Please note that this is a Fanfiction! This is not original or additional content for My Hero Academia or Miraculous Ladybug. This is a purely for-fun piece written by me and posted for others to enjoy. This story can also be found on Archive of Our Own under the same name.
I’ve decided to start posting the chapters of my story here for people who want to help support my writing in more ways than just leaving comments or kudos on Ao3. There are also downloadable versions of each chapter on my Ko-fi, as both PDFs and Epubs. They’re Pay-What-You-Want, meaning they’re basically Free. They also have Dyslexia-Friendly fonts!
Sasakia is a Vigilante Informant based in Musutafu and not affiliated with any agency or group. Despite the large number of cases he’s been involved in, no one has ever met him in person. Instead, he feeds information to heroes and police through the use of telepathy via glowing yellow and purple butterflies. He’s a highly valued anonymous source, though there are a few Underground Heroes who are looking into his true identity.
Midoriya Izuku is a shy but friendly quirkless student aiming to join UA’s Management Course to become a Quirk Profiler for a Hero Agency. (Limelight or Underground, he’s not very picky.) He dutifully attends school, takes self-defense classes at the local gym alongside his mother, and never goes anywhere without his lucky butterfly brooch.
Despite both having a vested interest in Heroes and their success and both living in the same area, there are no other visible connections between them. And that is exactly how Izuku and Nooroo want things to stay.
But something is stirring in Musutafu and making it very difficult for the young wielder of the Butterfly Miraculous to keep his lives separate and secret.
Izuku just hopes he doesn’t end up in prison at the end of the line.
Little Disclaimer here: I have never watched a single episode of Miraculous Ladybug, but I’ve read some of the manga adaptation as well as some fanfics from the series.
I liked some of the base ideas they put forward, but I could tell based on the section of the fandoms I was in that they hadn’t been executed well/committed to in the series. ML looks like a Superhero Show that was trying to use Magical Girl tropes. But its biggest flaw seems to be that they never fully committed to either one. Which is obviously where I think the show ends up crumbling under its own weight. They weren’t sincere in how they handled their tropes and spent too much time backtracking to justify things or not showing the growth of characters that would have helped them in the long run.
And, you know, it was a show about a teenage girl that’s being written by a bunch of adult men. I don’t think I need to explain why I don’t think that would work out too well.
But I liked the ideas and decided that, just for fun, I would abduct them to write them the way I want to. I went with writing it as a crossover just for fun and to give myself the room to wipe as much of the slate clean as I could to have the freedom I wanted for the story. How much of the ML lore I plan to use is up in the air along with how much I will adhere to the “rules” they put in.
I plan to weave in a little Sky:CotL magic just because I can. And I like it. So Izuku gets to be a little magic, too! Just because I have the power to do that.
Chapter 1: Origins
Izuku was four years old when he was told that he was quirkless. He’s adamant that they’re wrong.
He’d been a happy and playful child, from what little he could remember of those days. He’d been excited, the same as many other children, to find out what his quirk was.
He felt sure it had something to do with fire or light because of Kacchan’s quirk.
Kacchan’s quirk was Explosion, and he’d had trouble controlling it when it had first come in. He had accidentally used it on Izuku a few times, burning his clothes and backpack when he got excited. But Izuku himself had never been burned by it.
(His ears would ring a little, but nothing bigger than that.)
He’d felt warmth wash over him from the light and the sparks, but never pain. If anything, he’d felt energized from it! His skin was never burned, and there were never marks on him. He was sure that meant his quirk had something to do with fire.
After all, people’s bodies adapted to help them with their quirks. So, if he couldn’t be burned, then that meant he was built to be able to do something with fire. Right?
So he waited and waited and waited. But… His quirk just wouldn’t make itself known. Until he was the last kid in his day-care who still didn’t know what his quirk was. And everyone was getting confused about it. His classmates, his friends, his teachers, everyone was wondering why nothing had shown up yet.
So his mom took him to the doctor, deciding that they couldn’t just sit and wait anymore. It was time they got an answer.
After all the tests, the X-rays, everything, they told them he was quirkless.
But he wasn’t quirkless! Kacchan couldn’t burn him; that had to mean he had a quirk! His quirk let him not get hurt by fire! That meant they were wrong. They must have made a mistake. It didn’t make sense!
