The ride back to the classroom was a mess, though most of the trouble came with getting to the bus in the first place. Many reporters wanted to talk to them — to him — but the teachers wouldn't allow it and with Cementoss' help to fortify their exits, he and his classmates were rushed onto one bus and sped back to the classroom with none of the other classes around them. His classmates mentioned nothing about his quirkless label, mindlessly congratulating him and Todoroki for their medals; his friends cheered him on more energetically but he could tell they too were shying away from the unsure and confused stare from the rest of their class on the ride back. Even when they had all returned to their homeroom and filed into their seats, the silent aura remained around them all, and Izuku knew it was breathing down his neck.
It was time to let everyone else in on the truth.
Aizawa stood before them all at his podium, face more droopy and exhausted than Izuku had known their teacher to be before, as he looked over all their heads. "You all did good today," he applauded them, though his dry voice didn't bring any applause with it. "You all passed the obstacle course together and displayed worthy teamwork, and those of you who made it into the tournament rounds gave the heroes and scouts a clear understanding of your capabilities and what you can offer to heroes. When we return to classes after the weekend, you will all be selecting your choices for agencies for your work studies. Take the time to rest and consider what it is you want to do before picking an agency from the lists."
No one made any comments. Instead of muttering and mumbling about the possibilities, everyone remained silent around Izuku, and he too fiddled with his medal without a word.
"Fine, I'll bite," their teacher prodded flatly, walking around his stand to stand one meter closer to them. "Do any of you have something you would like to share?"
It was Jirou who raised her hand first. Aizawa nodded for her to speak, but before she did, the purple-haired girl spun in her chair until she and several more of their classmates were looking at Izuku. "Why did Bakugou call you quirkless?"
Straight to the point, Izuku accepted, rolling his tongue a few seconds before answering. "He and I grew up together," he started. "Classmates before coming here. He knew I didn't have a quirk. He knows I'm quirkless."
With the wave of confusion that statement brought to their faces, it was Sato who leaned over his desk to look at him quizzically. "What is that supposed to mean? Midoriya, you have a quirk. You're super strong. Do you mean you didn't know you had a quirk growing up with him?"
"It's not a quirk." That correction didn't make any believers out of his classmates either, and Izuku took in their confusion with another sigh. This was the hole he dug himself in. He wondered briefly what it would have been like being open about his quirklessness from the start and having to navigate the confusing reality of his strength with them along for the ride instead of kept aside.
"How is it not a quirk?" Kirishima pitched the question from his seat in front of Izuku. The red-haired boy looked completely befuddled by the green teen's words, and he could only apologize internally for the confusing mess it really was. "We watched you bat a guy across a lake. You can't do that without a quirk."
Before Izuku could explain himself further, Ashido interrupted, "And didn't you tell us you have a quirk?" She turned her pointed finger on his friends, the only three seated stiff and silent at their desks. "You all talked about it too. Is that not his quirk?"
"That was a lie" — Izuku raised his voice slightly to take the attention back on him, even noticing his friends finally looked his way — "I asked them to tell you. Because I didn't want to tell you I was quirkless. Because I didn't think you would believe me, or care."
Finally pitching in, Ojiro opened with a sigh. "For the record, I didn't like it," he clarified, shooting Izuku a quick look before gazing around the room. "But when I met him he was quirkless, and I saw enough to get why he didn't want to share it. Him being strong as shit is really new, so this isn't some plan to just start calling it not a quirk."
After another second of pause, it was his tall, tentacle-armed classmate who turned a mouth-hand his way. "I saw you at the entrance exam, Midoriya," he reminded the green-haired teen, voice low and soft. "I saw what you did to the Zero Pointer. Would you have still told me you were quirkless then?"
Izuku stared at the frowning mouth, and then up at the confused and questioning eyes positioned behind it. "Yes, I would have." Taking in how the mouth turned away from him mournfully, the green-haired teen gazed through the rest of his class. "I've only known I have this strength for about four months. I have the second toe-joint and the shoe for it. I've grown up quirkless my whole life."
He watched them continue to mull over his words, and how they shook their heads and stared elsewhere without believing him. Kaminari stared directly at him in silence, though, and Izuku nodded his head regretfully telling him it was the truth. The blond swiveled in his seat to look at Ojiro, then to Yaoyorozu, and to Uraraka with the same mute, dead stare. Izuku wished he told him sooner when he did everyone else, or pulled him aside at some point to try and explain it all.
"You said" — Todoroki twisted slowly in his chair, head hanging as though his silver medal was dragging it down — "you were powerless. In our fight. That your body didn't work with you." The heterochromia boy drew his dazed yet inquisitive eyes to Izuku's. "You don't have control over your power. You don't think it's a quirk."
Ah, right. He did let that slip, Izuku remembered his tirade. "I hadn't done anything spectacular until last December. I've barely got any control of it with my own two hands, and I've had more luck using it with a bat. Other than my strength, I've got nothing that resembles a quirk."
Hanta threw his arms in the air, his desk screeching slightly across the ground as his whole body twisted. "How is that not a quirk? You're got, like, Mirko-level strength! We saw you punch Tetsutetsu! In what way could you not have a quirk?"
"I can corroborate his story," their teacher butted in to confirm, much to the silencing shock of several of Izuku's classmates. "For the past few weeks, a few of us in the school's staff — your principal included — have run several tests and meetings with Midoriya to confirm the anomaly of his power. There are several conflicting details between it and what we know of as basic quirk biology, so as we currently stand we cannot determine that his power is a quirk. You can ask your sister class' vice president to tell you the same." The green-haired teen's ears perked up at that, recalling the blond-haired boy's title. "Monoma Neito can confirm what Midoriya has does not resemble a quirk, and can be more closely classified as quirkless, despite its effects."
The news was spreading faster, then, Izuku noted in his head. Monoma must have gone to Aizawa looking for answers, knowing what he did from their fight. But if he was willing to agree Izuku was quirkless, then had he shared all of their information learned thus far? He would have rathered to be the one who had to do it — explain it all himself instead of using his teachers as proxies.
"Mes excuses, sensei," Aoyama spoke up, standing from his desk to look over their classmates to Izuku, "but I still find that hard to believe. My quirk showed up late for me too, Midoriya, but I know it is unmistakably a quirk. I do not have the toe joint myself, but that could simply be a mutation of yours. I know what growing up around other boys without your own quirk is like, and I will not argue you haven't lived it too, but we are not quirkless. We are no longer stuck with that title to our name."
Izuku bit back his tongue from calling out on that , "stuck with," part. The first person he met who had grown up without a quirk for the longest time like him, yet he thought of the title like it was a sickness or chain on his life? Maybe he didn't mean it like that, maybe he did. Before he even had a chance to ask, Aizawa spoke up again.
