Chapter Text
In unsurprising news: the sky is blue, grass is green, and Izuku Midoriya does not have a quirk.
He knew this. His mother knew this, from the moment he was diagnosed as quirkless at the ripe old age of 5. Kacchan knew this, from when he finally got an answer to why his best friend wasn’t showing him his nonexistent quirk. His teachers knew this, from when they figured out why no one stopped the other boys in his class from playing a bit too rough with him. And anytime Izuku shared his dream of becoming a hero, of saving people and protecting the future of the world, all of them were very quick to remind him.
But Izuku’s studied quirks long enough to understand that not having a quirk doesn’t mean he can’t become a hero.
As an avid hero fan, he’s familiar with more than just the top heroes. Many heroes have quirks that, while useful, aren't flashy or advantageous in a fight. Some quirks, while helpful, are unfit for combat, leaving their wielder to take on villains quirkless. They have to rely on support items, taking the enemy by surprise, and using their wits to win.
So, why can’t he do that, but quirkless?
Unfortunately for him, the Pro Hero before him, Death Arms, does not agree.
“Kid, what you did was absolutely reckless! What were you thinking, charging at villains like that! Not only could you have gotten hurt, but you could have hurt the hostess as well!”
Izuku shifts in his spot. “No one else was doing anything.” He mutters, clutching his now slimy yellow backpack to his chest. “I just wanted to help him.”
Death Arms pauses, running a hand down his face as he scrutinizes Izuku. Izuku tucks his head further into his chest, angling his hair to cover as much of his face as possible. I must look pathetic right now, he thinks.
And he was right. His clothes had had the pleasure of being scorched from Kacchan's explosions, then wetted as he tried to retrieve his notebook from the Koi pond. Then he was attacked by the Sludge villain, and then he had decided to grab on to All Might and was sent flying into the sky.
My hair also probably looks like a mess too.
“Look, kid.” Izuku snaps his eyes up as the Pro Hero shakes his head lightly. “I know you didn’t mean to cause harm, but you seriously could have. If All Might hadn’t shown up, and the villain had hurt someone as a result of your actions, you could have faced serious consequences for your actions. Technically, you still can. Even if no one saw your quirk, you can still face vigilante charges for your interference. If you had been any older than -what are you, 13?- you probably would have.
Death Arms crouches down, making eye contact with Izuku despite his best efforts. “Next time, wait for the heroes, got it kid?”
And wasn’t that the truth?
“Yes sir, I… I understand.” Izuku mutters. Thankfully, no one else had bothered to come over and scold him. He’s not sure if he could handle another Pro telling him what he did was dumb, even if it saved Kacchan's life.
“Good, glad we're on the same page here. Now, you stay here, and I’m going to grab one of the officers. They're gonna wanna talk about your statement about the incident and call your parents.” Death Arms sighs, turning towards a police officer off to the side collecting a few of the witnesses statements.
Izuku stiffens, watching Death Arms waiting to talk to the officer. If they get a hold of his mother, then not only will he end up worrying her to death, but she might let it slip that he’s quirkless, and then he’ll get another scolding of why he shouldn’t have tried to help.
It’s just like All Might said, he thought, wincing at the thought of the number one hero. You need a quirk to be a hero.
Izuku tilts his head up, just enough to survey the area. Police officers ran around, trying to multitask between surveying damage, gathering witness statements, and shooing off the crowd. The Pros were just as distracted, split between helping the police with their tasks, keeping the villain down, and trying to get their own statements about the incident. Civilians, despite the Pros and cops best efforts to get them to leave, were filming, clearly excited that All Might had shown up, even if the man in question had already left. Near the back of the crime scene, medics and a few cops were fussing over Kacchan, who couldn’t look more pissed off than he tried.
In other words, no one was watching him.
Slowly, he backed down, taking advantage of a small alleyway in between the buildings to slip out of the crime scene, and into the dispersing crowd. He kept his slimy bright yellow backpack to his chest, weaving between the crowd as best he could without looking overly suspicious. Someone shouts something back at the crime scene, maybe for something else, maybe for him, and Izuku’s quick walk turns into a hasty jog.