The doctor insisted he was quirkless and just confused about it. That Kacchan was just young, so his quirk hadn’t grown enough to hurt him. That he didn’t have any powers because he had the toe-joint, and it was right there in the X-ray.
He’d been frustrated. Enough that once they got home, he sat in his room and cried.
Okay, it had been more like a tantrum than just a long cry. It didn’t matter.
What did matter was that he knew he had a quirk. He had some kind of power, at the very least! Explosions, even tiny ones, could burn people. And he’d never been burned by Kacchan. Kacchan couldn’t burn him.
So maybe, even with what the doctors said, he was immune to fire? Maybe that was his quirk. Not that anyone seemed to listen to him when he said that.
It took a year before he stopped trying to convince people that he wasn’t quirkless.
No one would listen to him, no matter how many times he told them that he was immune to fire, so he must have a quirk. They just thought that he was in denial. That he was making things up to fit in.
He was a kid, one who loved heroes. Of course, he’d make up stories to make himself normal and convince people he would be a hero someday. They made up their minds without ever listening to what Izuku tried to say.
Not even Kacchan believed him. (And didn’t that hurt?)
Instead, his best friend started trying to hurt him on purpose. Burning his stuff and yelling mean things at him over and over again. Kicking and hitting him whenever he tried to get him to stop picking on other kids.
(Where did his best friend go? What made Kacchan do this? Why did he start doing that? Kacchan got angrier after his quirk came in, but Izuku never thought his best friend would turn that anger onto him.)
Kacchan never noticed that there were never any marks from his quirk on Izuku. Even when he left handprints on his clothes, there was never a mark on Izuku himself. The noise would make Izuku’s ears ring, but he was never actually hurt by it.
Other quirks left marks, fists and kicks left marks on him. But not Kacchan’s explosions.
Izuku was pretty sure the school nurse believed him. At least about being immune to fire. It was the only explanation for how he’d avoided being burned so many times despite all the marks on his clothes. Instead, she gently taught him how to treat other people’s burns and how to put out a fire safely. (He didn’t know you could use sand to put out a fire, but it was very useful if there wasn’t any water!)
He didn’t tell his mom about it, though. He was sure that finding out that Kacchan was the one burning all his stuff would make her sad. So he lied and said it was a kid at the park who kept bullying people until he tried to chase them away.
His mom was already hurting from his dad leaving them. She didn’t need to know his best friend… Wasn’t being a good friend anymore.
(It was because of the doctor’s visit. He was sure of it. Not even his dad believed him. Shouldn’t he believe him? Dad could breathe fire. He should know that if Izuku said he couldn’t be burned, then he was telling the truth. He had to have gotten it from his dad!)
(So why did he leave? Why did he think Izuku was lying? He said it was for work, but… Mom cried at night. Izuku could hear it even if she tried to hide it. It wasn’t fair…)
Four and five are some of the worst years of Izuku’s life.
.
.
At six and seven, he stopped talking about becoming a hero at school.
Then he stopped talking about it at the park. Then, he stopped talking about it around town. Until he only talked about his dream of being a hero in the safety of their apartment, as his mom made dinner and he did his homework.
He didn’t stop talking about heroes, no. He loved them too much to ever stop talking about them. Especially with how entangled they are in society. Never bringing up heroes would be like never talking about the news!
No, Izuku just stopped talking about becoming a hero.
It stung, constantly being told he couldn’t be a hero by the people around him. It hurt that no one would believe him, believe in him. So he fell silent about his dreams. People stopped asking about them the moment he said that he was “quirkless” anyway.
(He’d prove them wrong. Just because everyone thought he was quirkless didn’t mean he couldn’t be a hero.)
But he would find a way. It would take a while, but he was a kid. He had plenty of time to figure it out. If he couldn’t train his quirk yet, then he could train the rest of himself instead.
He convinced his mom to sign them both up for a self-defense class, at least. It had seemed like a very good idea for both of them: healthy exercise and advice on what to do if something bad happened. Their teacher, Sango-sensei, was firm on teaching people about what they can do to keep safe if they got caught up in a villain attack.
