Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

What makes someone human?

Is it simply a biological thing? If you’re born looking like a human, thinking like a human, having the biological construct of a human – is that all it takes?

Does it all really come down to your heritage, the species that happens to give birth to you? The two people who come together and create you. The gene pool you just so happen to be plucked out of.

Or is it a psychological thing? Do you have to think a certain way to count as a human? It could be kindness and compassion that make someone human. It could all come down to their morals. So then are villains human? Do you have to reach a certain point of villainy to lose the label of human – such as when you stop feeling remorse or guilt for your actions? Is it the action of committing a crime in the first place, or just when the crime’s unnecessary? Maybe it all comes down to the reasons behind them?

Would that mean being human comes down to how life treats you, such as if you were raised in a bad environment you would statistically be more likely to turn to villainy. Is it just luck of the cards how human you are? Is their anything that can be done to change how human you are, or is it pre-destined from the moment you’re born?

Is it biology? Is it morals? Is it actions? Is it reasons? Is it circumstances? Is it luck? Is it fate?

So how human is someone if they have to commit the most inhumane actions for all the right reasons, just because fate gave them the worst of luck?

---

Izuku was four years old when life took it’s first turn for the worst.

All the other children had started developing their quirks, well, all except the small boy. But Izuku didn’t mind waiting a bit longer, not when he could still watch and study everyone else grow! Plus he could just improve in other ways, like improving both his general and quirk knowledge. He would be a great hero one day, just like All Might!

Still, once the youngest girl in the class came through with her quirk, his mummy and daddy decided it was for the best to have him checked out, just in case there were any problems with his quirk development or something (“there won’t be! I know my little boy, he’ll be strong just like his daddy” was what his daddy had said on the journey, ruffling his child’s hair playfully).

Thankfully, the doctors said that Izuku should have a quirk; he had the single toe joint that pretty much guaranteed the appearance of a quirk. He could just be a late bloomer.

But then there was the anxiety-inducing bit of the conversation: the rare possibility of not having a quirk despite the joint, or an invisible quirk that could just not ever get noticed. The chances for either were miniscule, but just knowing it was a ‘could-be’ put the whole family on edge.

After the meeting Izuku stayed curled up next to his mummy in the back seat, her constant comforting and reassurance making him feel slightly better about the worse possibilities, while his daddy remained oddly quiet in the front, focusing only on the road, his knuckles white from how hard he was gripping the wheel.

Once they got back, he and his mummy started making cupcakes to help lift the mood of the house. It worked temporarily, both of them laughing as dark green frosting got flung out the bowl and around the kitchen, a lot ending up on the little boy’s face despite his one hundred percent true claim that no, he was not eating any of the frosting as it all belonged on the Midoriya-special cupcakes, not his mouth! Even Hisashi let out a small smile as he watched his wife jokingly tell their child off for somehow getting batter in his hair.

At that moment Izuku had thought that they would be fine as a family, even if they had to wait a while longer for his quirk to come through. It helped that Kacchan was coming over the next day, as even though their playing had become a bit more rough recently, the games of heroes that the two played together were some of the most fun times for Izuku! Yes, everything would be just fine.

Hisashi left the house the next morning with no warning, leaving the distraught mother and son to pick up the pieces.

---

At five years old, Bakugo Katsuki officially left Izuku’s side.

Well, it wasn’t like it came out of nowhere; Kacchan hadn’t been particularly nice to him since his quirk first came in. He made fun of him for being currently quirkless, saying how he was so weak even his quirk wasn’t strong enough to form. He even gave Izuku a nickname as “Deku”, which apparently meant useless, and it didn’t sit right with the small green-haired boy. The blonde boy had also become more violent towards anyone he thought was weak, which in his case was almost everyone except a few lackeys.

Not that he said anything, Kacchan was still amazing and strong, but also had become quite mean and hot-tempered. If he argued back Kacchan would just injure him worse.

But now his only friend had finally stopped putting up with him and had burnt his shoulder when he tried to stop Kacchan from hurting another kid, kicking Izuku to the ground before ordering him to “stop following him”. It hurt finally admit to himself that he had no friends willing to support him, just because his quirk was taking its time, but Midoriya wasn’t going to let that get in the way of becoming a hero.

While waiting for his quirk to show up, he could practise other skills needed to be a hero! He would keep working on his hero notebooks (he was on number two now, the first one filled to the brim with bright crayon drawings and messy colourful writing) and improve at analysing quirks! He could also ask his mummy to sign him up for some dojo classes or something – if his quirk turned out to be a weaker one he would need all the early on training he could get!

He would be a great hero, no matter what the world threw at him!

---

At age six life got a lot harder for the two remaining Midoriya’s, in the form of Hisashi cutting off all contact along with the supply of money that they scraped by off each month.

That of course left them with a lot more problems, such as “how the hel-heck are we meant to afford this place” as his mum put it. Yeah, she was mum now, mummy was too immature, and Izuku knew he needed to grow up faster to help his mum in their new precarious state. It was his fault Hisashi (Hisashi, not daddy, not dad, he lost that title when he hurt mum just because of their son’s flaws) walked out in the first place, if he wasn’t such a late bloomer his dad might have stayed around.

The day after all the accounts were cut off from them his mum went looking for a job, but to no avail: it was quite unfair how people refused to hire a young single mother with a weaker quirk despite having great qualifications in both maths and law, an odd mix which should’ve left her open to multiple career paths.

Instead she came back home, getting more and more desperate by the day until she ended up desperately aiming for the minimum wage jobs. That day she came back with three jobs: a barista in the mornings, cleaning at an old nursing home in the afternoons and another serving job as a waitress in the evening.

At first, she worried about how to look after Izuku with her now packed schedule, but he reassured having money for the house and food was more important, plus he could look after himself. Still not fully convinced, Inko spent the whole weekend teaching her son how to make simplistic dishes that didn’t involve the stove in case he got hungry, along with giving countless lectures of what he must and mustn’t do (including no going off to watch hero fights alone young man!). A long tangent of one of their multiple discussions was about the dojo lessons that Izuku had been taking for the past year: he was demanding to drop them immediately to save money but she kept refusing.

“You’re still a child Izu, it’s important for you to have some fun once in a while,” she smiled sadly. Even though she didn’t know that Kacchan and her only son were no longer friends (proven by how her and the Bakugos still organised meet ups between the families every couple of months), she still had figured out that he wasn’t having the best time at school, quirk discrimination and all.

After bickering on the topic on and off for a few hours Inko won out. Never underestimate a Mamadoriya on a mission.

The next week the two started their new lifestyle, and it turned out surprisingly okay! Sure, his mum came back dead on her feet every day, but she would come back to find the house cleaned and a meal prepared by her son at the ready (though since he could still only make basic stuff they decided to take it in turns with the cooking, sometimes having delicious meals by the woman reheated after she prepared them on the Sunday, her one day off. Either way, the dynamic wasn’t perfect, but it worked.

Plus Izuku quite liked having the house to himself all evening: it gave him a good chance to do some extra studying and analysis practise for his future hero work! He’d decided, even though All Might was his favourite hero, he wanted to personally be a smart hero; one that combines their brain with their quirk as well as using it as a weapon to find ways to protect others, rather than just relying on brute strength.

Speaking of the future, it finally seemed like his quirk was coming in! Well – at least he thinks that’s what is happening – he’d been getting these stomach-aches of sorts, small bursts of pain that hit him after eating. They weren’t too bad, nothing in exchange for a quirk! It must be decently strong if his body needed to react like this in order to hold it. Maybe he was gonna have a mutation quirk manifest! Besides, the aches were easily ignored in comparison to the burns and bruises littering his skin from his classmates.

But hey, Izuku didn’t need their support! He didn’t need Hisashi’s either! No, all he needed was his mum, and all she needed was him, and with her love and encouragement he would become a great hero!

---

It was at age seven where the last of his luck drained from his life.

His stomach aches were starting to get worse, and a part of Izuku wanted to go crying to his mum, wanted to tell her to take him to the hospital as this feeling was wrong. It didn’t seem to be any quirk manifesting – in all other ways he felt the same, with no enhanced senses, no mutations, no new emitter power (he’d tried), no nothing. Just a constant pain that seemed to be slowly growing by the day, the dull thuds of pain from this stomach becoming sharper, spreading through him over time until it wracked his body. He’d developed a hunched over, curled in posture, one that most thought was just the meek little Deku cowering in fear at his superior classmates, when reality it was due to the slight relief Izuku got from the position.

But he couldn’t tell his mum, she already did so much for him! He couldn’t bare to see the look of concern, worry and despair that would appear on her face if he told her what he was feeling. She shouldn’t have to worry any more about him than she already did, and Izuku decided that he would not leave his mum heartbroken all over again for his sake.

Soon, the food his mum made for him most days seemed less appealing. It was odd, as it still looked the same as it always had, smelling just as good too, but just the thought of putting it in his mouth made Izuku want to throw up. His sense of taste was off too, the food tasting plainer and more putrid every meal, his pained insides groaning at the thought of digesting the food lovingly made for him.

Until they couldn’t.

It was almost a full year since when the stomach-aches started when Izuku found that he could no longer actually keep the food down. It had been past midnight, his mum asleep in preparation to repeat her busy mix of jobs the next day, when Midoriya had sprinted to the bathroom to have all of the katsudon his mum had made for him rejected violently by his system. Even the smell of food had become rancid at this point, and the trembling child just knew he wouldn’t be able to keep any more food down.

He felt his breathing quicken and become shallower, and knew he was one step away from having a full-on panic attack. What was he supposed to do? This couldn’t be some kind of quirk – what type of power would stop him from being able to eat? People don’t get killed by their own quirks: quirks were meant to be a form of evolution, survival of the fittest and all, not something that brings the user’s life to an end!

No, this was obviously a medical condition, one that needed to be looked at really, really soon. If he couldn’t eat, he couldn’t survive, and it would hurt his mum so much worse to have a dead son than one who needs medical care.

He would tell her about it tomorrow.

The next morning Izuku told his mum he had something to talk to her about once she got back from work that night, and she agreed softly as he choked down the lovely breakfast of miso soup with steamed rice his mum had prepared.

“Izuku, you know you can talk to me about anything, anytime, right?” his mum smiled as she watched her son tuck into his food.

“Sure, thanks mum” was the short reply she received from the small boy in front of her, as he continued to shovel his food into his mouth.

“Sweetie, slow down! You still need to breathe, you know?!” Izuku tensed at his mum’s words, just to relax when he realised she was laughing at him, not concerned for him.

They ate the rest of their meal with small talk about some of the latest hero fights in the area, including a rather in depth analysis about the new water hero called Backdraft from the younger Midoriya (apparently the new hero was great at dealing with fire-based disaster sites, and his quirk could be used effectively against a villain but the hero needed to move more while attacking instead of simply relying on his quirk), and he headed off for the small walk to school his mum couldn’t accompany him on anymore as she needed to head off for her first job of the day.

Once he left the house, Izuku threw up his breakfast in a dumpster down one of the side streets on the way to school. Yes, he needed help. Fast.

He stumbled into the classroom, feeling very tired considering the length of the walk (though it would make sense considering he hadn’t retained a single calorie since yesterday lunchtime) and collapsed at his desk. He didn’t listen to what the other children were saying, he’d learnt to block them out long ago. The odd word he caught such as “weakling”, “Deku trembling” and a lot of “wierdo”s  told him enough.

Everyone had apparently given up on him ever getting a quirk, and had instead decided to turn him into the class punching bag. They threw both words and punches at him, refused to give him his sheets in “fear of catching quirklessness”, hid his belongings and homework to get him in trouble and spent a lot of time talking badly about him as if he wasn’t in the room.

It didn’t help that his hunched shoulders and strained-in-pain smile that had developed over the past year had earned him the grand titles of “creepy” and “weird”.

But he could deal with them easily, they weren’t the main problem he had right now. They didn’t put his life at risk.

They didn’t leave his mum childless.

“Hey Deku! Stop being such a pathetic wimp and look at me!” Izuku looked up to find his former friend smirking at him, looking down on his hunched form as if he was no more than a bug beneath his foot.

“S-sorry Kacchan” he quietly replied, wincing slightly with the effort of raising his head from its drooped position, his stomach screaming at him to just stop, stop using the little energy he has and eat!

The superior boy’s constant frown deepened, “Why the fuck did I ever want to be friends with you loser. I mean, everything about you is just plain worthless.”

Ah, it one of those days: Kacchan had nothing to actually complain about, so he would instead just be annoyed at Izuku’s very existence. It pretty much confirmed that he would be beaten up at lunchtime.

Kacchan continued his rant, “Just look at you, even your fake-ass smile pisses me off! And just to top it off you’re quirkless! How can someone be more of a fucking joke!”

Sniggers could be heard all around the classroom, classmates turning to laugh at Midoriya’s expense. The quivering boy didn’t answer; it didn’t matter what he said, Kacchan would be angry either way, and everyone would find it hilarious, and the teachers would ignore it, and nothing would change except the fact he hurt so much he could barely think-

It was at that moment his stomach released a massive moan, loud enough for those closest to him to hear, including Kacchan. Izuku glanced back up at the other boy’s face to see it shift from angry-amused to angry-disgusted. “What the hell Deku? Are you so disgusting even your own insides want to leave you?”

‘That’s not funny Kacchan, you know what happened with my dad,’ he thought to himself. But he didn’t say anything, just slowly lowered his head back onto the desk, trying to still his shaking form as much as possible.

That angered the blonde worse, as he grabbed onto the front of his uniform, pulling him from his chair, “Oi! Don’t ignore me you-“

At that moment, to Izuku’s relief, the teacher entered and Kacchan had to stop. Sure, the teachers ignored the obvious bullying, discrimination and isolation the quirkless child received on a daily basis, even pinning the events on Izuku rather than on the attackers, stating he was a problematic student who was too desperate for attention, but even they would have to tell Kacchan off for physically touching another student openly in lessons.

The boy gasped as he fell back in his seat, his once-friend letting go of his shirt suddenly, whispered a threatening “This isn’t over, Deku,” before returning to his seat at the other side of the room.

The school day continued as it normally did: the teacher took the register and they started their maths lesson. Some sheets were handed out for them to complete, Izuku was skipped so he asked his teacher for them, in response got an irritated grumble telling him to come get them. He slowly trudged to the front, took the sheets he needed and went back, trying to keep the stabbing pains as hidden as possible, and returned to his desk. Today was more complicated multiplication and division, which while normally Izuku would have found pitifully easy with all the extra studying he did, he now struggled to even read the questions as his insides screamed and shrivelled within him.

After the fourth loud moan from his stomach, the teacher looked up annoyed, “Midoriya, if you can’t stop disrupting your classmates you can leave the room,” he said while blatantly ignoring how the rest of the kids had been whispering and passing notes the entire lesson.

Normally when called out, he would simply apologise and get back to work, but right now… “One second please,” he gasped as he quickly walked out the room, but not quite fast enough to attract suspicion.

Once out the room he ran/stumbled to the toilets before falling to the floor, a shaking mess. He couldn’t get himself to stand up, he hurt too much. He felt as if his insides were going to explode. He lay there on the tiled floor, curled up in his tight ball of self-protection, whimpering quietly and trembling profusely, unable to stop as he glanced around at the stalls and the faucet and the-

That’s it! Izuku heaved, dragging himself slowly over to the sink. He couldn’t eat anything, but last he checked he could still drink water at least (he had been very disappointed when he learnt he no longer enjoyed his favourite All Might branded tropical fruit juice from America). The boy slowly pulled himself up using the side of the sink until his head was beneath the tap and started lapping up the water coming out of it, almost crying as thank heroes almighty it still tasted like water should.

After a minute of heavy drinking he finally pulled himself away from the stream of water, feeling slightly better. Sure, the pain was still there, but it had shrunk back to its regular thumps in comparison to the shrivelling burn he’d felt since that night. Speaking of the burning feeling…

Even as a young seven-year-old, Izuku knew he shouldn’t be in this much pain after one day of not eating. Starvation takes a while to properly set in, he couldn’t already be this hungry, could he?

Then it slowly dawned on him as Midoriya realised in horror that he might be just that. He’d had these stomach-aches for a long time now, and the had been getting worse in the last month or so. And if the cause of these pains stopped him from being able to eat – he looked down at his skinny arms and legs – who’s to say he’d gotten anything out of the food he’d been forcing down himself?

Well, it will all be sorted out tonight, when he talked to his mum about all of this. He could go to hospital and they would find what’s wrong and help him and fix him and he could finally return to being there for his mum!

‘Just a few more hours, Izuku, you can do it!’ the water had definitely helped. He could do this! The pain of the last year could finally be put behind him!’ And with the more positive attitude on hand, he returned to class, just to be told off for taking too long.

English was next, and it went very much the same as maths (without the leaving-the-room-to-stop-the-wracking-pain part, and a classmate tripped him over as he went to the front to hand in his work early).

Then it was lunch.

Izuku always dreaded lunch, but never quite as much as he was today. He knew Kacchan was going to beat him up a bit, which in itself wasn’t a rare occurrence, but the temporary relief from the water had started fading and he was sent outside by a rather irritated Mrs Maki (“don’t make an excuse, just go outside and join your classmates!”) before he could get more.

He couldn’t deal with Kacchan like this.

As if the world wanted to give him one final slap in the face, Kacchan’s voice rang out behind him, “Deku! Get over here you little shit!”

Midoriya tensed up as he turned around to the former friend, seeing him standing behind the corner of the building, glaring right back at the green-haired freak. He knew why he was stood there: due to the school having a strict ‘no bullying’ policy, the teachers made an almost unspoken pact with the students with stronger quirks (namely Bakugo) in which as long as the teachers didn’t see anything, they were unaware of the situation and therefore didn’t do anything. Izuku was expected to play his part in this non-optional deal in which he allowed the greater students to do what they wanted to blow off some steam so that they would stay on track for greater future accomplishments.

And play the part he did.

Just like clockwork, the so-far-quirkless child trudged over to Kacchan without thinking about it, before stopping a few metres before he reached the explosive boy. Red eyes glared at him, “What the fuck you playing at Deku? You know the consequences for pissing me off, now face them you coward!”

But Izuku couldn’t move, his legs feeling stuck to the ground where he stood as if his brightly coloured trainers were rocks encasing his feet. His limbs started shaking an alarming amount again and he couldn’t regain control of his limbs as fear filled his head as he took in the situation: he really couldn’t be beaten up today, heck, he was worried that he’d collapse if he took another step forward, let alone if he took a fiery punch to the chest. If he got beaten now, he might not have the strength to get home tonight.

And with that thought he started crying, leaving Kacchan slightly shocked. Izuku had used to be a big crybaby but starting around a year ago when Hisashi had cut off the money he’d decided to grow up and had refused to cry in front of anyone since, only wearing his thin mask of a smile despite his constantly tense posture. So seeing he boy suddenly break down in body-wracking sobs was startling for both the boys. Midoriya just couldn’t take it.

Angry confusion appeared in Kacchan’s eyes, “Why the fu-“

He was cut off by a begging Izuku, who hadn’t moved from his spot, his arms tensed by his sides as he slouched further forward over his protesting organs, “Pl-please K-Kacchan, just n-not tod-today. Please. I’ll l-let you d-do what you w-want any other time, j-just not now.”

They stared at each other for a few seconds, the silence being filled by distant laughter and chatter from the others in the playground. After a few seconds in which Izuku attempted to stifle his crying without actually moving, Kacchan tutted and pulled the emotional weakling into the shadowed section of the school exterior.

A small whine of pain escaped Midoriya as he was slammed against the wall, trying to at least mentally prepare himself for the oncoming pain by tightly shutting his eyes and jaw.

So when the hit never landed Izuku was rather confused. He peeked open one of his eyes to find Kacchan studying him strangely, seemingly taking in the quirkless boy’s expression and body posture for the first time…ever. The constant anger from the other boy almost seemed to of faded, if only for these couple of seconds.

The now puzzled child looked down at himself and noted that, yeah, maybe he’d reacted a bit weirdly this time (at least to an outsider’s perspective): normally when slammed against a wall someone’s first reaction would be to protect their head from crashing, or at least try to slow down their impact by having their arms behind them. Instead, Izuku had wrapped his arms as tightly as he could around his torso, trembling all over.

The two seven-year olds remained in tense silence for a moment, before Kacchan tutted and turned away, “It’s not even worth hitting you when you’re like this. You’ll just ruin my fun with that face.”

Midoriya knew it was bad that he felt quite so grateful for not being beaten, but he was currently stuck in shock at the blonde’s actions. That small stroke of pity was the nicest thing the other boy had done for him in years, outside of their family meet ups (now all held at the Bakugo residence due to the money struggles his mum had), and he was not going to let it go unacknowledged.

“T-Thank y-y-you,” he managed to stutter out between stifled sobs as Kacchan glanced back at him, the look of anger and general disgust at Izuku’s existence returned and he replied with words that hurt almost as much as the punches and kicks he’d given throughout the years:

“Don’t thank me you weakling, I’m only doing this as your little baby tantrum would spoil the fun. I’ll find someone else today, and I expect you to meet me afterschool tomorrow as well as at lunchtime. This isn’t fucking pity Deku, you’re replaceable, and if you’re not my punching bag then you might as well die.” Even though Kacchan had let go, Izuku stayed pinned to the wall, letting the harsh words sink in as his bully gave the metaphorical knife one more twist, “You know what? No one would miss you anyways, so why don’t you just go die so we don’t have to look at your ugly face anymore!”

With that Kacchan stormed off, leaving the other boy crying alone behind the secluded wall.

‘Heh, you may not have to wait long for that Kacchan’ he thought bitterly to himself, sliding down the wall as his legs finally gave out beneath him, leaving him as a trembling pile on the dry soil. He couldn’t move, not an inch, except for his violent shaking that spasmed through his body tenfold the speed of the stabbing in his stomach.

He wanted to cry out, go to his mum and hug her and demand to go to the hospital right now in her arms and get help.

But he couldn’t do that when he couldn’t move.

He heard the bell go off, telling everyone to head back inside for lessons, and soon he was the last person left outside, silence surrounding him with nothing to distract him from his own pain.

The day continued to pass and if he had the energy to he would laugh: of course no one came looking for him, he was Deku. The teachers probably hadn’t even bothered to note his absence, and the classmates didn’t even bother to point it out. Hell, Kacchan even knew where he was and hadn’t mentioned it to anyone or someone would’ve been made to collect him. Was it seriously that easy for him to disappear from this place, with no one caring? Honestly the only person who would even miss him was his mum. So if he just disappeared….

No. No he shouldn’t think like that! His mum needed him, they were the only family each other had! He couldn’t leave his mum alone!

He attempted to crawl out from behind the wall blocking him off from the view of the school. He knew he couldn’t make it home, but if he was at least visible to the people leaving at the end of the day someone might call for help or at least go check if he’s okay. However that plan fell apart as he didn’t manage a single shuffle forwards before he fell from his elbows back into lying flat on his stomach in the dirt. Why had his health deteriorated so suddenly? He could walk fine yesterday, even if he was still in pain, yet now he couldn’t even crawl a couple of meters. Shouldn’t the process to reach this level of weakness take longer? He wasn’t sure he was just a kid, he didn’t know about all this medical stuff!

