One day, Principle Nedzu calls up second-year Gen. Ed student Midoriya Izuku to his office. It turns out that, through deduction, the quirkless kid is in secret the vigilante Null, using his analytical skills to clean up the dark streets of the city. Impressed by the boy's skills, he wishes to take him on as his apprentice. When Izuku refuses to give up his autonomy, Nedzu gives him an offer: play the Big Bad in their "Heroes vs. Villains" exam. If he wins, he will be left alone. If he loses, Izuku must give in and become his student. If he abstains entirely, Nedzu submits all of the evidence he has on Null to the cops.
Can Izuku outsmart the smartest animal in the world?
Null and Void is a My Hero Academia fanfic by NevaraRaven that can be read on Archive of Our Own here.
Null and Void contains examples of:
- Batman Gambit: Izuku advices Shinso to refer to Bakugo as "Kacchan", knowing that it would immediately get his attention and leave him open to being mind-controlled by his quirk.
- Dramatic Irony:
- Iida is one of the hero students who's most against Izuku and the Villain Team, both because of how militantly he is towards the heroic ideal and because Izuku is quirkless (and therefore views him being involved as irresponsible), completely unaware that Izuku is also the vigilante that saved him from the Hero Killer.
- After meeting Izuku, Aizawa remarks to himself that "Null and him are very similar and should never meet", unaware that they are actually the same person.
- For Want Of A Nail: This version of Izuku never gets One For All. Because of this, he has no quirk to fall back on and has since accepted that he could never become a hero, leading to him using his analysis skills to help underground heroes anonymously as Null and joining UA in the Gen Ed course.
- Good is Not Nice: While Nedzu gives Izuku every chance to develop a hero career regardless of his record or lack of a quirk, he doesn't exactly know how to accept "no" for an answer. He threatens to out his vigilantism to the cops and is even willing to drag his friends (who are innocent), as well as putting him on what everyone views as the "losing side" of the "Heroes Vs. Villains" Exam. On top of that, Nedzu wants Izuku's team to score at least 80; the record currently sits at 30, set by a team whose roster included Aizawa, Present Mic, and their late friend Oboro Shirakumo.
- Hypocrite: Tenya's habit of being a stickler for the rules and properness is criticized by Izuku since he is the same person who cast all of that aside to get revenge on Stain for attacking his brother. Tensei wasn't even crippled in this story, so there was even less justification than what he had in canon for such an extreme and sudden abandonment of the values he claims to hold up.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: Mineta has a long history of sexually harassing every other female student and views Izuku as inherently inferior to him due to his quirklessness, getting away with it because his parents are part of the school board. Izuku hits him hard with this trope by tricking him into thinking he was their new team leader, milking him for information on the Hero Team, and then proceeds to spell it out for him how royally fucked he is after they trick him into being willingly tied to a chair. Izuku confesses that he has collected dirt on his entire family's corrupt dealings and will have it all made public before he lets his female teammates torture him for hours (confident that Recovery Girl will restore him in the end), managing to break him physically and emotionally while completing four of the Villain Team's objectives* in one fell swoop.
- Loophole Abuse: Invoked. While at first glance the odds of the "Heroes vs. Villains" seem designed to be stacked against the Villain team, it doesn't take long for Izuku to realize that the rules were purposefully designed to be taken as Exact Words.
- Since it isn't expressly forbidden, it's encouraged that both teams outsource and ask for non-hero course students to join them. This allows Izuku's team to blow out the old record for largest Villain Team roster, with a whopping 32 (Izuku of Gen Ed, ten Hero Course students including Monoma, Hitoshi for obvious reasons, Shoto, Momo wanting away from Mineta, Mina for the same reason as Momo, and Denki, eight Support Course students including Mei, and thirteen Business Course students); the old record was 11.
- Two of the rules are "Keep all of the Villain Team together without losing a single member" and "Betray a Teammate". Izuku comes up with the solution of having someone on the Hero Team think that they are on the Villain Team and betray them. As a bonus, he picks Mineta to be the patsy as a form of Karma Houdini Warranty.
- Both teams are given a list of objectives to do. Doing their team's objectives is how they score points and once an objective is complete, doing them again will score no points. This gives Izuku the idea for the Villain Team to do the Hero Team's objectives before the Hero Team can. While this doesn't earn the Villain Team any points, it reduces the number of points the Hero Team can get.
- Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: Izuku makes a case on Himiko Toga's behalf to the Villain Team that the only reason she took to villainy was because she had a quirk-based psychosis; her quirk gives her a physical and psychological need to ingest human blood regularly. Due to the inherently unnerving nature of her quirk, her family refused to cater to her needs, resulting in a Sanity Slippage. When Izuku realized this, he would donate his own blood to her regularly, undoing what little villainous motivations she may have had.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Izuku helps his team empathize with Himiko Toga — a former member of the League of Villains — by drawing direct comparisons between her and Momo Yaoyorozu; both have quirks that require regular feedings to function properly. Both have received insufficient care to compensate for their quirks, but while Momo is rich and has been able to survive on the minimum (her quirk requiring her to have a high-calorie intake Izuku guesstimates around 15000 a day), Himiko came from a lower-middle class family and her quirk being inherently scary (needing regular intake of human blood) resulted in her family not providing for her needs, causing her to develop a psychopathic disposition. If Momo's living conditions were less than ideal, she would have ended up just like Himiko.
- Politically Incorrect Hero: For all of his good intentions, All Might is shown to have some quirkiest tendencies. On top of his attempt at dissuading Izuku from pursuing a career in heroism, he is the first to object to including him in the "Heroes Vs. Villains" Exam. It's also implied that he was why Shinso did not make it into the Hero Course until his second year in spite of winning the Sports Festival, believing that his quirk is ill-suited for hero work.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The hero students Izuku targets for recruitment for the Villain team who weren't already his friends are all students who have been discriminated against. Some were for Quirk status, be it for having a Weak, Villainous, or Mutation Quirk, others were for being women in a male-dominated industry, and at least one for having an undiagnosed learning disability and constantly called dumb.
- Rigged Contest: By design, the "Heroes Vs. Villains" Exam is an Unwinnable Training Simulation for the "villain side". Being a school for prospective pro-heroes, most students prefer joining the hero side, the villain team have to adhere to a list of contradictory rules and the minimum passing score for them is 80%. The highest any villain team ever gotten is a 30 (set by a team whose roster included Aizawa, Present Mic, and their late friend Oboro). When Izuku looks at the rules critically, he realizes that it is more of a test of wits.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Aizawa tries several times to have Mineta expelled for his despicable perversions, but he and Nedzu cannot overcome the problem of Mineta having relatives on both the UA school board and in the HPSC.
- Secret-Keeper: Before Nedzu confronted him about this, the only people who knew that Izuku was Null were Hitoshi Shinso, Mei Hatsume, and Shoto Todoroki. He ends up sharing this secret with the rest of the "Villain Team" to showcase that he isn't just a Know-Nothing Know-It-All.
- Unknown Rival: While Aizawa became 2-A's teacher to look after them for all of the trauma they endured in their first year, Vlad King moved to being 2-B's teacher because he didn't want to be outdone by Aizawa.
- Unwitting Pawn: The patsy Izuku chooses to be the Villain teammate they betray without compromising their other goals is Mineta Minoru.
- Vigilante Militia: While on paper Izuku's team is the "Villain Team", he gets the idea to have his team do the Hero Team's objectives to limit the Hero Team's maximum number of points, making them more like a band of Unscrupulous Heroes working outside of conventional Pro-Hero laws than outright Villains.
