“So you're the one!” An older woman accused.
“...Huh?” Izuku let out in confusion when he realised the older woman was speaking to him.
After he collected his tossed notebooks from the school’s koi pond, he started walking home. He was down in his spirits and wanted a pick-me-up. The only thing close by was a bookstore, it wasn’t much but every store had some All Might Merchandise.
He walked in and began to browse a few illustrated All Might Bibliographical novels. He was there for maybe five minutes before the older woman had spoken to him.
She was taller than Izuku, wider too, wore a garish dress that did little to hide her figure, wore a white apron for some reason, and has long red hair rolled up into a cone above her head.
He looked at her with a confused look.
She hefted up a green hardcover book without a label. He could tell that it was damp, like it took a dip in water before being left to dry.
Again he gave her a confused look, unsure of what the women meant.
She pointed at his book bag.
He tried to look but he couldn’t, so he felt behind him and could feel that water was leaking out from the bottom.
It dawned at him that he didn’t bother shaking the notebooks dry, he had just stuffed them into his book bag, and now they were leaking. And the woman came to the conclusion that he had wet the book in her hands.
“Um, I-I just got in here, I-I d-didn’t-” Izuku began but the woman wasn’t having it.
“You damage it, young man, you buy it!”
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Izuku didn’t have room to argue. He was forced to buy the damp book.
The woman and the other store clerk smirked the entire time he paid for it. It had no price, so the woman pulled out a random number that he just happened to have on hand.
A quirk, he realized. That was too close of a coincidence, not to mention they instantly decided that he was the one who did the damage when the book has clearly been drying for a while.
And the book itself.
“Empty,” he noted.
Every single page was blank.
It was damp, but blank.
Izuku sighed as he closed the book.
He was taken advantage. The woman clearly wanted to get rid of the book and she chose him as the unwilling buyer.
“That was all my allowance for this week too,” he had been saving up for something that would catch his eyes.
He kept mulling as he walked underneath a bridge and into a tunnel…
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“I’m sorry, but I would have to say no,” All Might said.
He was a lot skinnier than how he was normally portrayed in public media, skeletal even. His bangs weren't sticking up like ears, his eyes dark and bleak, and his large clothes now hung on him a couple sizes too big.
Izuku was attacked by some vicious villain with a malleable body and All Might saved him. The All Might, Japan’s number one hero and arguably the best one in the world too. He had given Izuku a signature and proceeded to jump away. Or tried to, but Izuku clung to him.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Then Izuku discovered All Might’s secret, he was injured and would “shrink” down when he’s not flexing. Leading up to that revelation, he had asked All Might if someone like himself could be a hero. Someone quirkless.
“There’s nothing wrong with dreaming young man, but you also have to be realistic,” All Might said before leaving Izuku alone on the roof of the building.
Izuku was frozen in place.
His dreams were broken by the one person he looked up to, the person he aspired to be one day in spite of being quirkless.
He wasn't mean about it. He clearly had Izuku's best interest in mind and even offered ways Izuku could help.
But that didn't mean that it didn't hurt.
He stood there and cried.
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Night had come, and Izuku had returned home with a gloomy air about him.
His mother took notice, but decided to give him some space.
After dinner, Izuku secluded himself to his room.
He...wasn't having pleasant thoughts.
He was currently looking over his new addition to his collection of hero signatures and his new blank book. Despite the green book being damp, he could still write and draw on the pages.
He tried drawing heroes and analyzing them to take his mind off everything. When that didn't work, he tried copying his old entries from his latest hero notes. The ones from the burnt and soggy notebook that somehow managed to hold All Might's signature on it.
At first he tried to improve his sketches, drawing from clouded memories to improve small details. He gave up after it made him frustrated. Izuku changed his approach and began to just quickly etch the drawings on with no regard for accuracy and scribbled notes he felt were worth mentioning. His drawings started to become more like stick figures with circular shapes accompanied by single sentence descriptions he deemed good enough.
He stopped eventually because it didn’t work. It didn’t take his mind off anything.
"What's the point," he asked himself, tears dripping onto the book. He closed the book and tried to control his tears. "Is there...a point to living?" He couldn't help but ask outloud.
He sat by his desk, sad and dejected.
