Work Text:
Midoriya Izuku, a runt amongst mutants, is many things.
A Deku. Useless. Disadvantaged. A crybaby.
He is also Kind.
And really, in this world, that's all that matters.
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Aizawa:
When Izuku is six years old, he lies to his mama and tells her he is going to play with Kacchan at his house. She doesn't know, nor will she ever, that Kacchan is a monster in the skin of a nephew.
Izuku goes in the opposite direction and darts through alleys (safe, because in the streets of the outskirts, the land of gangs not Yakuza, children are safe), before he frowns.
Smoke billows from the fight, and the media swarms the heroes glowing in its heat, but Izuku ignores them.
His eyes track the one slinking away, out if sight, blood on his hands. Izuku follows.
He is small, and light on his feet, and he doesn't alert the figure who is slowly streaking blood across the floor as it leaks from his side.
The man collapses, and Izuku runs. He kneels at the man's side and sees burns and blisters across skin. The man is a new underground hero, from the looks of it, and Izuku takes note of the capture weapon around his neck, bloody and tangled.
Izuku knows how to deal with burns, and has ones worse than this. He pulls burn clean from his little All Might bag and shushes the pained man (barely nineteen, not a man, a child soldier) while he applies the cream. He hums the song his mama sings when he is sick and the man relaxes. The burns lighten in colour (good quality burn cream made with a quirk, it costs all Izuku's pocket money) and Izuku wraps them in clingfilm (not gauze, as it sticks).
"Are you hurt anywhere else, mister?" He asks, wide green eyes meeting dry brown ones, and he sees something flicker in those brown eyes at his voice.
"Why did you help me?"
An avoidance, and Izuku's quick fingers find the deep gash in his knee within seconds.
"Because you're hurt." He answers, and the man hisses as he cleans out the grit from the cut.
"I could have been a villain." The man points out, and Izuku gives him a look so innocent yet so knowing for a small six year old face with freckles and chubby cheeks.
"So? Everyone deserves to be looked after." He says, and the Hero contemplates him.
He stands, looking alot better than before, and he turns to Izuku before he runs to his agency.
"Don't let the world warp that kindness, kiddo."
Izuku doesn't intend to.
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Nedzu:
His base instincts are screaming, and the quirk they forced into him is ramming into every nerve he has. He hasn't slept in days and his eyes BURN and his head feels like someone is stamping on it. He let's out a pitiful whine that is all animal.
He is wandering through some woods, having hoped a walk in the trees would soothe him, but the bird cry and the rustles are just torture for his sensitive ears and his pounding head.
He eventually just curls into some grass, sobs softly and closes his eyes. He thinks bitterly that if he dies here, he will be glad.
Footsteps, and Nedzu forced himself up, teeth bared. He sees a boy watching him with small hands and scarred knees (burns, his brain shouts somewhere) but the eyes of a fox hunting a rabbit. Sharp, taking in every detail.
Nedzu should run, pinned under a glinting green stare.
Instead, the screaming in his head stops.
He slumps, and the boy slowly steps forward, and rolls him a sealed bottle of water.
"Here, migraines can dehydrate you. My mama gets them alot." He says simply, as if the water is a simple gift, not life itself for his poor dry throat and his suddenly painless head.
Nedzu reaches a paw for the water, shaking with exhaustion, unable to open it.
"May I do it for you?"
Anyone else asked that, Nedzu would destroy them. He was not weak, he was not a creature to be coddled or looked down upon. But in those hunters' eyes, he saw nothing. No pity, no mocking. Just bright bright green and kindness.
He let's out a nod. The boy swiftly opens it and passes it back, then lifts his palms to be spread wide on his bare knees. Unthreatening, small, sweet.
Nedzu realises that this child doesn't know that he is the apex predator. Doesn't know of the hum about him, the way the grass moves of its own free will to caress his scars without wind to move them, unaware of the other animals peek their heads out to look at the little sprite that has blessed them.
This is a pixie in human flesh, and he doesn't even seem to know.
"Here." The boy has pulled a box of eggs and a bento box from his bag.
