Chapter Text
If you told Izuku Midoriya that he would be standing before Hero Course students at UA watching Kacchan practically wither from his gaze under tinted glasses he would have called you crazy, told you your girlfriend was cheating on you (regardless if it was true or not) and then punched you for good measure.
But that was the situation he found himself in. Kacchan had folded into himself and with shaking with repressed rage because he knew that Izuku had more power in that moment.
He knew it probably made him a bad person that he enjoyed it.
But did he care?
Hell no.
He had abandoned morals along with personal safety a year ago.
He was perfectly aware that he looked he had crawled out of a garbage-can and frankly that was exactly the look he was going for.
He hadn’t cut his dark-green hair in over a year and hadn’t brushed it in nearly as long. It was pulled into a loose bun with a rainbow hair-tie he had found on the pavement outside. He wore a beaten and stained aviator jacket with unintentionally distressed black jeans along and a t-shirt for a band that he hoped no one looked up. Emerald eyes peered predatorily at the class from under aviator sunglasses. There was also, of course, the handcuff that hung from one of his wrists that he could feel eyes being drawn to.
He knew exactly what the class was thinking,
Why the fuck is this trash gremlin here
And oh boy was that a story.
__
It had all started when he had jumped out a window.
Now, to many that may be slightly concerning, for Izuku it was just a normal Tuesday.
It wasn’t his fault that the cops had happened to see him smack a villain upside the head with a baseball bat because the heroes were useless as per usual.
Said villain had decided to break into an appliance store and steal a fridge (for some odd reason, Izuku might be able to respect it if it was something decent like a 56-inch flat screen tv) only to be met with a hard smack of a bat that Izuku had pulled from his backpack.
And of course, the cops finally decided to arrive just in time to see the assault.
That had prompted a chase through the city with Izuku darting through back alleys and dodging the random pedestrian but never loosing the unwanted police entourage.
The chase ended up with him being cornered in the third floor of an abandoned building with cops surrounding the only exit.
God the lengths these people go for a teenager who only made one villain concuss.
“Young man I’m going to ask you put your hands up and kick that backpack over to me.” said the cop at the front of the others.
Izuku scoffed and lit a cigarette, if only to antagonize the cops, because what’s better than doing something illegal right in front of authority. But yeah like hell he was going to give them his backpack, there was some expensive shit in there. The bat, an ax, an illegally owned handgun, a bar of Dove chocolate.
His mind didn’t supply any obvious escape routes so that left only one option.
The three-story drop to the hard pavement. Well, a four-story drop didn’t kill him so he doubted this one would.
Plus he had all the full intention of dying in the first one.
And so with a running leap, he crashed through the window, glass cascading into the street as he fell and tugging at his jacket.
Crumple your body to lessen the impact, roll when you hit the ground.
Surprisingly enough, he didn’t suffer any injuries other than a slight twinge in his ankle and a scraped knee.
He heard shouts of outcry and he spared a quick glance back up at the window to see the cops leaning out the window with a mix of concern and rage.
With a small bow, he booked it.
__
If his psychiatrist had seen that little stunt he would no doubt readmitted to the looney bin he had spent six weeks of his life in.
If his psychiatrist saw half of the shit he did he would no doubt the readmitted.
Ever since the “accident” he had taken up a new philosophy, eloquently called fuck you and everyone else.
As far as he was concerned Deku had died in the fall, after six weeks of daily therapy and some very needed venting sessions he had been reborn. Risen from the ashes of his shattered dreams into the bat-wielding maniac he was today.
His mother had pulled him out of school so he was now being homeschooled which lead to insane amounts of free time for him to get into all sorts of trouble.
Boredom was his main adversary in his quest to not spiral back into the pit of hell he had been unknowingly living in. Boredom had at first been a great motivator to get into shape. He had been doing parkour, free-running, boxing, gymnastics, and Ko-Ryu for quite a while.
Once he found out he would never develop a quirk he realized that he had to hone his body if he even stood a chance. So he had been doing classes once a week and had a fairly decent base. Now he did a class for each every day and was improving at an insane pace that baffled even his teachers.
But soon he found that even with the intense physical training, he still found himself bored.
So he had gone searching.
And what he found…
He had learned fairly quickly that he was much more perceptive than most people around him. His psychiatrist called him a Sherlock Holmes (whoever the fuck that was) and on multiple occasions and he had often solved petty crimes before even the police.
(He attributed this to the now burned Hero Analysis Notebooks he had been writing since he was four.)
Due to this, he realized that it was surprisingly easy to find blackmail on people along with learning things about them at just a glance. As soon as he figured that out he began to hone those skills until he had achieved a bit of a reputation.
