Work Text:
Midoriya was good with computers. He was a little less good at social situations, but that only gave him more time to improve his aforementioned computer skills.
His room was lit only by the glowing of his laptop screen, casting an elongated shadow onto the door behind him.
Scrolling on the internet was, most certainly, not something he should have been doing at such an unreasonable hour, but his bed appeared unappealing, and the siren call of sleep had long since been drowned out by the sweet melody of endlessly cycling through new content.
His enjoyment was cut short, however, as his mouse hovered over a simple textpost. His brow furrowed, barely resisting the urge to look away in the same manner one might expect from the spectator of a car crash. The grammar was, in every meaning of the word, atrocious. The spelling, sure, impeccable, but the grammar?
Midoriya clicked on the poster’s account, the rage in his heart only growing as he passed by countless posts of similar quality. He glanced at the username, opening up a new tab and firmly clicking on the ‘log in’ button. The first box was filled in hastily, but Midoriya paused at the second. There weren’t many hints for what the password might be, but based off the aforementioned username (SuperCoolCriminalWithLotsOfHair) he was given some information.
(Whether that information was useful for his cause or not.. Well, that wasn’t the point.)
With minor hesitation, he typed in a first guess, clicking the enter key. Much to his own surprise, he successfully logged in. He sat there for a moment, stunned, before a wild grin overtook his face. With rage in his heart and a keyboard at his fingertips, he began his work.
Twenty three minutes later, Midoriya sat back, victorious. He would never get that time back, but at least this random user had forcibly improved grammar, he supposed.
With a lighter heart, he closed the open tab and dragged himself to bed. He slept well, that night.
All For One frowned, squinting at his screen. Rather early on in his life he'd picked up the habit of deliberately using incorrect grammar. This was, of course, solely for the reason of causing rage and irritation, and now, staring unblinking at the posts before him, he finally felt a taste of his own medicine.
His shit grammar was gone.
His bald brow furrowed and with a few clicks, he began to type.
Midoriya awoke the next morning to something quite horrific. The account he'd… temporarily commandeered had posted something new. Something with worse grammar.
The post was simple, a complaint about his action that would be absolutely justified if it weren't for the blatant admission to intentionally making errors for the sole reason of evoking anger. Midoriya had fallen for it; hook, line, and sinker.
Quite understandably, Midoriya was stumped. He wasn't quite sure how to react. There was one thing he was sure of, however, and that was the username used by such an individual was certainly not dishonest.
With a clenched jaw, he reported the account for misinformation and illegal activities.
(It was a move made purely out of petty retaliation, Midoriya had no way of knowing his report directly resulted in the arrest of All For One.)
(The villain had been far too busy attempting to hunt down the person who dared to hack into his account.)
Midoriya was, of course, following All Might's official account. Additionally, he was following the secret account that the hero had too, not that it was hard to find. This was wonderful, joyous, in fact, but something was getting on his nerves.
Now, All Might wasn't young. Not by any standards, so Midoriya was mildly worried that he was picking up certain… connotations that the hero was skillfully missing. He cringed violently looking at the innuendo that was somehow skipped over by whoever was tasked with proof reading.
(Based off of the hero's previous posts, however, it seemed there was no such person.)
Despite the prior experience being something Midoriya would have liked to avoid repeating, he entered the username in front of him and typed in a random password. He wasn't anticipating success, in his defense, Midoriya at his astounding age of nine, was intelligent enough to know setting one's password as ‘password123’ was a bad idea. It seemed this lesson on internet safety had been dodged by the hero, alas.
Midoriya wasn't going to complain. With free reign, he pressed the small pencil icon and changed one word, just one, for an equally fitting synonym. He nodded, expression serious as he published the minor change.
Work complete, he settled down for a peaceful night.
On the internet, however, his minor change had been noticed. You see, the thing about being an All Might fan was that so was practically every other living soul. Midoriya was aware he wasn't the only one to find All Might's hidden account, far from it in fact. Most of his followers were from fans just like him, but even in the majority there were outliers.
Several accounts followed the hero for the sole purpose of screenshotting his unintended innuendo and poor choice of wording. It was one of these aforementioned accounts that managed to snag a ‘before’ and ‘after’ screenshot, posting it with a simple caption.
[Image][Image]
bro got sniped by the media team [mournful]
(All Might squinted at the post, “Fuck, these spot the difference games are getting impossible.”)
Midoriya liked puns. Sue him, it wasn't a crime, he was a sucker for wordplay and that wouldn't change. So, staring blankly at the low hanging fruit that was somehow missed, (‘Low hanging’ was being generous, ‘within the offender's grasp and begging to be eaten’ would be more accurate.) Midoriya narrowly avoided tears.
He was aware not everybody was a fan of puns, but this was criminal.
Fuck, Midoriya liked Wash, he thought the hero was underrated and underutilised, and before he could doubt his decision he was already logged in.
(Midoriya thought ‘password123’ was bad, but Wash using his public username as his password was a similar level of worrysome.)
It wasn't just one post this time. Midoriya was out of control, hours disappeared, countless posts edited as the child gleefully placed the final puzzle piece for each post directly into the spot that was made for it.
