All notes at the bottom.
Deku: The Sekiryuutei of Hope.
Chapter 1 – Stirrings of Red.
Izuku was bored. Really, why were they even teaching this in class? History was important, sure, but really, was it vital to repeat, when it mostly talked about the same topic over and over again?
His interest in the topic, Quirks and the emergence of Heroes, was the only thing preventing him from falling asleep. Still, hearing the same info so many times almost made him want to 'start a new era.'
Almost.
"To this day, scientists still don't know what caused Quirks to appear. They were able to trace them back to 200 years ago, though…"
Emerald eyes scanned the room in boredom. Hmm… What should he work on today? He had several ideas in mind for the powered-up boots for his Hero costume, so that was a good start.
'Yeah, remove that. It's too big. Maybe add shock resistant soles? Hm. That could work, but then I'd need to change the material, again. Iron is a big no, 'cuz it sucks. Steel seems good, but it's heavy…'
"Midoriya!" His teacher called out, cutting off Izuku from his mumbling. The boy's face heated up from the unamused stares he received.
'I need to control my mumbling.' "Yes, sorry, sensei. I'm paying attention."
His teacher sighed, "I know you're aware of all of this already, but can you please not mutter?" Izuku nodded in reply. Continuing, the Teacher said, "Right, well, back on topic. Although we were able to look further into the mechanisms of Quirks and how they manipulate our cells to synchronise with their unique functions, we still don't know the reason as to why men don't have Quirks."
The bell rang. The day was over, and so the teacher bid his farewell before leaving the classroom. He took a deep breath… and was quickly covered in smoke and ash as his desk sprouted a miniature mushroom cloud.
Izuku sighed internally.
She was mad at him, again.
"What is it, Kacchan?" he asked. This had happened enough times already, it was to the point where Izuku wasn't even remotely amused that the girl would hiss at him whenever he would show his determination to follow his dream.
"You were muttering about it again, right? Your fucking dream, huh?" she seethed, her words laced with venom.
The boy's face displayed a tinge of hurt, but he didn't give in. "Yeah, Kacchan. It's my dream to be a Pro Hero."
The place was filled with deafening silence until everyone broke out laughing, mocking him.
The girl fumed as she grabbed his notebook and let loose an explosion, shredding the notebook to almost nothing.
She got up. "You're. Not. Gonna. Be. A fucking. Hero. Deku." Bakugo spat, standing up. She pushed the chair back and tossed her backpack over her shoulder as she spun in the opposite direction and left the classroom, her lackeys following her.
Izuku sighed as he picked up the damaged notebook. It was a journal he kept to design his Pro Hero costume since all of them had one.
His breath hitched. For once, the boy felt his determination waver.
Izuku kicked a pebble, annoyance quite visible on his face. His eyes landed on a little girl nearby, generating a small, weak stream of water from her fingertips. He sighed and took a more isolated route.
He knew. He knew that a male couldn't be a Pro Hero. He knew about 5th wave feminism, and how it successfully overtook most countries of the world. Men were once dominant, but now? The entire male population was reduced by 70%, and even then, no more than a few countries had patriarchy. In some, men were simply there for sexual pleasure.
'I should count myself lucky that Japan is one of the few countries that value equal rights even a little…'
Izuku halted when he heard something around him move. He looked left and right, only to find nothing. But then, with a viscous, slimy flowing and bubbling sound, several green tendrils shot out from the manhole, one he hadn't noticed. They sprang up at high speeds, catching him off guard. His lack of combat experience caused him to freeze in place and they immediately wrapped around his leg, more and more tendrils emerging from the manhole. Each tentacle was thick and wet, wrapping tightly around one body part after the other, until they eventually reached his mouth, covering it and preventing him from drawing breath.
"Hmm~?" he heard someone say in a sing-song voice, "What do we have here? Such a cute little boy, huh? Don't worry, this won't be painful, little boy. Just stay silent…" She whispered as more green tentacles started wrapping around Izuku's body. The lack of oxygen made him dizzy, so he didn't hear her properly.
'Damn it, is this how I die? All because I was born a guy?'
'Mom, I'm sorry for–'
"IT'S ALRIGHT NOW! I AM HERE! TEXAS SMASH!" A powerful voice yelled. A moment later, wind blasted through the tunnel, obliterating the tendrils of slime and allowing Izuku to breathe once again. He looked up weakly, seeing a large, bulky body with a blinding grin.
It was none other than All Might, Japan's #1 Pro Hero.
"Are you alright, young one? You were lucky I came in time!" She proclaimed loudly, patting Izuku on the back, although he was sure he could feel a few of his organs vibrate from the sheer power behind the pat.
All Might started scooping up the unconscious Villainess into a bottle, somehow, before tightly screwing the lid on. "There! All done!" she proclaimed.
