Prologue, Part 1: One Small Step...

"You know if you really want to be a hero that badly there might be another way, just pray you'll be born with a quirk in the next life and take a swan dive off the roof of the building!"

"So no I honestly don't think you can become a hero without a quirk."

Izuku stood at the railing, red shoes tied together as an awkward bola. With a quick throw, the shoes flew from her hand and were caught on a powerline. Next, Izuku slips on a pair of old shoes.

She doesn't say anything, instead just going over to the edge and looking down. Something had exploded and now everyone was either going towards it or away from it, the rooftop she was on overlooked the space in-between, a street no-one had stayed on.

She leaned forward and fell, and everything went dark.

Katsuki couldn't breathe, no matter what he did with his quirk he wasn't making progress getting out of slime trying to force its way into his body. He kept trying though, heroes win, therefore he would win because he was going to be a hero, it was that simple.

He lets off a particularly large explosion, well over his usual limit in desperation. The blast shot through a wall and ruined the support of the rest of the building. He heard screams as bricks entered his view, then a bright light as the gas lines leading to the building were exposed to fire.

The blast forced the slime off him and launched him to the wall, his head slammed into the bricks, and everything went dark.

Toshinori's eyes widened as the alley exploded, then widened even further as he realized the agonizing pain in his left side. He looked down as the people around him screamed and backed away from him, rebar, right in his old wound.

He dropped to his knees as blood pooled in his mouth, spilling through his teeth and dripping down his chin. He opened his mouth and let the blood out before he started to drown in it. He pulled out his phone and hit the button to speed dial Recovery Girl.

He hoped she'd make it in time as he fell to his side, and everything went dark.

Izuku opened her eyes and saw the sky, as well as the buildings around her, she didn't feel anything though. At first, she wondered if she messed up if she was really so useless as to screw up committing suicide despite jumping from a five-story building.

She forced herself up and noticed the sheer amount of blood around her, why wasn't she dead. Her hands seemed pale, and she felt cold. She grabbed her wrist and didn't feel her pulse. Her hand shot to her chest, no heartbeat.

She died, but she came back... she got up and ran over to a window. She was pale, her face had red, fleshy looking stitches where it must have split open, she looked over her arms and legs, finding more stitches where she figured bone had broken and ripped through her skin.

A scream ripped through her throat and past her lips, after all the pain, all the insults, she finally found her quirk.

Katsuki woke up in the remains of the alley, just in time for people to pull him from the debris of his explosion. He shook his head and looked around, not sure what had happened, who set off the second explosion. His eyes widened as he saw the damage.

There were bodies everywhere, the various heroes tried to find survivors, to help them stay awake until emergency heroes and ambulances could arrive. People were burnt, impaled, missing parts or chunks of flesh or a mix of all three and worse. The heroes who pulled him from the rubble dragged him to the rest of the survivors and headed back into the alley to find others.

He wasn't stupid, his eyes found where he'd been trapped, where his blast would have gone, remembered the fires and how there had been screaming before the blast. How one building was more destroyed than the rest and right in the path of where his explosion would have gone.

It took him a moment to realize it was him screaming, the cool feeling on his cheeks was his tears, as he realized the consequences of his quirk.

Toshinori gasped as he woke up, Recovery Girl kneeling over him, he was honestly surprised. He sat up with her assistance and nearly passed out again. The devastation around him, all because he couldn't save people anymore. He'd failed.

He heard the boy scream as he realized what his quirk had done, but it was just as much his own fault. He had stood there wallowing in his own weakness rather than risking it all to save lives. He thought about his power, how it had given him the strength to stand above everything as a Symbol of Peace.

Of course he didn't risk anything, he's never known risk. What risk is he taking going up against villains, himself having enough power even now to completely rearrange the enter countries weather patterns with just a single punch?

His own scream ripped through him, what kind of a hero was he if he couldn't even use his quirk.

Chapter 1: Look Mom, I'm dead, isn't it amazing!

Izuku ran with everything she had and found... she wasn't getting tired, she could just keep going without stopping. She didn't even need to breathe she realized. She didn't have super strength though, or anything like that.

She just... didn't need to breathe, or rest. It was kind of weird, and amazing. She couldn't wait to tell her mother... maybe leave out the suicide part, claim to have been near that explosion, that could work...

She stopped by a furniture store though, to really get a good look at herself.

"L-Little girl, please sit down, you're-Cold, Jim, Jiiiim!"

Maybe she shouldn't have just barged in, still being bloody and all. Still, she found what she was looking for, a full body mirror. Her skin wasn't just Pale, it was translucent, she could see the roots of her hair and all the blood veins. Her sclera were pink, but her eyes were still dark green, and her hair was still green too. She pulled at her hair and it wasn't about to fall out, she gave it a rather hard tug and... her stitches broke, she pulled off most of her scalp.