He continued to lie there, having no further energy to attempt any other “plan” of sorts, just hoping that someone, anyone would come and help him! His eyesight started to get bleary as he looked out at the surrounding trees, the sun burning the skin on his arms not covered by his t-shirt as the summer day continued to drag on at an excruciating pace. Finally he heard people chatting, signalling the end of the day, and he made one final ditch effort at getting help: he shouted as loud as he could, begging for someone to come and help him, but all that emerged from his lips was a raspy whisper of “help…please…someone…” along with quiet whimpers as the small task made his insides clench further.

No one heard him.

He didn’t have the energy to cry as slowly the sounds of people dwindled until he was left in silence, again. He just lay there, the shaking stopped an hour previously, unmoving as the sun started to set. Was this it? Was he going to die here without a choice? Would he never get to see his mum again? Never get to tell her again quite how much he loved her? A single tear formed in Izuku’s eyes, the last of the water leaving his system as he begged the world to give him just one win, give him this one thing – to not leave his mother alone again!

Unsurprisingly, the universe let the boy down again, leaving him stranded in the school grounds as the sky went dark. If he had to guess, it was around 7, maybe 8:00? His mum would be worried when she got back. He needed to get to her! But he couldn’t, not when he was so tired and weak and hurt and so damn HUNGRY!!!!!

Suddenly a sweet smell filled Izuku’s senses and his eyesight sharpened dramatically fast. It was all he could think about, all other thoughts shoved to the side as he breathed in the scent. It was…delicious, breathtakingly so, and now Midoriya did actually laugh: after all this time of forcing food into his system there was finally something he want to eat. He needed it now!

He found himself running, not quite sure why this new smell had suddenly given him new life. Everything still burned, but instead of holding him back it was now fuelling him, as he needed that food now or HE WAS GONNA DIE AND HE NEEDED TO LIVE HE DESERVED TO LIVE AND IT WOULD BE WORTH IT IT SMELT SO GOOD HE WOULD EAT IT ALL!!!!

He was almost there. He could smell it.

Just down there…

Past that alley…

There.

He tucked in, barely coming up for air as he tore at the meal beneath him, relief filling him as more and more food went down his oesophagus, his stomach immediately relaxing as it finally accepted that it was meant to contain nutrients! Izuku swore, he hadn’t felt this happy since before his dad left and his life was still going well. Maybe life was finally going to turn around and give him some luck and peace!

At least that’s what he thought until he realised he was holding a hand.

A human hand.

He was eating a human corpse.

Izuku numbly turned around, looking at the dumpster he’d somehow ended up in, perched on what was left of the person below him, and gasped when a bloodied creature with red eyes and veins looked back at him, black sclera and a mouth dripping blood being reflected in the shards of glass littering the place. He blinked rapidly and when he looked back at the broken reflective surface he found his normal pale, horrified face, still covered in blood as he looked on in silence at what he’d done.

He’d eaten someone.

And enjoyed it.

At least he didn’t seem to of killed the person himself, they were in a dumpster afterall, and he seemed to have a knife wound to the head or something so…

Oh god why was he focusing on that! Who cares if he killed the person, he still flipping ate them! He just committed cannibalism because it tasted good!

Stop, he needed to focus: ‘No one will expect a person to of done this, they’ll probably draw this up to a wild animal. That’s if they find the body in the first place.’ Izuku winced as he looked at what remained of the person (only one arm and the head were still intact), ‘Someone obviously dumped them here not expecting to be found out, so there are probably no cameras around here to witness this. Actually, where am I? It can’t be far, I only ran for a few minutes. Now to deal with the biggest problem…'

Izuku glanced down to see the blood smothering his arms and chest. He couldn’t exactly walk around like this, a hero would pick up on it in minutes! He pulled off his t-shirt and used it to wipe at his face and arms to little success. He didn’t have anything else to use, his schoolbag still at his desk (hopefully), so he took a look around him; maybe there’d be a material he could wipe off some of the blood off on. To his relief he found a few newspapers, which while covered in a foul-smelling bin juice, were still helped remove enough of the incriminating substance to just be stained red rather than dripping in it. Hopefully the dark would help hide the colouring until he found a better place to clear up.

He scrunched up his shirt in his hands, slowly stepping out of the alley to realise he had absolutely no clue where he was. It didn’t look like his neighbourhood, but how far could he have gotten in the couple of minutes he ran?

It turned out the answer to that was ten miles.

After sneaking around this new area for what felt like hours, he finally found something promising: the coastline. If he kept roughly following it from now on he should eventually find Dagobah Beach, right?

Before heading off he quickly washed off in the sea, removing more of the evidence, before starting to run along the beach. Yeah, there was a definite increase in speed now, with Izuku speeding across the beach in mere seconds. ‘But at what cost?’ was all he could think about the new development.

After clearing the distance of that beach so quickly, Midoriya decided it would be safer to walk the rest of the way – didn’t want to be arrested for illegal quirk usage along with cannibalism! He laughed sadly under his breath at his own joke, tears forming in his eyes as a realisation hit him.

He’d never be able to be a hero. The heroes would hate him for his quirk – what type of hero has to eat others just to live?! Even if it wasn’t the heroes the public would reject him, not being comfortable with him protecting them.

Everyone would reject him for his quirk. They’d distrust him, hate him, capture him for the crimes he had to commit!

They’d see him for what he really is.

A monster.

It took a half hour walk to finally reach the dirty Dagobah Beach, where he decided to hide his ruined top amongst the rubble before he stumbled back to his house. It had been a long day, and despite the lack of pain coming from his gut (just don’t think about what it took), Izuku was very tired and ached all over from the walking, running and near death from starvation he’d experienced in such a short space of time.

He stopped outside his apartment block, considering one final thing: should he tell his mum? No, that was the immediate conclusion he reached. Even if he hid elements of his quirk, the more people knew about it the higher the chance they’d learn the truth. Then he’d either be taken away from his mum or worst comes the worst she would want him out herself. It’s better if he just pretended to be quirkless, it wasn’t like he was going to be hero anymore…

He entered the block and went to their apartment, opening the door just to be greeted by a rush of green hair kneeling beside him, crying.

“Izuku! Thank goodness! Where were you you silly child!” his mum cried while wrapping the little boy into a tight hug, tears coming down her cheeks in fountains.”

Oh. Izuku hadn’t expected his mum to be home already. Wait, what time was it exactly? He peered past his mum to look at the time on the microwave just to tense up at the digital 11:24. Tears were now forming in his eyes; his mum must have been so worried for the last 2 hours, with no clue where her last family member, her only son, was. He didn’t want her to have to worry about him, and that’s exactly he made her do.

Then there had been the chance he wasn’t going to get home at all, dying in agony at school

His mum would’ve been all alone.

With that the last of Izuku’s restraint disappeared, “I-I’m s-s-o sorry m-mummy! I p-promise it’ll n-never happen ag-again!” he wailed as tears began rapidly streaming down his face as rapidly as his mums. They were tears of frustration, sadness, guilt and so, so much fear, as everything that just happened replayed through his head and he wondered what on earth he should do next.

They stayed like that for a while, just hugging and crying until both of them finally ran out of body fluids to leak out. After mopping at her and her son’s faces with half a pack of tissues, Inko finally whispered a quiet “Does this have something to do with what you wanted to tell me this morning?”

“A bit,” the boy whispered out, making the final decision of what story he was going to tell his mum. He decided to stick to as truthful a version as possible, “I-I don’t want to be a hero anymore.”

The one supporting pillar of his life looked shock at the revelations, before she apparently noticed the slight smudges of blood on her son’s hands and arms, even a small splatter on his cheekbone, and she immediately paled, “W-What happened?” she said, hands trembling as her son told her a fake story that portrayed himself in a much more humane way than what really happened.

The next day Inko called the school and her work places, telling them her son had been subjected to a villain attack the night before and would take today off to rest. That’s the story Izuku told her anyways: after school on the walk back he was singled out as an easy target by a group of thugs and taken by them. He’d lost his shirt in an attempt to escape, but failed, only to be quickly rescued by an underground hero by the name of Eraserhead who handled the paperwork. In shock Izuku had been taken home, but the police had to leave in a hurry for a case halfway across town so Izuku had entered the building alone. The blood was from one of the villains in their fight against the hero, and the whole experience had been so shocking that it confirmed Izuku’s doubts of wanting to be a hero and he was ready to focus on a safer goal.

He knew Kacchan wouldn’t be happy with Izuku’s absence, especially after he let him go easy the day before. He’d probably think the villain thing was fake, but at least he might be happy that his weak classmate had finally given up on becoming a hero.

Plus he knew despite how worried she’d been, his mum would be happy deep down that the hero dream was over – her son was going to go down a safer route now, and him being safe and happy was all she wanted, and all Izuku needed to do was keep her happy.

He didn’t deserve anything anyway, not after what he did, and what he’ll have to do in the future. So even if it isn’t what he wanted, his mum deserved a normal, safe human son who would look after her to the best of his abilities and keep her as happy as possible.

As they sat down to eat Izuku heard his mum gasp at the television as shouted to him to come over.

“What is it?” he said as he slowly walked over (he didn’t want to risk accidently activating whatever that superspeed stuff had been yesterday), handing her the coffee he’d started making as she was on the phone.

“I guess we know what the other event the police had to run off to last night was…” his mum mumbled, looking horrified at the screen.

Izuku turned to look at the news broadcast for his blood to run cold. It was a picture of the dumpster from his…meal. The image was blurred out, but just the amount of red that filled the screen painted a clear enough image of what was beneath. The news headline beneath read ‘Local Worker Ambushed at Work, Killed, then Mauled by Animals’.

“It’s so horrible! No one deserves to be treated like that!” his mum gasped, shaking her head at the gruesome side story blaring on the screen.

Izuku could merely nod quietly in agreement as his brain told him cruelly, ‘yeah, that’s right Izuku, no one deserves a fate like that, and yet you did that to another person! You’re no human, just a savage animal blending in with your prey just to betray and eat them, one by one.

You’re worse than a villain.

You’re not even a person.’

It was at age seven where the world was finally able to crush a young boy’s dreams.

Chapter Text

Soon after deciding that a hero wasn’t the right route for him, Izuku quit the dojo. “I went in order to prepare for fighting against villains, it’s a waste of money now that I don’t want to go down that route,” he reassured his mum when she gave him a sad look as he announced his decision. In all honesty, it upset him slightly more than he let on to leave the place: it was a special place, not focusing on getting belts for specific styles, but teaching the students a mix of different techniques from karate to kickboxing to provide a larger range of moves and less predictability when it came to a real fight (villain attacks occurred so often it was better to be prepared). He also liked the dojo as it was mainly about fighting quirkless, teaching different techniques and how to combine quirks with the styles rather than about strengthening the quirk, meaning Izuku had felt rather accepted there, even looked up to as a good example, in comparison to his everyday shunning.

But that didn’t matter now – the priority was keeping his mum happy, which started with cutting all unneeded costs (he felt guilty for the wasted money on food that he threw up after eating but it would make her worry if her son didn’t eat). It’s not like he would feel accepted amongst them anymore, or around people as a whole.

School got worse from there as well; contrary to what he’d thought the bullying had only gotten worse after he announced he didn’t want to be a hero anymore, the names “coward” and “spineless” being added to the seemingly never-ending list of insults the class had for him. According to Kacchan he’d “thrown away any respect anyone had for him by giving up so easily on his dreams, they’d thought he at least had determination”, to which Izuku replied with nothing but a shrug. He stopped trying to befriend others, as bonding with him would only put them at a higher risk if he got…hungry. He was still polite enough, just never initiated anything as school went from unenjoyable to his own personal hell.

With his new free time from quitting the dojo and stopping attempting to talk to anyone who would give him a chance after school (that often led to being beaten up anyways), he started studying more: he still wanted to go to UA in the future, just in general studies as even it’s non-heroics departments were very high standard, and as a “quirkless” member of society he’d need all the advantages he could to get a steady job to support his mum with in the future. He kept up his hero analysis though, partly as a hobby and also the skill could be useful if he was able to become a detective or something. He just didn’t go out to witness the fights anymore, using online clips to study the heroes instead so that he could do it at his desk. He didn’t really want to meet heroes face to face anymore anyways, they made him feel nervous to say the least.

So that was how Izuku’s life continued: a much more isolated, lonely, painful existence taking the place of the old one. As time went on he learnt more about his quirk, each new discovery making it harder to hide. He already knew from the discovery of his quirk that he had some form of super speed, along with some strength enhancer (he had ripped a person to shreds as if they were paper!), and he’d hoped it stopped there. However when he returned to school and could hear the lesson next door as if he was in the room, along with literally smelling the scent of perfume on the teacher in the other room (some cheap rose imitation, it stung his sinuses), Izuku accepted there was an “enhanced senses” factor to his quirk. It wasn’t the hardest to hide considering everyone already thought he was weird, they just presumed the flinching was some weird quirkless thing rather than him reacting to the screams of civilians in a villain attack a few streets away.

The next development was…significantly harder to hide considering Izuku’s treatment. He discovered it two weeks after his last one when Kacchan had given him a particularly bad burn on his arm and scraped his knees when he was shoved to the ground, along with multiple bruises on his torso. After the bullies and onlookers had all left, Izuku stood up to find all his injuries gone. How was someone who was constantly hurt by others meant to hide regenerative abilities? He did the best he could, taking plasters and bandages from home to put on where he was supposed to be hurt, as well as deciding to wear more winter time clothes all year long (not pleasant but easier than explaining how a gash on his arm had healed and vanished in one night).

He could feel that there was more to his quirk, but he’d rather not explore it. The most noticeable was a new tension in his chest that felt like something that wanted to be let out, but he didn’t want to risk it and release another horrid curse into the world.

Speaking of curses, Izuku figured out how much he was meant to eat. He didn’t need to eat often, just once a month (like that made it any better), and when he ate he was supposed to eat almost a full person. Not that Izuku did that. He couldn’t bring himself to.

Right from the day he learnt about his awful quirk he had immediately started trying to find the most humane way to acquire his needed food – just because he was a monster didn’t mean he wanted to act like one – and he settled on going to the forest three miles away: a saddening amount of people ended their lives there, whether they were struggling to get out of poverty, had just had enough of the bias world they lived in, had turned to villainy and regretted it, or in a lot of cases because they were quirkless. If young Izuku had still wanted to be a hero before, learning just how many people killed themselves because of how society had treated and corrupted them soured his opinion on the flashy career path.

So once a month the young boy snuck out the house after his mum was asleep and headed to the forest, always walking in case he got caught for illegal quirk usage. He was always cautious, taking different paths there, wearing a large black hoodie to hide his features from any cameras he might pass, with a change of clothing in his bag in case he got bloody. In he’d go, walking deep enough in that hopefully it would be a while before the bodies he ate from were found, and then he’d eat: a few bites out of a hanging calf muscle, or a few organs from a person with a bullet to the stomach, taking only a little bit of a person each time. He knew he should eat more, but the thought of ravaging a corpse so thoroughly that it was unrecognisable or even eating enough that it was clearly attacked rather than decayed made Izuku feel worse than just going hungry.

So Izuku went hungry, getting just enough nutrients to help him survive the month as long as he used very little energy. Sure, it meant he ended up obviously underweight, any baby fat he had vanishing within a couple months, but it at least helped with his quirkless mask, as when he didn’t have excess energy his body acted much more like a regular humans: his speed, healing and sense just under double an average persons rather than unbelievably so.

The smaller portions didn’t make him feel any less guilty for his actions, and he started to make another notebook. He already wrote in two series; one being his hero notes, the other being a set of pastel books containing a quickly growing stash of recipes he’d make for his mum, getting more and more complicated as Izuku quickly improved despite not technically having permission to use the stove and oven. He based his reactions to the food off his mum’s (luckily she was always honest enough), and improve the recipes off her criticisms. The new addition to the collection was a few black notebooks in which Izuku decided to write about those he ate. He’d give each person a double page spread, writing about how they look, what they had on them when he found them (things like wallets helped a lot when it came to finding out who a person was), and try his best to make an analysis on each and every one of their pasts, whether it was on their quirk, family, their crimes or a brief summary of their life. To anyone else it might seem like a messed-up thing to do: cataloguing the people as if they were just a part of a food diary, but it meant something else to Izuku. It was his own messed up way of giving back to the people he’s taking from, as the young cannibal’s logic was that if someone felt the need to take their own life they must feel like there’s no one left to miss them once they’re gone. So he would miss them, learn about them, keep their memories alive when no one else would. He started keeping these morbid notes in hope they would make him feel less guilty.

It didn’t help.

And so Midoriya’s life became a miserable cycle: go to the forest, eat a small amount, write about them out of guilt, study in all free time, struggle being “normal” through school, get beaten up daily, clean the house, cook for mum, throw up food, force a smile.

Rinse, repeat.

---

Izuku managed to keep up this unstable balance for five years before he finally snapped, learning about the rest of his abilities. He was always afraid of what would happen when he fell apart (he knew it was going to happen at some point, he’d felt himself wear away steadily as the bullying became more extreme and the guilt became less bearable), he was worried it would be an explosion of animalistic fury, a sudden spell of anger that would overtake his mind without warning like the hunger did when it became too much, leaving him powerless as he took the lives of his classmates.

Instead he folded in on himself like a wet piece of paper.

So far being twelve hadn’t been the worst. Sure, it wasn’t good by any means, but he thought he’d cope through another year. He was getting ridiculously underweight, as he’d only grown a few centimetres since he stopped being a person, and not filled out in the slightest. Guess that’s what starving yourself does to a person, but it was still better than the alternative.

His mum had managed to get a slightly better job as a teaching assistant for the first part of the day, which meant they no longer had to worry about going into debt, which was nice, even if she still had ridiculous hours with her evening job.

The bullying was also not great that year, his appearance added onto the “Reasons the quirkless kid is so hilarious” list, along with claims that maybe he had a zombie quirk after all with the bags under his eyes. Well how was he supposed to sleep well when whenever he shut his eyes he was assaulted with corpses staring accusingly at him, waiting for him to be found out by the heroes and killed like the creature he was?

But he thought it would be okay, as his teacher Mr Hanna actually seemed…decent. He didn’t step in when the others made fun of him, but he did have stricter no violence rules, and didn’t even pin problems within the class on him!

But the man’s mercy turned out to be what got Izuku hurt the most.

It made the green pre-teen slightly nervous every time the man stopped the others from tripping Izuku in class, or whenever he wrote a nice comment on his work. It felt like an oncoming train crash, and Izuku was just watching as the two trains slowly got closer and closer to each other without being able to do anything about it, leaving a pit in his stomach.

The crash happened after an English test, where the man who was just too nice for his own good stood. There and. Complimented. Him in front. Of the. Class.

Mr Hanna just complimented him in front of the class.

In front of Kacchan.

His hands started shaking.

It wasn’t like it was a secret that Izuku was the top student academics wise (with the amount of studying he did any less would be weird), but no one ever actually mentioned it. Or gave him credit. He was sure Mr Hanna had meant to be encouraging with that comment, saying how people should take a note out of his book and put their all into their revision, but he had just made Izuku’s day so much harder with that one comment. And he’d eaten just two days ago, how was he meant to hide the healing this time?

At the end of the lesson the scared boy walked up to his teacher and told him to never do that again. When all he got in return was a confused look he specified: “T-the compliments. J-just don’t g-give me them in front of the c-c-class again. Please.”

“But why?” his teacher seemed more confused by the second, “You did well, you deserve to be congratulated for it. Is this an embarrassment thing or-“

“N-no, it’s just…if p-people hear me get complimented it ju-just tends to make things w-worse.”

A look of understanding appeared on the older man’s face, his hand making it’s way through his greying brown hair as his eyes fell to the floor, “I see Midoriya, I’m sorry there’s not more I can do to stop this.”

The boy nodded in return, knowing what he was referring to. At age nine Izuku was hit with the realisation that the teachers no longer stopped Kacchan or the other stronger students as they were scared. If they didn’t let them do what they wanted they might do something worse and get the school in trouble, maybe even shut down. He realised to expect no help from the staff when Kacchan blew up his homework and he got in trouble for it.

Heh, little did they know that weak little Midoriya was the most villainous out of all the students.

As he turned away from his teacher’s desk he ran for the exit, just hoping he could get away before the other students finished packing for the end of the day. But as he exited the room to find Kacchan waiting for him he knew the damage was done.

“So Deku, I couldn’t help but notice a certain teacher sucking up to your ass,” the explosive classmate growled, a vicious smirk on his face as he immediately grabbed hold of Izuku’s arm and started dragging him into the empty classroom next door, “You now think you’re better than me huh? You deserve special treatment cause you’re a nerd with no life outside your fucking stalker notes?”
“N-no o-of course n-n-not K-Kacchan,” he stuttered in response as he watched his old friend rummage through his bag until he found what he was apparently looking for.

“No you say? So I guess you won’t mind me getting rid of this then?” Izuku watched in horror as his maths class notes were torn to shreds and burnt in front of him.

“N-no!” he gasped quietly as he watched small pieces of paper curl as they burned. The response he got was a knee to the stomach as one of the lackeys laughed “What was that zombie-boy? All I heard was creepy mumbling, anyone else?” he started moaning and groaning like a bad zombie impression while the other one snorted at the performance.

Kacchan didn’t even smile, just glared at Izuku as he wheezed from the impact, before stating, “Just remember this next time you try to outshine me you shitty extra.” And with that he punched the shaking Deku in the nose.

The next few minutes consisted of Katsuki beating the hell out of Izuku, being careful not to burn through the clothes so that the incident couldn’t be immediately linked back to him, plus the occasional quip from either of the lackeys who seemed happy just watching. It frustrated Izuku so much. He had what it took to fight back, he was faster, stronger and more perceptive than his bullies, but the risk of revealing any of his quirk was too great. He could just imagine it: the fear on Kacchan’s face, the terror on his mother’s, the disgust of every hero in existence focused on him. Yeah, it was not worth it.

Once Kacchan was satisfied with Izuku’s level of pain (he could already feel the bruising, and he was pretty sure his nose was broken), he went on one final rant, “You see Deku? It doesn’t matter how you do grade wise, you’ll always disappoint everyone. Hell, you could even have a quirk and let people down from how fucking spineless you are.” Izuku was worried, today had been a stressful day, and he had eaten recently enough for him to have the energy to inflict serious damage, and he could feel the thing in his chest just aching to get out and defend him (he didn’t know what it was and he definitely didn’t want to find out here). Bakugo continued, apparently not quite done with rubbing salt in his wounds, “You hold everyone back, quirkless shits like you hold everyone back! It doesn’t even matter how smart you are, no one will hire you, and you’ll end up stuck with your mum, holding her back ‘til the day you die.”

