Chapter Text
Izumi looked over the sea from atop the giant pile of trash. She had worked so hard over these ten months and still felt like she wasn’t worth all of the help she’d gotten. She would figure that whole thing out. She’d agreed to go to therapy once college started, and she’d been assured by her mother and All Might that she was worthwhile. She had a treacherous thought that maybe they were right, but images of Kacchan slammed that thought down to the deepest recesses of her mind. She thought about all of this, the accomplishment, the question of her worth, a repressed feeling starting to make itself known related to Kacchan. It all came forward into her stomach, up through her lungs and throat and she let out a visceral roar before she began to lose her balance.
“Oh, my…Oh, my…Goodness!” she heard All Might yell, presumably changing to his muscle form mid-sentence. She began to feel herself fall backward, and she simply let it happen. She landed, not in the sand, but All Might’s arms. She was placed on her feet, and she focused on the present. All Might held up his phone, showing a scrawny girl.
“Is that me?” She asked. All Might nodded.
“10 months ago. You haven’t gotten ripped, but you certainly aren’t a twig anymore! You look stronger and healthier, and you should thank your lucky stars you don't have huge muscles like me. I’m told people aren’t attracted to that in girls.” He laughed, trying to get across to Izumi that his words were light-hearted. “You’re certainly ready for One for All.” Izumi smiled. All Might plucked a hair from his head.
“Someone told me once, never confuse being lucky with earning what you get. You’ve certainly earned this. Now, EAT THIS!” He yelled as he held out the blonde hair to Izumi.
After a debate surrounding the consumption of hair and how much shampoo is too much, Izumi made her way, in a hurry, to Yuuei. She was ready for this. She took a few steps forward before falling forward, having tripped on a small pebble. She accepted her fate of slamming her face on the concrete and having a possible bloody or broken nose for the exam. However, she was caught midair by seemingly nothing.
“Sorry for using my quirk on you, but I figured you wouldn’t appreciate eating the pavement.” She was set upright and looked at the girl who had spoken, and apparently, saved her. “So, a bit of tension in the air, huh?” Izumi blushed a bit more than she had been. However, this time she was blushing, not because of embarrassment, but because of the cute girl in front of her.
“Y-yeah…” Izumi said.
“Well, we should get inside!” the girl said before jogging toward the building. Izumi followed suit, but slower. The students filed into the auditorium and began to listen to their proctor, Midnight, explain the written exam.
After the written exam was done, and Present Mic had explained the practical, the buses to the exam sites took off. Izumi sat in the back of the bus, feeling a bit of tingling on her back. She looked behind her, and a piece of clothing she hadn’t put on this morning was there. A dark blue hood was on her back, secured around her neck, and pulled down behind her head. A cape flowed down her back before being slightly scrunched up between her lower back and the back of the seat.
This wasn’t normal. The fabric felt unnatural. Almost as if it was made from something that was cloth, but wasn’t at the same time. She grabbed hold of it and, suddenly, it grabbed onto her hand before the fabric shifted, turning into what could only be called a swirling mass of fabric. It began spiraling up her arm and forming into a band that covered her entire upper arm. She grabbed it with her other hand and tried to pull it off, and it reformed around her hand, becoming what looked like a martial arts hand wrap which, once her hand was completely wrapped, the fabric continued wrapping about halfway up her forearm.
She thought about it. Was this One for All? Was this a quirk of her own? Was this something that was on the seat? None of those seemed likely, but what she did know was that it wouldn’t leave her at the moment. When it was connected to her skin, it didn’t shift unless it was grabbed specifically by her with the express purpose of taking it off. She grabbed it again, thinking really hard about it coming off, which didn’t work, but it felt almost like it grabbed her harder as if it was saying “No.” The bus began to approach the exam site, and she grabbed it one more time, thinking of it becoming something useful for the exam. It unraveled from her arm, this time becoming thin and long, like a lasso or…
“A whip.” She said under her breath. She rolled it up, and now it was detaching from her, but when she dropped it, the handle of the whip was attracted to her hand, causing her to grab it. The students filed off of the bus and Izumi stretched a bit before looking at the whip. It seemed like this was going to be helping her for the time being. She thought of a few things before Present Mic yelled start. She realized that the fabric never changed size or the amount of space it covered. The amount of fabric was always the same, only the shape changed. She thought of ways to not only attack, but defend. The gates opened and Present Mic yelled, “Start!”
