Chapter Text
His fingers pressed painfully against the stick-out wood where a factory error had created a small secret for him, where his life had created a sense of meaning in the small items hidden bellow the floor of his small stolen space.
The small mask that stuck out from among his meagre possessions was his pick for the night, another night of vigilantism and a hero’s mindset. At least tonight, he was confident enough in his rest and skill to trail his favourite underground Hero, Eraserhead. Slipping on the mask, he slipped on his ‘Hero’ personality too, a more confident, self-assured person who had no issues expressing talent and study. As he continues on his creation of this Persona, which he has aptly named “Blank”, due to his lack of a quirk (funny, he knows) he passes over the creaking wood with red shoes, wearing down a practiced path across it. On his way out, he made sure to carefully check for outsiders (anyone outside himself) to make sure his corner of the world stays his own.
When he’s sure his corner will stay his own, he darts across the small decrypt lawn and starts his night for real. With practiced, smooth movements, he launches himself quickly up a fire escape and then onto a roof, instinctively taking off in the direction of Ereaserhead’s equally practiced patrol route. As his feet pound across the concrete and shingles of the modern Japanese rooftops, he finds himself thinking of the incident(s?) that started this modern mess.
He was 4, At the doctors office in his old hometown where it truly all started. His doctor said those damming words, a whisper of an uttered curse, the word “Quirkless” like a well poised blade in his heart. His mother’s tears hurt worse than his own, her burning cries of “I’m sorry” like it was her fault that he was broken, like it was all her blame to take. No, it was the world’s, the ones that struck and hurt and screamed that he wasn’t worth her time, that his father shouldn’t waste his money as if he didn’t have a plethora.
It was particularly his own, his unaltered trust in the world that had stripped him so bare, his untarnished dream of him as a hero, and he was still fully aware that his dream hadn’t been changed from all those years ago. Fully aware that he had searched for the permission of others to live in a world where he was weaker, but he still had a right to live, no matter that the comments for him to “take a swan dive” had interested him so much he had ended up at the edge of a roof only hours later. It was truly reflective of how much the blame fell to him for his own condition when even the other 4 year olds in the park had screamed at him for a condition that at best was seen as contagious and worth isolation, and at worst rendered him prone on the floor with “mysterious”(Quirk given) injuries.
But it was mostly the fault of fate; the fault of just how the cards were drawn, and how unfairly they were given. The fault of a higher power, who deemed others so worthy of godly power and him so weak to not even receive a measly spark. (At least a spark could light a fire)
And fate had told him off for not loosing his own spark, in the form of a villain incident that had stolen his only sun in life, tearing away the life of his mother in unfortunate circumstances, in a skewered car that was just too far for the service to reach any heroes to save them, in a world where police and ambulances don’t have the right to be the first on the scene. It was fate’s fault that he ended up pulling himself from a burning car that swallowed the corpse of his dear mother, before the villain could claim him too.
Before the heroes could save him
And he went back to mufasta, and he found a small, abandoned and empty building that reminded him to much and so little of his old life. And it took him no time at all to think of vigilantism, because after all, the rules said that Vigilantism was “using a quirk to fight crime without a license” which meant that he fell right into the cracks: he didn’t have a quirk, so there was nothing they could charge him over; he didn’t even have to worry about owning support gear because in the haste for quirk management, actual weapons and gear stopped being regulated.
Really, they should have foreseen that quirkless kids would try to take on Justice themselves after a tragic villain attack that rendered them parentless at the ripe age of 10. Because he was 10 when he started vigilantism, 10 when he found a voice modulater and a couple pieces of body armour (along with a bo staff and some knives) and decided to teach himself how to fight.
So he was 11 when he first took down a villain on his own, 12 when he first made the news, 13 when he “met” Eraserhead (Read: followed him when he saw him on patrol once) and now he’s 14, almost 15, and running across the rooftops to ring his favorite hero, minus All might, of course.
Which leads him to now, his feet silently running on rooftops as he jumped across and alleyway every so often. At first, he was disappointed to see that the houses in Japan were much more cramped together than the American stereotype of alleyways every couple steps.
Finally, with minimal roof-jumping, he made it to the area he knew that Eraser would be crossing through in a few minutes. There was no need to survey the rooftop, because he’d been there a thousand times; it was another piece of a practiced puzzle that had formed years ago. Ah, he would be arriving in a couple seconds! Deftly, Blank swung behind the old, rusty air conditioning unit that took up a quarter of the roof.
Eraser landed seconds later, right on time whether he knew it or not. It was easy to follow him; he never did look too closely behind the air conditioner.
In an almost non-existent crunch of gravel, Eraser was off, a matching crunch of gravel the only sign of Blank’s movement.