The bento box is filled with compartments of fruits, cooked chicken and leaves. The food on which a stoat needs to survive.
This boy knows he is a stoat. Not even the remaining scientists who created him (who he didn't kill, the ones who he spared as a message while they watched his sharp claws emerge from the other size of their friends' skull, covered in blood and brain matter) remember what he is.
Somehow, Nedzu doesn't mind the child knowing.
He eats, watching the boy content to bask in the sun while he does, green curls flashing an inhuman gold as they ruffle with his movements. A sparrow flies to land on him, and the child laughs (pure, otherworldly, just for a second the sun shone hotter and the flowers bloomed even though it was February), stroking scarred little fingers over dark feathers.
"Would you like me to carry you back to UA?"
The child knows who he is. Isn't afraid, isn't in awe, isn't disgusted. The question is gentle and soft and not a pity but an offer so genuine and practical.
Nedzu looks up at the winter sun and flinches, before he nods to the teen.
"Okay.",
As if it was that simple. Maybe it is.
He is placed in the scarf around the child's neck and the child walks.
Nedzu isn't ashamed that he let himself fall to sleep, lulled by the aura of a child who is many things, but less human than even him is the most prevalent.
He is awoken with a simple tap to his nose, and he wakes with a silent mind and more well rested than he ever remembers. He sees the sun is down, and the stars are out, and that the child has been sat outside the UA gates for hours.
"You seemed very tired, and you slept well there, so I decided to stay and do homework while you slept."
Nedzu looks in those eyes and sees light (stars, oceans, atoms, the birth of the fucking universe) and realises that he was wrong.
This child was not a sprite, pixie or Sidhe. He was a young God born of starlight and miracles.
The child places his down, gives a small grin, and skips away.
Nedzu sits back, and he schemes.
The child was wearing shorts with a logo on. He types it in and he sees Aldera Elementary School. A quick dig shows him eight year old Midoriya Izuku.
Nedzu cackles when he sees the label of 'quirkless'.
If that child is quirkless, then he is All Might.
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Kayama Nemuri:
Her date turned out to be an ass, and somehow she froze when he shoved her against a wall and began to touch her. She closed her eyes, ashamed and paralysed because she was supposed to be a damn hero and couldn't even defend herself, and prayed it would end soon. As his hand reached between her thighs and a single pearly tear dropped down a cheek, the earth seemed to shake.
"Get off her."
A child. Preteen, definitely, and she feared for him.
Her abuser let out a scream as if burnt, and his hands showed blisters that had no reason to be there. Both of them turned to see a child smiling with too many teeth and eyes so dark a green they were almost black.
"Leave, before I burn away on your body the place you were about to touch on her." It was a promise that was wrong coming from a small mouth, but it seeped into them both like toxins and they knew he wasn't joking.
Her would-be rapist ran off, free.
"Don't worry, Ms Joke is patrolling down that street, she has been made aware of the situation." The child says softly, and he takes Nemuri's hand to guide her to sit on some blankets that had absolutely not been there before.
"I-" She began, but all the words died on her tongue. She felt so weak and stupid. Years of training snd she froze like a damn deer.
A small scarred hand moved to flick her lightly between the eyes, and she meets the eyes of the kid beside her.
"Stop it. Fighting crime for a living is different to being the victim of one. You trusted him, and he betrayed you, anyone would freeze after that." He told her, and the words sank into her core until she believes them.
The boy presses a jacket into her hands, long enough that it would cover the parts of her clothes that the man had torn, and she wonders where he is getting these items because he hasn't a backpack with him.
"You'll be okay, Miss Midnight." He promises, and she believes him.
He runs down the street like a nymph, and when Nemuri mentions her encounter in the staff room, both Nedzu and Aizawa take interest.
She is pulled into the office of her feral mutant of a boss, and she is told the beginning of a myth that they will live through. About fledgling gods and tsunamis that hit the coast when a certain green haired boy was born.
Nemuri smiles, and she lights a candle that night for him, as a thank you, and places a single piece of candy next to the candle.
She wakes with the candy replaced with an asphodel bloom.
