It's 4:17 on a Tuesday, and Midoriya Izuku is on his knees, crying in a Musutafu back alley.

Tears stain his cheeks, and he sobs, clutching his heart with one fist as his other hand struggles to hold him steady. His bright yellow backpack, usually light as a feather, weighs him down like a hunk of lead.

His school uniform, which was supposed to be a neat and pristine black, is charred and scuffed. His red shoes are worse for wear, the laces of both being completely burnt and the left one missing the entire sole.

Midoriya's a little banged up, too. His ribcage throbs with the rhythm of his heartbeat, stabbing him with bolts of pain. There's a small cut on his hand, and his face looks a bit sunburned.

A cool February breeze blows through the alley, chilling him to the bone. Or it would if he could've felt any colder.

The words of his idol, his number one role model, his hero echo through his mind, bouncing around in an infinite loop of despair as the wind blows through the city.

"Without a Quirk? I should think not. The world of heroics is a dangerous place. Pros have to be willing to risk it all, day in and day out. Trust me when I say even top heroes get injured in the line of duty.

"Without a good Quirk to protect themselves with, us heroes could very easily die, or worse." All Might's smile, formerly bright and joyful, becomes strained. "I cannot condone someone Quirkless running around fighting villains or dealing with natural disasters. It's just too dangerous." Then, almost as an afterthought, "If you really want to save people, be a police officer. They get a lot of flak for not being pros, but it's still an important job and a much more… realistic dream."

Everything just hurts. His head, his heart, his throat, his back—it's all awful. Awful in more than just the fact that All Might, his hero for as long as he can remember, doesn't think he can do it. Midoriya had known all his life that most people thought his dream was foolish, or even suicidal. From his preschool teachers to his own mother, not a person he'd met believed in his dream—or him, for that matter. Yet somehow, All Might's smile was enough to keep him going. To push him through every obstacle.

But now?

That smile, the one bright and burning with hope, is replaced by the one he'd seen moments earlier. It's trying so desperately to be happy, but it just isn't possible. Instead, it becomes sad and mournful, wishing that things were different, but stubborn in the belief that things were always going to be the same.

How long has he been in this alley? Midoriya couldn't help but wonder. The sun's hanging lazily in the sky, not quite setting just yet. It's late winter, so it'll probably be an hour or two before nightfall.

His tears are slowing a bit now, and his sobs aren't quite as strong. After another bit of waiting, Midoriya does his best to wipe the tears from his eyes and stands shakily. He teeters a bit once he's up, but after a moment his knees regain their strength.

He feels… well, not better, but the heartache is dulled just a tad. His insides are still swimming with grief, but he's got just enough strength to shove it all down for the moment. It feels like he might have the strength to walk home instead of just lie on the ground in some dirty alley, which is good. His mom's probably worried sick.

Reminded of his mom, Midoriya reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. He winces as he catches his reflection and opens the camera app to get a better look.

He looks like a street fighter who lost, which, based on the fact that he tried to fight back against a pair of muggers and had to be rescued, is probably a decently fair assessment. His eyes are red, too, like he just finished chopping an onion or fanning a campfire full of wet leaves. Or crying.

He notices the time after a minute of studying himself. It's 4:32. He'd been crying for less time than he'd thought.

Midoriya's phone vibrates, and a push notification pops into his screen.

From: Mom

Sweetie, I'm seeing a report of a villain attack on your walk home. Did you make it back alright?

Midoriya blinks. Well, he's not home, or alright, but neither one of those are going to have a big impact on his reply.

To: Mom

I'm almost home. I didn't even know about the attack.

He gets a message telling him to hurry home and to not forget about the dirty dishes he has to wash a second later, and he turns off his phone. The villain attack should be resolved by the time he gets to wherever it is on his route back to the apartment, so Midoriya takes a big breath and starts walking out of the alley.

His first step out onto the street shows him the bustling world he'd been isolated from for those life-changing (are they life-changing? Does he really want to give up now? Part of him says yes, and that he's a fool for even thinking about it, but another defiant part urges him to push on) moments. It's hard, so very, very hard, because everything is just the same, but also isn't in the slightest.

Midoriya sort of equates the feeling with a book he read back in his first year in middle school. It was a compilation of first-hand accounts of people whose Quirks came in very late. In one of them, a man unlocked his at 20, and it granted him the color perception of some random marine animal Midoriya couldn't remember. The man claimed to have cried for days, and he liked to say the moment was like being enlightened or seeing for the first time. Everything was just so clear.

