Chapter Text
"Um, excuse me, are you the hero Deku, Sir?" A young girl asked, approaching the man sitting in the corner of the coffee shop. She had short, black hair that was styled upwards, almost like the petals on a rose. Many would think it was simply to keep said fair out of her face, but the hero recognized the style from somewhere, but he couldn't quite place from where. The hair was probably the wrong color, or from a very old friend.
The green-haired hero took off his face mask, cover blown. He smiled widely, but kept his hood up, to keep a little anonymity from whoever else was around. While his green hair was now almost considered a fashion statement, it was still always enough to attract attention to him. In a conspiratorial tone, he replied, lowering his voice. "When I'm working, yes, but please, call me Midoriya-san."
It was one of the things that people loved about the number one hero - despite his accomplishments, he was humble to a fault, and was always willing to speak to fans. He often emphasized that heroes were people too, and how important it was for people to remember that.
"Um, o-okay Deku", the girl caught herself "Midoriya-san". The hero, to his credit simply laughed. "How could you tell? I thought my disguise was pretty good". He took off his glasses and looked down at his Ground Zero hoodie, then back up at the girl.
"You were mumbling, and talking about quirks. Plus, I could see some of your hair." She giggled as she pointed out the last bit.
Anything who knew anything about number one hero knew that he loved quirks. His antics and praise of other people's quirks was a constant source of amusement for his fans, and his mumblestorms were compiled into plenty of meme videos.
"That explains it," the number one hero laughed. "Please, take a seat. I'm happy to talk with you, Miss..." the hero trailed off.
The girl sat down cautiously, as if worried that the number one hero was testing her. "Um, Hattori. Hattori Sachiko, Mr De-" The girl cut herself off. "Midoriya-san." The hero, to his credit, simply laughed. "Well, it's nice to meet you, Hattori-chan".
"Can we play the question game?" He was cut off by a flurry of words from the girl. "I mean, if it's okay."
Though less well known, hardcore fans knew that if prompted, Deku would play the question game with fans. He would ask two questions of them, and then they would talk a little bit. Sometimes, but rarely, he would ask a third question. If he did, it meant that the hero would answer any one question of yours. Well, nearly any question. No matter who or how many times the hero was asked, he refused to answer any in depth questions about his quirk, which was literally registered as "super-power", or things too personal about his private life, like his relationship to his wife, Uravity.
"Of course," the hero laughed softly at the obvious enthusiasm. "We'll start with an easy one, okay? How old are you?"
"I'm ten, Sir." The girl replied, seemingly nervous by the attention. "I'll take your word for it." Izuku laughed. "Ready for the next question?" After a small nod, he asked.
"Who is your favorite hero that isn't in the top 100, and why are they your favorite?" It was a favorite question of his to ask, especially to his younger fans. You could tell a lot about a person by who their favorite hero was, after you eliminated the most common answers.
The girl didn't waste a second, and replied. "Mind Blank". Ah, the explained the hairstyle, then. He could see the similarities now, between her hair and Shinso's, and realized just how much digging it would have taken to find and copy said hairstyle. This was the word of a super-fan.
"And why?" Midoriya reminded gently, already fully invested in the girl's reasoning. "Oh, right!" The girl laughed softly. "Because he's like me. People always talk about how my quirk is like a villain's, and he had that happen too. Err, at least, I think he did." The girl paused. "You sometimes talk about how that happened to a friend of yours, and how people are more than their quirks, and how that person was called a villain and how they overcame it and even though you never said it was Mind Blank I'm pretty sure it was and I think that's really inspiring." The girl trailed off, seemingly embarrassed by her own mumblestorm. She looked up, expecting a glare, or a look of annoyance from the hero for wasting his time with her silly feelings. Instead of jeering faces and taunts, however, she saw a sad smile, one of sympathy.
"I suppose this is what people see when I mumble, huh?" The hero laughed good naturedly. "That's a great reason, Hattori-chan. I'm sure Mind Blank would be honored to hear that." The girl blushed softly, looking down into her lap.
