Hey guys! Welcome to chapter two! I'm sorry this took a while for me to write, there was some school stuff and I found it slightly difficult to put my idea into words (is that called writer's block or something?). I'm aiming for weekly updates from now on, or, if I've got stuff to do, biweekly. No guarantees though (let's be honest, it's prob gonna be biweekly all the time). Hopefully I won't have to make you wait too long! Thank you for all the people who followed or favorited this fic. I genuinely didn't expect all this support. You all are amazing! Anyways, on with the chapter!

TW: Suicide baiting, attempted suicide, bullying (I have no idea if this is a trigger or not), suffocation (again, don't know if this is a trigger, putting it here anyways just to be safe), blood. If you feel uncomfortable reading these topics, you probably shouldn't continue reading.

Izuku went to school as usual, humming lightly to himself. A rough shoulder shoved him out of the way, and Kacchan snarled, "What're you looking so happy for, huh? That stupid smile on your face makes me sick. Don't get in my way, nerd!"

Izuku, being the good boy he was, listened to Kacchan's advice and put his usual poker face on. He had to make Kacchan happy, because Kacchan was his only friend. So, he had to listen to Kacchan. Classes started without anything else much happening, and the day went on.

His breath hitched when the teacher started talking about their future paths. He'd been bad and applied for U.A., the hero school. Kacchan taught him so many times that quirkless people couldn't be heroes, but he just was too stubborn and couldn't let go of those dreams. He felt so guilty doing what Kacchan had told him not to, but he did it anyways.

The moment the teacher said he was applying for U.A., Izuku shrunk up from all the eyes cast upon him. Kacchan's disappointed gaze burned on his skin, and before he knew it, Kacchan had started teaching him again. An explosion sent him flying backwards, yet when he tried to apologize for his stupid behavior, meaningless stuttered excuses slipped out instead. He knew excuses weren't going to make Kacchan forgive him, yet a selfish part of him wanted Kacchan to actually listen to those excuses and let him be a hero.

But Kacchan didn't listen. He kept on insisting Izuku was weak, worthless, and incapable of becoming a hero. And he was probably right. Yet Izuku was so obstinate, refusing to apologize.

Several new burn marks were scattered across his skin. He always had to wear long sleeves, even in summer, to cover his injuries up. Mom would ask if he was fine, noticing the way he winced every now and then, but he always pretended he was fine. Kacchan was only teaching him, after all. He wouldn't want his best friend to get in trouble for doing the right thing. His heart ached a little when Kacchan blew up his notebook, but he probably deserved it.

"If you want to be a hero so badly, take a swan dive off the roof and pray you'll get a quirk in your next life."

Izuku froze when he heard his best friend utter the cruel sentence casually, without looking like he so much as regretted it. Why would Kacchan ever say something like that to him? Why would he want Izuku to die? Wasn't he trying to teach Izuku just because he didn't want Izuku to die trying to be a hero? How could he say something like that to his friend?

Because he's not your friend, he's your bully. A sly voice in his mind unhelpfully offered the thought, but Izuku ignored it. Kacchan wasn't bullying him. Like Kacchan always said, he was just doing this so Izuku could learn his place.

Right?

His mind was in a haze as he subconsciously walked his way home. He barely even registered himself picking up the burnt notebook floating in a pond. When a villain made entirely out of sludge attacked him, he didn't panic. He just felt numb, holding his breath as he hoped for someone to come and save him.

Or maybe he hoped he could die, right there and then.

He didn't really know anymore.

As his oxygen started running out, his lungs set on fire and his head pounded, as if someone was repeatedly slamming it with a bat. No one seemed to be nearby. Vaguely, he could hear the sludge villain wrapping around him talk about something like taking over his body once he died.

Maybe I should let him kill me. At least that way, I'll die useful.

And so, he let go of his little remaining breath.

When the sludge filled his lungs, he felt a sense of calm and peace. Right before everything faded to black, he heard a shout of "I AM HERE!". But he was probably hallucinating. No way the All Might would save a quirkless nobody like him.

When he woke up, instead of heaven (or hell), the first thing he saw was All Might's face.

Yep, definitely hallucinating.

As he gazed in awe at his All Might signature, an idea struck him.