Izumi ran forward and unfurled the whip when she saw a one-pointer. She ran straight for it, trying out the whip, imitating what she’d seen on TV. This worked, somehow, and the tip hit the robot, a crack sounding through the air. Izumi was surprised when, instead of maybe making the robot move backward a few millimeters, the majority of the fabric seemed to shift toward the tip, hit the bot, and shifted right back to Izumi’s hand, causing a sort of ripple and bashing in the head of the bot.
‘It did that much? The bot’s not dead, but…maybe…’ Izumi focused on the fabric and it formed into what appeared to be a smaller than average bat. She tapped it against her other palm before smiling. She ran toward the bot and finished it off with a bash to the part which was indented, fully defeating it. Izumi didn’t know this had all happened over a few seconds, and her blood started rushing. It felt a bit like when she was trying to escape Kacchan, but more pleasant. It was just as chaotic and made her mind process things slightly faster. She figured this was adrenaline. She discarded the thought for the moment before rushing at another one-pointer.
All Might looked at the screens and couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Izumi was running around using what looked like a small bat, which had been a whip moments earlier, and bashing in the fronts of one and two-pointers. She seemed surprised that the whip turned into a bat, and eventually, that the bat turned into a sword. It looked sharp, too, cutting through parts of the three-pointers. This wasn’t right. All Might knew that Izumi was a terrible liar, so he knew she didn’t have a quirk. At least until now.
The transforming object turned back into a whip, and Izumi tried to pull off the arm of a one-pointer. She failed and was pulled forward onto her face. All Might cringed, but was still trying to figure this out. The object never left Izumi’s hand, at least not for long. It seemed to be magnetized to her, so it had to be a quirk. The strangest part was that it seemed familiar.
Izumi got up from falling and had her kill stolen by a boy with exhaust pipes in his legs. She needed to get her head into the game. She had been having so much fun with the weird fabric object that she forgot to conserve her remaining energy. She had finished cleaning Dagobah beach right before the exam, after all. The running around, testing random forms of the object, and the actual transformation of it, especially, were all sapping her energy. She had about thirty-five points at this point, and she knew she could do better. That was until she felt a rumbling louder than the bots walking around. She looked toward the source and saw a robot taller than the buildings.
‘The zero-pointer?! Isn’t that a bit much?!’ she thought. She heard a yelp which knocked her out of her musing. She looked at the source, which was, worryingly, in the same direction as the gargantuan robot.
“Help!” yelled the voice. It was the girl who saved her in front of the school. She was trapped under rubble. It was right then that Izumi decided to save her. It was also near that point that the adrenaline began to wear off, and she felt it. Despite this, she ran full speed toward the girl, the sword shifting into the only thing she thought would help at the time. A big crowbar. She began to pant heavily as she reached the girl, and smiled in her direction before slipping the thin edge of the crowbar under the rubble and placing her body weight down on the other end. The crowbar lifted the rocks enough for the girl to crawl out. The two, however, were unable to continue their escape, both unable to move and collapsing due to exhaustion. The fabric formed back into the hood and cape as Izumi tried to stay conscious. Just before the approaching behemoth could flatten them, Present Mic announced the end of the exam. The two exhausted girls smiled in each other’s direction.
“Thanks…for that…” the girl breathed out.
“Thanks…for out front…” Izumi responded. “How bad…is your ankle…?”
“Should be fine.” The girl tried to sit up, barely succeeding. “It’s not as bad as it could’ve been.”
“That’s good.” Izumi was face down, so sitting up wasn’t an option, at least not yet.
“So, that’s an odd quirk you have there.” The girl said, making conversation.
“Yeah…I didn’t know I had it until…the bus ride over.”
“You were gonna take the test without a quirk? I admire your bravery…or is it stupidity?”
