Chapter Text
People were not born equal. This was a truth that Izuku Midoriya could not forget; the scars that painted his body prevented it.
The first recorded quirk-user was born in Keikei City, China, and they were known as the bioluminescent baby. Before long, people with all sorts of superpowers popped up left and right, centering around Asia and expanding outward. No one was sure what caused quirks to appear, but it quickly became clear that they were here to stay.
The world’s current quirked population was at 80%. However, that percentage skews the reality of things. The vast majority of the world’s quirkless population --16% out of 20%-- were over the age of sixty, and the highest percentage of people with quirks were born in Asian countries.
Imagine Izuku’s surprise when, at the tender age of four, a doctor told him that he wouldn’t get a quirk. He’d never pull things toward him like Mom could. He wouldn’t breathe fire like Mom told him Dad could. He wouldn’t get a combination that let him manipulate fire. He wouldn’t even get one of those rare mutations where a quirk that didn’t resemble the quirk of anyone in the family cropped up.
He was shocked. No one ever talked about quirkless people; Izuku hadn’t even realized that it was a possibility. He hadn’t known that people without powers existed.
Izuku remembered the moments after that clearly. His mother had driven them both home in a weighted silence, and he had gone back to their computer, watching All Might’s debut over and over again with tears in his eyes.
“Mom…” he said. “No matter how much trouble you’re in… he’ll save you with a big smile. Can I be a super cool hero like that?”
Inko’s face scrunched up as tears rolled down her face, saying, “I’m sorry, Izuku! I’m so sorry!”
That wasn’t what he needed to hear.
Izuku needed to hear that he could still do it, that he could still help people even without a quirk. His mother’s words didn’t discourage him though. That day, Izuku decided that he would hold his head up high and become a hero no matter what. If no one else would believe in him, then Izuku just had to believe in himself.
He quickly learned that nothing in life was quite that simple.
Teachers changed after they found out that he was quirkless. They stopped calling him a bright boy and only ever said his name during roll call. They looked at him with pity, disgust, or a combination of the two, and the other kids picked up on it. Teasing about him being different turned into outright bullying, and the name Izuku was lost to the cruel, taunting nickname that Bakugo gave him. Deku. Useless.
Izuku Midoriya wanted to be a hero more than anything else in the world. His classmates told him that his head was in the clouds --that he’d never be able to be a hero-- but he’d bet an entire month’s allowance that none of them had looked at the statistics that he did.
UA was the only high school in the country that allowed quirkless applicants. They weren’t the only hero school; they were the only high school, period. The others didn’t outright say that quirkless people weren’t allowed to apply, but Izuku had always been good at reading between the lines. Those who knew where to look would see it too.
If he didn’t get into UA, into at least the general education course, then he was going to be thrust into a workforce where it was legal to pay him less than half of what everyone else made. All of this because he didn’t have a quirk. He refused to become that kind of permanent burden on his mother.
Izuku loved his mother. She wasn’t perfect, but she was the only person that he had. She noticed when he started coming home bruised and burned, and she always helped patch him up with tears in her eyes, walking him through the steps so that he could do it himself if she wasn’t home. She swore to him that she would go sort things out with the teachers. He remembered looking up at her at seven years old --seeing her eyebrows furrowed in the determination she had to have as a lawyer-- and being unable to bring himself to tell her that the teachers already knew.
It didn’t matter. The expression on her face the next day told him that she found out either way.
Initially, his mother had been determined to get him enrolled in an online school. She couldn’t homeschool him --not with how busy her job kept her-- but she wanted him to be safe. No programs would take him. They always told her that they’d met capacity for the year, that they couldn’t take any more students, but they knew. They both knew.
Inko signed him up for self-defense classes instead. It had been difficult to find one that would take him, but she eventually did, and Izuku found confidence in knowing that he was capable of protecting himself. That was the first step to protecting others, after all.
Izuku knew that his mother still didn’t believe that he could be a hero --he could see it in her eyes-- but when he asked her if he could start Aikido classes right before his first year of middle school, she said yes.
