Chapter Text
Izuku was young when it all sstarted, well, younger. It hadn’t been that long really, four or five years? He was about nine, after a particularly bad day at school followed by a particularly bad beating from Kacchan and his crew. He’d sniffled and limped off, trying desperately to find ways to either hides the injuries or find a way to explain them off. He patched himself up best he could with the little first aid kit he carried in his bag, wiping tears from his eyes as he worked. He hated how he could never stop crying when this happened, he hated how the tears’d stream and everyone would mock him, how frantically he’d try and fight them back or hide them, only for the humiliation and panic to grow until all he could do was run off and cry until he couldn’t anymore.
Like many a day, though, he ended up on his way back home, eyes still red and body still aching as he went. Also like many days beforehand, the sounds of an incident caught his interest. He ran off, ignoring the pains in his legs toward the source of the commotion. There was a villain, a crowd already drawn, and police trying to get a hold of the situation. It didn’t look like any hero had arrived on the scene yet, but surely it’d be soon. He remembered thinking that, trying to get a view of what was happening, when suddenly he felt a sharp jab in his neck and the world went black.
When he came to he was in a windowless van, zipties around his wrists and ankles, a gag in his mouth-
A scream cut through his memories and he jumped a bit, quickly looking around to try to locate the source of the sound. He rushed off as he had so many times before, finding a villain, a spectacle, and a crowd, like he always did. He quickly examined the situation, some thugs with what appeared to be a stolen armored vehicle, likely delivering cash to a bank. They had apparently crashed through the police barricade and damaged the vehicle and were now holding people hostage.
He hated hostage situations, but every incident was a threat to people anyway, wasn’t it?
It didn’t look like any pros had arrived…
He bounced on his heels anxiously, eyes darting around. Surely a pro would show up soon? There had to be one close, he just had to be patient right?
A child was crying, one of the hostages he hadn’t noticed before, one of the crook’s arms around their throat and a gun to their head.
“Shut up, you brat!” the man knocked them upside the head with the butt of his gun.
Nope. No being patient.
Izuku slid into a nearby alley, no one was looking, everyone was too fixated on the scene around the corner. It was times like this he actually was grateful he was so quick to tears. He closed his eyes and thought back to the last time Kacchan had tripped him down the stairs, it had hurt but no more than all the laughter. Everyone stopping to point and laugh, to mock him, like he was just there to get hurt for their amusement. He always used to fight tears, but he let them fall and embraced what was to come.
It only took him a moment to change, tapping into the reservoir of power deep in the pit of his being. It was always a heady rush of an experience, the way his body would change, the way he’d feel the stock of quirks stirring awake within him. It was always so exciting and he probably would’ve been giddy if it weren’t for the changes in his head. Any anxiety or fear melted away into a sense of calm and confidence. Everything he’d observed from the scene suddenly seemed so simple, every factor now simply a piece of a puzzle there for him to put together. Puzzles were challenging sometimes, but they were always fun to figure out, and he always could figure it out.
He was pretty cool like that.
The onlookers crowded around, panic and unrest growing as the pros that had arrived on the scene were trying to negotiate with the villains.
“Come on, don’t you want these people to go home alive?!” their leader snapped. “We’re going to start killing them off-!”
Abruptly, one of the villain’s lackey’s turned and slammed him in the face.
“What the hell-!?”
“What are you doing?!”
“I didn’t do that-!”
The lackey’s arm jerked to the side, slamming them into another one of their buddies and knocking them out-cold. The remaining criminals were too caught up in their confusion to notice the tall, white-haired figure that had appeared out of seemingly nowhere in their midst.
“Hey there,” he smiled pleasantly.
“Who the hell-!?”
He slammed his hand over the leader’s nose and mouth, a purple mist coming from his palm which knocked the man out. The remaining two of the group tried to jump their attacker and a wall of flame shot up between them, making them recoil in time for the man that had taken out their leader to slam them down with a hand on each their faces, the same purple mist knocking them out.
He smiled to himself, dusting his hands off. Well! Job well done! He was getting better at using Mom’s telekinesis, it was pretty handy once trained up. Midnight’s was always useful but he was still wary about using Endeavor’s flames unless he really had to…
“AH! IT’S ZERO!”
The onlookers erupted into cheers and he glanced over at them with a sheepish smile, responding with a simple wave. He didn’t like that was the name the media had taken and run with for him, the big ‘O’ on his shirt was actually based on one of All Might’s old costumes, but some blogger had thought it was a zero and…well, it’s not like he could make an official statement on it or anything.
Because technically he wasn’t a hero…technically he was breaking the law.
But vigilantes were often very popular anyway.
“H- Hey!” the cops redirected their weapons toward him. “Put your hands up and come quietly! You’re under arrest!”
They were quickly drowned out by boos from the crowd, a lot of the onlookers starting to get aggressive with the law enforcement and the pros on the scene suddenly had their hands full trying to calm them.
Time to make his exit then.
