Chapter 1

When I was four years old I had a bitter pill to swallow, "All men are not created equal". The reason I say this is simple. I'm part of the few, the twenty percent. Many years ago "quirks" started manifesting; the first was in a newborn baby, they glowed as bright as the stars, almost predicting the blindingly bright future in front of humanity. Soon after people were reporting the appearance of these "quirks" which is our name for the finominal abilities that could be called super powers. But this was only for eighty percent of the population, the other part of the population didn't have the powers that made the world seem like a vibrant, beautiful dreamscape of a comic book nerd. Which brings us back to when I learned this lesson. When I tried my hardest to help another only to be trampled over by the luckiest of them all in my eyes. Kacchan. My friend since diapers. All I wanted to do was help, but what did he say to me? "Your trying to play the hero? Even though your quirkless?" And then proceed to beat me and the one I was supposed to protect to a pulp. I don't hold any grudges, in fact since that day it's just pushed me to try harder, work harder, and wish with all my heart to attain my dream. Because if I don't, I'll be left in the dust. Something I once heard from a speech from All Mights first time being crowned the strongest hero, the number one hero. "I got here through hard work and dedication, it doesn't matter if you are the most talented, gifted person to ever live. Even the weakest least talented person to ever live will surpass you if the talented person never puts any effort in. That's why you must always try your hardest, to go beyond, PLUS ULTRA!" These words would inspire me to keep going, to keep trying no matter what. It doesn't matter that I'm quirkless, I can still reach the peak that I've been looking at all my life.

I'm sitting in class, in my own world thinking about hero's and how much I want that, to be worth something. Then the teacher grabs the attention of the class who were chatting away about after school activities, and what they wanted to do later. He asks everyone to think about our future as we will be going into high school soon and where we go will shape our future. I already know what I want, so I zone out a bit staring out the window. I see the wind blowing leaves to an unknown destination and how the trees leaves seem to glow like shiny emeralds in the light of early morning. And then I hear it, "who wants to be a hero?" Everyone raises their hands in unison and the teacher almost chucked saying "Of course you all do." Then Kacchan's speaks up saying something like don't lump me in with all these guys. I honestly don't understand why he keeps putting up this front, it almost seems like he's hiding something. But I push that out of my mind and the teacher says "Midoriya wants to go to UA as well right?" The whole class starts laughing and Kacchan almost seems personaly attacked by this as he blows up my desk screaming the normal "You can't because your quirkless!" It's like he thinks I don't know that, I do, I'm reminded every day. It's kinda ironically funny that just having a joint in your toe would put a label on you that spells out useless or something like that. But then again that's my name. "Deku", you can read my name this way, as Kacchan did when we were little. It's been stuck with me ever since. It might as well be my actual name. The bell rings and Kacchan pins me against the wall after the teacher leaves. He tells me, "Don't even bother trying Deku, if I see you at UA you won't even have the chance because I'll fucking kill you!" He then burns my book and throws it out the window. I'm surprised and a cool anger or something seems to bubble up from me as I turn around to face him. He gives me a cold glare and says, "What is it Deku?" I hesitate in saying anything but I don't have time to say anything anyway as he starts up again by yelling "Hey Deku I got a good idea! What if you jump off the roof or something and maybe in the next life you can get lucky and get a good quirk, maybe you can become a hero then! But I wouldn't count on it, you'll probably be useless in the next life too!" He then walks away laughing with a smug look on his face. I'm cold all of the sudden even though it's warm in the room, everything loses a bit of its bright color and warmth. I don't feel anything, it's as though I lost the sense of touch and smell. Sounds become distorted and I try to break out of it but i feel so heavy. When I snap back to reality I'm at the stairs, I didn't even notice. I shake it off and force a smile but I remember my book and run down to grab my book that he incinerated. I start looking for it everywhere frantically and eventually find it in the fountain. I yank it out really fast getting a bit of water on me, I inspect it to see if it's okay. It's soggy and burned but it should be fine if I dry it. I sigh in relief and smile with glee, "thank god" I think to myself. "I must move forwards, it doesn't matter what anyone says" I alsways tell myself this whenever my classmates or Kacchan start being mean to me. I do it because if I can ignore all the things holding me back and keep pushing, I can become a hero. It's what I wanted since I was a kid. I'd watch a video of all might saving civilians from a giant fire, you could hear his booming powerful laughter that inspires hope and intimidates any villain. His smile is bright and shows us everything will be okay, no matter the circumstances, no matter your circumstances everything will be alright and that you can do anything. It's what sets him apart from all the other heroes, what makes him the best. I smile and set off as school ended. On my way however I see my teacher at my gate, he's dropped some of his papers and I jump in to help. He says "Thank you so much, I'm so clumsy sometimes." He rubs the back of his head as he does this and gives me a warm smirk or half smile. I say with enthusiasm, "It's no problem teacher, your always so kind and teach me many things!" He snorts and says, "You probably just wanted to come in and save me right?" I blush and he laughs and says, "Thanks for saving me!" I just smile and lower my head. When I do this however he sees my notebook, his smile fades away and he asks, "Is Bakugo messing with you again?" I say instantly to retort "No, no he doesn't do that!" Teacher just sighs and says "Why do you defend him? You don't get anything out of it, you don't become nicer or kinder for it. You don't become a hero by bearing all the pain yourself. All your doing is hurting yourself and worrying the people around you." I'm surprised but manage to say, "Don't worry about me, I'm sorry if I did, he doesn't do that it isn't like that." He sighs again but this time you could almost feel the disappointment. He says, "If he does it again I'll get to the bottom of this, I won't let him hurt you anymore, he may be sneaky as to not get seen but I won't let it happen anymore I'm sick of seeing him doing terrible things for no reason and getting away with it." I say yet again, "I promise teacher it isn't like that!" He just smiles at me saying, "Okay. Thank you for your help!" And starts walking home. I don't think for a second that he bought it but Kacchan is my friend I can't let him get in trouble.

