Chapter Text
“To our first time viewers, and those of you hoping to join us, introductions are in order. UA Highschool is the top rated hero school in Japan. We take pride in four different academic streams with specialisations catered for the heroics industry. Management. Support. General Studies. And of course the heroics course.”
Students streamed into the stadium as their course was called. The crowd broke into a growing crescendo of cheers. The energy was electric.
“UA is privileged to house those with the raw unrefined potential, the embodiment of heroic spirit in our halls. Our mission has always been to cultivate the students of today into the greatest heroes of tomorrow. This is a time to celebrate their growth! Watch these events closely- and share in the achievements of Japan’s best and brightest. Welcome to UA’s annual Sports Festival!”
The video cut to a close up of the announcer. “Hero name: Mr.Principal, quirk: High Specs,” Izuku whispered under his breath. The principal of UA- smiling intelligently- welcomed him as the video clip ended. UA highschool. Izuku’s eyes shined with awe. A quiet need burned in his chest. Sleep could wait. Under the safety of his covers, he pulled his phone close to his face, and replayed the video.
--
It was every kid’s dream to become a hero. Throughout most of primary school, heroes were all anyone could talk about. This suited Izuku just fine. He liked to talk about heroes too. As kids grew into junior high, they tended to grow out of their dreams. They still talked about becoming heroes- topping the charts, having merch, being famous. But that’s all it was. Talk.
Izuku was not like his classmates. He and Kacchan worked for their dream. Izuku worked hard for straight A’s in class. He committed every hero he came across to memory. Their quirks, their strengths, their approaches to heroism. He immersed himself in the industry. And at the heart of it all, there was All Might. All Might who said that anyone could be a hero. Who went to UA highschool.
In the back of his mind, despite it all, he had faith that he and Kacchan would make it as heroes together. Everything else was just another chapter building towards that future.
--
Never let it be said that Izuku liked school. Learning? Sure, of course. Aldera Junior High certainly didn’t boast strong academics. It was run of the mill, with run of the mill teachers, and a student body that collectively hated him.
Aldera junior high might as well have been a haunted house, and Izuku had never been a fan of horror. Not when the terrifying bits all revolved around his life. Movies that made becoming quirkless a trope that guaranteed a character’s brutal death. Like it was a nightmare to be quirkless (and it was). Except in real life it didn’t take aliens or monsters to make someone quirkless, just an extra toe joint. He shouldn’t get so worked up over it. It wasn’t like he could watch those movies if he wanted to anyway, his mom certainly wouldn’t let him.
The point was, Aldera sucked. He was the only quirkless student in his year. Which did wonders for his social life. And it wasn't like there was a strong quirkless community to join in Musutafu either. People kept to themselves to limit the target on their back. It wasn’t all bad. During his first year, he managed to befriend a quirkless third year, but Hiroshi made it clear he didn’t want a little kid to drag him down entering high school. Being quirkless made him enough of a social outcast. Izuku could empathize. He was used to friendships coming with an expiry date. Didn’t mean that he didn’t cry about losing a close friend. Now in his second year, friend groups had already solidified and Izuku had the reputation of the creepy, quirkless loner.
In the end, it was just easier to focus on his future- becoming a hero. Maintaining his grades and researching heroes took a lot of time and commitment anyways. A busy social life wouldn’t fit into his routine. Kacchan didn’t slack, so neither would he.
And Izuku didn’t slack, for the most part. Except for when he managed to miss the better part of a week’s worth of chemistry class. Don’t get him wrong! He wouldn’t skip! He was in class, he just wasn’t present in class. He had been assigned a window seat in the science room- totally not his fault! What was his fault was how much he zoned out because of it.
By the time they were approaching the end of the chemistry unit, Izuku realized that he had no idea what was going on. His notes were lacking and borderline illegible, the teacher for that class hated taking questions, And he wasn’t a fan of chemistry to begin with.
The test was worth 25% of his final grade.
The fading sunset did little to lighten his mood. Izuku spun in his desk chair frowning. He really had no idea how to feel. The chemistry unit test his class took a week ago- last Friday- had finally been handed back, ending the mental spiral that had been plaguing him. But his results weren’t possible. The discarded unit test sat mocking him from his backpack.