"We do not expect you to believe us at face value," he told the green-haired teen's class. "This is a mess I am still trying to wrap my head around. The only answer I can give you for certain is that this does not have as simple an answer as you believe it should be. Until sufficient evidence can be found otherwise, this school will continue to recognize Izuku as quirkless in title, and any behavior to demean or target him for such will not be tolerated from any of you. There will be no arguments over this, unless you wish to bring new evidence forward for myself and the principal to consider alongside every other variable we already know." He looked over all their heads, blinking once in his tired stare. "If you can agree to that, you are free to go home and rest the weekend away. I will see you all on Monday." Their teacher took no time to hesitate as he stalked back to his desk and fell into the yellow sleeping back rested against the wall.
No one spoke a word for a short while, either staring blankly at their homeroom teacher or continuing to give Izuku a questioning look. The first person to finally move was Todoroki, slowly standing from his seat with his bag in hand. He looked at the green-haired boy a second, looked down as he fiddled with his own medal, and said, "Congratulations on your win," before he walked away. No snark or bite in his words, but an honest — if distant — tone behind them. Izuku only gave him a nod as he left; he could push to talk to him properly about their day and the fight they had when they came back.
One by one, everyone else began to follow suit. A few faces kept their looks of disbelief at his story and quite possibly the displeasure of being told it wasn't a joke. Sato, Hanta, Kendo, Shiozaki, Ashido, and Aoyama caught his eyes with their frowns before they left wordlessly; others like Jirou, Shoji, Asui and Tokoyami left without staring him down. For a brief moment Izuku wished he was still fully quirkless, having only to deal with the question of whether or not that was the problem instead of the messier conversation his newfound strength was. But that was a life he wasn't in, and shouldn't pile onto his worries over their acceptance of the story now. His classmates before had done worse than them; he wasn't going to hold their doubt against them like a grudge.
Tsunotori stayed in the seat beside him, asking again in English that Izuku said he was quirkless. He explained it again slowly to her, Yaoyorozu providing translation in words he didn't know from her own seat, until he was sure his horned classmate got the full story. Once she ingested it all in another minute, she lunged at the green-haired teen with a hug, a whisper in her native language apologizing that he had to live like that, before she took her things and left peacefully. No confirmation that she believed his side, but no fight against his insistence. He thanked her before she disappeared through the door.
Kirishima was the same, minus the embrace, asking Izuku only if he was the boy on the news, using a baseball bat like he did in their costumes and fighting villains at the mall. He answered truthfully, and the red-haired boy only followed it up with, "I'm happy you're in our class," before he too left.
All that remained in their seats were himself, Uraraka, Ojiro, Yaoyorozu, and — almost center from all their desks — Kaminari. He had gone from looking to them for answers to staring blankly at his own desk in silence, eyes still wide in processing. Unprompted, did he raise his hands to his face and sigh in his palms, rubbing his temple. "So you don't have a quirk," he repeated the information as his first words.
Izuku shook his head, even though the blond boy wasn't looking at him. "I don't think it is," he answered honestly. "I've not really heard of anyone with a quirk having a toe joint, or the other way around. And if sensei can't erase my power and Monoma can't copy it, then it's not anything like a quirk to me."
Kaminari turned to their other friends, bouncing from one head to the other quickly. "And you guys were all in on this whole conversation already. And Iida, I'm guessing."
Uraraka squeaked more than she hummed, nodding shyly to the blond boy. "He told us everything after the villain attack," she explained. "But that's only because we were there to see him when he recovered—"
"I would have pulled us together anyways," the green-haired teen clarified over her. "I was…panicking in confusion that time. I had told you guys either the truth or a lie as I knew them, and I didn't know what was going on anymore. I didn't want it to spiral anymore."
The electric-quirked boy shook a hand in Izuku's general direction. "So you don't channel energy to anything. You made that up."
"I encouraged it," Yaoyorozu admitted solemnly, passing the green-haired boy a mournful glance. "I originally assumed he had a quirk when we first met, and he went along with it. I was hurt too, when he told me the truth" — Izuku shot her an apologetic look in return, one she accepted with a small nod — "but I believe him when he says he's grown up quirkless. I understand why he felt pressured to make up a story on the spot because of my misconception."
Kaminari held his hands up in defense. "I'm not arguing that. I remember the…colorful nicknames people at my junior high had for the quirkless people we read about in history class. We didn't have a classmate like that, but that's probably not a place they'd want to be, either." He looked at Izuku with a pressed frown. "Sorry you had to go through that, man. People are a-holes sometimes."
"Language," their homeroom teacher piped up from his sleeping bag.
"I censored myself."
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner," Izuku replied. "That I was quirkless or when it got this confusing."
The blond shrugged off his concern sluggishly. "I probably would have believed you on the first thing. Don't think I saw you do anything too impressive until the villains attacked."
"That's what I went through," Ojiro shared. "That was a heart attack to see." He pointed the fluffy end of his tail at the green-haired teen. "If I hadn't known you for a year I'd think you were trying to play me for a fool." Izuku took the threat in its jest, gifting him a small smile before looking at his other blond friend.
"It's a bit confusing for all of us," he relayed once more, rising from his desk to inch closer and sitting on the open desk beside Kaminari's. "It probably would have been a lot easier explaining to everyone that I was just lying and I was actually quirkless instead of this not-a-quirk power I've got instead."
Kaminari shook his head, leaping from his own desk and swiping for his bag. "I'd probably worry for you more if you were. At least now you can be true to your roots and kick everyone's ass." He apologized quickly to their teacher as he called out about his profanity once more.
Izuku gave him a wider smile, taking comfort in the blanket of his words. "Thanks for believing me."
"Don't got a reason not to. You ain't a bad guy. Bit rough on the edges, thinking that" — he made another gesture at Izuku's mohawk — "is classy and all, but you've been a nice guy to me. I doubt you'd get the teachers to play into a prank like this. Thanks for being honest."
"I'll do it more often from now on," the green-haired boy promised, taking Kaminari's extended hand in his own to shake it tightly. "No use in being scared about the mess it'll make forever."
The rest of their group followed suit, grabbing their belongings and bowing goodbye to their sensei before leaving together and turning the conversation from the blood in Izuku's body to the gold medal on his neck, courtesy of the electric blond boy moving focus to it. A first of many hurdles in the mess that was exposing himself to the world without restriction — or diluting the mess of an explanation he was in his whole — by winning the Sports Festival in the world's confusion. A good half of his class hadn't believed him, but that was fine. He still had the time to give them his real honesty, confront them with his heart on his sleeve unlike before. He wasn't there to make enemies out of his allies, be his classmates or the heroes teaching him. He was going to be the quirkless hero alongside them.
First things first came being a better class president.
