4

Chapter 4: Chapter #4 | A New Beginning

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The trip home from Aldera was tense. Perhaps that was putting it lightly. Inko's face was a mixture of emotions. Horror, sorrow, consternation, self-loathing, and righteous fury were each taking their turns and sometimes even mixing. By the time they had stepped through the door, Izuku was fairly certain that if he'd had his knife on him then he could have cut the tension and served it on a plate. Izuku's eyes tracked his mother as she walked into their home, walked across to their couch, and to Izuku's shock, immediately broke down into a crying mess. Of all of the reactions, he hadn't expected this to be one of them. Anger at effectively being kicked out of his school, or at him ruining an age-old friendship with the Bakugo family. He had not expected what was effectively a full breakdown.

It was some time before Izuku had managed to calm his mother enough they could talk. Despite this, her voice still cracked when she asked him to explain.

"Where would you like me to start?" Izuku responded slowly, not quite sure how much he should tell her. From what he had gathered during her sobbing, she blamed herself for Izuku's suffering.

"From the start Izuku. How long has this been going on? I thought Katsuki was your friend? Why did you never say anything? I knew there was bullying, but you wouldn't talk to me and I just stood by. Oh god, I just stood by when I should have stepped in and demanded answers. I should have stopped this from getting this far." Inko was slowly slipping back into her spiral, and Izuku spoke up before she could go any farther with her train of thought. Still, he sighed, if he wanted to reach his end goal here, she would have to know a lot of what he had hidden. He only hoped she could forgive herself, as he had never once blamed her.

"Well, when you ask when it started and how long it's been going on, it's hard to answer exactly. When I was diagnosed quirkless is when things started to change for me. You know how society views the quirkless. Even if the government makes all sorts of rules and laws otherwise, well, actions speak louder than words, and the way we're treated? It says a lot more than their words. As for Katsuki. Well, that would have been around the time he got his quirk, as well. I suppose, though, I didn't see that clearly until much later. He became arrogant, prideful. He was the best, and only he could be the best. Anyone that didn't fall in line with him were targets. Anyone he viewed as lesser than him were targets, regardless. Hence his particular violence when it came to me. My quirklessness makes me a prime target to make him feel better about himself. For some sick, twisted reason or another. I didn't talk to you because, well, because I didn't see anything wrong with it myself for a long time. I just thought it was the natural order of things. After all, that's what has been instilled into us for so long. You shouldn't blame yourself. I never have. You couldn't have helped, and to be honest, some of this, such as the discrimination, will likely continue wherever I go." Izuku sighed, sorrow leaching into his voice as he went on, as he recited a dark part of his history with a new point of view. He leaned back, eyes losing their focus. Looking no longer at his mother but past her to a place no one should ever go. "I've had. Well, I've had a lot of time to think in this last… year. The conclusion I came to was that I was done dealing with being treated like I was a second-class human simply because of the lack of a tool. Because that's what quirks are. A unique tool to each person." Izuku shook his head and snorted "Hell, with the way things are, only a handful of people aren't a criminal if they use their quirks anyway. You would think that it wouldn't matter."

Inko throws herself into him, crushing him in her embrace. He could feel the back of his shirt becoming soaked through with her tears, and she was sobbing once again. All Izuku could do was rub small circles into her back, doing his best to comfort his mother. Although he had long accepted that many of these things had been done to him, it was different for his mother. She was just now learning the true extent of the discrimination in this society.

Discrimination in this society, huh? Well, that's a little too familiar. Izuku breathed deep and his mother pulled back, looking deep into his eyes. Her own emerald, shimmering with tears.

"Promise me, Izuku, that if something is truly bothering you, you'll tell me. Don't keep everything to yourself. I ca- I can't do this again."

"Don't worry, mom." Izuku shook his head. "I don't plan on dealing with these things myself anymore. A man on his own can face other men. A man with a support network can face the entire world." Inko stepped back a little confused as to where the words of wisdom had come from but perfectly satisfied in his answer. Her eyes lit again and she began pacing. Inko had been stewing on the issues, and now that the sorrowful talk had mostly passed and she'd gotten the promise she wanted out of him, she had clearly worked herself back to fury.

"At the very least I'm not letting you go back there, and I'll be damned if Mitsuku's boy is coming anywhere near us from now on. I'm going to make Aldera wish they had never opened their doors at all. I'll have every one of their teaching licenses by the time I'm done."

