Quirkless unemployment rates were in the ninety percent range.
Out of estimated hate crimes against quirkless people, only about ten percent were reported, and only one percent had legal follow-up.
One out of every third quirkless person committed suicide by the age of twenty.
Zero percent of quirkless people in the past fifty years lived past the age of forty.
Inko didn't like those statistics. So when her baby got the quirkless diagnosis, she had no choice but to apologize and bawl into his arms. Because she loved her baby. And she didn't want to lose him because of something as stupid as bad genes.
They'd been fine for a couple years.
Izuku came home with scratches and burns sometimes, but he just seemed so happy , and he always wrote them off as just accidents that had happened when he was playing.
Then one day he came home with a really bad second degree burn.
She'd taken him to the hospital, fussing over him the entire way, and then had stood in complete shock in the waiting room as her baby was ignored for six hours because he was quirkless and other people with 'good quirks' needed treatment first.
Inko hadn't stayed in medical school for long before switching to journalism, but she'd gone long enough to know that a second degree burn as bad as Izuku's needed higher priority than a man with a concussion and a water jet quirk. Especially when Egotistical Water Jet Man had been at the hospital for ten minutes, and Izuku had been there for six hours .
Six hours!
What really worried her, however, was that Izuku wouldn't tell her what happened.
And it just kept getting worse.
She saw him trying to hide the injuries. She took out his trash and found old bandages. She saw how he hunched himself over, like he was in pain. She noticed the burns on his uniform when she did the laundry. She went through his search history once in a panic and found links to a lot of websites on how to self-treat minor injuries.
When she called the school, they claimed they had no idea what she was talking about, but would keep an eye out for signs of bullying.
They did not keep an eye out.
Izuku's injuries got worse. One time, right after his eleventh birthday, he came home with a cracked rib. And he still refused to tell her the truth about what was going on because he wanted to be a hero and heroes didn't rat out their friends.
Inko got him a therapist, but after the first session the therapist sent her an email explaining that he needed to focus on 'higher priority' customers, and would have to cancel their appointments for a while. Having heard all the euphemisms by now, Inko knew that meant Izuku had told the therapist he was quirkless, and the therapist had given up.
She asked if he wanted to switch schools, and he broke her heart when he said it wouldn't matter if he did, because people would still hate him no matter where he was.
So Inko had to sit and watch as the world beat her ray of sunshine down. She watched as he fought against the current of discrimination and stayed determined to save people. She watched as he struggled and adapted and grew. And because she was watching, she saw the day hope died in her baby's eyes.
He came home one day without that sunshiny smile she didn't know she'd gotten used to. She'd seen the news, but he didn't seem to want to talk about what he'd done or how the heroes had treated him afterwards. He just vanished into his room. A few hours later, she found two boxes of All Might merch outside his door, with a post-it note declaring the boxes and their contents to be "For donation."
She didn't say anything about the boxes, even though she cried when she saw them. She just tucked the boxes into storage, hoping that this was just a phase, and it would pass.
It didn't pass, but the next day Izuku came home from school absolutely exhausted and fell asleep immediately upon getting home. Well, immediately after standing in the bathroom with the tap running for thirty minutes.
The day after that, Izuku came home with a spring in his step and a new light in his eyes.
And as the weeks passed, something changed in her baby.
He still claimed he didn't want the All Might merch any more, so Inko decided to get rid of it. He started researching quirk laws, learning to program, going on runs in the morning, and practicing punches in the kitchen. He still wanted to be a hero, but there was a new determination behind it, as though he was doing it just to prove he could, instead of doing it so people could be comforted by his smile.
At first Inko was worried because in the mornings, he'd leave his room with ten new bruises on his face and he walked stiffly, like he'd overused his muscles. But then Izuku started gaining muscle mass and started padding soundlessly around the apartment, like he'd become a ninja overnight. And as he got stronger, those injuries started to disappear, along with the burns.
As the injuries disappeared, so did his smile.
Inko liked his smile. She wanted it back.
It didn't come back.
Compromise
Chapter Notes
I'm back.
All righty. Tw for mentioned murder, mentioned rape, mentioned sexism, mentioned racism, violence, mentioned paralysis, and blood.
I am so sorry.
Um also, I realized that it made more sense to have Deku refer to himself by his first name when it's in his perspective, and that gives me an opportunity for sYmBoLiSm later on, so I went back through and edited all the "Midoriya"s into "Izuku"s. You might not have noticed if I didn't say anything, but I figured I should through out a heads up for those of you who might have.
See the end of the chapter for more notesThe weeks flew by with school by day and training by night. Izuku hadn't come home visibly injured in a while, and it was worth all of it, just to see the relief that simple difference brought to his mother. She didn't worry about him when he went to school anymore, and while they'd never openly discussed the bullying, he knew she could tell something was different.
