The Brightest Minds Will Shine (but not as bright as mine)

"So, the quirkless wonder thinks he can save people like a hero, eh?" A brash blonde child rhetorically questioned his opposite.

"I-I won't let you hurt him, Kacchan!" Said the opposite – a green-haired kid – with shaky confidence.

A few minutes later, the four-year-old with green hair was left lying alone, bruised and bloodied.

What would a child do to deserve such brutal punishment? Daring to help someone in need without having a superpower.

–

"D-do you think I could be a cool hero like All Might, M-Mom?" The crying child asked his distraught mother.

Unfortunately, his mother didn't have the words he wanted to hear. Instead, with tears in her own eyes, she held her son close.

"I'm so sorry, Izuku!"

–

By the time Izuku broke out of his grief-induced trance, his mother had left to give him some space.

As he stared at the computer screen, emotions swirled within him. The All Might debut video, once a source of inspiration, now filled him with a sense of disgust. He closed the page, his resolve to become a hero unshaken despite his new feelings.

He was determined to find out if there had ever been a quirkless hero before, to see if it was truly possible for him to be a hero without a quirk.

–

After three hours of rabbit holes, articles, interviews, and statistics, Izuku realized a terrifying truth.

Not only has there never been a quirkless hero, but there are dozens of anti-quirkless heroes, including the second-ranked hero in Japan, Endeavor.

Adding to his despair, the statistics for Japan's quirkless population suggested that Izuku wouldn't even survive through high school, let alone in a hero world.

He found multiple forums dedicated to discussing quirks. Some were kind to the quirkless, and those with conventionally unattractive and useless quirks, but a vast majority shunned them if not outright called for their extermination.

Kacchan–

No, Bakugou. No reasonable, good person would ever beat up their friend.

Bakugou's mentality was not uncommon, and his actions weren't even as rare as he hoped they would be.

The sad reality of this world is that not everyone is born equal in society's eyes. People like him, those with "useless" quirks, "villainous" quirks, and no quirks, have no place in a hero society except as villains to be jailed and civilians to be saved or killed.

However, despite all the frightening information Izuku found, he also found some that made him more hopeful.

One of the older forums, established by quirkless people shortly after they became the national – and global – minority, had a link to an archive that kept media and history from before the dawn of quirks.

During the Quirk Wars, which lasted most of the 21st and 22nd centuries, lots of physical media and digital data were destroyed. Thankfully, because nerds and data hoarders exist, a decent chunk of the destroyed media was restored to hundreds of archives and servers to prevent it from being destroyed again.

One of these surviving archives is where Izuku found information on the revolutions of the past.

The American and French revolutions, the Haitian slave revolt, and the Russian revolutions that led to the creation and dissolution of the USSR, among other successes and failures across time.