That’s what did it. Izuku snapped, just to have all his emotions leave him at once as if they’re strings had been cut. His body went limp in his position slumped against the wall as the other boys left the room. He sat there silently, his nose fixing itself as he thought through the last thing Kacchan had said. ‘I’ll hold mum back…until I die? Does that mean she’d be better off without me here at all? Yes she’d miss me, but would it end up being better for her future?’

Those thoughts kept banging around inside him as he slowly stood up and gathered his belongings. He kept focusing on them as he made his way out of school, just to be stopped and hurt by a third year middle schooler who wanted to show off his quirk to his friends (when he entered middle school he graduated from being the class punching bag to the school’s official one, used by anyone who wanted to show off or practise or just let out frustrations on a person who won’t fight back or get them in trouble), then continuing his walk while healing the small pinpricks caused by the darts that came out of the older student’s fingertips.

As he entered the silent house any remaining thoughts were fully consumed as he caught sight of the old picture of him and his mum: he was five, and they’d gone to a beach to try and distract them both of Hisashi’s disappearance. The picture held a moment where they’d both forgotten about the negatives in their lives, even if it just a short one where Izuku was busy trying to jump over the waves as his mum laughed at him.

It had been a long time since he’d seen her that happy, and a void opened inside him as he realised that he no longer had the ability to make her smile like that. He was failing the one thing he wanted to do. He was holding her back. If he wasn’t helping his mum then he was simply a monster sneaking around, quite literally living off people just to ruin other’s lives and hold them all back.

Monsters that prevented others from getting better were basically villains, and villains need to be stopped.

Izuku wasn’t thinking straight as he grabbed one of the kitchen knives, one of the ones his mum had always refused to let him use as they were too sharp. He entered the bathroom and took off his top, and in the mirror saw the now unbruised skin almost glow from how pale it was, his ribs clearly visible through his skin. He hated it. He looked like a weak, useless, Deku. No wonder he couldn’t make his mum happy anymore.

He yelped as the knife broke on contact with his stomach, the blade skidding across the floor, leaving the plastic handle in Izuku’s hands, facing inwards towards his stomach.

He felt all his emotions rush back into him as tears started flowing freely down his face. What was he doing? He couldn’t listen to Kacchan, he just wanted to hurt him – of course his mum wanted him around! He couldn’t leave her alone, she was who he was doing all this for! The (apparently now blade-proof?) boy shuffled around the bathroom, picking up the section of knife before examining his abdomen. Nope, not a scratch. He wasn’t really surprised at this point.

‘Actually’, Izuku thought through the events of that day, ‘maybe I should try and stop any future surprises. I need to learn not to care what people say about me, they’re never going to change anyways, plus there are more people like them. Should I also…’ he pondered for a second, focusing on the weight in his chest again. Should he just rip off the band-aid and learn what this piece of him is?

Yeah, he’d held it in long enough, and it didn’t feel like it was fighting against him like the hunger did. More like it was a part of him, an extra organ of sorts that had more to offer than he was allowing it to.

He needed to go somewhere else to try it though, somewhere private. He needed to hide the knife anyways so he might as well do this now while he still had the courage that rose after trying…that.

The twelve-year-old would later tell himself that the knife thing had been a test, an experiment of his quirk and nothing else. It wasn’t convincing.

Izuku headed back to Dagobah Beach for the first time in years. After his quirk manifested those five years ago he’d since spent so much of his life huddled up in their small apartment, only going out for school and his monthly forest trips. He was quite disappointed to see how the state of the beach had only got worse, with the rubbish piling precariously on top of each other- wait was that a car!? At least the new mountains of junk confirmed that no one would be able to see him among the piles.

He cautiously walked through the waste, being careful not to nudge anything that could send everything toppling down. After a minute of careful treading he reached a clearing among the rusted metal and decaying bin bags. It stank, and Izuku’s enhanced smell only made it worse, his senses picking up on all the different rotting foods and waste products decaying into the dirty sand. But at least it was quiet, a luxury he rarely got when he could easily hear the neighbour’s conversations as if they were directed at him, not to mention the traffic outside.

He mentally prepared himself in his foul-smelling but peaceful location. This was it, he was going to do it: after years of hiding from anything related to quirk he was finally going to face it head on.

He shut his eyes as he felt at the tension near his heart and tugged.

When he opened his eyes (they’d gone black and red again, he could tell from the feeling of veins sticking out around them) again he found four tendrils by his side, all emerging from between his shoulder blades like wings. All Izuku could do was stare in curiosity and slight awe at the powerful things(?) emerging from him.

There weren’t quite like any quirk he’d ever seen before (which basically matched every other element of his quirk), the colours of each tendril starting red near his back and fading to a coal-black around halfway along. The two upper ones were shaped differently to the lower: the higher ones arching upwards, the stems twisting until curving at the edges to form what looked like black scorpion stingers, while the lower appendages stuck diagonally downwards coming out from his body, looping back around and up in front of him, ending in sharp spikes with an overall much more simple, sleek design to them.

After standing dumbfounded for a few seconds, Izuku tried to move towards one of the stingers, just to be shocked as it moved towards him by thought, the curved tip stopping just in front of him. The movement felt natural, like using a limb, the four tentacles moving where he wanted them to almost subconsciously. As he looked closer at the stinger in front of him, he realised two things; one being how it wasn’t actually a stinger, more like a hook designed to look like one.

‘Sharp, strong enough to pierce into something and pull myself and others away with.’ He noted, as he focused on his second observation of how when the light hit the new limb-thing at certain angles the black part glistened blue and green – he couldn’t help but think how pretty it looked. He brought the other 3 appendages in front of him, and yes, they all had the same beautiful glint to them. A small smile appeared on his lips, the first non-strained one in years. Finally, an element of his quirk that felt like it belonged to him! He chuckled quietly as he made the scorpion-blade-hanger hybrids twirl around as he slowly spun on the spot, watching as flashes of red and blue and green surrounded him, encasing him with colours. The moment faded quickly as Izuku drew his attention to the simpler designed points. They were obviously weapons, no denying it, the spikes so sharp they looked like they’d cut someone just by looking at them. Their function was all too clear: to impale, to hurt, to kill, to rip apart the people he consumed.

So why did he find them so pretty? They existed to hurt others, but he couldn’t help but feel warm and content by their presence, feeling the only joy he’d experienced away from his mum since age seven. Heh, guess he really wasn’t a human anymore.

He thought of the limbs disappearing, and he shuddered slightly as they retracted back into his upper back. Taking a deep breath, Izuku sighed as he slumped onto the grimy sand beneath him. So that was the power he’d been hiding from himself for so long. He wouldn’t use them again anyway (growing and using weird mutations coming out his spine must use up energy, and if he used energy he’d need to up the amount he ate), so it’s not like anything had changed. Just another weird item in his messy list of a quirk. What did he have now?

Super speed

Above average strength, not All Might level but pretty strong

Speeded healing / regeneration

Heightened senses

Some form of immunity to blades

And now four weird spikes (he needed to make a better name for them) that emerged from his back and he could control with ease.

All at the cost of his diet. The abilities also seemed better just after he ate, maybe they’d be stronger if he ate more?

No, he’d never do that. He’d stick to the amount he ate, the bare minimum to survive considering things like school sports and healing after being beaten existed (not that the powers worked much two weeks after he ate, his body focusing on staying alive rather than enhancing his being), he didn’t want to use his powers! He’d live quirkless, devoting himself to making the one person in his life who actually cared about him happy, and that would be the best he could do!

“But,” a traitorous voice at the back of his head whispered, “If you just ate more, you could do more! You could save people! You could help more than just your mum!”

He groaned, shutting his eyes as the sky started to turn pink. It was tempting: even if he no longer aimed to be a hero, he still wanted to help others (that’s part of why he allows everyone to do what they want to him, as if it makes them feel better to hurt a creature like him it’s worth it). Even though he didn’t really want to form relationships, or even really interact with anyone other than his mum, he still felt the desperate urge to keep them safe from danger. Plus saving others might make him feel less guilty about his monthly crime, knowing the horrid actions helped keep others alive. But to help others he’d need to eat more of a person, and if he didn’t he might lose it like he did that first time (bloodied remains of a corpse in a dumpster still haunt his memories). That still wasn’t a sacrifice he was willing to make.

But if he ever found a way to save others without eating more, he wouldn’t hesitate for a second.

Izuku lay there in the sand for almost half an hour, dreaming of a reality where luck had been just that little bit kinder to him, before he finally stood up and slid his way back through the piles of rubbish. He felt the weary ache in his bones return as the last traces of happiness left him, the feelings of sadness and fear and guilt he hid from everyone else returning him.

But there was something else inside him now – a slither of determination to do something. Even if he couldn’t save people, he could do all he can to help those who do, even if it was the smallest of actions.

And Izuku knew exactly where to start.

---

Naomasa Tsukauchi was having a long night.

He’d started off the night by helping Present Mic and Sniper take down a small gang of thugs who’d been stirring up trouble the last few days. Well, by help, he meant stand to the side as the heroes did all the work, only coming afterwards to talk to each of the low-life criminals. That had been a pain in itself, the men grumbling out weak lie after weak lie until eventually the rest of the force decided to just lock them up and try interrogating again later.

Straight afterwards he’d been called to a house halfway across town as a lady called the police to hand herself in for murder, apparently very proud of herself for achieving her goal. When they arrived she was standing outside, laughing smugly as she held out her wrists for the handcuffs, not a trace of regret visible on her face.

Since then the detective had been stuck interrogating the disgrace of a woman for an hour and a half, trying to find out just why the living hell would she kill her sister “for the laughs”, as she so eloquently put it. There had been no hint of a lie when she said her reasoning, and it was quite honestly disgusting.

He’d decided to step outside for some fresh air after the deranged woman stopped answering his questions and simply went on a tangent about how her sibling deserved it for “having that fucking smug pretty face, always the favourite for her looks.”

However, as he looked down the street outside the station, he noticed a note clumsily stuck to a lamppost. Deciding it was better than going back inside to face the woman again he walked up to the flimsy piece of paper (slightly cautious in case it was a trap of sorts). After deeming it safe, he removed the paper and began to read the neat writing:

Hey whoever looks at this note!

If you’re not a member of the police force I ask you to hand the note over to them. Naomasa continued reading.

There's no way to not have this letter be a bit awkward - sorry about that. I just wanted to report a sighting of a suicide based in Musutafu forest. I was walking my dog when I found a body located on the west side of the place, about 100 metres away from the dragon-designed exit gate.

I recognised the body from the news a few weeks ago: it was Seiko Kamiya, a woman who was reported missing by her family for no apparent reason? It’s not the biggest case, you probably don’t know about it, but it should be on the database.

He noted the name for later, ready to check it out, while also feeling a sense of suspicion towards whoever wrote this note. Were they some form of villain? Why hadn’t they just come and reported this face to face?

Sorry for taking your time, but I just felt like I should report it. Might as well help where I can, right?

Good luck with fighting crime! I think you guys deserve more credit!

From no one in particular.

Weird compliments aside (no one complemented the police, they were almost a joke of sorts left to sweep up the pieces the heroes left behind) this letter screamed suspicious: the fact the person had downright refused to sign their name, or even a fake name, made it very likely this was some kid’s very unfunny version of a joke, or a villain trying to cause confusion and chaos among the force with false claims. What would someone be doing walking around the forest well known for it’s suicides anyway?

Might as well help where I can, right?

Oh well, he might as well check the claims, just in case. ‘It couldn’t hurt to check at least’, he thought as he re-entered the station, preparing for another round of anger caused by the immoral woman.

He didn’t know that a skinny figure in an oversized hoodie was watching from partway down the street on a bench looking intently at the detective who’d just received all the answers to the suicide case involving a depressed quirkless woman, written by a monster trying to survive and help at the same time.

Chapter Text

For the first time in the twelve unfortunate years of Izuku’s life, the world threw him a bone. It wasn’t the greatest one; he still had to eat others, he was still bullied daily, he still came home to an empty house as his mum slaved away just to earn enough money to look after a creature unworthy of her love, he still was in constant fear of what would happen if he let himself get just that little bit too hungry…

But at this point, the boy was grateful for any luck he could get.

It happened just under a month after he first released his limb thing (he was still testing names – none of the ones he came up with sounded quite right). He’d been heading out to the forest at 2 in the morning to collect his “meal” when a certain smell hit his nostrils. It wasn’t the smell of human flesh, he’d grown all too accustomed to that scent, and yet…

It was a smell of something edible that didn’t make him want to throw up!

He adjusted his mask (he’d started putting on medical masks whenever he went on this trip to further obscure the chances of any cameras recognising him through his baggy black hoodie, not that any cameras should be watching him but better safe than sorry) before running off in the direction of the smell, being careful to only “jog” as any faster would appear to be unnaturally speedy to the point of illegal quirk usage.

As he got closer to the scent he activated more of his quirk, eyes changing from white and green to black and red, removing his final visible distinguishable feature. He entered a nearby park, one he hadn’t visited since he was five and still had friends, the smell growing stronger every step, hope growing in his chest as yes, that smell was definitely not human, and yes he definitely wasn’t nauseated by it! He needed to find it, now! This could be what he was looking for; a way to survive without increasing the ugly stains of guilt and fear that would no doubt follow him for the rest of his life. He’d waited so long for an answer like this, and he was not willing to wait any longer than he had to.

Still, Izuku felt his traitorous body slow down (no no no he needed it now don’t stop take it now!) in surprise as he found the source of the smell: there was a young boy, no older than he was, sitting alone on a bench in the park beneath a flickering streetlight. He hadn’t been expecting this; what was someone this young doing out this late? They should be home asleep, preparing for school the next day, not hunching over with shaking arms wrapped around an extra-large cup of warm liquid.

That cup…

‘Priorities Izuku! First make sure this boy’s okay, ask about the drink later!’ he gave himself a mental slap as he cautiously edged closer to the bench. The lanky figure in front of him was definitely around his age, slender and child-looking, but starting to gain some of the height the beginnings of puberty brought (he could only dream of growing himself with his malnourished diet). However, his face brought an air of maturity to him, dull eyes and large shadows to rival Izukus own beneath them, his purple hair growing untamed in all directions like a weird mane.

The currently red eyed pre-teen had to stifle a wince at the sight of the forming bruises on the others neck and jaw. Whatever reason he had for being out here at this time was clearly not a good one.

“A-Are you o-okay?” Izuku stuttered out, seeing the look of shock on the purple haired boy as he saw he wasn’t as alone as he wanted to be. He couldn’t be blamed, Midoriya didn’t look the most approachable with his inverted eyes and red veins and dark sleepless shadows popping out as a frame around them, the rest of him covered head to toe in dark baggy clothes and the face mask. It was rather intimidating, despite his petite size and skinniness.

After a moment of looking the small masked figure, the dull eyes turned away from him, the owner mumbling out “M’fine.”: a blatant lie which only deepened Izuku’s concern.

It was annoying really. All he came to do was find what was in that cup, then head out for his miserable meal, but no, instead he felt the insistent need to help this boy. He’d have to be quick though, there was a reason why he was heading out now to eat: he was getting really hungry, and the throbbing from his insides was starting to become unbearable again.

“I-If you’re fine w-why’re you out h-here so l-late?” he talked on, taking in the smell coming off the other. Yes, there were definitely more cuts and bruises on the boy, the smell of blood was too distinct.

He earned himself an annoyed glance from the purple figure, “I could ask you the same thing. What’re you, like, eight or something?”

The twelve year old boy ignored the dig (just cause he was small didn’t mean he was a fetus!) and continued “I-I’m so-sorry, I guess I j-just wanted to make s-sure you d-didn’t need help.” It was clear the boy needed help, but Izuku was not the right one to give it. He wasn’t a person himself, how was he meant to understand and heal others when he was no more than a creature made to satisfy its own hunger. All he could do was provide some company for the hurting person, maybe get enough information to inform the police. But first “W-What’s in the c-c-cup, b-by the way?”

A small bitter smirk appeared on purple-needs-to-be-helped boy’s face, as he muttered “Nothing illegal, I promise. Just coffee.”

“C-coffee!? N-nothing else?”

“Nope. Just plain black coffee.”, he popped the ‘p’ sound, giving the slightly desperate boy a weird look (maybe he was reacting a little extremely to finding out about coffee, but he felt like it was justified considering the only human – humane food or drink he could keep down was water, something with zero nutritional value!). “It’s the cheapest thing the café’s got. Got a problem with that?”

“N-No! I-it just s-smelled r-really good…” Izuku stammered out as an attempt of damage control, only earning himself another judging glance. Was his choice of words really that weird?

They stood and sat there for a few short, but extremely awkward moments until the taller of the two ruffled his wild hair and shifted uncomfortably, murmuring out a quiet “Would you like some?”

Thank god he was wearing a mask, cause Izuku’s face had quickly gone a beetroot red under it as he hurriedly responded “No! I-I mean I-I’m fine thanks! J-Just heading out b-but I-I’m not hungry o-or thirsty so-“, just for his stomach to betray him by giving a loud growl and squirm.

Another smirk appeared as Midoriya’s face practically started glowing from humiliation, “You sure about that?”

He thought through his choices: he was pretty damn hungry right now, and he couldn’t exactly ignore how the inside of his mask had become wet from drooling at the smell of both the coffee and, undeniably, the scent rising from the others hidden cuts and scrapes. He had the choice of taking some of the coffee despite not paying for it (he didn’t like owing people they treated him bad enough when he didn’t and they always had him ‘pay back’ in the form of harsher beatings) or leave now, learn no more about this stranger who clearly needed help and possibly not even make it to the forest before he gave into his urges as the weak Deku he was. The choice wasn’t very hard.

He tentatively took the extended-out cup (which size wise was honestly more of a small basin), turned away from the offeror, and removed half his mask to take a gulp of the brew. He choked down a cry as he drank. No taste had ever given him so much controlled joy before!

It tasted like normal, bitter, cheap, crappy coffee. Completely normal and bitter and human! His stomach settled down a bit at the welcomed taste, calming his hunger.

He quickly put on his mask before he could chug the whole cup – that would just be rude, even though this guy seemed to have more than could possibly be healthy to consume – and returned the cup to the rightful owner who took a swig himself. He quickly noted the name drawn in black sharpie on the side (Shinsou, he’d look into that family name later) before focusing on the confused chuckle coming from the shock of purple hair.

“Heh, I never thought I’d see someone enjoy plain black coffee so much! I inhale it and still don’t have that much of a love for the stuff!” ‘Shinsou’ smiled tiredly, shaking his head slightly in disbelief at Izuku’s actions.

The choice of words caught the attention of the underweight child, “W-wait, if you d-don’t like it why are y-you sitting here at 2 in th-the morning drinking it by the gallon?” To his dismay his late-night acquaintance (‘I mean, he hasn’t hurt me yet, which is promising…?’) immediately soured, his eyes falling to the ground. “S-sorry if I offended you, I d-didn’t mean to-“

“No. S’fine.” He replied stiffly, sighing as he turned to face Izuku, barely flinching as his matching purple eyes focused on the red veins tracing the young creature’s face. “I just…if I drink enough coffee I don’t need to sleep.”

Izuku cocked his head slightly to the side, “What’s wrong with sleep? I-I mean we all need it so…?” He really didn’t know how to finish that sentence without completely forcing his nose where it didn’t belong, so he left it hanging in an open question. He really should head off soon.

In return Shinsou rolled his eyes, probably at Izuku’s lack of tact. “If I don’t need to sleep, I don’t need to go home.” He mumbled under his breath as he stood up, quiet enough that anyone without heightened hearing wouldn’t of herd a word. He was clearly done with the conversation as he started to walk away without another word.

“Th-thank you for the coffee!” was all he could think to say, the useless idiot he was.

“No problem kid,” was the response he got, the words making Izuku feel tendrils of guilt begin to wrap around his insides. “Kid”. As in Shinsou thought Midoriya was younger than him, like a lot younger. He thought he was sharing his feelings with someone too young to properly understand them, not a capable twelve-year-old. It made him feel like he was taking advantage of him…in a way?

Oh well, he’d pay him back in his own way: he’d do a little more digging online and around town tomorrow about the ‘Shinsou’ family and make the next note to the police about the possible child abuse and neglection.

And hey, he’d made a discovery – coffee was alright! He thought about his plans from the last month, how if he found a way to help people without increasing the amount he ate. Was this his answer? He’d have to prepare properly – retrain his fighting skills and pull together a more functional outfit – but he could do this!

For once he could do something he chose to do!

The next day Inko looked at her son with slight concern: “Izuku, is there a reason you’re drinking half a kettle of coffee straight after breakfast?”

Izuku pulled an only slightly strained smile across his face, ignoring the taste of bile at the back of his throat that was the return of his morning meal, “Not really mum, I guess I’ve just developed a taste for it!”

---

The entire police department was thrown into confusion, and had been stuck in it for the last month.

It all started with that note, the one about the quirkless women who’d committed suicide, written by an anonymous “no one”. They’d taken it as a tip off, a one time thing from someone who didn’t want to be dragged into the case.

They were wrong.

Every couple days, another note would appear from this “no one”, reporting or confirming multiple cases, some of them not even on the police radar yet, from suicides and drug smuggling to abusive household warnings, with even a couple of unsolved murder case analysis’ and solutions. They’d tried to track down who was taping them up, just to find the locations of the letters being in camera blind spots, or placed in plain sight by people who stated to of been told by others to take in the notes – not even the description of the people who told others to bring in notes matched up. Maybe some sort of appearance altering quirk? But then what about knowing the camera positions? Shouldn’t some sort of quirk be needed for those, whether it’s some form of perception quirk or at least an intelligence quirk that lets them hack into the police system undetected? It just didn’t add up.

Then there was the issue of who the hell “no one” was – their first bet had been a new vigilante, but knowledge on unsolved cases and understanding of the system as a whole hinted more towards an ex pro, but the lack of will to come forward mixed with police knowledge led to claims of more ex police force, but the cases solved by this person that the police wasn’t even aware of led them right back round to theorising about a new vigilante. Not even starting on how so many of the letters were written as if at a civilian standpoint (written with excuses like ‘I was walking my dog when I came across…’ and ‘I was heading back to my car when I happened to witness…’), but they wrote that down to a weak attempt to throw off further, not that it was needed. Nothing about this person made sense!

Sure, this mysterious person wasn’t doing anything wrong morally per say, but they needed to know who this was and what their motives were, maybe even ask them to train and join the force. All they’d reported so far was correct, but the lack of knowing where this mystery person was getting this information was freaking a lot of people out, Naomasa Tsukauchi included.

He frowned as he re-read todays note about some kid called “Hitoshi Shinsou”, a twelve-year-old who was apparently stuck in an abusive household because of his quirk. While the note was written in it’s usual positive, passive tone the writer still hadn’t hesitated as labelling the parents as “idiotic quirkist bastards”, which was honestly the closest thing they had to a clue on this person’s view, along with a higher respect for the police than most and a serious lack in self belief (shown through the constant apologies scattered through the writing despite them being filled with useful information that only benefitted the police). However, they couldn’t be sure if any of this was fabricated just for the sake of further throwing them off the trail, so the whole force was basically stuck.