It’s not until he's crossed a few streets that he finally slows down to a more normal pace. He stops at the side of the road, desperately trying to wipe away the sludge on his backpack with his hand. He’s mostly successful, but he’ll definitely need to wash his backpack if he wants to do anything about the green streaks. Fortunately, the contents seem fine for being thrown at a villain.
Izuku sighs, shrugging off his dirty jacket and balling it into his backpack. Today has been… rough, to say the least. Right now, he wants to go home, to wash off the day from his backpack, his clothes, his hair, and go to bed. The last thing he wants to think about is what today means for his dream to become a hero.
You need a quirk to become a hero.
Izuku shakes his head in an attempt to dislodge the thought process from taking root. Of course All Might would say something like that, he’s All Might. He’s the strongest hero in Japan, in the world, and even he was severely damaged from a villain fight. Izuku needs to understand that his words come from a place of understanding, not malice. Of course All Might wouldn’t want him to fight with such an obvious disadvantage, he’s a hero. Even if Izuku had dreamed of it, had wanted it, had clung to the idea of being a hero ever since people started telling him no, ever since he was diagnosed as quirkless, ever since he and Kacchan had first seen All Might on the big screen when they were children, All Might still had a duty to protect people who couldn’t protect themselves. People like him.
Izuku stops, his eyes getting too blurry to see where he was. Probably the pollen, he thinks, wiping his eyes dry as he looks around.
Because of the detour he took, both with All Might and escaping the crime, he suddenly finds himself in a part of town he was much less familiar with.
“Well,” he mutters under his breath. “Some of this area seems somewhat familiar. I’m pretty sure I’m near Dagobah Beach. Actually, that house looks familiar. So if that’s right, then the beach should be just…right here.”
He can’t remember a time when the beach didn’t have layers of trash lined up and down its coast, only a time when the trash wasn’t as high as it currently is. The afternoon sun shines off of the peaks of the trash mountains, making it almost impossible to see the abandoned garbage polluting the beach. It could have been pretty, Izuku thinks, if it was meant to be there.
Izuku sighs, readjusting the backpack on his shoulder. Alright, I should probably go left because I see a sign around 50 meters out, but that could just be a ‘no littering’ sign, so if that's the case I should go right and hope that it is the right way.
Izuku glances back and forth between the two directions. It is this action that alerts him to a movement on the top of a nearby trash mountain.
It’s the closest one to him, but it’s still across the wall that separates the beach area from the streets. Plus, the sun's reflection paints everything around the top in a shiny halo, but it’s shifting, like someone's moving around up there.
“Uh, hello?” He calls out weakly. “Is, is someone up there…?”
“AH HA!” A voice answers him from the peak. “I’ve finally got it!”
A figure stands up on the trash heap. Due to the sun, Izuku can only make out a faint outline of the person before him. Their hands are raised high, clutching some piece of junk above their head. They look like that one baboon from the old western movie, The Lion King. They’re small, maybe his age, and he had to take a guess from their voice, a girl.
“Um, that’s great!” He says, completely confused as to who she is, and why she’s up there. “But you should really try to come down-”
“WAHH!”
Izuku watches in slow motion as whatever the girl was standing on gives underneath the girl's feet, causing her to lose her balance and fall down the pile of trash with a loud crash.
Because Izuku has clearly not learned his lesson by running into potentially dangerous situations, not a moment is spared as he runs to jump over the wall. And because throwing a backpack or clinging on to a leg doesn't require more than basic motor functions, Izuku is completely blindsided by the level of technique it requires to land a jump onto an unstable trash dump.
With a pained gasp, he tumbled down a small trash mound he had missed because there was a wall that blocked it from the street. His backpack, both his saving grace and downfall, cushions his back from the trash when he slips backward and gets him stuck as it gets logged on a piece of trash.
Hero work is too dangerous without a quirk, kid.
