Chapter Text
His whole life had kind of been one big training session.
As a kid, having a waifish build and girly looks was bad enough, but Nagisa also happened to be quirkless.
And so, he was a bully magnet. Thugs from the nearby middle school would cut him off on his way home, and beat him into the dirt. Of course, it was never severe enough to tell a teacher, who only cared enough if Nagisa showed up with broken bones or something. Bruises and cuts were nothing new, every single day. In class, it was mostly elementary school bullying. Kids would throw him side comments whenever he was called up to read. The girls would talk behind his back, the boys would throw their crap at him. Occasionally his stuff would get stolen, or graffiti would be left on his desk.
So naturally, he took counter measures. He’d map out routes to avoid the middle schoolers, using a variety of shortcuts that a third grader probably shouldn’t know about. Dark alleyways, rooftops, and even sometimes he’d crawl into the sewers if he was desperate enough. Disgusting, he was aware, but that’s beside the point. He’d do the same thing for his own school too, coming and going to certain places at certain times of day, avoiding those who took advantage of the fact that he was small and weak. Not to mention he started arriving far earlier than the other kids so no one would get the chance to graffiti his desk. He realized that the kids only stole things they could get away with stealing; a pen or pencil, some pages from his notebook, the crayon he was using, et cetera. The solution was to just bring extras, like a pack of pencils, a spare pen, a box of crayons, you get the idea. Which is how, at the age of eight years old, reconnaissance became a very natural part of his daily routine.
Occasionally he’d get held up no matter what he did to avoid the tormentors. But being so tiny had its perks, surprisingly enough. It meant it wasn’t hard slipping out of sticky situations. He was fast, not enough to stand out from the crowd during gym, but enough that he could run when he needed to. He could dodge, too, and so it wasn’t very long before his reflexes developed into something actually respectable, believe it or not.
Of course, the injuries happened regardless. Not because of the thugs, but because of his beloved mother.
His mother, to put it simply, was a little sick in the head. Maybe that’s a bit rude, but regardless, the doctors called it bipolarism. Later on in life he would end up learning that most people with that kind of disorder often lived normal lives with the help of therapy and medication, something his mother was too stubborn for. At the time, however, he didn’t understand what it meant, just that it was an ugly word that his mother didn’t like. A word that meant hurt.
Hurt when his mother found out that he would not develop a quirk. Hurt when she cried in her room for hours. Hurt when she called him a burden, a disappointment, as if he had chosen to be a weakling. Hurt when she slapped him hard across the face, tears in her eyes, and damn did she pack a punch. She hadn’t wanted a boy. She wanted an obedient daughter, a cute little girl that she could dress up in frilly pink dresses and make into her doll, and the fact that he was quirkless on top of that made it even worse.
Not that having a son stopped her in any way, because why would it?
And while finding out that he was quirkless was a huge letdown for her, at the same time it seemed to be a blessing in disguise, because it meant he had no way of fighting back. He didn’t fight back when she stuffed him in cutesy and bright pastels like bubblegum pink and peachy yellow and even periwinkle blue.
Sometimes, she’d change the color of the clothes he actually wanted to wear, inky blacks and darker, more robust greens and blues becoming sickly whites and aquamarines. That was his mother’s quirk, Chromokinesis. A slightly weaker form of lumokinesis that gave her the ability to change and manipulate colors. She’s somewhat capable of camouflage, and can alter someone’s mood, since colors have an affect on a person’s state of mind. Most typically, she used her power to push Nagisa into a state of submissiveness, via bombarding his vision with dark colors mixed in with bolder, harsher ones. It did the trick, always invoking fear and making him feel sick, like he’d just experienced the world’s most intense LSD trip.
(Not that he knew what an actual LSD trip felt like, but he assumed it was something very similar.)
But to be honest, she didn’t really need to, since it’s not like he had the willpower to fight back, but it took away his desire to. Well, obviously he’d wanted to fight it. At first anyways. But as the years went by, he learned that she only did this because she was tired and scared, that he didn’t have the right to protest because she was his mother, he had to do whatever she told him to do, and he accepted it quietly because he just couldn’t bring himself to deny his poor, sick mother. She needed him, she wanted him to be successful in life, and if he had to dress up like a girl and endure her yelling fits and sometimes get slapped or punched or kicked or strangled to near unconsciousness in order to keep her sane and happy, then so be it. He loves her, and she loves him. She loves him.
