Chapter Text
Izuku was born with something to his name: hope and dreams and that very childish naivety. He was born with the eyes of a wanderer and the desire to be a hero, someone to know, someone to look after.
But he was also born quirkless, and that meant that people looked at him oddly and did not appreciate his commentary all that often. It was hard enough being like that. It was hard enough being a stranger in his own home, even harder when the world looked at him oddly and spoke poorly about him. A lack of a quirk. They acted like that was such a problem. Like it was the end of the world and the end of the world for everyone, not just Izuku.
To be quirkless was the end of the line for the newer kids in this generation. You died young, you moved away, or something much worse. People acted like it was the end of the world to be quirkless when they had never been quirkless before and never would. Izuku lived it. Izuku and a few other thousands in Musutafu lived it.
But the thing about being quirkless that everyone overlooked was that it meant you were totally, one hundred percent overlooked.
You learn that very early on and cannot change how the world perceives you. You can get messed up. You can get ignored and told off. You can, on the other hand, make them think worse of you in every capacity.
That was what Izuku decided to do roughly six years after his quirkless diagnosis.
He came at the world with his teeth bared and his eyes burning from how much he cried when no one—when everyone was looking at him. And you know, being angry wasn’t so bad. Izuku Midoriya was angry and bitter and people needed to realize it. His hatred wasn’t a phase. It wouldn’t be dying out any time soon, unlike the population of the quirkless. Some people, you see, forgot how kind Izuku could have been. There was never enough time to remember all the details for someone like him. Teeth bared, head raised, grades dropping fast but not any faster than the kids at his school—when he raised his fist, knuckles black in color, the other students mocking him dropped very fast.
When he was eleven he had gotten into his first big fight. And by big he meant it. He hadn’t known how to fight at the time, not really anyway, but he had a mouth and hands and legs. He had a body that was more or less fed and rested.
So he had grabbed his classmate by their shoulder-length hair and tackled them onto the classroom floor; his knobby and scuffed knees pressing into their ribs as he held them down and yelled, over and over, that people with quirks were the diseased ones. Quirkless people came first.
If someone was sick here, it was anyone but him.
(That wasn’t what Izuku actually believed, but he wasn’t about to argue with a bunch of dumbfounded and whiny school children. Grow up. That was what he wanted to say.)
Kacchan had agreed with him the first time he heard it, but after Izuku screamed at him about it, he hadn’t mentioned it again. Contradict yourself, pop back up like a weed.
So he got into fights. He fought with everyone over everything. Be smart or be dumb or be the everything-kid because why not. Izuku got into fights and won most of them because he got the first few hits in. And over the years his hits got stronger, more and more accurate. He started fucking shit up because he was so angry at the world, and when people acted like it was his fault, he cracked their jaws for it.
His mom wasn’t pleased. At first she tried to figure out why he was choosing anger and violence over anything else, any other reaction—but then she stopped trying.
Izuku didn’t blame her, really, because it must have been so exhausting to raise a desperate kid who just wanted to be treated fairly; a kid who wanted his mom and his dad and his friends again; a kid who was scared of being alone, way alone in the darkest corners of the apartment because no one loved him; a kid who was her own; a kid who acted so similarly to all her exes; a kid who just wanted to fit in; a kid who wouldn’t stop pleading with her to vouch for him; a kid who must have come out wrong ‘cause he had no quirk and that meant he had no future.
Kids without futures died very quickly and very quietly. Sure, tragically, but you wandered past dead-end alleys all the time. Who knows what kind of body lay there on the concrete, right?
His mom wouldn’t know. Izuku only knew from the grapevine of internet forums. You had to have support somewhere, and Izuku’s somewhere was in the darker corners of the internet because that was the only place where he could go without being mass reported one way or another.
His mom stopped trying because she was seeing all the signs other parents warned her about. Of course, those parents didn’t have quirkless kids, but everyone knew how it went. Mom has a baby boy with no quirk and her man of three years leaves and that's it, that's it, that’s all you get. Blame whoever you want, obviously, don’t help your trying and needy child because he was hopeless anyway, Inko, dear. Fuck you too, bitchass. Izuku burned with that hatred, too. All of it. Any of it.
Yeah, Izuku didn’t blame her.
(He blamed her. Every single part of him blamed her, he just didn’t say it out loud.)
He was a darling little kid at home. His mom didn’t beat him or yell at him or anything stupid. She was his mom. She drank a lot. From age twelve and onward, Izuku always saw his mom drinking something or another when she was in the apartment. Wine, sake, champagne, wine again, beer, hard liquor, whiskey, something else, wine again! He never saw her without a bottle or a glass of something.
So what? Inko Midoriya was a heavy drinker. She didn’t pop pills or smoke anything and didn’t beat Izuku bloody, she just stopped getting involved in Izuku’s fights. She signed off on the detention and suspension slips—fought tooth and nail like a rabid dog when he almost got expelled, which she prevented—but that was it. She still fed and clothed him. She still asked about his day. They still talked.
But she let him be violent, as long as he wasn’t violent to her.
And that was definitely bad parenting. Izuku knew damn well that no good parent of any kind should let their kid beat up other kids, no matter the reason at hand—not about quirklessness and disease and rot and defection—but she did it anyway and Izuku stopped blaming her, stopped caring at all.
He got up off the ground that was his bed and kept walking. Make it ‘til you break it, kid. One day your mom isn’t going to help you anymore. Well, screwball, Inko Midoriya stopped helping her son four years ago. Izuku was almost fourteen now. She didn’t help enough. Vouching for him? Fighting the expulsion records? Taking him to therapy sessions with this stranger who had glasses and blue-grey hair and stern old eyes—that woman hated Izuku, too, just as much as the boy hated her—well, that wasn’t helpful.
He didn’t hate his mom for it. And he didn’t hate his mom for drinking, either. Drinking that much was unhealthy and it would probably mess up her liver really badly, really soon, but he didn’t blame her for that. He didn’t care that she liked her liquors and sharp alcohols and all that. He just didn’t care.
Izuku was born into the world like every other kid and he was faced with its cruelty, its negligence. He hated that more than he could ever hate his mom.
That was what he told himself, more specifically. Not how he actually felt.
He had no quirk. Growing up, that meant kids were confused or mean or dumb. It meant they didn't have any critical thinking skills to offer Izuku, which meant they said insensitive and dickish things even though they were just little kids. But no one ever educated them, so they never learned, they never changed and never stopped being such painful thorns in Izuku’s side.
—
“Why do you fight everyone?” Kacchan asked him, and though Izuku was in the mood to be nice today he still was willing to hit someone or something if they said the wrong thing.
Out of everything you can say, people chose to be idiots. It was pretty stupid.
“‘Cause they make me angry,” He said with a frown. “And I’m tired of waiting for someone to not do anything.”
No one ever did anything. Teachers looked the other way. Parents didn’t seem to care when their children acted like privileged bigots with bright futures. Izuku found it ugly, found it beautiful in the sense that when he shook them down and knees them in the ribs they never saw it coming. They froze up, locked up. No quirk in sight? Are you going to use it? Be prissy, be something better than me. But they never were and never did. No one did anything and it meant that if Izuku didn’t snap his jaws, no one would. So he did.
