Work Text:
Time passed Izuku by without fanfare, nor with any acknowledgement from the boy that the seconds, minutes, or hours had passed at all.
The distinct pop pop pop of distant explosions roused no reaction, his phone long crushed and drowned with the sun and his hope for his future.
No moon rose tonight, the ever-bustling city's skyline instead lit up by the pollution of family dinners, and little late goodnights.
Though not for Izuku, his fate was finally sealed.
If that hadn't been the case for the last ten years.
No one would miss him, none would cry.
For the little Deku would finally take his flight.
"Well, Kacchan," Izuku said under his breath, "you can't say I never listened to you."
Fishing his junior high school ID from his soaked and crusty backpack, Izuku had finally accepted reality. There was no place in modern society for the unevolved. Especially when the Japanese government was slowly changing the global definition of a human.
The ID goes in the centre and the torn notebook page is wrapped around it like a letter.
Every person Izuku had ever encountered only reinforced this idea. Why wouldn't they? It was only the truth. Those without quirks are not human, or if they are then they are a lower subspecies of human. No longer necessary.
The backpack is moved from the middle of the roof to the edge.
Even All Might, arguably the most influential figure in all of Japan, was in agreement. A quirkless person had to be realistic. Though 20% of the world was quirkless, that population made up the majority of elderly people. People were almost never born quirkless now, 200 years after the emergence of the first visible quirk. So realistic for people like Izuku–quirkless people; subhuman people–was this:
A pair of too-small red shoes, white note held down by the weight of a junior high school ID, placed neatly next to the beaten, bright yellow backpack, and the owner of it all on the wrong side of the railing of a too-tall building.
No one had told him how soft and small the concrete would look.
-*-*-*-
Shouta would forever thank his lucky stars that he took his patrol from the back that day. Starting at the end and making his way to the start of his patrol route.
The sight of a too small body free-falling from a skyscraper. His achy joints and sore muscles were moving faster than they ever had. Instinct fuelling his movements as his spare capture weapon unfurled.
Precious cargo caught.
And the slow process of moving further up the building, the faster he can get to solid ground with the too-light body the better. The child is breathing. That's all that matters.
A neat pile is found. The smallest of memorials for a small child's death.
He stays.
And that's all that matters in that moment.
-*-*-*-
Later, there will be discussions and more comfort. Investigations, anger, and a movement will follow. Because despite all efforts to the counter, quirkless people were still human. And humans, like cockroaches,
keep
getting
up.