He never used anything that he learned in those lessons at school --he didn’t want to give Aldera the excuse to expel him; he knew that they’d jump on it and then he’d never get into UA-- but as time went by, he grew more confident in his techniques and more sure that he’d get away from his bullies if he was allowed to defend himself.
Izuku Midoriya was on the path to become a hero. He would claw his way up from the bottom and ensure that people were never treated the way that he was ever again.
However, one cannot forget that a hero to some is a villain to others.
-
“You guys are all third-years now, so it’s time to start seriously thinking about your futures!” his homeroom teacher cried out, taking a piece of paper off the top of the stack as he looked over them all.
Izuku kept his head down low --jotting down his observations about Mount Lady after he’d seen her debut earlier this morning-- as his teacher slammed his hands down on his desk. “I would hand out these future career forms, but…”
Papers flew all over the classroom after the teacher threw them. “I know you all want to be heroes!”
There was a cacophony of cheers as everyone else in the classroom started using their quirks. Izuku tensed up briefly before forcing himself to relax. “Yes, yes, you all have wonderful quirks. But you know that it’s against the rules to use them in school,” his teacher chided, putting up a token protest, as usual.
Nobody stopped using their quirks.
“Don’t lump me in with these losers!” Bakugo scoffed.
Izuku had stopped calling Bakugo Kaachan a long time ago --his mother had sat him down and explained that friends don’t hurt you, at least not on purpose, and that what Bakugo was doing was wrong-- and it was in moments like this that he wondered if he’d imagined the version of Bakugo that he used to admire.
“I’m the real deal. These extras will be lucky to become sidekicks to some busted D-Lister!”
His classmates loudly protested that, but his teacher only encouraged Bakugo’s ego by saying, “Ah, Bakugo… You’ll be aiming for UA, of course.”
Izuku could feel himself sinking even lower in his seat, resting his face on one of his arms as he hid from the world. He knew that Bakugo would get into UA. Everyone in the school knew that. It was probably why they never put a black mark on his record, not even when he beat up kids who weren’t Izuku.
“I aced the mock exam!” Bakugo screamed as he jumped up onto his desk. “I’m the only one here that’s got what it takes! I’m gonna surpass even All Might and become number one! And I’ll get super rich doing it too.”
‘Because your family is already struggling so much,’ Izuku thought snarkily. With Bakugo’s mom working as a model --he’d stopped calling her Aunt Mitsuki after his mom had a falling out with her once vague burns started becoming more and more obviously starburst shaped-- for Bakugo’s father --who was one of the most prominent clothing designers in Japan-- his family wasn’t exactly hurting for money. Izuku tried not to feel bitter about that, but seeing his mother working herself to the bone on and off the clock to support them was upsetting. He still felt bad for not understanding just how tight the budget was when he was younger; there was a reason why all of his hero merch was several years old at this point.
“You’re also aiming for UA, aren’t you, Midoriya?”
Izuku froze at the sound of his teacher’s voice. The entire room went dead quiet as every student in the room turned to face him before bursting into laughter.
“Midoriya?! No way!”
“Good grades alone can’t get you into the hero program!”
“I never said that I was going for the hero program,” he said, quieting most of the room. “UA is the best of the best, but that’s not only for heroics. There’s support, management, and gen ed courses too, you know?”
“Get real, Deku!” A familiar wave of heat came, and Izuku barely jerked his chair back in time to avoid his uniform getting charred alongside his desk. He still tipped backward with the movement, landing on the ground with a grunt as his chair tipped over.
“Forget all these other extras with their crappy quirks, you’re totally quirkless! You think that you can rub shoulders with me?!”
“I’m not trying to compete with you at all! Every hero needs a support system, right? I figured that if I can’t help people directly…” Izuku was desperately trying to deescalate the situation, but Bakugo seemed particularly angry today.
“And who would want help from someone as useless as you, hah?! You can’t even help yourself, much less a hero!”
‘I think that you’d be surprised, Bakugo.’
Izuku let none of his thoughts show on his face. He just ducked his head, relieved when the first bell rang. He gathered his things before sitting back down at his smoldering desk, tuning out the review as he kept writing the details of today’s fight down, touching up Kamui Wood’s page while he was at it.