After wishing (not for the first time) that his lie detector quirk would work through paper, Naomasa finally decided enough was enough: the heroes needed to be dragged into this case, cause the police were sure going nowhere with it.

He picked up his private mobile and went to the first pro that crossed his mind for this situation. Sure he was friends with Toshinori, but this wasn’t that big a case! Plus they didn’t need raw power for this, they needed stealth, patience and sharp perception.

And who fit that bill better than Eraserhead?

The phone rang once…twice…three times. It kept ringing as Naomasa started to wonder if the hero would actually pick up when a grouchy voice said “This better be important, I’m on duty.”

“Ah Eraserhead! Sorry to bother you at…” the detective cringed slightly as he saw the 01:38 blaring on the clock, jeez it really was getting late, and it was right in the middle of the grumbling hero’s shift, “…this hour, but there’s a case I need to talk to you about. Well, technically two, but they’re linked. One is this kid who we want to get out of a rather violent household as soon as possible, involving parents with two decently strong emitter quirks, and considering your…past I think you’ll be one of the most qualified heroes to help deal with the situation.”

A moments silence on the other end of the line before a rough “Fine, send me the details, I’ll bring a plan together in the next few days, I’ll need the police ready to arrest the parents if they resist.” A small amount of the tension was lifted from Naomasa, but he still hadn’t asked about the more frustrating of the cases (at least from the police’s standpoint).

“Um, meanwhile the second case is more complicated. It’s about the one who reported the abuse case. It’s someone who’s been sending in letters and notes about certain cases, some we weren’t even aware of! We think it’s some sort of vigilante, but not knowing whether or not we can trust this source is putting everyone here on edge. Not to mention just how little we’ve got on the case: this has been going on for a full month and we have nothing. Nothing! How’s that even possible!?”

Little rant out the way, the frustrated detective waited patiently as the erasure hero thought through the information. What felt like an eternity passed before an answer was heard “Give me a few days to sort out the abuse case and wrap up my current projects, then I’ll look into whether or not I’ll join the case.”

“B-but this situation is urgent! We don’t know who’s sending us this stuff! What if it’s some villain who’ll end up- “

An annoyed growl cut Naomasa off, “Listen, are these notes hurting anyone?” a clearly miffed Aizawa asked sternly.

“No?”

“Are you forced to act on them? Is there some quirk influence here which makes you unable to question the papers?”

A ball of shame started to rise up Naomasa’s throat as he realised where the pro was going with this. “No,” he said a lot quieter than before.

“Then I don’t see the rush. Stay wary of the notes for now, but if you find their information correct act on it. Now I don’t know what you guys at the force are taught but I personally believe stopping a child from being beaten by their parents and possibly other relatives just because of the power they were born with is more urgent than finding the source of notes and letters that so far have done nothing but help you.” Aizawa said in a monotone voice with a layer of anger hidden only just below the surface. He’d always made his viewpoint on vigilantes clear, his job involving a lot more working alongside them than any mainstream hero would. No doubt the man even owed a few of them with his life.

“No! Of course that’s our priority as well!” the plain detective started trying to retract his words, but his efforts were fruitless as Aizawa continued talking regardless.

“Good, now I’ll see you tomorrow.” And with that he hung up, leaving Naomasa alone again with the informative note and a head filled with questions.

---

After the discovery of coffee, Izuku rapidly began to change his lifestyle: he’d drink the glorious substance three times a day: as much as he felt he could consume in the morning without worrying his mum to death, a large cup he snuck from the teacher’s lounge each day at the end of the school day and a final couple cups when he got home after his workout, fuelling him for his studying which he’d moved to doing late at night instead of attempting to sleep.

Speaking of workouts, he’d started doing them! With the now constant rush of caffeine through his system he’d now go to the beach for a couple hours after school to train, using the hidden clearing among the junk as his training spot. He mainly focused on regaining the technique he’d had when he went to the dojo when he was younger, using his memory, old notes and online videos to get as good as he could in the mixture of styles he had a basic understanding of, using piles of rubbish as enemies.

He knew he wouldn’t ever be physically fit, but he had decent enough strength with roughly four times an average human just after eating and about two times as he got hungrier. It still definitely wasn’t what he’d be relying on in a fight, focusing more on his speed, agility and technique to improve on and use to his advantage.

He’d decided not to use his extra limbs, which he’d finally settled on calling a kagune (it just felt right when he said it, like it slipped naturally off the tongue when he thought of his hidden weapons. He’d made a discovery with them the third and last time he’d taken them out: even though by then he’d decided not to use them as they used too much energy and linked just a bit too closely to what his quirk was, as well a being extremely deadly if he didn’t focus, he still wanted a basic understanding of them in case something happened that left him no choice other than to use them. When he did he realised that in a weird messed up way his quirk had done what many do: taken elements from the parent’s genetics. However instead of simply taking quirk elements his kagune seemed to of taken Izuku’s parents personalities and turned each into a design. The scorpion-esc top tentacles were made for protection, the end stinger designs capable to dig into walls and the ground to pull himself out the way, the surfaces smooth enough to safely warp around others to help them. This selfless, less violent aspect of his quirk embodied his mum’s nature through and through, and while he didn’t remember much about his dad – Hisashi, he knew the man was more straightforward than he and his mum. Honestly Izuku didn’t want to focus to much on how violence-based the lower part of his kagune was.

Even with the caffeinated discovery, sacrifices had to be made for his new goal. For example, he had to buy concealer now: with whatever sleep he used to get being replaced with the studying he missed in the day thanks to the new workouts along with occasional late night training sessions, the bags under his eyes increased into sunken holes. Their was also the issue of how while the caffeine kept his hunger at bay for the month, he was still getting no increase in nutrition, leading to a rather startling loss of whatever fat he had left, his cheeks becoming gaunt and his bones sticking out awkwardly all over his body. He smeared on layers of concealer to hide the facial damage, and spent the remainders of his money on even baggier clothing and stuff for his vigilante outfit (while he was staying mainly low-key he needed a few new things, like platformed black boots (he couldn’t use red as that would link to clearly to his red trainers he lived in) and a protective underlayer to wear beneath his modified jumper).

Thing is it all cost more than ‘the remainders’, so Izuku had to sell the last of the rare hero merch he’d kept in the back of his wardrobe, as while he’d happily taken down and sold most of the stuff he’d been collecting since he first got allowance at age 3 (having hero pictures and figures staring down on you when you sleep doesn’t quite have the same affect when you know they’d justifiably hate what you really are if they ever found out), he still loved heroes for what they did, and couldn’t bring himself to get rid of some of his more precious belongings.

At least until now. The only item he kept was a rather embarrassing cloth mask that covered the lower half of his face, endorsed with a print of All Might’s smile, and that was only because he was modifying it for his new outfit.

School also continued to worsen. While no one had thankfully noticed the addition of concealer to Izuku’s long list of odd traits (the last thing he needed was “girl” and “drag queen junior” added to the range of insults), his lack of growth was getting more attention than he wanted. While his uniform hid the worst of weight loss, his classmates were starting to pick up more and more on just quite how weak and small he was, even the smallest girl in the year being a few centimetres taller than him, even with the clunky red shoes he persistently wore. Not like any of it stopped them from picking on him and beating him regularly.

Kacchan was still the worst, taking out every small frustration on the slight boy despite the continuously growing size difference between them. Izuku had to buy more bandages and plasters than ever to hide the injuries he needed to pretend to have for his cover. Even the family meetups between the Midoriyas and Bakugos were bad now, with him and Kacchan sitting in absolute silence during the meal and after as they played video games. He guessed it was as the blonde had nothing good to say to him in the slightest now, and he couldn’t exactly scream at him with the adults in the same house, and it wasn’t like Izuku would instigate a conversation.

But it would all be worth it! Once he learnt how to fight well enough he could go out and save people! He could make every bite of decaying person worth something if he dedicated some of him (he’d always be most dedicated to his mum and her happiness) towards helping and saving and just doing good in the world.

He might even be able to pretend to be a person.

---

Three months into the new training regiment Izuku decided he was ready.

Okay maybe he wasn’t quite there yet, but he was impatient. Every month he didn’t save people was another month he committed crimes in the forest for no beneficial reason. Plus his technique was still pretty decent, and if he did mess up he had the speed and senses to make up for it, with regeneration and his kagune ready for a worst case scenario.

His outfit was complete as well: a large dark grey hoodie that sat on the line between being baggy and simply not fitting at all, covered with a pattern of dark red lightning (he’d gotten bored one night after preparing his mum’s dinner early and started stitching on the design, and found that he couldn’t really stop), equally large jeans held up by a simple black belt and chunky black boots (just to add a little height) that he’d plated the front and top of the foot area with metal from a car on the beach, just to add more impact to his weak but fast kicks. He’d put small pieces of metal on the knuckles of leather gloves (last worn by Hisashi, found in a cupboard when he was looking for the sewing kit), and had topped off the look with the All Might mask he’d since painted black except the smile, which he added a zipper to if he needed to talk clearer, leaving his eyes (which he’d keep red in his time doing vigilante work) as the only visible feature. Around the neck, jaw, cheeks and nose he stitched pieces of a leather jacket on the inside just to make it a bit less easily torn. Finally, there was the thick black underlayer that covered everything from his wrists to his ankles. It wasn’t visible beneath all the other clothes, but it provided just that little bit of extra protection.

So that night, once he was sure his mum was asleep, Izuku got fully dressed into his gear and slid out his bedroom window, silently scaling down the building and running down the street. He was filled with adrenaline, and was using it to smother the fear and the feeling of ‘oh my god I have no idea what I’m doing’ that were festering as he turned into a dark alley. How did this work properly? He knew the areas with more villain attacks, but he’d have a higher chance of bumping into a hero. He knew areas he must avoid due to cameras (they were easy enough to locate when you could hear the soft whir of their machinery and spot them easily from the other end of the street – thanks enhanced senses) He knew many vigilantes set up rough routes of sorts, but this was his first night, he didn’t have a solid route planned. Should he just run around hoping to run into someone, or should he sneak around and listen out for anything suspicious sounding? That all felt too disorganised though, a waste of stamina, he needed to find a spot he could use to see as much as possible.

‘Might as well start with that,’ he thought as he turned another corner of the empty alleyways, ‘to see more I guess I should…start with the roofs?’

With that Izuku quickly bounded off the walls, swiftly making his way to the top of the three-story building on his left in two quirk enhanced jumps. He felt his ankle twist at his first dodgy attempt at scaling a building (he wasn’t a freaking pro, why did he think he’d be able to do that well straight off the bat?), but he felt it already start to right itself as his healing kicked in. He stayed still a few seconds, allowing the sprain to fix itself as he took in his surroundings.

Yeah, this worked better, the higher vantage point let him see more of the streets below, plus the buildings were close enough together he should be able to safely jump between them with only minimum effort (as long as he wasn’t an idiot who just went for it without thinking about the execution. Cautiously, he took a step back, followed by a small running start for his jump. Luckily, this time he landed on the other roof with no damage. He carefully jumped the next couple of roofs, before deciding he had it down enough to continue looking for criminals.

He spent the next couple minutes leaping roof to roof, keeping an eye out for any suspicious activity when BAM! Right there! Izuku practically sprinted over the roofs towards the source of quiet whimpering that reached his ears, jumping off the edge to quickly scramble down to the ground by rebounding off the walls on either side of the unlit alley. He got off with nothing but sore joints, which he considered a win.

As he squinted in the bad lighting he saw a figure whining, curled up on the floor surrounded by what looked like a small group of thugs. His red eyes darted around as he immediately started analysing what he saw: the one on the ground smelt of blood, probably injured when attacked by the three others, two men, one woman. One of the men seemed to have a sword instead of an arm (easily taken down considering his invulnerability to blades), the other with no obvious quirk related features, but less muscly than the others, and the women had large purple spots covering her arms (something poison related?).

The three villains turned to face Izuku, each glowering threateningly at the small boy. The one with no obvious quirk stepped forward, clearly the leader of the group, and gruffly said, “What’d’ya want?”

The inexperienced vigilante gulped. Oh boy he was actually doing this. “U-Um hi? I-I um, just, um- “ he stopped to regather his thoughts before continuing in a shaky voice “P-Please leave or I-I’ll h-have to s-stop you?”

Izuku cringed at his own words. Is this how seven years of social isolation leave someone? He’d have to work on that in the future. The woman in the group seemed to agree that he sucked as she cruelly laughed and responded “Get lost kid and we won’t hurt you.” Kid? Really? Was he that obviously young even with the boots and clothing?

Wait- no that wasn’t the issue here! “I’m sorry, b-but that’s not going to happen,” he responded as he pulled himself into a defensive fighting stance.

Another cruel laugh, this time from the leader, “Suit yourself,” was the last thing Izuku heard before the thinner man rushed forward and the fight began.

It wasn’t the smoothest fight, with Izuku very quickly losing his form under the pressure and resorting to using his fast reactions and reflexes to weave between attacks. The guy's quirk turned out to be some form of power storage, where the more consecutive attacks he threw the stronger he got. The women squirted bursts of purple liquid from her spots which corroded the wall behind him (they reminded Izuku sickeningly of exploding pimples taken to a next level), and her attacks helped him think of an improvement for his costume; without his kagune he really didn’t have a long range attack, and he couldn’t always rely on being able to get up close to the opponent. He was honestly lucky that the man with the sword arm wasn’t the smartest and he was able to use his lumbering form to block the deadly splashes with, also using the oafs weight against him to shove him into her again and again until they both tired out.

The leader was more within the young boy’s capability to take out, his fast movements leaving the powered-up man in the dust again and again as he attempted to land a punch on the light-footed child. Eventually he got the man to punch the women with a build up of eight punches, knocking the worn-out women cold.

Izuku quickly dealt with the bladed man, kicking him in the nose with the metal plating, barely getting a chance to turn before feeling a whopping punch make impact with his torso. He felt his ribs crack as the force slammed him into the wall (oh well, that would heal), and he quickly began ricocheting off the walls to try and make his opponent lose their accuracy while Izuku at least let his rib roughly reset itself. It wasn’t like the pain bothered him, it was more he didn’t want to risk further damaging it by moving too violently.

On his tenth rebound, he shot his fist out towards the fuming thug and punched him in the throat with the metal knuckles. As the man fell to the ground choking, Izuku placed his foot on the man’s head and kicked it into the ground beneath him. The green haired boy felt his face screw up in discomfort at his win: he knew that as a vigilante his fighting would have to be a bit dirtier than the heroes, but it still didn’t feel quite right to leave his opponents bleeding on the ground, unconscious.

Not much he could do about that now, he had to analyse what just happened while it was fresh in his mind. He pulled out his current hero journal number 15 from his large front pocket, the book now doubling as villain analysis and lately, vigilante business. ‘Okay, so I need some form of long-range attack, maybe something easily pulled out like Midnight’s whip? I also need to sort out these trousers, they’re good loose but these are so big they could inhibit my movement, maybe I’ll add some first aid stuff to help civilians and villains I take it too far with, just some of my bandages will do. Also I need to stay calm, I didn’t use any holds or throws and just flailed like a stupid Deku, I can’t just jump around hoping not to-‘

Izuku’s train of thought and scribbled notes were interrupted as the sound of sobs brought him back to reality. Oh right, the civilian he’d heard in the first place! He quickly turned to the women and helped her into a sitting position. She was in her late twenties, obviously dressed for a night out, with her tights and dress ripped from when she’d been pushed over. Her belongings from her bag were scattered all over the floor, and she had a bruise forming on her head, a few scrapes from the fall and a nasty looking burn on her hand from the corrosive quirk.

He forced his voice steady and into a lower pitch, hoping it would give him some form of authoritative aura, “Just focus on me, okay? It’s alright, you’re safe now.”

“Th-thanks,” the woman sniffed out, mascara running down her face as she looked up at his face, just to flinch at she met red eyes with black sclera shining out of dark shadows and dark veins poking out of pale, shallow skin. Guess he could expect that reaction again in the future.

“J-just…do you still have your phone?” he asked, trying to contain his usual socially awkward mannerisms. He needed to be the supportive one in this situation, not show his usual insecurities and weaknesses and flaws.

He needed to be like the person his mum deserved.

“Y-Yeah, it’s just over th-there,” she shakily pointed at the device strewn to the side a few metres away. It didn’t seem broken.

“Ok, well then…” Izuku thought for a second, “I’m sorry to leave you but I kinda need to get out of here before anyone shows up, so can you call the police once I’ve left?” to his relief she gave a shaky nod. “Thank you, I don’t really want to get arrested for helping others! If asked who saved you…just say a certain no one, they’ll know what it means. Now I’ve really got to go! Stay safe!”

And with that he started running, hoping that mess of a leaving speech was decent enough. He’d definitely have to work on his people skills if he was going to keep this up along with getting his own way to contact the police...

It was only once he’d sprinted a good few blocks way that it finally hit him. That he’d really done it. He’d saved someone, alas illegally, but still someone who otherwise wouldn’t be here anymore was alive thanks to him! He’d finally been able to give something back to humanity!

Izuku didn’t quite smile as he ran back home to finish assessing improvements for tomorrow night, but he felt a lightness inside him that had been missing for a long time.

---

The next day the police force was thrown into complete chaos at the sight of a walkie talkie taped alongside a note the next day reading:

Hey police! At least I hope you’re the ones who picked this up, I mean, you should be used to keeping an eye out for these notes after all these months!

I hope you enjoyed my little gift last night. Yes, the lady was telling the truth, I took down a couple of thugs last night; it was honestly a thrill doing my part to help you guys! Please ask if she’s doing okay for me, the criminals knocked her up pretty badly.

I know, I know, my actions weren’t exactly legal, but I’ve been helping you for this long and I couldn’t stand just continuing to leave all the work to the heroes and forces. So think of this as an upgrade: from a small voice who whispers hints to a helping hand who’ll help get the job done!

Oh, and I’ll be reporting locations of those I apprehend through the attached walkie talkie. It’s untraceable, so don’t bother trying to find me that way. I’d rather keep my private life separate if that’s okay, I mean of course it’s not really what I’m doing is against the law! Sorry for the stupid request I guess.

Still, I can’t wait for what’s to come!

From no one in particular

So the report from the night before was true, no denying it. The ‘No One’ figure they’d spent the last four months trying to track down had finally taken the jump from source to vigilante. Naomasa quickly pulled out his mobile, going straight to Aizawa’s contact and slamming the call button.

A few rings later there was a tired, “What now?”

The detective couldn’t blame the pro for sounding one hundred percent done – the two had been working on the ‘No One’ case together since Aizawa saved the purple haired kid a few months back (the same kid who he and Present Mic had been said to be considering to adopt), and they’d gotten exactly nowhere. It was infuriating: how could a pro, a top detective and a small groups of specifically picked out cops go out of their way for months to try and catch a single person leaving notes on the busy street outside the station without finding a single trace? Their target was either extremely smart or extremely paranoid about being found, either way working out in their favour.

Not that it mattered now. The stakes had been raised.

“There’s been an addition to the case, and not a good one,” the worn out detective stated, “No One has finally stopped viewing from afar and has started committing vigilantism.”

A groan could be heard from Eraserhead, muttering a quiet “fuck” as the man appeared to finally give up on humanity in the form of muffled moans and swears. It was justified: up until now there had been a chance of being able to track down the mystery person and try recruit them into the police (they were pretty sure at this point that the source was a good person, just from the sheer amount of effort they put into helping them). But now that they’d committed vigilantism, so openly admitting it as well…both the police and heroes were legally bound to take down and arrest the talented individual no matter their own views and morals.

Naomasa could hear the pro calm down on his end, before saying a calm “Okay, I’ll keep an eye out for now on my patrols. Logistically if No One is going out and saving people themself they should be easier to track, and we can finally bring an end to this case even if we don’t like the outcome.” The other man couldn’t argue with that, merely answering with a quick “Please do that, I’ll expand the area of cameras looking for No One, though I doubt we’ll find much considering he seems to know all their placements.”

“Thanks for the update,” was the monotone response he got, followed by the pro hanging up. Naomasa sighed to himself; Aizawa may be the most blunt, done-with-the-world hero he’s ever met, but without a doubt if anyone could find the seemingly invisible vigilante it would be him.

Invisible huh? He might as well have a look at those with invisibility quirks on the database instead of doing nothing to help with the case rapidly slipping from his control.

Have a small sketch of Izuku with his dirty bean water! I'm working on an image of Izuku in his complete vigilante gear and kagune for next chapter!

Chapter Text

Why do people experience the drive to advance in the world? They set themselves goals, work to reach them, then set new ones that push them further, and so forth. These personal goals can be of different difficulties, whether it’s to achieve stardom or just to make it to the next day.

This need to push yourself further and further might be a leftover feature from before humans created the speedily advancing society of today; some outdated coding within the brain that was needed when people needed to push themselves to survive, hunting and gathering as much as they could to increase their chances. Is the drive to do better only there due to the brain not being able to keep up with the pace we’re developing our living conditions?

Or is this something darker: a coping mechanism used to keep morale up, helping those who’re able to reach benchmark after benchmark. To stop people from achieving a final goal and asking themselves the question. The two-word question that has brought many successful careers to an end and can quickly throw a person into a crisis, re-evaluating their life choices and all their goals thus far. The question that has unfortunately brought an end to many lives.

And that simple question is: What now?

---

Aizawa perched on the flat rooftop of a seven-story building at the edge of Musutafu, peering down at the mainly empty streets below. That was expected; it was 3 in the morning and this area of the city was pretty much abandoned due to budget cuts, leaving many of the buildings unfinished and unusable after a big villain attack happened there a couple years back. However the lack of civilians and habitable properties left the location a place where less flashy, more secretive crimes thrived, making it a key location on Shouta’s patrol. It wasn’t like many other heroes were willing to work out here, the lack of media coverage on these underground crimes discouraged most heroes from wanting to patrol these areas. Only the occasional unlucky intern or sidekick came through here when told to, often just to collect ‘experience’. Shouta didn’t mind the lack of heroes around these poorer areas though, cause while sure it would be nice to have some legal backup for a change, it also left him with the freedom to work how he wanted without worrying about interruptions or distractions from others. He could work how he wanted, with whatever methods he chose (within reason, he was a hero at the end of the day), in what locations he wanted with whoever he wanted.

Not that he was working right now. He was here for something else.

As if on cue, a (obviously altered) low voice came from behind him. “Hey Eraser! Sorry again for yesterday, I really didn’t mean to break that man’s arm! Though he did deserve it, the dirty pervert.”

Shouta turned his head towards the source to look disapprovingly at the small figure. “I understand your feelings towards him, he was found to be the culprit for several rape cases from the last couple months, just as you said. But the more people you hurt, the harder it’ll be to bail you out of prison if you get caught.” While the hero wanted the boy to show any sort of consideration to his stern words, he knew better: he was instead answered with a raised eyebrow over red eyes filled with a cheeky glint as the vigilante took a few steps closer to his side of the roof.

