Izuku is a bright child. Glowing eyes and colorful bandages and scraped knees dotted in star-burns.

He's smart - he knows too much too fast━never really a child in the ways everyone wants. He takes school too seriously and he knows how to keep up with people. How to make them trust him━to make them love him. He doesn't have anything they hate. Izuku had wide eyes and freckles and a chip between his teeth. Green as life itself, he knows how to corrupt and how to heal. He's a fox in sheepskin in a chicken coop and he wants to be a hero. Wants to save anyone, make them smile like the loud man on the computer. He's three-years-old and get want to make them smile.

He knows how to calm people down, how to sooth egos and make people feel safe. Make them feel special in his eyes.

There's nothing wrong with him.

Until there is.

He's not like everyone else. He's weak━he's a trouble maker that gets into too many fights with a creepy stare and a chipped tooth and bandages over his wounds. He never ties his tie right and he cheats on every test. He's stupid and useless and he's better off jumping off his middle school roof and praying that in his next life he isn't suck a freak. So he gives up━he looks at his best friends chin and he wants to cry.

He's got loose tears and a bruised face. Self-esteem so low he probably is better throwing his useless body off a roof. So he walks home holding his waterlogged dreams home through a burnt-wet notebook with all his brilliance in it. He's got a broken dream and a crumbling heart sitting black in his chest. Waiting for it to shrivel and die one day. His hands are covered in smudged ink and graphite and waterstained hope. Or despare (dip him in melancholy maybe then he'll be pretty).

But to his best friend it's water under the bridge, right? Not like he (useless, stupid, worthless, creepy━) could mean anything if he did die. So it's water under the bridge, he thinks, walking home, under the bridge.

He choked on something━slime. He's suffocating and he thinks it's ironic that he's dying from an unrelated accident. An attach━waterlogged and heavy with burns. He's like his notebook, isn't he? Brilliance covered in ash and tears of catharsis. Drown him 'til he's ineligible; lines blurred an vision black as his dying dreams strapped to his rotting heart.

Then━then he wakes up. The man he's looked up to for so long. The best - number one. Holding the world on his broad shoulders for so long and Izuku wants so badly to ask. So badly to know that he's wrong. To think he's not what he really is under his inundated grin.

So he flies.

He's told to let go (of life itself) but then he points out his inevitable demise should he do so, and his hero decides it's better to drop onto a building (it's perfect really, he can jump off if thing go south). The man, his hero, shiny and golden, scolds him. Izuku━Izuku still has his question. Can someone like him, useless and weak and deformed to his toes, become a hero too?

No. Breaks through his bones. Tears him apart and breaks through his skin. He thinks that he's better off jumping. That the asphalt seems like a better embrace than his mother (kind as she is, she's not enough━maybe it's genetic). Even though she isn't enough, he can bear to make he sad. Pull her over with worry, shatter her world, because that's what he is. He's her world, something she's lost everything for; and he can't take it away.

Izuku walks the long way home. It passes through the city (where something's on fire). He smells nitroglycerin and freezes and runs toward it, because danger is his calling. Maybe this time the next friendly reminder leaves him with a gouge in his chest so empty that something had to have been there. So when he looks at blood eyes and fearstained lips he runs. Because there is nothing his best friend hates more than being weak. And that's what he is right now (choked on something like slime).

Burn him, that's what he does. Cover him in star shaped hands and thoughts so foggy they're shapeless, so sharp they smell like sugar and hate.

Pour words over sand and taste the ashes and dust. Wake, write, rinse, repeat. His hands are covered in distorted calderaic impact and graphite smudges. Colorful bandaids and blooming bruises; scrapes that bleed pink and red over his work. Over there brilliance he's spilled into crumbling pages as shattered glass digs into his sharp-tooth smile. Porcelain breaks through his bones and leaves him with nothing. Nobody.

(Take a swan dive off the school roof.)

And oh! He's so greedy - he wants to live. To watch everything burn and rebuild so he can see where society seeks to throw away the weak and bless the strong.

He's a fragile thing, you know. All hard edges and brittle resolve━crush his meddle and crush his world. Break his heart wide open and watch as some sickly version of blood colored black drips right out, poisons the slit wrists and hurt boys and girls and the ones between. Shatter lenses and take and take and take until there is nothing left but unwanted bones and red teeth.

This is anarchy in its most refined form. Bleeding lips and broken legs. He's not going to stand for this━

"Why-!?" Says the boy who had everything.

