November, 2XXX
The sun was out.
This alone felt like a miracle. After months of rain, rust, and general atmospheric hostility, the sky had finally decided to stop being a melodramatic bastard and just be blue for once.
Izuku stood at the edge of what used to be a mountain of scrap metal and surveyed his kingdom of suffering.
A third of the beach was clean. Actual, honest-to-god sand. The kind you could theoretically build a sandcastle on if you were the type of person who had time for that nonsense. The trash mountains had receded like a hairline on a middle-aged salaryman. What remained was still a monument to humanity's poor life choices, but it was manageable. Almost respectable.
He wiped sweat from his forehead and checked the note Hano had left stabbed into a rusted car door with a kitchen knife.
Went to collect on a debt. Don't slack off, brat. If the beach isn't cleaner when I get back, I'm doubling your sparring rounds.
P.S. There's leftover curry in the thermos. Don't let the seagulls get it.
Izuku crumpled the note and shoved it in his pocket. The old man's definition of "collecting on a debt" usually involved either a hostess bar or a pachinko parlor, which meant he'd be gone for hours. Possibly days if he won big.
Freedom. Glorious, unsupervised freedom. I could take a nap. I could go get coffee. I could do literally anything except this.
He looked at the refrigerator half-buried in the sand ten meters away.
Yeah, no. If I slack off and he finds out, he'll make me do squats until my legs become theoretical concepts.
Izuku rolled his shoulders. The 150kg of weights settled against his body like old friends. Seven months ago, they'd felt like anchors designed by a sadistic deity. Now they were just there. Part of him. The work was still hard, the loads still heavy, but his body had adapted. His muscles had learned. His bones had reinforced themselves out of sheer spite.
He walked over to a pile of bundled tires, grabbed the rope tied around them, and hauled.
The stack came up smoothly. Thirty tires, maybe forty kilos each. He slung the rope over his shoulder and started the trek across the beach to the designated dump truck.
His footsteps left deep impressions in the sand. The sun warmed his back. Seagulls screamed overhead like they were personally offended by his existence.
This is my life now. I haul garbage while birds insult me. Peak existence. Truly living the dream.
He was halfway to the truck when he noticed the scarecrow.
The man looked like someone had taken a skeleton, dressed it in oversized clothes, and left it standing on the beach as a warning to other skeletons.
He was tall. Taller than Izuku, which was saying something. But there was no weight to him. His clothes draped over his bones as if hung on a wire frame. His blond hair stuck up in wild, gravity-defying spikes that looked like they'd given up on life. Sunken eyes sat in a gaunt face that belonged in a hospital bed, not on a public beach.
He was coughing into a handkerchief. The kind of wet, rattling cough that made you wonder if his lungs were trying to escape.
Izuku stopped walking. The tires swung gently on the rope.
Great. A dying man. On my beach. If he collapses, do I have to do CPR? Because I know CPR, but I really don't want to.
The man looked up. His eyes were blue. Sharp. The kind of eyes that didn't match the wreck of a body they were attached to.
"That's quite the project you've taken on, young man." His voice was thin, reedy, like wind through a cracked window. But there was curiosity in it. Genuine interest.
Izuku considered his options. He could ignore the guy and keep walking. He could tell him to piss off because this was technically a public space but also his personal hell and he didn't appreciate tourists. Or he could be polite because his mother raised him with manners and she'd kill him if she found out he was rude to a dying scarecrow.
He chose option three.
"Someone's gotta do it," Izuku said, resuming his walk. The tires bounced against his back. "It's my city. Can't take pride in a place that looks like this."
The scarecrow man followed him. His footsteps were quiet, almost hesitant, like he wasn't sure his legs would support him.
"A noble goal," the man said. There was something in his voice now. Something warm. "You have the look of someone aiming high. U.A., perhaps?"
Izuku reached the dump truck, swung the tire bundle off his shoulder, and let it drop with a satisfying thud. He turned to face the stranger properly.
A grin split his face. The kind of grin that had made Bakugo throw desks in middle school.
"You bet your ass I am."
He caught himself. The grin didn't fade, but he raised a hand in apology.
"My bad, unc. Force of habit."
The scarecrow blinked. A faint smile touched his lips, barely visible under the shadow of exhaustion that clung to him like a second skin.
"That's a difficult path," he said carefully, like he was testing the waters. "Your Quirk must be quite something to give you such confidence."
And there it was.
The question everyone asked eventually. The one that separated the polite curiosity from the real conversation.
Izuku's grin vanished.
"Don't have one. I'm Quirkless."
Silence.
