AN: I'm suffering a heavy dose of writer's block for Old Souls, Part II, I tested positive for COVID last weekend, college started up again, and I really want to keep a promise to one of my readers that I'd update this story two weeks ago. With that said, I decided to make a small chapter about Izuku's teacher from his previous life. If I decide to make any more prequel-esque chapters, I'm going to refer to them as "Previous"

Also, I just wanted to mention now, that everything in MHA has been given an age lift here. Aldera is a high school. U.A is a college.

Outworld (Before returning to the cave)

Izuku stared at the ground, wondering how things had gotten this bad.

Mileena had been captured, and they couldn't find her. Instead, he'd gleefully led his friends into a trap just because he wasn't thinking straight. It was a miracle that they hadn't gone up against any stronger opponents.

As it stood, Kenshi and Izuku had taken a pretty heavy beating. Between their injuries and the fact that Shao Khan's forces were looking for them, the journey toward the caves had been slow.

"Are you sure you don't need a fire?" Kenshi asked.

Kung Lao nodded. "I'm sure. I was trained to fight in these conditions. Besides, this is Outworld. It's not even that cold!"

"Fires are too much of a risk anyways. We'll just have to rub our arms if it gets too cold. You both go to sleep. I'll take the first watch" Izuku stated.

"No, Izuku. You need your rest. I am in the best condition right now. I will take the first watch." Kung Lao replied.

Izuku, seeing no fault in Kung Lao's argument, nodded, before laying down on the ground.

For a few minutes, everything was quiet. However, Kung Lao broke the silence.

"I'm just curious about something." Kung Lao asked, turning to Izuku.

"Whatever question you got, make it quick. I want my beauty sleep."

"How did you meet your teacher? From the sound of it, before he went mad, he seemed to be a good man."

Izuku smiled. "He was. It was his obsession that destroyed him." Izuku sighed.

"Sit down. I'm gonna tell you a story."

Previous: Sensei

Izuku really should have realized he was going in over his head.

In his defense, many fourteen-year-old boys have the tendency to do stupid things, but he felt this was really taking the cake.

Stealing from a gang? What had he been thinking?!

And now, with a knife-covered hand pointed at his throat, all he could do was glare at the criminal in front of him.

"You sure, boss? This one's got spirit. He could be useful."

"No one steals from us and lives to brag about it, Akira. Besides, he's just street trash. No one's gonna miss him."

Akira sighed. "Sorry kid. You really should've minded your own business."

However, as Akira raised his hand to strike, a shadow dashed across the alley.

"What was that?!" Akira exclaimed.

The "boss" growled. "Nothing good. Mino! Check it out. The last thing we want is more trouble."

A man with fly wings nodded, before going across the alleyway he slowly approached the end of the alleyway, looking back and forth. After a few minutes, he turned to face the boss.

"I'm not seeing anyone. Guess it was a false ala-"

Suddenly, a throwing knife burst through the man's throat, showering the alley with blood. As the other gang members froze in shock, Izuku realized that he now had his chance to escape. Bringing his knee back, Izuku brought it with all the strength he could muster towards Akira's groin. Akira dropped him, screaming in pain. However, before Izuku could escape, a figure leaped from the roof, bringing a katana through the skull of the man that had just held Izuku at quirk point.

Izuku could barely make out what was happening. It didn't help that he got blood over his own eyes. As he hastily wiped the blood from his face, he could see the dark figure dismantling the gang like they were nothing.

A man with a Saw Tail quirk brought his tail down on the vigilante (What else could he be?). The vigilante didn't even look back as he blocked the blow with his katana. As Saw Tail tried to strike another blow, the vigilante jumped into the air, taking out a knife. Landing behind Saw Tail, the criminal didn't even have time to react before the knife slashed his throat. Without even missing a beat, the vigilante tossed the knife onto the sharp end in his hand, and threw it towards the man with a Lizard mutation.

In less than a minute, only the boss remained. Quickly looking around, he saw Izuku. Growling, he used his Telekinesis quirk to grab Izuku by the leg and bring him between the vigilante and himself.

Taking out a knife, he addressed the vigilante.

"Alright, asshole. I'm only gonna warn you once. Drop those weapons of yours, or I'll kill the kid."

