Chapter Text
Izuku Midoriya was lost in thought. Or, rather, he was exploring his thoughts. The sheer number of times he had done the same thing meant that he couldn’t quite be lost. He loved when this happened, when his thoughts flowed like good tea and his mind was sharper than even the spikes of Crimson Riot. In this state, he truly was the best version of Izuku Midoriya that could exist.
This time, he was thinking about quirk-based flight. It was, no doubt, one of the more viable abilities to have. The power to spot crime from a place where no one expected someone, to survey a disaster situation, to go where others could not, was truly an amazing power. So many of the top heroes could fly. The 3rd highest ranked hero at the moment, Hawks, was there largely for his unparalleled speed. His ability to control each individual feather on his back mentally also gave him a great deal of maneuverability. Endeavor could also fly, albeit with less control, but his sheer power and speed somewhat made up for it. Finally came All Might. Though he technically couldn’t fly, the sheer power of his legs could let him jump far and fast enough to make it a moot point. Izuku supposed that the ability to turn on a dime when flying made the power even better in large cities. One could better wind through the buildings. Faster, less controlled flight was better in places with less to run into, like outside or above cities. The fact that cities were more populated and had higher crime rates compared to the countryside meant that maneuverability beat speed any day, so long as both were significant.
“Mr. Midoriya?”
Izuku popped his head up from his journal. He had drifted too far into his thoughts and become untethered from the very real math class happening around him. Luckily, he was well-studied enough to not really care. Math came easy to him, though it bored him out of his mind. On the board was a math problem, and the teacher held a whiteboard marker in his hand expectantly. A large part of the class stared at him much the same. The almost dead silence was unnatural. Izuku practically popped out of his seat and walked to the front. A few snickers at his utter obliviousness wound through the idle noise of the AC. Izuku couldn’t understand how this could be funny. He had not been paying attention to class, and therefore didn’t hear anyone speak. It was a logical turn of events. There was nothing inherently humorous about logical conclusions. Humor was supposed to be a subversion of expectations.
Midoriya would have to muse on comedy later. He had been standing in front of the whiteboard for just a little too long without even looking at the actual problem. His eyes were a weary traveler in the desert, and the problem was a flask of cold water. Not in the sense of wanting to do the problem, but in the sense of wanting to get the problem over with so he could go back to thinking. Izuku popped off the cap from the marker with a dramatic flourish, getting to work. The marker danced across the board, making probably the worst looking integral sign anyone had ever seen. But as long as people could understand, they didn’t seem to care. Take that, kindergarten teacher! In 30 seconds, he was done. Whatever, who cared. An even more dramatic flourish put the marker back together and into the teacher’s hand. Izuku walked back to his seat and sat down again with his journal. He still had to think about the difference between flapped wing flight and propelled flight. Could one be superior to the other? In what situations?
The dismissal bell went straight through Izuku’s head. No doubt, this was one of the most painful noises there could be. Thankfully, by the nature of school, he had a way to distract himself from the bell: cleaning. Izuku, quite plainly, loved cleaning. It was a simple task that he could do while thinking just as fast as he usually did. The rush of a clean and tidy classroom by his hand could not compare. Put simply, cleaning allowed him to enjoy two of his favorite things at the same time. He rushed for the broom and began to sweep the floor with the dedication of a priest during a famine. No dirt would survive his discerning eye. Izuku practically tangoed with the broom as he went about the classroom. Back when he started doing this, students would occasionally pop in to watch him work. The only sad thing about cleaning was how quickly Izuku could do it. He was done in just 10 minutes with the entire classroom, and that was including realigning the desks, cleaning the whiteboard, and throwing away a few pieces of trash. Izuku left the bittersweet scene. Students outside were still finishing up. Nobody turned to watch him leave. They knew he was done with his share of the work.
Izuku took the same route to the school’s exit every day. It was the fastest route, and he liked efficiency. As he turned the corner to the front of the school, a hand took him in the face. Izuku wasn’t nearly fast enough physically to dodge, but he was mentally quick enough to know exactly who the hand belonged to. The slap reverberated slightly through the halls, and Izuku’s face stung. From around the corner shambled a disheveled young man. His hair was pale, spiky, and unkempt. He wore his school uniform in possibly the worst manner anyone could. His name was Katsuki Bakugo, and he was the rockstar quirk user who everyone expected to become a chart-topping unbeatable Pro Hero. Well, almost everyone. Izuku had known the boy for years upon years, and had never understood what part of him screamed “hero” to everyone else. Was it the sinister grin that always graced his face? Was it the death threats? Or was it the destruction of personal property?
“DEKU!”
Bakugo had come up with that charming little nickname as another reading of his real first name. Izuku wasn’t a fan of it. The name had tormented him for years. So long as Katsuki Bakugo was around to use it, the name followed. Still, there was some humor in how Bakugo clung to the name so ardently. It was as if he had to constantly affirm his own superiority with it.
“You hurt my damn hand, you bastard! Apologize or I’ll turn you into a fucking puree and feed you to your goddamn mother!”
From around the corner walked two of Bakugo’s stooges. One was decently plump with a buzzcut and two menacing red wings sprouting from his back. The other was tall, lanky, and had sunglasses hiding massive light-sensitive eyes. Quite honestly, they were just yes men. They were nothing without Bakugo, and Bakugo was nothing without his Deku to push around.
