Chapter Text
1 – Inko
Despite Hisashi being stationed far away, Izuku turns out to be like him. Just like him. Every time Inko sees her husband in her son – in the way he mutters creepily to himself, analyzing the best ways to disable someone’s quirk or in the way his saccharine smile just won’t leave his face, no matter how much she tries to get rid of it – it sends restless shivers down her spine.
She used to love her husband. But with time came understanding and with understanding came a slow sort of realization that still shakes her to her bones whenever she thinks about it. That her husband is a terrifying man. That his sweetness is printed on his face like a mask hiding away the ugly insect-like eeriness beneath. That his gifts are always exactly what she desires in the moment, as if he can look inside her mind whenever he so pleases.
That he’s a villain and not one that participates only in the occasional petty crime.
Hisashi is dangerous, with intelligence as sharp as a blade and eyes sometimes so cold they leave her gasping for air. They are a reddish brown but Inko swears they look like blood when he falls deeply into thought.
The worst thing is that she still loves him. How could she not? He’s only ever been gentle with her. Caring, loving, the perfect husband. Even when Izuku’s x-ray results showed that their son won’t ever develop a quirk, Hisashi treated Izuku the same. Didn’t even falter in his steps or got overwhelmed with guilt like Inko herself had become. Hisashi accepted Izuku’s quirklessness like it was nothing, not even a minor inconvenience.
Until he was permanently moved to the USA, Hisashi spent all of his free time with his family. Inko couldn’t fall out of love with him when he brought her flowers every couple of days, one bouquet more beautiful than the last, and brought All Might merchandise for Izuku with a sort of sarcastically amused grin that looked just the tiniest bit murderous.
She couldn’t. Couldn’t not love him.
Inko was so unbelievably glad when Hisashi moved overseas. She thought that if his presence were gone, Izuku would finally become more like her.
Instead, it seems as if distance only made them more alike. Izuku’s dark green hair, which shone like a scarab’s shell in the scorching sun, developed a stark white streak in his bangs. His round cheeks sunk with the loss of baby fat and it made his smile too sharp, uncannily like Hisashi’s. His muttering... by god. His muttering sped up, somehow, and with his dropping voice it now sounds like ghastly ghostly serpentine whispers instead of overeager info dumps. Inko misses the time when her baby was stuck as the smallest in his age group. Now he towers over her, as well as over most of his classmates, rail-thin and anxious but undeniably dangerous all the same.
She wishes she could stop loving him, just as she wishes she could stop loving Hisashi.
But she can’t.
She can’t.
(It makes her want to tear her hair out.)
2 – Katsuki
He doesn’t know how the extras don’t see it.
They act like Katsuki’s the one who goes overboard all of the time. Like Katsuki’s the asshole, like his childhood friend isn’t the most inhuman thing that has ever roamed these school’s hallways. Like Katsuki’s the one who has to keep himself from brutally murdering people just because he can.
It’s laughable, really, how blind they all are to Deku.
Katsuki doesn’t hate the bastard, not really. He isn’t even sure if he could get away with hating Deku without the nerd whipping his head around almost unnaturally fast and far, declaring war on Katsuki’s hatred with a hackles-raising smile and that snake-esque boyish voice calling him that stupid nickname.
Kacchan.
(If he didn’t know it better, Katsuki’d think it were meant as an infantilizing taunt.)
The kicker is that Deku doesn’t even know. The fucker doesn’t know why his own mom can’t look at him for longer than a couple of seconds without fidgeting anxiously or why the teachers ignore him. It’s not because he’s quirkless. (And how dare he?! He promised he’d get a cool quirk and become Katsuki’s sidekick. Motherfucker. Well, maybe Deku really doesn’t need a quirk. With his creepiness he’s gonna probably scare off villains before they even commit any crimes.)
Deku doesn’t know why Katsuki’s so goddamn agitated when the nerd’s following him around, mumbling grotesque ways to permanently disable (also known as fucking murder) their classmates or how to improve quirks so much they barely resemble what they started out as.
That’s more than fine with Katsuki, to be honest. It’d be fucking embarrassing if it came out that Japan’s future number one hero is terrified of his own only friend. Deku can remain as socially inept as ever and go bother another Kacchan when UA puts down their feet and tells Deku to fuck off for being a shitty quirkless nobody – just a tiny pebble on the road.
And if, until then, Katsuki has to keep Deku humbled to prevent him from gaining social awareness or, god forbid, confidence in his own abilities? Yeah, he’ll do it. He’ll take one for the team.
Those that end up in Deku’s high school class better be fucking grateful when they notice how much damage control Katsuki’s done.
3 – Ochako
The boy is plain-faced. She’ll give him that.