It went something like this: grow up, grow old, grow angry.
Kacchan had a really cool quirk. Izuku wasn’t going to lie and say it wasn’t cool. Out of everyone in the school, he would say that the kid in front of him was the closest thing to a friend Izuku would ever get. They got along fine. Kacchan rarely said anything stupid. Maybe privileged—that was what it was—but not stupid. Call it intuition or something else; birds of a feather flock together, whatever. Something like that.
So it went like this: grow up, grow old, grow spiteful.
“Do I make you angry?” Kacchan wrinkled his nose, sounding petulant. They were both twelve. Kacchan was kind of mean to anyone who couldn’t hold their own. When he saw Izuku fight—they grew up together, so he had always been able to see Izuku fight—he had stopped nagging him for being quirkless.
Izuku looked at the blonde for a long moment. Kacchan had no bruises and no heavy eyes. The kid hadn’t needed to fight him since they were like eight.
“No,” He shook his head. “Not anymore.”
—
The thing about anger was that it took a hundred forms. It could be anything. Izuku’s anger wasn't always violence. At one point it was quiet and deadly, an electrical fence and not just a fully automatic rifle in his mouth.
His anger changed the older he got and the more often people spoke of people without quirks. He was violent because no one realized how easy it was. He didn’t have to be, but he was. Not everyone’s anger was like his. It was a bad example to use. Some anger was in activism, in fighting tooth and nail legally. Izuku wasn’t doing that, he never had, and he probably never will. He was baring his teeth and he was making a name for himself. He had scars from the worst fights and memories of it, too.
The anger he had could not be applied to everyone. It would be unfair to say that being angry about this meant you rioted, you caused problems. It applies to Izuku, but not everyone. One day it would get him killed. One day his moms wouldn’t bail him out or detention or whatever.
Izuku knew that. He just didn’t care—anger did that to you, sometimes, made your empathy too great or too small.
—
Izuku had this gigantic and very demanding voice in his head. It screamed at him six out of seven days a week, most weeks, and was shrieking bloody murder about quirks and what it meant to live in a society when you didn’t have one at all.
It was like how Izuku scratched at his scalp until it bled.
He didn’t smoke and he didn’t drink. He didn’t have any piercings and he never turned in his work late. He had top marks.
Yeah, he got into fights.
That was a behavioral issue, not a performance one. He could crack jaws and break noses and dislocate shoulders and he was still getting perfect scores in all his classes. Top marks, he said. Not a late paper in sights. No missing work. Just issues with how he treated his classmates.
Contrary to popular belief, Izuku did have a sense of kindness. It was just buried deep in his chest where it only ever came out for really young kids or strangers who had yet to ask about his quirk—or his lack of one.
He knew he was going to get expelled. Izuku, fortunately, didn’t give three fucks or a yellow one about what someone had to say about how he treated some quirkist preteens. If you didn’t like his fist in your face, cracking up against your straight white teeth, maybe stop spewing quirkist garbage about the quirkless and mutant people out there? Just as a little suggestion to your one-sided beat down plight? Because Izuku could do this all day. He had the track record to prove it. Fights since he was eight, technically, but only serious shit happening since he was eleven.
Get even. That was his thing. He scratched at his scalp until it bled, until he pulled hair out and until his skin was red and inflamed and the dandruff was gone; just oil and grit and little drops of red left behind.
Izuku didn’t look like a delinquent.
He looked like any other kid. A very angry kid, sure, one who was clearly willing to jump the gun and yell at others, but that was something a lot of kids had.
Specifically kids with great quirks. Well, fuckshit dick man, Izuku had no quirk and he was a very angry kid. He had places to be. The beach, the park, the rooftop of his apartment building—you name it, he probably had to be there. Juvenile detention might come next. He wasn’t sure. A behavioral center. Izuku could act nice, that wasn’t hard. The not fighting and beatings stupid people up part? That was pretty hard. Why should he cater to those who were inadequate?
Izuku was mad. He was angry and bitter and he knew better than to sit back and take it. Every quirkless person ever in this generation could set back and take it.
Get hurt, get beat, get bruised, get outcasted.
He wasn’t like them. He wanted to be, yeah, because how can you go down so easy and not come back up swinging and spitting blood from between your teeth? But at the same time he was a bit tired. He wanted to crack head open like eggs. He really did. It wasn’t just a rage that came from ignorant politicians or power-high cops or abusive and neglectful teachers who didn’t care when specific kids got bullied. No. Izuku Midoriya had been raised—more like enabled, unfortunately and fortunately—to crush those who would not survive in the real world. Beat them down, stack them up, guess who runs this classroom when the teacher isn’t here?
Breathe in, breathe out. The whiteboard had all the dates for his school assignments in this class. His classmates were still being worthless pieces of societal shit, so. You have quirks! That is so great. How about using them to win the fight? No? Oh, well, there’s always next time. Izuku closed his eyes for one minute in this school and these kids were off screwing around with a new person.
Izuku breathed and scratched at his head until it was raw. He was quirkless. He was also the top student in his classes, almost every single one of them, and despite his record for violence he never did any of the other traditional textbook troubled kid stuff.
No smoking, no drinking, no stealing or joining gangs or whatever. He wasn’t getting illegal tattoos or funky stuff that was considered taboo here.
He was quirkless and angry and his mom enabled him to be violent. His behaviors changed drastically depending on who he was dealing with. He was good to little kids. He was even nice to kids his age who weren’t total quirkist freaks. He didn’t take anyone’s shit. The slightest red flag, however small or big, would still get you an Izuku Midoriya styled beat down, which meant the kid bit and clawed and slammed your head into whatever solid, hard surface was available.
Izuku knew he was going to get expelled the day a fight like that happened on a school campus. The day one of these classmates realized they could report him for it. But they were scared like the way quirkless kids were scared. They just sat there and took it once it started happening.
Get mad. You want pity? Get it from the backstreet corner, Musutafu late at night when you’ll find fucked up teenagers and young adults smoking blunts and getting high over their abusive parents or their shitty divorcees.
He knew quirkless people. He knew the rings. Groups and gangs and shitfaced party-goers who went missing. Izuku wasn’t a teenager yet, not really, but he would be one soon and he was going to make people rot in their own displeasure. He wasn’t afraid of them as much as he was intrigued, that morbid curiosity that came with being another number.
What percentage of quirkless individuals actually got mad and died doing something dangerous?
(Clear your throat. Read the lines very carefully. Don’t mess up. It’s your first performance.)
Well, not many at all! Committing suicide wasn’t what those questions were referring to. Neither was Izuku. When you crack your head open and come home after bleeding sluggishly, weeping blood, with a jacket pressed to the raw line of a fracture on your skull? Do you want to die out in the open or in your bathtub? On the roof or on the pavement? Your anxiety medications might kill you if you take too many. How many quirkless individuals went out swinging because no one knew a difference? Suicide or homicide. It didn’t matter, sometimes, because dead was dead and no one corrected the autopsy report.
