[SAY SLIME! ATTENDANCE PLEASE!]
Alright. Let's do this one last time.
Gotta get the story straight. The official report on the death of a dream. Let's see...
I sipped lukewarm coffee from my thermos, letting my legs dangle over the edge of the five-story apartment building. Below me, Musutafu sprawled out like a circuit board of streetlights and neon signs, the shiny hero district gleaming in the distance. Up here, nobody watched me. Nobody expected anything. Just the cold night air against my face and the distant hum of traffic.
It all started with a glowing baby in Qing Qing, China. The dawn of the superhuman age, yadda yadda. Suddenly eighty percent of humanity got superpowers. The whole world received a system update overnight, and the patch notes were chaos.
So what did society do? What it always does. It commercialized the chaos. Put a spandex costume on it, gave it a license, called it "Hero." The ultimate career path. The only one that matters in this brave new world. And sitting right at the top of that pyramid...
A distant billboard flickered to life, displaying an interview replay. That smile. That perfect, unwavering smile.
...him. All Might. The Symbol of Peace. The walking, talking god of the modern age. The gold standard. The guy who told me my life was a mistake.
I pulled out one of my old notebooks from my backpack. The cover was charred and water-damaged, but I could still make out "Hero Analysis for the Future #13" written in my childish handwriting. Running my thumb over the burn marks, memories flashed through my mind.
A four-year-old me in an All Might onesie, pointing at computer screen footage of a rescue, eyes wide with wonder.
The doctor's office with its sterile white walls. The X-ray. The extra joint in my pinky toe. "I'm sorry, but it's not going to happen."
Mom crying, hugging me, apologizing for something that wasn't her fault. "I'm sorry, Izuku! I'm so sorry!"
And me? I was his number one fan. The true believer. Even after the world's most depressing podiatry exam told me I was defective... I still believed. I studied. I took notes. I thought if I just tried hard enough, worked hard enough...
I zipped the notebook back into my bag, the sound sharp in the night's silence. My gaze drifted to another rooftop in the distance—taller, more prominent. The place where my world fell apart.
The place where I met God. And God was tired. He was bleeding through his T-shirt and he told me to be realistic.
Here's the kicker, the part that keeps me up at night: he wasn't being cruel. He was right. I've run the numbers a thousand times.
A Quirkless kid in a fight between titans? Please.
He saw the world for what it is, and in it, I didn't have a place. Can't even be mad at him for it.
It fucking sucks, but he wasn't wrong.
I stood up, stretching my arms above my head. Pity party's over for tonight. From my pocket, I pulled out a simple dark green balaclava, turning it over in my hands.
So yeah, a Quirkless kid can't be a Hero. Not the capital-H kind they put on TV. The kind that gets paid, gets merchandise, gets to stand in the sun. That dream is dead and buried right now.
But for the last month, I've been walking. Watching. And I see the cracks. The stuff that happens when the cameras are off. The muggings the pros are too slow for, the lost kids they're too busy for, the quiet despairs they're too famous to notice. The system's heroes look up at the sky, waiting for a monster to fall. No one looks at the gutter.
So, no. I can't be a Hero. But maybe... maybe a hero can be something else.
I pulled the mask over my face, leaving only my eyes exposed. Plugging a cheap pair of earbuds into my phone, I clipped a police scanner app to my belt. A tinny dispatch voice crackled to life.
My name is Izuku Midoriya. I'm seventeen years old. Senior at Aldera High. Quirkless. For all intents and purposes, a nobody.
And tonight, I'm trying something stupid.
The scanner squawked. "Dispatch, we've got a 211 in progress, corner of Nakamura and Fifth. Suspect reportedly has some kind of adhesive Quirk. No heroes in the vicinity."
A purse-snatching.
Perfect for me.
Let's go be a friendly neighbor.
The victim was an elderly woman, backed against a wall. The perp had both hands extended—fingers dripping with some yellowish substance that looked like honey but probably stuck like superglue.
"Just give me the bag, granny," he growled. "Don't make this messy."