Everything else about him speaks another story. His hair is dual-coloured – a lot more shiny dark green than off-putting too-white white – and he has sanpaku eyes with irises that are like two polished jade stones. His smile tears his cheeks apart.
He’s a lot taller than her but looks extremely small when he notices who saved him from face-planting on the concrete. It’s like he’s never spoken to a girl before. He mumbles a thank you, correctly hypothesizes her quirk and grows as red as a tomato seemingly in the same breath.
Ochako... doesn’t really want to have anything to do with him.
He hasn’t given her a reason to dislike him but she feels weird when she’s with him. She doesn’t like this feeling – it’s like she’s standing next to someone made of all the darkest parts nature could offer.
So, she hastily says goodbye and leaves him behind.
And hopes she doesn’t ever have to see him again.
4 – Tenya
He wants to criticize the mumbling boy.
But then.
Then he looks at Tenya and it’s like the air has become ten degrees colder. His eyes don’t hold contempt – that’s the oddest thing; that there’s actually no reason to be afraid of him – but Tenya doesn’t ever want to know what it’ll feel like when they do hold contempt.
Tenya doesn’t mention his mumbling.
He nonetheless subtly shifts in front of the girl with brown hair that the boy has been eyeing when they’re preparing for the practical exam.
She gives Tenya a thankful nod.
(How can someone like that boy be a contender for the hero course?!)
5 – Present Mic
He gets himself a big good old mug of coffee before sitting down at his workplace. A couple of minutes prior, a frowning girl came in and asked him if she could share her points with another kid who’d saved her from the zero pointer.
“I... I didn’t catch his name but he has a rather plain face with a few freckles. Uh, green hair with a white streak at the front?”
Quieter: “He’s scary. Something about him just freaks me out...”
But then, a sudden change in her demeanour – a boost of confidence, from what Hizashi could gather.
“He saved me! He scares the shit out of me but he saved my life! So, please, give him half of my points!”
Naturally, he told her that couldn’t be done. (Not that the participant in question would need the extra points. Such a heroic deed is always guaranteed rescue points aplenty.)
Now that he’s alone, though, Hizashi’s interested in this mysterious boy. What could be so off about him that it scared the girl that bad? She didn’t sound like it had anything to do with actual harassment on his end but... he’d rather take a look into the situation before they accept him into the hero course, much less throw both of them into the same class.
He takes a sip of his coffee and waits for his laptop to boot up, then types in the password for the practical exam’s video material. It’s readily available for any members of the teaching staff until the school year starts. Hizashi needs a second to find the group with the brown-haired girl (Uraraka Ochako) but he pulls it up easily enough. He clicks on the first video.
What the participants oftentimes don’t realize is that they’re already being filmed in the bus that drives them to the individual testing grounds and then, later on, before the exam starts. Of course UA doesn’t fail to mention it in the contract but most students quickly forget all about that or don’t really mind it. There are usually some outliers who try to spot the cameras but they’ve been hidden by none other than Principal Nedzu himself, which is why nobody has as of yet caught sight of them.
Hizashi switches through the different angles – click, click, click – not really paying attention to anything...
Click.
He lets out an ear-splittingly loud screech.
“What the fuck?” he whispers to himself, clutching at his poor chest. He can’t bring himself to look away from the footage, however disturbing it might be.
That’s the kid. Hizashi’s a hundred percent sure that has to be him.
Fuck, man. No wonder Uraraka was frightened by him.
The boy’s still staring straight at the camera, teeth bright as he smiles unwaveringly. He’s like one of those eerie jumpscare pictures. All around him, teens either talk animatedly to each other or do their own thing. The boy, though... it’s like he’s carved out of stone. A monolith amongst men, a being made of stillness.
Hizashi watches, entranced.
Slowly, life seems to seep into the boy’s body. His frame rate has yet to reach a point where his movements become fluid but his hands fly up to just under his chin. (How? They lay in his lap and then they were up there – how fast can he move?! Is that his quirk?)
Hizashi’s eyes widen. As soon as he understands what’s going on, his hands slam the laptop shut. The sound of the camera is abruptly cut off. Not that it’s the sound that’s the problem. (The boy didn’t know whether they had a microphone built in. He didn’t know.)
His heart races and he whispers to himself: “Oh fuck. Fuck, no. No, no, nope, uh-uh. I’m not doing this. I am not doing this.” before throwing back the rest of his coffee and leaving. The room that’s his safe space has become a hotbed for paranoia.
He needs to talk to Shouta.
(Shouta needs to take that... that thing and teach him how to stop being... like that. There’s no way Kan could ever hope to put reigns on the boy. No, Kan would fold like a wet paper towel after a single day. If there’s someone who can teach him, it’s Shouta.
