The world is unkind to quirkless people.

This is Midoriya Izumi's story-and the beginning of everything changing for her.

Warning for Season 1 Bakugo. Note: Bakugo/Consequences is the beginning 'pairing' for this story, if anything. Bakugo needs to learn the consequences for his actions first and foremost.

Present-tense. Initially posted in February of 2019.

(April 4, XX19, Orudera Middle, Musutafu District, Japan, 2:00pm)

The world is unkind to quirkless children.

The world has been teaching Midoriya Izumi this lesson since she turned four and her quirk never came in. She's been bullied, picked on, and hurt—and nearly hospitalized a few times. Starting with her childhood friend, Bakugo Katsuki, everyone bullies on her because she's the quirkless brat. She's worthless, in their eyes.

And nothing she, or her mother, do can convince even the teachers to step in for her. Most of them join right in with it, this bullying, this ridiculous treatment of her and she can't help herself—it feels like she's trapped in a cage with no way out. She's had a nasty feeling this would go too far one day, and she'd never been able to stomach watching people get hurt.

She's been standing up to Bakugo since she was four years old and a crybaby. She wants him to think for himself. Wants him to realize he's hurting people. Wants him to stop hurting people who don't deserve it.

Standing up to him, though, doesn't have that effect on him.

He's just turned to attacking her instead, and deep down, Izumi knew they weren't friends. She's tried for years to convince herself they were at one point, if not now, and that Ka—that Bakugo was just trying to be kind by discouraging her from becoming a hero without a quirk, but…then Bakugo went too far and broke her ribs. It was the same week Izumi was pronounced quirkless by a Quirk specialist.

Izumi's mother had put her into a separate school after that, just to keep her safe, and by and large Izumi thinks it was good. Arubeshi Elementary is a kind place, kinder than Orudera, and she misses it sometimes.

And then, because of money, Izumi and Kacchan attend Orudera, together and Kacchan found out and got worse, and—she swallowed hard, and he's taken to doingworse. He's lost the right to be called Kacchan, but she still sometimes calls him that out of habit, or—didn't respond to him at all. Though he seems to have forgotten his 'quirkless' childhood friend wasn't named Izu, or Deku as he calls her every single day.

Worthless, useless, quirkless, freak .

All words he uses to describe her.

Words she's learned to hate, and worse yet, she's starting to believe that everyone in her life—even her mother—thought this way on some level. Because what if she really iss—

Ruthlessly, Izumi shoves the thoughts aside and tries to focus on what she's writing. Thankfully, the last period of her day is homeroom. End of day announcements are starting, but Izumi isn't interested in them. She's trying to get homework done—or appear to get homework done—during her teacher's free period. The free period is usually used for that, but Izumi's done with hers, since it was an easy assignment.

So instead, she's working on her hero analysis on the heroes and the situation this morning, from the Tatooin shopping district.

Better to be prepared than not, if she wants to make it as a hero. She needs to know what kind of people she's fighting alongside. And she also needs to be able to take them down if she has to, like Eraserhead, who fights people effectively quirkless—and renders them quirkless. It was actually after one of his fights went on one of the forums that she realized there was value in analysis of heroes' fighting styles.

He's not super well-known, but Izumi loves him for being able to fight so well and bring people down to his level before kicking their asses. Really, the analysis was supported by TiredCatDad , one of the hero forum's top contributors, and Izumi sees no reason that analysis won't help her in the future.

Most people would find it tedious to analyze each and every fight, but Izumi loves every second it. She'd analyzed and re-analyzed all the fights she'd ever seen, recorded or in person, with her near-perfect memory helping her recall as many of the details as possible. She'd noted down all of the details in every single fight, and then used them to work out how the heroes' and villains' quirks worked. She usually analyzed heroes in the notebooks she took to school because, at least if someone found them, they'd write it off as her being a fangirl. Villains, she usually analyzed more ruthlessly, but there were a set of Strategy notebooks at home that she'd used specifically to work out how to react to a hero going rogue, and which heroes she needed to keep an eye on.

The fan community is remarkably well-informed, and Izumi has a lot of information on the top Ten heroes in Japan, and the world, partly thanks to them. Even the less well-known ones are of interest to her because, maybe, they (especially those with less powerful quirks) could provide her with a better way to start fighting quirkless. She's been working on her stamina and has been in and out of aikido lessons since she was a child, but it's not enough.