Shedding the backpack, Izuku lets himself slide down the rest of the trash, stumbling as he manages to land on his feet.
“Are you ok?” He asks, running to the base of the trash hill he saw the girl fall from. Frantically, he scours the top of the trash with his eyes, trying to pick out exactly where she is. “We need to get you to a hospital or something.”
“Yes, yes, yes!” The voice exclaims from somewhere above him. Izuku cracks his head up and, sure enough, near the middle of the trash heap, he can see someone struggling to get free. He scrapes up the heap, and sees a large metal sheet on top of a pair or kicking legs.
“Hold on, ok!” He reassures the girls in a shaky voice. “There’s a large sheet of metal on top of you, so I’ve got to pull it off you.”
“Finally, I can make my beautiful, beautiful baby as powerful as it needs to be.”
Baby?
If the girl is babbling nonsense, then there’s a good chance that she hit her head on the way down. Carefully, Izuku walks to the side of the metal sheet, keeping his balance low and watching his footing to try and prevent sliding down the unstable trash heap. Shrinking to a low crouch, Izuku grabs the edge of the sheet, gritting his teeth as his palm meets its sharp edge.
“Ok, I’m going to lift this up on three, ok? One, two, three!” Izuku hoists the sheet up as much as his arms would allow him to. Thankfully, the sheet’s light enough for him to awkwardly flip it so it can slip down the trash. Izuku watches it move down, a pinprick of pride filling his chest.
“Oh, when did you get here?”
The girl's voice redirects his attention down to her. Her middle school uniform looks even worse than his. It’s coated in sand, with the sleeves stained a dark brown. The middle front button of her jacket is gone, and another looks like it is just barely hanging on. Thick, shoulder-length pink hair messily pillows her face. He notices a pair of thick, handcrafted goggles as she blinks up at him, yellow lens-like eyes studying him with surprise as she clutches something small enough to cover in her hand to her chest.
“Are you hurt?” Izuku asks, helping the girl up to her feet. She’s shorter than him, but bears a broader, more muscular frame than he does. Not by much, but the difference is definitely noticeable. “If you’re injured, then we need to get you to a hospital to prevent any tetanus or- wait, did, did you not notice me before?”
“Nope!” She says, turning to start to make her way down the trash, carefully balancing herself with one arm as the other one continues to cradle the unknown object to her chest.
“Wha-how?” Izuku questions, following her down. “I was talking to you the whole time.”
“Didn’t notice.” The girl shrugs, carefully toeing the sandy ground as she hopped off the trash. “I tend to get pretty in the zone when it comes to my babies.”
There’s that word again. “Sorry, your… babies?” Izuku questions, turning to face her.
He watches as her lens-like eyes grow wide, her smile growing from friendly and cheerful to wild and borderline manic.
“Yup! My babies!” she exclaims, leaning in close to Izuku. “My darlings, my dreams alive, my true loves! I treat all of my inventions as precious pieces of treasure, cuz they are!”
“Oh, you're an inventor!” Izuku says, momentarily distracted from his confusion. “What do you make?”
If possible, the girl's excitement grew. “I think you mean, ‘what don’t I make’! And the answer to that, is nothing! Tech, clothes, gadgets, everything, sky’s the limit!” The girl grabbed Izuku’s shoulders, leaning in until she was barely a hand's length away from him. “But that’s nothing compared to what I’m gonna make!”
“Uh, what-”
“Hero gear! I’m gonna make gear for the best of the best, and watch as they use all my babies to their fullest potential!” She interrupts, shaking him back and forth. “Next year, I’m gonna make so many babies, they won’t know what to do with ‘em!”
“Wait, hero gear?” Izuku asks, finally snapping back to his senses. “You must be trying to go to a hero school, right?”
“Nope!” Hatsume declares, releasing Izuku as she crosses her arms. “I’m going to go to the hero school: UA!” The girl squeezes her arms together, her eyes squeezed shut as she squeals. “They have the best hero class which means that they have the best hero support class; I can’t not go!”