Katsuki felt sick. Though his wrist was healed from its dislocation prior it would not stop shaking in a phantom grip of pain and Deku's hand still wrapped around it. His throat burned from bile and the medicine he was provided for it still tickled his mouth like needles. His skin still felt damp and wet from the splatters of blood that wasn't his, even though it was barely large in its amount and had all been wiped away. He could still see Deku writhing on the ground — hear his screeches of pain and agony in his ears like a faint, unending echo. The cement-morphing hero sat across the room, his powers holding closed a bin Katsuki had dropped to the instant he was dragged into the room. The hero had tried to sit close to him, console him and speak to him but the blond teen dragged himself away until he was no longer in his space.
He didn't kill Deku. Deku wasn't dead. He was fine. Katsuki heard the crowds and All-Might, he knew the bastard was still alive. He didn't kill him. He wasn't a murderer. Why did he have to be here? Why did they let him fight? Why did his quirk suddenly stagger? He wasn't trying to kill Deku. He wasn't a murderer. He wasn't a villain. He wasn't.
The door opened up slightly and in walked the principal, his short form shuffling across the floor to look at him and the cement-bending hero, sporting a dark spot under his not-scarred eye. "I was told I'd find you two here," he greeted, the light tone of his voice grating in Katsuki's ear. "Did Recovery Girl not permit entry to the infirmary during the ceremony?"
"She left early," Cementoss explained. "Family problem with her granddaughter. The nurses wouldn't let him in without a fight, and I've had to close halls from reporters. Is Hound Dog coming?"
"Inui is dealing with the reporters now. He won't be with us for a while longer. And thank you for informing me of the nurses." The small headmaster hummed in thought before nodding his head. "I will have a word with them tomorrow. See if you can reach out to Chiyo about possible new hires. Was she at least able to attend to his wrist?"
Katsuki grimaced and looked away as the other hero nodded and picked up the garbage can. "The boy was feeling sick, as well. She gave medicine for it too before she left." There was more his mouth moved to say that Katsuki didn't hear, and a silent response from the principal that paired with his unreadable stare. "I'll throw this out and be back soon."
"I would like to be left alone with Young Bakugou for a moment, if you don't mind. Thank you for looking after him." The blond gave the principal a look from the side of his eye as the other hero bowed and left, leaving the two in the room. The shorter man(?) took his time closing the distance between them, climbing onto the nearest chair and leaning back against its rest. Katsuki hated this man, the one person with the lone finger to put him down. "I hope you understand why I'm here."
Katsuki scoffed, ducking his head between his knees to glare at the floor. Of course he knew, like it wasn't the most obvious answer in the world. As if being disqualified from the Sports Festival and forced to wait in a room for further instructions didn't make it clear enough what these people thought of him. "Just get it over with."
The short principal hummed. "Very dismissive of you — very mute — compared to our last conversation. But my apologies, I cannot simply 'get it over with.' I do need assurance that we sit on the same page."
"The hell is there to clarify? I fucked up and lost. You're not letting me back in the hero course."
"You did not simply 'fuck up,' Young Bakugou. We made the rules of the event and those placed solely on your shoulders clear from the very beginning. You managed proper sportsmanship with your fellow schoolmates and did not act out in violence unbecoming of anyone else when you were permitted to fight them in the final event. You maintained a proper attitude up until it came to your match with Midoriya and you blew open his scar."
His jaw locked before he could interject again, vision hazy as it replayed the sight of Deku holding his flesh in place. "I wasn't trying to kill him."
"You know the limitations of your quirk," the principal continued on, not acknowledging Katsuki's mutter. "Your body isn't a machine. Too many explosions and you would always run the risk of your body not withholding. But you continued to press, continued to push, and aimed for Midoriya's face on your last legs."
"I didn't try to kill him," the blond insisted, but the short mammal rambled on.
"Aizawa erased your quirk for as long as he could, but thanks to you letting the world know Midoriya is quirkless, he could only hold you back for so long before your insistence to let loose an explosion right on his scar came to fruition—"
Storm rushing in his ears, Katsuki spun on the short principal, gripping the back and a leg of the chair to bring himself into the mammal's face. "I am not a fucking murderer!"
"No, you are not." Unmoved by his proximity or his volume, Nedzu's beady eyes stared back at him. "You are a child, misunderstanding the world, making mistakes…and are now having a panic attack. Breathe, Bakugou. With me. Like so." Katsuki didn't know why his chest shook with every breath, or why the chair in his hands vibrated so violently, or where his hearing had gone, but the repeated motions of the small principal before him was too captivating to look away from. He found himself back on the floor not too long later, limp against the wall as the mammal came down to sit beside his legs.
"Good," the principal told him softly. "Good. Thank you." Nedzu patted a paw on Katsuki's pant leg and stared across the room. "My apologies for pushing you; I did not think you were that unwell. I know you are a closed off boy, and I thought it would be easier to hear the truth from you if I pressed. You did not deserve that."
Katsuki didn't bat away his paw, with his own hands dead in his lap and his thumbs grazing his own knuckles. Why would they need to hear anything from him? They had listened to him before and put him here, and they had seen what he had done now. What could he say that mattered to them anymore?
"I'll take your silence as an opportunity to speak and explain myself to you," the principal continued. "Since our last conversation, I decided to go back into your records and relearn your history before Yuei under the new light of your added perspective. I would like to think I understand you now. Never missed classes, scored good grades, excelled in his courses. No marks or warnings on your record. A clean, good example of a child aiming for heroics. A stark contrast from the warning we received and an odd one compared to Midoriya's records from your last school."
Green hair flashed in Katsuki's eyes again, flicks of flying red and echoes of shrill cries. "I didn't kill him."
"No you did not," the principal confirmed. "Midoriya is fine, recovering well from his own wounds. He and the rest of your schoolmates have already returned to their classes and will be heading home. No one is in danger." Other than himself, the blond noted he failed to mention. "His records from Aldera paint him as intrusive, barbaric, and reporting bad behavior. A far cry from the student he had been thus far, I've noticed. Unbecoming of adults to label a child such things as 'unwelcomed.' I'd say equally concerning the pedestal they forced you on for years.
"Your teachers and your peers paraded you around, so convinced of your future greatness they did not once think to look at who you are and know who you are. Praise of your quirk and your intelligence blotting their eyes. It is their fault in ushering you down this path so haphazardly and without consideration, but I cannot absolve you of all blame. Your actions and your words are your own, encouraged as they might be from the world you grew in. Accountability and understanding of your misdemeanors will still be expected of you."
The blond boy breathed wordlessly out his nose. What he had done? Trying to lure Deku away from getting himself killed? Pushing back the quirkless kid who wouldn't have been able to save himself in a real fight? And he was supposed to apologize? He, who was destined for greatness from the very beginning, apologizing to the one person he knew would become a nobody?
That nobody just kicked his ass, so what did he know anymore?
"I wasn't trying to kill him," Katsuki heard himself whisper. His fingers twitched in his lap, tapping against his legs. "Heroes aren't supposed to kill people."