He should ask All Might if a quirkless trash like him could possibly be a hero.

If All Might said yes, then Kacchan would definitely let him become a hero! There was no way the number one hero's judgement was wrong, after all. He would get to prove Kacchan wrong!

He shook his head. No, he shouldn't be trying to put Kacchan in the wrong. Kacchan was always right.

Still, the idea of asking All Might was brilliant. And so, he turned his head to ask the hero, only to realize he was already leaving. In a desperate, reckless attempt to get a chance to speak with his idol, he clung on to All Might's leg as he set to the skies in a powerful jump.

They got onto a rooftop, where All Might berated him for being foolhardy. He winced a little at that. Even All Might thought he was idiotic. But All Might was about to leave again, so, he desperately shouted out the question.

"Can someone without a quirk become a hero like you?"

But when he looked again, a skeletal man stood in the place of All Might. He freaked out, his first thought being that the man in front of him was an impostor. All Might lifted his shirt to show Izuku a gruesome scar, and explained what had happened. Izuku felt a spark of hope light up. If All Might had these injuries holding him back, then surely, he would be more sympathetic to quirkless people for their weakness. Then, maybe, he'd say yes to Izuku's question.

"Pro heroes are people who put their lives at risk daily. It would be a lie if I told you that a quirkless person could be a hero."

The harsh, but truthful words hit him like a truck.

Izuku felt like he was underwater, All Might's voice becoming unclear as the man walked away.

He should have known. Everyone told him the same thing over and over again, but he just didn't listen. And, now? Even All Might, the person Izuku had looked up to ever since he was a child, had cruelly torn those dreams apart.

He understood now. He was born quirkless. So, he had no future, no worth, no anything. No matter how hard he tried, he would always just be a useless Deku.

"Hey, did you guys know Izuku's name can also be read as Deku?" Kacchan, still in kindergarten, asked, eliciting a bunch of shaking heads.

"You can read my name's kanji?" Izuku's eyes widened with amazement. "That's so cool!"

"Deku kinda sounds like dekunobou if you think about it, right?" Kacchan ignored him and continued on talking. "Do any of you remember what dekunobou means?"

One kid piped up, "I know! It means a wooden doll or puppet, right?"

Kacchan smirked. "Yeah, but it also means good-for-nothing. Pretty fitting for a quirkless loser like Deku, huh?"

Izuku had never heard Kacchan refer to him with his real name again.

Through a vision blurred with tears, Izuku realized just how close to the edge of the building he was.

"If you want to be a hero so badly, take a swan dive off the roof and pray you'll get a quirk in your next life."

Kacchan's words from earlier today flitted across his mind. Looking back now, he didn't understand why past him had been so shocked. Kacchan had been genuinely trying to help him, to give him good advice. With how crappy his life was right now, starting over seemed pretty good.

Were there even other options to begin with? No matter what path he chose to take, the undeniable fact that he was quirkless would always come back and smack him in the face. It would be better to do everyone a favor and end his bleak, hopeless life.

He stood at the edge of the roof, the cool wind gently caressing his face. His shoes were placed neatly and carefully beside his backpack, a short note to his mother put under the backpack so the wind wouldn't carry it away.

He took in a deep breath, a smile gracing his lips as he stared at the streets down below. No one would be nearby, he knew. With the plume of smoke across town, all nearby heroes would be drawn there. Nobody would be around to 'save' him. He didn't want anyone to.

He let go of the railing and leaned forwards.

And as he fell, he didn't feel scared, or regretful. He felt relieved.

He hit the ground with a series of sickening snaps and crunches. His right leg broke. His right arm broke in four different places. His left leg bent at an impossible angle, ripped open to the bone. Blood trickled from the back of his head. Pain spiked in every single section of his body. The seconds filled with white-hot pain seemed like millenniums to him.

How am I not dead yet?

I hope I'll die soon.

It'd suck to lie here like this for hours until I died.

There were tingles all over his body, intermittent with waves of pain. As blood gurgled up from his esophagus, he started to choke on it.

Please, shorten this agony for me.

I just want to die.

His brain screamed for oxygen, his vision growing blurry. He could vaguely see a boy with spiky blond hair near him.

