Gold and Green (BNHA)
In all honesty, looking back, Izuku could only muse to himself on how many clues there had been about the predicament he found himself in – painting a poorly lit street with the red of his blood. Really, it was like being slapped around the face with a cold, wet fish known as the truth.
“Don’t worry, kid,” one of the many voices in his head reassured him as he bled out in a dingy alleyway in the backstreets of Fukuoka. “It gets easier every time…”
(or, in which One for All is not the only haunted, semi-sentient quirk in existence, and Midoriya Izuku was always fated to get up close and personal with quirks like that.)
Chapter One: Phoenix Martial Arts
There were many different paths to take in life, and Midoriya Izuku could only wonder what had brought him there as he stood on the doorstep to a martial arts academy.
Phoenix Martial Arts, the sign read in black, gold, and amber hues.
The only martial arts academy which didn’t seem to be too prejudiced against the quirkless, and it was dead cheap to boot. Something which had worried his mother when he’d first broached the topic. Research and statistics tended to suggest that the quality of the teaching would also be subpar, but Izuku liked to hope. Hope was a fickle thing which was all too often crushed beneath the heel of what was called reality. Life was not king to those who were different from the masses. When he was disabled in the eyes of the rest of the world.
“Are you going to stand there all day?” a voice rang out, harsh yet not unkindly. “Or are you going to come in?”
The door to the small gym was open, a figure wreathed in shadows lingering there. Eyes like the glowing embers of coal bore into him like Pro Hero Laser Jet’s newest weapon, and Izuku, never the bravest when it came to meeting new people, froze. “Uh-um…” The words tangled together on his tongue, and Izuku loathed his social anxiety in that moment. Way to make a great impression, Deku, a voice which sounded suspiciously like Kacchan’s echoed in his brain. His teeth clenched for the slightest of moments.
“I’m guessing you’re here for lessons,” the man said, jerking the door back and forth pointedly. “Come on in. I don’t bite, regardless of my appearance.”
“Oh—no! I can’t even see you properly. You’re standing in the doorway and it’s rather shaded and I wouldn’t—”
“Come in, motor mouth,” the man said, and Izuku, wisely, shut his mouth and ventured towards the open door. “I don’t have all eternity, you know.” His voice was wry, as if there was some joke to that which Izuku didn’t have the slightest idea about. An inside joke, like one between friends. Not that Izuku had any of those.
“Of—of course,” he spluttered, feeling the rush of blood to his cheeks as he stumbled forwards, almost tripping over his own feet as he did so. He was so clumsy. The instructor could probably see that much. His shoulders tensed, part of him waiting to be called out for it and scolded. How could you even think about learning martial arts? Some other snide voice asked from the depths of his mind, and he bit his lip, wondering where the rebuke was. Wondering where the ‘you really think you could learn martial arts with a body like that’ was. “S-sorry,” he mumbled, uncertain if his words were even heard as he entered what could only be the training hall. Or was it a dojo? A gym? He’d tried doing as much research as possible before joining, but there were limits to that and personal preferences for others.
“It would appear that you’re my only student for today,” the man said, and now that he was standing in the light and facing him, Izuku could only stare. He was tall, muscled, and rather hairy in the grand scheme of things, golden tan skin covered with long, looping scars and tattoos. His hair was a vibrant red, his eyes and nose distinctly vulpine in appearance. He had a fox mutation quirk, or maybe his parents had and his real quirk was something completely different. Izuku didn’t know, and he didn’t dare ask.
Foxes are always fraudsters, sly and tricky. The words he’d heard about another marginalised group rang in his ears, and he tried to get rid of that thought. You know better than to listen to those rumours and sayings, he scolded himself, eyes lingering on the tattoos. Yakuza. He shook his head slightly, trying to rid himself of those thoughts.
“Some call me the Fox Who Guards the Flame,” he said, the thicker hair on his forehead and growing from the edges of his human-shaped ears almost seemed to twitch as he stood there, arms folded across his chest. “You can call me Ryuusuke-sensei,” he continued. “Here at Phoenix Martial Art Academy we teach mixed martial arts, or MMA, as it might be more commonly known to you.” He paused then, if only to take a breath, and Izuku could only hold his own even as he tried to shrink in on himself. He was the only one there. The only one who was being scrutinised like a pig in the market to a buyer wondering how much his meat would be worth. “Before we begin – why are you here?”