Meanwhile, with Stain, Izuku was making an impressive amount of progress. He was rapidly becoming a threat in hand-to-hand combat-- an even bigger threat when he had knives-- and while he had yet to beat Stain, he could keep up with him for several minutes before getting knocked down. Izuku was also now well-knowledged on first aid, anatomy, and law, all of which he figured he'd need as a hero.
Stain had introduced him to all kinds of new weapons, giving a short presentation for each. These presentations were usually biased towards Stain's personal preferences, but that was easy to ignore. Izuku had already found his love for knives, throwing knives and katanas in particular, but there were so many more options. Beyond blades, he quickly found that he loved bows. Sadly, he had to agree with Stain about their impracticality and set that aside. His next favorite was, to his surprise and partial horror, guns. They were efficient, powerful, and exceptionally useful. On the other hand, it was incredibly easy to kill someone with a gun, and Izuku was struggling with the idea of using one in a fight, even if it was just to immobilize his opponent. Then again, there were all sorts of types of gun, and he could probably design bullets meant to incapacitate rather than destroy. The only other road block with guns was that Stain despised them, arguing they were "too easy to abuse," and wouldn't, or couldn't, help Izuku learn to use them. Plus, handguns were illegal in Japan, and Izuku was having trouble finding loopholes in that particular law. So, Izuku turned to his next top option, the bo staff.
The bo staff was elegant, swift, and blunt. It was a tool easy to incorporate into Izuku's training in hand-to-hand and martial arts. He could easily knock someone out with it without worrying about them bleeding out. It wasn't hard to carry around, especially with the modernized, collapsable version he was training with. And Stain didn't mind teaching him how to use it.
But, around the same time Izuku started training with the bo staff, Stain started killing again.
The Hero Killer hadn't attacked anyone since the week he started teaching Izuku, and the news tabloids had noticed. They weren't making a huge deal about it, but there were some conspiracy theories spiraling around regarding Stain's disappearance.
Izuku also noticed. Ever since the day he met Stain, he watched the news carefully, paying attention to anything related to his mentor. After weeks of nothing, he started to get hopeful that Stain was done, and that being a teacher had somehow miraculously been a good influence on him. Then, as Izuku started growing into a better fighter, Stain struck again, murdering the pro hero Skydancer in the next district over with no warning whatsoever.
Staring at his computer in shock, Izuku had to wonder why this surprised him. He'd known Stain was a killer, but now that he'd actually begun to understand and, dare he say it, like the man, it was hard to mesh together the two mental images in his head.
One half of his brain was pointing at the carnage in the alley Skydancer's body was found in and screaming at Izuku for not turning Stain in the moment he had a chance. That was the side of his brain which had, for all his life, been obsessed with good and evil, the shining gold line between right and wrong. It made him want to be a hero so he could protect the light from the darkness and make people look up at him in awe, feeling safe.
The other half of his brain pushed aside the image of Stain's extracurriculars and pointed at the man Izuku had come to respect and empathize with. It insisted that there wasn't a line between right and wrong, there was a cloud. A big grey cloud of ambiguity. This side of his brain wanted him to look at Stain and see a man who'd made mistakes, but still had potential to learn and grow into someone better. It wanted Izuku to be a hero so he would look at the world with compassion, and understand that nothing was black and white, that everyone , including the villains, needed saving. And some of the heroes needed condemning.
Izuku wasn't sure which side to listen to.
He wanted to like Stain, he really did, but he couldn't be friends with someone who murdered people in his free time. There wasn't any moral ambiguity about killing people because he didn't like their "motivations." That was clearly, so clearly, wrong. But then there was the Stain who laughed at Izuku's weak jokes, and didn't care that he was quirkless, and encouraged him to be better for no other reason than that Izuku wanted to be better.
So there had to be some sort of compromise.
As Izuku glumly pulled on a hoodie and grabbed his throwing knives, he considered. But there was nothing. There was no way for him to ignore murder for the sake of friendship. Unless…
He dropped to the ground outside his window, mind whirring.
Letting Stain continue killing heroes was out of the question. Stain's murder habit was wrong. But his ideals, while extreme and far-fetched, were in the right place. If Izuku could somehow convince Stain to give up the murdering portion of the job, and target actually immoral heroes, all this confusion would be cleared up. Izuku might not particularly like the idea of Stain beating heroes up, but it was a step in the right direction away from straight up killing them, so it would have to do.
The only problem he had now was how to convince the guy to quit it. Stain could be painfully stubborn sometimes.
It hit him as he left the bus station.
Martyrs.
He parkoured the rest of the way to Stain's apartment, wincing as his brain helpfully recited all the trespassing laws he was breaking and what loopholes he could potentially use to get out of legal retaliation. Swinging in through the window, he found Stain on the computer, muttering angrily to himself as he read an article titled "The Hero Killer Strikes Again!"
Well, at least he was in a good mood for this conversation to work.
"Um," Izuku said intelligently, announcing his presence.
Stain's head snapped up and he glared, before returning to the article.
