{MHA} Curses and Stains

-Youth-

I clutched my backpack as I turned the corner and slumped down in an alleyway, out of breath. My heart pounded in my ears and I felt like I needed to get up and keep running.

My face grew into a nervous smile as I started to giggle uncontrollably.

It was a joke! All of it! I'd saved Kacchan from the Sludge Villain, I'd done something that all those pro heroes couldn't. And yet, all I'd gotten was a scolding and looks of disappointment from the pros.

I'd done something they couldn't and all they'd done afterwards was yell at me. But that was reality wasn't it? No matter what I did, I'd never be a hero. Not with my quirk status. I knew that now.

Everything about today proved it; from All Might's speech to the fight with the Sludge Villain to the way the pro heroes treated me afterwards.

A part of me wanted to lash out at everyone. It just wasn't fair! I didn't ask to be born without a quirk!

I wanted to make them pay for how they treated me.

"I could be their worst nightmare," I muttered, fingers trembling as I started to open my backpack to grab my notebook. I thumbed the pages. "I know everything about them. They'd never see it coming."

As I flipped through the notebook, I quietly thought about how easy it would be to defeat each hero I had taken notes on. "It would be so easy. Kamui Woods could die if he so much as touched a candle. If I lured Mount Lady into an alley just like this one, she can't enlarge without causing property damage and possible damage to herself. She'd be too scared to use her quirk and she's practically light work from there. She's probably not immune to knives when she's not in giant form."

The graphic images of how I could defeat each of them raced through my mind as I kept turning the pages, my breathing getting faster and faster. Endeavor's overheating, Hawk's limited and fragile feathers, All Might's weak spot.

Then I got to Kacchan's file and I paused. The still-fresh memory of him being suffocated by the Sludge Villain popped into my head and I sucked in a breath of sharp cold air. What was I doing?!

Was I so propped up on adrenaline and spite that I was seriously dreaming up murder plans?!

All my life, I'd just wanted to help people.

I closed my eyes and forced myself to calm down, to breathe slower. I could still help people. With a twinge, I recalled that All Might had given me a whole list of careers I could go into to save people.

Not that I remembered them. I'd been so down in the dumps that my memory had, for once, failed to store something All Might had said.

"That's alright," I said, forcing myself to smile. "I'm still young. I've got plenty of time to figure this out. One step at a time, Izuku. One step at a time."

-cas-

I quietly opened the door to the apartment, hoping Mum wouldn't freak out at me coming home so late.

Naturally, she freaked out at me coming home so late.

"Izuku, I saw you on the news! Are you alright? Are you hurt? My goodness your uniform is dirty! What took you so long coming home?"

I looked at her face, her eyes on the verge of spilling over into a waterfall of tears. I felt my own eyes start to water up and I lunged forward to hug her.

The tears were definitely going to cause water damage to the floorboards.

"I'm alright, Mum. No, I'm not hurt. Maybe a few scratches, but I'm okay. I've got an extra uniform I can wear tomorrow. I got held up late by the pros," I answered her questions, only lying on the last one.

"Well," she said, wiping away the last of her tears. "I'm glad you're mostly okay. Do you need any bandaids?"

I shook my head. "Nah, the heroes took care of it," I reassured her. "If you don't mind, I'm gonna go back to my room now."

"Are you sure? Do you want to talk about that villain? It looked so scary on the news when you ran up to him."

I blushed at her concern. "No Mum, I'm alright. I just wanna do some... homework." I didn't know how to tell her I'd given up on my hero dream.

I could tell she knew something was off, but she understood and let me go.

I went into my room and sat down at my desk. I stared numbly at my computer screen wondering where to begin. I'd spent my whole life researching hero work that I didn't even know the first thing about any alternatives, and with high school applications starting soon, I needed ideas fast.

All Might had mentioned something about police officers, hadn't he? It seemed close enough to hero work; maybe I could find some similarities.

I grabbed a fresh notebook and labelled it "Potential Career Paths". As I searched through the information about police work, everything seemed okay and doable until I reached an article about combat.

Due to the recent rise in the potency of quirks, all police officers are required to have an emergency quirk use licence that has been distributed or renewed within the last 18 months. This licence must be up to code and renewal exams will be available once every 6 months. For further reference on this new policy refer to...

The article delved more into legality that I wasn't really interested in reading. I'd seen enough. Police officers needed to use their quirks to protect themselves from extremely dangerous villains. It was less common than a hero using their quirk, and it wasn't usually on the news, but if there were laws about it, it probably happened more often than I'd thought. Police work was a hard pass.

Who else helped people? Firefighters? I shook my head with a chuckle. Water based quirks had completely turned firefighting into a thing of the past.

The medical field! I thought with a jump. I could do that. Very few healing quirks existed, and having more doctors could always be helpful.

I quickly read through as many articles as I could online and came to the conclusion that it was safe to at least try it.

I shut off my computer and closed my notebook. There was a chance to help people after all.

-A/N-

Howdy, lads and lasses! Thanks for checking out -CAS-! I really appreciate you taking valuable time out of your day to check this out!

Enjoy the rest of the story and don't forget to vote this chapter!