Chapter Text
Kacchan’s words kept repeating over and over again in Izuku’s mind.
“ If you wanna be a hero so bad, why don't you make it easier for yourself and take a swan dive off the roof? Maybe you'll have a quirk in your next life! ”
Izuku’s stomach twisted as he clutched his notebook to his chest, the wind whipping around him and ruffling his hair, his clothes billowing. Flipping through the pages, he found the page All Might had signed.
Even All Might, the person Izuku looked up to most in the world, had told him he couldn’t be a hero. Even when Izuku had run in to save Kacchan from the Slime Villain, they’d all looked down on him. All the heroes, even All Might, had scolded him for getting involved. Then at school the following week, Kacchan had attacked him, going as far as to set off some small explosions against his skin, leaving burns. His classmates had laughed, saying it was pointless for him to have tried to do anything to save Kacchan.
Izuku thought maybe things would get better in high school. He applied to UA, trying for the Hero Department. But on the day of the exam, while he handed in his forms, he was turned away at the door by a member of the administration.
“ Quirkless? It’d be far too dangerous for you to be in the Hero Exam. You would be a liability not only to yourself but to the others in the exam. If you would like to apply for the other programs, you can, but I simply can’t let you apply for the Hero Department. ”
But what was the point of going to UA if he couldn’t be a hero? So he applied for a school closer to home, hoping that he would be able to stay under the radar and avoid the bullies. Kacchan would be going to UA, so maybe the others would leave him alone.
On the first day, it became evident that a power vacuum had formed in Kacchan’s absence. His old cronies were vying for the position of top-dog and the easiest way to do that was to go after Izuku. They picked on him, becoming crueler and crueler to prove themselves. They eventually sorted themselves out and Izuku found himself at the bottom of the pecking order. He was the butt of every joke and the odd man out.
At home, it wasn’t much better. Not that his mother bullied him of course. His mother was kind, but she did not understand Izuku sometimes. She couldn’t imagine him as a hero. Every time something bad happened at UA, like the USJ attack or the attack at their summer camp, she would remind him about how it was a good thing that he didn’t get into his dream school, that it was better that he avoided heroics. Then he would hear her calling Mitsuki Bakugou at night, praising Kacchan. Saying how it was amazing that Kacchan was near the top of his class and how it was amazing that Kacchan managed to narrowly avoid being kidnapped at the summer camp. She praised how aggressive Kacchan was, not only against the villains during the attacks, but also against his classmates at the sports festival. All Izuku ever heard was how amazing Kacchan was and how he was going to be the Number One Hero one day. And maybe Kacchan could be a good hero, but he wasn’t a good person; that much was clear. He needed to grow up before he could be a great hero. Yet he got all the praise and Izuku was looked down on. He was called weak by everyone, if not in words then in actions, like how his mother treated him like he was fragile.
And so, after a particularly bad day at school, Izuku took a walk. Somehow, he managed to find himself back at that building where he had spoken to All Might all those months ago.
He took one last moment to look at All Might's signature before he went back to flipping through the pages. Izuku kept going until he came to a blank one. Riffling through his backpack, he found a pen and wrote a short note to his mother, telling her he was sorry for everything, before bookmarking the page and putting it into his backpack. He swung the bag onto his back, figuring that the notebook would be safe in there and would be easy to find.
Shaking, Izuku stepped up to the edge of the roof and looked down. The ground seemed so far away, the skyscraper towering over everything.
“ If you wanna be a hero so bad, why don't you make it easier for yourself and take a swan dive off the roof? Maybe you'll have a quirk in your next life!”
He took one last deep breath before stepping off.
For a moment, he felt weightless. Time stood still. Then, the wind picked up, and the ground started to come up to meet him. And then, Izuku realized.
He didn’t want to die. He’d never wanted to die. He’d made a mistake.
Izuku opened his mouth to scream, but before a sound came out, a black void yawned open in the air, swallowing him whole.
He slammed into a wooden floor and tumbled across it, slamming into a barstool. The stool crashed down onto him, adding extra bruises to his body. His backpack burst open and all of his things scattered across the floor, making an even bigger mess. Izuku let out a yelp as he slammed into the side of what he at first thought was a wall, but was actually the side of a bar.
“What the fuck? Where’d he come from?” a scratchy, thin voice said.
“I thought you opened the warp gate in the middle of the sky?” a rough voice chimed in. “What was he doing in mid-air?”
A high giggle cut through the air. “I think he’s kind of cute!”
Everything was blurry and dim as Izuku managed to pry his eyes open. A face came into focus as someone leaned over him, looking down with furrowed, concerned brows over thick-rimmed sunglasses. Shockingly red hair swayed over him as everything finally stopped spinning.
