Chapter Text
“You're also going for UA aren't you Midoriya?”
The cursed words.
Izuku doesn’t know why their teacher felt the need to tell them, to share with the entire class what he plans on doing. He has to know what the reaction will be.
He has to know what the other kids say and do to him, too, but that’s never changed his behavior. He’s never stopped singling Izuku out, or making him take tests in the corner where there’s no chance of his cheating. He’s never once discouraged the bullying and the cruelty, even when it’s happening right in front of him.
The laughter starts, because what else would happen. A beat of silence and then a roar of jeers and mockery, thrown in his face. It stings against his skin and he tries to sink even deeper into his desk, but it’s not good.
“Huh?”
“No way!”
“Good grades alone can't get you into the hero program.”
Not for the first time does he wish to spontaneously develop an invisibility quirk. Or something that will let him sink through the floors.
He doesn’t.
He peeks out at the classroom, a lump in his throat, and catches Kacchan glaring harshly at him.
“W-well no!” he manages to squeak out. “But there's someone else in the hero program and-”
Kacchan slams his palm on Izuku’s desk and a blast of heat and the smell of burnt sugar slams into his face.
“Forget UA! Everyone knows that girl is only there to make them look good,” Kacchan spits venom at him.
Izuku knows the rumors. That the girl Yusada Suzume, had only been allowed in out of pity, or to make UA look like a more progressive school. That she had won the sports festival last year, and this year too, because her classmates let her.
They can’t be true. They just can’t be.
Kacchan keeps going.
“And they've already filled their quota for useless, quirkless extra's like you! So forget it. There's no way you'll ever get on my level.”
“I wasn't saying I could! Not at all!” He knows he can’t. Kacchan is amazing, his quirk is amazing, he’s going to be a super strong hero. Izuku just wants to be a hero at all. He just wants to help people, to protect people that no one else. People like-
Like himself.
“It's just- Being a hero has been my dream and I- I can at least try, right?”
“Try? Try what?” One of Kacchan’s friends smears down at him. “The entrance exam?”
The other one laughs at him cruelly. “What can you even do?”
The bells ring, and students start filtering out. One of two passes him pitying looks, but no one stops. No one steps in.
Their teacher just stands at the front of the room, smiling, before he too makes his exit.
Kacchan grabs him by the front of his shirt and lifts him out of his seat. The smell of burnt sugar makes his eyes water. “We're not done here, deku.”
He pauses, and his hold loosens enough that Izuku slides through it.
“What’s this stupid book? Hero analysis for my future? How lame…”
Izuku’s heart stutters frantically in his chest. “C-come on! Give it back!”
BOOM.
Tears prick his eyes as his book goes up in smoke.Ash scatters across his shoulders and the heat burns his cheeks. Precious hours of analysis, charred at the edges, and thrown out the window.
“The best heroes out there, well... they showed signs of greatness as students. I'll be the first and only hero from this crappy public middle school. The first to win the honor of becoming a student at UA high. Maybe because I'm such a perfectionist. But in other words…”
Kacchan looms into his face, looking ready to rip his throat out with his teeth bared and his red eyes burning.
“Don't you dare even try to get in.”
Izuku is barely holding back hiccuped sobs when Kacchan steps away with his followers, looking smug and superior as always. The words aren’t even new. He’s heard all of them before. He’s thought all of them before.
But he can’t keep the tears out of his eyes.
“Hey Deku!” Kacchan calls from the door. “Here’s an idea! Why don’t you take a swan dive off the roof and see if you get a quirk in your next life!”
For an instant, all of his fear and choking anguish is incinerated by a flare of rage and indignation. He has as much a right to live as anyone!
He draws himself up, a million words burning at the tip of his tongue.
Kacchan peers at him over his shoulder. His posture is loose and relaxed, save his raised palm and curled fingers. Sparks flicker on his palm.
The fight goes out of him.
Izuku is left trembling in the classroom, tears in his eyes, while Kacchan and his friend walk off laughing.
It takes him almost five minutes to regain control over his body.
He takes one step, then another.
At the stairwell he grips the handrail tight enough his fingers ache and climbs down to the ground to retrieve his notebook from the fish pond.
My future is smeared across the page when he very carefully pulls it out of the water. A few koi chase after it.
“That’s my notebook,” he scolds. “Not food, idiot.”
