Chapter Text
Izumi fidgeted in her seat as Tsubasa-sensei flipped through the results, a bored expression on his face.
It was a little while after her 4th birthday, and her Quirk still hadn’t shown itself yet! She’d tried everything to make it come out; she’d been straining her arms at every opportunity to see if she had her mama’s Quirk, and she’d huffed and puffed until she was red in the face to check for her dad’s Quirk. She’d tried so many other things as well, just in case she had a mutation of some kind, but nothing came out!
So, after months and months of trying, her mama suggested they go visit the doctor to see if he could figure out her Quirk. So she sat in his office and was very good when Tsubasa-sensei took all sorts of tests and measurements and-
“Yeah, I’m not seeing any Quirk here.”
Izumi blinked and looked up at the old man.
“No Quirk?” Her mama held her tighter.
The man shrugged, “It’s rare nowadays, but sometimes people just aren’t born with a Quirk.” He showed them several X-Rays of various parts of Izumi’s body, “Quirkless people have some functionally useless parts in their body that Quirked people don’t. Sorry to say, Midoriya-chan, but you don’t have a Quirk.” He didn’t sound sorry at all.
She frowned. No Quirk? But how was that possible? Could… could she even be a hero with no Quirk?
A funny static feeling surrounded her brain, taking her far away from the doctor’s office. Her mama was talking to the doctor, and then they left, Izumi running on autopilot. She continued to drift for the rest of the day, paying little attention to anything around her as her mind went blank.
She eventually awoke to herself watching a video on her mom’s computer. It was one she had seen more times than she could count, and knew off by heart. A video that had once given her comfort and hope in tough times, but now only served to rub salt into the wound.
All Might’s Japanese debut. The man himself was laughing, grinning widely as he carried countless people safely from a burning building. The video had been life-changing to a young Izumi, mourning the loss of her dad. It had given her direction, meaning.
But now it just reminded her of what she had lost.
The door behind her creaked as her mama walked into the room, “Izumi?”
She spun slowly in the computer chair, tears streaming down her cheeks, “M-mama? I-I can still be a hero, right? Even without a Q-Quirk?”
Her mama’s eyes glistened in the pale computer light, and she rushed forwards, enveloping Izumi in a tight hug, “Oh, Izumi, I’m sorry!”
But that wasn’t the response she wanted.
From there, Izumi’s life only got worse. Her best friend turned on her, ridiculing her every chance she got, and her mama only looked at her with pity. She couldn’t talk to anyone, couldn’t find comfort anywhere except her own room.
Izumi was alone.
A decade passed, and this did not improve. Izumi found herself isolated, cut off from the world around her, and unable to connect to anyone no matter how much she craved to. She retreated into the world of Quirks, analysing anything and everything she could find to escape her situation. And it was this she was doing on one particular morning, sitting in class and writing out notes about the debut of a new hero, Mt. Lady. She’d had the good fortune to witness the debut herself, on the way to school.
It may have almost made her late, but it was worth it.
Her notes were her life, truth be told. They were essential to her plan of becoming the world’s first Quirkless Hero. It was a plan no one believed in, not even herself some days, but she had to push herself anyway, to do her best and go Plus Ultra, no matter what!
Otherwise, what else did she have? Midoriya Izumi, the pathetic, no good, Quirkless hero otaku? She was decent enough in school, but that was it. No hope for anything other than a middle of the road office job that would eventually wear her down to nothing.
She had to try to be a hero. She had to .
Of course, Kacchan also knew how important her notes were to her, so it was no great surprise when, at the end of the day, he snatched them out of her hand, sneeringly told her exactly what he thought of her, then threw them out of the window. She tried her best to stutteringly defend herself, but what he said next stopped her in her tracks.
“Take a swan dive off the roof, and see if you’ll get a Quirk in the next life!”
That left her stunned, unable to speak as he and his lackeys laughed their way out of the room. He had never gone that far before. What was he thinking?! Saying stuff like that could put his hero career in jeopardy!
Did… did he really hate her that much?
She trudged outside, feeling just about ready to go home, when she found her notebook floating in the nearby pond. It was soaked through, but salvageable enough. Small mercies, she supposed. Still, it felt like the day couldn’t get any worse.
And then she was attacked by a villain. She nearly suffocated in his sludge but, thankfully, she was rescued by none other than All Might himself. He saved her, signed her notebook, and was all ready to leap away.