Izuku behaved differently and violently. He could be a filial son and pickup groceries and make dinner and smile kindly. He could also be the reason your quirkist daughter went home with a split lip and Izuku went home with a whole detention sheet and a list of highly recommended therapists for troublesome kids.
So, yeah. It was like how he scratched at his head until it bled. Ripped and pulled and hooked his nails under scabs until he was too annoyed with the blood on his fingertips to keep scratching anymore.
That was what it was like to live the way he lived. The need for it to get done.
—
Okay, so the behavioral center was a fucking joke, but it wasn’t like Izuku didn’t already know that beforehand. His mom wasn’t shocked either. They said their goodbyes in the car, not the lobby, and Izuku was barely surprised by anything that happened during his one month there.
The building sucked. The staff—which consisted of like maybe twelve people, so they were all overworked and very fed up—sucked. So did the food. So did all the other twittish and assholish kids. Like, yes, Izuku understood the blinding rage that lived in his chest could also live in someone else’s, but!
He was also exhausted! And the only quirkless kid in there with them! He was bound to beat someone up!
Which he did, unsurprisingly, but only because they were raging on this other boy who looked like he had just pissed himself because he was so scared. Izuku was violent ‘cause he wanted to be.
Someone had to.
That someone was Izuku, because at the end of the day they didn’t e elect the quirkless kid to pull the first punch or kick or first anything.
Who pulled the fire alarm? Okay, well, that one wasn’t Izuku but it was a close thing. Shove him into a restricted, shitty, terribly intrusive building with bad therapists and angry kids and what did you think was gonna happen? Most of the kids in the facility just wanted to go home again. They acted nice to the staff but lost their shit with the other kids here, which, hey, that was probably the problem you got sent here for. It was for Izuku, at least, but that was expected.
It was a total breeding ground for more anger and more hate. Izuku wasn’t sure why people thought it was smart to create facilities for troubled kids who all had similar or near-same experiences and mindsets and put them into a room together.
Group therapy? More like group trauma dumping session where the counselor can’t get any of the kids to shut up.
Izuku wasn’t one of them, obviously, because he was halfway off of a railway pipe almost twenty hours a the day, but at least he was still here. As the only quirkless kid in Musutafu’s (definitely-not-illegal-and-unsafe) Facility for Troubled Teens, he could confidently say that this place was a breeding ground for plans of illegal and self-destructive shit once they all got released. There was no other way to put it. Izuku got told roughly fifteen times how many places to find unlaced weed for cheap prices, and only told once that he could get better and wouldn't always be this angry ball of human mush.
The odds of this happening were actually one hundred percent real. One in a million? Wrong! More like one out of one chances.
So he spent a month at this facility for troubled teens, mostly kids with issues regarding their own heads and autonomy—which meant they got violated here because the staff didn’t seem to care that Kiba over there couldn’t handle being locked in his room at night—but you know. Who was surprised?
One month, and then he was out again, then he was like: fuck it, we ball.
His mom wasn’t too shocked to see him take his phone back from her purse, nor was she shocked to receive a thirteen second hug. That was routine for situations like these. He got his phone, googled the location in which Penni told him, and then he put it into Google maps and was on his mighty old way once his mom and him were back at the apartment. A total let down for his school because that one month break was not enough to make him a non-violent, non-active, non-angry kid!
—
“Izuku,” His mom said, and she brushed his messy hair out of his face. “Be safe, okay?”
She didn’t fight for him anymore, if she ever had, but she did love him. Either that or she was just a great actor. Not like he wanted to know the truth of the situation. He was a bit busy, anyway, lost in the clouds—this time of actual smoke! Gotta get high eventually, right? It was just weed.
“Yeah,” He nodded, obedient and loving and the perfect son because that was who he had to be. Who he wanted to be around his mom. “Of course, mom, I will. Love you.”
Saying love you to your mom? Pretty normal shit.
Saying anything important to her when you could be off studying or sitting on a roof with other, possibly more troubled kids than Izuku? Eh, Sorta normal. He wasn’t about to try and adjust every behavior he had.
—
“Young man?” Someone questioned, and Izuku barely resisted the urge to grab a handful of sand and throw it at whoever was currently bothering themself with Izuku’s presence. Like, out of the whole beach, you pick him to bother? He had manners to use but he never felt like using them. Adults were tricky to deal with.
He stopped staring at the sand and the trash he had been sorting. After a second, he turned around to figure out who was bothering him. Izuku pulled the blunt out of his mouth, smoke spilling past his lips.
It was a man. Scrawny, blonde, bright blue eyes that were sharp. He looked like a scarecrow, like he was sick. It reminded Izuku of Penni at the detention center, but hey, he wasn’t one to judge people on appearances. He judged you on the moral standpoint you had.
He stared at the man in front of him, both brows raised. “What?”
He tapped the ash, let it fall to the sand. Then he just stood there and waited. He had a black eye and an awful throbbing feeling on the left side of ribcage. His mom was working or out drinking with all her lady friends, which meant Izuku would probably be home alone until he got a on the way, will be late text with his mom’s name attached to it. He was at the beach to pass time.
“Ah,” The blonde guy paused, seemingly not expecting that kevel of bluntness, before he furrowed his brows and gestured bagels to the smoke trailing away from Izuku’s lips. “Someone your age shouldn’t be smoking. It seriously damages your lungs, young man.”
Damage my ass, actually, The kid wanted to say. He, obviously, did not.
“Yeah,” Izuku nodded, stuck the blunt back into his mouth and breathed it back in. Pop it, smoke it, burn it, pull it. Like that dumb toy from the two-thousands. Bop-It or something. “That’s the whole point.”
The man looked floored.
Good, look and feel that way. Better yet, stop talking to him. Izuku was smoking a blunt because despite having once thought he could hold out against the delinquent behavior rumors, he had finally folded. Now he was in. Call it a gamble, but you know, Izuku was going to feel better ir be high and still feel better because it wasn’t just nicotine, it wasn’t nicotine at all. Weed. Yessir. He was going in deep.
Izuku looked back over his shoulder, blinking slowly as he picked up a piece of trash—rubble, metal. He raised one brow. His voice was flat. “You going to keep staring at a minor or are you going to go away yet?”
“You really shouldn’t be smoking weed in a public space, young man,” The man said again, looking troubled for a total stranger. Why would you care about a random child’s health? Little weird. Little nice. Well, not for long. Izuku was going to drop the bomb and get over with this conversation he didn’t want to have.
“Weed for Teens is a literal shop in the middle of Musutafu, you know that right?” He tipped his head back, smiled a little. “It specifically caters to us children who are all or some of the following: broke, sick, troubled, villainous, parentless, sleepless, or quirkless.”
Pop his shoulder back into place. I’m almost all of those. What does it matter if I smoke a little here and there? Breathe, breathe easy, then don’t breathe at all.
No worries.
The man, again, paused heavily before squinting at him. “Weed for Teens?”
“It’s a saying,” The kid demurred, and trekked across the beach again to dump the metal in his hand onto the pile he had already began earlier today. Working, steady, always so steady. He had to be. “A joke. It’s not real.”
