#being a villain becomes a bit of a rush for Izuku because hey nobody's calling him a quirkless loser!

[somniumoflight]

Crossover Idea #9 – My Hero Academia/Bendy and the Ink Machine

Izuku ends up sharing a body with the Ink Demon and slowly changes his mind about wanting to be a hero – he ends up being a villain instead

Still haven’t read/watched My Hero Academia, but I’ve read a lot of fics in that fandom and recently I’ve been browsing the Vigilante/Villain!Izuku fics, and then suddenly my brain went “hey man, do a BATIM crossover of this.”  And, well, here we are.

So, the basic idea of this story is as follows – the Studio (and all the monsters/people in it) where actually a product of both Joey Drew’s Quirk and some occult stuff he dug into in an attempt to make his creations last for longer on their own instead of relying on him.  In the process he accidentally made sentient self-sustaining Ink, which in turn became the Ink Demon when it grew strong enough, and then the whole downward spiral of BATIM canon backstory basically happened with one major twist – Drew managed to deal with the Studio’s occupants on his own without Henry ever needing to be involved, and decided that he was going to just chuck all the evidence of what he’d done into the ocean – including what was left of the sentient Ink that made up everyone in the Studio, in the hopes that it would just dissolve into the sea thus officially be “dead.”

What actually happens is that the crate with the Ink in it eventually washes up on the shore at Mufastu (think that’s the town?), and the Ink breaks free and, since a lot of it did get washed away by water leaking in, starts trying to gain enough ink to reform by basically sneaking into stores and stealing from people. Eventually, though, people catch on to this ink black blob, and since it’s been hurting people in the process of trying to reform (by sort of possessing them/absorbing their minds??), the local Heroes start chasing after it, and after several months, the Heroes finally get a lucky break and manage to both figure out its weaknesses and isolate it in an empty warehouse to keep it from getting away.

Except the warehouse isn’t quite empty, because guess who got shoved into that same warehouse and locked inside of it by his bullies earlier that day?  Who else but a 11-year-old Izuku, who, when the Ink tries to possess him in a last-ditch attempt to escape the Heroes, somehow accidentally traps the Ink in his own body with a passive quirk he never knew he had, and then flees in panic.

At first, Izuku is not happy about having what’s essentially a villain sharing a body with him.  Especially since he starts having nightmares of the Studio and everything in it from the Ink Demon’s pov, and the Ink keeps basically using him to steal ink to eat so it can get stronger.  When he wanted a quirk, he didn’t want this! Except… then a series of unfortunate circumstances leads to him never getting into UA.  And the Ink, though sinister and deadly, has been reluctantly helping this kid, because now that they’re stuck together the Ink really doesn’t wanna test what will happen if the kid dies.  And Izuku’s been seeing memories of some of the worst things that people do to each other, through the memories of everyone trapped in the Ink.  And how villains are treated by Heroes. Suddenly, the notion of being a normal Pro-Hero doesn’t quite appeal to him as much any more… and when All Might tells him he can’t be a Hero because he’s quirkless, well, that’s the last straw.

So instead of going to UA, Izuku decides he’s going to become the vigilante/villain that shows people just how wrong the current system is about treating their “villains” and everyone who eventually becomes them… with the Ink, and eventually the Ink Demon once the Ink fully recovers, acting as his Quirk to help him.

Details of this crossover I’ve figured out:

Joey’s quirk is called “Animation.”  Anything he draws on paper can come to life, but only for a very limited period of time, and it only really works with ink, not pencil or anything else. Problem is that Joey’s creations can only really last for so long before they fall apart.

So when Joey decided he wanted to bring his creations to life permanently, he started diving into some old occult stuff from the pre-Quirk era to find something that could make his creations self-sustaining.  He finds something that works a little too well, and ends up accidentally creating the Ink.

According to the Dreams Come to Life book, the Ink in the studio is actually alive and manipulating things.  Here that’s not exactly the case – Joey literally just accidentally created a sentient liquid being with initially no sinister intentions unless you count trying to, you know, survive.  It’s not controlling anyone, even if all the ink critters are made of it.

The Ink starts off as shapeless, but slowly begins shaping itself into the form of the Ink Demon.  So, basically, the Ink Demon and the Ink are mentally one and the same here, it’s just that the Demon is the Ink’s properly solid form.

