wow. it's been a long time. sorry. school and such has been in the way, and i sincerely apologize for this chapter taking as long as it did to get to you. fun fact, i had to restart this chapter at least four different times! four completely different beginnings, jesus christ. it was. hard to know how to start this chapter. but thank you SO much for the amount of support i've gotten during those five months of no updates. i'm really going to at least try to update once a month from now on.

from here on out, this story will be seriously diverging from canon, mostly cuz i'm not caught up with bnha. you'll also see that i now have a set number of chapters for this story. this is just an estimate. it might change, and it might change a lot.

The fall of All Might shakes hero society to its very core.

When All Might took his role as the Symbol of Peace, it put modern superhuman society in a very precarious position. Crime did decrease in large swathes, but at a cost. Society started to stand on a pillar. A single point of failure. Sure, there were other heroes standing alongside that pillar, but no one hero was as important to the peace of society as All Might. It wasn't Kamui Woods or Cementoss or Best Jeanist that people cried out to save them when there was no hope left. It was All Might. He symbolized hope. Just knowing that All Might was out there was enough to make a person feel safe enough to stroll the streets, in a society where even just traveling to work could mean encountering a dangerous villain.

Heroes don't just save lives. They save hearts. What All Might gave Izuku wasn't safety from villains, it was years of hope for a brighter future. That one lifeline that would always keep him going to the next day. The idea that one day, he too could be there to save people, and make them feel like they were safe no matter what city or situation they lived in.

Izuku is in the living room when it happens. Huddled in a blanket, curled up against his mom as the two of them watch the news with unwavering attention. Right now, he clings to his mother like a child as the figure that carried him through his childhood stands as a skeleton. He can tell he's crying, but his mind hardly processes it. His mind isn't processing anything. This isn't the All Might he saw in interviews, encouraging kids to eat healthy and stay in school. This isn't the All Might in his very own cartoon show. This isn't the All Might he saw on television, beating villains left and right. (This certainly isn't the All Might he saw, suffocating in that tunnel.)

It doesn't matter who this All Might is, though, because this All Might is still All Might. "Beat him, All Might!" he screams with strangled vocal chords. Izuku knows All Might can't hear him, but it needs to be said. It's just him and his mother in the apartment, trying their best to yell hope past their tears, but in that moment, it almost feels like he can feel millions of people crying for the same. He knows he isn't the only one urging All Might on, to take a stand against this villain who brushed off All Might's blows with such ease.

Izuku stands to his feet and punches the air when All Might delivers the final blow, knocking the villain out cold. The camera zooms in on All Might, and Izuku can see the blood smearing his lips. Still, he has to celebrate this win when there's little else to celebrate. All Might transforms into his former self for what will be the last time, and holds his fist in the air in victory. Inko suddenly crushes Izuku in a hug, muttering "Joy Maa Durga, joy," into the crook of his neck. She holds onto him for all she's worth. Izuku naturally melts into her hold. If the two of them miraculously weren't crying before, then they sure were now.

It's not a victory. Izuku knows that. The days after are some of the hardest he's ever gone through. Izuku can't help but feel an aching loss deep inside his bones. It doesn't help that he's constantly surrounded by a reminder of what happened. The muttering of kids in school, news channels fervently debating about what this means for society, articles calling All Might either a fraud or a hero. Wherever he goes, one thing is clear. Society has forever changed.

When Izuku is stressed, he likes to do things that distract him from the source of his stress. This situation doesn't really allow for him to do that, but there are two ways he can escape all of that stress.

The first is his mother. She's the most understanding person he's ever known in his life, and he's so glad that she's there for him. The first time she tries to talk about what happened with him, Izuku starts tearing up on the spot. So from then on, she doesn't talk about it. Instead, she feeds him, sends him off to school with a smile, and never turns on the news channels. There's something strangely comforting about hearing his mom's soap operas echoing down the hall, the words of Bangla peppered through loud, dramatic sound effects. Izuku has never understood the appeal of the genre, but he can kind of see it now. It's nice to focus on fictional drama, instead of other things.