Idiot.
Worthless.
Quirkless.
Deku.
What can you even do?
He grips his notebook tight and slowly turns towards the road.
They’re words he’s heard his entire life.
There’s no hope for your son to be a hero.
He knows all of them.
They replay inside his head, over and over, even when he tells himself that he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. That he needs to keep his head high and keep moving forwards.
Just let the painful words roll off of him like water.
Idiot.
Worthless.
Quirkless.
Deku.
What can you even do?
His hands shake.
They’ve come from his classmates, his neighbors, even his teachers.
His mother, loving as she is, doesn’t always understand. She cries, apologizes, and calls the school, but nothing is ever done besides the teachers moving his desk away from one bully and next to a new one.
There’s another quirkless kid two years beneath him, a little girl who dyes her hair pink and ducks questions about quirks in a way that Izuku isn’t able to, not so long as Kacchan and his teachers proudly proclaim his status for everyone to hear. He hopes she has an easier time than he does, but he wishes she didn’t have to hide. He wishes he was strong enough to stand up for her.
There is a quirkless girl two years older than him, too.
He’s never met her. But he saw her on TV. He watched her fight, tooth and nail, and win. He watched her stand on the first place podium of UA’s sports festival with a gold medal around her neck and coal black eyes that burned.
UA entrance exam interviews are supposed to be private, but someone had leaked hers onto a forum run by and for quirkless people that Izuku frequents.
So he has seen her win. And he has seen her sit with her back straight and her mouth set in a firm line, defiant of all the world.
If fate came at you swinging, wouldn’t you fight back?
Yes, he will.
Kacchan. Fate. He’ll fight them all. He’ll make his dreams come true!
Something thick and viscous lashes out of the sewer grate and latches onto his arm.
Izuku opens his mouth to scream.
~ ~ ~
It wasn’t her plan to be here for this.
It wasn’t even her choice to be here!
In actuality it’s an extra credit thing; they’re supposed to find an undercover ‘villain’ before they can do something to hurt someone, and determine how and when to apprehend them. The ‘villain’ is a volunteer hero, and she’s 98% sure she knows where to find him right now. Today is her turn. Mirio is tomorrow, and his will probably go much better. Mirio is a brilliant sun in the shape of a boy, and she is a shadow intent on breaking bones.
He would be a much better person for this than she is.
But.
He isn’t doing his Mustafu patrol today.
Aw hell.
She is.
So she’s the one perched on a rooftop, her legs tucked under her and her dark eyes intent, when All Might lands on a roof across from her, and puffs in a cloud of smoke. Suzume watches for a long moment, until her legs start to fall asleep, as he ends up leaving a little boy with curly green hair crying behind him.
She knows this scene, even if it is vague in her memories. She knows that it’ll all turn out… fine-ish.
Except.
In the last two years, ever since she curb stomped her classmates in the Sports Festival and started garnering attention, she’s met more and more people like her.
More and more people without quirks. With scars on their skin and their hearts.
Grown men have cried talking to her, small children have sworn to learn to fight, and Ichigo and Ryuhei have both blamed her for their sudden increase in quirkless students of all ages. What started as a mission of vindication and righteous indignation on her part is steadily growing into something… more.
She is becoming more than she ever intended too. All because people like her need someone to pin their hopes on.
“Fuck it,” she finally mumbles. She’ll just go talk to him, maybe walk him downstairs, since All Might is stupid enough to leave a quirkless little boy in a roof after destroying his dreams.
Suzume lifts her arm and shoots a grapple out of her vambrace so she can swing across and land lightly on the rooftop. Her landing is silent, but that doesn’t mean much when she lands right in front of the boy.
A boy who’s about as tall as she is, damn it.
He shrieks in surprise and goes stumbling away from her. She catches his wrist before he can fall on his butt.
“Easy,” she tugs him upright. He’s way too light, all skinny limbs and wild green hair. His eyes, the same shade, are huge and wet.
Ooof . She’s never been good with crying kids.
“I wasn’t trying to scare you. I just thought I’d come over and see if you were all right.”
“You-” his voice cracks and his eyes somehow grow even wider. “Y-you’re her! You’re Yusada Suzume. Suzumebachi!”
She’s starting to give up being surprised when people recognize her. She is wearing her uniform after all.