An 80% wasn’t unrealistic for him. On a normal test. One he had studied for. It even leaned towards the low range of his average scores. He was on Aldera’s honour roll for a reason. Except Izuku hadn’t studied for this test. At all. He had actively avoided studying and spent the night before the test- both unable to sleep and unable to force himself to open his books.
The test had been structured as multiple choice. 40 questions total with four choices for each. According to chance and statistics, he should have gotten only a quarter of his guesses correct. Maybe even less. He hadn’t even read some of the questions. He had been so stressed out. Nearly triggered a panic attack in the middle of class over it.
He just knew that he had failed. He should have failed. Izuku caught his face in his hands and smothered a groan. Most people probably wouldn’t be so critical. A normal person would be thankful for the random stroke of luck and just enjoy it. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth and all that jazz. But not Izuku. Nothing ever worked out for him. Not like this. So sue him for being paranoid.
It felt like a prank. Though it wouldn’t make sense logically. There were easier ways to humiliate him for failing a test. His chemistry teacher in particular was pretty straightforward with his demonstrations. She preferred quick approaches, with minimal effort. Giving Izuku a fake grade on par with his average to lull him into a false sense of security wasn’t like her. So probably not a prank or passive-aggressive lecture- even if it felt that way.
This, this wasn’t normal. It wasn’t something that just happened.
Good things had to be earned with suffering, with hours of studying and lost sleep. It was the way things worked for him. Most people were born extraordinary. They had awe-inspiring power at their fingertips. Izuku’s birth won him the genetic anti-lottery. So forgive him for not taking some things in stride.
All of this to say, Blind luck wasn’t something that just happened to Izuku. Even if acing the chem test hadn’t been an elaborate ploy to lure him into a false sense of security, it wasn’t the sort of thing to happen naturally. Which meant something probably made it happen.
The thought of leaving it alone made his chest feel tight.
He opened his laptop and opened a search engine. Best to start with the obvious cause first. A quirk based effect. He couldn’t find any public records of a quirk that could hand out good luck, or any luck-affecting quirks. All that popped up were blog posts ranking the best and rarest quirks to have. Izuku scratched his head. From a quirk science perspective, luck was an entirely fictional concept. It was a stupid thought anyway. If such a quirk did exist, he couldn’t think of anyone that would want to give him good luck.
So, probably not a quirk.
And that conclusion didn’t really leave him with another obvious option.
He had already looked for patterns in his answers. Some teachers had a system for where they placed the right answers in multiple choice tests. Izuku hadn’t used a system for guessing on that test, and the questions he answered correctly were spread randomly between the different letter choices. He had answered the first three wrong, which ironically, were the three questions he had read and thought about before answering. He answered ‘B’ more frequently than other letters, but it hadn’t been a strategy for guessing. It just looked like a normal test that he did well on. He hated it.
It was probably a one-time fluke. Izuku bit his cheek at the thought. Not everything could neatly fall into cause and effect. But saying that didn’t calm his brain. There was a way that the world worked and even if it didn’t benefit him, he understood it. The ‘everything is random’ worldview never sat well with him. So in spite of his sanity, he kept searching for an answer.
----
Izuku threw himself into what felt like pointless tests and rabbit holes until he passed out from exhaustion midmorning on Saturday for 5 hours. He couldn’t help but feel like he was four again- trying to activate a quirk that didn’t exist.
It wasn’t until 3am on what was technically Sunday morning that he had any kind of confirmation. He had thoroughly entered the point of sleep deprivation that made him delirious. The kind of tiredness that had him stifling his laughter at seeing his own reflection, and tasting colours.
Maybe he shouldn’t study for his next major test. He flopped unceremoniously back onto his bed, wiggling around until his head and arms hung off the side of it. He hummed at the thought of circumventing homework, or not stressing over retaining information in class when his notes would sometimes get destroyed. Actively choosing to avoid all of it was appealing to him. Very appealing. But there was no proof that saying “fuck it” and going in blind would work a second time. And all of the consequences tied to failing a test- the public humiliation- would suck ass.