She has to.
So, his pain tolerance was higher than most, to say the least. The scars on his back he explained to others as being from a childhood accident, and most of the others that were on his arms and legs were too faint to notice. Mother knew how to treat wounds so that they wouldn’t infect or scar up too badly afterwards, and good thing too, or that’d be a fresh walk through hell. Though sometimes he’d be forced to patch up himself, which he could do just fine, thank you very much, since he watched her do it herself.
And that was another thing he could do. Observe and learn. It was because his mother never even bothered to teach him the things he wanted to learn, so he taught himself.
He was good at it, too. Certain hobbies and skills he picked up simply by watching and through some intensive trial and error. Once he decided to learn how to stitch up his ruined clothes (they had been torn off his body by Mom, and then subsequently replaced by fluffy dresses, what joy), and he did this by watching her do it herself. She didn’t say anything when he peered over her shoulder and stared at her patching up a hole in a blanket, and he tried it himself around midnight, long after he ought to have been sleeping. The result was dozens of tiny holes in his fingers where he had repeatedly pierced his hands, and a stream of swear words that he was very aware shouldn’t be in his vocabulary, but it would come in handy when his mother gave him a cut so deep, he ended up stitching up the wound himself. It hurt like a bitch, as one could imagine.
And it was like that for many other things, too. He learned some basic self defense maneuvers at age ten, ones where even someone as pathetically puny as him could bring someone down. He had climbed up a fire escape and watched a class of young girls and women being taught hand to hand. He took a video with a cam recorder and mimicked their movements. It was a sloppy imitation, but it did the trick, relatively speaking.
He learned a wide variety of other skills this way, either through looking up videos, or watching others do it. Some judo throws that a kid his size could pull off with some practice, a little bit of aikido, learning how to tie knots, and for no reason whatsoever, baking pastries.
Hunger never chooses a convenient time to strike.
Also, there was his talent of being able to mask his emotions. Saying the wrong thing in front of his mother, looking too vulnerable and scared around the kids who picked on him, it always got him in trouble. So no matter how turbulent the storm inside of his heart was, no matter how much it hurt or how badly he wanted to just make it stop, he realized that keeping a straight face, or faking a smile, or pretending to be upset about something he shouldn’t be happy about was the only way to make sure nothing bad ever happened. The hardest part was remembering how other people would act when trying to fake an emotion different from the one they were feeling. A mouth with upturned corners isn’t the same as a smile, tears don’t necessarily mean sadness, anger could easily be pain and fear trying to look scary. Learning what to do and what to say in certain situations, knowing what to do rather than acting how you felt, it was no easy task, to put it mildly.
Probably the thing that ended up being the most troublesome was something he liked to call “Mock ESP”.
It was always hard to tell what his mother would be like on certain days. Sometimes she put on a facade of an ordinary, caring, doting mother who made cookies and worked hard at her job. She would come home with a poor imitation of a smile on her face, not because it was insincere but because it was just plain off. Still, it usually meant that the day would be relatively painless, at least physically.
Usually.
Other times, it was all a ruse to lure him into a false sense of security. An almost admirable tactic from a strategic point of view. Either she was being nice because she was planning something behind his back, or she was keeping up appearances to stop herself from outright snapping . It scared the hell out of him, not knowing if she was genuinely happy or if he was dealing with the calm before the storm, but luckily he was able to pick up certain songs from her that meant one thing or the other.
Small things like changes in countenance. Body language. Twitches in the fingers or feet, shifts in stance, speech patterns. A glance over in this direction, shoulders facing another direction. One heavy breath per minute. Nervous habits, like biting your lip, sucking your cheek, rubbing your wrists. Little idiosyncrasies that told a story better than words did. God knows he can’t rely on people to say what’s on their minds.
Though look who’s talking, right?