“Like how the damage to your lungs isn’t real?” Stranger Man asked flatly. He followed several feet behind.
“I never said it wasn’t real, old man,” Izuku waved him off. He knew damage when he saw it. He wasn’t willing to quit smoking this blunt, though! It wasn’t the same as a cigarette so he wasn’t too worried. “I just said I didn’t care. Go about your day. You’re harassing a minor.”
“Have you eaten yet?” Blonde Man from Scarecrow Island asked, again, but this time it was different. Less naggy, less shocked. More curious and tired. Oh, to be a probably quirked old man with a stable life, hopefully, probably.
Izuku didn’t bother with a lie. He picked up another scrap and moved it. “Nope.”
—
Virtually anything you could say or show Izuku wasn’t shocking. He had seen a lot of fucked up shit, done it too, so he wasn’t easily surprised by events anymore.
This, on the other hand, was shocking: the man came back with bento boxes.
Izuku, hilariously stupid but angry Izuku—who, by the way, made bad choices on the regular when he was dealing with kids—almost threw a half-rotted microwave at the guy for calling out young man again when Izuku was clearly not much other than an angsty and stupidly self-destructive child who may or may not look like he had mommy and day issues on some varying degree. Like, he was hot shit, but at least he was hot by some of his classmates’ standards. A walking hurricane. A literal mess but at least no one had the guts to mention it more than twice a week.
Though he probably could have booked it out if there, he had looked at the bento boxes and the man—who introduced himself with an obviously fake name, so Izuku didn’t bother remembering it—well, he had looked at it and said what he always said.
The wise words in question: shit, why not.
Which was how Izuku somehow got involved in a semi-weekly routine of eating lunch with this stranger at the beach every Sunday.
Absolutely wild!
—
Kacchan didn’t smoke.
On the other hand, Izuku was starting to smoke. Or he already was. Like a bunch.
He knew it made him fit into the image of a really troubled kid, but in all honesty he didn’t mind. He was slipping. This, of course, was a bit of a problem but he would figure it out as he went. At least he wasn’t vaping. That would be pretty low of him.
The two of them were at Kacchan’s house—specifically, in the backyard on the patio. The weather was too nice to stay indoors. Both Mitsuki and Masaru were off running errands. They knew that Kacchan had invited Izuku over, and even though they were both very aware of the quirkless teen’s violent streak, they also had known Izuku since he was this very tiny baby boy who cried as soon as his mom stopped holding him to her warmth. So. They still called him son and dear whenever Izuku came over on the rare occasion for dinner or Sunday brunch. Kacchan still called Izuku’s mom auntie, for fuck’s sake, so really—it was all fine.
The house was great, the snacks were always in stock, and no parent was on the couch smelling of wine or other liquors. No one was coming home drunk or sad or like dead weight.
Izuku, who had a lighter in his hand and a blunt in the other, was about to get a little high.
“Why do you smoke?” His friend asked. It was a question he asked quite a lot, but you know. Sometimes answers changed. “Don’t you have something better to do, idiot?”
“Why don’t you smoke?” Izuku asked, even though he knew the answer to this already. He gave a wry smile. “Aren’t your lungs engineered differently so you can breathe smoke better? Because of the explosions from your quirk?”
Kacchan’s sweat was nitroglycerin. Izuku had taken notes on his friend’s quirk so many times over the years. He had a pretty good understanding of what Kacchan was and was not capable of. His sweat was explosive, he could get someone seriously hurt if they hugged him too long when he was covered in it, yada-had, he could store the sweat and then make larger explosions with it if he used an external source to direct that heat, whatever. Izuku gave him that idea when they were like twelve. Just make biogas’s gauntlets, use them when you need to cause massive damage. His friend took that idea happily and with a sharp grin.
To note, though: Izuku knew damn well that Kacchan’s lungs were not any more advanced than Izuku’s. That wasn’t how the genes formed,how his quirk took hold in the body. His palms were roughed, and that traveled to his fingers and knuckles, too. He was immune to some other explosives and had the slightest heat resistance—but that could also be because the teen built a tolerance to heat, not as if he actually was immune to it.
Izuku wasn’t about to ask and check. If Kacchan one day decided to figure it out, Izuku would write down that knowledge in one of his notebooks and call it a day.
“I’m not smoking because I can’t have that pop up on my record, jackass,” Kacchan rolled his eyes, leaning over and snatching the lighter out of Izuku’s hands. He set it down on the table,both brows raised in mock curiosity. Mostly just exasperation. “Aren’t you worried about it popping up on yours?”
Between the two of them, Izuku had more black marks on his record.
Kacchan may have participated in his fair share of fights and bullying bullshit, but Izuku had also knocked him down for that. If people called them friends they were correct. If the teachers at Aldera said that they were rivals in everything—academics, PE, actual physicals—well, they’d be correct too. Izuku and Kacchan were very violent and very good to one another. Bare your teeth, bark loudly, do as you do. Izuku wasn’t going to be the troubled quirkless twit at the back of class. On the occasion he wasn’t in first place in the rankings, he was only bested by Kacchan.
“Mine is already filled with detention and behavioral issues,” Izuku said with a wink. “I highly doubt any prestigious high school is going to let me join their oh-so-totally-not humbling ranks. Plus, we’re not at school. You’ve never seen me smoke on campus, have you?”
“I figured you were eating it like a normal teenager,” The blonde snorted, his gaze moving away from Izuku’s face and getting stuck on the pale blue sky.
A few clouds moved lazily, almost whimsically.
“Oh, no,” He laughed. He tapped his fingers over the surface of the glass table, giving Kacchan a smile again. “I don’t buy or make edibles. I’m not that far down to Earth, so. It’s just smoke for me.”
“You’re so dumb, sometimes,” Kacchan told him with an exasperated shake of his head, an explosion crackling in his palm like a shooting star. He rolled his eyes again, picking up his glass of iced tea and taking a long, deliberate sip. When he set his cup down, the ice clinked together on the sides of the glass. “One day you’re going to get caught and someone will report it to social services, and you’re gonna end up who knows where.”
Izuku raised a brow, picking up his own glass. He took a sip before answering, savoring the taste. He had shoved like six spoonfuls into his cup, so it was delicious. “Back to the troubled teens facility on which they starved us and yelled at us virtually twenty-four-seven?”
The deliciousness at hand: a shit ton of fucking sugar.
“Probably,” His friend stared flatly. He swished his cup again, quieter. “Why doesn’t auntie stop you from smoking?”
“She’s too drunk to say much about my bad habits,” Izuku shrugged, and his smile turned a bit more bitter; twisting, spilling out from underneath his own feet. A mat being ripped away. He waved a hand, stared at his iced tea. “You know how it is. It’s not like I’m doing it to kill my lungs or whatever. I get it. But I smoke when I feel like it, and if that just so happens to mean I feel like smoking most hours of the day, that’s my own problem, not my mom’s.”
He knew that he got exposed to tar, or whatever the hell was in his weed, but out of the past few months he had only smoked at the beach and the park—and twice on the roof of his building. He wasn’t sure how bad or how unhealthy it was, or if that was supposedly a tolerable amount.
