Chapter Text
Izuku was running, faster than he’d ever run in his life, well as fast as he could run with second-degree burns and a fractured ankle he’d gotten after school. Still, it was the fastest he’d run since he could remember, which hadn’t been much seeing as he just started junior high and his eleventh birthday was three weeks ago, but apparently, this mob of adults thought his life had been long enough.
He was in Hamamatsu after traveling to get a glimpse of All Might's fight, that’s when it started raining, pouring down even. Harsh raindrops blocked his vision as his glasses started to slide down his face, his curly hair was no help as it flopped and draped down into his eyes helping with the obscurity of his vision, damn...he really should’ve worn his contacts today. He splashed in puddles getting his uniform pants wet and tattered with mud, almost slipping when he took a sharp turn into an alleyway as they chased him down with the intention of beating within an inch—if they gave him mercy—of his life. They had seen his bright red shoes after he left a convenience store, where he had been purchasing—at a ridiculously overpriced—bag of chips and a notebook he planned to turn into his eleventh analysis book and they immediately gave him trouble. He hadn’t done anything but show his face and cursed the place with his presence, but apparently his meer existence seemed to piss them off. If he had to guess they were “Extremist” those feared within the quirkless community they tended to hunt down and beat/kill any quirkless people they came across and the police seemed to not give a damn about it.
Izuku himself had been in an online server for the “Red Shoe Community” when one of his online friends had just barely survived one of these attacks, she’d had a forced quirk manifestation as her body's last line of defense for survival. She ended up going insane from her quirk and now she’s nowhere to be found, he’d noticed her increase of interest in blood after the incident and her tending to go out with “Friends” she never elaborated on. She even changed her name online from “R0manlikesc4ndy!” To “T0galuvvsbl00d!” It was safe to say wherever she was she was either in jail or in trouble with the wrong crowd.
‘It’s a shame she was such a sweet girl and really good friend’, Izuku thought as he frowned finding himself trapped in a corner when the adults closed in on him, he’d been ignoring their hate speeches and slurs the entire chase, but now they were clearly starting to sound more aggressive as he’d made them chase him through town. One of the female adults spat on him and took the first hit, a harsh slap struck against his face. His glasses clattered on the ground as tears pooled in his eyes and the stinging from the strike let him know this wasn’t some twisted dream.
He was so fucked.
After the lady, there was a man who punched him and broke his nose, another who kicked him in his side causing him to fall to the ground allowing them more swings. Izuku didn’t even know how long it’d been at this point all he knew was the hits were getting harder and before he could even adjust to the beating, they started to use their quirks to torture him. He’d blacked out three times so far and every single time he awoke he saw their cruel crooked smiles, when he looked around he saw his blood pooled under him and his belongings scattered, he’d stopped screaming a long while ago as his windpipe had been crushed, and he stopped crying as the sky seemed to have done the job for him once he’d run out of tears. His eyes started to droop as his body was panicking, alarming pain everywhere and his heart rate was starting to slow. This was going to be his fourth time closing his eyes, and Izuku fear he’d never open them again.
When those emerald eyes blinked open, the pain had subsided, and the world stopped spinning, the first things he noticed was the smell of ashes and the feeling warmth. He was confused for a moment as he looked around and saw pink flames adorning the alleyway and objects flying around. Piles of trash and boxes in the air, dumpsters spinning around like crazy, smoke and debris filling the air, and a burning body right in front of him. It had been the woman who spat on him and initiated the beating...Izukus vision narrowed, his heart started pumping faster then if he’d run a marathon, his breathing shallow, and finally he screamed. Her face was melted almost down to the bone but enough to recognize who she was, and her hair was little to nothing mixing in with the ashes and smoke as her body was charred and her mouth...or what was left of it…was open stuck in a position of screaming in terror, pain, and fear. The flame covered boy looked over fearfully and saw a portion of the adults with fear on their faces begging for mercy, others were shouting and cursing at him, the rest of them just looked at the women’s in shock and unmoving. Izuku didn’t know what to do, he was scared and all he wanted to do was go home, curl up in his mother's lap, and cry.
So cry he did, and as he started to weep the flames spread and his quirk took hold of the ones who had wronged him, they were incinerated to ashes after they had been slammed into objects and thrown into the air. One guy with a flame-resistant quirk had run up to try and take him out, Izuku was hyperventilating with snot running down his nose as he felt his pants get wet. He looked down and noticed that he’d just wet himself like a toddler, he threw his hands up in front of him to try and make the guy go away, but the man started screaming in agony as his quirk tore the man apart from inside in out, Izuku heard a few cracks of the man's bones as his quirk lifted the guy into the air and saw the guy cough up blood until he exploded from the inside out. The man's guts had splattered around the alleyway adding to the ashes of the first woman’s corpse that was starting to fully burn away, some of the man’s brain matter had landed on Izuku's cheek, the boy sobbed harder. He cried so hard to the point he had almost missed something that had plopped in his hair, and as he fearfully reached for it, squshed it nervously, and gazed upon what he’d just grabbed, he saw the man's eyeball sitting firmly, sickeningly, in his hand. The nerves were still attached and everything blood from them dripping down to his wrist.
Izuku threw up and let out a gut-wrenching screech, without thinking much more he grabbed what was left of his belongings that was salvageable and dashed out of the alley. There was fire throughout the street, buildings burning, houses a blaze, people screaming and rushing past, some trapped and injured, others already dead, the alleyway a vicious crime scene almost fully scorched to a crisp the obvious culprit of the bright pink flames causing chaos and destruction, and Izuku was standing in the middle of it all.