"You looked like you needed help." Says the one who always has and will have nothing.

Because Kacchan is stelliferous - chock full of stars and stripes and anything anyone could like. Strong and smart and confident and pushing through barriers (isn't it ironic, that now he's the one breaking through a water barrier? He's a lacuna - a blank space colored green as emerald skies) and running to the fire of his demise. Chasing death like this is all someone twisted game set up for the pleasantries of whatever gods want to watch over him and laugh. The irony - he's born too late to thrive like this. Borne of too many joints and shaking hands, of a doctor who's grandson is gone, of a crying mother and missing father away for too many years to count on both hands; he's made of the gaps in his teeth and the black spaces of stars bright enough to strip worlds of their closk of darkness.

Skyscrapers are no closer to the sky than he.

(He runs home before his hero can reach him.)

━━

Waterlogged dreams can be blow-dried. He's got wet hands and callous ridden fingers. Izuku is a dying breed.

He wonders what would happen if he did do what was better ( STUPID, USELESS, WORTHLESS, DEKU!! ) for everyone━but school is going to end soon, eight months, and Izuku is still trying. Because this dream is all he has to hold. Clutched to his chest like a dim replacement for his rotten heart and breathless lungs. He's stupid, he knows, chasing a dream. A dream not even most normal people can accomplish━but he's trembling with the idea. And if he doesn't make it, he can always take Kacchan's advice, dance through the air, melt on the ground as he disappears into cracked green glass and muddy shoes.

Slip into the darkness, because he wants to be more than colorful bandaids and chipped tooth smiles and bruises lining his ribs under a canvas of hands shaped stars. Wants to be more than the stinging of his nose and the wetness of blue blood spilling down his face.

Wants to be more than hand-me-down dreams and used canvases of a boy coved in plastic.

He knows he's going to fail━but he'll give it his all anyway (even if his hero doesn't believe━even if his mother, his father, his best worst friend━even if he doesn't believe that he's anything special), they'll break his bones until his arms are covered in scars and his fingers will never be straight again. This is his decent, really━he doesn't realize that he falls so quickly━so fast and unsteady. Counting to ten back and forth. But he's smart. He'll pick it up soon enough. If he doesn't though━and he's so wrapped up in his worthless self he won't catch it, but if he doesn't, something bitter and kind and tired and scared will steal over his body. A puppet master over himself because he knows what it's like to be controlled, knows that he's never going to be free of anything. So he's going to fall and it starts like this:

He fails the exam for the Hero Course, he ends up in General Studies.

TAKE A SWAN DIVE OFF THE ROOF AND PRAY YOU'LL BE BORN WITH A QUIRK IN YOUR NEXT LIFE. Is seared across his mind━he stands over the edge and wonders why his life is like this. Why he can't crush robots; why he's so weak, worthless and━he jumps off that train of thought. Looks at it and spits it out. He's going to be something. Not a hero. But something.

Izuku wonders blearily, if anyone would care if he didn't show up. If he just dissipated into sand and drowned in the abyss of inky blue that is the sea. Maybe he'll help clean the beach, one day the shoreline will clear and he can sink off the pier. If he really thought about it, he would convince himself to drop dead on the asphalt from up-up-up━but Izuku has always been a coward. He's a sheep; a black sheep, but a sheep nonetheless. (He wonders when they'll send him to the slaughterhouse. Burn him alive 'til he's nothing but wool━gold is for fools that why they call it fools gold, but that's never stopped anyone. Maybe that's why the shiny floor of ocean water is so tempting.)

Split his skull open, pretty please, 'til all that's left are his eggshell bones covered in his rosemary blood.

He accepts anyway. He'll take the opportunity━━he's a coward, and what coward wouldn't cling to their dreams like a man to his mother? Like a child to affection? Like a daughter to hope?

Izuku doesn't like the uniform, if itches at his skin - catches on like spider silk and rough threads. His bandages rot away and he's got three bandaids on his cheeks━one on his nose (over a scrape), about over half his ear (to stop the ugly burn from showing, black and flaking of like his wool), the last is over his eyebrow and the cut under it will scar like the rest. It's brutal, but he doesn't deserve anything. Mercy is only granted to humans, and he is so far below someone would choose an animal hurt enough to euthanize over him. Sickly skin is a deterrent, he knows.

