Chapter Text
Not all men are created.
This was a reality that everyone had believed had come to be a fantasy.
This is something that I learned to be simply untrue on my fourth birthday.
That was my first setback on the road to becoming a hero, though it would be far from my last.
My name is Midoriya Izumi, and my Mom and I have a secret… I am a man, and I was not created…
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Midoriya Izumi
The stairs fairly flew beneath her feet as Katsumi raced to the top, a panting Izumi following her in her wake. Her skirt flared as she spun to look back, hopping from foot to leather-clad foot.
“Move your butt, Deku! You can fangirl over the heroes when you find the recordings tonight!”
“Not *pant* fangirling, Kacchan. Just wanna -“
“- Just wanna be late to school?” Bakugo Katsumi interrupted imperiously, “I’m not spoiling my perfect record for you, now keep up or eat my dust, nerd!”
With a burst of speed, she was off again. Down the street and around the corner, while the warning chime sounded in the distance - five minutes until school began.
Grumbling under her breath, Izumi stumbled up the last step and hurried after her friend.
She heaved her way down the last stretch and ducked through the gate as it began its laborious creaking way closed, across the yard and all but crawling up two flights of stairs,
Miss Izumi smirked at her as she approached the classroom door, noting her laboured breathing.
“Better fix that blouse before class starts, brat.”
Izumi’ s blush would have been visible if not for her exertion. She hurriedly tucked her blouse into her skirt and slid down the aisle - not the one next to her seat, but the next one lest she is tripped by Yubiko. Said meanie chuckled at her red face from behind her long fingers.
She slid into place moments after Suki, the class representative, called for them all to stand.
Miss Izumi had clearly paused to pull a stack of papers out of her satchel before she entered the room. These she placed on the class representative’s desk as the class performed the traditional bow.
“Be seated, please. Onizuma-san, please distribute the worksheets for this morning.”
“For the final part of our ecology module, we will be covering the four great disasters of the 21st and 22nd centuries. We’ll start by going around noting one fact about each or all of these events. Keep the muttering to a dull roar, please Midoriya.”
There were a couple of muffled sniggers and giggles around the room. The subtle murmuring from the rear corner of the room ground to an abrupt and embarrassing halt.
“All right, all right, that’s enough of that. OK, then Midoriya-san hit us with the most obscure thing you can think of for the Liberty Island Genesis event.”
A faint creak could be heard as Izumi leaned back in her chair for a moment to stare at the ceiling. She blinked for a moment before standing.
“The mother of Marie D’Ancanto, the girl whose quirk was used to power the Genesis Device, was a subordinate of the villain who orchestrated the attack, her name is unknown, but her quirk was shapeshifting.”
“Bakugo, the Gobi Forest Bombing.”
“Che.” Katsumi crossed her arms under her chest and spoke confidently, “The bomb was estimated to be between 110 and 125 megatonnes. Stupid waste.”
The moment Izumi-sensei’s back was turned, Katsumi reached over her shoulder and snagged a notebook from the corner of a distracted Izumi’s desk. Her eyebrow raised with interest as she perused her latest ramblings.
“Izemoto, The Chrysanthemum Riots.”
“Um… When Empress Mako died, the Diet tried to remove the Imperial throne, but the people didn’t want that. The tidal wave made by Avalanche in those riots killed… lots of people.”
Izumi looked up, clearly wishing she could add more detail until she noticed one of her notebooks in the hands of Kacchan. She flipped a page and paused for a moment before turning the notebook sideways to admire a costume sketch.
She sighed. She could poke the hornets’ nest to get her notebook back, but that would cause noise, and rocking the boat was not a good idea. She was so distracted fretting about what her explosive friend was going to do with her notebook, she missed the next question, undoubtedly about the twin impacts of the failed space colonies.
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Onizuma Suki
Izumi stared disappointedly at her shoe locker. Sitting on top of her shoes was a big bottle of milk.
… HOW?
Heck, not only how, but who managed to get this massive bottle of milk into the school, into her shoe locker and could be bothered to spend actual money trying to bully her.
“Um… are you OK, Izumi?”
In the sudden absence of her muttering, the popping of vertebrae in her neck sound like gunshots to Suki’s ears.
“Are those witches picking on you again?”
Words failed to pass lips. Tears noted the failure of sound and prepared backup systems for Operation: Deluge.
