Chapter Text
The dawn of Quirks had required many a change in laws.
The most widely known dealt with the establishment of heroes and the laws defining vigilantism and villainy.
However, there were many more, less known laws and loopholes, which would all come together to set the stage for this story – ones which one Quirkless Midoriya Izuku discovered one lazy Sunday before his last year of middle school.
You see, with the rise of Quirks and each subsequent generation, the rate of Quirkless people went steadily down, until only 20 per cent of the worldwide population were without a superpower – and of those, 90 per cent were above the age of fifty.
(that made Midoriya Izuku one very unlucky person – namely one of only an estimated 160,000,000 sub-50 years old worldwide, that is only slightly more than Japan’s pre-Quirk aera population and only about 2 per cent of the pre-Quirk aera population in general)
With this steady drop of Quirkless individuals, laws were amended to simply… ignore their very existence. After all, why keep in mind a breed of human that would die out in just a few decades’ time? There was no need to establish laws about the white tiger or pandas either, after all.
So, what does this mean?
Simply speaking, a hero is someone who received a license to use their Quirk for law enforcement.
A vigilante was someone doing such work without a license.
A villain was someone committing crimes using their Quirks.
See a pattern?
The Quirkless cannot use a Quirk for law enforcement or crimes.
They do not need a license for something they do not have. They cannot be persecuted for using something they do not have.
Now you might wonder, too: what about heroes such as Nezu? Animal with a Quirk that made him more intelligent than most humans? Where does he fit in? How did he pass the licensing exam, anyways?
(the short answer is that the HPSC doesn’t care about rules when it suits them and throws licenses at people when it suits them)
The long answer is as follows: with the rise of many different Quirks came… a few complications. What to do about animals with Quirks? With human-level intelligence? What to do with a human whose Quirk gives them premature intelligence and maturity?
Faced with such things, laws were amended to remove mention of species in regards to Quirks, and age requirements were removed for intelligence-based testing and job requirements, and special programs were enacted for people with extenuating circumstances to still receive a hero license.
All these things were discovered by one 14 years old Midoriya Izuku one lazy Sunday before his last year of middle school. And with some further digging, he discovered something peculiar.
Namely that Tokyo U offered a free online speed course on Hero Analysis, and with a fee-based final exam, one could receive a degree. They also offered the same for teaching licenses for any graduates of any of their degrees. What’s more, unlike high school, universities didn’t require applicants to disclose their Quirk status, and online degrees didn’t require a high school or middle school diploma if one was able to pass a test.
Furthermore, the HPSC offered a special licensing exam to anyone who has worked for a minimum of six months within the hero industry and receives recommendation by at least three active pro heroes.
Making a spur of the moment decision, Midoriya Izuku went up to his mother and asked if she would be willing to pay for the exam fees, fibbing a little and claiming it was just some certificates that would look good on his high school applications to make up for his Quirkless status.
She happily agreed, tears in her eyes.
Sitting down two weeks later to take the entrance test, Midoriya Izuku shrugged.
It couldn’t hurt, right? At least he could say he’d tried to be more realistic.
(the fact that getting a university degree and a teaching license at 14 was less realistic than becoming Batman was lost to teenage logic)
Midoriya Inko was very mad when it turned out that the fees she had paid for were for actual state exams, but it was quickly overshadowed by her now 15 years old son having gotten both a university degree and a teaching license.
(many tears were shed by a proud mama and her son)
Gunning for the special HPSC exam, Midoriya Izuku decided to apply to the Support Course at UA in order to add a support license to his growing pile of certifications, hoping to make up for his lack of a Quirk and finding work right out of high school.
What he didn’t expect was UA’s principal seeing his resume, cackling into his tea and sending out a job offer to him.
(weeks and months later he would ask himself how he’d ever been surprised)