“Oh, I don’t plan of getting caught anytime soon!” said a voice so obviously dripping with charisma that if it wasn’t for past encounters Shouta might’ve been convinced that this kid was actually some confident, experienced adult who did just happen to be…petite. That’s sure what the local media seemed to have concluded, and they were partially right. Sure, the vigilante was experienced after taking down so many criminals and villains alike, which had helped them gain confidence over time. That was correct, but…

“Now,” the erasure hero was snapped from his thoughts as the figure stopped walking, stopping a few paces away from him, just out of arm’s reach, “what interesting stories do you have for me this week?”

As Shouta started thinking about what highlights to include for this particular meetup, he couldn’t really help but think about the progress he’d made with the kid.

It had been over a year since he’d begun his hunt to track down the vigilante known as ‘No One’, and it had been a tough one. He had to make a whole new timetable for his patrol, using a couple of hours in the middle of his shift to search the streets with the highest crime rates, hoping to bump into No One in the act, capture him and bring him into the police, where he would then see if there was any way for the guy to work alongside the police as a sort of ‘community service’ thing to shorten the sentence (or something to that extent). But everything changed with that first time he’d met the person face to face.

No One was a child. A fucking child. He’d spent 3 months of nightly searches and worked overtime to track a kid.

Their first meeting would stay with him until the day he died.

Once again, Shouta was prowling the streets, keeping one eye out for any criminal activity, the other for the vigilante that he was meant to be searching for, though as time went by it seemed less and less likely that No One could be tracked down. It perplexed the underground hero: he was one of the best at what he did, and he could pretty much track down anyone unnoticed, and yet he’d barely seen a shadow of this person who focused their work in the same area as him and somehow posted notes to the police everyday undetected!

Honestly, he’d been on the verge of giving up on the case to fully focus on criminals that actually harmed society. While No One was clearly talented, he (they knew he was male from the voice on the walkie-talkie, but minus that they had an embarrassingly small amount of info on the guy) obviously didn’t want to be found, and it wasn’t like Aizawa had anything against vigilantes – some of his best work partners on undercover missions and back-alley deals were vigilantes! If he insisted on working alone, Shouta would begrudgingly allow him to do so if he continued discovering and shutting down cases that the heroes didn’t.

Then out of nowhere, a hooded figure ran around the corner and into the street next to the alleyway Shouta was inside, panting while clutching onto shaking legs with gloved hands, clearly exhausted.

The erasure hero felt his eyes widen beneath his goggles as his breath caught in his throat. No. Fucking. Way.

No way did the vigilante he’d been tracking for months just so happen to stop so close to him!

He didn’t dare breathe as he started creeping out of the alley towards the winded figure, who was still gasping for air. He figured that one of the possible options for No One’s quirk was some form of heightened senses (it would explain how no one, hero or villain, had ever been able to sneak up on him), so it was safer to make as little noise as humanly possible for this one.

He moved slowly, one step at a time, until he was just a few metres away from the man. Then as quickly as he could he threw out his capture weapon and wrapped it tightly around the man. He mentally prepared himself to give the legally-required speech about ‘resisting arrest’ and so on before he could ask his own questions.

“Sir, you’re under arrest for illegal- “

But Shouta never got the chance to finish his sentence as he met eyes with the illegal hero. There had been very little information received about the vigilante from civilians he saved and the villains he took down, and there had only been one hero report on No One, provided by some new rookie hero called Death Arms who had run into him at the scene of a crime that they’d both gone to apprehend the villain at. It had been annoyingly vague, saying how No One was a short man with red eyes who showed a fear towards heroes (not a surprise as most vigilantes showed some form of negative emotion towards the heroes that tried to arrest them).

But No One wasn’t just short. He was tiny.

His eyes weren’t just red but had black sclera and red veins protruding from the skin surrounding them. They were the only visible feature of his body as every other centimetre of skin was covered in fabric.

And those eyes, that almost seemed to glow in the darkness, weren’t just emoting fear towards being captured by Shouta.

They showed pure, unbridled terror.

At the end of the day…No One was a terrified small child.

Shouta was immediately aware of how much the man kid was trembling in the capture weapon, clearly working himself into a panic as his eyes started bulging out of their sockets.

“Kid, it’s,” the pro hero had to stop again as the boy let out a high pitched whine that sounded scarily like a wounded animal at the sound of his voice. He tried again: “Kid, it’s okay. I’m not gonna hurt you, I just need you to calm down for me, okay?” He got the feeling he’d just spoken to deaf ears.

So instead Aizawa decided to wait patiently as the kid continued to whimper, breathing unevenly into the mask that covered the bottom half of his face. Despite clearly being on the verge of a panic attack the child gasped out a quiet “E-Eraserhead? P-p-please l-let go. I…I wo-won’t run away. Please.” The voice was high pitched – if that sound was anything to go by the great vigilante known as No One was younger than Hitoshi! There was a weird waver to the voice however, an unnatural one that sounded almost like a…a faulty voice changer? If this kid was making voice changers, then they must be older than they sound…right?

It didn’t matter how old they were! No One was a child – one who was terrified of heroes and needed obvious help, not to be locked up for his actions!

Shouta knew it was wrong, but he let his scarf loosen it’s hold on the vigilante. As he expected, the boy went against his previous words and immediately started flailing his way out of the cloths. With a final pained, terrified whine, the boy went speeding off into the night.

Something needed to be done.

The hero decided to cut his patrol short and headed straight to the police station. He needed to have a word with a certain detective.

As expected, Detective Tsukauchi was still up working overtime at the station, slumped over a cup of coffee while reading through a stack of papers. Aizawa cleared his throat to get the man’s attention.

“Detective,” he said, waiting until the bleary-eyed man was looking at him before continuing, “I need to talk to you about the No One case.”

That immediately caught the other sleep-deprived man’s attention as he hastily stood up and stumbled over to the hero, the notes he was reading long forgotten. “Please tell me there’s been a breakthrough! Please tell me this is good news Eraserhead!” The man’s eyes were twitching slightly as he pleaded to Shouta, leaving the shabby-looking hero to wonder just how long the detective had been awake for.

“Yeah, there’s been a breakthrough of sorts,” Aizawa quickly continued speaking as he saw a glimmer of hope appear on the man’s face, “but it’s not a good breakthrough, it…complicates things.”

Tsukauchi groaned as he slumped back down in his chair, head on the desk as he moaned out, “Of course it complicates things, why the hell wouldn’t it!?” there was a few seconds of silence in which the officer seemed to question his whole life before he said “Continue.”

And continue Shouta did. He told the detective all about his earlier encounter with No One, the discovery that the vigilante was a child and how the kid reacted to Shouta capturing him. Ten minutes later, he wrapped up the speech with his idea of what to do next:

“I don’t want this kid to get caught. If he does there’s too high a risk that he’ll be locked up or at least get into serious trouble, either way gaining a criminal record which’ll mean he couldn’t become a hero or join the police force! Hell, it’ll probably make him even more set on his choice of vigilantism, maybe even lead him to villainy if he feels he doesn’t have the choice!” He took a deep breath before saying the not-so-legal idea that he’d started planning the moment he saw the kid’s eyes, “It’s obvious No One is heroic and wants to do what he believes is best, and from what we’ve seen his morals are rather intact and befitting of those of a hero. There’s just some form of mental barrier there that’s made him think this is a better path for him. With that in mind, I believe our best option is to let him continue what he’s doing and instead try and convince him to head down a more legal route by gaining his trust. He was clearly scared of me, and heroes in general, so if I show him that we can be trusted he might become more willing to change, something that won’t be accomplished by ganging up on him, capturing him and destroying what he’s created for himself!”

“Wait wait wait,” Tsukauchi looked at the hero with a stern glare, “You’re basically asking to throw the case!? You can’t be serious! I understand you want to help this boy, but breaking the law is not the way to do it!”

Aizawa quickly countered, “It’s not really ‘breaking the law’, per say. It’s not like we have much on No One anyway. We know he’s a male, and that he’s a child, but that barely enough to solve the case with! We’re both tired of this case anyways with the lack of breakthroughs, and there’s not enough people willing to work on this to make good progress!”

The detective sighed, leaning back in his chair, frown still present on his face, and mumbled out “Where are you going with this?”

“We’ll keep working on the case but put it to the side. There are more urgent cases for both of us to focus on anyway. Stop trying to actively track No One and instead solely look into finding his civilian identity. I’ll keep trying to track him and talk to him.” Shouta said, studying the other man, attempting to figure out just what the detective thought of this rough plan, how he’ll react, what that facial expression entailed-

Without warning Tsukauchi stood up and walked to the exit, grabbing his coat off the stand as he went. “We’ll discuss details tomorrow,” he said, not looking back at the mildly surprised hero.

“O….kay?” was all Shouta could think of saying in return, still feeling rather confused on what the hell was going on.

Tsukauchi seemed to notice that, as he turned back around and said, “If we’re not focusing on this case, I’m not gonna continue pulling all nighters trying to solve it. I haven’t slept in two days, which while normal to you is not to most regular people! So goodnight Eraserhead. Well, technically good morning.”

And with that Aizawa was left alone in the office, the amber glow of the sun rising just beginning to seep through the blinds. He shut his eyes and questioned just how messy this ordeal would be – they’d have to re-designate as many of the few officers on the case as they could without looking suspicious, they’d have to show some form of progress on the case or they’d be taken off themselves, they’d have to convince a child who feared heroes to trust them enough to throw away the No One persona he’d made for himself.

It wasn’t going to be easy, but they – Shouta needed to help this kid! The fearful look on his face when Aizawa captured him – No One clearly needed help, and yet continued to save others instead.

‘He’s the reason we even found out about Hitoshi.’ The realisation hit Shouta as he made his way out the station, ready to head home for the night (Hizashi would be fuming if he wasn’t home by the time he woke up). The kid had done so much for others, more than most heroes are ever willing to do.

Shouta decided he wouldn’t stop trying until he’d returned the favour.

Since that first meeting…things had gotten better. Sure, it was slow, but he was gaining the kid’s trust one step at a time. It took months just to convince ‘No One’ – he really wanted to learn his real name – that he wouldn’t hand him into the police, and for a few months now they’d met weekly to catch up (which mainly consisted of Shouta talking while the kid listened, as despite his relaxed attitude the vigilante was extremely guarded about anything to do with himself). They’d even worked together in a few fights, though Aizawa was careful to never touch the boy or get too close during these. He’d watched as a shy, terrified child with poor technique had become more sure of themselves, more determined and confident as they took down harder cases and learnt from every small mistake better than any of his students did. If it weren’t for the whole vigilante thing being illegal, Shouta would be quite proud of the kid.

But that was the issue: this whole thing was illegal, and No One had started attracting some media attention. While crimes in this area weren’t often publicised, when enough people were saved by the same person an interest starts to spark, especially once a few small-time heroes tried to take him down as an “easy target”, just to be completely outmanoeuvred. While it was still only a small reputation, the name No One was quickly gaining more and more attention as the mysterious individual started saving more people daily than most heroes did. Aizawa just knew this steadily growing reputation could only have bad consequences.

Then there was the infuriating knowledge that the kid had no plans to stop. Shouta had warned the boy about his reputation when it started to emerge just to get an eyeroll and no further comment in return. No One had a complete lack of self-preservation that irritated the man to no end, as what the hell could happen to a kid this that made him not even flinch at the thought of his own arrest? All Shouta could do was watch as No One’s outfit got upgraded over time, from the added intricacy to the patterned hoodie, to the now fully functional voice changer inside his smiling mask, to the new paint on the metal sections of the shoes to stop them glinting in the light, to the recent changes to the whip that hung on a belt inside his baggy hoodie; it was now painted a mix of red and black with…was that a hook on the end? Shouta wasn’t quite sure what that last design choice was for, but all of the changes screamed one thing: this kid was thinking of how to improve his designs for the future, and if he was thinking of future improvements it meant that there was no thought of stopping soon.

Shouta couldn’t allow him to go down this path. The kid had a clearly heroic attitude, and would no doubt make a great hero if he stopped fucking up his chance! Eraserhead just had to gain his trust, and eventually try to convince him to attend UA. He didn’t quite know how old No One was, the mix of extremely baggy clothes, overly chunky boots, extreme intelligence and a voice changer leaving a rather wide possibility of ages, but he couldn’t be old enough for high school, right? Shouta still had time to sort this boy out.

Jeez, he really was a problem child.

“Helllooo? Hey Eraser, buddy? Lost you for a second there,” the hero blinked a couple of times as he registered the figure across from him, head cocked to the side in apparent confusion. Ah, right. The stories. He was meant to be telling one right now, wasn’t he? Shit, he really needed to sort out his brain and get some sleep before he spaced out in front of a villain or something.

“Sorry ‘bout that, it’s just those devils known as students have pushed me to a point where I can no longer stay connected to reality without immense pain,” Shouta grumbled out. It was kinda true; this year’s set of students were a bunch of brats.

“Aaaawww c’mon! I’m sure they can’t be that bad!” No One jokingly replied.

“Oh, you have no idea! Zero potential, the lot of them! All they care about is the fame and fortune that comes along with heroism, and they don’t even use it to motivate them! They put in minimum effort and rely too much on the small amount of skill they previously had with their quirks, not pushing to improve or anything. They’re lazy at best, talentless at worst!”

A huff of air could be heard from inside No One’s mask as he said “Yeah, well it’s not like you gave most of them a chance – you expelled half of them on the first day!”

“Cause they were hopeless,” Shouta said, hiding his own smile. “I have half a mind to expel the other half the next time I see them.”

“No! Just – even you wouldn’t expel a whole year group!” despite his words, the vigilante didn’t sound sure. For good reason, since Eraserhead was at least 90% sure he’d have no homeroom students by the end of the week. It had been a little over half the school year and each pupil seemed to have less potential by the day.

“We’ll see about that,” the hero let out a small groan for theatrics (which he didn’t normally use, but it seemed to amuse No One more), and started a new rant, “It’s not even like they’re the worst people in my life right now. I mean, if my class is full of devils then Hizashi and Hitoshi are an unstoppable force of evil sent by Satan himself to ruin my life.”

To Shouta’s (extremely hidden) joy the eyes of the kid seemed to sparkle and brighten despite them being black. It was the happiest he ever looked, and it always happened whenever Aizawa’s family was mentioned. The vigilante had taken an interest in the life outside of work the three individuals lived together, and Shouta could only guess why. It could be because he cared about Hitoshi’s progress since he was rescued. It could be because some of the more entertaining (and traumatising) stories came from their interactions. Or it could be…for more personal reasons.

Back in the present, the kid had started excitedly talking, “What happened now? You can’t not tell me with that build-up! Does it rival the great ‘Birthday Surprise’ from last week? There’s no way it can…right?”

Shouta shuddered involuntarily at the memory. Last week had been his birthday and his husband and so- Hitoshi had planned a surprise for him. It was a surprise alright. Shouta could still hear the purple-haired monster-of-a-child’s screams, and he’d never look at lemon flavoured butter icing or Yukio the cat the same way again…ugh. “No, I don’t think anything will ever beat that on my list of worst nightmares. Ever. But this time was still…infuriating.”

The boy looked like he was on the verge of exploding. “Stop delaying and tell me already! I’m gonna die at this rate!” he whined.

“Fine, you impatient brat…” Shouta purposefully waited a few seconds just to annoy the kid, earning him a small growl and fake glare, before continuing, “So the two idiots were trying to make up for the birthday-we-don’t-speak-of, starting with fixing the hole they burnt in the wall. Honestly, they started off okay, and I even thought to myself for a moment ‘Hey, these two might not be so incompetent after all. Maybe these brainless dimwits can actually come together and do something right.”

“Big mistake,” No One mumbled, shaking his head like a disappointed teacher, “Never underestimate the lack of braincells those two share when placed in the same room.”

Shouta nodded his head in acknowledgement, “It got worse from there. They kept working hard for twenty minutes, and soon they were almost done. Then I made the big error in judgement and left them to “finish up” as I took the bins out.” A small gasp came from the vigilante, as yes, it should’ve been an obviously bad mistake at the time. Too late now. Aizawa continued, “I was gone for what? Two minutes? (“Two minutes too long” grumbled a mechanically lowered voice) And by the time I got back I found Zashi plastered to the wall under the effect Hitoshi’s quirk. They claim it was “dodging practice” and “all in good fun”, but it didn’t seem so fun when they had to wait half an hour for Cementos to come and remove Hizashi from the wall and then get rid of the clumps of dried plaster they’d thrown around the house with no thought process whatsoever!! At least Cementos agreed with me and made the two idiots remove a decent amount of mess by hand, you know, just to drill in that there are fucking consequences for your actions!”

As he reached the end of his story, No One released multiple huffs of air, which gave Aizawa conflicting emotions. It was sad that this was the most positive emotion the kid showed: he showed anger, sadness, confusion, the whole range of negative emotions, but never anything positive outside of a huff in the place of laughter and the tone of voice. Yet at the same time Shouta was glad that the boy didn’t pretend around him: the underground hero had seen No One in action, and had seen how he looks when he saves people. Despite wearing a mask, the vigilante crinkles his eyes up as if he’s smiling when he’s around civilians and victims. But the expression looks so…forced, unnatural to Shouta, as if the boy is only smiling for those around him and not because he feels like smiling himself (which could very well be the case). Even though it hurt to see the kid so devoid of genuine happiness, he preferred the honesty and lack of metaphorical mask No One wore around him.

Since this was about as happy as he’d get the boy, Eraserhead decided it was time to make his “attempt” for the month: “So kid,” he said, hoping for something, anything out of this try, “anything major happen in your life?”

Immediately there was a change in atmosphere, the cheer in No One’s eyes falling to leave a more hollow sadness. The change was quite jarring, and it left Aizawa wondering not for the first time what the boy must have been through to make him flit through emotions fast enough to leave everyone around him with whiplash. The vigilante spoke at his normal pace and volume, but the was filled with sorrow as he said “No…things are still the same. Life’s still not great, but at least it’s consistent. Nothing has changed.” He reached inside his hoodie and pulled out his uniquely decorated whip, and began fiddling with the ends, “Nothing’s going to change, either, Eraser. I thought I made that clear.”

Shouta sighed. Of course the attempt was going to go this way, it always did. No One would never talk about themselves when asked, only saying vague things that told Aizawa that the boy wasn’t doing well, but still refused to be helped.

Even with the lack of information, Aizawa had his own suspicions on what was going on: no matter what age he was it was clear the boy was underweight. He covered every inch of his skin minus the top half of the face and a few curls of hair that showed beneath the hood (Shouta still couldn’t work out what colour they were in the dark, but he reckoned either black or dark brown as they were the most common colours), and was clearly paranoid to the point of being overly cautious to cover his tracks and being fearful of heroes. He showed little self-worth, moved quieter than any kid should know how to, worked himself extremely hard if the notes and vigilantism was anything to go off and had trouble showing and/or feeling positive emotions. A lot of the symptoms were pointing towards an abusive household of some kind.

Shouta had seen his good share of physically and mentally abused children. Hell, Shouta hadn’t had the best upbringing either (he still had nightmares of being forced into dark rooms with a blindfold on, or of his father smashing his mum’s favourite plate against his head when he came home late), and he recognised a lot of the behaviours to ones the child displayed. He also knew kids would often be abused because of their quirks (just look at Hitoshi!), and with No One’s unique appearance…it painted a slightly too clear a picture.

“Oh, before I head off,” the vigilante said, pulling another 180 with a return to a more cheerful tone, “I wanted to give you something!”

He turned away as he rummaged in his hoodie pocket, revealing a diamond shaped hole in the back of the outfit that showed the black underlayer the kid wore beneath it (either an odd design choice, or something quirk related?). After a few seconds, the kid clearly found what he was looking for and turned back around to face the hero, eyes shining with happiness once more.

“So, you probably don’t remember, but it’s been exactly a year since our first meeting,” Shouta blinked. Was it really? Fuck, this was one of the things he should’ve kept in mind when trying to gain someone’s trust! “And, I uh, wanted to give you something to thank you for talking to me. I enjoy our meetups, and I hope they’ll continue in the future!”

The kid threw something to Aizawa, which he immediately caught by reflex. It felt…squishy? The hero looked at the object in his hand, and was surprised to find one of his infamous jelly pouches.

It was different though; the pouch felt flimsy in comparison to the ones he bought (to the annoyance of his husband, who demanded he should eat proper meals), and upon closer inspection it was clear why. The kid had gone and made a personalised pouch, which was a gradient of dark grey going into the same gold colour as the pro’s goggles - Shouta couldn’t help but be touched by the notion.

“I made the pouch and the jelly for you,” No One stated while rubbing the back of his neck through the hoodie awkwardly. Fuck, who gave this kid the right to be this adorable? “I know you really like them, a-and I really like cooking and stuff, so I thought I’d at least try making one. It’s slightly different from the ones you normally have, I, um, added some more nutritional value than the ones you normally have to keep Hizashi happy, y’know? I…hope you like it.”

The vigilante’s eyes pierced into Shouta, gazing expectantly as they waited for the man’s verdict. Shouta twisted off the home-made cap (how did he even get the materials to make this?) and took a mouthful. It…wasn’t half bad. It was a bit sweeter than he preferred, but overall it was a damn good attempt!

Not that Aizawa could say it like that. Instead he grumbled out “Not bad kid,” before continuing to consume the jelly. Still, the boy got the message, and nodded happily.

“I can make you more in the future, if you want? Just give me any improvements you want and I’ll happily listen!”

That comment made Aizawa pause for a second. This linked to something that had both him and Tsukauchi worried lately – the kid was seriously overworking himself. His shifts as a vigilante had grown significantly longer since when he first started, going from a couple of hours to practically the whole night. The notes he sent to the police had also been growing in size, now covering several cases per letter, sent in almost every single day. It left the two adults wondering how the boy had time to do anything else, like hang out with friends, relax, or even sleep (the bags that had been steadily growing beneath his eyes said enough about his lack of self care)! He was on his way to burning himself out, and considering he spent half his life fighting villains…that was dangerous.

And Shouta knew that kid had been close to the brink for a long time, ever since their third meeting…

And now the boy was trying to add more to his schedule – making food for the pro who had no time for proper meals? Shouta couldn’t say an outright no, as then the boy would probably think he didn’t like the jelly and would then work harder to improve the recipe. But he couldn’t say yes, and add more self-applied pressure onto him. He would surely break.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” was the weak-ass response he ended up with, looking away from No One and down at the empty streets below.

“Well, it’s getting late, so I should probably have one more look around and head home, huh?” the vigilante said as he backed away towards the opposite edge of the building, “So, same time next week?”

Aizawa felt his hopes rising slightly. As long as the kid kept wanting to meet up with him, there was still a chance of convincing him to change his future. “Sure,” he said, placing the now empty pouch in his pocket to show to his two idiots when he got home. They both knew about No One and Shouta’s situation with him, and both of them were just as eager for the boy to get help as Aizawa was – especially Hitoshi, who ‘basically owed the vigilante for his new life’, as he put it.

