Chapter Text
Midoriya Izuku is a small boy. He always has been and likely always will be. But now he wishes he was even smaller, small enough to hide between the molecules of air. He wants to condense himself into a neutron star, fold in on himself further and further until he stops existing entirely, a pinprick of density.
Quirklessness is a terrifying fate for someone so young. Most people don’t respond well to it. The life expectancy for young quirkless people is less than thirty years old. Society that was once built around it is now so hostile to it that most quirkless people don’t survive it. Villain attacks and hatecrimes are at an all time high, and it’s a bleak fate for someone so young to look at.
The one in five figure was greatly exaggerated, especially in Japan. It was far more likely to be one in a hundred, fewer living, and Izuku was alone.
He wanted to be a hero so badly, and it’s gone now. And his father doesn’t want him. And his mother doesn’t know what to do. And he cries.
She moved him out of their house when Hisashi got angry.
He had a sleepover with Kacchan. Kacchan was mean, and he left the next day.
Hi s mom found a new place on limited income.
Midoriya Izuku is a very small boy on a very small island on the outskirts of hero society. Japan itself isn’t small, its population is dense and mostly city-based, but just off the coast is a small island, connected by a bridge to a filthy beach with little foot traffic.
The isle of debris, a very silly name if given any thought- as debris described the beach it connected to rather than the island itself- began as an easy interception point for illicit shipments. It’s reputation may extend as far back as the days of piracy, currents carrying ships into the island rather than the port a few kilometers south. If intercepted right, the ships are completely out of sight of the mainland, and especially the once-thriving shipyards. And once the advent of quirks began, transportation systems were thrown into chaos, and the island thrived .
Even before quirks, it was a shady place, with few living long term and even fewer remaining. Those with quirks began trying to take shelter on the island, safety in numbers and an easy defense, but as quirks rapidly became the majority, it became less necessary for those with quirks to hide. Those who were deemed volatile or villainous, however, were a different story.
Organized crime has had a hold on the island its whole history, piracy networks evolving into mafias and the yakuza, and while villainy takes precedence in the minds of the populace, it never left the island, or the rest of the country for that matter. They’re rolled into one, and the organizations took a backseat, less flashy and far more underhanded. The celebrity status of modern heroes rolled back their desire to pull at shadowed webs, and underground heroes are rare enough to be a combatable threat.
And a strategic location with powerful quirks is one to be fought over. Especially one functioning as a glorified shipyard, with supplies in and out. It’s not a nice place to live regardless, few people wanting to be caught in the organizational battles and quirk-based devastation, but many people didn’t have an option.
And the people on the island are insular, and dangerous, and heroes won’t touch them.
It’s the setup for a warzone.
And it is.
Midoriya Izuku had his life upended in a very short period of time. Being five (almost six!) years old, this isn’t much of a life experience, but he can’t go to daycare with Kacchan anymore, he’s surrounded by villains, and while his mother is doing her best to hide it, they’re struggling. Izuku is many things (small, quirkless, weak, Deku) but he’s not stupid.
So instead of crying about it, he’s going to learn. His situation is bad. He’s an outsider on an insular island. He’s stuck at home until his mom finds him a school he can get to. He’s impatient. When his mom smiles at him as she goes to look for work, and asks him to stay at home today, and that she trusts him, he smiles and nods.
It takes all of an hour for him to get bored. He can only take notes on so many heroes without seeing them, so he ducks out of the apartment, locking the door behind him with the key she left him. He might as well see if anyone his age is around, maybe he has some interesting neighbors! And if he doesn’t, he can just go see someone’s quirk, there’s got to be interesting quirks around, maybe someone won’t mind if he asks questions?
The apartment complex smells weird, like smoke and something gross and sharp, and it’s hard to avoid the sticky spots in the carpet, and hard to ignore the weird stains and cracks in the walls. It’s not been quirk-proofed very well, he can spot at least three scorch marks.
He wants to go outside, he’s bored. And he hasn’t seen his neighbors yet.
But his mom said not to talk to anyone. So he won’t. He’ll just go see! Yeah! That’s what he’s going to do!
He makes it down the stairs, wobbly and creaky as they are, and he heads outside, planning to just sit on the front steps. But the front steps are dirty and he doesn’t want to get his clothes all gross, so he just sort of stands in front of the building. People don’t really pay attention to him, and he sees all sorts of cool mutation quirks, though he sticks firmly to not talking.