Slender arms wrapped around Izumi, and her ear twitched slightly as Suki soothed her. “One last year, one more year, and you won’t have to worry about any of them, ne?.”
“Besides,” she leaned back, “no-one can turn lemons to lemonade quite like you can, Izuchan”
‘Oh wow’ she thought as she caught sight of Izumi’s face. ‘She’s got that look again…’
“C-can I ask you a favour?”
A slender, mauve eyebrow climbed towards a mauve hairline. ‘Oh yeah, this should be good.’
The last time the flat-chested girl got that look on her face, Suki had had to be sent to the nurse from laughing so hard. Months later, she still couldn’t look at soba without grinning.
“Do- Do you know that girl in 2-C with the hydrokinesis quirk? The one with the cornflower blue hair?” Nod, nod. “Can you get her and see if she can come to meet us near the pool house?”
“I’ll try… see you soon, OK?”
A couple of steps and a pause to swap out her school shoes for outside shoes, and Suki darted out the door.
Her excitement at getting to see the resident green girl genius at work and her next act of mad science put a girlish skip in her step. She found the group of underclassmen she sought just sitting down to eat their lunches on the edge of the fountain that decorated the centre of the horseshoe shape the main school buildings formed.
The smallest member of the group only just managed to catch herself before she toppled into the water with a surprised squeak. Suki darted in to whisper into the ear of one member of the group in particular.
Between the startlement of her most petite friend and the suddenly red face of the group’s bluenette, the third member of the little clique, a girl with custom shoes for her penguin feet, started roaring with laughter.
Suki scowled at her for a second before tugging gently on the girl’s wrist and looking pleadingly at her.
The blue-haired girl sighed and rewrapped her lunch before standing.
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Onizuma Suki
An odd collection of a half dozen students from all three year levels gathered behind the changing rooms of the school pool.
A first-year giggled with naughty glee as she plucked strawberries from under the leafy thatch of hair on her head. Beside her, a pale girl chopped industriously at the small pile already gathered on an impromptu chopping board, each of her fingernails a steel blade almost as long as her fingers.
A fourth girl sat beside Izumi, a student from 3-A; she recalled that she had dreams of becoming a baker if she remembered right, while the one she affectionately called the Mumble Muffin coached her through transferring heat from one small cup of milk into another.
Said ‘Mumble Muffin’ - ‘oh wow, it’s gonna be hard to call her Midoriya after this’, she lamented in her mind - looked up and smiled nervously as the final two members of the group arrived.
“O-oh, hello. I’m sorry, I don’t know your name, but I asked Onizuma-san to bring you to see if you would like to help us make some ice cream.”
Suki froze.
No. Freaking. Way.
She’s turning bitches bullying her about being flat into ice cream?!
By the time Suki’s brain reset, Izumi was already giving directions to the rest of the group while Hahari-san used her finger blades to scrape the now pulped strawberries into the milk jug.
“OK, what I need you to do, is move the milk inside the bottle, swirl it around in as many directions as you can, just so long as it stays in the bottle and keeps moving.”
Kawamaki-chan, the blue-haired underclassman, nodded determinedly while she focused on the bottle with her hands swirling in front of her.
Izumi nodded to the baking enthusiast, “OK, Suru-san, do your thing.”
Suki wasn’t alone in watching with fascination as Suru seemed to pull at something invisible from the bottle before pushing in a similar manner at the cups of milk. One, then the other started to steam.
Kawamaki started to sweat, then struggle, as if something was pushing back on her hands as the milk rapidly chilled.
Izumi watched the inside of the bottle like a hawk, “Just a li-ittle bit more...”
Kawamaki groaned slightly as her hands finally ground to a halt, and she lost her connection to the former milk. Seconds later, Suru also stopped the movements that denoted her own quirk usage.
“Harikuru-san? Could you cut the top off?”
While the plastic was industriously sawed away, Izumi finally turned back to her.
“Thank you so much for the inspiration and help, Onizuma-san. Could I ask you for one last favour? Could you make us some spoons?”
“After that? You better be calling me Suki.”
Suki casually reached into her bra and started extracting spoons, the entire time, she was eyeing the ice cream, made in minutes with an act of pure genius.
Six spoons dipped into the ice cream and six curls of strawberry flavoured goodness touched six tongues.
“Mmmmmmm...”