Joey is of course irritated, because in his mind this thing has no right to exist, and tries to get rid of the Ink Demon.  This is a big mistake.  The Ink Machine, though not directly bringing the demon to life or anything, has been pumping ink into the Demon p much ever since he existed, without Joey realizing it, so the Ink Demon is almost literally unstoppable.

Joey does end up eventually destroying the Ink Machine, thus cutting the demon off from their supply of ink, and then uses acetone on it until it’s an inky blob again, then shoves it in a leaky container and chucks it into the ocean, in the hopes that when water started leaking in it would dissolve the Ink and ultimately kill it, and thus erasing the evidence of his crimes.

What actually happens is that the container ends up washing up on the shores of Degobah(?) beach (what’s one piece of trash amongst others?) and manages to break out.  The Ink then begins searching for normal ink to “eat” so it can become strong again – it doesn’t like being weak.  

However its abilities as nothing but liquid are limited and so it starts trying to manipulate people into stealing ink for it and accidentally discovers it can possess people a-la the sludge villain from MHA canon, only the people’s minds are trapped in its ink when it leaves instead of dying, putting those possessed people into a coma regardless of how long the ink is in them.  Still, if they have a useful quirk the Ink can use it, and that’s good enough reason to keep doing it.

The Heroes eventually catch on to these possession tactics and start hunting this creature down in earnest, since its obviously dangerous.  Negotiations don’t work – it just attacks, seemingly mindlessly to them.  They then try fighting it – that doesn’t work out because so long as it’s got a mouth or nostril or even breathing tubes to get through it can possess literally anyone regardless of their quirk, and while freezing it does sort of work it’s only really frozen on the surface and the rest of the ink is warm enough to start thawing the rest of it.

Eventually though a certain flaming garbage can finds out that the “liquid” they’ve been chasing is strangely flammable (as some pen inks are).  Then suddenly things start getting worse for the Ink FAST.

The Ink eventually gets cornered in an old warehouse on the shore that nobody uses, and Endeavor ends up getting permission to burn the thing down since this “villain” will clearly not come peacefully and literally nothing else seems to permanently effect it other than fire.  He has people block off the warehouse entrances and burns the place to the ground with great glee, and it seems to the Heroes that the Ink is now dead.

Not quite, as it turns out. Because earlier that day, Izuku got locked into that same warehouse by his bullies, and the Ink desperately tries to possess him in the hopes of being able to use his mystery quirk to escape.  Except of course he has no such quirk.  Instead, he has an unregistered passive quirk that somehow fuses the two beings together into one body while leaving them with their individual minds.  This allows Izuku immunity to most of the Ink’s more harmful tricks, though possession is definitely still on the table (for limited periods of time).  

With flames rising around them, the Ink, sensing an opportunity, intimidates Izuku into keeping his silence as they try to escape, because nobody’s ever survived the Ink possessing them before so the Heroes will probably try to hurt Izuku thinking he IS the Ink, and if he’s quirkless he can’t defend himself, can he?

Izuku ends up escaping with the Ink in tow by sheer luck – one of the nicer Heroes sees a scared, burned, scorched kid escaping from the blaze, and after asking him a few questions (the Ink never talked to anybody before, just acted “mindlessly,” so the Heroes mistakenly believe it’s mindless and thus cannot talk) he lets the kid go, telling him to run home.

After that, things are difficult for a while – the Ink has basically threatened Izuku into silence considering its existence, and sometimes forces him into letting it puppet his body to grab ink to eat and heal itself with.  It doesn’t help that the Ink’s on edge, fully expecting to eventually end up getting caught again, and its nervousness is rubbing off on Izuku, who gets even more skittish than normal (not that anyone except Inko and Bakugou really notice, and Izuku can lie to his mother p well when under pressure as it turns out, and Bakugou could care less about “Deku” at this point.)

Eventually, though, the Ink calms down when it becomes clear that the Heroes have written it off as dead.  It still uses Izuku’s body to steal ink to heal itself, but other than that its… calmer. Less threatening-feeling to Izuku.  And having it around is actually helpful to the poor kid too, because having the Ink fused with him means he’s gotten its abilities as well, including healing from drinking ink, which helps avoid awkward questions about bruises and stuff wonderfully.

On top of that, realizing that it was a bunch of Pro Heroes that burned down the warehouse he was stuck in sort of shook Izuku’s faith in Heroes.  Like, a lot.  All Might wasn’t one of those Heroes, though, so he still admires him and wants to be like him, complete with being a Hero himself.