He remembers when he was little━seven or six or eight, something of the like━he thought that if he held his breath under water the noises would drown out. The hospital he woke up in was dreary and dull because really he shouldn't even exist, so really, be greatful he's lived this long and his mother's crying is still clear.

Izuku tried not to remember.

(His whole life, people have stuck bricks on his legs and thrown him to the sharks with instructions to swim. He's born with small hands and big eyes like his mother, he's born with a sharper jaw and freckles and messy hair, like his father. Another thing he won't realize until he's become his predecessor, is that his brain is sharp and it runs too fast.)

━━

It's like this:

The first day of school passes. Nothing happens. Nobody knows of his condition and the teachers are the kind that treats him like glass━he finds he hates it more than being treated as something bellow dirt. Something that should be stepped upon (explosions burn through his uniform) he wonders if they'll think he's made of glass if he shows them he's covered in molting skin. Faceless flesh over wiry muscle.

It's like this:

The second week happens; class A is attacked. Kacchan is attacked. Izuku cries himself to sleep when the first thought that comes to mind is: why can't he just die already. Izuku doesn't know which he is going 'round in his head, but it makes him cry nonetheless.

It's like this:

The Sports Festival comes up, and he winds up in first place during the obstacle course. Him, quirkless, worthless, powerless (DEKU!!), winds up in first place. He nearly cries himself dry of tears. Pools of it race toward in a fountain.

A boy in his class asks him to join his group and Izuku nods. He doesn't want to speak━he knows his voice is annoying, and that once he starts he won't be able to stop. He'll just annoy Shinsou (?) even more than he probably is. A girl walks up to them, she's got pink hair and super cool eyes, he wants to ask about her quirk, but that's rude; she has a load of inventions lined with her. They snatch a kid from class A - her name is Hatsume 'just call me' Mei. She only wants to be on their team because he got first place━

(God he's dumb, nobody would want to be on a team with HIM of all people.)

The son is rotting his skin away to dust. Izuku wonders when he's melt into muddy water━the kind of which he was born. Green-green; too green, but it's puke green, and it's covered terribly in some sort of charcoal red and inky-black embers. He's turning to ash and something ugly. Awful and terrible━something brimming with goo and bile and something green━it's slime. There's slime in his lungs and it's going to strangle him. They didn't get it out when it was climbing up his throat and rushing out past his lips.

It goes like this:

Izuku passes to the one on one rounds and beats everyone━

It goes like this:

Izuku is quirkless, he is unable to pass to the hero course (weak, defenseless, he's not made of glass) because of a joint that has defined his existence. He's worthless to everyone.

It goes like this:

Principal Nedzu wants a successor, and Izuku has the brain for it. He doesn't go to english - he's fluent. So he brings his notebooks (like he's instructed, follow instructions Izuku, or you'll fail). He walks to the office (it's so big and scary and he's probably going to be expelled once they find out how useless he really is, replace him for Kacchan; he's never been better than Kacchan). Nostalgia soaks his bones and his nose sting━he'll pretend he's allergic to avoid his teachers looking at him pitifully.

He knocks twice in a row, counts to three and knocks again. A voice chirps at him to come in, and there is a plastic couch━the kinds that look more comfortable than they are━seated off center. Just enough that you have to either sit on the dent or crane your neck uncomfortably to look at Principal Nedzu. Izuku stares with cold-dead-tired eyes and chipped teeth and bandaid covered skin, and Principal Nedzu grins with a feral glint.

"Midoriya!"

Izuku stops breathing - his lungs hold still in his chest and the lights burn muddy stars to his eyes.

"Y-yes?"

They fall into a pattern━Nedzu tells him a story (covered in blood). He says that heroes are puppets held by loose thread and guilty conscience. That he wants Izuku to pull on the gossamer line that binds the world together until it snaps. Because to be a hero, a Hero, or anything of the like, he'll have to see things nobody else will and grin. Chargin flows like molten lead through his viens.

It goes like this:

He interns over at Hosu with Manuel (because he needs to learn how to get paperwork in order while there's water in the area). Izuku meets Ingenuims' little brother, Iida Tenya. He's amiable and kind and his eyes are frozen over with the type of rage he's only ever seen on the face of Kacchan's father. Masura was the scariest thing on Earth and nobody━not even Kacchan━would deny that. He's angry and bitter and he grits his teeth with a sour shriek.