He was also a little lost as to why no other responsible adult had taken note of his slow movements and his lax tongue, but whatever.
At the end of the day, he supposed it didn’t matter. His mom was busy at work or busy pouring herself a glass of wine along with her plate of tilapia. She and Izuku still watched movies on the couch and cleaned dishes together. They still did the laundry side by side. Izuku was certain that she could smell the smoke, sometimes, on his jackets when he came home from the beach or the park that most problematic kids hung out at. Who knew if she was aware of his habits. Maybe she was just glad it wasn’t alcohol or hard drugs.
Kacchan raised his brows for a third time, leaning closer with narrowed eyes. “Sounds like she should get reported for child neglect.”
“Maybe,” The quirkless teen said, and he tapped the blunt in front of him. “I won’t smoke at your house, if that’s what this is about. But when I go to the beach, you gotta understand that the only way my Trash-Topia is bearable is if I get a little high. More importantly—the only way that strange man is bearable is if I’m high, thank you.”
“Why not report his ass to the cops for harassing a minor?” Kacchan shook his head, all the more bored. He stared into Izuku’s soul sometimes. He made food and smacked Izuku over the head, said that they should soar in the backyard—which they did, several times over, until both of them were sweaty and aching and Izuku was asking if Kacchan stopped using his quirk because he was worried Izuku would actually report him for illegal usage. Goofy teenager. “Did you threaten him with that already?”
“You know I did,” Izuku rolled his eyes. “I guess he feels bad for the lone and bruised kid at the beach. Who knows.”
—
Minding his business went like this: shove on his headphones—volume down really low so he could still hear the rest of the world all around him—get walking, get running, and try not to get angry as the world passed him by. He couldn’t keep up the way others could. It didn’t mean he stopped running. It meant he tried to run harder. For longer. As fast as everyone else, make himself faster, make the gears turn and all his muscles work until they were yanked in the wrong directions.
But his plans to minding his own business never involved dealing with people when he shoved on his headphones and let the music sway itself into his skull. Make a mark on his misfortune, make him angrier than he should be.
(People sometimes said he wasn’t acting angry anymore after a few months of not seeing him. It was wrong. He was always angry. He would always be angry.)
On the beach, at his little corner of Trash-Topia, sat the blonde man from before. It wasn’t someone he wanted to talk to, not really, but he didn’t hate the guy. It was just not something he dealt with. People. Taking to adults outside behavioral facilities for troubled twits or his school teachers or his mom; who, by the way, still didn’t talk about the bruises on Izuku’s face and didn’t question why he told her red wine was better than white wine over dinner one night.
Color him enthralled.
Izuku pulled off his headset once he was a few feet away, letting the device settle around his neck comfortably. The man looked in his direction, his face seeming to light up a little.
The kid, despite his better judgement, shoved his bruised and blistered hands into his jacket’s pockets and shuffled closer.
“What do you want?” He asked, eyeing the stranger up and down. Not to be a jerk or anything, really, he knew it was a public beach. It wasn’t just his. But this place of trash and trouble was his to mess with, in a way, and it made no sense for anyone to come close to it when there was no reason. It was a mess. It was a guaranteed way to trip and get us tetanus or something.
“Ah,” The guy blinked—and Izuku should have bothered to remember his name, but he didn’t, so now he was going to have to ask again. Not like the old guy knew Izuku’s name either, probably. Those blue eyes burned, though, and they were stuck on the dark mark on the left side of Izuku’s face. “Young man?”
He stared some more, biting the inside of his cheek before raising his brows expectantly. “What?”
“Are you alright?” The very Blonde Man from Scarecrow Island asked, and it was almost ironic how a stranger asked this question while Izuku’s own mother didn’t. Absolutely absurd. Totally messed up. He should probably see a therapist for that—his feelings of loneliness and abandonment and guilt and whatever else that lived in his aching and brittle ribcage.
Izuku waited a long moment, just to see what would happen. He pulled a hand out of his pocket to jab at the left side of his face, the molted bruises that was brown and yellow and quite obvious. “You mean this?”
A wince, followed by the man narrowing his eyes.
The kid dropped his hand with a flat expression and shoved it back into his jacket’s pocket. He didn’t remember putting on this specific All Might jacket, not when it was a limited edition from three years ago—they were no longer produced—but all it meant was that he was going to have to do light work in Trash-Topia today because he was not about to screw up the thread count on this thing. He actually liked it. Thank you.
“I’m fine,” He said. It wasn’t a lie. Sure, he had been fighting off aches and trembles for a while now, but ibuprofen could only do so much for someone like him. He tipped his head to the side. “It’ll be healed in a few days. Why are you here?”
There was another pause, yet another wince. The man was on his feet. He looked like he was a few seconds away from approaching again—which, hey, if that were the case Izuku would be a few seconds away from kicking him in the crotch, but that wasn’t a guarantee!
No need to get so violent on a Wednesday afternoon. The very start of summer. Groan and rub it off, water right off a duck’s back.
“I was actually hoping to run into you,” The man admitted at last, and gave a wry smile. He gestured to the partially clean beach that Izuku had been cleaning inconsistently for several months. Consistently if you didn’t count his week long absences from when he was at centers or therapy session that made him way too tired to help with the local trash heap that was on this damned beach, but you know. Save nature and all that! Never give up, like, ever!
Izuku raised his brows again and shrugged. “Well, here I am. You knew where to find me. What do you want?”
The man—unsurprisingly, Izuku expected this of him—smiled a little more genuinely.
—
The Blonde Man from Scarecrow Island’s actual name was Toshinori Yagi.
—
Izuku was angry.
No matter his fate he was always angry. He knew that people couldn’t see past those two factors; his lack of quirk and his obvious lack of patience. His kindness lived in a cave somewhere in the Bahamas. It simply didn’t exist openly anymore.
—
Heading to the park was what Izuku did when he felt like his house was too stuffy. He wasn’t part of any after school clubs or anything like that, so most his time was spent alone. This, of course, wasn’t actually a problem. Izuku liked being alone. It meant being angry but calm was easier. No reason to get loud or get in anyone’s face. It just meant he walked around and breathed and maybe smoked weed in the corner of the park on that one bench that every teenager in the area called the designated Smoking Bench with capital letters.
Maybe he would smoke. Maybe he wouldn’t. He already finished his math and summer was almost here and that meant he needed to study for exams—who knew if he would actually attend a school or not!
Maybe an online program would be a better idea for him.
His plans, though, did not always go the way he wanted them to. Today he had hoped for a calm and simple walk through the park and the fields attached to it, but was interrupted by what seemed to be a one-sided beat down on the side under the canopy thing that no one knew what to call.
Someone was talking shit, as all beatdown-goers talked, which was what caught Izuku’s attention second. The words you quirk stealing bastard was almost funny to hear. No one stole quirks, and if they did, it would n’t be public information. Like, be so real right now. Smoke some dope and say that again. Do you still think it was true? No? Yes? Yeah, there you go, you’re so smart.
So it wasn’t actually thievery, was it? It was just someone being a dick because another person’s quirk threw them off.
