Chapter Text
Izuku Midoriya liked to think that, for a genetic deviant, he was doing pretty alright. He could be dead, like many others of his not-quite-kin. The statistics don’t lie. In fact, he has held up remarkably well, in his humble opinion. Many people would have broken under the stress put on Izuku Midoriya. Every time he thinks he’s weak, he holds on to a few sets of rules he had placed before himself.
1: Strive to be good every day. Even if it’s a small act of helping an old lady across the street or cleaning up some litter, or using himself to shield the other bullied kids from harm, just one act of kindness can impact someone’s life greatly, or so he believes.
2: Train. One of the simpler rules to follow. He lacked a quirk, so he had to make up for it with hard work. He couldn’t slack, and he couldn’t plateau. He needed to keep rising, in both body and mind.
3: Don’t let them break you. Have an iron will against adversity. Heroes never give up, so he won’t either! He’ll keep trying to be a hero, no matter what harsh words the others sling his way.
Those three rules were what kept him going through his Junior High years. Aldera, megalomaniacal cesspool it is, was simply another hurdle, another bump in his path to being a hero. Overcoming it would bring him closer to his goal.
He always retained the brightness in his eyes, the sun in his smile. Just like All Might!
However, on the cusp of his graduation, that’s when everything changed.
The worst and final day of his life.
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He walked into class that day, head held as high as he dared. (He had gotten out of bed and didn’t even feel tempted to stay in it and wither today!) Usually on these days nothing could get him down. It must be the effects of knowing that soon he’ll be free of this place. Maybe he can finish his education online so that his chances in high school aren’t ruined by quirkist teachers? That sounds like a good idea, he’ll have to take it up with his mother.
He approached his desk, but today, there was something new on it. And it wasn’t scorch marks or insults written in sharpie.
It was a tiny vase, containing a single, red flower.
A spider lily.
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The tiniest crack appeared on the dam.
Don’t let them break you.
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“Oh, Deku’s planning on going to U.A. University in a few years too?” their teacher asked, his eyes sparking with malice as he purposefully singled Izuku out. He had to bite back the scowl that wanted to appear on his face, as looking angry has never helped against Katsuki. Speaking of, his own walking blonde hell rounded his burning glare on him so fast it gave Izuku whiplash just from looking at it.
“DEKU…”
The teacher casually turned away, back to the class as he took his sweet time putting each and every single paper the students had turned in into the filing cabinet one at a time.
He tried to curl inon himself, hoping to not have to confront Bakugou today. He was having such a good day too!
That plan went out the window as quick as it had came, when the feeling of a heated palm made itself known through the fabric of his school gakuran as he was pushed backwards so hard he went from leaning forward on the desk to flat out on his back on the floor in seconds. He didn’t expect Katsuki to be so forceful this time around, and wasn’t able to tuck his head, the back of his skull hitting the ceramic tile hard, his arms only barely able to soften the impact when he had flailed about trying to catch himself. His head rang, his vision swam. Katsuki’s voice came through, but barely, and the bright flashes of his quirk made his eyes hurt so much so he was forced to shut them.
“YOU THINK YO...OT SHIT, DEKU!? I’L...CKING CRUSH YOU IF Y…U’RE BE... THAN ME!”
“Whuh…?” he slurred out under his breath. He was barely cognizant of his surroundings at the moment, but the feeling of heat on his skin, the annoyingly loud cracks and pops from Kasuki’s quirk, they forced him to focus on the next set of words as he felt his body be lifted up by the collar, his feet barely touching the floor.
“Don’t apply for U.A. Deku. My backstory is gonna be perfect, and I won’t have my success be ruined by some hero-wannabe quirkless bitch like you even making it past the gates, got it?”
He tried to nod, but the splitting pain in his head rendered that motion null.
He felt gravity return to his body, and his legs gave out from under him, leaving him to collapse in a pile on the floor. The motion of falling made his headache worse. Maybe he should get some tylenol?
He opened his eyes to see Katsuki dig out his latest analysis journal, toasting it with his quirk before throwing it out the window. He raised an arm weakly, as if that would help in the situation, but it did nothing as he watched it sail out the window, singed papers tearing and fluttering out from the force of the throw.