She couldn’t explain why she latched onto his leg, clinging to him tight as they soared through the sky. When they arrived on the top of a skyscraper, she asked him the first thing that came to mind.
“Can I be a hero, even without a Quirk?”
She was then, quite frankly, shocked to find All Might had deflated, somehow, into a skeletal shadow of his usual self. That scar of his certainly looked grisly, and yet…
“No, I’m afraid you can’t.”
Those words echoed in her ear as he walked into the building, leaving her alone. She couldn’t be a hero. The Number One hero, her idol, said so. She was… she was just useless, Quirkless, Izumi.
For one brief, terrifying moment, she recalled Kacchan’s words at school. She looked over the edge of the building. It was certainly an awfully long way down. If she just…
A distant explosion shocked her out of those thoughts. What had she been thinking?! She couldn’t do that! If nothing else, it would hurt her mom endlessly!
Another explosion cracked through the city, and she looked over to find smoke rising in the distance. Without a second thought she ran towards the sound, and was shocked to find Kacchan being attacked by the Sludge Villain from earlier.
The next minute or so was a blur. She acted without thinking, throwing her backpack at the villain, distracting him long enough for Kacchan to get a breath of air. Of course, that left her vulnerable to a counterattack, but before she could get consumed for the second time that day, All Might rescued her again, blasting the villain to pieces.
She then had to endure a, frankly, embarrassing lecture from the on-site heroes about how useless she was and how she just made everything worse, and by the time that was over, all she really wanted was to just… go home. Sleep.
Maybe wake up in a few years.
She opted to take a shortcut, trudging through the streets that still reeked of smoke. Except… as she got closer to home, the smell of smoke grew stronger. Eyes widened, she sprinted the rest of the way, bursting into the open to find her entire apartment block had become a towering inferno, fire and smoke bursting through every window.
With a shriek, she launched forwards. Her mom was still home! Was she safe? Did she get out/ What if she was still inside?!
Two strong arms caught her, stopping her from running through the police cordon. “Can’t let you do that, I’m afraid.” A smooth, calming voice uttered.
She shrieked louder, struggling against the hold, “Let me go! My mom’s still in there!”
But their grip was ironclad. “And you won’t do her any good if you go and get yourself stuck too!” The voice declared, triumphant. She scowled, but couldn’t argue, and resigned herself to waiting by the cordon. The arms released her, and their owner moved to stand by her, giving her a good look. He was a tall boy, maybe a year or two older than she was, with shaggy ash blonde hair and piercing yellow eyes that twinkled with a feline playfulness. His clothing, a black waistcoat, tie and dress pants paired with a blood red shirt and covered by a black cloak, clearly showed him to be a hero student.
Perhaps in another situation, she’d be excited by this, but now she just needed to know if her mom was okay.
The boy picked up on this, and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder, “Hey, don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye out for her.”
Izumi blushed at the touch, unused to any kind of physical contact, but nodded. Having him beside her certainly helped calm her down a little.
That is, until her mom was carried out of the burning building on a stretcher. The boy ran over to assess the situation. When he turned back, his expression was grim, and he slowly shook his head.
Izumi collapsed to her knees, tears bursting forth. Just when she thought the day couldn’t get any worse… she sobbed loudly, clutching herself tight. When familiar arms wrapped around her in an unsure embrace, she launched herself at the boy, sobbing into his shirt.
Her dad was dead. Her mom was dead.
Izumi was alone.
She didn’t know how long they sat there for, Izumi drenching the boy in her tears as he uttered soft words of reassurance. It was long enough that, when Izumi managed to calm herself down enough to function again, her head buzzing, the fire had been brought under control.
“Hey.” The boy whispered softly as she looked up at him with puffy red eyes.
She sniffed, “S-sorry…”
He offered her a small, comforting smile, “Nothing to apologise for. I…” he hesitated, “do you want to talk about it?”
“O-only if I won’t be a burden…”
“Nah,” he shook his head, “I’m a hero student, it’s our job. I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t want to help.”
And so they talked. Izumi was hesitant at first, but soon started rambling about Quirks, as she was wont to do. He listened, seeming genuinely interested, and introduced himself as the hero student Alucard, though confided that his civilian name was Kan Himito. He told her about his Quirk, Transform, and she found it fascinating, and incredibly useful for a hero. He’d blushed at that, and she distantly noticed how good it looked on him. Things got a little prickly when he asked about her Quirk, but when she admitted she was Quirkless, he didn’t treat her any differently.