The vigilante didn't answer. The boss started to get incensed.

"Didn't you hear me? Drop those weapons, or I'll kill the kid! I'll do it! I'll fucking kill him!" the boss roared.

Without warning, Izuku threw the back of his head against the boss's nose. As Izuku rolled away from his temporary captor, the vigilante swung his katana with all his might. The boss's head flew into the air, before landing right next to the decapitated body.

As the masked man began cleaning his weapons, Izuku looked at the scene, feeling a sense of awe.

What had happened was something he'd always wished to see, but began to start thinking was impossible. A man without a quirk had just taken down an entire group with strong quirks.

"Now what's a kid like you doing here?" the man asked, interrupting Izuku's thoughts.

"I'm 14!" Izuku replied back. "Besides, it's not like sneaking past gangsters is my favorite hobby. I just needed some money. Some of my friends are sick and the only pharmacy around marks up medicine for Quirkless and mutants."

The man stared at Izuku for a few moments, before tossing him a bag.

"There. Find yourself a doctor that actually follows their oath." he stated.

Izuku opened the bag, taking a look inside. The stacks of yen would no doubt be enough to buy the medicine Himiko and the others needed. Sighing in relief, he turned to the vigilante."Thanks. Guess I owe you-"

The man was gone.

"-one." Izuku finished. Shaking his head, Izuku turned away and headed back to Sunflower Orphanage.

A Week Later

Izuku kept hitting the punching bag, letting his frustration from the awful day he went through bleed into his blows. The punching bag wasn't much, just PVC pipes, carpet, and tape wrapped together onto the vague shape of a bag, but it did wonders for letting Izuku take his anger out it rather than risking letting it out on the street.

Today had been, to put it bluntly, horrible. First, the police had come and harassed the homeless men that had been protecting the orphanage. It was only after Izuku threatened to leak the video he'd taken of their abuse that the police hadn't arrested anyone. Then, Dabi had come back, half dead. It was only after a lengthy interrogation by both Himiko and Izuku that he revealed he had been putting himself in underground fighting rings so that he could fund the orphanage. To top it all off, Bakugo had somehow gotten even worse over the past few years Izuku hadn't seen him. Izuku had recently started high school in Aldera, and if he thought middle school was terrible, Aldera seemed to be in a league all on its own. Izuku could already tell the next four years were going to be hell on earth.

Suddenly, the door opened. Izuku stumbled on his punch, tumbling onto the floor. Quickly getting up, he fell into a fighting stance.

"Who's there?!" Izuku exclaimed. The man raised his hands to his side, showing that he was unarmed. Stepping out of the shadows, the man revealed himself to be the vigilante that saved him last week.

"Calm down. I'm not here to hurt you." the vigilante stated.

Izuku sighed. "You've got a funny way of showing it. Ever heard of knocking? How'd you even get past the guys outside?"

"You mean the homeless people? I just came in through the roof. I must say, I never expected an orphanage to have actual guards outside."

"Yeah, well, after the last asshole tried to set this place on fire, we needed some people outside to deter them from thinking it was a good idea. Tezuka and the others volunteered as soon as we told them what had happened. I don't know where we'd be right now without his help."

"I can see that. What the hell is wrong with this place? Where's your funding? I know that the government should be allocating a budget for orphanages."

Izuku scoffed. "Budget? That budget's a fucking joke. Interns of Pro Heroes get higher starting pay than even the most popular orphanages in this country. Besides, the only kids here are Quirkless or Mutants. No one wants us, not even the government. We haven't had a social worker touch this place in all the years I've lived here."

Izuku began punching the bag again, his frustration once again bleeding into his blows.

"In the eyes of the oh-so-wonderful country of Japan, we don't exist, unless it's for someone else with a quirk to punch down to make themselves feel better."

The vigilante was silent for a few minutes. Neither Izuku nor the stranger said anything to each other.

The vigilante was the first to break the silence.

"The way you escaped from the man with the knife hand quirk and the boss of that gang? That was some quick thinking."

"Yeah, well, gotta think fast if you want a chance to get into U.A without a quirk."

"U.A? You're planning to enter the top hero university in the country?"