There were a few he restrained from, the more serious posts talking about the rise of violent vigilantes and natural disasters were untouched.
With one final flourish, the boy edited a barely visible basket of assorted socks into the background of the hero's profile photo; a homage to those lost, never to be found again.
(His own washing machine had recently stolen a single one of his limited edition All Might: Shooting Star socks, leaving the remaining half forever alone. He saluted the shittily edited image.)
(In truth, unbeknownst to the offender, Inko had accidentally grouped it together with some of her close friend Nemuri's washing, and it was currently in her sock drawer.)
Overnight, the onslaught of puns had caught the eye of the public, and Wash near instantly rose to second place on the popularity rankings. The aforementioned hero was rather confused on the matter, but didn't give it much thought.
(Across Japan, there were reports of a large burst of flame that was thankfully extinguished by Wash before any damage could occur, boosting his popularity further.)
Keeping up with new heroes was always fun for Midoriya. Ingenium was one of those heroes. There was, to nobody's surprise at this point, one thing that got on his nerves.
It seemed out of fear of losing his youth, the hero was creating slang that didn't actually exist. He had suspicions he was being fed misinformation from a colleague, but Midoriya had no way of knowing.
Midoriya had, somewhat, learnt from his past mistakes. Since his previous actions had resulted in unintended consequences, he'd decided on a new plan, a flawless plan, the best plan.
Firstly, infiltrate the hero’s close friends. This had unintentionally been done when Midoriya had befriended someone his age for their good stationery recommendations.
Secondly, gain trust. Midoriya had brought up passwords in general exactly once in conversation and hastily realised nobody had given the youngest Iida the talk on internet safety, as the boy proceeded to list every password he knew, and what they were for.
Thirdly, leave a message in the account drafts so only Ingenium himself could see. Impeccable. Glorious. Impermeable, even.
Midoriya was quickly proven wrong when the holders of the account responded using the same method, requesting his services as a Media Manager for the account, simply to oversee and make sure the twenty-four year old didn't look too old online.
He wouldn't have responded if it weren't for the palpable desperation practically dripping through his screen.
Midoriya was no stranger to shitposting. A unique artform, difficult to perfect. Of course, the shitposting wasn't usually coming from a verified hero account—something that was usually for official statements, or things of a similar vein.
Now, as a freshly employed nine-year-old, Midoriya was learning a lot about what sort of things should be posted by such public figures like Power Loader, and he’d come to the—correct—conclusion that the hero simply wasn't aware.
Now, despite his previous failure with his renowned draft method, Midoriya was confident this time it would work.
The genre of shitposts was so specific that the boy didn't hesitate after pasting an entire link in the password box, nor did he startle when it logged him in.
Leaving a small message, complete with healthy use of the thumbs up emoji to sell a friendly impression, Midoriya dusted off his hands, dragging his newly acquired Ingenium blanket with him.
(Midoriya had made a simple request to be paid in merchandise to avoid certain child labour laws (Not that Ingenium was aware of that) and it was the best decision he'd made in his life.)
Apparently Power Loader had switched accounts one day and never switched back; a grievous error. Instead of deleting the mountain of posts, he simply claimed to have been hacked, not that it was a lie, and continued his ways.
(In a dark alleyway, a vigilante rubbed his chin in thought. “Yes.. A true hero shitposts on main…”)
Several years had passed since his hacking days, for Midoriya. It was awkward as hell interacting with Iida knowing he was technically working for his brother, but all his difficulties melted away when one single post caught his eye.
He narrowed his eyes as he reread the words once, twice, a third time for luck. He raised his hand.
“Sir, I'd like to be excused. I believe I'm ill.” It was a boldfaced lie, but nobody prevented the teenager from walking out of the classroom, stopping only by Power Loader's office for a particularly eye-catching metal coated bat.
With a calm demeanour, Midoriya simply got on a train heading towards his destination, smiling politely whenever he was shot a worried look for the weapon he was carrying, more than enough to dismiss any fears of him being dangerous.
Midoriya glanced at his watch leisurely, stepping off the carriage and exiting the station.
He meandered towards one specific alleyway, coated in darkness, and walked down it.
There was a man in the alleyway, a man he'd known was there. Midoriya smiled brightly, stepping closer.
“Hero Killer Stain?” He asked, already aware of the answer.
Poor, poor Akaguro didn't stand a chance.
Tsukauchi rubbed his face with exhaustion unbefitting the start of a shift.
“You found him like that.”
Midoriya nodded vigorously, “Yes! I just stumbled across him.”
Beep!
“You claimed to be ill and left school early?”
Midoriya tilted his head innocently, “I am ill.”
Beep!
“And you just happened to have a steel plated baseball bat?”
“For safekeeping.” Beep! “I didn't want to leave it unattended.” Midoriya glanced at the door.
“Can I go now?”
Tsukauchi dragged his hand down his face wearily.
“Yeah. Sure.”
Midoriya bowed politely, practically skipping out of the police station with far too much whimsy for someone who'd spent the last hour and a half beating the shit out of a mass murderer.