Not all men are created equal.
Some, or most, really, are born into normalcy. Normal Quirk, normal family, normal life, never to leave the small slice of the world they call their life. Others are born into greatness, with abilities far exceeding those around them. They go on to stitch their name into the history books, becoming an inspiration for good and bad alike. Others still are born into less. Be it from a poor family background, a weak Quirk, or no Quirk at all, the world has already deemed them lesser than those around them.
Izuku is that second one.
"Observable Prescience," the doctors called it. Open his eyes, and live through the future. He had learned early that, despite the already mind boggling capabilities that explanation gives it, it could be so, so much more.
Yes, he couldn't look at people anymore, lest they experience the same thing he did, but to him? The pros outweighed the cons tenfold.
Bank robbery? Just move some trash cans around, block enough spots for their getaway vehicle for them to put it in the direct path of a hero. Flash flood? Call in a villain attack beforehand. By the time the heroes realized there wasn't a villain, they'd already have to help with the flood. Supervillains? He could stop them before they even became one just by standing in the right spot. All of this, and he hadn't even scratched the surface of possibilities.
Kind of ironic, how little it mattered in the end.
There was a fire, the kind that got too big too fast to be stopped. The entire apartment building was flaming before the fire department even got there. His room, his home… his mom. It all burned. In the end, the only one who was left were his and his dad.
It took him far too long to notice the connection.
It started slow, at first. He'd be asked about the future, something small, like tomorrow's morning news. "You've got a strong Quirk, son," Hisashi would say, "You've gotta keep using it if you wanna get stronger."
Then he'd started asking smaller details, "What happens on tomorrow's news? A villain attack, you say, what happened? He got caught, well that's good! Do you know what he could'a done to get away? Why am I asking? Well, if you're going to be a hero one day, you need to think of all of the possibilities! Can't have bad guys outsmarting you now, can we?"
He still can't get over how easily he was tricked with that one. It's humiliating even when considering how young he was at the time. By the time he realized what was actually happening, Hisashi had become too dangerous to be stopped. He had-
Izuku jolts, his body seizing at the several thousand volts pumping through his body. When it stops, he slumps down, rubbing at the bulky collar on his neck. If he were to remove his blindfold, he'd see an almost unhealthily thin man lazily pointing a remote at him while watching U.A.'s Second Year Sports Festival.
Almost every news outlet would tell you that this man is to be avoided at all costs. Most know him as Blowtorch, a practically untouchable super villain whose exploits turn away even the most dedicated of heroes. Others call him Warkasi Hisashi, extravagant playboy billionaire with a penchant for drug fueled parties. But only Izuku knows him as Dad.
"Mutterings a bad habit, Izuku, you need to break it," he drawls, not turning away from the screen.
Izuku wasn't muttering, he knew, as that was a habit he broke long ago. He doesn't say anything, though, knowing he's only looking for reasons to flaunt his control over him.
"Hmm… tell me, who's gonna win this year?" he asks, deeming to take his eyes off the screen to look at Izuku.
Izuku sighs, easily seeing it as the order it is rather than the request he disguised it as. "G-give me a m-moment," he responds, pulling himself off of the stained couch.
"Where are you going?"
"O-oh… I don't want t-to risk p-pu-pulling you in w-with me-Sir," he answers, unable to suppress a shudder at the unbidden memories starting to rise.
A brief glance at Hisashi's newest client. The agonized cries of a man who's seen too much. The furious roars of those surrounding him.
The blinding pain of his hand charing. The sickening pops of his skin searing. The mocking sneer of his father's laughing.
"Izuku, I told you not to call me that. Makes me feel old."
"R-right, sorry d-dad." Izuku stammers, making to leave again.
"And stop stuttering, it's unbecoming."
"Y-yes si-dad," he winces at the blunder; despite how much is riding on this, he still can't help but dread the consequences of disobedience. He doesn't try to suppress the stutter, though. It needs to sound believable, afterall.
He doesn't feel the collar go off, so he leaves before Hisashi starts feeling chatty. In reality, he already knows who's going to win, having seen it several days prior. He learned early on that it was far too risky to go through life not knowing what was going to happen. Not here, anyway.
He lets himself slide down a wall, gripping at the blindfold he wears to stop any more accidents with his Quirk. He's not worried about keeping up appearances, having done this enough times to know no one will bother him.
He can feel it; the fraying at the edges of his mind. The lines of thought abruptly cut off by an indistinct something that he can't quite put his finger on. The throbbing numbness just behind his eyes. He's starting to fade, and there's still so much he needs to do.
A particularly big pulse pushes the deadened feeling further through him. Maybe he could get a quick break in? Just long enough for him to be able to regain a little coherency. Then he'd get back to…
A memory, unbidden, fills his thoughts.