“Yeah, that’s me. You okay?” she looks him over critically. There’s a few burnt spots on his middle school uniform, some scrapes on the palms of his hands and a bruise on his cheek. More bruises on his wrists, fresh ones not even an hour old, and a tremor in his body. All Might had just left him here?
Twat .
“A-ah! Yes I-I’m fine,” he tries to bow rapidly to her. Suzume doesn’t let go of his hand. Instead she turns it over. His palm is scraped badly. There are lines inside his fingers, and two of his nails look like they were ripped back a bit.
“Hold still,” she orders. She slips her fingers into one of the large pouches tied to her thighs and plucks out neosporin and a thin roll of bandages.
“Oh! You don’t have to do that. It’s not that bad…”
“And I’m sure you’ve had worse,” she says dryly. “Now hold still. I don’t like repeating myself, Midoriya.”
He sucks in a startled breath.
“How did you know my name?!”
She glances at him before going back to fixing his hands, her own moving with long ease. “It’s on your notebook over there.”
She nods to the battered book laying on the rooftop not far from them.
“Oh. Right. I’m sorry!”
“Stop apologizing.”
“I’m- erm.”
She lets go of his hand and straightens up. He fidgets with his fingers, looking up at her and away again from under curly bangs. She won’t lie. It’s kind of adorable. He almost reminds her of her little brother.
“If you’ve got something to say, say it kid.”
He swallows thickly and straightens up, like he’s bracing himself. Like he expects her to hit him.
“Do you- Do you really think that quirkless people can be heroes?!” The words are a rapid, desperate whisper.
Suzume lets out a hum. It’s a question as familiar as her own hands.
“I am going to be a hero. That’s the end of it. It isn’t, ‘I think I can do this’ it’s, ‘I will do this, and anyone who tries to stop me can go fuck themselves’.”
He chokes at her bluntness.
It’s fine. She’s used to it.
Eighteen months ago she debuted at the UA sports festival, and challenged the rest of the planet to try to stop her from becoming a hero, with gold on her chest and fire in her eyes.
Eight months ago she tested as one of the highest participants to get her provisional license, as a first year at that, and she got to relish the tight lines in the face of the HPSC rep who passed them out.
“All Might doesn’t think we can.”
He slaps his hands over his mouth and squeaks.
Suzume doesn’t so much as blink.
“That was what he told you just now. Figures. What a dick.”
“He’s the number one hero!”
“He’s a person. No more no less. And, it just turns out that he’s one more person for us to prove wrong.”
Midoriya swallows thickly.
“Us…?”
She props her hand on her hip and looks at him. “That’s why you asked me if I really think quirkless people can be heroes, isn’t it? Because you want to be one. So yeah. Us. You, and me.” And a small handful of other young people she knows plan on trying the heroics entrance exams all over the country.
Tears well up in his eyes again and spill, falling fat and wet down his cheeks. He sobs into his hands and nearly falls to his knees, his legs buckling.
Suzume isn’t any good with crying kids. Or crying people in general. Why can’t it be Mirio here?
“Do you… want a hug?” she offers, awkwardly. He cries harder, and she hesitantly loops her arms around his shoulders and tugs him to her chest, like she does her little brother.
The boy sobs into her hero costume, and thin arms lash around her tightly.
She holds him like that, swaying slightly from side to side rubbing up and down his back. A year ago, she would have been much rougher with him, but Hound Dog taught a class on comforting victims of villain attacks, and Suzume had taken those to heart.
She doesn’t let go until his sobbing trails off into sniffling and he squirms away from her, his face wet and red.
“I-I-I’m so- I mean-”
“Relax,” Suzume scoops up his notebook and passes it to him. “C’mon. I’ll walk you home.”
“You don’t have to do that!”
“I know. But I want to,” she shrugs and goes towards the ledge. “Let’s go.”
“Wha- but, the door is over there…”
“And?” She arches a brow at him. Without looking she lifts her other hand and hits the discrete button that deploys a grapple into the hard concrete on the building she had come from. “Doors are for losers.”
She holds up an arm in clear offering.
He shuffles nervously before the temptations grow to be too much. His eyes are bright and excited, even if they are still wet, when he finally scrambles to her side. Suzume loops an arm around his middle.
“Hold on to my shoulders, okay? Good boy,” She lifts him off the ground easily and hops off the ledge.