Izuku blinked, feeling those burning eyes piercing through him. “Because…” His mouth felt ever so dry as he tried to say his dream aloud. Something he hadn’t done in a long while. He could almost hear the phantom sounds of Kacchan’s quirk popping as it always did, covered by the thirty-third clause of the Regulations of Civilian Quirk Use Act. “Because I want to be a hero,” he said, bracing himself for the inevitable question of what his quirk was.
They must be desperate for business if they’re allowing primordials to attend, callous words he’d heard in passing about his new martial arts academy rang in his ears, heart beating in his chest almost frantically as he tried to calm himself down.
“A noble aspiration,” Ryuusuke-sensei said flatly. “Though you might struggle with those limp noodles you currently call arms and legs. I suppose that’s why you’re here though,” he murmured, nodding to himself as he looked him up and down. “I don’t suppose you have any previous history with martial arts?”
Izuku shook his head. “No, I don’t…” he mumbled, wondering then if ever he’d be able to stop mumbling. He wondered if one day he wouldn’t shrink into his own shoulders. He wondered if one day he’d feel comfortable in his own skin—
“Right. So we’re starting from scratch. Excellent,” he murmured. “No bad habits to train out of you. A blank slate. I like it,” he said. “First, we’d best have you warm up – so five laps of this room please,” he ordered, and Izuku stumbled into action. “Please refrain from quirk use while you’re here,” he continued speaking, even as Izuku ran, leaving him in no state to inform his sensei that he didn’t have a quirk, meaning that statement didn’t even apply to him. “Also, if I hear word that you start a fight or injure anyone with malicious intent using what I teach you – then you will be out of this academy faster than you can say, I can explain.”
Izuku swallowed, the air suddenly feeling far too thick and heavy.
“In fact, one of the first things I’ll be teaching you is how to run,” his new instructor informed him, and Izuku could only wince. Running was supposed to be simple, wasn’t it? How could he fail so badly at it that he had to be taught. “Use your arms to drive yourself when you start getting tired, and pick those knees up – take full strides rather than shuffling along,” Ryuusuke-sensei called, barking out other helpful advice that Izuku tried to take onboard as he continued running his laps well beyond the five which had been originally been set out.
It was only later, some ten minutes down the line, that his new sensei called at him to stop, after he had become a hot, sweaty, gasping mess. Sweat was dripping from his forehead, shame curling in the pit of his belly. Because there was some small part of him which had thought it would be easy. Kacchan probably did stuff like this all the time, and somehow Izuku doubted he struggled as much as he was seeming to.
“Well, at least we know what your baseline is,” Ryuusuke-sensei spoke, an almost impish grin curling at his lips, and Izuku could only muse on how akin to a shadowy vampire he suddenly looked, with his sharp canine teeth and the odd air he seemed to give out at he stood there, watching and waiting. “Now, I suppose, we might as well get to the lesson you were originally expecting.”
::
His limbs were like jelly, he found, stumbling towards the bus he had taken to get to that place, a bit of a distance from his house as he was. Dimly, he clocked the wrinkled nose of the person sitting next to him – who soon decided to get up and move after another passenger had alighted at their stop. Izuku rather felt he couldn’t blame them, what with how even he could tell that he stunk.
Evidently his deodorant hadn’t done its job, and he was left smelling like the sweaty teenager that he was, large sweat patches drying slightly white ever so telling of the exercise he had been getting up to. Yet despite the burn in his legs, and the way he couldn’t lift his arms above chest height was telling of how hard he had worked. Of how his muscles were repairing themselves, bigger and stronger than before. Maybe one day he’d even have some decent bicep muscles, he mused to himself, a soft snort escaping him at the mental picture of him with arms like All Might’s. It felt like a fleeting dream to him, and Izuku could only sigh.
“Musutafu, Midori-ku—” a familiar automated voice rang out, listing off the stop location, and silently Izuku counted down the number of stops until he was back home – where he would be able to have the dinner his stomach was already grumbling for. If his fuzzy memory was serving him correctly, then it was katsudon for dinner. His stomach rumbled audibly at that thought, and a blush coloured his cheeks as he sat there, peering out the window as the bus continued in its journey.
His phone buzzed, and he pulled it out of his sweaty gym bag, smiling when he spotted the text from his mother.
[Mum]
How was your first session? Katsudon almost ready. See you soon!
[Izuku]
It was alright. Tell you when I get home?
He looked at his sent message, idly wondering what exactly he was supposed to tell his mother about how his first session at Phoenix Martial Arts had gone. Hey, mum, it was great besides the fact I made an embarrassment of myself when I couldn’t do the most basic of exercises without sounding like a dying rhinoceros? A snort escaped him, even as he leapt to his feet, his stop coming up as he grabbed his belongings and exited the bus with little fanfare.