I crouched behind a dumpster, taking stock. Adhesive Quirk meant I needed to avoid direct contact. The alley was narrow, littered with trash. A metal pipe lay near my foot. The woman clutched her purse with shaking hands, her face pale with fear.
"Hey, sticky fingers!" I called out, stepping into view. "Pick on someone your own age."
The thief turned, surprised. He was young, maybe twenty, with patchy facial hair and bloodshot eyes. Drugs, probably. Great.
"Who the fuck are you supposed to be?" he snorted, looking at my makeshift mask.
"Nobody important," I shrugged, twirling the pipe. "Just a friendly neighborhood citizen who thinks you should walk away now."
He laughed. Actually laughed. "You for real? Get lost before I glue your ass to that wall."
The old woman looked at me with a mixture of hope and confusion. I gave her a slight nod.
"Run," I said to her. "Now."
She hesitated only a second before clutching her purse tightly and shuffling past the thief, who was too focused on me to stop her.
"You little shit," he snarled, advancing toward me. "That was my score."
"And now it's not," I replied, backing up slightly. "Funny how that works."
He lunged, fingers splayed, glue dripping. I'd spent years analyzing Quirks, watching how people telegraphed their moves. His weight shifted to his right foot before he moved.
I sidestepped, bringing the pipe down on his extended arm. He yelped, stumbling forward.
"Might want to work on being so easy to read, man."
"Shut up!" He spun, slinging globs of adhesive my way.
I ducked behind the dumpster, the glue splattering against metal with a wet thwack.
My heart pounded in my chest, but my mind remained clear. Years of Bakugo's pursuit had taught me how to dodge, how to read an attacker's body language.
"Look," I called out, "the lady's gone. The cops are coming. You really want to stick around for petty theft charges?"
"I ain't leaving without teaching you a lesson!" He kicked the dumpster, trying to flush me out.
Fine. We'd do this the hard way.
I scooped up a handful of gravel from the ground and threw it high over the dumpster. When he looked up—basic instinct—I rolled out from the other side, sweeping his legs with the pipe.
He crashed down hard, cursing. Before he could recover, I stamped on his wrist—the one that seemed to produce more glue—and placed the pipe against his throat.
"Stay down," I advised, breathing hard. "It's over."
In the distance, police sirens wailed. His eyes widened, then narrowed in defeat.
"Who the hell are you?" he asked again.
Not a vigilante, exactly. Just...
"Like I said. Nobody important."
I removed the pipe from his throat and stepped back. "The police will be here in about two minutes. You've got about thirty seconds to disappear if you're going to."
He stared at me, confused by the offer.
"Why would you—"
"Because helping the cops file paperwork for a purse-snatching isn't exactly on my to-do list."
After a moment's hesitation, he scrambled to his feet and ran, disappearing down the alley. I watched him go, then tossed the pipe aside. The sirens grew louder.
Time for me to vanish too.
I made it three blocks before the adrenaline wore off, leaving me shaky and nauseated. Ducking into an empty playground, I pulled off my mask and sat heavily on a swing, trying to steady my breathing.
What the hell was I thinking? I could have been killed. Or worse, glued to something.
But the old woman got away. She was safe. That counted for something, right?
My phone buzzed. A text from my mother: "Where are you? It's late."
I typed back: "With a friend. On my way home now. Sorry."
Another lie in a growing collection.
As I pocketed my phone, I realized my hands were trembling. Not from fear—though there had been plenty of that—but from something I hadn't felt in a long time.
Purpose.
It wasn't the rush of playing hero. It wasn't about proving anything to All Might or Bakugo or anyone else. It was simpler than that. For ten minutes, I'd mattered. I'd made a difference, however small.
The world didn't need another All Might. It didn't need me in spandex punching supervillains through buildings. But maybe, it could use someone who noticed the little problems.
I pushed off the swing and started walking home, my mind already analyzing what I'd done wrong, what I could improve. The mask needed work. I needed better tools than a random pipe.
Maybe something expandable I could carry easily...
For the first time in a month, I felt like making notes again.
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Was looking for an izuku spiderman fic and couldn't find one so I made it myself. Hope you guys enjoy and remember...
READ DEMON SEER!