"You know, it would probably be easier to get people to like you if you didn't kill heroes," Izuku told him, crossing the room with his arms outstretched for the bo staff. He'd been separated from it for too long.
"I'm surprised you came back," Stain said finally.
"I actually came back to take this staff from you, and argue with you," he answered honestly. He was intentionally trying to keep his voice light, like doing that would somehow make it easier to have this conversation. "Ready for some constructive criticism?"
Stain made a noncommittal noise.
"You can't kill people anymore," Izuku said simply.
"Why not?" Stain asked, looking genuinely angry. "I'm trying to get a point across."
"Yeah, I get that," he said, nodding. "But you're doing it wrong."
"I'm not--"
"Shut up and let me explain."
Stain slumped back into his chair, arms crossed like a pouting toddler. Izuku sighed, twirling his staff around his hand a few times while he collected his thoughts.
"Look," he said. "What you're doing right now looks like needless murder. You're taking people that the majority of Japan looks up to and you're killing them off."
"I'm trying to show that they're unworthy!" Stain protested.
"Well, you have to prove it before you kill them!" Izuku countered, scowling. "You can't just kill heroes with an unfounded claim that they're unworthy and expect everyone to get it. So I'm going to tell you what a better way to do it is. Ready?"
Stain just glared at him.
"First, you've got to start getting people to trust you. Right now, all people see is this crazy psychopath who hates every hero except All Might, who, by the way, also isn't really that great of a hero. So you need to start digging up facts. Find things out. For example, Skydancer originally became a hero so she could hide a drug trading operation under her agency. You didn't even know that, because you didn't look. The rest of the world definitely didn't know that, and they never will, because you killed her.
"Right now you're just killing every hero who isn't All Might. But if you find genuinely condemning information about heroes and then spread that information before you attack, you'll find that a lot more people are going to start supporting you. It'll change from 'Stain's a crazy guy who runs around randomly killing heroes and no one can stop him' to 'Stain's helping expose immoral heroes and putting them out of commission.' Which leads me to my next point," Izuku said, pointing his staff at Stain and rubbing his forehead tiredly. Stain was still glaring at him, not moving, so he honestly couldn't tell if any of this was getting through to him. "You have to stop killing them. All you're doing by killing them is making a long list of martyrs. You're taking these awful people and you're giving them the chance to live on in the history books as people who honorably died trying to defeat the Hero Killer. And if you find reasonable proof before they die, people are going to want to destroy those heroes themselves. Want to know what the one thing more satisfying than blood is?" he asked, eyes glinting dangerously. "Turning the entire world against someone and watching them burn."
Izuku knew that was true because that's what Kacchan did. He hurt Izuku himself, until he decided that wasn't enough, and then he turned the entire school against him instead. It looked very satisfying. If Izuku wasn't so weak and useless, he'd probably want to try it on his bullies.
"That's what the media is for ," Izuku continued vehemently. "The media was literally designed to find this stuff out and tear people apart for it. So if you give the media information, they're going to go crazy."
"But I want to personally watch the light leave their eyes," Stain said flatly, still not moving. "I want to be the one to purge them from this world."
"So beat them up," Izuku said. He hated the words as they came out of his mouth, but knew this was the only way to get Stain to stop killing people. "Destroy their lives without killing them. Make it impossible for them to continue being a hero, without taking anything else from them."
He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath as he decided whether or not he wanted to go through with this. But it was the only way, so he opened them again and looked Stain dead in the eye.
"Captain Celebrity," he said, keeping his voice as steady as possible, "is arguably the worst hero in the world. He comes to Japan for the sole purpose of raping Japanese women. He's also here right now. I can give you an exact location, actually. But I want you to do something for me. Instead of killing him, I want you to stab his back in just the right spot so he has full body paralysis, but doesn't die. You know the one I'm talking about."
Stain nodded.
"You are going to hit him there, and then you are going to leave him where someone will find him. You are going to write a note about why exactly Captain Celebrity deserves that treatment, and you are going to leave it there. You are not going to kill him. I'll give you all the relevant facts and statistics you need to write before you leave. Then you are going to call a media outlet. It doesn't matter which one, but the bigger the better. You're going to give them Captain Celebrity's location. They'll come, they will find your note, and I can assure you, Captain Celebrity will never be the same again."
Izuku took a shaky breath and released it, well-aware he was almost done and then he could go home and have nightmares by himself. "Just this once, I'm going to tell you to do this, okay? Just this one time. If you hate it, I'll get out of your life and you can go back to killing people in peace. Okay?"
Stain gave him a long, calculating look and then stood up.
"You're trying to be a hero," he said, "and you're telling me to go beat up a hero?"
"A sexist, racist, dickhead of a hero," Izuku spat before he could think about what he was saying. He slapped his hand over his mouth immediately afterward, shocked at his own words.
But Stain just laughed. "Yeah, okay. You're more of a hero than any of them, kid."
Izuku gave him a shaky nod, not really sure if that was a compliment.
"So. Where is this guy?"