"Kacchan?" he weakly forced out the word, resulting in him coughing up more blood. Kacchan's eyes widened with horror as he began to back away from Izuku, one shaky step after the other.

Why're you so scared? Isn't this what you told me to do?

"I did... what you told me to. Why aren't you happy?" Izuku asked, making Kacchan back away even faster, until he turned around and straight-up ran.

"Don't... go..." Izuku reached out his hand towards Kacchan's shrinking silhouette, and darkness filled his vision.

The strings attached to the wooden puppet were snipped off, and it slumped onto the floor, limp and unmoving.

Bakugo's heart felt as if it had taken a hammer and was trying to fucking smash his ribcage apart. He blindly ran, away from the childhood friend he had just witnessed committing suicide. On the edge of his hearing, he could hear Deku's outstretched hand fall to the floor with a thud.

"If you want to be a hero so badly, take a swan dive off the roof and pray you'll get a quirk in your next life."

He hadn't meant it. He fucking hadn't. It had just slipped out of his mouth when he was pissed, but he didn't have the guts to take it back, because Katsuki Bakugo was never wrong. He didn't make mistakes. If he suicide baited someone, then they deserved it.

Or at least, that's what he wanted himself- wanted everyone to believe. He had been born with a perfect quirk and had perfect grades along with perfectly clean records- albeit the last one being due to all the times teachers had turned a blind eye to your blatantly obvious bullying, his conscience cutting him off.

Fuck off, he told his conscience.

He didn't bully people, he simply taught the weaklings their place.

Like how you 'taught' Izuku to jump off a roof?

SHUT UP!

As he walked down the streets, the pungent smell of smoke filled his nostrils. Immediately, he looked up, and, well, let's just say a giant cloud of smoke is pretty hard to miss.

If he had seen the smoke fifteen minutes ago, he would've ignored it and went the other way, thinking the heroes would take care of it.

No heroes showed up when Deku jumped off a roof.

He quickened his pace, and soon, he reached where the smoke was coming from, where a crowd of people were already there to watch the action, making Bakugo have to shove his way through.

From what he could see, a villain made out of sludge had taken a fire-quirked civilian hostage and was currently trying to suffocate said hostage. The suffocating man, panicking, set his surroundings on fire, hence all the smoke. None of the heroes had quirks able to close in on the villain and the hostage, who had practically made his surroundings a live minefield, anywhere threatening to set ablaze without warning. Instead, the heroes were currently focused on getting other civilians out of the fire and putting the flames out.

If this goes on, that guy's gonna die.

And so, without thinking, he rushed forwards, ignoring the heroes' surprised shouts.

"Kid, what are you doing? Stay back!"

Using his explosions, he propelled himself up into the air, where the fire couldn't reach him. Almost immediately, he spotted a weakness on the villain- its eyes, the only solid part of its body. He launched himself forwards and sent multiple blasts at the villain's eyes, and it(?) (I have no idea what gender the sludge villain is) howled in pain, instinctively letting go of the hostage, who Bakugo pulled back to safety.

Being blinded, the sludge villain knew it was at a huge disadvantage, and gave himself up, willingly letting the police contain him.

"Good job, kid! If you ever become a hero, my agency will always welcome a young man full of potential like you," A hero at the scene said, and Bakugo had to suppress the urge to roll his eyes. You think I haven't had adults sucking up to me for my quirk since I was four?

Bakugo soon slipped away before reporters could bombard him with questions. On his way home, he tried his best not to think about De- no, Izuku.

A green-haired teen lay in a pool of blood, his broken limbs bent at gruesome angles-

He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the memory. While doing so, he walked right into a skinny blond man with sunken blue eyes, who immediately fell over and started coughing- holy crap WAS THAT BLOOD?

"K-Kacchan?" the green-haired boy said weakly, his voice barely above a hoarse whisper. He began coughing, Bakugo's heart missing a beat when blood left the other teen's mouth.

"I- er, how do I explain this?" The blond man got up, as if he hadn't just COUGHED UP BLOOD, "I've... Kinda been looking for you."

"Yeah, that's totally not creepy at all." Bakugo replied casually, while trying to calm his racing heart. "Um... are you alright? You coughed up quite a bit of blood there."