Midoriya shouts in her ear but he doesn’t look away as they swing down to the ground. His grip is stronger than she was expecting.
Suzume lands them lightly and lets Midoriya go.
“Are you ready?” she asks.
He nods quickly.
“Great. Do you mind if we stop by an office near here? I’d like to get out of my suit before we get too much more attention.”
“Oh! No, that’s fine with me,” he promises quickly.
Suzume nudges him, and they make the quick walk to the small ‘office’ that they’re using for the exercise. It’s a converted gym more than anything else.
Suzume walks up to the hero in charge of the exercise.
“He’s in the plaza, wearing a black cap and a gray hoodie. It’s best to wait until he’s away from other people, so he can be safely detained without risking bystanders. In the meantime,” she nods towards her little guest, who’s gaping at the woman behind the desk. “I’m walking this guy home.”
Her task had been to find the ‘villain’, not to capture or bring him back. This one was strictly information gathering.
The hero, a dark skinned woman with a red armored dress and a quiver on her back, gives a nod.
“Good job. Go ahead and change and we’ll send Phantasm out for his turn.”
“Yes ma’am,” Suzume dips a bow at her and goes to change. She’s just entered their improvised locker room when she hears Izuku explode.
“You’re Neith! You’re such an amazing hero, I had no idea you were in Mustafu. I saw your fight against Dark Rise last month on the news and-”
She hides a laugh while he starts going off about all her amazing qualities, and how cool her ‘Ricochet’ quirk is.
By the time Suzume comes back in her UA uniform, Neith is signing his book and praising him for his (frighteningly accurate) analysis. Suzume loops her arm around his shoulders and turns him away before he can faint from excitement.
“Home we go, fan boy.”
“A-ah! Right, thank you very much Neith!”
“Travel safe, Midoriya.”
“Thank you!”
“How many times are you going to thank her?”
“Um. Maybe one more?”
Suzume snorts at him, and they wander off into the evening. The sun is going down, it’s almost dark. Suzume doesn’t mind. She enjoys the darkness. It’s home for her.
It takes her a few blocks to realize that he’s starting to tremble.
“...you okay?” she asks.
“Huh? Yes! I’m fine, I just. Um. Can I ask you a question?”
“Yeah, shoot.”
“How… How did you get into UA?”
“Hmm? Are you asking me what the entrance exam is like?”
He nods.
“Well… I was actually recommended by a pro.”
“What? Really?!”
“Yeah. I stepped in to help someone who was in trouble, and he happened to see it and recommended me.” It’s a bit more complicated than that, but he doesn’t need to know all the details.
“For the recommendation students, it’s an obstacle race and a personal interview, on top of the written exams. Although winning the race matters less than how you perform during it. The teachers are looking for how people with quirks use them, how creative someone is and how they adapt to new situations, as opposed to raw speed. For the general exams… I bet you could figure it out.”
“What?”
Suzume shoots him a crooked smile.
“You’re a smart kid. You could figure out what the entrance exam is, and how to pass it, if you put your mind to it. You’ll need to start working out though.”
He looks down guiltily.
“I know I’m not all that strong. I’m not like you.”
Suzume snorts again.
“Don’t be stupid. You’re exactly like me. I’m not special, Izuku. I’m just stubborn. I decided I wanted to be a hero when I was… five? And I started learning to fight right then. I’ve been training for almost twelve years now.”
“That’s amazing!” he breathes, looking at her with huge, green eyes. “I wouldn’t even know where to start!”
“I started with martial arts and went from there,” she shrugs. Pauses.
Suzume pulls one of her wrist bands off and holds it out to him. “Here.”
Confused, he reaches for it and nearly drops it when she lays it in his hand.
“It’s heavy!”
“It’s ten pounds. I wear one on each wrist and ankle, and a harness of them on my chest too. Every month or so I add more weight to it. It’s one of the ways I train. I also run, all the time. Uphill, down hill, too and from the train station,” she tacks off. “You need to be fast. Quirks are useless, no matter how powerful, if they can’t actually touch you.”
She pauses.
He’s writing everything down in his notebook.
Yeah, he’s a cute kid.
An explosion goes off in the distance.
Suzume doesn’t hesitate.
She bolts towards the rising smoke, leaping over a bench and tearing around a corner. Midoriya is already a fast kid, and he scrambles at her heels.
