Chapter Text
Ever since Midoriya Izuku was a little child, he had always dreamed of becoming a hero. A hero, just like Allmight.
However, that all changed when he was "diagnosed" quirkless.
His friends turned on him, teachers and other adults would outright ignore him or be rude to him, heroes and police officers didn't even look at him. Not even Kacchan, his best friend, stayed with him.
The only one who stuck with him from the beginning was his mother, his father having abandoned them at his birth.
The worst, however, was that they were thrown out of their apartment. They were given a week before they had to be out of there.
Inko, doing her best to find a place as soon as she could, found out about a more... secluded area, far from Musutafu, in which housing is provided for free, including electricity and water, which was localised.
This area is known as the Crimson Valley or just The Valley for short.
When Inko and Izuku moved into the Valley, they noticed it was very different from other places they knew.
The houses were all quite run down, but still liveable, with only a few shops dotted around, but still enough to ensure the need of resources and food, and, the biggest change, there were no police stations nor hero agencies in sight.
Another big change was that there were no public transports nor any privately owned vehicles, meaning that the family of two walked down the streets to their assigned new home. However, there were those odd, identical, smaller houses every now and then that had a huge sign saying "port-terminals" on them.
They got their keys from a member of the "governing" family, as they had introduced themselves, and were quick to settle into their new home.
During their first weeks, a certain realisation became clearer to them.
The Crimson Valley is the place, outcasts of society live in. It gave them a stable home, a place to feel safe at, away from those who rejected them.
The Midoriya's found themselves fitting right in.
However, there were no heroes in sight. Usually, one could see one or two heroes patrolling an area, but in the Crimson Valley, not a single hero could be found.
This made the crime rate there very high. However, the crimes committed were usually underground business between villains and criminals, as there was no point for the villains to cause a scene for heroes to find.
There was little to no killing of civilians – the difference in percentage of kill rates of civilians between The Valley and the outside, as they call it, was 36% – and villains didn't cause any big scenes nor attacks in even the more populated streets.
They also figured out that the "port-terminals" were The Valley's way of transportation. Port-terminal is short for teleportation terminal. Within those small public houses turned terminals, were around 5-15 so called teleportation pads, or port-pads for short. The amount of port-pads inside a terminal varies depending on the area around the terminal.
One only has to select the desired port-terminal to appear in, and then one would be teleported into a free port-pad inside the selected terminal.
As the years go by, Izuku and his mother became more accustomed to the lifestyle of a crimson misfit – crimson misfits is what the citizens of the Crimson Valley call themselves.
Even though The Valley is a huge area and barely pupulated, the crimson misfits are a very close-knit community, with almost everyone knowing everyone else.
That also meant that word spreads around very quickly. That is how Inko was able to find a job very quickly, and at the local hospital nonetheless!
Even if the hospital is rather run down and the only one in the huge area that is The Valley. Though Inko doesn't mind. She loves her work, healing others, and it pays decently, so she has no reason to complain.
Izuku's views on heroes also shifted as time went by. The longer he lived in The Valley, the less he idolised and worshiped heroes. Sure, he would still watch hero fights, if only to analyse the quirks of both the hero and villain.
But that still didn't change the fact that he and his mother started taking on the views of a crimson misfit when it came to heroes.
Heroes were looked down upon. After all, heroes had abandoned The Valley for many hundred years now, the resentment only growing with each generation.
The only heroes that were at least tolerated were underground heroes, who made an effort of patrolling The Valley at night.
But then again, not all underground heroes do so, and even those that do, usually patrol there so irregularly, that it barely does anything to the crime rate in The Valley.
The Crimson Valley has its own set of rules and regulations, as the Government, and by extension the HPSC, does not care about them. That is something Izuku and his mother learned very quickly.
1. Petty crimes, like minor theft will be frowned upon, but tolerated. The reasons must not be known, but usually it is only done if in absolute dire need. Vandalism is also tolerated. There is not a single wall free from graffiti or street art.