The rest of the day flew by with little incident, and Izuku had hope that he would be able to sneak out before anything else happened. Bakugo dashed that hope immediately by snatching Izuku’s notebook from his hands.
“I ain’t done talking to you, Deku.”
Bakugo’s lackeys peered at the cover of Izuku’s notebook, laughing at what was written on the cover. “Quirk Analysis for My Future?! Come on, Midoriya…”
“Your creepy notebooks aren’t going to help any heroes, Deku. Give it up already.”
“Come on! Just give it back. I’m not hurting anybody--”
Izuku’s protest was cut off by the sound of an explosion, and he watched in despair as Bakugo tossed his ruined notebook out of the window. He tried to bite back his words, but he still let out a strangled “Why?”
Bakugo huffed at him. “Stupid Deku. The best heroes out there… they all showed signs of greatness, even when they were still students. I’ll be the first and only hero to come from this shitty school. It’s all a part of my perfect backstory!”
‘That’s… is that why he goes to school here? He lives in the district, but I know his parents offered to send him to a better school.’
“You getting into UA, even as some extra, would mar that backstory! In other words… don’t even think about applying,” Bakugo said menacingly, leaning forward and resting his hand on Izuku’s shoulder as his quirk burned through the fabric of his uniform.
Izuku went quiet, trembling as he bit back a cry of pain. The group of students that were lingering scoffed, starting to walk away as one of them said, “Jeez, how typical. C’mon, at least say something.”
“He can’t say anything,” Bakugo taunted with a sneer that Izuku could hear through his voice alone. “He’s always been so lame. Even as a third-year, he just can’t face reality.” Bakugo paused, and Izuku felt ice plunge through his veins at the look that his bully was giving him.
“Oh yeah! I’ve got an idea for ya. Do you really wanna be useful so badly? If you do, then go take a swan dive off the roof of the building and pray to be born with a quirk in your next life!”
Izuku jolted at that, and it was impossible to keep the shock off his face. Bakugo glared at him and popped off more explosions as he said, “Yeah? Got something to say?”
‘You’ve… never gone this far. They’d have to give even you a record if I jumped. You realize that, right?’
“That’s what I thought,” Bakugo scoffed.
As Bakugo and his lackeys walked out of the classroom, Izuku acknowledged that the burning anger that he’d let simmer for years might be hatred after all. ‘Why is it that someone like him is told that he’s gonna be a hero every day while I’m ridiculed for even wanting to try? I just want to help people. Bakugo doesn’t want to help anyone but himself.’
Izuku clenched his fist, took a deep breath as he blinked the tears out of his eyes, and exited the school building. He walked around to the pond that his notebook had landed in, digging it out with a sigh.
“I’m gonna have to try to dry out the pages and transfer any legible notes to another notebook, I guess.” Izuku was glad that his notebooks weren’t expensive; he had to rewrite them entirely too often.
Izuku was thrumming with indignation on his walk home, grimacing at the rank smell of his pond-soaked notebook as he walked under an underpass. ‘Why is the smell so strong all of a sudden?’
The manhole that Izuku had just walked past rattled, and he froze, slowly turning around as someone made of sludge rose from the holes in the cover.
“A medium-sized body to hide in…”
Izuku ran, but he didn’t get far before the sludge enveloped him. Aikido couldn’t help him at all here --he couldn’t redirect blows if his opponent wasn’t solid-- and Izuku squirmed helplessly, bitter tears forming once again.
“Don’t worry, kid. I’m just hijacking your body. Only 45 seconds and it’ll all be over…”
‘No. No! It can’t end like this.’
“You’re my hero. I never thought that he’d come to town…” Izuku’s hands jerked as he tried to get them out of the sludge, making the villain laugh. “There’s no point in that! I’m completely fluid, you know?”
Izuku’s vision was spotting with black. He couldn’t breathe, but something about what the sludge villain said rang false. ‘His… eyes. I’ve gotta… I can’t die like this--’ Slowly, one of his hands moved toward the villain’s face. It was hard to aim when he could barely see, but Izuku’s fingernails managed to scrape the edge of something that felt like a different kind of wet from the sludge.