They find a terrible scene. A building on fire, and pros trying to keep a crowd calm. Next to the burning building is a wild mass of green slime. One that’s swallowing a blonde boy.
Oh.
“Kacchan!” Izuku screams, horrified.
“Get back!” Death Arms pushes a few civilians out of the danger zone. Inside the villain Bakugou is fighting for his life, launching off as many explosions as he can. What few escape tear up the concrete and exacerbate the fire that Water Hose is doing their level best to put out.
Izuku claps his hands over his mouth, horror on his face.
Suzume scans the scene.
“Shit,” Air Jet hisses, just loud enough for her to hear. “None of our quirks are useful against him! And that kid is trapped!”
Suzume rolls her eyes.
With a click of her tongue she walks into the convenience store to her right, passing a blond skeleton of a man, and goes behind the counter.
“I’m borrowing this,” she tells the clerk, picking up a red cylinder. They gape at her, bewildered, and she takes that as permission.
She walks back outside, strolls past the pro heroes, and lifts it up. While she was gone Izuku has thrown his book bag into the villains eyes and is trying desperately to claw the boy trapped inside free.
“Scoot,” she orders Izuku, her tone brooking no room for argument.
He scrambled out of her way, crying and terrified, but so very brave. Someone grabs him and pulls him away when he gets close enough to the crowds.
“Better hold your breath,” she tells the boy, and sprays the villain with the Co2 fire extinguisher.
“What the hell? Cut that out! Out..” the slime starts to loosen and his massive eye rolls. The villain drops Kacchan as he falls into a puddle, and Suzume catches the boy easily in her arms. As soon as he’s free he starts swearing and coughing, wet and awful.
She sets him on the ground in time for him to vomit up a mouthful of slime. He’s pale, shaking and sweating.
Suzume touches the back of his spiky blond hair.
“Keep your head down, between your knees.”
“What- the- fuck?” he croaks between gasps.
“It’ll make the nausea better, and if you keep your head down no one will get any clear shots of your face.Tabloids are a bitch.”
She looks up in time to see Izuku break free of the hero that had grabbed him to pull him away. Death Arms and Kamui Woods sprint after him.
“Hey! What were you thinking? That was dangerous, you could have gotten killed!” Death Arms scowls at her as soon as he’s close enough.
Suzume, unphased, tilts her head towards the villain.
“I was thinking that there’s very few quirks that let people exist without oxygen, and that if that guy didn’t have lungs he probably absorbed it via osmosis. And I was right. Shocker.”
“You can’t just rush into situations like that. It was reckless,” Death Arms insists.
Suzume doesn’t even blink at him. “Do your job and next time I won’t have to.”
“Our job? A lot goes into being a pro hero. There were the fires to think about, and the crowd getting caught in the crossfire. None of our quirks were suited to taking down the villain. Sometimes it's best to bide time and wait for backup.”
“Right, right, and uh, what quirk did I just use to knock him out?”
Death Arms opens his mouth, then shuts it, his cheeks turning red under his mask.
She stands and brushes her skirt out.
“Tell the chief I’ll submit my incident report tomorrow morning.”
“The chief? How do you know him?” Kamui Woods, who is at least marginally more sensible, asks.
Suzume pulls her wallet out of her skirt pocket and flashes it at them. Her provisional license sits underneath her school ID.
Kamui Woods sucks in through his hidden teeth.
“You’re UA’s quirkless hero student. Suzumebachi.”
“I’ve also solved seventeen murders in the last ten months, thanks so much,” she drawls. She says it, but she knows that she’ll always be ‘the quirkless hero student’ until one day she becomes ‘the quirkless hero’. “So, tell the chief I’ll submit my report. I’ve got places to be.”
She pats Kacchan’s head on her way past.
“Listen to the paramedics,” she orders. He snarls at her, but a croak comes out and he’s forced to bend his head again to throw up more slime.
Gross.
Suzume motions Izuku to follow her.
He does, looking nervously back at Kacchan.
“Will he be okay?” He asks, looking ready to cry again.
“He’ll be fine. He should see a doctor, and probably a therapist, but I doubt there will be any lasting damage. At worst he’ll need his stomach pumped,” she promises.
Izuku bows his head, clutching his notebook to his chest.
“This is my fault…”
“No, it isn’t,” she says immediately.