2. Child neglect, abandonment and/ or abuse is against the Crimson Valley's codices and will lead to being kicked out of The Valley. Your child will be taken from you and taken into the local orphanage. Children's lives are valued more than anything else here.
3. If someone dies, you may mourn the day they die/ the day you found out they died, and you will receive half of your pay for that day. Any kind of further mourning, like death anniversary, will have to be private and work cannot be skipped. Taking the day off would result in no pay at all for that day.
4. Giving spider lilies to the dead is considered rude and inconsiderate. In The Valley, Spider lilies mean you are sad that they died, however, there is no connection nor respect to the life they lived. Given that many of those who came from the outside to live inside The Valley were suicide baited with said lilies, it is not seen as a sign of respect. Instead, giving a crimson rose is more appropriate, as it means you respect them for their hardships in life and wish for them to rest in peace.
5. Praising heroes will give you glares. No one likes heroes nor the police. The only heroes you may praise are underground heroes, but then again, they are only tolerated and very few crimson misfits actually respect them.
6. Quirks don't matter. A quirk is a tool, nothing more, nothing less. You yourself decide if you will either use it or just live without ever using it. No one cares about quirks, so leave that out of your judgment of people.
Those are just some of the rules and regulations that the Midoriya's learned. Most of the rules are still relatively the same to the rest of Japan, but still, there are more rules that are also very different.
Izuku actually loved living in The Valley. It was better than when they used to live in Musutafu and he loves the crimson roses that grow around everywhere.
Crimson roses are actually very rare flowers which are now only found in the Crimson Valley, which is also why the area was named the Crimson Valley.
Crimson roses are similar to red roses, however, their inner petals are black while the ones further from the centre are a crimson red.
When Izuku was 7, he met two other children while walking through an alleyway.
Unlike him, they have lived in The Valley since they were born and they knew barely anything about what it is like outside of The Valley.
These children are Shirakumo Shōkyo and Shinsou Hitoshi.
Their only source of information about the outside was from Shōkyo's older brother, who went to UA, as a hero student.
At first, Izuku was surprised, a little skeptical as well, when he heard that someone from The Valley had decided to go to the top hero school to become a hero of all things, but his confusion was cleared when he found out that they were going for underground heroics.
Actually, ever since getting accustomed with life in The Valley, Izuku himself had left his dream of becoming a hero like Allmight – a limelight hero.
Instead, taking inspiration by the only tolerated and somewhat respected heroes in The Valley, he knew underground heroics was something for him, especially without a quirk. As an added bonus, he would work unknown by the public, as even till now he hated being the centre of attention.
Him, Hitoshi and Shōkyo hit it off quite quickly, thanks to their shared goal. Only a few weeks passed and the trio was already the bests of friends.
Time seemed to slow down for the trio.
Not many months after they first met, Shōkyo's brother died during his work studies.
The news travelled throughout the whole Valley, resentment of the heroes and the outside only growing.
The trio knew that becoming underground heroes may help The Valley – just as much as it could make them become rejects of their own kind – as well as fulfil their dreams, but that would still be many years away, until they can actually go and train in a hero school.
Since The Valley doesn't abide to any of the usual government laws, the trio decided, why not take matters into their own hands?
Heroes, for the exception of some unders, never did anything for The Valley. And even the underground heroes were not really helping in the long run.
Even vigilantes didn't dare come into The Valley, mostly because of the rumours of The Valley being rotten to the core and entering would be equivalent to a death sentence.
That was the day they decided that they would start a group to help the Crimson Misfits and dampen the villain and criminal activity of The Valley, and perhaps some of the nearby areas of the outside as well.
After all, no rules stopped them from "playing the heroes" as the police would put it if they were present in The Valley. Neither were there any rules that prevented them from becoming vigilantes – at least within The Valley.
And thus, that day, the Reigning Three of the Shadow Misfits were born.