"Oh, don't worry about that! It's an old injury," the man replied, lifting up his loose white t-shirt to show a crater-like wound that seemed fatal. "And, erm, about the whole looking for you thing, I believe I may have phrased this wrongly. I am not stalking you, I simply saw your heroic deed just now and wanted to talk to you about it."

"Oh, brilliant, so you're a reporter?"

"No, no! I simply want to converse with you, that's all."

"Yeah, whatever you say." Bakugo scoffed. "So, what did you want to talk about?"

"Why did you jump into the danger recklessly? There were heroes handling the situation, you didn't need to rush in and save the hostage."

"Are you fucking hearing yourself right now? Those heroes were busy saving other civilians. They didn't do shit about the actual hostage. If I hadn't stepped in, that guy would've died."

"Don't you think that's a little harsh on the heroes? They were trying their best."

"Well, their best wasn't enough. Their quirks weren't well-equipped for dealing with the situation. I'm just being realistic here. If the heroes aren't gonna do their job properly, I'll save everyone for them."

The blond man laughed. "You truly have a heroic spirit, young Bakugo. I have decided to give you my quirk!"

"..."

"What?"

The blond man scratched the back of his head awkwardly. "It sounds really weird without context, doesn't it? I definitely should have prepared more for this. Well, first things first, I guess I should tell you that I am ALL MIGHT!"

He transformed into a muscular form before yelling those last two words, and Bakugo looked him up and down. Yep, definitely All Might. The man proceeded to turn back into his skeletal form (while coughing up a lot more blood) and explained what his quirk, One For All, was. It was a crazy story to Bakugo- a quirk that stockpiled more and more energy as it was passed on from one generation to another. And now All Might was offering to pass that quirk to him.

"I truly believe you deserve to receive this quirk."

A bloody, trembling hand reached towards him.

I don't.

I don't deserve it.

"Well?" All Might looked at him expectantly.

"I'm sorry, but I need a while to- to think it out, and ask for my parents' permission, all that." Bakugo forced the torrent of emotions rising up his throat back down, keeping his voice carefully neutral. "Could you give me a few days to consider everything?"

"Of course," All Might responded. "I'll meet you three days later at Takoba Beach Park."

"The trash-filled one?"

"No one ever goes there, so it'll be easier for us to keep this a secret." All Might winked, and headed off to god knows where.

Bakugo was lost deep in thought as he made his way back home. Today had been the biggest mess in his life, and he wanted nothing more than to collapse on his bed and get eight hours of rest. At the same time, he dreaded opening the door, and finding his old hag and old man crying over Izuku's death. Some part of his heart still held out hope that Izuku hadn't died, that he was alive and in some hospital, not lying on the street in a puddle of bloo-

He stopped dead in his tracks, finding himself at the exact same street where Deku had jumped off a roof.

Where a corpse was supposed to be, he found nothing but bricks. Not even a drop of blood was on the floor.

OMAKE: How Kurogiri got rid of the puddle of blood

Kurogiri: Shigaraki told me to clean up the scene, so I guess I should get rid of this blood.

*opens portal to random place underneath the blood*

Kurogiri: I sure hope I didn't drop that on a person, that would've been confusing for them.

Kurogiri: Eh, whatever. It's not like they'll be able to trace it back to me.

Toga: *minding her own business (aka stabbing people) *

*random blood drops from the sky*

Toga, being Toga: *drinks it*

Toga: That is the best tasting blood I have ever drank and I will not rest until I find whose blood that is.

(I like to think quirks affect how a person's blood tastes so there are pretty much infinite kinds of blood flavors, and for whatever reason, quirkless people's blood tastes the best) (Don't ask me how quirkless people's blood taste different from each other) (This isn't canon to the fic anyways, just randomly thought of this and didn't want the idea go to waste) (So it doesn't necessarily need to make sense)

My motivation when I was planning this out in my head: EEEEEEEEEEE

My motivation when I actually sit down to type it out: adios

Aaaand that's all for this chapter! If you enjoyed, maybe consider following and favoriting? You don't have to, but it lets me know you guys like this and I'll gain motivation to write more (: Feel free to leave your thoughts or constructive criticism in a review, and I'll see you all next chapter. Bye!