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After Izuku was diagnosed as quirkless, his family all but fell apart. His parents fought regularly, honestly he questioned why they even stayed together. Even at school everyone treated him like trash. So, he tried to find things to bring some joy to his sad and depressing life.
Over the years he gained and lost hobbies. Tried things like crochet, drawing, knitting, and one time he attempted karate. He doesn’t talk about the time he attempted extreme ironing. Over all of that though, there were two things that stuck with him. He loved analysis. He always had a notebook on him, constantly muttering and writing things in it.
He also loved gloving. He can vividly remember the first time he was wandering around a store and found those lovely gloves. It was like they were meant for him when he tried them on.
As he got older he got really good. Not like those shitty glovers he would see online, but almost mesmerizingly good. He almost prided himself in it all things aside.
Of course, he could never share his hobbies with anyone at school, or even his own parents. He would always practice in the safety of his own room. God, if anyone else found out his already 6 foot under reputation would be done for.
At first, Izuku would watch others online and copy their moves, and he got pretty good at that when he was younger. Until he ran out of moves he could find online. So he started making his own. He loved finding new ways to twist and turn his fingers.
That was exactly what he was doing. He was experimenting with a new move, his room dark save for his gloves glowing a bright green. He usually practiced whenever his parents fought, it helped him ignore what they were saying. Usually they fought about him, sometimes about other things.
Typically, they would end with both of them storming off to opposite sides of the house, occasionally one of them would leave. Usually it would be his dad, Inko would usually calm down quicker. That's what he expected this time around as well.
This time it was about him. Though, he was so focused on his gloving that he didn’t notice the faint orange light coming from under the door. Not until it was a vibrant light, threatening to cross into the threshold of his room.
He slowly got up and grabbed onto his door handle, turning it and opening a crack to see outside his room. Not daring to open much further in case one of his parents sees.
That's when he realized it was fire. His house was on fire. He needed to get out.
He jumped up and ran to his window, as quick as he could he unlatched the window and jumped onto the fire escape. Thank the gods they lived on the second floor, he quickly made his way down to the alley beside his house. He then sat there for a moment.
His apartment was on fire. His parents weren’t outside of the building yet. Had Hisashi attacked Inko? Was he the reason he could see flames licking out of his bedroom window?
Izuku looked down at his hands, his gloves still on. He closed his hands into fists and holding the gloves tight to his chest.
That's when it hit him. Assuming his parents died, he would be put into foster care. Quirkless people never fare well in foster care. He saw far too many reports on the news about orphaned quirkless kids killing themselves. For how rare quirkless kids are nowadays, he saw it a lot. A lot more than he wished he would.
So, he decided to run. With only his gloves, phone, and jacket in hand, he ran. At first he just wanted to get away from the apartment, to make sure no one saw him. He passed various buildings and alleys that he recognized, many he passed to get to school.
Slowly but surely, he stopped recognizing buildings, on the occasion he would notice buildings he saw in the news. Once he reached an unfamiliar enough place he stopped for a moment. That's when he started looking around for a place to sleep.
He debated benches, until he realized that a kid sleeping on a bench out in the open was suspicious. He then looked between alleys and just ran around looking for a hidden away but safe spot.
That was until some grody, ugly, random ass man pulled him into an alley. Seriously, that man had the most rancid breath one could possibly get.
“Well what’s a cute little feller like you doin’ out at night?”
Yeah, no. That was gross as hell. Izuku wasn’t very proud of what he did then. He panicked. He started gloving. In all honesty he did it when he was nervous, and this qualified tenfold.
To Izuku's surprise the child diddler stopped and stared at his hands, as if in a trance, so Izuku kept going. He could have sworn he saw a bit of drool fall out of his mouth. After his surprise slipped away, he wound up and punched the man. The man all but comically fell down to the ground. Izuku really didn’t know what to do for a moment.
He decided the best course of action was to pull out his phone and call the police. He held his phone up to his ear.
“Hello, 119, what is you-”
“Some child pred just tried to prey on me, I think I knocked him out.”
He looked around for some sense of where he was.
“Im in an alley across from some abandoned laundromat.”
Izuku then hung up. Sure, he probably shouldn’t hang up on emergency services, but he did NOT want to go into foster care. So he dipped.
He started running again, this time he did not get grabbed by random discord mod looking guy, instead stumbling upon a very nice looking park. It looked very similar to that of the one he and Kachaan used to play at.
He decided to lay down against a tree and take a nap.