Chapter Text
For the most part, Toshinori loved being a hero. Saving people was his life's dream; he didn't regret a single moment he spent on the job. But all the auxiliary stuff he was expected to do-- he could live without it.
He understood that there was a level of necessity to attending meetings and ceremonies and such, because a hero's public image had a lot to do with his effectiveness, so of course he smiled and was polite and didn't leave as soon as the function was over, like some of the more short-tempered heroes. Still, he wished he could be doing something a little more useful with his time (especially now that it was so limited). Sure he needed to maintain a good social image, but couldn't that be just as easily done by making smaller public appearances? Maybe even out in the city, where citizens could actually meet him, instead of at choreographed dinners only attended by other heroes and the politicians that sponsored them?
There was no way to escape from this current meeting without offending anyone (even though it was just a dinner-conference that had literally nothing to do with him), so he grinned and bore it. He resolved to go meet some fans in the poorer parts of town this weekend, if he had time.
It was as the party was entering its third hour (and he was really going to have to excuse himself soon, if it lasted much longer) that he noticed a hero he'd never seen before. At least, he thought he'd noticed someone. It was out of the corner of his eye that he saw them, and they'd seemed fairly close, like they'd just come up to chat with him from out of his periphery, but when he turned his head, they were gone. He looked around. Nobody was standing nearby, and nobody was walking away, so he guessed he was seeing things, unless it was a new invisible-turning hero. Or someone with camouflage.
He would have been more than willing to chalk it up to being tired, but he saw the person several more times over the next quarter-hour. It was always just from the corner of his left eye, and they were always gone when he looked harder. After the first few times he decided to stop turning his head and analyze just what he could see from there.
The person (and he assumed it was a hero, because the politicians were mostly in black suits) was small of stature, and wearing a largely green outfit. Or teal, maybe. It was hard to tell from there. That was all he could glean, and the vision disappeared again when he tried to look at it head-on.
Luckily, the dinner ended before too long, and Toshinori was able to excuse himself without being too rude. As he was leaving the hall, among a crowd of other brightly-dressed heroes, he thought he saw the little teal hero again, but only once. There was nothing he could do about it, and it wasn't really causing him any trouble, so he simply went home and went to sleep.
He awoke to some old pop song playing on the radio. In the tired recesses of his mind, he recalled it being popular the year he'd been injured. It had played almost incessantly while he was in the hospital recovering, to the point where he'd had the radio removed and sat in silence the whole rest of the time, just so he didn't have to hear it anymore. (That wasn't normally the sort of reaction he'd have; he was far too easy-going. But things had been tough then, and he'd been in a bad place, and some of his thought processes had been a little immature. He very rarely had that sort of knee-jerk reaction to annoyances anymore.) So, it wasn't exactly his favorite song.
Reaching around for the snooze button or the off switch or something, he wondered why he'd had his old radio-alarm set anyway. These days he usually used his phone. Had he forgotten to charge it or something? He felt around on the side table for the slim metal device after he'd gotten the radio to quit, but what he found instead was-- well it was a phone, but it wasn't his. It was a clunky composite flip-phone. He hadn't had a flip-phone in years. Was it something he'd found and forgotten to turn in?
Cracking his eyes open, Toshinori took a good look at the little device. It was used, but not terribly worn, though the style was a little outdated. When he flipped it open, he was greeted by a grinning picture of his own face-- the hero form, anyway. He stifled a laugh; funny he'd stumbled upon a fan's lost phone.
Well, he figured he'd take it to the police station while he was out today. The screen read that it was 7:15 (why on earth had he set his alarm so early?), so he still had a little time before he needed to be up. The morning rush was hectic, but most serious crimes happened later in the day, so he left the early hours to the other heroes.
At least, he'd thought there was time before he needed to be up, but a knock on his door told him otherwise.
“Izuku?” the woman called. “Are you awake yet? I've got a meeting to get to this morning, so I'm heading out now. Make sure to get some breakfast before you leave, okay?” She waited for a moment, clearly hoping for some response which Toshinori was wholly incapable of providing, before she knocked again and called, “I've gotta go. Don't be late for school!”
When a door further in the apartment closed loudly, Toshinori finally snapped out of his stupor and opened his eyes-- whereupon he was assaulted by more of his own face, which he certainly did not recall having pasted to his own walls. He also didn't recall having a woman living in his house... Or ever being called 'Izuku'.
Sitting up, he looked around the room further. It definitely wasn't his. Not his posters ( well ...), not his clothes strewn about the furniture, and not his bed.
...Not his body, either, he noticed as he looked down at it. Clad in a t-shirt and boxers, this body was absolutely tiny. He was pretty sure he hadn't been this small since before he'd hit puberty. (This one? It had hit puberty.) Therefore: not his. Definitely not his. It made the situation a little uncomfortable, as he was now faced with the mundane task of completing a morning routine, which was probably going to be a lot less mundane than normal.