He was three hours too deep into his angry, riot, fuck all authority figures playlist to turn away from what he was currently hearing and seeing—so like any normal, angry, troubled quirkless teen, Izuku tuned on his heel and walked up to the beat down like it was a birthday party he was invited to.
“Hey,” Izuku called out, and when the one guy turned around, a look of anger on his face, Izuku matched the fucker’s look with one of his own.
His fist hit the guy’s nose and cracked inwards.
—
The holding room that Izuku was placed into was pretty generous. Not like he minded either way, but still. He took note of these things. He wasn’t sure when his mom would get down here to both try and smooth this situation over and go drive him home, but that was fine. The room was heated and chilled. It had AC. The guard in the corner didn’t look too angry yet, so Izuku was pretty sure he wouldn’t have to deal with a cop’s shitass lecture just yet.
Inside the room, though, was more than Izuku. It was also the blonde kid with grey-blue eyes. The one the others had called copycat or something. You know, the one that had been getting shoved into a wall and cracked open as if he was a punching bag and not a kid.
Izuku did not feel bad about breaking the other guy’s nose.
Let Me Just Beat You Up Guy had it coming. If you didn’t think someone would eventually try you on for size in public, well, maybe you’re being naive.
“Hey,” The blonde said, and Izuku looked up from where he was wasting time picking at a thread on his sleeve. The stranger had a bruise on his jaw and eye and face. Basically everywhere, really, like he was one big walking bruise. Maybe he got beat up a lot. Maybe this was the first of firsts. Izuku wasn’t about to ask, though.
Izuku raised his brows, echoed the word back. “Hey. What’s up?”
“Thanks,” The kid said, shrugging. He pushed the ice bag onto his cheek again, giving a wry smile. “I didn’t know when he’d stop, so. Thanks.”
“For beating his ass?” Izuku kid inquired. It was a little funny to say out loud, as it always was, but he didn’t want to talk too much about it. His hands didn’t hurt. There had been four people ragging on this one blonde kid, so. What a day to fight four people at once. Sorta.
“Yeah,” The other teen said simply, a smile curling onto his face, too. He looked at Izuku’s hand, just a sparse glance and then at the seat next to Izuku which was empty.
The quirkless teenager’s face twitched, lips curling upwards like this conversation was amusing. In a way, it was. He hadn’t been part of a fight in a public park in over three years. That meant the last time he did something this outdone and angry, he was like eleven. That in and out of itself meant that Izuku was probably going to have to deal with some charges this time. Violence isn’t the answer, Midoriya! You can’t beat people up just because they do or say something you don’t agree with. Izuku didn’t care though, so, suck it? If he was hopeless let him be hopeless. Just let him.
“Do you mind if I sit there?” Beaten Up Blonde Kid asked, and he sounded a little hopeful but more strained. A lot if kids sounded that way. That was fine.
“No,” Izuku said, and he inched over a little just so the kid knew he meant it. The seat was available. It was a bench, for fuck’s sake. There were three of them in this room, all attached to the cold but not totally dreary walls—lime in color, which was both adorably sad and ugly—so really, the kid could sit anywhere. But that was cool if he wanted to sit with Izuku. Not a problem. “Feel free. Not many other seats in the room, anyway.”
“I guess,” Beaten Up Blonde Kid—he would probably introduce his name soon—muttered. He slipped into the other half of the bench, holding onto the ice pack and giving another hesitant glance at Izuku’s knuckles; the slight bruising. “I have to hand it to you, I didn’t think you’d be able to take all of them. Not with what they had at the ready.”
Izuku hadn’t fought four people like that. Not really, anyway, because to fight like that was to end up in the emergency room one way or another. Cops. Who knew who would shove their head into the business of a fight once a quirkless kid got involved.
Sometimes he could risk it. Sometimes he couldn’t.
But at the end of the day a weapon didn’t scare him. Neither did most quirks, mostly because kids didn’t know how to use them or apply them in a way that dealt major damage.
“A giant metal stick isn’t scary enough anymore,” Izuku informed the stranger with a nod. He lowered his voice, gave a partially amused smile. “Let me see fire or something. Some toxic gas. Maybe turn into a metal pool board. I don’t care, get creative. The bat means very little.”
Four bitchy teens versus one angry quirkless teen: who will win? Izuku liked to fight. He realized that, sometimes, when his opponents were all scummy and he didn’t want to educate them the polite and formal way. He fought for hell and for himself. He fought because the satisfaction of watching someone lose was always enough, even if he went home aching and stinging. He took care of himself just fine. His bad decisions were his, his alone, and that meant teeth and blood and broken bones. Call it cruel. Whatever you want to call it. Izuku was cruel in his words, in his claws; it was not survival or entertainment, it was just anger. That was the real and genuine label.
The blonde kid spat out a butchered laugh, like it was the first time he had ever heard someone say a metal bat wasn’t terrifying when it came down right next to your head, onto your hand.
But the thing with a bat splatted with blood was that it was hard evidence. The fact that both Izuku and this quirked kid were stuck in a holding room rather than a hospital or medbay was pretty fucked up, though. They got hot around a bunch. Get your heads on straight. If one of us bleeds out and dies, I hope you get sued to Heaven and back, dickshits.
Izuku cleared his throat. “What should I be calling you besides Beaten Up Blonde Kid?”
“That’s what you’ve been thinking of me as?” Beaten Up Blonde Kid laughed again, snappish in his tome—not actual anger, but like that was just how he sounded. Like a hyena on helium. It was a real laugh, which was always a good sign.
He raised his brows, made his expression as mock-pitying as he could. “Should I be thinking of you as something else? Something less accurate to this situation?”
The other one’s blue eyes crinkled, turned amused. “Neito Monoma. You?”
“Izuku,” He said with a smile, a real one. He would offer a hand or a bow or whatever, but he didn’t feel like getting up. No point. He winked at Monoma, which made the blonde grimace in an amused manner, and then shrugged off the ache in his back and shoulders to keep talking. Voice pitched low, words humored. “Izuku Midoriya if you’re being formal or whatever, but I don’t mind whatever you choose.”
—
His mom came to get him later, of course. She didn’t smell of alcohol. She came into the station looking thoroughly worn out, but she handled the situation with grace and didn’t let anyone paint a picture that fell through the lines.
“My son gets into fights for reasons that can be justified to nay activist group,” Inko Midoriya said sternly. “He intervened on another child’s behalf, and was beaten with a metal bat. Whether the other kids have broken noses or bruised arms is nothing in comparison. Where is the original child? The one my son stepped in for?”
“Mom,” Izuku said, and he tugged on her sleeve with his hand. It was finally starting to hurt; a rough scuff mark along his knuckles. Plastered purple, red. “He’s okay. I’m okay.”
“I know you’re okay, honey,” His mom assured, and she squeezed his forearm with a tight-lipped smile. She turned her attention back to the people in blue and black. What good were public peacekeepers if they couldn’t even assist children when they clearly needed help or guidance? Exactly. “Why don’t I come back for another meeting after my son has been tended to? I don’t trust that you’ve taken care of him.”
The person handling this meeting cleared his old throat, scruffy round his lower face from his shaved beard. He nodded, looking a little flustered—yeah, they had offered an ice pack, but not adequate medical care.
