Chapter Text
“Why don’t you do everyone a favor? Take a swan dive off the roof and wish for a quirk in your next life?”
…
“My boy - I don’t believe that a quirkless person has the strength to be a hero. You may be a detriment in the field.”
Izumi gazed over the edge of the abandoned office building she’d been left atop. Acidic sludge burned her scalp, her mouth too coarse to cry out, her eyes bleeding tears. Five years ago today, she had been left alone by her mother. Quirkless and transgender was too much for her mother to bear. She disappeared without warning. Here one day, gone the next. No hero nor officer bothered to listen to the quirkless girl’s plea to look for her mother. Today, her former best friend, a boy who had beaten her for a decade finally broke her down, telling her to do the world a favor by killing herself. And now, now she had been put down by Symbol of Peace. The one man whose smile put the nation at ease. The one face she thought would encourage her to keep trying her best. To help her prove everyone wrong, and help her become a hero. As he deflated to his skeletal remnants of a man, his bloody mouth sputtering over Izumi, her hopes had been shattered. Her hero told her that she should stop dreaming.
She sat at the edge of the building, overlooking her downtrodden city. It was a grey ugly she’d known her whole life. She lived in a country with some of the most beautiful views and landscapes the world over, but she had been doomed to live with the Midoriyas. A man who abandoned his wife and child, leaving them to live in squalor. A woman who abandoned her child when she saw her as nothing more than a freak. A child left on the streets, as no foster would take her. No shelter wanted her. She had no worth. She shed her name when her mother did not return. She was a corpse of a woman with no family to claim her, a Jane Doe. The only things she had owned were her new name, Izumi, and a beaten yellow bag.
As she stared into smog-obscured sunset, she hesitated for a moment, considering writing a note. She looked at her charred notebook, All Might’s scribble of a signature encompassing a full page. She figured it may be nice to write a note to the world, one that told her story. One that detailed every scar she’d earned, every beaten-in bruise. But she knew better. There was nobody to leave the note to. She was hated in life, she would be forgotten in death. It was time for her to rest.
With no care left for her being, she stood on the brick railing of the building. Far from traffic, far from any legitimate business. Her body wouldn’t even be found for several days. She knew nobody would look for her when she was gone. She took one final step and plummet to her assured demise.
But she defied those odds.
Izumi had always surpassed the odds. She had long since outlived the life expectancy of a quirkless person. She had always stood strong after a beating. She always patched herself up and continued marching forward. She was a fighter, and she would never go down without a fight, even if she wanted to.
As the wind passed her by, she did not cry out. Her cheek bashed against a steel fire escape, shearing her freckles off her cheek. Skin and blood smeared the railing. Her tumble flung her into a hanging pole, and snapped her leg, snapping her femur like a twig. After all, one solid meal a week left her a scrawny skin and bones. She winced, but did not cry. Even in agony, she would not reward the world with any more tears. She let her body fall freely, ready for her form to be a pile of viscera when she hit the ground.
She never did.
Before the final sleep, the girl felt her arms envelop in shadow. A bursting anger seared through her veins. Her rage towards the world. She would not go quiet into the dying light. She would rage. She would rage against her own demise. Black veins shot from her fingertips. Nightmarish tendrils of black agony, twinged with her own crimson blood. They ensnared her in a comforting embrace, slowly easing her descent. She met the ground without a jolt. She was alive. The tendrils wrapped her leg in a tight squeezing brace, setting her in place as they stitched the bone together inside. She would be left with a limp, but she was alive. Blood smeared her face, both All Might’s and hers mashed into her stinging cheek.
She sighed and stumbled ‘home’ to her beach. A trashpile with a broken down truck she called shelter. She really was worthless wasn’t she? She couldn’t even kill herself right. All because of her stupid quirk.
… stupid quirk?
Izumi felt a twinge of anger, and watched as the veins in her arms became a sickly black. She felt her muscles tense with strength. She raised her fist, and punched into the decimated remnants of a washing machine. It went straight through. No pain in her knuckles. No blood or wounds from the metal tearing her skin. A black haze enshrouded her arm before slinking away into the recesses of her psyche.
She laughed.
She fell to her knees and laughed out loud. A powerful, joyous cry as her bloody tears met the sand beneath her.
Her trauma had awoke her ability. A quirk in the palms of her hand, circular black scars like those of the crucified.
She had been granted rest by some grace of some God. But it was not the relief of death, it was a divine normalcy. A belonging in this world.
As she stared at her stigmata, she knew what her ability would be. It was her rest. A rest from her pain and sorrow. A relief from her life of Hell. Her fists were clenched in a dark rage.
Her ability was her day of rest. Her Black Sabbath.