All men are not created equal. In a world where eighty percent of the population has superpowers - quirks - the twenty percent without might as well be considered disabled. Those who can't lift cars, or fly, or breathe fire, or walk on water are the minority, and if not harassed or put down for their inability then they're to be - even worse - pitied.
Midoriya Izuku, however, has learned there are worse things than being born quirkless.
He learns when, at the age of four, the doctor who took his X-rays tells him that he can never let anyone know about his quirk with the same sort of grave seriousness he might use if he were delivering a death sentence to any other patient. Izuku doesn't understand why his mother looks so sad, but looking back, he'll think that he should have figured it out much sooner.
He learns when he falls - is pushed - out of a tree in the second grade and breaks his leg, only to have it heal in a matter of hours. His mother pulls him out of school for a week anyway, and when he comes back she makes him wear a cast he doesn't need for one week more. He asks why he can't just say he has a healing quirk. His mother says it's safer this way.
He learns when he looks in the mirror one morning and sees a strange thing staring back at him, with a bizarre black eye full of glowing veins spider-webbing out from a blood red iris in the center. His mother doesn't cut his hair as often any more, and brushes it so it falls over one side of his face. Over the strange eye.
He learns when he accidentally overhears his mother sobbing into the phone late one evening, tears streaming down her cheeks as she tells the person on the other end about her child's 'monstrous' quirk.
He learns when he learns why he and his mother never eat out, like the other families do, and most of his meals are delivered by the doctor who X-rayed his foot when he was four, all of them wrapped up in brown paper and hidden in the back of the fridge, behind his mom's meals. He vomits uncontrollably when it hits him, and for several weeks after he stops eating altogether. Eventually, the hunger becomes too much and he starts eating again, tears running down his cheeks as he takes tiny bites of his first meal in nearly a month.
He learns when he learns exactly what the dark red 'juice' his mother has him drink every morning is.
Many quirks are dangerous. They can be used to hurt, or even kill people. There are schools, institutions, set up to train people in the use of their quirks so that they can always control them. Lots of people use their quirks for good things. Some even become Heroes, using their quirks only to hurt criminals and dangerous villains.
But what about those whose quirks are - by their very nature - evil? Those who hurt others merely by existing?
Izuku wonders about that as he lays awake one night, listening to his mother sobbing. She thinks he's asleep. She never cries when she knows he's awake.
'If only I didn't exist,' he thinks, not for the first time.
Nobody at his school knows he has a quirk. His quirk is too dangerous to tell others about. If they knew, he'd be taken away, or so his mother believes. The other kids make fun of him. They push him around, call him names, even try to hurt him. The worst of them is his former best friend, Bakugou Katsuki. Kaachan. Sometimes it gets bad enough that he wants to tell them. Wants to scream at the top of his lungs, 'You're wrong! I have a quirk! A quirk as strong as any of yours! I could kill you all in an instant, rip out your guts, drink your blood-'
Then he realizes where his thoughts are going and feels sick. He hopes nobody ever finds out.
One day he asks his mother if there's any way to get rid of a quirk. She stares at him in shock, tears welling in her eyes, before she wraps him in a tight hug, burying her face in his hair.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I wish things were different..."
She dissolves into a mantra of half-formed apologies and blubbering, and Izuku understands. The world isn't fair.
He would have had a twin, his mother tells him late one evening, after she's had just a little too much wine. She and his father had a name picked out; Mikumo. But something happened while they were in the womb, and Izuku ended up 'absorbing' his brother. Looking back, that might have been the first manifestation of his quirk.
To Izuku, this is the straw that breaks the camel's back. The final shred of evidence he needs. It's one thing to eat complete strangers, delivered to his doorstep in brown, paper packages by a doctor with access to all the corpses he could ever need, but to cannibalize his own brother? His twin?
Is this the reason his father isn't around anymore? Because his child is a monster?
The next day at school, he gathers up all his books, packs up his extra uniforms. He doesn't want to make his teachers have to clean up all of his stuff when he's gone.
The bullies are as vicious and cruel as ever, but somehow Izuku finds their words don't cut as deeply as they used to. Maybe because he knows he won't have to put up with them much more. He goes through the school day on autopilot, students and teachers little more than things in his peripheral vision that move and make noise. When the history teacher calls on him to answer a question it takes her three tries to get his attention. He only responds when one of his classmates reaches over and thumps him on the back of his head. Annoyed, the teacher says if he's not going to pay attention he might as well not even bother staying for the rest of class.
With a shrug, Izuku gets up and walks out of the classroom, ignoring the disbelieving stares of the teacher and his classmates on his back.
Soon enough a student is sent to bring him back to class. It's just Izuku's luck that the student sent after him turns out to be Kacchan.
"What the hell is your problem!?" Katsuki growls when he grabs Izuku by the back of his uniform and harshly spins him around. "You think you're too good to sit through class with the rest of us? Huh!?"
Izuku has no idea where that came from, but he doesn't have the energy to refute it. In a few more hours, it won't matter anyway.
He's snapped out of his musings when a small explosion suddenly goes off in front of his face. It's not close enough to do any real damage, but he can still feel the stinging heat on his skin and his ears ring as he lurches back and hits the wall behind him. Even if he knows the burns would heal in a matter of hours, sometimes not even that long, he's scared of the pain.
Katsuki laughs at him, jeering at his timidness, at his fear, at the tears welling up in his eyes, at the fact that he can't - as far as Katsuki knows - do anything to stop him.