“Wow, that’s great,” Izuku says, holding back a wince at his strained tone. Just because he can’t become a hero, doesn’t mean that he should discourage people from doing the same.
Thankfully, the girl doesn't seem to notice. “Once I’m in, I’m going to be the best inventor that school has ever seen! And this baby’s gonna help me do it!”
Carefully, the girl holds out the hand that she had kept cradled so close to her chest. In it, there lies a disk, no bigger than the palm of her hand. It’s thick, much thicker than Izuku would have expected it to be, and coated with a layer of sand and junk from residing in the trash for so long.
“Took me ages to find this lil’ guy!” she begins. “This baby is a multifunctional engine. It can hook up to almost anything, so long as you know what you’re doing, of course!” She adds with a wink. She gently brushes off some of the sand and junk from the disk, holding it up to the sky to let the sunlight bounce off of the dull metal. “Nowadays, the ones used are way smaller and thinner, and require either more care or more replacements. But this one’s old, meaning that once I clean it up and learn what to do, it’ll be the perfect power source for my baby!”
“Oh, are you planning on making one invention in particular?” Izuku asks, bringing a hand to his bottom lip. “That would make sense, since you’ve already talked about wanting to join the UA support department and your goggles themselves seem to be handcrafted. It can’t be official hero gear since you need a licence to do that but maybe a smaller, more personal invention for yourself.”
“Wow, you catch on quick! But you're still wrong! For the Support Course at UA, one of the requirements to get in is to bring in your own invention for testing. Bonus points if it could be used for hero work while still, legally, not being a weapon!”
She puts the disk in a pocket, patting it down as she turns to face the rest of the trash dump. “I’ve got a power source, so now I know what I’m working with! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get this baby home to clean up and study! See ya!”
Izuku stares, watching as the pink haired girl starts to run out the trash dump, leaving him alone with the metal and waves.
Huh, he thinks absentmindedly. We never exchanged names.
~ ~ ~
“Mom, I’m home!” Izuku calls out, taking off his shoes as he enters his home.
No matter how much time had passed, or how much had changed in his life, Izuku can’t remember a time where his home didn’t look the same as the day before. The kitchen table was the same one that had been there when school had given him his first homework assignment. The couch was the same one he once ran into when he was playing as All Might. The walls were the same ones that he had drawn on when he was two. It made the space feel like a time capsule, and comforted Izuku with the knowledge that no matter how much changed, home would never.
“Izuku! How was school?” Mom calls out from the kitchen, the smell of her cooking wafting throughout the apartment.
“It was alright,” he shrugs, making his way over to his mom. “How was work?”
“It was fine dear, although I did have to- Izuku! What on earth happened to you?!” She quickly abandons her cooking, scrambling over with teary eyes as she tightly clasps his shoulders. “Look at you! You’re all dirty and messy and you lost your jacket! Are you hurt?! Where did you go?!”
“Mom, mom, I’m fine,” Izuku soothes, placing his hands on her arms. “I just, uh, I tripped on some steps on the way home, but I promise I’m fine! I put my jacket in my bag because it got dirty from the fall, but really, I’m ok!
“Are you sure?” she asks, looking over his face for any obvious signs of damage. “You really should be more careful.”
“I’m sure Mom, it was just a small trip. I didn’t even get hurt.”
“I know, I know,” she says, wiping a few tears. “I just can’t help myself. I want you to be safe.”
Izuku swallows. “Yeah, mom,” he reassures. “I’m safe.”
His mom pulls away, slowly turning her attention back to dinner. “Well, alright. Dinner’s not going to be ready for a little while so go ahead and take a shower and put your clothes in the wash. Make sure to check for any cuts or bruises you might have gotten from your fall, ok?”
“Of course Mom,” Izuku replies, slipping into his room to grab a fresh change of clothes. He gently closes the door to his room, then sliding down it with an exhausted exhale. Finally, he lets him process the day, from All Might to the sludge villain to the girl at the beach. The whole day had felt like a rush, both physically and emotionally. Even now, after the day has passed, he still finds himself struggling to understand how one day could make him afraid, crushed, and confused in the span of a few hours. Honestly, it’s a surprise he didn’t crash and burn from the emotional rollercoaster of the day earlier.