Even if she's at the peak of human limits, it's not enough. Though it does help keep Bakugo off her back, these days. So she started analyzing villains when she was about eight, in the hopes of learning how to take them down when she becomes a pro.

No one would write off an analysis of a villain's tactics as fan girling over cool heroes . Especially not half-formed, half-baked ones from a middle schooler, and Izumi didn't need any more hate for what she did. Most people assume she's just a nerd who likes to go to heroes' fight scenes (and a stereotypical fan at that) and she is ; she just also likes to know about the villains in the world and to know, or learn, how to beat them. But in her mind this is also practice for the future. What should she do when she encounters her first villain? Freeze?

She needs to know how to do better. She needs to be able to do better the first time she runs into a villain. She's not going to have a quirk to rely on, which means she's going to have to get better at using her surroundings to her advantage and analyzing villains' strategies, not just their quirks. Something that a surprising number of pro heroes have difficulty with, outside the top ten.

And even then, only a very few pro heroes have actually used their minds. Eraserhead, for one, is one of her favorites because he pulls people with quirks down—he's one of the best examples of how to use surroundings to one's advantage. She's analyzed him, but there isn't a lot for her to go on, there, because he's an Underground hero-all she knows is that he uses his capture weapon, carbon-fiber reinforced strips of cloth, and surprise to take villains down.

Obviously she'll need practical experience at some point, and maybe some practice—perhaps even getting into UA would help her there. She wants to use her heroic license to help people, but also to arrest some of the less heroic 'heroes' of the world. The heroes she's analyzed aren't all good, and she's not a fan of how the media (and by proxy, other pros) protects the more ruthless villainous heroes, especially since they just skirt the edge of the law or are too powerful to be taken down. Which means if she gets her hero license, she can officially take her evidence to the police force, and maybe do something about their abuse of power.

That's a side project for when she makes it as a hero, though. For now, she just really wants to enroll in UA, All Might's alma mater school. To be given the chance to do something like that is beyond anything she ever thought she'd get, and she wants it, and she wants it badly.

Izumi rubs tired eyes as she stares down at her notebook, trying to blink the sleep away from them. She was up late last night redoing her analysis of All Might, and adding in a few weaknesses she'd noted in the No.1's recent fights, as well as possibly noting an injury and how to fight around it. He's started favoring his left side a little, and while he's good at fooling most people into going for his right, she's seen him go white when the left is hit. If she ever meets him, she wants to ask him what's wrong.

Her analysis of Mt. Lady as a new hero is missing something, even though she can't quite figure out what right now. It's bothering her, seeing the big blank space left near where she usually wrote strategies or something similar relating to the hero's quirk and how it was used. Sadly, Mt. Lady's debut was quick, so quick that Izumi can't get a good read of her. And it's so utterly lacking in technique, which could imply laziness, or it implies that she's done this on purpose. She wants to trick the brighter heroes—aha.

Izumi writes down her suspicions. Because if the woman is doing this because she's working with a villain, or is even a villain in disguise, she will need to find proof. Her eyes, Izumi remembers, are cold. Colder than the coldest ice. No pro's eyes are that cold without a reason, and the pros with the least emotion on display often have the most to hide.

Mt. Lady's huge. She has superior strength, speed, and agility—something to do with her gigantification quirk, which had to use up a lot of energy. She's also got harder skin than most people, or it's a part of her outfit to make villains underestimate her. Her outfit is designed to be used as partly a distraction—Izumi's not an idiot, she knows a lot of people find that sort of thing attractive, and many pros use their appearances to get wha they want. Furthermore, Mt. Lady isn't afraid of a villain with monstrous strength, or speed—but she might be more leery of one who could cut her down.

The size boost didn't appear to slow her down any, either. She'd not acted like it had, at least, but there had to be some drawbacks to her quirk and she certainly hadn't really used the environment well. She probably consumes more than the average person just to keep her energy up because a transformation quirk like that has to eat up a lot of energy. Her personality seems to reflect that—kind, somewhat quick, and clearly efficient in her takedown of villains. Probably by necessity—maybe there's a time limit to how much she can use her ability. Though she gets negative points for not working with a team; it isn't the first time Izumi's seen this kind of behavior from an up and coming pro, but it's disappointing all the same. It implies they're more interested in fame than in saving civilians, which puts them on her watchlist of heroes to investigate a little more. Though Mt. Lady did help Kamui Woods take the purse-snatcher down, and it was clear the other pro had been having some difficulty before Mt. Lady stepped in.