Well, certainly better than crying. But while I'm good with the prior…

"Mom. I'm not saying that we don't do something about it, but. Well, I have a plan for that. That school won't be around too much longer. It has to be done carefully though. As much as I want to hate Katsuki, I can't ruin him yet. Oh don't get me wrong, I blame him for what he's done and I can hold him at fault. But. I mean. When was the last time you saw someone tell him no? Tell him what he was doing was wrong? Make him take a look at his actions? No, right now, he's what society has made him to be. As are all the other students in that school that stood by. I can't end Katsuki's career before it can even get started. Not when it could so easily turn him into an actual villain. Not when I've long put it behind me. If he decides to continue down this path? Then I have no problem ending him before he begins." Izuku's tone had leached into something dark. Something that his mother caught and gave him a worried look. The way he had behaved in the office came back to her. Something was different about her Izuku since he had woken up. He seemed… older and more jaded. It worried her, but seeing as he had promised he'd tell her if something was bothering him, she'd let it go for now. Maybe he was just being honest with her for the first time. "Besides all that, I think that the school problem may be self-solving. I, ah, may be a little bit ahead of my classes."

Inko stops her pacing long enough to narrow her eyes at Izuku. "We'll leave the discussion on what to do about the school and the Bakugos for another time. What do you mean ahead of your classes? Exactly how far ahead of them are you?" Izuku withers under his mother's stare. He may be mentally old enough to be an adult, but never will he be able to stand up to his mother's stare.

"Heh. Eh. Ah. I might be a few... Years?" Decades "Ahead? I studied a lot? I could ace the content without looking at it and the teachers weren't fond of the idea of the quirkless student outdoing the others so they never let me move on?" It wasn't a lie, Izuku thought. He certainly could have answered, if not taught the subjects, better than most the teachers. Besides that, the augmentations had granted him a borderline photographic memory and spiked his IQ through the roof. So anything that he might not have learned, he would have picked up very quickly. "I think it would probably be for the best if I found online classes that let me finish things at my own pace. It would be a better gauge of my abilities than school has been thus far, at least."

Inko rubbed at her eyes. It would lack social interaction and that was an issue. But if it let Izuku catch up to where he should be, then that issue could be dealt with later. Weary, she sighed, tired from the day's events, and sat back down. "Looks like you got Hisashi's intelligence then. Alright. Alright, find a couple good options and we'll look over them together." Izuku could see the weary way she held herself now. She was reaching her limits for bullshit for the day, and quite frankly, he could relate to that on a spiritual level right now. But if this conversation was going to go how he figured it would, then he should just get it out of the way.

"Mom. Something happened with him while I was in the coma, didn't it? I can't help but notice things are different. Hisashi's photos are gone, things that were left here that were his are gone now. What did he do?" Izuku broached the topic carefully, unsure of what the answer was going to be.

"Well, when you were attacked, I contacted him on I-Island. Long story short, he stated I shouldn't worry about you." Izuku narrowed his eyes. Is that so? He suspected that his father had said far more than she was letting on, but he wasn't going to push her if she didn't want to talk. It would be easy enough to check into anyway. Yet another thing to add to his growing list of things to do.

…

A couple weeks had passed since the events at Aldera and Izuku sweatdropped as he stared at his computer screen. He had only started his online schooling a week prior and now he was staring at the completion screen for his sophomore year of high school. He had known he was ahead, but there had been several factors he hadn't anticipated. First, as it turned out, he remembered far more than he thought he had regarding his education. Sure, his language classes had taken him a moment to dust off the languages of this world. But after that learning, it was nothing compared to Osmian, Phurian, or the slew of languages he had to learn in the academy for cryptography. Secondly, he had evidently brought more than just a couple of the genetic splicings they'd endured. Only time would tell just how many had come with him, but right now they were reactivating as he worked his body back into shape.

He'd only needed to sleep thrice in the last two weeks, and all three times had ended just as his first night had. Izuku shook his head, leaning back in his chair to stare at his ceiling. He'd have to talk to someone eventually, he logically knew that. They had been trained with the knowledge of what they were doing to themselves. Even still, he couldn't help but feel that he shouldn't bother. He was living something like a second life, and he should feel blessed at the chance. But why him? Why not Sergeant Reed? Sergeant Wilson? Didn't they do as much, if not more than him? He shook his head once more to clear his thoughts.