It really wasn’t much but he had wrapped a few people around his finger. He had even become an informant for a few vigilantes or minor heroes.
Now, he wouldn’t call himself either of those and he has chosen to remain an entirely neutral party. There was really no reason behind it other than he had been bored and decided to do something with the skills he had.
But sometimes he couldn’t stave off the boredom and that always lead to some memorable moments such as mixing things with his anti-depressants or ending up in police custody for some odd reason he could never quite remember.
Adrenaline junky had flashed across his mind more than once so points for self-awareness.
His basic schedule went along the lines of something like this:
6:00 a.m.: Wake up from the imaginary sleep
7:00 a.m.: Home-school
11:00 a.m: Whatever bullshit he could get himself into
3:00 - 8:00 p.m.: Physical classes
9:00 p.m.: Basic information gathering
12:00 a.m.: More reckless bullshit
and rinse and repeat.
His mother was hardly ever home so everything worked out.
Dimly he was aware that today had been the day for UA’s entrance exams and he couldn’t give less of a shit. He had made peace with the realization that he couldn’t be a hero and frankly had better things to do than play in the dream of every three-year-old ever.
Right now it was 1:32 in the morning and the rest of the day had passed with little drama and Jesus Christ he was bored. For once nothing was happening in the city and perched on the top of a skyscraper in one of the worse parts of the city. There was a cigarette hanging from his lips as he let his mind wander.
He had this thing where he often couldn’t remember how he got to where he was and right now had absolutely no idea how he had gotten up here or how he was going to get down. He would probably pick the lock on the door and saunter out of the building leaving some very confused security guards in his wake.
A sudden thought possessed him and he had never been very good at ignoring his bad ideas so he figured why not.
He pulled out his lock picks and began to shimmy the lock on the maintenance door when there was a large rush of air and with a bored expression, he turned around very slowly to see the outline of a very large and very muscled man.
His hair was unmistakable and his smile seemed to be generating its own light.
All Might.
“NEVER FEAR FOR I-“
He had long ago murdered his obsession with heroes and wasn’t reduced to the weeping fanboy he would have been a year ago. Instead, he cut him off and with a bit more poison than he anticipated said, “Zip it He-Man. Spare me the speech, I’m fine.”
All Might looked a little taken aback because that was a reaction he didn’t experience often. He was still blinking in surprise when Izuku turned back to the door and finally got it to open.
The youth dropped the cigarette, crushed it under his heel and pocketed the lock-picks. He gave All Might a wave from behind and slammed to door in his face.
__
Toshinori stood frozen staring at the door that he had just been so rudely dismissed by.
That had never happened before.
Usually, when he met someone that boy’s age they tried to hide their awe but he had never been met someone that didn’t care.
The entire reason he was here was due to Aizawa so maybe he had planned it. It sounded like something Shota would do.
The story he had been told was that Shota was on the hunt for a boy who frequented the shadier parts of the city and he had started to amass an army of people he held something over. He had no codename and hadn’t made any move to use the information.
But it was how villains were born so they had wanted to put and end to it before it metastasized into something less benign. Shota had found a video of the boy had when he had shown it to the police to see if they knew anything they had all consecutively groaned.
Apparently, he was a bit of a problem child and had had multiple run-ins with the law but nothing that was less than noble and charges that never seemed to go through. If anything he seemed to be more of a vigilante.
The boy’s file had revealed that his name was Izuku Midoriya and he looked familiar but Toshi couldn’t put his finger on it. He had been surprised when he learned he was qurikless but when he had read that he was clinically depressed and had attempted suicide last year his heart had cried for the child.
He was much too young to wish to die.
So when Aizawa had called him saying that Midoriya was seen at the top of a skyscraper he had feared the worse.
After all, he had jumped from the top of the school and lived. If he were to jump from the skyscraper he would definitely not survive.
Thankfully, whatever he was doing up there seemed to be harmless. He had caught him trying to break back in the building and was smoking a cigarette.
He disapproved of the cancer stick.
But the boy was interesting. An air of mystery surrounded him but and he had to admit that his coldness stung a bit.
He secretly hoped they would meet again under much more fortunate circumstances.
__
It wasn’t until a week later that that experience caught up with him. Izuku had once again found himself in the custody of the police for underage driving. But honestly fuck that. He had been chasing this random dude who decided to snatch his wallet.
So he naturally grabbed the nearest motorcycle and took off after the guy.