"Hi-"

But Iida is already gone. Izuku remembers now - remembers again, that he's nothing special. Just colorful bandaids on purple-green bruises. Chipped tooth and freckled cheeks. He's nothing special, and nobody likes him. It's a little funny he thinks; how nothing has changed.

It goes like this:

Izuku saves Iida from Stain. By talking.

"You'd kill a kid?" He spits. "You'd kill someone on the wrong path before they can set themselves straight?"

The hero killer looks up with shiny eyes. "He's already proven himself to be selfish. Unworthy."

"So has All Might. He's doing less hours now that he's teaching - he doesn't know how to teach either. It's like his personal break." Izuku grins. His teeth are sharp and his eyes twist; he knows. He always knows something. Knows that Iida isn't moving and that Stain has blood on his lips. Knows that he's got a pain tolerance covering him in tough starbursts of scar. Knows too much too often. "He's a fake, the world's going to break when he retires; we're dependent on him."

Knows that Iida's finger just twitched, and that Stain didn't see. Knows that he's probably going to die. Knows he doesn't really care, because what's one quirkless kid in the grand scheme of things? If he's going to die - well, he knew it would never be pretty.

━━

When he wakes, he knows something is wrong (he can't feel; he always feels too much, everything always hurts; burns around his throat).

It's too quiet. His bones are rotting in his skin (eat him alive and throw him━TAKE A SWAN DIVE━off a roof). So that his ashes mingle with the dust under a ground zero.

"It's my fault━" Someone says from the other curtain. "I should have realized."

"Ochako, you need not blame yourself for my misconduct!"

He thinks if he wasn't like he was (if he wasn't QUIRKLESS) then someone would be visiting him too. Not even his mother is here, though she's so busy it's no wonder. He wonders what his father (who left before the diagnosis) knows; wonders if he was planning to come back, but heard the news that his son, his child━his disappointment of a boy was quirkless. He's not worth as much as a snapped piece of lead. Tilted and smudged grey over bandaged hands.

The sky is stapled with silver stars and a hanging moon (it's suicide, the night) dipped in saccharine black. Black and white of a photograph captured at three-fourteen in the morning━before the sun is awake and the stars fizzle out. He wonders if he cried enough; could the oceans flood would his father come back home - not for him (though that's not to say there's a Midoriya Hisashi sized hole in his chest), for his mother. Or maybe he's still an elementary schoolerer crying over his empty valentines day box.

Then he leaves the hospital━Nedzu says he was reckless; that he was genius. Izuku thinks thats all he'll ever be. A contradiction mixed into a person. Green like life itself, corpse skin and dead eyes - weak and frail but determined to hell and back. He's a highway sign━useless unless your desperate for direction. He spends the entire day back from internships staring at his classroom wall and painting his fingers crimson with the inky blood spilled from his nails. Peal his skin back because the pain hurts so much less than the running thoughs spinning 'round, 'round, all around in his head. If it ever gets to he too much he can drown out that pain with a pain reliver.

He cries tears murky enough to be gasoline from eyes long lost of their embers. Izuku is useless; everyone knows it.

Classes stay the same -- people look at him weird, the teachers stare at him with disbelief etches to them. Maybe they thought he would've dropped out by now━maybe he should. Nedzu though━the principal has spent time and effort on him. Izuku can't just waste that. People like him can't waste anything. It's a bitter biting in his ears, grating plastic in shards over something forgotten. Maybe it's him ━

Izuku talks with Nedzu. He drops out of Yuuei high school. There's a though that everyone is better off without him anyway. (He's just a waste of space anyway.)

So much happens when he leaves. Izuku doesn't turn on the news much━tries not to━but that doesn't stop people from muttering at his new school, in the halls.

He goes to a second rate high school. Graduates and gets a second rate job; goes nowhere (everyone he knew was right, he did end up a nameless deadbeat). He wonders if he should have just jumped off the building All Might left him on when he was a teenager wishing for everything to end. The world is rigged━and he's loosing. He wonders in his spare time if roses bleed red━wonders if he really is that weird (the classmates in his school didn't do much except stick bubble gum in his hair and ignore him). Wonders what messed up the leader of the League of Villains so bad he went to destroy society; and Izuku decides in a moment of sleep deprivation and restlessness from his office job - he can do that. He can fix the world do that people like him can make it places. Hard work and effort of the stars burns in his gut. Izuku starts his writings again. He plans out a suit, plans out his rise to fame in extraordinary detail, stapled together (people have ALWAYS doubted him; he's short, scrawny, and he flinches at bright lights) in a mess of perfection.