The moment he heard sirens he bolted home, his hands wouldn’t stop catching fire and objects started to float when he got scared, and yet he felt no pain—physically—at all. His crushed windpipe was healed seamlessly, the cuts and bruises had disappeared, his fractures, broken bones, and burns were nonexistent. How was that possible? He was certain he’d died and even if he didn’t, how did all his injuries just vanish beside some aches and exhaustion? Without scars at that, so if he was healed by someone with a healing quirk then why was there no scars? Not a single mark was left on his skin.
Izuku looked around frantically as he got further and further away from the scene back to his home town Musutafu, the fire had spread dangerously far in Hamamatsu, and even though he traveled back on foot instead of train like how he’d gotten there, he was still fearful that the police had followed him home and was coming to arrest him; locking him so deep in Tartarus with other serial killers he wouldn’t see the light of day again. This caused him to experience more paranoia and anxiety then he’s felt in his entire life, continuing to venture dazed back to his apartment, to his mother, to comfort.
The moment he entered his home he threw off his shoes, stripped his mildly burnt and blood-stained uniform off, and threw them in the washer. He turned his shower on the highest setting and hopped in, thanking whatever deity there was out there that his mother had a late shift today and was not yet home. He scrubbed and shampooed his hair harshly making a few strands fall out, and rubbed his skin till the point it was red and raw. This was the longest shower Izuku had taken in a while, and yet he’d only gotten out after the water started to run cold and he was starting to run out of soap. When he finally turned off the near-freezing water, he saw himself in the mirror, he started to grind his teeth and tears fell down his face, his iris had turned from an emerald green to a deep lilac color, whilst deep within his thoughts Izuku unknowingly had activated his quirk lifting his shampoo bottle that floated from behind him unnoticed and slammed directly into the mirror causing a faint crack to appear right where his face was.
‘Shit...how will I hide this from my mother’, he thought, as once he looked back into the mirror, his eyes had returned to normal...so he was a murderer and hallucinating.
Great.
Izuku decided to throw on some PJs and warm up a meal his mother prepared for nights like this, nights where she worked extra long grueling shifts and Izuku would be alone for extended periods of time. He wasn’t really hungry, how could he be he just murdered—he just didn’t want her to think he was skipping meals...again.
Izuku turned on the TV when he started to lazily eat the tonkatsu his mother had prepared, scrolling through channels and regrettably stopping on the news station, he knows that he should’ve changed the station the moment he saw the headline “Massive Fire in Hamamatsu, Killing Over A Dozen and Injuring Well Over Thirty Bystanders” but his mind was running a thousand miles per hour, why? You may dumbly ask. Well, for starters, HE Midoriya Izuku, Aldera Junior High’s quirkless wonder had a forced quirk manifestation, died—in theory—came back to life, and most of all killed over twelve people and injured many many more. Although no one knew what started the fires as it was stated in the news interview, there was over millions of yen worth of damage within the town and many were suffering because of him, they only used one word to describe him throughout th entire broadcast and it was Villain.
He was considered a Villain.
‘But....that can’t be right. I’ve only ever wanted to be a hero’, Izuku thought as tears poured down his face and bile started to rise in his throat again. The sound of their screams and cries, the smell of the burnt corpse, the man's eyeball in his hands. Hisashi screaming and burning him for being useless, what would he do if he found them and saw that Izuku was a villain now?
He threw up all over the hallway floor before he could reach the bathroom.
“Dammit” Izuku muttered as he saw what was left of his meal right in front of him, the smell was disgusting and the taste wasn’t any better, he started to sniffle as he began to cry for the tenth time, dammit he was sick and tired of these tears.
To his surprise and fear, his heightened emotion fueled his quirk and his hands as a result once again burst into flames.
‘These lilac and pink flames will be the actual death of me’, Izuku thought grimly as he shook his hands at an ungodly speed, thankfullying getting the flames to dissipate. The boy sighed as he wiped his mouth on his sleeves and began to gather the tools to clean up the mess he’d just spewed on the floor, and something to mend his uniform that had just been washed and dried.
He’d decided to dye his beloved red shoes black with fabric dye after they had got done washing, to avoid any future...incidents...such as today. He dunked them straight into the bucket of dye and waited for a while to then take them out wipe them with a towel and throw them in the dryer to be worn tomorrow. Izuku then made his way to the hallway to clean up the vomit. When he was done he cursed as he looked at the time telling him it was nearly three in the morning, he ran to his room with needle and thread and his previously brand new uniform. Izuku fumbled with the needle as he tried his best to stay calm, any burns and singes on it he could blame on Bakugou and the holes in the uniform were easy to fix if he uses the fabric from older uniforms that were beyond repair.
Izuku did some thinking while he mended the cloth, there was no way in hell his mother could know about his quirk, well not yet at least. But there was also the fact that when it came down to it he didn’t feel any guilt for killing those people who’d beat him in the alley, he felt rage. He had been upset and terrified, and most of all dying as they beat him to death—in theory—causing his body to—once again in theory—manifest an entire quirk that killed and harmed not only them but others. The funniest part is statistics say he should’ve died too, which he did, but he should’ve stayed dead. Hearing himself say that made his heart sink, he was a murder of innocents, not on purpose of course, but he still blamed himself. If he’d just stayed dead instead of going through a forced manifestation—
‘Great, here comes the tears again’ Izuku thought as he dropped the needle and thread and curling himself into a ball, he started to rock himself back and forth for comfort like he did when he was little, back when everyone turned on him, when his mother gave up on him, when his father started to beat and loathe him. Why? Why him...? Why did he have to get a quirk after dying? Why did it—he—have to be dangerous? Why....?
He cried himself to sleep that night.