“Want my advice? Take a swan dive off the roof and pray for a good quirk in the next life. Maybe then you’ll amount to something.”
With one last kick to the chest, the teacher finally turned around.
“Alright Bakugou, class is starting back up, go sit down.”
“Tch, whatever, teach.”
“Midoriya, you’d do well to get to your seat as well, or else you’ll be sent to the office.”
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The crack spiderwebbed out, growing larger.
Don’t let them break you.
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The bell rang, making him wince in pain as the loud sound seemed to stab his eardrums with a screwdriver, and he stood up to go leave the class. His vision swam, and there seemed to be a surplus of desks in the room. Odd, maybe they’ll be moved out soon. Does he need glasses? Things aren’t really focussing right now.
He staggered through the halls and out the door, the ache in his skull so persistent he forgot his notebook had even been thrown out the window. He stumbled right past the koi pond, and out the gates. He got a little lost on his way home, and considered calling his mother as he went under an underpass, but decided against it. She had enough on her plate as is.
He heard something rattle behind him, and turned, ready to ask the stranger for directions. They seemed to have a really cool mutation that made their body to be composed entirely of some kind of slime. He was about to ask, but then realized he wasn’t even listening! He tried to focus, because the least he could do is have good manners if he was gonna be asking for favors.
“...- make a good meat suit. Didn’t expect for him to be here…”
Wait, what?
Suddenly, the man was after him, and in his mind he distantly recognized that this was a villain. He tried to turn and run, but he tripped on his own shoes and fell to the ground. As he scrambled to get up, he heard the wet, gurgling laugh of the villain as he approached. He felt it envelop his legs first, not like they were much use at the moment anyway, then slowly creeped up his body, enveloping him in a pervasive feeling of sticky, cold slime. He tried to call out for help, but that was the wrong move, for as soon as the word exited his lips, the slime villain forced itself over his mouth and nose, and he had just used the last of the breath in his lungs.
His mind, already hazy, began to darken, much, much faster than he had anticipated in fact.
His eyes opened, not to the dark, gritty underpass he was in, but instead a black void. He stood up tentatively, distantly noting in the back of his mind that he wasn’t hurting at the moment. Then he spotted it.
A small, golden light. Something to latch on to in this dark abyss.
He curled his hand gently around the mote of light, attempting to bring it closer to his face, but the second his skin touched it, it burst to life.
It rapidly expanded. The mote of light grew in fractals, geometric shapes, somewhat translucent, as it assembled a figure.
It was vaguely humanoid, lacking any real features. It shed bits and pieces of the light shapes as it hovered there, missing its bottom half. The front of its blank face turned to him as it moved its arms in a curious fashion, as if unused to taking shape.
“Interesting… You have brought me back to life…”
Izuku stood, mesmerized at the figure before him. It radiated warmth, light, power. Pure, unbridled energy.
“You have bound yourself to me… Or have I bound myself to you? Never you mind, the result is the same… Greetings. I… am Anlek.”
The voice was like dozens, no, hundreds of voices, talking in almost perfect unison. There were parts where the voices were in harmony with the other, others where it was dissonant, and some of the voices seemed to speak slower or faster than the others sometimes. It was… Odd.
He gave a small bow, mostly out of habit more than anything else.
“Uh… I-Izuku… Midoriya? Uhm… Sorry, but what’s your quirk? A-and where are we?”
“My… Quirk? I don’t understand....”
“Oh, how could you now know about quirks? Or do you call them something different where you’re from? They’re like… Genetic superpowers! Like uh… Making explosions come from your hands, or pulling small objects towards you!”
“Ah… What… Is yours?”
He stumbled over his words, trying to decide what to say, before settling on just coming clean.
“I-... I’m quirkless....”
There was a still silence from the entity as it tilted its head to look at him.
“I can… grant you power… would you… like that?”
His head snapped up, looking at the glowing entity (Anlek, Izuku, their name is Anlek!)
“But… but how?”