The villain howled, “You little--” For a split second, the sludge around his mouth was gone, and Izuku took a deep breath before clamping his mouth shut again, preventing the sludge from diving into something larger than a nostril.
“Fear not, kid!” a familiar voice cried. The manhole hit the roof of the underpass with a resounding clang, and when Izuku looked over that way, his eyes widened at who he saw. “I am here!”
All Might drew back his fist. “Texas… Smash!!” The shockwave of air completely flung the sludge off of Izuku, but it also knocked him back into the wall. He grimaced as he rubbed at his head, eyes widening in alarm when his hand came back red.
The sludge villain was scooped up into two soda bottles that All Might was carrying, and Izuku still couldn’t believe his eyes as All Might walked over to him. “Are you okay, kid?”
Izuku didn’t even answer before All Might continued, saying, “Apologies for getting you caught up in my villain hunt. The sewer system was more complex than I had imagined!” All Might laughed, and Izuku chuckled alongside him, too relieved to be alive and too excited to see his idol to care about a head wound. ‘Even small ones bleed excessively, so I should be fine, right? I’ve had worse.’
“My success today is thanks to you!” All Might cried as he grabbed Izuku’s notebook. He watched, wide-eyed, as his idol flipped toward the end and asked, “Who should I make this out to, kid?”
“I-Izuku. Izuku Midoriya! Thank you so much! This’ll be a family heirloom!!” Izuku scrambled to his feet and bowed, stumbling as dizziness rushed over him. All Might gently guided him out of the underpass before handing his notebook back.
“Now then, I must take this fellow to the police. Do you have a phone?” Izuku nodded. “Then make sure to call an ambulance to get your head checked out!”
“W-wait… That can’t be it--” Izuku needed someone else to make that call. Quirklessness was heavily discriminated against in the medical field. Doctors and nurses had told both him and his mother that their machines simply weren’t compatible with people like him and that the staff’s quirks needed to assist with higher priority cases. A scraped knee would class as a higher priority case than helping a quirkless person with anything.
“A pro battles both villains and time, kid! Sorry, but I’ve gotta be going. Until next time!” All Might crouched down, and Izuku --in a fit of fear or desperation, he wasn’t sure-- grabbed on. They rocketed through the sky, and Izuku closed his eyes as he clutched onto All Might’s leg for dear life.
“Hey now! I appreciate your support, but your enthusiasm is a bit much! Let go!” All Might started thrashing around, and Izuku held on even tighter, life flashing before his eyes.
“If I let go, then I’ll die!” he shrieked. Thankfully, All Might seemed to accept that and stopped trying to get him off, heading over to a nearby rooftop instead. When they landed, Izuku fell to his hands and knees.
“Of all the--! Hopefully, the people downstairs will let you out of the building, but I don’t have the time!” All Might sounded irritated, refusing to even look at Izuku, and was already walking over to the edge of the rooftop.
Izuku stood up as quickly as he could, holding out a hand as he said, “Wait! Please--”
“No! I will not wait!”
Izuku intended to ask him to call an ambulance, but he wound up asking another question entirely. “Even without a quirk… can I still be a hero?”
Green eyes closed as he waited for All Might’s response. Izuku had promised himself that he’d become one no matter what, but there was still a part of him that was desperate to hear someone, anyone, say yes. He wanted someone to believe in him. All Might was always saying that anyone could be a hero, so Izuku knew that he’d be able to keep going if he heard him say it personally.
“Quirks are…” All Might’s voice went quiet.
Izuku’s eyes opened slightly, looking to the ground as he said, “Because I don’t have a quirk… I’ve always been bullied. That’s why I want to save people. I want to help them so they don’t suffer like I have. I started taking self-defense classes young and I’ve got over two years of Aikido under my belt too!” Izuku was desperate for him to understand. He’d been working so hard for this, honing his body and mind alike in his pursuit of heroics.