Instead of focusing on the strange little body, he let his brain go into a sort of auto-pilot (once he'd found the bathroom, at least), and started thinking about what in the world he was experiencing. Or rather, why. He was pretty sure it wasn't a dream. Not a normal one, at least, because he'd never had a dream this vivid before. He wasn't completely lacking in imagination or anything, but generally his subconscious did not do... this.
It could be a hallucination brought on by someone's powers, he thought. He remembered the person he kept seeing out of the corner of his eye the previous night. Maybe someone was messing with him.
Well, it didn't much matter, he decided. There wasn't anything he could do about it now, except for go along with it. It wouldn't kill him to be someone else for a while, and this 'Izuku' seemed okay. He was short, which took some getting used to, and he was a teenager, which would also take some getting used to. But it had been a long time since he'd felt this energetic. He wasn't tired at all! He felt healthy-- and hungry!
After a quick shower, in which he mostly cleaned himself automatically and tried not to think that he was someone else , Toshinori made his way out into the kitchen of the modest apartment, and helped himself to three different types of sugary breakfast foods.
Maybe this was a dream, but he still wanted to go along with it as smoothly as he could. In order not to mess up the narrative too badly, he figured he ought to listen to Izuku's mother (that was who the woman was, he was sure; well, she could have been an aunt or something, he supposed). To that end, he searched the apartment for any sort of schedule that might tell him where he was expected to be next. There was nothing relevant stuck to the fridge, and no clues on the coffee table, but he did notice a framed piece of paper next to some photos on the living room wall. It was a letter with a golden seal on it-- a UA acceptance letter.
He looked down at himself. He was scrawny, but probably high school aged, so it was definitely possible that this kid was a UA student. The uniform in his bedroom was further evidence, with the little UA emblem stitched onto the front of the coat, so he donned it, gathered what seemed to be his school supplies, checked to make sure he had a door key, and headed out.
Toshinori hadn't lived in this part of town since he'd gone to UA himself, and that had been over twenty years now. But he still recognized the main streets (it didn't look like they'd changed all that much) so he found his way to the school without too much trouble.
While he walked, he found himself wondering what Izuku's quirk was. It was strange, being in someone else's body, because he couldn't figure out how to activate the boy's powers-- especially without knowing what they were. He concentrated the same way he normally did in order to use his own abilities, but nothing happened. One for All definitely wasn't active, at least, and nothing else was happening either. He pulled the flip-phone out of his pocket to fiddle with, thinking maybe it was a touch-activated quirk, but there was nothing. And he couldn't stretch, or shoot any sort of element, or change color, or grow any extra appendages. It felt a lot like being a kid again, before he'd come by his own quirk.
Figuring he could get someone to tell him about it later, he walked on and up the long hill to the UA campus. The place was pretty much the same as ever, and it made Toshinori feel nostalgic. ( More nostalgic, at least.)
Unsure where his class was, he stood around the front gate, vaguely nodding at everyone that passed, until finally a girl approached him with a sunny grin.
“Morning, Deku-kun!” she said, turning as she walked so she could continue talking to him. He took this cue to follow her.
“Good morning,” he replied, giving her his best superhero grin. She blushed a little, but didn't seem too surprised, so Toshinori assumed that meant this Izuku (or did he go by Deku?) was a pretty cheerful kid. He was pretty sure that was the case as he followed the girl (Uraraka-san, according to her tall friend Iida; Ochaco-chan, according to her female friends) to class, where he was greeted by a good handful of students.
His classmates didn't seem to think there was anything really off about him, only giving him curious glances every so often when he spoke-- something about his dialect, maybe? Nothing as strong as an accent; his mother hadn't sounded too different. He didn't know which desk was his, so he sat down next to Uraraka until the seat's owner came around, then leaned on her desk and tried to look casual until the rest of the seats had filled in.
The day passed by without much ado, Toshinori mostly following after Uraraka and Iida, which they seemed to think was perfectly normal. He avoided talking very much, and whenever anyone asked him if he was okay he just responded that he was a little tired; it wasn't remotely true, but it sounded like a good high-schooler excuse, and people always bought it.
But towards the end of the day, he still hadn't figured out the one thing he was most genuinely curious about: what this kid's quirk was supposed to be. About half of the other kids in the class had either used their quirks in some capacity, or had ones that were obvious just by looking at them. (Iida, for example, had exhaust pipes coming out the back of his calves, so he didn't have to utilize his quirk for Toshinori to know it was likely the same super-speed as the hero Ingenium. And while not physically obvious, Uraraka used her anti-gravity ability whenever she needed to pass something to someone or carry more than she was comfortable with.) But many of the students never seemed to have the occasion to use theirs, and nobody looked surprised that 'Izuku' wasn't using his.
