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Chapter 2: Rise From the Ashes

Izuku felt nothing but pain. In fact, pain was the thing he had become most familiar with over the years. For the last half-decade, Izuku's mother had, in no uncertain terms, beaten the dogshit out of him five days out of the week. He had undergone ruthless physical training in combat, stealth, cardio, weight training, a bit of gymnastics, and even parkour for when it would inevitably become necessary.

And Izuku loved every minute of it.

At age 5, Izuku was started off with something relatively light: dodge training. Inko called in a favor that an old associate from her time as a pro owed her, and she managed to secure a small training room in the city as well as a frightening amount of small, rubber balls. Izuku's objective was simple: dodge the oncoming projectiles that his mother would launch at him with an unsettling grin. It seemed simple enough until he realized that his mother had impeccable aim and the arm of a major league pitcher.

What she did not tell him was that she'd be yoinking the balls behind him back into her grasp with her quirk, and he'd have to dodge those, too. It doubled as training in situational awareness.

Strangely, Izuku would occasionally feel an unnatural heat in his body, usually congregating in his chest. When that heat made its appearance, Izuku felt as if the world had slowed down a bit, and the balls were suddenly easier to dodge. Those strange bursts didn't last for very long, usually for a few seconds at most, and he tended to feel even more worn out in the aftermath. He chalked it up to bursts of adrenaline until he had further information.

He didn't notice the sparks and flickers of yellow that appeared in his hair when the phenomena happened, but his mother had, and she made note of them every time they did with a vindicated grin. She wouldn't tell him what she was smiling about, though.

At age 10, Izuku learned firsthand what it truly meant to be quirkless, regardless of his suspicions of the accuracy of his status. This lesson came in the form of two distinct incidents happening on the same day, one being more pleasant than the other.

The first incident began with a regular day at school for Izuku; that was, if regular involved him jumping in front of his sorta-friend, Katsuki Bakugo, before the explosive blonde could continue tormenting another boy cowering on the ground. Izuku would have liked to believe that it wasn't a regular occurrence, but…

"The hell are you doing, Deku?!" the ash blonde growled at him with eyes filled with more annoyance than anger.

"You can't just beat people down like this, Kacchan!" Izuku responded with a tinge of exasperation. "You've made your point already… whatever point that even was to begin with."

That, in Izuku's estimation, may not have been the right thing to say.

"Oh, really?" Bakugo growled in a low, dangerous tone. "You think you're better than me, huh? What the hell can you even do about it, you quirkless Deku?!"

Izuku didn't particularly want this to end in violence, but he knew that it was becoming unavoidable. A quick glance around showed that they were beginning to attract a crowd of other students, and he saw a teacher wander over to see what the ruckus was about. By then, the kid who was previously cowering had long since made his escape while Bakugo and company were distracted, so all the teacher saw was Bakugo and two others surrounding the unsettling kid who didn't have a quirk. So, he did what any other reasonable adult would do in that situation.

He turned around and walked away.

'Thats… that's gotta be illegal, right?' Izuku thought with a deadpan frown. He didn't dwell on it, however, as he had a more pressing issue to deal with in the form of a pissed off Bakugo and his two lackeys making their way toward him. He really did not want to fight them, but it seemed inevitable. He just hoped his mother wouldn't be too upset with him.

"If I have to stop you myself, that's exactly what I'll do," he said with a measure of conviction that took Bakugo slightly aback. "It's what a hero would do."

And that, Izuku learned, was definitely not the right thing to say.

"You looking down on me, you shitty, worthless nerd?!" Bakugo almost screamed. "Guess I'll have to finally put you in your place and remind you of the goddamn pebble you are!"

And without any further preamble, Bakugo threw a right hook at Izuku, his fist crackling with small explosions from his quirk. Resigning himself to his fate, Izuku quickly sidestepped the punch and snapped a firm hold onto the blonde's arm, flipping him over his hip and slamming Bakugo to the ground with a thud.

Bakugo was frozen; Deku, the weak, defenseless nerd, had actually reversed his attack. Deku could actually defend himself. It was a shock to his system and caused him to freeze and only stare up at the boy above him, and he did not like what he saw.