The second is perhaps not the healthiest way to cope with the situation, especially given the changing times, but he doesn't care. It's comforting in its own way. Izuku definitely doesn't hesitate to put the camcorder his mom got him to good use. He's never intentionally gone out of his way to make situations where he'd have to lie to his mother, but there's a strange exhilaration to recording fights between heroes and villains in the dead of night.

Part of it is because of the influence of a particular online forum. If there is one place that Izuku is willing to hear discussion of the effects of All Might's fall from, it's The Guard's Archives. Maybe it's because it's discussion he can directly participate in, but something about it seems so much more convincing. All Might was a deterrent for crime, and a standard for heroes. There's a huge gap between number one hero and the number two hero, on pretty much every front but defeating villains. It wouldn't be surprising to see heroes failing to make up for the hole All Might left. Perhaps lacking a symbol of proper heroism nly means an increase in hero corruption. Izuku might be stupid for listening to the voices of radicals, but he feels a duty to document battles between heroes and villains. To keep an eye on the slip-ups of heroes when most news stations still won't. Somehow, it feels more important in these changing times. Words can be disputed, but recorded footage can't.

So at least twice a week, in the middle of the night, Izuku straps on his camcorder bag, puts on a hoodie, and brings a couple of things for self protection. He can't exactly just go out into the night with nothing to keep him safe, of course. That lesson from his mom at least stuck in his mind, even if every other one didn't. He sticks to recording footage from the roofs, where most villains can't get to him. Admittedly, it's not the safest plan ever, but hell if he has the time to worry about his personal safety.

He never knew what the night life of heroism was like. This kind of stuff isn't broadcasted by mainstream media. The night is the domain of underground heroes and the most dangerous types of villain. It's here on these rooftops that Izuku comes to respect a whole new type of battle, one that he'd never before seen on anything but crappy footage on The Guard's Archives. Heroes like Rampage, Warbleu, Eraserhead, and Dewjelli. Izuku still respects the type of hero All Might once was, of course, but his horizons have broadened.

The battles are brutal. A villain in the daytime often acts to get seen, or is simply committing a petty crime that went too far. A villain in the nighttime stays in the shadows because they know that's where they're the safest. The shadows are where organized crime happens, where villains plan heinous schemes for months, where the screams of victims forever unheard echo into the night. Here, a hero's goal is different. Subdue the villain before their evil spreads to the daylight.

Izuku gets hours and hours of footage over the next months. He knows he's suffering from sleep deprivation, but he can't stop. It doesn't have the same allure of the hero fights he observed so often in high school. Before, the appeal was the hope that eventually, observing hero fights would aid him in his quest to become a hero. Now that he's given up on being a hero, the appeal is that feeling he gets when he thinks about how his footage could be helping to shape a better society. He believes in hero society, of course but...When he's constantly browsing a forum with such different takes on hero society than what he's usually exposed to, it's hard to believe that hero society is fully capable of functioning on its own. It needs people to call out its flaws, whistleblowers. Those who protest, those who speak up, those who change things from within the system.

And hero society is changing. Maybe it isn't because of small fry like Izuku, simply posting videos for others to look at. But it's changing because of large scale protests that march through large cities like Tokyo, Kyoto, and Tokushima. Recent ideologies, like that of Stain, gain traction. Even if a person recognizes him as a coldblooded murderer, it's hard not to agree with his core beliefs. People expect more from heroes, and they know that society needs to change now that there's no All Might to act as a pillar. Izuku sees the public discourse shifting all around him, and he's not sure if its good or bad. For now, though, he focuses on doing what he can, by disseminating information to the people who end up advocating for change.

