Honor Among Thieves: A My Hero Academia Fanfiction

It took eleven years for Sachie to identify her Quirk. It took the same amount of time to realize that not all men were created equal and not all Quirks were heroic.

Cherry blossom petals fell on that day, fluttering across the front steps of Nabu Middle School. Sachie plodded down the steps in her oversized sweater. The garment still smelled like its previous owner, like cigar smoke and stale pizza. She hated it.

The walk home would be a long one, though it always was. At least the breeze was steady and soothing, and the scenery was breathtaking. At least the latest round of clothes her father had stolen for her weren’t riddled with holes, so she was warm. At least she had a home to go back to, even if its rent was paid by purloined treasures swiped by a shallow, greedy man—a man who spat on the idea of heroes and had no right being a father.

The moment she started away from the school, Sachie saw them: a trio of older students, most likely eighth graders, each with matching menacing grins. They surrounded a smaller figure, a boy shrinking into the shadows beneath a cherry blossom tree.

Sachie paused, eyes catching on the boy’s mussed purple hair. He was in her grade, though she couldn’t remember his name. His ghostly complexion had blanched further as the older boys towered over him. He clutched his backpack to his chest in a vise embrace.

The leader of the bullies—a stocky figure with spiky hair the color of overgrown weeds—leaned down and jabbed a finger into the younger boy’s backpack. “I saw you talking to one of my classmates in the hallways. What’d we tell you about talking, Puppet Boy?”

The purple-haired boy flinched. He tried scooting away, only to find his back already against the cherry blossom’s trunk. “She dropped something. I-I just wanted—”

“Shut it, freak!” screamed the leader. “Don’t talk, remember? You try anything with those mind tricks of yours, and Kazuo will make you choke on your own teeth!”

One of the accompanying bullies—Kazuo, apparently—stepped forward and pounded his fist into his other palm, a wicked smile twisting his face. When his hands clashed, the skin there solidified into stone. The rock-encased punch resounded with a heavy thud. The purple-haired boy’s eyes widened at the threat.

The leader swept his hands to his allies on either side. “You see, guys like us just wanna do the right thing: be heroes. That means protecting others from villains like you. With your creepy brainwashing Quirk, there’s no limit to the damage you could do to our classmates. So from now on, keep your mouth shut or we’ll sew it shut, understand?”

The purple-haired boy opened his mouth on the cusp of a reply, only to recover his senses at the last moment. Instead, he offered a meek nod.

Ache brought Sachie back to her own thoughts. At some point while witnessing the exchange, her fist had reached up to strangle one of her backpack straps. She pried her hand loose, finger by finger, all the while never pulling her gaze from the purple-haired boy.

Though he was in the same class as her, Sachie knew nothing about him. She kept to herself mostly, never meeting anyone’s stares, never exchanging a compliment or reply. Better to build up walls around herself than drag other people into the mess that was her life.

Sachie studied the boy again—his lanky, trembling frame, his hooded, fear-stricken eyes, his disheveled, worn clothes—and realized that she didn’t have to know anything about him, because she still knew enough. She knew that he looked nothing like the villains she had seen rampaging on television. He just looked like a scared boy.

Anger boiled through her veins. Before she could process her own movements, Sachie crossed the distance between herself and the boys. Defiant, she wedged between the bullies and the shrunken stranger. And before the upperclassmen, the bullies, the villains, Sachie planted her feet and held up her fists.

Admittedly, the boys were scarier up close. The leader had sharp teeth narrowed to daggered points. Kazuo’s arms remained encrusted in a thick, fortified layer of stone. The third boy had unsettling cat-like eyes that glowed with ominous light. All three were at least a head taller than her, and unlike her, all three had Quirks.

For a moment, the bullies gawked down at her. She imagined what they saw—a shrimpy runt with silver hair and opaque eyes. Their laughter rang out after a beat, confirming what she knew they saw her as. A little girl. A nobody. The prospect swept the last of her fear away, leaving only white-hot rage behind.

“If you losers don’t back off,” Sachie snarled, “I’ll be forced to use my super-awesome, all-powerful Quirk on you.”

