"Can someone without a quirk become a hero?!" The question rang in his mind, the words he said coming back to him as he looked down, his body wet and muddy as rain poured down while the trees above him held back the floods of rain that seemed to mask his tears. The young boy kicked a tree with a scream, his frustration and sadness becoming ever more present as the words that the man said echoed in his mind harder and harder. It was the man he respected the most, the hero he loved the most. He was his number one fan, All Might meant everything to him. The young boy's green hair masked his tearful eyes, a bag in a dry spot on the ground full of clothes.
"I'm sorry young man-" He punched a second tree, the thoughts of the words blowing back towards him making him even more dejected. He caught the number one hero after an interview, his day brightened by the man's smile before his perception of life broke, the words of his idol breaking down everything he believed in. He knew, knew the man was just trying to look out for his safety, just saying words that were politically correct to say.
But it wasn't what he needed to hear
He couldn't give up on his dream, he wouldn't give up on his dream. Even if the entire world was against his dream, he would stand firm. He heard all the apologies; he took on all the bullying; he took on everyone that doubted him and kept a smile on his face like All Might did, and All Might didn't give him the answer he desperately craved.
"You're just a quirkless Deku, you'll never be a hero like me!"
"I'm so-so s-sorry, Izu…"
"Sorry, kid, but you gotta be realistic…"
His face scrunched up in pain, he knew he couldn't stay at his home anymore. His father wasn't in their lives besides the monthly stipends, not wanting to be associated with a quirkless brat like he was. His mother couldn't move as her job was so close to home, he hated his school, the school that tore him down and relentlessly pushed him even further to the ground, stomping on his dreams at every moment. No more.
"M-Mom, I-I'm sorry. I n-need to be free… I can't live like this anymore, I WON'T LIVE LIKE THIS ANYMORE!" He looked up and saw that the rain had stopped, his eyes going up to the sky and seeing a crack, a large rainbow crack in the sky that shot out 7 shooting stars.
"Shooting stars, p-please, PLEASE LET M-ME B-BE FREE!PLEASE LET ME BE A HERO!" The boy yelled out for the forest to hear, but it was only a pipe dream as the boy continued to cry and pound the ground beneath him in frustration and dismay.
"W-why am I e-even a-alive?" The boy said through tears as a voice echoed in his mind. "Hey, don't say that!" The boy looked up and around, not seeing anyone in sight before looking up again, seeing two lights above him, a yellow and blue light. "W-what…"
"You're a kid, you shouldn't be thinking like that. Besides, you feel nice, you called out to us, and we responded because we felt your words." The boy looked up, his face mesmerized by the lights before everything went white.
xXx
A teen opened his eyes, emerald green eyes shining in the moonlight as he got up from the tree branch he was sleeping on. "Another dream of that night, it's been a long road since then." His hair clashed with the night sky, a Persian blue mixed with emerald green highlights, while a smile came to his face, the moonlight revealing his appearance. The boy was wearing an open sleeveless vest composed of a mixture of blue, white and green, underneath that was a white undershirt with a yellow fox design spray-painted on, the fox giving a peace sign as his pants underneath were pure blue and white. The shoes he had on looked robotic, the green and white blending together with metallic edges and yellow dots underneath the shoes that glowed with his every step. A gust came his way, his vest blowing with the wind as a noticeable metallic pouch underneath his vest that responded to his fingerprints only came into view.
"It's been nearly 5 years since the day I met them, I wonder if they're proud of the choices I've made. Well, I know at least he would've been." He snickered before standing up on the branch he was sleeping on, looking toward the tides that smashed against the island he was on before he pulled out some sort of high-tech recorder and a hologram opened before he chose the option that said 'new'.
"Log: April 13th. It's been close to 5 years since the lights chose me that night in the forest. I will never forget the sacrifice that they did to give me their gifts, along with the others. They gave up their consciences so I could be ready to handle this adventure after losing their home, their world, their friends, everything they worked for. Since then, I've used their gifts to explore this world around me and fix any aftershocks from the Genesis Wave. Stabilizing the aftershocks required further training of the fluctuation of energy that Chaos has, something that I'm glad I trained in. I've fixed small cracks all across the world, even stabilizing the big ones in Jordan, The Arctic, Northeast China, Egypt and even Indonesia yesterday without international attention, not including different heroes and villains that tried to recruit me."