He's done a good job of keeping out of the way of villain attacks, and he at least doesn't get taken hostage by any villains. Even if he does sometimes accidentally get grazed by their attacks, a burn or a scratch or two is nothing he can't brush off. That's not to say it all goes right, of course. The biggest mistake Izuku makes is during the beginning of his second year of high school.

It's a clear night, with the stars bright in the sky. The moment the minute hand hits four past two, he creeps out of his bed and slings his camcorder bag over his shoulder. He slips out of his night shorts and into pants that will at least protect his knees from scrapes. Next is a simple hoodie, a dark color so that no villain can see him sticking out like a sore thumb on top of the roofs of the city. As much as he'd like to wear his favorite All Might hoodie with its bold and colorful yellows, reds, and blues, he simply can't. Not if he wants his mother to see him alive the next day. So instead, he wears his most casual All Might hoodie. It's a simple dark grey one with maroon sleeves, that just says All Might across his chest. It's about the best thing he has in his closet for night runs like this.

The last two parts to his midnight ensemble are a little unusual, but Izuku has found them to be lifesavers. The strange thing about villains that roam in the night is that they very often have quirks that spread substances over large areas. Spores, vapors, mists, fogs, and gases. The first time it was an issue was when Izuku got irritated eyes for an entire week after a villain's tear gas-like substance got into his eyes. He ignored it, thinking it was a small mishap that probably wouldn't happen again. After all, quirks like that weren't one you would often see villains using in the bright daylight. The second time it was an issue, though, was much more serious. It involved a quirk that beautifully replicated Midnight's Somnambulist quirk, only with a much wider range. Izuku was knocked out for a solid three hours on the top of some stranger's roof before he came back to consciousness. The scramble back to his house was a terrifying one, given that he had to get home before his mother noticed missing. It wasn't a fun time, to say the least, especially knowing that he was left defenseless on a roof for an entire three hours.

So now, Izuku has a respirator and eye protection. He picked up the respirator from a home convenience store, which keeps them in stock for those who don't want to breathe in wood dust while doing woodwork. It's not the best in the market, but a high schooler can only do so much. The mask is a lot less fancier, and not at all intended for what he uses it for. If he's being honest, it's an orange-tinted ski mask he wanted to use for a Hawks cosplay. When Izuku gave up on the cosplay once he got to the wings, it laid in his closet unused for months. In any case, he's glad that he at least found some use for it.

When Izuku finally gets everything he needs, he creeps past his mother's room, the same way he always does. She's a heavy sleeper, and has yet to wake up during any of the times he's slipped away into the nights. As long as he gets leaves past two in the morning, he's in the clear. It means he gets a lot less sleep than he could, but it also means he can completely avoid a conversation he never wants to have.

The rest of the process is a blur. Once he leaves the house, he just wanders the city until he finds a decent fire escape to climb up. Usually, he uses the one on a nice apartment that's just a five minute walk away from his home, but other times, he decides to start from somewhere else. The moment he gets onto the roof, he relies on following the cement beneath him to take him where he needs to go. It was terrifying the first few times, trying to figure out which buildings were safe to hop onto and which weren't. Izuku often came back home with more than his fair share of bumps and scrapes. Now though, he's gotten pretty decent at urban parkour, and he leaps on the roofs like he's been treading them for years.

It doesn't take long for him to find his entertainment for the night.

Most of the battles that Izuku follows involve the underground hero Eraserhead. It's gotten him a reputation on The Guard's Archives for being an Eraserhead fanboy, simply because he most of the footage he posts has the hero in it. He can't necessarily deny the claims, though. There's something infinitely cool about seeing Eraserhead crouched on top of a roof just like Izuku, looking down in the streets for crime to stop. It's almost straight out of a comic book.

Izuku knows that Eraserhead has no intention about being followed by some stupid second year high schooler. But from his vantage point, it's hard not to see Eraserhead, even if he's often several buildings away. The matter of the fact is that Eraserhead standing on roofs to find villains to stop is exactly what makes it easy for Izuku to follow the man, even if he has to be more stealthy than he normally would with other heroes.