This is the prime reason why they stay on edge around each other for a couple of years, because the Ink hates Heroes (they tried to kill it, and Joey once admitted he had aspirations to be a Hero when he was younger until he found his true calling in life – that’s enough for a grudge in the Ink’s mind) and Izuku’s a little scared of it because of the previously mentioned threats and the fact that he’s technically sharing his body with a villain.

Then comes the day when Izuku’s told by All Might that he can’t be a Hero because he’s quirkless. Izuku is heartbroken, and thanks to the trauma and the Ink’s influence over the last couple of years, he ends up just… giving up on being a Hero.  What’s the point of trying, when his idol says he could never succeed, and all other Heroes might hurt him?

This is when the Ink, wanting to get revenge on the Heroes that nearly killed it, and possibly Joey as well, gets an idea which it presents to Izuku – become a villain. Rob a bank or something.  Izuku’s against this at first, trying to scout out actual legal jobs, but as it turns out, hardly anyone wants to hire a quirkless teenager no matter how good his grades are if there are people with quirks they can hire instead.

So Izuku’s slowly worn down to the Ink’s idea, and after some very careful planning, lots of training with the Ink in how to use its abilities, and finagling a promise out of the Ink that if Izuku doesn’t want to keep doing the villain thing that they will stop after this, they end up robbing a major bank.

Izuku wasn’t intending to keep doing the villain thing after that – robbing a bank of that much money is bad enough – but then he sees how everyone and their mother is talking about his villain persona, and how the news is painting him, the quirkless loser, as a threat. And suddenly, he’s feeling a vicious kind of satisfaction at his actions.  That’d show everyone – his bullies, Kaachan, they were all wrong, he’s not useless!

So Izuku starts tentatively committing more crimes.  At first he keeps to robbing places to get money.  Then some local criminals try to corner him when he’s out and about as a villain (to get his money that everyone now knows he probably has) and Izuku ends up killing his first person in self-defense.

He freaks out about this big-time at first, especially since due to basically drowning them in the Ink, their minds are trapped inside of his own body along with the Ink itself, and god but does it give him nightmares to hear them screaming.  But as more and more criminals start coming out of the woodwork to try to get rid of him, and he starts slowly getting used to killing, and the Ink outright encourages the whole killing-people thing, he slowly starts to take a vindictive satisfaction in killing people too.

Eventually, around the same time that the Ink recovers enough to become the Ink Demon again (when it can convince Izuku to use enough ink at once for their body to form, they’re still connected) Izuku’s convinced to plot a proper villain debut in the underworld.  No more just robbing banks and killing people in self-defense – time to act like a proper supervillain.

So, after some more careful planning, practicing summoning the Ink Demon and other super-Ink abilities that the Demon was holding back on until then, and planning their “costume,” Izuku and the Demon make their debut as a duo of villains.

Izuku’s villain name is “Inkstone,” and by this point he’s sort of learned to associate being a villain as his safety blanket – nobody knows who he is, nobody thinks he’s a quirkless loser, HE’S the dangerous one like this – so he’s a lot more confident as Inkstone than as Izuku, and has even decided to put on a bit of an act to make it harder to identify him – “Inkstone” outright worships their villain partner, and will willingly claim that the Demon “saved him from being worthless.”

His starting costume is basically just black clothes, shoes, gloves, etc, with a bunch of ink leaking out of his hair turning it black and dripping down his forehead.  He also orders some black contacts to put in to disguise his eyes and complete the spooky-ink look, and he’s naturally a little pale, and his freckles are hidden pretty well by the dripping ink.

Their initial debut involves killing a small-time hero – more specifically, the same Hero that let Izuku out of that burning warehouse, in order to keep him from identifying Inkstone as the same kid he saved from a burning building.  The two of them team up on said Hero and kill him as a warning to the rest of the criminal underworld to not mess with them. (They also use the Ink to absorb his mind like other people in the past – having his knowledge could definitely help in the future.)

After this initial debut, Inkstone and the Ink Demon quickly take over the criminal underground.  Nobody wants to mess with the duo that mercilessly slaughtered a Hero and left his corpse hanging up by the police station.  

Nobody wants to mess with a giant hulking demon made of black shiz, either, especially since the underworld catches on faster than the Heroes and figures out that hey, these two have something to do with that string of comas that was happening a couple years ago.  Soon Izuku has a healthy trade going, and ends up cornering the market when it comes to information gathering – all he and the Demon have to do is grab the right person and absorb their mind into the Ink, and bingo, they’ve got info.