"You're so pathetic," Katsuki sneers. "Why do you even bother getting up out of bed in the morning? You should do everyone a favor and just disappear!"
With that, Katsuki turns his back and storms back to the classroom, leaving behind a trembling Izuku. He wonders if Katsuki would still say that if he knew what Izuku was planning. Maybe. Maybe not. Izuku has started to accept that he simply doesn't know his childhood friend anymore, can't tell what he's thinking. Selfishly, he can't help wishing someone other than his mother would care, but logically he knows the fewer people who would, the easier this will be.
When everyone leaves school that day, Izuku doesn't. He takes his school bag with all of his books and journals and uniforms and throws it in the trash. He's already going to be making a big enough mess, he doesn't want to make things more difficult for the teachers or staff by making them have to clear out his locker for him when he's gone.
Then he heads up to the roof.
Katsuki is feeling good as he leaves school that day. He got his test back with a perfect score, as usual. Just because he's not a bookworm doesn't mean he doesn't care about his grades. He has to get high scores to get into U.A. after all. He kicked ass in gym. The teachers even let him get away with using his quirk in the classroom again. With a quirk as awesome as his, it was no wonder.
By the time he's out the front door, he's on cloud nine. He's planning on taking his friend and playing in the woods where they'll act out real life battle scenarios and test out their quirks, far from the eyes of the adults. That was the plan, anyway.
"Whoa, look up there!"
One of his friends - he's not sure which one - is pointing at the roof of the school building. Katsuki turns around, not sure what he's expecting. Maybe a genuine Hero standing dramatically against the backdrop of the sky? Or some villain they can unleash their powers against?
He doesn't expect to see the scrawny form of stupid Deku - a cruel nickname he has for Izuku - standing near the edge of the roof.
He doesn't expect to see that form suddenly tip over the edge. The fall only lasts a few seconds. They're not close enough to hear the sound of the impact, or even see where he landed. Minutes tick by silently, and still Katsuki hasn't processed the sight.
"Dude..." one of his cronies breathes. "What the fuck? Like, what the actual fuck?"
That pretty much sums up Katsuki's thoughts at the moment. This can't be real. This wouldn't happen. Deku... Izuku would never do that. This has to be some kind of trick, or maybe a terrible dream. Katsuki doesn't realize he's taking a step back towards the school building until someone grabs his arm and tugs him away. He rounds on them and the look on his face must have been pretty damn terrifying because his friend just about pisses his pants.
"Dude," one of the others says, putting their hands up in a disarming gesture, "if the grown ups see us here, they're gonna blame us!"
Realization hits him like a ton of bricks. They're right. He's the one who told Deku to disappear. If anyone sees him near the... the... near him they'll blame Katsuki for his death. It'll go on his record and severely impact his chances of getting into U.A. Even if he does manage to get in after something like this, even if he does manage to become a Hero, that will always be a stain on his record. Nothing about a Hero's life is private. He'll be associated with this forever; he bullied some defenseless, quirkless kid into suicide.
That isn't the kind of rep he wants. It's not the kind of rep the Number One Hero has. He can't let anyone find out. Ever.
Self-loathing leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. Running away is a coward's route, but it's the only option he has at the moment.
So he turns and flees, his friends close behind him.
He ignores the voice in the back of his mind whispering 'murderer,' over and over again.
Izuku lays there for a long time after the initial impact. He can feel, and that's strange enough at first, but then the pain hits and he's scared. His arms and legs are bent at weird angles, and his blood is pooled all around him, even spattered on the wall. He hit the building a few times on the way down.
Luckily - or unluckily, as far as Izuku is concerned - he's eaten recently. Soon enough he feels his skin and muscle begin to stitch itself back together. After about thirty minutes he finds the strength to pull himself up into a semi-sitting position and drag himself to the side of the school building. He leans there, waiting for his bones to fix themselves. It'll be a few hours before he's strong enough to stand up on his own.
It didn't work. He'd hoped but... somehow, he didn't expect to get the outcome he wanted. A few experiments performed at home, in the dead of night when his mother was asleep, already proved that his body is a lot more durable than most people's. He's already broken several pairs of scissors trying to stab himself.
So what to do now? Izuku knows of only one surefire way to die, and he doesn't know how he is going to pull it off. He can't just... not eat. His mother will notice something is up, and even though he doesn't want to live anymore he is still scared of the pain of a slow death.
He could just... leave. Maybe. Would his mother look for him, or would she be relieved he was gone? He isn't sure which one he wants it to be. He knows she deserves better than to be burdened with something like him.
Izuku looks up at the sunset. It's almost nightfall. If his mother is going to come looking for him it will be soon. He has to leave now, if he's going to leave at all.
The next morning, all anyone will find of Izuku will be his school supplies in the dumpster, the shoes he left up on the school rooftop, and the massive bloodstain behind the school building.
(Author's Note: This is sort of an experiment. The idea's been bouncing around in my head for a little while and even though I have other projects I should be working on I liked it enough to start typing it out. I may not make this one a full 'story,' but rather a few snippets of this alternate universe, but, hey, we'll see where it goes. Right now I'm partial to Izuku's kagune being an ukaku. Specifically, a one-winged ukaku, similar to Touka's. ('Cause they're both rabbits. Get it?) It's not set in stone, however, and if anyone has any suggestions my ears are open.)