“Your body is… well-suited… to receive my power… Here… Don the mask… it will… grant you strength… for the journey ahead…”
Anlek pulled some of the dark matter from around them, curving it into a smooth face mask that would cover his face from the hairline to the chin. They floated the mask between their hands, and Izuku watched as it spun rapidly, before exploding in a small shower of golden light. The inside of the mask now held a golden glow, with a balc void in the center, directly where his face would go.
“Go… Ahead. Put on… the mask. Become… a prospect.”
He hesitantly did so. Before he could seat it fully onto his face, the mask rattled in his fingers, and like a magnet, flew onto his face. He was physically pushed back by the recoil. White lines began to spread through the black void he found himself in, originating from him, as he felt a void in his soul he didn’t even know was there finally clicked. He felt… full. Energized. Invigorated. So much so…
He felt like a balloon about to burst.
He suddenly came to in that underpass, his mind suddenly clear of the fog that had taken root in his mind.He watched in fascination and disgust as the slime that had been forced down his airways be removed at high speed, not even the taste of it remained on his tongue. He heard the villain shout. And just as he felt he was ready to burst with all that pent up energy, he decided to let go.
And then the next thing he heard was a deep, booming voice.
“Texas… SMASH!”
He was flung bodily away just as the energy was released, and he skidded across the pavement. Miraculously, he stayed conscious, and he didn’t even feel hurt!
He stood up, bristling with excitement as he looked up, seeing All Might, in the flesh, still in the pose he had struck with his last super move. He seemed shocked, but schooled it quickly.
“HAHAHA! Sorry about that young man, didn’t mean to get you caught up in my hero-ing! I would have caught the villain earlier, but the city’s sewer systems are harder to navigate than I thought!”
All Might started up another round of booming laughs as he emptied a few liters of soda (Was he on a shopping trip?) and began packing the slime into them. He didn’t question how he managed to pack the whole villain into two two-liter bottles, because if anyone could do that it’s All Might, and instead started actively restraining himself from fanboying.
“Ohmygoshit’sAllMight,it’ssuchanhonortomeetyousir,I’msorryIwasinthewaythere-”
A task he failed monumentally.
All Might just laughed and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Now now! I’m happy to have such an enthusiastic fan, but my quirk isn’t super hearing! NOW! Would you like an autograph?”
Izuku may or may not have yelled yes so hard his voice cracked.
It was only now that he realized he was, in fact, missing his notebook, and almost panicked at that, but instead resigned himself to pulling out a piece of paper from his binder that hadn’t been contaminated by the slime villain, holding it open for All Might to hold and sign. After successfully obtaining the autograph, something he thanked All Might immensely for, he felt an urge bubble up in his stomach.
“A-All Might, c-can I ask a question?”
“Not right now, my boy! I must deliver this villain to the police. A hero fights time as much as they do crime, HAHAHA! If you want to know something, send it on my website!”
He began to crouch, limbering up for a jump no doubt, but…
Izuku had to know. He had to know if all his effort, all his suffering was worth it.
So he did something he’d come to regret later down the line.
He reached out and wrapped around All Might’s leg, like a koala might do to a eucalyptus tree.
And somewhere along the lines, he forgot to account for the fact that, in doing such an act, he would, by nature, follow All Might on one of his jumps. Jumps famous for clearing entire cities in one go.
All Might began to obviously freak out as well, lightly pushing him, but that only made Izuku grip harder.
“IF I FALL NOW I’LL DIE!” He shouted over the screaming winds. He saw All Might mouth something, if he had to wager a guess it was a curse in English.
“Hold on young man, this may be a bumpy landing!” All Might called, as he braced for impact. Izuku did as well, clinging to the man’s massive, muscled legs like a lifeline, because for all intents and purposes, they were.
They landed on top of a nondescript five story apartment building in one of the poorer districts, the ones he usually avoids because of the amount of petty crime there. He fell back onto grimy, sun-baked concrete, and it had never felt so good to do that.
“My life just flashed before my eyes…”
He saw All Might turn to him.
“Young man, what you did was very dangerous.”
“Y-yeah, I know… But, I really need to know… All Might, is it possible to be a hero, even if I’m quirkless?”
