Chapter Text
Weird things always happened around Izuku Midoriya.
Early on, people assumed them to be mere hallucinations. Their quirks would behave oddly one second, only to resume proper function the next. Of course, as he grew up, Izuku learned that the odd happenings centred around him.
He first realised that he was the cause of the errant quirk behaviour early in elementary school. Bakugou had used his quirk in class, only for stray ribbons of confetti to pop out from his hands. Just minutes before, he had idly been thinking of Bakugou’s quirk, and somehow, had linked it to the idea of confetti. Bakugou had been confused, annoyed, angry at him, and then promptly declared him not quirkless after excitedly explaining what had happened, and the campaign of bullying ended right then and there, exactly in that order.
Of course, immediately after that, he had no idea how to remove the effect he’d had on Bakugou’s quirk. It had resumed within a matter of minutes, but reappeared again the moment that Izuku let his thoughts return to where it had idly drifted to previously.
Over the years, just like everyone else, he began to get a handle on his quirk. Unlike everyone else, his quirk still tended to flare up at times. Still, he at least got an understanding of how it worked.
His mother’s telekinesis had somehow manifested in the form of dramatically improved cooking for several minutes. Telekinesis had become deli-kinesis. Incidentally, that probably explained why his father had sworn to Inko Midoriya that there was one time his quirk had led to him exhaling tyres in the form of tyre-breathing rather than fire-breathing.
There were several ways for his quirk to work. The first, and most direct, was knowing its name. His quirk allowed an instinctive knowledge and identification of someone else’s just by looking at them. From there, thinking around its name, making the slightest of modifcations, he would get a sense of which alteration would hold, and how it would manifest.
His classmate’s Lightbulb could become Mightbulb – and by that, he meant that he had suddenly been able to release bulbous plants from his hands, each of which had the chance of growing – or he could have become Rightbulb – all that changed was that his lightbulb-shaped head that normally screwed to the left instead screwed to the right. He couldn’t, however, become Tightbulb – whatever the reasons were, Izuku’s quirk didn’t let him do that.
The second method by which it worked was thinking about the concept of its application. The easiest example was with Bakugou’s explosions, which had spontaneously been altered into blasts of confetti. Explosions, meant celebrations, which meant a party, and hence confetti. Again, his quirk decided what worked – he couldn’t suddenly wish for Bakugou’s quirk to allow for the release of nukes, and not just for ethical reasons. He simply couldn’t. For whatever reason, there was an element of randomness involved there.
The third method that could let his quirk function was by what Izuku thought of the quirk’s owner, as he was currently having to deal with, having been assaulted by someone he had instinctively thought of as the “Sludge Villain”.
His quirk had turned him into the Fudge Villain.
“Y-you brat!” the man whose entire body was now a mess of dripping chocolate shouted at him, eyes wide. “What the hell did you do to me?”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” He apologised profusely. He had panicked, and set his quirk loose on the first thing that his power allowed him to modify his assailant’s quirk to. “I really didn’t mean to!”
“Undo it!” His knife had slipped from his hands, and he tried to grab at it with chocolatey-fingers, but it slipped free from his grasp each time. As he had learnt from the many times he had been hauled in to the police for unlicensed public quirk usage that was out of his control, it turned out people really had a hard time adjusting to sudden changes to their quirks after having lived their entire lives with them.
“It’ll undo itself on its own –“ He caught himself mid-sentence, before his eyes narrowed. “You tried to kill me!”
“You brat!” The Fudge Villain gave up on grabbing the knife, advancing toward him, dripping delicious brown droplets as he did so. “You’ll pay!”
…yeah. Izuku should probably run. His quirk would expire in a few minutes, and when that happened, it took some time for it to be reapplied. As chocolatey as he was, he couldn’t give chase, and Izuku could call for help. He could change the altered quirk to another form – Pudge Villain had registered as something that would work, turning him morbidly obese – but he could probably still tackle him or something.
“HELP! IT’S A VILLAIN!” he shouted, turning tail and running.
“Get back here!”
Then, there was a gust of wind from the other end of the tunnel behind him, and he heard a voice he could recognise any day shout out.
“Fear not!” All Might spoke, a thunderous crash sounding out from behind Izuku. “For I am here!”
“You!” The Fudge Villain shouted.
“Evil does not –“ All Might paused, looking between them both. “Ahem! Kid, would you happen to have seen a Sludge Villain out and about in this area?”
“Oh, that’s him,” he said pointing at the mess of chocolatey goodness. “He’s a Fudge Villain now, though.”
All Might blinked, nonplussed.
“See, it’s my quirk,” Izuku explained hesitantly. This was All Might. All Might in the flesh! “I, uhh – I modify other quirks?”
“UNDO IT THIS INSTANT, YOU BRAT! Curse you, All Might!”
All Might still looked confused, but then he shook his head. “Well! It seems clear that you are the one I’ve been chasing!” He glared at the Fudge Villain. “In that case, then –“
He reared his fist back, and the villain cowered away, attempting to flee with legs of chocolate that wobbled with each step.
“TEXAS SMASH!”
Izuku was awed, as the Fudge Villain dispersed, leaving a condensed core behind, that All Might swiftly bottled. This was his chance! There were three things he always said he wanted to do when he saw All Might!
“All Might!” he spoke excitedly. “Can I have your autograph?”
“Certainly!” he haphazardly signed the offered Hero Analysis and Quirk Ideas/Puns for the Future, Volume 12. “I’m afraid that –“
“One more thing, please!” he said quickly. “Can someone with an unpredictable quirk become a hero?”
“An unpredictable quirk?” his brows furrowed. “I – I’m afraid I don’t understand – but kid, I really do need to go –“
Drat. Well, then. He would take that as a tentative yes, for now. Bakugou did always say he could use his quirk to make the unexpected happen, and take advantage of it. His quirk did allow him to know what the quirk’s user called his quirk, and he could guess how it worked and play around it even if he couldn’t find something suitable to alter it to.
Besides, Eraserhead pretty much fought quirkless once he erased someone else’s quirk away, anyway. It wasn’t like Izuku's quirk was without precedent, only his was a hundred times more random.
All that was left was act number three. It was something that had bugged him for a long time.
Method Three of his quirk could allow All Might to become ‘All Right’ – everything would behave as it did before, except he could only use the right half of his body. He could do ‘All Tight’ too, but he really didn’t need that mental image.
He couldn’t think of anything that would stick for method two. It made sense, the more simple and physical-based quirks were hard to abstract to something else. He couldn’t really link explosive punches to… explosive lunches? No, that didn’t take hold.
Last one. Method one, then, was –
He blinked.
“What the heck is One for All?”
All Might froze from where he had been about to jump off into the distance, turning to look at him incredulously.
“Kid,” he said slowly. “Where did you learn that name?”
From the expression on his face, Izuku had the distinct impression that he just said something he really wasn’t supposed to know about.