#the demonization of all might and inko is really funny sometimes though. like she would not fucking say tha😭😭

[nutsack90]

his bad looks and worse personality have captivated me

[marzaid]

Vigilante AU where All Might never gets the chance to catch up with Izuku to ask him to be his successor and Izuku, gives up on his dreams of being a hero. He gives up and never applies to UA and instead goes to a regular high school, intent on finding a different more realistic dream like All Might told him to. Only problem is that Izuku is accidentally always there when a villain attacks. Old habits really do die hard and Izuku keeps finding himself on the scene where villains are because it just became second-nature for him to get there to analyze everything. The minute he gets there his feet move by themselves and he does his best to help. At first, he’s more of a hindrance than help but as time goes by he gets better. He begins to learn how to fight and how to use his ability to think quickly and analyze a situation to make the most of a bad situation. No matter how many times he tells himself that yesterday was the last time he would do it, he keeps finding himself in situations where he’s saving people. 

Pretty quickly, Izuku goes viral. He’s always described as a plain kid with messy green hair and red sneakers but no one knows who he is. They end up calling him the mysterious vigilante until one day someone asks him what his name is as he’s running away from a scene and he yells “Midoriya Izuku.” The end part of his name was drowned out by police sirens or something so they just hear Midori and everyone thinks that’s his codename. Overnight it explodes and they now call him The Mysterious Vigilante: Midori. Izuku is still shunned by a lot of people even in his new school because he’s quirkless, so no one really puts it together. 

Time passes and Izuku gives up on lying to himself and decides to accept that he is now a vigilante. In his mind, saving people is still saving people regardless of whether he’s a prohero or a vigilante. He creates a costume that protects him but also has all sorts of gadgets he can use to help others. In order to pay for it though he sold most of his All Might memorabilia. Inko thinks that Izuku is finally getting over his fanboy obsession and she also doesn’t want to think about how similar Midori is to her own Izuku so she doesn’t comment. She just patches him up and if she buys more supplies for their first aid kit, she doesn’t comment. If she purposely makes it easy for Izuku to sneak in and out so be it. Maybe she does eventually face it and sits him down and they talk about it and she makes sure that he gets martial arts lessons so he can protect himself properly. Sure she’s furious with her son but Izuku has a point when he says, “Technically, I’m not breaking the law because I’m not using a quirk in public.” Inko will do anything for her son and to make sure that he is safe and in a different universe that would have been trying to stop him from continuing at UA. But in this one, that means giving him the supplies that he needs to be safe and seeking out proheroes to tell them to protect teenagers at any cost. 

Izuku makes it his mission to stick up for the little guy. If he sees someone being bullied he jumps in to stop it. This gives him a reputation as the children’s hero. Kids LOVE him because he’ll stick around and listen to them or hang out with them. He’ll talk to them and make them feel welcome because he never had that and he’d be damned if he let another person go through what he went through. He entertains their dreams and tells them that they can do it because no kid should be told their dreams are unrealistic. Adults, on the other hand, HATE him because he threatens the careful framework they’ve set in place. They have a hierarchy that they’ve meticulously upheld and with one simple teenager, it’s starting to fall apart. The Hero Commission calls for all acting heroes to seek him out and take him down. He’s labeled as a threat not because he’s hurting anyone but because he’s helping people. They demonize him but Izuku never stops helping people. He grits his teeth and forces a smile on his face. 

But the funny thing is, no one ever realizes it’s Izuku because to everyone else, he’s just some quirkless nobody. He can’t be a threat. So despite the obvious, glaring similarities, no one turns him in because they can’t put two and two together. All he has to do is straighten up and square his shoulders and everyone thinks he’s another person. It also helps him shrink back into the crowd when he’s trying to hide because sure he has messy, green hair like Midori but it can’t be him right? He’s just a shy, nervous kid. He shrinks back when someone approaches him and is always so humble and kind. There is none of the biting sarcasm or sass that people see when Midori is interacting with proheroes or the police. 

Izuku starts to meet some of the kids from UA that would have been his classmates in a different timeline. He meets Shouto first because the boy interned at Endeavor’s agency after feeling like he had no other choice. Endeavor had made it his mission to do anything to capture Midori and throw him in jail. Shouto is inevitably caught up in it by being an intern. Endeavor and by default, Shouto, are chasing Izuku and Izuku runs down an alley. Because Shouto is smaller and able to get through better, he is sent to chase after Izuku, even if he’d much rather be doing other things, like actually saving people instead of chasing after some random kid that was probably his own age. The two of them fight in an alley and Izuku can see Shouto is shivering. He knows that the boy has a fire quirk that he can use to help him but he’s refusing, so Izuku yells at him to go full force. This breaks a dam and suddenly Shouto is telling him everything he’s sobbing icicles. “IT’S YOUR POWER!!” Izuku shouts and lets himself be captured by Shouto. But he isn’t ever brought in to the police. Later Shouto will tell his father that Izuku got away and face the brutal training that’s in store due to his failure. But at that moment, Shouto’s life changes. Hope. For the first time in so long, he feels hopeful that he can be something other than his father’s puppet. He lets Izuku go but ask to exchange numbers so they can keep talking. They become quick friends and it’s with Izuku’s push that Shouto breaks out of his shell and slowly befriends his fellow classmates.