The short mammal bobbed his head to the side. "Ideally, you are correct. I am glad you believe that. We can save the conversation of circumstance for another time. When I say I understand you, it is not that I am vilifying you for your actions or your words; it is that I understand the society that has molded you and filled within you such strong beliefs you would stand for. That I understand you are a child who has seen but a fraction of the real world and who still has time to learn properly."
Katsuki gazed at the back of the mammal's head, his own body bouncing slightly from his words. "I'm not expelled?"
"Only from the hero course, as you've already been," the short principal clarified, peeking back over his shoulder with a small smile. "I am a principal, not a monster. You children are my responsibility, and it is my responsibility to ensure you all receive a proper education and understand the world as it respectfully should be. This mess falls on my own hands, hoping to leave it up to fate and chance and watch from a distance as the pieces move around the board until it was my turn to play. The reality of this year's events have proved more unstable than I first imagined. The wellness of my students and the need to educate and inform must now take a hands-on priority this year. I will not leave you to the cold winds of the world that will not understand you and what you need to flourish properly."
He still did not understand what the principal of the country's most prestigious hero school saw in him that could be fixed. Bakugou Katsuki was supposed to be flawless, pristine, and perfect. He was strong in a pool of pathetic lots — a star in a backwater district of invisible, faceless extras. He was the only one who could hope to aspire to All-Might's greatness and surpass it in no time at all. All-Might was a man who never killed the villains he fought. That was supposed to be him.
Not this shriveling mess on the ground. Not some pet shot at the knees from reaching his dream. Not some wimp who couldn't put down a single person. Not some crybaby who couldn't keep it together at a skull he ripped open from its flesh. Tens upon hundreds upon thousands upon millions had witnessed him be humiliated and nearly take a life. That wasn't supposed to be him, and yet that was who he had become. That was what he had done. What was there to save in that?
"You'll keep your seat in General Studies under your homeroom teacher, Cementoss," the principal continued. "I will be speaking with your parents on scheduling you for seminars with Hound Dog, to discuss your behavior and give you someone to speak to about this." A paw found its way on Katsuki's trembling hand, pressing gently below the knuckles until it calmed down. "You are not a monster, nor a villain, nor a murderer. You are a child, brash and egotistical, used to being elevated by your peers and looking down on others who tried to stand in your way. If you still dream of becoming a hero, you may get another chance to test for the course at the end of this school year; though to allow that, I must ask you an important question." Though his eyes were of a single, shining black color and the shapes of perfectly round dots on his face, he could feel the void behind them reaching out to his own. "Why do you wish to be a hero?"
Katsuki blinked. "Heroes are the greatest there are," the words left his tongue with ease, a mantra he played in his head for years watching All-Might on T.V. "They're strong, infallible, superior-"
"Yes, yes," the principal interrupted him, "you can tell me everything a hero is verbatim, but that's not what I'm asking from you. Why do you, Bakugou Katsuki, wish to become a hero? Who are you being a hero for? What could you offer the world as a hero other than putting your body on the line? You do not seem the type to vain for fame and fortune. Anyone faced with the chance to become a hero must face this question: what do you hope to do as a hero?"
It should have been an easy answer, one he could bat away with a single sentence, but the words did not leave Katsuki's throat. He was going to be better than All-Might, he had told himself for years, but now he couldn't tell what that meant. He didn't care for the smiles of the people like the number one hero did — truthfully he could do without having to see their mugs in front of him — but All-Might saved people, so that's all he had to do, right? Every hero did that, though. What would be unique about him, with a quirk that was supposed to be unmatched yet lost to someone without one?
"When you find an answer," the principal continued, "bring it to me, and I can see if you are ready for next year's hero course. Until then, you are a student of ours still, and we will continue to help guide you along the path you find for your future. I would like to nurture the true hero within you."
The true hero within him, Katsuki repeated in his head silently as Cementoss and Hound Dog returned, guiding them through the stadium halls back to the school. The hero he had always seen in the mirror, standing proud and tall, now silent in his ears. Where had that hero gone?
Reading the news was a mistake, Toshinori grimaced. Scrolling through the feed of news sites on his phone late at night was tradition, catching up on heroes and villains and the like; he could only see so much in a single day. But maybe today was the wrong day to do that, barely picking out bits of crime or hero interviews in the sea of coverage on the Sports Festival — or more accurately, the first-place holder of the event.
He remembered what life was like growing up quirkless, before his first master adopted him as a pupil and passed on to him the quirk passed on to her. Japan had always been a country overpopulated with heroes and quirks hoping to become such too. There were problems between quirked and quirkless, of course, as there had always been in history since mankind's newest evolutionary step. But even when songs were written about their differences, Toshinori never felt like he was singled out or targeted because of his quirklessness.
How had he become so blind to how the world changed?
No one reporting on Bakugou and Midoriya's words believed them at face value, and those who humored its possibility listed every reason under the sun not to value it. Yuei wouldn't accept quirkless into their heroics program; his competitors were instructed to hold back before the opening ceremony; the school admitted him into the course out of pity; if there was a way to label their lack of celebration for Midoriya's victory, they found a new way to word it in each opinion piece.
There were very little instances on display where the green teen showed strength beyond that of the old human age, but with how he held out trading punches with Tetsutetsu, Todoroki and Bakugou, his durability and stamina were the only glimpses of his strange power Toshinori ever noticed. Some sites questioned why he showed so little of a quirk - asked why he tried so hard to appear quirkless and pathetic compared to his schoolmates on stage. The number one hero wouldn't even consider labeling the boy's performance as 'subpar,' but apparently news outlets had a harsher eye for pizzazz than he did.
Was this how Midoriya grew up, Toshinori wondered. When he had met the green-haired kid under attack from a slime villain, when he had told him to give up on his dream atop the building's roof, when he had dismissed his valiant effort to save Bakugou from the same criminal; were these the insults and disapproval the boy heard directed at him? Were quirkless so neglected from the heroics scene that even the notion one could try was met by majority disbelief and heckling? Was this the world Midoriya fought against simply applying to the school?
Was this why he refused to call his power a quirk?
Nedzu slipped to him a summary of the conversation he had privately with the boy after the fiasco at the USJ. Even begrudgingly accepting his super strength, Midoriya was insistent on avoiding quirked language to talk about himself. Such an odd opportunity provided him the chance to act and see himself as though he was no different from his classmates, and yet when Bakugou accused him as quirkless in front of the world, Midoriya took the title with pride as his first response. With strength he could cultivate and grow to one day match Toshinori's, he persisted in keeping his quirkless title.
He was quite sure there wasn't a good reason to stop him from doing so.