“You okay there, kid?”
Izuku nodded, taking a shaky breath before trying to speak. “Th- Th- Thank you! I think you… you saved my life!”
“Magne, give him some space,” a rich voice said as footsteps approached. “I have some water here for him.”
A man knelt next to him and held out a glass of cool water. As Izuku looked over to thank him, he felt his throat tighten in panic.
It was Kurogiri: one of the villains from the USJ attack; the one he had seen pictures of on the news.
Stifling a scream, Izuku scrambled backwards over the barstool and plastered himself against the bar.
“You’re… You’re…”
“Ah, you recognize me. That complicates things.”
“Shigaraki, send the Nomu out. We don’t need to freak him out even more,” Magne said
“You’re not the boss of me.”
“Shut up and do what she says, you crusty ass bastard,” the rough voice said. Izuku glanced past Kurogiri to see that the speaker was a tall man with black hair and a multitude of scars ranging over his body, leaving him disfigured. His body language seemed disinterested, but his sharp blue eyes seemed to catalog everything. Beside him was the infamous leader of the League of Villains, Tomura Shigaraki. The head of the villains was dressed in plain clothes, which weren’t all that intimidating really. He looked rather monochrome, except for the bright red shoes on his feet, which looked startling similar to Izuku’s own. Behind the two men was a massive winged Nomu, its rolling eyes locked on Izuku.
Tears welled in Izuku’s eyes as he pressed himself even further against the bar and whimpered. “Please… I swear I won’t tell anyone. You don’t need to kill me, I promise!”
“Slow your roll, kid,” Magne said, taking the water from Kurogiri and coming closer to Izuku to hand it to him. “Let’s start from the beginning. Do you have a flight quirk or something? Is that why you were in the air?”
Izuku shook his head as he took the water with shaking hands.
“Okay, then why were you up there?” the scarred man said as Shigaraki ushered the Nomu from the room. As he came back, he started poking through Izuku’s things, which were spread across the floor.
“I… I…”
“How did we save your life?” said a blonde girl as she skipped into view. It became clear that she was the one with the high pitched voice that spoke before. Past her were three other men: one with a lizard mutation quirk, one in a mask and top hat, and one in a full body suit and mask.
“I was falling.”
“From where?”
“He didn’t fall off anything,” Shigaraki said, stepping up to Izuku and holding up his notebook. He’d opened it to the bookmarked page: his suicide note. “He jumped. Kid was trying to kill himself.”
A look flitted across Magne’s face. It was something sad and laced with pity and understanding.
“Oh hun, why would you do that?” she asked.
“I… You see… Um…”
“Ugh,” Shigaraki said, flipping through the notebook and landing on the page with All Might’s signature. “An All Might fan boy, huh? Disgusting.” He ripped out the page before letting his pinky, the last of his fingers, touch the page, disintegrating it to dust.
“I don’t like All Might anymore!” Izuku said, both defensively and desperately.
That caught the villain’s attention. He gestured for Izuku to keep talking while he tossed the notebook aside. The scarred man picked up the notebook and started to read.
“Well… I met All Might once… and he told me I could never be a hero, even though I really really wanted to be one. And… I guess he was right. But I looked up to him since I was a little kid, you know? Then he just- he just crushed my dream like it was nothing. I don’t hate him for it but I don’t really like him either. And he just left me on a rooftop… the rooftop I just jumped off actually. And my friend… or I guess my bully… had told me earlier that day to kill myself by jumping off a roof and for a second, I thought about doing it. I didn’t, which was a good thing, but everything just kept getting worse and worse and today I guess I finally broke.” With a choked off sob, Izuku buried his face in his hands, bringing his knees up to his chest as he curled in on himself.
Magne cooed at him as she settled to sit next to him, wrapping him up in her arms.
Shigaraki scoffed. “Typical. I wouldn’t expect anything less from All Might.”
“He was the one hero that Stain said was true. He has to have some sort of redeeming quality!” the lizard man said.
The blonde girl glared at him while hissing, “Shut up, Spinner. The guy is obviously a douche if he was so mean to this cutie!”
“Kid, did you write this stuff?” the scarred man asked, still reading from the notebook.
Izuku looked up and shyly nodded. “Yeah… That’s one of my hero analysis books.”
“Is that your quirk? Analysis?”
He shook his head. “No, I just really like heroes and studying them. Like I said, I wanted to be a hero and I thought if I studied heroes, I could learn to be like them.”
“These are actually good, kid. Like, really good.”
“Let me see that!” Shigaraki snapped, snatching away the notebook. He scanned the pages, his glare slowly morphing to confusion, then excitement. “Not half bad. You must be pretty smart if you were able to write these up. Do you have an intelligence quirk then? Come on, tell me what your quirk is; I’m curious now.”