Izuku scraps materials over the next few days━his coworkers say he's more lively (some say it like they're looking at school child and others say it like it's a curse). They're not wrong; he practices fitness at Dagobah Beach. Does his writings on the birds; people watches; writes in a code when he realizes that the ideas strapped to his book are held too close to his heart.

He breaks his heart over and over and rebuilds it. Disects his fears and breaks them apart, crafts a guise to create a world. Shatters himself until he knows the tics that make him, himself. Build him up like a house of cards and make the paper yourself through trial and error. Izuku learns to read through the taut lines of muscle and skin and the twitching of lips.

Then he does what he's been dreaming of since he was too little too late into the game.

He does the thing he's always wanted too (always, somewhere in the back of his mind). And he plants a body too, makes sure it's like him in every way it can be. This is his downfall, he's sure. The first step in a plan that will have him dead━but he's twenty-two and his mind is far too old for the body it's trapped in. Izuku wonders what Kacchan will think if he ever learns of it; he hopes his note is clear enough.

It's simple really, Midoriya Izuku takes a swan dive off his apartment roof.

━━

He wakes up in an alleyway. It's the one he fell asleep in, his suitcase is still in his arms and his backpack is strapped and locked (because he's a paranoid guy). Izuku wakes up and the first thing he does from his sight is take the half-dead cat staying on a garbage can. He pulls his hood over his head, changes his pants with the ones in his backpack and goes to the nearest motel.

There's one person in the room next to him who doesn't know the definition of quiet (Izuku doesn't want to think about what's going on in there). Instead of that, he takes out his computer━the one he bought with cash and makeup on━and he does what he does best. He finds a cheap-as-dirt apartment in the shitty part of Musutafu. Close to the slums, but not quite. He sends an E-mail.

Two days later he's set up in his apartment━he doesn't want to be caught so he scars himself. Drags a knife from his left forehead across his right eye. He knows it should hurt more, but Izuku is a boy covered in stars and filled with dead embers and dressed in colorful bandages. So he laughs as the blade drags across his nose. He stops it when it gets to the parallel of the blast on his left ear. He's a monster in human skin, bleed out his demons so that maybe he can be better.

Izuku decides that the last thing he'll do is fix this place. Because it's so broken. Shattered like a body on asphalt.

The League of Villains is practically running the underworld. Hate festers black like bruises over his skin. Bubbling over like tea-kettles and vomit laces shoes. Like burning skin and kindling hope. Izuku is a bitter little thing━so it starts like this. He posts an analysis on All Might (because he's already dead, gone, he's a lost symbol) and three days later he's asked to do one on the up-and-coming hero Sugar Rush. So it goes like this:

Sugar Rush is killed in an attack three days after his advice is given. Things only spiral from there.

He makes a deal with an infobroker; Giran is one of the most neutral parties to exist. He's missing half his face and one leg, but he's still kicking. The League has grown so large that nobody dare defy it. Shigaraki Tomura truly was All for One's successor in everything but blood.

So Izuku plays the long run. Neutral. He looks at himself in the mirror, looks at the cracks sewn on through his skin, across his face, and thinks he's perfect like this. Ugly, inside and out. It's simple really, he's a monster dressed in freckles and scars━he's got fake glasses and a chipped tooth. Bloody fingers and washed away dreams headed someplace far passed the horizon. Cover him in steel-toe boots and iron spiked gloves (don't forget that he's covered in diamonds and that people like him, they don't burn they melt). Soiled dirt spread across his fingerprints and dripping in arsenic and cynicism and anything it could have been if emerald were unbreakable. Izuku isn't like that tough, he's shattered into hundreds of splintered bits. Green decks disappearing behind his eyes. He wears contacts and they're red. Red like his father's eyes and red like blood soaked rosewood.

Izuku is a boy of jaded skin and bruises blooming lavender and gold under bright band-aids. Hold him together, please, won't you? This boy is falling apart by times own hands━fate has always been cruel to him.

Oh how everything bends and breaks and static rests upon unsure minds. Slip away to a forgotten place where his mother stopped apologizing and the scars on his skin fade to splatter paint freckles. Where he wasn't so useless and dust doesn't seep through the cracks on his lungs. Ashes black his eyes white━he just does what he does best. He gets into trouble. The devil will scream in fear at him one day━like father like son I suppose.

