Chapter Text
Chapter 1
“No, I don’t think you can be a hero without a quirk.”
Izuku sat at his desk, absentmindedly scrolling through his favorite quirkless forum. Normally, after a bad day, speaking with others who are like him fills him with a sense of community and belonging. But not today. Today, that one sentence played on repeat, circling his mind like a demented rollercoaster.
The acquaintances he had met online were messaging him. Little envelopes were popping up next to the names on his friend list. Some had green dots next to them, some didn’t. He had been ignoring all attempts to contact him for the last however many hours it had been since he got home. He was one of the younger members of this particular site, or so he had been told by the moderator. It’s not too surprising the older outcasts would want to check in.
Izuku was an active member of the forum, talking about his day or what heroes he had seen on his way home from school. He posted something nearly every day. Those who he had friended would be able to see he was online, but was not even attempting to interact with anyone. That reminded him. He probably needs to change his username now. He didn’t know if he would be able to even look at the computer knowing that anything he did would be associated with a name he no longer believes in.
AllMightJr has changed their username to Deku
The comments came in immediately.
BigBrother23
No. You change that back right now. That is not acceptable in this house.
Freakazoid
I agree with the sentiment, Big Bro, but not in those exact words. Kid, we talked about this. You cannot give your bullies the satisfaction of thinking they won. If you start here, where will it end?
NoSoupForYou
Dude, you are, like, the epitome of a hero fanboy. What the hell happened to cause this?
CSIGuy
If I had to guess, I would say that whatever happened had less to do with hero society and more to do with All Might himself.
Izuku contemplated if he wanted to respond. He had never told anyone here of his dream. He was unsure if anyone would be able to understand what he was feeling. Should he take the risk of being shattered by people who should be able to sympathize with him?
Deku
I met All Might today. He told me I could not be a hero without a quirk.
BigBrother23
Well he can just go fuck himself then.
NoSoupForYou
No swearing around the kid!
BigBrother23
Fine! But I stand by it!
Freakazoid
No true hero would say something like that to anyone. If you want to be a hero, you go be a hero.
CSIGuy
While I don’t agree with saying it like that, All Might may have a point.
(Izuku felt his heart breaking.)
BigBrother23
You should be extremely careful with what you say from now on. You are on thin fucking ice.
NoSoupForYou
Yeah, jackass. If you continue, I will personally make sure your body is never found.
BigBrother23
You literally just told me off for swearing in front of the kid.
NoSoupForYou
Yeah, and? I’m a hypocrite, so sue me.
Freakazoid
I can’t express how disappointed in you I am, CSIGuy.
CSIGuy
Now hold on a second. Before you go biting my head off, let me explain. All Might is a limelight hero and has been number one for decades. It is highly unlikely he thinks of heroism as anything less than what he has been doing, using his overpowered quirk to fight bad guys. And, because of his strength, he is probably the one that is called when there’s a villain local heroes can’t handle.
Therefore, his idea of a hero would be someone like him. As someone who is quirkless, I can positively say that none of us, in a million years, would be able to perform the same feats as All Might.
I’m sure you would be able to be a hero, but definitely not one like All Might. You would not be in the limelight. You would not be famous.
Deku
But I don’t care about being famous or being in the limelight. I just want to help people.
CSIGuy
Then, of course you can be a hero.
Deku
But he also told me to be more realistic. To become a police officer or doctor or some other profession that helps people. But all I have ever dreamed about is being a hero. I don’t think I would be happy being anything else.
CSIGuy
No, I get it. I do. Look, I work in a crime lab. But all I am allowed to do is keep inventory. I am not allowed to touch or process evidence in any way. Afterall, if I were to touch it, it would no longer be admissible in court. When I was younger, all I wanted to do was be a scientist. Colleges believed that because of my quirklessness that I wasn’t smart enough to be admitted. This was the closest I could get.
NoSoupForYou
I’m not sure if I ever told you guys, but I always wanted to be a chef. I’m self taught for the most part and even tried opening my own restaurant once. But no one wanted to eat food made by someone quirkless. Because, you know, it's contagious. Needless to say, we had to shut down after a few months. But I just couldn’t leave food service. I love it too much. So, I now clear tables.
BigBrother23
Well, I am pretty open about what I am doing from day to day. At the moment, I am jobless. But I normally just drift from one job to the next. All of them are unskilled labor positions.
Freakazoid
Well, I am a NEET. I am currently mooching off my parents while searching for a job that I am actually allowed to do. I’m thinking I may actually have to settle for waste disposal. If anyone has any better ideas, hmu!
Izuku logged off the forum with an abrupt goodbye, then went to google. He began looking for jobs that would allow quirkless to apply. CSIGuy was right, even if Izuku did become a hero, he would never be famous or wealthy. More than likely, the amount that he would be paid would be less than what he would need to survive. He would have to find a second job anyway.
The results were less than encouraging. He scrolled through page after page with little to no results. He briefly thought about calling it a night when a small article at the bottom of page 75 caught his eye. He clicked on the link. It led him to an article from more than 50 years ago. A quirkless man had been killed while attempting to save a highschooler from being mugged on their way home from school. The author called the man a Crime Fighter.
That was odd. The way it was written, it's as if that’s a title. Izuku opened another window and went back to google, typing in Crime Fighter and quirkless. The search brought up one result. It was another news article. This one was from about 100 years ago. That was around the time when the quirkless families in power died out. The last powerful quirkless family was very much anti-quirk. When they realized they were dying out, they did everything they could to make sure quirkless individuals would be around as long as possible. They are the only reason why children aren’t immediately killed when diagnosed as quirkless. Izuku learned that in history from a teacher that did not make it a secret that he disagreed with the government “bowing down to the quirkless freaks”.
The family, in their attempt to limit the capacity of the newly created Hero Public Safety Commission, forced the government to create the Crime Fighter license. For much of the history of quirks, heroes were, what is now considered, vigilantes. Once vigilantes became more common, and started to actually become a public nuisance, the government declared that anyone wanting to use their quirks to fight crime must be licensed. This limited the amount of people fighting crime on the street. No one wanted to out themselves as a quirk user. They would immediately be killed by their friends and family. The only people brave enough to apply for licensure were those who had strong quirks they could use to defend themselves.
The quirkless families in power did not want to give that much power over to one organization without having quirkless representation, which would not be controlled by the organization in question. In other words, if there was going to be one organization to control all of the licensed quirk users, there should be a counterbalance of crime fighters not controlled by the same organization. According to what Izuku found, Crime Fighters are quirkless individuals who fight criminals. They are licensed, not by the HPSC, but by their local police station and the only reason they are licensed in the first place is so that the villains can’t come back and claim assault.
Izuku’s heart began to pound in excitement. These were really, truely, quirkless heroes. Well, not heroes exactly, they didn’t have that designation, but they were essentially heroes. He just needed to find out if that provision was ever repealed.
After a little searching, he discovered a single line hidden in legal jargon that states that quirkless individuals may obtain licenses for detaining villains at their local precinct.
Izuku threw his hands in the air with a smile on his face and spun in his seat. He was going to be a Crime Fighter! A poster above his head caught his eye. All Might smiled down at him, showing all his teeth as if he was sneering.
“No, I don’t think you can be a hero without a quirk.”
Anger surged throughout his body. All Might was wrong. What he said was nothing more than his opinion and that was crap. Izuku tore the poster down the middle and ripped it up into shreds. Pieces of the poster rained around him before falling to the floor beneath his feet.
He was going to be a Crime Fighter and nothing was going to stop him.