Chapter Text
For the record, when Izuku had started training to become a hero, he had definitely not been expecting this.
It had started when Izuku had seen a clip of an All Might “Origins” interview. Izuku watched with wide eyes, still as obsessed with All Might at age 12 as he had been at age 4.
“I trained for hours every day,” All Might said, his voice deep and almost resonant despite the tinny speakers. “Month after month, in heat waves and in monsoons. It takes a lot to be a hero, but if you put in the effort you can accomplish great things.”
And that was when Izuku realized he had been neglecting an important step on his journey to become a hero— physical training.
The very same day, he started looking up workouts. Body weight exercises, weight training, yoga— Izuku tried them all. But easily his favorite activity was running. He already had lots of practice (fleeing from the wrath of an explosive Kacchan was much better than staying to take the beating), so his runs were much more fun than the workouts his twig limbs didn’t have the muscle for.
It was while out for his morning run that he came across Dagobah Beach.
Dagobah Beach was possibly the most disgusting place Izuku had ever seen; a dumping ground for what looked like all of Japan. Trash there ranged from reeking garbage bags of municipal waste to fully-functioning (if scuffed and powerless) refrigerators to old water pipes rusted almost beyond recognition. It was a veritable treasure trove to someone who was smart (and disgusting) enough to realize it, and Izuku felt he fit both of those guidelines. The kids at school called him “trash” enough; maybe it was time to embrace it.
For the next week, Izuku explored the precarious landscape of the beach, until on the eighth day he hit a jackpot: an old duffel bag full of beaten up sparring gear, and a punching bag with beans spilling out a rip at one side.
As soon as he had patched up the punching bag, Izuku began running his own masochistic training ring. He pushed himself to his limits every day, starting off with stretching and a dynamic warmup before carrying out his grueling cleanup efforts for the day. (He had managed to steal a dumpster from behind a convenience store, which might be morally wrong because it was stealing, but he figured it was for a good cause). Finally, at the end of the day he subjected himself to the torture of weight training and combat training.
Izuku had no idea what he was doing at first. He had absolutely no experience and no guidance, so he watched videos and read web pages religiously until he could consider himself an amateur-expert, and probably wouldn’t break himself while training. By the end of the first couple months, he began to see the results.
And then he met Giran.
Giran reminded him of his sleazy uncle, despite that Izuku had no uncles. The man had found him when Izuku was yelling in time to his punches, barely managing to sway the bag— though that was better than when he had first started.
Giran had looked him up and down with that glint in his eye that said “high potential investment”, and given him a sleazy grin that made Izuku feel like he had been dipped in oil by association.
Needless to say, Izuku had not trusted him at all. But Giran was nothing if not a businessman at heart, and it had only taken a few well-placed mentions of “free expert training” and “extra income to support your family” to balance out the whole “fighting for money” aspect, before Izuku was sold. If extremely wary.
Izuku had already figured that if he wanted to get into the hero course, he would need professional training. Unfortunately, all the dojos in the area were very reluctant to accept a quirkless kid onto their mats, so he didn’t have many options.
Still, he clearly had reason to be wary; when he arrived at the place Giran had told him to come for training, he was greeted by an absolutely massive man who was almost definitely hiding an automatic rifle in his coat. The man, Iguchi, actually turned out to be really nice, so that wasn’t the best example of Izuku’s paranoia paying off, but it did prove to be founded in the next few months.
Yes, the training itself was incredibly helpful— if incredibly painful, with the intensity of his workouts.
However, Izuku was sure he saw at least five illegal dealings go down in his four months at the makeshift warehouse-dojo, and was witness to countless more implied crimes based on one-sided phone calls Giran had in his hearing range.
At first he had been anxious enough, and therefore shaky enough while training, to consider quitting altogether. He debated calling the police several times, but always swayed himself back with the argument “well, who else would train me?”
It was times like that when Izuku thought his brain might have the default setting of “destructive spiral”.
After the first couple months though, he became mostly desensitized. Nobody ever asked him to take part in any crimes, and they treated him like an actual person — which was better than he could say for most of society, once they found out he was quirkless— so he resolved to turn a blind eye when shady people brushed out past him just as he was arriving to the warehouse, and to crates of suspicious substances stacked in the corners of the room, and, of course, to his ever-changing rotation of combat instructors.
The only constants in his time at the warehouse were Giran, who would drop by every so often to see how he was doing, and Iguchi, who guarded the warehouse but would often sit in on Izuku’s lessons and give him tips.
Overall, it was… surprisingly nice. Iguchi became the “cool uncle” in contrast to Giran’s sleazy one, and the training sessions gave Izuku the opportunity to get stronger while simultaneously beating out all the stress he built up during the day. In consequence, he ended up going to the warehouse more days than not in his typical week.
Izuku’s mother, of course, knew nothing about this. When Izuku came home drenched in sweat and smiling like a lunatic, she assumed he had been training by himself in the park, and he just never corrected her. He didn’t want to lie to his ma, so he held up non-confirmation as a flimsy paper and duct-tape mental shield, and continued on with his maybe less-than-legal activities.
After seven months, when he could feel his improvement so drastically it was almost unbelievable, Izuku graduated from training at the warehouse to his first actual fight.
He lost.
Horribly.
He lost so badly that it was less than a minute before he was out cold. When he came to, Iguchi had said, “better a short fight than a face full of stitches,” and handed him an ice pack for his throbbing head.
The next fight, and the fight after that, and the fight after that until it had been two months, ended with Izuku’s loss. The crowd had taken to calling him “Zero”, on account that he had yet to win even a single match. Zero wins— yet countless bruises, a number of scars, and even two broken bones. Anyone sane should have given up by now.
But Izuku never stayed down.
And he could feel himself getting better.
Knockout blows became blocked strikes. Blocked strikes became glancing hits. Glancing hits became near misses. Every time he stepped into the ring he was a little bit faster, a little bit stronger.
Maybe that was why Giran didn’t drop him. If anything, the gleam in his eyes that said “high potential investment” grew brighter— sharper. More excited.
It was almost exactly two months later when Izuku landed his first knockout blow.
His opponent was a woman with a reptile quirk. She was cocky, probably because of his terrible reputation, and clearly wasn’t putting everything she had into the fight. Her tail banged against the side of the sunken ring with a metallic clang! clang! clang! , riling the crowd into a cacophony of jeers, mostly aimed at him.
She was heavyset, corded with muscle and covered in thick scales that only thinned around her head. A wall of strength.
One hit from her sent Izuku flying.
The audience cheered as she looked up at them and flashed a mouthful of crooked teeth.
Izuku touched back to the ground.
He had noticed something at the beginning of the fight— because she was heavy, the woman was slow. Fortunately for him, Izuku’s tactics relied on speed and agility.
Finally, all those hits he had taken in fight after fight paid off.
A split-second of distraction was all he needed to rebound and launch back into a perfect reverse hook kick, foot slamming into the pale, unprotected skin of her head. She crashed to the floor.
And didn’t get up.
The feeling that spread through Izuku’s body as the announcer declared him victor was almost indescribable— like the sun emerging from his soul and shining straight out through his skin. The crowd didn’t cheer, but it didn’t matter. Izuku was floating.
After the match Giran handed him an absolutely massive stack of cash, grinning at the shell-shocked look on Izuku’s face. “You didn’t forget about the money, did you?”
Izuku had, in fact, forgotten about the money.
“Win some more matches, kid,” Giran had said, and sent him back home with a puff of smoke into his face.
Apparently everyone in the crowd had bet against him, and consequently lost all their money. Izuku was holding almost a third of it.