He sighed...he grabbed his pencil, eager to distract himself.
He opened the book again...to find a single phrase written on the page:
A HERO IS BORN
Stunned, Izuku couldn't help but read that phrase over and over again. The thing is...Izuku was sure he drew on that page!
He checked the other pages and found that his drawings were gone!
He turned page after page, looking for his rushed work, but instead he found nothing but the phrase. All his work gone and replaced! He kept turning page after page until, eventually, he came across a page with a single word written on it.
SLEEP
Mystified and his mind feeling numb from fatigue, Izuku stood up, pealed his uniform off, and crawled into bed.
It did not take long for sleep to claim him.
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Izuku's eyes flutter open to the tune of birds singing while staring up at an unusual sight.
Blue sky , he realized.
There was no ceiling over his head, or covers wrapping him.
He woke up on a bed of straws next to a burnt out campfire.
"H-hello?" He couldn't help but call out.
No answer.
He gathered more of his surroundings as he stood up.
He was in a sparsely populated woods, his campfire(at least he assumes it’s his) is next to a small pond that is fed by a small river that continues downstream somewhere.
Confused and thirsty, he walked over to the pond, that’s when he caught his own wavy appearance.
Izuku looked himself over. It was definitely him, but his clothes….
These...these aren’t mine, he thought to himself.
He wore a pristine white dress shirt under a green, padded, double breasted notch vest with bronze buttons. In addition, he wore blue jeans tied with a brown leather belt, red shoes with white soles and black laces, and wore grey gloves riddled with thick seams that never felt uncomfortable. Curiously he loosened his belt and looked beneath his pants, he was wearing comfortable undergarments.
He...was not repulsed by the clothes. They were modern but clearly took on a medieval aesthetic. It looked nice on him, but it was definitely not in his wardrobe.
He tightened his belt and was in the process of taking his gloves off in order to fish some water to drink when something caught his eye.
Floating on the pond were fish. Lots of fish with weird discolouration. They were all motionless as they gently floated down the stream.
Izuku put the gloves back on and backed away from the water.
He looked around and spotted next to the bed of straws two items.
One appeared to be a leather sling satchel and a leather water container (a canteen maybe? Or a water drum?) with decorations similar to peppermint candy, only instead of red and white it’s brown and grey.
He picked up the canteen and gave it a few experimental shakes. He felt a wave of relief surge through him when he began to hear and feel the liquid slosh around the container.
He opened it and greedily drank...then coughed.
It wasn’t water, it was something fruity and had a hint of alcohol, he remembers it from when Bakugo tricked him into drinking his mother’s “grown up juice”. It wasn’t bad, per se, just surprising.
“Ale?” Izuku wondered aloud.
He looked at the container, then back at the pond with more discoloured fish floating down, then back at the container.
With a sigh he drank the liquid in the container, feeling a rush run through his body that made him shiver uncomfortably.
He closed the lid.
He wondered what to do with it before he realized that he could attach it to his belt.
His stomach rumbled a little so he decided to search his sling satchel, at least he assumed it was his, given where he woke up. As he picked it up, he noticed that close to it, right by the bed of hay, was a knife in a leather scabbard.
He swung the sling satchel over his shoulder, used the buckler on the strap to tighten it in place, and bent down to pick up the knife.
The scabbard’s leather design has long straps.
Izuku quickly rationalized that he could tie it on to his belt and quickly did so. After he was done, he drew the blade.
The handle was made of wood with two metal rivets along the centre of the handle, it also had a short bronze coloured guard. The blade itself was fixed with one side having a sharp edge that curved as it got closer to the tip. The metal for the blade seemed to be of a lesser quality, at least when compared to the clean and reflective looking kitchen knife his mother owns. The metal was gritty, worn, and repeatedly sharpened.
Izuku swallowed a lump, it was his first time holding something like this that wasn’t a kitchen knife.
He gave a few experimental swings with it.
He slashed the air in a variety of ways and even stabbed at the empty space. After a while he began moving and slashing. He laughed a little before he realized what he was doing.
Izuku blushed and stopped when he realized he was playing with around with a sharp knife.
He sighed dejectedly and began to sheathe it.
“Just,” he began after stowing the knife, “where am I?”