Chapter Text
The funeral was small, but it held the greatest amounts of grief the cruel world could ever leave in its wake. Everyone was gathered, dressed in black, around the coffin engraved with flowers and a name: INKO MIDORIYA. Half of the people were crying and the other half were trying not to.
Izuku stood there, too empty to cry for the first time in his life. He wished he had been there. He wished he could have done something to stop the villain from hurting her, from stealing away her life, from taking her from him. But he wasn’t there, and apparently, neither were the heroes.
He swallowed thickly. Everyone in the room was stealing glances at him, concern and pity and everything dark glittering in their eyes. He wanted them to stop. He wanted to scream.
He wanted to see his mother again.
What was even the point of heroes if they couldn’t save what mattered most?
Izuku wandered the streets in a grief-struck daze. It was as though someone had carved his very heart out of his chest and held it tauntingly in front of him.
No one said a word to him at his middle school those days, not even Kacchan. Some masochistic part of him that craved the normalcy of the past wanted the other boy to scream at him. To yell at him and shove him to the ground. But even Kacchan wouldn’t dare disgrace Inko’s name, the unspoken mourning period after her tragic death, by daring to touch her son.
Once he was out of school, it all happened so fast. He was walking home. Alone, quiet, his gaze focused on the ground. He walked under the car tunnel. He held his notebook in his hands, thinking to himself: Mom would want me to be a hero. I have to be the hero that couldn’t save her. The one who saves everybody.
There was the ominous screech of metal and concrete. The loud bang of something—the sewer lid—falling to the street.
Izuku spun around, turning right into the sludge villain’s grasp.
Slime clung to him like sorrow, wrapping itself around his legs, his arms, his throat. It covered his mouth and his nose as the villain laughed and laughed and laughed—
He couldn’t breathe—
The air—
He clawed at the slime, desperate and dying—
I can’t die here—
“Have no fear!” cried a booming voice. All Might? “You are safe now—for I am here!”
It all faded to black.
The next thing Izuku remembered was waking up to All Might gently slapping his face. He blinked up at the hero, his gaze bleary and blurred.
“Ah, there you are. You’re safe now, kid.”
Izuku nodded, reaching for his notebook. All Might turned to leave.
No. He couldn’t leave. Izuku had so many questions—he had to make his mother proud—he grabbed All Might’s shirt.
“Wait!”
The hero turned.
“Please, just let me ask one question.”
The hero frowned. “Alright, but please make it quick. I don’t have much time.”
Izuku stared fixedly at his notebook. Everything he had ever learned about heroes was there, everything he hoped to become.
“Could I…could I become a hero too? Even without a Quirk? ‘Cause I…I don’t have a Quirk, but I want to be a hero more than anything. Is it possible for someone like me…to become a hero, like you?”
All Might was silent. Izuku dared to glance up.
The silence was thick and heavy, like the foggy air after a storm, only much more unpleasant. Finally, Izuku’s idol spoke.
“No.”
It was everything awful rolled into one: the screech of a stopping record, the long shadows of midnight in an unfamiliar part of town, the scalding pain of accidentally touching a hot pan, the sight of watching fragile glass shatter into a million, irreparable pieces.
“What?” Izuku breathed, praying to whatever god might listen that he had misheard.
“I said that you cannot become a hero without a Quirk,” All Might said, his voice heavy with pity. “I’m sorry, kid, but there are many things that you can’t do as a hero without a Quirk. Maybe try a different career, like joining the police force or something.” The hero placed a large hand on Izuku’s shoulder. “There are many ways to be a hero, kid.”
Izuku shrugged off the hero’s hand. He nodded, his eyes burning with the searing weight of tears he couldn’t hold back.
“I understand.”
What else was there to be, if not a hero? If not the hero that saved the ones that couldn’t be saved?
Izuku’s mind spun—the world might as well have been turned upside down. He stood there, stared, as All Might, his hero, his idol, his ruination , walked away without a drop of guilt weighing on his shoulders.
What was a kid with a dream to a man who had fulfilled his own?
It is a well-known and well-displayed fact that predators target the weak. They seek them out, the ones with soft skin and softer hearts who shed tears like flowers shed pollen. They find them, and then they hunt them down.