Turning towards his desk, he moves to grab a backpack with the intent to both wash his jacket and his backpack. However, the backpack was not in its usual spot on his chair.
Frowning, Izuku turns around to check next to his bed, then by the door.
“Where is…” he drones off as he pokes his head outside his room to check.
Not here, he thinks. Did I leave it at school…no, I threw it at that slime villain…but I’m pretty sure I grabbed it when I slipped out…
“The beach.” He realizes with a groan. “I left my backpack at the beach.”
~ ~ ~
Unfortunately for Izuku, he had school the next day. Which meant that he had to wake up early if he wanted to have time to grab his backpack. He gave himself an hour to grab his backpack, clean it, and get to school. He ditched breakfast to save time and to prevent his mom from questioning why he was leaving without a backpack.
It was only a 10 minute run to get to Dagobah Beach, giving him plenty of time to grab his backpack and go. However, Izuku overestimated his endurance, leaving him hunched over and panting as he tried to catch his breath on the top of the beach’s stairs.
“Oh, it’s you again! Whatcha doing out here?”
Izuku snaps his head up, looking for the sound of the voice. Eventually, he spots the girl from yesterday digging around in a trash dump near the wall. Her school uniform was clean this time, and over her shoulder rests an abnormally large duffel bag.
“Just, uh, grabbing my backpack.” He pants. “I took it off when I went to help you out of the trash and forgot to take it home with me.”
“Oh yeah, thanks for that,” she says, redirecting her attention to the trash she was digging in. “I’m going to drop off some of my inventing stuff so that I can come back after school, right after I finish looking at this.”
“Are you planning on building your invention for UA already?” Izuku asks, slowly making his way down the steps to her. “I suppose it would help you work out any kinks, as well as allow you to build something truly amazing.”
“Nah, can’t do that yet. UA gives out the prompt for the invention ‘round a month before it’s actually due to tell us what we’re building, so I won't know what to do ‘till January-oh what's this.”
Most of the time, when Izuku starts to ramble to himself, he’s ignored by the people around him. Usually, people would answer his first question or two out of politeness, before opting to ignore him. He didn’t mind it, the questions were usually at least a little bit too personal, and the rambling helped him think more than anything. So when the girl indulged him yet again, it took him a moment to smother his shock as he latched on to her answer.
“Anyways,” she continues, dumping her duffle bag on the ground as she takes a closer look at whatever it was she found, “I’ll be working on improving my overall invention skills; getting used to the materials in here and one upping myself everytime!”
“I see,” Izuku responds, walking over to see what has her so interested. Getting close to the girl, he lets out an embarrassing squeak as he recognizes the object she was currently looking at to be a very familiar charred notebook.
“Um, excuse me?” He said, his voice raising several octaves against his will. “That, that’s mine.”
The girl turns to face him, lense like eyes blinking at him before her wild grin grows even more. “Wait, seriously?” She asks, holding out the notebook. “This is some deep level stuff about these hero’s quirks.”
Izuku blushes, grabbing the notebook from her before turning to grab his backpack as well. “Yeah, um, it’s a hobby of mine,” he admits weakly. “I’ve always loved heroes and their quirks so I’ve built a habit around trying to understand them as much as possible.” He awkwardly shoves the notebook back into the bag and turns to walk away, only to run into her.
With a grunt, Izuku falls flat on his butt as he blinks up at the girl. She looks completely unconcerned with the fact that she had knocked Izuku down, instead making intense eye contact with a manic smile.
“You’re smart,” she says, crouching down into a low squat to come face to face with him. “I thought as much yesterday with all those questions you were asking, but this notebook is on a whole other level.”
“Um, thank you?”
“Let’s cut to the chase,” she says, as if she wasn’t one of the most direct people Izuku has ever met. “I’m going to need practice building gear that supports quirks, but I don’t know all that much about them. But you do. So, whaddaya say to being my test dummy?”
