Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Summary:

A set of incomplete works I have done for Boku No My Hero Academia

Disclaimer:

I don't own My hero Academia or any of the characters in the series, they are the work of Kohei Horikoshi.

Intro:

When I write a story, I usually start with a question or two and develop it from there. Some of the stories that come from these questions take off and become stories that I can post. An example of that for Boku No My Hero Academia was Shattered Centers, which came from the questions:

But for each question that I turned into a complete story, many more don't reach completion to the point I feel comfortable posting them, although I can spend a great deal of time exploring them before moving on. This Series: An Exploration of Questions, is focused on these explorations…partial stories that I could never quite get ready to post. How would various characters react to learning about Izuku's notebooks? What would happen if Izuku got De-aged? These are just a few questions I started building stories around but left behind, although there are currently fewer here as there is still a lot of material that I think I might still put out, since I am currently writing for this series.

I will be posting my work for many questions I explored related to Boku No My Hero Academia here. Keep in mind that these are incomplete works, so there will obviously be scenes missing, plot holes abound, possible moments where Characters may be Out of Character, (although I will try to remain true to them as best as I can) and other issues that come from incomplete work.

I welcome everyone who is interested to read and see where some of my questions led me. I hope you enjoy them.

Chapter Text

In this original approach to the question, the villains noticed Izuku's hobby first. This was actually written before the last story I showed you. I couldn't quite get it to work the way that I wanted it to.

This was one of my earliest BNHMA pieces. I started writing long before I had caught up to the Anime (Season 3), let alone started on the Manga.

There is a League of Villains encounter and Izuku drops notebook. I never got to make that part of the story. The part below just popped into my head first.

Through a series of bad luck and unfortunate events, book 14 falls into the Villain's hands.

Shigaraki looked at the notebook lying on the ground, covers open and pages fluttering back and forth in the wind, somehow reminding him of an animal breathing. Probably some school notebook one of the UA students had dropped. He was about to dismiss it completely as trash.

Then something caught his eye. One of the sketches looked like…

Quickly, Shigaraki snatched the book up. Oh, the image was of him alright and as he read the words, he felt himself paling. Someone, a member of Hero Course 1-A had analyzed his quirk with an efficiency and brutality that could only be outdone by Sensei himself. And the 'who' was quickly answered in the weakness section. It stated that he needed all five digits for his quirk, which made him two digits from functional quirklessness. This was followed by a statement that while some of the author's nightmares about the time at the mall involved Shigaraki reducing him and several bystanders to dust, there was another set involving said author using his power and holding a bloody finger while its original owner screamed in agony, even though he doubted he could have ever gone through with it in real life (and then he goes into an ongoing moral dilemma about if he had the right to protect his own morals when so many lives were on the line, not even seeming to think about how his was one of them…this speaks of a special kind of madness).

Shigaraki found himself trembling as he recalled Izuku Midoriya lifting his hands while he'd choked him in a four-digit grip. What Shigaraki had seen as complete control suddenly became something else, where his seemingly powerless victim had the element of surprise and could have easily… He felt a shiver run down his spine as he drew his  hands to his chest, careful to keep one finger from making contact and ruining his shirt. All that had saved him was that somehow, despite being threatened and choked, this boy had been caught in a morality debate about whether to defend himself. Shigaraki knew what any sane person would have instantly chosen.

He glanced at the back of the book, looking to confirm what he already knew. Sure enough, clear as day was the name Izuku Midoriya. Well, the kid wouldn't be the only one having that nightmare from now on.

Shigaraki flipped through a few more pages, but his mind wouldn't process anything but their talk in the mall. He'd given Midoriya that piece of information to terrify him. Instead, the boy had processed it and figured out a way to turn it on him. The only reason he didn't follow through was because he didn't want to cause his captor and possible soon-to-be murderer harm?! Seriously, what type of person puts the wellbeing of a tormentor's life above their own survival?

He closed the book and read the cover, "Quirk Analysis for the Future, No 14."

Shigaraki sat to look at the book again. He was ready now. He looked at the harmless-looking cover. After a moment, he flipped to the first page, which had one single line written on it: "All men are not born equal."

These were a set of words that could describe everything wrong in this world, if ever he saw them. Shigaraki wondered who Midoriya had quoted. Clearly, he'd taken the words to heart himself, to place them as the first words in this book. In a way, it seemed not only a statement but a warning, sitting atop a collection of writings about the different quirks.

And then he flipped the page and began his glimpse into the mind of Izuku Midoriya. Quirks, no matter the owner, were lain to bear with a brutal precision. There was information that would be useful to the League both for taking down their enemies and defending themselves. He also had physical and psychological evaluations, notes on fighting style, guesses at everyday life.

Shigaraki stopped reading on his second glance over his own page to grab tape, a pen and notebook of his own. Wrapping tape around the pen and running it in strips across the back of his notebook, he now had an easy 5-point touch resistance for the equipment, via Izuku's suggestion (actually, expectation that Shigaraki's life was already filled with such items). He copied down other ideas Izuku Midoriya had written. After scribbling the note, he squeezed the pen in one hand and grasped the notebook in the other, reveling in the sensation of holding something with all his fingers without it falling apart in his hands. A sensation that was about to become a lot more common, thanks to the notes he was working through.

There were glimpses of a boy far more jaded than he let on. Deep complaints about what was wrong with the society, albeit with much gentler solutions than Shigaraki personally preferred. Izuku, despite being able to contemplate brutal approaches, seemed to prefer nonviolent solutions. He seemed to hold a sad delusion that the world could be fixed, healed rather than seeing that it just needed to be burned to the ground to make way for something else in its ashes.

He also wrote about the League of Villains as a whole, as well as breaking down individuals within it.

Sensei had occasionally stated that knowledge is power, and that sensitivity and secrecy were the main factors behind it. It seemed that little Midoriya agreed with that concept. This book was a compilation of such power. There were even some he considered too powerful to just write out here. Some secrets were coded, ones about his quirk and All Might's, a page with seven figures, some detailed and others nothing but silhouettes, even a section on Sensei. Shigaraki was sure that he was staring at secrets he was linked to but he didn't know. He would have them, whether through cracking the code or getting Midoriya to talk.

His thoughts drew to a halt. Damn it, he'd already decided to go after Midoriya, hadn't he? To take him alive.

This wasn't the side game Shigaraki had thought it would be and Izuku Midoriya was no longer simply a frustrating NPC. What he was remained unclear but the dismissive label of 'annoyance' could no longer be considered a worthy title for him after reading even this incomplete piece of work, the fourteenth part of a series which Shigaraki had no doubt he would find enthralling from start to finish. But why settle for a few leavings when he could snatch up the source?

Shigaraki glanced over in the direction of the spot where they stored Overhaul's serum. He was torn. They currently had only a limited supply. Did he really want to use it?

What it ultimately came down to was, 'did he really want Midoriya so badly?' Because there was no way he'd be able to steal the other boy while he still had his quirk. His choices were clear: suppress the quirk and snatch him up, or kill him before he had the opportunity to grow into an OP Hero Boss that had incredible strength and intelligence.

Shigaraki closed his own tape covered notebook, four fingers pressed to the back cover and his thumb against the front cover, taking in the differing texture of tape and book. He grabbed it with his other hand and held tight and looked across the table at the reason he was able to commit this simple act of touching something with all of his fingers.

Shigaraki had better sure as hell plan out how to contain the kid before going after him. Izuku Midoriya was hardly going to come quietly, even if he lost his quirk. Nor was he going to be easy to hold onto. He was far too clever.

Hours later, after he'd slipped away with his fellows and had time to really read the journal—which was only a third of the way filled—he called upon the rest of the League. As they came together, he looked up and stated, "I think we are going to have to shift priorities. Bakugou is not the only suppressed member of UA Class 1-A, and the other one is going to be harder to catch, harder to win over but astronomically more valuable." He threw the journal on the table and said, "But first, we need to discuss quirks, both ours and the student’s. Get ready for a small glimpse of Class 1-A's strategic Quirk Analyst who is expanding his field into basic support application, fighting style, and psychology. Furthermore, he is a collector of secrets and knowledge." Knowledge, a power Sensei had sometimes stated as being above that of Quirks, with the more secret the information, the more powerful it was. Apparently, young Midoriya shared that belief, along with way too many other things for Shigaraki to feel comfortable. "I am going to read certain excerpts from here that I consider relevant." Because there was too much in here that he didn't want them seeing.

Shigaraki placed two familiar cases on the table and stated, "Midoriya gets to confirm which of these is the temporary quirk suppressor and which is the permanent one and then is going to be put on heavy lockdown."

"Surely he can't be that major."

"Quirklessness isn't going to make Midoriya helpless, it's going to move him from an OP boss to a possible usable character, if properly subdued and won." And boy, did he advertise some points where his views aligned with theirs. He had a solid view of society's problems (once again running parallel with a lot of Sensei's complaints about the government and social system) but a far less violent view of how to deal with them. The kid did not like the idea of inflicting pain, despite clearly being good at coming up with ways to do it.

As he sat there, he pulled out a set of bandages and wrapped his hands in a suitable formation to cover up his index and middle finger with wraps anchored at his wrist. It would do until he could get a hold of one of the hook-around or multiple seamed fabric gloves Izuku had described in his notes. He was also going to have to find scotch tape for arm rests, wallpaper to lay in strips to make a near disintegration-proof wall and lots of patch work quilts to make his life a hell of a lot more comfortable. All equipment the boy had already assumed he had in his life. The kid had a grim, if accurate, view of the hardships that came with his quirk in everyday life. He was also sure that vast plots of information were missing, tucked away in a different edition.

Furthermore, everything he had in code disturbed Shigaraki deeply. Most of the information on Izuku's Quirk and All Might's Quirk, a page dedicated to multiple figures, one of which was drawn a second time on its own, another page with Sensei. Izuku Midoriya needed to be brought in.

Even if they couldn't win him over to their cause, Shigaraki had a feeling he'd be helpful in other manners, as his problem seemed to be that he couldn't stop himself from helping people in trouble.

Chapter Text

Ever since Izuku was little, he'd found quirks amazing and loved analyzing them. One would think that this would be difficult to do, considering that unauthorized quirk use was illegal. The main people using them would be heroes protecting society and the villains breaking the law.

Reality was quite different. People with minor quirks used them with less fear than a kid parking a bike on the sidewalk or a jaywalker crossing the street.

Kids were hardly enforced at all. As a quirkless kid who had often tried to stand in the way of bullies, Izuku saw more of quirks than was probably healthy.

Even if quirk use wasn't everywhere in his day to day life, Izuku always seemed to be at the right place, at the right time for witnessing fights with heroes and villains. Honestly, he'd looked up the statistics and during his childhood, he'd seen more such fights during a week than most people saw in their lifetimes. Which was lucky, considering how much he loved watching quirks in action.

He'd basically learned to read and write because of quirk analysis, starting with writing about the quirks he saw and reading how other quirk analysts wrote to refine his own skills. Although Kacchan's grades had always placed him at the top of the class from a young age, Izuku had managed to outdo him when it came to writing skills alone and he had his practice of quirk analysis to thank for that.

Quirks had kept him going in that decade where everyone had told him that he would never be a hero. He would break down every one he could: descriptions, strengths, weaknesses, the witnessed application and the quirks general utility and implications for the user's everyday life. He'd start with what he observed and come up with questions and possibilities which would often result in hours of research later. He would often draw images of the users of the quirks, preferably both profiles and images of them applying their quirks. With quirks he saw repetitively, he revisited them in his 'Quirk Analysis for My Future' journals. Kacchan's Explosion could probably fill a journal on its own if he were to separate it out from everything else he'd written.

During his year training with All Might, his hobby had to be placed mostly on the backburner, limited to what he could learn about One For All as All Might supervised his training, his first of many notes he would write in code, just in case, and what he witnessed on television and internet footage in the time between homework and bedtime when he had time on the physical recovery days.

But he quickly made up for it as he entered UA. Starting with the entrance exam. So many quirks, so much action.

In terms of his quirk analysis hobby, his time at UA had both positive and negative aspects. On the bright side, he got a lot more writing material. Not only his classmates and teacher's application of their quirks, but new ideas such as analyzing fighting styles and psychological profiles.

It was also one of the few silver linings to the villain attacks, that he would get to record their quirks. He would write not only from his experiences but also used those of classmates as they talked about what they had to go through during their unfortunately numerous encounters.

Heck, Shigaraki himself had given Izuku plenty of material while threatening his life and other mall goers. Although many of his nightmares involved the man succeeding in reducing him and the other people around to dust, he had as many where he used his power to disable the man's quirk in a horrendous manner in his terror. After all, he needed all five fingers to use it. Both scenarios made Izuku nauseous to think about.

On the other hand, he liked learning from hero training exercises. Participating with or watching his classmates compete in using their quirks was always amazing. And well…no one was in much danger, there, except for injuries that Recovery Girl could treat.

Unfortunately, it was hard to find the time to write, as he couldn't do it during class and generally was swamped with homework. He often found himself silently lamenting over what he might have lost in the time between seeing something and actually writing it out.

Still, on some evenings and on the weekends, he'd often spend time looking around town, journal in hand, using his newfound skills and knowledge to better analyze the fights between the heroes and the villains on the streets.

Which made his current situation at the dorms…odd. The students were being kept there and got escorted by teachers to and from their homes when they went home at any time. It was all for their safety and after all he had been through, he knew he was one of those who needed it the most. After all, the current head of the League of Villains had personally informed him that he nursed a special hatred for him. One that would probably only increase if the man knew the story of the quirk he carried and how it tied into his Sensei's problems.

But…

Izuku missed watching quirks outside of school.

He sighed. He had finished his homework and had wandered over to the edge of a training field, hoping to catch Kacchan and Kirishima training. Unfortunately, it looked like they were already done. Ever since their first fight on the second day, Kacchan seemed like he planned his training sessions with the green haired boy's work schedule in mind, planning it so that he saw as little of his training as possible. That didn't change after the fight they had after the licensing exam.

In fact, as he came around, he saw Kacchan glance at the book in his hand. The 15th journal, already half filled, thanks to his experiences here.

Kirishima looked up and waved, "Hey Deku, we're just finishing up here."

Izuku smiled and asked, "How's your hardening time coming along?"

The redhead gave him a double thumbs up. "I've put a good ten seconds on my unbreakable form in the last month and cut five from the rest I need afterward."

"That's great!" Izuku replied, and it was, as every second counted in a fight, making the difference between life and death.

"How about you?" Kacchan asked, and Izuku knew that he was thinking about the declarations they had made after their last fight.

"I'm making progress." Now that he was getting a handle on distance firing with flicks of his fingers thanks to Hatsume's gear, he was exploring different applications for the ability. He already had a weaker imitation of the Howitzer Impact Kacchan had applied to his final attack during the final battle of the UA tournament.

Hatsume also stated that she would make updates to the gloves so that they might handle more of his power in the future. Izuku wondered if he would one day be able to use his finger snap ability to hold aerial maneuvers as well as Kacchan did with his blasts. He could already use it to affect his trajectory in midair.

He'd spent time running laps and watching Ida run too in order to help with his speed. He took note of his form as he did so and asked questions about things he needed to consider when reaching such high speeds. Injuries from putting stress on leg joints and ligaments were no joke and he already had to worry about the shape of his arms. He didn't want to be concerned about his legs too.

Izuku had also taken to finding a quiet spot and summoning his power while standing still. He hoped that maybe just exposing his body to the power for prolonged periods without using it might help it acclimate to higher power levels. It also might help with his control of how much he summoned. He would spend time holding his energy at one level sometimes and others he would purposefully fluctuate between high and low percentages of his energy, letting his body adjust. Still, he didn't trust himself to use more than a quarter of his full power without something giving.

"Good," Kacchan stated, and Izuku could almost swear he had waited a moment specifically to let Izuku think over what he was doing to improve, probably to judge the amount of work he was putting into it by the look across his face. He glanced down at the journal Deku was carrying and said, "I heard Icy Hot might be out here later."

Izuku nodded and asked, "how's the licensing course going?"

"It's fine."

"I'm sure you'll have your license no problem this time," Kirishima stated. "The work you put into your presence, it's so Manly!"

"'Course I'll get it this time. And Icy Hot better, too."

Izuku watched as the other two boys wandered off and sighed. He looked down at his journal despondently. Oh well, he supposed he could read over his old journals again and see if he got any new ideas about old notes while he waited for someone else to show up to train.

Maybe Izuku would get lucky and see people from Class B at work. A part of him found it frustrating that they were almost never allowed to work together.  It wasn't like they couldn't have been brought to the same starting location for the summer training or shared time and space while training for their provisional licensing exams. They weren't exactly competing at those times. For all the importance of teamwork being expressed, they were sure being kept separated. Izuku wasn't even sure about all of their quirks. And that was hardly considering the upperclassmen. Except for a visit from the big three and their appearance at the festival, they might as well not even be here for all of the interaction class 1A had with them.

Izuku had taken up a picnic table with his first seven journals and was reading through his third, making notes of places where he could expand on his information when a shadow fell over his notes. "Deku! How are my latest babies working for you?"

He looked up to see Hatsume, clothes covered in oil and grease and a manic smile on her face and excited eyes, almost in defiance to the bags beneath them that spoke of a lack of sleep.

"Oh, they're excellent, thanks for asking."

"Using them well I hope?"

Izuku nodded and asked, "What are you doing outside the studio?"

"Power Loader insisted I needed to get some fresh air and eat some food even though it means time away from my babies." She lifted a paper bag before pulling a sandwich out of it as she sat down the table at a free space. "He's on Hero duty during the weekends but he checks the security door scanner to make sure I don't spend the whole weekend in there. If I'm not careful, he'll cut my hours for the next week." She sighed. "So, here I am."

She looked down at his notebooks and asked, "What about you? It looks like the planning stage of one of my classes over here."

Izuku smiled and said, "Oh, this is just something I do in my free time. I like to analyze quirks." He started describing what he did for his analysis, looking down at his journal in hope of avoiding the usual weirded-out looks he got when he talked about this stuff.

When he finally lifted his head, rather than the reaction of leaning away and staring from a distance in confusion or fear he was used to, he jumped, startled to find Hatsume was inches from his face, a hungry look in her eye that had nothing to do with her food. "Deku, have I ever told you how amazing you are? Because you are."

"Y-y-you're…alright with this?"

"I'm being trained to make support gear for heroes. In order to do that, I need to think about how my customer's quirk works. Would you mind letting me look at some of your notes for the hero course?"

"Well, if you really want to, I wouldn't mind sharing. I'm just not used to anyone being interested in my writing."

"If your notes are as detailed as I suspect, reading them would be worth getting kicked out of the lab for a whole week for the ideas they're going to generate for my babies."

"I'll have to go get my newer journals, since most of my notes for the class are in them. I'm just updating older ones right now."

"I'll finish up my lunch while you do that. I have a notebook for my ideas that I carry around too."

Two hours later, Izuku was deep in conversation with Hatsume. It turned out that not only could he give her helpful information but that their conversation had opened up a whole new analysis section to add to his notes: Support technology, both that which a quirk user might have at a given moment and ideas for possible future technology.

They had been discussing his classmates' quirk application and he had just described Mina's special move to her.

"And she was trying to make a nozzle with her hands? I've already got an idea for a couple different babies that could make her acid distribution much more effective." She was scribbling in her notebook. "All I have to do is look at a garden hose nozzle and a sprinkler for ideas."

Izuku nodded and made a few notes of his own in a different journal. "Thanks for helping with starting a section for possible classes of equipment to fit with different quirks, I really appreciate it."

"Oh, it's a pleasure. Maybe we can work together in the future. While you're out in the field you'll see the type of trouble heroes are having and you might even come up with some possible solutions and bring them back to me to fine tune. With your help, I'll be able to make even better equipment."

"I'll have to study up on the hero support field a bit more," Izuku [replied, he] replied. He knew some basic tech available and the type of gear that certain heroes preferred to use but he didn't know the finer details. "Don't forget to bring your ideas up with the people before you go and make gear for them."

"Of course. Maybe we should meet up with them together, since I wouldn't have thought of a lot of this without your help. Plus, there's some things that I think you should bring up with them yourself."

Izuku looked at the notes. "I don't know, wouldn't it be rude to sit here and talk about their quirk to them like this? I offered to give Uraraka strategic advice against Kacchan during the tournament and she declined because she wanted to do it herself. I was worried that giving out this kind of information would be offensive."

"I wasn't even thinking of giving out strategic advice against other people. I was thinking that you could tell your classmates about their own quirks." Hatsume flipped to a page he'd written on Kacchan. "I don't know why you chose to be so detailed about Katsuki Bakugou, but you bring up some major points that he should be aware of. You see how you talk about how he probably has natural shock absorbers? Not to mention… the rest of this." For a moment, she pales. Izuku couldn't blame her. [had] He had been starting to update his pages, bringing information from past books and writing it here. He'd decided that it was best to make it all easily available if it applied to [people, he] people he dealt with often. Plus, it forced him to reconsider the information from those previous entries, expanding based on new knowledge he'd gained during his time at UA. Bakugou had always been given extensively detailed entries in his old books.

Izuku knew things that could permanently put the other boy out of commission. It was how he had vented his anger when it had finally sunk in that the other boy had turned on him. For example, if Kacchan was given a cut to the palm of his hand, the explosiveness of sweat caught in the crack could prove so concentrated as to…Deku shivered, feeling as guilty as he had moments after finishing that first entry.

It was a problem that had arisen as he suffered bullying. When he got hurt, angry or scared, he started analyzing the extremes of the quirks. Strengths, power levels, threatening ways it could be applied but, most importantly, weaknesses and how they could be exploited, often his ideas focusing on effective before rolling back to humane. Not that he would ever act on those first ideas. In fact, often, they made him sick to his stomach when he reflected on them later. He made himself focus on the gentler approaches as much as possible, as if to bury those initial ideas.

Of course, those ideas would be the ones a villain might think of as golden opportunities.

"Doesn't Bakugou deserve to know this before some villain figures these things out? Same with the others. What if they get hurt and you could have prevented it by showing them your notes?"

Izuku paled and nodded. He'd never be able to forgive himself.

"I think we should take your notes to my sensei. There's no way that I can make stuff for all of Class 1-A in a timely manner and he might consider this material grounds for a worthwhile project for the support course. Plus, I think it would be good if you could do this for the other hero students as well. Would you mind bringing these over at some point next week to show him?"

"So, does this mean you want to call it a day, or keep going?" Izuku asked, hoping it would be the latter.

"Oh, keep going for sure," Hatsume stated. "I'd much rather discuss this with you, since you seem to think of more than you put on the page. Plus, you keep coming up with a lot of ideas yourself. You probably wouldn't have made a half bad support student if you'd taken up that interest. Your ability to see the functions of quirks and point out strengths and weaknesses, along with your ideas for solutions, all show that."

Izuku smiled at the comment. "Thanks, that means a lot coming from you."

"You just remember me when the Deku Hero Organization gets off the ground. I'll be happy to have Hatsume Industries back you with a discount for the small, small price of doing these breakdowns with me."

Izuku blushed at the comment. He didn't think about the business side of heroics. That Hatsume seemed to automatically assume that he would be successful made him uncomfortable. The idea of owning a hero company…all those people depending on his success. It made him giddy with nervousness.

That nervousness soon faded, as the other girl brought his attention back to his notes. They continued to do so until the sun started to set, discussing quirks and technology to support them. Izuku wished that this had happened on a Saturday because then they could have had a second day to compare notes before having to get back to the normal school schedule. Even though it wasn't watching a fight, Izuku enjoyed expanding his quirk analysis.

Chapter Text

"Izuku, you're here!" Hatsume exclaimed as the reinforced doors to the Support workshop opened. "Come see our babies!"

"Our babies?" Izuku asked, both confused and nervous.

"Of course," she stated as she yanked him through the door. "I wouldn't have thought of them if it wasn't for our talk." She walked him past the tool benches to another part of the room, filled with multiple types of paper, writing utensils and writing implements. There was a pile several inches thick.

"Are those…"

"Yup. First sketches. I'm trying to get as many done as possible. I don't want to risk forgetting any. I got so many ideas from our conversation. Would you like to hear what they are and how they'll work off the quirks you described?"

Without waiting for a response, she started with the drawing she was working on and Izuku listened, fascinated. He found himself talking with her about how it would impact the quirk user and people with similar classes of quirks. This ended up fueling even more ideas for Hatsume. They moved on from one sketch to the next over and over. At some point he pulled out his own journals and opened to the entries related to the people Hatsume's sketches were designed for. Often while they talked, one or both would write a few notes.

That was how they were sometime later when he heard someone clear their throat.  How long it had been, Izuku didn't know. He was having too much fun expanding on the newly-formed support aspect of his quirk notes. He looked up to see Power Loader standing there.

"Oh, hi Mr. Maijima." Hatsume exclaimed happily.

“Good afternoon Hatsume.  Still sketching I see.”

Hatsume nodded happily.

Izuku suddenly felt awkward as he raised his hand awkwardly.

"Midoriya, I would ask what brings a student of the hero course here when we aren't at a point in the semester when suit updates usually occur, but Hatsume's mentioned her conversation with you at least once or twice a day and has been spending every free moment working on initial sketches. And then I come here to find you two putting your heads together over them."

"Is that bad?" Izuku asked, feeling suddenly nervous.

“She doesn’t even remember half her classmates names, let alone those from other courses.”

Hatsume smiled and said, "You're always telling me I need to get out and talk to people more. It turns out that some of Midoriya's interests align with mine." Then she stiffened and said, "Oh, yeah, I was going to ask you to look over his notes, too. He's got some good points for support ideas but there's too much here for me to keep up with by myself."

Izuku could've sworn he saw Power Loader pale at her statement. The boy saw the pro hero glance at the stack on her table. "Hatsume, are all of those ideas from…"

"Yup!" She threw her arm over Izuku's shoulders and pulled him into a one-armed hug. "And he was helping me expand on them just a moment ago. I've got another dozen since he came in! He's got a real gift for quirk analysis and was using it to think about how peoples quirks would interact with my babies."

Izuku felt his face turn red and said, "It's really just a hobby."

"You go show him. I've got more sketches to work on, anyway."

Izuku grabbed his journals off her worktable and she grabbed a fresh sheet and started writing expanded notes, cackling as she went. He knew when he was being dismissed.

As he walked away with Power Loader, the man dejectedly stated, "I'll be kicking her out within three days of her starting to construct that mess."

"Sorry," Izuku said.

"Don't be. I haven't seen her talk with another person like that in the whole time she's been here. I suppose that'll be worth the stress."

Izuku smiled and said, "We have another discussion planned this weekend."

The man nodded. "So, quirk analysis?"

"It's nothing special, really."

Power Loader glanced back over to Hatsume as she placed another sheet on the stack, and pull up another sheet to scribble on, a manic smile on her face. "Somehow, I highly doubt that but if you're uncomfortable showing it—"

"If you really want to look at it…"

"Don't worry about it, kid." The man cleared out a spot on the table.

Izuku placed his Quirk Analysis books down. "I've got a few on you. Although one of them is back in my earlier editions, from a fight I saw you have and then online videos I watched after. But I have the one I made after the end of semester exam." Izuku flipped to the man's page.

Power Loader leaned over the table to look at the notes. As time passed and he didn't look up, Izuku felt himself getting nervous. More so as the man cast him occasional side glances.

Finally, Higari Maijima looked up at Izuku and if he hadn't known any better, he'd  have sworn he saw a mix of fascination and wariness. "May I look at a few more pages?"

"As long as you leave my cyphers alone. There's things that I can't share but I promise that the relevant heroes know what it's about."

The man now had a definite touch of fear in his eye.

He flipped back to the first page, where Izuku always wrote the same set of words, 'All men are not created equal,' and Izuku found himself getting nervous.

Then he started looking at the students. He stopped at Kacchan's entries. "You're quite detailed about Bakugou, Midoriya."

"We have a history. I wouldn't use the more violent techniques, though. I was young and angry when I wrote them." And hurt, betrayed. The realization he'd written into the first page of each journal was finally hitting home after he'd protected that kid and taken a beating from the kids who he had previously called friends. "I'd never act on them though. I'd never hurt someone like that."

Power Loader looked like he was about to say something but saw something in his face and changed his mind. He kept reading on instead.

After a few minutes of flipping through students, teachers and other heroes, he turned to a page with Stain. Part of this entry was written using one of Izuku's cyphers, discussing the details of how Izuku, Shoto and Ida took him down and the events that occurred after. "You write about the villains, too."

Izuku nodded as the man flipped to his analysis of the League of Villains. Most of All for One's Quirk Analysis was in code as well, but since the event was on live TV, Izuku hadn't bothered about hiding related notes, including the quirks he'd heard the man listing off, the quirks he'd displayed for sure on live TV and those Izuku suspected were also there, taking note that there had to be an incredible one (or set) providing skeletal support for the ones he was displaying, otherwise his bones would have been snapped like twigs before he even tried to throw a punch at All Might.

The man continued, scanning through his analysis of Shigaraki. "This is almost as detailed as Bakugou's. Hand maiming seems to be a common theme with you."

"I don't suppose that you heard about what happened at the mall, did you?" That Shigaraki had wrapped a hand around his neck wasn't quite a secret, but it wasn't common knowledge. The police were there before the media and had gotten him out of sight. Recovery Girl was also willing to heal the bruises. No need for any reminders that he League of Villains was out to get them while at Summer Training Camp. Oh well, he supposed the thought was nice.

As he flipped through the villains and Nomu, Izuku recalled that he had drawn one of Stain standing over the flying Nomu's corpse, the heroes off in the distance on the opposite side of the serial killer.

The man shut the book shut. "It's really been a tough year for you, hasn't it Midoriya? You have more experience fighting high level villains than some fully licensed heroes." He smiled and said, "I see what Hatsume was drawn to, though."

Izuku felt like the man was trying to keep him from grabbing his notebooks and bolting. "You're not upset, are you?"

"Not at you. Does Aizawa know about this?"

"All Might's the only teacher who saw any of them."

"I saw the signature."

"Hatsume actually suggested that I show the students I've written anything for what I have on them."

"You are going to hold off on that. I think we're going to have to set up something more official than an impromptu study group…no offense."

The pro hero handed the notebooks back to Izuku with the utmost care. "I know that it's not school hours right now, but I need you to come with me."

"Where are we going?" Izuku asked as he followed the man out the hall.

"To the cafeteria, that's where Aizawa and Eri would be at this time, eating dinner. Then probably to Principal Nezu's office, if he's still in." When Izuku started to look nervous, the man added, "You're not in trouble."

Chapter Text

As Izuku walked into the Cafeteria with Power Loader, Eri smiled and waved to him. Seeing her happy always lifted his mood. He smiled back at her.

Aizawa was looking between him and Power Loader. "What's going on?"

"I found Midoriya and Hatsume having fun comparing notes in the workshop."

Izuku saw a subtle shift in Aizawa's demeanor expressing worry. Hatsume's reputation was well known throughout the school, but she never talked with anyone much longer than it took to generate ideas or test inventions on unwilling guinea pigs. "It's a bit odd but I hardly see why students hanging out would explain why you're here."

"Hatsume insisted I see what Midoriya has been doing. Midoriya allowed it. Have you seen his notebooks?"

"I've caught a few glimpses of him writing in them. It doesn't seem like a bad idea to take notes on the hero courses."

"I think you need to look at what's in them. Midoriya might need some additions to his curriculum if he's going to reach his full potential."

It was weird to see a teacher react this way. All Might had just treated the notes as part of his obsession. He stated that they were a bit on the creepy side in the amount of detail they had. Now Power Loader was dragging him over to his homeroom teacher.

Aizawa acted disinterested but the fact that his eyes hadn't left them spoke of the reality. Izuku placed his notebooks on the table and pushed it across the gap to Aizawa.  As the man began examining it, Izuku went to grab some stew Lunch Rush had left simmering for occasional student dinners before sitting on the other side of Eri from his teacher.

"What's in the notebooks?" Eri asked.

"I like to write about people's quirks." He looked over to see Aizawa enthralled in whatever he was reading from the book.

"Do you have anything on me?" Eri asked.

"Of course, I do. Your quirk's too great not to write about."

"Really?" Eri asked, "Even though…my quirk's so bad?"

