MHA : Venom In My Hero Academia

"Sure you don't want fire?"

The two of them once again sat opposite each other, leaning up against trees.

"Yeah, I'm not really bothered by cold anymore."

Well, that wasn't entirely true. He was still affected by ice-cold temperatures, but he'd discovered early in his training he wasn't affected by just being wet at night.

His quirk had been pretty erratic tonight, ever since they meet this hero, he had been all over the place, rage, suspicion, annoyance. At the mention of fire, rage returned.

"It's quite the multitasker this quirk of yours."

He blushed.

"It's... It's not that special. Just a general strength quirk really."

"No, that it's most certainly not. The strength itself is pretty decent, but healing… Healing is exceedingly rare, even amongst quirks that cover it exclusively, much less those who only have it as a side power."

Izuku flushed even harder. A pro hero was praising his quirk! An actual pro hero!

"Cold resistance isn't anything to sneeze at either. It's way more useful than you might think. During winter, even passive cold resistance is such an upgrade from the standard."

Well, it wasn't like Izuku didn't know that, but hearing it spoken by a pro somehow made it seem real. Not just something you read on message boards.

"So… You think I have a shot at being a hero then?"

The man looked at him with a… Kinda inquisitive look.

"Why do you want to be a hero kid?"

He was taken a bit aback, but he answered honestly.

"To help people… Like… Like you did tonight." He blushed furiously as he said it, but it was true enough.

This was what he wanted to be. Someone who helped people who needed it.

The man gave a small smile.

"I'm flattered to be someone's inspiration, but surely you had some other inspiration before tonight."

"Yeah… I did."

"Well, it's kinda stupid, but… I wanted to be a hero since I was 4..."

"I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess your inspiration was All Might was it not?"

"Yeah." He smiled at the memory of seeing All Might's debut video. Then it vanished remembering what came afterwards.

"Yeah…"

"You were a very late bloomer, weren't you? With your quirk I mean?"

Izuku's head shot up as he stared at the man's mouth agape.

"How… How did you know?"

"There were quite a lot of signs. For one, you are training far, far more to master the basics than anyone who grew up with their quirk reasonably would. In particular, your complete inability to do a punch that's something other than full force and a love tab REALLY stands out. Kids with strength quirks learn very quickly growing up to control how strong they hit something. It's way harder to learn if you have to learn it in your teens."

"You… You know a lot about this stuff."

"I've lived quite a while now. In my profession, you learn a lot of things."

A short silence, then…

"To answer your previous question kid, I think you have a shot at being a Hero."

Izuku's breath stopped cold.

"Your quirk is pretty good, you still need to work on your punches quite a bit, but frankly, I've never cared much about quirks. It's a man's motivation and what he does with it, that defines who he is. Not whether he's strong enough to have made a rank."

Izuku just stared at him, tears forming up. In his eyes again. He tried to force them down, but they came anyway. This time though, he didn't feel sad or conflicted. Just… Relieved. Incredibly relieved.

His quirk was horribly, horribly confused.

Another silence followed, where Izuku finished crying and drying away the tears.

Then something struck him.

"Wait… How long have you been watching me? I didn't do punches today."

"4 days" He admitted.

"I've been patrolling just south of this forest this entire week. You weren't exactly inconspicuous or hard to keep an eye on, alone in the forest, running around like a cheetah."

Dear god, Izuku was lucky this guy hadn't just decided to call the cops or arrest him.

Izuku blinked.

"Oh… Oh, I'm so sorry, but I just realized… I never asked for your name!"

He winced. He just now realized that, and just randomly blurted it out?

The hero didn't seem to mind.

"I think it would be better if we don't do names kid. If I never know your name, I would not be lying if someone asked me for the name of a green-haired teenager who's a bit liberal with the law while training. But, if you must have something to call me, you can call me Stick, for the time being."

He took a wild guess the name came from the two sticks he had in a holster at his belt.

"No problem. Stick."

A short silence followed, but somehow it didn't seem hostile or forced.

"So, how did you figure out I was inspired by All Might?"

He was genuinely curious. He had All Might shirts of course, but he didn't use them while training. The only things he had with him were a set really washed out clothes he used for training, his keys, his black notebook, and his phone.

"Well… Don't take this the wrong way, but 9 out of every single hero I've met in this country was inspired by All Might to become heroes."

That… Sounded just about right.

"Wait… You're NOT from Japan?"

"No."

"Wow… your Japanese is REALLY good, for it not being your native language."

And it was, Stick spoke perfect Japanese, he had for sure pegged him as being a Tokyo Native.

"So I've been told."

A quick silence followed, but this time it was stick who broke it.

"It's a peaceful land, this Empire of Japan."

He wasn't entirely sure how to respond to that.

"It's not peaceful in your homeland?"

"No. It's not been true peace there since the start of the second Millennia. There's always something going wrong."

He sighed.

"But don't let my worries trouble you. How's your foot?"

Izuku blinked. Oh yeah, the reason they were still here. He wiggled his toes a bit. Pain immediately shot up his foot. It wasn't anything compared to the pain of getting it janked into place, but it was still bad.

"Pretty bad still."

Stick stared at his foot, still covered in black liquid.

"The healings pretty fast. I think you should be able to walk with help in maybe 3 hours."

So 02.00 then. Great. He really was going to spend the rest of the night before he got home.

Izuku sighed.

...

The trip back to his home took around 3 and a half hours. Meaning it was 05.17 when Stick and him reached the stairs to his apartment.

The pain in his leg had thankfully begun to actually fade by then. He couldn't put too much weight on it, but at least he could actually walk now. Though slowly.

At the stairs, he turned to say goodbye to Sticks.

"Thanks… Thanks for all the help."

"No problem kid. One final thing though, before I leave you to yours."

"Yes?"

"Punching. Your current training regiment isn't gonna work. If you want control over them, you need something that isn't so weak that it just instantly breaks when you put some force on it, but isn't so rigid that it can only break when force is applied."

Okay…

"What do I need then? It sounds like you have something in mind."

"What you need kid, is a punching bag."

Izuku blinked.

That… Was so simple and obvious that he couldn't fathom why he hadn't thought of it himself.

How he was going to afford a punching bag was another thing entirely, but it was good advice. Much better than continuing to punch rocks anyway.

"Thanks, thanks for the…" Izuku blinked.

He had looked down for a couple of seconds to consider the advice, and in that time, Stick had suddenly disappeared into thin air.

He stood and just looked for a moment. Then he turned and began the slow and kinda painful journey up to his apartment.

As he got to the door. He carefully checked if it was open.

It was.

That meant mom was still awake waiting for him.

He stood there, for a second, contemplating it, then stepped inside to talk to his mother. This was going to be pretty bad he had no doubts.

...

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