All the while, Izuku gawked like a fish.
He snapped from it. "A-All Might?! I-You-Wow!" he yelled, failing to say a coherent sentence.
All Might nodded, giving her usual blinding smile. "Indeed!"
"Ah...my notebook! Where'd it go! I-If it's not too much of a bother, could you…?"
She merely laughed. "Actually, I have already signed your notebook and backpack! I predicted you were going to ask this, young one!"
Then, as she chuckled at his delighted fanboy squeeing, she stiffened subtly, feeling herself reaching her limit. "Well, child, I must leave! Stay safe!" she proclaimed, about to jump off.
Izuku, despite his immense intellect and smarts, managed to make a split-second decision and grabbed onto her legs. The woman leapt, and oh boy did she leap high.
She then realized that there was an unrecognized weight on her. She looked down to see the young green kid from before, yelling something.
'Really, how reckless can one be…!'
As soon as she landed on a random rooftop, she firmly detached the young boy from her leg and made to leap away again. However, her knees buckled and she let out a choked gasp of pain, steam blasting from her body. 'Ah…shit!'
Izuku by that time had let go, standing on the same roof as her. He turned to her, ready to apologise, only to see All Might shrink before his eyes. No, not shrink; deflate. Her eyes were sunken as if she hadn't slept in ages and her powerful, muscular body shrank down until she was practically nothing but skin and bones. If anyone compared the two, they wouldn't have bridged any similarities, other than the blue eyes and blonde hair.
"...Imposter–"
"No, kid, it's me."
"A fake–!"
"I'm telling you, it's me, All Might."
"...P-Prove it!"
The Pro Hero sighed before swelling back into her power form, only to deflate again, blood spewing out of her mouth.
"I–W-what? Why are you like that? Could it be that this is your actual Quirk, which is to shapeshift into other people, and so you shapeshifted into that form for power? That may be possible, but it could also mean that you could be a different Pro Hero that shapeshifts into the image of All Might, who might've never even existed. Then maybe you're a vigi–"
"Hold it right there, motormouth. Jeez, you really like to ramble, huh?" She sighed as she placed a hand over his mouth, stopping his mumbling.
"Look, kid, it's me. This is why I look like this…" Her sunken blue eyes focused on Izuku as she pulled her shirt. The boy instantly blushed and covered his eyes. "Not that! Look here!" He peeked through his fingers and saw a savage scar on her waist. He gasped in horror.
"This happened five years ago, in a fight I was in. It took quite the toll on me, so now I can use my power for around six hours a day." She said, a hint of self-recrimination and regret in her voice.
"Wait, five years ago? Was it the battle with Toxic Chainsaw?" Izuku asked since that Villainess' Quirk seemed to fit the criteria to do this sort of damage.
She chuckled, impressed that he could remember that incident. "No, but I'm impressed by your memory. Anyway, I've reached my limit, kid. I need to leave." She turned, preparing to summon her power again and leave.
Izuku, driven by his previous melancholy, called out, "Wait!"
She halted.
"I-I have something to ask you! L-Look, I know that I'm a boy, b-but do you think… d-do you think I can become a Hero…?" He asked, his voice now almost a whimper.
Yagi can feel it. She had already experienced it all before, too. The young boy's voice contained desperation, so much that it pained her to answer.
But, even then, being a Pro Hero was something this boy cannot achieve. The concept of a Hero would still apply to other carriers, however.
"...You can be a doctor, a lawyer, a policeman, and still be able to save lives. But, being a Pro Hero, fighting Villains like I do…it's just not cut out for you, young one," she said bitterly. It was painful, to both him and her, but she couldn't just lie to him for temporary happiness.
"...Okay." He sobbed, getting up and heading for the exit door. Yagi, in skeletal form, stood there in silence.
…
'Where is the bottle that had that slimy person in it…? Wait, fuck.'
He pushed the door open, the bells attached to the top rang in rhythm. He stepped outside the store, numbly crunching on some chips he'd bought to try and cheer himself up, even if it was a little bit.
His eyes looked like they'd lost their light. His mentality was cracking, slowly withering away. His mother didn't believe in his dream, his 'friend' humiliated him all the time… and even his favourite Hero, his idol, the person he looked up to the most, had just given him the cold, heart-wrenching truth.
'Maybe I should give up. I can be a surgeon, I know a lot about biology; I get the top grades all the time, so there will be a prestigious school to accept me…'
[Fool. Don't give up.]
Izuku jumped, almost tripping and falling onto the concrete face-first. As soon as he managed to get his balance, he looked around frantically for the source of the rough voice, only to find everyone else passing by casually, staring at him strangely.
'What the hell? Hah, I need to take a good nap… Wait, what's the commotion?'
