In the end, I didn't join the League of Villains because I believed in their cause, because I hated heros, or because I wanted revenge.
In the end, I joined the League of Villains because I was dead ass broke.
I was not only two hundred years into the future, and not only in a different country-but a different world entirely; and I was still, somehow, a millennial.
Let's rewind a little.
...
I was nineteen and aching inside; sporting large swathes of heavy purple scaring, hair dyed black and staples grimly holding onto the divide between skin and living leather on my face.
I was sobbing into the long stretch of pale stomach belonging to the prostitute I was clutching to me in the bed of my tiny, stained apartment. I had spent all of the first five minutes fucking her into the mattress, and the last half hour had been spent on crying and cuddling.
"Tell me I'm still pretty!" I hiccuped.
"Oh no-darling, you're still the prettiest!" She soothed, running her fingers through my hair. "Look at those eyes! They're gorgeous! If my eyes were half as pretty as yours...why, I would charge three times my current rate!"
"...really?" I sniffled.
"Really really." She reassured me, giving my shoulder a tight squeeze.
"...I miss my mom!"
I burst into tears again.
...
Ok. Not quite what I was aiming for.
Let's go a little farther back, shall we?
...
I was thirteen and red haired, limbs long and gangly, face spittin mad.
"Isn't it so fucking funny when strong people kick weak people around?! Huh?! Isn't it kid?! You were talking all that good shit a second ago, laughing your fucking ass off! Why aren't you fucking laughing, explosion bitch?! Isn't this so fucking funny?!"
"Aaarrrhhhhhhhhh!" A young Katsuki Bakugou screamed in incoherent rage from underneath where my boot was pressing his face into the pavement. I yanked back on the hold I had on both his arms from behind him.
"Ka-kachan!" Izuku Midoriya gasped from where he sat, bruised and burned off to the side. He sounded completely fucking traumatized. "L-leave Kachan alone!" He sniffled as he forced himself to his feet in order to defend the blond that had put him on the ground in the first place.
"What's that? Is that scrawny little kid you were just kicking into the dirt coming to your rescue?" I lean down to whisper sweetly in the blond kid's ear. "That's fucking pathetic. How weak do you have to be to need that little shrimp to save you?"
"Diiiiiiiiiieeeee!" The little brat screamed, firing off explosions rapid fire right next to my ear. With the angle I was holding his arms back at, I would be half deaf, but otherwise fine.
I cackled evilly as Midoriya Izuku jumped in surprise at the explosions, then shook himself and ran over to grab my shirt to try to shake me off, crying all the while.
...
Ok. Bullying a literal toddler. Another one of the not-my-best moments. Let's rewind just a biiiiiiit more...
...
I was zero years old and I was being pushed out of the vagina of a woman I had never met. I was hot, sticky, tired, and screaming. Red faced and tiny and struggling. Death was still fresh in my mind. I was too hot and too cold and the lights too bright and I couldn't see my eyes didn't work it was all a blur there were hands on me Iwantedtobealoneleavemealone.
I was placed on my new mother's breast and she cooed at me softly.
I threw up what was probably placenta on her shoulder and resumed screaming.
...
Ah. Another one of my greatest hits. But maybe a little too far back. Lets fast forward, just a tad.
...
I was five years old and the world was my oyster. Tiny, cute, blue eyed and red haired, I had recently discovered that magic was real and I could hold it in my hands.
I slowly dialed up the heat of the fire flickering over my palm, and the orange was pushed to the edges of the flame until only a ghostly white fire remained. My skin began to redden and smart. I quickly shook my hand out and cut my quirk until the fire dispersed.
White fire was just so difficult to maintain. It took forever and the concentration of a god to get my fire hot enough to be white without hurting myself, and I could only maintain it a moment so far. It kept wanting to either slip back into a cooler red/orange fire or race on ahead of my current ability, hotter and hotter until eventually, I suspected, it would one day flicker into blue. The margin between the two where the fire was purely white was miniscule. It always wanted to flicker into other colors. White was meant to be an in between color, I think.
Despite my difficulties, I grinned and made a fist around the tight, hot skin of my palm. This was basically magic. I was fucking magic. Me, an uneducated nobody from nowhere, USA. This was...everything I could have ever dreamed of and more, despite the ever looming drawbacks I knew came with being born into this particular family.
I could only hide the fact that my quirk had come in for so long, and then I knew that Todoroki Enji would finally din to turn the full burnt of his attention onto me.
Hah. Full burnt. Ha. Ha. Ha. Fire puns; the lifeblood of this family. Someday, I would find one that Endeavor had not already heard, and in the meantime I would make him regret my birth in my search for it.
My smile slipped a little. I wondered if I would be able to withstand Endeavor's..."training". I recalled something about Shoto getting kicked in the stomach so hard he threw up...? I wish I knew more about what to expect.
I laced my fingers together and then pulled them apart, drawing a web of orange fire between them. Even without me telling it to, the fire quickly rose in temperature, from red to orange and flickering with white before I cut it off and shook out my hot fingertips with a wince and a hiss and much frantic blowing upon my chubby little digits.
Well, if this was any indication of my pain tolerance, then I was fucked.
I thought about a future where Todoroki Enji promised his youngest son to become a man that the boy could be proud of.
Maybe I could just...hold out until then? Endure, so to speak. Endure, and do damage control. I wouldn't let Rei burn Shoto, I wouldn't let Endeavor beat my siblings, I would support them emotionally.
And maybe...just maybe...I could be a hero, too?
I held a flame in my cupped palm. It cast a flickering light over the tentatively growing smile on my face, even smaller than the tiny flame in my palm.
Despite everything, I was feeling optimistic about my future.
Chapter Management