The seagulls kept screaming. The waves kept crashing. The world kept turning.
But the scarecrow man went completely still.
His eyes went wide. Not with disgust. Not with pity. Just shock. Pure, unfiltered shock, like Izuku had just announced he was going to fight god with a pool noodle.
Oh hell no. If this guy starts with the 'have you considered a different career path' speech, I'm throwing him into the ocean.
But before pity could settle in, Izuku went on the offensive.
"So what? That's not gonna stop me from being the best. It's just a handicap. I've been training to overcome it." He gestured broadly at the beach, at the clean sand, at the mountains of trash he'd personally relocated through sheer bloody-minded stubbornness.
"Plus, imagine the free publicity. The marketing. 'The Quirkless Hero Who Cleaned a City's Shame.' I'll be a brand by the time I graduate. The endorsement deals alone will be worth all this."
He wasn't lying. He'd thought about it. Late at night, when his muscles screamed and his brain was too tired to lie to itself, he'd imagined walking into U.A. Imagined the looks on their faces. Imagined the media circus.
Quirkless Kid Makes It Into U.A.'s Hero Course.
The headline wrote itself.
"I'll have my pick of agencies," Izuku continued, warming to the topic. "Support companies will throw money at me for testimonials. 'If Midoriya can do it without a Quirk, imagine what you could do with our gear.' It's capitalism, unc. I'm just playing the long game."
The scarecrow man said nothing.
He stood there, handkerchief clutched in one skeletal hand, staring at Izuku like he'd just witnessed a miracle or a car crash and couldn't decide which.
Izuku shrugged, turned his back, and walked toward the next pile of junk.
"Anyway, I've got work to do. Beach isn't gonna clean itself."
He grabbed a rusted washing machine, tested its weight, and started dragging.
Behind him, he heard the scarecrow man take a breath. It sounded shaky. Like the guy was trying to remember how lungs worked.
"What's your name?"
Izuku glanced over his shoulder.
"Midoriya. Izuku Midoriya."
"I see."
The man bowed. Actually bowed, which was weird because Izuku was covered in rust and sweat and probably smelled like a dumpster's regret.
"Thank you for your time, young Midoriya. I won't keep you from your work."
He turned and walked away. Slowly. Each step careful, like he was conserving energy for something important.
Izuku watched him go, frowning.
Weird guy. Polite, though. Didn't try to talk me out of anything. Didn't pull the 'be realistic' card. That's rare.
He went back to work.
The washing machine scraped across the sand. His shoulders burned. The sun climbed higher.
And on the edge of the clean sand, hidden behind a rusted car frame, Toshinori Yagi stood perfectly still.
His hand shook. The handkerchief fell from his grip, caught by the wind, carried away toward the ocean.
He didn't notice.
An image of his master, Nana, her smile bright just like young Midoriya flashed behind his eyes.
Quirkless.
The word echoed.
He's Quirkless. And he's cleaning a beach by hand. Training his body to the breaking point. Aiming for U.A. Smiling like it's already a done deal.
Toshinori thought of the countless heroes he'd known, their power an accident of birth. They fought because it was easy.
This boy had nothing.
And he was doing it anyway.
Not because he had to. Not because the world had given him a gift and he felt obligated to use it.
He was doing it because he chose to.
Someone's gotta do it. It's my city.
Toshinori looked at his hands. Skeletal. Weak. The hands of a man who'd given everything to a power that wasn't his to keep.
He looked back at the beach. At Izuku Midoriya, hauling a washing machine across the sand with weights strapped to his body.
This is what I've been searching for.
Not someone who needs the Quirk to be great. Someone who would be great regardless. Someone who would fight without it. Someone who deserves it.
Toshinori's phone buzzed in his pocket. A message from Nezu. Something about class preparations.
He ignored it.
He stood on the beach and watched a Quirkless boy move a mountain, one washing machine at a time.
And for the first time in years, since the injury, since Nana, since the slow decay of his own body became impossible to ignore, Toshinori Yagi felt hope.
Real hope.
The kind that didn't come from smiling through the pain or telling yourself everything would work out.
The kind that came from watching someone prove that impossible was just a word people used when they gave up too early.
Young Midoriya.
He committed the name to memory.
I'll be watching.
Izuku sneezed.
Great. Now I'm getting sick. If Hano finds out, he'll make me run laps as 'immune system training' or some garbage.
He wiped his nose on his sleeve, grabbed another bundle of scrap metal, and got back to work.
The sun climbed higher. The beach got cleaner.
And somewhere in the distance, a scarecrow walked away with a secret.