As confusing as Midoriya's source of power was — and their ineptitude in pinpointing its origin into his possession alongside it — it was still unmistakably the boy's strength. And with Nedzu theorizing it as a new evolution beyond quirks and yet the green-haired teen mistakably quirkless, it was a fitting working title in the same vein as One For All and Premonition. Confusing as it was, it was still technically correct; it challenged the preconceived notions and understandings of the word 'quirkless' in society but given what Toshinori was reading, it was a welcomed challenge. His victory and hard work shouldn't go punished and ignored simply because of a word these people disliked. Maybe he'd have to throw his own weight on camera for once when Nedzu finally addressed the questions lobbed at Yuei about their student.
A discussion he could have later, as his phone swapped screens from walls of text to a scruffy-bearded man fighting for screen-time with his blonde daughter shaking his phone.
Toshinori answered the call, shifting the phone to his ear as he greeted, "David. It's been a while. I've been meaning to call you, actually—"
"Is it true?" his original partner's voice hastily interrupted him, sounding quite out of breath.
The blond man hesitated, flexing down his frown. David Shield was his first support gear designer and provider when he toured across America and officially started his public run as an independent hero. But he had only told him partially about All For One back in the early days, and never updated him on the man when the two split their career and life paths. The news of the attack on the USJ wouldn't have mentioned him by name, but David was a smart man; if he could piece it together off less information than Toshinori had, the hero would believe it. "Is what true?" he asked back hesitantly.
"Midoriya. The quirkless kid. Is that real?"
Instantly, his lanky form deflated even further with a happy sigh. "Oh, that. You watched the Sports Festival today?"
"Caught up on it, actually," his first partner clarified. "Melissa brought it up to me earlier; she's been rewatching his fights all day…I can hear her watching it in her room right now. She might be his biggest fan already. I don't think her last project's success left her smiling this much. It's becoming quite the talk of the island; the first quirkless kid in a proper heroics program globally, and stealing first place in your guys' big, televised event for the world to know?"
Toshinori grimaced lightly, staring out the window to the starry night sky. "It's a bit more complicated than that…"
"Yeah, no doubt. I've seen the opinion pieces on the kid. There's a raring review coming out of Brazil about the kid, but I think the most praise about him has come from my little girl. I take it you're waiting for everyone to sleep on it and give it some more thought than these knee-jerk reactions I've read?"
"I believe so. His real words were a bit more vague about that." And a bit more harsh about the human race's intelligence overall, but Nedzu still promised some sort of response or address to the public come the next day.
"I'll keep an eye out for it tonight. It's almost noon here. So when can you bring him over?"
Toshinori blinked, rolling his head to stare blankly at his wall in front of him while his brain replayed the question. "Huh?"
"Midoriya. When's the earliest you can bring him to I-Island for a work study or as a project for his classes?"
"Bring him to—David, what are you talking about? Why do you want to see Young Midoriya?"
A slight chuckle worked its way through the call's static. "I bet everyone does, for one reason or another. But it's actually my little girl who wants to meet him. Growing up here, she hasn't actually met any other quirkless people like her, much less other kids."
Toshinori blinked, recalling memories of a short blonde girl barely reaching the height of his waist; Melissa Shield was David's only child, and one of the only other born quirkless people he still knew personally. Though he hadn't seen her in quite some time. She was probably around Togata's age by now, he imagined.
"She's really excited to meet a quirkless boy on track to be a proper hero," David continued. "With how uncommon it is these days to be born without a quirk, I can't tell if she's enamored by the idea of meeting another like her or if she's finally considering my suggestion of working for a heroics support studio to make gear for him like what we had. Given what his classmates were like in those fights, he'd probably be helped by having catered gear and support items to move forward."
Toshinori scratched his cheek, musing over the oddity of referring to both Midoriya and Melissa as the same kind of 'quirkless.' "It's not that simple, David," he tried to explain, but once again the other man cut him short.
"Oh, I can believe it. With how some people are reacting to this kid, it's probably best you try to keep him safe for a while longer. And it'll be a while before you have an open slot of a work study where he can visit for a long period of time." The blond hero slouched and dropped sweat down his face, opening his mouth again to try and talk. "I myself actually have a presentation I need to get to here soon; I just needed to call you ahead of time to get some answers for Melissa. I'll hear from you again soon, Toshi. Have a good night."
"No, wait, David—" The line cut in his ear before his words could reach his old partner, and all Toshinori could do was swipe the phone back in front of him and find walls of text colorfully doubting Midoriya's capabilities back in his face. What was it with his colleagues calling him for answers and not waiting for him to explain? He prayed his old mentor Torino wouldn't be next.
Then his mind drifted back through his memories and his fingers through his apps until he was in his photo album, and he pulled up the last photo he had from the Shield family; father and daughter fighting to take up more space on the screen. Melissa was the first quirkless kid he'd met in years, daughter to his widowed friend and aspiring creative genius growing up on the famed I-Island, the moving utopia city that housed and bred many of the world's greatest minds and inventors. He had only been an uncle of sorts to the girl a few times in her early childhood, but the famous hero remembered her bright-eyed ambition, shooting to be the world's greatest inventor for everyone's sake and benefit.
To hear she was so excited over Midoriya's performance at the festival, though, was a surprise to his ears he should have expected. He knew I-Island's discrimination policy was non-negotiable, and the young girl hadn't grown up with any qualms about her lack of a quirk the few times they talked in the past, but to know she was practically begging to meet the green-haired kid thinking he was the same kind of quirkless was…
Maybe it was a good thing he didn't deny it on air, Toshinori mused as he tucked his phone away. After reading so many articles doubting his words and others disregarding the hard work he'd have put in if it was true, hearing someone was happy not just for him but because of him was pleasant news to his heart. They couldn't have grown up more differently, but maybe that's why he kept the title, hoping to bring smiles to quirkless people who grew up like and unlike him. To spite those who dismissed him no matter the truth, but brighten those who related to his story and person; Toshinori could see the good in that.
But Midoriya wasn't just any regular quirkless or pre-quirk-era person, but a superpowered person who grew up and who genetically appeared quirkless. Though Nedzu had theorized his powers were the start of a new wave of human evolution, maybe specific to quirkless if not something that would soon encompass over the place of quirks, if there were more people like Midoriya to come. If it was something unique to the quirkless population, was there a chance of such an oddity occuring in his niece?
He would have to call David back another day, he silently decided on his trek to his bedroom. There were still many questions in need of answers he would not find in a single night. He could wait another day to solve the world's mysteries.
Tenya hadn't left Tensei's bedside since he arrived at the hospital. It had been nearly six hours since his mother passed him the news and he'd only moved from his chair to accept a meal while visiting hours were still available. His phone chimed constantly with messages and mixed calls from his friends and classmates, aware or not of his brother's condition, but no one received his response. Every draft he wrote felt wrong, and he didn't want to lie or openly dump his emotions on their laps. He'd need something proper to say when he saw them the next school day.