The bullies cackled harder. Off to the side, Kazuo slammed his stone fist into his palm again. Sachie held back a wince at the grating noise.

“You hear that, Rin?” said Kazuo, nudging the green-haired leader. “This pipsqueak thinks she’s All Might or something.”

Sachie’s fists clenched tighter. In reality, she was as powerless as a pinned bug, but they didn’t know that. If she could convince them of her bluff, maybe they’d retreat on their own. At the very least, she could hold them off long enough for an adult to take notice and intervene.

A hand tugged at the cuff of her jeans. Sachie found the purple-haired boy still cowering behind her. His lips remained pressed in a thin, quivering line as he shook his head.

What, he wanted her to back down? Judging by the bloodthirsty smirks on the bullies’ faces, Sachie doubted that was an option anymore. And backing down wasn’t what heroes did, after all. Even when they were outmatched and overpowered, true heroes held their ground. She’d never become one if she shied from every uphill battle.

The leader, Rin, cast his arm out toward her. Sachie shielded her face and prepared herself for a blow, yet nothing happened. Instead of swinging directly at her, Rin’s fist had paused in the air. His fingers writhed as though beckoning to an invisible force.

Beneath Sachie, the ground gave a low tremor. The hand on her pant leg recoiled. Sachie glanced down in time to see the grass cleave beside her sneakers. A tree root slithered from the opening and coiled around her ankle. The rough bark agitated her skin as the root tightened its hold.

Sachie yelped, scrambling at the root to no avail. Behind her, the purple-haired boy had crawled forward to help. His nimble fingers knocked against hers as the two wrenched against the root around her ankle. At one point, his fingernails raked across her bare skin above the binding. Blood beaded from the cut and trickled onto their hands.

A chorus of laughter sounded from Rin and his friends. She felt their mocking glares burying into the top of her head. “Whatcha gonna do, hero?” jeered Rin. “Where’s that super-awesome Quirk of yours, huh?”

The root squeezed tighter around her ankle. Sachie struggled to maintain her balance as her foot began to lose feeling. Her mind was in a frenzy, clawing for solutions as desperately as her hands clawed at the root. How far would the boys go? Sachie could feel the bark piercing deeper into her skin, drawing more blood. Maybe they wouldn’t stop until she lost her entire foot, and she’d be forced to hobble home on one leg.

No, no, no. She didn’t want to lose her foot. She didn’t want any of this, the helplessness and panic and pain. All Sachie had wanted was to be a hero. But who was she kidding? Quirkless people couldn’t be heroes. She’d end up like her father, a low-life living off the stolen goods of others, quicker to swindle and steal than lend a helping hand.

A spike of pain shot through her ankle. Losing her balance, Sachie pitched forward, directly into the lead bully. The moment her head collided with Rin’s chest, electricity zipped through her veins.

Except it wasn’t electricity, exactly; she didn’t quite know what to call the unexpected sensation. But then she felt it nestle within her grasp, felt the air crackle around her with something potent, and she realized exactly what it was: power.

By the time Rin shoved her away, the root had already retracted from her ankle. With nothing to anchor her, Sachie pedaled backwards and landed with a grunt on the ground beside the purple-haired boy. Pain spiraled through her behind on impact. Blood trickled freely from her ankle. Yet she saw and felt none of it, because all she could register was the look of horror as it dawned on Rin’s face.

The root sat motionlessly where it had sprouted, crimson staining the bark. Rin threw out his hand towards it. He squinted and sweated and shook, yet no matter the amount of concentration that laced his face, the root remained unbudging.

Color fled Rin’s complexion. He stumbled back with a gasp, his hand flying to his chest. “M-my Quirk. It’s…” Rin trailed off. He stared at his hands, horrified. Sachie waited for a twinge of satisfaction to register at the realization of his fear.

Slowly, Rin’s attention lifted to Sachie on the ground a few feet away. The look on his face inspired not a single spark of triumph within Sachie. His expression, one twisted with terror and confusion, was something reserved for a monster.

And the monster was her.