People assume that humans are just that: humans, above every other creature that roams the Earth. They forget that humans were once beasts too, and that instincts never die.
Days that felt like eternities passed, and the world was looking darker than it ever had before. Izuku’s mother was dead, his dreams shattered. The storm in his head was never, ever going to go away, and eventually, the rain would fill up the holes inside his heart until they overflowed, and the water would creep into his lungs until he drowned.
But all hope for the future was not lost, for the monsters that stalk in the shadows of humanity saw potential in the boy with a broken heart. They watched him, they waited, and anyone would tell you they were waiting to attack , to strike and aim to kill. But that didn’t explain what happened next.
Izuku was returning from school, much in the same manner as before. Hands on his backpack straps. Shadows dancing in his mind. His mouth was drawn in a grim line, his green eyes as dark as the tragedies inside them.
“Hey, kid,” a strange voice rasped. Izuku flinched, spinning around to see two people in an alleyway. There was a man, leaning against the wall, his face shadowed by the hood he wore and sky-blue hair spilling out of it, and…well, it was hard to tell what the other person was. They were much taller than the other one, and appeared to be made of dark, purple-rimmed smoke that danced in the wind.
Izuku took a step back.
“There’s no need to be afraid, Midoriya; we just want to talk.”
“How do you know my name?” he said, voice trembling with the effort of pulling a brave face.
“We’re villains. We just…know stuff.”
Izuku frowned, taking another step back. It wasn’t hard to tell what that meant. “You stalked me?”
“Maybe a little bit, but that’s not the point . Shut up and let me talk please.”
He swallowed and nodded.
“Uh.” The villain paused. “Could you come over here? Don’t want to draw attention.”
“What?”
“I said get in the alley!”
“No! You just said you’re villains; what if you’re going to murder me or something?”
“We’re not going to murder you, idiot! We want you to join us !”
He blinked. “You…what…?”
“We want you to join the League of Villains.”
“You want me …to join the League of Villains ?”
The man nodded. “What don’t you get?”
“I spent my whole life aspiring to be a hero, and you want me to be a villain ?”
“Well, we can go then. Come on, Kurogiri.”
“Wait,” said the smokey one. “You’re being too harsh with him. He’s been through a lot.”
“Oh, come on. We’ve all been through a lot.”
Kurogiri ignored him, looking straight at Izuku. “You’ve had a rough life, haven’t you? You never really had your dad around. Your best friend turned to bullying you. Your mother died. You’ve always been told that you couldn’t do it because you’re not good enough. They tell you you’re not good enough because you don’t have a Quirk.”
Izuku’s mouth tasted like ash. As creepy as this was…the villain was right.
“We’re here to tell you the opposite. You’re worth more than the absence of a Quirk. Someone’s Quirk shouldn’t define who they are and who they get to be. But the truth is, kid, they’re never going to let you be a hero because to them, there are heroic Quirks and villainous Quirks and they don’t care about those who have neither.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that you don’t need a Quirk to be great. You don’t need a Quirk to be remembered. All you have to do is join us, and we can set you free. You can be whatever you want to be without the weight of their expectations and rules chaining you down.” Kurogiri paused. “You don’t have to make a decision right now. I know it’s probably a lot to take in. We’ll be here in two weeks at the same time waiting for your answer.”
Darkness. Quiet. It was so lonely, the same old routine. Every day when he passed the alleyway, he peered at the shadows. They weren’t there. Did he want to go with them? Did he want to be a villain?
He wasn’t a hero. He would never be a hero. What would he do with his future? Was he really doomed to become a nobody who helped no one, affected no one?
Bitterness seized the shards of his heart. He had already spent fourteen years as a nobody. He didn’t want to spend the rest of them doing the same. It had grown so tiring , being the Quirkless, worthless nothing. The background character, fated to be nothing more than a wisp of memory or a plot device.
If not the hero, why not the villain? Why shouldn’t he show the world what he could do, what he was really worth?
Two weeks passed, and Izuku heard the words he never thought he’d hear, or even want to:
“Welcome to the League of Villains.”