Ay I decided to crosspost this from ao3. I'm going to upload all the chapters at once. I hope that you all like it!

Also this fic has a discord server! The link is on my profile page if you want to join.

Laughter, cruel and cold, rang in Izuku's ears as his body pulsed with pain. He knew that if he looked up, he would see hateful red eyes and a malicious smile, lackeys laughing themselves silly, their childish and sadistic urges sated. And, worst of all, Izuku knew that he was powerless to stop it.

He was certain that Kacchan was making some inane comments on what a "worthless Deku" or "Quirkless loser" he was, but Izuku couldn't find it in himself to care enough to listen. He focused on the burns that now adorned his skin, the scorch marks that blackened his clothing, and the awful, shrill shrieks of amusement coming from his classmates. He took it all in, letting it grate at him and fueling his determination.

You will be better than them, Izuku told himself in the quiet recesses of his mind. You will make them regret this. You just need to wait.

His mom would be so worried for him if she knew he had thoughts like that. For that reason he would not tell her about it. Ever.

As it always went, Kacchan and his lackeys would be the first to slink off, followed by their adoring classmates about how "awesome" and "cool" they were. Once they were all gone, voices lost to the wind, Izuku picked himself up off of the ground. He was burned and battered, but far from the broken shell that Kacchan seemed to want him to be.

He refused to become anything Kacchan wanted him to be. He would never allow it.

For now, though, that wasn't important. He had to get home and put on a show of being perfectly fine for his mom. His facade had to be perfect. He didn't want her to be sad. She had enough to worry about.

Wiping away the tears that he was never able to keep in, he gingerly put on his backpack and began to make his way home with shaky, lopsided steps.

The problem with society, Izuku figured, was how much it was all by ruled by Quirks. It didn't matter what a person acted like, what their personality was, how hard they tried. It all took second place to what a person's Quirk was, how powerful that Quirk was, and how well someone could use it.

It's why people like Izuku would never be able to fit in society. He has been condemned since he was pronounced Quirkless. Oh, he still wanted to be a hero. Even if it was hopeless, he still craved it and couldn't just give it up. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

His classmates certainly had no qualms with reminding him of how useless and fantastical his dream was. With Kacchan leading the campaign of bullying against him and everyone else an eager participant, Izuku had no delusions of their opinion of him.

He paused for a moment. Why was he still calling Kacchan "Kacchan"? It had been a name for his easily irritated childhood friend, something that Kacchan certainly was not anymore.

Izuku hadn't hated Kacchan.

Izuku absolutely despised Bakugou.

Izuku knew that it would have been impossible to explain to someone, but it made perfect sense in his head. Kacchan was gone. In his place was a bully who believed that everyone around him was a background character or a stepping stone.

He would wield the name like a weapon against Bakugou, but he would never truly be Kacchan to Izuku again.

Izuku stopped when he finally reached his home. He brushed off his clothes and tried to hide the burns on his uniform and his skin as best he could. He pasted on a smile that grew far more genuine when he hugged his mom and she announced that she was making katsudon for him.

That night, before he went to bed, he made a note to himself to start writing entries in his Hero Analysis for the Future journals.

"You wanna be a hero so bad? I've got a time-saving idea for you. Believe with all your might that you'll have a Quirk in the next life and take a swan dive off the roof!"

The second those words left Bakugou's mouth, Izuku felt something potent and dark snake around his heart, binding it like a vow.

I will be the reason that Bakugou dies. I will destroy him in every sense of the word. Nothing will be left when I am done with him. I will uphold this until my dying breath.

Izuku was certain that his face was twisted with murderous intent and, somewhere in the back of his mind, he was thankful that no one was there to witness his expression. He didn't need anyone growing suspicious or reporting something to a teacher. He just needed time. Enough time to grow better than Bakugou and strong enough to grind that malicious, arrogant sneer from his face. Permanently.

That time was not today. It wasn't even likely to be this year, but Izuku would see his vision through until it came into fruition.

For now, he had a journal to find.

His journal hadn't landed on the ground. No, it had landed in the koi pond because having it burned and then thrown out the window just wouldn't have been good enough for dearest Kacchan.

Izuku gingerly picked it out of the water. He would have to blowdry the pages so that they didn't stick together. Giving it up for a lost cause didn't even cross his mind; he had put entirely too much effort into Hero Analysis for the Future No. 13 to scrap it. Taking care to be gentle, Izuku turned through the sopping pages and assessed the damage. Surprisingly, everything seemed more or less intact. A few paragraphs and sketches were blurred, but for the most part it was all legible. Izuku couldn't believe his luck.