Izuku blinks at the girl, expecting her to elaborate on her offer. He hopes she does, because the way she phrased it made it seem like he’s a guinea pig.
“I’m sorry,” he responds. “Your…test dummy?”
“Yup!” she says, not helping his fears of becoming a guinea pig in the slightest. “Someone I could use to test out all my inventions! With my mechanical genius, and your knowledge of heroes and quirks, we could totally figure out the best ways to make support items together!”
Izuku swallows, averting his eyes from her persistent stare. So that’s why she was asking him, she thought he could help her. She wanted to use his quirk knowledge to learn how to work around quirk, most likely wanting to start with his own. His heart sinks at the realization. He’s spent years studying quirks, analyzing them and their different uses, but even when someone asks for his help to design support gear for heroes, his quirklessness still prevents him from being able to work around that properly.
“I can’t,” he finally admits. “Sorry.”
“Huh? Why not.”
Izuku licks his lips. “I, I don’t” he stammers, sighing to himself before continuing. “I’m quirkless. I don't actually have a quirk for you to practice accommodating. Sorry.”
“Really?” She asks, and Izuku nods slowly.
“Yeah, so I really can’t-”
“Perfect!”
Izuku blinks, looking up at the girl to see that her wild grin hadn’t changed a bit. “It is?”
“Heck yeah! Wow, you scared me there for a second! I thought you were going to say that you had an extremely complicated quirk that I wouldn’t be able to work around without the proper materials, and then I would have to find some other person to convince to let me use them. But no quirk at all? That means that there's nothing to work around at all! It’s the best solution possible!”
“But, I thought… don’t you need to practice working around quirks?”
“Yeah, but I’ll get training on that in UA. There are a lot more support gear items that don't support the quirk at all, and you’ll be perfect to test those out.”
She holds her hand out, offering him a way to stand. “So, you in?”
Izuku inhales, the hand before taking up all his focus. The offer the hand possesses feels heavy, almost tangible, like he can reach out and just grab it from her. He can almost see all the inventions she will make backed by his knowledge, both here and in UA. She needs his help if she wants to fulfill her dream, and they both know it. Her inventions are going to help people, save countless lives, and she wants him to help her get started. It’s an offer so close to what he’s always wanted.
And so far away from it too.
He wants to tell himself that he can still fulfill his dream; that helping his girl is only the first step towards heroism, that they can go to UA together. He wants to tell himself the same thing he always had: that he can be a hero too.
When it was Mom saying he couldn’t, he could ignore it because she was just worried about his future of being quirkless. When it was Kacchan and his classmates saying he couldn’t, he could ignore them because they were children who had never seen any type of hero other than ones with flashy quirks. When it was his teachers saying he couldn’t, he could ignore them because they were likely having that same talk with every student who they felt was unfit for their future career path. And even when All Might said he couldn’t, Izuku understood that the number one hero and had seen countless fights where his quirk was the reason he was alive. If these voices were singular, he could ignore them.
But they weren’t. They grouped together, a wave of doubt and discouragement that only grew the more he tried to fight it. If it was just one voice, he could chalk it up to a small hurdle, but all of them? When everyone Izuku knew voiced the same opinion, when Mom and Kacchan and All Might all told him the same thing, Izuku couldn’t fully stop his own voice from joining the wave.
But she still needed help. She wants to go to UA, to become the best of the best, just like he does, except that she actually can. If she has her own wave then Izuku will make sure she can swim it. Because if she has a shot, even a small one, then what kind of hero wouldn’t do everything in his power to make it happen.
“Midoriya Izuku.” He says, taking her hand as she hoists him up.
She grins. “Hatsume Mei.”
The sky is blue, grass is green, and Midoriya Izuku does not have a quirk. But not having a quirk only stops him, not her. And if he can help, can use all the resources and skills he’s developed over the years towards his dream for someone else, then he’ll do it. Because if there's one thing he’s learned about heroes, it's that that's what they do.