“You stole it,” murmured Rin, his feeble voice barely audible. “You stole my Quirk.”

Sachie had little time to process the weight of his words. In an instant, Rin was upon her in a fit of seething fury. His attack knocked the wind from her lungs, leaving her breathless and gasping. Hands clawed at her face, gouging at her eyes. Screams echoed around her—Rin’s fueled by rage, her own pitched with fear.

The foreign sensation tugged within her again; without thinking, Sachie tugged back on it. Rin disappeared off her, thrown a good ten feet across the clearing. He landed somewhere far away with a pitiful moan. Bleary-eyed, Sachie sat up and took stock of her surroundings—the pale-faced boy by her side, the two standing bullies gawking down at her, the groaning figure of Rin in the distance.

Amidst it all was the root that had slithered to her aid. It poised above her like a serpent, guarding her front. Its end was still pitched forward from the act of throwing Rin.

In the terse silence, Rin staggered onto his feet. A blotch of blood dripped from his temple, the crimson stark against his green hairline. He gaped at the root before Sachie with a mixture of horror and betrayal.

Somehow, Sachie found her voice. “Leave,” she commanded, and at the word, all three bullies turned tail and fled.

The root curled in and retracted back into the ground. The grass zippered up, leaving no signs of having been previously cleaved. Sachie stared blankly at a cherry blossom petal by her sneaker. She was so, so numb. Had she made the root recoil back into the ground? Had she actually summoned the force to betray its previous wielder and protect her? Had she really stolen that boy’s Quirk?

She had stolen his Quirk. Part of her was lost in the relief that she wasn’t Quirkless after all, that the diagnosis when she was tested at four years old had been wrong. But the rest of her was crawling with the sick realization that her Quirk was to steal, to take another’s power and use it to her own advantage. In an effort to deviate from the path her father had laid, Sachie had only further proclaimed herself a thief. And thieves weren’t heroes; they were villains.

Dimly, she registered someone staring at her. Sachie glanced to meet the boy’s gaze beside her. His eyes were the same lilac hue as his hair. When their eyes clashed, the boy flinched, though didn’t scurry away from her. Instead, he stood, dusted himself off, and then offered his hand to her.

Sachie blinked at his outstretched arm. Wasn’t he afraid that she’d take his Quirk too? She wasn’t sure about the nature of her Quirk yet. What if she couldn’t return the Quirks she stole? What if she rendered people powerless forever? Did that not scare this boy at all?

Prodded by the insistence in his expression, Sachie accepted his hand. His palm was cold and calloused against her smooth skin. With surprising strength, he yanked her upright. The moment she found her footing, Sachie dropped his hand, afraid that prolonged touch would cause her to steal his Quirk. Unless she had already stolen it, and she just couldn’t feel it.

The boy worried his lip for a long moment. Then, in the barest of whispers, he spoke. “You didn’t…you didn’t need to help me.”

Sachie almost told him why she did need to—because it was the heroic thing to do. Except nothing about what had occurred had been heroic. Whatever Quirk was flowing through her veins wasn’t a hero’s Quirk. Its power wasn’t meant to save and preserve, only to hurt and thieve.

“I’m sorry they treated you like that,” Sachie said instead. “It wasn’t fair, no matter what your Quirk is.”

“Brainwashing, just like they said,” the boy murmured, looking ashamed. “It activates when people respond to things I say. It’s not a good power, but…”

He scratched the back of his head, further mussing his purple locks. “But I still want to be a good person,” he finished, his voice still nothing more than a trembling whisper.

Me too. Gods, the desire to be someone good ached far more than any bruised ankle or wounded ego. Judging by the fire in this boy’s eyes, he understood her drive. Perhaps he strived for the same dream in spite of his Quirk.

“I’m Sachie Ginko,” she said. Sachie almost outstretched her arm for a handshake, only to reconsider and clasp her hands behind her back instead.

A slight smile crinkled the boy’s features. It was an odd expression on his face, something that could pass as unsettling if not for the genuine intent behind it. “Hitoshi Shinsou. Nice to meet you, Sachie.”