Midoriya didn't feel enlightened though. Sure, he might understand the world better now, but it wasn't a good thing. He wished he could go back to being a dumb, fantasy-obsessed kid again.

But he couldn't. He never could.

A bike zipped right past him, accompanied by the frantic ringing of a bell. The rider's backpack brushed his nose a bit. It startled Midoriya, who jumped back half a foot. He took a couple deep breaths and gave himself some hard slaps on his cheeks. He needed to focus on getting home. Then he could sulk and contemplate his life.

Grabbing the straps of his backpack, Midoriya starts to walk. He gets a couple odd looks from other pedestrians, which isn't strange. His clothes look like they belong in the trash, which they do, and he's got a first or second-degree burn on his face. He's also limping slightly, but no one seems to care enough to help him out, which is par for the course with him.

Midoriya noticed the distinct smell of ozone in the air around him as he rounded a corner but brushed it off. He kept walking, ducking around more corners and crossing streets absently. It's only when he's three meters in a crowd that he realizes that the villain attack his mom mentioned isn't over. Not by a long shot.

There are barricades up, Midoriya notes. The same barricades that have separated hero and villain fights from onlookers since All Might debuted thirty years ago. There are also tons upon tons of people in the crowd. He pushes to the front of the mob (muscle memory is a hard thing to break), but the usual excitement he feels when watching hero and villain fights is now replaced with a morbid curiosity.

The scene before him is heart-wrenching, if he's being honest. There's one villain, a small, skinny man with some form of electric type Quirk, and a Pro Hero with an earth Quirk battling in the center of the crowd. The villain is winning soundly, despite the disadvantage he has due to his opponent's Quirk. His lightning-like bolts of electricity are just too powerful for the hero's walls of earth.

"C'mon, Quake!" a booming voice shouts from Midoriya's left. The boy's head immediately spins on a dime. There, to his left, stands Death Arms, a hero who debuted six years ago after graduating from Ketsubetsu High. He's not particularly powerful or skilled, Midoriya really only knows him because he's a huge nerd and has memorized every hero in his town, but he's a more combat-suited hero. If things go south, hopefully he'll rush in.

It's just a shame that he'd be fried by the villain.

The fight continues on for a while. The hero, Quake, keeps going despite her injuries—there's a nasty gash on her thigh that Midoriya knows will scar, along with bruised cheekbones. And those are just the ones he can see.

Other heroes show up eventually, but they're all ill-suited for the fight, too. Backdraft, for one, arrives with his sidekicks but sticks to keeping people out of the fight and dealing with a small fire the villain must've started earlier. A snake-themed hero, Basilisk, shows, too, but he can only yell encouragement from the sidelines.

"Where's All Might?" Midoriya mutters, barely realizing he's saying anything. "He was here earlier."

"All Might?" a man asks loudly from his left. Midoriya flinches at the volume. "You said All Might was here?"

And just like that, the crowd starts to call out for their Number One. Apparently, he'd been in Musutafu all day, so people know he should be around. But where is he?

Midoriya keeps watching the fight for a while, taking mental notes on the styles and Quirks of both sides like he usually does. It's not like he'll ever use them, but the familiarity helps a bit.

The shouting continues for a long time, and Quake, apparently inexperienced in real fights, gets distracted by it. She looks away at just the wrong moment, and the villain hits her hard across the face with an electrified haymaker. Quake goes down. Hard.

Midoriya's heart plummets for the second time that day. It doesn't seem like All Might will be here soon, if ever. Maybe… maybe it's his fault? If Midoriya hadn't been mugged, or maybe if he hadn't asked that stupid question, All Might would still be in the city. But now, because of him, All Might is probably all the way back to his agency in Tokyo, trying his best to put the sad little Quirkless kid out of his mind.

Midoriya can't help it. He starts to cry again. A hero might die today because of him, and no one's doing anything. Everyone's just standing there, waiting for All Might. Midoriya wants to shout and scream. He wants to smack Death Arms and all the other heroes for doing nothing. He wants to restart the day and avoid taking that stupid alley as a shortcut.

Midoriya wouldn't remember when he started to move. Later, he'd ask his predecessor over afternoon tea. The man, skinny as a wisp and tired with age would only offer, "Just as everyone in that crowd was beginning to lose hope," for a response.

