Beneath this Drifting Moon (BNHA/Reaper of the Drifting Moon)
He wasn’t entirely sure where he was – or why he had been taken in the first place. All he knew was that he needed to survive somehow in a place which wanted to mould him into a killer. His name was Midoriya Izuku and he knew how to play the game of survival without losing.
This time, though, he wanted to win.
Chapter One: An All-Encompassing Darkness
Darkness as far as the eye could see.
That was what greeted him once he awoke, frantically trying to remember the circumstances leading up to waking up in somewhere he wasn’t familiar with. He had been walking home – alone, as per usual, since Kacchan refused to be seen with him anymore. Quirklessness was contagious, according to Kacchan’s new-old friends, which had meant the usual solo trek back home to his apartment. He should have arrived back at his house to be greeted by his mother, and yet…
His thoughts trailed off, the sheer silence surrounding him making his heart beat that much quicker. He felt terrible. He felt as though someone had pried his brain from his skull, slapped it numerous times, only to wedge it back inside his head.
“Kidnapping?” he asked the silence.
The silence didn’t answer.
Nothing did, and that fact was eerie. Izuku was used to being ignored, and he was used to playing the game of don’t be seen nor heard when it came to the classroom. Being shut away in pitch darkness was another matter entirely though. Even the lockers he had been shoved into had little vents for light, and he always knew someone would eventually let him out after they’d had their fun. “Hello?” he called out once more, holding onto hope that someone – anyone – would answer him. “Is anyone there?” he asked, ignoring the looming, foreboding feeling which told him that no one would answer him. “Hey! Anyone?” he called, listening as his voice seemed to echo faintly, yet still no one answered him, if anyone had even heard him, trapped in the darkness as he was.
“As if anyone would want to answer a loser like you,” Kacchan jeered, and Izuku felt the first signs of tears beginning to build up in his eyes.
Why was he there? Izuku could only wonder, left alone in the all-encompassing darkness as he was. Where even was there? Why had someone taken him? He was quirkless, and that generally meant he was supposed to be below almost everybody’s notice.
And maybe that was why he had been taken? Part of him could only muse as he lay there, body far too battered and aching to move. He pondered on whether that was perhaps the aftereffect of a quirk or a drug. The former was probably more likely, what with how quirk-obsessed everybody was those days. If someone had a good quirk then they were all but guaranteed to succeed, whereas if someone had a weak quirk, a villainous quirk, or worse – no quirk at all – then they were failures, destined to be discarded and forgotten about. That had been a truth he had long since learnt over the years. Even if he was only eight years old, he wasn’t blind to that fact. Not when people had all but shoved that very truth in his face ever since the doctor had pronounced him hopeless.
He could still remember that appointment day as though it had been yesterday. He still remembered the way his mother had questioned the man, told him of how intelligent he was and how smart and thoughtful he was. How he acted older than his years. He still remembered the way his doctor had concealed a scoff.
“You have a quirk which is considered telekinetic, Midoriya-san,” he had said, voice dripping with something Izuku had learnt soon after to be condescension. “It’s no surprise that your son’s brain is developing faster than others who might not have the same type of quirked mother, and while that might have been considered incredible some two-hundred years ago, in today’s society it’s nothing. That cannot be counted as a quirk – as I’ve said, your son is quirkless, give it up.”
He closed his eyes, humming softly to himself even as that did nothing to ease the nervousness and fear bubbling up in his gut as he lay there in the darkness. Idly, he wondered how long he had been there – it could have been hours or minutes. He wasn’t sure how fast he was thinking, nor did he want to dry his mouth out by counting when he had no clue of when his captors would come to hopefully keep him alive. There was no sunlight to orientate himself with. There was no clock which he could see, engulfed by the darkness as he was.
He wondered where his mother was, wondered whether she had already called the police to report him missing when he hadn’t returned from school. He wondered what his classmates would say when they realised he was gone. Missing. Izuku gritted his teeth, feeling the tears sliding down his face, hot and wet as he continued lying there, trying to get his battered body to listen to him and move. He could picture the entire class cheering with joy as they realised the useless Deku was gone and would no longer be bothering them with his useless presence.
His throat felt inordinately dry, and Izuku only blinked, the darkness ever present as he lay there, in a strange place which didn’t seem to have any food or drink. Had he been brought there to die? The thought flitted across his mind, fear making his eyes tear up that much more. He didn’t want to die. There were still things he wanted to do. He wanted to become a hero. He wanted to prove everyone wrong. He wanted to prove he was useful. He wanted to make his mother proud.
Izuku couldn’t do that in the darkness.
Hands curled, digging into the stone floor beneath him even as his head throbbed and ached. It was damp, he noted, and cold. There was a musty smell in the air, a faint trickle of something down the walls as he lay there, coming to a startling realisation. Cold, damp, and musty – he was underground, he noted, fingers twitching against the cold stone. He wasn’t sure how long he lay there, staring blankly into the darkness. He wasn’t sure when he began to hear things that much more vividly. All he knew was that he could hear the sound of running water, a steady drip, drip, drip, and something which felt like hope came to him.