Aizawa's head snapped up but before he could say anything, Izuku declared, "Your quirk is not bad. I meant it when I told you it was gentle. It's one of the most wonderful ones I've ever felt and I've had many used on me. There's so many out there but yours? Yours is special. It saved me in a fight, undoing any damage my quirk did to me and if you can control it, you'll be capable of so much more. You have the potential to undo injuries and diseases, treat cancer, correct congenital issues…" He heard Aizawa turning the pages and realized that he must have been looking for Izuku's notes on Eri. Luckily, he had the right book. The teen called out, "Page 45," before returning his attention to Eri.

"But I took away Mirio’s quirk…"

"That was the Percepts, not you. Don't ever blame yourself for that."

Aizawa and Power Loader were talking over Izuku's notebooks at the other end of the table in hushed voices.

"Can you tell me about some of the other quirks you've seen?" Eri asked. 

So Izuku spent the dinner telling Eri about some of the things he'd seen as a kid: hero/villain fights; of a man in an All Might costume (Nice Guy) with a three point gliding quirk who had once brought out a medical kit to patch up his skinned  knees—Aizawa actually rolled his eyes when Izuku started going into detail on his quirk; an elementary school classmate who used her mist powers to make rainbows and many more.

"The world's so full of magic, I can't help but going out to look for it." Magic. It was a little used word these days, but that’s what quirks were, wasn't it? Sure, they could point out genetic triggers but no one could explain where the power came from or how they worked once they activated. Still, no one really thought of quirks like that. And what a pity as in these times, it was everywhere. "I can't help but wonder if there were always other forms of it and we just didn't have access. There are so many stories and legends about things like quirks from the time before they arose."

As he talked, the girl cuddled against Izuku and he wrapped an arm around her. He wasn't afraid of her quirk activating. In fact, he would probably be a little welcoming of it if she accidentally used it. But Aizawa was close by and her horn was much smaller than when they fought Overhaul.

With no one stopping him, Izuku mumbled on and on about anything she'd ask about. What's a rainbow? Does his mom have a quirk? What's his favorite food? Katsudon? What's that? Her questions trailed off as she curled up against him, hands bunched up in his shirt.

He quietly told her stories of some of the gentler uses he'd seen for quirks, many not quite legal.

She listened, head angled so her horn wasn't digging into his side. It was a few inches long. He found himself wondering about it and gently stroked the girl's forehead, brushing against it to find it was warm to the touch.

It brought about several questions at once. He considered some of them as he carried on with memories of old notes.

Was horn a proper term for it or was that just the closest term the doctors could come up with in visible appearance? Was really the source of her power or was it just a secondary expression of Eri's quirk, acting as nothing more than an indicator of how active it was? If it was only the horn, then the cruelty endured have been more centered around its removal, if Overhaul was…harvesting…hormones for his serum. If it was some genetic aspect, the monster could have just settled for some cheek swabs, rather than tearing her body apart. So, this led Izuku to suspect that whatever caused the quirk to activate involved something beyond the molecular level.

What caused the quirk's activity to fluctuate? Mood? Physical Health? Was there some fourth dimensional aspect that humans just weren't capable of detecting? Of the little he had investigated, he had found that despite how they experienced time, it might not actually constant nor linear. Would such things impact the expression of Eri's quirk, as she had to impact the localized flow of time while the rest of the world was left intact? How could it affect certain aspects of time, such as ancestral genetic state or physical biological status but leave others untouched, such as mental capacity? How much temporal breakdown was involved?

"That might be something to bring up with the doctors next time they come around."

Izuku startled, realizing he had started speaking his thoughts aloud at some point. In response to his movement, Eri just curled up tighter. "She's asleep," Izuku realized aloud, wondering when that had happened. He looked up to see both Eraser Head and Power Loader staring at him.

Power Loader stated, "I'd talk to some theoretical physicists and see if there's some technology for time mapping but I'm afraid of Hatsume catching wind and getting an idea that would punch a hole in the fabric of reality."

Aizawa glanced at him. "You're joking right?"

"You'd like to think so, wouldn't you?"

"I'll bring it up with Nezu tomorrow, along with a few other things. I'll take over from here, Maijima. There's a few other things I've been meaning to discuss with young Midoriya for some time. Thanks for bringing this to my attention."

After Power Loader left, Izuku looked down at the sleeping form curled up against him. "I hate how everyone is so scared of her." And of all the terrible things she was put through up to now.

"Well, while what you say about her quirk's potential is true, she's a danger to herself and people around her unless she learns to control it."

Izuku nodded. In that respect, it was very much like his experience with One for All. "I'm sure she'll get a handle on it. You think she'd benefit from looking at some information on time. It could be that she senses it all the time and doesn't even know it's unusual."

"I'll try to bring it up, but I don't really know what to say about it," Aizawa said as he picked her up and they worked together to gently dislodge her from Izuku's shirt, tucking her under in a one armed grip while trying to maintain his pretense of indifference. "Maybe you should make a list of your ideas about the situation." He held out Izuku's notebooks and the boy took them.

"I don't really know much about any of it, either."

Aizawa raised an eyebrow at the comment but remained silent.

They were quiet as they walked back to the girl's room, except for the scratching of Izuku's pencil as he worked his thoughts and questions into the section he'd written on Eri's quirk. He didn't think that his thoughts wouldn't make a difference but he still enjoyed penciling them down. He'd present a copy of his thoughts about Eri's quirk to Aizawa tomorrow.

They walked into a small, multiroomed space and Aizawa walked the girl back to a smaller bedroom bare of any decorations where he tucked the girl in. Izuku decided to find out about some things Eri might like and talk to Momo about some decorations for her, if she didn't mind.

Izuku followed Aizawa out and they sat at a table in the cafeteria again. For a minute they sat in silence. Finally, Aizawa stated, "I watched you and Bakugou fight and heard the conversation you two had with All Might afterward."

Izuku stiffened before asking, "So you know?"

"I wanted to do some digging before I approached either of you about it but yes, I know about One for All."

Izuku huffed a breath, his nervousness making him feel heavy, rather than jittery as it usually did, like any movement would be impeded by some great weights. He knew that Aizawa wouldn't be a danger but still... What did it mean for him to know?

"How many times had you even used it before the entrance exam?"

"All Might transferred it that morning and warned me there'd be a kick back." At the glare Aizawa cast, Izuku quickly added, "I don't think he expected it to be that bad, he said he was able to handle most of its power the first time he used it, as did a friend of his previous wielder. Apparently, I'm a special case…" In more ways than one, he thought, recalling his recent experience being shown the events leading to the creation of One For All, culminating with the first [user, All] user—All for One's younger brother—actually talking to him about the quirk being beyond the point of singularity, and then promised to talk with him again later when he had more control over his power. Despite knowing about the theory, Izuku had been doing some extra research.

"And am I right to assume that the second time was when you threw the softball?"

Izuku nodded. "I had to pass, although it made me work on focusing my power in smaller areas, rather than my whole body, which is how people usually hold together when using it. It's what I learned with Gran Torino during the shadowing before…Hosu happened."

Aizawa looked frustrated but Izuku could tell that it wasn't directed at him. Aizawa fiddled with his scarfs as he said, "If I had known how new you were to your quirk, I would have expelled you and then tried to personally escort you out the front gate, and probably would have found Nezu standing in the way. I'll take it Gran Torino is the teacher you mentioned for All Might."

"So many people know the secret now."

Aizawa snorted. "Midoriya, I'm counting six people and I bet you know a few more. You can't expect a secret to keep if there's more than three people involved and even that may be impossible if one of them is All Might. This information is going to leak somewhere, it's only a matter of time. I don't know where, how or to what extent but it'll happen. It would be logical to accept it and plan with that eventuality in mind."

Izuku looked at his hands. "I don't think anyone would say anything."

"Not on purpose but simply by virtue of the number of people who know, there's no chance of it staying hidden. And if news gets back to the League of Villains, you'll become an even bigger target, since they are so deeply linked to All for One."

Izuku shivered at the thought, recalling how emotional Shigaraki had been toward the man during the fight at Kamino Ward. Yes, he would be moved up from his already terribly high position on Shigaraki's list of priorities, probably with a note of 'more painful' next to his death requirements.

Aizawa sighed. "Along the same lines, Power Loader is right about your Quirk Analysis. I'm going to have you show these to Nezu tomorrow. I'm also going to warn you, it's probably for the best if these are locked away when you aren't writing in them. And most certainly not in the dorms. If you have the other journals, you should probably be ready to collect them to lock away too. Any of these books in the wrong hands could be devastating."

"The spy?" Izuku asked.

"How do you…?"

"Remember what you told me when I asked if All Might was coming to the Summer Camp? Yet the Villains showed up. Someone had to tell them." He felt a tear running down his cheek. "But I keep hoping, maybe it's someone who has a quirk to see these things or some sort of surveillance technology picking it up. I don't want to think that someone would…" He shook his head. "And yet I think about it. Think about who might have motive. It's how I think, first come the darkest ideas and then I claw my way out. It's probably what kept me alive as a quirkless kid pursuing active quirks."

The man gritted his teeth and winced at the statement. Nothing quite unsettled people like dropping the word 'quirkless'. "We're going to talk about that. Even with the few stories you told Eri, you seem to stumble upon an impossible number of people using their quirks. The average person sees two or three incidents in their lifetime."

"That was my week."

"That's my point. I'd bring it up with a quirk analyst, but I think I'm better off suggesting you consider the hypothetical quirks, considering your notebooks because you have a better handle on quirks than most trained experts."

"Everyone said it was stupid when I was younger."

"And who was it who burned that thirteenth book?"

Izuku fell silent but Aizawa made it clear he already pretty much knew the answer. "Bakugou didn't think that book was nothing, he saw it and you as a threat." Aizawa smirked and said, "If All Might hadn't found you, there's a good chance you would have been the first Quirkless transfer to the hero course anyway, coming in side by side with Shinsou. Your notes are that good."

"Before All Might, I thought that if I made it to be a hero, it would probably have been one similar to you. You essentially fight quirkless, your power just levels the playing field against nonmutation type quirks. Sometimes I wonder if there were better people for the power of One for All."

"It certainly hasn't agreed with your body," Aizawa stated. "This last half of a year you've spent adjusting it has wrecked a good portion of your body. You're probably always going to have to think about how you use it to keep yourself together." He sighed and added, "If Eri gains enough control in the next couple of years, it could be in your best interest to have her roll back your biological clock to before your fight with Todoroki." Izuku opened his mouth to object but Aizawa gestured for silence. "You would be set back physically but the long-term benefits would be well worth it. You understand how to control it but your power has increased astronomically since the beginning of the year and your arms are only going to get worse as you grow. I'll personally make sure you get the training to catch up on lost time but if you're going to be leading people onto the front lines, you can't afford to be halfway crippled because of the shove you got at the start line."

Izuku caught a glint in Aizawa's eye and suddenly recalled what he'd said a few minutes ago about how he had ended up misusing his power. "You can't blame yourself. I didn't know—"

"I can blame myself but, trust me, I'm not the only one I'm holding responsible. All Might essentially sent you into this blind. Telling you he'll give you his power without giving you proper warning of the drawbacks. Any of the staff here who knew and went along without so much as any explanation or excuse to the rest of us for your complete inexperience, or that you would become a high-end villain target sooner or later."

"I think the only villain who might know about me is All for One. The League of Villains would have been making much bigger attempts on my life, otherwise."

"Well as long as it's just the centuries old monster who wrecked an entire section of a city, we have nothing to worry about, do we?" Aizawa replied, and if sarcasm could actually drip, there would have been a puddle of it pooling on the floor. The man sighed and said, "You should get back to your dorm. Starting tomorrow, your schedule's probably going to be much busier."

"I'll have that list for Eri together in the morning." Izuku picked up his notebooks but looked down at them and placed them back on the table. "These'll probably be safer here, tonight." The words were painful to say, as was the thought of not having one of them in arm's reach. But with his luck, it would be after finally being forced to see how dangerous they were that his luck would give out and they'd disappear.

Aizawa nodded and said, "I'll take care of them. I won't let anyone look at them without you being present, either."

"I know," Izuku said before he cast one last look at the two notebooks sitting atop the table. "I've just never left them behind before." He finally forced himself to walk down the hallway, away from the room.

Chapter Text

Izuku was in the dorm kitchen Saturday morning, washing the dishes from his breakfast when Kaminari poked his head in. "Hey Midoriya, Mei Hatsume just burst through the doors, saying she's ready to continue some conversation you were having last weekend."

"She actually came here?" Izuku had thought he would have to go to the workshop to speak to her, where he expected it to be just as likely that the girl would be too busy building something as she would be willing to continuing her conversation. That she had come out here was surprising, especially considering what Power Loader had said about her always being so focused on her inventions.

As he entered the lounge area, he found Hatsume sitting on the couch, a tense Uraraka in a nearby chair. and a few other classmates around. The pink haired girl, surprisingly lacking the grime that came from her almost constant time building gadgets, was speaking to the brunette excitedly.  "...And so I was thinking, since his notes seem to suggest you don't just do zero gravity but rather halts the momentum of objects  in relation to the earth when you touch them, some targeting launching and propulsive technology for items you grab and for yourself might be….Oh, hi Midoriya…" She jumped up and rushed over to him, big smile on her face as she leaned in too close for Izuku's comfort and said, "We didn't arrange a time to meet up and talk more about quirk specifics." She grabbed his arm and said, "Come on, we can talk to everyone here like I promised before building anything for them." She pulled him down next to her on the couch, so she was sandwiched between him and Uraraka.

"Hey Uraraka," Izuku greeted awkwardly, "how was your morning?"

"It was good. So, how long have you and Hatsume been hanging out?"

"Oh, umm, she kind of stumbled across me looking at my quirk analysis notes the other day and we got caught up in a talk for a few hours about support technology that would go well with the quirks."

"And we were talking about bringing our ideas up with the students we were discussing, thinking maybe they could give us some better insight before we get started," Hatsume stated.

"I was actually thinking we'd be doing some more one on one discussion first and I'd bring it up with you guys sometime this week and we could do it next weekend," Izuku clarified.

"Well, why wait that long? After all, if we're going to talk to students in every class—"

"Wait, what?"

"You haven't even gotten to look at most of the older student's quirks, so they'll take even longer. So, we'll stick with our age group for now and get to them later—"

"But do you think it's really a good idea to talk to the upperclassmen… I mean, I get class B but it seems like all the classes generally stick to themselves. Wouldn't it be a bit intrusive?"

Hatsume paused, looking so confused that he could have been speaking a different language. "Heroes like support items and would benefit from thinking about what you've got written on them. I was thinking of talking with the teachers, too. I've got this wonderful visor that I'm planning on surprising Mr. Maijima with. It'll automatically upload geological maps, mineral types of local soils and construction blueprints for buildings as well as run scans of his surroundings to give him an idea of how to move underground while avoiding obstacles. I'm still working on the visor so it can withstand the stresses it will be put under while he tunnels and a way to keep track of his location underground. For now, he'll need at least some surface time to download the information, though. I'm thinking of making a similar one to help people with other situations where vision might be obscured, like a waterproof one for aquatic situations. Tsuyu Asui would probably benefit from having one." She focused on the people in the room. "But for now, we can talk to you, and then go see who's in the Class 1-B dorms right now."

Izuku was given time to run upstairs and grab his relevant Quirk Analysis books as Hatsume picked their first subject.

Izuku came back down to see Kaminari sitting down next to Hatsume.

"Behold, a brave volunteer!" Hatsume said.

"I'm happy to help," he said, although Izuku had a feeling it had more to do with being close to a girl with no understanding of personal space than having his quirk dissected. He wasn't Mineta by any stretch but he was pretty bad himself. Some of the annoyed looks from the girls in the room hinted at the same suspicion.

Izuku opened the book to Kaminari's page and sat next to the boy as he asked, "Are you sure you're okay with this?" As it stood, Uraraka and Bakugou were probably the only two people in Class 1-A who had any idea how in depth his notes were. Uraraka was actually watching quietly from her chair.

"Alright, then. First, I'm going to set the book on the table and let you look over what I wrote for you and if there's anything you're uncomfortable discussing here, you can let me know."

"Come on Midoriya, you can't think you have something here that I wouldn't mind…"

Izuku looked away as the other boy's words trailed off, his eyes drawn to countermeasures Izuku discusses in his weaknesses. "I've always broken down quirks as far as I could. A person sensitive to their own electric quirk… it opens up many possibilities for…opponents."

Kaminari took a deep breath before saying, "Well, I guess with them laid out here, I can plan for them. I would have never thought of some of this stuff." He wouldn't want to consider it.

"Don't worry," Hatsume stated happily. "I have and I've got some ideas for babies that will help you. Your quirk should be one of the easiest for me since I have to understand electricity when constructing my babies."

Kaminari read over the rest of the notes Izuku had on him and smiled, looking a little more comfortable. "You really think a lot of it, huh?"

"Why wouldn't I?" Izuku retorted. "Your quirk is amazing. There's so many uses for it, too."

Kaminari paled again. Izuku had mentioned some of them in his book, noting that even if Kaminari had many ways he could apply his quirk both against villains and for rescue efforts. One of the biggest problems in rescue situations was that there was often no power available.

Izuku looked down and bit his lip. Had this been a mistake? Should he not have done this? Had he just alienated one of his classmates?

Then he felt an arm over his shoulder and looked up. "Relax, I know you'd never hurt me. It's just…seeing it there, it's a little… shocking."

Izuku chuckled a little.

"Where did you learn to do this?"

"I always loved watching people use quirks and thinking about how they worked. So, I went out looking for heroes in action and broke them down." Izuku smiled and added, "the moment I saw your quirks," he gestured to everyone present, "I had to add them. They were just too great not to."

"That's so nice, Deku," Uraraka said, her cheeks bright red.

"Why didn't you take these out before?" Kaminari asked.

"I know, right?" Hatsume said, "I could have used these ages ago!"

Izuku felt a few tears slipping out around his smile as he said, "No one was really interested when I was younger."

"What about Bakugou?" Kaminari asked. "You've got to have some stuff on him?"

"Of course, I do." He recalled how the explosive boy had attacked the thing. Izuku had a feeling that he knew that those books were what he'd poured his hero dreams into, so when he'd heard about Izuku applying to UA, he'd targeted it specifically.

He had fallen silent, but that was okay. Hatsume had taken the opportunity to start talking with Kaminari about the ideas she’d mentioned about support tech.

Izuku quietly took notes as Hatsume discussed plans for babies that would work well with his quirk, occasionally asking questions of his own. He noted Kaminari glancing toward the pencil a couple of times. Izuku had a feeling that he would be noticing it whenever the notebooks came out in class or student events from now on.

Within a minute of swapping over to Uraraka, a text went out from Kaminari to Class 1-A, explaining what Izuku and Hatsume were doing and stating that the others needed to get in on this as quickly as possible. Both had important information to share.

By the time they were done with her, five of their classmates had filed in. Sato, Todoroki, Mina, Kirishima and Bakugou.

Hatsume looked at Bakugou and called out, "Hey, how about we do you next?"

"I'm not interested in Deku's stupid notes," Bakugou growled. He looked directly at Izuku and declared, "You should have just kept them to yourself, fucking Deku!"

"Dude," Kirishima stated, "it was you who insisted we needed to come up here and do this."

Todoroki suddenly stiffened from his spot across the room. "You're scared." Izuku could swear he detected a note of awe in the other boy's voice at the statement. But that was ridiculous. Bakugou…scared of him bringing out his Quirk Analysis journal…

"What was that, Half n' Half?! I must have misheard! Because I know you didn't just fucking say what I thought you did!"

Izuku felt his heart stop. He recalled the incident he'd just been remembering a short time ago. Yes, the attack was about destroying his morale. But that may not have been all of it. After all, Izuku's mumbling habits had been with him long before he got here. It had been about a week after Izuku had written down the possibility of Bakugou being able to use his explosions for flight that the boy had gone airborne in his chases. Coincidence? He doubted it.

How much else had the other boy heard. Enough to see Izuku's Quirk Analysis books as a threat? Because they certainly could. It was on Bakugou's notes that he had learned his skills for figuring out brutal weakness breakdowns and retaliations.

"Kacchan…" Izuku called out, a desperate tone creeping into his voice.

"I'm going to my room," the other boy declared. "You better listen to whatever he has to say about you Shitty Hair. The rest of you, too. Otherwise, one day, a villain might use the type of crap he wrote down about you and that'll probably be the end of your hero career. No way I'm going to have mine read where everyone can hear it."

Izuku recognized the message: come tell him later…alone.

After that, some of their other classmates requested they talk about it alone.

Chapter Text

Later, Hatsume pulled Izuku up to Class 1-Bs dorm and he trembled nervously, clutching his notebook in his hands tightly. He was mortified when, instead of ringing the bell, she shoved the doors open and yelled, "Hey, anyone home?" pulling him in as she did so.

In set up, the building looked identical to 1-A Alliance. A group of surprised faces poked up from the living room. A lot more kids this time.

"Hatsume, we can't just charge into other classes dorms like that."

"I did it at 1-A and no one seemed to mind! And you can call me Mei," she exclaimed and threw an arm over his shoulders, "after all, you are my muse, now!"

"It's alright!" Testsu-Testsu called out. "Kirishima sent me a text and told me what you were doing. Said we should get in on this, so I sent a group message out to the rest of the class."

Kendo was standing at the entrance to the common area. "Please, come in and sit down. Our classes really should interact more anyway." She smiled and asked, "So, you've been taking notes on quirks?"

Izuku heard a snort of derision and Kendo shot a glare to a figure just out of sight from the hallway. "Remember what I said about if you can't behave?"

Izuku walked in to see Monoma seated in a comforter. "I remember. But I doubt that there's anything Midoriya could tell you that I couldn't. After all, he can't actually experience your quirks. I'd have been happy to run a quirk analysis session myself."

Even as he felt a wave of nervousness, Izuku couldn't help but feel his mind spark to life. It made sense that Monoma would be good at analyzing quirks. After all, he would have to be, in order to make any effective use of Copy. It would be important to be able to learn how to use someone else's quirk and think up as many field applications, strengths and weaknesses as he could as quickly as possible, otherwise he'd be extremely vulnerable. How quickly he could figure out such things could be the difference between…

The room had gone silent and everyone was staring at him. The subject of his thoughts was shocked. "I was saying my thoughts out loud, wasn't I?" Izuku said, feeling his face heat up again.

"That's alright," Kendo exclaimed, drawing his attention away the blonde, who had foregone his usual intimidating smile and demeanor for fascination.

Mei smiled proudly and said, "You see why I brought him? It's just been a flow of one idea after another, talking to this guy. Izuku might be one of my consultants as well as my first major customer when I open my shop. And I'll bet when he gets older, he'll be perfect for advertising Hatsume Industries gear."

Izuku smiled uncertainly and said, "This is kind of a childhood hobby. I analyze any quirk I think is cool…which is almost every quirk. Even with the class exercises where we faced off against each other in 1-A and the exam at the start of the summer, I only got to see so much, so a lot of what I have is questions and theories, rather than the in depth details that I have on my class. I got a little between participating in the sports festival and watching the recordings later but I was looking forward to learning something during the test of courage at the summer camp but then…well, you know what happened there."

"I'd love to see what you've written about us," Kendo replied.

"Me too." Izuku started as he turned to find himself staring into a pair of intense, now readable blue eyes. At some point while he had been talking, Monoma had quietly moved from the chair to the empty spot on the couch next to Izuku, somehow managing to do it without Izuku noticing.

"Well, only for those who are okay with it. Some of my classmates found me talking about their quirks in front of everyone a little awkward."

"Why would that be?" Kendo asked.

It would be at some point while he was discussing his suspicions of Kendo's quirks limits being determined by arm and wrist strength that he became aware enough of the look on her face to know that he had answered her question. He looked up from his discussion with Kendo and Hatsume to see that their audience were all paying attention.

When he and Hatsume were done talking with Kendo, Izuku turned to Monoma and asked, "Do you want to go next?"

"No, you can do the others first."

As Izuku and Hatsume went on, many kids came and went. Some got bored waiting, while others filed in and out, taking breaks in the kitchen.  Others were too invested to not duck out at all. Izuku and Hatsume were determined to talk whoever wanted to discuss their quirks. Monoma was silently studying them. Kendo was watching Monoma.

After several students, Monoma finally asked, "You're a SmAllMightFan0001 stalker, aren't you?"

Izuku froze and spun to look at Monoma. The other boy was referencing the discussion forums for heroes and quirks. Izuku had poured many hours into them as a child.

And he’d become so popular that some people followed him a little to closely for his comfort.  Apparently others had noticed to.

"Last I checked, I can’t be a stalker if it’s my account."

"D0p1eganger06," Monoma replied, a smile growing on his face.

"No way!"

Kendo looked between them and asked," What are you two talking about?"

"Quirk Discussion Forums," Izuku stated, smiling.

"I've had more than one late night discussing quirks and hero fight analyses with this guy!" Monoma exclaimed excitedly. "I would generally be able to lead conversations about the physical and functional aspects of quirks while he'd take over in strengths, weaknesses and applications."

"You gave me a lot of my ideas for expanding my notebooks," Izuku replied. "Never thought I'd be putting a face to the name." 

"Hey, you haven't seen anything from 2CDKP, have you?" Another person they'd get into deep quirk related discussions with. He was extremely knowledgeable and opinionated about quirk law and the government as well as interested in discussing general quirk related theories. And there was hardly a quirk break down thread that wouldn't eventually have him dropping a few questions. From time to time, he'd also suggest Izuku take on a name that more reflected himself, seeing as "All Might Fans' were a dime a dozen,” which in his defense, was true. But Izuku liked his title.

Over the last couple months before dropping off, he'd gotten even more 'talkative' with Izuku's online persona. They'd exchanged private messages for in depth one on one conversations before but it was taken to new levels as they had discussions related to recent events. Things like the tournament and Hosu had caused a flurry of activity among the forums.

"Not since before we took off for summer camp…" Izuku replied. He'd been terrified the guy would bring up Kamino Ward the next time he came on. He had an uncomfortable way of disconnecting himself from the reality of people in danger to look at the quirks. Of course, Izuku had been guilty of that before seeing it firsthand, so maybe he just hadn't had that exposure to make it real.

Instead, there'd been silence from him. He was worried the man might have gotten caught up in Kamino Ward.  One among the many casualties.

He decided to change the subject.

The two boys launched into an old discussion in front of the other Class 1-B students. Hatsume wished them a good evening, stating that she'd got some sketches to work on.

Chapter Text

The teachers start noticing slight shifts in the fighting styles of the students, kids moving to make the most of their quirks, experiment with new ways of using them and defending their weaknesses.

Power Loader is noticing the strange absences of Hatsume from the shop, followed by massive waves of ideas…so many that she is working minimum hours in the workshop itself. At this point, since he's been insisting that she get out some, he is torn between worrying about what caused the shift in behavior and remind himself not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Besides, once the ideas stop coming so quickly, he knows she'll be back in the workshop with a new fervor. He wasn't looking forward to it.

Word spreads among the students of a kid in class 1 A who was a quirk analyst and suddenly, Izuku finds older students inviting him to watch them spar and give them his opinion on their quirks. This is where the teachers start to catch on that whatever's happening, Izuku's at the center of it. Whenever he is spotted with a group of students, their battle style takes the same subtle shifts seen among the first years.

One day, Izuku comes back to his room to find his older Quirk Analysis books are gone. He has no way of knowing, but he caught the eye of the UA spy.

Izuku looked at the space on his shelf, his mind refusing to process what his eyes were telling him. "Where are they?" Izuku asked as he started looking around the room. Despite knowing the truth deep in his heart, he searched, becoming more and more desperate as his eyes grew blurry with tears.

"Deku, what's wrong?" Izuku spun around to see Uraraka standing there.

"They're gone. My other 13 Quirk Analysis journals. They're all gone!"

"What?"

"I came in and they were gone from the shelf. I looked everywhere; I can't find them."

She rushed in and said, "I'll help you look, again. We'll find them, don't worry."

No, they won't. Someone took them. As soon as the nasty thought popped up, he knew it was true. Someone here, at the school, maybe even in their class, had waltzed in and stolen them.

He tried to crush the thought. There had to be some other explanation. Because the idea of someone he trusted doing something like…like… that, was too much to bear. So, he looked again. Nothing.

Urararaka looked at him, "Deku, are those books like the ones you've been showing us?"

Izuku nodded. "I did them for every hero I could. And some vigilantes, regular civilians, my classmates from elementary and middle school, Kacchan and Mom."

She opened her mouth to say something but was cut off by another voice. "You should have just kept them to yourself."

Because of the quiet and calm tone, she almost didn't recognize the speaker. She looked up to see Bakugou standing in the doorway. His fists were clenched as he said, "But no, you act like you can trust everyone. You of all people know better." He lifted a fist and tiny sparks fizzled there. "I'm a fucking living, breathing reminder of that, Deku. Now there's no telling where they are or what they'll be used for. Not to mention whoever has them is going to know exactly what you're capable of."

Izuku looked up but said nothing, trembling where he sat.

"Stop it!" Uraraka yelled at Bakugou, wrapping her arms around Izuku and rubbing his back.

"No, he's right," Izuku stated and slipped from her embrace. "You know it, too." Neither he nor Bakugou had brought up their childhood relationship in front of their classmates but he'd seen how nervous Uraraka got when she saw him writing in his notebooks.

Izuku opened his backpack and grabbed the two notebooks he'd had with him. All that remained of years of work. The thirteenth even had information on One for All, written in a cypher sure, but they could be decoded. And after Kamino Ward, many people would believe his words about a transferrable quirk. "If we don't tell someone, people could get hurt."

He pulled out his phone and texted All Might: 'Where r u.'

Almost immediately, the phone rang. Izuku picked up. "Midoriya, My boy what…?"

"Thirteen of my Quirk Analysis journals have disappeared from my room."

"Oh, that's horrible, I…"

"I've analyzed heroes…hundreds, descriptions, strengths, weaknesses and…one of them has information on my quirk, it's in a cypher but…" He trailed off.

Silence for a moment. "I'm coming. I'll be there in a few minutes."

Izuku sighed shakily. "I'm sorry, I was showing my classmates information I had on their quirks to help them out and…"

"This isn't your fault, young Midoriya. I'm going to hang up and make a couple more phone calls, I think we need to notify a few other people. You did the right thing, calling me."

All Might brings in Nezu and Detective Tsucachi to talk to Izuku.

"What's Eraser Head doing here?"

Nezu looked up at All Might and said, "He's going to need to know what type of danger his student is in, so he needs to know what exactly is going on."

The man stood in the back.

Izuku pushed his notebooks across the table to Nezu. The teacher opened it and his eyes widened as he set his cup of tea down. "These are well done." He glanced at Aizawa and pushed the other book to him.

Izuku smiled. "Thank you."

The mammal of indiscriminate species gave him a smile from across from him and took a sip from his cup.

He swore he could feel the temperature plummet in the room from the reactions of the other three humans.

Aizawa quickly snatches up the offered book and started looking at it, eyes widening as he went and glancing back at Izuku several times.

"Unfortunately, I suspect that your books won't be coming back. How much do you remember of them?"

"All of them, I have an eidetic memory."

"Would you be willing to write them out for us so that we can…"

"You're not surprised."

"No," Nezu said, "and since you'll figure it out on your own with so many clues and a real reason to think on it, I might as well tell you now. There's a spy in UA, working for the League of Villains."

Izuku felt his heart sink…The idea of his books in Shigaraki's hands…

"We need you to write the journals out, again. It'll probably be best if you start with the most recent and work backward, since I assume you improved over time."

Izuku nodded.

Nezu turned to Aizawa. "Izuku might be absent from the classroom for a few days while he works on this."

Aizawa nodded.

"When he's done, I think we'll need to have his revised schedule ready."

"Revised schedule?" Izuku asked. All Might looked equally surprised.

"Of course. We're supposed to be challenging our students to expand their quirks and skills to be the best they can be. Your current curriculum doesn't account for the talent you demonstrate here." He tapped the books. "I'm afraid we're going to have to replace your free periods with lessons. I also will put out optional weekend assignments where you would overlook recorded class lessons and analyze what you see."

"Really?" Izuku asked, mood lifted slightly at the idea of getting to analyze students in action, albeit not much considering what he'd lost.