Her focus was on what to do to get yourself to a safe place and how to escape if you were stuck. It was better to try and escape on your own than to hope a hero would come by and dig you out personally. Or to get away from a criminal if they tried to make you a hostage.
(She was very specific about saying “Criminal” instead of “Villain” during her classes. Which made sense. Villain was more for people who used their quirks illegally, but not all crimes were committed with a quirk.)
She also wasn’t above teaching the kids to fight dirty if an adult they didn’t know tried to grab them. She told them all the things they could say and do to escape. Where to kick and punch to get away and what to scream to get a responsible adult to come as fast as possible. She even talked about safe places like Libraries and community centers where they could go for help if they couldn’t get to a police station.
Best of all, she didn’t treat Izuku like he was frail or helpless just because he was quirkless. If anything, she seemed even more determined to help Izuku learn how to defend himself. She even offered to give him lessons on using self-defense gear once he was a bit older! If his mom was okay with it, of course. (He hoped she would be. Sango-sensei knew how to use a quarter staff, and those were cool. He wanted to know how to use one, too.)
His mom liked the classes. He could tell. The world felt less scary when there was someone there to teach you how to stay safe. It was less scary when you knew there was something you could do to stay safe. Something that was in your power to do, and that you didn’t just have to sit and hope that someone else could help you.
(Izuku planned to recommend Sango-sensei to everyone. If he ever met a hero student who wanted to take classes, he would tell them about Sango-sensei.)
Sango-sensei helped his mom smile more, she seemed happier and less nervous than he remembered her being. And she talked more about her friends and the people she worked with at home than she did before.
The class was good for both of them.
.
.
Izuku was nine when he started his quirk research.
It was started in a fit of frustration mixed with determination. Everyone was telling him that he would never be a hero without a quirk. He’d never be able to fight villains without one. He needed to just give up already and find something else that he wanted to be.
Izuku thought that they were wrong. Besides, there was more to being a hero than just fighting villains.
All Might, his idol, did more than just fight villains!
There was Search and Rescue! Emergency services and Disaster Aid, too! You didn’t have to be a hero specifically to do those. There were other ways to help people, and there were heroes who specialized in those. So he could be like them instead of fighting villains.
More than anything else, Izuku wanted to help people.
And a quirk wasn’t a requirement to help people when they needed it.
But everyone had a point about the villains, as much as he didn’t like it. Being immune to fire wasn’t very helpful if the villain didn’t have a fire quirk. So he’d just have to be smarter than them.
He started researching heroes and their quirks. Because if he couldn’t fight a villain, then he needed to know which heroes to ask for help. He made as many notes as he could, trying to figure out as much as he could about their quirks so he could turn to the perfect heroes for whatever villain showed up and get them to help.
He figured out the quirks of his classmates and how they worked. If they became heroes, then he might need to ask them for help later, so he needed to figure out all the pros and cons they had before then. Even if they were mean now, they could always change later. So it would be good to know what they could do now.
(His notes on Kacchan were… Extensive. But Kacchan used his quirk a lot, so it wasn’t a big surprise. Plus, Izuku knew Aunt Mitsuiko and Uncle Masaru’s quirks, too.)
Studying villains’ quirks helped him come up with ways to counter them. Figure out their patterns and trends to catch them with as little harm as possible. It was a skill he knew he’d need as a hero, so studying as much as he could was important. The faster he could figure out what a villain could do and how, the sooner he could get help to stop them.
That last one was called Quirk Profiling, according to his mom.
It was considered a branch of Criminal Profiling, where someone took the clues left behind from someone’s quirk to figure out what it was and how it worked. It was a very important tool for heroes since it let them narrow down their villains and figure out how to stop them. He read somewhere that underground hero agencies had lots of Quirk Profilers working for them.
(He liked the sound of that as a job. Maybe he could get a second degree in that. After he became a hero.)
.
.
Izuku was eleven when he accidentally freed a god(?) and turned his world on its head.
Izuku had just been trying to find a birthday present for his mom. There was an old antique shop close to the main markets that he’d visited several times for old hero merch. He’d thought it would be a perfect place to find something to surprise his mom with for her birthday that he could afford with his allowance.
The owner, Mrs. Kidashi, had smiled softly when he asked her for help finding a present and pulled out a few old jewelry boxes and some old accessories for him to look through.