Fingers twitched, and Izuku fumbled for control as he rolled over onto his stomach, bruised knees digging into the floor as he pushed himself to his feet ever so slowly. He felt blind in the darkness, fear making his heart beat that much more frantically, his arms outstretched in front of him as he blindly searched for something – anything – in front of him.
Something solid and cold met his fingertips, the rough feel telling him it was a wall of brick and mortar. He’d been shoved into and against enough of them to know the surface intimately. It wasn’t some sort of cave he had been thrown in as he’d originally thought – rather, it was something which had been constructed, and the thought sent shivers rolling down his spine as he wondered if something far more sinister was afoot. Someone had planned whatever was going on, Izuku realised, and it had been planned for a long while. Buildings took months to be constructed, and they took a lot of money and manpower to build and complete. It wasn’t like there were many underground buildings, and certainly not ones without modern comforts.
Yet someone who had that much money had kidnapped a random quirkless boy from the streets and imprisoned him there? The longer he thought, left alone with only his mind for company, the colder the feeling in his gut became as he started to wonder if maybe his kidnapping hadn’t been an act of opportunity.
“See?” Kacchan whispered to him, the voice of the world which hated him and strove to push his head in the sand to suffocate and perish. “Someone so powerful wants you gone!”
He wondered if he’d been without food and water long enough to hallucinate, legs giving out of him as he pawed at the brickwork behind which he could hear running water. He swallowed, throat bone dry, tears biting at the corners of his eyes once more.
Kacchan laughed, the sound so unlike what Izuku had heard when they’d been the best of friends. It was cold – cruel and mocking – a sound he was intimately familiar with from the amount of times he’d heard it. Even in the black void surrounding him it still haunted him.
“Just give up already,” a mockery of his own voice whispered to him, and Izuku could only blink and turn to the source. A mirage of him stood there, smiling at him, and he knew then that all his old doubts and worries had come to call. “Useless Deku… The world would be better off if you died, wouldn’t it?”
His hands curled into fists, part of him pondering on the answer to that. Maybe the world would be better off without him, yet he wanted to live. He wanted to spite those who said he’d never make it very far in life. He wanted to prove everyone wrong. He wanted to accomplish his dream of becoming a hero. He wanted to be selfish for once in his life, if wanting to live whilst everyone else besides his mother would be content for him to be buried six-feet under was truly that selfish.
He couldn’t do that if he gave up.
His eyes narrowed, straining to see in that darkness. “Maybe,” he answered that voice of his own. “But I think I stopped caring about what other people thought about my existence long time ago…”
“Did you now?” his own voice leered, and Izuku knew then that whatever stood before him wanted him to doubt. Wanted the questions which always plagued him to swallow them whole. He didn’t want to be swallowed whole.
“Yes,” he hissed, thinking of every shove, every word written on his desk, every spider lily ever left for him in his locker or on his desk. It had hurt, but he had to pretend at least that it didn’t bother him in the slightest. Children were like sharks, and any sign of upset from him was like blood in the water, and it sent them into a feeding frenzy. Where they drank in his misery and tore his feelings asunder.
Hands curled into fists, eyes narrowing as they caught on the faint, almost indistinct sight of water trickling down the bricks in front of him. He surged forwards, lips against the rough brickwork, letting the far too slow stream of water trickle into his mouth. A faint sob escaped him as the ache in his dry throat lessened ever so slightly. His fingers splayed out on the rough surface, digging into the brickwork as if that could get rid of the obstacle between him and an even greater water source.
His stomach rumbled, reminding him of the fact that he hadn’t eaten anything since lunchtime of the day he’d been taken. Whenever that had been. He planted his steadiest foot beneath him, pushing himself to his feet, hands climbing up the wall. Nails caught on something soft and almost fluffy. Moss, he realised, even as his stomach rumbled.
He moved almost on instinct, cramming the soft, earthy substance into his mouth and almost gagging on the taste. But he wanted to live, and that meant eating what he could… He didn’t even know whether or not he had been brought there to die of starvation. Logic dictated that would be a waste of money. Yet some people had money to spare and vendettas against groups of people who did nothing wrong bar breathing. He crammed another handful of moss into his mouth with a grimace, tears leaking from his eyes at the bitter taste.
He had refused to die when his classmates had crammed spider lilies into his desk and locker, telling him to jump with newspaper cut-outs and sometimes their own words. “I wonder when you’ll get the courage to jump,” they had whispered, mocking smiles on their faces.
It didn’t matter who told him to give up on everything.
He refused.
PREMISE: In which Izuku is kidnapped and trained to become an assassin. Fusion of sorts with Reaper of the Drifting Moon - or in which Izuku experiences the same fate as Pyo Wol but in the BNHA world. No pairings - not romance focused.