Izuku realized he said too much. He sighed. "Forget it. You're just gonna leave in a minute, anyways."

The vigilante sat down. "I'm not criticizing. I just want to know, why?"

Izuku stared at the man for a few seconds. "Really? No lecture about how it's unrealistic, or how I've got my head in the clouds, or that I'm gonna get myself killed?"

"No. I just want to hear the reason you want to get into U.A."

Izuku stared at the bag, wondering how to explain himself to someone that was actually interested in his dream.

"When I was a kid, there was this video I used to watch all the time. A disaster hit the Chiba Prefecture, and a hero ended up making his debut by saving over a hundred people in less than ten minutes."

"All Might. That video you used to watch was his debut?" The man replied.

Izuku smiled. "Yeah. That video…it may have terrified my mom, but to me, it was the opposite. It gave me hope. Hope that I could one day make the same impact All Might did, to save people with a smile. I thought to myself, When I get a quirk, I'm gonna be just like him"

Izuku's smile dropped. "The next day was the day that all came crumbling down. My doctor said, to my face, that I should just give it all up, because I'd never gain a quirk."

Izuku turned to the man, rage clear in his eyes.

"In the span of one month, I lost everything. My mom abandoned me in an orphanage, my best friend turned on me and began beating me up in front of the entire school just for a laugh, and I became a pariah to society, all because of a genetic defect I couldn't even control!"

Izuku turned away from the man and began to hit the punching bag again.

"That's why I want to be a hero. I don't just want to save people anymore. I want to look the people that threw me away in the eye and tell each and every one of them that they were wrong about me. That just because I wasn't born with superpowers, I could still be a hero. I want to give kids that are in the same situation I'm in hope that they can crawl out of the stigma this damn country smothered them in."

The vigilante said nothing. Izuku sighed again. "Well, that was my reason, Go ahead, laugh it up."

"I already told you, I have no intention of criticizing you. Besides, what you said…would you believe me if I told you I've met many heroes who don't even have a tenth of the resolve you hold? Most of them only became heroes for money or fame. They didn't become heroes to help others."

"Believe me, I know a guy exactly like that. He only wants to be a hero so he can have an excuse to beat people he doesn't like. Unfortunately, it looks like everyone's giving him a pass on his atrocious behavior simply because he's got a strong quirk."

"That shouldn't be happening. Japan has the strongest hero presence out of all other countries, and yet our standards have fallen so low people like Endeavor are allowed to become the Number 2 Hero in this country! Endeavor, a man who was rumored to have killed his own son and sent his own wife to a psychiatric hospital!"

Izuku thought back to Dabi and the scars that had never healed. He never explained where he had gotten them, but Izuku had a few ideas, none of them good.

Especially when he noticed that Dabi seemed to spend a lot of what he earned on black hair dye.

"Well, what do you expect me to do about it? All I can do right now is train myself up and hope I can change the system somewhere down the road, and that's if I can make it past everything in U.A, much less actually getting accepted into that university!"

The vigilante stood up.

"You don't have to train alone." he stated.

Izuku paused, doing a double take. "Wait a second, are you-"

"I am. I want to teach you everything I know. I want you to get into U.A and prove to this country that others shouldn't get a pass on their behavior just because of their powers."

Izuku chuckled. "Well, that's a tall order, isn't it?"

"It is. That's why I will warn you right now, I expect nothing less but the best from you. If you start slacking off, then I'll end these teaching sessions of ours."

"I can handle it." Izuku replied, a smile present on his lips.

The man took off his mask, revealing a rather chiseled face and long dark hair. Putting out his hand, Izuku could see he was smiling as well.

"Chizome Akaguro, but you can call me Stendhal."

"Izuku Midoriya. Cute name, but I'll just stick with 'Sensei' for now."

"Sensei, huh? I like the sound of that."

And thus, the two vigilantes, one present and one future, tied their destinies together. For better…

And for worse.

AN: Izuku, Kenshi, and Kung Lao took a day and a half to get back to the caves. Normally, they'd have arrived much quicker, but they took a bunch of hits that prevented them from going at their best speed. They also had to worry about Shao Khan's search parties. I forgot to add it in last chapter, so I'm putting it here now.