“Yes it is! All Might caught that guy earlier. He only escaped because I interfered. So Kacchan getting trapped was because of me!”
“It wasn’t,” she says with absolute conviction. “It was just bad timing. All Might should have been paying more attention, and not let him go. You’re just a kid.”
“But, still, I-”
“Did you tell the villain to attack your friend?”
“What?!” He looks horrified. “No!”
“Did you push that kid into his jaws?”
“No!”
“Then it isn’t your fault. It’s just bad luck.”
“It wasn’t luck. I chose to grab onto All Might. I put people in danger.”
“The villains chose to attack people. Not you. All Might dropped the ball. Not you. That boy was in the wrong place at the wrong time. These things happen. Life is like one fucked up rube goldberg machine at all times. Understand?” she looks at him sideways.
Izuku gapes at her, his eyes wet again, before he nods quickly.
“Yes. I understand.”
“Good.”
She walks him to his building and stops at the door. She plucks his notebook from his hands and a pen from her own hair, and writes in the very last page an address.
“Here. This gym is nearby. Tomorrow after school, meet me there. If you’ve figured out what the UA entrance exam consists of by then, I’ll give you a few pointers on strengthening your body and getting ready for the test. You have ten months to prepare, kid. Don’t squander it.”
He stares at her, his mouth slack open.
“You’re- You’re serious? You would teach me?”
“I’m not making you my apprentice or anything,” she cuts that notion off swiftly. “But… yeah. I’ll teach you a little bit.”
She’s not good with crying kids.
But she figures that for this cause she can put up with it.
Besides, she’s been teaching martial arts for years now, at Ryuhei’s dojo and later Ichigo’s. She knows that under the tears there’s a fire in Izuku’s heart. The same one that burns inside of her own chest.
She’ll just show him how to throw a punch. That’s all.
“Do you- Do you really- I know that you’ll be a hero, you work so hard. But I’m starting so late, and everyone always says that I can’t be one. They say I’m-” He stops, looking down with tears in his eyes.
Suzume can fill in the blanks. She’s heard the same words that he had, after all.
So she reaches out and pats him on his fluffy looking hair.
“So? Do it anyways.”
~ ~ ~
Izuku is quiet for most of the next day at school.
Kacchan isn’t in class. He doesn’t know if he had to stay home because he’s still sick from the slime, or if it's for some other reason, but the other boy rarely misses classes. Besides pushing Izuku around Kacchan is incredibly protective of his record. He won’t stand for tardies, or bad grades. Even with the bullying, no teachers care enough to stop it. The only ones who have even said anything about it have told him to ‘get used to it’ and ‘it's better to know how the world is now’. One had even claimed Kacchan was doing him a favor.
He wonders what Suzumebachi would do, if Kacchan tried to turn his burning quirk on her.
Break his arm, probably. Like she did that kid in the sports festival this year. She broke three of his arms, and sprained his fourth wrist before he could even land a hit on her. It was incredible. I wonder if she’ll teach me that technique? It was all so fast I had to slow the video down and watch it frame by frame. She’s so incredible! Does All Might know about her? He’s so busy, he probably doesn’t watch the Sport Festival. Maybe if he did, he would change his mind. I’m sure she’ll be a hero. And I’ll be one too! Or at least I’ll try my best. She said she’s going to help me get started and I don’t want to disappoint her and-
The bell to dismiss them rings, ripping Izuku out of his mental ramblings. Or verbal ones. He isn’t sure if, or how much, he said out loud.
Izuku scrambles to pack his books away in his backpack, shoving them in alongside his hero observation notebook, and a brand new one he’d started just today.
‘Training Manual’.
He doesn’t know how much information she’s going to give him, but he wants to be ready for anything.
It’s quick work to slide out of the school before anyone can notice him. With Kacchan gone the other kids, the worse kids, will be more than willing to grab him, but Izuku knows where they hang out and how to avoid them.
The ‘gym’ turns out to be a small dojo between his school and the train station.
The woman in charge of it is older, with most of her once black hair shot through with gray. Her hands are huge and battle scarred, and she has shoulders like a brick wall. Even if she is old, she’s clearly powerful. It’s in every inch of her, from the firm stance of her legs to her eagle-like eyes.
