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Mirio was quirkless.
Quirklessness was strange. It meant having to sit out heroic training, only being able to watch. It meant trying to go intangible, but realizing he didn’t have his quirk anymore when his very tangible foot hit the very tangible door. It meant all these times he used this quirk without even realizing where gone, and replaced by a constant reminder that now he was quirkless.
Quirklessness was helplessness. It was not being able to train, to help. It was his provisional licence being put on hold and talks about it being permanently retired because one couldn’t be a hero without a quirk. It was being surprised because he’d never realised his quirk made him stronger, but it did even if it wasn’t by a lot, and he kept overestimating his strength.
Quirklessness was realization. It was watching the news and only understanding five minutes after hearing it that this potential new law about heroes losing their licence if they were permanently, quirkless, be it biologically or effectively, would affect him too now. It was everyone treating like he’d become a glass statue overnight and not understanding that because quirk or not, he was still a hero, he was still Lemillion.
Quirklessness was confusion. It was staring at the total of his grocery bill and wondering why the hell it was almost twice the normal price, only to be told it was ‘the quirkless tax’. He didn’t even know that existed. It was looking at his ID, which now had a big red Q instead of Permeation written next to Quirk and wondering how many things it would affect in his life if there was a goddamn quirkless tax.
Quirklessness was sadness. It was his morale hitting rock bottom when he got a text from his mom saying their insurance didn’t take quirkless people and she was searching for a new one, but for some reason those that did accept quirkless people all ended up ridiculously expensive.
Quirklessness meant he wasn’t a hero anymore. Couldn’t be a hero anymore. No provisional licence, no apprenticeship, no hero training, no power. He knew there were talks about transferring him to General Education so he could still get the UA diploma.
Honestly, he still couldn’t believe he might… not be a hero. Just like that. After saving only one person, one out of a million.
r/quirklessness
Iamtintin100000000
Okay, it’s my first time on this subreddit, but… does anyone know what the heck is going on with quirklessness and assurances? They say it’s the regular price but the only thing that changed is that, so why would someone being quirkless make assurance that much higher no matter where we call, and does anyone know where to find one at a regular price?
ShadowWalker2945
Okay, I have a question
I saw some of your posts before and you… aren’t quirkless? If one of your family members is quirkless then go to r/quirklessfamily, man. That’s not your space.
(I also recall enough to be decently sure you’re not one of these accounts who try to fish info out of the community, though, so I’ll still answer your question)
It’s the quirkless tax. Plain and simple. Technically not mandatory for assurance but unfortunately legal.
And sorry but I can’t help you when it comes to finding a regular price, sorry. We’ve got a lot of assholes on here who come to the subreddit to try and find quirkless-friendly places and people they can go after. I suggest asking whoever quirkless person is on your assurance to find a quirkless safe space to ask (and if they’re can’t because they haven’t found the community yet, they absolutely should try to as soon as possible)
Mirio looked at the bill on his phone, and forced his smile to stay in place.
“Sir, I believe there has been a mistake,” he politely pointed out. “This is almost twice as much as the amount I should be paying.”
The cashier gave him a smile that was just as fake. “You’re right, I did forget an item. However I am certain I did not make any other mistake, as your account is subject to the quirkless tax.”
Mirio’s eye twitched as the amount went a bit higher. He had definitively not forgotten anything. But alright. Alright. It was fucking legal, for some reason, so alright. He paid, and made a mental note not to come to this store again.
But this was the third store in a row and he’d been legally quirkless for barely a month so he was starting to think he just wouldn’t find one that would make him pay the normal goddamn price.
Was this like this their whole lives for quirkless people? He thought they were protected by discrimination laws. A legal tax to make everything more expensive was not protection, obviously. He tried to recall the class about quirk discrimination Aizawa gave them in second year. What had he said about quirklessness? Mirio remembered leaving thinking it was terrible, but then there had been the provisional licence exam and it slipped his mind entirely.
He had said… that their data was often misleading, right? Something about that and how they couldn’t get reliable statistics for some reason he couldn’t recall. Probably something about people with quirks they never found out about and quirkless people faking a weak quirk. That most people had no idea how it really was and more often than not didn’t really care. Hadn’t he offered to tell them more about this if they wanted to? Mirio wanted to say yes after the exam, but he apparently had forgotten about it.
He spent the trip back to the dorms on his phone trying to get some information, but quickly realized it was all incredibly contradictory. One article would gleefully claim quirkless suicides were an all-time low, and the next talk about how discrimination was at its worse and why. The third detailed why they were going to die, and quirklessness wouldn’t exist in a few decades, meanwhile the fourth explained in detail why they were never going to disappear and it was necessary to make sure laws still protected them.