He found a very pretty old hair clip that would be just perfect. The little decorative crystal flowers were a little dull, and the metal could use some shining, but the little green and gold clip was exactly what he had been hoping to find.
But, tucked away in the largest box that he looked through, was a little black and red gift box that caught his eye.
It was hexagon-shaped and very old, and more than a little dirty. It looked like someone had done a sloppy job of adding a lock to it later, too. The lock was pretty ugly and cheap-looking when he compared it to the box it was attached to. Izuku was sure he could get it off without damaging the box.
Mrs. Kidashi said she’d gotten the box in an estate sale from someone who used to travel abroad a lot, and she had no idea if there was something inside the box. There was a little rattling inside when it was shaken, so she thought there was something in it, but she had no idea what it could be. She said the lock was surprisingly stubborn for her, and she was too worried about damaging the box in the process. That didn’t stop her from letting Izuku take both the clip and the box with him.
He carefully hid both from his mother when he came home, deciding that he would use the box to give the clip to his mother once he got it open. And he didn’t want her to see the clip before he had the chance to clean up the clip so it would be nice and shiny for her.
He had some stuff for cleaning up old models that he was pretty sure would work on the clip. So he didn’t have to go out and try to find some polish for it!
The locked gift box, on the other hand, took more work.
It took a lot of careful wiggling and jiggling with his model-building tools to finally get the lock off. Then it had been simple to pop open the box.
Where a little purple and white, butterfly-shaped broach sat on the fancy red cushion inside. Except the pretty broach didn’t hold Izuku’s attention for very long because he was quickly distracted by the glowing light that drifted up from the broach and formed into a little… Fairy-thing over his desk.
A fairy that looked scared for a moment before it finally spotted him, then it just got very nervous. A fairy that, once he asked if it was a fairy, said it wasn’t.
They were a Kwami, and their name was Nooroo, and that was their special magic brooch, and did Izuku know where they were? They had been asleep for a very long time in the box and didn’t know what had happened during that time.
They seemed sad and kind of scared. Like they needed help
Izuku wanted to be a hero because he wanted to help people. And this was a chance to do just that.
During the year he’d known Nooroo, the little Kwami became his closest friend. Far better than Kacchan had ever been.
Nooroo listened as Izuku told him where they were, how he got Nooroo’s box, what had changed in the world while he was locked inside, and whatever else Izuku knew and Nooroo asked about. And, most importantly, he listened to Izuku.
He listened as Izuku told him about Quirks and Heroes, how the world had changed to adapt to them, how daily life had changed with the addition of nearly every human having a special power unique to them. About Pro Heroes, Villains, and Vigilantes and how they affected everything.
He told Nooroo about a dream that he wanted more than anything else, but no one believed he could ever achieve.
He lamented that no one believed him about having power of his own, just because he had the extra toe joint. He just wanted to be a hero and help people, but everyone was sure he was powerless. He was sure they were wrong; he could feel it in his soul.
And Nooroo finally gave him an answer.
Izuku didn’t have a quirk. Because he had something else.
He had magic, and that was the source of his special powers. He had a power that was disconnected from his genetics and as much a part of him as they were. Something he didn’t have alone, but was very hard to know about without help in a world like the one he lived in. Not without someone else to notice it. Nooroo could feel his magic, a gentle glow like a star with warmth like the sun. Izuku just needed a little help to learn how to use it.
Izuku asked if Nooroo knew who could help him learn, but the Kwami said he didn’t know of anyone who might still be around that could do it.
But Izuku had a noble goal, wanting to help people. He thought that was a good reason to want to learn. And, for such a noble goal, Nooroo was willing to help him. He didn’t know much about the gentle magic in Izuku, but he’d be happy to help him where he could.
So, under Nooroo’s tutelage, Izuku began learning about the magic that flowed through his body. Flaring out from deeper than his blood and bones.
It was some form of light magic, according to Nooroo, with a few notes of fire magic to it. It didn’t feel like it would be very good for fighting. However, there were other things it was good at. Things that could be just as helpful if he used them in the right way.
He could express himself with flares of light around his head and hands, making bright effects to illustrate a point he was trying to make and conjuring small things like little butterflies made of light. Not to mention his immunity to being burned and, as it turned out, being able to draw magic and energy from firelight and sunlight.