He stammers out his business, and at first she doesn’t know who he’s looking for, but eventually she says ‘Kono’, nods, and directs him to a small, private back room. There’s a huge mirror on one wall, and the other three walls are thickly padded. Across most of the floor is a thick matt.
Suzumebachi, Yusada Suzume, is kneeling in the center of it.
A long staff is resting against one of the walls.
When her black eyes open, Izuku swallows reflexively.
He’s seen her before. He’s watched both of her sport festival fights with rabid interest, until he could replay each second on the backs of his eyelids if he needed to.
(He has, with his back on the ground and the smell of burning sugar above him, Kacchan’s voice ringing in his ears and the laughter of his peers digging like blades into his skin. He’s thought about her, and the gold on her chest, and the tremulous hope that swallowed him when she was announced.
If fate came at you swinging, wouldn’t you fight back? )
Being right in front of her, there’s nothing to dim the intensity in her gaze.
Last night she had been utterly calm. Even when people were screaming, even when older pros were panicking, she had acted without hesitation or fear to save Kacchan. And on the rooftop, when she had told him firmly that she will be a hero, and that he would be one too, there hadn’t been any room for doubt. But the shadows of the night had hid the smoldering fire in her coal black eyes.
When they turn on him he instinctively steps away from her.
“Izuku,” her voice is even and calm. “I was hoping you would show up. Did you figure it out?”
He squares his shoulders, and reminds himself that she isn’t his enemy. She isn’t a cruel student, or an adult telling him to ‘get used to it’. She’s Yusada Suzume, and she believes in herself and she believes in him.
“It’s robots, isn’t it? The entrance exam is fighting robots.”
There’s a flicker of a smile at the corner of her mouth.
“I knew you could get it. Good job.”
He flushes warmly from the praise.
“Alright. Since you figured it out, it's time for me to keep my word. Let’s see how well you can fight. Bow to the mat and come here, put your fists up and try not to get hit by me.”
Izuku cringes. Still, he squares his shoulders and steps up.
~ ~ ~
He sits in his room that night, watching videos of today's most interesting pro hero fights. He takes notes and dissects their quirks, but his thought process has… shifted.
Most of his previous notes had been focused on the quirks and ways to improve them, or compensate for weaknesses he saw with support gear or team ups or strategies.
At Yusada-
( “Just call me Suzume.”
“I-I couldn't!”
“Why? I’m telling you, call me Suzume. When you get to UA, you can even call me senpai.”
When you get to UA.)
At Suzume’s suggestion, he’s changing it in these ones.
On the pages after All Might's signature, he goes from trying to improve weaknesses to figuring out how to exploit them using quirkless methods.
Suzumebachi hadn’t used a quirk, or even support equipment on the sludge villain.
She had made a logic based deduction, found a Co2 fire extinguisher nearby, and used that.
No equipment. No quirk. Just her own mind.
So he watches Crust fight, he notes his quirk and the way his shields form. Their speed, density, and sharp edges. A quirk like that is best suited for defense in a straight out fight, with a lesser ability in offense. It's extremely versatile, but it means that Crust lacks a certain range of motion, which he makes up for by teaming up with other heroes who are faster or more flexible than he is.
The best bet for beating him would be isolating him and knocking him out with some kind of gas, or perhaps trying to get close enough to attack the soft tissue in his mouth, eyes, and ears.
Suzume had told him that those soft tissues were weaknesses that few quirks ever compensated against. Most humans still needed their inner ears to keep their balance, their eyes to see, and had a multitude of blood vessels in their mouths.
A blitz attack could also be useful against Crust, attack him before he knew that you were there and had time to form his shields.
While he writes with one hand, Izuku lifts a weight with the other.
In his backpack are five small weights. There’s two wrist bands and two ankle bands with one pound in each of them, a harness like the one Suzume wears with two pounds in it.
He sets his alarm early for the next morning, so he can run the block a few times before going to school.
After school, he’s going back to the gym he had met Suzume at.
The old woman, Uchiyama Arisa, had promised to teach him how to fight.
There was something scary in her eyes when she made the vow to Suzume, who she called ‘Kono’ the entire time they were there.
Izuku has a feeling that he might just die before he ever even gets to the entrance exam.
~ ~ ~
Uchiyama Arisa, Uchiyama Sensei, works Izuku until he feels like jelly.
