Chapter Text
Izuku Midorya had just turned four years old when his quirk manifested. He had been holding the metal cap of a pen when he suddenly felt his perception of the metal change. Inko Midoriya practically dropped the pot she was holding on her foot when she heard Izuku’s squeal come from her office. She ran into the room to find Izuku staring intently at something in his hand.
“Izuku honey, what the matter, what’s that you have there?” She tentatively asked as she slowly stepped towards her son. He quickly turned around in the chair he was sitting in before shooting out of it so fast that Inko almost thought that her son had some kind of speed quirk.
“Mom, Mom! I think my quirk lets me manipulate metals!” Looking down at the hand Izuku had held out in front of him she saw a bending, twisting and stretching mass of what appeared to be metal.
“That’s great sweety, I’ll schedule us an appointment with a quirk doctor so that we can get it properly registered.” She glanced back down at the writhing material in her son's hand, “While I’m sure you would love to keep experimenting with your quirk but it’s getting late, pack up your things and head to bed.”
“Okay mum.” Izuku replied, sound just a bit sad that he didn’t get to try out his brand new quirk, but still listened to his mother. He turned the metal lump back into a pen cap and began to clean up, closing the science textbook that he had been taking notes on.
Inko noted how Izuku already seemed to have a good control over his quirk unlike most kids who just got theirs. ‘It’s not that surprising, seeing as he’s already taking highschool level classes,’ she mused to herself. She and Hisashi had quickly come to realise that their son was a genius when he started to talk just two month after being born. ‘Hello, I’m Midoriya Izuku,’ had been the first words to come out of his mouth when he had first met Mitsuki and Masaru Bakugo. The event left everyone in shock, except the young Katsuki and Izuku, who had begun to laugh at the looks on the adults' faces.
A few days later and Izuku and Katsuki are sitting together at the Midoriya residence, Izuku sat with a notebook in front of him labeled Hero Analysis For The Future, No. 1, and Katsuki sat next to him watching what Izuku wrote. Izuku and Katsuki were both experimenting with their quirks and Izuku was currently writing about Katsuki’s quirk, ways he could use it and ideas for support items he could use when they became heroes.
“What’s that part you’re writing for?” Katsuki chimed in as he saw Izuku begin to write something new.
“It’s ways that you could use your quirk for things other than just attacking,” he began to sketch a diagram for how Katsuki could use his quirk to achieve a form of flight, “I think you might be able to use it to fly if you got enough practice.”
“I could fly?! That’s awesome!” Katsuki made sure to memorise that diagram that Izuku was drawing so that he could try it out later. Izuku was about to start on another suggestion when the doorbell rang. Inko and Mitsuki could be heard talking to someone, Izuku put down his pencil as he turned to the door in anticipation. The door to the room they were in slid open to reveal Hisahi with a huge grin splitting his face, he stepped into the room spreading his arms.
“How’s my little genius?” He said as he knelt down to catch the blur of green running towards him.
“Papa! Tell me about America!” His radiant green eyes staring up into the amber eyes of his father. Hisashi let out a chuckle as he heard his sons eagerness to hear about his time abroad. He had travelled to America to work with the heros there after a Japanese villain had escaped there. Hisashi was the number 16 ranked pro-hero in Japan, Drakon, the Dragon's Breath hero.
“We can get to that later, I hear you have important news to tell me?” Inko had told him that Izuku had gotten his quirk, but hadn’t given him many more details, which had left him very anxious.
“Yeah! I got my quirk! I can control metals, but I’m not yet sure about everything I can do with it.” Izuku was quite visibly vibrating from excitement as he talked about his quirk, which he proceeded to do for almost two more hours. That night the Midoriya household was full of noise as Izuku talked about quirks, showed off some of the ideas he had for support items for both Hisashi, Katsuki and himself.
Izuku and Katsuki had just begun their second year of primary school, the two of them sat further in the back of the classroom. Katsuki was paying next to no attention to the teacher at the front, he was already fairly smart so he knew that he would do well anyway. Izuku was actually paying no attention at all to the teacher, he was completely absorbed in taking notes from a college level robotics textbook, a neuroscience textbook also sat on the floor next to his desk. Izuku had already graduated from highschool online over the break between their first and second years of school, which most of his teachers from last year had expected after they had gotten used to the fact that Izuku was smarter than most of them. Their current teacher was new, meaning that he didn’t know this, he also didn’t like being ignored in class.
“Midoriya, what are you doing?” Some of the eyes in the room turned to face Izuku, most just began to giggle. Mr. Obara seemed to think that his students were laughing because one of their classmates was going to get in trouble. Not getting a response from the pretty plain looking kid with green messy hair, he tried again. “Midoryia Izuku, what are you doing?” From where he was Mr. Obara could not see that Izuku was reading a college textbook, so he had assumed that he was reading a storybook or something like that. He was about to try and get the kids attention again when the kid next to him spoke up.
“Give it up sensei, once he’s stuck in one of those textbooks there’s no contacting him.” Mr. Obara didn’t like the way Katsuki was behaving in his class and was about to say something when what Katsuki had said clicked.
“Textbook…?” He walked closer and he was able to determine that Izuku was in fact reading from a textbook while furiously taking notes, just reading some of what was in the textbook made his head hurt. A glance at the notes that Izuku was writing at breakneck speeds almost made him faint. ‘Okay, kid’s a genius… I’ll just go back to teaching’ he thought to himself.
As this was happening Izuku had been planning on how to create and apply a cybernetic arm. He had become heavily invested in cybernetics after watching a series of old movies called Star Wars, in which he had seen a number of characters with robotic limbs. This is what led him to thinking about possible problems one would face when attaching robotic limbs to your nervous system.