And, with the right spell, he could use that energy to heal himself. At least, that was what Nooroo thought it could do since Izuku’s cuts and bruises healed so quickly. But Izuku wasn’t very keen on doing anything big to test that theory, nor was the Kwami keen on encouraging the idea.
Once Izuku started learning to use his magic properly, he had started to glow. Nothing noticeable with the lights on, but in the dark, he could make out his own light and vaguely see with it. It wasn’t much brighter than a few candles, but it radiated from his small body in the dark. Just enough for him to find the bathroom at night without tripping or stepping on anything.
He already had ideas for how he would explain his magic when he signed up for UA, if he was caught using it. A light manipulation quirk that was ignored/missed because it was mostly passive-protection until he managed to figure it out.
But now, with the lessons he’d gotten from Nooroo, he was more hesitant about becoming a hero proper. Izuku was able to come up with plenty of ways to use his magic, but it seemed that villain captures would be something he wouldn’t be able to do alone. Not without some serious combat training to make up for it, or a ton of support items. Perhaps he could follow another route and be licensed for just a specific type of heroics instead of a general license?
(Someone could get a licence for just Search & Rescue or just Disaster Relief. Doing it like that meant that you didn’t need to go through full heroics schooling, just the lessons that applied to your chosen specialty. It was kind of like being licensed as an EMT instead of a Doctor or Surgeon.)
Nooroo also taught him about people and places he had never seen before.
He told him of heroes from the far past and their bravery and determination to face down evil to build better, happier worlds. The evils they faced, big and small, and the prices they paid to create better futures for the people who came after them.
He walked him through languages and stories that could help him build the future he wanted to live. Folk stories and fables that shaped different parts of the world. The trials and tribulations that shaped the countries they came from, and how they interacted with the rest of the world beyond them.
And, eventually, Nooroo confided what it meant to be a kwami and the power of the miraculous that Izuku had been caring for.
That he was a concept of the universe given life and form, that he was the embodiment of Transmission and Transformation. That his powers had been used and abused in the past, to hurt the world he had wanted to be part of, as more than an unseen watcher. That he had been forced to see and feel the ways his powers had been used to hurt friends and strangers alike.
That he still grieved for the people who had been irreparably hurt by the ones who’d abused his powers.
At his heart, he’d wanted his power to be used to help the world blossom and flourish. But he’d been denied that for a long time. Being able to help Izuku use his powers, his hard-earned skills, to help innocent people was one of the happiest things Nooroo had done in a very long time.
He was happy to let Izuku use the passive powers of his brooch, the ability to sense the emotions of those around him, to help others. To help the lonely child at the park make a new friend, to help the scared lady at the cafe nearby with an angry customer, and to comfort the grieving grandmother who missed her husband after he passed away. All of which Izuku happily did without hesitation.
They were little things, in the grand scheme of the world, but they were giant to the people facing them.
Izuku enjoyed every moment of shared happiness from his acts of kindness.
.
.
Izuku was twelve when, under Nooroo’s gentle encouragement, he became a Vigilante.
A terrible case on the news about a little girl who had been kidnapped at the local park convinced them both to take a leap of faith.
For Nooroo to convince Izuku to use his Miraculous to create butterflies from their combined magic to find the little girl and lead the local heroes to her before the worst could come.
(He knew that little girl; her name was Kushina. She had needed a friend to sit a play with her and distract her from the way her parents fought at home. He played with her almost every Sunday at the little park down the street. Her favorite color was blue, the same shade as the sky on a sunny day.)
(In 40% of child kidnappings, the child is killed before the police can find them. 4% are never recovered. He couldn’t let that happen to her. Please, not little Kushina-chan!)
Nooroo suggested how he could hide who he was, then told him what he could do with the power of a Miraculous. Told him of sensing emotions, speaking with his mind through the magic of a butterfly, hiding his face behind a mask that couldn’t be removed by anyone but him. Of being able to change his face and his voice so that no one would make the connection between Izuku Midorya and the Mysterious Butterfly Wielder.
Izuku knew vigilantism was wrong, at least in this day and age. He knew that they should just leave it to the heroes and listen for updates on the news. He knew (now, at least) that Nooroo’s powers were dangerous if used wrong or if he let himself be overly tempted by them. He knew all of this.