And he needs to talk to Shouta.
Not just because he needs to ensure the boy lands in 1-A instead of 1-B but also because...
...because Hizashi’s fucking scared, alright?)
Throughout the entire two minute walk, the images depicting all too clearly what the kid has done flash behind his eyes. As if they’ve been burnt into his retinas.
Midoriya Izuku signed flawlessly and almost too fast:
I can see you
with that goddamn horrible smile on his lips.
Fucking hell.
+ 1 – All Might
Toshinori meets his future successor when he’s on a time crunch. That is, decidedly, very much not an ideal way to meet your future successor.
Well, it’s not like it could be helped. That damn slime guy slipped straight through Toshinori’s fingers and went underground – which meant Toshinori, too, has to follow him through the canals and out of an open manhole. His left side throbs as he jumps and sends a jolt through his body after he assesses the situation (shit, a kid’s being choked) and sends an appropriate punch their way to disperse the villain.
The child drops. Toshinori winces when the boy’s head thumps as it hits the asphalt. He quickly makes sure his skull isn’t damaged, brings him into the good old anti-choking-on-your-own-bile position and checks his breathing before quickly stuffing the slime into a couple of coke bottles he finds in the trashcan. (Man, they really don’t teach you stuff like this at UA. They should. Less creative heroes might have a hard time coming up with a capture method that works for villains like this one.)
When he’s done – and the boy still hasn’t moved – Toshinori heads over to his side and repositions the kid’s head onto his yellow backpack. Might as well make sure he wakes up before depositing the slimy villain at the police station. Following protocol, Toshinori has already sent out the coordinates for the paramedics. Although he knows they’re going to take their sweet time, since this part of the town’s rather far from the local hospital. (And, as much as he doesn’t want to judge his colleagues, Musutafu doesn’t have the most enthusiastic paramedics. They’re a little lacklustre. Always a bit too late when it’s not an immediate emergency. Always a bit too rude with people whose quirks aren’t pretty.)
Toshinori feels his time starting to run out. Feels like the last few kernels of sand symbolizing One For All are drizzling down the funnel of the hourglass. Still. He can’t just leave the poor boy here alone. And so he waits.
Luckily, the boy soon opens his eyes, looking rather disoriented as he blinks up the tunnel’s arching ceiling.
“Oh, good, you’re awake!” Toshinori calls out, mindful to keep his usually boisterous voice a bit subdued. There’s no knowing whether the kid has a headache or not, after all.
Confused green eyes focus on him. For a second, the teenager doesn’t recognize him but then: “A-ALL MIGHT?!”
Toshinori’s grin becomes less arbitrary and more genuine as he sees how the child’s whole face lights up in delight and eagerness at seeing him. The kid jumps up, scrambles for his backpack like he wasn’t out cold mere second ago, and his sometimes too-fast-to-comprehend mutterings as well as his glitch-y movements remind Toshinori of an especially overzealous puppy. (So cute!, crosses his mind.) “Indeed!” he answers, kneeling down next to the kid while making sure the bottled villain remains in his vicinity and doesn’t have even the slightest chance of breaking free, “It’s commendable how fast you seem to have recovered, my boy, but I must implore you to stay somewhat seated until the paramedics arrive. This Sludge Villain here tried to suffocate you, after all!”
The kid comes to a sudden halt. “O-Oh, yeah... I just, um, wanted to show you a thing I did.” He sounds so unsure now that something in Toshinori’s chest aches. It is clear as the cloudless sky above them that the child’s self-esteem is lower than his own was at this age.
(And he’d have thought that’d be impossible, since he was quirkless – one of the, back then, thirty percent who were destined to die before age, again, back then, twenty-five. He’s been keeping up with the statistics and no matter how many times he states in interviews that quirkless people are just as capable as quirked ones, no matter how much money he discreetly and not at all discreetly donates to the sometimes borderline illegal facilities for the Unwanted, All Might’s opinion all of a sudden isn’t worth anything anymore when it goes against what everyone has been conditioned to think. The statistics are now worse than ever.)
“Well, then, my boy. Let’s see what you’ve got for me!” he encourages him and the teenager – one Midoriya Izuku, as is written on the notebook he hesitantly presents Toshinori with – wobbly grins up at him. Toshinori gasps when he sees what Midoriya has done.