The moment that Eraserhead's hair and scarf starts floating in the air is the moment that the hero has spotted crime. Once Eraserhead takes off, Izuku, like many nights before, pursues the man. It's a bit hard following a pro hero who's had way more experience on the roofs than him, and Izuku is barely quick enough to follow the hero. Still, he manages it. When Eraserhead stops and looks down into an alleyway, Izuku finds a good place to settle in. One where neither Eraserhead nor the villain can see him, but he can see them.

It seems that the suspicious activity Eraserhead has spotted involves some sort of individual who is wrapped up in bandages. The person looks kind of like a mummy. Their bandages twirl in the air, randomly cracking at the air every once in a while. It's strangely reminiscent of Eraserhead's own scarves. The mummy person is having a discussion with a blonde man that's backed into a corner. Nothing is inherently wrong with the situation, and no laws seem to be broken, but it's definitely shady enough for Eraserhead to investigate. Izuku pulls out his camcorder, and begins recording.

Eraserhead always hesitates for a few moments before he enters alleyways. If Izuku were to try to guess a reason for why that was, he would have to say that the man was probably trying to evaluate the situation to see if it was more logical to enter the alleyway or to stay far away. This time, the hero makes the wrong decision. The moment that Eraserhead enters the alleyway, the bandages around the mummy person snap to complete attention, becoming sharp fabric that looks like it could pierce. One strand sits at the neck of the blonde man, who has his hands up as he's pressed completely against the wall.

A hostage situation. One of the worst kinds of situations for any hero to handle. For Eraserhead, it's a coin toss. Either the villain threatens the hostage with their own quirk, or they use a weapon that has to be properly disarmed. This time, it seems like Eraserhead is lucky. The bandages are clearly part of the mummy person's quirk, as the bandages fall limp the moment Eraserhead's erasing quirk goes into effect. The blonde man immediately bolts for the exit of the alleyway. It's a situation Izuku has seen at least five times over.

This time it's different, though. The blonde man doesn't just run for his life, getting as far away as he can from the situation. Instead, the man stops at the end of the alleyway, turns around, pulls out a knife, and rushes towards Eraserhead.

It was supposed to be a situation where freeing the hostage meant that Eraserhead would be able to fight more freely. Now, though, it's a two on one situation, and Izuku isn't sure if Eraserhead has even realized it yet.

Izuku doesn't even register his next movements. He doesn't know that his hands have already put down his camcorder, reaching to pick up a brick from the stack of bricks on this rooftop. He doesn't register his noodle arms straining to pull back the brick, and chuck it at the blonde man.

It's the wrong action. What happens next happens quick. Eraserhead's scarf wraps around the blonde man, restraining him while Eraserhead trains his eyes on the mummy person, and sends them flying into the wall, clearly down for the count. Two people neatly constrained in a mere few seconds. Izuku certainly isn't able to follow it, too shocked by what his hands had done.

Izuku broke the rule he's always set for himself when he's out on these roofs. Don't interfere with the pros, because they always know better than he does. The moment the brick goes flying into the blonde man's head is the moment that Eraserhead's goggles flip up, his eyes snapping up to meet Izuku's. Izuku is struck with fear, and almost gets ready to scramble away. Then, he sees the way that Eraserhead's hair floats threateningly, even when the battle has ended. Those glowing red eyes aren't aimed at a villain, they're aimed at him. Even then, it's not the glare that holds Izuku in place so much as the sight of the man he just struck with a brick. It's a red so much worse than Eraserhead's eyes.

Izuku doesn't move. He can't move, his eyes pulled in by the blood smeared on the cement floor. Instead, he waits there on those rooftops as Eraserhead ignores him, focusing on making sure the two villains are completely restrained. When the hero finishes, he quickly makes his way up to the roof where Izuku is, using the fire escape on the side of the wall.