It happens quickly after this that Izuku meets Tenya and Ochako. Well runs into them really. He’s running away from the scene and Tenya and Ochako are tasked with finding him. They at first fall into the trap everyone else does and assumes that Izuku is an innocent bystander. They hit it off well and the three of them become fast friends. The three of them start to hang out on the weekends and Izuku asks them all about what they’re learning. They run to him sometimes on scenes but they just think that he lives nearby or goes to school nearby. During school, Shouto reaches out and becomes friends first with Tenya and Ochako. Soon the three of them are hanging out with Izuku on weekends. As Tenya and Ochako get to know Izuku the more they put the pieces together. It becomes so obvious to them that Izuku is Midori and suddenly they feel ridiculous for having not seen it, to begin with. They confront Shouto about it because he had a highly publicized run-in with Midori but Shouto is tightlipped. He would rather die an infinite number of increasingly painful deaths than betray his first...well whatever Izuku was to him. Knowing they won’t get anything out of Shouto they go to Izuku. They ask if he’s Midori. Izuku’s reaction is surprising. He smiles and has a fond look on his face. He tells them a story that Shouto heard on top of a rooftop in the middle of the night while the two were stargazing. Izuku tells them a story about a quirkless kid, who always dreamed of being a hero. It’s a story of a kid constantly bullied and abused for being different, for being disabled, for being quirkless. In this story, he meets his hero but is let down by him but can’t hold it against him because he understands the world he lives in now. A world that he is hellbent on changing whether anyone likes it or not. 

To say that Ochako and Tenya are surprised would be an understatement but when they see all the pieces together, it suddenly makes so much sense. It makes them wonder how they never saw it in the first place. They’re now faced with the dilemma, Shouto never considered. Do they turn in their best friend? Of course, they don’t. They can’t because Izuku had changed them all. Had made their lives so irrevocably different, better that they can’t imagine a world where they’d betray him. Together, Ochako, Tenya, and Shouto make it their mission to change their class’s minds about vigilantes. Sure they couldn’t change their teachers but they could change their peers. They have their class meet Izuku and they all love him. Well most of them do. When Bakugou meets Izuku, it’s with a growled, “Deku!” and an explosion. The rest of the class had met Izuku by then and had seen him nothing but soft-spoken and kind. Squared shoulders and a furious glint in his eyes, Izuku snaps and hits Bakugou in the only way he knows will work, “That’s not very All Might of you.” Bakugou explodes and goes for the attack but the rest of the class has Izuku’s back and sure Bakugou is strong but he can’t take on everyone in his class at once. “I’m a hero whether you like it or not,” Izuku mutters to Bakugou as he turns back to the rest of his new friends. But there is awe on every single one of their expressions. 

They’ve realized he is Midori. Some of them have a more difficult time than others coming to terms with but they all come to the same conclusion. They won’t turn him in. They can’t. Not when he’s helped all of them and changed their lives. As they go through school, they fight more dangerous villains but they can count on Izuku to be by their sides when things get worse. What he lacks in professional hero schooling, he makes up in legitimate experience. The teachers and heroes are furious with their students/interns because they’re supposed to capturing the vigilantes not fighting alongside them.

It’s a long time before All Might meets Izuku again but that doesn’t mean that he’s been oblivious the entire time. He had a feeling from the first headline that read “Mysterious New Vigilante Saves Day!” that it was the same kid that had caused him to act when the Sludge Villain was there. All Might read every single article and kept tabs on Izuku the best he could. He tried several times to meet up with Izuku but Izuku thought that All Might wanted to capture him, so he evaded him. When All Might finally does meet Izuku, it’s after a particularly serious villain attack. There is nowhere for Izuku to run and he knows he finally has to face the man that started him on this course in the first place. A large yet gentle hand rests on Izuku’s shoulder and Izuku thinks he might vomit from nerves. His entire body is shaking but he stands his ground and looks All Might in the eye. “I was wrong,” All Might says. “You have always been a hero. May I fight alongside you?” Tears stream down Izuku’s face as he throws his arms around All Might. For someone so large, he gives gentle and reassuring hugs.