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“I don’t remember what I look like anymore.”
When Midoriya Izuku first got his quirk, he was four. He was eating katsudon with his mother when suddenly his hair changed colors. It startled his mom so bad, he thinks, that she dropped her chopsticks. They went to the doctor and found that he could change himself to look like anyone he wished, changing either small parts or his entire self.
When his mother died, he was five. He doesn’t even remember her name, or how it happened.
The foster system is weird. Everytime he went to a new family, they asked him to look like them. So, he changed his hair color, but that wasn’t enough for some. Some people gave him pictures of children he had never seen before, sometimes who were older than him, and asked him to become them. He always did, and then was expected to go to older kid school. Those homes he left pretty quickly.
When he first realized he forgot what he looked like, he was eight. He had just gotten picked up from a foster home where they made him change his entire self and act differently when the nice lady asked him to unshift. He can’t unshift, he can only shift into other things he has seen. And it's been so long since he’s seen himself in a mirror without looking like someone else. So he changed to look like the nice lady, who looked sad.
“Maybe try looking like your mom!”
That was when he realized he didn’t remember her, either.
Everytime he comes back from a foster home and is asked to unshift, he changes to look like whoever asked it of him. He doesn’t remember how old he is anymore, so he looks at the people around him where it looks like he will be staying, and shifts to their height. Nobody seems to notice that he’s shifting to be like them, nobody else seems to remember what he looks like either.
He’s not allowed to be fostered out to people who used to have children anymore. Too many people asked him to become them, but the one that decided this rule had him turn into a girl, but became upset when his voice didn’t change. So he copied the wife's voice, but that got him into more trouble, and the house took him to another house bruised and broken.
At ten, someone has him shift into a woman and work at his bar. He copies a random stranger's voice on the streets, and finds out what men like to do to pretty ladies. He is told to tell the social workers if that happens again. It happens five more times, before he’s taken out of the foster system and put into the orphanage house instead.
At eleven years old, he’s asked if he’s going to become a hero. He would apparently be great at undercover missions, and underground work in general because of how quiet he is. He decides that he’s going to try for that, and starts training.
At fourteen, looking like a mix of his current roommates at the orphanage, he is attacked by a villain and saved by All Might. He gets a signature, and decides to have his blonde hair and blue eyes instead. Nobody notices.
At fifteen, he walks into UA High. He looks into the door and mixes himself around. He gets curly hair from a pink girl, but decides to get brown hair from a guy. His eyes become shaped like the tail guys, but become red like the blonde guy. He sits down at his seat, and his teacher walks in. They have to go outside and train.
At fifteen, he remembers what he looks like and cries. He becomes adopted that same week, by the one who helped him.