Don't think like that. You know where that kind of thought process leads. You've seen it before. Don't go there. Izuku could feel himself getting twitchy. He had too much energy right now. It served him wonderfully when he was running field operations or working on a project, but this didn't challenge him in the slightest. Hmm. Project, eh? His brain flashed back to Dagobah Beach. He could start cleaning the beach. But he knew that it wouldn't be enough. Not unless he wanted to be out on the beach cleaning in the wee hours of the morning. While an option, he wasn't quite that desperate yet. His mother wouldn't like the idea, and while the area was safe enough, he didn't particularly want to explain to the police why he had broken someone's spine for trying to mug him at three in the morning. I bet that beach has plenty of materials buried in there that are still usable, though. I'll be needing gear anyway if. Izuku stopped mid-thought, frowned, and sat up. Did he even still want to be a hero? He had certainly wanted to be one before the coma. But now? Could he call himself a hero with the things he had done? Done to others? No, he knew he was no hero. He still wanted to help people, though, that hadn't changed. Police? No, too constrained by rules and red tape. Medical? He didn't want to help people only after the incident had already occurred. That would be a waste of his training. Vigilante? He wouldn't be doing anything illegal, technically. For once his quirkless status could actually help him there; however, he would still be chased down on the technicalities of his gear and those laws. Military again? No. Not that there was an issue with the military. If anyone understood what they did it was him, but he wouldn't be satisfied with that in this world as it is now. In the end, heroics was his only choice. He'd take the license to be a hero, Izuku decided. If only so that he could help people without the law getting in the way. But he certainly wouldn't ever consider himself one.

…

Izuku wiped his brow of sweat as he cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders. Then his elbows, wrists, fingers, spine, knees, and ankles cracked as well. He winced when everything else cracked with his neck. Izuku had managed to convince the city to lend him a series of dumpsters that would be emptied each morning in exchange for his community service of cleaning the beach. It had taken entirely too many arguments to get even that, considering that this beach was supposed to be their responsibility in the first place. But he had them now, so that detail didn't particularly matter. He had only been at it for a couple days, but anyone could already see the difference. Where Izuku had once been nothing more than a walking twig with a bush of hair on his head, now he was sporting dense muscle up and down his body that clearly showed with his monochrome shorts and tank top. His hair pulled back into its ponytail where it was out of his way for the beach cleanup. Between the beach and his regimented exercise routine, he was rapidly regaining the muscle he'd had before waking up. Much like the beach, though, progress towards his goals was slow. Izuku had been about right before in his estimates regarding the trash. Thirty feet at its deepest points and at least five at a minimum at its thinnest. This resulted in mountains and dunes of refuse and abandoned parts. He was pretty sure there had been one or two cars he had already seen buried, and he'd only surveyed about 20% of the trash mountains thus far.

While it had disgusted Izuku initially as to just what some people considered trash, he found it helped him quite a lot. Everything from common scrap metal, of which was plentiful, to old platinum cased lighters. Any kind of precious metal like that always made Izuku jump for joy. Those could be repurposed for all sorts of things later if he got access to some kind of forge. Platinum in specific was incredibly hard to come by and was wondrous when making electrodes. Not that he had delved too deeply into the mechanical side of things. That had always been left to their unit's two engineering sergeants with Izuku handling the biological side of things. But right now, Izuku had all the time in the world and, for once, all the information he could want at his fingertips. So he would be damned if he wasn't going to take the opportunity to learn. He looked around at what he had accomplished in the last while. A path had been cut through the mountains of trash to about halfway into the beach where a large circular clearing sat. From the other side of the clearing, the path continued on until the water. Sadly, the first time the water was likely able to reach the sand unimpeded in years. One pile sat in the middle of the clearing. Particularly useful salvage or pieces that could be repurposed went into the pile. Otherwise, a very clear line of footprints from the beach to the dumpster detailed where Izuku had made countless treks to remove the useless, defunct, cannibalized, or legitimate garbage.

"Well," Izuku muttered, "progress is progress, I suppose. Time to load up and head home." Retrieving his empty bag from the side of the clearing, Izuku stepped over to the pile in the middle of the clearing. Initially, when he had asked his mother to use their spare room as a workshop, he doubted she had been expecting him to start bringing in actual materials. Not that he had started too much in the way of actual work quite yet. Right now, it was mostly a dozen blueprints that he considered for the future and a few dozen more that he wanted to get replicated quickly so that he would have access to the materials he needed for more complex projects. There would be a lot of work to get the kinks worked out even if he had a mechanical background. As it was, he would be learning as he went. Which he didn't mind, but it would certainly cause a certain loss of resources that he wasn't sure was feasible until he could secure a source of funds. Perhaps if I crea- Izuku was snapped out of his thoughts as he heard the crunch of sand under boots behind him. Spinning, he dropped both his bag and himself into a low stance ready for whatever might be behind him. Behind him stood a short girl that he expected was about his age, with pink hair and a wild look in her eyes. She wore a black tank top that could have done with being a size larger as it showed her curves that were, frankly, incredibly well developed for their age. At her waist, a tool belt filled with a variety of gadgets hung over grey cargo pants and was completed by black combat boots.

"YOU! YOU'RE THE ONE STEALING MY SCRAP!" She barely had gotten the cry out before she lunged forwards towards Izuku. Izuku was not ready for what was behind him.