Shackles of the Past

Friendship

Midoriya Izuku never really had friends.

His father, Midoriya Hisashi, was a villain. A fire breathing villain, that went by the name of Flash Fire. A powerful fighter and arsonist, it had taken the combination of Endeavor, Best Jeanist and Hawks to take him down.

He didn't know his father was a villain. His mother never told him, but he had noticed her breakdown when his father was been carted away in a fire resistant police car.

He was a smart child, an empathetic child. He could tell when someone was feeling sad, when they needed help, and would try his best to comfort them.

He had noticed his mother's change in emotion, and despite only being three, he had tried to comfort her. She had ended up spilling the entire story to him. He himself had declared Midoriya useless, and had ditched them in favour of being a villain.

She had grown distant. She never really acknowledged Midoiriya, blankly looking at the boy as she brought him home from preschool, empty inside as she just went through the muscle movement of doing daily everyday mundane tasks.

He understood. Her own deteriorating mentality over her husband had taken over. She didn't, couldn't, wasn't able do anything to stop her son's classmates from bullying the poor boy who was just too nice to everyone. All that was getting to her head. And he didn't blame her.

Midoriya was short, way shorter than the rest of his peers. No one wanted to befriend him, saying that it wasn't cool to be his friend. They claimed that he was too nice, too cheerful, just too happy and smiley in general. He was too talkative, too willing to make friends. They said with that attitude, he couldn't be a hero.

He wasn't weak by any standards, given he was still a toddler. But no one really cared about that. He was short, thus he was not worthy of being friends. Simply, childish logic, but it still stung all the same.

It would get better, he told himself, eventually.

It didn't.

Midoriya Izuku was declared quirkless at the age of four.

They punched him, kicked him, used their quirks against him. The teachers didn't stop them, and occasionally Midoriya did overhear them, and even the caretakers had decided to let the children do whatever, as long as they didn't end up killing the boy or causing long term damage. They were just roughhousing, after all, they said, children do that all the time.

They called him Deku. They called him weak, useless. That he wouldn't amount to anything because he was simply quirkless and powerless.

Then, they found out that his father was Flash Fire, when a teacher accidentally spoke too loudly and they all heard him from outside their classroom.

Then they said the best he could do was become a villain so that when they became heroes, they could beat him down easily.

They didn't know what they were saying, Midoriya reasoned, It made them feel better about themselves.

He was okay with that.

But Midoriya also wanted to prove them wrong.

He knew he was quirkless. He needed to somehow even the playing field. He had been analysing quirks since he was young, but all that knowledge was useless in a fight if he was hit in an instance.

He slowly learnt how to read people's movements. Every twitch, every blink, how they walked, how they talked, how they slouched or lay down. He needed to learn, to keep up with the other super powered children he called his classmates. He didn't have a choice if he wanted to be a hero.