Chapter Text
Hello! It’s the author! This was rewritten and edited a day after the information chap was sent out! Not beta-read, if you find any confusing ways of wording or misused words (EX: tails and tales) please tell me!
Disclaimers: eventually lots of cussing. And mental trauma and bullying… but that’s normal in most MHA fics.
Have a nice day/night and I hope you will consider joining my discord!
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What did he do? Was it the dreams? The hope for a quirk of his own? What gave them the right to decide he was less? Because he was quirkless? Was it his bleeding heart for heroism or how he wore his heart on his sleeve? Was it his admiration for those with quirks that made him weak?
He wished they would just stop. Stop hurting him and laughing about it like he was some… some bug they could just step on for fun. The teachers, the students, the pedestrians who think someone else will help. When in reality, no one would.
Not even All Might the number one hero. The head of one of the largest quirkless rights activists groups did not see him as worth his dream. And when an explosion rocked the city, Izuku sat right there, hoping that someone, anyone, would save him.
His eyes hurt from crying, his heart burned, and a headache was beginning to form. He needed to get home.
The chill night air burned the raw tear tracks that cascaded down his face. He did not have the money for the train, thanks to Bakugou and his need to take EVERYTHING from him. But after about an hour and a half of walking, he finally made it home. Whether it was a good or bad thing, his mother was not home to see his face flushed with cold and sorrow. She wasn’t there to tell him it would be alright or that she would always be there for him. But… she needed to work, her work was more important, and he would never want to take her away from that.
So resigned to the ache in both his bones and heart, Izuku cleaned up. The slime villain smelled awful, and he did not want to be in that foul stench anymore. A quick shower and a fresh pair of clothes eased the ache but… but what could cure broken dreams? Most likely… most likely sleep.
His room seemed to mock and yell at him as he laid there mind spiraling deeper and deeper into the depths of sadness. If he could not be a hero then, maybe it was time to break out those old architect notes he wrote on Cementos.
As sleep finally claimed him and the voices could not express their hatred at him, he could not help but wish the next day would be better.
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"No mind to think."
In his dreams, he was never in control. For years they had repeated the words said to belittle him during the day. His nightmares made him relive the worst days and remember the saddest with uncanny clarity.
At first, he thought nothing of it; they were dreams. He would eventually forget them. But he never did.
"No will to break."
Eventually, he started to believe the voices. Their hatred spread through him, and the sirens screaming in his mind were maddening. He could not fight back. Not against the evil of his dreams. Not when they spoke the truth. He was useless. He was weak and scared. Undeserving of his mom, and he deserved his dad leaving them. HE caused everything to go to shit for him and his mom. HE should not have been born.
And he could not deny that they were right.
"No voice to cry suffering."
As his dreams only ever seem to get worse. It became harder to speak up against the bullying, against the blatant uncaring attitude against his life. Pain cries for help turned into quiet sobs and whimpers as he couldn’t bring himself to care anymore. The burns and cuts and bruises on his skin seemed to meld with everything. He could not seem to focus on anything anymore.
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He was in a topless pit. It stretched infinitely towards the sky, yet even despite the odds against him, he kept climbing. The voices made him lose balance and fall. The scars distracted his eyes when he needed them most. The lack of any drive seemed to make the pit look even taller. But, there was always a light at the top. So he kept trying. Getting higher with every slight and defamation on him was another inch, every cut, bruise, and burn made him work harder to get SOMEWHERE. Whether it was a dream or reality, he NEEDED to accomplish at least this. At least he would have accomplished something.
The words of All Might, the anger, the disdain of his teachers, the dislike and pain from his classmates. The uncaring nature of all those who passed him in the streets, the fact he could not bring himself to speak with his own mom about any of it. The emotions weighed him down, but eventually, he made it to the light. His limbs burned and, his heart ached even more as he realized that he HAD done it. It was a dream but, he had done it.
He had been climbing this same dream since he was four. Since he was first told, he was useless and would never amount to anything. Since he got his first burn and scornful glare from Bakugou. Since he stopped thinking of Kachaan as Kachaan.
He had always slipped at the top of the pit. He had fallen back into the infinite darkness of the void in his dreams. And was forced to awaken at the youngest hours of the morning.