He snickered at the thought of both sides, wanting him to join them, though he knew neither would. His definition of a hero now was very loose, as he went and saved people wherever trouble was when he passed through a certain area. He didn't follow the laws, people thought that the power he held was a quirk but no one could even get a clean glimpse of him. He saved people and then left the scene as quickly as possible, a blur in the wind.
"It also seems that my time as a 'blur' is slowly coming to an end. Salaam has been talking to other top pros in the world about me ever since I went to Egypt and stabilized that breach. I've also heard the rumblings of a vigilante teen called the Blue Blur, I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree huh?" He snickered to himself, the nickname he got from the heroes being the same one his new idol has received in his world.
"However, not all is well. These minor breaches can be a massive problem if left unchecked. I know most will stabilize in the next month without problems, but Japan has been reacting poorly to some breaches, it's almost like someone is testing them there, and if he is in Japan, I need to stop him now. I-Island especially needs to be checked out, Animals are being corrupted by the breaches and they're full of chaos energy that leaves them rampaging monsters and they're all emanating from around I-Island's zone. So far, the Japanese Hero Association has marked them as animals with quirks, but I'll need to go there for the foreseeable future and deal with those breaches. I also feel the call of the other emeralds, they will return from null space soon, and I need to prepare for that moment that blue and yellow showed."
His smile softened, his mind once again wandered to the two that saved him that day, the two that reinforced his dream when no one else was there to help him. He wasn't lost in the utter convenience it took for him to be in that exact position to call out to them.
"You'd think it was out of some fictional show?" He laughed as his eyes looked up to the moon, his smile wide and his confidence brimming, a stark contrast to his past self.
"Thank you everyone, but you especially Sonic and Tails. What you two did for me that day, I'll carry with me for the rest of my life. You gave me your powers, your knowledge, everything and passed your mission and dreams onto me. You trusted me with the aura of every emerald knowing I wouldn't abuse the power, and while I know what I only felt that day was a small glimpse of the other's powers, I know I inherited everything you two offered. I know you hated me saying this over and over again that day, but you two took a child on the verge of giving up, and gave me genuine hope. You let me turn that hope into what I am now. You guided me to my freedom, and I know even if you can't talk to me. You'll always be there, you'll always be with me." He felt his heart warm at this, a sign that the two still guided him before he walked toward the beach, his mind wandering to other people in his previous life.
His memories of before he met Sonic and Tails were all fuzzy because of the influx of memories he received, but he always remembered some faces. The face currently in his mind belonged to the person who brought him into this world. "Mom, I don't know if I'm ever going to face you again without apologizing and bursting into tears. Maybe you'll hate me, maybe you couldn't bear to look at my face anymore, maybe you wouldn't even recognize me at first glance. However, if I ever see you again, I'll be sure to let you know just how sorry I truly am for leaving you alone, and I hope you understand just how much this helped me grow."
He leapt into the air, a sense of serenity and glee around him as he smiled, the rush of adrenaline burning deep in his chest before a sonic boom echoed from the island, a blue blur dancing across the ocean's waves with a grace no one could predict or even hope to achieve.
xXx
"I'm sorry young man, but I don't think you should be focusing on being a hero. Heroics are dangerous, and if someone is quirkless, they'd have to work 10 times as hard as others just to try to reach the same success. I don't like the way the world has thrown quirkless people aside, but it is a dangerous profession that quirkless people shouldn't focus on. Sorry, kid, but you gotta be realistic." The words that he said continued to play in his mind repeatedly. Following a recent recovery from a devastating injury, he went to the shoot to maintain secrecy, and in the process crushed the aspirations of someone who looked up to him. It had been nearly 5 years since that one moment, and All Might could say wholeheartedly that he had never seen someone's heart shatter so quickly, and he had seen people lose their life. He looked around at the classes in front of him, the future generation that would even surpass him.