From his upside-down spot Izuku grabbed a pen from the floor. He really needed to clean his room. He glanced at the All Might cup he used to hold his writing stuff on his desk. It was so far away. Maybe if he just… Izuku adjusted the grip on his pen and shut one eye to line up a shot. Now, Izuku didn’t have the greatest hand-eye coordination. A non-delirious version of himself would know that if he threw the pen he’d just make a bigger mess. He’d have to get up, go look for it and pick it up again. Sleep deprived Deku wasn’t coherent enough for the thought to even cross his mind.
Impulsively, and still upside down, Izuku tossed the pen. It spun in an arc, and clanked as it landed neatly- inside of the cup. Izuku stared. He blinked. It had landed in the cup. He jerked to a sitting position, swaying slightly as a wave of lightheadedness swept over him.
“What the fuck?” he whispered.
Izuku stood up, walked to his desk and grabbed the pen from the cup. A lucky throw. Bluescreening, he walked to the opposite side of his room, lined up his arm and tossed the pen a second time. Again, it landed in the cup- jostling all the other pens and pencils already in it.
The test, and now twice with a pen. What was it that that one crime podcast had said? Once was an incident. Three times made a pattern.
Instead of going to bed, Izuku tried more tricks and tests. And it worked. It worked really well. By the time supper was being made, Izuku was sure of it. The test was not an isolated incident. Deku was lucky, and there was no logical explanation for it. Izuku thought there was some comedic irony in him having unexplainable good luck. As far as he had tested, random chance was literally something he could rely on.
His day of analysis of the not-quirk had revealed multiple things to him. Firstly, his luck was relatively trainable. The more he thought in a particular instant, the less it worked. Izuku still had questions about whether or not luck was something he was born with. Unfortunately, he thought too much to say concretely. Izuku regularly overthought everything he did or didn’t do. For most things he thought enough to completely negate any positive effect of his luck. It was a wonder he discovered it at all. Maybe the chemistry test had triggered something?
And there was another cool thing he realized through the multiple choice test. Luck was measurable. There was a whole subsection of mathematics dedicated to the study of probability! For standard multiple choice tests with 4 options, random answers would yield a 25% accuracy. Izuku hadn’t studied, had only read half the questions, and had pulled an 80% result. To be fair, he was entirely preoccupied by how he was about to fail it, and all the terrible things that were sure to result from his failure. Izuku had tried a series of university level multiple choice exams over the following morning. He hadn’t read any of the questions, didn’t try to make sense of them, just filled bubbles at random. That didn’t stop his mind from wandering while he took them or the twisting in his gut.
He finished scoring them right as his mom called him for dinner. Across 10 exams, he ranged from 85% to 95%.
Yeah, Izuku thought to himself. There’s no way I’m going to school tomorrow. With how pale and nauseous he looked, it wasn’t hard to convince his mom to call in sick for him.
The third thing he learned was that his luck only affected himself. He did not have control over it and could not give it to others. An aspect that confirmed that it wasn’t a quirk, but a phenomena that only impacted him. Even calling it trainable wasn’t entirely accurate. He wasn’t expanding an ability to bend luck, he was changing his behaviour to maximize the effects. Like angling a magnifying glass to refine the sun into a laser rather than being a laser himself. He could learn how to play with the rules as he learned them but those rules only applied to himself. Izuku couldn’t directly use his luck to help other people.
This was both super cool, and extremely annoying.
Over the course of the next two weeks, Izuku learned a fourth thing. His luck wasn’t limited to just academics and throwing pens. Fair to say that he never checked both ways before crossing the road. He could (and had) crossed busy highways without a scratch. Hell, he could probably just walk onto a battlefield during a villain attack and survive. Not that he would. Just because Izuku probably could do it wouldn’t stop it from giving his mother a heart attack. Plus it was easier to take notes on fights from the sidelines. In any case, so long as people weren’t actively targeting him, his luck was probably consistent with his academic testing.
And there was the larger issue. In cases where other people actively interfered, luck wouldn’t hold up. Luck wouldn’t stop Kacchan’s friends from punching him, or chasing him after school. Therefore, the final fact was that luck was only luck, and worked best on undecided events. He would still lose in a fight because he was a quirkless weakling. Luck couldn’t manifest likability, a quirk, or muscles. It was just a tool for Izuku to use, and it had limitations and weaknesses. It didn’t suddenly make him strong, or popular, or invincible. The more that Izuku could do, the more he could do with his luck. Long distance running opened the door to escaping bullies, and free running opened the door to finding hero fights. Which led to more dangerous activities.
