Growth
It started that day in the park. Rigorous training that left Izuku so bruised and he would laugh coming home saying “you should see the other guy,”.
Shinsou now had ice packs prepared for when he came back, not even questioning why Izuku was limping or sore anymore.
“You’ll tell me why one day, right?” Hitoshi asked him quietly over homework one night.
“Of course, Hitocchi. I’ll tell you eventually, just not right now,” Izuku replied.
“And it’s not something bad, like he’s not hurting you on purpose?”
“Not in the way I know you’re thinking, no.”
“Well, if he does, let me know. I’ll beat his ass,”.
That made Izuku cackle, hushed whispers of ‘be quiet!’ resounding in the room from other long term kids.
“I’d love to see that, Hitocchi,” Izuku finally replied.
---
The months passed quickly.
Izuku’s days started early. He and Hitoshi had taken up running together, sneaking out of the large window on the back wall of their room. They’d only been threatened a few times by the other kids, but it was worth it to get the work out.
From there, the two did some light yoga before they traipsed off to school for the day. The two of them had picked up doing odd jobs on the weekend to help save up an allowance, so they stopped at the konbini for breakfast in the mornings now. Both of them were starving by that point and needed the fuel to get through the rest of the day
At school, Izuku would dodge bullies, which he was getting even better at with his training, and turn in near-perfect homework. You had to be smart to get into UA after all. He ate his lunch up on the roof and could outrun all of the bullies on his way back to the train station.
After taking the train home with Shinsou, Izuku would sprint to the park shack for training with Akaguro-sensei. His sessions were brutal, with Izuku ending up on the ground more often than he was standing. It was worth it though, especially when weapons training began.
On Saturdays, he would get up early to spend the entire morning working on stealth, information gathering, and filtering his senses with Akaguro-sensei, and then head to the library in the afternoon to work on homework and learn some coding and hacking skills. Sensei said they would be useful as a hero at some point.
On Sundays, he would spend time finishing his homework and visiting with Yamada-san before he and Hitoshi would help at either a small flower shop down the street or the konbini on the corner. They were both owned by a husband and a wife who had a quirkless daughter that passed years ago. When they saw Izuku’s bright red Primordial shoes, they were happy to let the two boys sweep or stock shelves for a couple dollars. And Ms. Hiragaki, who ran the flower shop, always slipped them a few extra dollars at the end of the month.
It was an easy routine, helping to drag him out of the pit of grief and loneliness little by little.
---
“Focus, Izuku, you have to learn to meditate in a way more conducive to fighting,” Akaguro-sensei chastised.
“It’s hard,” Izuku whined slightly, “There’s so many sounds and smells. The street sounds like there are tanks driving through it. The fertilizer is strong, and the new shirt I bought is starting to feel like sandpaper. I can’t concentrate.”
“You’re not going to be able to focus on your surroundings and your opponents at the same time unless you learn to calm your mind and sort the information. Now, focus,”.
Izuku took another deep breath and forced himself to settle down into the pose. He started at his toes, slowly relaxing each muscle as he worked his way up, cycling his breath throughout his body to slow his heartbeat. He tuned into his hearing, listening to the way the wind whistled between the cracks in the shed walls.
The slight change in the air signified movement, a soft whisper being sliced by a blade.
Izuku’s hand shot up and he caught the handle of the knife an inch from his head.
“I thought we were supposed to be meditating?” He raised an eyebrow at his Sensei.
“Danger never ceases, child,”.
"Ok, but did you have to throw the knife at my head?"
---
Izuku was growing.
It didn’t show too much physically. Mostly because Izuku didn’t get the nutrition he needed to pack on all the muscle. But he did end up strong, lithe, and lean close to a year after his training started.
It showed in how he carried his grief, how he carried himself. No, he wasn’t any more brash or open than before, but he also no longer hunched in to make himself small. He carried himself with an air of confidence now, armed and dangerous just like his Sensei had taught him.
The grief had gotten smaller as well. Or maybe Izuku had grown to hold it better.
---
This was the third time in the past hour that Izuku had been flipped on his back.
“Again,” Sensei barked and nudged Izuku’s side with his toe.
“Yes, Sensei,” Izuku scrambled to his feet and settled into the fighting position that had become natural over the past year.
He was quicker, stronger, now able to hold his own against his teacher for five minutes straight. It was a lot of progress, as he couldn’t even get near his teacher in the beginning. They had started to integrate swords into their sparrs, which left Izuku with a couple new scars, but once he was hit he didn’t allow for the trick his Sensei used to work again.
Rarely did Sensei praise him, but he did mention that Izuku was a quick learner.
The kid basked in that near compliment for months.
---
He realized how different things were the second year in, sitting with Hitocchi and Yamada-san at the bakery he and his mother used to visit. The ache was there, but it was bearable, less all- encompassing and more like a shadow in the back of his mind. He was able to sit with it and remember his mother in a happy light, and less like he was going to cry from missing her so terribly.
“So listener, how is that analysis of the recent villain going?” Yamada-san asked around a bite of his blueberry muffin.
“Great! Will you thank your husband for the information? It was so helpful in trying to figure out what his quirk was. Everyone thought it was some type of vibration quirk, but he’s actually manipulating the soil with his feet! Isn’t that incredible? Well, not for villainy, but you know what I mean.” Izuku bounced in his seat, completely ignoring his chocolate croissant.
