Chapter Text
Izuku Midoriya learned very young that not everyone is created equal and people looked at quirkless children like unfinished things. Not cruelly. Not always. Sometimes the pity was worse.
“Oh,” adults would say after asking what his quirk was, their smiles faltering for just a second too long. “Well. Everyone blooms differently.”
Or:
“That must be difficult for you.”
Or the one that always made his stomach hurt:
“You can still support heroes in other ways.”
Support heroes. Watch heroes. Admire heroes. Never become one. Like heroism was something that happened behind glass where people like Izuku were meant to press their hands against the barrier and stay there quietly.
The doctors had called him a late bloomer until he was four.
Then five.
Then six.
By seven, they stopped pretending.
His mother cried in apologetic silence on the train ride home from the specialist appointment while Izuku sat stiffly beside her with his hands folded in his lap and tried very hard not to cry too, because she already looked guilty enough.
“It’s okay,” he’d whispered.
He remembered that clearly. The way her face crumpled harder afterward. As if comforting her had somehow made things worse.
At fourteen, Izuku still collected hero analysis notebooks. He still watched fight footage obsessively. Still scribbled down observations in the margins of homework assignments and muttered strategy patterns under his breath while walking home from school.
He still wanted. That was the humiliating part. Wanting never seemed to go away no matter how many people laughed at him for it.
“You seriously still doing the hero thing?” one boy in class snorted one afternoon after catching sight of his notebook. “Dude, you don’t even have a quirk.” Bakugou didn’t laugh immediately.
That somehow made it worse.
Izuku glanced instinctively toward him anyway, because some traitorous part of him still searched Kacchan’s face for approval the way sunflowers tracked sunlight. Bakugou sat sprawled in his chair near the window, boots kicked onto the desk in front of him despite the teacher yelling about it earlier. Explosions snapped lazily against his fingertips as he looked over with the sharp-eyed irritation of someone already annoyed before the conversation started.
“Why’re you looking at me, damn nerd?”
The class laughed. Izuku smiled automatically because that was easier than reacting honestly.
“S-sorry.”
God, he hated that word. He used it constantly anyway. Bakugou scoffed and looked away like Izuku had already ceased being important enough to bother with. The conversation moved on. Izuku kept smiling until nobody was paying attention anymore. Then he looked back down at his notebook and quietly stopped writing.
The sludge villain attack happened on a rainy Thursday.
The sky had been threatening a storm since morning, heavy gray clouds hanging low enough to swallow the tops of buildings. By the time school ended the air smelled electric and sharp, rainwater collecting in the gutters while students hurried toward buses and train stations beneath umbrellas.
Izuku lingered. Not intentionally. He always moved slower after bad school days, thoughts snagging endlessly on conversations he should’ve handled differently.
Maybe he shouldn’t have answered that question in class. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought the notebook at all. Maybe if he stopped trying so hard people would stop looking at him like a joke stretched too thin.
His shoes splashed through shallow puddles when he trudged through the street .A hero billboard overhead flickered brightly against the darkening sky.
ALL MIGHT: I AM HERE!
The image showed All Might grinning with impossible confidence, cape snapping dramatically behind him while civilians looked upward in relief.
Izuku stopped beneath the sign automatically. He always did.
Even now. Even after years of disappointment and humiliation and impossible dreams that should’ve died already.
All Might still made him want things. Hope is an embarrassing like that.
Izuku adjusted his backpack and continued toward the tunnel shortcut near the underpass, head full of muttered hero analysis and unfinished homework.
That was why he didn’t notice the bottle rolling toward him until it hit his shoe. He blinked downward. A grimy glass bottle spun in a puddle near the curb. Something dark moved inside it.
Before Izuku could process that thought properly, the bottle exploded. Sludge burst outward violently.
It hit him hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs as thick black liquid surged across his face and down his throat in suffocating waves. Izuku choked instantly. The world became wet pressure and panic. Something forced itself into his mouth, his nose, his ears.
“Perfect,” a voice hissed directly beside his ear despite there being no visible mouth. “A weak body. Easy.”
Izuku clawed frantically at the sludge covering his face, nails slipping uselessly through gelatinous mass while terror detonated through his chest.
“Thanks kid your a real hero y’know” the sludge chuckled
He couldn’t breathe.
He was going to die.
He couldn’t—
A massive impact shook the street. Wind exploded outward with enough force to scatter rainwater in every direction.
“I AM HERE!”
All Might’s voice crashed through the underpass like thunder.
Pressure vanished abruptly.
Izuku collapsed onto wet concrete coughing sludge from his lungs while civilians screamed somewhere nearby. Through blurred vision he saw All Might towering overhead in his golden age form, one huge hand gripping writhing black sludge that screamed obscenities loud enough to echo off the tunnel walls.
“Fear not, young citizen!” All Might boomed.
Izuku stared upward in dazed disbelief.
All Might.
Actually All Might.
Standing three feet away.
The sludge villain writhed violently in the hero’s grip while All Might laughed with bright effortless confidence that made the entire world feel temporarily safer.
And then, right in front of Izuku, All Might deflated. Not metaphorically.
Literally.
One second he was massive and invincible. The next he collapsed inward like a punctured balloon, steam rising from his body as his towering form shrank into a gaunt skeletal man coughing blood into his hand.
Silence crashed over the underpass. Izuku’s brain stopped functioning. All Might looked up slowly. Izuku looked back.
“Oh dear,” All Might said weakly.
The sludge villain disappeared thirty seconds later.
Izuku should have gone home after that. Logically, he knew this. A normal person would’ve gone home. A normal person would not chase after the Symbol of Peace while muttering excitedly about hero ethics and injury concealment and secret identities.
Unfortunately, Izuku had never once been normal about heroes.
So he followed All Might onto a rooftop. And somehow—through a combination of frantic rambling and pathological sincerity—he ended up asking the question he had carried in his chest for years.
“Can someone without a quirk become a hero?”
The words trembled slightly coming out. All Might looked tired suddenly.
Not annoyed, not mocking. Just tired in a way that made him seem older than Izuku had ever imagined possible. Rain pattered softly against rooftop concrete around them.
“Young man,” All Might said carefully, “there are many ways to help people.”
Izuku felt his heartbeat begin sinking immediately.
“You could become a police officer. Or a doctor. Support and rescue work are noble callings.”
Not an answer. Which was answer enough. All Might sighed.
“The world is not kind to those without power.”
The sentence landed softly. Gently. Like mercy. It still hurt anyway. Izuku smiled because his face knew how to do that automatically by now.
“I understand,” he lied.
He bowed politely afterward. Actually bowed. Because apparently humiliation could always get worse. Then he walked toward the stairwell before All Might could see his expression properly.
“Midoriya,” All Might called suddenly.
Izuku paused. For one terrible hopeful second, his chest lifted. But All Might only looked regretful.
“Be realistic.”
Izuku nodded once. Then he left.