Midoriya might not remember when he started to move, but he would remember the moment he realized what he was doing. By this point, he's already halfway across the wrecked intersection that served as a battleground and slinging his backpack off his shoulder.

The villain, who has his back turned to Midoriya and his section of the crowd, is suddenly struck by a five-pound sack of pens, pencils, and textbooks. He spins around, momentarily forgetting about the downed hero.

Midoriya, who's shaking with every fiber of his being, stands firm before the villain. "Stop!" he yells, his voice cracking. He feels a fat tear run from the corner of his eye all the way down to his chin.

The villain stares for a moment, oblivious to the screams of terror from the crowd and gathered heroes. Then he smirks evilly and lights up his hands with yellow electricity.

"Big mistake, kid," he says, glee evident in his voice, "it'll probably be your las—"

But then, All Might is there, wearing the same clothes Midoriya saw him in earlier. The blue carpenter's jeans and white tee are both filled with rippling muscle that could pulverize a whole ward.

"Detroit Smash!"All Might bellows, throwing his right fist forward in a straight punch.

The villain doesn't even get a chance to react before he crumples to the ground in a pathetic heap. The crowd of people predictably goes wild, cheering for their Number One. All Might helps Quake up before shouting a hurried apology for his tardiness and leaping off into the (almost) sunset.

Midoriya is left to deal with the aftermath. It's… not pretty, to say the least. The paramedics, ever dutiful, barely have enough time to patch him up before Death Arms grabs him by the arm and gives him a real tongue-lashing about risking his life and trusting the pros. Backdraft does much the same, though much more gently, and Quake gives him a pat on the shoulder and a warning not to stick his neck out like that again.

Midoriya quietly wonders what their words would be like if he let it slip that he was Quirkless. Would they mock him? Yell at him even more? They'd probably just treat him like a three-legged dog made of glass and walk him home to his mother. They'd probably make sure he'd never act heroic again, too.

It's not like Midoriya can blame them. They're right, after all.

He manages to escape the bunch of heroes and the reporters that seem to constantly hover over their every move. He's lucky he's a civilian minor, otherwise he might've been forced to give a statement.

Midoriya's only three blocks from home when he hears it. There are footsteps behind him. It's nothing new, he knows a few classmates that live in his apartment complex, but it's almost six o'clock. Everyone should've been home an hour ago.

"Young man," Midoriya hears from behind him. He stops walking and turns around. There he sees a man who's very tall and looks skeleton-like with his thin build and sharp facial features.

"I'm sorry," Midoriya says, taking a step backwards, "but I really have to get home. My mom's probably worried sick because—"

"Of the villain attack, I know," the man interrupts. "That's fine. I won't keep you long. I'd just like to talk."

Midoriya narrows his eyes, feeling slightly apprehensive and suspicious. "I gotta—"

The man sighs heavily, almost like he's frustrated, then grows. He shoots up at least half a foot, and his shoulders expand to stretch out his shirt. His legs balloon up, and his once sharp and jagged face rounds out. The two bunny-like strands of hair that once framed his face now stick right up in the air.

"A… All Might?" Midoriya asks, his eyes clouded with wonder. "Wait, no! All Might is all powerful! There's no way someone who looks like that could be him. You're an imposter!"

'All Might' frowns. "I assure you, I am All Mi—" He lets out an awful cough and spits out a wad of blood. "Shit," he swears before a cloud of steam erupts from his body, and he's back to being skinny again.

Midoriya is half tempted to offer him a tissue, but he remembers that this is an All Might imposter and probably a villain. He reaches for his phone to call someone—anyone—before the man stops him.

"Wait!" He moved a bit closer, though he's still a respectable six feet away. "Just… I can prove it to you."

Midoriya lowers his phone. He looks around. There's no one on the street. It's completely dead. The rational part of him wants to chuck his backpack at the man's head, but his gut is telling him that he should let the man talk. He nods. "Then prove it."

The man sighs. "About two hours ago, I saved you from a mugging. Before I could leap off, you grabbed on to part of my jeans. I sort of pushed you off and let you ask a question." The man looks especially guilty, almost as though he regrets everything, but pushes on. "You asked if someone like you—someone Quirkless—could be a hero. I told you no."

Midoriya feels himself collapse on the ground. He feels his knees bruise. "It really is you..."

All Might nods. "Yes. I trust you know not to share this with the world?"