In Mirio’s uninformed opinion, this was an absolute mess and he understood why Aizawa had seemed so done with life when he exposed the few stats he had. It had probably been hell to find those.
If when he managed to become a pro, he would do something about quirkless discrimination, he decided. That really sucked.
Mirio stared at his desk for a few minutes. Uh. That was new.
A single spider lily lay on it, with a note. Nulls and lulesses don’t belong in UA. Red ink on black paper.
He distractedly wondered which one of his classmates could have done that. Someone not in the class wouldn't know which desk was his, and most other people didn’t know he had lost his quirk anyway. The only other students who knew were the first years who had been part of the raid. It felt strange; he was friends with most of his classmates. He didn’t think they would be bigoted.
But he knew what spider lilies meant. It wasn’t hard to understand the message.
“Mirio, what… oh!” Nejire’s eyes widened in horror when she saw the flower. “Who did that?!”
She turned to everyone else to stare everyone in the class down one by one, cheery smile disappeared.
“I won’t repeat. Who did that?”
No one answered, and the tense silence was cut by a yellow sleeping bag crawling in the room.
“What are you all doing and how did anyone get Hado to glare?” Aizawa complained. “Everyone to their seats, immediately.”
“Sensei!” Nejire immediately said. “Someone put a spider lily on Mirio’s desk. And a note with a slur!”
Mirio wasn’t sure when it happened, but the next second the underground hero was standing, out of the sleeping bag, and his eyes were glowing red. It took less than two seconds to get everyone on their seats, mouth shut, except for Nejire and Tamaki who stubbornly stayed by Mirio’s side.
“Give me that note,” he ordered. “I will say this once, and only once. UA has a zero tolerance policy towards bullying. If I ever hear about a single other incident like that, I will expel the culprits without hesitation and there will not be any re-enrolment. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sensei!”
“Good.” The hero’s hair fell down. “Hado, Hamajiki, go to your seats. I let it slide this once, but next time you sit down like everyone else. Since apparently the first lesson didn’t go through your thick heads, we’ll have another class on quirkless discrimination next week, but unfortunately I can’t do it right now. Whoever did that, if I find out who you are by any means that is not you going to me and telling me, I will expel you. Now, today’s lesson was supposed to be about regulations for mutation type quirks…”
The community’s stance on functional quirklessness
OfficialCommunityPost ✔
Functional quirklessness has been a debate for quite some time now. However it is important for us as a community to finally decide how we stand.
As most probably know, pro hero Ragdoll has lost her quirk. Though she is not biologically quirkless, she has entirely lost her quirk, which is a first for a mental emitter type. As @GreenBoy/Deku.official’s analysis and information has shown, the differences with actual biological quirklessness (toe joint, etc.) are minimal to the point she has been declared officially biologically quirkless despite the inexactitude of that label. He also has been able to confirm that someone else has suffered the same treatment (partly explained loss of emitter quirk though from a different origin, legally biological quirklessness).
We also know they both have suffered the same discrimination as any Lace does, at least to some extent. Notably, Ragdoll has lost her hero licence. There might be more of those cases. None of them know how to react to this, not being members of the community, and we have to decide if we want to help them and how much they should be let in the community.
After discussion from SL’s pillars, it has been agreed an official decision would have to be made in a week from now. Until then, none is allowed to tell them about any Lace information.
This is the space dedicated to the debate. It will close once the decision is made.
“Togata? Please stay behind. I want to talk to you," Aizawa said.
“Yes, sensei!” Mirio smiled at his friends, he’d catch up later. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Togata, is that the first time something like this happened? We can’t let this slide. You didn’t suffer any kind of discrimination since you lost your quirk, right?”
Well, that would be a lie, Mirio thought. But he doubted Aizawa wanted to know about things that didn’t happen in school.
“That’s the first time, sensei. We’re in a hero school, after all, people are better than that!”
Aizawa didn’t seem convinced. “Sure. If it ever happens again, I want you to tell me. I’ll tell the rest of the faculty to keep an eye out.”
“Of course, sensei,” Mirio nodded.
“Togata. You’ve been declared legally quirkless, right? Not only functionally quirkless. Correct?”
Mirio nodded.
“The law about quirkless heroism will not pass,” he assured. “It was a close call, but now we’re almost certain it won’t. It was hard to get you to graduate as a hero, but eventually the Commission gave up. You’ll get extra training with me, if you want, to adapt your fighting style and learn to wield some weapon. Unfortunately you’ll have to pass the provisional licence exam again before you can get your permanent one, and you won’t be able to train in heroic classes until then. Sorry for that, but we couldn’t get more.”
Mirio smiled. “Don’t worry, sensei! I’ll do it!”
Me:
Hey, dad!