Just before he left, however, he turned back around to say one more thing to the child who he cared maybe just a bit too much about, “You know if you ever need assistance or guidance, with anything at all, I’ll be more than happy to help.”

He didn’t turn around to look at Shouta, instead letting out a sigh. “I know,” he said, and with that, he jumped off the rooftop.

Aizawa knew that No One didn’t believe that.

---

Izuku was thirteen years old.

And he was stretched thin.

He loved being a vigilante and helping people, he really did. In fact the only time he felt okay was when he was in his modified outfit running across the rooftops, knowing that what he was doing was saving those the heroes couldn’t. He would even go as far as to say that he felt…good during his talks with Eraser, someone who genuinely seemed to care about his wellbeing. During those night hours he felt strong and calm and confident and anything but the useless Deku he was. It was just… somewhere along the path something had gone wrong. The vigilante work was great, but the second he stopped things went wrong. The confident, satisfied aura was replaced with a sense of guilt that overwhelmed him every time he headed home, as a voice asked him after every victory: ’What now?’. It demanded that ‘it wasn’t enough, wasn’t enough, he needed to do more’ no matter how many criminals he took down and reported. It reminded him that everything Eraser “knew” about him was wrong, and he should be ashamed for using the hero for company fully well knowing that if the man knew the truth he’d take back all his supportive words and agree that yes, the boy was an animal who should be locked up. He was a disgusting, useless, selfish excuse of a Deku no he didn’t deserve that name he was worse than nothing monster, and what he was doing wasn’t enough to redeem him in the slightest. So Izuku’s self-assigned shifts got longer and longer, going from a couple of hours long per night to exhausting sessions that started the second he heard his mum fall asleep until just before the sun rose.

Even so, he still felt guilty, so when he was at home he worked: he’d either continue writing his notes to the police (which were honestly becoming mini essays with amount of evaluations, conclusions and reports he made), continue improving his vigilante outfit (even he had to admit he was proud with the progress he’d made with his whip design, turning a pair of cheap Midnight whip knock offs into a strong weapon designed to match his kagune with help from scraps from the beach, different paints he found in the storage room and materials from a rather illegal sight which he reported straight after receiving what he needed – he was using the stuff to help people, so no problem…right?) or research new recipes to cook for his mum.

All the while the list of names in the black books continued to grow.

Izuku couldn’t continue like this and he knew it – he was barely sleeping more than a few hours a week, and despite the massive strain on his body he still wasn’t eating more, replacing the needed increase in meals with coffee. He now was constantly jittering with a caffeine high, which didn’t help his stutter, and even his teachers started giving concerned glances at his large flask of coffee that he carried around at all time, Mr Hanna had even tried to talk to him at the end of the school year to see if he needed help (which Izuku had quickly refused). Luckily the teacher for 7^th grade didn’t really care for the ‘quirkless’ kid’s wellbeing, so there hadn’t really been as much, if any attention drawn to his worrying diet for a while.

Didn’t stop others from picking on him though. They threw away the lunches his mum made, they destroyed his homework so he’d get into trouble, they tripped him over and laughed at him and hit him behind the school and whispered about him just loud enough to know they’d be heard and made sure the quirkless loser knew that he’d never achieve anything!

It was all just one big hilarious joke to them. Izuku wondered if they’d still be laughing if they knew his quirk was all that was keeping him alive? He knew it was, and it scared him. So. Much.

It was his third encounter with Eraserhead, the only hero who didn’t seem to want to capture him on sight, despite the man hunting him down. Izuku still didn’t trust the man. Far from it. Sure, he seemed nice now, acting like he ‘just wanted to talk’, but he was just waiting, biding his time as he tried to gain the vigilante’s trust just to take him in and learn what he was. No one would accept him once they knew what a monster he was, so Izuku had to keep his distance, couldn’t get attached.

Still, the young boy wanted to be brave as a vigilante, someone to inspire others and give them hope, and for that he needed to face his fear and at least try to talk to the underground hero.

The first two meetings Izuku had been cornered by Eraserhead, but this time he searched him out.

It didn’t take too long to find him; he was the only hero who came to the poverty-stricken areas of Musutafu, and he travelled by rooftop just like Izuku. Plus it helped that the man was purposefully searching for him at the same time.

“E-Eraserhead,” he said as he landed on the same rooftop as the pro, albeit on the opposite side and as far away as he could be, inwardly cursing at his stutter (he was trying to be brave, dammit!) and the waver of his voice that the incomplete voice changer didn’t quite hide, “I n-need to talk to you.”

A slightly shocked expression turned towards him, not caused by being snuck up on but more surprise of how the boy he’d been chasing for five months was willingly talking to him! “K-kid!? Um, yeah, sure – I mean – fuck, uh, of course!”

Seeing the pro sputtering at his presence would probably amuse Izuku if he wasn’t so damn terrified, so he started saying what he needed to so he could leave as quickly as possible: “I-I just wanted to ask you…” Izuku steeled his nerves, “…why are you doing this? Hunting me, I mean. I get I’m a vigilante and all, b-but aren’t there worse criminals to go after? I just want to help! I’m not harming anyone, so why can’t you just leave me alone!?” He could feel his body shaking from the caffeine and nerves, shoulders tense as he waited for the reply.

A few moments silence as the man thought through the question (at least he seems to be taking it seriously), before answering in his low voice “At first it was as you’re talented. We thought it’d be good to track you down and try to recruit you into the police force, even once you started your vigilante work.” There was a slight pause where he recollected his thoughts, “Then we met face to face, and I found out…how young you are. You’re too young to be putting your life in danger like this! You’re obviously strong and heroic, so there must be some reason why you’re doing this now and not waiting to get into a hero school. Whatever the reason, I want to help you and help you do this in a better way that doesn’t involve breaking the law.”

The answer felt honest, and that was enough for Izuku (though he couldn’t deny the guilt that surged through him for making this hero want to help him – he didn’t deserve that offer and he certainly didn’t deserve help). The vigilante looked into the pro’s eyes, looking for any traces of dishonesty while keeping an ear out for any disruptions in the man’s heartbeat – a clear sign of lying – before replying in the calmest tone he could manage: “Don’t bother. I don’t want or need help. So stop.” And with that Izuku turned to jump off the rooftop. He’d gotten the answer he wanted, and even managed to stay relatively calm around a hero! He was ready to leave.

Looking back, he knew Eraser hadn’t meant it. He was about to leave again without giving the tired man any answers, and the only way to stop him from leaving was to erase his quirk. If he was anyone else it would’ve been harmless, a mere inconvenience prohibiting them from leaving. But because of his condition…

As he took a few steps further away from the hero he suddenly felt his body shut down. The coldness that he always felt (a side effect of starvation that was…inconvenient) suddenly tripled as his body instantly became too weak to even shiver. He felt his brain freeze up as now returned- green eyes had their eyesight blur and became dark around the edges and he was dying he was dying he was dying!!!!

And then it was all back, his head reeling from whiplash as his soul was shoved back inside him and everything returned to him. He was immediately aware of the figure beside him, a hand reaching out towards him as his eyes returned to red before the man could see. If the man saw it would all be over.

“Don’t touch me!” he screamed at the figure. Of course, of course heroes couldn’t be trusted! Not by him! He needed to leave! The hands didn’t stop coming towards him so he slapped it away with as much force as he could manage. Shit. He couldn’t see right, everything felt off! He needed to get away and lose Eraserhead and heal whatever the hell had just happened!

He sprung off the rooftop as Eraserhead reeled back from the slap to the hand. Izuku probably broke his hand with that, but that wasn’t the priority! He needed to leave and go home and just think.

It took three weeks for Izuku to even approach the hero again.

After that incident he’d had to come to the devastating realisation that he was constantly mere inches from death, his self-regeneration constantly running in the background to keep him from keeling over where he stood.

That had hurt to accept. He knew he wasn’t doing great, with the unnatural coldness only he felt that led to him wearing extra jumpers beneath his baggy school clothes, and the lack of growth he’d had in the last few years, but knowing that he’d die if he didn’t have access to his quirk for a few seconds? That would haunt anyone.

He was stretched beyond his limits in every way and he knew it. His body got more weak as his vigilante work got more intense as his caffeine dosage increased as his police notes got longer as his hours of sleep decreased as his layers of concealer got thicker as his bullying got more violent as his smile became more strained as he forgot how to laugh as he got more scared as he got shakier as he got colder as the world turned it’s back to allow him to be pulled apart until he was thinner than paper.

There was only one thing that kept him going: his mum. Even that had become unhealthy, with Izuku fully relying on his love for his mum to keep himself from breaking. He knew it was bad, he needed to find other things to live for, but he couldn’t. Everything else brought pain and sorrow along with it, and he really couldn’t cope with much more of that.

He’d just have to live for his mum, doing all he could to keep her smiling in between his uncontrollable, futile attempts at redemption in the form of ‘No One’. He’d keep finding new recipes to cook for her. He’d keep joking and taping on smiles to make her laugh. He’d keep covering his bags, hollow cheeks and thin body to keep her from worrying. He’d hide the monster he really is to stop her from losing the last of her family. He’d do anything to help her! He’d keep repeating this hell as long as she needed him.

He could only wonder how long that would last for.

---

He soon learnt what the answer to that question was: not long enough.

It was pathetic, really. He’d thought he’d at least make it to the end of the year, hopefully even up until high school before he broke again.

Instead it happened during the last week to the year. For the last week, the school was having special “fun lessons” to celebrate the end of another year. Izuku’s class was in chemistry, and as a treat they were allowed to do some special flame tests with different elements and chemicals that were normally reserved for older years only. It was all very interesting to the boy, and he’d become fully absorbed in the lesson and seeing what coloured flames could be created. Maybe he could even find a way to utilise some of them to make a cool flamethrower for his vigilante work!

Idiot.

He should’ve seen it coming, but he’d relaxed too much into the swing of the lesson, going from station to station trying to note down all the observations he could see. He should’ve seen the leg sticking out to trip him over.

He fell over, and the test tubes filled with metal and liquid samples went spilling out on the floor. Izuku felt his heart stop for a second. Shit, it can’t be good to have this stuff everywhere! He needed to clean this up quickly!

“Midoriya, be more careful for crying out loud!” the teacher at the front of the room glared at him, unimpressed. Izuku immediately plastered his (fake so fake it hurts) smile on and stuttered out “I-I’m s-sorry, I-I-I’ll clean th-this up r-right away!” He started scooping up the solid metals in shaking hands as quickly as possible, when he heard a voice that made his blood run cold.

“Oh Deku!” a sneering voice came from behind him as Izuku felt his chest tighten up, “Looks like you fell over again! Want a hand?” A crackling sound came from the figure’s direction.

Izuku knew what was happening. There’s only one reason why Kacchan would offer assistance to anyone (especially a useless Deku), and that was if there was a twist. And god, this twist was so, so cruel.

“Pl-please d-don’t K-K-Kacchan,” Izuku begged, his “smile” twisted into a desperate plea for anything but this as the sparking hand crept closer to the mix of highly flammable liquids spilt around him, “I-I’m s-sorry p-please d-d-don’t d-do-“

“Listen Deku,” the blonde whispered in a fierce tone, hand mere centimetres away from the floor, “You’ve been getting weirder and weirder all year, and it’s disturbing everyone else.” The smirk was gone from Kacchan’s face, replaced with a scowl of disgust that Izuku had got all too used to, “You’re disturbing me too, and you know how I feel about people getting in my way. Let this be a reminder of why you should stop being a useless creep and just fuck off out of all our lives!”

“K-Kacchan w-wait please-“ was all the greenette could gasp out before the angry teen let a spark hit the spillage.

Izuku didn’t think Kacchan knew how powerful the flames would be (at least Izuku really, really hoped so), and within seconds he was surrounded by multicoloured flames. He could hear the screams of the other students as the fire rapidly spread across the floor towards other work benches, and all the trembling boy could do was watch as the plastic chairs in the room began to go black and melt.

It took Izuku a few seconds to realise he was on fire too.

He let out a shriek and immediately got to his feet, attempting to follow the rest of his class who had already fled the room. He tried to ignore the slight hurt of them all abandoning him without a second thought, which was easier than usual considering he had the distraction of his arm being alight. He could feel his right hand and arm begin to blister from the heat as he stumbled towards the exit, his uniform turning to ash where the flames hit, along with the jumper he’d worn beneath it.

He slammed the door shut behind him, hoping that would be enough to contain most the smoke inside. He could hear the fire alarm going off, which would explain the lack of people around. Gasping from pain, Izuku fell to the floor and began rolling to try and put out the flames. That’s what you’re meant to do in this situation…right? Izuku didn’t really know, since he hadn’t been expecting to be burnt alive today!

Izuku was used to pain. From a mix of years of bullying and vigilantism he’d gained a high pain tolerance. He could stand being punched, kicked, hit, thrown, and scraped (though he couldn’t be stabbed or cut, luckily no one from school with quirks that would involve slicing into someone had not ‘tested’ their quirks on him so far). He was even fine with most burns, years of explosive hits from Kacchan had left him able to receive up to lighter second degree burns while showing no signs of pain.

He’d never experienced a pain like this though. It was unbearable, and he wanted more than anything to just rip the arm off entirely. Izuku could almost feel the individual layers of flesh peel away as they shrivelled up and burnt away, and it felt like the flames were digging deeper and deeper right down to his bones.

But the worst part of all was that as his arm cooked and boiled and blistered, his stomach rumbled.

He made himself sick, he truly did.

Izuku stood up once the flames had gone out, leaving the limb sizzling and agonising as he continued walking/stumbling along the corridor, to his relief finding the whole building abandoned for the fire drill. There hadn’t been an increase in smoke, so hopefully the fire hadn’t spread or continued to grow. That’s all the greenette could hope for as tears began to swell up in his eyes against his will.

‘No, I don’t deserve to cry, monsters shouldn’t show emotions like that, I have no right to feel self-pity after all I’ve done!’ he thought desperately to himself as he tried with all his might to stop the droplets from spilling over.

Luckily at that moment he made it to the bathroom, and he quickly turned on the taps and splashed the water onto his face (if he couldn’t tell the tears apart from the water then it was okay, right?) and then dunked his arm under with a gasp and a sob. Nothing had ever felt so soothing yet so painful at the same time, and the mix of feelings brought a sense of nausea that made him want to keel over right where he stood- or, apparently knelt. Huh, he didn’t remember falling over.

He kept the half-cooked arm under the cold tap until he regained control of his limbs through the pain and yanked himself up to his feet. He couldn’t help but wince when he saw his reflection; he looked like he was on the verge of death, his concealer washed off to reveal the deep bags and gaunt face he’d tried so desperately to hide when he was being the school Deku. He was even more pale than usual, practically translucent in the dim glow of the bathroom’s light, and his form…

A grimace formed as he studied the right side of his outfit. The uniform sleeve had been burnt away, along with the one of the fluffy dark red jumper he wore beneath for insulation. A big hole was burnt in the torso next to it, revealing red, shiny skin that covered shoulder and chest bones and ribs that protruded outwards to the point they looked like they were going to break through the skin at any moment. Finally there was the main burn, which ran from between his thumb and second finger down the back of his hand up to just below the shoulder. While the worst of the burn was already healing up (watching burnt tendrils of skin (and what little muscle remained on Izuku) grow and reattach themselves together was unnerving to sat the least), the wound still looked pretty nasty for now, with loose shreds of leathery skin hanging limply around what looked like a hole in Midoriya’s arm, almost as if an entire chunk of the limb had been torn out. The rest of the skin on the arm was red and heavily blistered.

No one could see him like this. This wound should be fatal, possibly bad enough to end with an amputation if too much nerve damage was found, yet in a couple of days the wound would be completely gone. That would be enough to raise suspicions, not to mention the unwanted attention his skeletal body would earn him – he’d probably go from the school joke to the city’s freakshow, and if that news ever found its way back to his mum…

Okay he could do this. Everyone would probably be outside for another ten minutes at least, which would give him time to get to his gym locker. He had a spare thick jumper there along with a long sleeve PE top. He could also get the spare med kit he left there and put his arm in a sling. He could say he was lucky enough to get easily treated burns, and no one would be able to see the difference. Then he should have just enough time to reapply his concealer and throw away the burnt clothes. It would be a shame to have to spend money on a new uniform, but it was a cost they’d just have to-

Wait. ‘Costs’….

Izuku had to sprint to the loo behind him to throw up a measly amount of bile practically coated in coffee.

Costs. Shit. How could he have forgotten?

The horrified teen threw up again.

The next day Inko was called into the school, Izuku by her side with his arm still in a self-made sling. They were here to discuss…payment. According to the teacher who had been in the room at the same time, the fire had started due to the quirkless kid being clumsy and tripping over a chair leg, spilling his samples on an on Bunsen burner. The weak coverup didn’t surprise Izuku in the slightest; the school would never blame students with powerful quirks for accidents, especially not Kacchan, and a student like Deku made the perfect scapegoat with no way to fight back and a mother who was too kind and sweet to argue back.

That’s what horrified Izuku about this whole thing. The school was leeching off the woman’s sweet nature, and were making her pay for the damages to the lab. The woman who worked from morning to evening just to afford a roof over her and her son’s head, was being forced to pay for damage caused by another student just because said student was lucky enough to be born with a quirk worthy of a hero.

It hurt more knowing that Kacchan’s family would have no issue paying the amount owed – it would be an annoyance, sure, but they’d still be fine. Most of the stuff had been fireproof in the lab, and the costs came down to paying for the melted and burnt chairs, a new layer of paint for the ashen tables, and replacements for the wasted chemicals. The Bakugo’s could of paid that amount and gone back to their normal way of living afterwards. Their family would still of been able to afford their house, their food, their bills!

But no, as always it was all shoved onto his poor mum, the sweetest woman in the world who never seemed to catch a break. And now the two remaining Midoriya’s were in trouble.

After several apologies to the headmaster, the mother and son went home. Izuku was taking the day off to “rest his injury”, and now apparently to start packing.

They had to move to a new house.

His mum had said it as soon as they got back to the small apartment that had been hers since before Izuku was born, plonking down on the sofa with a sigh as she explained that there was no other choice, and that they’d been just about scraping by for years. Beneath the calm façade she had on, Izuku could see his mum’s words were hollow, like she’d finally accepted defeat to the gods or fate or whatever malevolent power out there had decided that Inko Midoriya deserved this. It made the reassuring smile Izuku had stapled to his face that bit harder to hold, his lips trembling with the rest of his body as he choked out a quiet “I’m sorry.”

His mum turned her head towards him from her position on the sofa, a warm but sad smile gracing her features as she said “Honey, there’s no need to apologise. This move was bound to happen eventually. Honestly, it might be for the best to finally let this place go.”

Fake. She didn’t believe a word of it, Izuku could tell straight away. Maybe he’d lied so much he’d learnt all the giveaways (though that skill could be from the books on detective work he’d read when he was bored of his regular studying)? He knew his mum would forever cherish this place: it was the last and only home Hisashi, Izuku and her had been a happy family, back before everything crumbled to ashes.

The teen leaned over and tentatively gave his mum a small but tight hug before heading off to his room. He could tell she was trying to keep herself together for him and needed some time alone to cry it out. He quietly shut the door behind him and sank onto his cheap beige bedspread.

The silence bore against his skull as the truth finally settled within him. He’d failed. Miserably. All he wanted to do was keep his mum happy, and what had he done? Destroyed everything she’d worked all these years to achieve, that’s what.

Of course he was the one to screw things up in the end! Cause it was his fault! If only he’d dodged the leg that tried to trip him up, or if he’d tried to convince Kacchan just that little harder, or if he hadn’t let the class turn against him in the first place, or if he didn’t parade around as some weird quirkless loser or if he’d just been born with some normal quirk that he could show off and become a hero with rather than this curse that destroyed anything he cared about!

“What now?” he mumbled under his breath. He really didn’t know where to go from here. He couldn’t continue doing this, all he was doing was destroying what left his mum had left he’s a burden. He couldn’t keep ruining her life like this he’s a parasite. He had to stop now a dirty fucking animal and finally let her move on to love real people MONSTER.

Maybe…yeah, maybe it was finally time end this, time to let his mum free you selfish beast let the people be happy without the pathetic cursed weakling him around.

He’d served his purpose.

Now it was time to move on.

The next day Izuku said nothing. He plastered on a final smile (he knew it reached nowhere near his eyes but it’s the best he had to offer right now) that morning as he made a final breakfast for slimy leech his mum. He putrid creature didn’t eat anything though; he didn’t want to have to throw up on his final day. He disgusting smiled on his final walk to school, smiled in his lessons (even when his sheets got destroyed before he’d even read them), smiled when some upperclassmen punched his “burnt” bandaged arm and side at lunch, smiled as the day continued right up until the last bell rang.

Everyone left the room quickly, even Kacchan who had been surprisingly non-violent towards good for nothing Izuku that day. Maybe he felt some form of guilt for quite literally destroying their household?

Ha, maybe just for his mum. Kacchan always seemed to like his mum.

Before useless Midoriya quite realised what monstrosity he was doing, he found himself trudging slowly towards the school roof, empty smile hanging off his face by a thread. His pace was steady, footfall heavy, almost like a death march…which was rather fitting, wasn’t it?

Then coward was there. No where else to go. He just stood on top of the roof and watched as the students trickled out the building. After school clubs had been cancelled thanks to him stupid burden while the school repaired the fire damage from two days previously waste of his mum’s money maggot feeding off her earnings , so it took only half an hour for the sounds of oblivious laughter and chatter to fade, the final seams of his smile snapping as his face fell into a tranquil expression with oh so much pain seeping into every crevice.

Izuku…if he could really be called that anymore, slowly began wiping the concealer fake lying creep off his gaunt face with shaking hands quivering freak and the thick sleeve of his jumper beneath the uniform and slowly took off his red trainers.

He grabbed hold of the fence and had one final think through:

Should he wait longer?

Creep

Was he sure about this?

Freak

Would anyone at school care?

Deku

What about his vigilante work?

Leech

What about all those people No One hadn’t saved yet?

Curse

What about Eraser?

Parasite

What about all those unsolved cases?

Creature

What about home?

Monster

What about mum?

Burden.

B.

U.

R.

D.

E.

N.

BURDEN.

MONSTER.

CREEP BURDEN MONSTER  CURSE BURDEN BURDEN WEAKLING BURDEN CREATURE MONSTER CREEP DEKU CREEP MONSTER BURDEN MONSTER LEECH BURDEN MONSTER PARASITE WEAKLING MONSTER BURDEN MONSTER BURDEN BURDEN BURDEN BURDEN BURDEN BURDEN

And Izuku let go.

He felt something snap on impact.

And the world disappeared.

…and came back again.

There was no dramatic gasp, no moment where he felt his soul re-enter his body and force him back to the living. Instead Izuku groggily opened his eyes, feeling as if every inch of him was bruised and broken, and looked up to see an orange sky above him.

Well…shit.