Izuku wakes the next day with green fire crackling in his soul, and feeling like a god.
It is on that day that his mama sits him down finally and tells him of his father. The man who was a star, and had to return to the chaos of space after he was born.
He smiles, and tells his mother of his gifts. Of how he can summon and create and see more than he should. Inko smiles, a feral thing that told Izuku he did not inherit his rage from his father, and tells him she is proud.
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Toga:
She sobs in her corner, thin and dizzy and so so hungry. Her leg bleeds from where she cut it climbing from her window (from the cell her guardians kept their monster of a child). Her own blood can't sustain her she knows, she has tried.
Her stomach aches something awful with hunger, and she screams as her mind snaps a little further, her thought warping as she smells a human nearby. Her self control is snapping, she's so hungry, she wants to eat.
A bloody wrist appears under her nose, and her blurry gaze meets glowing green eyes. She can't help herself and she sobs as she fastens her mouth with her sharp little teeth onto to cut, sucking like it's her last meal. (It might be, if her parents find out she has eaten.)
The blood is sweet and perfect, hot on her tongue, and her body relaxes slowly when she realises that the boy isn't fighting her. The blood slowly stops, and she whimpers. The boy pulls away, reopens his wrist, and offers it again. Five times he does it, until Himiko can actually see and hear and feel like a person again. She watches as the cut heals instantly, and she cowers from the boy.
"It's okay." He tells her, and his voice vibrates like an angel is talking to her, like how is described in the book the priest her father had called in said.
"But...I'm a monster." She tells him, repeating words beaten into her.
"You're not. But even if you were, monster deserve kindness too. You're not going back there. Can I take you somewhere safe?" He says, and she believes somehow that he will be safe wherever this boy takes her.
She takes the scarred hand that is outstretched, and basks in the warmth of human touch (well, almost human, something in her head tells her to worship this boy, for he is something else).
He leads her down streets, buys her clothes and soft toys that she had never been allowed since she was four, and takes her to a little house on the suburbs.
She meets his mama, who is kind and sets her up a bedroom. Who is a nurse and can get blood for her with no judgement. Who smiles at Himiko and bathes her wounds and says she always wanted a daughter.
Himiko is home, and she has a god for a brother.
She is safe now, and always will be.
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Eri:
When Izuku is twelve, he shoots from his bed one night. His eyes blaze and his mother and sister let him go with soft encouraging words. They light candles for him and burn herbs that give him power, and watch as he slips into shadow.
He appears in the Yakuza compound like a demon, and he watches as his little sister (by blood, a child born of a star) sob in the arms of an old man who looks despaired.
He watches a man who he has been watching creep forward, reaching for his sister.
He will not allow Kai Chisaki to harm his little sister. Thunder strikes and green eyes glow like gems, and eyes flash to him. Bullets bounce off him as he walks forward, and he vanishes those who try to use their quirks.
The little girl with red eyes, silver hair and a glittering horn has stopped crying. She recognises her brother.
"You will not harm her." Izuku says softly, but it cuts across the ground and shatters windows. It makes ears bleed and the little girl giggle.
"Who are you?" The old man asks, clutching her close. He seems to care for her, at least, somewhat.
"Brother!" Eri cries, and she wiggles in his arms until she is set down, and Chisaki's grabs for her miss each time as Izuku flings him across the compound.
Eri slams into Izuku, and they both light up in green and gold respectively, and the stars burn bright as their father watches over them.
"Can you control her quirk?" The man asks, and Izuku gives a child like giggle.
"Quirk? Oh no, sir, she doesn't have one." He says, and blinks away into shadow with Eri on his hip.
Himiko giggles and plays with Eri, and is delighted for a new sister. Izuku summons enough money for a new house, and Inko grins as she gets to buying one.
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Epilogue:
Izuku decimates the entrance exam, though doesn't use all his powers out of fairness to the other candidates. He saves Uraraka from the 0-Pointer which looks at the young God and turns on its heel and retreats.
He smiles as he leaves, as do the ones who had met him already.
A young God in UA.
The world wasn't ready for him.