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It starts when Izuku is young and impressionable and left witnessing the carnage of the world around him. He spent so much of his childhood being told he is useless, a waste of space for not having a quirk, yet here in this mess of a world he finds he can make a difference. It doesn’t start out large or fancy. A boy handing out band aids and water, simple things but important things nonetheless. Someone seeing the pain of the world and wanting to make it better.
He doesn’t set out for it to mean anything, or for it to be his life’s path; yet that is the end result anyways. Actions have meaning, and these ones mean everything to those he helps.
Even the smallest act of witnessing someone as they are, even if there is nothing he can physically do to help is an improvement over ignoring their hurts.
Izuku’s work gains momentum over the years, from people he’s helped bringing him better supplies, to some even beginning to assist in the work itself. He learns, and he grows, and he dedicates himself to a path of healing what he can.
This has more implications than he will ever truly manage to understand. There is more than one way to be a hero after all.
And to that end, the older Izuku gets, the more his supplies start to resemble the closest approximation to a hero costume that a civilian can possibly get.
There’s the utility belt with individual compartments for the simple band aids, the rolls of gauze, the packets of sterilizing wipes and even a roll of stickers for when his ‘patient’ is someone younger than he is.
His cheap yellow backpack has long since been replaced by something more durable, in a bright reflective yellow for safety and a buckle strap that makes an X across his chest for weight distribution.
Inside is a tablet with reinforced backing and a shatter shield for the situations that require quick research.
He’s also got flashlights with extra battery packs, emergency flares and even a couple of shock blankets he’d been gifted by a retired paramedic. There’s gloves for open wounds, cold packs for fevers, heat packs for chills. And a shit ton of energy bars and water bottles just in case.
Of course there’s also the other, more professional things that he can’t even tell his mom about for fear that she’d ask where he’d got them.
Lugging it all around had been tough at first but even as he’d struggled he hadn’t been able to bring himself to remove anything for fear of the good old rule of Murphy’s Law.
And now after so long of carrying his gear all over Musutafu he can barely even feel the weight anymore, the ease with which he swings his pack over his shoulder doing more to showcase the passage of time than even the additions to his gear.
What a long way he’s truly come since he started on this path by circumstance so many years ago. When he was younger, he’d been told time and time again that with his quirklessness he would surely amount to nothing, and here he is, countless undocumented medical assists under his belt and a handful more to his name once he’d gotten his certifications.
At some point he even begins having to file or sign paperwork for the injuries that are so severe they can’t go without documentation. And– in a way it makes everything so much more official, so much more real when he punches in his initials and his ID at the end of a long incident report. For a while, though, this changes nothing other than to add a slight delay to his work.
Then one day, after a partial building collapse that had resulted from a villain fight, he’s tidying up his supplies at the nurses’ station in the makeshift emergency medic tent when someone clears his throat from behind. “Young sir, are you perhaps the First Aid Kid?”
Izuku swivels around to find a thin, tall man with two long strands of jagged blond hair framing a gaunt face.
“That’s me,” he answers, scanning the man for signs of visible injury, beyond his obviously frail physical condition, but finding no immediate causes for concern. “Did you- did you need something? What’s your name?”
The man hesitates. “You can call me Toshinori,” he replies after a pause. “I had heard of you from a friend of mine, and I’ve seen your name on several reports — you see, I work closely with a few of the administrators at the hospital and police station.”
Izuku nods cautiously. “Am I… in trouble?” Surely somebody would have notified him beforehand if any issues had occurred, right?
“Oh, no, it’s nothing like that,” Toshinori hurries to reassure him. “I was simply– well, the larger reason behind all of this is a bit more complex and quite confidential, but I was interested in the way you work. I’d noticed that you have some of the highest statistics in the system of registered medics, despite your young age and unconventional start.” And his lack of quirk as well, goes unsaid even though Izuku is sure that the man is well aware and only being polite.
Izuku’s mouth opens and closes, trying to process the words that Toshinori was saying. He is only a no-name, 13-year-old nobody who tries to help out as a medic occasionally when he has the chance, and he had managed to somehow catch the interest of this random stranger who apparently had connections to the higher-ups?
“If you would be willing to come back to the police station once you’ve finished here, I can explain everything in greater detail,” Toshinori offers. “I’m sorry, I know this must be quite sudden for you.”
Izuku manages a nod. “Yeah. Uh, I’m going to check on a few more people and see if there’s anywhere else I’m needed, and then I can meet you at the station,” he suggests.
Toshinori accepts his terms and Izuku gets back to work.
If he’s being honest, it’s hard to focus on the people in front of him, what with the whole everything that just happened.
Izuku is still struggling to wrap his head around it. Him? He caught someone’s eye? Him?
It’s as he’s tying off a pressure bandage around a woman’s bad knee that the doubts and fears start to really sink in.
It can’t be legit… can it? This isn’t just some kind of sick joke right?
Or even worse, it’s not a trap of some kind, is it? Izuku’s not about to be pulled into some shady shit as a scapegoat is he?
He’s not a vigilante, far from it considering his lack of quirk, never mind the fact that all he does is help people. But the lack of quirk isn’t exactly something he advertises. And with a citizen gifted moniker like the First Aid Kid it’d be pretty easy for someone to accuse him of something, right?
Why else would Toshinori have suggested meeting at the station?
Izuku musters up a smile for his current patient and sends her on her way with a sticker and a lollipop— the fact that they’re clearly a grandma means nothing when it comes to his standard procedure.
If Recovery Girl can hand out gummies then the First Aid Kid can hand out stickers and lollipops. Age of patient has nothing to do with it.
Izuku casts his gaze around what’s left of the makeshift tent knowing that he’s just stalling at this point but hoping and praying that there’s still someone left that he can treat.
Finally Izuku can delay it no longer. He is out of patients, out of time, and out of excuses. Whether this is a trap, a scam or any number of other bad things he can think of, he has agreed to go. And it could be important after all.
Slowly he makes his way to the agreed upon location, knocking and letting himself into the room.
He startles at the sight that awaits him. It is not simply Toshinori in the room, but someone he recognizes immediately as Shizenji Chiyo, Recovery Girl herself. A hero he’s looked up to his entire life, and she’s standing here in this room like she’s waiting for him.
No way.
This has to be a dream.
Looking over at Izuku, she smiles. “Hello there, Toshinori here has been telling me about you and I just had to meet you.”
Meet…him? Why?
Toshinori picks up where she left off. “We would like to recommend you to UA in order to study under Recovery Girl and the other teachers there to reach the full potential of the rescue hero you could become.”
“Yes, it has been long enough since I had my own protege, though I may yet end up sharing you with Toshinori himself. But we would like to mentor you on your journey, you show much promise when it comes to dedication to helping people,” Recovery girl says.
Izuku is stunned. More than stunned. He had never dreamed that getting a recommendation into UA was possible, hadn’t been doing what he did for anything other than love of helping others.
“You…you really mean it?”
“We do, young man,” Recovery Girl affirms, Toshinori nodding along enthusiastically.
And in an instant, just like that, Izuku’s dreams suddenly don’t seem so far-fetched. He can be a medic and a hero, without having to choose one or the other.
All because someone had seen and believed in him.