His journals had started as ways of documenting heroes and how they fought. He would diligently record their strengths, ways they could improve, and possible weaknesses. It wasn't until the bullying got worse that he started to document his classmates and included potential ways to neutralize them and heroes alike.

He had enough analysis on Bakugou to write a whole journal at this point. His fighting style, his temper, his hatred of Izuku, his Quirk… Izuku wrote about it all. Any observation that Izuku made was a strength that he could mitigate or a weakness that he could exploit, no matter how much Bakugou thought he had none of the latter.

Izuku had figured out long ago that the best way to render Bakugou completely useless would be to cauterize his entire body, damaging and sealing all of his sweat glands off. Without his sweat, without his Quirk, Bakugou would be nothing. It would, of course, be incredibly painful for Bakugou and leave him effectively Quirkless. It would be a wonderful way to go about crushing him.

It was almost poetic, in a way. The person Bakugou hated most reducing him to the thing that he hated more than anything in the world. Izuku would have to seriously consider that option.

He always made sure to keep a few pages free of his more gruesome ideas so that he could show his mother. She loved hearing him talk about heroes and looking over the pages he showed her. Izuku knew without a doubt that she would be concerned to learn about his darker thoughts. He refused to cause her any undue stress.

With the amount of care that most only showed to newborn children, Izuku placed the soggy journal in his backpack. He just needed to get home as quickly as possible so that the minimal damage had no chance of getting worse.

Of course he had used up all of his good luck with the state of his journal. Obviously the universe had decided that it was being too nice to him so now he had to fall victim to some random villain made of mud and sludge.

If Izuku wasn't so certain that he was going to die, he would have been planning out the best way to get revenge on this complete asshole.

He distantly heard a voice muffled by the slime and the roaring in his ears. Suddenly, there was a gale of wind and the sludge dispersed completely and he could breathe.

As his vision faded to black and his mind teetered into unconsciousness, he caught a hazy glimpse of the person who had saved him.

All Might?

He came to with a large gently tapping his cheek and his entire body pulsing with pain. He blearily opened his eyes. What…?

"Thank God!" a voice above him boomed.

Well, Izuku was certainly awake now.

Everything quickly came crashing back. Bakugou trashing his journal, Izuku's vow to end him, being accosted by some random slime villain, and being rescued by…

All Might.

The Number One Hero in all of Japan was talking in the distinct and jovial manner that everyone in the country was familiar with but Izuku couldn't even comprehend the words. Here, right in front of him, was the man who had been bestowed the title of the Symbol of Peace. Izuku registered that he really should be listening to what All Might was saying. However, the majority of his brain was currently in the process of fritzing out because oh my god All Might.

Looking back on this moment, Izuku would realize that this was when his role of an All Might fanboy was carved into stone. His faith in All Might could be shaken and stirred, but it would never break.

All too soon—because a few seconds in All Might's presence would never be enough—the man was pocketing the liter bottles filled with the slime villain and standing up. Izuku scrambled for his journal, all earlier semblance of reverence for it paling to All Might there in the flesh.

"C-can I have your autograph?" Izuku forced out through his twisting tongue. The words came out too high and too shrill for a boy his age but it didn't matter because All Might. And then, faster than Izuku could make out, All Might had signed his journal.

Anyone who looked at Izuku at that time would swear that there were actual stars in his eyes.

Izuku's voice seemed to come back then and he found himself rambling full-force about how he would treasure this journal forever and keep it as a family heirloom and holy shit Bakugou is going to be so jealous.

That's when he realized All Might was leaving. Saying something about professionals always being busy.

Wait, Izuku tried to force out, I need to ask you something!

Acting on impulse, Izuku grabbed All Might's leg.

Alright, Izuku thought, that was probably the dumbest thing that I've ever done in my life but I absolutely do not regret it.

Izuku could vaguely make out All Might mumbling to himself from his place on the rooftop but he only managed to catch what All Might was saying when the man raised his voice.

"I really have no time to lose, so I'll leave you here!"

No. This is not happening a second time.

"Wait! Uh—"

"No! I can't wait!"

"Can I become hero," Izuku said, "even without a Quirk? Is it possible for... a Quirkless person to become a hero like you?"

Izuku knew he was rambling again, but he couldn't stop himself. He needed to know what All Might thought. He had to know if Bakugou and everyone else at school were truly wrong. He needed to know that even All Might himself did not agree with them.

When Izuku looked up again and saw a frail, skeleton-thin man in All Might's place, he felt something in his heart shatter just a little further.

Well. That certainly wasn't how Izuku had expected things to go. He couldn't say that he was happy about it, but he wasn't nearly as broken up about it as he thought he would be.