When they had caught him (but not the thief) they had slapped handcuffs on him and Izuku raised a green eyebrow and whispered “kinky” under his breath which made one of the female cops snort.
Inko couldn’t be reached (mostly due to the fact that Izuku had long ago blocked the police’s number on her phone) and they ran through a series of events and what was going to happen.
Izuku only sighed, he knew how this was going to work. They would unsuccessfully try to intimidate him, they would review their paperwork, they would find the massive loopholes in the system, they would return dejected because he was quirklessness they couldn’t do anything, and bing bada boom he was free to go.
Honestly, why did they even try?
But you can imagine his surprise when the police walked in with two people that had no reason to be there.
First, it was All Might, his large stature filling the holding room. Izuku only gazed at him with a disinterested eye. The man next to him was much more interesting anyway.
He looked like a much older version of Izuku with dark tangled hair and tired eyes that rivaled Izuku’s. A large scarf was tied around his neck and looked overall really done with everything.
He immediately decided he loved the guy.
Something about his was familiar but he couldn’t quite figure out what exactly it was.
“Well hello, people I either don’t know or don’t care about!” Izuku said with an overly bright smile, “What you doing here?”
“We’re here to talk about what we found in your backpack.” the dark-haired man’s hoarse and exhausted voice replied.
Ah. Yeah, he was currently down an ax, a bat, a handgun, a small sword, and of course, his prized notebooks of information and blackmail.
“Look the weapons aren’t mine.”
The man raised an eyebrow, “We aren’t here for that impressive assort,”
So they were here for the notebooks then. He could probably figure out why but his insomnia was catching up with him and he didn’t particularly care at that moment.
“Good to know. So why is Mr. G.I. Joe here —no offense Mr. All Might sir— but he doesn’t seem like the best person for anything other than illegal weapons and I feel like he had better things to do than deal with a fifteen-year-old who stole a motorcycle.” he shouted the last part, flipping off whichever cop was unlucky enough to be behind the one-way glass.
The man seemed thoroughly unamused and All Might looked surprised at his blatant disrespect for authority.
“It’s about the notebooks.”
“Yeah, I figured.”
“How did you get that information.”
“I asked.”
The man didn’t buy that for a second.
“What does it matter to you?”
The man sighed before rubbing his bloodshot eyes, “I’ve been keeping an eye on someone who seemed to have blackmail on a fifth of that part of the city.”
“I’m flattered, but it’s more like a sixth.”
“And Nedzu took interest in you so when we were told you got arrested he sent us with a proposition.”
Izuku actually leaned back for that. Well, that was a curveball. Out of everything that was not even on the first ten pages of possibilities.
Nedzu, the slightly sadistic principle of UA had taken interest in a quirkless nobody.
“What is it.”
The man looked as impassive as he had the entire conversation when he said, “He wants you to be his personal student. You wouldn’t be with any of the other classes and would be more like a student teacher.”
What in the fuck.
This had come out of absolutely nowhere and he couldn’t count all the plot holes on his fingers.
“What does he want in return?”
There was no way that he didn’t was something in return.
“Just a different perspective on the students and what they could do to improve. He feels they could benefit from an instructor in their own age level.”
Every part of his body screamed at him not to accept, there were too many red flags and it was so entirely unrealistic it was almost laughable.
But he had never been known for a good sense of self-preservation.
“Sure.”
All Might had been sitting quietly, watching the exchange in silence and offering no input when he suddenly jumped up and pointed at Izuku, “I remember where I know you from!”
The dark-haired man raised an eyebrow as the number 1 hero continued, “I saved you from a sludge villain last year and you asked me…”
“If I could be a Hero without a quirk.” Izuku finished for him, eyes hard and half-closed.
“… and I said no.”
“Indeed you did. Thanks for that by the way. That dream needed to die anyway.”
All Might had suddenly gone silent as he connected the dots, he had been the final push that shoved Midoriya over the edge. The guilt that blossomed in his chest was almost enough to cripple him and revert him back to his true form.
“Well anyway, when does this special tutelage start?”
The man seemed very interesting in the drama between him and All Might but replied to the question all the same, “Tomorrow at normal school hours.”
“Great see you then.” he flashed a smile at the duo before screaming at the top of his lungs, “NOW CAN SOME BASTARD UNCUFF ME SO I CAN GO HOME AND TAKE A FUCKING NAP! I HAVE A FISTFIGHT SCHEDULED WITH GOD AT 8 O’CLOCK! YOU ALL NO PERFECTLY WELL YOU CAN’T FUCKING TOUCH ME!”
At that precise moment, Aizawa realized that is was probably the worst idea Nedzu had ever had.