Many licensed heroes aren't worth their training or the licenses they have. Izumi's found far too many accounts on the forums (unproven, of course, but still) of pros who aren't interested so much in saving the civilians as in their own self-image. The number of these accounts often include damaged or destroyed video footage and other proof that is neatly covered up.

After what happened to Ms. Otani, Izumi isn't taking any chances. Some heroes aren't worth the title, let alone their own ranking.

Kamui Woods isn't a new hero, but he is a favorite of most teenage and college-age girls, and one of the top 50 heroes in Japan. He's strong, agile, and fast, and does good work of limiting property destruction and civilian casualties in his work. He was also the subject of the documentary, Life as a Spirit-Touched Child , though the character based on him was so different as to be almost unrecognizable if not for Izumi being too good at research. His focus is on saving civilians, and protecting the general public; he's popular because he's good , or at least he tries to be—she hasn't found an account of him trying to cover up his mistakes anywhere, save once or twice, which turned out to be false rumors. He's not one of the clever heroes, but he did start out working with Ingenium and seems to embody the same qualities—that saving as many people as you could, as fast as you could, is the best way to go forward.

Izumi's not seen more than two accounts of Mt. Lady prior to her debut. All she knows is that Mt. Lady interned with Gang Orca's agency, and his agency tends to produce good, competent, but not necessarily kind heroes. Izumi resolves to look into her a bit more, because she wants to know about Japan's newest pro.

Still, though, something nags at Izumi about her; an insistent sense that she's missing something. Izumi doesn't have a quirk, but she's learned to trust these little feelings, because they're not wrong. There's something off about the situation that she can't put her finger on.

Izumi rubs her eyes again, wishing she could avoid the oncoming headache.

Something's been nagging at her about today since she got up. Something big, but she's not sure what.

She's felt like this before, but it's not always insistent.

The first time was when she saw Bakugo Katsuki for the first time since elementary school.

The last time was when Bakugo tried to corner her to force her to drop out of Orudera Middle.

She's going to have a bad day, again. It's not like she's had many good days, but today's going to be especially bad and she has the feeling she knows why when Mr. Sawada starts talking about the future.

"Come to think of it, Midoriya, aren't you also applying to UA?" asked Mr. Sawada, fixing her with a cold smile that doesn't reach his eyes.

Sawada Iemitsu is a relatively tall man, with long, brightly colored hair that stands on end—likely a result of his quirk. He can control his body parts by detaching his limbs, and he's got blood vessels but his hair is wired throughout his body and gives him nutrients, kind of like blood. He can also regrow limbs if he's injured. Thing is, his limit is (she's tested it) 2.5 meters, she thinks , and he really doesn't like her. He thinks she needs to be taught a lesson—probably because she's quirkless and still trying to make it as a hero.

Izumi barely pays attention to him, save to keep him from giving her unfair detentions. He's done this to a few other kids, too—anyone he sees as a 'troublemaker' which means she counts on his list. She does her best to avoid him, and she tries not to see him outside of school whenever possible. And her mom knows Mr. Sawada has been trying to steer her away from becoming a hero, but not everything he's said to her, especially about being careful because she's so fragile.

At the same time, he pays no attention to what Bakugo does to her. He can do no wrong in Mr. Sawada's eyes, and he gives Bakugo and the other kids in the class who have strong quirks more leeway than her. Izumi's held to hard deadlines, and the others can get extensions on different homework assignments—it's like his expectations of her are higher. She gets the same feeling from him as she does most of her teachers; there's something wrong, there, and she thinks she knows what it is.

To him, she's a worthless quirkless kid who's making a spectacle of herself. To him, she's nothing more than a quirkless kid; it's an old feeling, however familiar and it's also pretty frustrating. But she can't do anything about it.

She covers her notebook with her homework the minute someone looks sideways at her, out of habit, and pretends to be paying attention to that. Checking her answers and double-checking her math equations. Better to use the time now to pretend to finish her homework, and try to run through the equations in her mind to study because Bakugo likes blowing hers up when he catches her working on it. Since it isn't due until next Tuesday, and it's only Wednesday, she's got time to redo it this time.

She's had to replace her notebooks so many times since coming to Orudera that Izumi's considering getting a part-time job. It can't be easy for her mom to keep her fed, clothed, and in school, even though Inko works as a lawyer at a hero disaster mitigation firm and is thus paid very well.