Meanwhile, Izuku has felt the world slow down once again. The familiar heat was making itself known in his chest, but it also felt like twinges of it were spreading throughout his body. That was certainly new; he'd think about that later, though. In his periphery, he saw several grotesquely long fingers lunge for him at a crawling pace. Sidestepping once more, he seized the boy's long fingers and employed one of the tactics his mother had drilled into him: ruthlessly attack joints if your opponent was dumb enough to leave them exposed.

And with a pop that made everyone in the area wince, that was exactly what he did.

He still could not rest, though, as his final opponent was trying to lunge at him from his other side. The portly boy with minimally effective wings tried to use the barest of glides his quirk allowed to get the drop on Izuku. The heat in his chest left him, but the heat in the rest of his body remained. Turning around to face the winged boy head on, he swung his arm out to clothesline the boy and kill any momentum he had.

That was the intention, anyway.

What actually happened was that the boy slammed into Izuku's arm as if it was a wall, and Izuku inadvertently launched the larger boy into the crowd with the followthrough of his swing.

Yes, that was certainly a new development.

While Izuku was stuck contemplating what exactly happened amidst the deathly silent and awestruck crowd, Bakugo was focused on what he had seen. Particularly, he was stuck on the small flames that protruded from Izuku's hair for mere moments at a time, one yellow and one green.

'Deku's got a fucking quirk… and he's been lying about it!'

While Bakugo silently seethed at the perceived injustice, the teacher from earlier had finally returned to handle the ruckus. However, he was met with a silent collection of children all staring in tangible wonder and fear at Izuku.

"Midoriya, what have you done to these boys?!" The teacher immediately accused with a stern glare at the young green-head. A part of Izuku wanted to flinch and cower at the glare he was receiving, but a larger part found the man horribly lacking in intimidation factor compared to frightening taskmaster that was his mother. However, the older man did not even give Izuku a chance to speak before he quickly disregarded him entirely.

"I don't want to hear any of your lies," he said before turning to a bystander. "What did Midoriya do to those boys?"

Said bystander, a brunette with a heavy chameleon mutation, looked as if he was about to speak before one of his eyes fell on Izuku. The chameleon boy subconsciously flinched at the gaze, regardless of how nonthreatening it actually was.

"Um, nothing," he quickly answered. "He did nothing."

The teacher raised an eyebrow, not terribly convinced. "Oh, really?" He asked, now turning his gaze to the crowd at large. "Did Midoriya truly do nothing?"

The choruses of "yep," "yeah," "uh-huh," and "I'm not a rat" surprised the teacher. It was very unusual for anyone to go to bat for the little, quirkless weirdo, much less an entire crowd of bystanders who had clearly just watched a fight. Realizing he couldn't reprimand him without any proof, he scanned the area to find even the smallest thing to pin on the boy. His eyes landed on one of the students on the ground, clutching his fingers as if they had been broken. A cruel smirk finally finding its way onto his face, he walked over to the boy and kneeled down beside him.

"Did Midioriya do this to you?" He asked a gently as he could manage.

The boy briefly looked up at the man through the pain before his gaze flickered to the aforementioned boy, and he immediately clammed up.

"I-I fell," he quickly stuttered out before shutting his mouth again.

The man was now positively beside himself. He could not fathom what the hell the boy had done to command such… fear? Was it fear coming from the other children? It certainly wasn't respect or anything positive in nature. The man made a mental note that Midoriya needed to be watched by the faculty and potentially some other parties.

Before he could travel any further down that thread, the boy of the hour hesitantly stepped forward. Izuku weathered the weary and fearful looks of the other children as well as the heated glares from the teacher and Bakugo before stopping in front of the kid whose fingers he, as his mother would say, forcefully readjusted.

Izuku didn't know what exactly compelled him to step forward, but he could feel an even newer sensation of warmth, this time in his palms. This time, he couldn't ignore the faint pink glow they sported while everyone took notice of the small flickers of pink flames that sprouted from Izuku's hair. Bakugo was again reduced to a snarling rage as Izuku kneeled down and took the injured boy's fingers into his hands, allowing the warm, pink glow to bathe over the kid's fingers. Within seconds, the previously broken fingers reset themselves and straightened back up, looking no worse for wear.