He learned how to get answers out of people without asking them directly. Questions or other phrases would trigger certain reactions that told him everything he needed to know. Misdirecting the conversation to make himself seem a little less suspicious. It turned out to be useful when talking to Mother, it was a safe way to speak with her about a subject without actually talking about the subject at all.
And of course, his mother, in an effort to make him into the success she never was (or as much of a success as a quirkless kid could be), made him study all day during Sunday by giving him large books to read with the promise that he’d only get to eat dinner if he read.
One of those books was a Sherlock Holmes novel. He glanced at the page and initially groaned a bit at the Victorian era style of text and the bits of foreign dialect that made it hard to understand, but he grabbed a dictionary and made it work. The book was, to say the least, very interesting. He was enthralled immediately after the first chapter, riveted by the amount of detail put into the people and places. His heart raced during the tense scenes, every inch of him tingling with excitement, his mind under a spell or enchantment as he flipped each page with a vigor he oh-so-rarely got to feel in his daily life.
He ended up asking his mom to buy him more Sherlock books, which she was pleasantly surprised about. It worked out better than he expected, since from then on due pretty much just left him alone on Sundays, assuming he was reading Sherlock.
From then on, Sherlock became his personal hero, which was a bit ironic considering he lived in a world where heroes actually exist, and have powers that make the deductive reasoning of the investigator look like child’s play. But Nagisa cared very little for heroes like All Might, who coasted by with raw power and natural charisma, or Endeavor, who clearly wasn’t as interested in saving lives as he was the fame and fortune of his career. No, the real heroes were the people who helped others with skill and intelligence, who stepped up to the plate even when they weren’t guaranteed a win. Those who put themselves out there to protect those who needed it, not because they could or felt obligated to, but simply because it’s the right thing to do.
So he took a lead from Sherlock’s book. Other kids mimicked pro heroes like All Might, but Nagisa focused on honing the skills of his own hero, the only real hero in his book. While he had very little prowess in terms of social skills, being a self proclaimed wallflower, he learned enough from Sherlock to combine deductive reasoning with his ability to scan body language and other things, and eventually he was able to develop the ability to gather information about someone with a single glance.
He remembered that a teacher once asked him if he was really quirkless, because he had once been able to guess her age, quirk, hobbies, and family simply from clues he picked up. They were in art class, and he noticed that the teacher kept coming back with cups of water from outside. The water was too clean to be from a stream or even a hose, and her own palms were wet each time, so he asked her if she had hydrokinesis. He then guessed she was around thirty to thirty five years, because she had come to school with a Valentine’s Day card from her son, and Nagisa guessed from the handwriting on the front that it was a boy between the ages of ten and thirteen. She was also divorced, he noticed, since she wore no wedding band despite having a child, but there was a faint tan line on her ring finger indicating she’d once worn one. Speaking of her fingers, the pads were calloused and the palms had some blisters, so he guessed she was into music, specifically guitar. She also had a white cat, if the pet hairs on her shirt were anything to go by.
Needless to say, the teacher was freaked out. But Nagisa personally knew that it wasn’t a big deal. To be honest, most of those guesses he made were just that, guesses. An assumption that’s probably right isn’t the same thing as a summation that is definitely right. He knew that he must’ve gotten a little too personal though, and he apologized, he hadn’t meant to be so invasive. He also asked the teacher not to tell anyone about him, since he didn’t want to draw even more unnecessary attention to himself. Being quirkless, it’s better to fall into the background and stay quiet instead of standing out and being picked on as a result. It’s a natural law of survival, isn’t it?
Sometimes he did it for fun or for practice. He tries to guess who that one girl sitting next to him is writing a love letter to, or why that one kid is always getting sent to the nurse. The answer is usually what he expects, (the love letter is to that one popular guy, because of course it is, the kid goes to the nurse for asthma complications), but it’s a nice way to pass the time when he’s bored.
He never saw himself as anyone special. His skill at deductive reasoning, his ability to read people, one might consider those things impressive, but the fact was that he only had those abilities because of circumstances. He just so happens to be put in situations where he developed these abilities. He wasn’t a hero, he wasn’t a genius. He was someone who had to survive in this world, this world where men are not born equal.