Nezu nodded but added, "Unfortunately, I'm going to have to ask you to leave your journals with me from now on. You can take notes in a separate book but I expect them to be copied into your original journals and discarded by the end of the week. If you need them, ask All Might, Aizawa or myself and we'll give you access. They're too dangerous to leave lying around but they're still yours."

"To keep any large amounts of information from getting out."

Nedzu nodded, then said, "Could you step outside while we talk? I'm sure Eri is starting to feel lonely out there right now."

Izuku nodded. He had a lot of information to process. He instinctively reached an inch toward his journals before stopping himself. He looked at them. His last two Quirk Analysis journals.

The rest had been stolen by a traitor. Someone he trusted. To be handed off to the League of Villains. To be used against heroes… to also expose Izuku's deepest darkest thoughts.

As Izuku slipped out of the room, Nezu’s smile vanished. "No one's going to take us seriously until the League act on Izuku's notes."

"And the first time they act on them, it won't be a battle. It'll be a massacre," Aizawa stated. "I saw him pull out those things every single day. I saw how a couple of the other students even got twitchy when he did."

"Surely they can't be that bad," All Might declared. "I mean, they can be creepy to read over but…"

"You knew about this?" Aizawa asked, dumbfounded.

"If you had shown me this, I would have requested him for tutoring during the year you spent training his body for One for All. I could have had an extra year and a half to sharpen that mind," Nezu lamented.

"He had training for it? Then what was that during the entrance exams?" Aizawa asked.

"No one's ever had the amount of trouble he does with it. I knew there'd be recoil damage the first time but I didn't expect him to shatter like glass."

"First time? Seriously?" Aizawa asked, furious. "And how many times did you practice before the first day of class?"

"There was none. That was his second time using the power of One for All." All Might smiled proudly at how Izuku had performed that day.

Chapter Text

Shigaraki looked down at the box that the UA mole had left behind with curiosity as the person departed with utmost haste. He'd been told that within was something that would give them the capacity to bring down hundreds, maybe even thousands of heroes and that there was even more where that came from, if the rest could be obtained.

It also apparently was proof that Bakugou wasn't the only UA student with untapped potential. And the level of excitement seemed to hint that they were that they were talking even greater possibilities.

Shigaraki popped open the lid and saw it was full of tiny pocket notebooks, although he couldn't make out anything more in the dark. He was tempted to just leave the whole box here in annoyance. Notebooks?! Honestly, some stupid hero student's notes were supposed to hold all this power? The very idea seemed ludicrous. Still, the spy had yet to fail them, so he pulled up his hoodie and carried the thing back to the main hideout. After all, this was the first unscheduled meeting, so they must be pretty important.

They’d better be worth it.

The others looked up as he walked in.

"Hey, how'd your surprise meeting go?” Twice asked. “I bet it went great.  It was probably a complete waste of time!"

"I don't know. It depends on what the notebooks in this box are about."

"Notebooks?" Toga asked and a few of the others glanced up.

"Seems that the secret to taking several heroes might be here. I'll be the judge of that." He set the box on the table and pulled out a book at random, careful to keep his pinky away, lest he disintegrate the thing by accident.

It was at least a few years old but seemed well cared for. Scrawled on the cover was 'Hero Analysis For The Future,' an No.6 in the bottom right corner. "What the fuck?" Shigaraki asked, annoyed. It looked like it had been written by a little kid. Was this supposed to be a joke?

Shigaraki flipped open the cover and his annoyance was dampened by the single line of writing placed on the first page. "All men are not created equal." He paused, for the words resonated deeply with him. He recalled how it had been before Sensei had found him, treated less than human. These words had been written by another who understood the unfairness of society.

Recalling what their spy had told him about both a possible new target for turning and of the ability to do some real damage to hero society, Shigaraki turned the page…and found himself carried away by detailed drawings and descriptions of heroes and their quirks. How they functioned, their strengths and weaknesses and their application, full not simply of fanboy praise but in-depth critiques on the application of their powers based on the situation. The writer went beyond what he saw and wrote speculations, too.

The villains in the incidents were not spared this treatment, either. Even members of the average population made it in. This was a quirk analyst of the highest quality. He knew of only one being he'd seen do this better [at it] and that was his Sensei. And usually, he was tight lipped about his observations.

Then he got to pages involving children, all about eight or nine. One would think this would get less interesting. Except here, among the notes, said author often described their quirks in far greater, incredibly brutal detail and included images of the marks their quirk would leave on a potential enemy…or a victim. They also delved into physical and psychological descriptions. They were followed with detailed notes of how to use all of this against them. These books were not just a quirk analysis, they were a venting point. Like when he scratched at his neck to calm the itch. These notes were so detailed that even a quirkless child could have taken these kids down.

And then he turned to a page that really stood out. Katsuki Bakugou. That it was him couldn't be more obvious, despite the fact tha the writer used the name "Kacchan," rather than his full name. The nickname implied some deep relationship between him and the author. The page confirmed that 'Kacchan' was something special, the author's personal top tormentor, with the psychological impacts to boot. Shigaraki could read some of the signs. His abilities and strengths were spoken of with hints of deep admiration. There was pain in the description of different types of effects from explosion, direct blasts for burning vs impact, blinding flashes, fear in the right hook and propulsion blasts for chasing. And the weaknesses: they spoke of fury as he methodically described countermeasures that Shigaraki was looking forward to testing.

Reading it was enough to shake Shigaraki from the content itself long enough to look for a name. And there it was, on the back cover, it was written along the bottom.

Izuku Midoriya.

And unbidden, the familiar thought, 'why is he everywhere?' arose as flashes of their encounters ran through Shigaraki's mind. Izuku Midoriya. The annoyance, the thorn in his side. As he stared, a few more titles were added to the list: the boy flying solidly beneath the radar…the secretly jaded kid…the quirk analytical genius.

"Well, shit!"

"And thus, our illustrious leader returns from his journey into the world of the notebook."

Shigaraki looked up to see the others staring at him.

"Is it everything they promised?" Dabi asked jokingly, only for his smile to fade as he saw Shigaraki's expression.

Shigaraki looked down at the notebook again. "Yes," he whispered. "That and then some."

Shigaraki looked over at the box and, for the first time, had ideas dancing through his mind involving both Izuku Midoriya and Overhaul's serums. After all, when you find out there's a goose laying those golden eggs, you tend to consider taking it, giants be damned.

The principal then sets up some additions to Izuku's curriculum, to heighten skills demonstrated in the journal. He watching training sessions and analyzing quirks he watches (used both for himself and to give the students past and present an analysis of themselves), sessions with Aizawa designed to increase his mental processing speed, lessons with Nedzu... that have the teachers getting nervous.

Izuku also pulls Kacchan aside. Up until then, the other boy had refused to discuss his quirk. Now, Izuku states that all he must do is listen, but he needs to know exactly what Izuku wrote about him. It is devastating. Izuku apologizes at the end of his discussion, not for the viciousness of his analysis, but what it meant about their fights. Izuku had always had to hold back, write off certain options…he couldn't run the risk of permanently crippling the explosive boy.

Meanwhile, The League of Villains have been watching and waiting, looking out for an opportunity to neutralize and snatch up Izuku Midoriya. They manage to catch him alone and dart him with one of the vials of the serum they have.

Izuku only escapes because the League underestimated him without his power.

All Might assures Izuku that once Eri gains control of her powers, they'll be able to get One for All back. That is, if it didn't overcome the effects on its own (being a uniquely transferrable quirk from the first generation might give it an edge).

Izuku's training shifts to better support his analytical skills even more.

When Nedzu is publicly challenged for doing this, Izuku is put through a series of tests…and ends up being the first functionally quirkless student on the hero program. Izuku finds Mirio being brought in to train with him, learning how to fight without a quirk and gain some analytical skills and in return sharing his own experience and ability to read his opponents movements that he gained from working under Sir Nighteye . Eri ends up watching a lot of them and Aizawa is the best teacher for quirkless fighting.

Izuku is also told that he's probably opened the door up for future quirkless heroes and can't help but smile.

Chapter Text

So, my first idea would have started at the beginning of the canon series up to the Sludge Villain attack. The first chapter is mostly Izuku's experience in the first chapter of the Manga from Izuku's POV, including thoughts and emotions. I put in a few things, like memories of playing with Kacchan when younger. This post is so long because I wanted to get past the part that parallels the canon in one go.

"You guys are all third years now. It's time to start thinking seriously about your futures."

Izuku glanced up from the notes he'd been writing to expand the entry had started during the incident he'd witnessed that morning. He was careful not to shift the book itself, which would expose the worst damage of his wobbly, nicked, beaten up desk…an ugly scorch mark that left a blackened, rough surfaced dip in what should have been a smooth desktop. Teachers had long given up on switching out Izuku's desk until it was completely unusable. No point in spending so much money replacing school equipment that would just get messed up like that again. It wasn't like it was that important for a quirkless kid anyway. They'd probably dispose of it once Izuku was gone.

The teacher held up a pile of papers he had on his desk. "I would hand out these future career forms but…"

He was winding up the room and Izuku felt himself drawing his arms and legs in, hunching over his desk, trying to make himself as small as possible without drawing the attention of the rest of the room.

"I assume you all want to be heroes!" The teacher exclaimed, throwing up the forms he held in his hand for dramatic effect as the room broke into an amazing, colorful, and loud show as cheering kids around him joyously displayed their quirks.

If the cause of their celebration had been anything else, Izuku might have found some cautious enjoyment in watching their quirks in action. They weren't focused on messing with him, so it would be relatively safe to take his notes on them. His class really did have some amazing ones: stone skins and spike hands, telekinesis and torch arms, whirlwinds and…well, it was an impressive mix to say the least. Even though there were a couple more lackluster quirks, a good portion of them would be excellent for hero work. Even without any major mutational quirks, it was easy to identify what everyone had when they got like this.

But he didn't feel like taking notes on it now, not when they were discussing the future, something most of them would say Izuku didn't have. But he'd known the teacher wasn't exactly including him when he spoke to the class, even if he planned to be a hero, too.

"Yes, you all have wonderful quirks." Case in point for 'not talking to him.' "But you know that it's against the rules to use them in school."

At that, a couple of the kids chuckled but the class settled down. It was kind of a joke. Despite it being not only against the rules but the law for civilians to use their quirks, you'd never guess it here. As long as the quirks didn't disrupt class…at least not too much… the kids enjoyed full access to them. It seemed like it had always been that way. Even outside of school, it was nothing unusual for Izuku to see people casually use their quirks to bounce across the street like rubber balls or pick up their suitcase using telekinesis.

"Sensei! Don't lump me in with these losers!" The voice that cut through Izuku's thoughts made him flinch. "As if I had anything like their crappy quirks. Heh."

Kacchan. Izuku's first friend. And the guy with the best hero quirk in the whole school. Even now, as he glanced out of the corner of his eye to make sure that, yes, Bakugou wasn't interested in him at all for the moment, his tone summoned old memories. He recalled a time when the two of them were in the woods, pretending to be heroes coming to save the day. Izuku would 'rescue' pinecone and pebble “civilians” by using the front of his shirt like a pouch to carry them to safety while Bakugou held off bush "villains," wielding a stick like a sword.

Now, he was lounging on top of his desk, antagonizing their now angry classmates who were yelling at him. "Shut up! Extras should act like extras."

"Ah Bakugou," the teacher stated, voice full of pride, "you, of course, must be aiming for U.A. high school."

Izuku buried his head in one arm and ran his other through his hair as the other kids started talking about information on UA that he'd learned forward and backward over the years. 

He couldn't help thinking about how angry Kacchan would be when he found out that Izuku had been accepted for the entrance exam, too. Maybe he could be lucky and the other boy wouldn't even find out until it was done.

"Ah, the stupid chatter of extras!" Bakugou exclaimed as he leapt to stand on his desk. "I aced the mock exam! I'm the only one here with the stuff for U.A…" As Bakugou kept going, Izuku tried to tune it out as his anxiety grew…

Until: "Oh." The teacher's voice cut through… Please don't say it… please, please don't… "You're also going for U.A. aren't you, Midoriya?"

With the words, a beat of silence descended upon the room as all heads turned toward him, desks creaking as they repositioned themselves. Some even used their quirks to get a better view. Then everyone started laughing. Well… almost everyone, since Bakugou was glaring over his shoulder and down on Izuku from him from atop his desk.

"Huh!? Midoriya?! No way!"

"Good grades alone can't get you into the hero program!"

"That's not necessarily true! Sure, there's no precedent but…" Izuku honestly wondered if the teacher had done it on purpose, another attempt to discourage him from 'wasting time trying for the impossible.' But he didn't have long to ponder it.

He saw Bakugou turning on the desk and, knowing exactly what was coming, pushed himself back, tipping his chair as Bakugou jumped through the air and slammed his hand down on Izuku's desk.

Bang! Wood chips went flying in all directions, a couple bouncing off Izuku's face.

Apparently, the kid behind him had also known what was about to happen because his momentum pushed desk behind him back as his chair clattered to the floor. If he weren't so used to this type of thing that he threw his hands instinctively behind him, he probably would have smacked his head on the floor. Instead, the palms of his hands absorbed the shock, his wrists aching from the sudden jolt as his palms were covered by dust and scraped with pebbles tracked in by classmates.

"Forget the crappy quirks." Bakugou sneered, "You're totally quirkless. And you think you can rub shoulders with me?"

"Wa…wait, no… Kacchan!" How could Bakugou even think that?

As the other boy came closer, Izuku quickly crab walked backward at an impressive speed, despite how his wrists still ached and his hands stung from the fall a moment ago.

"I wasn't saying I could compete with you! Not at all! I mean it." Izuku would just be lucky to earn a hero license at all. Even if he did, by some miracle, make it to the hero course, there was no way he could measure up to Kacchan. He was so powerful! Izuku had no doubt that he would be one of the biggest, most amazing heroes of their generation, if not the Number One.

As Izuku reached the wall to his back, he arched his back, pulling his knees up protectively as he said, "It's just…been my dream. Since I was little. And well," he peeked up at Bakugou and added, "there's no harm in trying…"

"Try?! Try what?!" Bakugou asked, hands [smoking,] smoking. "The entrance exam? You're taking the entrance exam just to 'try?!'"

At this, their classmates giggled and chuckled at how ridiculous that sounded but for Izuku, trying was all he could do. He knew the odds were stacked against him. Bakugou was smart and powerful. He'd sail through the exam no problem. Izuku was smart, if not as smart as Kacchan but he was also quirkless. There were no guarantees, not unless he wanted to settle for being nothing for the rest of his life, unable to do anything good. And he couldn't do that.

"What can you even do?!" Kacchan added and Izuku had no answer. The class laughed even harder, as if this were the funniest thing they'd ever heard.

After what seemed an eternity but was probably only a few minutes, the teacher asked the kids to settle down and return to their desks. After a moment, Izuku got up and returned to his desk, the earlier marks etched into it joined by a deeper one, with a splintering edge where a chunk of wood had been blown off the edge on the far side.

Izuku looked down at the palms of his hands and saw blood welling out a few minor cuts on his now dirty hands. He brushed off a couple pebbles, digging out one that was lodged in a bloody opening. It would stop bleeding in a couple minutes, he was sure. Certainly, nothing worth going to the nurse's office for.

Out of the corner of his eye, he glanced at Kacchan's back. He'd have to spend the next few months being extra careful. The other boy wouldn't be finished trying to dissuade him from taking the UA exam. Of course, he'd known that was a possibility and he was willing to put up with whatever the other boy threw at him.

After all, Izuku had put up with it for a decade, already. He could handle one more year.

Somehow, Izuku managed to stay dry eyed. Once he was sure Kacchan wasn't going to look back to shoot him another glare, he carefully picked his notebook off the floor beneath his desk, where it had fallen when he had knocked it off during his scramble to avoid the other boy's blast earlier.

Unable to really focus on the class at the moment and knowing the teacher wouldn't pay attention to what he was doing, Izuku pulled out his phone and tracked hero activity for the day. It soothed his nerves to read about these people going out of their way to save the civilians.

Izuku noticed one thing coming up again and again. Later, as the last class of the day finish with the ring of a bell and his classmates chatted as they filed out, excited for the weekend ahead, Izuku smiled as he noted how the incident from this morning was all over the net. Maybe he'd go out later and do some quirk watching this evening to calm his nerves, get lucky and see another hero event…although usually he only saw them once every few days but for now he should get home and get his notes in order.

Izuku was jarred from his thoughts as another hand snatched the book off his desk. He instantly realized his mistake. The moment class let out, he should have been watching. He should have already had everything packed up and been ready to get out. That way he might have been able to slip out with the main group and run home before Kacchan and his posse caught him…give the other space and time to possibly calm down.

Instead, for becoming too focused on his hero analysis and not paying attention, when he lifted his head he was 'rewarded' with the sight of a very pissed off Kacchan, his buddies closing in behind the blond as the teacher quickly filed out of the room with his other classmates, none sparing so much as a glance their way.

"We ain't done here, Deku!"

"What's that, Katsuki?" one of his followers asked.

As if they didn't know full well what it was. Izuku had been struggling with the first couple before he broke off from Kacchan's group completely. His first page on Kacchan was written the night after he'd realized that Kacchan wasn't his friend anymore. He'd regretted it the next day and his thoughts on those words still made him cringe. It stood as proof  of the darkest place his mind ever went.

"'For my future?' Seriously? This guy, Midoriya," one of his 'extras' said.

"C-come on. Give it back!" Kacchan knew just how much that book and its predecessors meant to him. But he knew that Kacchan wasn't just going to give it back. That meant he was extremely angry, this time.

Instead of drawing out his begging before finally tossing it across the room for Izuku to chase after, Kacchan instead slammed an exploding fist into it, startling and horrifying the green haired boy.

"Why?"

Kacchan huffed and walked over to the window, stating, "The best heroes out there, well…they showed signs of greatness even as students." He punctuated the sentence by chucking the still smoking notebook carelessly out the window as Izuku watched on in a mix of terror and misery. The blond returned his attention to the quirkless boy. "I'll be the first and ONLY hero from this crappy public middle school! The first to win the honor of becoming a student at U.A. high. Guess I'm a perfectionist."

"So vain."

"In other words," Bakugou stated, placing a hand on Izuku's trembling shoulder smoke rose from it, "don't you dare get into UA, nerd." [Izuku] Izuku's shoulder stung as tiny explosions crackled against his shirt. The burn wouldn't be as bad as some of the ones from when he was younger, a few of which even left scars. But blows like that left a lot more evidence…this one would probably be minor enough to write off as a rash.

As if Izuku would ever tell anyone. He'd never risk Kacchan's future by getting something like that put on his record.

Still, even as Izuku trembled, he could tell from Kacchan's smile that he was ENJOYING this, terrorizing him, making him break down. It made him sick. He hoped the UA staff would be able to change that part of him. Izuku had taken so many beatings pulling Kacchan's attention away from other kids…and just being there.

Then Bakugou walked away, leaving Izuku standing there to stew in his misery.

"Jeeze…" one of his followers said. "Typical. C'mon, say something…"

"He can't say anything. He's so lame, even as a third year, he still can't face reality."

Bakugou spoke up again, "Oh, you wanna be a hero so bad, I've got a suggestion for you. If you think you'll have a quirk in your next life…go take a swan dive off the roof!"

Izuku spun around, his anger welling up in him. Those words burned far more and far deeper than the hand on his shoulder had. What gave Kacchan the right to treat him like that. WHY would he say something like that. He glared at the other boy.

"Yeah?" Kacchan asked, raising his fist half clenched fist and crackling with tiny sparks within. "What?"

Nothing…and they both knew it.

Izuku never would lift a hand against Kacchan, even if he wasn't terrified of getting beat to a pulp. He wouldn't be able to bring himself to start a fight, to do any real damage like Kacchan and his group had done to him. To act on notes in books like the one Kacchan had just tossed. So, he stood there, trembling.

After Kacchan and his buddies left, Izuku walked over to the window, looking out to see that his notebook had landed in the Koi Pond. He picked up his school supplies and made his way down to the pond. "Idiot, if I'd really jumped, you'd be charged with bullying me into suicide! Think before you speak!"

Sadly, it was hardly the first time he'd been baited. It probably wouldn't be the last either. But that didn't make it hurt any less, especially coming from Kacchan.

As he looked down at the book, he shooed away the fish before pulling it out. He'd be spending his evening blow drying the pages and might even have to get a new book for the weekend.

He felt the tears well up in his eyes. Would it be too much to ask for just one person to be supportive of his dreams. His mom loved and cared about him, which was enough to be thankful for but he knew that even she didn't believe he could ever be a hero. He remembered that night after he'd gotten his quirkless diagnosis, as All Might's debut played on the computer again. His mom's words as she pulled him in a hug crying, "I'm sorry, Izuku. I'm sorry."

He decided to take an indirect route home. Walking was always good for clearing his head and cheering him up. Watching people made him feel better, too. So, he took a winding path through the park. He walked beneath an underpass without a second thought. Instead, he was remembering how it had been those words that had given him the final push. That he refused to care what anyone else said. He would keep his chin up and keep moving forward.

Suddenly, he heard a squelching, gurgling sound behind him and glanced over his shoulder.

There, forcing its way out around a drain hole cover was a sludge villain, panting heavily. It looked at him and said, "A medium sized body to hide in."

Izuku spun to flee but the villain plopped forward and splashed on top of and around him, chilling him as it wrapped around him and instantly seeped through his clothes. Before he could scream, the viscous, gritty fluid had covered his mouth and started to leak through, forcing his mouth to open as it also began to force its way into it and his nose, the cold, bitter, gritty texture pressing in against the walls of his throat as his nose burned from being filled, like the world's worst sinus infection.

The villain warped his amorphous form so that Izuku was looking into a mad eye. "Don't worry. I'm just hijacking your body. Calm down." God, he couldn't breathe but he could feel it filling his stomach first, so cold and so solid. His body tried to eject the invading material using the gag reflex.  If it had been possible, he had no doubt he'd be throwing up right now.  Instead, all he felt was his body seizing as his stomach muscles and diaphragm convulsed, fighting in vain to reject the foulness that was flooding in. "It'll only hurt for about 45 seconds…then it'll all be over." As the villain continued to ooze down his throat, he kept talking, "I'm saved, you're a real hero."

Never did Izuku imagine those words could sting so much.  He kicked his feet, hoping to dislodge himself but his feet scraped uselessly, unable to get enough traction to do anything for him.

The villain meanwhile, continued to monologue, "I never thought he'd show up in this town."

Izuku tried to dig at the sludge around his mouth desperate to get a gulp of air as the world around him dimmed but his hands just sank right through the freezing gunk, accomplishing nothing. In fact, more of the villain's sludge flooded around his face.

"No point in trying that. I'm fluid you see!"

As if Izuku couldn't feel that for himself, enveloped and…full…as he was of the madman's muck. And try as he might, he couldn't keep up his struggles. He couldn't breathe and he felt so weak. He was dying.

He watched as his notebook fell to the ground, where he would probably never pick it up again.

Wouldn't anyone help him?

And suddenly, a voice, one he knew from watching footage in endless streams over and over again, called out, "Fear not kid," and there, stepping out of the sewer grate, was All Might himself…or maybe Izuku was just hallucinating from the lack of oxygen. "For I am here."

All Might stepped forward, "Texas SMASH." And with his fist came a burst of air that blew the sludge villain off him. The last thing he saw as he blacked out was All Might's smile.

Chapter Text

"Hey," a voice said as a hand slapped Izuku's face lightly but repetitively. "Hey."

Izuku opened his eyes to find himself staring up into a pair of glowing blue ones.

"Thank goodness." All Might was standing over him.

All Might was standing over him!

Izuku opened his mouth to exclaim his shock but instead, his stomach chose that moment to do what it had been trying to before he blacked out. He threw up, right there, a mix of sludge and bile all over All Might's shoes as his body began to spasm and tremble…

Did…did he just throw up on the Symbol of Peace's boots? No…he wasn't even in his costume. Those were probably his regular shoes. Izuku felt a wave of horror, even as he kept retching, his body shaking as he leaned over. He felt a huge hand gently patting his back as he gasped for air. His nose was so clogged that he could only breathe through his mouth.

"Better?"

No, Izuku was absolutely mortified. All Might, his idol, had just showed up and saved his life and what did he do? He hurled on him. Could this get any worse? Izuku looked down at the sludgy pool and got his answer.

"It's moving," Izuku cried hoarsely and nasally as he jumped back or tried to. More like he fell away, back into a sitting position.

It tried to crawl up All Might's leg toward…one of two large soda bottles that held the rest of the sludge villain.

"Oh no you don't." All Might swung his hand hard enough to raise a gust of wind, smaller than last time but large enough to send the blob airborne. Then in the blink of an eye, he'd opened a bottle, scooped up the airborne sludge and recapped it. He then looked back down at the green haired boy. "Are you alright?"

"Don't know," Izuku rasped out, breathing heavily. "Dizzy. Throat hurts. Stomach too." And he took another breath through his mouth. Oh…OH! "I think some of him's still up my nose." And who knows where else, he thought as tears failed to prick at his eyes…that monster was probably all up in his sinuses!

He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to see a more forced smile than before. "It's going to be alright. I'll get you to the hospital."

Izuku, in his dazed state, expected to see All Might pull out a phone. Instead, he squeaked, startled, as All Might picked him up and leapt up into the air.

Toshinori should have run the kid straight to the hospital once he saw he was breathing. He didn't even want to think about what that sludge would do in the poor boy's system even if it wasn't moving.

On the topic of physical conditions, Toshinori was also pushing his body to its limits even as he leapt through the air, carrying the small boy in his arms. The young teen was clinging tightly to his shirt, hands and face curled instinctively into his chest to shield it from the harsh gust pressing against them because of the high speed at which they were moving over the city.

Toshinori coughed through clenched teeth and a familiar coppery taste filled his mouth, feeling a couple droplets from the corner of his mouth dampen his cheek slightly as it streaked across it before most of it was whisked away by the wind.

The man silently cursed. There was no way that he was going to get the hospital staff to take the boy and get out before his form gave out. Heck, he doubted that he'd make it to the lobby before his form collapsed. He could just picture what would happen if All Might transformed into Yagi Toshinori as he went through the front doors.

Luckily, they had landed closer to the ambulance entrance anyway. He had mixed feelings about how no one was there when he ducked into the space that resembled a parking garage.

As he ducked in, out of sight of the main street and into the emergency vehicle bay, he felt steam rising from his body. "Damn it all…" he cursed in English; there was no stopping it now, though. "Hold on," he told the boy he was repositioning in his arms so he wouldn't drop hm and felt the hands release his shirt to instead wrap around his shoulders.

He braced as he felt the majority of his strength disappear, drained away with the mist that rose from his body. He could feel his muscles shrink and tighten as the boy in his arms seemed to double, then triple in weight to his weakening arms…luckily the kid didn't weigh all that much, small as he was.

The boy almost lost his grip as he startled at the sight of what remained. "All Might?" His stuffed-up voice rang with disbelief and fear. From the look of horror on his face, Toshinori had the feeling that if the kid were in better condition, he'd be freaking out about now.

Toshinori clenched his jaw shut, afraid that if he tried to answer aloud at that moment, he'd cough up a spray of blood on the already traumatized boy. As if he hadn't been through enough. Even so, the man felt a warm, bubbling trickle up his throat and filling his mouth, bringing an all too familiar metallic taste with it. He swallowed to keep it from dripping before finally trusting himself enough to open his mouth to say, "Fraid so. I'll explain later. Right now, we need to get you medical attention."

"A-are you alright? C-carrying me l-l-like this."

It was jarring, to see concern in the boy's eyes, like if Toshinori gave him the word, the kid might try to not only stand but carry him. It was a reaction he saw in few people. It was odd to see it from a civilian who'd just been through a villain attack and needed medical attention. It was a complete role reversal from what he was used to.

Warmed by the concern, he gave a smile that was far more real than his public one and said, "I may not look like much in this form, especially these days, but it still takes a great deal of strength to support my quirk." He closed his mouth and cleared his throat as he kept walking forward. "I could probably carry you a couple miles like this, no problem." His doctors would probably have a fit if he did something like that, though.

The kid seemed satisfied with the answer and just settled into position so as not to throw off Toshinori's balance.

A few more steps and they'd made it to the doorway. As they made their way through the doors, one of the staff rushed up to him and said, "Sir, you can't come in here, it's emergencies on…"

"I'm All Might's secretary. This kid was attacked by a villain made of sludge and needs immediate care. The villain may have left behind parts of himself within the boy that seem to have maintained mobility, despite their owner being unconscious. The child needs immediate attention and the police should be contacted so he can receive attention from a hero experienced in this type of work and so that we can completely subdue the villain." He nodded to the bottles on his waist. "The moment my hands are free, I'll show you."

She quickly led them to a gurney that they set the boy on and he gave her his card.

She looked at the card and then said, "We'll see to him right away, Mr. Yagi, sir." She pulled out a pager.

As she did so, he could feel a pair of eyes and looked toward the boy, who was watching in silent fascination. As the woman turned away, the kid sat up, despite looking like the motion took a colossal effort of balance and will power. He looked Toshinori dead in the eye, serious as can be and made a lip zipping motion.

Toshinori smiled gratefully and mouthed a 'thank you.'

He nodded before returning to resting position.

Then, seconds later, they were surrounded by medical staff. Bombarded with questions for him and Midoriya. Of course, it would be as they were doing this that Toshinori coughed, giving everyone present a scare, child included. Before he could get his reassurances out, the boy was already carted off. The kid shot him one last worried look before the doors closed, blocking him from view.

Version 2 from landing in the underground receiving area

As they landed in front of the emergency vehicle entrance, mist suddenly surrounded them. This time, he knew he heard All Might curse as he felt the muscles holding him shrink.

Izuku watched as the face of the hero he'd recognize anywhere morphed into a an unfamiliar as mist rose from vanishing muscles to leave Izuku to be held by a form of mostly skin and bone. Feeling the grip on him slipping slightly, Izuku brought his own feet down and stood up…only to lean heavily into the man again as he was hit by a wave of vertigo. Th e suddenly thin arms helped him stay upright.

But as he looked up, he still recognized the eyes he'd awoken to earlier.

"All Might?" Izuku asked fearfully.

The man coughed into his free hand, blood spattering on it. "Fraid so, kid. I'll explain later. Right now, we need to get you medical attention."

As they made their way through the doors, one of the staff rushed up to him and said, “sir, you can't come in here, it's emergencies on…"

The hero pulled out a card with his free hand, "I'm All Might's secretary. This kid was attacked by a sentient sludge villain and needs immediate care. The villain may still be actively hiding parts of himself within the boy that he can still control. He needs immediate attention and the police should be contacted so he can receive attention from a hero experienced in this type of work and so that we can completely subdue the villain." He gestured to the bottles on his waist.

She looked at the card and then said, "Yes Mr. Yagi, sir, come right this way."

Yagi. All Might's surname was Yagi. After a moment, realizing just how vulnerable everything that he'd witnessed in the last few minutes could leave his hero, despite the ache in his throat, Izuku whispered, "I won't tell." He didn't want All Might to worry.

"Thank you.  We'll talk later when this is all over."

Then, realizing more, Izuku whispered, "Garage footage."

All Might stiffened and gave him a quiet nod. "Thanks. I'll take care of it."

Then the lady returned with more staff, wheeling a bed in. "We'll take the boy to get him examined right away. We're reaching out to a colleague in a nearby clinic who has a quirk that might help and has gained special authorization to use it.

"We also have a temporary holding area for amorphous patients. We'll transfer the villain there before he regains consciousness and take a sample from him to see what we're dealing with. The police can take him once they get here."

"Does he have a name?"

Izuku interrupted, "Midoriya, my name's Izuku Midoriya."

"Midoriya, do you have anyone we can contact?"

Izuku gave his mother's name and home number.

"Do you have a quirk that might interfere with medical procedures?"

He sighed and shook his head.

"Allergies?"

As they continued asking him questions, the staff wheeled him into the hallway behind the doors and he caught one last glimpse before the staff left Mr. Yagi alone in the back room, assuring the staff that his own condition was perfectly normal.