UA High School, one of the greatest high schools for aspiring heroes in the world, and yet still Toshinori Yagi was unsettled. He watched as the two classes bickered amongst themselves, the two classes belonging to the hero course at UA, the students that would have the most pressure amongst them to aim for the highest spot. His eyes wandered across as he looked at the different social cliques that were forming within the two classes, and yet despite his ever-present smile and upbeat attitude, he couldn't help but feel that something was missing.
"Alright, zygotes, classes are finished for the day! I wish you all the best of luck for tomorrow's classes. And remember, GO BEYOND!"
"PLUS ULTRAAAAAAA!" All Might's smile seemed to get wider as he rushed to the teacher's lounge before he deflated and felt the weight of the day impact him, looking at the wound on his stomach. This wound would be there forever, it would remind him of the person he lost, the person who gave him every tool needed to succeed. He would never forget the sacrifice his master, Nana Shimura, made for him to thrive. She took in a powerless teen and gave him power. "If only…"
Toshinori smacked himself out of that thinking. He said the safest thing things every other person looking out for someone would've said. However, his heart betrayed his mind, and his heart knew that the kid was definitely still somewhere out there, he just had a feeling, he just knew.
"If I ever see you again kid, I'll do whatever I can to rectify what I did to you. That face you made that day… It still haunts my memories, and I know I will never live it down unless I show you how much I regret it." The face of a young boy with green-hair popped into his mind, his eyes almost soulless before the boy simply walked away, his voice quivering as the words he said replayed in his mind all the time. "O-okay, thanks All Might! I'm g-glad my idol is l-looking out for my safety." It wasn't until the next week that he found out that the same kid had gone missing when his friend in the police force had brought it up in passing.
"Yeah, I've been exhausting handling a missing child case. This woman, Inko Midoriya, has reported her son Izuku missing last week. We did some digging and found out the kid was being discriminated against by the school he was in, too. Poor kid, I hope we find him and actually give him a good childhood." His friend, Naomasa Tsukauchi brought up a picture and showed it to Toshinori who's blood ran cold, the green hair and eyes full of happiness in an All Might themed outfit staring right back at him as the man froze before his memories went back to the boy the week before who asked him the question last week.
Despite everything, Toshinori had to carry all this weight on his depleting shoulders. He was the Symbol of Peace after all, All Might was a symbol for everyone to look up to and smile, a person everyone could rely upon. So Toshinori would smile just the same, he had to for everyone around him. After all, he had finally found his successor, the person who would take the reins and let him retire peacefully.
"Sup All Might!" He looked ahead to see his successor, a blonde teen that had an appearance more like Tin-Tin. Mirio Togata, a recommendation of Sir Nighteye, his old sidekick that he had a falling out with. Mirio was ready, he had heart, he had drive, and that really impressed Toshinori. He gave Mirio his quirk, One For All, and would let Mirio decide on how his future was to go. It was a week since he gave Mirio the quirk, and he could see why his former friend and sidekick had pushed so hard.
"Young Togata, I hope the class is treating you well." Mirio laughed with a smile and flashed a thumbs up. Mirio was a TA for the hero course this year along with his other friends that made up the Big 3 at UA.
"The same way it's treating you old man?" Toshinori gave the boy a soft laugh as the two went their separate ways, however all was not well as when the two went their separate ways, both began coughing and each of the two made a pained face. "Gotta fight through the pain right now, for everyone."
xXx
"Why Kacchan, WHY DO YOU ALWAYS HURT ME?" His scowl etched deep onto his face as he walked back to class, hearing the others around him talking about how class went with the other hero class, Class 1B. He walked ahead alone, not bothering to talk to people while his mind continued to spin.
"IT'S CAUSE YOU'RE QUIRKLESS YOU DAMN DEKU!" He ground his teeth at the memory continuing to play in his mind. "GET OUT OF MY MIND YOU FUCKER!" However, for how hard Katsuki Bakugo tried, he couldn't get the boy out of his mind. For all his taunts, all the hours he put into making sure that damn nerd finally gave up his dream, he never expected Izuku Midoriya to just vanish into thin air.