He was a broken boy, one who had nothing more than his wits and his desire to help others. Helping others wouldn’t make him anyone’s hero, and yeah, it’s selfish to want to be a good person just to make yourself feel better, but in the end, there was no merit to helping himself, so he may as well help others, right? Right.
One way or another, he was just a kid without anything to make him special, and that was... well it wasn’t fine, but it’s not as though it’s the end of the world.
Besides, there’s next to nothing he could do about it. He was a drifter in a sea of solitude.
And then he met Korosensei.
* * * * *
His time in the “end class” had been the best year of his life.
His mother was pissed that his grades were so low that he ended up in 3-E. Truthfully, he had about average marks in most of everything, but that was only when he was focused. It’s hard enough to focus when your mind forcibly crams every little detail about your surroundings into your brain, but the divorce on top of it was too much to handle, and his grades sank like the Titanic.
Their teacher? A yellow octopus monster. It was the most bizarre thing he had ever experienced. But it was also the most fun. It may sound surprising that being forced to train to become an assassin just so you can off your teacher would be fun, but strangely enough, it was the catalyst for some of the best experiences he’d ever had.
As well as a few of the worst.
Regardless, he’d never felt more free, more alive than when he was in that class. He managed to bring his overall GPA up a little. He became closer to his classmates, all of whom were more or less comrades to him. He made friends. He spoke up when he had something to contribute. He stood up for himself a bit more. He joined in on group activities. He even managed to reconnect with his first (and at the time, only) friend Karma Akabane.
There was also the murder attempts.
As weird as it sounds, the assassinations were thrilling to carry out, even if they usually ended in failure. For every single time they crashed, they came out having learned something new. And they kept trying, mostly for the hell of it, because it gave them all a purpose, and also because, well, why not?
It was the first time in his life he was actually included. They asked for his input, they valued the information he collected, they needed him to partake in each attempt. Each time it came as a huge surprise, and it took a while for him to stop thinking that they would all inevitably get bored of him, ostracize him, and abandon him. Most people would, but he knew they weren’t most people. These people were better than that.
Karma, to his credit, seemed to feel bad for what he did. Nagisa never really blamed him for it, he understood fully. Who wants to be friends with a quirkless loser, anyway? But even so, it still really hurt. Forgiving was different from forgetting. The pain of being left behind like he meant nothing wasn’t anything new to him, but that didn’t make it sting any less. It was a permanent mark on their history, one that Karma covered up with colorful paint and casualness that came naturally to him. It made Nagisa a little envious, the way his friend could move along with his life, all with that cocky smirk and don’t-give-a-single-shit attitude. Such a wonderful, wonderful jerk, that guy.
Karma seemed to think that the best way to make it up to his friend was to train him personally. Unfortunately for Nagisa, his method of training could best be described as making a run through hell, twice a day, every day. After school they would find a spot on the mountain that no one ever visited, and... Karma didn’t hold back. Though to be fair, Nagisa all but begged him to do whatever it takes to make him stronger, so maybe the blue haired boy shouldn’t be surprised.
Sometimes they’d run laps around the entire mountain. Other times they’d do hand to hand training. The CQC was especially tough, since Karma was the strongest in the class in terms of raw combat prowess, and Nagisa, to put it bluntly, had the build of a stick figure. Every day he’d go home bruised and sore, once even receiving a sprained wrist. Karma apologized and offered to take him to the hospital, but Nagisa said that it was fine. He hid this from his mother as much as he could, explaining the injury as a bad fall, and his absences as him “studying” with a friend, which was half true, in a way.
Other than that, Karma had been genuinely surprised at the sheer level of grit Nagisa showed. Some things were rather easy for the smaller boy, such as hunting and tracking and stealth training. Other things he worked at until he dropped, like endurance and resilience building.
Though the tracking and stealth training ended up being more or less of a curse. Karma’s quirk, Alpha Wolf, gave him the sharp canines of a wild dog, as well as retractable claws and an enhanced sense of smell and hearing. The fangs were a constant part of him, though he could make them grow and shrink at will, as were the senses. Regular Karma was bad enough to deal with, but when he was truly in his element, the best chance you have of escaping him is praying to any of the gods you believe in.