Not too far away, Izuku saw a great gaggle of people clustered together, gazing at something and murmuring loudly to each other. Police sirens were blaring out loud and clear, and there was even a Pro Heroine pushing everybody back to safety.
Izuku sped up, his gut telling him that something was off. Pushing through the crowd, Izuku finally saw it, his eyes widening with horrified recognition.
It was that slimy Villainess from before, tightly holding onto a girl with wild ash-blond hair, the gooey substance covering her entire body. Explosions cracked, popped and burst from said girl's palms constantly, but they were useless. The Villainess's body would splatter and spread across the concrete, but it would just reform.
This was a hostage situation that the Pro Heroes can't recklessly interfere with. They did not want to end up with blood on their hands, so they couldn't attack the Villainess until they could be sure they had a strategy to simultaneously capture her and free the hostage with minimal damage.
But they couldn't see it.
She was suffocating.
'She's going to die.'
[Go.]
His body launched itself straight forward, his mind was uncaring of the warning shouts of the Pro Heroes. His mind raced as he took a pencil in his hand, throwing the entire backpack at the Villain.
She didn't expect it, so it momentarily surprised her, but she grinned and swatted it away with a tentacle. The next thing she knew, a green-haired kid was running straight forward, something in his right hand.
"You're that kid from before! Tryna be a Hero now, eh?! What're you gonna do without a Quirk, you disgusting male?!" Her body expanded, three tentacles were thrown at Izuku from her abdomen while drawing Katsuki's body even further into her gelatinous depths.
Something within the boy warned him. It was almost as if it was guiding him as he side-stepped two tentacles from the right and ducked under one from the left. He closed in on the Villain, already feeling tired, thanks to an untrained and weak body.
She didn't give him room to breathe, shooting out more slimy projectiles at him. Izuku jumped unexpectedly high, avoiding the vicious tentacles, and stabbed his pencil at the Villainess's frame as he landed.
Even though he missed his target, one of her bulbous eyes, the Villainess flinched in pain as the pointed stick slashed through her gooey flesh just beside it, giving Katsuki a chance to breathe.
"LET IT RIP, KACCHAN!" He shouted, looking her directly in the eye as he gasped for air.
The girl glared back, but her palms lit up. Turning her hands inward she directed a powerful, concentrated explosion at the Villainess, blasting her away in a shower of dirty green slop and with a scream.
The crowd cheered, the Pro Heroes rushed in. Izuku released a breath he didn't know he was holding.
While the Pro Heroes reprimanded him for his suicidal actions, another watched from atop a building. Her eyes looked quite… disappointed.
But not at him.
'No Quirk, a frail body, awful stamina, and he just rushes in, huh? This kid isn't some random boy. He's a true Hero. I must speak to him quickly.'
Later on, the crowd dispersed. The Pro Heroes privately thanked him for his solution, yet still warned him about doing it again, lest he really falls into trouble for it. Especially because he was a male, some might be prejudiced against him. No one was fatally injured, thankfully, and Izuku continued walking back home.
"Kid."
He spun around to the voice, seeing All Might standing there, in her true form.
"A-All Might? What're you doing here?" he asked, making sure not to shout.
She looked guilty and ashamed, "I came, because…I wanted to apologise for what I said; I take it back. I saw you save that girl."
Izuku panicked. "I'm s-sorry! M-My–"
"Your body moved on its own," She adapted a knowing smile, "I know what that feels like. That's why I need to tell you this. You can be a Hero, a Pro Hero."
His vision started getting blurry, "...B-But I can't, I don't have a Quirk."
Yagi smirked.
"You will if you're willing to listen to what I have to say." Her claim made Izuku's face snap up to gaze at her with unnatural speed.
Good, she had his undivided attention.
"I was once also Quirkless, like you, kid. My former teacher, when she met me, said that she saw a rare spark in me, one of a true Hero. She saw my issue, though, but offered me a solution. Her Quirk… it could be passed down. She transferred it down to me, telling me to fulfil my dream and become the Symbol of Peace. Now, I choose to pass it down to you. Become my successor, and be the future Symbol of Peace, boy. Become the world's ray of hope."
Something wet impacted the pavement, and Izuku realised they were tears, streaming down his face. It started with a sob, and then the gates were opened; he wailed uncontrollably, falling to his knees, overcome with emotion.
"You can become a Hero."
"Man, what the fuck is this?!" is what you're probably thinking...
If you're tired of me doing rewrites, don't worry. This isn't a rewrite.
This is a whole new story, bitches. Yup. The old story barely even had a proper plot, this one though... big plans, people.
Beta'd by NourthSouthGorem and inspired by Total Command by Epsilon110.
Chapter 2, 3, and 4 are already done, but they need to be beta'd, and I need to start on chapter 4 for Game of DxD. If you have any questions, PM me.