"Ten dead in bank robbery gone wrong. The supervillain, Blowtorch, strikes again at a local bank, holding several hostages while two unknown villains broke into the vault and stole millions. Though promising to leave the civilians unharmed if given a getaway vehicle, several were found to have been executed upon his leave…"
Izuku remembers that. The moment Hisashi decided to let his cruelty spread to his job. The moment that cemented him as an official supervillain.
The moment he promised to escape.
"Izuku? You alright?" Hisashi's voice cuts through his thoughts.
'Just a little longer.'
"I-I'm coming!" Izuku calls back, pushing himself off of the wall and pointedly ignoring the nothingness slowly filling his head.
He walked back in, stiffly sitting beside his dad as the announcer roared something he didn't quite catch. An uneasy silence filled the room, the constant drone of the TV the only source of noise before Hisashi gives an impatient "So?"
"Wh-Oh, t-the winner, r-right. Th-" He stiffens suddenly as another round of jolts come from his collar.
"Stuttering," he reprimands, not even glancing away from the screen.
He resists the urge to point out the irony of trying to keep someone from stuttering by electrocuting them, and instead lets out a slow "… Mirio… Togata," being extra careful to keep the tremor out of his voice.
"Right, thanks."
Another long silence, another bout of anxiety fueled doubts.
"Well it's boring if I know how it'll end." Despite knowing it was coming, Izuku tenses anyway. "Here," Hisashi says, standing up as he tosses the remote to his son, "Find us something to watch."
Izuku listens to him walk away, straining his ears until he's sure he's gone before getting to work. He makes sure to switch the channel before starting- 'Don't want another repeat of last time.' -and proceeds to flip the controller over.
"Izuku!" 'Fuck! He wasn't supposed to say anything until he got back! He shouldn't be back already! Did I remember to hide the beers behind the milk this time? Oh fuck what if I forgot, I can't-' "You want anything?"
He strains his ears, but can't hear him walking back. 'Just a deviant,' Izuku thinks with a shuddering sigh. "N-no thank you!" he calls back, quickly pulling off the battery cover, sliding it up his sleeve before setting it face up on the couch.
"Ooh, I haven't seen this one in a while," Hisashi says as he comes back, falling back into his seat.
They fall into yet another silence, this one much longer than the others, only broken by the low din of the television and Hisashi's offhand comments that Izuku doesn't have to respond to. He lets himself fall into an almost sleep like trance, only focusing on the static slowly encroaching on his mind.
This is the worst part, Izuku thinks. Not talking to the psychopaths that often walk the halls of the overly big mansion Hisashi owns, trying to appeal to whatever illogical logic they follow, or trying to discreetly steal things that only he could have a use for. It's the moments in between, the moments of quiet where his only companion is a cacophony of fear and doubts, telling him to stop, that he could leave everything be and it'll all be fine, that this is just good enough.
He ignores them, like always, but it's harder with a head full of cotton.
Eventually, blessedly, Hisashi takes Izuku back to his room, dropping some cheap gas station burger that one of his cronies bought on his desk on his way out. It's only after several hours, what felt like days to him, that he feels comfortable enough to get to work. He carefully takes the tin foil wrapping off of the long cold burger, robotically eating it as he folds and tears the foil into carefully sized pieces.
The collar was something Hisashi had spent millions on developing. It had to be perfect in order to properly contain its intended wearer. Anti-tampering measures would set it off if someone tried to remove it without deactivating it first. A proximity field was set around his room to keep him from leaving, with similar anti-tampering measures to keep those in place. There were enough spare parts in the collar for him to basically be wearing two of them, and all of it was covered in a single solid piece of steel. There was even multiple tracking devices spread throughout it, each more different and complex than the last. Truly, it was a perfect machine.
But not perfect enough.
He runs his hands through his hair, long and disheveled from disregard, and pulls out several more near identical squares of foil. Those are wrapped in several pre-prepared places around his door frame, blocking whatever sensors caused the collar to go off if he tried to leave, while the new ones from his dinner went around his collar, serving to both double block the proximity field and scatter whatever trackers were in there.
He was on the clock, now. It was only a matter of time before Hisashi noticed his signal had disappeared and sent someone to check on him.
Izuku slid the back of the remote between the collar's electrodes and his skin, being extra careful not to pull too hard and set it off. Now, all that was left was the door.
He pulls an unwound paperclip out of the heel of his shoe, twisting it to shape before pushing it into the lock of his door. A quiet click from it told him he'd unlocked it. "Four more," he mumbles absentmindedly.
He pulls out the numerous notebooks he had accumulated over the years and, with a heavy heart, begins destroying his life's work. Nearly a decade of priceless analyses were shredded, and the scraps flushed using his bedroom's bathroom. Not all of them, though, he wasn't stupid enough to ignore just how much Quirks are able to pull off. Some went with him, crammed into pockets with future plans to discard them in more discreet places.