He was the first person ever to do that.
Eventually, though, the sun was dipping towards the horizon. Kan-kun had to go with his hero mentor to do paperwork, and Izumi, well, she had to deal with… everything .
With no living parents, family, extended family or family friends, it was decided that Izumi would live in a shelter until such time as other accommodation became available. Perhaps if she were someone else, someone useful to society, she would have found a place in a foster home. As it was, she was lucky not to be on the street.
That night, as she settled on the creaky old bed with the thin lumpy mattress with her backpack, all that remained of her belongings, one thought struck her amongst the maelstrom of misery whirling in her mind.
She hadn’t even gotten Kan-kun’s phone number.
A month later, life hadn’t improved all that much. Izumi had managed to scrounge up some worn out clothes from the shelter’s lost and found, and she wasn’t going hungry, even if what they served in the canteen could barely be described as food. School was mostly an afterthought these days, feeling so small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Her mom was dead, her home gone, her life ruined. What did school matter now?
Ah, her mom. She was coping… okay, all things considered. She hadn’t had a major breakdown since the incident itself. Mostly she’d just numbed herself to the pain, or pushed it down deep inside so she never had to acknowledge it. Perhaps not the healthiest coping mechanism, but it wasn’t like she had much in her life. She needed to at least remain stable, lest she lose herself in the grief.
She was taking things one day at a time, though really that just meant existing in the shelter, occasionally walking around the block, and sometimes even thinking about maybe returning to school.
Possibly.
Either way, she really did only have the clothes on her back and what meagre possessions she had in her backpack. She had nothing else.
Well… not quite. She had Kan-kun.
Since the day of the fire, she hadn’t been able to get the boy out of her mind. His sparkling yellow eyes, his tousled hair, his laugh… it was kind of embarrassing how much of a lovesick puppy she was. But she couldn’t help it! He was amazing! And that wasn’t even getting into his Quirk, the way his fangs gave him a unique grin, or the utter heroism he displayed that day. The way he’d comforted her, how he’d stayed with her until she was okay enough to function again…
It had struck her how he was the first person in years, besides her mom, to show her such genuine compassion and kindness. He hadn’t even recoiled at her Quirkless nature. He was…
Well, in a word, he was perfect .
It made her want to know more about him. So, on days when she was fortunate enough to grab a shower in the morning, she went down to the library, booted up a computer, and searched up all she could find on him. There were the expected social media profiles for a boy his age, though they had been created surprisingly recently. He was a student of UA, as she expected, in Class 1-B. That, of course, meant he had competed in the Sports Festival earlier that year, and it didn’t take her long to find the full recording. That afternoon, she watched, transfixed, as he threw himself into the competition.
He came 3rd, overall, but his performance was, frankly, awe-inspiring. How he had flown through every challenge with that bright cheshire grin, and given every single contestant a run for their money.
It wasn’t enough. She needed to find more.
There were plenty of recordings of him on his internship with Vlad King, often uploaded by fangirls going nuts over his rising star. The thought of that sent a strange jolt of jealousy to her stomach. They didn’t know him, not like she did! They hadn’t sat down and talked to him for hours, made him forget that he was on the job! She did that, her! Quirkless Midoriya Izumi did that!
Eventually, though, she had run out of videos. He was still a first year, after all, his fanbase barely even established yet. She tried rewatching old clips but they didn’t give her the same rush, didn’t scratch the same itch that had quickly built up in her brain.
She needed something new. She needed to see him again.
In her defence, she never meant to start the stalking. She was just going to wait outside UA for Kan-kun, make an excuse to say hi, and strike up a conversation. But then she felt self-conscious just standing there, and standing by the gates of UA looked super suspicious, so she pretended to be taking a call on her (long-dead) phone under a tree some distance away. And when he finally did walk out the gates, he was accompanied by a group of his friends, and well, she couldn’t just approach him like that, it was mortifying!
And then she thought, well, she’d already made the journey out there, there was no point in going home empty handed, as it were.
So she maybe,
Kind of,
Followed them. Just a bit.
They were a fairly normal group of teenage boys, all laughing and bantering with one another. Kan-kun was no exception, though when he laughed a dopey smile spread across her face. She couldn’t lie to herself, she was down bad .