“Izzukun, eat your snack,” Hitoshi muttered before pushing the plate out of the way of his bouncing elbow.
“Sorry, Hitocchi,” Izuku blushed and picked up his food, “I was excited about the quirk,”.
Yamada-san just laughed at their antics. “You two remind me of my husband and an old friend of ours. I’m sure he would have loved both of you.”
“Would have?” Izuku asked quietly.
“Yes, he passed away when we were in high school, unfortunately. The three of us were as thick as thieves, and even planned to open an agency together.”
“You still haven’t told us which hero your husband is,” Hitoshi pointed out.
“You’ll meet him eventually,” Yamada-san waved his hand dismissively, “he’ll come around to having kids and I’ll drag him along to one of our weekly meetups,”.
“Yeah like some hero couple would adopt from our foster home,” Hioshi joked and took a slightly bitter bite out of his pastry.
“Hey!” Yamada-san laughed, “I’m from that foster home too, of course we’d adopt from there,”.
“Yeah, yeah, that’s what they all say,”. Hitoshi grumbled.
“Who’s ‘they’, little listener?”
“I don’t know, just them,” Hitoshi waved his free hand around like he was encompassing the entirety of Japan.
Izuku sipped his coffee and listened to the two of them banter back and forth.
Yeah, he had grown.
---
“Hey, Akaguro-sensei, I got you something!” Izuku bounded into the small shack in the back of the park, hands clasped behind his back and cane nowhere in sight.
Two knives sailed through the air and Izuku moved his head slightly to avoid them. They dug into the wood just behind his head in the door. Sensei’s usual greeting.
“What did you bring me, child?” Akaguro-sensei set his knife and polishing supplies down, the smell of it tickling Izuku’s nose.
“Here!” Izuku held his hand out to his Sensei, excitedly bouncing on the tips of his toes.
The vigilante strode over to his protege, picking through their training supplies until he was standing in front of Izuku. He slowly reached out, taking the gift from the palm of the boy’s hand and holding it close to his face. He turned it over a few times, not saying anything.
As the silence stretched on, Izuku became more and more nervous.
“It’s a bracelet made out of the wrapper from the ice cream we had together when we met. It was today about two years ago. Do you remember?”
“Yes, I do,”
Akaguro-sensei tossed the bracelet into the trash and started toward the door, not saying a word to Izuku as he brushed by him.
“Wait! It’s for you, where are you going?” Izuku cried, flipping around to snatch his mentor’s wrist.
“We’re done here,” Akaguro-sensei yanked his arm from Izuku’s grasp, “I’m through training you,”.
“What?!” Izuku scrambled after Akaguro, snagging a knife from where he knew the man kept it in his back, left pocket. “No! You promised, you said you would help me be a hero-”
“You’re not going to be the type of hero that I want you to be,”.
“What? You mean you don’t want a hero that is sentimental?”
“Exactly, sentimentality gets you killed and doesn’t change the world,”.
“I think I can be sentimental and still help people,”.
“Not the type of hero that I need, not the type that I want,”.
“What kind of hero do you want? I-I can be that! You know I can, you know I’m good at this, Sensei,” Izuku begged. He gripped the knife tightly in his hand, feeling the blade digging into his palm. “Please, Sensei, just tell me-”
“You wanted a father, I wanted a soldier,” Akaguro-sensei spat.
Izuku froze, dropping the knife to his side. So this is what he was talking about.
They’d had this conversation a million times over the past two years. They were “ethics” lessons. Akaguro-sensei hated the current hero system and wanted to change it, to make it more like the heroes in old comic books and not what the job of hero had become. He thought of them as fakes who were paid too extravagantly, people who wanted more to be idolized like celebrities than to care for the citizens of Japan. He spent hours ranting about the faults of the system. The rankings, the discrimination, the quirkism. And well yes, Izuku did agree with some of Sensei’s points, he didn’t believe that people deserved to die because of it.
Heroes were a combination of paramedics, police, and general emergency responders. Would you like firefighters and EMTs to not be paid? Detectives and police officers? No one can hold such a rigorous job and not make anything to sustain themselves for it. Yes, heroes were paid a ridiculous amount and it should be lowered, but not receiving any compensation at all? The system would fall apart and there would be no heroes left.
“No, I wanted a mentor. I didn’t want to be shaped into some goon to fight in your war!” Izuku flung the knife at Akaguro’s head.
Akaguro batted the knife to the side, not even looking at it as it flew wildy through the air. “My war is going to change hero society for the better. Proper heroes, real heroes will be responsible for safety. No longer will we have to deal with the fake men who sit atop gilded thrones built by public affection. True heroes-”
“I know, I’ve heard that sales pitch before, Stendhal,”.
“And it is what I trained you for. To help me reshape society into what it is meant to be,”. Akaguro picked up his knives and started sliding them into their holders in his vigilante costume.
“No, you want me to kill people. People with families and friends and lives!”
“If that’s what it takes to change Japan, then I will be the hero this country needs,”.
Izuku stalked to the doorway of the shack that he had spent the last year of his life training in. The fertilizer and rotting wood scent had become home as much as Hitoshi’s tobacco and detergent smell. There were divots in the wall from hours of learning to throw knives and handle a katana, broken boards from strengthening his kicks, buckets filled with sand from strength training.
“You aren’t going to be a hero. You’re going to be a villain,” Izuku growled and slammed the door behind him.