It took a few minutes for the boy to find the energy to lift his left arm to his face (the right one was still wrapped up in a sling that was significantly more bloody than it had been on top of the roof) and rolled up the sleeves of the two layers he was wearing. Minus the grime and blood that coated the skin, the skinny appendage was in pristine condition: no cuts, no scrapes, no bruises, no nothing. There weren’t even scars from old burns that Kacchan had given him so many times that they should be imprinted into his skin.

It was just a skinny, shaky, bony, pale arm that was too perfect for a body that had just jumped off a four-story building. His stomach growled in complaint about how much non-existent energy had been used to heal his pathetic body.

He wanted to eat. He needed to eat.

Izuku felt like he was sinking into the concrete beneath him as the horrid realisation swamped him:

Once his mum didn’t need him anymore he was going to die. It wasn’t something he’d planned, per say, he’d just kind of accepted it was going to happen. He lived for her, and once she was gone he’d truly be no more than a burden on the world, whether he was Deku, No One or whoever the hell Izuku Midoriya really was.

He’d never even questioned if he could die.

But here he was, still alive and fucking hungry – his body healing the things he didn’t want healed at the expense of leaving him starving for the thing that made him want to die more than anything else. He wasn’t needed anymore, but he was still here. He was stuck! He couldn’t get out of this cycle! He’d have to live, and eat, and regret, and live, and eat, and regret, and eat, and regret, and eat, and regret and regret and regret regret regret until the world saw what he was and took him down themselves and hated him and feared him and were disgusted by him like Kacchan and Aizawa would feel betrayed for being tricked and life would once again make sure he got all the pain he deserved for being this thing but all he’d be able to do is regret regret regret REGRET!!!!!!

It was at that moment that the once smiling, cheerful, determined child known as Izuku Midoriya was finally shattered into thousands of tiny broken pieces.

Izuku's Vigilante design (plus kagune)

https://emmarzhere.tumblr.com/post/614602057525149696/my-ghoulizuku-vigilante-design-ive-been-messing " />

Chapter Text

Deku was fucking weird.

It was a fact of life by this point, just like it was a fact that Katsuki was gonna be the next greatest hero, or like how the Earth orbited the sun. Deku was just….

There really was no better word to describe him, was there?

For one thing: he was a quirkless freak. That was enough to make him stick out like a sore thumb from the rest of their class. Katsuki was always the shining hero of the class, with the power to make fucking explosions out his palms, while Deku was useless, a nobody, worthless. Hell, his own dad had left after finding out his kid was gonna be a failure! Deku was made to be no more than a stupid joke and background character in Bakugo’s hero origin story.

That led onto the next weird thing about Deku: he had still wanted to be a hero. No matter how impossible the quirkless diagnosis made it, how much Katsuki knocked him down, no matter how many times his lackeys beat him up, no matter how many times the students used him for “quirk practice” he still got up. He’d get up and keep following Katsuki, claiming how they were gonna be heroes together.

Deku was fucking delusional, and it annoyed the hell out of everyone.

Then suddenly out of no where he gave up. He’d been acting weirdly for what? About a year at that point? Katsuki couldn’t really remember, but he could remember Deku becoming all hunched over and shit. He’d stopped crying which was a small improvement, but instead he was whiny and squirmy and meek and plain disgusting to be around. Just another stupid-ass side effect of being quirkless, he supposed. Wasn’t he always clutching at his stomach as well? Maybe he was trying to trick everyone into thinking he had some weird ass quirk? Fuck, the nerd had even convinced Katsuki there was something seriously wrong that one day when he cried for the first time in years, then didn’t show up to lessons for the rest of the day. Or the next.

But no, turns out the nerd had just gone off sulking about his stupid dreams cause then he came in more quiet and mopey than ever, and had the fucking audacity to go up to Katsuki and say he wasn’t going to be a hero!?! Deku wasn’t just a useless, slimy little shit, but a fucking spineless coward! The teacher had said the nerd had been involved in some villain attack, and now he’d given up on his dream? After all that bullshit about becoming a hero no matter what, he’d given up after one measly villain?

Needless to say, Katsuki lost any form of respect he’d had for Deku. He was worth less than nothing.

Over the years he just kept getting worse: a feat no one had thought possible. He stopped trying to talk to the other extras unless directly spoken to, his smiles lost any genuinity they’d ever held, he wore the fucking winter uniform all year long, and he started shaking constantly like some nervous wreck. Though that was probably caused by the freakish amount of coffee he drank. It’s like he was trying to repel others, with his large canister of plain black coffee that he clutched to like a fucking lifeline. Deku was also annoyingly small. He’d probably be mistaken for a fucking child if it wasn’t for his stupidly good grades (just a sign that the nerd had too much free time) and that pained look he always wore as if he was a martyr or some shit. Self-centred brat, always thinking he was the bigger person, always looking down on him. As if people expected anything off him. He was a fucking waste of space, and everyone knew it but him.

Katsuki just had to drill it through his thick skull.

And he finally succeeded. Katsuki couldn’t help but be proud of the accomplishment. Sure, he might’ve worried slightly when the plan set in motion – he hadn’t expected the fire from the chemicals to be quite so…immediate, and yeah, he might’ve felt a spike of worry when he saw Deku’s sleeve set on fire as he left the classroom with the others, but everything turned out fine! When everyone eventually returned to lessons the freak was there, with his arm wrapped up in a sling (probably from the nurse) and in some new clothes he’d gotten from his locker (why he’d had an oversized baby blue hoodie with him was beyond Katsuki – just another weird thing to add to the list). And there hadn’t even been that much damage! It was like what? 40,000 yen in costs to replace damaged shit?

Apparently it was enough to make the Midoriyas have to move house, which yeah, made him feel a bit of a dick. He’s not a fucking monster, he knew it was wrong, and Auntie Inko didn’t deserve it. Deku didn’t really either, he supposed. But it seemed to finally get the message through to the worthless excuse of a classmate.

Katsuki had almost punched the nerd when he’d entered the class smiling the next day. Still so far up his own ass, despite everything. But it didn’t take long to realise there was something…different. The smile was just as fake and annoying as always, but it never dropped. Not once in the whole school day. Freaky as hell, but it was like the nerd wasn’t even trying to convince people it was real. He honestly hadn’t looked like her was fully there, his eyes glazed and unseeing, his body moving stiffly as if being moved by an outside force while his brain was god-knows-where. He hadn’t even brought his bucket of coffee with him!

The smile had disappeared by the next day, but the glazed eyes stayed. For the last few days of the year Deku had been silent, blank faced and emotionless. He didn’t even shake despite the return of his vats of vile bitter coffee. Hell, he hadn’t even flinched when Katsuki slammed a sparking hand on his desk, merely looked at his desk with dead, glassy eyes.

In other words, Deku had literally become a fucking puppet, matching his namesake.

He’d finally learnt his place, stopped being a pain and nuisance to the class (minus how he still creeped everyone out) and taken his rightful place as another background character in Katsuki’s origin story that he could put behind him once he got into UA. Deku could finally be out of his life!

…Well, the nerd could still be used for quirk practise, right? It wasn’t like anyone else was stopping, and he made a good target with no consequences.

And it’s just Deku, so it’s not really wrong or anything.

Katsuki half expected the nerd to revert back to his old self over the short break between their second and third year at middle school. Even their family dinners were cancelled over that time, as the Midoriyas were busy moving to some crappy flat a few streets away from their old one. So really, Bakugo had no clue how the weakling was doing, or if he was gonna stay in his place.

Turned out there was no need to worry, as he returned to school to find a blank faced Deku sitting upright in his chair, staring down at his desk. Or more accurately in the direction of his desk.

Good, things were still as they should be.

Unfortunately not everything could be ideal when it came to that slimy greenette – he was still Deku after all. The fake smile had returned, which was fucking frustrating, and the nerd had started talking again (thankfully less than before, but it still pissed Katsuki off when he heard Deku’s strained voice answer the sparse questions sent his way, or when he stuttered out a greeting to whoever approached him to kick his ass that day). He was also still a smartass, if anything widening the gap between himself and Katsuki intellectually to the point it was rare for him not to get 100%.

Hey, it was a work in progress; besides he only had to put up with the bastard for one more year.

Then he’d be free of Deku forever.

Even now he didn’t need to bother with Deku anymore. He was just one of the pebbles beneath his feet.

So why did he still keep focusing on the nerd?

It was lunchtime, a couple weeks back into the new school year, and Katsuki had found himself glowering at Deku on his way out of the classroom. The midget bastard hadn’t moved from his seat despite the bell going off. Guess there wasn’t much point when some extras had already chucked his lunch out the window.

Still, it pissed Bakugo off.

“Hey Bakugo, you coming?” Lackey 1 said, nudging his side (Katsuki had to use all his willpower not to break the loser’s overly long fingers then and there).

“Yeah, we should go quickly if we wanna get your usual table,” said Lackey 2. God, he was surrounded by a bunch of sucking-up idiots.

So he growled out his orders: “Go get the table then you fucktards! I’ll get there when I wanna!” The two followers snorted out a nervous laugh and hurriedly left the room. Sure they were annoying as hell, but at least they treated him with the respect he deserved.

Now it was just him and Deku in the classroom. Not that the nerd seemed to of realised.

“Oi, Deku!” he snarled, letting small explosions pop in his hand. An intimidation tactic. One of his favourites.

Deku didn’t even move. Was he that damn unaware of his surroundings? Disgusting.

Rolling his eyes, Katsuki let out a small blast by the nerd’s ear.

The greenette yelped and sharply turned his head to face the other teen. Finally, a reaction. Alarm swiftly crossed his face before the return of nothingness, all signs of life gone once again. That’s about as much real emotion anyone could get out of him lately; whether it was a flash of pain, a hint of sadness, or a moment of confusion.

Then came the annoying part: with the fake, strained smile forcing it’s way beneath dull eyes, as the disgusting excuse for a classmate stuttered out a soft “H-hi K-K-Kachaan.”

Katsuki merely grunted, he’d decided it wasn’t worth even addressing Deku as long as his parents or Auntie Inko weren’t around. So instead he got straight to the point, “After school. Today. Meet me down the sidepath of Crescent Road. Don’t make me come get you myself.”

“Of c-course. I’ll b-be there,” was the empty response he got. There was no fear, no sadness, no dread, no excuses, no attempting to talk his way out of it or negotiating or begging. Not even any calm acceptance of what was coming.

It was just empty. Empty words coming from an empty shell.

And it disgusted Katsuki.

He didn’t really know why. Deku was meant to be like this. He was meant to be a no one. He was meant to accept whatever he threw at him. He was meant to know his place. He was meant to understand he was worthless. He was meant to be a mere steppingstone that would fade into the background with the other shitty extras until he was completely forgotten.

And yet just the sight of the nerd was still pissing him off. Everything about Deku always disgusted the blonde, no matter what he did, no matter how he changed. Ever since he was announced quirkless, anything to do with Deku felt and sounded grotesque.

He wanted nothing to do with the green bastard. He honestly didn’t.

So why was Katsuki staring at the short figure as he slowly got to his feet, eyes losing whatever focus they’d had on the explosive teen as he grabbed his coffee and yellow bag, followed by the smile peeling off his face as he began trudging to the exit as if moving through treacle. Katsuki stared into the dead, soulless eyes of the boy he’d once considered a friend for whatever fucking reason, and found that all he could think about was….

…was how everything about this was unnerving.

No, creepy?

Disturbing?

Depressing?

Wrong?

Concerning?

Worrying?

Weird?

Yeah, weird.

Deku was fucking weird.

---

Shouta Aizawa was getting worried.

Really worried.

No One had always been a fragile case. Even more so once he found out the vigilante was a kid. Even more so once he found out the kid had some serious issues that weren’t being dealt with correctly.

And the case was becoming more fragile by the day.

Shouta didn’t know what, but at something bad had clearly happened to No One. It started with a few slip ups one week, a security camera catching sight of the hooded figure, a civilian late at night witnessing the vigilante jump across a roof with his whip out. The hero had been worried that the kid was getting overconfident in his vigilante role, and would slowly descend into his downfall. He planned to bring it up next time they met.

That was until he saw No One approach their meetup point with glazed, dead eyes.

He only asked what was wrong once (any more and No One could get annoyed and leave) and received a predictable “It doesn’t matter.” Even through the voice changer the voice sounded exhausted.

He left it at that and began talking about his week as usual, the vigilante staying silent practically the whole meetup minus the goodbye at the end.

Over the next few weeks, Shouta’s concern continued to grow as the kid slipped up more and more, the police receiving more reports of sightings, most saying the figure was injured, varying from limps to deep gashes cutting through costume and skin, each report leaving Aizawa feeling nauseous with worry.

Even though he’d began talking like usual in their meetups, the glazed look never left his eyes, and the pit-like bags seemed to be digging further and further into his face. He was really starting to doubt if the kid was sleeping at all.

After a report of a sighting from the new emerging hero Kamui Woods, Eraserhead decided he could no longer afford to take this slowly. Action was needed.

He barged into Tsukauchi’s office as soon as the day shift started at the station, unsurprised to find it empty; the detective had been up interrogating multiple suspects for a series of murders into the early hours of the morning. He quickly went to the computer on his desk, put in the password (the detective had told him it once they started working on the No One case together) and quickly opened the files to the case, which currently consisted of pictures of his notes and the recent pictures caught on surveillance footage, along with lists of male students from every middle and high school in the surrounding 150 mile radius (they’d started with local schools only but had continued to widen their search area as no results emerged).

Sure, giving police stations access to information on every person living legally in Japan may have once been considered a breach of privacy, but with the amount of quirk related crimes rising everyday that easy access to personal information had become a necessity.

Besides, it wasn’t anything too personal; mostly quirk stuff along with noticeable features and links to files of other family members (the amount of people who used their quirks on their enemies’ families as a form of revenge were disgusting). More information would only be given if an official investigation began.

Despite having looked through the student lists thousands of times for a match to his vigilante, the pro began the process again. If he could just figure out the identity, maybe he could avoid confronting the boy tomorrow on the roof during their meetup?

He started how he so often did: filtering by appearance. 46,891 results for students with red eyes, 1,450 results for students with red eyes and black sclera.

Damn quirks, thought they made people more easily recognisable.

It’s not like it wasn’t hard enough: the files didn’t provide photos of the student on first check unless they already owned a criminal record, the list showing quirk information and any additional effects (such as major weaknesses and triggers) being quite useless. From some more confidential schools even that slither of information could be hard to collect unless an official investigation took place.

Shouta clicked on some of the results to see more information on the students (while most had already been searched through there were a couple of new names from the newly increased search radius. He had around an hour before he had to get to homeroom with his new, slightly more promising class, and he wanted to use it as efficiently as possible.

None of the results had quirks to match any of No One’s possible ones, but he hadn’t expected appearance to work anyways. Those eyes would have got the kid noticed by now if he had them like that constantly. Smart-ass kid, hiding an element of his quirk from the public to limit recognition (It left the question on just how long the vigilante had been planning this career choice).

Moving on, he began filtering quirks.

First he tried enhanced senses, probably the most likely quirk for the kid, at least in his opinion. Then he tried mild strength enhancers, then regeneration quirks, then intelligence quirks, then speed quirks (he increased the radius again for that one).

Nope, nothing. Just like every other time he’d done this search; there were matches but none that quite matched the problem child they were looking for once accessed in more detail.

He tried adding ‘small stature’ along with the quirk types. Yeah, even he hadn’t expected that to work. Even a specific height wouldn’t work with teens.

He thought deeply to himself. Either this kid was incredibly deceptive with his quirk or he was looking at this in entirely the wrong angle. Was the kid purposely throwing them off with his vigilante setup? Did he have an entirely unrelated quirk??

But the kid was scarily intelligent. And aware of his surroundings. And strong despite being tiny and possibly malnourished. Maybe the quirk took a lot of energy?

Shouta groaned, slumping against the table as a headache began to settle in. Great, the day had barely started and he was already ready to curl into his sleeping bag and hide for the rest of the day. It was just literally impossible to capture a kid who seemed unnaturally good in every field-

Huh.

The kid was too good at most things.

Maybe the quirk enhanced both body and mind?

But that was incredibly rare.

It was more like two separate quirks!

Would a quirk like that also enhance healing?

…

Yeah, that could make sense.

77 results for “full body and mind enhancer”.

Still more than the satisfying “1” he wanted, but a much more manageable number!

As if predicting the removal of the storm cloud over the room, Tsukauchi entered the room, yawning as he shuffled over to Shouta’s side. “What’s got you here so early?” the detective asked, falling into the second spinning chair installed in the office.

“Doing another search for No One.”

Tsukauchi’s eyebrow rose, “I thought we were keeping the active search to a minimum?”

The hero’s eyes didn’t move from the screen as he clicked on the file of a ‘Kita Akihiro’, beginning to read through his information, “Kamui Woods spotted the kid last night.”

“What!?” the detective jolted up from his relaxed position, surprise evident on his face, “But the kid’s always been so-“

“Cautious? Until the last few weeks, yeah he has been.” Nah, this kid’s quirk involved a muscle enhancer – No One was many things but beefy wasn’t one of them. He moved onto ‘Tokunaga Arata’, “Something’s happened recently, and it’s really messed him up. Made him unusually reckless. That’s why something needs to be done sooner rather than later.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing Eraser, you could lose any progress we’ve made so far if-“

“Of course I don’t know what I’m doing!” the hero snapped, highlighting the name on screen to be looked into later (a speed, regeneration and slight mental boost quirk sounds like a good fit for their vigilante), “This kid’s been a damn anomaly since the beginning! Hell, I’ve been talking to him for months and still barely know a thing about him!” Next name: ‘Saiki Bushida’. “But he got spotted by a hero. A rookie hero of all people. If it had been someone with more experience…”

A sigh came from the other man as he rolled his chair over to look at the digital file over the teacher’s shoulder, “So what’s the plan?”

“I’m going to confront the kid tomorrow. Don’t want to but don’t have much of a choice at this point.” This kid wasn’t right either, most of his enhancements helping more superficial things, like fast growing hair and nails. No interest in heroism, going to a modelling high school. “Giving finding his identity one more shot before that though, I just…really don’t want to scare him off again.”

“You know I worry about him too Eraser. That’s I agreed to all this in the first place.” Shouta didn’t turn to face the detective, merely giving a terse nod as he clicked onto the next file. They sat in silence for a few moments before Tsukauchi spoke up again, “You know what? I’ll keep looking through these, you really should head off to work. I’ll call if I find anything.”

Glancing at the time in the corner of the screen, Aizawa saw that yes, he really should head off now. He stood up and stretched, his back giving a satisfying crack as it tried to recover from it’s hunched position over the computer screen. “Alright, but call right away. Not after a break. Not at the end over the school day. Right. Away.” He rolled his eyes at the cheesy grin and thumbs up he got from the other man, making his way to the door.

If he was being honest with himself, did he expect Tsukauchi to find anything? No. They’d searched through almost all possible options over the last year and a bit, and still come up empty. Did he expect the identity to magically fall into their hands now that there was a sense of higher urgency? Don’t be an idiot.

Did he think that his confrontation would end well? No. Not in the slightest. It was highly possible that he’d destroy the delicate relationship he’d been piecing together with No One with a few intrusive words.

But the risk was worth it now.

It was worth risking all the trust and sincerity he’d built in order to protect a hurt child.

---

He made his mum breakfast.

He threw up breakfast.

He drank coffee and brushed his teeth to remove the flavour.

He put on the bandages he needed to fake for school.

He went to school.

He sat in lessons.

His lunch got thrown away, usually not by him.

He drank coffee.

He brushed his teeth.

He applied his concealer.

He got beaten up.

He sat through more lessons.

He got beaten up.

He went to the new flat.

He did his homework.

He drank coffee.

He started his police notes.

He tidied the house.

He made dinner.

He worked on his costume.

He drank coffee.

He ate dinner with his mum.

The threw up dinner.

He drank coffee and brushed his teeth.

He finished his notes for the police while his mum went to sleep.

He got into his costume.

He snuck out the house.

He did his vigilante work.

He got beaten up.

He drank coffee.

He went home.

He updated his notebooks.

He had a shower.

He put on his layers of clothing.

He put on his uniform.

He applied his concealer.

Repeat.

No sleep. No lying down. No free time. Free time meant time to think. Thinking was not productive.

He’d crash sometimes, waking up to find himself unconscious on top of his notes, which was okay.

As long as he was too tired to think, it was okay.

As long as no one knew, it was okay.

All the days were blurring together. It all just repeated like clockwork, and he had to drag himself through them all.

He really didn’t have another choice.

It was always cold, no matter how many layers he wore.

But that was okay, the cold was distracting.

He felt dizzy and unfocused from not sleeping for the last 4 days.

But that was okay, his grades were still doing well, and no villains had beaten him yet.

He made a couple of tiny mistakes during his time as No One when his dizziness was at its worst.

But that was okay, they were so minor no one had probably noticed.

He was getting so many injuries at school even his quirk was struggling to deal with them.

But that was okay, it was easier than faking them.

The bandages on healed wounds itched.

But that was okay, it was better than people finding out.

Aizawa seemed worried about him.

But that was okay, he didn’t know the truth.

Eating his meals still disgusted and horrified him.

That wasn’t okay, but he couldn’t change that….

He just had to stay busy. No thinking time.

It was Saturday, probably his least favourite day of the week. PE was on Saturday. It’s not because he sucked at PE, quite the opposite really. Making sure his results were realistic for a Deku was…tiring. He also hated the normal sports kit. Too revealing. So he wore the jumper and joggers all year long, with his own 2 jumpers and leggings hidden beneath it. He always got laughed at for that, especially now it was almost summer and everyone else was getting hot. He was still cold though. Really cold.

At least he had his talk with Aizawa to look forward to tonight…

He stepped out of the changing room and robotically made his way onto the field. It was odd; as No One he could take down villains with little effort, scale buildings with a few simple hops and jump across rooftops with ease. Meanwhile as Deku…every movement took. So. Much. Effort. Every small action had him questioning if it was worth it.

Still, it was better than people finding out.

He vaguely heard laughter around him. Yeah, probably everyone laughing at his clothes. Again.

He always gets beaten up more after PE.

“Look at Deku! Why does he even show up when he knows he’s gonna get his ass kicked?” he hears from a boy behind him.

A group of girls next to him start whispering loudly, clearly wanting him to hear, “I always forget how skinny he is, is he what? Five years old?” They all giggled and continued sharing insults as he studied the light brown scuffs on the tips of his faded red trainers.

He heard someone across the room mutter a not-so-quiet “fuckin’ creep.”

‘They’re right you know,’ The voice he’d been trying oh-so-hard to block out lately whispered traitorously in his ear ‘You’re a freak, a disgusting one at that! Even you knew it was better for you to just disappear, but you can’t even kill yourself correctly you- ‘

Nope. Not thinking like that again. It was pointless when there was nothing he could do about it.

Besides, it wasn’t a suicide attempt, just another test of his quirk. Like the time with the knife.