The hero smiled. Often, dissatisfied with the answer to the prior question, the hero wouldn't even want to ask a final question, and simply wouldn't. Many self proclaimed superfans clearly expected him to tell them they were just like him, and that they were born for greatness just as he was. Many were all to similar to a younger Bakugou, and didn't even realize it. "One more question, if you don't mind." He asked politely, and her eyes widened as she realized the significance.
"Of course", the girl smiled up at him, her prior stuttering nearly gone. He smiled to himself, recognizing that she was feeling more confortable now. "What is your quirk? You don't have to answer if you don't want to - " The hero was cut off "A quirk dampening aura. People's quirks are less effective when I'm near them, and weaker ones just turn off. I can focus it to other areas, but that can give me a headache." The girl frowned gently. To the untrained eye, it was nothing, but Izuku knew the look in her eyes - it was one he wore many times beore he even met All Might.
"I think that's an incredible quirk! He exclaimed. There are so many uses for it. You can help detain villains once they are captured, and help support other heroes again villains with high-powered quirks."Hattori didn't know when it happened, but a notebook had appeared out of nowhere, and the pro hero in front of her was nerding out about her quirk. Her quirk! She watched, enraptured as he took more and more notes, her breath catching as he sketched a simple portrait of her into said book, taking special care with her hair. Who knew the number one pro hero could draw, and so well? How was that even fair? She tried to read his notes, but the messy handwriting seemed hard enough to read right side up, much less upside down and obscured by the scarred hand drawing her likeness.
"Sachiko?" A man's voice called out from across the coffee shop, where he had been watching. "Are you still bothering this poor man?" A taller man walked across the floor of the coffee shop, towards his daughter and the man she said she needed to ask something to.
"Oh, oh my god, I'm so sorry!" The hooded man's voice was familiar, the man mused, but he didn't think he had ever met the man in person. "I got lost in thought, is everything okay?" The man, who sounded more like a boy, than anything, looked up.
"Everything's fine, I just wanted to see what the hold up was..." The father trailed off at the sight of the number one hero, lost for words.
"This is Deku - erm, Midoriya-san! We were talking about quirks," his daughter supplied. Her father nodded, confused, before taking a seat at the table beside theirs, and listening in on the conversation.
"I'm so so sorry, I spaced out. I owe you an answer now, don't I?"
"Um, you don't have to"
"No, no, I do. Those are my rules, and I'd like to stay a man of my word," the greenette, who he now clearly recognized pro hero Deku, insisted. "What do you want to know?"
"Can I be a hero, even with my quirk?"
Neither father nor daughter would ever understand how similar that question was to another, asked some 15 years ago. Midoriya was determined, however, not to make the same mistake his mentor nearly had.
"Have you ever heard of the pro hero Eraserhead?" The hero asked, carefully.
He was answered with a soft 'no' from the girl, who was clearly hanging on to his every word. It was these moments, Izuku Midoriya had long since realized, that made his role as a pro hero, and the sacrifices that came with it, so worth it.
"I know him better as Aizawa-Sensei, he was my homeroom teacher at U.A." The girl nodded, though whether it was out of politeness or familiarity Midoriya didn't know. "His quirk was called Erasure - he could temporarily erase someone's quirk just by looking at them, but their quirk would come back when he blinked, or if he looked away from them." The hero smiled even brighter than before as he remembered the antics of one of his greatest role models.
"His quirk reminds me a lot of yours, Hattori-chan. Because his quirk didn't even have a way for him to disable his opponents, he had to use martial arts and a capture weapon similar to Mind Blank's. He found a way to be a great hero, however, and I'm sure you can do the same," he went on. The girl's hopeful expression was obvious, and she seemed on the verge of tears of joy. "Why haven't I heard of him?" She asked softly and carefully, like the wrong question would shatter the fantasy she was building up inside her own mind.
"Eraserhead was an underground hero," his tone dropped softly, like he was sharing a great secret. "Underground heroes operate in the shadows, and away from the media. This helps them keep their quirks and capabilities a secret. Underground heroes often do more hero work in a night than I do in a week, their work is just less visible."