‘Not only would there be extreme physical pain, which could be countered with normal anaesthesia, actually attaching the nerves and arm would result in an extreme amount of nerve pain, and to my knowledge there is no anaesthesia that can negate nerve pain.’ Izuku sat for a few seconds thinking about possible chemical combinations that might be able to achieve the wanted effect. A smile split across his face as he came to a conclusion, ‘I guess I’ll just create one myself.’
As soon as school ended Izuku almost ran home, he didn’t really have many friends besides Katsuki as his extreme intelligence set him apart from the other students in his class. The other kids didn’t ostracise or bully him, most of them were actually quite interested in the things he would do, but most of them just felt like they didn’t belong talking to someone so far above them.
Two weeks later, Izuku sat with a metal canister on his desk, inside the canister was a light grey liquid that Izuku had named GNA or General Nervous Anaesthesia. The liquid had taken a lot of trial and error to get right, he had tested it on both himself and Katsuki, at first it had knocked them out, which was not what Izuku had been aiming for. Now, the liquid had been perfected, it didn’t knock you out, but stopped both physical and nervous pain without causing any harm to the user. Izuku had kept some of the version that knocked you out, just in case he wanted to use it for hero work.
He read over his notes as his pen spun slowly above his hand. One of the things he found out his quirk could do was telekinetically control metals, making them float and move around, though his current weight limit was that of his pen, a fact that had annoyed him to no end.
Izuku began to look around his small lab for a space to put the canister, the only space he could find was in the corner under his desk. After putting the canister away Izuku began to do some of the light exercises that his father had laid out for him. Despite his nerdy nature, Izuku was on the fitter end of his grade, which had impressed both his teachers and classmates. He tended to keep the fact that his father was a top pro-hero a secret as he knew it would only bring him trouble if his classmates knew.
It was near the end of their mid-year break and Izuku and Katsuki were walking home from Hisashi’s, or more accurately, Drakon’s hero agency The Dragon’s Castle. Even if Hisashi was currently out of the country to do confidential hero business, Inko would often bring the two to the agency while she worked. Izuku knew pretty much everyone who worked at his father's agency, including sidekicks, interns, support staff, even the cleaners, so he was surprised to see someone he didn’t know there today. Inko had said that he was Hisashi’s newest sidekick and that he was an underground hero. It came to a surprise to both of the adults when Izuku almost recognised the man as the new underground hero Eraserhead, who had made his debut at the same time as the much louder and flashier Present Mic and Midnight.
“Hey Izu-kun, wait here, my old man wanted me to buy him some art supplies, I won't be long.” Katsuki then appeared to storm off across the road to the art store that his father frequented.
“Sure thing Kacchan!” Izuku smiled, he knew that Katsuki actually really liked art, but would also threaten anyone who tried to point it out with death, so Izuku knew to keep his mouth shut.
It was a few minutes before Katsuki came back out of the store laden with art supplies, “Come on Iz-” Katsuki was cut off by a near deafening
Boom
Izuku spun around towards the source of the noise, as he looked up he saw a giant man who looked like he was made of stone falling through the building. Debris began to fall towards Izuku, he froze as he watched it fall. HIs mind was yelling at him to run, but all he could do was stare.
“Izuku, Run!” Katsuki’s scream caused Izuku to start moving, but by now, it was too late. The building and giant landed on Izuku and all Katsuki could do was watch as his best friend was crushed. As the sound died down and the dust began to settle, as a crowd began to form around the destruction, Katsuki let loose a scream, a scream that froze everyone where they stood as they realised what it meant. “IZUKU!”
Izuku woke in pain. He couldn’t see anything, he tried to move but he couldn’t, this scared him. The feeling of being trapped was so foreign to him that he couldn’t comprehend it. He felt out with his quirk and found lots of metal around him, but it was a mess and Izuku couldn’t figure out what to do with it. He tried to move his legs, he felt them move a little but something felt wrong. He tried to use his arm to feel around him, but he couldn’t feel his arm. He tried to turn his head, but this resulted in more pain, it felt like there was something pinning his head to the ground. He moved his eyes to where his right arm should be, even with the lack of light he could begin to see the outline of his body, but something was wrong, his legs seemed to end right before where his knees should be, and where the rest of his legs should be there was a large piece of concrete. To his right he saw that where his arm should connect to this body there was instead a heavy steel beam. Izuku soon realised that he couldn’t see the left side of himself very well, as if his left eye wasn’t working. Izuku knew that these were wrong, that this was not how his body was supposed to be, in his fear he cried out to anyone that could help.
“Help” His voice came out raspy, and he coughed a few times, bringing him more pain.
“Over here!” he heard someone call, the voice muffled by the material surrounding him. Izuku realised that the wreckage near him was being moved, he relaxed a little at the thought that he would be safe, but a sudden movement in the wreckage caused his injuries to hurt more, even with the adrenaline coursing through his body. The pain caused him to scream out, before all of a sudden a ray of light hit his eye. Then more light pierced through into the small space that he was in as the rubble above him was removed. Izuku thought that he saw the man he had seen earlier before he closed his eyes from the sudden light that hit them.
“Ah shit, this is bad. Hey this kid needs immediate medical attention!” Izuku felt his body get lifted up as someone picked him up. “Hey kid, it’s gonna be okay, just hold on for me okay.”
“Izuku!” Izuku recognised his name being called out, ‘Kacchan?’ he thought he recognised the voice but couldn’t quite make it out.
Izuku began to feel his conscience fade as his vision blackened, “come on kid, hold on for me, I know you can d-”