I'm walking home now, waliking past houses and apartments until I reach a bridge. It's dark and gloomy underneath but I need to get home, my mom will be worried if I don't make it home soon. So I walk under the bridge and there is something here, as the shadows seem to be moving. I pay attention to it but don't say anything, I keep myself calm and collected trying not to grab whatever it is's attention. I might be nothing but my imagination but unlikely, it could be a unfortunate homeless person, a thief, or worse a villain. They are the opposite of heroes, they use their quirks for their own gain and hurt others in the process they are terrible people with no morals. As I start to space out about this train of thought it strikes. Before I knew what was happening this weird pungent and sticky liquid wrapped around me. It's stench fills my nose and whatever it is says, "This body can work." It then starts to enter my body from my mouth and nose. I can't breathe, my heart quickens and it feels as though my lungs are burning and ripping themselves apart trying to get oxygen. I scrape and try to pull it off only to have my fingers slip through it or off it. I can't really tell as my visions getting blurry and I feel as though I falling into some deep sleep as my body slumps. I think to myself, "Is this the end? Is this death? I never got to do anything, I never got the chance to try to become a hero. To save people." And I kind of laugh at myself, "fate was cruel to the end." And pass out. When I come too I feel a stinging, throbbing sensation in my cheek. I open my eyes to see someone. I ask him "I'm dead aren't I?" He says, "No my boy you are alive and well!" His voice feels fimiliar and my vision finally unblurs and I see him. All Might, I scream and start freaking out bibiling incoherant garbage for a solid minute. All Might just stands there wondering what the hell im saying. When he snaps back to reality saying, "I must be off now!" And I say, "W-w-Wait! Can I-I have an aut-ograph!" He points to my book and I see his name written on two of my pages with his iconic V hair style and eyes. I'm lost for words but I see him getting ready to jump away. I latch onto him as I want to ask him what's always been on my mind. He jumps with such power and speed we are in the clouds in a second! He seems confused at first and then gawks at me saying, "I think your support of me is wonderful but don't you think this is a little overboard?!!" He says it in a concerned and shocked tone, he then tries to push me off but before he could I interject saying, "If I drop from here I'll die!" He stops right away and says in a way as if he's facepalming at his stupidity, "Oh yeah of course!" We soon land on a roof and says, "I'll leave you here so please don't try to hitch a ride again." "Wait All Might!" He turns to me waiting for whatever I have to say. He looks so different in person, he looks larger than life and emits and energy of kindness and warmth. I snap out of my analysis and ask with all my heart, "Is it possible for someone without a quirk to become a hero like you!" The words leave my mouth like a huge boulder was lifted off of my chest, like the crushing feeling that I've had all my life was gone as I said that. He takes a second seeming to be taken aback by this question. He says in an almost sad and heart broken tone. Like he really didn't want to say this, that it was like the hardest thing he's ever done. He says, "My young boy, I'm sorry but it's not possible. There are other jobs that you can do that will have the same weight though, you can still do good things if that's what you want! You can be a firefighter, policeman, or but I wouldn't recommend this one, to join the military!" He says the last bit in a way to try and inspire me. To lift me up as he has to say the obvious. I should have seen it, but I was too stubborn and selfish to see it. He sees the look on my face and says "sorry kid but that's the truth, if I said anything else I would not only be lying but sending you down a path that would destroy you. I don't want that for you all I want is for you to follow your dreams but it may be in a different way than you thought." I say, "No it's okay All Might, thank you for setting me straight, I should have seen it before." He seems to have started to say something or want to say something but stops himself. He says , "Thanks for your support and good luck my boy!" As he jumps into the city to save more people. I'm shocked it's like I have a hole in my body. A gigantic empty void in my soul. I start shaking and I start to cry, my life was a farce a waste of time. If the best says I can't then I never could no matter how much I try. He's the one who kept me going with his speech of going beyond but he must have meant the least talented person with a quirk not