He dashed toward the nearest building and race up the side, jumping onto the rooftop. He perched on the edge just a moment to give another wave to the crowd.
“Don’t give them a hard time, okay? Gotta go!”
He turned and raced off, hearing the cheers and shouts behind him.
As soon as he was sure he was clear he slipped into a backstreet, behind a dumpster, and then let out a sigh that felt like it drained his whole body. It did, really, and he shrank back into the middle schooler Izuku Midoriya. He fumbled in his pack for one of his spare uniforms, awkwardly glancing around to make sure no one was around and quickly changing into it, then stuffing the larger set of clothes back in.
He tried to make sure he didn’t go too far off, he had left his backpack stashed around the place where he’d transformed. His school stuff and ID were in there, he kept his more important stuff- money, phone, keys- in this same pack as his clothes. He’d made the mistake of leaving those things in his school bag before, only to try and return for where he’d left it to find someone had picked it up and, unfortunately, not turned it in to the cops.
Mom had been so upset and worried when he told her it’d been stolen, but they had managed to sort things out.
She had been way more upset when it all started.
He didn’t know where they took him, he’d struggled and flailed in the back of the van, trying to break through the binds but succeeding only in rubbing his skin raw.
“Kid you’re the only one hurting you, right now,” one of his kidnappers had scoffed. “Just stop struggling, we’re not going to hurt you.”
Like he could believe that. As much as he hated to admit it though, he wasn’t making any progress and he was exhausted. He settled down, sniffling to himself. So weak, so pathetic, so helpless.
What was going to happen to him?
When the van finally stopped one of the men had climbed into the back with him, a dark bag in hand. Izuku scrambled away best he could, but it was a small space and the man had no trouble grabbing him and pulling the bag around his head. He was scooped up and he flailed best he could, not sure what he could even manage to do if he slipped from his grip onto the ground.
He didn’t remember exactly what they were saying, but he heard people talking about him. They needed him for something , and they kept mentioning their ‘boss’. At some point they placed him on something and strapped him in. The voice then he remembered, and at the time he thought it sounded familiar but he couldn’t place it at all. Maybe if he hadn’t been so scared and panicked…
He felt another jab in the neck and was barely aware of the bag pulled off his head, his vision swimming as a blurred figure with large round glasses looked down at him.
“That’s him all right,” he made out a toothy grin. “This should help Sensei a good deal…”
A lot of the next few days he didn’t remember. He remembered it hurt, and he remembered he didn’t stay awake for very long at a time. Most of it was a blur, the first part he remembered clearly after the haze was waking up in a small room. It was bare except for a bed and a small bathroom. There was a couple fluorescent lights, no windows, and a single door. He wasn’t restrained but his body ached, there were small holes and stitches all over his body. He was wearing a hospital shirt that was way too big for him, it was more like a gown, and a pair of pants about the same size was folded on the end of the bed. What? That didn’t make any sense, but he wasn’t exactly going to stop and ponder it right now.
Ignoring the pain he fumbled to the door only to find there was no handle on his side. He struggled with it, trying to push it open, to wriggle his fingertips into the sides to pull it open. Nothing worked.
He fell back onto the ground and sobbed, wailing like a baby. So pathetic, so weak, so useless. If only he was strong, like All Might, if only he was brave, like Kacchan, if only he was anything other than himself…
His body seized up, he choked, hands clutching at his throat.
He couldn’t breathe, he struggled and heaved and spat, but he couldn’t get a solid breath.
He fell onto his side and stars exploded in his vision.
“Oh, it seems to be working, excellent.”
The voice from earlier, he wasn’t sure where it was coming from.
“I’m sure he’ll be more than compatible for Sensei. He’ll certainly be glad to know he got a use out of him after all.”
He didn’t know who ‘Sensei’ was, but he did know he didn’t want to be ‘of use’ to him.
But he was preoccupied with other things at the moment.
He grit his teeth, eyes shut tight.
He screamed.
It felt like his entire body was on fire, inside and out, the already existing pains in his body accentuated, crunching and stretching. His body was changing but something in his head was far more frightening. It felt like…he couldn’t explain it, not in any way that would do it justice. It felt like being…replaced, he felt like his fear and panic was being squashed, like he was in his own head trying to hold back a tsunami as it crashed down on him and smothered him. His feelings morphed, his thoughts morphed. Fear became fascination, panic became irritation. He found himself intrigued by what was happening and even…excited. What a strange new experience! What kind of opportunities would it bring? His remaining fear was nothing but an annoyance, he felt it but he found himself angry that he felt it. Couldn’t it just go away? It was distracting, and juvenile…
As the pain faded and the world came into focus again, he became aware of his surroundings. He was still on the ground, a sheet had been thrown over him, and a pair of shoes was in front of his face. He placed a hand on the ground in front of him, moving to push himself up.
The hand was much larger than it should have been, his arm thicker, more muscled. He pushed himself up, looking up at the man. Judging by the glasses and the grin, it was the man that had received him when he came here. He was a lot shorter than he thought- Oh.
