Chapter Text
Izuku was bored.
Ever since the Stain incident, as he liked to call it, he hadn’t really had anything to do. His schedule was free, so all that left him to do was his classes at U.A., which have become boring and repetitive (other than heroics). He was already fluent in English due to him learning it in case his father ever called from America, and the fact that it was a good skill to have in case he ever went to America for hero work like All Might had.
Izuku was already ahead in math and science; his middle school teachers had given him harder work than all of the other students in hopes of making him fail, so Izuku had to learn ahead of the regular curriculum. He didn’t really mind it too much though; it gave him something to do after school to distract him from the quiet in his house. He never liked the quiet. It left him with his thoughts and reminded him that his mother was barely home.
Due to this, he was just lying on top of his bed facing the popcorn ceiling while some pre-quirk band played in the background. He liked pre-quirk bands; the music didn’t involve quirks or quirkism or anything involving the hero society, and it was so nice.
But eventually, his boredom got the better of him, and he sat up, swinging his feet off the side of his bed before walking the short distance to his desk. He sat in his chair and opened up his laptop, deciding to do some research on the newly prisoned serial killer.
——
As it turns out, Stain was an interesting character to Izuku.
From what the media said about Stain’s ideals, everyone that Stain deemed unworthy deserved to be taken care of, hence why they were all killed with the exception of Ingenium, who had just been paralyzed. All the heroes who had been killed focused on fame and money instead of what a hero really should value; the lives and safety of the people they are supposed to protect.
But there was more to it than what the news put out.
Stain killed heroes who had had their personal lives leaked, had public crimes against them, or had been publicly shamed by the media; the media being a single user who kept popping up every social media site he checked.
The user who posted the majority of the information about the heroes went under @k!llth3h3r0z…What an interesting user. Anyway, the person even ran the website that held the majority of the information about these heroes.
Even with the less-than-creative username, Izuku was still curious about who this person was. Who had access to all these videos, pictures, and reports? Did they know that Stain was using this information? Did they care?
———
Izuku found all the information within the hour, and after reading through it, he was livid.
The user’s real name was Kazuki Taiki; he was a 27-year-old male who was an employee at the HPSC. He was told to set up the account by the commission, and from there, he would release information about the heroes the HPSC wanted dead. The heroes who had been posted about by the account had all become suspicious of the commission before their death, leading to doubt and unwillingness to work with them. Since the heroes refused, the HPSC decided to take it into their own hands. They decided that they would use the Hero Killer to kill the heroes. While it was quite obvious that the man himself didn’t know he was being manipulated, all the information he received was basically given to him on a golden platter.
After reading this, Izuku dug further into the man’s email and from there was able to gain access to all the files the HPSC had. (You may ask how the teen was able to do this, but being an unsupervised child on the internet with a huge obsession of heros lead to more than a few hacking lessons being watched and put into practice. And this man was exactly…smart. But, since it was the HPSC, it was extremely difficult to be able to gain access to these. Good thing Izuku was way smarter than the average person and once fixated on something, he wouldn’t stop until he finished!) While Izuku was just gonna go through the files of the dead heroes, he stumbled upon some of the current top heroes files.
He found out that the number two hero, Endeavor, had killed 158 civilians, 58 criminals, and 78 villains throughout the current year. All of the casualties that happened were pushed under the rug, even though, as stated in the file, they had just been straight-up killed. Endeavor murdered criminals and villians. Most of said criminals committed petty crimes like theft to feed their families or survive on the streets. They weren’t threats to the civilians.
Speaking of civilians, all the casualties that had happened to them were because of Endeavor’s ego and tendency to not pay attention to the people and buildings around him. Bystanders would get injured by his quirk, often getting 1st through 3rd degree burns depending on how close they were. When handling villains, Endeavor destroyed buildings, which led to even more casualties.
Safe to say that Endeavor was more of a threat than some of the criminals and villians he killed. Endeavor was practically a villian with a heros liscense.
He then saw the files that included All Might, and safe to say, he was not surprised.
The man had caused 213 civilians, 72 criminals, and 64 villains to die painful deaths due to his powerful, flashy quirk.
The reason the death toll for civilians was so high was due to All Might’s carelessness with his quirk. He would more often than not use his quirk to handle situations where it wasn’t necessary. A simple theft? He used an overpowered punch to deal with the problem, causing damage to nearby buildings and roads, but since he was the ‘Symbol of Peace’, it wasn’t a big deal. He was saving people, that’s what mattered.
And don’t get Izuku wrong, he liked All Might! He was glad that Yagi was his teacher, it’s just…Yagi was trying to make him into an exact replica of him. Ever since Izuku accepted One For All, he didn’t have control over his life. All Might was always there, controlling his life in some way. Wether that be training, meal plan, what he was destined to due in the future— it wasn’t up to Izuku. And another thing! All Might didn’t even have the common sense to try to hide their relationship, more often than not asking to eat lunch with him in the middle of a crowed hall. In front of his friends. How more obvious could he get!?
Izuku had so much pressure on him; because he had One For All, he was destined to be the next Symbol of Peace. He’s supposed to make everyone feel safe, keep society stable, defeat villains, and always have a smile on his face. But those were all things All Might did. The same All Might who left him on a roof after crushing his dreams only to then offer him a quirk. His quirk. The same All Might who grew up quirkless but still told Izuku he couldn’t be a hero without one.
With All Might around, society had changed. Wether that before the better or the worse, he didn’t know. People trusted that the heroes would save them; that heroes could only be heroes if they had a flashy quirk. Every child that got a quirk that was powerful and heroic was praised from the moment they got it, while kids who had ‘villianous’ quirks, or Kami forbid quirkless, were beaten down. They were less than everyone, and that meant they were the perfect punching bag to society.
It wasn’t fair. Quirks were just tools! Even if a person had a quirk that involved blood, it would be a perfect quirk for a hero to have! Take Stain for example. He would be able to paralyze and take down villians so easily if he had the support he should have gotten. But no, society had their head shoved so far up their heros asses that they didn’t see how many flaws came with them.
Izuku had a realization that night.
He wanted to changed society, and the only way he could, was to tear it from the inside out.