Chapter Text
“Hurry up, Zuku!” Katsuki calls out from where he’s sitting on a swing, waiting for the green haired boy.
“You’re so… fast, Kacchan!” He pants out as he finally steps onto the playground. Izuku and his best friend were playing together on the day before Izuku went to the doctor to figure out his quirk. He had just turned four a couple of weeks ago.
“No, you’re just slow.” The blond said as if it was obvious. “When’s your quirk coming? It obviously won't be cooler than mine, though.”
“Um, well, I’m gonna have a doctor’s ap-appointment tomorrow..” Izuku mumbles, stumbling over the big word. At this point, they were sitting on the swings beside each other without actually swinging. “I’ll figure out my quirk then!”
Katsuki scoffs. “Well, it better be strong, ‘cuz I’m gonna be the number one hero and you’re gonna be my sidekick!” He exclaims proudly, like he has said multiple times before.
“Yeah! We can be.. the wonder duo!” He says with sparkles in his eyes.
“Tch, whatever I guess..” Katsuki says instead in a poor attempt to conceal his excitement. It was now late enough that the street lights were turning on, illuminating the sidewalk beside the playground.
Izuku pouted, playing with his best friend was really fun, but he had to go home now. “I gotta go home now.. but I’ll see you to-tomorrow when I come home from the doctor?”
“You have to go so soon?” Katsuki scowls even though it’s been 4 hours already. “Fine… See you tomorrow.”, he says, and they both head in the direction of their homes after bidding each other goodbye.
— —
Today was the day Izuku was figuring out his quirk and he couldn’t be more excited! His mom was still sound asleep but Izuku woke up bright and early, too excited to sleep in. Now, that seemed to be a mistake as he was awake at 5:00 AM, the sun just barely rising over the horizon. Nevertheless, he was still excited and that found him by his mom’s bedside trying to shake her awake.
“Mom, mom! Wake uppp… we need to get ready!” He whined. She grumbled in her sleep for a second then cracked her eye open just a bit.
“It’s so early.. what is it?” Inko said.
“We have to get ready to go to the doctor! We’re gonna see my quirk!” Exclaimed Izuku.
She sighed lightheartedly and sat up fully. “Izuku, baby, it’s five in the morning. We go at eleven.” Izuku pouted and had the decency to look embarrassed.
“But.. I’m so excited…” The four year old said. “Okay…” He mumbled.
“Let’s go eat breakfast.”
Inko and Izuku made breakfast and Inko did chores around the house while Izuku watched All Might’s latest villain takedowns on the TV for the next 5 hours. Finally, at 10 they got dressed to go to the doctors.
“What do you think my quirk will be? I hope it’ll be like yours, mama!” He bounced on his heels while his mom was pulling his shirt on.
“Alright, it’s time to head out Zuku.” She gathered the rest of her things into her purse and took Izuku’s hand while she tugged him to the door.
The drive to the clinic was a loud one, with Izuku randomly blurting out hero facts and Inko adding on when she could. After what felt like years of anticipation they arrived and Izuku nearly sprinted out the car door.
The clinic smelt like plastic gloves and hand sanitizer. They sat in chairs close to the window so Izuku could occupy himself with looking outside until they were called. Finally, the receptionist said his name.
“Midoriya Izuku?” She called out. He snapped his head to the front desk and grabbed his mother’s hand to pull her towards the hallway. “This way, please.” They followed her into a white room where a doctor was waiting next to an X-Ray.
“Hello, you must be Midoriya Izuku and his mom,” The doctor addressed. “Well, first, I’ll have to check whether or not he has a quirk in the first place, which’ll be done with this X-Ray right here.” He explained to Inko.
The doctor took an X-Ray of his foot and went to another room for a good 30 minutes. Later on, he emerged with a picture in hand.
“Ahem, Mrs. Midoriya? I’m afraid your son does not have a quirk. He’s part of the 20% of the population who is quirkless.” At those words, Inko tensed up and went pale.
“I’m sorry, what..?” She stammered out.
“Mom, what’s a quirkless?”
“Nothing, Izuku, let’s just go. Thank you for your time, sir.” Inko ushered Izuku out of the clinic and into the car. Compared to the drive to the location, this one was silent.
“Mama, what is a quirkless?” He said again since he didn’t get an answer last time.
“Let me think, okay? I’ll tell you soon.” Once they got home, his mom went straight to her room and when Izuku put his ear to the door, he could hear shouting from his mom’s phone.
“What do you mean our son is quirkless!?” Said the voice from the phone. It must’ve been his father.
“I don’t know Hizashi- just-“
“I’m not paying child support for that- that thing!” Suddenly Izuku didn’t want to listen anymore. He ran to his room and cried quietly. He didn’t know what quirkless was but it was making his parents fight and he didn’t like that.
Later on his mom exited her room with red and puffy eyes and explained to him that a quirkless person is someone without a quirk. She kept apologizing. Why did she keep apologizing?