It takes two days for him to get caught━the hero that tries to arrest him is tall (so tall, towering over him and he's going to get hurt━), towering over him in every aspect. They're cloaked in the dark, shadows morphed around them in a purple glow; yellow slits pear down at him.

"I am here to turn you away from the darkness in hopes that you will seize the light in redemption."

"Uhm.. no thank you?"

"Oh it is such sweet sorrow."

Izuku grins under his mask, it's a wiry thing, fear etched to his bones. "That we must part 'til be it morrow."

━and Izuku runs; feet slamming through the pavement, eyes scanning the signs. He runs in the opposite direction of his house. His lungs burn and his muscles ache but he's never felt better━never felt more free. His head is full of stars and they twinkle instead of burn. Shaking hands have never been associated with anything good, but goddamn in Izuku doesn't feel like he's ON TOP OF THE WORLD. Like he belongs to someplace━he's never felt so.. wanted. Even if it's true that nobody really wants him out on the streets. He passes a television that's half broken and spilling static. His face is on the news along with garbled words of how he killed himself━Kacchan walks on with glitchy feet and he says that things like this need to stop. That just because you're rewarded for hurting someone doesn't mean you should━Izuku wants to walk up to him and scream. Tell him that everything he's been told is his fault━that he jumped off a roof because it was his advice. Shouldn't you be happy Kacchan? He wants to scream. I took a swan dive━just like you wanted. Are you happy now, Kacchan? But he doesn't. Izuku has always had to restrain himself from acting━what's one more time?

Ashes and sand spill out from his face.

━━

Blood seeps through like ink on his hands. It's more simple than anything, really.

Izuku makes a deal with Giran and the word gets out.

Two weeks later he had people saying they'll give anything to work with him. And Izuku? Izuku only deals in favors and cash; he wonders who knows about him. Wonders if his mother has figured it out that the rise of the Japanese underground.

━━

Broken bones and bruises feel like kitted scratches on his skin. Maybe it's because he's used to falling; maybe it's because he knows what to do so automatically his body just blocks out the pain. That's how the human body and brain work. If he's exposed to something enough times it just doesn't register, he goes numb to it━hence the whole 'not limping while there is a bullet in is thigh' think. Actually, it barely tickles (that's a lie, it stings, feels like a shallow scrape would with rubble under his skin after the shock wore off). The sky dims down under the yellow light in his kitchen. It's a scraggly thing. Like some mockery of the sunlight he hasn't seen in ages; he spends the day sleeping when he can and when he isn't, he's writing in his notebooks (coded words with letters he's memorized; it's not based on any language, he just knows the shapes and their meanings).

The world is burning, Izuku is well aware, but he's long since conquered his fear of fire, and he's never been one to run away. Always saving, always giving (he'd given his life, his identity for this life━but he'll never regret it).

He spits lava in a tongue that only the ones who are lost can speak━which, of all people, includes a hero. It's no secret that Hawks is on an infiltration mission; it's odd to him that nobody but him can see the look in his eyes. That all he has has been ripped from him because he cannot hold it for himself. Or maybe Izuku is just self projecting━he's just Nobody after all. That's what he calls himself to anyone that will listen; he's the ghost of a smile that moves with ticking eyes and twitchy fingers. It's in his bones to pick apart things (some people tell him that when he looks at them with his poison-green eyes, it feels like he's picking them apart under a microscope. He is, but he won't tell them that).

Like this though, when people are desperate and threatened by him, he feels safe. Feels some semblance of WORTH. He trades in favors and cash. Though it's easier to get the latter than the former; anyone that's been around long enough knows that dealing in favors is suicide (ergo, only the truly desperate deal in favors).

There are things he wants that he'll never have, never own, never be able to grasp. So he imagines them in timeless places, when it's early enough for there to be no stars, but the sun hasn't found it's way through the sky━light dimmed in a warped way. Sometimes he'll draw what he wants (he always burns the papers, he's learnt far too early that all weakness need die before it kills him). He draws his mother holding him, draws toes without extra joints, draws the quite memory of a father hollowed in the corner, on a chair, reading the newspaper. Draws himself in a costume for stealth and writes 'DEKU: THE HERO' on the top. It doesn't matter what he draws though, because it all turns to dust. Paper is cheap when he's got hundreds of thousands of yen to his name; but it's the paper that he started with. Crayons staining with oily tips and graphite pencils breaking over notebook after notebook. This is what keeps his sanity in check.