Izuku ducked his head, avoiding Shigaraki’s gaze. He felt Magne squeeze him ever so slightly tighter.
“It's okay, hun. You can tell us your quirk. None of us will judge you for it.”
“I- I, um… don’t have a quirk. I’m quirkless,” Izuku said. He immediately closed his eyes and tensed in preparation for the attacks that he knew were coming.
Instead, Magne just gave him a little squeeze while the scarred man made an impressed noise.
“Damn, wish I was that smart, especially at your age,” he said. “When I was 13, I was out just trying to cause trouble.”
“I- I’m 15…”
“Oh shit, you’re tiny.”
“Dabi, you’re not helping,” Magne scolded.
“Oh! You’re almost the same age as me!” The blonde girl said excitedly. “I’m 16 years old. Wait, I didn’t tell you my name! I’m Himiko Toga! What’s your name?”
Izuku hesitated for a moment, unsure if he should tell the group of villains his name, even if they were being surprisingly nice. Before he could make up his mind, Shigaraki flipped the notebook closed and looked at the cover, where Izuku had written his name.
“Midoriya. Izuku Midoriya. At least that’s what this thing says.”
“Uh, yeah that’s my name. I- I don’t mean to be rude but am I allowed to go home? Like I said, I won’t tell anyone I met you guys!”
“For sure! No, we have to kill him! ” the masked man said, contradicting himself.
“Don’t listen to Twice,” Magne said. “He doesn’t mean it.”
“I’ll make you a deal, Midoriya. I’ll let you go but I want to keep this notebook. And I want you to write down one more analysis for me. Do we have a deal?” Shigaraki asked, holding out the notebook to the small boy.
Izuku nodded vigorously. “Yeah sure! Whatever you want! Who should I write it on?”
“Endeavor,” Dabi chimed in slightly too quickly. If anyone else noticed, they didn’t say anything.
Within minutes, Izuku was handing the notebook back, two full pages written on Endeavor.
“I did an analysis on him a few years back. This is everything I wrote before, along with a few recent things I noticed. Is that enough? C-C- Can I go home?”
Dabi stepped up behind Shigaraki, who failed to try to wave the other man off, and read the pages over Shigaraki’s shoulder. He smiled, his skin pulling on the staples in his face as he reached out to ruffle Izuku’s hair. Izuku flinched at first, thinking that he had somehow messed up and was going to be killed for it. When he realized the man was being fairly gentle with him, he froze and stared at the floor, his thoughts racing as he tried to process what was going on.
“That’s perfect, kid. Toga, help him pick up his shit. Kurogiri, think you can open up a warp gate to send him home?”
Kurogiri nodded. “Yes. Where can I drop you at, Young Midoriya? Can you tell me a general area so that I can see if I know any locations near there to open a warp gate to.”
“Um… Do you know the Shiba River Park in Musutafu?”
“Yes, I do.”
Toga scurried over with an armful of papers and books that she helped squeeze back into Izuku’s backpack. Once it was zipped up, she helped him to stand on his shaky legs while Magne tutted over Izuku’s dirty school uniform.
A warp gate opened and Izuku was ushered through. As it closed behind him, leaving him in the dim park, the street lights just starting to flicker on, Iuku was left wondering quite a few things.
Should he believe the League won’t come for him eventually, since he was a liability now?
Did he make the right choice, handing over all that information on heroes?
And why did he find that he didn’t particularly care if what he did was wrong? In the end, he did it to survive. It wasn’t like there was anyone out there that would care enough to save him.
After all, he was just a quirkless Deku. He was alone in the world.
The only person that was going to look out for him was himself.
---
“I have a gift, Sensei,” Shigaraki said, his cracked lips twisting into a smile as he held out a notebook.
His Sensei, the true leader of the League of Villains, cocked his head, his eyeless face turned towards the young man.
“A notebook, Tomura? Tell me: what is in the notebook?”
“It’s filled with detailed write ups on plenty of heroes. When we went to release the Nomu into the city, an NPC fell through. Skinny kid, kinda short. Said he was 15. He’d tried to kill himself. I’d hoped he had an interesting quirk to give you, especially after I saw his notebook, but he turned out to be quirkless. Some of the others seemed worried about him and, wanting to help solidify their trust in me, I agreed to let the kid go on the condition that he write out one more analysis in the book and leave the thing with me. He gave us more information than I think he realizes.”
“Well done, Tomura. You were smart to use this opportunity to foster your subordinates' loyalty. But if the boy is as smart as you are implying, he may very well know how much information he has handed over. It’s curious he was so willing to give it to you. He might be a resource to utilize at a later date. First, read me some of his analysis. I am curious about how thorough he was.”