Whatever helped him live with himself.

He just needed to focus on something else, as he had been for the past couple months.

He felt the world around him blur as he blocked out the murmurs and whispers surrounding him. Find something else to focus on. That couldn’t be too hard considering how busy he kept himself.

He settled on one of the cases he was looking into as No One; one he was gonna report to the police rather than tackle himself. It wasn’t like he could take down an entire drug circle of thugs high on some new drug called Trigger by himself, not that he’d stop digging independently to see quite how big this case was and how the hell it’d spread so quickly across-

“Alright, line up!” he was cut out of his thoughts as his PE teacher barged into the school gym, bellowing and sweating slightly despite the lesson not even starting yet, as per usual.

He let out a silent sigh of relief and got into line with the others. He was doing fine, he just needed to ignore the stares and whispers and that voice in the back of his head set on making his life a living hell and then he could leave for the day.

“Today we’re gonna start off with a good old game of dodgeball!” the overly sweaty man (Oshiro-sensei? He hadn’t really payed attention to his introduction at the start of the year) shouted unnecessarily loudly, immediately making an excited murmur travel among the students, and a crackle of small explosions came from the direction of a rather explosive teen.

His heart sank. Dodgeball was never good. It always led to him being ganged up on, then hit more afterwards.

He guessed he wouldn’t be getting home as soon as he wanted.

The man he was around 70% sure was called Oshiro-sensei continued yelling, “We’re using standard rules! Team captains Bakugo and Himura shall pick their teams, one person at a time! The match will last until one side has no players…”

He stopped listening, the rest of the rules were pointless, said only for legal reasons. Not that the others would follow them.

“No Quirks allowed?” He was pretty sure Kacchan had managed to burn him every lesson so far.

“No aiming for the head?” How many times had he been sent off with a concussion?

“No ganging up on your own teammates?” Please, give him a break.

“Deku.” Hearing his nickname brought him back to the present. He slowly lifted his gaze from the floor to meet the malicious grin of his classmate.

Himura was staring at him, impatiently waiting for him to go to her side. He was picked first, but that wasn’t unusual. It was an unspoken rule that if Kacchan was a team captain (which was too often) the other team had to choose useless Deku to give the other boy a reason to fight the boy. Even the teachers seemed to play along: it couldn’t have been a coincidence that he hadn’t been on a team with the blonde since he was eight.

‘What other reason would they pick you? They think you’re a quirkless loser, and if they knew what you really are they’d be running away from their monster of a classmate.’

He trudged over to the redhead’s side, focusing his eyes on Oshiro(?)-sensei in a desperate attempt to distract his mind from the cruel giggles of his surrounding classmates. He noticed beads of sweat beginning to roll down his forehead and onto his cheeks, and couldn’t help but wonder if it was a side effect of the man’s muscle enhancer quirk. Maybe the large muscles needed to constantly burn body fat to sustain themselves? Maybe the man was in a constant feverish state with his body burning up? No if that was the case he’d probably take suppressants to stop his body from overworking itself-

“BEGIN!!!” the man roared with too much enthusiasm for a kid’s dodgeball game, making the greenette wince. Sure he was better at controlling his enhanced senses than he used to be, but sudden loud noises like that still left him with a splitting headache.

He didn’t have long to think though as a dodgeball came whizzing towards him. He quickly dodged out the way (but not too quickly), turning his attention to the game. The teams seemed pretty balanced skill wise, well, minus Kacchan, but if they knocked out some of his teammates quickly he could get worked up, which always makes him a bit less accurate, but then he’d also get more forceful with more of his quirk behind the throw which would in turn and there was a ball heading towards his face there was definitely a quirk behind that it was gonna break his nose if he did nothing shit shit shit!!!!

Without thinking he grabbed the ball and immediately froze, every crevice of his being filling with regret.

He’d just broken one of his first and main rules: a Deku never, ever prevents an attack.

Oh god they were going to realise he wasn’t as weak as he pretended to be and then people would ask questions then peoplewouldfindoutpeoplecan’tfindouttheycan’t-

“Midoriya! Throw the ball right now or you’re out!” Oshiro (Oniro? Did it even begin with an “o?”) sensei yelled, snapping him out of his mini panic.

“R-right!” he yelped, throwing the ball as weakly as he could, watching it pathetically bounce over to the other side. As Deku he had to be as pathetic, but not so pathetic as to get himself out by holding the ball (that was just asking for several burns along with not-so-accidental kicks from his whole team). It still hurt when his whole team began whining at him for the pathetic throw, matching that little voice in his head that just would not shut up.

He stood there on the court, watching as the four balls in play were thrown wildly between the two sides, shrieks of laughter and competitiveness being tossed around, along with the occasional “DIE!!” from a certain blonde.

‘Poor Deku, if you had been born a real person you could be part of the fun, not some wet blanket who ruins everyone’s day with their creepy-ass attitude-‘

Okay, dodgeball wasn’t a big enough distraction. Guess these things became too tame when you spent every night taking down criminals? He needed to focus on something else. He winced again as a bellow from across the room left his ears ringing slightly.

That’s it! Oshiro (he’d call him that for now until he was sure)-sensei’s quirk could still work as a distraction, at least for a bit longer. The man was still shouting too enthusiastically for a middle-school PE teacher, the sweating having increased exponentially since the start of the match, the front of his shirt beginning to show patches. Looking closely, he noticed a slight ripple in the man’s bare arms at the same time as Oshiro-sensei’s eyes creased. Was his teacher’s quirk causing pain? Why wasn’t he taking suppressants if his quirk was hurting him like that? Was the sweating related though? It was summer afterall and most people were probably getting hot in the stuffy-

A ball hit his chest, hard (yeah, there was definitely some quirk behind that blow). He made sure his face stayed neutral, not showing any of the pain from the ball making contact with his not yet healed cracked ribs.

“Midoriya! Focus on the game next time!” the teacher yelled. “Now get off the court!”

“Yes sensei! Sorry sensei!” he shouted back, skuttling over to the bench of out players. Both immediately gave him dirty looks, so he chose to instead stand awkwardly off to the side. Unsurprisingly, a dodgeball was “misaimed” at his head a minute later.

This wasn’t productive. This wasn’t keeping his brain busy. He could refocus on the case from earlier? But a part of his brain was now too alert on keeping an eye out for whizzing dodgeballs. He couldn’t focus entirely on anything, and the voice was gonna fill his head again and he’d do something he regrets.

“Oshiro-sensei, please c-can I go to t-the bathroom?” he asked, trying desperately to not let his rising panic show on his face.

He earnt an unimpressed glare as the quite concerningly sweaty man spoke, “If you’re going to try and get off sports, at least get my name right. Now go sit down.”

“R-right, sorry sensei,” he muttered, shuffling back to his awkward spot standing just behind the bench. So he’d been wrong about the name. Severely wrong if the disgruntled look was anything to go off. Then where had he gotten Oshiro from?

…

Oh.

Oh.

That was the last name he’d written in his notebook.

The black notebook.

Was it just him or was the world going white?

He felt his eyes try and roll back in his head, so he quickly shut them and sat down on the gym floor.

‘Wow, you’ve really gone and done it now.’ The voice sneered, ‘You’ve fallen apart, and everyone will know soon.’

He couldn’t argue with that. He’d just called his teacher by a dead man’s name.

God, why was it so cold?

When would this world finally allow him to leave?

How much more could it take away from him?

“-ku! Stand up nerd!” he faintly heard through the cotton wool blocking his ears. Using energy that didn’t exist, he pulled his eyes open to find Kacchan standing over him.

They both stared at each other for around five seconds, but felt like years to him, before the explosive teen spoke again, “Don’t fucking ignore me nerd! I said stand up!”

He looked around, seeing most people had left the gym, teacher included. Shit, he must’ve crashed for the rest of the lesson. Luckily he’d already sat down with his back against the wall otherwise the class might’ve notice him fall unconscious. Only Kacchan and Himura remained, along with the newly picked lackeys for this year waiting by the door, probably as lookouts.

Before he knew it his sport’s kit collar had been grabbed, a rough hand easily dragging him to his feet. His head span slightly as he was assaulted by red eyes.

“When I tell you to stand up. You. Stand. Up. Is that clear?” Kacchan’s voice was low and quiet, and he felt his heartrate speed up slightly. His childhood friend wasn’t just angry, he was pissed.

Despite the oncoming feeling of doom, he forced the corners of his mouth up and out, his plastered on smile screwing itself into place until it was unmovable, “Yes, s-sorry K-Kacchan.” He stuttered out between the shivers that wracked his weak form. Maybe he should start wearing a third jumper?

“Jeez, I can see why you find him so disgusting Bakugo. That smile is so creepy,” drawled out Himura, sending a well known look of disgust in his direction.

In return she got an angry “Shut up!” before the blonde turned his attention back onto the shivering greenette. “You are aware you upset this one today?” he nodded towards the girl behind him who immediately began speaking.

“Yeah, you really let our team down you stupid-“

“I said shut up you shitty extra!” Kacchan barked, reaching forward and placing a hand on his shoulder. He could already feel the heat radiating through his layers of clothes. “Now, don’t you think you owe her an apology?”

He knew it wouldn’t make a difference, but he said it anyways, “I-I’m really sorry Himura. I’ll t-try to do bet-better next time.”

A blonde eyebrow raised, “I don’t know, that didn’t feel very sincere to me? What about you?”

The redhead smirked, yellow eyes glinting mischievously, “Not at all, I think he might need the lesson driven home.”

And with that a punch made contact with his cheek.

He fell to the ground and was greeted by a kick from Himura. Followed by a stomp on the neck.

Kacchan leaned over him as he wheezed, apparently waiting for him to regain some form of breath before speaking. Once the choking stopped, the teen said “I have a question for you Deku. And you better answer honestly or I’ll fucking destroy you.” He grabbed his hair, yanking his face up so the duo’s eyes met. “During our game today you caught one of my balls. More than that, you caught it easily. So I have to ask: do you still really think a loser like you can get away with fucking looking down on me?”

So that ball was Kacchan’s? Shit. Shit shit shit shit! He was so stupid! How could he have not even paid attention to who was throwing each dodgeball!?!? He smelt burning hair as some of his curls began sizzling from the applied heat. He felt the smile begin to slip from his lips as his mind raced, the distance he’d managed to build between Kacchan’s bullying and his feelings decaying before his very eyes. He had to sort this out. Fast.

His voice came out dull, just like it always seemed to as Deku recently, “Of course not Kacchan! I w-wasn’t, I p-promise. I-I don’t even k-know how I m-managed to catch it hon-honestly I was s-so surprised I alm-almost dropped it right-“

He was interrupted by a punch to the eye. He stumbled backwards, clutching his hands to the sensitive spot.

“Fuck off Deku, if you’re gonna mutter bullshit for an answer then why the hell give one in the first place?” Kacchan snarled, heading towards the door, Himura following like an excited puppy. “And pull yourself together! You’re such a weakling it’s pathetic!”

And with that he was left alone in the sweltering gym. Yet he was still cold.

At least now he could go home. Saturday afternoons were optional private study, and he’d be much more productive at home.

Plus he wasn’t sure he could put up with much more today.

He waited until he could no longer hear the blonde’s distant shouts before slowly making his way out of the room towards the lockers. He gathered his things, noting dully that there were red scribbles lining his yellow backpack (most likely from Himura) as he slung it onto his shoulders.

He spent the rest of the evening studying for an upcoming English test and continuing his notes (more like a full on report) on the Trigger drug case, the words fading in and out of his brain as if passing through a torn membrane. The cold didn’t ease up as he tried desperately not to let the unwanted thoughts through.

At eight he began preparing the chicken katsu curry and kani salad for his and his mum’s dinner for her return at around nine. He quickly re-applied the concealer as best he could (not much he could do about the half-formed black eye which was healing a lot slower than anticipated) and plucked out his best, most realistic smile as he heard the woman approach their new apartment.

The new place…wasn’t the nicest. It was a lot cheaper than their old, already low-budget apartment, and for good reason: the neighbours shouted late into the night, the bathroom held a weird smell that no amount of incenses and air fresheners could remove, the stove was in desperate need of replacing and the place was cramped even with just the mother and son living there. Sure, his mum pretended to not mind for his sake, just as he pretended for hers.

But he could see it; a little more of the light had left her eyes, the move draining more of her already crumbling determination, making it all the more important for this mask of fake strength and happiness had to stay in place.

‘Making it all the more important for him to not be a fucking idiot “experimenting” with his mortality.’

“Izu, I’m home!” his mum called out as she unlocked the door.

Emerging from the bathroom, he entered the small lounge/kitchen/dining room area with as much bounce in his step as he could manage (which was very little as his legs continued to shake from the cold), casual smile draped over his features. “Hey mum! Dinner will be ready in a few!”

“Thanks sweetie, I honestly don’t know what I’d do without you!” tired eyes smiled at him as he turned his back to begin plating.

‘Maybe live a happier life where you don’t slave away to keep a monster alive?’ He ignored the unhelpful comment his mind presented to instead focus one spooning the curry into servings.

“How was your d-day? I hope the children didn’t work you t-too hard,” he asked, beginning the low-effort small talk the duo always held after long workdays.

He heard a sigh from the table behind him as he finished up the salad, “Well that’s to be expected, those kids are absolute sweethearts but they can’t sit still for five minutes.” She chuckled lightly in amusement and he joined in with his quiet huffs of air despite the smell of the food he was serving leaving him queasy. Actually now he thought about it he felt weirdly lightheaded. Oblivious to her son’s discomfort, the mother continued, “The bigger issue was this table at the restaurant, no manners the lot of them! They complained at me about everything they got served and tried to not pay despite eating almost everything! Forget twenty five children, that is exhausting.”

“S-sorry to hear that mum, guess those g-guys just don’t treat their elders with the respect they d-deserve,” he pulled what he hopped was a cheeky grin.

Inko gasped overdramatically, hand moving to her chest, “Elder? Why young man, I thought I raised you better than that!”

“I w-want to speak to the manager!”

“I am the manager, now apologise before I kick you out my fine establishment!”

“Darn, my evil plans, foiled again! However shall I pay off my meal now??” he choked down a piece of chicken, huffing out his rather pathetic excuse of a laugh (he’d realised one day with Aizawa that he no longer really knew how to laugh properly) despite the rancid taste in his throat.

His mum was also giggling softly, making struggling down the disgusting meal worth it, and apparently decided to put an end to this weird scene they’d set up, “You can start by telling me about your day. I’m sure it was more interesting than mine!”

And so the conversation dissolved into it’s usual form: the petite boy playing a card game where he picked from his pack of lies which ones to tell to his mum today. He lied about having fun with his classmates in dodgeball, despite sucking at sports (hence the slight swelling around his eye that the concealer couldn’t quite hide). He lied about eating his lunch with some friends, then lied about hanging out with Kacchan after school, all while shoving as much of his inedible meal into him as he could. It was mainly just the salad – he felt so nauseous even without this food swimming around his insides.

He was still cold, despite the extra jumper he’d put on.

After the meal, he tidied up as fast as he could with his shaking hands before excusing himself, knowing his mum would want to go to bed soon after another full day of work. He found that he couldn’t quite wait for her to finish her nightly shower before his food re-emerged, opting to instead quickly pop out the window and throw up in the alley across the street. From the smell the addition wouldn’t make much of a difference.

Quietly re-entering his room, he reached to grab his usual vat of coffee to remove the taste – just to find he hadn’t got one. Shit. Absolutely fucking fantastic. He’d forgotten to make one earlier. Just another shitty thing to top off another shitty day. He let out a small whine as he sat at his desk to write notes.

‘You’re losing it. You can’t even stick to your own schedule anymore. Next thing you know you’ll be standing right back on the edge of a buildi-‘

He slammed his hand on the table, a slightly louder whine escaping him. You know what? Today just really hadn’t been working out for him. Well, even more so than other days. Maybe he could just…take a night off?

No no no no nononononono that was crazy who knows who’d get hurt if he wasn’t around Eraserhead couldn’t cover the whole area alone no he couldn’t let people die just cause he was tired he couldn’t go to sleep why was it still so cold-

Okay, that was a no. He quickly shook himself out of the very deep spiral he’d almost dived straight into. Maybe…he could focus on his notes more? He’d still do a small patrol when he went to meet Eraserhead, and everything would be fine, right?

…yeah, that was okay. Then he could finish off this next batch of notes to deliver tomorrow.

‘Losing it…’ his mind murmured. No, no he wasn’t. He was fine, fully in control of this schedule. He could bend it when needed. He could make altercations when he wanted, as long as he was still helping others.

He knew what he was doing.

With that he set off to work, pen scribbling frantically on the sheets in front of him for the next few hours.

---

At 2:30 he snuck out the house in his full gear, climbing to the roof of the new apartment block with ease. Tonight was simple: patrol for half an hour on his way to his meet up with Eraserhead, talk for a while, then half an hour patrol back. Sure, he could get there and back faster than that, but he needed to do some form of patrol!

As he began his jump from roof to roof, he began to feel a little better. It was true: the only time he felt some sense of alright was as No One; free to run around the city without the glares of disgust following him, all the haunting thoughts leaving him momentarily as he focused solely on saving anyone in danger.

Five minutes into his self-made route he heard the sound he’d been waiting for: the sound of a fight. Adrenaline spiked as he dove into the alley where the noise was coming from.

However when he turned to the direction of the noise he found only one man standing, the other figure already unconscious on the floor. Probably just a fistfight taken out of hand.

The smile the still standing figure gave him said otherwise; a cruel look that seemed way too happy considering the vigilante’s appearance.

“So you’re that new vigilante, right?”

His insides squirmed. This was all very wrong. Cautiously he replied, “I wouldn’t say new, exactly.” He took a defensive stance as the other’s smile widened.

“Ha! I knew that would work – start a fight around here and you show up within minutes!” the man gloated, eyeing the vigilante up and down with a predator’s gaze.

He frowned. He wasn’t that well known, was he? He certainly wasn’t a big enough figure to be personally targeted, was he?

“Heh, I don’t know why Overhaul wanted us to take you down so bad,” the villain continued. This guy wasn’t the smartest criminal, spending his time monologuing proudly, even giving his enemy new information. Overhaul, huh? That name was getting filed away for later.

“…two of us for a pipsqueak like you? I’m capable of snapping a twig to pieces alone.” The villain took a step forward, “At least he made good bait.”

The boy tried to focus on the pair of claws encasing the villain’s hands, he tried to come up with a plan to defeat this guy. But his mind had gotten stuck on something else:

This guy had been ordered to fight him in particular, and fully believed he could do it.

“Overhaul” wanted him dead.

They believed this guy could take him down, and set a trap for him.

He was being trapped. Hunted.

Hunted like a monster.

His blood ran cold.

Too cold.

The person in front of him was warm.

He only just dodged the swipe sent his way. His eyes travelled to the man’s smirk, smudge of blood on the corner of his lips.

Blood from the fight he’d had with his partner.

Warm blood circulating through his body.

He dodged another close swing, the crab-like claw crumbling the bricks it contacted from the power behind it. He tried really, really hard to ignore the stench of injuries filling the air from both men.

Body full of meat.

He tried to aim a kick at the man’s legs, knowing hitting the arms were pointless. He missed as his vision swam.

Monster vs meat.

It would be a lie if he said he wasn’t drooling.

He needed this meat.

He was slammed in the already cracked ribs.

He needed to eat.

He shouldn’t need to eat for another week.

He NEEDED to eat.

He needed to focus on this fight!

Who would miss one thug?

No, HE was in control! He knew what he was doing!

Then why was he so cold?

He somehow made contact with a nose, the criminal yelping as warm liquid spurted.

Izuku was so, so cold.

But then it got warmer.

---

Twenty minutes.

The kid was twenty minutes late.

He was never late.

Aizawa swore he was gonna kick some sense into the vigilante the next time he laid his eyes on him.

The hero stood on their usual roof impatiently, the knot of worry in his chest swelling every second he stood alone. There was no way No One had suddenly decided not to come tonight, right? Hell, he was pretty sure the vigilante hadn’t taken a night off since he began.

That meant something bad had happened.

‘No, that’s a stupid assumption,’ a more logical part of his brain supplied, ‘It is much more likely that the kid finally had to sleep, or he had something else planned – No One must have a life outside of vigilantism.’

For most other people that reasoning would help settle Shouta’s nerves, but this was the problem child: there were already several warning signals about his home life, and the kid was more likely to pass out fighting than give himself a night of rest- oh god what if he’d passed out fighting?

The pro decided he’d wait ten more minutes before beginning a search. Damn, and on the night he was gonna finally confront the vigilante.

It was seven minutes later when a small figure finally appeared on the roof, swaying where he stood.

By then Shouta was not in the mood for greetings, his moment of relief immediately being swamped by a rush of concern and teeth-grinding frustration. “Kid, we need to talk. Now,” he said, taking a few steps closer to the vigilante.

The lack of response made his frustration begin to boil, bubbles rising up his throat and coming out of his mouth in gruff words, “You can’t keep doing things like this, it’s becoming dangerous to your health and you know it, it’s making you reckless which an illegal vigilante can’t afford to…” the words stopped spilling from Shouta’s mouth as No One let out a pained whimper, sounding far too much like a wounded animal. All he could do was stare as the tiny frame in front of him curled in on itself, ending in a sitting-up fetal position.

There was silence between them for a minute as Shouta evaluated his choices. Shit, comforting civilians had never been his forte, let alone comforting an emotional vigilante who had just been through god knows what. He began speaking, careful to keep his distance, “Is there anything-“

“No.” a raspy voice answered, voice muffled from it’s owner talking into his legs, voice distorter inactive, “Not now Eraserhead. Please.”

The only sound came from the traffic in the distance, sounding like a distant mimic from the duo’s abandoned building.

Slowly, incredibly slowly, Shouta made a move: he inched towards the boy until he was about a metre away, before slowly sitting into a cross legged position. Then he extended a hand out towards the boy. Not intrusive. Not threatening. Just an offer.

Once his arm was almost fully extended, the vigilante raised his head to meet the concerned hero’s eyes. The first thing he noticed was the fully bloomed bruise around his right eye. The second was the lack of glazed eyes, replaced with…

If Shouta had thought the kid looked sad before, it didn’t compare to the whirlpool of loss and despair (and was that….anger?) in the boy now.

Once again he could only imagine what No One had gone through. None of the ideas had a happy ending.

Timidly, No One reached his hands out and clutched onto the extended arm. His usual gloves weren’t anywhere to be seen; pale, bony hands clinging onto Shouta’s arm as if it was the only thing grounding him to reality. Right now it possibly could be.

The grip hurt – in any other situation he’d be impressed by the strength from such a small kid. But when said child was gripping you so hard that his knuckles were turning white while his face showed nothing but heartbreak there was very little to focus on other than deep concern and care.

They sat like that for a while, no words between the two other than the odd whine from the vigilante as his grip held strong. No tears, no sniffles, just the occasional sound of true repressed pain escaping, a sound that hurt Shouta more than any other.

No confrontation took place that night.