“I want to save people with a fearless smile, just like you!” Izuku looked up, freezing when he saw a tall, thin, blond man standing where All Might was before, steam rising up around him. “A transformation quirk? Hm… he could be an impostor, but he’s got All Might’s height, coloration, and even his bangs! I guess this explains why no one ever sees you outside of hero work--”
All Might chuckled nervously, blood leaking from his mouth as he said, “You’re correct. I am All Might.”
“... Shouldn’t you go see a doctor? That can’t be healthy.” Izuku felt a bit hypocritical saying that, but it wasn’t like anyone would refuse service to All Might.
“This happens all the time, kid. I’m fine.” All Might sat down with a sigh, looking up at Izuku as he mumbled, “A fearless smile, huh?”
‘He’s… really not like how I expected him to be. I know that all heroes have personas, but still…’
“Don’t go telling anyone about this form, kid.”
“I would never--” Izuku’s voice cut out as All Might lifted the side of his shirt, revealing a massive scar on the upper left of his torso. He barely stifled a gasp.
“Five years ago… an enemy did this to me. My respiratory system was nearly destroyed, and I lost my stomach. Even after surgery, the aftereffects have had me wasting away ever since. I can’t do hero work for much more than three hours a day now.”
‘So that’s why he kept saying he was out of time…’ Izuku’s eyes narrowed. “Five years ago? There’s no way Toxic Chainsaw did this.” The scar would look more jagged and less like a crater if he had; this looked like something that spread out from a single, incredibly forceful impact.
“You’ve done your homework, huh? You’re right; that lowlife didn’t do this to me.” All Might’s let his shirt fall back down, and Izuku wouldn’t deny being relieved. It looked so painful. “This fight wasn’t a public one. Or rather, I ensured that this fight wasn’t made public. A Symbol of Peace, someone who saves with a smile… he cannot be daunted by evil.”
The thought that there were villains out there strong enough to give All Might trouble was a scary one. Izuku imagined the unease that everyone would feel if they saw All Might get hurt like this, and he understood why All Might pushed himself so hard with the three hours that he could work as a hero. ‘People depend on him. Losing him so suddenly or realizing that he could be lost… it’d be a disaster.’
“My smile is far from fearless, kid. I smile to keep the fear and pressure at bay. A pro has to be willing and ready to risk his life at all times…” All Might looked at him, and Izuku silently pleaded for him to stop talking. He could already see All Might’s answer all over his face.
“Someone without power… I cannot say that they can become a hero.”
Izuku didn’t even register the tears welling up in his eyes. A strangled whine escaped his lips as he trembled in place, watching All Might walk away like he hadn’t just destroyed his dreams.
“If you really wanna help people, then you could always be a police officer, kid. It’s not wrong to dream, but you’ve gotta be realistic.” All Might threw a wave over his shoulder as he walked through the roof access door, leaving Izuku standing there all alone.
“But I… I couldn’t.” Even if they didn’t have quirks that benefitted them in investigations or on the field, police officers were required to have quirks. It was hidden in the fine print, but they refused to allow liabilities on the field. Quirkless people were always considered liabilities in the eyes of the law.
Izuku sobbed. His vision blurred with tears, and for a long, painful moment, he looked over at the edge of the rooftop. Bakugo’s taunt echoed in his head. Izuku took a single step toward the railing before stumbling backward, rushing down the stairs and out of the building as quickly as he could.
He was terrified of giving himself a chance to change his mind.
‘It doesn’t… It doesn’t mean anything, right?’ he thought as he walked home, rubbing his eyes. ‘Everything is the same. No one believes in me, but that’s nothing new. I just have to… I just have to…’ Izuku paused when he heard explosions, looking over at a crowd that had gathered to watch another villain attack.
Before he even realized it, Izuku wandered over to join them, and his eyes widened in horror when he saw the sludge villain wreaking havoc. ‘Did… did All Might drop him because of me? This is my fault!’
“Why aren’t the heroes doing anything?”
“Looks like the villain grabbed some kid.”
‘Someone else is enduring that pain? Because of me? I’m so sorry… Someone will come to save you soon, so just wait--’ Izuku paled even further when he saw familiar red eyes peering out from the sludge.