But he made it. He sat in that shining light of the dream, enjoying the feeling of finally accomplishing something. The ache in his heart had let up. The burn in his chest that had taken over his heart seemed to leave him at peace. But just as the calm reached its crescendo, the floodgates opened.
Every angry thought and wish washed over him. That want to have a quirk vanished when Izuku was eight and forgotten when he was ten. His want to have someone to be friends with whole the world hated him. The first burn to the last. Every hate-filled insult, every look that told him how sorry they were to him for being quirkless. The one friend managed to gain leaving him when they found out he was quirkless. The word sorry being the only word said by his mom to his pain. All Might deciding to let up his hero persona only to hurt him.
And then the dream ended.
The hate.
The joy.
The want.
The pain.
All vanished at once.
And then he was alone, the walls lined with one hero. The voice of that one hero mocking his dream. The void that had consumed him when he was four. The burning hatred in him. His want to prove this son of a bitch wrong took hold. He would not just be a hero, would not prove them wrong and stop. He would become the Number One Hero. He would take the spot All Might holds and usurp it for himself.
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He was still in a cold sweat from the rush of emotion from his dream. It was a common occurrence at this point but, he felt just a bit grosser than usual, so he took a shower. At first, nothing caught his eye. His scarred skin littered with freckles and painful reminders. But for some reason, some of the freckles looked… darker. Like when someone puts black paint on their skin, only no matter how hard Izuku scrubbed at the splotches, they never lightened up.
It started to frighten Izuku when he noticed some of them had grown in size since he started his shower. Not by much but worry was taking hold as he continued to shower. The panic only grew as hidden in his curls were two nubs that had never been there before.
Rushing out and drying off, he put on some clothing. His mind raced with questions, “what the heck is happening?” “Did some quirk do this? If so, why?” and many others like that. He should tell his mom… but what if she did not believe him? He knew she would but- but he could not help but think the worst. He had to figure it out on his own. If not for his safety, then for his moms.
A couple of hours passed with him researching dreams and even some less than ligament quirk theories. He stumbled on an article about how some quirks take time and an outside stimulation to activate. Some of the more common were emotionally reliant on their first activation. The stronger the power could be, the more positive and negative experiences the dormant quirked person needs to have. The longer the quirk was kept inert... The more it mutated. Say the power was telekinesis, but then. It was latent and changed into a mass gravity manipulation quirk. The most prolonged documented quirk activation took a kid till they were eight… He was fourteen. The eight-year-old’s quirk was a fire quirk that allowed them to both telekinetically control flames and produce heat nearing Endeavors level.
As time passed, Izuku boxed up and sold most of his All Might merchandise for money. He would need some training to get into UA, so he put some aside for that. Even with a quirk that could potentially do anything he needed to train. But the money was also used to buy a thick beanie to cover the growing horns on his head and some extra long-sleeved clothes and gloves to hide the fact his left hand was now black.
He was hoping the mutations to his body would slow down. But as time passed, his skin grew darker. The only place not going darker was his face, which grew pale. The whites of his eyes were getting darker but thankful only slowly, and the green of his eyes seemed to have darkened a bit as well. But the clothes and light changes to his appearance seemed to… well… piss off a certain pomeranian. That and Izuku had been avoiding and running from the blonde land mine.
But eventually, his luck ran out in the third period of school. It seemed like two weeks of not looking or conversing with Bakugou made him more pissed than ever and, right as the teacher walked in, attacked Izuku. The explosion was large for Bakugou and, it shredded and burned the cloth on his right arm but, instead of pain, he felt… rejuvenated. The heat did not affect him one bit and, checking over his arm showed that the black skin was not even burned.
The black skin that everyone could see.
Fear shot through Izuku as he bolted out the door, only just grabbing his backpack. He could hear the confused and angry shouts of his classmates but, he could not care. He was sprinting home, the trains were getting more full recently and, he could not sit in it with his quirk showing, hell he could hardly sit in them anyway.
He had made it home in record time, not even out of breath from a long-distance run and, the usual ache of running was absent. Hurriedly opening the front door to the apartment, he was faced with a sight he really did not want to see. Or have him be seen by. His mom was home. And someone grabbed his beanie…
Great.
11 months till UA Entrance EXAM
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