He only lasts an hour before he taps out and starts the walk home, feeling weak and pathetic.
He has discovered, to his own surprise, that intense workout quiets down his ever running thoughts, so that’s a plus at least.
Izuku has his head down, and his shoulders hunched. He doesn’t want to garner any attention when he’s this close to his middle school. No one else should be around right now, but there’s always a chance and Izuku doesn’t have it in him to outrun anyone just yet.
He almost doesn’t notice when the thin blond man steps out in front of him, but a voice stops him in his tracks.
He knows that voice.
“I am here.”
“A-All Might?!”
“That’s me,” he raises a hand. He’s scrawny in this form ,the one that Izuku had seen the night before last. His shirt seems to swamp him. Izuku knows that it's hiding a horrible scar on his side.
“Kid. I've come to revise what I said to you earlier.”
Izuku almost falls over on his face.
“W-what?”
“I saw you attack that sludge villain,” he explains, “A timid, quirkless little boy like you. That young hero student stepped in before I could, but nonetheless I've heard your story, and I wanted to tell you... Most of the top heroes show signs of greatness even as children. Many of them claim that their bodies moved without their even thinking of it. That's what happened to you, right?”
Mutely, trying to understand what was happening, Izuku nods.
“Young man. You too can be a hero.”
Izuku’s knees go out.
He drops to the ground, gaping at All Might. His head spins.
“You can be a hero, because you see I've decided that you are the perfect person to inherit my power!”
“Inherit...?”
“That’s right. My quirk is... unique. I'm sure you know that the tabloid and even official reports don't have much on it ever since I became a pro. The most any of them can get is ‘super strength’. Because All Might, the 'symbol of peace' must come off as a natural born hero. But the truth is this quirk was one that was passed down to me! Like the olympic torch.”
“And now it may be your turn, young man.”
Whatever physical exhaustion-inducing zen had started to take over Izuku’s mind goes straight out the window.
“To be sure All Might's quirk is one of the seven great mysteries of the world, and there's been endless debates over what it might be. There isn't a day that goes by without some new theory on the internet but... now he says it was passed down to him. Naturally I have no idea what he means, but more than that that's not even a theory that anyones proposed before and that's mostly because we still know so little about what quirks really are in the first place. I mean we used the term quik to begin with because each power or characteristic is so very particular to each individual and-”
“Kid,” All Might calls, “aren't you listening? I have the ability to transfer that power. That's the quirk I inherited. It is called One For All.”
One For All.
“The first person cultivates the power, then passes it to another, the next refines it and passes it on again. In this way, those crying out to be saved and those with brave and true hearts have formed the crystalline network of power that I now possess.”
“But all this.. why.. Why me...?” Why was All Might trusting him with this secret? Why was he offering him this power? The greatest quirk in the world. It was what he’d wanted as a little kid, wasn’t it? Not telekinesis, not fire breath. Not even Kacchan’s explosion. But All Might's power.
“You may be quirkless. A mere fanboy. But back there, you were more heroic than even the pros on the scene! But of course it depends on you. What do you say? Will you accept my quirk?”
Izuku stares at him. Familiar tears swim into his eyes. All Might thinks he can be a hero now? Because he acted without thinking?
But, why him? Why not Suzumebachi, who had actually beaten the villain?
All Might only called her ‘that hero student’. Did he not know who she was?
What’s more, All Might had been there.
He had watched Kacchan struggle as slime was poured into his lungs and his belly and he hadn’t stepped in. He hadn’t done anything.
If Suzume hadn’t stopped the villain, would anyone have saved Kacchan?
Or would they have watched him die in the same agony Izuku had felt not hours before then?
All Might… thinks he can be a hero. If he has a quirk.
He can be a hero because All Might has decided to gift him his power.
Not because Izuku could do it on his own.
Not because he’s smart, or because he acted no matter how afraid he was. No, that only makes him worthy of being given the power.
Without it, he’ll still be quirkless.
Without it, he’ll still be the one All Might told to give up, face reality, and then left alone on a rooftop.
If he accepts this quirk, who will he become?
If fate came at you swinging, wouldn’t you fight back?
So? Do it anyway.
When you get to UA.
Izuku scrubs the tears from his eyes and stands up slowly. His heart aches.
He shakes his head.
“Thank you, All Might. But no. You’ll have to give your quirk to someone else.”