Today his smile is almost too cold. The prickling feeling in her chest is the first answer to his question, something cold and harsh and angry , and she knows he expects her to respond. Loudly, since she's done so before—but she won't give him the satisfaction. She catches his eyes and stares at him instead, because she knows he wants her to snap back at him.

Then jeering, taunting, and laughter explode around her.

Izumi bites down on her tongue, trying to shrink into her seat as they get louder, laughing about Deku and her dreams; jeering and taunting her about her quirklessness. The words wash over her at this point; they don't surprise her anymore. Her classmates are just one more thing she's going to have to prove wrong; just a few more people who don't believe in her. And Bakugo's going to fixate on her, again.

It doesn't matter if she's quirkless if she can figure out how to take down the stronger heroes because even the strongest heroes have a weakness in their technique. She can take them all down, if she tries, if she just has the chance to try and she knows that's what she's going to have to do. That's part of why she spends so much time analyzing their quirks. It's partly to know how to fight, but it's fun , and it won't matter if she's quirkless if she uses her brain instead. Pros tend to overlook quirkless people in particular, even the really smart quirkless people.

And if she ever develops a quirk in the future, being able to fight and coordinate quirkless is going to be to her advantage.

She doesn't say any of this, just stares at her desk.

She knows what happens when she speaks up.

She won't do it again.

"Eh? Is that right, Deku ?" snarled Bakugo Katsuki, and her half-healed burns smart a little as she looks up at him. "What chance do you have?" she barely manages to snatch her homework and notebook back from the desk as he slams both hands down onto it, snarling into her face with explosions and scorching the desk. "Listen up, you useless fuck , I'm going to be the only student who applies to UA from this school, got it?"

Izumi swallows hard and stared at him, waiting for him to blow up her uniform's arm again. He'd burned her pretty badly the other day and he was going to go for her again, at least if she didn't stay still. Class would be over soon and she could leave then.

Part of her wants to cry, but Bakugo never stops when she cries. It's like her tears make him happy to keep going; like they're a neon sign blaring for him to move forward. She won't let him make her cry again.

She can't. He's getting something out of this and she can't give it to him anymore.

The laughter from her classmates echoes through her mind as Izumi refuses to drop her eyes, feeling them burn. She'd learned if she did, it would hurt less, but she'sangry today. She doesn't know why, she doesn't know when it came to this and she doesn't know how to feel about that but right now she's just frustrated and angry, with herself and with Bakugo and with everything that just keeps happening . It's been two years since she enrolled at Orudera and she just wants to have one day where this doesn't happen.

A part of her just wants to fight back today. He'd blow her up later if she backed down now, anyway—Bakugo doesn't know how to hold back. He'll have to learn, if he wants to be a good pro hero, but he's never listened to her.

Why should he start now?

She hopes, vindictively, his next teachers force him to clean up his act. It would serve him right for being such a massive dick about her lack of a quirk.

She holds back tears, anger and fear and frustration and deep down, the fucked up desire just to be his friend again burns, too. She doesn't understand why he does this; she's never understood, and after all this time, she's tired of it.

She's tired of wanting to be his friend, of being so pathetic she'll just take his hand and forgive him every single time he hurts her. She's tired of lying to her mom about things. She's tired of having only Bakugo as a sort-of friend.

"Tch. See? Can't even fucking talk back to me," laughs Bakugo, and the rest of the class laughs, too, either enjoying watching him bully her or too afraid to stand up. "What could you do? Quirkless freak like you probably can't even get into UA. You should just give up , loser, and let the real heroes get into UA, got it?!"

Izumi doesn't look away. She should; he'll hurt her worse if she doesn't, but she doesn't because she's tired of giving in to him. Bakugo looks…off, when she doesn't look away. He scorches her desk again, scoffs, and moves back to his desk.

With luck, they'd get out of here soon, she thought as she removes her second copy of her analysis notebook—specifically, and only, about quirks heroes had—from her backpack.

Today is going to be a bad day.

Original Author's Note Below:

Points to anyone who spotted the reference in this chapter.

Bonus points for anyone who's figured out what I'm implying with this reference.

Chapter two will be coming in about a month or so (if not earlier), as I am trying to keep on top of this fic ahead of updates. This is the only story I've had the inspiration to write lately, and I'm trying to move the characters on through the first arc so I can *really* get to the meat of this story. I've got about 35k of rough draft so far, but finalizing those chapters takes some time, and I'm trying to stay at least 5-6 chapters ahead of my updates.

Updated whenever I have the inspiration to write for it.