This was…a new, perspective.
He bemusedly glanced around the room, getting a sense of the scale and comparing it to what it had been just minutes ago. Afterward he gave himself a quick glance over, bringing up a hand to feel out the shape of his face.
“My, my,” the man grabbed his face, tilting it up to look at him. “Certainly a resemblance, hm?”
Izuku’s first reflex was to flinch back, but a more foreign feeling riled up in him. Anger? Disgust, even.
“Don’t touch me!” He snapped, pulling his head back and slapping the man’s hands away.
“Oh, a bit moody are we?”
Now he was being mocked. He was getting really sick of that…
“Well, go ahead and get yourself properly dressed,” the man turned and walked out the door. “I have a plethora of tests I need to run before we move forward.”
He attempted to stumble to his feet and make for the door but before he could manage, the doctor had left and the door had slammed shut. Izuku grit his teeth and suppressed a growl, glancing around the room again.
Well if this had been an ‘expected’ result, the large pair of clothes that had been left made more sense now. There was no point in panicking or getting riled up right now, he’d get dressed and then try and get a read on the situation again. He pointedly ignored how foreign his body felt, instead mulling over what was happening.
Okay, whatever they had done to him had made him like this, they had the intention of this outcome, he was in some facility he didn’t know anything about, the only way out seemed to be that door, and whatever the end goal was, it was using him for some purpose for this ‘sensei’ of theirs. Why him, though? And other tidbits he caught…’resemblance’, hm? He didn’t like this, but that was unnecessary conjecture at this point, he’d think it over later when he wasn’t in a more pressing scenario.
So…the door, then? He couldn’t force it open before, they were going to have to open it at some point though, since it sounded like they were going to move him out of this room for their so-called ‘tests’.
Damn it, he wished he could just slam through the wall like All Might-
A shudder passed through him and his arms throbbed. He looked down at them with confusion, they didn’t seem to be any different- well, than they had been a minute ago. Something…definitely felt different though. He flexed his hand, frowning. It felt…strong.
On a whim, or perhaps an instinct, he clenched his fist and thought of All Might and how he could punch a hole right through this wall. He slammed his fist at the wall and-
And the wall fell to pieces.
He didn’t waste any time making his escape after that.
To this day Izuku didn’t know what had happened, or why. He remembered just trying to get as far away from the place as possible. He put as much distance between them as possible before he’d eventually collapsed in some street. He had come to in yet another hospital bed, but in a proper hospital, in a proper room with windows. He was small again, and all the stitches and pock-marks were gone, like they’d never been there at all.
Of course, he’d panicked, his mother came and he cried, clinging to her. She had cried too, they both had cried quite a bit. Eventually police came, they asked him what had happened, and, of course, having the mentality of a scared, confused child, he told them everything he knew.
In short…they thought he was crazy.
Not crazy necessarily, but they didn’t believe him. They thought the frenzied, non-sensical ramblings were a coping mechanism for a traumatized child, dreaming up some fantastical story to ignore what really happened.
They never found the facility, never found anyone involved, never found anything to back up his tale at all. They’d even examined him at the hospital and said everything was normal, that he was just exhausted, and that he was very lucky that his kidnappers hadn’t hurt him. The police kept asking him to ‘try to remember what really happened’, but eventually they gave up when the only things he could tell them they didn’t believe. Even he thought he had imagined it, after a while…until it happened again.
If it was all real after all, he wondered, why had the doctor and his people let him go? No one had ever tried to kidnap him again, or hurt him, and the police and pros could never find any evidence they existed at all. When he found out he could change like that, when he wanted to, he thought of going to them to prove his story by showing his transformation. He thought about it, but…but he also felt like making that a fact would end up being a bad idea, dangerous even…honestly, he was too scared to see what would happen.
He was never scared as ‘Zero’ though, but when he was Zero he was too…interested, in other things. There was no desire to go to the cops and see what they could find out, not when there were so many more entertaining things to experiment with. When he’d made his escape he thought he had some kind of power quirk, like All Might, but the second time he changed he discovered that wasn’t the case.
There had been a fire, and he thought of how the Waterhose duo could shoot water…
And he did.
He didn’t understand it in detail, but he figured out more or less how the ‘quirk’ worked. He could use any quirk, but only ones he had seen before. He’d tried making some up and they wouldn’t work, or tried using some he’d heard of but had never seen videos of or in person. Even then, there were limits…and consequences.
For example, the variety he’d used earlier was strenuous, so many changing so fast…
He yawned loudly, rubbing his eyes.
He needed a nap. No more vigilantism today, he’d definitely hit his limit.
If only he could use quirks when he was ‘Izuku’…he’d much rather be a legitimate hero than a vigilante with the cops always after him. Once he became a real pro, he wouldn’t have to keep breaking the law and he’d feel less guilty about it…
But it’s not like he could’ve just not done anything, not when he had the ability to.
Besides…it felt much better being “Zero” than “Deku”.