Chapter Text
Izuku Midoriya liked video games. Loved them really. They allowed him to be what he couldn’t be in real life—a hero.
(They allowed him to pretend that he wasn’t useless).
He couldn’t remember the exact day he first picked up a controller, but he remembered the game itself. An All Might themed side-scrolling beat’em up, played on a old console bought at a garage sale. He had still been in elementary at the time, eight or nine years old, and what had started out as a mere distraction quickly became an escape.
He probably couldn’t be called a hardcore gamer, not when heroes remained his main passion and consumer of his time, but video games became one of the few things that helped make life bearable. They were fun and engaging and gave his racing mind something to focus on other than his own anxiety. The application of strategy and analysis were often the keys to victory and Izuku was nothing if not fond of analysis, another hobby that focused his mind and calmed his nerves. Most important of all, video games did not require wandering his neighbourhood where Kacchan and co could stumble upon him.
(Izuku had just started learning to avoid Kacchan rather than seek him out. While he still considered the blond boy his friend, there were only so many explosions he could take before he began to flinch away).
New game titles soon filled his shelves alongside books on heroes and action figures. He explored genres and found the ones he was comfortable with, still hero-themed of course. His games started out as single-player.
But, eventually something more crept in. Much like pro-heroes, video games had thriving online communities and, well, Izuku couldn’t resist. Not when they were all so passionate and interesting, just like hero forums with legions of fans bouncing ideas and sharing excitement back and forth. Games were dissected and reconstructed, the best speed runs measured by pixels and millisecond, and complex strategies to take down difficult opponents coordinated between dozens of people. He began participating, slowly at first, but soon he was invested and talking and listening to online peers (never too deep though, never enough to get attached).
They recommended more games. Older ones, classics without a traditional hero in sight (but classics for a reason). Multiplayer games that Izuku flitted to and from without really getting invested in but enjoyed nonetheless. Complex rpgs more numbers than not, explained by bickering players who disagreed on the meta not because they didn’t understand it, but because they all knew it too well. Amazing stories directly told in powerful cutscenes or only inferred through environments and a few lines of dialogue that every player interpreted differently.
Soon video games became one of the few things in his life that weren’t (always) hero-themed.
(Of course heroes would remain his first and greatest passion, but there was enough empty space in his life for both).
His mom didn’t like it, though not because of the usual parental paranoia of brain rot and violence (which she was concerned about of course, but she knew her little boy was far too smart and far too kind for such worries to truly dig their fearful roots in). It was for the same reasons she disliked it when he was holed up in his room scrolling hero forums and scribbling in his notebooks. She wished she could find his happiness outside himself and a screen. She wished the isolation of being Quirkless did not make him turn inwards.
Sometimes Izuku wished she would just do something about it other than worry, and then hated himself for thinking so.
By that point, he rarely told her about the things that upset him anyways.
Then—then news of Sword Art Online came out. True, fully realized VR, with not just sight and sound but touch and taste and smell, controlled by your mind just like in the movies. Beforehand, the NerveGear and other FullDive technology had been rather niche, expensive, and only capable of small puzzle games and walking simulators. A curiosity. This, however, promised something amazing. But it was an MMO and Izuku didn’t know… while he was familiar with MMOs, he never stayed long. Real progress almost always required teamwork and Izuku was not good at putting himself out there, even online. He liked sticking to typed chat, to talking briefly about whatever had caught his interest then leaving and never adding people to his contacts, never sharing anything about himself. He analyzed recordings of raids and the like—of course he did, the strategies were fascinating and the coordination mesmerizing—but never participated because raids required relationships and commitment. Sword Art Online wasn’t just something he could sign up for for a month and then abandon like the other MMOs he had checked out. Not when it would require purchasing NerveGear.
But VR. Created by the mysterious genius Akihiko Kayaba, who also wrote some captivating papers on the neurological aspects of Quirks and dammit, Izuku couldn’t resist. So he did his research, found himself fascinated with everything Sword Art Online (because the game, because the tech, because this was a chance he could truly pretend to be more than Quirkless Deku without a screen between him and the fantasy) and he wanted in.
Except NerveGear was expensive and the Midoriyas were not a wealthy family. They were hardly poor, but still. Izuku spent most of his money on the hero merch and games his mother didn’t buy for him rather than saving for such a big purchase. Buying a brand new state-of-the-art gaming system and a new high-demand game all at once was so outside his budget it wasn’t even funny, and it was far too expensive to ask his mom to buy it for him.
It was upsetting. Frustrating. The NerveGear alone was revolutionary, and from what he heard the game itself was a labour of love. A hundred floors of content, each one unique, and while it seemed far too good to be true there was some footage (in-game footage, not the CGI animated bullshit and it looked real) and man, there wasn’t much Izuku cared about other than heroes but he cared about this.
That was fine. He could save up and who knew, maybe by the time he could buy Nerve Gear there’d be new, even better games on the market. He was used to being disappointed.
Except that wasn’t what happened. He came home after a particularly bad day at school with clothes smelling faintly of smoke and ears still ringing, a state he accepted with a numb sort of resignation. Then he saw his mother sitting at the dinner table with a wrapped box, smiling anxiously like she often did.
“Come sit down Izuku,” she said and he sat, feeling a little nervous.
She took a deep breath. “I don’t always know what’s going on in your life. And I know you hide things from me.”
Which was true. She didn’t know a lot of things about Izuku’s life because Izuku kept them from her. Nothing would change if he told her, a fact he had discovered very young, and it kept her from getting upset on his behalf. If he told her then she would cry and apologize and Izuku would feel so, so guilty because he had hurt his mother and made her even more stressed, no doubt blaming herself for giving birth to a useless Quirkless son (and he was sorry for being born Quirkless too, for being such a burden when she could have had a kid with a cool Quirk who had a dream she could believe in). Izuku had thought he had been sneaky about it, that she hadn’t realized how little he told her about what happened outside their little apartment. But apparently she knew he was at least keeping some things from her.
Yet habits remained, and so he remained silent rather than opening up about the challenges he faced.
“And I know I’m not always the best mom.”
“Mom–” Izuku began to protest but was cut off by her holding up her hand.
“Let me finish sweetheart,” she said shakily. “And I don’t always get your interests, but if they make you happy then– then I want to support you.”
She pushed the box across the table. “Now go on, open it.”
Izuku peeled off the shiny paper and– “NerveGear! Why would you…” NerveGear was expensive, not a purchase to be made on a whim.
“I know you really want to play that Sword game when it comes out. Who knows, maybe I’ll try it out sometime and we can play together, though you’ll have to teach me how.” She smiled, a tiny fragile thing that was equal parts hesitance as it was hope. There were tears in her eyes.
Oh. He was crying too.
He stood up so fast he made the table shake and launched himself into her arms. They both sobbed, a small moment of connection after years of silence and guilt between them. One of them had finally reached out.
And while Izuku was still thrilled to be chosen for the beta test, it was really this moment that made him the happiest of all.