But then she saw as strings muscle came out from under her skin, sticking out of the wound and piercing her scalp again, pulling it back down and stitching the wound closed again. She grinned and ran out of the store despite people screaming for her to stay and wait for the ambulance.

She kept running, running through alleyways to try and get home as fast as possible. She had a quirk, she could be a hero she-

She's still bloody and at her house, still bloody and probably going to give her mother a heart attack. Usually she thinks this stuff through, a side effect of the quirk or sheer joy of having one... questions for later.

She looked through her things, where was her key... oh, it stabbed through her pocket and into her leg. She can't feel pain, oh my god she can't feel pain this quirk is the best. She pulled her key from her leg and, wiping off the blood, unlocked the door and walked in.

"Mom I have a quirk!"

"Sweetie, you-OH MY GOD!" Her mother said, clutching her chest with one hand and steadying herself with the other by grabbing the back of the couch. It wasn't enough and she fell over. "What happened, why are you covered in blood-ARE THOSE STITCHES!?"

Izuku laughed and ran over to her mother, pulling her up. "I died and I came back, I finally found my quirk mom!"

Her mother fainted. Right... she died... she just told her mother she died.

She should probably calm down and think through what to do when her mom wakes up.

First, she drags her mother to the front of the couch and lifts her onto it, then makes her way to the shower to clean the blood from her body. She undresses and quickly rinses the blood from her body and hair. While she feels the water it doesn't feel the same, it's very dull in comparison to how it usually felt... dulled nerves, she guessed. Considering she's kind of dead she's surprised she feels it at all, especially when she didn't notice the keys or didn't really feel her scalp ripping from her skull before that.

Once she cleaned up and went over to her bedroom and pulled on a basic blue tee-shirt with All-Might on it as well as a pair of dark green cargo shorts. Her old clothes she'd probably end up throwing away after she explained everything. She heard a gasp as her mother woke up and then rapid footfalls, doing a few breathing exercises to calm herself down. Then her mother burst into the room and pulled her into a hug, holding her for a moment then letting her go and taking a step back.

"You, You're cold, why are you so cold!"

She smiled to try and ease her mothers' worries. "Mom, I... I got caught in a villain attack on the way home, it caused an explosion and I... died." She said, she felt bad about lying but she didn't need a suicide on her record in her attempts to become a hero. Her mother started to hyperventilate, her skin going pale as tears poured from wide eyes.

"But, then, I got back up, and all my wounds were closed with these stitches... I learned by accident those are strings of muscle."

That much was true, she hadn't meant to rip her own scalp off, total accident.

"Izuku…" Her mother side, reaching and grabbing her wrists, tears pouring down her cheeks faster as she realized there was no pulse, then her mother put a hand on her chest, looking for a heartbeat. Then she started sobbing and pulled her into a hug. "Izuku, I'm so sorry."

"Mom, you don't need to be sorry, I have a quirk now mom, I'm not quirkless anymore."

Katsuki stared out of his mothers' car as they drove to the nearest hospital. He'd been fixed up by one of the emergency heroes but she wanted to get him checked out in case the healing quirk missed anything. Suddenly they stopped and his mother started screaming obscenities and hitting the car horn. He rolled down his window and started looking around. There were people crowding what looked like yellow police tape. He rolled his eyes, just one problem after another.

He noticed something red and looked up again, there was a pair of shoes with the laces tied together, red sneakers just like Dekus. His mothers' car started to move again as the police made a gap through the crowd for cars to go through. A blood splatter, and a vague image, maybe a body...

"Take a swan dive off the roof of the building!"

"Mom stop the car!" He said as his eyes went wide. "Mom stop!"

She did, and before she could ask why he'd pulled off his seatbelt and gotten out of the car. Please let him be wrong, please let him be wrong. He got himself clear of any bystanders and blasted himself up into the air, towards the shoes, and pulled them from the powerline. They looked exactly like Dekus shoes. Same size, same shade, same burn marks near the top where he'd grabbed Deku by her ankle when he and another student tossed her in the trashcan.

They were Dekus shoes. He dropped to his knees, this can't be right, no someone just as the same kind of shoes, the burns might be from their own quirk. He looked in the shoes and saw a note. He pulled it out as police closed around him, realizing he'd found evidence and moving to take it.

He opened the note before they could pull it from his hands, his mother arriving before they did.

Goodbye, Kacchan

He screamed as the police pulled the shoes and note from his grasp as his mother head him close, having seen what the note said and realizing who's blood was on the street.