The First Generation

Orphanage, Secrets, Izuku Midoriya

The Nomu wasn't alive.

Nor had it been alive for a long time. In a sense, it wasn't even human anymore. It had the figure, and the shape, but it had been mutated and mutilated into something that wasn't even remotely Human anymore. Standards of what was and wasn't Human in the current age tended to be strict and discriminatory, at least unofficially. Much of the public couldn't bring themselves to see the Quirked generation as anything other than mutated freaks of nature. Mistakes of evolution. But even by the standards of these superpower bestowing mutations, the alterations and genetic manipulation that surrounded the Nomu made it seem less – Or more – than Human.

It hadn't been alive for a while now. It was brain-dead, by Shigaraki's own admission. You couldn't kill something that was already terminally brain-dead, right? That was what Izuku had to remind himself of. And besides the point, something that barely classified as Human or Quirked due to how its very essence had been altered. If the baseline was Human... Nomu couldn't be classed as Human, could it? It was artificial life. Barely life at all.

At least, that was what he told himself. What he tried, so desperately, to believe.

He was born Quirkless, and now had a Quirk within himself. The lines were blurred between Quirked and Quirkless as it was by his mere existence. No matter how hard he tried to think otherwise to try and alleviate his guilt, he didn't accept the notion that the Nomu wasn't alive. He couldn't.

It was. Had been. Now, it wasn't.

He had felt the knife sink into his target's brain, and felt the squelches and the sinking of the blade run down the handle and into his body. It felt like he was stabbing into a particularly viscous pile of jelly. What stuck out at him the most about it was how easy it had been, how effortlessly the blade had sunk into his target. With One For All surging throughout his body, he hadn't even felt much resistance. It had been effortless. Simple.

Easy.

Quiet.

Roars ceased almost instantly, as did all the tension in the muscles. It was just gone. Terminated like the life he had just taken.

He looked at his hands. They were covered with blood, shaking, trembling.

He had killed something. Someone. No matter how it had come into this world, no matter what had happened to it, no matter who it was.

He had killed it.

What had he done?

"Midori?"

Izuku felt a nudge against his arm, and felt his right eyelid slowly open up to look at the world around him. For a moment, he didn't remember where he was, who was around him, who he was and what words meant. It quickly all came back to him though.

"H-Huh? Where..."

"We're almost there. Thought you'd wanna be awake."

The train. He remembered now. They were on a train, headed for the other side of the city.

Sat next to him was Mina, and across from him, Todoroki. And to the side of Todoroki, Eri, the child they had been assigned to take to one of the orphanages for Quirked children too young to attend the established Yuuei school. Eri was to be taken there, to try to learn how to better control her powers, no doubt under the careful eye of researchers, along with those sympathetic to the Quirked.

He'd fallen asleep. Not all that surprising considering the events of last night, and how little rest he'd actually gotten that night. After all, compared to everyone else, he'd had the roughest time of it. He was still haunted by what he'd done. What had happened because of his choice.