The crowd of onlookers had assumed that they could not have been any more surprised by the day's events, but the blatant display of a quirk from the quirkless kid after he had handily defeated the class tough guy and his cronies was a little much for those in attendance. Many had decided to just walk away from the scene to process everything somewhere else, while many others, such as the chameleon boy, made mental notes not to mess with Midoriya, lest they get their fingers broken, as well.

Bakugo's two cronies scampered away to lick their wounds and think about their life choices. Bakugo, on the other hand, had festered into vicious glowering, trying to will the green-head to melt with his glare. It wasn't yielding any success, which only served to strengthen the blonde's glare.

The teacher, meanwhile, had a notable glimmer in his eye as if he had come to a profound realization.

"Midoriya, detention after school for quirk usage during school hours," is all he said before walking away from the scene.

Izuku, stuck in the reverie of his mom apparently being correct about him being a late-bloomer, was ripped out of said reverie when he processed the teacher's statement.

"ARE YOU FU-"

Izuku could only sigh in a mixture of frustration and resignation as he walked home from school after his detention. He was looking forward to giving his mother the news, although, he was curious as to how it would affect his training. His mother had specifically not accounted for quirk usage in any of the combat and movement training they had done, so he supposed that she would figure out ways to incorporate his quirk in the routines and stances in a way similar to her own fighting style.

Of course, that would have to come after they figured out exactly what his quirk even was.

He was certain that the warmth he periodically felt during training had something to do with it rather than just being adrenaline, and he at least knew that he could heal people's injuries with whatever caused the warm sensations in his palms. Maybe his quirk was similar to Kacchan's in that way.

Speaking of which…

"DEKU!"

He had sensed a presence waiting around the school when he left, and the presence followed him on his path home. If it weren't for the shock of ash blonde in his periphery whenever he glanced over, he would've been worried and taken a different route.

Stopping and turning to face his sorta-friend who had been following him, he took stock of the absolutely livid snarl his face contorted into. 'This is probably about my quirk' he thought with a sigh.

"Hi Kac-"

"WHERE THE FUCK DO YOU GET OFF LOOKING DOWN ON ME, HUH?!" Bakugo interrupted Izuku with violently crackling palms. He grabbed the scruff of Izuku's gakuran and pulled the boy into an adjacent alleyway before roughly tossing him into it.

"Looking down on you?" Izuku ventured in confusion as he stood and dusted himself off. He hadn't been looking down on Bakugo at all. Sure, he thought the boy was an asshole more times than should be necessary, but he didn't think any less of him, especially not in comparison to himself.

Up until that afternoon, Bakugo had a quirk and Izuku didn't, and that automatically made him superior to Izuku in the eyes of society. Izuku was well aware of that.

"You've been hiding your shitty ass quirk all this time to laugh at me behind my back, haven't you, you shitty fucking Deku?!" Bakugo interrupted Izuku's internal musings with more screaming.

Izuku was perplexed; that was more vitriol than Bakugo had ever spewed to anyone. Where did it even come from?

"You think you're so fucking cool that you have some shitty quirk to heal the extras?! You're a fucking pebble in my path to greatness, a worthless fucking scrub that needs to remember his goddamn place! You hear me, fucking Deku?!"

Izuku had begun to suspect that the teacher had gotten to Bakugo sometime before they left. The things he was saying were absurd, and Izuku knew that nothing productive would come from the conversation should it continue.

"Sure, Kacchan, I'll stay out of your way," Izuku dully said before brushing past Bakugo and continuing on his way home. He didn't mean to come off as dismissive, but he wanted to placate the angry blonde, and he wouldn't dare grovel or cower to his attempts at intimidation to do that.

Unfortunately, Bakugo took that as another slight against him from the boy he believed was acting above his station to personally insult him, and his temper that was already hanging by a thread had been lost. He roughly grabbed Izuku and launched him deeper into the alley before igniting his palm and blowing the boy back even further. Bakugo was seeing red, and he would be sure to remind Deku of his place in way that he'd never forget.