He’s trying to guess the quirk of a guy with clocks in his eyes when he hears a scream from nearby, and shouting. Those usually mean hero fights, right? Maybe he’ll get to see a hero! Ask them if he can be a hero when he’s quirkless!
He runs towards it, hearing a loud thunk from the alley to his left.
“Goddamn thief! Give it back! You’re a fucking thief!”
“C’mon Mizuochi, you know me!” A big man with dark claws and sharp features has someone pinned to the wall, growling in their face. The person he has pinned is taller than him and somehow pointier, with sharp horns and sharp wings that remind him of Tsubasa’s.
“Not as well as I thought I did! I can smell your lies, or did you mean to take my nose too?” The person he has pinned is struggling against him, and they start to snarl in his face at that.
“I didn’t take anything you won’t get back, asshole! Let me out of here!” Their wings are flailing
“Just like you didn’t take those wings of yours! Lets see how you steal with no getaway plan kid!” He grabs their wings and Izuku yells.
“Hey! Stop that!”
Mizuochi’s head swivels to look at him and he suddenly feels quite a bit smaller.
“Who’re you to do that? They took my fucking quirk!”
“You get it back in ten minutes! You’ve got three minutes of quirklessness, is that so bad?” They’re using his distracting to worm their way out of his hold and he slams his arm back into their throat.
“You’d prefer to leave me vulnerable while you cover your ass?”
“Hey! This argument is stupid!” shut up shut up shut up, “ You ,” he gestures towards Mizuochi, “get your quirk back in three minutes. You’re not a hero, you don’t need it right now! You ,” He gestures at the winged one, “aren’t supposed to use it anyway! What if a hero saw! You’re too old to get off with a warning!”
They both start laughing at him, argument stopped temporarily.
“What?” They start laughing harder, before Mizuochi remembers they’re meant to be fighting and slams the skinny one back into the wall by their neck.
“Heroes aren’t gonna see this, kid. And ‘don’t need it’ my ass, they left me defenseless for a whole ten minutes! A lot can happen in ten minutes!”
“You still have your claws, you’re not defenseless! You’ve got them, don’t you? And they have your quirk.” shut up shut up.
“You’ve got guts kid. You’re not very smart, but you’ve got guts,” He drops the winged person to the dingy alleyway ground, and they just sit there, trying to breathe, “You get off with a warning. This bastard has hell to pay.” He grabs them by the horn and drags them out of the alleyway.
“Don’t hurt them, please!”
“Time’s up, kid. Get out of the way.” The tall one looks resigned, and Izuku stares at them as they're dragged up to him.
“No!” The tail on the skinny one melts away and back onto Mizuochi, the barb dangles in front of Izuku’s face as he says it. “Nothing bad happened, and now you’ve got your tail back!”
“How the hell do you think this world works? Kill or be killed.”
“But-”
“Drop it, greenie. You’re just a kid.” The tall one was dragged out of the alley.
“No! Wait! What are you doing to them!?” He chases them, he just has to stall for time until they give up.
“They stole those wings, I’m sure they’ll survive without them.”
“But… They gave back your tail?” They have a mutation theft quirk, minor shapeshifting, but it has a time limit, right?
“Get out of the way. I don’t have time for this.”
“No!”
He’s stalling for time, because he’s not big enough to fight him, but he’s running out. If nobody helps soon he can’t help anyone, and he’ll have failed.
“Go away!” He’s shoved roughly off of the sidewalk and into the street, and he hits the ground with a thump. He scrambles back to his feet and in front of Mizuochi.
“They take mutations, right? And they’re given back after ten minutes? Why aren’t their wings just a natural mutation?”
“Fuck off!” It bought just enough time, he realized later. As Mizouchi told him off, he jerks his hand forward, and Izuku watches the tall one jerk their head roughly away from his grasp, breaking their horn with a snap, and taking off into the sky.
It takes a moment for Mizouchi to register that his prisoner is gone and in that moment, Izuku’s instincts finally kick in and he starts to run, leaving the man standing there in the street, torn between hunting him for sport or tracking his actual enemy.
Izuku takes off down the street, ducking back into his apartment building and sprinting up the stairs as fast as he can go, slamming the door behind him, locking both locks and slumping to the floor in relief.
He did it! The tall one is safe! He was a real hero!
His mom is going to kill him.
It takes a few days, but he spots a tall figure in a dark leather jacket and darker wings sitting on top a building as his mom takes him to visit Auntie Mitsuki, and he waves up at them with his best All Might impression.
He can just barely hear the ghost of laughter.