"LET HIM GO KACCHAN!" He was at UA, he was at his dream school, he was becoming a hero goddamnit! He always believed he would become a hero and Deku would simply fade into the background, a blank character from his past that simply accepted the way things were. For all the stomping he did on Deku's dreams, he never expected him to ever go missing.
"GET OUT OF THE DAMN WAY DEKU, YOU'LL NEVER BE A HERO! STOP TRYING TO BECOME ONE AND DIE!" For all the wishes that Deku would just fade into nothing like the side character he was, when Katsuki had actually received what he asked for, that moment in time was a moment he'd truly say he was lost.
Bakugo walked into the house with his dad who picked him up from school, a tiny little smirk etched onto his face. Deku hadn't been to school in over a week and it was a week where there were no annoyances on him saying he'd be a hero of some kind, it was incredible! His smirk turned into a scowl however, noticing his mom was talking to a green-haired woman with a pink long-sleeved shirt, white skirt and tears running down her face. Bakugo didn't like Deku, but he had no issues with Auntie Inko, in fact he even admired her for dealing with someone like Deku every single day. Inko knew his dad first before his mom, but his mom Mitsuki brought her out of her shell more often than not, and they grew to have a really close bond, as mothers often do.
"Oh dear, you still haven't-?" His dad, Masaru Bakugo, blurted out as the two mothers turned to him. "MASARU, NOT IN FRONT OF KATSUKI!" Mitsuki tensed up with Masaru facepalming and muttering a soft apology before motioning Katsuki to go upstairs. Katsuki however was busy looking at the two mothers as his mother came up to him and kissed him on the forehead, him shaking her off before she lightly hit him on his head as Auntie Inko walked up to him, Katsuki noticing how she was trying to hold back tears for his sake.
"Katsuki, I hope you had a great day at school. And don't worry about Izu not showing up for a week, he's just had a l-lot…" Inko couldn't contain her tears anymore, falling to her knees and hugging Katsuki close while Mitsuki came in-between the two and rushed Katsuki upstairs while Masaru tried to hold back the flood of tears entering their house.
"Brat…" He scowled at his mom, but saw her grim look and knew something was wrong. "You're going to get transferred out of that school you're in. I'll have you go to another one in the area, and this is final!" His eyes popped and he went to scream at him before he noticed that his mom's face changed from grim to furious. Whatever Katsuki did, she was not happy. "You're also grounded, and you'll be going to therapy. You won't be ungrounded until I find out your attitude has improved and don't even try to fight me on this Katsuki. I know what you've been doing at school in your free time with little Izuku, and I'm extremely disappointed in you. I never thought my son could be a heartless bully, and while I want to say it's the teachers' fault for letting it all go unchecked, I raised you to be SO much better! Your father will be in here later to give you a thorough talk, just know that you've let me down, I can't believe you." Katsuki tried to fight back tears at this as his mom slammed the door to his room shut, his embarrassed and angry face staring at the door that led to the outside world, a door that he couldn't open by himself now without getting in major trouble.
He could still hear Auntie Inko wailing, her cries of 'my baby' and 'he's missing' not going unnoticed. His parents knew, Auntie Inko knew, they knew everything. The handle to his door turned, and he saw his father looking at him, and for the first time in his life Katsuki could say he had never seen his father so angry. What followed was one of the worst periods of Katsuki's life, a three-hour tongue-lashing by his father, something Katsuki was so unprepared to ever hear he ended up clinging to himself in tears.
Izuku Midoriya had gone missing, and on the night he went missing, Inko had thought someone had broken into the house only to find a note left by her son, a note that shattered her heart. A note that named Katsuki Bakugo as his only friend, but a friend that would attack him with his quirk.