His older brother was in a comatose state, beaten, battered and bruised worse than Tenya had ever seen him or any hero. The machinery crowding him was louder than the breaths he took to prove he wasn't too far gone. His arms, tight-bound and wrapped and hanging like in hammocks — this pride of his brother's quirk — were so beaten and battered that it was unclear if he could work again. The hospital was not a place any hero dreamed to retire, and his brother wouldn't have the chance to choose it himself.
Onemu, one of the sidekicks working at his family's hero agency, tiptoed into the room, passing by his brother's bed with a fleeting glance to take up a seat beside Tenya.
"Heard you haven't had any dinner yet," she stated plainly, offering to him a dry plate of a meal. "Tastes better than it looks, I promise. Hospital food is still food."
"Thank you, Shinya," he accepted her offer, placing it down on his lap. The sidekicks of the agency had filled in place of babysitters before, when his parents had excused his presence as a work day special to show him around the family business. Omenu Shinya went by her unchanged family name as her hero identity like a few others imitating the Iida name, but it helped him to remember her like an older cousin where he had none.
Onemu gazed at the sleeping Tensei while Tenya chewed silently on the provided meal. "I'm sorry we didn't get to him sooner," she quietly apologized. "Splitting up only works well when the goal is to locate. He shouldn't have been fighting on his own at all."
"You were looking for the Hero Killer," Tenya repeated from the explanation they provided him and his parents when he first got to the hospital. "Stain used another hero to bait him in as a trap and take him by surprise. You got to him as soon as you could, but it's not your fault he engaged in combat. You were still there to help him, even if only after the battle."
The horned woman giggled softly, turning her lazy eyes to him. "That's a kind mindset to have, kiddo. Your family is too kind sometimes. Your parents are helping us run the agency while Tensei takes his breather" — she gazed sadly at the oxygen mask strapped to his face — "and you watch over him for us. 'Iidaten are always there for you;' must be a household motto too, huh?"
Tenya nodded silently, gazing up at his brother's prone form. The Iida household was the drawing board location for many of the Iidaten agency principles. Tensei had their mother drill them into his head, but Tenya had him to learn them from. While their father was lively and their mother was lovely, his big brother was his hero in the family. It was his brother that Tenya yearned to become as he grew up.
He knew the sidekicks of his family's agency had a similar perspective, knowing Tensei's attitude to be a big brother to everyone he met. He understood their hopes to be like him, and he understood their dismay for not saving him sooner. There was no reason to blame them for not being there when in his brother's place, Tenya would see flickers of green hair and freckles trapped under layers of bandages and silence.
Tenya understood their feelings of frustration and powerlessness.
"Are you here to take me home?" he asked softly, fiddling with what little food remained on his tray.
"Only when you're ready," she confirmed. "Your parents are closing the agency late tonight, so you're in my care. But I'll let you stay up past curfew if you're good."
The blue-haired teen snickered behind a smile and turned it to his brother's sidekick. "Thank you."
He stayed longer, chatting quietly with her and answering questions about school. Neither of them knew how the Sports Festival ended, and he hadn't looked to know the results himself. Texts from his classmates asked bluntly if he thought Midoriya was actually quirkless, which meant that had come forward while he was gone— he had failed to be there for his friend as he promised, again — but the green-haired teen's messages only asked about his brother and his own welfare. Knowing who won in the end could come later.
Unable to properly word responses to even his closest friend, Tenya's mind focused on his brother and the cause behind his condition. Heroes feld on the job had become quite more common in the news as of late. The Hero Killer was a problem, to be sure, taking the lives or ability to work from many heroes and several sidekicks who crossed his path. Rumors that his attacks only targeted heroes deemed 'unworthy' without any deeper explanation swam through the web, though numbers of active duty heroes rose in droves because of his violence. But he wasn't the only villain reported for the same crime. Someone else left heroes beaten and battered, with no name to pass along but a slew of injuries that didn't match those left by Stain. The Hero Killer had an accomplice, the news theorized, spreading his work but leaving the face of their operation to the slasher of a man.
Tensei and the Iidaten agency had been hunting for Stain specifically, scouting his last reported location in hopes for clues or the man himself to put behind bars. And it was quite possible the current holder of the Ingenium name had crossed paths with the Hero Killer and sustained his wounds from the man. But Tenya could tell the difference from the reports to what his older brother had suffered. It wasn't Stain who nearly took Tensei's life, but his unnamed partner in crime.
Tenya didn't say anything to Onemu as they finally left, nor did he voice his thoughts to his comatosed brother as he bid him goodnight. But he vowed, in his heart, to stop both the villains. In the name of the heroes they crippled and killed in their wake; in the name of his brother who they lured into a trap and beat within an inch of his life; in the name of his friends who had dealt with villains head-on while he was nowhere to be found enough times; he would be the one to bring both of them to justice.
The Ingenium name would not fall yet.
Being home was nice, Izuku hummed as he lay on his bed. His mother had greeted him at the door with a marble fountain of tears and a flood of congratulations, though crying more as she checked his still bandaged eye. He was urged to a table of food and treats — a small celebratory dinner for the two of them to feast while she recounted her side of events having to view the dangerous stunts he pulled. It was nice to have a laugh over the water-damage complaints their neighbors below tried to bring up before being caught in the woman's iron grip to watch his fight with Bakugou in the final. It was nice to just be home with her.
The medal ended up resting on — oddly enough — one of the few All-Might figurines he still had on his bedside desk. His mother thought it fitting the man who bestowed it to him would be the one to entrust displaying it in their house. Had it been any day sooner, Izuku might have fought that suggestion; but he agreed with the sentiment and propped the gold medallion between the figure's raised fists like Atlas holding up the sun.
Izuku still remembered the man from the first day they met, laying shadowed beneath him after the sludge villain, feeling the weight of his denouncement of his dream atop the roof, and staring at the man's back when the sludge villain was defeated once more. The disconnect from the admiration — the crack between him and his younger self — remained in the back of his mind. He thought he had cut himself off from it for good, that he'd never meet the hero again and move on to chase a new dream for himself and his desire to be a hero. He didn't think the day would come where he'd be happy in the hero's presence again, nor so soon; but he welcomed All-Might back in his life. He was no longer the man Izuku idolized to become, but to know he was truly trying to support him — to hear he was proud of what Izuku had done already — was a good enough replacement.
Izuku's eyes trailed away from the statue to the picture frame beside it, of a happy family from years ago still in one piece. He lingered in his thoughts staring at the man in the photo, flashing glowing teeth and a shining shirt beside an enamored child and a cautious yet happy woman. He didn't know how long he was lost in his silent gaze before the woman in the photo came knocking at his door. "Izuku? Are you still awake?"
"I am," he called back, lifting his head up to watch the door creak open. The current form of his mother waddled in, leaning to his bedside and nearly falling on him with the hundredth hug that evening.
"Almost forgot to say goodnight," she reminded him softly, humming as he returned the hug.
He hummed back in the brief moment their embrace tightened. "Sorry. There's been a lot on my mind."