What Midoriya has crafted, is a much better description for it. It’s... wow. For a moment, Toshinori’s positively stunned at what is, essentially, an in-depth analysis breakdown of his hero persona. There are three drawings on the first page, which show his most prominent costumes, done in normal and coloured pencil. They are beautiful, first of all, and clearly cost Midoriya a fair amount of time, since he put forth the effort to shade them as well. Secondly, there’s something incredibly realistic about his faces. At first, he can’t quite pinpoint what it is but then he realizes: His faces aren’t kept the same. They change design by design, expression more carefree and laidback in the first two than in the third, more mature and experienced in the third. With a start, Toshinori notices that Midoriya has somehow captured the difference between All Might pre-injury and post-injury. Which, well, should frankly not have been possible.
But the drawings aren’t even close to being the highlight of this. No, what completely steals the show is what has been written in almost hasty yet entirely readable font.
Toshinori turns to the next page. And the next. And the next.
On over seven whole pages, Midoriya has basically covered his entire life as a hero.
Here’s a fun fact: Nobody even knows what his date of birth is, yet alone his blood type or... he squints down disbelievingly at favourite drinks, USA compared to Japan. Midoriya knows everything, it seems. How many hours have gone into this? Is this Midoriya’s quirk?
Toshinori blanches as his eyes catch Major Injuries: 2221 – broke a rib during quirk accident involving a minor, 2226 – broke both legs during natural disaster (earthquake); !!2232 – gained massive injury during unknown fight (NOT Toxic Chainsaw!), displays signs of organ damage (torso, left side damaged, discreetly coughing up blood – not imminent cause for concern but cause to be more careful), displays signs of chronic pain (shielding torso, left side periodically), displays signs of decreased quirk functionality (general hours as hero gone down, strength going down approximately 0.17% per month)
By all that’s holy, he hopes Midoriya either has connections to an info broker or an analysis/intelligence quirk.
“Uh... do you happen to have connections to an info broker or an analysis-slash-intelligence quirk?” Toshinori asks carefully.
“No, um, All Might, Sir. I, ah” here, the boy chuckles as he awkwardly avoids looking at Toshinori, “I don’t have many contacts at all. And. I-... I’m quirkless.”
Toshinori instantly knows he’s telling the truth, which is a capital Problem since this means Midoriya’s been able to discern all of this from All Might’s televised appearances. (But, man, all the same this is an incredible love letter to the work he’s put his whole life’s energy into. This is... he can’t even begin to describe how impressed he is.)
Because Toshinori’s too busy staring at the notebook, he doesn’t register his time with One for All running out entirely. He’s already steaming by the time he finally notices. “Shit” he curses, discreetly looking around whilst going halfway into panic mode.
“A-All Might? There’s a public toilet just around the corner if you need to hide!” Midoriya whisper-shouts and Toshinori forgoes asking how he knew and instead let’s himself be dragged to the toilet by his t-shirt. (God, trying to keep One for All up when there’s no time left feels like he’s burning on the inside.)
Midoriya, bless the boy, careens him into a stall, guides him to sit on the ceramic toilet seat and closes the stall door behind them. “You can let it go now” the boy says soothingly as he rubs Toshinori’s back. The hero is reminded of his younger years, when he’d gone out clubbing with David and one of them always inevitably ended up retching his soul out while the other tried his best to simultaneously offer comfort and sneakily gather blackmail material. (He still has that video of Dave sobbing out the tune of their back then favourite TV show’s intro as he periodically projectile-vomited everywhere but into the bowl. Hah... good old times.)
Whether it’s because he has no other choice or because Midoriya’s presence for some reason puts him at ease, Toshinori obeys.
He lets go.
Midoriya doesn’t gasp in shock. He doesn’t shriek or cry. He doesn’t react at all, aside from mumbling something that sounds like “oh, I was right, you do have a second form”. Toshinori shakily inhales, closes his eyes and leans back against the white-tiled wall.
Without opening his eyes, he asks: “Do I need to explain this or...?”
“No. Uh, not if you don’t want to! I don’t want to make you uncomfortable but I guess it has something to do with your injury?”
“Mhm” Toshinori hums in agreement, “Yeah, that’s the gist of it. As you deduced, my left side is pretty fu- uh, messed up.”
“Oh...”
Toshinori opens his eyes. Midoriya’s looking at him like everything’s alright – like the number one hero hasn’t just implied he’s a soon-to-be has-been and like he doesn’t think of him any differently.
There’s a faint noise coming from outside – an explosion, if Toshinori’s right.
Midoriya flinches. Hard.
Then his jade green eyes widen and: “All Might, we left the villain behind.”
“...Fuck”
They both hasten out of the stall and follow the sounds of destruction. Indeed, the villain has escaped (plastic bottles torn apart) and now he’s attacking someone else.
Another kid.
Shit. Toshinori’s out of time. He can’t... he just can’t.
“Kacchan!” Midoriya hisses at his side.
And before Toshinori’s able to ask, the boy takes off.
(In that moment, a hero is born and a successor found.)