It was a minute later when they presented Izuku with a hospital gown that he realized another problem he was about to have. He couldn't take off his shirt…if he did, they would see the burn marks. The one on his shoulder, while minor, was fresh!

And if they connected it back to Kacchan, that could be the end of his hero career before it started.

Once Toshinori had convinced the staff that he was alright, they led him to the now open gate for wait for the police. He texted Naosama to notify him about what had happened and the cleanup that would need to happen.

Toshinori was glad that the boy, Midoriya, had said something about the garage footage. Otherwise, he might have considered the situation surrounding his identity wrapped up once Midoriya promised not to say anything. He seemed like a good kid who understood the importance of his secret.

Still, there was now a young civilian who knew.

The police soon came in, one of the vehicles with a tank specially designed for villains with amorphous natures. They would probably have a special container in case they…extracted? Captured? Well, if any more of the sludge was sentient when removed from Midoriya's system.

Toshinori should have brought Midoriya straight here once he'd confirmed that the boy was breathing. He'd just assumed that the villain had just been on top of him, not… He'd thought the villain had been taking a hostage, instead of…he'd been pouring himself into the kid.

Suddenly, Yagi wondered if there were any cases around involving dead bodies with a sludge residue inside them. He felt himself tremble, not with worry but anger this time.

It was at that point that Naosama pulled up. He rolled down his window and asked, "Are you okay?"

"I think the sludge villain I just caught might have a body count. You have any unsolved cases who had bodies with sludge residue?"

"Actually, yes, quite a few, and they aren't pretty."

Toshinori clenched his fists. "Damn it," he cursed in English.

Chapter Text

Inko gets called by the Hospital.

Inko Midoriya left the house to rush to the hospital as soon as she ended the call. The sun was setting as she left the apartment and, by the time she was at the hospital, it had been dark for the better part of half an hour.

While she sat in a waiting room, a couple officers approached her. "Mrs. Midoriya?"

"Yes. Is Izuku alright?"

"He is fine, for the moment. Can we go somewhere private? We have a few questions for you."

Confused, she followed them to a private room.

"Your son is stable but during his examination, we found several marks consistent with frequent quirk assaults. Most of them are old but some are very new. He looks like he got a second degree burn in the last twelve hours…"

Inko's fists clenched. "That would be from his classmates. I've tried talking to the school and getting him [transferred but,] transferred, but he's quirkless. The school doesn't care for his safety and other middle schools don't want him."

The men glanced at each other. "Sadly, that explains a lot. It's not uncommon to see quirkless people going through things like this. We'll investigate the school. If we find signs of negligence, we'll help see to it that the boy is transferred."

While Inko is in the waiting room, she meets Toshinori Yagi, who states that he was the one who brought the boy in and just wanted to make sure he would be alright. She thanks him for saving her son.

All Might can't help but think of how much the woman reminds him of Nana Shimura.

Eventually, the doctors come out to tell them Izuku will be just fine but only family can visit at the moment. They want to keep him for monitoring for a few days before sending him home.

Toshinori states that he'll drop in the next day but he's glad everything's alright.

After walking around town for a while, Bakugou had decided to walk through the park, his cronies following behind like they always did. The sun was just above the horizon and as Bakugou approached the underpass where, unbeknownst to him, Midoriya had almost died, the sunlight shown through from where it sat on the horizon almost blinding as he wondered through.

It was only after he'd passed through that he noticed the small notebook with the burnt cover on the ground on the other side, causing Bakugou to do a double take.

One of the guys, fingers, asked, "Isn't that…"

"Yeah, it is," Bakugou replied. There was something eerie about seeing it lying there. Why would Deku pick it up from where Bakugou had thrown it into the pond and then just leave it lying on the side of the path?

"You don't think he came out here to…"

"Deku's too stubborn to actually try to kill himself," Bakugou retorted.

Still, he couldn't help the thoughts creeping in. And how it would make more of a statement to do it out here in the park. They had spent a lot of time around here. There was the children's area with the swing set just a few hundred meters back and the creek wasn't far from here, either... Fuck! Surely the dumbass wouldn't do that and in such an obvious spot they were associated with. Still…

He'd never been able to read the bastard. Bakugou had pushed harder today than ever…would Midoriya push back as a final statement?

He picked up the book. "We'd better look around. He might ruin my reputation if he kills himself, here." And that was all he cared about. Deku was a waste of space. Bakugou didn't care what happened to him.

He swore he didn't…not at all.

Still, they split up and looked around but found nothing. In the end, Bakugou had wasted his time he could have been spending doing better things and worried - for his hero career, only of course – all for nothing.

Come Monday, he was going to beat that nerd to a pulp.

Bakugou glanced down at the book and thought maybe he could find some fuel for his rage or for mocking the other boy in there. Maybe find out just how much the little bastard looked down on him. He squeezed the damp burnt notebook in his hand.

I was playing around with when Izuku and his mother would be reunited.  I had one version set up for the night of the incident and was playing with another for the next day.  Thus the contradictory nature of this scene to me above.

It wasn't until late the next morning that Izuku was allowed to have visitors. His system was cleared out completely of the sludge villain but both the attack but the treatment, a small blood sample from a doctor in a nearby clinic with an anti-toxin quirk, had used up his own body's reserves for the energy it required to work. He'd be kept overnight for further monitoring before being sent home, where he would be expected to rest the remainder of the week before going back to school.

Hopefully, Kacchan wouldn't get in trouble while he was away.

Izuku looked at his shoulders poking out of the covers, seeing the edges of a couple starburst shaped scars. There were also handprint shaped ones from the same source. He had other marks, scrapes and lacerations that he'd learned to hide from his mother so that she wouldn't worry about him. Now, the doctors had seen them.

On the television, there was live footage of All Might dealing with a situation across town, about five minutes away by the speed he flew. He wondered if the man was hanging close by because of him. He didn't want to distract the hero.

Izuku's mom came in, crying,

All Might momentarily forgotten, Izuku felt his own tears well up as he smiled, happy to see her. He opened his arms and they embraced.

Bakugou looked at the notebook he'd thrown on his computer desk when he came in. What had looked like a sad sodden scrap of trash now looked terrifying.

This was Midoriya's personal book full of notes he didn't expect anyone to look at. If he opened those pages, he knew he'd be crossing a line and things would change. He didn't know how, just that they would.

Then he frowned. He was being a fucking moron. It was just a notebook. In a fit of rage, he opened it, determined to look through every fucking page, just so he could mock stupid Deku about it.

'All Men Are Not Created Equal.' Midoriya had written that one tiny line on the first page, writing it so it fit in a row across the page, like it was some kind of warning or something. Bakugou snorted and flipped the page. A hand sketched map of their area with a set of lines and circles, thickest between school and home. Escape routes and hiding spots, Bakugou realized as he thought about where the paths and circles were…well, not anymore.

At the bottom of the page was a note, 'Kacchan won't be happy when he finds out I'm applying for UA. I need to be ready. For this, I've looked at the area and checked over my past notes to make an extended, in depth analysis for this year. I have to.' There was something foreboding in the shaky scrawl, different from the neater notes on the hand drawn map above.

For a moment, he hesitated, his hand on the corner of the page. Then, pissed at himself, Bakugou flipped it, unsticking it from the next one. And there, on the wet page, was a crappy drawing of him, surrounded by notes, many of which were smudged by the water damage.

Deku was still a terrible artist but the drawing served well enough for utilitarian purposes.

He read the initial description of his quirk, not at all surprised that Deku had figured out that the secret was his nitroglycerin sweat. Years ago, according to the fact that the information was sourced from notebook two. A spark from his palms triggered the explosion. The cut and dried super simple mechanics were easy enough to describe in a few lines. So, what the fuck did Deku need to write pages worth about?

Bakugou kept reading to find out. At points, he had to go slowly, figuring out what the half legible smudges were.

First were the quirk's applications. Midoriya even had drawings of some of the effects of the attacks…including burn and bruise patterns which left Bakugou feeling somewhat uneasy to see. The whole time, words like 'incredible flashes' and 'amazing thrust' spoke of anything but the tome he'd expected. By the time he'd gotten through the first section, full of praise for the way he'd used his quirk to chase after, torment and beat the ever loving shit out of the author,  he felt angrier than ever at Deku.

Then Katsuki got to the questions and ideas section for his quirk and realized, to his utter horror, that Midoriya had ideas that could have put him years ahead of where he was with how he used his quirk now if he hadn't been focused on chasing the runt off. Not just in skill, but power, as Midoriya even had ideas for training it to be stronger.

It went on to the next page to describe Bakugou’s fighting style and psychology.  He sneered at the words on the page, pissed that Midoriya had the nerve to sit an analyze his home life.  And found it fucking creepy that he still got so much of it right even though it had been years since he’d been here.

He turned the page and found weaknesses…and felt his stomach drop.  The few words his mind picked up on immediately and the drawings had him pulling his arms and hands protectively to his chest and by the time he’d read through half of what had been written, he was trembling like…like….

Like the kid who knew ways to hurt Bakugou and his squad of extras so badly that it would make what they did to that other boy look like a joke but instead curled up into a ball and took their crap.  Deku wasn’t a pebble in his path…he was a pile of bricks that could be used to build a set of stairs to victory, create a wall in his way or just be used as ammunition to fire at him one at a time, fucking him up for life or legitimately kill him if one landed a good hit.

He only got a few lines into the first section…what he realized were ways to permanently cripple him when he finally dropped the book, all but tossing it onto the floor with trembling hands as he realized that he’d broken out into a cold sweat.  He held one palm out, open handed and realized his hands were on the edge of sparking.  As if he was threatening to blast the thing into oblivion right there on the floor of his own bed room.

Yeah, he was done for the night.   At least reading it.

A few minutes later, he finally picked it up off the floor.  Part of him still wanted to blast the thing right out of existance, remove the writing from this world…except according to his notes, Midoriya already had most of this in other books…this was just a collection of it spread across a few pages.  And it wouldn’t make the weaknesses he had go away, would it.  And the strengths and ideas…

He frowned as he walked into the bathroom.  “Mom, I’m using your hairdryer,” he screamed.

“You better put it back when you’re done with it!”

He couldn’t believe he was doing this. He stared down at the book he’d personally messed up earlier that day and sighed before he began going over it page by page with the dryer, reading once he stopped seeing classmates.  And thus, he later turned to the last filled pages…All Might’s signature.

Deku had met All Might…and then left the book behind.  What the fuck?  What the actual Fuck?!

Chapter Text

"It's so weird," one of the hospital staff member stated. "Quirk activity spiked in this whole neighborhood overnight and our hospital seems to be the worst of it. One of the Doctors and a few of the other staff got injured this morning because patients' quirks keep going off. This spot's the worst of it."

It was true, about this area. Toshinori and a few other heroes had been stuck around here because there was so much activity. Not just villains but civilians. It was only early afternoon and he'd already used all but an hour's worth of power that he usually tried to save for serious emergencies.

He was currently in his natural, skeletal state, gaining concerned glances from the hospital workers but otherwise ignored.

Naosama said that some police had already been dispatched to the area to find out what the source of the quirk activity spike might be.

Still, that wasn't what Toshinori was here for. He needed to talk with the kid from yesterday.

As Toshinori stepped through the doorway, he was greeted by the sight of the boy he'd saved—Izuku Midoriya, he'd been told—and a green haired woman who looked…eerily familiar but was also clearly related to the boy.

Izuku was absolutely beaming when he said, "Mom, this the man who made sure I got into the emergency room so quickly after All Might rushed me over."

"Thank you so much for helping my son."

"No need to thank me, he needed help and I made sure he got it." Suddenly he had a coughing fit.

"Are you alright?" Mrs. Midoriya asked, horrified, no doubt by the sight of blood on his mouth. The younger Midoriya looked upset as well but, judging by the sadness mixed in, he'd already caught on that this was his normal.

"I'm fine. I took an injury about five years ago and haven't ever really recovered."

She studied him and said, "Izuku said you were All Might's secretary. Did you get injured by a villain?"

Toshinori nodded. "No one else was around who could have stopped him. I managed to but…"

"I'm sorry you got so badly hurt."

All Might felt his shoulders sag.

"You saved the people who needed your help though, right?" Young Izuku Midoriya asked.

Toshinori smiled again. "Yeah, and many more the villain would have hurt in the future if I hadn't stopped him. So, that made it worth it."

The boy responded with a smile of his own…and then it clicked what was happening. This kid was using his own technique of smiling for the people he was helping. He felt the tiniest idea bubbling into his mind. He hadn't seen much of Midoriya yet, but what little he had…

"I can see why All Might would have you work so closely with him," Mrs. Midoriya said, jarring him from his thoughts. "You seem to share his drive to help people." She smiled and added, "Izuku loves heroes but All Might is his favorite. Maybe from now on he'll be more careful about seeking out incidents to see them."

"I wasn't even doing that, this time. I was just walking home when..." Izuku fell silent after he said that, hand going to his mouth and his face seemed to pale. For the first time his smile vanished but it was only for a couple seconds before he shook his head.

"Sweety?" his mom asked.

"I'm okay," he said, smile now looking forced.

"Izuku…" She reached over and took his hand in her hand. As the boy took it, Toshinori suddenly noticed some scarring on his arm. A starburst shape that was most likely the result of a quirk.

"Hey, I had a notebook with me when the…when I had to be taken to the hospital. Did you happen to find it?"

Toshinori remembered that book, alright. A burnt cover and pages wet. The notes inside had been incredibly detailed. He'd left his signature in it and then…left it right there on the sidewalk when he'd rushed the kid here. He looked out at the rain coming down. "I…I'll go back and check right now. It…"

"That's okay," Izuku said, although judging from the complete evaporation of his smile, it wasn't. "It was already ruined earlier. I'll just have to rewrite it. I have a pretty good memory for them."

"What do you mean it was already ruined earlier? Was it something else Katsuki did?"

"Mom, Kacchan…"

"Don't tell me he wouldn't, not when I can see proof of exactly how far he's gone."

The boy's hand went to his arm. "This was a couple years ago."

Mrs. Midoriya looked like she was about to continue but then remembered they were not alone. She let it rest.

All Might meets with Sir Night Eye later and is introduced to Mirio. He is interested but wants to spend time getting to know the young man and seeing him in action before deciding whether to give him his quirk.

Toshinori stood before Sir's building. He was in his natural form, rather than using One for All. This was not a time for All Might's smiles but his honesty. He owed his old friend that after all these years.

He took a deep breath. He could do this. Finally, he stepped through the glass doors.

As he walked down the hall and approached the entrance to the office he pushed forward, worried that he would lose his nerve with his momentum if he stopped.

As he stepped through the doors, he found himself looking directly into familiar golden eyes from across a desk on the other side of the room and at the sight of them, he did stop.

A young woman began to state that he needed to schedule an appointment to come in here, breaking the spell that held him in place.

"No, Bubble Girl, it's alright," Sir stated as he stood and stepped out from behind the desk. "This is Toshinori Yagi, the appointment I scheduled for yesterday which cancelled."

"You mean the one you wanted Mirio to meet?"

He smiled a little. "Yes, in fact, could you get him from his break while I speak with Mr. Yagi alone?"

"Sir yes sir!"

Once the door closed behind Bubble Girl, the two men stood quietly, staring at each other for a time. Finally, Sir said, "I wasn't sure you'd come."

Toshinori felt a wave of shame at the thought that he almost hadn't, as much in his shame for how he'd treated the other man as frustration in his demand that he retire as All Might for his own safety. "There was a boy who got attacked by a sludge villain that I had to take to the hospital. He saw me drop into my true form before I got him to the staff."

"Is he going to be a problem?"

"No, thankfully. He was giving me suggestions for covering up my secret before he was carted off and checking on my health when I was trying to the same for him afterward." He thought about the kid again and was reminded of why he was here.

He could tell his old friend could see the thoughts in his mind, and his own small smile was replaced with a frown. "Seriously?"

"It's just a thought, not a decision. I am here to meet young Mirio Togata and you know I wouldn't be if I wasn't serious in considering him."

That seemed to soothe his friend's worries for the moment. Still, he made a mental note not to talk too much about the boy because he had a feeling his friend might try to investigate. He could be intense and Toshinori didn't want the other man to scare young Midoriya.

"Still, it means that your transformation time is putting you at risk."

"Just because I'm passing on One for All doesn't mean I'm immediately retiring."

"But…"

"I'm going to have power left over and I'm going to use it to save as many lives as possible. It doesn't matter how my strength will decline. I told you this last time."

"I don't want you to get killed."

"We all die sometime."

Sir opened his mouth to protest but a knock at the door interrupted what almost certainly would have ended in another blow out like the one they'd had when they last spoke. He could see a touch of the relief he felt warring with the worry and hurt in the other man's eyes. "Yes?"

"I have Lemillion," Bubble Girl stated.

"Good," Sir said. "Send him in."

And in came a child with a blond [cow lick] cowlick and solid blue eyes, lacking the usual distinguishing features of the corneas, irises, and pupils. "Hello, Sir. You wanted to see me?"

"Yes, would you come in please?"

All Might discusses One for All with Mirio and states that he is considering passing it on to him. The teenager insists that he waits at least until the next tournament to be sure, if he can wait that long.

Before Toshinori left, he turned to Sir Nighteye. He considered whether he really wanted to ask his question, considering what it was for.

"Just ask."

"The kid I was talking about…I lost a notebook of his [notebook] when I was rescuing him. I signed it while he was unconscious and just left it when I realized he was still in trouble. It was for something really important to him, filled with notes and drawings. I want to replace it but I don't know anything about getting materials like that."

Sir Nighteye sighed. "What type of notebook are we talking, school notes?"

"No, it was something he could tuck in his pocket."

The other man held up a finger before opening a drawer in his desk.

"Oh no, you don't have to…"

"Don't worry, I've got more than enough extras. It's good to be able to keep track of things I see out in the field." He pulled out a book with a leather cover and held it up. "About this size, right?"

All Might nodded.

Sir Nighteye held it out and All Might awkwardly accepted it. "Thanks."

"If this boy continues to hold your interest, I want to meet him at some point."

All Might gets a new Notebook for Izuku and puts his signature on the first pages.

Izuku looked at the notebook. It was given to him by All Might! He opened it to see a note of apology about losing his last book and the hope that this would make up for it. On the next pair of pages was a signature that filled both.

Izuku smiled. The notebook in hand was a gift from All Might, himself. He couldn't believe it "Thankyou! Thankyou! Thankyou! I'll treasure it forever. This'll be a family heirloom…"

All Might smiled. "I'm glad you like it."

Izuku thought that maybe he'd make this a notebook just for All Might. Something he'd keep safe at home.

Chapter Text

Izuku’s elementary School signs up its first-year students for a Pen Pal program with kids across the country. The kids fill out their letter at minimum to an assigned structure.

Izuku looked down at the page that night and glanced at the requirements. He frowned, started…then restarted…again and again. This would be the first time talking to whoever was on the other end. Lots of his classmates were dropping this as soon as the assigned set of letters ended and he knew that the kid receiving this letter might want to keep in touch afterward. It would be nice to have a friend who was welcoming to him, again.

He winced as he bumped his arm against the wall. He hadn't been fast enough to dodge Tsubasa as he swooped in from above and knocked him down, earlier. Kacchan had been furious that the other boy had out flown him. It still happened from time to time but not as much now that Kacchan was getting the hang of flying with explosions.

Izuku missed when he and Kacchan played heroes together so much. He hated being nothing but a Deku.

The kid who would get this letter wouldn't know him as quirkless, useless Deku. Even if this only lasted a couple months, it would be nice to talk to someone who just thought that he was a normal kid. He didn't know who it would be. Apparently, their letters would be passed out at random.

Izuku turned the letter in along with the other students in his class.

"Alright kids remember the pen pal assignment I told you about? Well, the letters are in. So now you can read them and it'll be your turn to reply."

Hitoshi didn't make any move to take the letter off his desk when the teacher placed it there.

He looked at the photo that came with the letter. It showed a tiny boy with curly green hair poking out of a red winter hat. He had a big beaming smile that revealed a missing tooth second to the left from his upper set. His cheeks were red with cold. His coat, at least from what Hitoshi could see above the shoulders, matched his hair.

It looked like the kind of picture you'd use to advertise a kid in a holiday advertisement.

He opened the letter.

Hi.

I'm 11 years old. I live in an apartment with my mom.

My favorite food is Katsudon. I like watching quirks.

I want to be a hero when I grow up and save people with a big smile, like All Might. I don't have a powerful quirk, so I'm hoping if I can analyze quirks well enough, I can still do it. Maybe I could even go to UA. I'm even in Musutafu, so it wouldn't be far from home.

I go to school at Aldera Elementary but you probably already know that. I don't know where this letter is going. I tried asking but my teacher wouldn't say.

What about you? What are some of the things you like? Do you want to be a hero, too?

I'm excited to write to someone I've never met before. Maybe we can exchange information when we come to your school at the end of the program. Only if you want to, though.

Sincerely,

Izuku Midoriya

Hitoshi could almost feel Midoriya's cautious optimism rolling off the page. He was relieved to see that Midoriya didn't really talk about his quirk or ask for Shinsou's, despite his professed interest in them. It meant that he didn't have to talk about his.

There was something about Midoriya's words that seemed…friendly? 'No,' he looked back at the image and noticed that he'd chosen lighting that almost hid the bags. Despite the sincerity of his smile, this wasn't his normal state. He reread the last paragraph. 'More like desperate.'

Hitoshi looked at the picture he'd taken for the requirement. He was in his school uniform and he certainly didn't try to hide his bags. He'd had no interest in this and he hadn't hesitated to show it.

He continued staring at the letter and thrummed his fingers.

He'd originally planned to half-ass the project but looking at the picture, he'd changed his mind.

Izuku was both excited and nervous upon receiving his letter. He immediately tucked it in his math book, which he had saved for this. It was one thing when his classmates attacked Izuku and his stuff. It was another entirely when they damaged school property. Therefore, his math book would serve to protect the letter until he could bury it in his backpack.

When he got home, he slipped into his room and immediately looked at the letter.

Izuku Midoriya,

I didn't feel like following the graded requirements. If I'm going to talk with you, I want it to be real.  Not some script based off a list of questions assigned by people who think kids our age are too dumb to carry on a conversation on our own.

I don't ask questions if I can avoid them. It's just how I am. So, don't expect me to expand the letter five paragraphs with them.

Your quirk watching sounds cool. I think it's a good idea for someone who wants to be a hero but doesn't have some big flashy quirk. I might try it, too.

I'm also aiming for UA's hero program and know it's going to be hard for me, too. And I know how other people treat those of us who are like that.

If you want to make friends with me then write me a real letter, not your school assignment. I'll be waiting for your next one.

Hitoshi Shinsou

Izuku finally looked at the picture that came with it. Shinsou was a tall boy with short purple hair that seemed to defy gravity and eyes of the same color stared back. He was frowning, but not disapprovingly. Like he was waiting but ready to be disappointed.

Izuku looked at the letter again.

Dear Shinsou,

I'm not really used to writing letters but I'll try. I suppose that I should let you know that sometimes, things will happen and a letter might get ruined. I try to be careful but sometimes it isn't enough.

If you want to talk about quirks, I'm always happy to. I think that they're all amazing.

I'm the exact opposite of you when it comes to questions. I like to ask lots of them. Lots and lots. Is the reason you don't ask something to do with your quirk? I read about this one woman, who every time she asked a question, music from this centuries old game show called jeopardy would follow her everywhere until someone answered her. She can't even control it, except by not asking questions at all.

Sincerely,

Midoriya

Midoriya,

When you say things happen, I assume you mean Jerks (the teachers won't let me send this to you with the word I want to use). I get it. Just let me know as soon as you can. I have my own problems with that here.

Thanks for the offer to helping get me started. I'd like to know more about it how to use quirk knowledge toward heroics.

Yes, it's something to do with my quirk, but I don't really want to talk about it. I looked up the game show you mentioned and then I was able to find footage of the woman online. Wow. I mean, really, just wow. That has to be rough.

I'm sure that you have a reason that you don't bring up your quirk either. I say we agree to avoid the topic of them, altogether. Still, it's likely that even if we don't talk about it, our classmates will blow it for us.

Hitoshi Shinsou

Dear Shinsou,

I've been thinking, since we both know our classmates are going to talk about stuff we don't want them to, why don't we meet up early? I've already tracked down your school.  Wearing your uniform in the picture really helped. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to find you, sinceteachers won't let us exchange addresses or numbers or anything.

My mom usually lets me go quirk watching, anyway. Since you'll get this next week, I'll be at the gate of the school at 11:00 on Saturday. If you're there, we can really get to know each other.

Midoriya

"He used my uniform to track me down?" Despite being a little weirded out, Hitoshi still wrote a letter to plan to meet with the other boy.

Chapter Text

Izuku was essentially vibrating with excitement as he stared at the breakfast his mom had made him.

Izuku was finally going to meet Shinsou. He was scared. What if he got the wrong school? No, he'd already checked the roster, Shinsou definitely went there. What if Shinsou didn't like him? What if he did but changed his mind when he found out Izuku was quirkless?

"Izuku, sweety?"

Izuku looked up.

"Do you want me to come with you, baby?"

Izuku smiled, grateful for the offer. "Thanks, but I…I need to do this myself."

"Just know that I'm always here if you need me."

Izuku smiled and asked, "do you have any big projects lined up?" As a seamstress, Mom could work from home. It also meant that most of his clothes, the exception being vintage hero gear and a few other shirts that grabbed his attention, and his backpack were her work.

She could use her quirk to help speed things along with her needle. He loved watching her do that. Sometimes, when it rained and he couldn't go out, Izuku would help sew a little, although he was slow compared to her. It was always really relaxing to just sit and watch her weave it in and out between her hands.

She smiled and said, "I've got some requests for baby shower gifts and have another couple considering me for their wedding dress."

"Mom! That's great!" The wedding dress especially was a huge deal. "I hope they choose you to make it."

"Thank you."

Izuku beamed and finally started eating.

As he got ready to go, she kept reminding him to grab items.

"Where's my phone?" Mom would never let him go out without it, since simply being a quirkless child left him at higher risk in a community where villain attacks had a frequency comparable to car wrecks, although as often as Izuku saw them, he'd insist that was an underestimation. She didn't want him running around without keeping her informed of where he always was and wanted him to be able to call for help if he got in trouble.

"On the table. Do you have your hanky?"

"Yes mom." Tucked in his pocket opposite his notebook. He also reached into the secret pocket he'd sewn into his shirt to check his small med kit was in place. When his mom asked about the pocket there, he said that on school days he tucked his notebook in them. Which was true, as he had a bigger med kit in his backpack on those days and he didn't want to tempt anyone to grab his notebooks if he could avoid it.

As Izuku finished his check, he slipped on his outside shoes and he and his mom exchanged a kiss goodbye.

"Just give me a call if you need me."

Izuku nodded. "You too mom. Have a good day."

"You too. I hope things go well with your pen pal. If they do, feel free to invite him over. It's been too long since you've invited a friend over."

"Yeah." Izuku was painfully aware. The last person had been Kacchan. He'd only come over a couple more times after Izuku had been diagnosed as quirkless. "Maybe."

It would be nice.

As Izuku walked to the train station, he watched the people around him. It was against the law to use quirks, but that law was like littering or jay walking. People broke it all the time. He smiled as he watched a man with springs in his feet cross the street with a literal bounce in his step.

The sight lifted his mood even as the man kept walking.

Waiting at the train station, he saw a few other people around too. One of them had a mutation quirk that made them look like a chameleon. He saw Ms. Kambia from time to time. Despite being heavily bundled against the cold that her body was probably extra sensitive to, he saw from what little bit of skin he could see—mainly around her face—that she was a little pale. He wondered if she was having a rough day or if the near freezing temperatures were just getting to her.

He walked up to Ms. Kambia as her telescopic eyes darted in different directions from each other. Although, other people had said she was scary looking, he'd never agreed. He thought it was cool.

He'd probably made that clear the first time they'd met a few years ago, when she'd moved into the area and he, at six, had come up to her and asked her about her pretty quirk.

She spotted Izuku just before he greeted her, "Hi, Ms. Kambia."

"Izuku, good morning. How are you today?" Ms. Kambia swerved an eye toward him and turned a brighter green. He knew from doing research about chameleons while learning about her quirk that this meant she was happy to see him. She always seemed a little greener when he said hi. It made him feel good to know he made someone's day a little brighter.

When he was little, he'd asked her about her quirk, a lot. He'd shown her the section he had on her in his notebook, once. She'd smiled and said how he'd made her such pretty colors. She was one of the few people who'd ever complimented his notes.

"Good morning, Midoriya. Where are you going today?"

"I'm going to meet a pen pal I got through my school. We decided not to wait for the field trip day."

She nodded. "That sounds nice."

"How about you?"

"Well, thanks for asking. I'm off to the mall to restock for on warmers in the ectothermic section."

Izuku nodded.

In the distance, a familiar screech of rails could be heard.

"This is my train," Ms. Kambia stated. "I hope you have fun with your friend."

Izuku nodded. "Stay warm."

She smiled and nodded as the doors opened. Then she stepped on and the train took off, leaving Izuku at the station, alone. His train arrived a few minutes later.

Once he reached his stop about half an hour after he stepped on, Izuku used Moogle Maps to get to the school, since he wasn't very familiar with this area. He followed the fence around the playground. Twenty minutes early, he found himself at the front gate.

Izuku looked around nervously. What if Shinsou didn't show up? What if he decided Izuku wasn't worth the effort? What if he saw him in person and changed his mind about the whole thing? Doubts just kept creeping in and he tried to distract himself.

Hitoshi arrived ten minutes early to see a tiny form with green curls waiting, slouched against the gate. As he approached, he could hear the [other mumbling] other boy mumbling under his breath.

"Midoriya?" he asked.

The freckled face he'd seen in the photo looked at him, except this smile was shyer than the one in the picture. "Hello, Shinsou. It's nice to meet you."

Chapter Text

Izuku watched silently from around the corner as the two kids argued.

"No way."

"You questioning how strong I am?"

"There's no way you could move that thing that far with your explosions."

They were arguing about a rolling dumpster behind the school. Kacchan was insistent that he could blast it all the way to the wall five meters away and a kid from an older grade didn't believe him.

"Ha! I'll prove it."

The trash can had been full, so everyone had thought it would be extremely heavy. They had no way of knowing that a bunch of arts and crafts supplies had been cleared out; turns out cotton fluff, puff balls and crumpled paper took up a lot of space and therefore, the trash didn't weigh what it normally would. In all honesty, it would be lucky that it didn't catch fire.

No one knew that then, though.

Kacchan released a massive explosion at the dumpster.

It made it to the wall…and rebounded with a loud bang.

There were screams and a screech of metal.

Izuku  cried out, his eyes snapping open. He found himself staring up at a ceiling in the dark. It wasn't quite 'familiar' yet. They'd only moved here a few weeks ago.

He'd rolled wrong again. That's what had awoken him. Not the mem…nightmare again. The twelve-year-old winced as he readjusted himself so as not to agitate his ribs as much. He absently rubbed his right hand over the texture of the cast that covered his left arm and sighed.

All he remembered was the screams and the pain. Izuku was told that he ran out and pushed Kacchan and the other kid out of the way. He doesn't recall that.

What he did remember was waking up in the hospital.

And that he'd broken a lot of bones.

With his mom there, crying.

Izuku wondered what time it was. It felt like somewhere just before dawn. In all honesty, he was surprised he'd fallen asleep at all.

After all, with the rise of the sun, he would be going to a new school.

When Aldera had tried to spin the story so that Izuku had startled Kacchan into setting off an explosion, it had been the last straw for his mom. She wasn't sending Izuku back there again.

It had taken her a while to find a school that would take Izuku, so hard that she'd had to move so that he could get to school and she could still go to work. It wasn't very far but it was far enough for him to not be as familiar with the area he was now in as he was with their old neighborhood.

And now, he was about to go to a whole new school.

He sighed and got up; he knew that he wasn't going back to sleep any time soon.

"Everyone, I would like you to meet Izuku Midoriya. He is a new transfer and I want you to make him feel welcome."

Izuku would have preferred to have been unacknowledged by the teacher. Not that he would have gone unnoticed by the students, anyway. Even if transferring immediately after the summer break wasn't awkward enough, but the cast and sling his left arm was in automatically drew eyes.