He finally got his question out there. There was a second of silence, before Izuku blabbered on
“I’m not-I’m not gonna just dump my whole life story out there, but I’ve wanted to be a hero since I was a kid… I trained relentlessly, honed my mind, but nobody seems to believe that I’d make it, so I wanted to know if I even had a chance.”
He looked up, hoping to see All Might’s trademarked smali and maybe even get some comforting words, only to see a cloud of rapidly dissipating steam and a skeleton of a man wearing oversized clothes that looked eerily similar to…
“Wait a second.”
This is All Might. He knows this, because he witnessed him save him not two minutes ago. He was physically caught in a Texas smash. He had latched onto the man as he flew over a city. He was wearing a white t shirt and green cargo pants. He had blonde hair and piercing blue eyes.
The man in front of him fit that physical description, but yet, he seemed to be lacking something. That being, All Might was a paragon of muscles and strength. The man in front of him now looks like a particularly stiff breeze could send him careening over the edge of the railing if he wasn’t careful.
So one could imagine how, logically, he could assume that this was All Might, despite him being a walking skeleton of a man, and logically one could also say this man looks nothing like All Might.
He felt like his brain was on the cusp of crashing due to the two contrasting truths set before him. He opened his mouth to scream, but All Might (Mini Might?) held up a hand.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Just… don’t go screaming.”
He limped over to the wall (Why was he limping? Was All Might injured?) and slid down it, collapsing in a heap of long, gangly limbs, and let out a bone-deep, exhausted sigh that Izuku related to on a personal level.
“Before you ask, yeah, I’m All Might.” All Might’s eyes glanced up to meet his emerald ones. “I hope you’re smart enough to know that now that you’ve seen me like this, you can’t go talking about this. Not to your friends, not on the internet, none. Got it?”
“I-I…. You know what? Screw it. Sure. Whatever All Might.”
“You… seem to be processing this remarkably well…” All Might said with worry.
Izuku let out a mirthless chuckle. “Oh, I’m most definitely not, I’m just… struggling to process it fully, actually, and I think I might have died in that slime villain’s grasp, and that this is all some kind of vision before I succumb to death.”
“Dark.”
“I know.”
They sat there in silence for a bit as both contemplated what to day. Izuku spoke first.
“I just… h-how? What… what happened to you…?” He said, gesturing to the emaciated shell of a man sitting across from him.
All Might sighed, lifting up the left side of his shirt to reveal a gnarled, ugly, purple bundle of scar tissue. It looked like a tank shell had ripped through him.
“Pretty nasty, yeah? Happened to me about five years ago…” he said, a look of pain flashing across his face, as if it hurt to even remember it.
“Toxic chainsaw? No, no,the wounds don’t match up… who did this to you?”
All Might chuckled. “You know your stuff kid. But no, Toxic Chainsaw was a tough foe, but even he would have perished against the foe I faced. He was… an unimaginably horrible supervillain. I beat him, at the cost of most of my organs. And knowing what’s out there, villains with the power to reduce the Symbol of Peace to a measly three hours of hero work a day… No, I don’t think a quirkless can be a hero. Sorry kid. It’s nice to have dreams, but don’t let your dreams get you killed. Try being a doctor, you seem smart. Or, at the very least, the police force. They often get ribbed for not doing as much as the heroes, but they do good work, just without the flashy recognition.”
All Might stood up, grunting with the effort as blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth. “Knock on the door. I’m sure someone will come up and let you in,” he said, unaware of the dull emerald obs that now stared at his back, almost lifeless, hidden behind a slowly darkening mask the teen didn’t even know he had. It had come as a bright, smooth golden mask, curved to match the curvature of a face, but not to mould to it. It became warped and rough, and lany light hitting the mask’s surface immediately became lost in the dark. The golden glow flickered, and shapes within went from yellow to white. Anlek had a new, silver visitor in his abyss.
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The dam didn’t crumble, it was reduced into a fine white powder.
He BROKE.