But there was a desperate family who wanted their little girl back. There was a scared little girl out there who needed help. There was a criminal who had snatched her away and was threatening her family.
And the power to help them was sitting innocently on his desk, waiting to be put on and used to do good.
It was risky.
It was dangerous.
It would get him in so much trouble if he were caught.
(Except… he wanted to help people. To save them. To prove that, even in the darkest times, there was still a spark of hope. So was it really a choice?)
So Izuku yanked his notebooks from their shelves, picking and choosing elements from past butterflies and the people they’d changed that Nooroo had told him about, and came up with a costume. He thought of little edits to hide who he was from anyone that he would speak to, and anyone who might spot him as he slipped through the night to get closer to the kidnapping area.
It was, after all, the little details that made the best disguises.
He made himself look and sound just a little bit older. Not an adult, he didn’t think he could ever pass for an adult. But he could change enough to seem a few years older than he actually was.
A few inches taller than he was, cheeks a little less rounded than they were, a voice that was just a bit deeper than it currently was. Making his hair long enough to be tied back, and changing the color to look more black than the natural green he shared with his mother. Clothes that hid his body shape just enough to keep someone from guessing how much muscle he had or how broad his shoulders might be. A theme that most wouldn’t think was the brain-child of a purely Japanese teenager.
All of them came together to create a person, a possibly high school-aged teenager, that no one would know was actually a twelve-year-old Midoriya Izuku.
He snuck out into the crisp night air and used his new senses and his butterflies to find Kushina and her kidnapper, and then used them to lead the police to the very door that they’d been hidden behind.
He’d forgotten to pick a name before heading out that night, admitting that he hadn’t thought of one when speaking into the mind of the detective on the case, when he told them where the kidnapper and his victim were. He was lucky that the man had taken him at his word and gone where Izuku told him to go.
By morning, little Kushina was safely returned to her parents, and the neighborhood celebrated that she had come home.
Technically, Izuku had committed vigilantism. He had used his powers to be involved in solving a crime when he didn’t have a license. The detective had thanked him but warned him that he shouldn’t get involved again. (He couldn’t arrest Izuku, after all. Since he wasn’t physically there, and the detective didn’t have a name for him.)
Izuku didn’t regret it.
There had been a rush from what he’d done. Both fear and excitement when he’d first slipped out, then knee-weakening relief when Kushina was safe in the arms of her family.
But the city was full of powerful emotions, anger and fear and hate, and so much more. Things that Izuku and Nooroo could feel bubbling away under the surface, that so easily came to pass simply because help didn’t know to come sooner.
They couldn’t help acting again. And again. And again.
Until Izuku finally came up with a name for the person behind the butterflies, and both Heroes and Officers alike knew it. And both started keeping eyes out for glowing butterflies fluttering through the night sky.
He had a double life, and it was worth every second.
I see a lot of people who are doing Izuku always have him being very hands-on in his involvement with Heroes, which suits the canon version of him (being All Might’s protege and all). But I rarely see people playing with the alternate ways his Quirk Analysis skills could get put into play. I thought it would be interesting to use Izuku’s skills in a slightly different way by having him take up a role as a Quirk Profiler, and studying hero quirks to come up with ways to best employ them in various situations.
This Izuku is going to play more of a Mysterious Informant role with his use of the Butterfly Miraculous instead of going out and hunting down Criminals/Villains himself. I think that would suit his miraculous and analytical skills better. So that’s how this fic is gonna work.
Plus, I think it would be an interesting way for Izuku to drive heroes up the wall. (Faceless informant who knows Way Too Much but is Stupidly Polite while telling them things.)
Just remember, guys, this story is a lark. It’s purely for fun. I have no idea how much I will/can write before the muse leaves or where I’m gonna go with it. I have a few Key things I want to do, so at the very least, I wanna write those parts out. My writing doc is all over the place, but that’s fine by me.
Anyway, I hope ya’ll think it’s as interesting as I do. I welcome any fun/funny thoughts people want to throw at me for this!
(Still have no idea how I’m gonna do identity reveals or Kamikos (non-evil Akumas), but whatever. Suggestions for those are welcome too.)