From that day on, he had very limited contact with Inko, and he knew that she never forgave him. She may have tried to mask her ire with kindness, but her eyes showed a world of hurt that he could not fight against, considering he helped create it. Despite all the apologies behind closed doors, they both knew that the apology wasn't truly genuine, and even if it was, it wasn't meant for her. He didn't know how she managed day in and day out now that her son was missing for 5 years, but she somehow did, and she kept his presence in her life despite his own mom saying that she didn't have to stay in contact with them because of what Katsuki had done.
"Despite everything, you're making an effort to change Katsuki, and you two are my only friends. You're all I have left. Hisashi left me when Izuku was born, and n-now my b-baby is gone, I can't lose you too."
His parents kept to their word about his grounding, making sure he switched schools immediately and also knowing they testified in Inko's lawsuit against the school for quirk discrimination. He got grounded for the remaining 5 months of the school year and a schedule came to be where he could not go to any friends' house and hang out with them and he had to go to therapy immediately from school. It was there that he got diagnosed with a mix of a superiority complex and an inferiority complex and forced to rethink how he thought about… everything. While on the surface, he was still the same crass boy who swore and fought for himself, his issues on the inside cut deep, and it all started from one person's presence in his life. And while therapy changed his issues regarding treating others like they were side characters, making sure he knew how to treat his peers in his own way (he'd always be a competitor, always giving people nicknames), he could never get over the hump of learning to let go of one certain person.
"Katsuki's issue with Izuku runs much deeper than you two think, it isn't just a child being told to hate another child, there is a genuine disconnect about how Katsuki feels regarding everyone else around him and how he feels regarding Izuku. To him, Izuku isn't just a regular person, but someone that he just couldn't accept. They admired the same hero, they had the same dream, and Katsuki felt it was a slight on him specifically that the figure of Izuku in his mind could dare try to be a hero. And I fear that you can't just make that issue go away, you confront it at the source. And it won't go away because Katsuki can never see the boy who ran away."
The therapist's notes that he caught a peak of saying everything that he knew to be the case. He couldn't accept Deku's dream, he wouldn't accept Deku ever being a hero unless he saw it with his own two eyes. But he ran away, and that is what truly cemented Deku as someone he could never forget in his mind. He ran away, and now Katsuki could never truly say he got Deku to give up on his impossible dream.
"I know you're out there somewhere, Deku. You ran away from your problems like a coward, but you're out there somewhere. If you ever come back, stay out of my way. I'm going to be number one, and if you're still out there, you'll watch me reach my dream while yours will be on the ground, smashed and stomped on. I know you're out there somewhere, because for how missing kids never re-appear, none of them were a nerd like you were."
And Katsuki's anger peaked even more as a deep scowl etched onto his face, his classmates all looking at him confused as he sat down back in the classroom and stewed. Because for all his anger, all his dissatisfaction for how Deku always came back with a smile, there was always the back of his mind telling him that Deku deserved his respect for never giving up.
"Yo Bakugo, you alright?" He looked to see a red-haired teen staring at him with a grin. Eijiro Kirishima if he remembered correctly, but he'd hadn't earned his respect yet, and whoever hadn't earned his true respect…
"Shut up Shitty-Hair I'm fine." He rolled his eyes, Kirishima noting their hair was actually kind of similar before Bakugo just looked ahead, a green-haired 10-year-old staring back at him with a concerned look on his face as he glared back.
"Come on Kacchan, let me help you up!" For all the fighting he did against it, Deku still found a place in his mind.
xXx
A blue stream of light shot through the sky, the blue-haired teen flying on a sort of hoverboard that avoided air traffic warnings because of the hoverboard giving off no signals as it flew past the Japanese border, the beaches of Kanagawa welcoming him back to the country for the first time since he left, remembering the first time he ever ran across water as he blazed through to South Korea. He flew over towns, people below him pointing out the blue stream that passed by as he bopped his head to the music playing through his customized orange headphones.
"So, right now I'm apparently in Kanagawa and nearby an HPSC office, I should probably lower the altitude." He went lower to the ground and glided his hand closer to the ground before going over a small lake, his hand rippling through the water's surface as he flew his way toward train tracks, a high-speed train coming his way as he raced alongside it on his hoverboard. The people in the train tried to record him, but all they obtained footage of was his dust before he sped up and flew off.