Izuku, on the other hand, was not in the mood for this shit. Bakugo had already tried to attack him earlier that day, and that became a whole thing that landed him in detention with a teacher who clearly hated him and probably put Bakugo up to this very encounter. He watched Bakugo approach with a vicious gleam in his eyes that promised nothing but pain, and he could already feel his body rapidly heating up again. However, it was much greater than normal, as he could see thin wisps of smoke steaming from his skin.

When Bakugo took a step within a yard's distance of Izuku, something within him snapped, and the familiar warmth became a shocking yet comfortable haze of heat that washed over the entire alley. What followed was an explosion of vibrant colors, turning the dank alley into a mosaic of flames kissing every end of the rainbow. Bakugo was momentarily pulled out of his rage by the sight of his classmate standing in front of him wreathed in flames of every color. His normally green hair was spattered with the colored tips of flames moving to the beat of their own drums. His breath hitched at the way Izuku's eyes glowed a threatening shade of green.

Bakugo, for the second time that day, had frozen.

He could do nothing but watch in alarm as Izuku slowly raised his right hand and pointed his palm at him. The way Izuku's violently emerald eyes narrowed with contempt at him made his stomach drop, and he truly did not know if he would make it out of that alley in one piece.

In an instant, a bright flash erupted from Izuku's palm, and Bakugo clamped his eyes shut in a vice grip, awaiting the inevitable burns to wash over him.

But they never did.

He waited at least 5 seconds for something to happen, only opening his eyes to assess the situation when it was clear that nothing would be happening. Izuku was gone, the only evidence that he was even there being the glossy rainbow burned into the concrete where he once stood.

Bakugo took a moment to catch his breath before quickly leaving the alley and making a beeline for his home, pushing past the nosy extras who came to investigate the explosions.

Izuku sat on the fire escape of one of the buildings looking down at the alley. He would've given himself a rightful pat on the back for using a fake blast as a diversion to make his escape up the walls and out of the sight (his mother would be so proud), but he was still reeling from the, he supposed, true activation of his quirk.

He stared down at his right hand, eyes fixed on the beautiful fire that encased it. It was like nothing he'd ever seen before; Endeavor's powerful, sun-like flames were one thing, but the malleable stained glass portrait in his hand was breathtaking. The warmth and inexplicable bouts of speed and strength now also made a great deal more sense.

Putting the flames out, he hurried up to the roof of the building and down the fire escape on the other side to book it home and show his mother. She was right all along about his quirk, and now, a whole new dimension had been added to both his arsenal and the kind of training they could do together.

Finally arriving at his complex, he bounded up the stairs and giddily reached for his front door, practically throwing himself inside in his excitement.

"Mom, you were right! I have a-"

He paused at the sight of two policemen and a man in a beige trench coat in his living room. His mother was sitting on their couch and looked more exhausted than Izuku had ever seen her.

"Izuku, welcome home, honey," his mother said with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.

"What's going on?" he questioned, carefully examining the police in his home. Said policemen and the man in the trench coat looked to Inko, and she nodded. Taking that as his cue, the man in the trench coat looked back toward Izuku.

"Hello Midoriya, I'm Detective Tsukauchi. We were only here to verify the events of what transpired here earlier today. It's a blessing that you weren't home for it."

Inko cut back in before Izuku's worry could start to overtake him. "Your father came home."

That was… good? Bad? Izuku wasn't entirely sure given the context of their current situation. He hadn't seen his father since shortly before his diagnosis. As far as he knew, his father worked overseas and sent money back every month.

"Is he okay? Did he do something?" Izuku hazarded.

Inko let lose a mirthless chuckle. "Oh, he did something, alright. He came back with the intention to kill you for being quirkless."

The room was engulfed in a silence that was equal parts heavy and awkward. No one said a word as Izuku was left to process that fun little nugget. He opened his mouth to speak, but he closed it, not finding the right words. He repeated the process for several minutes until he uttered the only thing that came to mind:

"Would you believe I just awakened my quirk?"

I wanted to get to three particular plot points in this chapter, but this was an appropriate place to end it. Those plot points will be explored next chapter, as well as everything up to the start of canon. Thanks for reading.