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Midoriya Izumi
Some days, she wondered if life would have been easier if she had been born a real girl…
Sometimes she even wondered if it would have been easier if she had been one of those Made Men; one of those almost mindless drones who seemed to have little purpose other than simple manual labour or staffing Houses of Negotiable Affection, whatever the heck those were.
She’d heard some girls giggling about the places and mentioning something about salami once. What does salami even have to do with affection? Why not katsudon?
It’s been a while. Maybe it’s time to ask for katsudon for dinner!
Yes, yes yes! Perfect!
‘Oh hi, ceiling. What are you doing in that direction?’
“Forgetting something?”
Bakugo’ s face leaned into her line of sight. Oh.
“The stuff you write about quirks is creepy detailed.”
WHUMP!
Ashes from the burnt edges of the notebook showered over her face and hair, shortly before a very singed slab of paper slapped onto her face.
“I’m keeping my page.”
The notebook slid off her face as she leaned upward in time to watch her walking away with a couple of sheets of paper waving over her shoulder. ‘Dang it, how can someone be so mean, but so cool at the same time?’
With a shrug, and shake of her head to get rid of some of the ash. Izumi lunged forward into a sitting position before standing up again. She winced as he reshouldered her bag - a bruise on the shoulder from that landing.
Home. Katsudon. Fix notebook. Smile, don’t forget to smile.
Never forget to smile!
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Bakugo Katsumi
‘The hell is this?’
Three heroes worked to hold back onlookers while a girl flailed and struggled in the grasp of a sapient ball of slime.
“Oi! Why the hell aren’t you helping her?”
The hero with enormous arms called back from beneath the rubble she was holding back from falling into the street, “None of us have quirks that can affect her, we need to wait for a more appropriate hero.”
“Che.”
“Hey. Hey! What are you doing?!”
Katsumi ignored the useless water user as she strode directly for the villain.
“Get away, kid. I’m getting out of here, no matter how many heroes come after me.”
Two hands were thrust forward as a single syllable was uttered, “Die.”
B-BOOM!
Near simultaneously, a pair of cones of force shook the street. While everyone else in line of sight was cringing, flinching, screaming at the sudden loud noise - worthless extras - Katsumi stepped forward and wrenched the girl free from the remains of the slime and flung her back towards the heroes.
“I’ll hold the squishy back. Get someo -“
“I AM HERE!”
Katsumi instinctively wanted to either blast the hero or check herself for clean underwear as 200kg of enormously muscled woman landed almost directly beside her.
“It would be best if you leave the heroics to the heroes, young lady.”
Katsumi actually spat to the side in annoyance, never letting her eyes leave the slowly reforming slime villain. “And let some girl drown in goo when I could help? Not my style.”
“An admirable attitude, but one that will get you in a lot of trouble.”
The mountainous woman sped forward, almost faster than the eye could track. A dozen bottles dropped onto the street one after the other, each filled with part of the sickly green/brown villain.
There was a cheer from the crowd and many of them immediately raced forward to converge on All Might, while Backdraft and Kamui Woods moved forward to talk to the explosive interloper. Vigilantism is after all, a crime.
Kamui was just getting into the swing of her lecture when there was a cry of dismay from the scrum that had formed around All Might. There was a telltale blue blur before her eyes as the girl she was berating was whisked away.
She grumbled at the impropriety, before turning to assist with making the partially collapsed shop front safe enough for Cleanup to come and start repairs.
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CODEX - THE SHATTERING
The first widely known incident of quirked heroes and villains is an event that has been analysed ad nauseum over the years, being ignored by only a few, more reclusive countries.
On July 14, 28, PUC at 2:13AM New York time, Eric Lehnsherr, aided by several of his villainous associates, used an early quirk amplification and inversion device (SEE SECOND GENESIS BOMB). The device was powered by the life force of Anna Marie LeBeau (née D’Ancanto) in a mostly successful attempt at causing a global scale quirk awakening event.
The incident is credited with the simultaneous largest quirk awakening and mass murder in human history, with 99.2% of the global male population perishing in the following 48 hours and the following years of disasters, mass starvation and instability. In short, society, as it was known then, was irrevocably changed.
It would be another 22 years before civilisation recovered enough to form a coherent government. This culminated in the reformation of the United Nations government and the adoption of the Universal Calendar. This marked the end of a calendar system that had been in use for more than 2000 years, known as the Anno Domini or the Gregorian calendar. (SEE CHURCHES OF THE OLD SAINTS, VATICAN RIOTS)