His feet had barely hit the concrete before he made the mistake of locking eyes with someone he actually recognised. “Fuck,” he muttered under his breath – the appropriate curse word for the situation, given it was Fingers and Hair he had just spotted. Takahashi-san and Ito-san if he was being polite, as he all too often was aloud. In the depths of his mind it was easier to just call them by their quirks. Fingers had a quirk which allowed him to extend the aforementioned appendages, and Hair had a quirk which allowed him to harden his aforementioned hair into sharp spikes.
Perhaps being “friends” with Kacchan had rubbed off on him more than he thought? Izuku tilted his head, heart sinking in his chest at the familiar call of his “name”. Though calling someone according to their quirk was perhaps slightly better than lumping them all under the title of ‘extra’.
“Hey, look!” Fingers called, gloating and gleeful. “It’s Deku!”
Not, Izuku mused wryly, that his bullies cared about the difference in the way Kacchan and he called them. Not so long as Kacchan had his strong, awesome quirk, and he was a quirkless deku. His shoulders sank at that, and he widened his stride, wishing bitterly that he’d be able to get home unmolested for once. Fingers curled over his shoulder, his aching muscles protesting as he was pulled to a sudden, jarring stop. Part of him almost expected to feel the slight crackle of heat, the way Kacchan’s hands popped when he was irritated or just generally in the summertime. He couldn’t help it, Izuku liked to think, ever ignoring the voice which asked him why Kacchan even had to grab him like that in the first place.
“Where you goin’, Deku?” Fingers demanded, ignorant to the way his limbs tensed, a fresh ache travelling up through his aching muscles as he stood there on the pavement. He had been through the same song and dance so many times. He knew what was coming by that point, and part of him just couldn’t be bothered to fight back. They would go and cry to the school if he left a mark on them, as he once had, a year and a bit ago, and then he would be reprimanded again. That was what happened when he got it into his head to fight back against his ‘friends’.
It's just boys being boys, Midoriya-san, the teachers had told his mother the last time she had gone to the school to complain. Takahashi-kun and Ito-kun are good friends with your son, no matter the trouble that Midoriya-kun has given them. His hands twitched at the memory of it – of the way he’d had to bite his tongue and swallow the ball of anger in his belly back. He had smiled as politely as he could that day, and part of him hated it. It was the same part of him which wanted to scream at the world which revolved around quirks. The very thing he didn’t have, and he would be eternally lesser for it, no matter how well he knew he did in class and all the other factors which mattered. At the end of the day he was just a quirk – or quirkless without the factor which everyone else determined worthiness through.
“Don’t cha know it’s rude to ignore your friends, Deku?” Hair asked, and Izuku blamed tiredness for what happened next.
“Are we?” The words escaped him without a conscious thought, and his heart thudded in his chest, stomach twisting painfully as he realised that he had just fucked up majorly. Even if his arms and legs weren’t dead, he couldn’t outrun them, and he had been warned by his new sensei that he wasn’t allowed to use what he learnt there for school fights. Besides, that would just end up with him in trouble with the school for instigating a fight. One day soon, he hoped he’d be quick enough to evade them, what with how Ryuusuke-sensei was teaching him to run properly. Yet that day wasn’t that day – so enduring it, it was.
The first blow came like clockwork, and Izuku resigned himself to the black eye that would undoubtedly leave. He would have to restock his concealer soon, it seemed. The impact made him stumble back, eyes seeing stars before the familiar feel of a knee to his gut had his hands and knees slamming into the floor, doubled over in pain and breathlessness. He curled up into a ball, arms protecting his face and other vital organs as the usual beating started. There was a reason he preferred long-sleeved shirts when it came to school – even in the summertime, and the cause was what was happening right then and there.
“Shitty, Deku,” Fingers hissed. “You should know better than to get in Bakugo’s way!”
When was the last time he had even talked to Kacchan without having the blonde scream in his face about how useless and worthless he was? When was the last time he had “gotten in Bakugo’s way” other than seemingly simply existing? Izuku couldn’t quite remember. There was quite a lot he couldn’t remember, though maybe that was thanks to the constant blows to the skull his bullies were all to happy to give to him. His shoulders slumped, and he remained curled up into a ball long after they had finished.
Were they hiding around the corner, waiting for him to get up before they jumped him again? Izuku could only wonder, remaining curled up protectively for a good five minutes before he peered over his hands, noting how very empty the street was. It was always quiet when Fingers and Hair bothered him, and the few people that occasionally walked by never intervened.