Eventually he gave up on wondering and just asked. “What's your opinion of my quirk, Uraraka-san?”
Uraraka looked highly amused. “What, are we doing a role-play? You're so silly, Deku-kun!”
Iida seemed concerned. “Midoriya, are you positive you're feeling alright? You've been acting rather strange today.”
Toshinori tried to play it off with the excuse he'd used earlier. “Yes, I'm alright! Just a little tired!”
“If you're tired enough to forget you don't have a quirk, maybe you should go rest in the nurse's office,” Iida suggested, and Toshinori froze, before forcing himself to laugh.
“Um, no, I was only joking!” he assured his worried friend. “Certainly I know I don't have a quirk.”
Neither Iida nor Uraraka seemed to entirely believe him, but they let it slide, and Toshinori was glad Izuku had such forgiving friends.
While he was shocked to find out his host had somehow gotten into a prestigious hero school without any sort of super power, it was also a relief. Now he could focus on just being a regular teenager and not worrying about if he'd accidentally hurt someone by activating his quirk at a bad time because he didn't know how to control it. And honestly, it was rather a lot like his own childhood, being quirkless. Was that why he was this Izuku now, and not someone else? Whatever had caused him to be in this body, had it had a purpose? The school bell rang, he said goodbye to his friends, and wondered about it the whole way back to the Midoriyas' apartment.
The woman from that morning was home when Toshinori got back (a little late because he got turned around once or twice), and as soon as he saw her he was sure she was Izuku's mother. She was short and green-haired and her face lit up when she saw him.
“Hi sweetie, welcome home,” she cooed as she came forward to give him a hug. He tried not to seem too stiff as he returned it, but her motherly instincts caught on anyway. “What's wrong? Did you have a bad day at school?”
“No, it was a fine day. I'm just tired,” he told her, rehashing the same excuse because it seemed like such a good one. “I'm going to go work on my homework, if that's okay.”
Mrs. Midoriya nodded, giving her son an affectionate smile and holding on to his hand softly. “Of course, dear. You know I'm so proud of how hard you worked to get into that school. But don't overwork yourself either! If you're tired, maybe you should rest until dinner.”
Toshinori nodded and said, “Thank you... mom,” hoping that sounded natural enough. The woman nodded, gave his hair a quick pet, and let him go on his way.
Back in the boy's room, covered in All Might posters and other merchandise, he closed the door and took a deep breath. He still couldn't decide if this was a dream, a hallucination, a vision, or what. Setting his bookbag down on the floor by the desk, he walked over to the dresser and stood in front of the mirror over it.
Izuku... What was he like? Toshinori wondered. A teenager with a caring mother and supportive friends, who was clever and a hard worker, who didn't have a quirk but was on course to becoming a hero anyway. He was short. Small. His hair was thick and a little hard to manage, and if you fed him junk food his stomach didn't try to kill him from the inside out. But what was he like? Was there a he? Or had this character just been created for the purpose of this situation?
Furthermore, he wondered how long he would be stuck here. It wasn't a bad body. (He missed being able to see over peoples' heads, but that was a minor inconvenience.) But it wasn't his, and he didn't really know what to do with it. If this was a dream, then it didn't really matter. If he was here for the long-haul, then he'd have to try his hardest. And if that was the case... He looked around at the walls, heavily featuring him in various heroic poses. If he was stuck here , what was to become of All Might?
Again, there was nothing he could do about it, so he tried not to dwell. Instead he sat down and did Izuku's homework. It was a little different from what he remembered when he was in a school, but he got through it easily enough, and then skimmed through the rest of the notebook, looking at Izuku's handwriting. It was clear, if a little rushed at times, and smaller than his own blocky font. He could cram quite a lot of words on a single page, and often did.
There were a series of other notebooks lined up on the desk as well, and he helped himself to them without feeling too guilty. (After all, there wasn't much point in trying to respect Izuku's privacy if he was going to have to be him for any length of time. Toshinori had to know how best to act the part.)
The books were numbered 1 through 13, and were full of notes and drawings about a variety of heroes. They were very detailed; it looked like Izuku was pretty observant. There were several pages on him (or All Might, at least), and several more doodles and sketches of him here and there. Towards the end of the 13 th book was a sketch of a hero that he was pretty sure he'd never seen before. It didn't have a name or a list of special moves like the others did, but it still struck him as being familiar somehow.
Rather suddenly, he found that he was tired. It felt like it had been creeping up on him and he'd only just noticed it-- or maybe it was because of all the times he'd used it as an excuse that day. And Izuku's mother had suggested he rest, so that was what he did.
It was a little odd crawling into a bed that wasn't his (odder than crawling out of it), especially with the little All Might plushie sitting in the corner by the spare pillow, but it was soft and inviting after such a long, strange day, and it didn't take long for him to fall asleep.