"Oh no doubt." Turning her attention away from him, his mother smiled at the gold medal proudly displayed atop his desk. "You were absolutely wonderful today. I remember winning first place for my veterinary project in high school; the ego will be in your head for a few days, don't worry about that." Izuku snickered lightly at that, resting his head on her arm a moment in peace. When the seconds of silence from his mother drew out longer, he looked to find her gazing away wistfully as he had to the photo beside his medal. "He would be proud of you, you know."
Izuku looked at the photo again, and the dark-haired man who was his father featured on its leftmost side. "Would he?" he asked softly. "I thought he didn't want me to be a hero."
"He didn't want you to get hurt," she corrected him gently, "or in danger you couldn't get yourself out of. He'd have thrown a banquet in the lounge downstairs if he saw how hard you pushed yourself today; probably drag the mailman in too to spread the word." She chuckled at the image she detailed, running one hand through Izuku's curly hair. "It might not be how we saw you becoming a hero, but Hisashi and I always loved you. We're both proud of you."
Izuku smiled at her, entwining a hand with hers as they stayed in the silence once more. He remembered how they had both danced around his dream of becoming a hero, never having to say they forbade him to know their thoughts years ago. But even for a man whose job dragged him around the world, his father had always tried to make family time welcoming and tell the green-haired boy how much he was still loved. A reaction to his quirklessness no different from his mother's aside, Izuku knew the man cared. He hoped the old man would have been proud of him, too.
"Can we go see him again?" He took a long breath from his nose, holding his eyes together as the thought alone shook through him. "After the work study we have coming up for Yuei. So we can share a few more stories with him?"
His mother gave him a wide smile, the tears he had held back in his eyes threatening to seep out of hers. "Yes we can," she promised him, and leaned in to kiss his forehead. Her thumb lingered along his freed scar a second longer, before she parted and rose slowly. "Sleep well, Izuku."
"You too mom." His eyes returned to the photo as she left quietly, taking in the sight of his father once more.
Izuku didn't have to look at the news to guess what people were saying; he heard enough at the Sports Festival. He knew plenty didn't believe in him — his words or his potential — but that was nothing he hadn't heard before. His mother, once the first of many naysayers to his dream, had turned around to support him. The man he once idolized had come around on their first meeting, overriding the disbelief held a year ago with trust and encouragement Izuku didn't think he'd get from him. The one person in the world who had antagonized him most had lost to him in a head-on fight; Izuku didn't need the knock-out to know he was going to beat Katsuki in the end. The words of naysayers anew held no weight on the shoulders of a boy who had everything he needed to prove himself and know he was worth following his dream.
It would have been nice to have hugged his father and tell him he would be strong.
He lurked quietly through the night, ducking between alleyways and under flickering lamps. He paused as late-working businessmen or huddles of drunk girls and boys rushed past, before continuing on behind them without so much as a sound.
Returning to Japan had been difficult, especially for someone who looked like him; walking corpses weren't often considered sanitary enough for public venues. 'Convincing' the fat Chinese prick of an underworld consultant to connect him with the Japanese branch and buy a stowaway seat wasn't worth the dozen years it took to build up the money selling scraps of heroes' costumes and gear. The Giran fuck he was told to meet hadn't bothered to greet him when he finally made contant with his homeland's soil, and treking south for several months just to meet at all really enticed him to smelt the bastard once he saw his face.
"That Yuei Sports Festival was something else, wasn't it?"
"It was un-be-lievable."
He took rest upon entering another alley, ducking behind its corner to melt into the shadows as cars rolled by. The electronics store beside him rambled on its screens a late-night show playing white noise in his ear. This wouldn't be an ideal place to rest, but then again neither were any of the previous streets he crossed.
"As you at home have probably heard by now, Yuei High's annual Year-One Sports Festival ended today with uproar and confusion at the surprise announcement that the first place winner, Midoriya Izuku, is in fact quirkless."
"Do we take that at face value, though? Could a boy without a quirk really best the likes of Endeavor's son and that explosive boy in combat with such overwhelming force?"
He plucked at the collar of his jacket, scratching at the edge where his charred skin met the fresh new layer. The damn material was chafing to wear, but that's what he got for digging through a donation bin from a shoreline town. Probably residue saltwater or some shit trying to rip through his flesh. Just his luck.
"He definitely fought quirkless, though. Ran the obstacle course on his bare feet, did nothing but run in the cavalry battle, and used only his bare knuckles in all his matches. Unless the kid has some very well-hidden durability or strength-enhancement quirk, you'd probably not know he has one at all for most of the festival."
"But he obviously does. We all saw how he flew and tumbled in the obstacle course's ravine and minefield sections with barely a scratch of blood on him. Do we think the steel boy, Tetsutetsu, was rolling with the punches just for show? And his finals in the final event — that steel-skinned kid, Endeavor's son, the Bakugou boy — he went matching blows where no little quirkless boy would."
"Do you think his competition was holding back?"
"Since he's not quirkless? No; especially not after he challenged them to a fair fight in his opening speech. But if any of them thought he was quirkless, and in those fights? Most definitely. It was the Bakugou student from General Studies that called him one, after all."
He rounded back out the alley, shouldering walls of the buildings to make his way down the sidewalk. He spared a glance at the display television screens as he passed, noting the talk show hosts sitting on opposite ends of their table as the picture of a kid vacated the space between them. He would have moved on — turned away and not given any of it a second thought — had the boy's bushy, dark green mohawk not been in frame.
He retraced his steps, falling back a few feet to stand before the biggest screen in the window's center, and watched on wordlessly as the photo turned to footage, and the green-haired boy was trading fists with a silver-haired kid.
"Besides, it's unbelievable Yuei would ever admit a quirkless into their heroics programs," the man with a goat's head for his own continued. "They're powerless children; they would be willingly sending them out to get hurt and, at the worst, die on the field. No one would endorse such a thing."
His co-host - a more plain-looking man if it wasn't for his sabertooth teeth and a mane of hair - pointed a finger back at the goat man. "But Midoriya didn't verbally deny it — it sounded like he played along with it — and at this current time, Yuei refuses to comment or answer anyone's questions on the matter. Why not shed light on the truth and rid everyone of the confusion of the matter?"
"All press is good press, as the saying goes. Being quirkless is becoming one of the rarest symptoms humanity can identify as; if this kid was brave enough to pitch the idea to the school board, his plain performance to its most extreme display could simply be an attempt to instill what fleeting hope in the quirkless population there is that they can leave a story behind in the history books within this era of quirks."
"Faking quirklessness just for the attention won't be leaving a good name for himself, though. But it does sound like the near-sightedness of a child."
The style of the kid's hair was wrong, but the rest of his face fit perfectly. The shade of green, the dusty freckles, the jutted nose; that was a hard combination to mistake. But the name they called him was all wrong.