Looking back, he should have seen that one coming.
As adults everywhere loved to preach, night time was a dangerous time to be outside. Izuku wasn’t sure that there was a major difference. He always got beat up during the daytime. If anything he was probably safer to go for runs at night. There wasn’t a risk of crossing paths with any bullies. And there had to be heroes that patrolled at night. Izuku hadn’t run into any yet, but the concept was exciting. Nighttime hero fights would be so cool.
The streets of Izuku’s neighbourhood were near vacant. A thick cloud cover hung over the sky to cover a nearly full moon. Streetlights cast long shadows between buildings. He always left his house prepared in case he ran into trouble. The best method proved to be bringing a handful of random items from his house- that would all turn out to be incredibly useful over the course of the night. If he packed tissues he might find someone who was crying, if he packed a can of soup, he might come across a food bank accepting donations, if he packed an umbrella, it was probably going to rain.
Each night before he went out, he catalogued what he packed in a notebook, but never thought about why he’d need them. Because then he wouldn’t need them. And that was so much more annoying. There was one night when he had packed a spork. He had spent the entirety of his outing trying to rationalize what he might need one for, and then he hadn’t needed it. It was worse to be left wondering.
The pattern seemed to be that the more intent he, or someone else put into something, the less of an effect his luck would have. Especially in working against that intent. He still needed to test exactly how much his own directed intent (actively thinking critically, wanting a specific result, and imagining the consequences of failure) affected his success rates. It seemed like his own intent had more of an effect on his luck than other people's. Strangers had cursed him out on the street in the past and he had been fine, paranoid, but fine.
If he had a clear mind, and trust in his luck, everything (mostly) worked in his favour. The more he questioned something, or the more that other people took specific actions directly in opposition to him, the less lucky he would be. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
A self-fulfilling prophecy that managed to impact the biggest overthinker he knew. Not that he knew many people. Despite his training, Izuku couldn’t help getting caught on certain lines of thought. The spork issue in particular was an itch he couldn’t scratch. He hasn’t needed to pack a spork since. And that was more infuriating than anything because he knew that his questions surrounding it were preventing it from being needed. Sure it could just be chance, but chance seemed to have a personality, and liked to fuck with him.
--
Izuku kept a slow, maintainable pace on the street. Sure it was dark out, but he had earned some alone time. It wasn’t like he was running at night. He spent enough of his day running away from bullies and towards hero fights. Plus, walking with the right mindset would boost his luck. According to his theories, looking for trouble was only going to keep him out of it.
And if his theories were wrong? Well that didn’t really matter too much.
He just liked the quiet. Walks were good for you. Izuku wanted to stay healthy. The fact that Izuku had pushed himself so hard his first two nights of researching causes for his newfound luck that he passed out on the train ride to school and woke up in another prefecture had nothing to do with it. It took him until lunch to make his way back. His mom had been so upset with him when he got home. The school had called her about his absence and she had assumed the worst. Thinking about her angry tears while lecturing him made his mouth dry. He kicked a small stone down the sidewalk. That had nothing to do with it at all.
Shouts echoed down the street, pulling him from his thoughts. Muffled but clearly threatening. Izuku's stomach churned with his nerves. There weren't any heroes in sight. Possibly a mugging. Izuku picked up his pace towards the suspected alleyway. Adrenaline bubbled in his chest. He pulled the tennis racket from his bag and pushed all of his questions about the improvised weapon out of his mind. This wasn't the time to get in his head- someone needed help.
The shouting crescendoed into the sound of something hitting a wall hard. Izuku turned the corner of the alleyway and closed the space between him and the large figure angled towards the wall. His feet splashed. Izuku sucked in a breath. The figure froze, swivelling to make eye contact with him. He walked right into ankle deep water. Izuku would have to think about the water later. Losing the advantage of an ambush probably wasn’t a good thing.
Light caught on the man’s face as he stepped back from the wall, revealing a man slumped on the ground. Izuku tightened his grip on his racket and forced his breathing to even. Under the limited streetlight, the other man had a wide set face with short cropped hair and noticeably large arms. Something related to his quirk?
