Izuku Midoriya could not exactly pinpoint the moment when his life went off the rails, but he could make a general approximation.
The day had started normally enough, waking up in a peaceful bliss. Before the various bruises across his body screamed in protest. Let it be said, the initial walk to get cereal was anything but bliss. He almost dropped the bowl from where he had grabbed it when a stray fly landed on his arm.
But after making it out of his house, and going down one of his hidden trails to avoid bullies. Bakugo was a clean freak, no way in fuck was he going down to the sewers, Deku or no. Izuku finally made it to school, climbing out of the manhole in the road, giving a blond man with massively oversized clothes a near heart attack, blood coming out of his mouth in surprise.
However Izuku had no time to observe the man's evident health issue, when he checked the time. 7:43 his watch said accusingly, the blood draining from Izuku's face. He was still in front of the school, and Bakugo arrived at 7:45 every single day. He tapped the manhole cover with his foot by instinct, hearing it click in as he bolted to his homeroom. Izuku just hoped for a quiet day.
"Ah, Midoriya, don't you want to go to U.A. too?"
Izuku slowly leaned back in his chair, an accusing look shot at the ceiling.
"I got the message God. Fuck you too." He whispered, vindicated, as the class slowly turned to look at him. Bakugo already had explosions crackling in his palms.
Izuku cast a contemplative look at the window, debating whether or not the cost of fixing it was worth getting out of here.
Now, after gaining a scorched and soaked notebook, a suicide bait, and a new uniform to fix, Izuku was about to lose it. Hopefully the punching bag at the beach was still there, he wondered idly, although he'd have to get a new Bakugo face cutout for this one. He even used metal for the last one, maybe titanium would hold up better than steel?
Meanwhile, under the manhole. The villain had finally heard someone approaching, finally an easy target he had thought at first! But then he heard the mutterings. Maybe the titanium won't actually break in one punch today, but I'll have to layer it a bit, I don't want to damage it too much. The villain paused, confused and mildly terrified of what he heard, but that frankly intelligent thought got shoved out the window when it hit him.
With a quirk like that, All Might won't stand a chance! With pure stupidity fuelling him, he erupted out of the manhole, cheering mentally and laughing physically when he saw the small, skinny teenager. He surged through the small tunnel, but freezing right before he reached the kid, ice flooding his veins. The kid was fucking smiling (and oh god my eyes are burning) like he had just won the lottery. He was practically bouncing on his feet.
"Oh look, a target!" The boy chirped cheerily, his hands looking almost clawlike in the shaded underpass.
The sludge villain was frozen, and if he could sweat in fear, he would have made the Mustafu Pacific Ocean. That was calculated, the villain thought in horror, the green devil bearing down on him, but damn am I bad at math.
All Might, or Toshinori Yagi in this form, was sprinting as fast as his singular lung allowed, trying to track down the villain that had slipped away into the sewers. He had practically no time left, and running out in the dark and contagious sewers would be horrible. Pneumonia did not tend to end well with a single lung.
He was about to give up the search and send out an alert, when a scream from a nearby underpass alerted him, and he bolted over, about to transform and save the day…and nearly coughed up his lung from shock.
The villain, who he had just been chasing, was now in some sort of demented game of cat and mouse with a teenage boy, but the teenage boy was the cat and the villains eyes were the mouse. Toshinori winced as the kid got another hit on the already damaged eye, the villain letting out a whimper. But then the bloodshot, puffy eyes of the villain latched onto him and sludge swarmed towards him.
Toshinori was blanching, he never thought sludge could pull off a dogeza, but you learn a new thing every day.
"Please sir I'm begging you. I am a villain, take me to the police. I'M BEGGING YOU!" The villain shrieked, shaking violently on the ground. Toshinori had never quite been in a situation like this, but this was his job, no matter how unnerving that smiling teenager was.
"Well, I am a licensed hero, so we can go to the station-" Toshinori started slowly, before he yelped, green eyes appearing inches before his own. The child was looking at him with an awestruck expression, notebook open and pen clicking aggressively in his hand. How does one click a pen aggressively? Not even All Might knows.
But he did know when he saw a fanboy, and knew how to avoid him perfectly. "Sorry kid, I'm just an intern." He whispered quietly to the kid, who pouted, neatly storing away the supplies in his backpack. He gave one last glare at the slime and one more fucking blinding smile to Toshinori, and then he was gone.
Toshinori didn't quite know what to think of that even much later on after he dropped the still cowering villain off at the nearest precinct.
With power like that, maybe he could be my successor? He wondered absentmindedly, before immediately banishing the thought with a chuckle. He did wonder why he heard very faint laughter.
At the same time, Izuku had just taken a sip from his water bottle, which tasted a little saltier than usual.
Now, these events were connected. Because apparently, when Toshinori saw a small teenager claw his way out of a sewer to seemingly get to school, he had spewn blood in surprise, as one does. However, one singular, miniscule drop of blood projectiled across the street, landing perfectly on the slightly open cap of the boy's water bottle. It weasled its way into the bottle throughout the day, until Izuku Midoriya finally took a sip of it at the exact time that Toshinori Yagi thought about passing his quirk onto the boy.
And thus, a transfer was made, and seven ghosts nearly died again, this time of laughter instead of brutal murder.