All Might had been blunt but he certainly had not been unnecessarily cruel or malicious and, as skewed as Izuku realized it must seem, that went a long way in his books. It was loads better than everyone at school, at the very least.

It wasn't good but… it was something.

Now Izuku was making his way back home. He was excited to tell his mom about meeting All Might, though he would certainly be leaving out everything after All Might jumped into the air with Izuku clinging to his leg, including the event itself.

That was when Izuku noticed the large crowd that was gathered on the other side of the street.

Ever curious, Izuku quickly made his way to the edge of the densely packed crowd. He stretched his back and stood on the tips of his toes, trying to make himself as tall as possible to see over the heads of the crowd. And when the crowd shifted and a window opened between them, Izuku saw it. The slime villain.

The crowd was rumbling with raised voices, exclaiming that a schoolboy had been captured and the heroes were waiting on someone with a better-suited Quirk to arrive on the scene. Izuku wanted nothing more than to see the villain taken out.

Then the monster shifted. Izuku could see blond hair sullied with sludge and red eyes alight with a foreign emotion.

Fear.

Izuku's brain kicked into overdrive and he reached a decision within two seconds.

He wanted payback against this villain and he was going to get it. He couldn't be completely sure, but he was rather certain that the eyes, if nothing else, were a weak point. Just the idea of a Quirkless school boy helping to take down a powerful villain who was enough to subdue Bakugou was tantalizing enough for him to consider charging.

The thing that really cinched his decision was that the victim was Bakugou. Oh, Bakugou would loathe being rescued by a "useless Deku" and while it most certainly did not make them even, it was a damn good starting point. Bakugou would think about this every day, that Deku had been the one that saved him.

Besides, dearest Kacchan was Izuku's to destroy. And, in Izuku's humble opinion, Bakugou hadn't suffered nearly enough to die just yet. He wasn't about to let Bakugou take the easy way out.

So Izuku sprang into action, swinging his backpack off his shoulder, pegging it into the eye of the villain. While the monster shrieked, its hold on Bakugou relented for but a moment. Bakugou's face twisted into that familiar expression of rage that Izuku hated so much.

"Why!" Bakugou roared, "Why are you here!"

"My legs moved by themselves!" Izuku lied, "I don't really understand why!"

And then an idea so wonderful and cruel came into Izuku's head. He forced down a smile as he spoke his next words, making them loud enough for everyone to hear.

"Because… your face seemed to be calling for help!"

Oh, that was certainly a new look on Bakugou. Shame and embarrassment and pure, unadulterated rage the likes of which Izuku had never seen before. And Bakugou could do nothing about it.

It sent a thrill through Izuku.

Almost as quickly as it had begun, it was over, All Might coming in from nowhere and defeating the villain with a single punch, scattering the slime everywhere. The heroes made quick work of the clean up and All Might left soon after being thanked by an adoring public.

Izuku really could have done without the lectures he got from the Pro Heroes but he had years of experience tuning out angry people while giving the passing appearance of listening. Sure enough, he was sent home within the hour.

What a day it had been. Being the victim of a villain attack, meeting All Might, discovering the Number One Hero's greatest secret, humiliating Bakugou who was also the person he despised with a hatred so black and poisonous that it made his skin crawl…

It had certainly been exciting, if nothing else.

He figured that it was over by this time, the setting sun painting the sky a brilliant orange and the wind whispering through the leaves bringing him peace and closure.

And then All Might rounded the corner.

After the man deflated, Izuku stumbled over an apology. He didn't manage to get very far before All Might cut him off with a speech of his own. Izuku was stunned to say the least. Here All Might was, telling him that the words Izuku had spoken aloud, the ones that he did not believe, were pivotal in what being a hero meant. Here was All Might, the man he had hero-worshipped since he could speak, leading him to such an obviousconclusion…

If Izuku were a better person then he would have told All Might the truth.

If I had been a better person, Izuku told himself, then this conversation wouldn't be happening in the first place.

"Top heroes have stories about them from their school days. Most of their stories have one thing in common: their bodies moved before they had the chance to think. This… is what happened to you too."

Izuku fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face. "Yes," he lied, his voice a wet and frail thing.

With All Might's steady gaze on him, the man spoke the words that Izuku had longed to hear for all his life.

"You can become a hero."

And there it was, flickering faintly in his chest. Something he had tried to smother and kill so many times.

Hope.

Izuku was going to be the best hero that the world had ever seen. Better than any of the kids from his school, better than Bakugou. Hell, maybe one day he would surpass All Might himself.

Failure was not an option.

Izuku was going to change the world and there wasn't anyone or anything out there that would stop him.