“You get one warning to mind your fucking business,” the man spat at Izuku.
Izuku’s gaze drifted towards the man on the ground. He hadn’t moved. That probably wasn’t a good sign. Unconscious people usually needed the hospital, common sense told him that much. He wondered if the water was deep enough to drown in. If he was drowning, that gave Izuku less than three minutes to save him.
A flash of movement snapped him back to the threat in front of him. The thug pulled something round from his pants pocket and held it out in front of him. Izuku barely caught how his arm seemed to compress back into the man, winding like a spring before shooting the ball like a bullet at Izuku. Panicking, he reacted and swung the racket. The ball moved too fast to track with his eyes. He could only feel the strain pushing against his swing, and hear the satisfying thwack of connecting with a target. What he didn’t expect was the two following thwacks, as the ball first hit the alley wall, and then the man who threw it in the side of the head. The man dropped immediately. Izuku jumped at the movement.
With the threat down, Izuku released some tension in his shoulders he didn’t realize he was holding. He quickly checked that both of the men were breathing, and proceeded to drag them out of the flooded alley. His mind was buzzing. He had just assaulted a grown man, a villain, in self defence. But he had inserted himself into the situation. He fought a villain without a hero license. He was gonna get arrested for vigilantism. Shit! And he still needed to get both the villain and victim actual medical help. Running to a conveniently placed phone booth, he made an anonymous tip about the incident, and asked for both the police and an ambulance. He did feel bad about leaving when the operator asked him to stay on the scene and wait for the police. Hopefully the two men would be fine on their own. It wasn't like a middle schooler was going to much to protect them anyway.
Izuku’s feet sloshed inside his shoes as he fled. Great. His socks were soaked. This was so gross. He was going to have to wash his shoes when he got home. At least he knew why he had packed flip flops. The entire alleyway had smelled like sewage. It probably was sewage water. In any case, he couldn’t keep training with wet feet. His mind was running too fast for luck training anyway. The calm clarity from the fight had worn off, leaving him all jittery and tired. Izuku stopped a couple of blocks away from his apartment complex and made the swap to flip flops, keeping his soaked hightops in the plastic bag he brought. On the bright side, he had some extra time to document the quirks he saw into his notebooks, and take a hot shower.
--
Bakugou was ready to blow his desk to bits with Deku’s bullshit.
There was something up with the nerd. To be fair, Deku was a walking shit storm from birth so something was always going on, but Bakugou could usually read what shit was brewing. Blame it on having a decade of history together or being friends, but Bakugou knew Izuku. The fact that Deku couldn’t lie to save his life just made things obscenely easy for him. He always knew what was up with him, both for Deku’s safety and his own. The old hag would beat him into next week if something happened to Deku. That didn’t even count what Auntie Inko would do to him. He’d heard stories from his mom about how terrifying Auntie could be. About what body parts counted as small objects and could be pulled by her quirk. That was motivation enough on its own. A person capable of living with the nerd full time wouldn’t be weak.
Katsuki himself could never get rid of him. Deku clung to him like a burr or an annoying younger brother. Never giving him space to do his own thing, and when he did finally leave him alone, he’d be walking into traffic or something stupidly dangerous. Katsuki had a deep unspoken respect for Auntie Inko for handling Deku like it was nothing.
When Auntie wasn’t around, Katsuki was forced to intercept most of his idiot schemes. Most of the time that just meant stopping him from chasing hero fights, either by force or the threat of it. It was annoying, but Katsuki knew what to expect. There was control in the routine.
Except now he didn’t know. He could tell the dumbass was up to something monumentously stupid. Practically smell it. The lack of mumbling in class was never a good sign. On the scale of Deku-disasters, lots of mumbling wasn’t good, but none at all was a catastrophic omen. It meant Izuku wasn’t ratting himself out. Katsuki just didn’t know what the disaster was.
Last time Deku had stopped mumbling for more than a few days in a row, it was because he was planning to run away to his deadbeat dad in America because he had heard All Might had been sighted in the US. He got caught when Katsuki caught his dumb ass trying to buy a plane ticket with Auntie’s credit card. He’d even saved up the money to pay her back for it. Years later and Katsuki still had no idea where Deku had scrounged the money from.
