~Zero to Hero: A Vigilante Deku Story~

Nine: New Beginnings

Okay, this chapter is a couple days late and there are so many typos, guys. So many typos it isn't even funny. Oops.

I'm really sorry for the delay. You guys are so patient and I appreciate that. This chapter is super long, so hopefully it's satisfying. Please let me know if you see any errors or typos, because I just wanted to get this out as soon as possible so you guys wouldn't have to wait anymore. Definitely going back and editing later.

And of course, happy late Halloween! What did you guys do to celebrate? Tell me all your spooky stories- just not too spooky. I'm a total wimp.

Without further ado, please enjoy the chapter!

Word Count: 11, 832

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WARNING: This chapter contains fairly descriptive mentions of the suicide of a minor character (all contained in the first segment of the chapter, which is skippable), as well of mentions of suicide, suicide baiting, and bullying. Please do not read if these things trigger you. Thank you and please take care of yourselves.

The tombstone was dusty.

Very dusty. Faded too, worn over years of time and grime and dirt that no one had bothered to clean. No one would bother. Not with the grave of a quirkless.

Izuku had never met the owner of the grave. He never personally knew any of the people he visited- that was part of the point, he supposed. That was the reason he was here.

He'd picked up this grave-viewing habit sometime last year, but the idea had taken root long before that. He would always linger for a second too long on articles about quirkless deaths and increasing suicide rates, and Izuku could remember thinking how sad it was that no one would ever mourn for them. (Just like him.) Completely invisible in both life and death... it was the saddest thing he could think of. Why did they (he) have to be forgotten?

But they didn't, he'd realized soon after. Not if he was the one to remember them.

The idea had only developed from there. He'd spent hours back then- he still did- researching and reading news articles, looking for people suitable (weak quirk, villainous quirk, quirkless, they cycled through his head like a mantra) to visit. He looked for victims who would have no one to visit their graves; no one to care about, or even notice, their absence.

(He looked at the cause of death too. Read over and over and over again to truly understand, imagine what it must have been like for them in their last moments. Sometimes it was an accident. Sometimes it was murder. More often than not it was suicide.

Had it been painful? Quick? Gratifying? The questions hurt, and yet he couldn't seem to stop asking them.)

Izuku didn't have much free time nowadays, but he made absolutely certain to visit one or two graves a month no matter what. And it just felt right to do it today, the day before he started UA. Like he was closing one chapter of his life and starting another. It felt right to pay his respects to the people he was living on for.

This tomb was only one among thousands, faceless masses of grey marching on past the horizon. Just one drop of water in a sea of the abandoned. But hidden on that gravestone, underneath all those layers of neglect and solitude, was a name. A name that once belonged to a person. Someone who'd had dreams and ambitions, before they'd been stolen away. Izuku was here to honor that.

The green-haired boy knelt down and gingerly placed a flat palm on the tombstone he'd chosen for today's visit. It was so encrusted with muck that the name he knew was there wasn't even readable.