Nagisa managed to get around this by using different anti-tracking methods that he picked up over the years. He would smear himself in mud to mask his scent, learned how to move around the woods silently even when it was dark (this proved to be useful for sneaking into the house without his mother ever noticing when she was in one of her bad moods), and even went as far as to set up traps and keep tabs on the redhead’s thought process. Even so, during the first few weeks where he had to learn through trial and error, the idea of having Karma hunting him was absolutely terrifying. It was all he could do to keep his wildly hammering heart from giving him away in some situations. Good thing he had a great poker face.
While Nagisa ultimately failed to gain a slightly bulkier body than what he had, he was glad that at least his build slightly improved. His arms and leg muscles had gone from soft and doughy to tough and strong, and they were well defined rather than being thick. He’d gained a little bit of core strength as well, so overall, while he couldn’t say he was as strong as a boy his age ought to be, he at least wasn’t quite as fragile as before, and thank god for that.
Karma and Korosensei were far from the only ones to teach him different things. Every one of his classmates taught him one thing or another, whether it be Okuda’s vast knowledge of poisions and toxins, Itona’s hacking abilities, Okano’s acrobatics, Hayami’s balance and precision, or Nakamura’s excellency in English. Even Muramastsu was generous enough to teach him how to ride a motorcycle. He was weird, but cool.
Each time he went in for a private lesson with his friends, he was sure they’d say no, but all of them were so kind and caring that they didn’t even question it. Nagisa truthfully wanted to have a wide array of skill sets simply for the sake of adaptability. Those most willing to adapt are the strongest type of assassin.
He had no idea what this would end up getting him into.
* * * * *
”Nagisa, a word please?”
Karasuma-sensei called out just before Nagisa reached the door. Nagisa, as usual, had been the last one to leave. It was a bit of a habit; the bluenette was always a little reluctant to start heading home, for obvious reasons.
Nagisa froze in the doorway. Something in his stomach felt that there was tension in the air, and he turned around to face the government official. The notepad in the boy’s hand crumpled a bit as he clenched it tightly.
Korosensei had left earlier than usual, most likely because of the swimsuit competition meant to be showcased on tv later. Such a perv.
Bitch-sensei was also waiting for him, but far from her usual raunchy poses and half smug, half flirty countenance (he suspected it was a habit of hers), her back was leaning against the wall and she had a tense posture, her face a mask of seriousness. She had her cherry red lips pressed tightly together, her crystal eyes locked firmly on the ground, and her brows knitted together.
Nope, he definitely wasn’t nervous at all. Not at all.
Their wavelengths showed him that they were uneasy and sober, their heartbeats steady but their consciousness levels all being kicked into overdrive. He felt a knot tie itself up in his gut, but kept a neutral appearance.
“Yes?” He asked, pretending not to read the room.
Karasuma drew himself up to full height, his usual professional stoicism giving way to a look of appraisal.
”Nagisa,” the man spoke, his voice just as deep and calm as always, “There is someone who wishes to speak to you.”
Unsure of what to expect, the middle schooler turned his attention to the far side of the room. He had tried not to pay any attention, but there was someone waiting outside the sliding door.
Speak of the devil, the door slid right open and in walked a man that looked a great deal familiar. Very tall and rather old looking, with dark hair that had once been a buzzcut but was now growing out. He had a distinctly vicious but impassive appearance, like a sleeping lion, with leathery pale skin and faint white scars, and a face that reminded him a little bit of Frankenstein’s monster, though he knew better than to ever say that to someone out loud. Tired circles under cold, dangerous eyes scanned the boy, and then twitched with familiarity. Guess the man recognized him too.
”Nagisa, my boy.” The man spoke with a very thick accent and gravelly voice.
Nagisa let himself grin a little. “Lovro.”
* * * * *
Three months later, the assassination was finally complete. Korosensei was now dead.
The news, government, general public, and plenty of hero associations were all going absolutely insane. In less than a mere six hours, headlines were already being made of the “twenty eight heroes” and their takedown of the world’s most infamous villain.
The press was forbidden from interviews with any of them, even their teachers. Absolutely no one was to know anything about the true nature of the classroom. As far as everyone in the public knew, the students had been held hostage for an unknown amount of time, but were able to work together in order to defeat the monster. No one knew how, and no one was allowed to ask.