At some point these two end up going up against Dabi and Toga (who have joined the League at this point) and end up absorbed by the Ink as well after a grueling fight – however, instead of their minds eventually being broken down by the Ink like all the others, the Ink Demon finds something very interesting in their minds – the existence of the League of Villains, their apparent goals and of course, Dabi’s history as one of Endeavor's sons. (They don’t pay much attention to UA stuff except to keep an eye on future heroes – they know that class 1A was attacked by villains and that’s about it at this point.)

And also the fact that neither of them are nearly as scared as most people that got absorbed have been. Toga’s mostly whining about not being able to make people bleed anymore, and Dabi’s furious that he didn’t manage to get revenge on Endeavor.

Neither Izuku nor the Ink Demon are thrilled about this – Izuku because while he is indeed a villain at this point, he still has some morals, and he still admires All Might and doesn’t appreciate the League trying to kill the man.  The Ink Demon’s more pissed off about the info on Endeavor over anything else, because this man is reminding it a lot of Joey.

In the end, the two of them end up using Dabi’s information to kill Endeavor for him (with Dabi’s blessing – yeah, he’s dead, but he’s also cheering his killers on because fuck Endeavor), and exposing his dirty secrets to the world to discredit him after death (also with Dabi’s blessing).  This is when Inkstone and the Ink Demon are officially designated as super-villains rather than normal ones – they took out the number 2 hero.

Dabi may or may not end up being basically revived as an ink creature by Izuku, since the guy wants to hang around and keep an eye on his siblings.  Also, he’s NOT going back to the League, thanks – he was more a vigilante in mindset than anything when he first got recruited.

Toga may also be kept around because the Ink Demon finds her bloodthirst and her excitement about killing folks amusing.  Also, they need some trustworthy minions and if these two are made of ink now, Izuku and the Demon can control them if need be.

Of course, now being considered one of the top villains in the country has a downside – in that everyone knows about them now thanks to news coverage.  This includes All Might, who Izuku still admires and never wants to go up against if he can help it, and Joey Drew, who basically spittakes when he sees the international news and realizes oh shit that’s his creation being a supervillain in Japan how.

All Might eventually tracks down Inkstone, and Izuku doesn’t bother trying to hide that he’s an admirer of All Might (which makes All Might uncomfortable because oh god this better not be like Stain all over again.)  Izuku’s also willing to give him some info on the League that he got from Dabi, such as info on their next moves as Dabi knew them – and All for One’s location, since they managed to get that thanks to Dabi snooping plus absorbing some of the rest of the league.

When All Might wants to know why, Izuku tells him that All Might simultaneously saved him (true) and ruined his life (also true), but that he doesn’t hold any grudges against him for the latter – I mean, look, Izuku actually has a life now instead of being a loser like before, and its all because All Might shattered his hopes and dreams!  (All Might is of course horrified by this.)

Joey crosses over to Japan at some point and attempt to get rid of the Demon for good this time. This doesn’t exactly work out because the Ink Demon is publicly enraged by his presence and makes this known in spades – and exactly WHY.  Joey gets arrested pretty fast after that, but not before Izuku and the Ink Demon basically pummel him into a coma.  The only reason they don’t kill him is because the Heroes catch up before they can.

Izuku may or may not have spilled some of his life story on camera while being driven into a rage, though, so that causes problems.

Eventually Izuku gets found out to be Inkstone, and may or may not end up being confronted by 1A after they’ve graduated and become proper heroes.  Including Bakugou, who is the guy who manages to figure out who he is under the ink.  Cue angst and Bakugou finally getting some consequences for his shitty actions as a middle schooler!  Yay!

Also there will be at least one or two glorious “oh shit” reveals about Izuku and the Ink Demon technically being the same person.  They’re not going to happen for a while though.

Holy wall of text, Batman!  Sorry about the length of this one, okay, but I’m a sucker for good Villain!Izuku stories – because quirk discrimination is NOT fine and Izuku getting to lash out at the world for it treating him so badly and getting away with it because he’s scary smart or strong now is like my favorite thing in all MHA fanfiction.  Green bean deserves to beat up some people.  (And so does Bendy, because its not his fault he came out misshapen!  Sure, he’s not exactly Bendy here, but… who cares!  Not me!)