"But would Yuei go to all that trouble to stage their biggest televised event for one kid's idea to appeal to the school's only absent demographic in the quirkless? The reputation of the other kids in the hero course would be hurt by this plan, wouldn't they?"
"Yuei will publish a piece in the morning, hold an interview to clean it all up for us, as per the norm. The school has one of the best PR teams across the nation; they'll wait out the whole day of the event for news to reach the world, garner enough attention and then set things right. Remember the mall attack last December? They took three days after to even clarify the kid caught on video fighting the villain wasn't a student of theirs; now he is. Everyone will be tuning in from across the seas to find out what becomes of this messy child."
The choppier footage set the record straight. Though he held a bat, dressed plainly and had a full head of hair, it was that latter detail that pieced everything together in his eyes. This kid's face was harder to make out, but it was clear enough to know it was the same Midoriya those blabbering, blind fools were talking about. That was the right hairstyle.
He smiled wide, metal rings pinching and tugging the dead skin and the fresh skin on either ends of his lip's edges. Blue fire flashed in his hand a second, before steam remained as he reigned in his excitement.
"So that's what became of you," he cheered.
Hello one and all, to another episode of quirked white boy does it again. It's me, the author, coming at you with a bit of a long end piece. With this being an end to the first third of the story, capping off what I am calling "The Self Saga" starting from chapter 1, I've decided to come here and add a few of my own personal writer's notes about only a few specific characters this time around. I've seen your comments, your opinions, and your concerns, and I wanted to loosely address them here regarding the main three people to this section.
Izuku
Ain't there a lot to say about this guy? I know plenty of you have found his recent chapters and interactions to not feel like him, and I remember when people asked when his changes and growth into the Metal Bat from OPM this concept is based on would come, but that is something I'm trying to balance. I've felt it a bit on my own end that maybe I'm writing him just a bit too off key to either side, failing to retain that which makes him Izuku or investing that which makes him Bad, but it is a character growth balance I try to maintain. I don't want to write him 1:1 as either character with only nods of references to the other, and I try to write him bouncing between the two as part of his own identity crisis with his "quirk" and the path around him not being the set-in-stone journey he has in canon, getting to live his dream and following it to a T with only the physical hurdle in his path. I like giving him the mental and emotional roadblocks here.
Speaking of his power, I know many of you want to get to the "Fighting Spirit" of Metal Bat and get it over with, but I've made it more complex than that in the lore of this universe. Don't worry, we've got the next 22-ish chapters that make the second/middle saga of this story to explore that more and give it a more conclusive answer to this canon. That'll take up the rest of the year around my other planned story uploads, so stay tuned for that.
And also speaking of gradual build up, you will take the mohawk and you will like it. We are on our way to the pompadour. We'll get there when we get there. That's this next saga too. Allow your characters to go through stages of their own growth without moving from A to B instantaneously. I didn't take a creative writing college major to abbreviate good storytelling practice.
All-Might
I'm not getting rid of the hyphen. It is as pivotal to this story as Yuei over U.A.
I've explained this more in my own discord, but to state it here I am much against bashing fics. I find nothing to be more character assassinating than writing them to be a one-note bad guy to the situation, especially when they're part of the hero's side in canon. It's a struggle for me to read other fics like that knowing full well the characters in question had lost a part of themselves to become another writer's punching bag. To combat the portrayal of who I find to be most popular on that end of the stick, I present to you imperfect but genuine Yagi Toshinori.
I know some people like to paint him the buffoon or the woefully ignorant man making dangerous mistakes when he should have known better, but in canon he's written as an honest man out of his element more than anything. He passes on OFA to Izuku not knowing AFO survived and will soon target him. He doesn't know how to teach growing control of a quirk he could handle from the start without a problem. He isn't blind to the woes of Izuku's past people blow up into grand proportions from what canon shows or how Izuku actually feels about them.
I'm not here to write him as a villain or an antagonist. He is simply another hurdle for Izuku, an idol he cannot latch onto or strive for anymore but not a man he can fester on and hate forever when he's presented with another side of the man who initially refused his dream. Their relationship is one of hesitance and patchwork, of one accepting they were wrong and another accepting that they have to let go of the grievances to move on. From here on out, that beef has been settled for the two to move on peacefully.
Bakugou
On the other hand, here is someone I am writing as an antagonist. Yes, I've quite possibly stretched his original version to a more rough, gnarling, self-centered maniac from what he is in canon at this time, but this is an intentional approach to twist Hori's original idea. He's come forth before acknowledging a lot of his early chapters and present characters like Bakugou and Aizawa to name are rougher and meaner than he probably would have wanted to for characters he wants the audience to be warm to, and I decided I like the concept of antagonist Bakugou over deuteragonist Bakugou, especially for this early on section of the story. He's not a villain, of course (I want to write him a bit more complex than that) but he is no hero here. He is the first true boss to Izuku to cap off this story's section, and now I get to write a redemption arc out of him.
I know plenty of you are not happy with the ending fight of the festival not being a smack down and knock out win in Izuku's favor, but that simply wouldn't work. He won against Monoma with a forfeit, Tetsutetsu with a ring out, and Todoroki with a knockout, so the only win condition left to portray is disqualification. And what better a defeat than for the man who thinks he can do no wrong? In canon, the battle trial is where Bakugou is awake enough not only to see his loss, but to hear the class pick him apart and show off their own strengths and prowess to a guy who thought he was alone in the clouds. I knocked him out then, so that is a thought process I got to delay so his worse aspects could fester more. He's high on his horse, only seeing evidence after evidence with things like the USJ attack and the scar on Izuku's face - the only one to receive a lasting wound from that attack - to know Deku is unfit for the program. So what better a way to kickstart his change than to slap him in the face of making him the monster that nearly kills him after always being the one trying to tell him off for his own safety?
Katsuki isn't a villain. Violent, sure, but never truly deadly. He gives Deku a punch and a burn or two from time to time, he'll patch up fine and learn his place, though he never does. He never sees the extent of the burns on Izuku's arms from the battle trial, so he doesn't know just how close he's been before to being the monster he convinces himself that he'll put behind bars or protect everyone from at the USJ, the 'if I was there' mentality. I like to think that for all his antagonistic traits against Izuku, always shouting die with his quirk, going beyond that line means he has failed to live up to what should be the clean and unmatched All-Might he was supposed to be better than, a man the world has never seen take the life of another. How can he surpass that when he nearly takes a life?
I'm not gonna bash and humiliate him for the sake of quick satisfaction and drop him in the next segment. For all my grievances with canon Bakugou, I want to write him with a character arc, and I think he was perfect for a real redemption arc that simply required specific steps to take place to set it up. He won't be as major for a while going forward, but make no mistake he will return and his growth will continue on-screen instead of in the background for good.
For now, though, I have a My Hero America to write and flush out so we can return to the next big arc. We're coming up on one of my favorite scenes. I hope you enjoy your time here.