Wasted Quirk

Final Chapter

            It was nearly three in the morning when I started running. My dad had offered to drive me, but I didn't want that. I needed time to think. I needed to run off the adrenaline.

As soon as mom had woken me up and reality dawned on me, I had gotten dressed then started towards the hospital. It was warm outside, even that early in the morning. I was sweating from the humidity and exercise.

It had been a dream. Deku's suicide and subsequent actions. Him destroying quirks, being the greatest villain I had ever encountered... but it had felt so real. I had been convinced that it was real.

I was glad that it hadn't been. Villain Deku was way worse than not-villain Deku. My whole life I had continuously put him down, trying to get him to give up on his dream of ever becoming a hero. I had done everything without a single thought that at any point he could have snapped. To be honest, I didn't think he had it in him. He's always been good. Never selfish. Never unkind. Never like me.

Thinking about how real it felt, seeing his body on the ground in front of the junior high, with the black plastic covering draped over him, forced me to stop. My steps slowed until I reached the corner of the street. The hospital wasn't much further.

Would everything have played out like it had in my dream? If he really had tried to kill himself, would he have survived? Would he have pursued that path? Would Izuku Midoriya have died and been replaced by the empty shell I saw? Would my... would my quirk have been destroyed? I leaned my back against the brick wall of the corner store I stood by. The details of the dream were rushing back to me in full force. I was starting to feel overwhelmed.

I had been so self-centered. I wasn't concerned for anyone, always looking out for number one. I only cared about me and my life. My dreams. My goals. Me. Nobody else mattered. Deku's words came back to me. If that's how I behaved, how did I expect to be a good hero? I stared at my hands as his voice ricocheted through my head. What good is having the quirk I've got if I can't even save people? How did I plan on saving people if I was making them feel like they were better off dead? I was starting to feel like this quirk was wasted on me. I never should have gotten a quirk. I didn't deserve one. Deku did. Deku was the hero, not me.

I shook my head in frustration. It was just a dream. None of it had been real. There was no point in getting caught up in the what-ifs. People lost their minds over that. All there was to do was move forward. Leave it behind.

But I couldn't help but feel like I was supposed to remember it. Every detail of that dream was important and should never be forgotten. The obvious takeaway was don't tell Deku to kill himself. Right?

Then I remembered his voice. He hadn't been an empty shell of the Izuku I had known. He was the same. But instead of being filled with hope and determination, it had been replaced with sorrow and pain. I could still hear the inflections in his tone, the hurt that saturated every one of his words as he revealed his feelings about being abandoned when he needed someone the most. I could have been there. I could have been better. I could have saved him. But I wasn't there, and I hadn't even tried to save him. No one had. And that point he made very clear. We had failed him. More importantly, I had failed him. Which wasn't all too different from the reality I was facing now.

No more. I already knew how to use my quirk to always come out on top, to win. Now I needed to focus on using it to save. I refused to waste another minute being a half-assed hero.

I sprinted through the hospital doors. It was quiet and I had startled the night nurse sitting at her station with my abrupt arrival. With all the noise that had been present inside my head, the sudden silence was a little unsettling.