“I’d say it’s a little of both.” Izumi looked at the girl. The exhaustion made her dazed and allowed her to take in what she looked like without blushing at the mere sight of her face. She was a brunette who had her hair in a bob cut. Her eyes were nearly as big as her own, and she had a small amount of blush on her cheeks, and it looked permanent because her face should be drained of blood as she regained her energy. She was a bit more well endowed than Izumi, which she didn’t know whether to be envious of or attracted to. She was a little bit curvier than Izumi as well. Izumi wasn’t sure what she looked like at that moment, having been too absorbed in training to care, but she was sure this girl was more attractive than her.
The two heard an old woman telling everyone they did a good job.
“Is that Recovery Girl?” Izumi asked.
“I dunno, but she’s small, giving out gummies and kissing a few people.”
“It is her…tell her you’ve got a sprained ankle, and maybe ask for some gummies for both of us. I’m wiped.” The girl shouted to Recovery Girl, who walked over, stopping a few times for more urgent cases. The girl noticed the kisses Recovery Girl gave the others healed their injuries.
“Alright, dearies, you two seem like you’ve had it rough. Let me see that ankle.” She looked at the girl’s ankle and kissed it after muttering about it looking like a simple sprain. The girl felt better before feeling exhausted. “Have some gummies, get your energy up, the bus leaves in five minutes.” She handed the two girls two gummies each and proceeded to help more injured applicants. As they ate the gummies, they felt their energy return, almost magically.
"Wow," Izumi said, getting up.
"Yeah, those gummies must've had something in 'em."
"Steroids?" Izumi suggested, jokingly. The girl chuckled.
"I was thinking amphetamines," She retorted. "I never got your name," The girl said a few moments later.
"Oh, I'm Izumi Midoriya," Izumi said, smiling a wobbly smile. Her inhibitions were coming back and her face was once again getting red.
"I'm Ochako Uraraka! You seem like someone I'd like to hang out with." The girl said as they walked out of the exam area and toward the bus. "By the way, where is that crowbar-sword-cloak thing?" Ochako asked, making odd motions with her hands to represent the forms of the hood.
Izumi grabbed the back of her neck, only to find the weird cloth still there. "Woah, it's back! That's so cool!" Ochako gushed. The hood had disappeared, but reaching for it brought it back. That or her new friend was simply screwing with her, but Ochako's face gave away nothing.
"Huh. This thing is weird. Like I said," Izumi started as they stepped onto the bus and made their way to the back. "This thing kinda appeared on the way here, and it shapeshifted whenever I tried to take it off, but when I tried to use it as a tool or weapon to help me, it cooperated." Izumi was looking this way and that, trying to keep her eyes off of Ochako.
"So it has, like, a mind of its own?" Ochako asked, head tilted.
"I wouldn't go that far. I analyze quirks for fun, but this, if it even is a quirk, is a mystery to me."
"Well, you'll figure it out. Anyway, you wanna hang out this weekend? I have to go home Sunday night and I live a good distance away, but I can hang out before then." Ochako asked. Izumi blushed at the thought of spending more time with this girl who was already growing on her.
"I have no plans on Saturday…or any other day." Izumi's voice lowered toward the end of her sentence.
“Well, you do now. Saturday, we hang out. And if we both get into UA, we hang out a lot more after that, too!”
“I feel like that one scene from that old sci-fi movie.”
“What scene?” Ochako asked.
“‘Congratulations, you are being rescued! Please do not resist.’” Izumi said in a vaguely robotic voice. Ochako tried not to laugh but failed miserably. Izumi smiled, her face bright red, as Ochako leaned on her, laughing, finding the joke much funnier than she should have.
Despite the whole first seventeen years of her life, being tortured and pushed around with only her mother to go to for help. Despite Izumi feeling as if she was worthy of nothing, especially the quirk of the greatest hero. Despite everything that she finally noticed once All Might and her mother pointed it out, such as the constant abuse of her classmates and teachers. At this moment, with her new friend leaning on her to prevent her from falling, laughing harder than Izumi ever had, and complaining about her stomach hurting from the laughter, Izumi smiled and felt she was finally worthy. Worthy of life.