Negligence at its finest.
“Yes,” He said, “That would be great, Midoriya-San. Thank you for coming down here on such short notice—we are sorry for any inconvenience we might have caused you.”
Izuku bit his tongue, bit his words back. Bile and vomit and hate. Monoma had already been picked up by now, thank fuck. Before that, he and Izuku had exchanged numbers. Not that Izuku would text until the other kid messaged him first, but still. Must be odd to see something like that so easily. After such a fight, too.
He breathed out through his nose. His mom squeezed his arm soothingly.
—
What was another word for incompetent people with power?
Heroes.
That worked sometimes. Not everyone was cut out for high-stress situations. Or those with a lot of risky behaviors piling up on their transcript, that too.
Izuku wasn’t afraid of people who could move fast or hit hard. His anger had made him reckless and risky. He knew that. It made him look at danger and hate how no one knew how to deal with it. Izuku didn’t know how to deal with it either, but he was a child and he wasn’t trained for any of it. Heroes were trained for it. They were supposed to know how to handle awful situations. They were supposed to prevail.
(You can’t always prevail, but you’re supposed to try. Watching people fail over and over again makes you weak.)
When a villain was on the loose and you just let them roam, can’t catch them, can’t hold them down—you can’t tell Izuku to be quiet and stick to the back because well, you’re just a kid, you don’t know anything about fighting and surviving. He did. He just never fought people who wanted to kill him.
He wasn’t that strong. He didn’t have a quirk and he didn’t have much muscle. He didn’t have a weapon, either.
But he was fast. He was angry.
Izuku only needed those two things, most fights, because people never saw him coming down with teeth. He liked to break noses and shove his nails into eyes. He like ramming heads into desks or walls. He was creative with his anger, got good with it, turned his tongue into a battle axe. Kacchan was the same way. Plenty of kids were like that—the only thing was that they fought other kids or their shitty parents. That was the difference. They didn’t fight strangers three times their age. They fought people who were supposed to be kind to them or keep them safe.
What was another word for bait?
Izuku; because when he threw that chunk of rubble at the idiot made of sludge he didn’t feel anything. When you burn and you blister and you can’t set yourself straight, you force someone else to play their hands in the middle of public.
What did the world see if heroes couldn’t do a rescue mission but a child with nothing to his name but trouble decided to do it for them? Did that paint a good image? Do you think it made the heroes happy, to know that a quirkless kid was put into harms away and you didn’t notice until the sludge guy was roaring like some kind of freight train because—
“I am here!” All Might shouted, and the weather burst into rain and thunder—astronomical pressures the force of coming down into this fight.
Kacchan hit the ground hard, spitting and heaving sludge out of his mouth. Izuku dropped the next rock in his hand and shoved his way to his friend, teeth grit, face still wide and angry. He went down, scraped his knees. His uniform was scuffed up and he felt like an idiot for not bringing hair spray with him—he had a lighter for his weed. A lighter plus hair spray would have been a great distraction for the sludge villain; right into the eyes, right into the fucker’s face before he wrapped his sludgy body around Kacchan’s own.
Izuku slid down, went easy. He was good at that when he wanted to be. His anger ebbed out, and he grabbed onto Kacchan’s face with both his hands and shook him, looked into his eyes and then released his skin to jab him in the back, encourage him to get rid of whatever else might be in his lungs and throat.
“How did that asshole get a drop on you?” He asked, and Kacchan just made another hacking noise—yellow bile spilling onto the concrete.
The wind whipped at them. He didn’t bother trying to get Kacchan up, not even with All Might subduing the sludge villain a few meters away. It was fine. Izuku could play a bit again. Ragdoll, maniac, dumbass quirkless kid who wanted to play hero.
“Fuck you too, Deku,” Kacchan spat out a mouthful of vomit.
That’s absolutely delightful, Izuku thought. He rolled his eyes, giving a weak laugh as he patted his friend’s back again like they were hunched over in a bathroom stall and not in a destroyed street. “Yeah, yeah. Totally so nice of you to say that. Can’t wait to tell my mom that we don’t get along anymore.”
“Dick,” Came the reply, raw and tired.
Kacchan’s explosions didn’t do much against the villain. Seeing as he got stuck before he could reach for anything solid to jab into the person’s eyes—which had been the only solid material that wasn’t slime—he hadn’t stood much of a chance.
“You’re the one who got stuck in sludge,” Izuku said, but his tone was easy. He wasn’t blaming Kacchan for anything. There was no reason in the entire damn world for Izuku to blame his friend. He rubbed another circle into the top of Kacchan’s spine, voice lowering, “Are you okay? No broken bones, right? I didn’t make it worse?”
(What was worse than your friend getting killed? You getting killed with them, probably. The actual answer? You being the reason they got killed.)
“You’re fine,” Kacchan heaved again, smudging his mouth with his hand. Dirt crumbled away, vomit smearing. He looked okay, excluding the obvious things that a paramedic should check him over for. A maniac glint returned to his gaze, and he coughed before grinning, “I’m alive. You’re alive. It’s great.”
—
Quirkless people were in the background. Burn, split, crack, die. That kind of thing. The easiest explanation ever: you lived and you died there. Izuku, on the other hand, wasn’t in the mood to spill his guts out on the concrete with a bunch of strangers. He had places to be.
The places in question?
Your mom’s house.
Fuck off or he might actually become a home wrecker at his young age of almost-fifteen. He might become your new quirkless, troubled, smoker dad.
(Better than Izuku’s dad, but hey, who was going to see that coming?)
So he was surfing through life and people couldn’t tap at him all the time because he was actually ahead of them. His grades were great. Scores and tests and exams. If it weren’t for his terrible record of detention and suspension stuff, he could probably get into any school he wanted as long as they didn’t turn him away for being quirkless first. He had reactively good speed and endurance, clearly enough dedication to get involved in some messed up shit—enough hate in his heart to do something about injustice when he saw or heard it, but alas, he did not have the thing everyone wanted him to have: patience.
Or, well, a quirk, but that was obvious so he didn’t count it as an actual thing that he needed anymore.
He could lie through his teeth and say he had a non-functional quirk. Say that he attracted hot objects to him, and that was why Kacchan was near him all the time, why fire came so easily to him and why Izuku was smoking a blunt. It just kinda popped into his mouth one day like he was a fucking idiot or something. Izuku was one, in a way, because though he long since grew out of his naivety, he never did grow out of his devotion to what most people called vigilantism.
The kid still thought it was mostly heroism, just not in the traditional wholly legal sense, but you know. Time was of the essence and Izuku was a on a bit of a time crunch so things were all over the place.
People didn’t know how to handle him and his supposedly violent outbursts—Izuku didn’t think they were outbursts, but okay, sure, whatever the super attendant at the school wanted to say, fine—which meant people thought he was hopeless or whatever the fuck they thought about quirkless kids who were angry and violent and unforgiving to most of the world’s population.
He had a bad temper to almost everyone he met. People apparently thought that meant he was an overall piece of shot, which, hey maybe they weren’t wrong.