All Might had arrived on the scene not long after the deed was done. He found over two dozen kids crumpled in heaps at their desks, with his usual catchphrase of “Never fear, for I am here!”, and made a long winded speech about how they had done a very brave thing and they were all safe now, seemingly unaware that none of them were in the mood for any of that.
He went up to console Nagisa specifically, apparently aware that he was the one who had dealt the killing blow, but the bluenette, who had yet to say a word, wasn’t going to have it. He sat still and “listened” as the number one hero rattled off a bunch of crap he wasn’t able to hear, and frankly didn’t want to. After a while, Karma, seemingly able to sense his friend’s silent distress and irritation, was able to rescue him by claiming that the smaller boy wasn’t feeling well and giving him a harsh shutdown. All Might seemed to realize that he was being a little to invasive and backed off, leaving Nagisa to be promptly collected and swooped away by the redhead.
Two days after all that, while Nagisa was lying in his bed and trying not to cry, the light that filtered through his windows was suddenly blacked out.
He quickly got up, locked his door, and went over to open his curtains.
Lovro was there, perched on the edge of his windowsill like some sort of hawk. He looked ridiculously unnatural wearing a civilian outfit. A black trench coat rested over long blue jeans and tall military boots. A fedora sat on top of his head.
Nagisa unlocked his window and slid it up. “Sensei!” He whispered harshly.
Lovro grinned sadistically.
* * * * *
”The higher ups have given you a brand new mission.”
”What is it, sensei?”
”They want you to infiltrate a known hero school, and collect intelligence.”
It took everything inside of Nagisa not to spit out his tea. “Excuse me?”
”Yes, my boy.” Lovro took a long swig of brandy from a hip flask. “The school in question happens to be the best of the whole country. UA to be precise.”
In the darkness of the room, Nagisa blanched quite a bit.
”Sir,” he tried to reason, “I’m no hero. In fact, I—“
”I understand, dear boy. But this is a decision that can’t be altered.”
”Why? Why do I have to...?”
”Nagisa.” Lovro sighed somberly. “Son, I wasn’t told everything about this, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s because they want to get updates on the newest generation of heroes. They’re hoping that a man on the inside of a hero agency will be able to provide us with key info.”
The kid frowned. “Where’s the logic in that?”
”I don’t think I know. But a student like yourself will draw far less suspicion than any adult. Unfortunately, that also means that you’ll have to take the entrance exam, just to lessen the chances of someone looking into your past.”
Nagisa felt himself wilt a little. He was no hero, not at all. He’s killed too many people, done too many heinous acts. He wasn’t anyone’s savior. He was the exact opposite.
How was someone like him supposed to pretend to be a hero? To act like a guardian of the people when he was really just a killing machine. Even if he wasn’t, he was still just a small quirkless boy. No one would take him seriously, no one who didn’t know what he was capable of.
His skill set wasn’t suited for combat or heroism. Being able to kill wasn’t exactly a good thing to put on his application. Nor was his creepy Mock ESP. Would they accept a late application? Did they even allow quirkless kids to apply? It’s not like he was anything special physically, after all. Obviously his assassination training made him a bit stronger than he was before, but considering that it was the school that only had a 1/300 acceptance rate, he suspected being slightly lean wasn’t going to be enough.
His grades were another problem entirely, because while he was by no means stupid, he was sent to E-Class for a reason. Now that he had a full time gig as an assassin, it wasn’t like he had a lot of time to spare for studying. How he was going to prepare for the entrance exam, as well as keep his grades up in class, there was no way of knowing.
Oh yeah, there was the practical exam too. Yeah, he’s gonna get flattened.
Three weeks to train and study. Basically no time in the day. A small, helpless body, no quirk, no prior experience.
This was— it was literally impossible. No way could he compete with the kids who had powerful quirks, intelligence, athletic prowess, and far more. It just wasn’t possible.
But, he supposed, assassinating the top villain of Japan was never meant to be possible either.
He swore internally. This’ll be fun.
Yeah, about as fun as a lynching.