Underground heroes spread rumors of him. The analyst. Says he's on no sides, he's a ghost of a person without an identity toward him. He doesn't plan a big reveal either━he heard somewhere that one of the top-tiers in the League of Villains was going to out himself and tear society down but chose not too. He made a deal, that if they want information, they can't attack him. He takes commissions from anyone and everyone, he does what he does best and hides, he sinks into the shadows and the underground hero that almost caught him before━Tsukoyami is his name━comes most often. He does his research on underground heroes. Asks for information from anyone that knows, because knowledge is power, moreover than any quirk will ever be (it's also the only thing that has ever truly been HIS).

He wonders if the habits that are not his mothers are his fathers. His mother, kind as she is, cannot find it in herself to take anything. Always giving, always. He wonders if she has ever had anything of her own, kindness is used and that is all. He has stony eyes and a grin so sharp is scares people (they say he looks like something to fear, something you should never get on the bad side of. He tells them it's very hard to get on his bad side, but if you are, you would wish for a painful death), Izuku knows how to break people, little by little, make them dependent on you, help less and less and less until they don't know what to do. Lead them to their own deaths. Izuku knows what pain is, and leaving someone with a lifetime of paranoia and anxiety is far worse than any death he could hand out. He subtly gets them to do the things he wants, and when they loose their worth he tells them to take a swan dive off a roof and pray to be better in their next lives.

Heroes are as scared of him as villains.

━━━

He meets the League of Villains, or more accurately, he gets scouted. Hawks the double-maybe-triple agent winds up in his route. He changes it up every now and again━enough so that above ground heroes won't notice, because most underground heroes know not to arrest informants. They're the neutral, if you take out a neutral it's like taking out and underground doctor. You don't.

It's a rule, you don't ask where he gets his information, don't ask how much he knows, don't ask who, what, when, where, or why. You take it and leave with a debt to your name. Izuku is ruthless, but that does not make him any less kind. There are people he trusts with his whole being; velvet will stain the hands of whoever touches his mother━because she gave him life. He'll kill anyone that goes after Kacchan, no matter how bitter he is, because Ground Zero is his to deface. Is his to destroy; he's called dips the same way Dabi has to Endeavor. It's common knowledge, and grudges are always personal. Most people that know what's good for them don't ask.

Mindjack isn't most people. He's not stupid enough to brainwash Izuku (instead he asked for Izuku to keep his quirk off the streets). They talk on rooftops, sometimes. Tsukoyami joins and they eat takeout and things they really shouldn't.

"Hey. Why don't you let anyone kill Ground Zero? I know you hate him."

Izuku smiles under his mask; it's a sheet of white with two holes for his eyes. "He's my kill. K- can't have anyone stealing things I should have. He's the reason I'm here, really."

"Where were you before."

"Clinging to a dream I would never achieve. He was right, I'll give him that. I never could be a hero. He didn't say anything about this."

"You━wanted to be a hero? Help people."

"It's all I wanted, actually. I could tell you that it's in my blood, but I also take after my father. He's not inherently cruel, I don't think, just has issues with promises he makes."

Mindjack has a grin in his eyes━he also wears a mask. It looks like a muzzle, but Izuku won't say the questions curling in his lungs. Won't ask the things he craves to. (It's a waterlogged dream, but he thinks that in another world, if things were different and he was something good, Mindjack and him old have been friends.)

Izuku laughs light and cheerful and full of spite. It's holding him by the throat and one day he'll tear in half and nobody will comment on Nobody's death. He wonders if his mother kept his notebooks or threw them away he wonders a lot nowadays. Business slows during summer. Lesser known villains, desperate people try to find jobs, less people are half freezing to death, etc., etc..

"You're fucking terrifying, you know that?"

Izuku's eyes twinkle when he looks at Mindjack. "Oh darling, that's the point. You can't tell if this is all fake, or if my civilian identity is the mask. Or if I even have one. It's the mystery. I'm Nobody, you know? That's what━it doesn't even matter. I'm going to fix everything or burn in to the ground━it's one or the other! You can't stop me, nobody can, not you, not All Might himself in his prime, not the Boogeyman of the underworld himself. Do you remember him, Mindjack? Remember the rumors? A quirk that can steal quirks? They say he's the one to have caused All Mights downfall, but I'm not scared!"