So, since he was already here, Izuku straightened the uniform he was wearing for the first time and smiled at the unfamiliar faces of second year middle school students who would be his classmates from here. He smiled, hoping his nervousness didn't shine through as he said, "Hi, I'm Midoriya."

"Please take a seat," the woman who'd introduced him stated.

Izuku glanced over, surprised. She wasn't going to make him state his quirk or lack thereof. Upon confirming that she wasn't, he said, "Yes, mam."

She pointed to a vacant seat. It was one of two, both of which to either side of a tall boy with light purple hair that stuck up from his head. His irises matched the shade of his hair and he had bags under them.

After the introduction was over, the boy had tipped his head down, staring into his book rather than looking at anyone.

Izuku noticed that all the other surrounding students seemed to have physically moved their desks as far away from him as possible without the teacher telling them to readjust their seats. The behavior immediately made how the rest of the class felt about him perfectly clear.

Well, the fact that the teacher had to be aware of this but let it happen anyway spoke oodles about their view on quirk discrimination. He made a mental note not to mention THAT to Mom. She'd worked so hard to find a school where he'd be safer. He guessed that taking any student despite quirk status and being welcoming to them were two different things.

Still, at least the school had a zero-tolerance policy on actual quirk use, which had been the real appeal for her choice.

Izuku felt the bandages around his torso tighten as he sat down. He looked forward to not needing them after next week. Even if his sides would still be sore and it would be a while before he was doing anything more than light exercise in gym.

Izuku glanced at the taller boy and smiled only for it to fall away as the other boy glared coldly at him. He curled in on himself in response.

The other boy rolled his eyes and turned his attention back toward the board, dismissing Izuku.

"Smart move, you should be scared," a voice whispered from his other side, causing him to almost jump out of his chair before settling down. He found himself looking at a fat kid with light, curly hair. "Tough luck, getting put next to Shinsou. You should be careful. If you talk to him, he might use Brainwash on you."

Rather than respond to the warning, Izuku sank further down into his seat, not liking the tone with which this boy spoke any more than the other's glare. It was the same type of disgusted one used when his previous classmates were discussing his quirklessness.

He'd hardly been in this classroom all of two minutes and already had a general idea of just what he was in for when everyone learned his quirk status.

As their homeroom teacher started their math class, Izuku focused on her for a few minutes until he realized that he recognized the work she was teaching, having gotten through it over the summer break, while he was preparing for the transfer. He'd had nothing else to do, considering he had to take it easy.

He was just itching to get back to hero hunting. Watching fights online just wasn't the same.

For now, he settled for pulling out his hero notes out behind the math notebook and studying his classmates. He could work on their quirks.

Izuku started taking in unique physical features and behaviors, which could often hint at the quirks. He noticed that there were actually some kids with mutant quirks here. There had been very few at Aldera and even those were mild, like stone where their hair would be or something.

Of course, mutations weren't the only way to get hints for quirks. He noted kids with odd movements and tics, which could mean nothing or everything.

A couple times he felt eyes on him and looked up to find other students watching him. The most common of these was 'Shinsou,' although, to be fair, he was close enough to hear Izuku's mumbling, which he did start doing a couple of times. Still, it made Izuku nervous.

Over the next few classes, he saw other students within their grade. Whenever Izuku could, he chose a seat in the back of the room, where he could watch his classmates more carefully or near the doorway, where he would be able to make a quick getaway in the future if need be.

Not that he got choices very often, a disadvantage of coming in in the middle of the year, rather than the beginning.

Still, Izuku had to admit, it was still already looking better than what he had to deal with at Aldera.

It was weird, especially without Kacchan around, but it was nice. After a few minutes, Izuku felt himself relaxing. There weren't any desks here that showed signs of being scratched or burned. Hopefully, that meant that things wouldn't get that bad, here.

Out of habit, he watched the rooms warily. Every class had a hierarchy, most with the same structure where the kids at the top degraded those at the bottom. He needed to figure out where the problem would come from, hopefully before they realized that he was quirkless.

He was actually surprised when a teacher called him out on scribbling his notes, rather than focus on class. At his old school, they'd never cared unless he started mumbling and distracting the rest of the class.

Between classes, he was bombarded by curious students, asking him personally and fixating on his broken arm, which distracted most, but not all, of them from asking about his quirk. He was silent on both fronts.

A few kids asked if they could sign his cast, which he was more receptive to.

Izuku was probably happier about the attention he should have been. No one would have asked to sign it at his old school. Not that they had gotten the opportunity to ignore it. Mom had pulled him out immediately after the 'accident.'

As the lunch bell rang, Izuku packed his bags with one eye on his classmates, knowing they'd be curious about the new kid with the broken arm and wanting to test the waters more thoroughly. No doubt the lunch period would be the perfect opportunity for that.

Izuku quickly packed up his stuff in order to slip out the door before anyone could talk to him. He didn't make it. So, he just decided to ride the wave.

Classmates helped him with his food tray and he got another couple signatures on his cast before he sat down with a group of helpful classmates.

Izuku spotted the empty slot among a group he'd already identified as the popular kids that he was led to. So now the grilling started. He'd seen this at his own school a couple times, although Kacchan himself had never bothered. The blond couldn't be bothered with whatever 'weak' quirk any newbie had.

Izuku glanced around the room and spotted the purple haired boy, Shinsou, sitting alone with his back to the exit to another set of hallways, watching the spectacle from a distance. Watching for trouble from the other kids, Izuku realized.

Their eyes met for a moment and Izuku could see the kind of disconnected acceptance that came from years of being pushed to the outside.

Shinsou must have recognized something in his own eyes because the boy cocked his head and looked at him more thoughtfully.

"Don't let the villain boy scare you," one of his unrequested care givers stated.

"He won't get near you while you're with us," another said.

"But..." Izuku wasn't scared of him.  At least not anymore than anyone else.

"Come on, we want to get to know you."

'They want to sort me.' Izuku translated mentally. If he'd had his tray, he'd have probably gone straight to the other boy's table.

But the other kids were clinging tightly to it. They were crowding him… boxing him in, he realized. Swarming round him and his cast, as if getting their names on it would be like placing it on a giant billboard.

Quirk use and physical violence wasn't tolerated here, but that just meant kids found other ways to play their games.

He looked at the table ahead, where they would try to make him talk about his quirk and his injury. If he said something, he'd be called the weak, quirkless kid. If he held his tongue, he'd be labeled a jerk. Either way, free ride ended now.

And then it would start again. Tripping or clumsily 'dropping' his books as he walked between classes, 'startling' kids into using their quirks, being told he was useless. Bruises, scratches, cuts, burns and weirder marks he'd have to hide from Mom.

He looked at the tray of food, at the swarm of kids around him and at the table and decided that if he had to accept that label, he'd do it on his own terms. He looked at the kid carrying his lunch and mumbled, "Thank you for grabbing my lunch for me." Before the kid could reply he said, "I'm sorry."

With a move well practiced from running from bullies always out to corner him, Izuku stepped back and slipped from between his escorts, shielding his bad arm as he weaved through the crowd like water and slipping through the doors he came through, past the line of kids waiting for food.

He was in full panic mode as he ran up the stairs. Up and up past one floor after another. The stairs were safer. He'd long learned that most people didn't like running up. Didn't even look up, usually. Even Tsubasa with his ability to fly had kept his eyes to the ground, had learned that he'd had to think three dimensionally to keep track of Izuku.

It had been a relief when he didn't show up at Aldera middle school, even if Kacchan was already flying. It had been getting increasingly difficult to give him the slip.

Izuku reached the roof door but was horrified to find the door locked. He sat down on the top step. He didn't know when he pulled the notebook out out but he was clutching it to his chest as he took deep breaths, leaning with his back against the door.

He stared at the door, his mind still catching up. Then he translated that there was a woman's voice, one that had followed him since he ran from the cafeteria.

He was breathing heavily as he leaned against the door, the adrenaline rush wearing off. He looked to see a woman with a mutation quirk that made her look like a bipedal hippopotamus huffing and panting at the bottom of his flight, from the second story to the roof. "You don't have permission to leave. You need to…"

As she trailed off, Izuku heard something land with a small tap on his cast. He looked down to see a drop splattered on it. He was crying, too. Great.

"Are you hurt?" she asked.

"No. I was just overwhelmed."

"Come on, I'll take you to the nurse's office."

Izuku frowned. "What makes you think that I…." Then he realized what it meant and he looked at the woman. "Do all the school staff know?"

He'd looked up quirkless statistics.

Twenty percent of the worldwide population was quirkless but Japan's had the lowest percentage in the world, not quite at five percent and most of them were older, not kids. And between Middle and High school, the number of those children dropped by about a third, a large percent of the reason being suicides.

So, of course the teachers had been warned when the school 'took him in.'

And now he'd just established himself as emotionally unstable. And the increased tears at the thought couldn't be helping.

'At least they care, here,' a small part of Izuku's mind whispered. But was it about him or how his treatment reflected on the school?

'Either way is better because it means they won't throw you to the wolves.'

Unaware of his inner turmoil, the woman at least had the nerve to look embarrassed. "You can't stay here."

Izuku nodded and slowly made his way down the stairs, too tired to be upset at the discovery. As he walked down the stairs and the woman led him through the halls, he said, "They were going to drill me about who I am and what my quirk is." He knew that with a mutation quirk, this teacher would at least understand part of what that meant. "I know they'll find out sooner or later but, I wasn't ready. I didn't feel like playing word games. And for how things'll be afterward."

The woman flattened her ears behind her head. "If anything happens, you can come to us."

"Your principal told my mom that, too."

As they arrived at the nurse's office, she led Izuku in. She talked to the nurse before she left to return to the cafeteria.

Apparently, his run up the stairs was enough to require a check up to make sure he hadn't reinjured anything or messed up his wrappings. Not that the level of checks they could do would reveal anything if he had messed anything up. And he knew how to fake being okay.

He didn't fail to notice that the nurse examining his fresh scars. He didn't have many.

Last year, he'd been introduced to a girl in the grade above his who had a scar removing quirk…or more like scar hiding, since it only went skin deep. He could still feel plenty of them and if he pressed on his skin in some spots, he could make them visible.

The teachers had convinced her to use her quirk to help classmates.

Izuku had agreed because it both protected his classmates' records from being marked and, more importantly, made it easier to hide how bad things were from his mom.

She'd been furious with the school when she found out.

He noticed the nurse's eyes flash blue as she touched one of them.

"What type of quirk is that?" he asked, suddenly excited at the prospect of learning a new one.

She blinked before saying, "I can see how an injury was inflicted. Not the event, just how deep it is and the form it takes."

"Like a 3D view?" Izuku asked, opening his notebook.

"More, I can tell how the tissue around is effected, bruises, inflammation, foreign objects."

"That's so cool!" Izuku said. "And you chose to work at a school so you could use it?" Even hospitals weren't allowed to let their staff use quirks, even helpful ones, unless they obtained a hero's license for it. Schools, on the other hand, were notoriously more flexible (although not officially), simply because of dealing with kids. "You're the reason they're able to enforce their zero-tolerance policy on quirk related bullying here. A lot of quirk related injuries would be obvious and due to how unique most are, you can almost definitely figure out who did it."

"You know a lot about quirk application."

"I like analyzing quirks!" Izuku held up his notebook, hoping to distract the nurse from his own injuries as much as to show it off. He opened it and started writing notes. "So is it just fresh injuries or can you look at older ones? Do you have to be in contact with the wound or just touch where it was to feel it...?" Izuku pelted her with questions. At first, she was awkward about answering but as he delved deeper and started asking about things she didn't know the answers to, she loosened up a bit.

They were startled when the bell rang.

"Think you can handle going back to class?"

Izuku nodded and slipped out, wondering how long it would take her to realize that she hadn't gotten to actually finish her checkup.

Chapter Text

‘All men are not created equal. This was the reality I learned about society at the young age of four. And that was my first and last set back.’

It's been four years since then.

Izuku sat by a fountain, watching as the police slapped a pair of quirk suppression cuffs on a villain who was being held in place by the sidewalk. Cementos, a hero who recently became a UA teacher, now patrolled their city in the mornings and evenings between. He had been on patrol and been the one to apprehend the Villain that was now being passed off to the police.

Although Izuku was always excited to see heroes in action, he had already seen him a few times and today's events hadn't revealed anything that was worth adding new notes for.

The villain on the other hand, was a different story. He was a robber with a suggestion quirk that made people want to ignore him.

Izuku himself was doing everything in his power to do the opposite as he wrote in 'Hero Analysis for the future, Vol 5. He was writing notes about the fight he'd just witnessed, and specifics about the quirk. Tonight, after he finished with his homework, he'd consider the implications of such a quirk: Quirk Classification, strengths, weaknesses, possible uses outside what he'd witnessed today, and anything else he might think of to study for later.

But he wanted to make sure he got as many notes as possible, because if the quirk had long term suggestion abilities, he might just forget before then. That would be horrible. He'd have to take note if that happened and add that to the quirk's description. Still, the fact that he was thinking about it so intently now might negate that effect… He supposed that he would just be adding it as a possibility for the extent of the quirk's ability either way.

He sighed and went to rest his arm on his leg, only to wince as he rested the weight on a bruise. The kids at school had gotten better at hurting him in ways that weren't as easy to see over time. Although, to be fair, the teachers couldn't care less. No one really cared about the only quirkless boy in the school.

Honestly, he was surprised that he hadn't been forced to move to another school on that merit alone, considering how obviously discriminatory his was. On top of him being the only quirkless kid who attended, there were also no kids with extremely obvious mutation quirks.

Most kids his age didn't notice such things, but Izuku Midoria couldn't afford to ignore it. Not if he wanted to survive. He'd been careful to read up on statistics for quirkless people, as ugly as they were. If he was going to be a hero, his first obstacle was the wrong end of those numbers. To overcome them, he had to know what he was up against.

Izuku knew that even things like his tendency to stand up to bullies and desire to walk around town on his own, studying fights between heroes and villains he came across all the time was risky. But he couldn't help it. Helping people was just something he needed to do and on top of training himself for the future, seeing quirks in action just made him feel alive.

In the distance, Izuku could hear kids laughing and playing. It was almost enough to distract him from the scene before him.

Izuku recalled the days before Bakugo had developed his quirk and he had been told he would never get one of his own. Instinctively, the green haired boy reached up to wipe a tear running down his cheek. He missed being welcome around other kids, being able to approach them without them lashing out at him. For seeing him as something less than they were. Nothing. Useless.

Deku.

"Hey there. You alright?"

Izuku looked up to see Cementos had come over to him. He instantly perked up; a hero was talking to him! Then he processed what the cement hero had said and realized that he was crying again. He rubbed the tears off his face and said, "It's nothing big, really."

The cement hero looked at his watch and stated, "I have a few minutes, if you want some company."

"Really? I wouldn't want to distract you from important hero work."

"I'm sure I've been here long enough seeing to that villain's arrest for everyone in the area to know I'm here. I doubt any villains will try anything."

Izuku chuckled and said, "You would think." Then he looked down at his Quirk Analysis journal and back up at the hero and asked, "If you have a few minutes, I don't suppose you could give me some tips about learning to be a hero, could you?" He lifted up his journal and said, "That's what I've been doing here, taking notes about today so I can look over them to help me look at how heroes deal with villains."

Cementos smiled and said, "You got lucky then, seeing an actual apprehension, didn't you? One with minimal danger to civilians."

Izuku cocked his head and frowned in confusion. "Actually, this week's been kind of slow. Usually, I'd have seen at least two or three by now. This was the first one all week and it's already Thursday."

"You shouldn't be seeking out hero-villain confrontations. They're dangerous."

"I don't seek them out, I just happen to be there when they start. So, I study them." He flipped through his pages and showed Cementos a picture of himself. "I've seen you deal with three other villain attacks. One of them was that bank robbery where you caught the four villains by trapping their car in the road and folding it up into walls around them." He spun the journal around and added, "You're really good at catching villains without damaging property or putting other people in danger, but I guess your medium would help with that, considering you can make it hard enough to deflect bullets or soft enough to mold around anything with nothing more than a thought. Hey, I've wondered, since you probably have to have some sensory application to your quirk in order to know how to shape it, are you able to sense people's movements through it?"

Cementos studied him for a moment before stating, "You sound like you’re already well on your way. Your observation and analytical skills will serve you well, although you should try to keep your distances from the big fights."

Izuku looked down sheepishly at the statement.

Cementos sighed before stating, "But yes, I can sense people's movements through the cement. Conventional construction work gives me a headache."

Izuku tapped his pen on the journal and said, That's why you changed your general patrol pattern last month."

The hero looked surprised and opened his mouth to say something but changed his mind and instead asked, "Is this related to your quirk?"

Izuku blushed and looked down. "No. I don't actually have one. I'm hoping that rule for hero schools not accepting quirkless kids finally gets overturned before I'm old enough to apply. I've been watching the proceedings on that really closely. If it doesn't happen, I figure that I'd try asking one of the lone hero agencies for an apprenticeship when I'm a little older. It would be a lot harder but I'm willing to put in the extra work."

He glanced back at Cementos who seemed to be trying to come up with something to say when a beeping filled the air. A look of relief crossed his features as he pulled out a phone and said, "I need to get to the other side of town. A villain blew up a section of road while trying to make an escape."

"Going to reshape it for them?" Izuku asked happily.

Cementos nodded. "Take care of yourself, don't get too close to fights."

"I hope I'll see you in UA."

The hero was already gone. Izuku suspected that if he had stayed, he would have warned Izuku that being a hero was dangerous and tried to talk him into another profession.

He smiled, happy at having gotten to talk to a hero but couldn't help but think it would be nice if someone would believe in him every once in a while. Even be there for him. The few classmates who'd step up for him were soon silenced as they were exposed to a portion of the bullying he suffered. Others, he rescued from bullies, often purposely drawing the attention onto himself. These kids either shot him sympathetic looks or pretended he didn't exist afterward but didn't step in again.

The teachers. Ha! What a joke. They watched it, sometimes they even encouraged it, saying things to draw negative attention to him. But surely they wouldn't do that on purpose.

Only his mom was there for him and he didn't want to bring his troubles down on her.

Izuku looked up at the sky and noticed how low the sun was. Had he really sat here that long, thinking and probably mumbling to himself? He frowned, knowing he needed to head home. His mother had only consented to letting him be out on his own, walking to more places between home and school, only if he promised to keep her updated on where he was and came back before the sun set. It was more out of concern for worrying his mom than any fear of getting in trouble that he made sure he followed her rules to the letter. Even if wandering the streets after dark was dangerous.

Izuku hooked his pen in his shirt and closed his journal before texting his mom to let her know he was heading back. He stood up and stretched. He started walking back, quickly adjusting his gait so that he moved normally despite his injuries from school today. He'd had a lot of practice at hiding it, almost daily.

He clutched the journal in his hand, taking comfort from the feel of its spine against the palm of his hand. It represented his lifeline, his hopes and his dreams for the future. It was the physical proof that despite whatever everyone said, one day he could become a hero.

Izuku looked up at the setting sun as he stepped onto his street and started walking towards his house. He felt the slight breeze as he walked in the golden light of the evening, his shadow stretching out before him down the street and his house coming into view.

Suddenly his world lurched and there was a shift of colors and light around him. He felt nauseous from it. Then as quickly as it started, it stopped.

Chapter Text

The first thing Izuku realized was that he was cold and wet. People around him were running and screaming in panic. People? There had been a couple of kids playing further down the street but...

He looked around and saw that he was no longer on his street but somewhere in the middle of a city intersection and the sunlight was wrong, like early afternoon rather than evening.

He took a step forward, hoping to figure out what was happening and almost tripped. He looked down to see that the clothes he was wearing were way too big for him. The only thing he recognized was his journal clasped in his hand, now dripping with water.

"Well, aren't you just the cutest little kid! It almost makes me feel bad."

Izuku looked up to see a woman with pointy ears, water dripping from her mouth as she took a step toward him.

"What… where…how…?"

He made to step back but tripped over the too big pants he was suddenly wearing and fell with a startled cry.

Suddenly, he heard sirens in the distance. Someone had called the police.

The woman reached down and snatched him up. "You've already made a big enough scene. We'd best be gone before they get here." She reached out and snatched him by his wrist. "With the bounty the League put on you, I'll be set for some time."

With that, she dragged him down an alley as he struggled to escape. That was until a second person appeared and stuck him with a spur on the side of his thumb and he suddenly felt his muscles loosening.

Suddenly, it was all he could do to hold tight to his journal as he was carried through a series of alleys and back streets, trying to figure out what was going on and how he'd ended up in the grasp of villains miles away from home.

Izuku listened to the conversation of his captors as they carried him between the alleys, talking about how surprised at how easy a catch this had been. He understood that the barbed man had some paralytic poison quirk.

"Look at him clinging to that book in his hand," the poison guy stated.

As he reached for it, Izuku whimpered.

Izuku was surprised that they were carrying him through the streets in open daylight. They boarded a train and sat in separate locations, the woman carrying him, his hands tucked in his lap with the notebook clasped between them. From the looks he caught through half lidded eyes, he realized how it must look. Someone carrying an exhausted little kid, probably a family member or friend of the family. Wasn't an amber alert going out for him?

Was a quirkless kid worth one?

Izuku kept track of where the train stopped. Funnily enough, he caught glimpses of an alert for an older boy who did look a lot like him on some screens by the second stop. But nothing for him. He wished he could say he was surprised but who had time for some random quirkless boy, honestly?

He hoped the older boy was okay and someone found him soon, too.

Eventually they stepped off the train. He took in as many details as he could as they proceeded to a dingier part of the city.

As he listened, he caught on that the woman had done something by spitting water on him to make him helpless. Odd, he couldn't think of feeling any different when he’d first been grabbed, just being soaking wet and somewhere other than his neighborhood. Before he could piece together what must have happened, they had reached some trashed, closed, condemned hotel where they slipped inside.

Izuku was starting to be able to move his limbs again as he was set down. So, not a permanent or even long paralytic. The man who paralyzed him talked to the woman about going and finding one of the contacts for the "League" to pass him off to.

They discussed hiding him until the people showed that they would actually pay. Then he was gone.

He didn't even bother to paralyze Izuku again. 'That means he doesn't expect this to take long,' the boy realized.

The woman carried him into a room. As she set him down, Izuku quietly curled up into a ball, protecting all his sides as he quietly observed his surroundings: a guestroom closet.

"You make one sound and I'll kill you," the woman stated. He nodded his understanding, although he knew better. Death was probably assured if he sat here and did nothing. He heard the lock click and listened to the woman walk away.

Izuku looked down at his too-large pants, fighting the last effects of the paralytic as he rolled the legs up but gve u that approach, as the cuffs got in his way.  Instead, he unrolled them, removed them and looped them around his waist, so that he could tie the legs into a knot to secure his billowing shirt as well as the oversized boxer shorts beneath. It was not pretty, but serviceable.

He had to figure out what was going on. Whatever it was, it was bad news for him.

But first things first.

Izuku didn't know who this "League" was but he was sure that he didn't want to meet them. Especially not in a closed off corner with nowhere to run.

He had to get out of here.

Izuku looked up and saw a shelf in the little light seeping through the cracks of the doorway. He tucked the spine of his journal into his mouth and jumped up to grab it. As he lifted himself up, he thanked his lucky stars that whoever designed this building hadn't been thinking and that the people who'd snatched him up were amatures. There was an actual vent in the closet. Now if he could just slip off the grate somehow, then he could climb in and find a way to sneak out. He reached to his pants pocket and was glad to find his pen, although he didn't know how much it would help.

Izuku set his journal down and took his pen apart, placing the tip into the grooves of the screws to start spinning them out of the rusty grate that they loosely held in place. He wasn't sure how much time had passed as he worked, just that whatever he had was running down. As he spun the last screw, the pen’s tube busted, spilling ink all over him. He silently cursed, using Kacchan’s new favorite word but he knew it could be worse. He may have had to deal with slippery hands for most of this. Instead, he only had to struggle a few moments more before he was rewarded as the last screw fell off. He removed the grate, careful not to make any noise as he placed it down.

Then he grabbed up his journal and proceeded into the ventilation shaft, hoping he didn't make too much noise as he moved carefully within. He quickly found a section going in the direction opposite the main entryway and followed it.

Chapter Text

Every grate Izuku found, he carefully tested, hoping to find a loose one.  Thus far, he’d had no luck.

Then he heard voices and froze.

The woman who'd dragged him here stated something he only caught the tail end of. "…a year a day."

"And how old is he?" The voice sent a shiver down his spine. If it was quieter, he'd describe it as a menacing whisper.

"I'd say six, by the look of him. We got lucky, catching him off guard like that."

Izuku frowned, offended. Six? He was eight! He knew he was small but, really?

Even as he felt the indignation, every instinct in his mind screamed to keep moving. The villains were about to find a room that he very much wasn’t in and would start looking for him.  So, he kept squirming through the small space.

Izuku knew that his prediction had come to pass when he heard angry yelling.

So that meant they'd found nothing but a broken pen and his ink stained fingerprints where he was supposed to be. He heard another unfamiliar, deep voice state placatingly, "There's no need for that, I'll find him."

It was at that moment that Izuku found a very loose grate.  Even as he wiggled it, he felt a pressure shift in the tunnel, a slight stirring from the way he came. He kicked the grate out and crawled out.  With the practice of someone who couldn’t hesitate while running through playground equipment or over trash when being pursued by his bullies unless he wanted a beating, he crawled out with only mnimal prep for the fall, landed and rolled.

Izuku looked at a window that looked like it had been painted black, as if to keep out light, and pulled off the pants he'd tied around him, wrapping it around his hand. He needed to get to people.

Izuku didn't even understand why these people were after him. He just knew that staying here was bad.

That the consequences would be worse than anything his bullies had done to him.

He glanced behind him to see a pair of yellow eyes appear in the space previously covered by the grate. Not like yellow irises, but two glowing yellow eyes swathed in darkness.

Izuku found himself instantly fascinated. Whatever quirk this person had, it gave them an amorphous mist form. Rare, very rare. Very hard to outrun but maybe the shaft limited how much he could funnel himself here at once.

"Foolish child, if you were going to escape, you should have just run rather than talk about it. Not that it really matters, I only needed to see where you are to catch you."

"Oh, I didn't realize I was speaking out loud," Izuku stated, embarrassed. "Sorry!"

A strange sound filled the air as a swirling circle of black mist appeared. After a split second delay, a second black cloud appeared, then the first disappeared… no, it became the second.  The villain was now floating in the hallway, towering over him.

"A warper," Izuku realized, unable to hide the awe in his voice. Both ends of the portal had opened simultaneously, so while it was good for transport, there would probably be no void space between—

Suddenly, a second person stepped forward, coming out from within the mist. A man covered in hands. Maybe real ones. Izuku looked up into mad, excited eyes behind the hand covering his face. "Well, well. So, it's true. They did knock a few years out of you." He glanced to the portal and called out, "Interesting quirk, let me know if you want to work with us again. I'm sure I could find a good use for it."

"Maybe I will."

So not only physical forms but energy waves could travel through it, at least sound waves. Although it didn't look like light…

The man's red eyes narrowed behind the hand covering his face.

"I said all of that out loud, didn't I?"

"He's been running quirk analysis since he saw me," the mist warper stated from just over Izuku's shoulder, causing him to startle and dart sideways so he could keep both men in his view while stepping closer to the window.

"Really? How interesting."

Izuku needed to think of a plan. Keeping these villains talking might keep him alive. Big villains usually loved to talk, after all, right? Especially if they didn't think the person they were talking to would get to tell anyone else. "Who are you? What do you want?"

"Oh, right. You wouldn't know," Hands Man said.

The mist man floated snake-like next to the other and stated, "This is Tomura Shigaraki, leader of the League of Villains, and I'm Kurogiri."  Izuku had never heard of the group or the individual villains, but he’d always been more interested in heroes anyway.  Maybe he’d change that if he ever got away.

"As for what we want, that might depend on just how good your analytical skills are. Kurogiri was hardly subtle about his quirk. Tell me, can you figure anything out about mine?"

"It's something to do with your hands," Izuku immediately replied. "Even if you didn't dress the way you have, the way you hold them gives that much away."

“How I hold them?”

Izuku nodded.  He didn’t understand why these people were interested in his analysis, as no one ever was before but if it bought him time, he’d talk about it.  It also helped to keep him calm. "You lead fingers first but keep them slightly splayed.”  Izuku exaggerated the stance the other was using as he continued. “That suggesting you have to be careful about bringing them together. It must be an easily activated one. You are trying to get in close so it's probably not a long distance effect either. If it was, you wouldn't close in like this. Hands are too easy to damage and a bad mistake might leave you either in pain every time you went to use your hands or even functionally quirkless."

Shigaraki took an uncertain step back, withdrawing those hands slightly and Kurogiri's eyes widened before narrowing to slits. 

Izuku lowered his head and started shivering in fear. "I guess the weakness assessment was a bit overboard. It's kind of a habit when I write down my quirk analysis—"

"You write that shit down, too?!"

"Yeah." He tapped the book and added, "I'm up to five now…" He looked down and saw 'Quirk Analysis No 15.' And suddenly everything started clicking into place. The alert for the 'older boy,' the disabling and age comments, the two villains before him and how they had to remind themselves that he wouldn't know them.

He looked back up at Shigaraki and said, "She made me younger!"

Shigaraki laughed. "Wow Midoriya, I didn't mistake you for being stupid but I never would have suspected your intelligence went so far!”

Shigaraki touched a wall of the hallway with all five fingers. The wallpaper immediately started peeling away with a crackle and the wood beneath it turned to dust that filled the air and coated the back of Izuku's throat as he breathed it in. "I'll be honest, it never crossed my mind that my hands would also be my weak points,”  He pulled it awat the wall, turned it palm up and flexed his fingers as he glanced down, “but, you're right."

"Five point touch?"

A moment of silence, then Kurogiri said, "I think I understand one of the reasons UA class 1A has held so well against us."

"You think?  I’ll bet you that he’s the one who thought up that stunt they pulled in Kamino Ward."

Despite his fear, Izuku felt a smile come to his face. "You mean I make it? I actually make it into UA without a quirk?"

Both pairs of eyes look at him in surprise.

He cocked his head and blinked, then smiled. "I have a Quirk? Oh, what kind? It must be subtle, since I haven't used it yet. Well, not knowingly at least."

"Your quirk's about as subtle as a sledgehammer."

-Alternate overlapping version-

Izuku cocked his head. 'Knocked a few years out...' His mind was trying to put the pieces together but it wasn't working. And this wasn't the time either. Not surrounded by such high powered villains.

Izuku tried to delay Shigaraki by talking. Meanwhile, he had backed up to the window, one of the spots of light blocked by his body.

Shigaraki mentioned dealing with him before help came.

Izuku scoffed. "I doubt you need to worry about that. Kids like me don't get rescued. Not unless we save ourselves."

Shigaraki froze at his words, wincing as if Izuku had slapped him. He didn't know why they had instilled that reaction but that was good, because they'd almost lodged in his own throat, painful as they were. If they delayed this man long enough to save him, it would be worth it.

Izuku clenched his cloth covered fist and spun to the window, as he'd been planning to do originally. With the shattering glass came blinding rays of sunlight shining through but he pushed himself forward. He heard the warper curse as he undoubtedly shielded his eyes from the light.

Izuku took advantage of the moment and jumped onto the window ledge and saw the guy had haphazardly opened a portal out the window. He placed his protected hand on the window frame, hoping none of the remaining glass shards would cut through the thick fabric of the pants. Then he jumped to the side and landed in front of the building, seeing more than feeling a piece slash through his shirt and shoulder. With the warper momentarily blinded by the sunshine, his best hope was to outrun Shigaraki. He had to keep the escape hole small and leave the glass in.

Izuku glanced up to see the latter looking down at him as a gray spot already appeared on the wall beneath, showing he was using his quirk to eat a through the building.

 Something had changed in Shigaraki’s gaze.  Sadistic joy replaced for an intense stare.

Izuku shot a glare back at the man before running for his life.

Staying close to the wall, Izuku ran around the corner of the building. Even though it meant less distance, it also meant the warper would have to poke his head out the window to get a lock on him. As he rounded the corner and saw stacks of trash almost blocking up the windows on the hotel side and a door hanging unhinged on the side door of the next building, he thanked his lucky stars. He might actually get out of this.