By the time he was done, all that was left were the wire spirals that kept them together. Those were untwisted and retwisted into something resembling a hook, before being pushed through the crack in the door.
He slowly scrapes it along the door, twisting it until he feels them connect with something protruding from the wall. The deadbolt, from the feel of it.
Then he unlocks the four remaining locks, sliding the chain out of the deadbolt, jamming the padlock into the doorframe to get the leverage to work at it, all things that most would find impossible to do normally, much less under a time limit.
Luckily, Izuku had practice.
Just as the last lock clicks open, he throws opens the door, quick enough to make the man about to open it himself flinch back. It is this moment that will make or break him
Izuku charges the man, hoping beyond hope that the villain does the same.
Which he does.
Izuku, despite malnourishment making him much smaller than a boy his age should be, has been around too many dangerous people to not know how to fight them. He headbutts the man with a running start, aiming just below his ribcage.
He knows this won't be enough to take him down, that even with a liver shot, and the running start, he was just too small to do any real damage. But listening to the rasping gasp the man takes, he allows himself to grin. Yes, if he had a running start, he wouldn't have done much.
But the villain had one too.
Izuku is thrown back into the room, the only thing that kept him from breaking his own neck being his bulky collar, but he did it. The man hits the ground, struggling to take in a breath as he clasps his chest, trying to find some relief for the agony he is now undoubtedly in.
Izuke doesn't allow himself to celebrate, ignoring the much different kind of static spreading through his head as he scrambles to his feet and sprints out of the room
He runs blindly, the blindfold negating any sight that would be gained from the moonlight filtering through the windows. It doesn't matter, though; he's lived here long enough to be able to make this run with his eyes closed.
'Which,' Izuku sighs, 'Is exactly what I'm doing.'
His path is wild and incomprehensible to the outside viewer. For him, however, it's the perfect balance of speed, stealth and efficiency that allows him to avoid any unfortunate meetings with the building's residents.
Turning into a seemingly random room, he jumps, tucking his head under his arms and turning his body parallel to the ground. As glass shatters around him, he hears an alarm start to blare from somewhere in the mansion.
Izuku hits the ground and rolls, his only injuries being a number of small cuts running up his forearms. He doesn't slow as he runs to the wall, hitting it full tilt and using his momentum to easily climb to the top.
Then it hits him
For the first time in almost a decade, he's outside. Air, not choked up by the scent of cheap beer and cigarettes, but real, clean air. In the distance, he could hear the sound of a city he never set foot it. He was out. He was out!
So having to jump back down, back to the hellish place he'd been forced to live in for the better half of his life, was almost harder than getting up there to begin with.
He knows it's too dangerous to run now. Dozens of villains were already pouring out of the mansion, already heading to where he's at. The trail of broken glass, paired with the cuts on his arms smearing blood all up the wall, would lead them to the obvious conclusion. He has no doubt Hisashi would demand everyone go to the nearby city to look for him, giving Izuku free reign to loot the house as he pleases.
And they do. Hidden in the bush, just outside the window he'd jumped out of, he sees Hisashi. Having forced Izuku to do the thinking for him for his entire criminal career, he doesn't stop to contemplate beyond what's in front of him.
Just like Izuku predicted, he roared for his lackies to go to the city, to bring Izuku back. None of them are willing to defy him, so they go without question.
They leave in droves, emptying the mansion in under ten minutes, an impressive time had anyone but Hisashi told them to do it.
Izuku goes back into the building, ransacking the place of everything he'd need to start a new life. When he leaves, he goes out of the front door, knowing full well of all of the security cameras he's passing to do so. He doesn't care. 'Let them see me,' he thinks, 'It's the last chance they'll get.'
He doesn't go to the city he's so desperately wanted to run to for his entire life, instead turning around, and marching into the countryside.
He doesn't let himself feel excited, not wanting to jinx himself and summon any of his dad's goons from wherever they might be. He walks in a trance, clutching the shopping bags full of supplies to his chest as he goes.
He only stops when he feels the first rays of sunlight hit his face, the first rays of sunlight he's gotten in years.
Finally, he lets himself fall, legs that barely walk the length of the building in a week screaming from overexertion.
He'd done it.
He cries, gripping the bags tighter as silent sobs ripple through his body, letting tears he's held back for far to long flow freely.
Tears that don't stop when he comes back.
The blank nothingness that filled his head exploded into a torrent of agony, enough pain to have been blinding if he had opened his eyes.
But that's not why he cries. He was out, if only for a few hours, if only in some blissfully wonderful fantasy cooked up by his Quirk, he was out.
And now he was back. Back in this room, in this house. Only years of practice keeps him from screaming out into his darkened room, from tearing apart the jail cell his father dared to call a home.
He lets himself be devoured by the pain from Quirk exhaustion, if only to drown out the agony of his confinement.
'Tomorrow,' he thinks as he blacks out, 'I leave tomorrow.'