The smart thing to do would be to bolt, considering that Izuku probably just committed a crime. Hell, maybe several crimes, if he considers the camcorder sitting right next to him. He glances down at the camcorder, and then looks down at his hands. If there's one thing he can do to make this better for himself, it's to hide away the camcorder, mask, and respirator, to make his presence on the roof seem less purposeful. So he does that.

When Eraserhead finally gets to the roof where Izuku is, he briefly has a surprised look on his face, as if not expecting the high schooler to remain there. Any surprise is quickly washed away by a blank face. That stare of Eraserhead's is so much scarier up close. Izuku shrinks into himself and looks down on the floor. He bites his lip, and starts to stay something, but Eraserhead cuts him off. "Save it."

"I-I'm sorry," Izuku squeaks out, "It happened without me thinking."

Eraserhead looks down on him with a scornful gaze. "You're just a kid, probably a high schooler," Izuku does nothing to deny it. The hero scoffs, "If you were an adult, I'd have you arrested for acts of vigilantism. If you were one of my students, you'd be expelled quicker than you could say All Might. But you're neither of those things, so here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to assume your guardian never taught you any common sense. This can stay between us, and I can say that the injury to the man was caused by me. But you don't pull this crap again. I see you on these roofs again, and I'm showing no lenience."

Izuku's relieved that Eraserhead isn't punishing him. The last thing his mother needs to hear is that her son was out on the roofs at three in the morning trying to watch a hero fight two villains. But a pit still sinks in his stomach. He doesn't want his actions to be misunderstood. Izuku blurts out, "I wasn't trying to be a vigilante!"

"But you did act as one," Eraserhead then gestures at the alley, likely indicating the blonde man Izuku struck with a brick, "You could have killed him. You're lucky he's even alive. Kid, we have pro heroes for a reason. I had the situation handled, but now I have more paperwork to file. Your actions are not helping to make our jobs any easier." Izuku knows that, he really does, but he can't help what he does without realizing. "If you're going to play hero, then you have two options. Transfer to a hero course, and if you can't do that, then be a civilian, and leave the job to those who are licensed for it."

How does Izuku say that he once wanted to be a hero? That he was stopped before he could even try? Izuku tries to choke out the words, but he isn't able to say it. So instead he looks down at the floor, and utters words he'd never uttered for himself since elementary school. He'd never had to, because someone would always answer for him. What's your quirk? Someone would ask. He's quirkless, someone would answer. Cue laughter.

"I'm quirkless," Izuku says softly. "I can't be a hero." Pause for laughter.

Eraserhead doesn't laugh, though. Instead, he just sighs. "Yeah, there's a reason you aren't a hero. I'm not going to pointlessly bloat your hopes and say that it's possible to be a quirkless hero, but I'm not going to say it's impossible either. Quite frankly, I don't know. But if you've given up already, then you've got zero potential. So I can't say anything that's going to help you."

The words stay in Izuku's head, even after Eraserhead escorts him home.

Even if Eraserhead said his words couldn't help, they do, because the hero is right. Izuku has given up, hasn't he? He knows he can't be a hero, but the advice applies to more than just his old fantasies. Izuku has given up on himself. He's given up on any sort of future. And in the process, he's made himself into a person without any sort of potential.

That night, Eraserhead becomes the new idol of a young teenage boy by helping him regain his spark in life. Yeah, Izuku is going to try to make something useful of himself, even if he won't be able to be a hero he always wanted to be. Some day, he'll help save people in his own way.

sorry if the writing was sloppy. events happened a little quicker than i initially planned them to, but i think this was the best way to get myself writing again. cutting straight to the interesting stuff.

i'll give you a hint for the most significant parallel of the last scene, just because i like it. think about one conversation izuku had on a rooftop in canon, that never took place in this story. granted, aizawa is probably out of character. i don't know how to write him, whoops.

as always, my tumblr is proiida!