At the same time, of course, Izuku didn’t mind being known as the angry, violent, troubled quirkless kid. People avoided him. Other kids avoided him, too. He didn’t mind it and that was easy enough, actually, because when he crashed any bullying rings made of prissy preteens who thought their quirks warranted the demeaning and defamation of other kids who apparently had lesser quirks.
Quirkless people were in the background because there weren’t many of them anymore. It meant that when they took the stage, most people thought that pity was the acceptable reaction.
Coddling. Babying.
You can’t coddle a kid like him, though.
He was on his own. He hot the stage and scraped his knees and did it with the kind of idealistic hatred that came in movies where the villains just almost won, but didn’t.
He wasn’t a villain, hopefully—maybe in one of his old elementary school classmates’ memories he was, but that was because they were dumb and Izuku hadn’t been willing to listen to a dumb kid talk about what it was like to be a walking defect in humanity. Izuku was okay with just about any label you wanted to throw at him.
So he was not in the background: he was up wherever he wanted and needed to be whenever it was required of him. Blood, sweat, and tears.
Izuku could pop his shoulders back into place when you dislocated them. He would be fine.
—
Hit a dead end: start over, try again.
—
Izuku had a shit record. He had informed the man of that before, like, five times.
“I know you said your record was full of black marks, but that might not be as big of an obstacle as you think it is,” Yagi said firmly. He sounded kind, sounded hopeful. He also was starting to sound like a Disney character of sorts, so Izuku was going to have to nip that in the bud.
“What’s a bigger obstacle than being known as a fucked up kid?” Izuku raised one brow.
“Er,” The man blinked, then gave a smaller smile—one that was just a tad bit amused. By tad bit Izuku meant indefinitely. “Your language is one of them. But excluding that, my boy, you don’t have to live down low. You can be something more than that.”
“Right,” The quirkless teenager nodded along, chewing on his cheek. He tipped his head to the side, never the one to be kind, never the one to be polite. Not always, anyways. “But only if I give up my whole anger thing, right? And the smoking? And the totally unproved, unexpected, uncalled for fights with students who said quirkless people as a whole were better off dead, right?”
Yagi cleared his throat, shaking his head. It was almost like he expected that from the kid today.
The man seemed to expect a lot from Izuku—including those quips about the quirkless. Despite the awful reality of things, and how it clearly resonated with Yagi, he had stopped trying to offer his sympathy after the first time Izuku told him to shut up about it.
At least he respected Izuku’s anger, at the bare minimum.
“You don’t have to stop being angry, Midoriya. You just need to channel that anger into something other than street fights,” Yagi informed him, giving another smile—almost encouragingly. “The smoking part, though—well, I would certainty recommend quitting. If you need resources for the withdrawal symptoms, I can provide you with some.”
Izuku crossed his arms, kept his expression open and blank. “It’s weed, not nicotine. I could quit and probably be fine.”
“Right,” The man paused, squinting at him a little and muttering something about needing to meet Izuku’s parents if they’re so permissive of their child’s health—which, hey, Izuku had half a brain to tell Yagi to screw off and not shit on his mom when the man had never even met her.
(He had half a brain to tell Yagi that she didn’t care about his health. He didn’t say this.)
The thing was that the man knew a decent amount of stuff about Izuku. And, of course, Izuku would be in the right if he asked why about all those things, it was just that he didn’t feel like it. Yagi didn’t push too many boundaries. He stayed out of Izuku's home life. At least, that was the impression Izuku was under. He wasn’t about to question it yet, not when Yagi listened when the kid talked.
Despite all that, Izuku hadn’t told Yagi about the correctional facility, or the street fights. He never even mentioned his mom’s alcohol problems because that was a sure fire way to get reported to social services. Yagi was a good man who enabled Izuku, only in the slightest ways, just so they could continue talking. Continue meeting at the beach like all was well. He did not like the kid’s smoking habits or the fact that he admitted to breaking other students’ noses, but he also listened empathetically and seemed to understand where the kid was coming from.
So he didn’t tell Yagi everything. He looked at the man and saw the connections—after the incident sludge villain, it felt pretty obvious.
He didn’t mention that, either.
If Yagi was All Might, then that was enough. Okay. Sure. Izuku wasn’t the die hard fanboy he’s used to be when he was really young,but it wasn’t like he stopped idolizing All Might. He was the number one hero, of course Izuku was still interested in hearing news and new drops of merchandise about the man.
“Why are you telling me all this, anyway?” Izuku sighed. His voice was low, still rough around the edges, “Don’t you know the mortality rates for quirkless individuals?”
He resisted the urge to reach up and scratch at his head until his fingers came back bloody. He had to resist that urge quite often these days. It came like a hungry dog and nipped at his heels, never quite leaving him alone, never quite shutting up. All it did was bark and bite. He knew that one day the dog would stop feeling hungry, stop being hungry; but that didn’t happen overnight. So he resisted the urge again, keeping his arms crossed, his hands tucked away under skin and long sleeves.
“I do,” Yagi said after a long moment. His expression was open, too, accepting. Empathetic. “I also know that you want a chance to do what everyone says you cannot, and will not be able to.”
Izuku narrowed his eyes.
“You mean to tell me,” The kid ventured, leaning from foot to foot. He inched a little closer, squinting quite hard at the man before him. Curiosity and disbelief coursed through him, and he wanted to hide his face in hsi hands at the way it made his blood curdle and grow cold. “You think I can be a hero?”
All it took was that little spark of hope, the popping of a phone case off the device as a new one was put on. A pop socket. A toy. A little keychain to go with.
(It was like those All Might advertisements where the hero said that you could be one too.)
“Yes,” Yagi said—
And it felt like when Izuku got high fir the first time; weightless.
—
Izuku Midoriya was quirkless.
Before that, he was angry. You should always know to describe him as angry before you did quirkless. He didn’t bite his tongue so you could feel better about yourself. He snarled and he fought and he went for your eyes, your sockets. He wanted you to ache on the occasion he fought you. Not over you, with you. Against you.
He was angry and he was quirkless. He may be smart academically, and clearly with strategies, but he was a bitter kid with a bitter future. He was angry and he wouldn’t stop being angry, not even with kindness being offered him—
You never stop being angry when you’re like him.
Broken bones, a history with fights and detention. To apply to any school was to be denied, and he always knew that. He never stopped fighting. He would keep doing it, keep seeking it out. Kids grew up. So did he. So when they were adults and yapping bullshit, Izuku woudlnt mind cracking their skulls then either. That was justice, vengeance. That was fair. It was equal. If they wanted to try and get away with it, so would he.
(The difference was that he could get away with it. They couldn’t.)
Izuku Midoriya bared his teeth in a grin and broke noses, broke bones, broke egos and tear ducts. When someone offered him something, something that was supposed to be impossible—
He accepted, still angry, still wanting.
Anger didn’t go away in one afternoon. It stayed for most your life, festered until you exploded, until your blood was all over the ceiling and smoke was in the air and the cops found your stash of weed under your bed because of course they did. But he was alive. But he was here.
He took that quirk and he took on something new, something he thought he wouldn’t be able to have: heroics.