You’ll never guess what aizawa sensei just told me
If I repass the provisional exam and I’ll be qualified to graduate
Dad:
Fuck
I’m sorry Mirio
I’m sure you’ll get a good job even if you can’t be a hero, you know, you'll still be a UA graduate.
Me:
… What?
Mirio went to the provisional licence exam for the second time. He passed.
He was not sure why, but seeing it with the big red Q in place of ‘Permeation’ brought him a wave of pride he didn’t get the first time.
On a whim, he took a picture of it, blurred all the identifying information, and posted it. It brought more debates on the Internet than he would have thought.
Lemillion, at some point, became the Quirkless Hero. He wasn’t sure when or even why, but he somewhat liked it.
He found a whole bouquet of spider lilies the next day. Four red flowers of death with a neat little ribbon. This time, the words ‘geneless scums aren’t heroes’ were craved into his desk.
This time, someone snitched. Aizawa being true to his word of telling the rest of the faculty, Present Mic promptly expelled the culprit.
Mirio took the flowers home and dried them to keep them. That wouldn't stop him.
By the time he graduated, Mirio had learnt several things.
The first thing was that if many people were outraged by him posting a picture of his hero licence, there were also people who loved it. He had accidentally become a symbol, though it was not the one he intended to be.
The second was that some people hated him for that, and it hurt.
The third was to ignore them.
The fourth was that the quirkless community, somehow, knew about him, and after that getting included within it as one of their own was fast. He did not share all of their experiences, he did not wear the red shoes, he was not born quirkless, but he was quirkless now and it was apparently enough to be a Lace.
The fifth, and a lot of the following ones, was what it meant to be a Lace. Losing respect to a lot of heroes and gaining respect for people he simply would have thought of as villains before. The symbols and the codes, progressively, as he became one of their own.
The last one was that his quirk never defined him, didn’t define anyone, and that he loved to be a Lace.
Lemillion became a symbol. What kind of symbols depended on who was asked, really. Some called him a symbol of lies, a symbol of nulls, genelesses and hollows. Some called him a Symbol of Hope. Sometimes, it was a Symbol of Change. His true title, however, the one he bore with pride and thought of as his own, was the Golden Symbol. The symbol of those who didn’t understand, shouldn’t understand, but did anyway. The symbol of those who helped. The symbol of those who still fought even when society was against them and it would be easier to give up. A symbol who wore a lily’s armband with a shiny golden spider lily like an ally, but who also drew angel wings on his shoes during the days of mourning, burnt spider lilies every month and even went to white balls like a Lace.
He was not the only one. There was a hero who wore Primordial Reds but wielded a quirk, who had never stopped being a Lace even when he stopped being quirkless, who was called their White Symbol. Reporters would ask why Deku and Lemillion partnered so much, and they would look at each other, smile, and say they had things in common -but really, it was easier if you didn’t have partners who would ask where exactly you got this intel.
Mirio didn’t regret losing his quirk. He was still a hero. He knew that some day, he would still save a million people.
He watched Eri grow up to be a firm anti-discrimination activist, particulary hellbent on quirkless rights, and if Lemillion ever saw her illegally use her quirk to heal quirkless civilians when a march turned violent or saw a very recognizable horn glowing through the vigilante Reverse’s hood, well, no he didn’t. It was a coincidence that said vigilante added the lily’s armband to their costume shortly after Mirio gave one to Eri.
So no, if you asked him, he wouldn’t say that he regretted losing his quirk. He regretted the people he knew he couldn’t save because he didn’t have it, of course, but he knew he had also saved many other people in a very different way. The rate of quirkless people going missing significantly diminished for the first time in a long, long time after LeMilling and Deku became pros.
Mirio was quirkless. He had been for years.
Quirklessness was community. It was burning the spider lilies he still got -not that he tried to avoid getting them, really- even years after he became a pro, on the first Sunday of each month. It was drawing angel wings on his shoes in mourning days, going to marches, militating for their rights, being the living proof that quirkless was not less.
Quirklessness was bittersweet. It was going to lily parties, getting to know people with always that question in the back of his mind: ‘are they planning to make it to sunrise?’. It was a sad smile when he went to a new shop and wasn’t let in, and having no idea, really, why Reverse would go tag on this building in particular, but well they had never managed to get rid of her paint before had they?
Quirklessness was joy. It was seeing a kid with cheap copies of Deku’s red shoes that he knew were not Primordial Reds, it was seeing another with his visor or his armband -and it was good that his was unique because otherwise merch would make it confusing.
Quirklessness was hate. It was being booed by people who thought because he had lost his quirk he couldn’t amount to anything anymore. It was smiling, and ignoring them because he knew the truth.
Quirklessness was his life, now, and he wasn’t unhappy with it.