Izuku darted down into a side entrance of the next building, door hanging off its hinges. He swiped his hand across his bloody shoulder and slammed a handprint on the wall to the right before darting left. It was more gruesome than dropping school supplies but he hoped it would do the trick. He ducked into the nearest doorway, leaving it half opened but hiding behind it.  Once out of sight, he waited, hoping his trick would work.

No more than a few seconds passed before he heard a single pair of footsteps approach. If the mist man was there and had a physical form, it could levitate. What a quirk! He'd have to take notes later, if he lived that long.

He heard Shigaraki's voice and his breath caught in his throat, "How old do you think he was?" There was a strange whispery sound in the background.

"Shigaraki, please, stop scratching yourself like that.  You'll tear your skin open. It just healed up for the first time since we left Kamino." Not whispery, Izuku realized, it was the other scratching at himself.  Izuku felt a wave of sympathy at the thought that the man might actually do it so intensely that he hurt himself.

"I was about that age when Sensei finally renamed me. He looked like he's known no one was coming for ages already, like he'd figured it out on his own." There was another stretch of silence and this time, there wasn’t any scratching. "There's his hand print. He must have gone this way. We need to find him. I need to talk to him. I think…I think I misunderstood. Bakugou wasn't the only one…maybe not even the biggest."

Don't look back… Izuku silently begged. Please don't check here. The footsteps continued onward and he fought the urge to sigh in relief. But he felt safe enough to breathe again as they began to move away from him.

"We still need to be careful. Don't forget how powerful his quirk is. It might break him to use it if cornered but it won't stop him…"

What was this quirk that had them so scared?

Izuku gave them enough time to get around the corner before he slipped back out the way he came in. He went deeper into the alley and found that there was a space between the buildings behind it so that he could slip out into the next street.

Over the next hour, he travelled four blocks.

Along the way his memories started rushing forward, showing him that night at home and the next day. His injuries started fading but he winced as he took a few more blows suddenly. He moved quietly, careful to watch for portals or shadows when crossing streets, as the bleeding in his shoulder slowed. 

Suddenly, he stopped because of a headache. He suddenly had a new memory of getting home but he knew that he never made it there. It was like his memories suddenly kicked into a fast forward button, hopping through his evening with mom and to bed even though he was still standing in an unfamiliar place all alone, not safe but running from villains.

Izuku barely made it into an alley to hide. He needed to calm down. He looked down at his journal, binder pointed toward him, a few drops of water, ink and blood on it. Maybe there'd be something here to help him.

He turned the page, hoping his older self would give him the help he needed.

After all, if there had ever been anyone he could count on to help him, it was himself.

Chapter Text

Quirk Analysis, No 15.

Not 'for the future.'

Izuku opened it to the first page and saw the single statement he placed at the start of every book as a reminder. "All men are not created equal."

He took comfort in the fact that, no matter how much old he’d been, some things didn’t change.

Book No 15…

He wasn't really eight, he finally realized. He knew he had been hit with a quirk that changed his age but there was a difference between knowing and accepting.

Well, of course he was eight right now but not naturally. He was under the effect of a quirk, and his body's meter was just starting to turn back to where it was supposed to be.

A year a day…that's what she meant, his rate of return to how old he really was. That meant a month every two hours, a day every four minutes or so, depending on how accurate the time frame was.

Izuku looked at his leg and noticed the bruise he'd had earlier was gone, although judging from the sore spot that had appeared on his back, it had been replaced. He could feel time rushing forward in his memories, but they were kind of disconnected, almost like he had to look at them to even see them. He winced as a new set of bruises appeared, along with the memories of how he got them. It was going to be a long few days.

Izuku turned the page and saw an image of…himself. Older, but not grown up, probably in his early to mid teens. Except not like he'd ever imagined. He'd gone through the trouble of inking it so red lines crisscrossed his body and what looked like green electricity ran around his legs. Was this his quirk?

The quirk was called One for All. He'd written some general stats down about it, discussing its power and versatility, how he'd started out with arm based attacks but shifted to legs injuries he’d taken. Most of the writing about his quirk was actually coded. But he suspected what the key was. He wished he had time to decode it now but he didn't.

But how could he have manifested a quirk? Especially after all this time. It didn't make sense.

Izuku flipped the page and saw the images of All Might and a skinny, sickly man next to it. After reading for a moment among the uncoded material, he realized that the skinny man was All Might's true form. He stared for a minute, amazed as he took in the skinny figure on the page.

He read what he could. All Might was a teacher of his. He saw the word retired and also had One for All. Otherwise, the writing was once again mostly in code.

A drop hit the page and Izuku wiped the tears out of his eyes. He'd done it. Somehow, he'd become a hero. After all this time, all the people telling him to give up, after his own mother had given up on his ever making it…He'd done it.

And done it well, if the villains chasing him were anything to go by.

But his mind caught in something. He had written himself and All Might as having the same Quirk. Even if he was lucky enough to have the same type of quirk as All Might (and the picture from earlier looked totally different from All Might's power), quirks were as unique as fingerprints. Not even identical twins got the same exact quirk. Yet he'd clearly named it as the same one. He suspected the answers were hidden in his secret words.

As he flipped the page, the mystery deepened, as there was an entire page completely devoted to the quirk itself, complete with eight dark forms and a shading suggesting a possible ninth, all in the same cypher as that found on the previous two pages.

Izuku didn't have time for this now. He was being chased by villains! He had to see if there was anything in here to help him against them.

Despite the situation, Izuku was smiling as he flipped through the pages. He noticed that his older self didn't just analyze quirks but skill level for fighting and strategy as well as psychological analysis. While they weren't quite expert level, he'd clearly done some reading. Izuku read over his own notes.

Izuku saw classmates and promised that if he had time later, he'd look over his descriptions of them. For now, he just settled for taking in their images as he flipped through them. He still stopped for a moment when he came to Kacchan's image, taking in his costume. It was a good fit. The other boy probably looked amazing as he outshined most, if not all, of the class with his quirk and his skills. Izuku didn't take time to read what he'd written about it, though. He needed to find something else.

Izuku finally stopped flipping as he came to a page labeled League of Villains, describing them as a group with the goals of killing All Might and overturning hero society, although apparently it was putting up a front of having other goals to gain support. He noted how he even speculated that it might actually develop more solid goals in the future, as it was apparently still a budding group. It was dated and listing known members of this time, since obviously in the future this would probably change.

He flipped the page and saw an intimidating figure that was more a silhouette than an actual detailed picture. Beneath was the label All For One….True Name, unknown. All Might's greatest enemy. He was named for his quirk, used to steal quirks and use them or force on others, the giving and taking often completely breaking his victims, reducing them to vegetables. His older self recommended reading about Nomus either  a few pages deeper or back in Quirk Analysis Journal 14. It went on to list a set of quirks he was displayed using, all rather straight forward, heavy duty abilities.

Izuku's older self had made a note of suspecting a structural support quirk beneath, otherwise the man's bones would have crumbled under the pressure of such intense quirks.

He also saw multiuse quirk with a question mark. And of course he'd have that suspicion. A quirk that allowed multiple other quirks to be used simultaneously, if there was such a thing, would be hard to ID and find…useless to its original owner but there was a difference between having quirks and using them all at once. Of course, it was possible that it just naturally… Izuku shook his head. No point in speculating over this guy right now. He noted that the man was currently in a high security prison, defeated by All Might (his last fight before retirement). Izuku smiled; good for All Might, even if he was sad that his favorite hero had to step down after. The rest of the page was once again covered in the coded text and he had little doubt that All For One was connected to the mystery of One For All.

Izuku turned the page again, leaving the mystery to poke at another time (and he would, he couldn't help it) and there was the man of hands. Shigaraki Tomura. Although One for All was the real leader, Shigaraki was the figurehead and usually the one actually calling the shots for individual missions.

Izuku read about his quirk, which heroes called Disintegrate. It broke down anything or anyone it touched. Izuku noticed a question mark for plastics and a second for twinkies. He chuckled, knowing the latter was a grim joke.

He'd written about the probability of disabling the quirk by keeping at least one digit from being capable of contact. He only got so vague when the ideas for how to act that way were too dark to feel comfortable penning to the paper. He'd had several incidents of that thinking about Kacchan. This time, he knew the undetailed disabling most easily meant maiming, either breaking or removing digits.

This type of quirk was so rare that made his warping counterpart look downright common, but, he'd speculated in his notes, probably took a mental toll on the users, who had to deal with the physical and psychological issues of being unable to touch anyone or anything without running the risk of destroying it.

Apparently he'd done research which suggested Shigaraki might be the only owner of that kind of quirk not locked away in one of the 'special wards,' for people with naturally dangerous quirks. Izuku felt a shiver run down his spine as he thought of what he'd read of those places. At least the quirkless were allowed to roam free; the ward's patients had rights about equal to imprisoned criminals, maybe less.

A life with not only his quirk working against him but a society ready to throw him into a padded room and throw away the key simply for his power just laid the foundations for a life of villainy. Simply by not handing himself in when his quirk activated, he would have been declared one, along with his parents. Society had rejected this man far more violently than it had Izuku. How hard would it have been, cornered and relegated to that society's underbelly, to decide he wanted to see the whole world burn.

On top of all of this, Izuku read that his older self had all but confirmed that the man had been exposed to some horrible childhood experience and blamed the heroes for not saving him, although the specifics were unknown.

Shigaraki was cautious, possibly cowardly. Understandable, if he'd grown up from a young age outside of the law, fighting for survival with deadly villains all his life with a quirk that would make him either a problem or a useful tool. While he was at the center of most of the League's plans, he rarely got into fights directly and usually only approached opponents when distracted. His nervous tick was to scratch at his own neck to the point that he tore up his own skin and it left noticeable scars there.

Each plan he had was more developed than the last. The ultimate shape of the League of Villains could very well depend on how Shigaraki ultimately turned out. Reading this made Izuku frown.

The guy even had a personal vendetta against him…great. Just the kind of person he wanted angry at him. He also noted that there was a small set of coded notes at the bottom of this page, too.

Suddenly another tear struck the page. As Izuku wiped his face, and then carefully dabbed away the droplet on the page, he noticed similar smudges to what this left behind elsewhere on the page, hinting at this being far from the first time he'd cried for this man. He wondered how many sleepless nights he'd spent thinking about this guy, wondering if there was any way to save him.

Izuku sighed and flipped the page. He set aside the pity he felt for the guy. He had to remember, this was a madman who would kill him. If there was anything to be done, it wouldn't be while Izuku was a quirkless child at the moment. Shigaraki was hunting, probably intending to kill. It was safest to simply view him from the perspective of being his target.

It didn't make him feel any less sad, thinking about the lost soul.

And there was Kurogiri, dark with ink and bright yellow eyes that seemed to almost glow even on the page. Not much outside of actual battle tactics. Izuku saw that he'd listed blinding among probable weaknesses. He circled it, so he would know in later editions to add it under the notes about his physical form.

That was followed by the page for the Nomus. What he read made him sick to his stomach. These poor people. He wiped his eyes, too much. This whole edition was too damn much. He understood why he hadn't written 'For the Future.' This book had immediate relevance. How many of these poor souls were out there? Why had no one noticed they were missing before? Did the average person really matter so little that they could just be snatched up and warped into [monsterous] monstrous dolls and no one cared?

Yes. He'd known that. He'd seen it with the quirkless statistics. They were the most targeted population. Disappearances happened all the time and authorities barely devoted any time to trying to solve them.

Izuku kept going, despite wishing he could stop, feeling like this book was too much to process, with knowledge both wonderful and terrible being thrown at him too fast. But he needed to know what to expect if he wanted to live through this and get home.

He read through the other members of the League of Villains, each disturbing in their own way. He had written multiple entries and while he'd apparently seen some of them in action, others were listed as secondhand accounts he received from his classmates. Some were listed as arrested but others were not.

Izuku sighed. He looked around at the condemned buildings. "I must be somewhere in the Industrial District." He had to get back to the main part of the city. If he could borrow someone's phone from there, he'd only have to wait for someone to arrive and then he'd be safe.

Izuku climbed a fire escape to the roof. He had to pause part way up as he was struck by a new set of injuries, courtesy of childhood Bakugo and Co., and looked toward the city…right in the direction he'd just come from…of course it was.

Izuku took in his situation, processing all the information he had as he flipped to a free page of his quirk analysis book and pulled a second pen still hanging in the pants pocket.. Usually, he doubted he would write plans in it but right now his survival depended on him thinking at his best. He did his best thinking when he wrote. As he worked, he whispered to himself, so it would be a conscious effort rather than an uncontrolled, possibly too loud to go unnoticed talking.

He wrote the names of his enemies, mentally summoning the pages he'd read on them, Although it was possible that Shigaraki wouldn't be able to get them all on such short notice and if there were any of the Nomus… He tapped his pen as he wrote the word down and underlined them. Hopefully, they hadn't made any specifically for tracking people.

He drew up a list of scenarios, taking note of the largest threats he could think of. If there was a tracker Nomu, he was already as good as done for. If Kurogiri saw him and he couldn't slip out of sight, all would be lost. If the magician, Compress, touched him, it was over too.

He listed as many probable negative scenarios as he could think of to avoid in five minutes.

So, what could he do?

He listed the supplies he currently had, the Quirk Analysis Book and pen and the clothes he had with him.

And the bluff of a powerful quirk, he reminded himself. Except he gave that away, already. Maybe he could act like he'd been too confused, earlier. A convincing hollow threat could be the difference between life and death.

Of course he'd gone and messed up what would have been his best chance.

He drew a general map of what he knew about this part of the city. There should be a city dump nearby. If he could navigate it, he might be able to get into the main part of the city from there. It would be dangerous, but the shifting environment created unknowns, even for those living in the area. That meant a more level playing field for him.

It would also open him up to treasures among the trash. Tools that could increase his odds ever so slightly.

A game plan began to form. He didn't know any of the streets by name but he knew where the dump came closest to a more active part of the city. He couldn't trust anyone here, not with the shape shifter, Toga about. But if he could get somewhere public, the villains might let him go so that they don't attract hero attention. He could ask people for help to get him to the police or the nearest patrolling hero. They could get him to safety.

Even if the villains were so determined to have him that they did brave the public streets, he just had to last long enough for a hero to show up.

And what if someone gets hurt because of it? What if…? He shook his head. He knew his odds. Chances were, he wouldn't even make it to the dump, let alone to the public area tha was his goal but if he stayed here and waited, he didn't stand a chance.

So, he stood, took a deep breath to steady his nerves and started in the general direction of the trash, stopping at alleys filled with litter and trashcan lids and avoiding all the people he saw.

Izuku looked up to see the last of the evening light leaking out of the sky. He silently apologized to his mom for being out so late when he'd promised he'd be home for dinner. Even if he really did make it home that night and was now months older than when all this started this afternoon. Surely she had expected him to be home by now.

Chapter Text

"Shigaraki is here," Izuku stated to the police over the phone. He was certain that Kurogiri was probably waiting somewhere just outside. Some alley just out of sight.

"We're sending heroes now."

"If he's here, their Warper's probably close too. If I get in his line of view, he'll be able to open a portal and take me basically anywhere. Are there any super speed heroes in this city, preferably who could carry a lighter hero without any…?"

"No one who could get here before I turn a dozen people to dust." a quiet hissing sound met Izuku’s ears with the statement, from the countertop above, followed by a crackling. He saw that the people had leaned back from the counter, eyes filled with fear.

Izuku looked up to see the face drawn in his book smiling down at him as the counter began crumbling beneath his fingers.

"But none of these people have to die. If you just come with me right now, they can go on with their little lives, pretending nothing ever happened."

Izuku felt his eyes tear up and not just from the dust raining down on him from above.

"If I come, no one here gets hurt?"

"Only if we leave before the heroes and police get here."

Izuku could still hear a voice rising from the phone clutched in his hand as looked over at the scared clerks. No one else had caught on, Shigaraki must be able to control the speed at which his quirk worked, for it still to be mostly intact.  And where Kacchan's quirk boomed, Shigaraki's barely even whispered. Suddenly the crowd that was supposed to symbolize his safety had become the jaws of an inescapable trap. He sighed and handed the phone back to the clerk closest to him.

Izuku clutched his book to his chest and walked around the counter. Shigaraki wrapped an arm around his shoulders and grabbed his upper arm, his middle finger kept lifted.

Izuku couldn't help the small whimper that escaped his lips as the man pulled him to his side. In the process, the loose fabric of his shirt bunched up and bumped said middle finger and suddenly, the four other fingers were against his bare skin. The sleeve was connected to the rest of the shirt by a seam, so the disintegration stopped there, dust coating the cold sweat up to Izuku's elbow.

Shigaraki looked up at the people behind the counter and said, "Thanks, for a while there, I was worried I'd lost this little guy." If the adults hadn't known any better, he probably would have sounded like a relieved family friend or babysitter. Until he frowned and growled, "If you do anything stupid, whatever happens will be your fault." He then looked down at Izuku with a big smile and said, "Come on Izuku, it's time to go."

Izuku looked around at the people and took a shuddering breath. Heroes were coming but they wouldn't be able to stop the villains without at least a few people being killed, would they? They weren't even planning on killing him, at least not yet and even if they were, better him then someone else, right?

As Izuku started walking with Shigaraki, he tried to focus on the feeling of the book in his hand but he could not tune out the feeling of a hand with three fingers and thumb wrapped around his arm.  It was just slightly too tight, one finger from Izuku being disintegrated.

Izuku winced as he felt a new set of bruises appear from another beating; most notable were a  hand shaped bruise he could feel blooming along his jaw and up his cheek, marked by elongated fingers, and a burn appear on the skin beneath one of Shigaraki's fingers. The result of him standing up to Katsuki and his friends as they were about to bully yet another kid for having a 'stupid' quirk.

Izuku felt the hand holding him shift, irritating the bruise, causing him to yelp before saying, "Sorry."

The man froze momentarily and Izuku glanced up. The other's eyes flitted to the stinging spot on his cheek and his grip stiffening before relaxing into a more comfortable hold.

Then he felt two fingers and a thumb cup his chin and angle his head up. The smile was gone, replaced with actual concern. "We'll get some ice for it."

Izuku huffed before saying. "It'll be healed in ten minutes but I'm sure I'll have another just as bad somewhere else by then."

Shigaraki narrowed his eyes in anger.

Izuku expected the fifth finger to come down. He shouldn't have said anything. He wondered how long it would take before his nerves stopped…

Then Shigaraki let go of his chin and started walking again, faster than before, despite Shigaraki having pulled Izuku closer to his side, which he would think would make it a little harder to walk.

They walked through the large glass doors and in moments, Izuku heard a whisper of sound as a portal opened and they were engulfed in a dark mist. For a moment, he heard startled cries and shouts from outside.

Then they were elsewhere entirely.

Chapter Text

The first part of this was also used from Little Deku, Part 1 (chapter 17).  If you want to, you can go back and read it again to get an idea for the headspace Izuku is in for this. 

Izuku's world shifted. He was lying on the floor beneath florescent lights, a heavy weight leaning against him. He looked up to see a little girl lying on top of him, unconscious. Across from them was another boy a couple years older than him staring at him in horror, held in the arms of a young man with blond hair and blue eyes who was just on the adulthood.

Above them stood a man, his hair sticking straight up and eyes glowing red. Then the man's eyes stopped glowing, turning brown as his hair once again obeyed the rules of gravity.

What just happened?

Today was supposed to be simple. Get in, let Eri pick what she liked, make the purchase and head back to UA.

Shota should have known something would happen. Something always happened when Midoriya got involved.

In this case, that 'something' had been Eri's attempt to be friendly with someone her age involving a child with a quirk that enhanced the effects of other quirks. And, once again, since children were not allowed to practice their quirks, neither of them had any control and when Eri's quirk went off…it was a good thing that they had all been nearby.

In the half second it took Aizawa to spin around and focus his quirk, Midoriya had used his own to speed over and separate the two kids, shoving the boy into Mirio's arms as he pulled Eri to him to keep her from falling over.

Aizawa suspected that if he hadn't been there, Izuku Midoriya would have followed Eri's father into nonexistence. As it was, he found himself staring down at a small, scared child. As their eyes met, he saw no recognition there. Instead, the boy wrapped his arms even more tightly around Eri, who was unconscious from the shock of her quirk's amplified misfire. Obviously trying to be protective of the girl, even in his current state.

The irony of the situation was that they were only here to set up something that would allow Eri to train and avoid this exact type of scenario. One that had mostly been the idea of the now small, lost looking boy standing in front of them.

A few weeks previously, Aizawa had caught Eri playing with an apple, reverting it to an apple blossom and realized her powers didn't just work on people, but all living things. He'd allowed her to keep playing with it.

Midoriya saw it last week and a day later came to him with a list of ideas for safely training her quirk. One of which had been getting her plants to practice her quirk on.

So here they were in a garden center, in public where people with all types of quirks would be.

"Midoriya," Mirio Togata asked, not having seen the lost look in the child's eyes, "are you alright?"

Midoriya startled and looked at the teen, angling himself so that he could still keep Aizawa in his field of vision. His posture was wary as he asked, "Who are you? How do you know my name?"

"Midoriya," Shota called out, causing scared eyes to turn back to him. He knelt so that he was closer to eye level with the boy. "I'm Eraserhead, a trained hero."

"Eraserhead? I don't think I've heard of you before."

"I'm an underground one."

"Oh," Izuku replied. "Cool! I bet you have a really neat quirk!" He glanced around and asked, "But how did I get here with you?"

"What's the last thing you remember?"

"I was walking home after spending time at the park and then I was here. It was almost dinner time." He looked down at the little girl and asked, "Did I get hit with a teleportation quirk? No, that doesn't explain how you know me. Unless it affected my memory and you already talked to me beforehand…"

At that moment, Eri started to wake up. Izuku looked back to her. "Are you okay?"

Apparently, some things never did change. Still, his jumpiness worried Shota.

As Eri looked up at the boy, he could see the dawning understanding. "I'm sorry." She looked over at Shota, tears in her eyes and said, "I didn't mean to…"

"It wasn't your fault." Aizawa stated, before he looked at the other kid that triggered the event, who also looked extremely guilty. "Either of you." Then he looked at Midoriya and said, "Midoriya, Eri's quirk is rewind. She can rewind people back to previous states." He could see understanding dawning in his eyes… "She was talking with this boy here who has an amplifying quirk and they triggered a reaction. You jumped in so that he wouldn't get hurt. Do you understand?"

"How old am I supposed to be?"

"Sixteen."

"I'm eight," Izuku said as he looked down at his hands. "What should we do now?"

"We should get back to UA as quickly as possible and try to find someone who can fix this."

"UA?" Izuku asked. "I…I made it?"

Aizawa smiled and said, "Hero course 1-A."

"Can I call my mom?" Izuku asked. "Just to check."

"It is a lot to just believe at my word. Calling her is a logical idea."

Midoriya pulled out his phone and pressed 1, not even questioning whether he changed it or not. He put his phone to his ear.

Midoriya is allowed to stay on campus while they contact someone to deal with his situation. It is believed that sending him home will be too dangerous.

On the way back, Izuku finds his latest notebook in his pocket and reads through it to figure out what's happening.

Rewind is willing to correct his condition but it will take a week to get the paperwork to travel between America and Japan and travel over to them.

Inko Midoriya is allowed to stay on the campus but at the time the incident arose, she was out of town. It will be several hours before she'll be able to get there.

Momo makes him a set of clothes that he can fit into to sustain him until someone obtain clothes for him.

Bakugou caught Uraraka's eye from the stair and quietly nodded up the stairs.

Curious, the girl followed him up the stair. "Why don't you go out there, Bakugou. You and Midoriya were childhood friends, right?"

He looked at her and she realized what was behind the glare: shame. "Oh, that's what he'll tell you. But it's not true, I'm the guy who beat the crud out of him. Which is why you can't allow him to be around me. He'll want to but it's not good for him. Do not let him be around me alone. Lock him in in a room with someone else if you have to but I am not someone he needs to be around. It won't be easy; he's going to seek me out the moment he finds out I'm here. He will eventually find me too. Deku's nothing if not persistent. Do. Not. Let. Him. Do it alone. I wouldn't do anything to him anymore but by that age, I had him flinching at just the sound of my voice."

Chapter Text

Izuku gets caught by a time travel quirk caused by two-time quirk users, one from his time and one from the past, accidentally activating a portal when he is present. It was meant to give the person from the past a way to escape to the future. He is being hunted down by someone and had been in contact with the future person.

They cannot reopen the portal because they exhausted themselves. There is an angry crowd coming for them. The man who accidentally trapped Izuku there is sure that there is no escape. The police would be of no help and would in fact kill him if he could try to use his quirk on the populace.

Izuku doesn't understand at first but uses OFA to get them out of there.

He soon finds out that this is the time of the first-generation users. So early, in fact, that one would be hard pressed to find  someone with “superpowers” above the age of thirty. They are few and far between.

The man admits that he was trying to escape to the future with the help of one of his descendants. When Izuku asked about time distortion, he states that he had a kid already who had such a subtle power that he could pass as having none and it would be safer for everyone if they didn't know about his quirked parent. Plus, records indicate that he disappeared around this time: his descendant had done their homework. It had been suspected that he died when the building was set on fire by a mob, although  no body had ever been found. It was essentially the perfect opportunity and his lack of presence afterward could be evidence of his successful escape.

If he could lay low for a week and then somehow sneak back onto the property (and count on the descendant being in the same spot at a future time) they could get back to Izuku's time no problem.

But as they wait, people with quirks start showing up.

At one point, a boy named Hisashi shows up, catching Izuku’s attention as he is the first person he;s met with his father’s name.  He’s about Izuku's age shows up who has a power he calls 'storage.' He can take and give quirks, storing them dormant within himself. He claims he was attracted by an insistent pull on his stored quirks. A quirk magnetism that he has traced back to Izuku.

Hisashi is trailed by a younger brother who he is extremely protective of. An unhealthy boy who jokes that he's a sickness magnet, picking up every bug that came his way. He is currently dealing with a cold. There's something familiar about him too.

Izuku gives a false name for himself, just in case.  He didn’t know much about time travel and didn’t want to risk changing something by accident. He asks if the other is sure about the Quirk Magnetism.

Hisashi realizes that Izuku doesn't even know he has it. They talk for a few minutes and Izuku finds that that they share the same obsession with quirks or "superpowers" as everyone calls it.

Hisashi explains that he discovered his powers by accident when a man tried to attack him with a quirk and he yanked it away. Since then, although he's tried to keep quiet to the general public, word of his abilities had crept out to the superpower community and people kept secretly approaching him, either to beg for him to take their power away or give them one.

Izuku wondered if All for One had any relatives other than his brother.  “Storage” is very similar to the quirk and based on how All Might described All for One, he might have eventually done something to get rid of this boy.  The problem is, he doesn’t know if he even can warn Hisashi of the danger.

Izuku spends a few days hanging out with the two of them. Hisashi tries to help him explore his secret quirk, and they soon discover that it works both ways, pulling him toward quirk wielders as much as it pulls them to him but usually only on a subconscious level.  Izuku supposed that it would be easy for this quirk to go undetected in his time simply because there were so many people with quirks around, unlike here, where they were so rare that stumbling across each other accidentally was unlikely.

While he is out, the time quirk man disappears. Izuku finds signs of a struggle but doesn't know what happened beyond that.

He finally explains his situation to the boys, and they decide to try to help him.

Then a van comes and snatches up Hisashi and his younger brother.

Izuku chases them but loses them when the police fire on him for using powers.

Izuku is forced to embrace his previously unknown ability to track down the brothers, finding that they had actually been snatched up by the government and Hisashi was being forced to take part in experimental quirk removal at the threat of his younger brother's safety.

Izuku tries to get them out, busting out the other quirk users who were being secretly kept without committing a crime. Most are children.  The person with the temporal link quirk with his descendent is dead.

Once Izuku frees both Hisashi and his brother from their holding cells, Hisashi’s fear is replaced with anger. In his rage, Hisashi discovers that his 'Storage' power is in fact not what he thought.

Hisashi can activate his stored quirks. All for One has awakened, and Izuku is caught totally off guard.

Hisashi teams up with Izuku to get the kids out. In fact, Izuku has  to physically stand in his way to stop him from pursuing their tormentors afterward. They get into a fight that Izuku easily wins, restraining the other until he calms down, arguing that helping the others is more important than hurting their abusers.

After everything, Izuku admits to having no clue how to get back. Hisashi reveals that the time quirk was one of the ones he was forced to take. Izuku needs to get back to his own time and the other boy is going to help him.

As they wait, the brothers argue over whether quirk users should be forced to hide their powers for their safety or they should fight back. Izuku is torn, because the boys clearly care for each other and Izuku knows exactly where these arguments are going to lead. That it will tear the two apart and grow into a feud that will become a standoff carried across generations for over two centuries. But he knows that if he says anything, the results on the rest of the future could be catastrophic.

But when they open the portal for him, the brothers are standing side by side seeing Izuku off with big smiles.

Izuku arrives back to his home section of time almost two months after he left. He knows he has a lot to tell and multiple people to set up meetings with, including a man who's waited 200 years, possibly leaving the quirk One for All intact during this time, all for Izuku to come and have this chat.

During Izuku's time setting up that meeting, he also comes to a suspicion that his father's name wasn't passed across generations at all.

Chapter Text

In an attempt to improve relations between their classes, Eraser Head and Vlad King decide to give students an assignment together.

"Vlad King and I have decided that Classes 1A and 1B need to improve relations. As such, you will be working on a project together. The main topic is Heroics Through a Social Lens. Beyond that, you are expected to choose a more specific topics. You will need both Vlad and I to accept your topic of choice."

"You will have a few afternoons, your usual heroics class time, cut so that you can further explore this topic during class hours. You are expected to find direct sources, which may mean going off site. If so, you are expected to be at least in pairs if not larger groups."

"Your partners have already been selected." He pulled out a pile of papers. "I have the pairings with me."

Izuku saw Kirishima's shoulders fall at that. No doubt, he'd been hoping to rush right over to TetsuTetsu to partner up with him later. Not that he could picture the other picking someone else. They really bonded during the tournament and internships had been hanging out quite a bit since then. Maybe the teachers would put them together, anyway.

As the list of groups was passed out, Izuku immediately recognized that they weren't random by any means. There were some pairs that were clearly chosen for their cooperation in previous situations, such as Momo and Awase, who had apparently worked together during the Vanguard Attack to tag the Nomu with the tracker before the latter had carried the former to the ambulance.

Then there was Kendo and Iida. Nothing like getting the presidents working together to try to convince the rest of the students to follow suit.

Izuku knew he was trying not to bring his eyes further down the page, afraid of seeing who he was teamed up with. Deep down, he knew that whatever person he was paired up with, it wasn't going to be as pleasant as these combos. He'd gone so far as placing his hand over the part of the page his name was on. He knew it was probably mean to think that way, but he couldn't help it.

The pitying glances he caught from a few classmates didn't help allay Izuku's fears either.

Izuku continued to observe other groups on the list to distract himself. There were several pairs from opposing teams during the class face offs.

As he removed his hand, he finally saw that he was very much in the last group. He felt himself paling as he read the name.

Neito Monoma.

Neito Monoma, who was perpetually angry over something and chose to pour it into accusing Class 1-A of thinking they were better and being attention seeking troublemakers. Monoma, whose first interaction with Izuku was to elbow him in the back of the head before telling his classmates how 1-A would drag others into their messes, too. As if he could sense that Izuku was always one of the people there…maybe he'd recognized Izuku in the footage of Stain's speech. He'd been right, too. Izuku remembered the training camp, the glow of distant fire through the trees as the smell of smoke permeated the area…of his arms throbbing in time with his heart as he ran through the woods…of many classmates hurt and one stolen.

Monoma, who'd confronted him directly during the team fights. Who Izuku had gotten angry at and nearly hurt when a secret quirk he didn't know One for All held was unlocked.

Clearly All Might wasn't part of this discussion, otherwise he would have tried to convince them to put him with someone else. Monoma knew too much about One for All, already. He'd copied it, even if he didn't get all the power it held. He knew a weakness, because it was a stock piling quirk.

Izuku sighed.