But that was years ago. They were almost grown-up now- only a year and a half left of the shit hole junior high. It would make sense that the scale of Deku’s schemes had only grown. So when Katsuki noticed that Izuku had been silent in class for the better part of a week after missing a day of class? Katsuki knew he was up to something. Something dangerous. Probably self destructive. Definitely nothing good. His palms itched to ignite and let off some steam. Bakugou hated not knowing.
If he didn’t know what was going on he couldn’t prepare himself. And if his regular methods weren’t working because Deku had finally shut up and miraculously grown a brain-to-mouth filter, then he’d have to pry the information from the source.
The bell rang for lunch. Katsuki stormed out of his desk to loom over Izuku. It was all too easy to corner him. He didn’t even leave his desk. Deku really had been more distracted in class lately. And disappearing after school. He’d heard something about the nerd’s vanishing acts from the extras. That was damning evidence if he’d ever heard it. Bakugou snagged the nerd’s bento from his desk and sneered. Looking out for his dumb ass was cutting into his break time. If he couldn’t eat then neither would Deku.
“Oi, Deku! What the hell have you been doing?”
Deku jolted, his eyes shocked into saucers like he’d just realized Bakugou was there. His face warped into a wobbly smile. “Kacchan? What do you mean?”
“You know what. The disappearing act you’ve been pulling after school. What’s that all about, huh?” He pushed.
Deku let out a nervous laugh that almost made him blow up the nerd’s lunch. “It’s nothing bad, just some research! Can I have my lunch back please?”
Katsuki ignored the request. “If you have to open by telling me it’s nothing bad, then it's obviously something bad. You might as well fess up now. Are you chasing hero fights again?”
That made Izuku frown. “Kacchan… I never stopped chasing hero fights, how else am I supposed to become a hero?”
Katsuki short circuited. As far as he knew, Deku had stopped chasing heroes last year, after he threatened to kill him for wasting his time babysitting. If Katsuki wasn’t there to watch him, Deku wasn’t allowed to chase hero fights. The nerd was barely allowed even when Katsuki was there. And now Deku was telling him he never stopped? That it would be Katsuki’s fault when he inevitably gets hurt?
“God fucking damn it. You’re gonna get yourself killed, you idiot. Is that what you want? To take me down with you?”
“Kacchan, I’m going to be a hero too. I have to train.”
“Train?” He scoffed. “Hero training makes the strong stronger. Look at you! You’re dead weight. A quirkless weakling like you sounds like the most useless hero ever. You wouldn’t make it out of UA’s entrance exam in one piece. Get your head out of your ass!”
His breathing was becoming short. How close had Deku been to ruining his plans for UA? Deku getting himself hurt or killed in the heat of a villain attack would derail all of his training for UA’s entrance exams. He’d be up to his ears in note taking for the nerd, or walking on eggshells around the old hag, or helping Auntie. And that was another thing-
“If Auntie hears about any of this she’ll flip, and if you hurt Auntie I’ll kill you. You hear me? I’m gonna be number one, and you’re going to be nowhere near me when I get there- got it? Stop. Chasing. The. Pros.” He slammed the bento onto Izuku’s desk and stormed out of the classroom before he really got mad.
--
Izuku mulled over Kacchan’s words. He had always assumed UA would cover all of the physical training to make him into a hero. All of his preparations had been knowledge based- with the exception of cardio. It would be kind of presumptuous for UA to base a student’s potential to become a great hero on their physical strength in middle school. And sure Izuku didn’t have a flashy quirk, a quirk at all to boast about. That was why he studied so much. The fact that he enjoyed analyzing heroes was just a bonus.
But there was a physical portion to UA’s entrance exam. Space for physical strength and a quirk to show off. If the physical portion and the academic portion were weighted equally, Izuku would need to excel at both to get accepted. And without a quirk, he was only going to stand out in all the wrong ways. Was Kacchan right that Izuku stood no chance? He stared at his disheveled, now steaming lunch. UA accepted quirkless applicants for all courses, and that was more than any other hero school in Japan. There had to be a way.
A quiet idea solidified in the back of his mind. High stress, high risk situations- like the unnamed incident with a racket- was exactly the sort of skill that would prove his physical potential. The idea grew into a whisper. He could be useful, he just needed to work harder.