The group walked around the usual haunts of the city, more enjoying each other’s company than the places they went. Izumi wanted desperately to be the person Kan-kun spent his time with, walked around the city with, spent time with… maybe even more.
Eventually, though, the group began to break up and go their separate ways, and Izumi took that as her cue to make her own escape. Following them all was one thing, but people tended to be more alert when they were on their own, and anyway, following Kan-kun to his home was a line she didn’t want to cross.
She pointedly ignored the fact that she’d already stalked him for a whole afternoon.
When she got back to the shelter, she promised herself that that would be the only time she followed him. She was going to approach him tomorrow, no matter what.
Except… tomorrow came, and she was all ready to talk to him, and he never came out! Eventually, she had to catch her train, but she vowed that it would be the next day, for sure.
And so the cycle continued. Every time she went to talk to him, something got in the way. Whether he was with his friends, or busy in school, or she just lost her nerve, she just couldn’t do anything other than follow him around! She’d even started to push her luck, following him more and more when he was alone, hoping that he would spot her and start a conversation like that! But her years of bullying had made her light on her feet, and surprisingly good at sneaking around, so that didn’t work either!
And every time she promised herself no more . She would stop following him, and just approach him like a normal person would!
She still did it the next day, without fail.
Months passed, and very little changed in Izumi’s life. She still lived in the shelter, she still barely went to school… and she still hadn’t spoken to Kan-kun. She was honestly at her wit’s end on that front, nothing she tried seemed to work! He was always busy, always with someone, and when he was alone, she lost her nerve!
Right now, though, it was late in the evening at the shelter, and she was hanging out on her bed, commiserating over her latest failed attempt to talk to the object of her affection. She decided to take a walk around the block, to get some fresh air and clear her head before she bedded down for the night. She stepped outside, holding her tattered sweater close to her.
She started a slow walk, just enjoying the evening peace. It was rare she got a quiet moment, with the centre as packed as it was, so she revelled in it. That is, until she heard quiet murmuring coming from a nearby alleyway.
Now, Izumi was nothing if not curious, perhaps to a fault, and her recent activities had made her more than a little foolhardy, especially when it came to poking her nose into other people’s business. So, as quietly as she could, she crept over to the alleyway, and peeked inside.
Two men stood inside, talking quietly to one another. One she recognised from the shelter; he’d been there longer than she had, but she didn’t know much about him beyond that. The other, however, she’d never seen before. She liked to think she’d remember that garish purple suit and sleazy grin.
She couldn’t quite pick up what they were talking about, only hearing snippets about “change the world” and “All Might”, but the whole scenario reeked of something suspicious going on. When the first man left through the other end of the alley, she started to make her exit as well.
“Now, I don’t appreciate being spied on, y’hear?” The other man’s rough voice called out.
Izumi froze in her tracks and slowly turned around, finding him pacing towards her, a lit cigarette held in a gap left by a missing tooth. He puffed out a cloud of smoke in her direction, and raised an eyebrow.
“Wanna tell me what ya doin’ here?”
“U-uh,” she stuttered, scrambling to think of an excuse, “I-I just thought I heard something weird! I won’t tell anyone anything I saw, I swear!”
The man hummed, “That’s weird, little girl like you, not goin’ to the heroes at the first sign a trouble.” He looked at her more closely, “Ya live in the shelter?”
“U-um…” she couldn’t tell him the truth, but she knew he’d know if she was lying!
He hummed, “Lemme guess, some heroes screw ya over? Maybe a lil mad with them?”
She knew she shouldn’t be talking with him, but she had to admit, she had some real mixed feelings about heroes. Sure, there was Kan-kun, who was already amazing, but then there were people like Kacchan, Bakugou , who just wanted power. There were the useless heroes at the Sludge Villain incident, and as for All Might…
“I-I… someone who wants to be a hero told me to ‘take a swan dive off the roof’.” She found herself spilling her story to the man, “That same day, All Might said I couldn’t be a hero, ‘cause I’m… Quirkless, and when I tried to help someone that the heroes weren’t they all yelled at me for causing a problem!” She shrugged helplessly, “That was the same day my mom died in a fire. That’s not relevant, but… yeah.”