"Are you sure Midoriya and Monoma are a good match up? Midoriya seems a bit…"

"Don't let Midoriya's quiet behavior outside of class fool you, he's one of the core members of class 1-A." Eraserhead looked at Vlad King and frowned. "I won't lie, there will probably be some fireworks before everything settles down but several of my own students have ended up overcoming personal barriers in Midoriya's presence. He has a gift for that. You've mentioned that Monoma made comments that he doesn't think he has a quirk for being a primary hero." Then Aizawa smiled like a Cheshire cat as he added, "Besides, the kid's always upset that 1-A finds trouble. Midoriya's always at the center of those problems. Either Monoma might curb that a bit while they're together or Midoriya will drag him into a mess so he can't keep ribbing my students about it anymore."

"Midoriya is your resident troublemaker?"

Aizawa leaned across the table. "I'm sure you're aware that he was one of the kids at the Stain incident but tell me, after the battle at Kamino Ward, did you ever hear about how Bakugou was rescued?"

The other man's eyes widened. "No way!"

"I can confirm or deny nothing, for if I did, I may or may not be required to expel most of my class."

Kan's jaw fell open.

"You still think Midoriya can't handle Monoma?"

Chapter Text

In an attempt to improve relations between their classes, Eraser Head and Vlad King decide to give students an assignment together.

"Vlad King and I have decided that Classes 1A and 1B need to improve relations. As such, you will be working on a project together. The main topic is Heroics Through a Social Lens. Beyond that, you are expected to choose a more specific topics. You will need both Vlad and I to accept your topic of choice."

"You will have a few afternoons, your usual heroics class time, cut so that you can further explore this topic during class hours. You are expected to find direct sources, which may mean going off site. If so, you are expected to be at least in pairs if not larger groups."

"Your partners have already been selected." He pulled out a pile of papers. "I have the pairings with me."

Izuku saw Kirishima's shoulders fall at that. No doubt, he'd been hoping to rush right over to TetsuTetsu to partner up with him later. Not that he could picture the other picking someone else. They really bonded during the tournament and internships had been hanging out quite a bit since then. Maybe the teachers would put them together, anyway.

As the list of groups was passed out, Izuku immediately recognized that they weren't random by any means. There were some pairs that were clearly chosen for their cooperation in previous situations, such as Momo and Awase, who had apparently worked together during the Vanguard Attack to tag the Nomu with the tracker before the latter had carried the former to the ambulance.

Then there was Kendo and Iida. Nothing like getting the presidents working together to try to convince the rest of the students to follow suit.

Izuku knew he was trying not to bring his eyes further down the page, afraid of seeing who he was teamed up with. Deep down, he knew that whatever person he was paired up with, it wasn't going to be as pleasant as these combos. He'd gone so far as placing his hand over the part of the page his name was on. He knew it was probably mean to think that way, but he couldn't help it.

The pitying glances he caught from a few classmates didn't help allay Izuku's fears either.

Izuku continued to observe other groups on the list to distract himself. There were several pairs from opposing teams during the class face offs.

As he removed his hand, he finally saw that he was very much in the last group. He felt himself paling as he read the name.

Neito Monoma.

Neito Monoma, who was perpetually angry over something and chose to pour it into accusing Class 1-A of thinking they were better and being attention seeking troublemakers. Monoma, whose first interaction with Izuku was to elbow him in the back of the head before telling his classmates how 1-A would drag others into their messes, too. As if he could sense that Izuku was always one of the people there…maybe he'd recognized Izuku in the footage of Stain's speech. He'd been right, too. Izuku remembered the training camp, the glow of distant fire through the trees as the smell of smoke permeated the area…of his arms throbbing in time with his heart as he ran through the woods…of many classmates hurt and one stolen.

Monoma, who'd confronted him directly during the team fights. Who Izuku had gotten angry at and nearly hurt when a secret quirk he didn't know One for All held was unlocked.

Clearly All Might wasn't part of this discussion, otherwise he would have tried to convince them to put him with someone else. Monoma knew too much about One for All, already. He'd copied it, even if he didn't get all the power it held. He knew a weakness, because it was a stock piling quirk.

Izuku sighed.

"Are you sure Midoriya and Monoma are a good match up? Midoriya seems a bit…"

"Don't let Midoriya's quiet behavior outside of class fool you, he's one of the core members of class 1-A." Eraserhead looked at Vlad King and frowned. "I won't lie, there will probably be some fireworks before everything settles down but several of my own students have ended up overcoming personal barriers in Midoriya's presence. He has a gift for that. You've mentioned that Monoma made comments that he doesn't think he has a quirk for being a primary hero." Then Aizawa smiled like a Cheshire cat as he added, "Besides, the kid's always upset that 1-A finds trouble. Midoriya's always at the center of those problems. Either Monoma might curb that a bit while they're together or Midoriya will drag him into a mess so he can't keep ribbing my students about it anymore."

"Midoriya is your resident troublemaker?"

Aizawa leaned across the table. "I'm sure you're aware that he was one of the kids at the Stain incident but tell me, after the battle at Kamino Ward, did you ever hear about how Bakugou was rescued?"

The other man's eyes widened. "No way!"

"I can confirm or deny nothing, for if I did, I may or may not be required to expel most of my class."

Kan's jaw fell open.

"You still think Midoriya can't handle Monoma?"

Chapter Text

As the lunch bell rang, Izuku decided to get started. Better to do this now than wait until after school, when his nerves had even more time to be worn raw. He took a moment to let his classmates file out, hoping that being closer to the end of the line, the other boy would already be seated and he could approach afterward.

It turned out Monoma wasn't going to wait for that, because he was waiting just up the hall from the lunch line when 1-A showed up.

Knowing why the blond was probably waiting there, Izuku looked at his friends and said, "I'll talk to you guys later."

Uraraka glanced at Monoma and said, "If he gives you any trouble, you can always come to us."

"Thanks," Izuku said, even though he knew he'd do no such thing. After, he walked over to the other boy.

Before he could say anything, the other boy jumped right in. "Don't think because we're in the same group, I'm going to let you walk all over me. I'm not going to take any of your 1-A superiority garbage."

Izuku just nodded, not trusting his voice at the moment, worried it would come out with a tremor or as a squeak from his nervousness. Instead, he took a breath before saying, "Do you have any ideas? I was thinking maybe we could do something related to people's views on quirks in relation to heroics."

Monoma frowned and said, "If you're choosing a quirk related topic to try to get on my good side…"

They heard a snort and looked up to see Bakugou was passing them.

"And what's that about?" Monoma snapped.

"You, thinking that Midoriya is choosing a quirk related topic for your benefit." He looked at Izuku and said, "If you pull out your creepy ass notebooks or start mumbling about quirks, do it where I don't have to listen."

"Kacchan!" Izuku replied, shocked and cheeks burning with embarrassment. It had been a long time since the other boy had berated him in front of others like that. He'd been sticking to just doing it in private, lately.

"I thought you guys were friends," Monoma said.

Bakugou ignored them and kept going.

Izuku sighed.

"What notebooks?" Monoma asked, giving him a suspicious look.

"It's nothing," Izuku said, pulling out his notebook, noticing Uraraka pausing by the lunch trays and glancing over her shoulder. He gave a her a smile, to reassure her before looking back at Monoma and saying, "I like doing quirk analysis. It's an old hobby of mine."

Monoma eyed it. "I saw you with that during our mock battles."

Izuku nodded. "I just took basic observations while watching. I wouldn't have time to write down all of the ideas and questions right then, since it was the first time I got to see all of your class's quirks in action. I was really looking forward to the test of courage for that but… I guess it turned out that you were right about drawing trouble on you."

There was a moment of awkward silence at the statement and the other boy was studying him intently. Rather than pursue the issue, he instead looked at the book in Midoriya's hand in wary interest and asked, "So you wrote about all of our quirks in there?"

Izuku nodded and smiled, happy to change the subject to something more enjoyable as they moved along in the lunch line.

"Yeah and since you talked more about it while helping with Eri's quirk, I was able to go into even greater depth with yours than I would have otherwise," he said, glad to talk about something he enjoyed.

"Could I see?"

Izuku frowned, sure he must have heard wrong. "You want to see your page? Are you sure?" No one ever wanted to read his writing.

"I'd be a fool to pass up finding out what you know about me."

Izuku flipped through his notebook to the page he'd set aside for the other boy and passed it to him.

Monoma's eyes darted over the pages. "What makes you think skin to skin contact only?"

"Well, I figured that if you could use your quirk by touching hair or something, you'd have set up your costume to reflect that. Let's say that you use your quirk on hair, if you had scissors or some sort of comb or Velcro; you could collect hairs and your time limit would be much less of an issue. Instead, your limit would be sample based. I would also think you would be considering asking others for samples, so you could set up a quirk pool without actually having to reach out for people every time. Hypothetically, your biggest challenge would switch from being how long you can hold a quirk to how quickly you can drop one from your immediate set to make room for another, unless there isn't a lower limit to that." Izuku was relieved to reach the front of the line, taking his tray occupied his hands, which he realized he was starting to wave around. It also gave him an excuse not to look at Monoma for a moment, so he wouldn't have to know how badly he was probably creeping the other boy out. "Of course, th-that's just if you could do that."

He glanced over to find that Monoma was staring at him like he'd grown a second head.

"Sorry, I ramble and mumble when I get thinking. I usually try not to do it when other people are around because it freaks them out."

"Are you telling me that your classmates know you do that and haven't lined up and taken turns to ask you about what you've figured out about their quirks?" Monoma asked, sounding amazed. "I mean I'm only looking at mine and…these are game changers! Your point that I could use a quirk's natural resistance against opponents is a good one, too." Monoma held out the book to Izuku, who balanced his tray on one hand to take it with the other.

The blond took his own food and thanked Lunch Rush before he and Izuku looked for a table to sit at. "I do get what you're saying about people freaking out when you get talking about quirks, though. I had that problem when I was younger. I learned to just keep it to myself."

Izuku nodded. "Yeah, you'd probably be curious about all of them too, given that your own quirk is dependent on figuring out the ones you pick up as quickly as possible. And I'm sure you're able to find out a lot more than I ever could. You get an inside perspective on how they work. I just watch and guess based on what I see from a distance."

Monoma sat quietly for a moment before pointing at the notebook he'd handed back and stating, "So, I saw that one was number twenty."

Monoma glanced up at Midoriya, listening intently and encouraging him whenever he paused.  It had been a one-eighty from the unexpectedly timid approach the other had taken, earlier.

If he had never seen Midoriya in action, he would have assumed the greenette was one of the weaker members of 1-A from his behavior. And then would have assumed he got in on his intelligence, rather than his quirk, once he showed his analytical skills. He would have suspected that the greenette had a quirk that wasn't overtly 'heroic,' like himself or Shinsou, for instance. Except one who was just getting their footing for standing up to others.

But he had seen his quirk and he knew this was one of the powerhouses of 1-A. So his behavior made no sense.

The uncertain way he looked up and started stuttering further added to the illusion. "Wh-wh-what do you th-think?"

"Hmm?"

"I was saying that maybe for our first person perspective portion, we could talk to people who witness hero fights."

"Do you know how to track down those fights, or the people who watch them?" Monoma had, partially out of necessity, partially out of a curiosity that he'd been warned by counselors was probably driven by the nature of his quirk. He wanted to see new quirks…and feel them…and use them…

Which was kind of hard, when no one wanted to touch him, as if he took their quirks rather than just copied them.

Still, he didn't want the other to think he would be carrying all of the weight, here.

"There's apps for listening in on police scanners and besides, even without them, I can find them pretty well." Midoriya turned red as he said, "I can't talk on the websites anymore without making a new identity because I tried talking quirk theory and got intimidated by the reaction."

"Yeah, if you don't know what you're talking about, they can get pretty aggressive." He'd always loved the conversations but knew that some people tended to disappear if they got overwhelmed.

Midoriya nodded and said, "They also swarm you if you get things right too often. They take it very seriously."

Neito smiled and said, "Then how about we do something on quirks and hero popularity compared to actual application?"

Quirks, ironically, seemed to be the key to breaking through the shy stuttering to excited brightness. He had a feeling that a villain could have started this conversation and he would be just as happy to carry it on.

Not that Nieto minded, considering the subject matter. Most people had gotten weirded out when he started talking about quirks in any meaningful way.

He hadn't realized how deep they were in conversation until, a few tables away, he saw Bakugou stand up and leave the cafeteria, actually looking unsettled. Neito looked up at that.

It suddenly occurred to him that the other teen had slammed into his shoulder while he was letting Midoriya squirm. And now he'd been close enough to hear.

And was leaving unsettled. Neito knew the type, had seen it sometimes in elementary school before he'd learned to curb his own tongue.

He was scared but trying to pretend not to be. It was the first time Neito had seen such a thing from him.

Yet he'd also specifically brought attention to Midoriya's quirk knowledge earlier when Neito had accused the other boy of just trying to gain his favor. Was this another subtle sign of Bakugou's development, stepping in for a friend, even if the topic he was spurring was an unsettling one.

He hadn't missed the way a large portion of Class 1-A was around Izuku Midoriya. He was one of the sensitive points for the class. Of course, he'd been one of the three kids attacked by Stain, and been one of the students who'd been taken on a big joint task force mission that, despite the resulting wreckage, had almost no coverage. A hero had died and one of the most promising third year students had been stripped of their quirks.

Midoriya had a propensity to get swept up into deeper trouble than the others and was living proof of how easy it was for the idiots to get in over their heads.

Midoriya and Monomas' project is one of the first accepted. It has no problem getting passed.

I played around quite a bit with Midoriya and Monoma's first interaction. This is some alternate material which would have ended up in the deleted scenes if this had become a fully-fledged story.

"H-hi…" Izuku forced back the old stutter, slowing down just enough so his tongue wouldn't trip over itself. "It looks like we're working together

Monoma frowned, studying him for a moment.

Izuku fidgeted under the gaze.

Suddenly, Kacchan walked past Izuku and bumped shoulders with Momoma.

"How typical!" Monoma snapped at the other blonde.

At the same time, Izuku cried, "Kacchan! That wasn't very nice."

That got a look from the other blonde. "Kacchan?"

"Fuck being nice, Deku."

"Hey, are you two going to just talk over me?" Monoma asked, affronted.

"No, of course not," Izuku replied.

"I only talk to people who are worth talking to," Bakugou said as he turned his back to Monoma.

Izuku frowned. "Sorry, he hasn't been quite that bad for a while."

"Like what, an hour?" Monoma asked him, annoyed.

Izuku looked on, wondering what Kacchan was playing at.

"What do you mean?"

Great, he'd asked that aloud. "The way he interrupted us was on purpose. He wanted to draw attention to him. He shouldered you, but he did it in front of me. He meant to draw a reaction out of both of us. But he hasn't been so blatantly rude in a long time."

Monoma looked between the spiky haired blonde and Izuku. "All of that from a shoulder bump?" Then he frowned and asked, "How long have you two known each other."

"Longer than we can remember," Izuku replied as he watched the spiky haired boy receive his food and walk off to join Kirishima, a small ache of longing as he turned away and smiled. "So, do you have any ideas for what we can do for our project?"

Monoma sighed and said, "Not really. I don't suppose that you have any."

"I have a few."

Nieto watched as Izuku Midoria expertly shifted his tray into one hand as he pulled out a notebook with his other. "Since our teachers want us to do a project about the social influences of heroics and want us to do field work, I was thinking maybe we could look at something related to hero fights." Everything about Midoriya came off as 'wrong.' "Th-they are always drawing crowds. It would be easy enough to…"

Chapter Text

Chapter 3

Midoriya and Monoma go to town and make some observations, as students are allowed to do this if they travel in pairs or groups. As they try to talk to people, they end up getting involved in a ridiculous number of incidents compared to normal, even with the hero tracking apps. They end up getting in a fight with a villain that makes people 'disappear.'

As they approach the second hero fight in as many hours, Neito wanted to scream. It was their second afternoon to gather information for their project.

Yesterday, they had somehow stumbled across three fights while there were no more qualified heroes around to help, plus two robberies which they had deal with themselves. This was maybe the number of incidents a hero might usually find in a week. When Neito had said as much to Midoriya, the greenette had given him a befuddled look and asked, "You really think it's that much more than usual? I thought it seemed a little slow."

Later, looking back, Neito would suppose that should have been his first warning for what was to come, other than the president of 1-A had coming to him at the end of the first day after they had been assigned their partners and asking to exchange numbers 'in case something happens.' He'd been frustrated at the time, and said that just because they coddled Midoriya, they couldn't expect him to follow the same pattern.

Now though…Now he was starting to get it.

Today was shaping up much the same as yesterday.

And Nieto didn't miss how 'Deku' kept glancing over at him like he wanted to say something but every time he looked the other kid would get flustered and nervous. Which was indeed his natural state. Unless he was mumbling or fighting.

When he wasn't fighting, then he was between the Villain of the Hour and everyone in danger. He'd also given Neito the idea of slipping through the crowd to pick up quirks on the way to the villain, thanks to previously aforementioned mumbling.

After scanning to make sure the crowd was a safe distance back, Midoriya made his notebook appear seemingly from thin air and started scribbling and mumbling. Neito didn't interrupt, knowing that a lot of his event-specific questions would come from this but it was still interesting to hear the other boy breaking down quirks, techniques, reception, damage to environment and anything else he seemed to think of. He got some ideas for things he'd look for in the future too.

Of course, Midoriya also wanted to know about the quirks Neito picked up, too, which was a new experience for him. He was used to people just counting on him to use them and nothing else. It was actually kind of nice…when they were doing it on campus without having to worry about having to rescue a civilian, fight a villain or get interrupted by some other hero doing it.

They asked the people some questions, explaining it was for a class project. After some time, they moved on.

"Stop! Thieves!"

Midoriya perked up and looked in the direction of the call, pulling on the top half of his lackluster costume and slipping on his mouthguard in one fluid motion as Neito just sighed and followed.

Chapter 4

The two teens get hit (Maybe Izuku taking a hit when he realized the other boy has been sent elsewhere, to help him).

Monoma and Izuku seem to stop the situation with no problem, before the getaway person uses their quirk and they both 'vanish.'

Chapter 5

Izuku looked around and breathed a sigh of relief. "You're alright?"

"Of course I am," Monoma replied. "Just because I'm not 1-A doesn't mean I can't take care of myself." The comment was only thrown out halfheartedly as the other boy looked around. "Where are we?"

"I don't know, but whatever that villain did, it messed up my phone. I've got no signal."

"Huh, me neither."

Izuku looked around. The road looked similar to the one they'd been on, if not quite the same. Different store fronts. A few people stared at them, tense.

Izuku smiled nervously and said, "Hey, we're a couple of hero students who were stopping a robbery. Seems that one of them had a teleportation quirk. Could someone tell us where we are? Maybe lead us to the nearest police office?"

The people seemed to settle at that comment, a few giving them sympathetic looks.

He heard a whisper about them seeming to get younger every year.

The people helped them out and they found that they were on a street with the same name as the one they left. "Maybe their quirk could only teleport people to streets with the same names?' There'd been weirder quirks out there.

Except, some of the streets they passed had the same names as where they just were. Suddenly, they passed a television that was giving a weather report…for the wrong month.

"Monoma?"

The other boy looked and frowned. "What?" He looked up at the screen and said, "Oh…"

"How wide a time range do you think our cell phones would work in?" Izuku asked

"Shoot."

Izuku just nodded and said, "Yeah, that sounds about right for how to feel."

As they continued, they slipped over to a magazine rack, hoping to get a date. They did, but they got something else, too.

There on one of the racks was a government issued 'Natural Disaster Warnings of the Year' issue, with a tidal wave on the cover. Izuku picked it up and read. Someone with a foresight quirk? If so, it was a clever application of it but… he recognized some of the events from history books but there had never been mentions of warning systems. Surely there would have been plans in place to prevent the horrible loss of life that occurred.

Yet events that hadn't happened yet but were accurate down to the day. "Huh." There was an events page for human activities with a warning that the predictions were less accurate but again, Izuku recognized the described events from history class.

Monoma grabbed a booklet and asked, "What are these?"

"Catastrophes and major crimes. Don't you remember reading about this earthquake in historylass? It was awful…but it hasn't happened yet. So how can they know? Foresight quirk?"

Monoma suddenly went as white as a sheet and looked around. He spotted a girl with a cell phone of a very recognizable model. "Midoriya, their cell phones are only a couple years behind ours."

Izuku glanced at the cell phones that he could see the other boy was right. "This can't be a foresight quirk. But what?"

"We're not the first."

Izuku looked at him, confused for a moment before comprehension struck. "Do…do you think the others gave this information by choice?"

Monoma frowned and walked Izuku away from the magazine stand. "We don't legally exist here. They don't need willing cooperation. And they have their citizens to protect. What's a few people who don't even exist yet in comparison to that."

"The accuracy, Monoma. We aren't just back in time, you've seen time travel fantasies and all, right?"

Monoma looked away. "Are you suggesting a different universe?"

"Maybe…"

"Maybe it'll wear off and we'll go home."

Izuku frowned and said, "Don't you think there'd be warnings out about that if anyone ever made it back?"

Monoma looked at him. "We can't freak out here and now. Chances are, people already know we're here. People saw us pop out of thin air. Who knows, maybe we were caught on camera. We have to get out of here."

Izuku nodded and asked, "Train station?"

"Not if we're used for disasters and terrorist attacks. People will look there."

"No taxis. Our money is dated; if they take time to see it, we'll be leaving a trackable clue and if they see the date, we'll be accused of using forged bills at best and seen as real at worst."

As they slipped into an alley, Monoma stated, "Lose the suit. Our hero licenses mean nothing at best here. We take any action and we'll be vigilantes."

Izuku nodded and they found a place to change. As Izuku revealed he'd packed his UA outfit, Nieto wondered how many changes had been made to it over the years. "Lose the tie and pass me the vest." Break up the images as much as possible.

Suddenly, Izuku started rummaging through his backpack and pulled something out.

"Why…"

" Mirio used his cape to comfort Eri when she was in danger. I didn't have that but I figured that this would be helpful."

From the folds of his backpack, he'd pulled out an All Might Hoodie. No one would recognize the hero here and now. He held it out to the other boy. "People saw your hair."

Monoma frowned but took the hoodie, pulling it over his head. For a second, just a moment, Izuku could see the other boy's fear. Then it was buried, the attitude returned.

Izuku realized that it was a front, like Kacchan when he was challenging people he wasn't sure he could beat and pretending they didn't stand a chance.

"What?"

Izuku realized he'd been smiling and said, "Oh, nothing." Much like with Kacchan, he knew better than to try to break through the other's illusion.

At the moment the two boys appeared in a side street, tossed back in time, a few quirks were set off. Once, more would have been triggered, but with the exception of a couple users in range under government protection and one extremely powerful user with a dimensional disturbance detector fashioned from multiple quirks, the rest had been weeded out over the years.

Two parties sent the message out to be on the look out but contact their higher ups if they saw anything.

One of the groups went a step further. All for One could sense the direction and general distance of the new arrivals. He smiled, excited at the idea of competing with the Japanese government to find and collect the new dimensionally-and-temporally-displaced arrivals. Things had gotten a little dull lately, anyway.

To be fair, originally, All for One would much rather just have removed them from the equation but the moment that the American Government had decided to collect these people who lacked any proof of existence and weaponize the information that they had, everyone in power had to follow suit or risk being left behind. Many natural catastrophes were avoided but time had been fucked up enough over the years since this started that human-caused events only landed about one in five times these days.

And that was how multiverse theory was confirmed for the members of this world.

Of course, it had been different earlier. Organized criminal organizations had to follow suit or get torn apart. Some allies had been removed but there was a lot more competition. And now All for One kept up, refusing to be left behind in the race. He made sure to collect the useful quirks; sometimes they even stayed in their users if they swore loyalty to him.  It was often easy to convince them, when he could offer protection from an uncaring government that would lock them away.

But he'd also constructed a temporal disruption detection system out of a set of quirks he'd kept and fused together for himself.

And now it was going off, giving him a general direction and distance that was accurate to within a few kilometers.

Japan's government officials would only be able to say where they'd arrived within a fifty square kilometer radius, nothing more.

Still, they'd put their feelers out, too.

The race was on and All for One felt a mild thrill at the thought, excited more by the hunt than the prize at the end of it. He pulled out his phone as he made his way toward the train station, smile on his face.

Chapter Text

Later, Midoriya and Monoma found an abandoned apartment building. They were hardly the only people there. Izuku noticed that there were a lot of people with 'villainous quirks.' It seemed that some things never changed.

Still, no one bothered them and they found a small room that was unoccupied for themselves.

The two boys curled up and Izuku pulled out a sandwich and a few snacks he'd brought for lunch. He tore the sandwich roughly in half and offered the larger portion to Monoma. He then asked,"Apple or potato chips?"

After eyeing the apple for a moment, Monoma finally replied, in a tone that lacked it’s usual tone "Chips."

Knowing what he really wanted, Izuku instead handed him the apple.   After a short argument, Izuku managed to convince him to take it.

The boys ate their food and curled up together so that they could jump to attention if anything happened. Izuku pulled off his steel toed boots but pulled them close to his chest…they were killing his feet and could make fair weapons in their own right, either if thrown by hand or used as a weight with Black Whip, if he could get the latter to work for him well enough to hold them.

Monoma was the first to fall asleep, and unconsciously slipped from leaning against the wall to lying against Izuku's shoulder. Izuku wrapped his arm around the other boy and placed his head on top of the other's as he readjusted his shoes against his other side, making sure the steel soles were not touching him and drawing his heat away. Satisfied, he kept watch for a little longer before dozing off from exhaustion.

The next morning, Neito's first awareness was of a rhythmic thrumming of energy through him. He didn't know how long it had been going on but it felt nice. He enjoyed the sensation for a few more moments before alarm bells started going off in his head. This power felt familiar.

He cracked open his eyes to see a familiar glow across his cheeks as green electricity arced around him. But that was nothing. The world around him was like…being swallowed by a rainbow. He must still be dreaming.

He slowly craned his neck toward the form he was lying against, to find himself staring into a nebula. It was like he was looking into the depths of space, stars and…and was the nebula wearing a shirt? He glanced up to see a figure made of streaming lights, so bright he had to bring his eyes back down to the glowing red x of energy on his own nose, which glowed as brightly as the reds zipping across with the other…

Midoriya's Super Power

And in a blink, they were no longer inside a rainbow but the room where they'd fallen asleep. The nebula wrapped around him topped with streaming lights had become Midoriya.

Midoriya swathed in his quirk.

What the heck?!

As Neito made to move, he felt something shift against him. A warm weight rested on his head and was draped around his shoulder. He glanced over in disbelief at the arm wrapped around him, pulsing in time with his copy of the quirk.

He didn't know which woke him up quicker, the idea that someone had actually sustained physical contact with him—something most people tried to avoid because of the nature of his quirk—or that the other's quirk, which had the ability to blow this whole building sky high and break the user's arm at the same time, was active against him while said user was unconscious.

He decided that the latter was the more important. Yes, that power was currently draped over his shoulder and possibly leaking in to activate and interact with his weaker copy, if the pulsing was anything to go by. Just what the heck was this thing even stockpiling, anyway?

Careful not to move and startle Midoriya, Neito reached for Copy to shut down the duplicated quirk.

It wouldn't deactivate.

Well damn. No doubt, Midoriya's quirk was actually manipulating his own through the copy he’d subconsciously made. Which suggested it was more than just a super strength quirk, which he supposed the hallucinations he was seeing kind of already hinted at. Just what the heck was this thing even stockpiling, anyway?

He quietly called the 1-A student. "Midoriya?"

No response, except the arm pulled him closer against the nebula.

"Midoriya, your quirk's acting up and it won't let me shut down a duplicate I accidentally made."

The other boy immediately straightened, his quirk shutting off.

Neito's copied quirk responded in kind, shutting down before he even tried to close it off himself. Now it was still there but locked down so tight he doubted he could access it even if he wanted to.

Neito instinctively slipped from Midoriya's hold and turned toward the other boy. "What the heck, Midoriya? You just manipulated my quirk!"

Midoriya curled up into a ball against the wall, as if he expected Neito to hit him or something. "Sorry. I didn't mean to." Tears pricked at his eyes. "I'm sorry."

Neito took a deep breath, calming himself upon seeing Midoriya's confusing submissive behavior again. He took a step toward the other, who started trembling, and sighed. He sat down close to the other boy on the stained, patchy rug but made no move to touch him. "What was that?"

"My quirk does things on its own sometimes," Midoriya admitted. "Like during the tournament with Shinso…or what happened during our joint training session. It actually activated the night before our fight and despite knowing it was acting up, I fought you anyway…I should have said something. I knew something was wrong."

"Damn it. You mean it does this type of thing often?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean 'you don't know?'"

Midoriya looked at him thoughtfully and glanced around before whispering, "I guess since we're in this together, you need to know. My quirk activated less than a year ago."

"What?"

"I'm…still learning about it."

If Neito hadn't been sitting already, he probably would have collapsed. "How many people know?"

"All Might and Recovery Girl for sure,"he whispered. "Kacchan, too."

"I didn't know that people bloomed so late. Especially quirks like…well as big as yours."

Izuku smiled shyly. "Yeah, it was like a dream come true. Especially after everyone said that a quirkless kid couldn't ever be a hero."

Oh…Oh! "Now it makes sense."

"What makes sense?"

"Why you don't behave like someone with a big, flashy quirk usually does." At Midoriya's confusion, he added, "The 'I'm the toughest guy in the room and no one can touch me' attitude.  You don’t have it at all."

Neito could see comprehension dawning in [the] Midoriya's eyes.

Oh. Is that why he was bracing for blows?

"You have a ridiculously powerful quirk but you still think like a quirkless kid. And any regular five-year-old has more experience their quirks than you do." How did Midoriya get okayed for the hero course? He's clearly torn himself apart and could easily have killed half his class accidentally if his quirk had thrown a fit at the wrong moment.

Neito remembered when he'd elbowed the other boy in the cafeteria…his real first exposure to having Midoriya's quirk, even if he never actually got to use it. He'd been expecting the other to give a volatile reaction.

Instead Midoriya had just asked 'what was that for?' And what had just seemed like whiney annoyance now seemed like a near tearful confusion at wondering why he'd been singled out. Either way, he never got to taunt the boy with the copied quirk.

He was glad he didn't now. Because wow, did he feel like a jackass.

And now, Neito was the only support system Midoriya, with a quirkless mindset and a toddler's level of control over his obscenely powerful quirk, had. He suddenly envied himself from a few minutes ago, dreamily enjoying the thrumming energy somehow calming him as he laid clueless in a warm embrace.

"I need to go for a walk…" Neito stated.

Midoriya nodded, staring down at his feet as he said, "Don't forget my hoody."

Neito sighed and threw it on. "I'll be back soon."

As he slipped through the building and then out in the side alley, Neito finally calmed down to notice how tired he still was, and how his muscles were sore from sleeping awkwardly…and how gross he felt; he could use a shower and a toothbrush right now. As he walked past a television, he saw some footage that caught his eye. He looked up to see it was a news channel. He read the caption, describing the two young figures, himself and Midoriya, just popping into existence. Below, it warned that this was footage of a duo of dangerous villains and if seen, not to approach but alert authorities.

Neito stared. Villains. They'd been labeled as villains. He was glad the footage was grainy, but his hair was still pretty obvious. It was a good thing Midoriya’s mask was up at the time and they must have been in an area with relatively little surveillance; despite all the comments about him seeming normal, his green curls and eyes made him easily recognizable.

Neito made it back into the side alley of the building he and Izuku had sheltered in before he started crying.

They were in another universe, at a time when they didn't exist. Where maybe even his parent's didn't exist yet, if they would at all, with the shift in reality. Now the government had just declared them enemies. Dangerous villains. Two high school freshmen, one with a second rate quirk and another with the quirk control of a toddler.

He just wanted to go home, but he didn't know if that was even possible.

Izuku sat in thoughtful silence after Monoma left.

Thinking about how One for All had hijacked Monoma's Copy. Thinking about the half truth he'd just told the other boy, the closest he'd come to the truth about his quirk without straight up saying it. He wasn't ready to tell the other boy his secret, but he needed something after what Izuku had just done.