If he had been a pedestrian walking by, Izuku knew he would never have ignored the blatant violence, and it only further solidified his wish to become a hero. Even if he didn’t have a quirk. He would just have to prove the world and his so-called friends wrong. So that less people were called a “deku” just because they were quirkless. So that people stopped thinking of quirkless and useless in the same breath. A smile curled at his lips, his wish the bastion he clung to even in the darkest of hours, when the whispers of the world around him inevitably caught up to him and tried to sink their claws in. That was how he survived, and how he would continue to survive.
Fingers scrabbled for purchase on the pavement, and Izuku pushed himself to his hands and knees, green eyes darting around to see whether or not it was safe to move. His “friends” had moved on it seemed, but there was a part of him which remained on edge, even as he stumbled forwards nervously, wincing at the new aches and pains there were on top of his healing muscles. “Thanks for the help,” he muttered, his sarcastic, slightly more caustic side peeking through the cracks of the smile he tried to wear as he looked towards the figures at the bus station a little ways away. He let out a long low breath, concealing the wince as he pressed a hand to the side of his ribs. They were tender, a few kicks having slipped past his noodle arms, and those kicks were definitely going to leave bruises.
Catching sight of himself in the reflection of a nearby storefront, he sighed once again. His mother was definitely going to notice, and there was no way he could hide what had just happened. Midoriya Inko was a nurse – she knew exactly what the likely cause of those injuries were, and there was no point in trying to hide them, eagle eyed as she was when it came to his health. His heart pounded in his chest, a familiar tight blanket of anxiety coming to wrap around his chest at the thought of his mother crying yet again. He didn’t want to make her cry.
A hum escaped him, brain conjuring up a jaunty tune as he walked back towards his apartment, eager to get home, yet dreading the reaction he’d get what with his muddy, scuffed up clothes and the grazes and scrapes even he could see. He should have gone with a long-sleeved top, like he did with his school-wear. Hindsight was ever twenty-twenty.
“I’m home!” he called as he crossed the threshold into the house, smiling at his mother when she popped her head around the archway which led to the small kitchen.
“Izu-kun!” she greeted back, and Izuku could see the exact moment she clocked his newest injuries.
“Is dinner ready?” he asked, taking his shoes off and leaving his bag at the door – he could deal with that after he’d dealt with the almost audible rumbling coming from his stomach. “I’m starving!”
“Perfect timing,” his mother said, her smile ever so slightly tighter than it was before. “Your favourite dish is ready,” she announced with as much aplomb as she could muster. “I thought you’d like it after your last day for the week… and your new training…” her words trailed off, eyes looking at his own and his injuries searchingly.
“It’s not from training, mum,” he said, his words like nails in the coffin of happiness. “But dinner looks great!” he added, smiling as brightly as he could – which wasn’t particularly hard since he was home and it was his mother in front of him. His favourite person in the entire world. The bowl was set down in front of him, his chopsticks already set out on the table, and he all but collapsed into his chair. He ate with all the grace and voracity of a vacuum cleaner, mildly alarmed green eyes watching him as he did so.
“Make sure to chew properly,” his mother reminded him amidst his meal.
He nodded at her, then continued to eat, and all too soon his mother was opening her mouth to speak. And Izuku knew exactly what about. “You know what would happen if we tried to complain again,” he murmured, soft words cutting her off before she could get a word out.
His mother looked as though she had swallowed a lemon. “I know,” she whispered, closing her eyes, and Izuku could see the familiar sheen of tears in her eyes. Tears for the way he’d been treated. Tears for the way she knew she couldn’t do anything about it. They didn’t have the money to start a case against Aldera, and even if they did, there was little hard, photographic evidence which would be needed. They didn’t have any influence within Aldera, and so they couldn’t change the treatment of him. They couldn’t give the teachers a reason to care about what happened to him – not when he was just a stepping stone in their path of bolstering Kacchan to whatever heights and glory he wanted. “Go have your shower – the hot water’s been on. I’ll check on your injuries afterwards,” she promised, a familiar, resigned look in her eyes as she sent another watery smile his way.
“Sure thing, mum,” he answered, tidying away his plate and utensils before he trekked into the shower, wishing that the hot water could wash everything away as he buried himself under the jets.
PREMISE: One for All isn't the only sentient-ish quirk out there being passed down, and Midoriya has a strange kind of luck. No Pairings. Gen.