“Can I still be a-a hero?”
“I’m so, so sorry baby.”
When Katsuki found out a few days later, he was pissed. He didn’t want to be Izuku’s friend anymore and Izuku cried for the 3rd time that week.
A year later and Izuku is now in kindergarten he made a few friends but when they found out that he didn’t have a quirk, they left him because, “They didn’t want to catch it,” as if it was a sickness.
Later on, older kids started to say rude comments when he’d pass them in the hallways. He didn’t like it very much.
Sometimes the teachers would use him as examples of why sometimes quirk marriages aren’t that bad because then at least the child would have a quirk, all in all, his kindergarten experience wasn’t that great.
In grade 3, Katsuki and his friends started to do more than just verbal comments, sometimes Katsuki would use his quirk and Izuku would go home with burns running up and down his arms, other times his friends would just punch him down into the dirt. Every, single, time, Izuku would get in trouble instead of them for “Starting fights,”. His elementary experience wasn’t too great either.
When he would come home while being hurt, his mom would start caring less and less and would eventually just start not caring at all, sometimes he’d hear her on the phone complaining about how expensive taking care of a quirkless child is.
He hated how people treated him like some sort of illness. He hated how they’d treat him like a punching bag. He hated them.
— —
Izuku walked into his last period classroom. As always, he got there before anyone else, he preferred it that way to not run into Katsuki and his “friends,”. Soon enough, more people started coming into the classroom and the bell rang shortly after.
Class was boring, he already knew most of the material so he spent class time doodling and adding to his hero entries. He’d long dropped his muttering, as it got him into trouble with Katsuki.
It hadn’t been long until the bell rang, signaling them to go to home, but before he even got a chance to get up, Katsuki slammed his hand onto his notebook and turned it towards himself.
“You’re still writing in those stalker notebooks?” He snickered. “How do you still not get it? You can’t be a hero, dumbass.”
“I’m n-not trying to..-“ (Curse you, damn stutter)
“What was that? Were you trying to talk back?”
“No.”
“Tch, whatever.” He started to walk out of the room and his lackeys followed. “Oh, and Deku? There still might be a chance for you to be a hero. You can take a swan dive off the roof of a building and pray for a quirk in the next life!”
At those words, he exploded and threw his latest analyst book out the window. Him and his followers laughed as they walked out the door, but all he could focus on was Katsuki’s words. This isn’t the first time someone had suicide baited him, but why did it hurt so much this time?
He packed up his stuff and began his trek back home, picking up his notebook from a pond on the way.
“Stupid fish… that’s not food.” He muttered. “Stupid Kacchan… What if I really jumped, what would he do then?”
Taking the underpass of a bridge, Izuku didn’t even notice anything was wrong until it was right in front of him. Literally.
He slowly turned around and his blood ran cold. Looming dangerously right over him, was a green sludge villain.
“Hm, a medium sized meatsuit.. You’ll do perfect, kid! It’ll only hurt for a second.” The villain then dived into (?) Izuku and started choking him.
He struggled and tried to claw the slime off of him but it was no use. The sludge just molded over his hands making it even harder to escape. In a last ditch effort before he ran out of energy was to headbutt the villain in the eye which did make it recoil enough for him to get a breath, but no more than that.
He was starting to get lightheaded and black spots dancing along his vision. The last thing he saw before closing his eyes was-
“I AM HERE! SMASH!” Izuku suddenly fell from the villain and coughed out slime. Gross.
“A-ALL MIGHT?!” He scrambled for his notebook just to see it was already signed, but that’s not the only thing he wanted.
“I’LL HAVE TO GO NOW, GOODBYE!” He boomed, hurting Izuku’s ears.
“Wa-wait..” He got up and started stumbling, grabbing onto the hero’s leg in order to not fall, but that happened to be at the very second he jumped up into the air… and was flying. Great.
“LET GO, MY BOY!”
“I CAN’T, I’LL FALL!”
“OH.” They landed on the roof of a building that was likely abandoned.
“I-I need to ask you a question.. can a quirkless person.. be a hero like you!?-“ He was cut off by All Might coughing blood, and then a puff of smoke concealing the hero.
Who emerged from the smoke was not All Might, it was a skeletal person who looked deathly pale.
“WHO ARE YOU?! WHERE DID- WHERE DID ALL MIGHT GO?!” He squeaked out.
“I am All Might. Five years ago, I was in a dangerous villain fight, which gave me this.” He lifted up the corner of his shirt which revealed a sunken, huge scar. “Now I can only use my hero form 3 hours a day.
So no, I don’t think a quirkless person could be a hero. If the symbol of peace, number one hero in Japan, can get this injured from a villain fight, then it would simply be too much for a quirkless person. You’d get killed in an instant.”
Izuku wasn’t listening anymore. He thought maybe, just maybe all those “anyone can be a hero” talks would apply to him, but it seems not. If All Might just said yes, even if he was lying, he could pretend everything was fine just a little longer. He was foolish for thinking that.
