Chapter Text
Izuku was not okay. He was sure of that much, at least.
Everything started when he was five, when he was diagnosed as Quirkless. Of course this was seemingly the end of the world. He sat in that plastic little chair as the doctor looked at him with fake sympathy.
It got worse. His mum tried her best to distract him from his diagnosis, making his favorite food and taking him to movies. But she couldn't keep it up, and it wasn't working. She tried her best to protect him.
Not everyone was like his mum though. Kacchan was a little less ok with his new quirk status. It didn't escalate much at first. Just name calling, and that childhood sort of rejection, of not playing together.It wasn't all Kacchan's fault, he was a product of his environment, and turns out teachers won't really stand up for the Quirkless kid. It made sense to him, eventually, nobody liked him because he should have gotten a quirk and he didn't. Simple as that.
He was 13 when everything changed. His mum had been taking longer shifts at work since he was 11, and he oftentimes didn't see her. That day had just gotten worse and worse. He had been late for school and thus had been humiliated in front of the class. Then Kacchan had yelled at him for muttering again. God Izuku can't you just shut up for once. And then the teacher had told the whole class he wanted to apply to Yuuei.
He was able to zone out through the rest of the day, and when the bell rang Kacchan had blocked the doorway.
"Stupid Deku, what the hell do you think your doing! I'm the only person from this hellhole who'll make it to Yuuei! A useless Deku like you couldn't make it in, no school would want a Quirkless idiot like you!"
Kacchan put his hand on Izuku's shoulder, burning him with his quirk. The smell of burnt clothes and nitroglycerin filled the air and explosions sparked against his skin. He grabbed Izuku's analysis journal, throwing it out the open window, and turning away.
" You should do yourself a favor and take a swan dive off the roof, and hope for a quirk in your next life."
Izuku was no stranger to the suicide baiting. It happened almost everyday, spider lilies on his desk, cruel words scratched onto his locker. But this hurt the most.
His brain couldn't process his childhood best friend saying this to him, and promptly shut down. He didn't say anything, just put his tattered yellow backpack on and walked to retrieve his notebook from the fountain.
He walked on autopilot, his mind a million miles away as he tried to process what he had heard, because of this he didn't take his usual route home. He walked right past his turn to start towards his street, and instead walked to the park a little whiles away.
No one was there, seeing as it was almost 5pm. So he made his way to the swings and sat down, half-heartedly kicking the woodchips. Eventually sadness gave out to hunger, and he walked to the grocery store down the block.
He picked up some soup, and a pack of plastic utensils, as well as new broom. His had broken the other day and he couldn't stand the feeling of dust on the floor.
He walked back to the park, eating his soup not caring that it was cold.It had gotten dark fairly quickly and the street lamps didn't do much.
As he walked he thought he heard something. Someone crying maybe?
He carefully went to investigate, and walked down the alley it had come from. There was a man, using his quirk on another guy. He seemed to have some sort of mutation quirk that turned his fingers into knives. He was threatening the other guy, saying something about money.
He knew that if he didn't do something, the guy would die here tonight, alone and forgotten.
His feet seemed to move on their own, he held the broom like he imagined one would a staff. In some sort of freakish luck, the broom he had bought wasn't hollow. Normally this would be bad, it would be too heavy. This however worked in Izuku's favor, because as he closed his eyes and hit the guy over the head, it knocked him out.
What did I just do???
He immediately realized what he had done. He hurriedly checked Knifehand's pulse with shaking hands, relieved to find it. He asked the guy to call the police and not tell the police about him.
He promptly ran back home, straight to his room and locked the door. He sat there, worrying about his accidental vigilantism. He opened his laptop, and looked up the laws concerning vigilantes, with short, panicked breaths. A quick search calmed his worries. It said that vigilantism is defined by a person using their quirk to fight crime, without a hero license.
He looked at the screen, and idea slowly forming in his mind,
Laws had loopholes, it was almost guaranteed, and his quirk status was one of them. Because he was Quirkless, he couldn't be charged with vigilantism, and besides no one would suspect the Quirkless kid.
With this knowledge came something else, a slight bit of hope. And though he dared not jinx it, maybe, just maybe he could afford to hope. Just a little bit