If she was completely honest, it felt great to finally vent some of her anger around that day, even if it was to a shady creep in a back alley. The man took a puff of his cigarette and nodded, “That’s one helluva bad day kid. Most people’d snap from that. You seem pretty well-adjusted though.”
She elected not to mention her stalking habit and just shrugged, “So, are you gonna kill me now, or…?”
He laughed at that, a harsh grating sound that echoed through the alley, “I got a better idea. How’d you feel about joining a group of visionaries who wanna change the world?”
She raised an eyebrow, “I’d say you’re probably lying.”
“Yer a sharp one.” He smirked, “Truth be told, there’s some villains out there, who wanna make a change. To begin with, they want All Might dead.”
“Really?” She snorted. Many people had taken shots at the Number One hero through the years, and not a single one had succeeded. She suddenly remembered who she was talking to, and took a nervous step back, “W-why are you telling me all this, anyway?”
He waggled his fingers at her, “Quirk. Worst case scenario, I can make you forget this whole thing. So, whaddya say? Wanna come check it out?”
She chewed on her lip. Why was she even considering this? This was literal, actual, villainy! More than just stalking, this was conspiracy to murder!
And yet, a bitter part of her hated the world for that day. She may have met Kan-kun then, but that was the only good part of an otherwise awful, awful day. That day had taken everything from her; her mom, her dreams, her life… and though not all of it was the fault of the heroes, a significant portion of the blame belonged to them. Maybe if they hadn’t delayed her by lecturing her, she could even have arrived in time to save her mom…
As for her hopes, her dreams… that was All Might’s fault. Bakugou’s too. And while she didn’t exactly want either of them dead, she certainly didn’t mind scaring them a little, taking them down a peg.
Then there was Kan-kun. Allying herself with villains would certainly put a wrench in any prospective relationship they may yet have, but that probably happened when she started stalking him, so there wasn’t much more line to cross there. Besides, being around villains, it might even be good for her confidence! She might even finally be able to have a conversation with him.
Slowly, she nodded, and the man’s grin stretched wider.
Izumi wasn’t sure what she had been expecting when the man - Giran, he called himself - pulled out a cheap phone and dialled up a number, but it hadn’t been for a swirling black portal that reeked of petrichor and ozone to open up before them. Giran gestured for her to walk in, and she did so with only the slightest hesitation.
Perhaps it was foolish to go to a secondary location with a stranger who was also an admitted criminal, but she’d been feeling quite cavalier with her life of late.
She stepped out into a small, gloomily lit bar, the old wooden floorboards creaking beneath her feet. Behind the bar stood a tall, well-dressed man, whose flickering misty body matched the colour of the portal. Sitting in front of him at the bar was a young man with greasy blue hair and plain black clothing, scowling at the handheld device in front of him. When they walked in, he looked up at them, blood red eyes blazing with such an intensity that it made her stagger backwards.
“It’s late, Giran. What do you want?”
Giran shrugged and blew out a cloud of smoke, “Found a recruit that could be a real cut above the usual grunts.”
The man turned to glare at Izumi, “Don’t look like much. Could be a wizard… oi, what do you know about our quest?”
“U-uh, well, I know you want to kill All Might, and that you want to change society?”
“Mm,” he grunted, still not impressed with whatever he was seeing in Izumi, “and you think you can help with that?”
She nodded, “I’ve spent my life analysing heroes, especially All Might. I-I know their strengths, their weaknesses… I know All Might’s weakness.” She played her trump card.
The man straightened up, interested, “Yeah?”
“H-he has this old injury on his left side, it’s been draining his power for years, he can only stay buff for around 3 hours a day… the rest of the time, he’s all skinny.”
The man watched her carefully, before slowly smirking, “Interesting… always good to know a boss’ weak points… you do analysis?”
She nodded, pulling out one of her old books she’d intended to touch up on her walk, and tossed it over to him. He caught it - in between his index and thumb, she noticed - and quickly flipped through it. “Interesting… so you’re a support class, then. Always useful…” He looked up at her again, “People your age are NPCs, worshipping the ground heroes like All Might walk on. What dialogue options did you pick?”
The way the man spoke was hard to parse, but she thought she understood well enough, “All Might… crushed my dreams. So did other heroes. So… I guess I wouldn’t mind him getting hurt as payback.”
He smirked at her, “Good. Then…” he drummed his fingers against the bartop, “welcome to the party.”
Izumi breathed a sigh of relief she didn’t know she was holding.