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He walked without thought. He looked, but he did not see. He was alive, but he was not living. He wandered without aim, following wherever the crowds herded him, wherever his feet were set to follow. He was broken out of his stupor, however, when he heard it.
The blast of an oh-so-familiar explosion. The smell of nitroglycerine, like burnt sugar. But also… the smell of smoke. This wasn’t Bakugou showing off, he was fighting. And causing destruction in that fight, as he is wont to do.
As he got closer though, he recognized another disturbing facet. There was a tinge of odor underlying the smoke and sweetness, like someone had boiled sewer water.
Sewer water…
Wait, he recognized that smell…
He could never forget his killer.
His sight went from downcast silver to bright, yellow sunlight.
“Kacchan is being attacked!”
He wrestled his way to the front of the safety line, provided by Backdraft (‘Hydrokinesis, could be used to solve the fire problem, but does Diluting the slime monster weaken its power?’) Death Arms (‘Strength enhanced brawler, not to an extreme scale, as far as… strength quirks are known to be, but certainly viable. He may not be able to utilize that strength to easily go in fast and get the hostage, right?’) and Kamui Woods (Wood transformation type. Can he create different types of wood and select the more fire-resistant tree? Can he alter the amount of water inside the branches? It’s alive wood, so it shouldn’t burn easily, he just has to be quick, which he’s known for.)
And he was shocked at what they did. They sat there and did nothing, claiming their quirks aren’t compatible. And as he was about to shout out, he heard a familiar wet cough, turning to see Small Might. Probably lamenting about his damned time frame.
‘No one is... helping… Do you... not wish to be... a hero?’
‘We must end this fool. His attempt on your life should not be forgiven!’
He steeled his resolve and ducked under the police line, and dodged the water tendrils and branches that came out, hoping to snag him, but he deftly dodged, like a leaf flowing between strikes. He felt the wind carry him.
‘Who? Forget it. Save now, questions later.’
He jumped through a pit of fire quickly to maintain his forward momentum, the small puff of heat barely fazing him as he went through too quickly to get burned.
He took his bag off his back and unzipped it in one smooth motion. Rearing back, he wound up and threw, right as the slime noticed him.
“YOU AGAI- AAAAGH!”
His pencils had gone through the slime, apparently much thinner now, possibly due to the high temperatures. A weakness we needed to use, but how?
Explosions cackled in the slime, but were quickly swallowed. The noise was enough to remind him, however, that the hostage is, currently, a living BOMB.
He took the chance while the villain was reeling to send it back further by jumping and pushing his fist through the thin liquid, easily connecting with the other functioning eye, before quickly going back. It could hold one person, but could it resist two?
He plunged his arms into what felt like yogurt instead of slime, and he grabbed Katsuki by the gakuran. He leaned back with far more power than he had thought possible, and shouted two words as he saw tentacles of slime now racing for him.
“BLAST ‘EM!”
The slime slammed into Izuku, and sent him careening into a wall, through said wall, and ended with a sharp pain in his chest as he cried out, his lungs screaming at the action as blood crawled up his mouth.
Katsuki got a feral grin on his face, and Izuku watched in morbid curiosity when he heated up both palms and let out one of the biggest blasts in record time (‘I wonder if that’s what it looked like when he used it on me…?’ Izuku thought, before he ceased to think any more, slipping into the comforting black void again.
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“BLAST ‘EM!”
Let it be known that Katsuki doesn’t take orders, especially from a worthless runt who thinks he’s hot shit, but he knows how to fucking prioritize. His palms crackled as he wound up the biggest explosion he’s made so far. Might be the fires he had accidentally caused making him sweat more.
The force sent him skidding back, but the explosions had enough force to blast the slimy fuck apart and even evaporate a solid bit of the offending slime. And the villain was finally rendered unconscious. There was a small pause of deafening silence before a resounding applause.
‘Why was Deku wearing a mask?’ Bakugou thought, as he approached the hole in which the green haired teen was laying in to give him a piece of his mind.
As the dust settled, the horror was revealed. Twin pieces of twisted rebar impaled him on both sides of the chest, and his limbs were mangled and bent from the force of being thrown through a building.
Izuku Midoriya was dead.