“Hello Bakugo. It’s nice to see your insults haven’t gotten any less graphic.” droned Izuku. Izuku’s voice was never that monotone, but it seemed to piss Bakugo off even more. Bakugo lapped at the puddles of emotion that he squeezed from his victims, and Izuku had a great deal of fun letting him parch.
“Shut up! You think you’re anything fucking special just because you’re smart or something? You’re too boring to be anything in this world but a worthless shitty ant!”
“Boring, says the boy who gave the same speech yesterday, and the day before that, and about every day of this grade of middle school. I’m beginning to think you don’t have any new material, Bakugo. Why even say anything anymore?”
“Uh-go die, Deku! Maybe then your body will fertilize a tree and make up for all the oxygen you waste!”
“You have a quirk that makes explosions, Bakugo. You waste more oxygen in one second than I do in hours. And that doesn’t even cover the number of notebooks you’ve destroyed. Maybe you should be the one planting trees.”
“J-just shut up! God, why won’t you shut up for once! Your mouth just keeps moving when nobody wants to hear you!”
“Because you keep talking to me. If my silence was really what you wanted, you wouldn’t even have spoken to me in the first place. Not to mention the multiple times this same routine has begun while I’m nonverbal. Every time, it only pisses you off more. It’s almost as if you want me to suffer. Unfortunately for you, you’re not even in the top ten of things that bother me. You’re just a sad little man who uses his big scary quirk to make up for the fact that he’s an ass.”
Bakugo punched Izuku in the chest with a Tyson-esque left hook. Izuku had been prepared for it for a bit now. The fact that this was an everyday occurrence meant that it was ultimately not a problem. Thankfully, their proximity to the school entrance meant that any explosion of sufficient size to be threatening would also be quite audible outside. Even if Bakugo could be an ass inside the school, outside he was subject to the same laws that governed everyone else.
“Oh noooo, you hit me. Whatever will I do? Do everyone a favor and shut up yourself. We can use the 15 minutes wasted on this every day to do anything else. Speaking of which, see you tomorrow, Boom Boy.”
Izuku sauntered off, head held high. Even if Bakugo had taken the advantage through that punch, Izuku’s words had been far more concussive. He had won, and Bakugo would cry about it at home. The thought of Bakugo’s face contorted into a weeping grimace made Izuku happier than he really wanted to admit. After all, the boy was still, above all, Izuku’s tormentor. He had done things to some of his other victims that would make Izuku’s poor mother sob. That’s why it was Izuku’s job to keep him in check, to make sure he never got too comfortable in the role. Maybe then he’d be able to find his childhood friend somewhere in there.
The town streets were loud, quite loud indeed. The air conditioning systems working inside every home generated a high pitched squeal that only Deku could ever seem to hear. To say nothing of the sounds of the people. This was why Deku always wore headphones. Sure, he wouldn’t be able to hear anything else. But he would snap if he had to go home with the screeching electric chorus in his ears one more time.
As Deku arrived home, he immediately hugged his mother. That was one of the few ways he could express his own affection. He loved his mother so much that he just had to show it with force. Inko loved her son, too. Her love was a bit different, though. She prepared her love with rice and lentils, and served it with a ruffle of Izuku’s hair. The two sat down, and Izuku began to speak about his day. Well, what he could remember of it, anyways. His fascination was far closer towards the aspects of Quirks he had been thinking about earlier that day.
“I was thinking about flight-based quirks. If you could pick between a quirk that gave you bird wings to fly or one that gave you jets in your feet, which one would you pick?”
Inko had scarcely any clue what Izuku was talking about sometimes. Still, she saw the light in his eyes grow whenever he spoke about quirks and their usage. She was honestly surprised he had abandoned his dream of being a hero so quickly after his diagnosis as being quirkless. She supposed that being an accountant for the Public Safety Commission had its own way of helping people out. She was also surprised that he was able to lie so well about it. Publicly his quirk was listed as being a mutation-type giving him a faster thought speed in crisis situations in addition with his emerald green hair. No one seemed to notice that adrenaline did the same thing, or that Inko had similar hair, or even that their family name literally had the word for green in it. Rather, they didn’t seem to want to notice. The quirkless were treated so horribly these days, and not even the doctor who diagnosed Izuku had the malice in them to put anyone, let alone a child, through that. But he had the extra toe joint, and they knew it. Izuku was as quirkless as the parents of the Luminescent Baby.
Izuku wasn’t expecting an answer. He knew his mother was completely unaware of anything he spoke about. Still, she listened, and that was all that mattered. “I’d pick the one with the jets. Bird wings sound interesting and all, but most birds have hollow bones that both lessen their weight and provide extra lung space. To say nothing of the wing size that would be required for a fully grown human to fly. Hawks only gets as far as he does because his wings are partially telekinetically controlled, meaning he can flap his wings much harder than any sole avian mutation would allow. Jets are far more compact and extremely efficient. The only issues I can see with jets is that they’re a bit harder to control, since they can’t be pivoted in quite the same way as wings can, since you’d constantly have to brace against the jet’s own thrust to make sure your limbs didn’t go flapping about, and fueling them is hard, since combustion engines require something combustible to work. I suppose in the case of a particularly inconvenient permutation of a jet engine quirk I’d go for the wings instead, but it’s a high bar.”
This went on for a bit longer before Izuku remembered his homework. Not that it really mattered. He tore through his homework like a Flashfire Fist through a concrete wall. His remaining evening time went towards more brainstorming, before a nice dinner and bed.