me. Quirks run this world and it would be stupid to think he meant the twenty percent. Not out of hate, malice or bad intentions but because we don't have the ability to. He's the protector of all, the symbol of peace. He must inspire the strong and protect the weak. I shouldn't have taken it literally he just wanted to inspire the strong to try as hard as they can to become heroes and not only to make the heroes better but to lessen the amount of villains. It feels like everything is clicking, everything makes sense now. I walk down the stairwell I feel as though my body is aching but not from the monster. I just keep walking and walking and walking. Then I see it. That monster again but this time he's attacking someone else. The street looks like a hellscape, there is fire and destruction everywhere. I start to move but i stop myself. "What can I do?", "I'll just get in the way", "I'm useless". I keep telling myself that as I force myself to sit and watch. Then I see the person the monsters attacking, I stare wide eyed and bewildered. The clouds in my head seem to disperse and I run towards towards the monster, I'm so scared I'm shaking, but I force a faint smile and look forward with determination. The heroes and people behind me yell at me to come back to get back to safety. I just keep running, then I hear the distorted voice of the monster that I couldn't quite make out before. It's booming and terrifying, but I keep going ignoring all the sounds around me and all my fears. The monster said, "oh it's you again I guess it's my lucky day I'll get to try and kill you again". I ignore it and look at my surroundings which yields no tools that could help me. All I have is my bag and my determination. I stare him straight on, he looks much bigger than I imagined the monster is easily ten feet tall and has a mouth and eyes surprisingly enough. He just seems to chuckle but before he could do anything as that would spell my doom; I throw my bag at him so that my books would fly out giving it more range and hopefully one of the corners of the books will hit his eyes. It does and as he howls in pain I scrape desperately at the monster. "I must save him" I think it doesn't matter what happens to me, he must live to become a hero. Kacchan yells at me, "Why are you here I don't need your help you quirkless bastard!!" The people in the crowd and heroes realize the situation, the hero's are really worried now as they thought he might be strong or at least have a quirk in order to run in there seeing everything. But no he's just a quirkless kid, he can't protect himself and almost everyone in the crowd is not scared of the monster or the kid trapped by the monster. But now their scared for the kid, who seems way to young to throw his life away like this. But Izuku says with a smile although trembling with fear, "You looked like you needed help." The monster now ready to attack looks at him with a bloodthirsty hating look that pierces through him. He readies himself for what's to come but it doesn't, instead it's All Might. He stands tall withstand the villains attack head on. He says to Izuku, "I'm pathetic I tore you down and I couldn't put anything heroic into practice, thank you for setting me straight young man." All Might then punches the slime monster into a thousand pieces scattering the street and creating a windstorm in the process. The fight is over, the villain defeated, All Might stands tall raising his fist signifying victory. The crowd is cheering now, so happy that everything was okay. Izuku was now being scolded by the heroes but Izuku was just absorbing everything that happened. Kacchan on the other hand was staring at Deku, he's thinking about what he said, "You looked like you needed help." Even though he looked so scared, even though he's quirkless! It pisses him off to no end and to a point where he's ignoring the praise of the heroes. Izuku was walking home now with Kacchan close behind, which weirded him out. Eventually he turned around and asked Kacchan, "Why are you following me?" He quickly retorted, "I'm not following you idiot! We live right fucking next to each other!" I answer back, "Oh yeah never mind." Then he asks a little while later, "Why did you come for me when it's obvious that you couldn't do anything?" He said this more quietly than his normal loud personality and also it seemed to be said with genuine curiosity. All Izuku said in response was, "You can't die yet, you have to become a great hero in my place!" Kacchan was taken aback by this as he never once heard anything from Deku that even closely resembled giving up on being a hero but this, this was a white flag of surrender. But before he could say anything back Deku turned the corner and was gone. It's not like he cared or anything but something was wrong something happened.