The sound of the roof access door closing was distant in his mind, as he was focused on one thing only. The edge of the roof. His mind was numb as he walked towards it, each step sealing his fate as just a stain on the sidewalk.
Just as he was about to reach the edge, the sound of a very loud explosion snapped him out of his trance.
“What- the hell… was I about to do..?” He shook his head and looked towards where the explosion came from. He could recognize that sound from anywhere. It was Katsuki.
He slammed the roof access door open and ran down the stairs to go down to the exit. He ran and ran, until he was facing a large crowd watching something.
Pushing through the crowd to get to the front, he finally saw the scene and he went pale.
The sludge villain was holding Katsuki hostage, and the heroes weren’t doing anything. It was as if his body was moving on its own and he was running up to the villain and throwing his bag at it.
Katsuki took in a deep gasp of air as Izuku was clawing the slime away from him.
“Stop fucking exp-exploding it! That won’t do anything!” He hissed out to his childhood friend without taking his eyes off of the villain. But it was at that moment that All Might came out of nowhere and punched the villain to oblivion, blowing the middle school children to the side together.
“DETROIT.. SMASH!”
“What the FUCK!?” Katsuki growled. “WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, HAH?! SOME SORTA HERO?” He was about to explode Izuku until the heroes dragged him away.
“The kid is right, you were extremely reckless and could have died, had All Might not stepped in!” Izuku was getting scolded and Katsuki was getting praised for being a hero. Huh, suddenly the blonde’s advice didn’t sound all too bad.
After what felt like years but was really just a couple of minutes, they let him go. He’d just now noticed that he was pretty burnt up from his tormentor’s explosions, the heroes mustn’t have cared, but it didn’t really matter.
There was a tall abandoned building in a pretty sketchy area where no one was really around. He slowly climbed the stairs, thinking of nothing and everything at once. When he finally got up to the top, he didn’t even bother to leave a note, considering no one would really care anyway.
Izuku struggled to get over the rusty railing, but eventually hauled himself over it and stood on the other side of the fence. The sun was setting and casted beautiful orange and red hues across the sky. He shifted so that he was leaning backwards since he decided he wanted to see the sunset one last time.
He took a breath in, out,
and let go.
When he opened his eyes again-
Wait, what?
“Huh? I-I should have..” He stammered before coughing out blood aggressively. Izuku was surrounded in a pool of his own blood on the ground where he lay limply. He slowly lifted himself up into a half sitting position as he tried to figure out how the fuck he was alive.
“A quirk, maybe? But there was no one around… It must’ve been..” Until he realized. He froze. “..me?”
Suddenly sitting fully made his head pound even more than it was before but he could care less. He should have been dead- the fall was high enough and there was no one in the area to heal him, so it must have been himself.
He had a quirk.
…Maybe.
“All those y-years of bullying for- for nothing?” He laughed bitterly and instantly regretted it when he coughed up even more blood.
It felt like he was still dying, his head was pounding, he felt like vomiting and passing out and crying all at once and he was bloody and cold.
But he couldn’t just lay there forever, if he stayed in those wet clothes for any longer he might just jump again. Getting home and taking a shower then going to sleep was his number one priority at the moment.
It was late, probably around nine o’clock judging by how dark out it was, and it was around seven when he jumped, so he was out for maybe two hours.
There was another problem, how was Izuku going to get home without people thinking he’s a criminal? There were some different ways he could go but added up, it would take him about an hour to get home. But, if it meant not getting arrested, he’d take it.
Finally arriving at his doorstep made him so relieved he could cry. His forgetting to lock the door was a blessing this time because the spare keys were inside and he must have lost his keys in the fall.
“I’m home.” Izuku called out to no one in particular. Ever since grade five his mom took more and more shifts at the hospital to provide for them both, as well as going out nearly every night. He hardly saw her anymore.
He kicked off his shoes and immediately went to take a shower. Scrubbing off all the blood made him feel sick as he realized how truly crazy the situation was.
He was raised quirkless for all his life, bullied and neglected, and when he finally finds an out it turns out to be the quirk he was praying for since he was four? No, this was more of a curse than a blessing.
He shut off the water and got dressed, then went to go put his school uniform in the washing machine, and sat on the floor next to it, and thought about what he was going to do now.
If he went to school and suddenly said, “hey, I have a quirk that makes me immortal!” He’d sound crazy, and would just worsen the bullying. It wouldn’t do any good to kill himself in front of everyone. Could he be a hero now? No, this quirk wouldn’t help in combat and people wouldn’t really let him use it. So.. he just.. doesn’t become a hero? But that had been his dream for years, he wouldn’t let go of it that easily, but how is he even supposed to become a hero?
Izuku groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. That’s a problem for future Izuku. Right now, his main priority was to get to bed, and that he did.
Apparently, dying saps a lot of your energy, because he was out as soon as his head hit the pillow.