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Eight tiny, black eyes blinked up at Inko Midoriya the day he was born.
The doctors had said nothing during the pregnancy. No scans had shown it. They called it a mutation-based Quirk expression, a fancy way of saying we don’t know what the hell this is. They avoided her gaze as they handed her a baby that didn’t look human—soft green hair like moss, black glistening eyes clustered where a baby’s should not be, skin just a shade too thin.
His Ashi—his father—walked out within the hour. There were no words. Just one look, and he was gone, like a switch flipped, and love had never existed.
Inko didn't follow. She just held the child to her chest and tried not to look at his eyes too long.
Age 3
Izuku built his first web in the corner of his room, above the window.
Not out of playfulness, but instinct. Thread spooled from his fingers in glittering green filaments, and he wove them methodically, silently, like he had done it a thousand times before in another life. It took hours. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.
Inko started locking the window at night.
He preferred the ceiling to the bed. Nestled into his self-made cocoon, webbing thick around his limbs, he slept more peacefully than ever.
He stopped speaking at daycare. Wouldn’t sit with the other kids. Wouldn't eat the food unless it was raw.
He liked the dark.
Age 4
The slurs started early. “Critt.” “Splice.”
“Critt” was what they called him in whispers—short for “critter,” less than human. Something else. “Splice” was worse, more clinical. It meant you shouldn’t exist. Like someone patched his DNA together in a dirty lab and let it crawl free.
He came home with bruises on his arms and webbing on his clothes. Inko didn’t ask.
She didn’t hit him. She never did.
But she flinched when he walked too quietly. Went still when he climbed on the walls. Started spending less time at home—working late, forgetting dinners, forgetting him.
And when she looked at him, it wasn’t love. It was fear, dressed up like exhaustion.
Age 6
Izuku stopped trying to explain himself. The school didn’t listen. The other parents stared like he’d infect their children. Teachers asked him to wear sunglasses and gloves indoors.
He obeyed.
It was easier to disappear than be hated.
He still kept a journal. Dozens of them, actually. Covered in scribbles and drawings, detailing spider traits, Quirk observations, and hero tactics. Every page was desperate hope—maybe if he knew enough, he could still be a hero.
Even if he was a monster.
Age 8
He accidentally stuck a kid to a desk with a panic-thread.
It was instinct—the kid grabbed his arm too hard, and the silk/webs reacted. The class screamed. He was suspended for a week.
He came home to silence. The webbing over his ceiling sagged. Even it felt tired of him.
Inko didn’t yell. She just handed him a bag and told him to clean out his corner.
That night, he spun himself a web in the bathroom instead.
Age 10
People don’t look you in the eye when you have eight of them.
Izuku figured that out the hard way.
The world didn’t want him. Didn’t want his silk. Didn’t want his skittering gait or clicking joints or too-wide grin. So he stopped offering.
Stopped asking.
He still wanted to be a hero. The idea lived in his chest like a parasite. A dream he couldn’t carve out, no matter how many times he heard “you’ll never make it.”
He slept in alleys sometimes. Just to practice.
Just to feel less alone.
Age 11
The rooftops became his training ground.
Not sidewalks. Not parks. Rooftops.
Cold concrete ledges and rusted stairwells were better than the ground that spat on him. He ran five buildings a night, until his lungs burned and his arms ached from catching himself on window frames.
He fell. A lot.
He broke a rib once. Didn’t tell anyone.
He just wrapped himself in silk and let the pain dull until it faded into something usable.
His silk got stronger. Thicker. He started testing tension, thread sharpness, and elasticity.
By winter, he’d built an entire snare trap in the condemned apartment above his. Just to see if he could.
Age 12
He got faster.
The webbing wasn’t just for traps now. He learned to fight with it. Long-range lashes. Trip threads. Silk shields. A heartbeat-sensing net he could string across doorways.
He started calling the attacks names. Whipstrike. Threadwalk. Netlatch.
It made it feel like a game. Like it could be a hero move.
He climbed streetlamps, tracked motion with his vibration sense, and practiced dropping four stories without a sound.
He’d be dead if he wasn’t careful. And no one would notice.
But he lived.
He thrived.
Age 13
Someone tried to mug him.
One second, Izuku was walking home. The next, a man shoved him into an alley, knife to his ribs.
And then—it wasn’t even a choice.
Silk erupted from his back like a thunderclap. Glowing threads shot forward and pinned the mugger’s arms and legs to the wall like he was crucified.
The knife clattered. The man pissed himself.
Izuku didn’t even breathe.
He walked away, silent, shaking. That night, his webs pulsed red with something he didn’t have a name for.
Power. Rage. Something ancient.
He didn't sleep.
Age 14
He started building his suit.
Not a real one. Not a hero suit.
Just gear. Reinforced hoodie. Gloves with web conduits. A mask he stitched himself out of blackout fabric and nylon webbing. It made him look like a ghost.
He trained harder.
Blindfolded obstacle runs through silk mazes. Drop rolls off construction cranes. Pressure sensitivity drills. He wanted to be untouchable. Unseen.
He studied spiders until he could name them by leg structure alone. The Black Widow became his symbol.
Not for her name.
For what she did after the web was spun.
Age 15
He could kill a man in six moves and leave no evidence.
He didn’t want to. But it was a fact now. His venom could paralyze, and his silk could slice. Could wrap a throat and pull.
His body had changed. Sharper joints. Reflexes too fast to track. When he moved, it wasn’t quiet—it was silent.
No teachers. No training facility. No support.
Just instinct. Just trauma. Just a dream.
And it was time.
He applied to U.A. using his legal name, half-expecting the system to spit him out for being a "Critt." A "Splice."
But the letter came anyway.
And when he opened it—just him and his nest and the city outside—he didn’t smile.
He just whispered:
"They’re not ready."
Then climbed out the window and vanished into the night, eight eyes blinking against the stars.
He doesn’t live in his mother’s apartment anymore.
Not really.
There’s still a body that moves in and out of it, that eats in short bursts and showers like he’s washing blood off even when there isn’t any. But his mind lives in the rafters. The corners. The webs. He’s up high now, even when he’s on the floor.
He doesn’t speak much these days unless he’s working. Saving people, quietly, before they can scream. Stopping muggers. Catching falling children. Dragging unconscious civilians away from villain attacks before the real heroes arrive. Always in the dark. Always on the ceiling. Always just a blur of fangs and webs and those blinking, inhuman eyes.
They’ve started calling him “the Widow.” Like a ghost. Like a rumor.
He doesn’t correct them.
And then—
One day—
The envelope comes.
Thick. Off-white. Stamped in red like a wound that didn’t clot right. It slides through the mail slot and lands with a sound too loud for something made of paper.
He doesn’t open it right away. Not because he’s scared, but because he doesn’t trust it. He sniffs it. Licks the corner. He webs it to the wall and waits six hours just to be sure it won’t bite.
Then, carefully, he opens it with the edge of a claw.
Inside is something that shouldn’t be for people like him.
A U.A. High School Entrance Exam Letter.
He reads it three times before blinking.
You are invited to attend the U.A. High School Hero Course Entrance Exam.
He laughs. Once. Just once. A sound like rust scraping off a knife.
There’s no note about his Quirk. No rejection. No warning.
Just a date. A time. A place.
He thinks about throwing it away.
But he doesn’t.
He thinks about burning the whole building down and starting over.
But he doesn’t.
He just folds the paper back up, sticks it to the ceiling above his nest, and stares at it all night.
The spider-boy. The monster. The freak.
They want him.
So he’ll show them what that means.