‘That’s?! Bakugo is an ass, but no one deserves this.’ Izuku had never seen Bakugo look so afraid before. He opened his backpack, pulled out a pair of scissors and a few sharpened pencils, and dropped it at the front of the crowd before bursting through the blockade by ducking between Death Arms and a police officer.
“Get back here, you moron! Are you trying to get yourself killed?!”
Izuku tuned them out. He distantly registered the sludge villain saying something, but that didn’t matter right now. All that mattered was that Bakugo could die, no one else was helping, and Izuku knew this villain’s weakness. He bared his teeth in a snarl as he swung the scissors around, and the sludge villain, seeing exactly where he was aiming, panicked.
He swung the scissors through the sludge just under the sludge villain’s eyes, grinning when the villain flinched back before realizing that he hadn’t felt any pain. “Hah, you missed--” Izuku’s right hand reached through the sludge to grab onto Bakugo’s arm as his left hand swung around, revealing three pencils held between his knuckles in makeshift claws.
Izuku wasn’t trying to miss this time, so he didn’t. Pencils would cause a lot less permanent damage than blades --even the ones in scissors-- would, after all. The villain screamed. Sludge fell away from Bakugo as the villain recoiled, and Izuku took the opportunity to jerk Bakugo away from him.
“Why would you--” Bakugo jumped back as the sludge villain surged forward again, releasing an explosion near the villain’s face. ‘Good. You noticed it too.’
“You just… you looked like you needed saving!” Izuku said, baring his teeth as the sludge gave up on Bakugo and turned to Izuku again. ‘Just try it. I won’t go down without a fight.’
In the end, Izuku didn’t need to. All Might came rushing forward in his hero form, steaming as blood leaked from his mouth yet again. “I ought… to practice what I preach!”
Izuku darted back as All Might swung his fist, watching as a Detroit Smash splattered the sludge all over the place. A cold chill fell over the area, and when Izuku glanced up, he saw dark clouds rolling over them as rain started falling from above.
‘Huh. Who would’ve thought that I’d ever get to see a weather-changing punch in person?’ The crowd of civilians was just as awed as he was, and the heroes that had been standing by before came together to gather the sludge villain up.
‘There were more heroes here than I thought. Backdraft, Mt. Lady, Kamui Woods, Death Arms, Slugger… Why did none of them do anything?’ Death Arms marched over to him and chewed him out for illegal quirk usage and needlessly putting himself in danger, and Slugger wasn’t far behind him. Izuku knew that saying he didn’t have a quirk to use illegally would only make things worse, so he just sat there quietly and let them yell at him until they huffed about him not even listening and walked off.
Bakugo, on the other hand, had impressed a couple of the heroes with his quirk. Izuku tried not to let it sting that Bakugo was already being offered sidekick positions when Izuku was the one that saved him. ‘It’s not like I did it to be recognized, but still…’
After insisting that he was fine, Izuku escaped the paramedics --he refused to give them his name; they would know if he did-- and started walking home. ‘Mom’s gotta be worried sick. I should probably call her.’
“Oi, Deku!”
Izuku blinked, looking back at where Bakugo was standing. ‘Huh. Why’d he follow me when he was getting the heroes' attention?’
“I… I never asked you to save me, you got it?! I could’ve beaten him myself! How dare some quirkless failure pity me? Are you trying to win me over?! It won’t happen, so stop fucking mocking me!”
Bakugo spun around after saying his piece, and Izuku watched him go with a sigh. ‘Honestly, his refusal to accept help isn’t going to do him any favors as a hero.’ Izuku resolved to wipe his hands of this entire incident, putting both Bakugo and All Might words out of his mind.
‘Today was proof that I can do it. I probably wouldn’t have been able to get away from the sludge villain the first time without All Might’s help, true, but that doesn’t change the fact that five licensed heroes stood around as I saved Bakugo with some school supplies and determination. Who cares if they never take me seriously? I can still save people.’
Izuku cared. Izuku cared a lot, but he would learn how to deal with it if it meant that he could do more of what he did today. He sighed, turning back around and continuing on his way home. Suddenly, All Might rushed out from a side street and stood before Izuku in his hero form. ‘It can’t be good for him to push it like this…’
As if the thought had undone a spell that they were both standing under, All Might reverted to his other form with several bloody coughs. “Kid… I’ve come to thank you and revise what I said earlier. I also have a proposal for you.”