He looked at the morning light shining through the window. A late spring morning…in another time…in another universe.

What if the quirk that had shot them to this world didn't wear off? What if they were stuck here?

Well, if they got here by quirk; maybe they could get back the same way.

Izuku shook his head.  He was getting ahead of himself.  For all he knew, they could find themselves being pulled home any minute.  It seemed just as likely, if not more so.

Comforted for the moment, both by the thought of probably the quirk bringing them back home soon and having the nebulous beginnings of a plan if they didn’t, Izuku rested and instead went back to worrying over the mornings events with Monoma as waited for the other boy to come back.

When Monoma came back in, his overconfident smile in place but his eyes oddly shiny, Izuku knew there was more bad news.

"Come on, let's see if we can find a more private spot for us. We can't stay here."

Izuku slipped on his steel toed boots and followed the other boy.

All for One stood across the street from the blockade along with a few other onlookers. This was where the "Teleportation" had happened and the young "Dangerous Villains" had landed. How ironic. He knew from their attire and trained movements that they were what they had claimed to be: Hero Students.

Hero students always had the best quirks. The cream of the crop. And quirks from the future tended to be more powerful with each generation.

He supposed it made for another reason to find the poor, lost children before the government did.

All for One decided he had better head over to the park where he'd asked Machia to meet him. He'd made the arrangements to stick around for a couple weeks, the absolute longest he expected it to take in order to track down two lost hero students.

He looked forward to the exciting new powers he might soon be adding to his collection.

Chapter Text

Izuku looked around the ancient factory. It was perfect. There was even space to exercise and train without drawing attention to themselves.

The small office that overlooked the disused working floor would make a good living space. It had a good view over the factory, the windows were easily reachable and even the ceiling was thin enough to easily punch through. There were also a few buildings near enough that even Monoma could make the jump with the copy of Izuku's quirk backing him.

They were planning to raid a junk yard that night and uncouple a few car seats to bring back as beds. It was only a few kilometers away. Izuku could have carried that kind of stuff off even without his quirk, thanks to All Might's training on the beach.

He wished that their bathroom worked, though…but without electricity or water, they were out of luck. They'd have to make other arrangements for their water and bathroom needs.

He glanced at Monoma, exhausted from their day of walking. He winced in sympathy, knowing that the other wasn't as bad as Izuku was about a year and a half ago but still not as used to activity as he is now.

Izuku's stomach rumbled, reminding him that he hadn't eaten anything today either.

He and Monoma looked at each other.

"We need food but we can't buy it," Monoma stated, addressing the elephant in the room.

"What do you suggest?"

Monoma frowned and said, "Grocery stores have more food than they ever actually sell. I could aim for stuff that's about to expire. With your quirk, I'll be fast and strong enough to make off with more than usual. We should choose somewhere away from here…I don't want anyone following us back."

"Are you really okay with stealing, though?"

"It's stuff that probably would have been thrown out. Plus, we can't afford to get unhealthy, especially you. I've seen the way you eat and exercize…you have to be healthy to keep your quirk from breaking you, right? A few days like this and I'll bet your use of it will start declining, won't it? We can't let that happen."

Izuku felt tears pooling. It was true. And with…the current situation, he couldn't afford to weaken and risk injuring himself. "Is it that obvious?"

"I live in a dorm full of hero students too, you know. 1-A isn't the only class with members that need to eat and exercise in order to maintain their quirk use."

Izuku could already picture a couple of 1-B students who might have such requirements right off the top of his head.

Although he didn't like the idea of stealing, he knew that if All for One came for him, he had to be strong enough to fight the Villain off at his full strength. The villain wasn't crippled here, as no one had been able to stand up to him yet. Izuku couldn't afford to be handicapped that way.

The robbery was surprisingly easy.

Especially after Izuku and Monoma spotted a five year old girl who shrank a hero toy to slip into her pocket and Izuku asked a very pertinent question.

"Hey Monoma, do you have to have skin on skin contact for your quirk to work?"

"No, it can be any part."

"What if you only had a hair to work with?"

Monoma stared at him, first in confusion, then in dawning comprehension. "I'm an idiot."

Although the items shrank in size, they did not lose their weight. That proved to be the main limiting factor to what they walked out with. Of course, with Izuku there, that wasn't even that much of a limitation, considering even at the start of his training, he could move a refrigerator while All Might sat atop it.

No refrigerated goods of course, due to their lack of cold storage.

No one even noticed.

When they got back to the factory Izuku and Monoma started emptying their pockets and Monoma collected the goods: mostly cans, boxes, and bottles of water and other drinks, although there were a few fresher thing like a few fruits and vegetables that didn't need to be refrigerated.

"We did good," Monoma said. "This'll keep us stocked for…Midoriya? What's wrong?"

"I used to steal stuff for my med kits all the time. I…I hoped to be done with that. With bending and breaking laws."

"You've broken laws before?"

Izuku nodded. "Stealing supplies for my med kit. Letting a kid in another class user her healing quirk on me…hiding how much Kacchan used his quirk."

There was a hitch in Monoma's breath before sighing. "It was something you had to do then...right?"

"Yes."Izuku replied

To his surprise, the other sank to his knees before asking, "Then this doesn't mean we're really villains for this, right?"

"Then, what about all the other people who committed crimes the law because they needed to?"

They both fell silent for a while after that.

They never did make it out to the junk yard that night.

The first part of their night was actually started when Izuku dropped some cans and boxes in front of Monoma and asked, what colors? Hair dye and colored eye contacts.

In the end, the other had decided to go for brown eyes and black hair, for now. They'd pose as brothers. They'd save the rest of the colors in case they needed a quick identity change.

They found a nearby building where the water was not completely cut off, perhaps a malfunction in the system. Izuku would never trust the stuff coming from the pipes for drinkability but it was probably good enough for washing.

Either way, they both took turns showering in a rickity shower that spurted as much air from the pipes as it did water, using products that they had grabbed that evening.

Izuku helped dye Monoma's hair, but the lenses turned out to be a bust because they needed some fluid and case that the duo didn't have. "This should be good enough for now anyway," Monoma said, looking at his hair. "Plus, blue eyes are recessive, so we can still play the 'brothers' card."

When they got back, Monoma spent a while walking around with the girl's hair in hand, shrinking items and returning them to their proper sizes, over and over. Apparently, being in constant contact with the hair he'd collected meant that he had constant access to the quirk.

Izuku had pulled out his notebook, writing about implications and questions that came with that…as well as the quirk he was copying.

They were careful not to sleep too close together, lest they repeat the last nights events where Izuku's quirk hijacked Monoma's.

The next day, they decided to stock up on some clothes. Izuku's steel toe boots made nice weights, but they would get worn out and they drew eyes. Plus, their current outfits consisted of a combination of school uniforms and hero costumes. Not good for blending in.

It wouldn't be until the next night that they went to the junk yard to steal beds and 'targets' for practice. The hair Monoma had made it a lot easier.

After they were settled, Izuku had an idea from the incident earlier. Why not go vigilante while they were here? Monoma could use different people's hairs to keep his identity secret, seeming like multiple different people. And although he didn't say it out loud, Izuku was also sure he could manage with minimal use of his quirk, making it harder to recognize if news of his activity reached the wrong ears.

"Getting the hair for that will be the trick though."

The next day, he and Monoma walked past a set of stores and shops…including a barber shop, looking in to see a woman sweeping hair together and dumping it into a dust bin.

The two boys looked at each other, clearly having the same idea. They slipped over to a dumpster next to the building and grabbed a few trash bags before carrying them off.

A week after they had robbed their first grocery store, the first hair Monoma had snatched lost it's viability. As long as Monoma had that hair on him, he had been able to access that quirk at will but then, the second to last couple days, he'd had to roll it between his fingers more and more until, finally, it just stopped working altogether.

Same for any quirk who’s user they could get stuff like hair or through spas and salons they garbage dived for, as long as he could have contact with it.

They were stealing Velcro straps and small rubber bands to set up constant points of contact, either to secure the hair in place or wrap it and hold it in a ring for Monoma to wear. They tried  to do both so Monoma would have a backup if one was lost.

With these in place, Monoma time limit was replaced with a very different set. How quickly and accurately he could swap out his quirk set.

The minimum Monoma could hold a quirk he picked up was one minute, meaning that if he staggered the 'pick up times' evenly, he could swap out quirks every fifteen seconds or half a minute. If he held the quirks for a full minute, he could swap them all out at once.

Then there was the pick up control. Having to touch people directly had made it a minimal problem, because it was hard to test that limit; he was not likely to come into contact with too many people in a given moment. Now, he could access more quirks than he could hold and he discovered that if he didn't concentrate, the quirk set he would pick up would be completely random. He still slipped up on what he wanted to grab half the time, but in the first week had improved from having to make several attempts to get a target quirk.

Still, for now, Monoma decided he'd just carry quirk smaller sets in the field until he got the hang of things.

Meanwhile, newspapers talked about a new uptick in vigilante activity. Izuku and Monoma made sure that, whenever the original quirk user was arrested, they made use of the collected quirk in a way that made it unmistakable, to ensure the persons innocence was known as best they could.

They didn't know it but this one considerate choice to protect these people would be their undoing for all attempts to stay off the radar of one of the people hunting them.

The worst one.

All for One frowned as he picked up a newspaper. They were more of a novelty item than anything, these days. A small portion of population still preferring paper between their fingers over the scrolling of a screen. The trans-dimensional refugees had proven very proficient at laying low but he'd been enjoying himself trying to track them down.

It wasn't often that people gave All for One the slip even for this amount of time, as he had grown so skilled at tracking people over the years.

The article he currently read was devoted to the most recent episode of the latest local drama of the strange uptick in varied vigilante activity. Apparently, a couple days ago one of the suspects had been apprehended. But last night…

The person's quirk, seeming the same very one, was being used. He read again.

Oh. If this meant what he thought it might, he couldn't have that. Anyone with quirk that took or duplicated other quirks were either in his pocket, in him or completely removed from the equation.

He had some phone calls to make.

Chapter Text

The next day, Izuku wanted to go out hero watching.

"If we can't train in the open, we can at least watch how the pros do it and discuss what we see. It would also be a good idea to know who the local heroes are, just in case they find us while we're illegally performing heroics or stealing things." That was his excuse, but after spending so much time with Izuku, Neito wasn't fooled.  Izuku wanted to see quirks.  And possibly a few historically famous heroes in action.

Still, that didn't make his points any less valid.

Plus, Neito liked watching quirks, too.

'Still,' Neito thought, 'our change in environment has hardly curbed Izuku's ability to walk them right into messes.  But  surely their luck could hold out for something so minor, in broad daylight, no less.'

When had he started thinking of the other boy as 'Izuku?'

Thus, they found themselves watching a hero fight with a large crowd. Neito pretended not to notice that even while some people seem to listen with interest, others crept away from them as he and Izuku discussed the hero and villain and how they applied their quirks.

Izuku wore a two sizes too large pine-green hoody that seemed to swallow him. He'd refused to touch dark gray or black ones, saying they reminded him too much of an ambush he'd apparently been caught up early last summer at the mall. Just how many villain encounters did this guy have? It was like he was a villain magnet or something.

It was fun getting to talk to someone who shared his love of quirks, though. That is as long as the other didn't burst from excitement over it, himself. Izuku trembled so much in his excitement, Neito wondered how he managed to write down anything that could be remotely legible.

Then a deep voice spoke, "Ah, doth mine ears deceive me or do I hear fellow quirk enthusiasts?"

"You sure do." Neito turned with a smile, for even in this time, it seemed that their conversation of choice rarely drew others close, even the silently interested ones. He found himself looking up…way up, at a man in a suit with red eyes beneath white curls, about as tall as All Might. "And there's just so many different ones to see."

Neito expected Izuku to give an even brighter greeting.

Thus, Neito was shocked when Izuku turned more toward him, away from the newcomer. His smile suddenly becoming extremely tense…more like a mask than anything. He leaned heavily into Neito, away from the voice, pulling his notebook to his chest, eyes full of terror.

Neito looked up at the man. His friendliness was replaced with mild confusion at Izuku's reaction.

"Sorry about that, my friend has a trouble magnet quirk," Neito stated, the first thing coming to his mind off the internal joke he'd made earlier. "It leaves him a bit jumpy when he meets new people."

"Trouble magnet?" the man asked.

Neito nodded and said, "If we don't take him out to express it, we won't even be able to cross the street without risking getting involved in a mugging or a robbery or something. So, we go out and find heroes in action. This is the third incident today. He loves them," Neito as Midoriya glanced at him fearfully. "Still, if a month passes without him getting jumped by a villain, we consider ourselves lucky."

Izuku glanced over his shoulder, hood half covering his eyes.

The man frowned thoughtfully as he studied the other boy, who must not look like much, considering he'd chosen his baggy, oversized clothes to hide the muscles beneath, giving the illusion of being smaller than he already was. Which was pretty small to begin with.

Recalling Izuku’s history, it suddenly occurred to Neito that he might have chosen the look on purpose.

"My apologies. I didn't mean to startle you. I just don't get to meet many people who share my joy for analyzing quirks so openly. It would just be nice to talk about it with people who are clearly well versed in the subject."

Izuku took a deep breath, forced his smile to look more real and said, "I-I-I'm n-n-not th-th-that g-g-good."

Neito studied the man carefully. The fact that Izuku was scared of him immediately had him cautious.

"You sure sounded pretty well versed a moment ago. I know fully trained quirk analysts with years of experience who would be hard pressed to break down this fight the way you just did."

Izuku's face seemed to regain some color, and Neito had a feeling that if it wasn't completely drained a moment ago, it would be beet red right now.  "I-I've always loved figuring out quirks."

"There's nothing quite like picking them apart and learning how they work, is there?"

"Maybe realizing that my initial assessments were wrong and realizing they function completely differently," Izuku replied quietly.

The man chuckled. "True. I'm sure it's one of the few good things your quirk does for you. A lot of people with unique quirks…"

"Get pushed into villainy," Izuku finished. "D-d-do you h-have a quirk?"

Neito got the distinct impression that Izuku already knew the answer to his own question.

The man smiled and said, "I can see any screen crystal clear, no matter how poor quality it is. It even works when I have my eyes closed. As long as I have a screen in front of me, I can see anything on it."

Izuku actually perked up at that, not happy but deeply interested. "So, you could essentially have your eyes completely covered but if you had a screen in front of you, then you could see it."

The man nodded.

It was Izuku's turn to frown thoughtfully and Neito suddenly realized how similar his facial features were to those of the man before them. He wondered if Izuku recognized him from some old family photo or something. Come to think of it, they seemed to share a similar body language and had the same intelligent spark in their eyes.

"So, does it just work for video cameras or phones or something specific or does it work for any screens?"

"Any screens. As long as I'm facing them, I can see them, whether my eyes are opened or closed."

Yeah, despite Izuku's continued discomfort, the man clearly had him hooked. Quirks were Izuku Midoriya's kryptonite.

The three of them talked for a while about 'their quirks,' Neito showing off the object shrinking quirk as his, explaining how they kept their weight, though.

Then the man looked at his watch and startled. "Oh, is it that time, already? I'm so sorry but I really must be going. I have a friend I'm meeting up with and he tends to get paranoid if I show up late. It was nice chatting with you boys."

He pulled out a card, wrote something on it and passed it over. Neito frowned at the sight of a tabloid that was still going strong in their time. He'd written a personal email address on it along with the business contacts. "Reach out to me some time. And if you need some help, just call the number or show up at the address and ask for "Hisashi Shigaraki."

Oh. Oh shit. Neito looked at the tall figure with a terrifying suspicion of who this was. Still, he kept his features unreadable.

"Th-th-thank y-y-you." Izuku said, taking the card shyly. Careful, always so careful not to look up or push the hood up over his head.

The man smiled, "Really, feel free to reach out. Talking with you two has been a breath of fresh air."

Once Hisashi Shigaraki had disappeared, Neito turned to Izuku. "Midoriya, who is he?"

"Not here."

Rather than take Neito back to the warehouse, he went to the house with the water and closed the door, before peeking out the boards of a window.  Izuku led him in a side entrance before closing the door and glancing through the slats of the front windows.

"Midoriya, what's going on? That man went by Shigaraki and you clearly knew him before he introduced himself."

Izuku looked back at Monoma. All for One didn't know yet. He was sure of it. He wouldn't have let them walk away, otherwise. The villain would not let either an interdimensional castaway or a One for All user escape him so easily.

And Izuku had known tipping his hand in that busy street would have led to tremendous loss of life, so he'd slipped into a role more similar to that which he'd held during his childhood, hoping the villain wouldn't figure it out. It had been disturbingly easy.

For a moment, he had thought that the man had been messing around and was going to turn on them, when he used an alias with the same first name as Izuku's father but he'd seen the card and realized that the man really was using Hisashi as his name. It was both on the card and in the email name.

He really was none the wiser.

Izuku had no doubt that would be a different story the next time they met. And it certainly wouldn't be a meeting Izuku would arrange.

The boy glanced at a trash can, tempted to toss the card but he decided to keep it. It might come in handy.

"Monoma…" No, after they've been through so much, he deserved more than that. "Neito. Remember how I told you that my quirk just activated?" He  turned to the other boy, light shining across his face in streaks through the boards. "It didn't just 'activate.'"

Izuku told Neito about One for All.

"The man who created that quirk…who tried to give the first user—his little brother—a stockpiling quirk against his will under the belief that he was quirkless…is All for One. He can take, fuse, use and pass on quirks. The first time I saw him was in Kamino Ward and, although the top half of his face was punched off, I will never forget his voice."

Neito was as white as a sheet.

"That man that just talked quirks with us is him. And the monster in Kamino Ward was crippled." Izuku pointed out the window. "That thing out there; he's whole and healthy. And if I fight him, I'll lose. I can't even access half my power without risking breaking something. And now he's interested in me for my quirk analysis skills. Worse, he knows you’ re with me. The reason he didn't ask about where we live is probably because he's confident he can find us." He felt tears rolling down as Neito became a blur. "Next time we cross paths, he won't be asking. Everything he wants, he takes. And you saw him. He liked us. Then if he finds out where we came from and what quirks we have… what I have…I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry…" He kept repeating the words as Monoma reached out and pulled him into an embrace.

"We'll figure this out. We always knew that the walls would close in on us. We just have to move faster." He leaned back and Izuku looked up. "But I think you've told me something that we can use to swing this more in our favor."

Izuku looked up and blinked. "What?"

"You have a quirk that can hold eight quirks at once and you just said that the passage of your quirk is determined by the will of the user. Izuku, during the team battle, did you refuse to have your quirk stolen…or did you just will it not to break me?"

It took three seconds for him to understand.

"Izuku, remember what happened when we fell asleep. I think we need to find out how much of your quirk I can copy and learn how to use it. I think if we can find the right quirks, if I can wield quirks at once with One for All…"

"But your limit…"

"You manipulated my quirk. And there's a chance that, since I have an exact copy, minus two hundred years of stockpile, I might be able to reach back. It could be OUR limit…together. A limit that the enhancing nature of One for All may expand who knows how far. We might be able to do this.  Especially if we can set up some sort of positive feedback loop between our quirks."

Izuku felt the gears spinning, "Alright." He took a deep breath. "Alright." He nodded. "First, we need to buy time, which means getting out of here. Your body's not ready for One for All, we don't know enough about temporal or dimensional barriers and we have no idea where to find these quirks. We probably need months, at least. If we stay here, we'll have days, at best. Although more likely, it's hours."

"We've saved up on the recyclables cash. I say we pack our bags and catch a cab right now."

"No, we need to hide our traces, first. We're being tracked by a man who gained his power by hunting and catching people. But we should have enough time if we work quick."

The sun had long since set when Izuku had declared he was satisfied that they had covered their traces and they left their home for the last month behind… by busting a hole through the roof and carrying Neito bridal style as he leapt across buildings in single bounds, mumbling about hero tracking quirks that could show footsteps and how spreading them out would make it harder to detect a trail.

That morning, Neito would have refused such behavior, calling the other boy paranoid.

Now, with the revelations Izuku had sprung upon him about his quirk and its connection to the Kamino Ward Villain—the man who'd invited himself to follow them around for an hour—he'd all but jumped into the other boy's arms, wishing to have already been gone hours ago.

As they entered a nicer part of town, they started looking for their first taxi. Tonight, they would just find another place but not to sleep; no, Neito was hair dyeing and getting familiar with the curling iron while Izuku got comfortable putting lenses into and pulling them out of his eyes. Green was too distinct.

The next day, they braved the rail system, hopefully looking too different from the boys who appeared out of thin air all those weeks ago to set off any alarms.

Izuku had also informed him that they were going to Musutafu. This was about to become a matter of One for All and All for One. That meant that it was time to seek the help of those who knew…

Neito was afraid that, as rough as things had seemed before, they were about to get a lot worse.

When Gigantomachia slammed the warehouse doors open, his senses were immediately bombarded. He looked around and what he saw boggled him. They'd definitely been here but…

"Machia, what's wrong?" All for One asked. Then he sniffed the air and looked into the building, using a glowing quirk of some kind to light the space. His face took on a look of mild surprise. "Oh."

There were shades of every color under the sun scattered all over the place. Hair. The trash bags they were pulled out from were left scattered about the place, too, adding their own aroma to the scent of what was probably the cuttings of several hundred people.

There were shattered bottles of perfume and undoubtedly empty cans of hairspray about the place, too. The kids hadn't just chucked them, though. Gigantomachia was sure that even his Master could smell it. For him though, it was taking all of his will power not to run back down the street the way he came just to escape the smell.

"And there's their exit hole," Master stated as he pointed at a hole in the ceiling from which light filtered down. "Guess they got hold of some strength enhancement quirk. quirk."

Giagantomachia didn't need to see the smile on Master’s face to sense his excitement.

"I'll give our misplaced hero spawn this, they're clever little runts." He chuckled. "They might be worth keeping. Such high-quality young children I'm meeting around here!"

All For One looked around the building for any clues that the boys might have failed to hide. He noted that some of the materials that had been dragged in were large or heavy, meaning that at least one of them had a quirk that allowed them to move heavy objects around. He frowned, hoping it wasn't just some super strength quirk. He could stockpile those easily enough that, no matter how powerful, they weren't of any great value to him. That was, with the exception of one particular stockpiling quirk that had been carried off to America only a couple months ago.

He decided he'd best get back to Gigantomachia.

He activated a couple of quirks he loved dearly. The first was a fire breathing quirk which he used to make a cloud of smoke. Once it was sufficiently large enough, he activated the second; a warp quirk which could only be used through fogs and hazes but could take the user anywhere, as long as they knew exactly where that location was.

He stepped through and joined Machia where he was waiting on the street just outside the building. Clouds of smoke roiling out through the portal behind him. "We'll have to wait for them to take up their vigilante activities again. It won't take long…they're hero students, after all."

Chapter Text

Chapter 11

Neito woke up to an increasingly familiar feeling of One for All pulsing into and through him.  He had convinced Izuku that if they were going to stand a chance, they had to commit to their goals 100%.

Izuku had taken them to Dagoba Beach for their place to stay and their training ground.  The other boy explained that his last, greatest quirkless act had been cleaning that beach and he knew that there was enough trash not only to hide them, but allow them to construct a shelter within and train both body and quirk.

 And how they did train.

They also collected cans and bottles, walked dogs, mowed lawns and whatever other small tasks that they could do to collect money, not for food but for the internet cafés.   He and Izuku were using it to learn about multiverse and quirk related theories and information, track viable quirks for the construction of an ‘interdimensional bridge’ and, in Izuku’s case, any clues of either All for One’s inevitable approach or what corner of the world Gran Torino might have holed himself up in.

Unfortunately, neither Gran Torino nor All Might were actually at UA at this point.  Toshinori Yagi had graduated shortly before their arrival and was now in America.  Neito wondered if he’d taken on his hero name yet.  It was weird to think that they were in a world where All Might lived but his rise had yet to begin.

But, remaining in Japan, Gran Torino had to stay hidden for fear of All for One deciding to take interest in him.

Then, at night, they ran long distances in the dark to patrol other parts of town for criminal activity.  Turns out that the hardcore ‘quirk stalkers’ had long used apps to listen in on police scanners, usually to help them track hero activity.  Izuku and Neito went to areas that heroes didn’t bother with.  Each time they showed up in a different location, Neito used a different quirk.

He had also learned how to apply Izuku’s shared One for All at the same time as other quirks…that it could be used to enhance his quirk and expand his limits.  By adjusting his quirks around it, he could use all the ones he could hold at once.

As long as Izuku willed it.  For it was all by the will of the holder.

Izuku, of course was a very generous if slightly too protective wielder.

But Neito told him to stay back for the fights…All for One knew every quirk Izuku had within One for All and had experience fighting using them. 

But All for One did not know that One for All was in play nor how greatly.  Even if the Super Villain sussed out Neito’s true quirk, which considering the similarity in nature was quite likely, Izuku could still be their ace in the hole. 

But only for one strike.  Then their hand would be shown.

Luckily for them, ‘Trouble Magnet’ was a very easy cover story for anyone to buy after spending any time with or tracking Izuku. Seriously, it was ridiculous how easy villains were to find with him.

But for now, Neito lay half awake, watching dark silhouettes of previous users move around in seeming to have unheard conversations.  Occasionally, one or two of them would wonder to stand next to Izuku or even Neito.

It made Neito feel good to know that they weren’t nearly as alone as they appeared.  Even if it was the company of ghosts.

Today, he watched the one figure that was hazier than the others, the one that never moved, just floated quietly next to Izuku.  He recognized the shape of All Might’s deflated form.  Izuku had once said that that his seemed ‘not all there.’  Neito suspected that it was because it wasn’t.  And he’d brought up that if it was still connected to All Might, that might mean they don’t have to build a full bridge from nothing to get a message home. That they might have a guy line to set their bridge to, using One for All’s connection to All Might.

It was a long shot but so was their whole plan.

Izuku watched a much younger Recovery Girl and had an epiphany.  All Might may have taken to One for All immediately, but there was no way for anyone to know that would happen until it did.  They would need a medical professional in case everything went wrong when the chosen quirkless boy was gifted with a quirk.  Besides, Gran Torino didn’t go easy on All Might, they might have needed her anyway.

And she was already employed at UA.

“Neito, I think Recovery Girl might know and if she doesn’t yet, she finds out eventually.  She might help us.”

Izuku approached Recovery Girl.

“Who’s there?” The woman called out.

Izuku stepped out of the shadows, “someone who needs help.  I’m a student that got hit with a quirk that threw me from a different future to here.  Along with a classmate.” He held up a magazine and passed it to her.  “The government marked us as villains.  They’ve been using people like us to make predictions.”

She looked down at the prediction manual and cursed.  “Of course they did.”

“I’m looking for Gran Torino.  If you know where he is, can you send him a message.  Tell him what I just told you…and tell him I’m the nineth and…and I could really use his help.” He felt tears well up as he added, “He can find us at Dagoba Beach.”

“You’re the ninth user?” She asked.

Releived. Izuku summoned his quirk so a single finger glowed, not wanting to draw too much attention.  “In my universe, at least.  This one is so different now… Either way, I’m so glad you already know.” He lifted his right arm and pulled back his sleeve.  “One for All is not as gentle with me as it was with the others.”

“Don’t you dare consider my knowledge an excuse to get reckless!”

Izuku smiled sadly and said, “I won’t have a choice much longer, All for One doesn’t know I’m a holder but we’ve already crossed paths and I’ve sparked his interest. For more than one reason, even if he doesn’t know yet.” The tears slowly leaked as he said this.  “My friend has the ability to copy quirks.  We’re hoping to construct an interdimensional bridge, at least to get a message across and maybe, if we’re lucky, to open a portal home.  But he’ll find us long beforehand without help and if we get into a fight, if All for One doesn’t finish me, One for All might.” Izuku smiled bitterly.  “Gran Torino survived years without any users around in my universe, despite All for One knowing about him.  He knows how to avoid the villain.  And that’s not even considering the government.  W-we need help or w-w-we’re probably d-d-dead.”

“I’ll pass the word to Gran Torino.”

Izuku hugged the woman.  “Thank you.”

“I wish I could do more.  A child shouldn’t have to experience the whole world turn on them.”

Izuku laughed, “Don’t worry, that was my whole childhood.” 

After they slipped away, Izuku broke down sobbing.
Monoma wrapped him up in a hug

The next day went as usual but the following morning, Izuku and Neito were awoken by a loud bang of feet slamming on the hood of a rusty truck, causing them to startle and instantly break their energy sharing as they rose, ready stance.

Then Izuku saw a much taller but still easily recognizable figure.  “So, which of you is Toshinori’s successor and which is the copier.

Izuku smiled, feeling tears of joy.  “Gran Torino!”

Chapter 12

Izuku proves who he is to Gran Torino, demonstrating OFA.  AsGran Torino takes them to his home, Izuku explains OFA’s awakening and also how the specifics of Neito’s quirk allows Izuku to share his quirk with him.  He also explain how they plan to use it to get home.

He also tells Gran Torino about their first encounter with AFO.

“You’re either the most unfortunate soul I’ve met or the luckiest kid in existence, and I have no idea which.” Gran Torino growled, “You, a cross-dimensional One for All user, drew that monsters eye, engaged him in conversation and walked away not only without a scratch, but with his seal of approval and an invitation to come back for a second round of chatter.” He pointed at the card Izuku held up.

“I think he was just too busy hunting for interdimensional travelers to snatch up regular kids on the street.  And if we came to him, he wouldn’t have to hunt us down later.”  He looked down at it and said, “I hope I never have to use it.  Even the name creeps me out.”

“Why’s that?”

“His alias has the same personal name as my absentee dad.  Before he gave me his card, I had a moment where I thought he was messing with us.”

Gran Torino studied him before asking, “did your old man have a quirk?”

“Fire breathing.”

Gran Torino stared at him quietly, casting a glance at his notebook before back at him, color draining from his face.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m just thinking of what’ll happen if he ever gets his hands on you.”

Izuku nodded and looked down at his notebook, “I wrote about our encounter. Took some notes.  After all, how many of us get to see him in a genuinely good mood without any malice behind backing it.”  As he started mumbling about his observations and how his quirk obsession might be used to distract and delay the villain, he failed to notice the worried look that Neito and Gran Torino shared.

Gran Torino leads them to the warehouse where he trained Toshinori.  Even with Recovery Girl’s help, he can barely make enough money to keep the two teens healthy.  Izuku and Neito are often arguing about who should eat when there isn’t enough food.  Neito can usually win, saying Izuku needs to keep his strength up or he won’t be able to weild OFA protectively.

Gran Torino is frustrated when the boys slip out to practice vigilanteism. He is worried that eventually either the authorities or AFO will see a pattern.  He eventually comes up with a roundabout way to keep the teens from going out at night.  He trains them to exhaustion.  Neito is building up muscle and experience.  Both boys are experimentinng with OFA, awake and asleep.

Gran Torino sat down to watch the now familiar sight of Midoriya’s expression of One for All pulse through both him and Monoma as they slept together. 

He’d received a letter from Toshinori.   He wished he could tell his student about what was going on here.

Despite his fears about Midoriya’s suspected heritage, the boy himself was clearly an earnest, caring child.  He only wanted to help people.

Which was a good thing, because his mind had a familiar brutal sharpness and he could suss out people’s strengths and weaknesses in the same manner as the figure the boy reminded him of

Thus far, their luck had held out but Sakahiro knew it wouldn’t last forever.  And if All for One got a hold of the boys…he looked again at the energy shared between them and felt a shiver.  He might not even need to take OFA, if he could get Neito’s quirk and bend Midoriya to his will.

They needed to find a few more quirk users to target, then they could get hair cuttings and they would be able to get a message out, then they could work from both ways.
            He shivered again, realizing that this was probably the same process All for One went through in hunting down quirks for his combos.

Maybe the experience would make them better at tracking and setting up traps for him.

“Nana, I worry for your successor’s student.”  Suddenly, there was a spark next to Midoriya and it floated toward him before disappearing.

“Nana?”

It flashed again.

He shook his head, just a trick of the light, most likely.

The kids had a set of quirks targeted that might do the trick.  All that was left to do was collect them.  Izuku and Neito were working on the plan tocollect them as quickly as possible, so they’d have as much time as possible to get it right.