"Alright, so last I heard, the animal, a lion from a zoo of some kind, was rampaging somewhere in Mustafu. The records say it was an experiment gone wrong, the lion taking on an energized appearance with darkness surrounding it and it looking more like a sphinx before a coalition of heroes eventually took it out. It's said that the lion then reverted back to its normal form."
He looked in the distance and saw Mustafu, the city he ran away from, the city he was born in. He stopped his hoverboard in the air and just looked at the buildings from a distance, and smiled. "Well, Mustafu, it's been so long since I've seen ya. When I left, I was Izuku Midoriya. Now, Izuku Chaotix makes a return." He stood tall on his hoverboard, his 5'7 frame looking around with wonder and delight at the sense of adventure that rolled in.
"I left a broken boy, someone that questioned whether or not he should live. Now I come back, ready and waiting for the next rush." He smiled before he pumped his fist in the air, the same way he did to the two all those years ago. In that city, in this country, were perils he couldn't even describe. Japan was a country built on heroes and villains, it was a place that built everything off quirks, and he had entered it, and he was going to show this place he wasn't afraid of a single thing that it would throw his way, not anymore. He looked down before he deactivated his hoverboard and caught it in its compact form. He fell toward the ground fast, the memories he vaguely remembered replaying in his mind.
All the 'I'm sorry' phrases he had heard, all the prejudice he had suffered from being quirkless, all the people that said he couldn't do a single thing about the way he was, it all prepared him for this.
"I'm back, Japan. AIR BOOST!" Blue energy emanated from the teen before the air around him parted. Shooting forward with immense speed toward the city, his smile even wider as people tried to record the blue blur that sped past them almost instantaneously. Within that blue blur was a teen guided by a new way of life.
"Let the Wind Guide me, and take me to my next destination."
xXx
So, a re-write to the first Freedom is Always With You. I never expected this in my 2024 Bingo card, and when I first started that story I was in my senior year of high school and MHA was only in the middle of the war. Now it's 2024, MHA is OVER, and I'm in my last year of college. Suffice it to say that I'm older, hopefully wiser, and my brain just can't comprehend that I messed up doing that story the way I did. No troll, I did put too much emphasis on people's reactions to just how good Izuku was, and while it has a special place in my heart for the later chapters, the earlier chapters just couldn't cut it, and I need to re-do a lot, and it starts with the beginning.
I'm keeping the backstory VAGUE, but not too vague. I made the mistake of making Izuku's past in the first version way too vague and it made it so that I would end up not knowing where I was going sometimes, that changed. I now sprinkled in a lot more of the plot points, especially the HUGE one with the Genesis Wave and its 'aftershocks.' It now makes sense as to how the main gang from Sonic's Dimension arrived in the MHA dimension, but something that still needs fleshing out for every possible detail.
Also, I've sprinkled some real MHA elements into the story to show that isn't just the main problem. Mirio accepted One For All, and we all know that Mirio has gone past the Singularity and will be dead within the next year unless something is done :), that something being a thing I've been thinking about for a while, so just wait and see.
Also if people are pressed with how Bakugo is being presented and how he shoud not have a POV, a lot of his and by extension Class 1A's and Class 1B's moments are going to be tied with Izuku's story in Japan since honestly, they are a nexus for the story even if Izuku isn't with them. I'm sure there's a better way to word this, but just because their story isn't as intrinsically important to Izuku's POV quite yet, they're going to get involved regardless cause Izuku still goes around being a hero even if he doesn't follow the law, and UA gets involved quite a lot with the main villains which Izuku will have some interactions with, especially since you know who might be in Japan.
And of course if you have any suggestions and constructive criticism, let me know. I didn't make Nezu arbitrarily meet Izuku like in the first one, I didn't arbitrarily make Inko and Toshinori a thing where they had a daughter, nothing like that. I will introduce the stand-ins for the sonic cast (like how Izuku is a mixture of him, Sonic and Tails would be) and how others will be at my own pace, at the end of the day I'm glad I changed my story around.