"That's probably why you haven't heard of many," he continued. "They avoid media attention. Eraserhead hated reporters even more than Ground Zero does" The hero laughed at his own joke. "I think that you could make a great underground hero, with a quirk like yours. You could be a more traditional pro hero too, of course, if you prefer," he quickly added.
"What about my headaches?" The girl squeaked out. "Sometimes, if I use my quirk while trying to practice, it gets so bad it's hard to walk," she went on.
"Most pro heroes had difficulties with their quirks, even when they're older than you. I was breaking bones with mine even after my first year at U.A." He laughed again, and smiled softly at the girl in front of him. On a seemingly unrelated note, he went on. "Uravity took the U.A. entrance exam with me, you know." He smiled at the memory he was about to share. He hoped her close friend wouldn't mind the slight embarrassment.
"Mmhm". The girl replied softly, holding her breath. "You saved her by destroying a giant robot, right?"
"Yea, but there's a second part to the story, that we normally don't tell. Can I trust you?" He asked gently.
"Um, um sure." She smiled widely. Talking to the number one wasn't nearly as scary as she thought it would be, although she couldn't help but be a little intimidated.
"When I jumped up to save her, I broke both my legs, and then an arm when I punched the robot," the hero smiled as if it were a good memory. "On the way down, I realized I might die, you know. It was a huge fall. Luckily for me, Uravity was able to stop me before I fell all the way, and caught me in zero gravity at the last moment. You know what happened next?"
The girl nodded her head no, smirking as she noticed her father lean closer to the storyteller. Try as he might to seem aloof, no one could resist a story from the number one - he simply had a knack for it.
"She threw up!" The hero grinned, like it was an old joke. "You see, Uravity's quirk gives her nausea if she overuses it. Now, of course, she could probably lift that whole robot without issue. That's why we keep training, after all, to get stronger. And I can tell that if you train safely and intelligently, you can do great things to."
The girl fought back tears, not wanting to cry in front of one of her idols. "Th-thank you. Thank you so much, I needed that", she mumbled into her sleeve, as she averted her eyes. "Can-can I hug you?" she asked softly, almost mumbling. The hero looked at her father, checking that it was okay before stepping out of the booth. The girl practically latched onto him, crying into his shoulder with joy.
"Crying isn't a bad thing, you know. Sharing your feelings like this, I know it takes real strength." The hero smiled, gently setting the girl back on the ground. "I have a patrol coming up, but I have one more thing to share with you, Hattori-chan." The girl simply nodded, and moved to stand beside her father.
The pro hero quickly wrote something into his notebook, before ripping the page from the book entirely. He folded it once, before standing up. "This is for you," he looked down at her as he handed her the folded page, before nodding to her father. She put the paper in her backpack (which was purple, in honor of a certain hero's hair), determined to give the hero himself her attention for the few minutes before he had to leave.
"I never expected him to be so polite in person", a man mused as they walked home, ignored by the pedestrians around them. "I always figured the fame would get to him, but he's a bigger hero nerd than you are, isn't he?"
"Maybe, maybe not!" his daughter teased, beaming. The man's heart leapt, he could see how much the man had inspired her in only a few short minutes, and couldn't be thankful enough for him.
When they got home, the girl unpacked her backpack, jolting with surprise as the paper made its way back into her hands. She had all but forgotten about the paper, and realized she didn't know what it was as she unfolded it.
She smiled as a familiar face stared back at her, that of her own. Written in messy but legible handwriting, she read over notes on potential uses of her own quirk, written by the number one pro hero himself. Her smile grew even wider as her eyes drifted to the bottom left corner, which was devoid of notes. Instead, there was a messy message:
"I know that if you work hard enough, you can do amazing things. Keep working to be the best person you can be! Your number one fan, Deku"
Taking a break from work later that night, she saw a tweet from the number one himself.
Deku @Deku-Official
Every day I am reminded of just how lucky I am to meet so many wonderful people. You all inspire me with your hard work and bravery.
Today, I met a person who inspired me once again to be the best pro hero I can be, and I am incredibly thankful for that.
Remember, no matter how tough a challenge may seem, you will come out stronger for having conquered it, so be sure give your best effort.
I know you can do it!