‘What? Did he… did he change his mind?’
“Without you… If I hadn’t heard your story, then I would’ve stood among the crowd and done nothing, resigned to being out of time.”
Izuku shook his head frantically. “That was my fault in the first place though! You never would’ve dropped him if I hadn’t grabbed onto you.”
“Maybe so, but that doesn’t change the fact that, of all the people on the scene, it was only you, timid and quirkless, that acted! You inspired me, kid.” All Might looked at him with a smile, and Izuku could feel hope rising within him.
“Most of the top heroes show signs of greatness from a young age. Many of them claim that their bodies moved before they could even think. Their desire to save others spurs them forward, no matter the consequences! That’s what happened to you back there, yes?!”
“Y-yes,” Izuku stammered, tears welling up in his eyes. “Yes! I just wanted to help him. I couldn’t stand there and watch!”
“Young Midoriya… You can be a hero.”
Izuku sobbed as he fell, and his poor, abused knees would definitely need to be iced after a day like today. He didn’t care how much he hurt or how sore he was right now, though. He’d finally heard the words that he’d wanted to hear his entire life, and his idol was the one who said them to him.
‘I changed All Might’s mind about a quirkless hero!’
“And I believe that you’re worthy of inheriting my power.”
Izuku blinked at that, looking up to All Might with a dumbfounded expression. “Huh?”
All Might burst into laughter. “What’s that look for?! I did tell you that I had a proposal. The real work starts here. I’m asking you if you want to accept my power!”
‘What… does he mean by that?’
“I’m talking about my quirk, young Midoriya.” All Might held his hand out to him, helping Izuku to his feet. “Everyone speculates that my quirk is some form of super strength or a power boost, but it’s nothing quite so simple as that. I always dodge the question with a joke during interviews because All Might, the Symbol of Peace, has to be seen as a natural-born hero.”
‘Is he implying that--’
“However! In truth, my quirk was passed down to me from another. And now… it could be your turn.”
Izuku was so shocked that he couldn’t say a word. A quirk that could be passed down from person to person --not even through families, but entirely willingly-- defied almost everything that they knew about quirks. ‘I know that we’re still learning a lot about them, but this… it seems too good to be true.’
“Stunned into silence, are you? Indeed, the quirk that I inherited is the ability to transfer power to another. It is called One for All! One person cultivates the power before passing it to the next, then to the next, then to the next, until it finally wound up with me. Now, young Midoriya… I wish to pass it to you.”
“Why… me?” he finally managed, head swimming with a million possibilities and complex feelings that he couldn’t quite name right now.
“I’ve been searching for a successor for a while now, but you were the first to truly capture my attention. My boy, today you were more heroic than anyone else on the scene. You rushed out to save that boy, had a plan of attack that you executed perfectly with minimal damage, and you saved the boy too! I know heroes with years of training and professional experience that couldn’t have managed what you did today.”
‘Then why? Why does it still sound like you…’
“I cannot think of anyone better suited for my quirk. It is entirely up to you, though. What do you say?”
‘All Might… He’s trusting me with his secrets. He’s the first person to ever tell me that I could do this. How could I possibly say no?’
“Yes.” Izuku’s voice wavered as he said it, but he was certain of his decision.
“A quick answer,” All Might said with a chuckle and a grin. “I expected nothing less from you.” His idol reached for Izuku’s notebook and wrote something else across the pages that he signed earlier, and Izuku’s eyes widened as he read it. “We’ll begin training soon. For now, you should head home.”
All Might walked off before Izuku could say anything. If he wasn’t still looking at All Might’s signature with his phone number written underneath it, then Izuku wouldn’t have believed that anything about today happened at all.
‘I met my idol. I saved someone for the first time and even impressed All Might while doing so. He offered me his quirk! It’s my dream come true. I’ll get to be a hero just like All Might! So then why…’
Why did it hurt so badly for Izuku to say yes?