Trying to get away from Kacchan as he didn't really want to talk to him right now, Izuku knows him very well and he know that he probably doesn't want to talk. But Kacchan surprised him, he followed him after he tried to get away but it doesn't matter, Izuku doesn't want to talk. He realized this as he saw him start following, he knew that after what he said Kacchan would try to figure out what's wrong. He may be headstrong and mean sometimes but he's no idiot and he isn't cruel, he just has his own sets of problems like Izuku. He didn't know what they where but he has that feeling that Kacchan knows this about him as well I mean the knew each other forever. They never once really talked about each other's felling but they can fill the gaps with day to day interactions and other subtle hints.

*Author Note* (Do not need to read)

This is where the story starts to change from the source material, I tried my best to follow it exactly while also cutting out anything really unimportant and changing somethings. I did this to change up the start of the story so it won't be boring to read as well as help the plot move fowards from here. I put subtle hints in here and metaphors that will be used later. I hope you enjoy as this is my first fanfiction or writing endeavor for fun, it's not necessary but I would appreciate reviews about any problems, comments, concerns, tips, etc in order to help this become a well structured and fun to read story.

As of the moment of writing the series is in Season 3

*End of Author Note*

I lost him a while ago but now I don't know where I am and it's getting pretty late as the suns going down. My moms going to be so worried I need to get home right now but... Where am I! I was so caught up in losing him I lost track of where I was! This is bad, I'm lost at night and statistically that means more villains and I think I've had enough of those today. I need to think rationally! So what do I do first? I look around only to see the gleaming light of the sun is hidden behind the horizon, and the street light turn on and almost blinded me as my eyes started to get used to the darkness before they turned on. This is a housing district, my apartment is near a housing district so I must be there now. That puts me pretty far away but not terriblely far. I look at my wrist watch and it's 7:07 right now also assuming I'm at the one I'm thinking I'm at, that means it can take me at the least thirty to fourty minutes to get home and a max of an hour and thirty minutes. Pretty wide margin so it's not going to help me all to much and as there's no landmarks or places I've been to in sight, which means I don't have much to actually find my way home. I know my house always faces away from the sun when it's night so I head opposite to that way for now while looking for signs and such. I wander around a bit and start to get nervous as I havent seen anything yet and I feel as though I've been wandering for a while now. I check my watch to see it's 7:37, man time really does fly. I finally find someone and I'm filled with relief, I walk towards them at a decent pace but then almost run towards them. When I get to them I realize it's a she, she's wearing a white trench coat and has a white purse. I have to say she has very good features to be honest she could pass for a model. Her brown long curly hair like autumn leaves and eyes as blue and deep as sparkling oceans. She turns around and smiles at me asking, "are you lost? I haven't seen you in this neighborhood before?" In a warm, kind and genuinely concerned tone. I almost forgot I am lost for a second by how approachable she is. I say almost gleefully, "Yes I am, do you live here?" She responds back with, "Yes I am young man, I live a couple blocks away. Do you know where you are?" "No I don't sorry, can you tell me and I'll stop troubling you." She smiles even wider now and says, "Its no trouble really I like helping people, you see I'm a nurse." This fits her very well as she has the bedside manner necessary from what I've seen so far and that would also explain why she has a employee lanyard. "I didn't quite get you name young man, would you mind telling me?" I blush a little and say, "Izuku Midoriya!" I feel embarrassed right after as I said it like I'm flustered and she just laughs and says, "Well this is Sakura Way, I hope that's close to your house?" I curse at myself as Sakura Way is in the opposite direction of my house meaning I was going the wrong way. I say "Thank you for your help I'll leave you now and get out of your hair." She says, "Wait you shouldn't go by yourself it's awfully late right now and you wouldn't want to get lost again!" It's like she said it as if I'm her child doing something stupid. "I really don't want to bother you miss, you've helped me plenty already!" Again I'm screaming at myself for sounding like I'm trying to hide the fact that I have a crush on a classmate or something like that. She laughs again saying, "it's no trouble, I'd hate if I sent you alone on your way home. Anyway the way you started down was where I need to go to go home anyway." I thank her again and we're on our way. The way home was a little akward as I couldn't muster up anything to talk about and even so I don't want to as it would come out insanely awkward. I'm so tired however and I think frantically about what time it is! I look at my watch to see that it's 9:00! But before I can say anything about I see her slump over and I catch her, "Are you alright?!" I'm suddenly getting more and more tired. I don't know what's going on, I put her over my shoulders and look around to see if it's a gas leak or something. I'm getting really tired now I can barely move and I almost drop her. It's only been a couple seconds this can't be a gas leak even carbon monoxide couldnt do this and that's one of the only ones caused by industry that is oderless and clear that I know of. I set her down the best I can and start coughing intentionally to try and get it out of my lungs as that's all I can think of. I'm on my back now looking at a cold starless sky that only seems to get darker. Then I see it a glimpse of a person and then I'm out.

End of Chapter 1