He knows he's talking nonsense. Knows that it's all a lie; or some half-truth concocted from the depths of his suicidal thoughts. Maybe he's not scared of them because he wants to die. Wants to see the abyss and fall in after his guilt leaves him (he already died once, red splattered on the pavement in the same pattern as a spider lily). There is blood on his hands, on his chest. Ink on his fingers and a chip in his tooth he got when his childhood friend-turned-bully pushed him and he fell into a rock. His tooth fell out and broke the one growing in underneath. Izuku is a boy of gravestone dreams dancing in the winds like a meteor hitching half past Pluto. The devil'll weep when they meet━hell has no place for people like him.

"And when he blows to bits, well, I'll go with him!"

"That's.. you're on a suicide mission."

"I've been on the way to hell since I turned four," He corrected. "and he's going with me."

"What'd he do?"

"Killed my classmate. His name was Midoriya, but we'd call him Deku. He wanted to b e a hero so badly, you know? The kid was quirkless, though. Took our Class Kings advice━took a swan dive off a roof. Prayed for a quirk in his next life, I'm assuming. Bastard. I think I miss him, we were really close when we were kids━he started backing off after word got out of his diagnosis. That's what they called it, ya know? Diagnosis. Like it's a disease."

"I used to think I was cursed. That I was going to be a villain." Mindjack starts. "I mean. Who could be a hero with a quirk like mine?"

"You apparently, I wish you were a villain!" There is a scrunch to Mindjack's eyebrows. "Having you in the underworld would be a nightmare and a half, and I've always been one for a challenge."

There's a vindictive pleasure in Izuku's eyes, he hopes to god Mindjack can see it too. Izuku thinks that Mindjacks parents didn't love each other; they didn't love him either; he's got the look of an abandoned kid sewn to his eyes and for all his manipulation there is some childish, naive part of him that wants so badly to help. "Maybe you should join me, Mindjack, after all, kids like us were never truly fit for heroics. You should, but don't."

"That's a weird way of trying to get me on your side."

"I'm not trying to get you on my side, is the thing."

Izuku holds the back of his mask and slips it off so that the hero can see his eyes. Know he's not lying. "After all, everyone is born quirkless, we're not so different, you and I. Goodbye hero."

He jumps off the roof. "See you!"

━━

Three days later, Mindjack joins him. Says that he's right about everything, gives a name and let's Izuku do what he wants to his hearts content. To contempt that burns through his blood.

(He wonders again what Kacchan thought when he saw Izuku's body smashed into gears on the pavement. Was it sweet, that sight?)

What was that saying?

Give a fool enough rope and hell hang himself.

━━

There is blood on his hands.

Nobody double-crosses Nobody. He's nothing, the ghost of a breath and the jump over hollow wood.

He's a monster in human skin. (They say he doesn't even have a quirk.)

━━

When people come to him, they stop with the pleasantries. They ask politely about what they want and how to obtain it. He names his price.

He is nothing if not a man of his word. It is something he's always prided himself on. He became a hero (though it's warped; to some he's a hero, to others he's a nightmare dressed in feathers. A fox in a chicken coop), though the definition is different for each person. Izuku thinks that he's far too deep into this, that the salt water is drowning him and he's burning of a fire of his own making.

His mother might've called him something sweet once. Like the medicine he used to take when he was sick of the smell of grass after it rains. He's never liked flowers, they smell rotten to him. Now he's bitter though.

Izuku's always liked his coffee black━he's never took painkillers, because he likes to feel his skin burn up. Likes to feel the world around his warp and tingle. That's why everyone is afraid of him; he moves like a ghost. He's scary, scary like Bakugou used to be. Scary like his father fluttering off into the wind on his fifth birthday, right before he was diagnosed as quirkless.

One day he'll she'd his sheepskin, but for now he wears a suit and tie; different from his vigilante gear. He walks into the League of Villains headquarters and makes an alliance. He twists the world until he's running Shigaraki Tomura under his thumb. Until the dust settles, because if there's one thing All for One dude wrong in raising him was that he forgot that in order for complete loyalty you have to have love. Devotion. You have to twist the minds of people till they can only stomach what you feed them; poison their minds and make all the evidence concrete. Because if they can't find holes in your logic, then you will. Remember to praise, he knows that if for whatever reason, if All Might had told him on that rooftop━or if anyone, really, had believed in him, he would be a hero right now.

The world doesn't work like that though. So he's going to fix it or die trying.

(They call him the Boogieman. That if you double-cross him, you'll regret it.)

Like father like son, is how the saying goes.