"I… yeah, but why tell me this anyway? I'm just a hopeless hero wannabe."

All Might smiles. "Perhaps. But do you know what you did back there? With your backpack?"

"Put myself in danger for no reason and almost died," Midoriya mumbles.

"No, not at all."

"But you were there right after! If I just waited, everything would have been fine! I wasn't thinking, and I embarrassed myself!"

"Ah, so you weren't thinking. I figured as much." Midoriya looks up, with confusion evident in his expression. All Might continues. "You see, four years ago, I had a big fight with a villain. He did this to me." All Might lifts up his shirt, revealing a massive, puckered scar across the left side of his torso. "I lost half of my organs because of it."

"There's no way that Toxic Chainsaw or Purifier did that."

All Might laughs, but it's airy and humorless. "You know your stuff. I had a feeling you were a fanboy. But you're right," he agrees, "Those two were strong, but they didn't have the raw power to hurt me. The fight I'm referring to has been covered up. Only the very upper brass of hero society know I've been hurt, and most don't know how bad."

"How bad is it...?" Midoriya asks.

"Aside from missing half of my organs? I can only hold onto my hero form for five or six hours a day now."

Midoriya sucks in a long breath. "That's—"

"Very bad, I know." All Might looked over Midoriya again, as though burning every feature into his mind. "But I'm not here for your pity, or to let a random teenager in on one of the world's most important secrets. Back there, you moved to save a pro hero whose life was about to end. You weren't thinking. I could tell just by looking at you. Believe me when I say everyone in that crowd thought you were insane, because you, a skinny middle schooler, with tears in his eyes, were running right into the face of danger.

"But I didn't share that thought, because I know that every true hero in the world has had a moment like that, where their body just… moves."

Midoriya starts to feel the sting of tears in his eyes for the second (or is it third?) time that day. He feels his legs go weak, and he collapses on the ground, supported by his forearms. The tears start to flow freely.

"Young man, I came here to correct myself. I have wronged you. I now believe that you, too, can become a hero!"

Midoriya briefly sees his life flash before his eyes. Everything from when he first met his one and only (former) friend, to that faithful doctor's visit, and all the time he tried to stand up to bullies. Every word of discouragement, every time he cried himself to sleep, and every time he took a beating while being mocked.

It hurt. It hurt so, so badly. But it was all going away and being replaced by the words he'd always longed to hear.

A sob, or maybe a shriek, of joy tears from his sore throat. His eyes were flooded with fresh tears, which fell to the ground in a pair of small puddles.

"My power is yours to inherit."

"I… what?" Midoriya asks, trying to stop his sobbing. He really didn't want to cry twice in front of his hero.

All Might smirks. "My Quirk. It can be passed on, and I'd like for you to have it. Should you accept, you'd be my successor, and I'd train you."

Midoriya blinked. "A transferable Quirk? But how? Quirkless bodies aren't meant for Quirks, and that's assuming I can receive one." He didn't even realize that he was muttering, his mind was moving too fast, "But if a Quirk can be passed down, can a Quirk be taken? Can a Quirk be modified or cloned? Where's the line when it comes to—"

"Kid!" All Might interrupted, throwing his head back and smacking his face with one palm. "You're really overthinking this. I'm not gonna force this on you, but I gotta know: do you want my Quirk or not?"

"Yes!" Midoriya answered immediately. He stood up. "I'll be your successor!"

All Might nodded firmly, "No hesitation, that's what I thought." He squared his shoulders and raised a hand high in the air. "Tomorrow, we'll begin your training! Meet me at Dagobah Beach at five PM sharp, got it?"

"Yes, sir!" Midoriya answered.

"Good. Now run home, I don't want your parents to be worried.

It's 5:32 on a Tuesday, Midoriya Izuku is walking home. His backpack and clothes are damaged beyond repair, and there are dried tears on his face, but his stride is determined and powerful. Each step is one closer to his dream. His shoulders are set firm, and his chin is up. His eyes burn with determination and grit, and the smile on his face is wide and fierce.

He'll be a hero. He'll be the best hero there ever was, even if it's the last thing he'll do.

This is also on Ao3. look at my profile for a link to my Ao3 account. There are currently 51 chapters so if you want more of that go there. If you're cool with waiting for me to put up the chapters as I find the time to then refresh this story every now and again. I'll get it all up eventually. This has been beta read by Flauel.