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Feeling stifled by his room, Izuku slipped out of his balcony and used Black Whip to make his way slowly up to the roof. He would've used Float but happy emotions were hard to come by at the moment.
Leaning up against the air conditioning unit, he tipped his head back and stared blankly at the sky. Honestly, happy emotions should've been exceedingly easy to find. After all, they had won the war with AfO, taking down the worst supervillain since quirks had first begun. They had pulled together to end a threat, not only to Japan but to the entire world.
However, even though they'd managed to save the world, Izuku's own world had fallen apart.
He hadn't been able to save Shigaraki, a boy whose journey mirrored his own. It still haunted him, he should've been able to save him, been able to reach him if he had only tried just a little bit harder. It hurt, because he understood Shigaraki and his struggles in a way that none of his classmates truly could. Shigaraki had truly believed that he was making the world a better place by tearing it all down. There had been days, especially in middle school, when Izuku had considered doing the same thing. Removing the corrupt and incompetent and starting anew, starting fresh and building something better.
Still, he had held off, hoping that he could manage the changes himself, as a quirkless hero. That dream had changed, obviously, when All Might had offered him OfA. But at the same time, his dream hadn't. He had just wanted to save people with a smile, make things a little bit better however he could. A quirk would only make doing so easier.
Now, even that hope was fading fast. During the fight, something had broken within OfA. He didn't know if the quirk would ever recover or if it even could. While he wouldn't mourn losing the quirk because he had managed to save the world using it, he didn't know if he could go back to being quirkless. To being thought of as less than human, a hazard, a liability.
Maybe he could talk with All Might about how to live with just the embers of a quirk, about how to still be a hero when there was almost nothing left. However, he was struggling with meeting him lately. Not only had the final battle taken an extreme toll on All Might's health, leaving the older man in the hospital more often than not, but it was hard to meet his eyes and see the sympathy and care there.
He had come, over their time together as they had grown closer together, to see Toshinori as a father figure in his life. And he knew that the inverse was true, Toshinori having become fond of him and even inviting him over for meals and to do activities together. This thought managed to bring a small smile to Izuku's face, Toshinori truly was awful at Mario Kart but he insisted on playing it every time Izuku came over, insisting that he'd get the hang of it and beat Izuku one day.
The smile quickly faded away as grief crept back in. Even though they weren't father and son, they were closer than Izuku and the man who had disappeared from his and his mom's life when his quirk didn't come in. But that didn't change the fact that they weren't truly family, weren't truly related in any meaningful way. And now Izuku didn't have any family left at all, completely alone in the world.
While he had been fighting to save Japan and even the world's future, his mom had been being a hero in her own way, helping to pull people from a collapsing building. However, she had been too slow to escape herself and the building had come down, burying the one person who loved him unconditionally beneath tons of rubble and debris.
He swiped roughly at the tears trickling down his face. He was so tired of crying over this, hiding away and letting the tears flow where no one could see the Hero Deku break down like a small child. No one else even knew that his mom had passed. Even Kacchan didn't know. The country was still so chaotic and disordered that word was slow to spread. Only Aizawa and Nedzu knew, he'd asked them to keep it from Toshinori, knowing that the man would worry about Izuku and neglect his own health.
So here he was, a week away from his seventeenth birthday, hiding on a rooftop, crying and trying to figure out what the point of everything was. In all the hero movies, documentaries, and history books, they spoke about the heroes and people banding together and working to save the world. They never spoke about afterwards, about the cost paid for the victory and the painful, slow rebuilding of a world shattered by evil.
Even if they rebuilt, things would never be the same, things have been irrevocably altered.
The sound of the rooftop door creaking broke him from his spiral and Izuku bolted behind the A/C, crouching down so that he was invisible. It was probably just Aizawa-Sensei coming to send him back to bed, but it never hurt to be careful. Peeking carefully over the top of the unit, he was surprised when he saw both Mic-Sensei and Aizawa-Sensei emerge. Mic was supporting Aizawa and guided them over to the wall, away from where Izuku was crouched.
Was Aizawa sick?
Straining his ears, Izuku heard Aizawa speak, his voice slightly slurred, "Why're we up here, Zashi?"
Mic's voice was quieter than Izuku had ever heard, with a gentle, sad edge to it. "You need to take a breather, Shou. Have to make the rounds and check on your kiddos in a bit and you'll want to be in peak form 'cause you know that some of 'em will be having nightmares."
Izuku wished that he could argue, but all of Class 1A still struggled with nightmares, even months after the final battle. He was starting to wonder if he would ever manage to sleep the night through again or if nightmares would haunt his sleep forever. Another thing no one ever bothered to mention to the hero hopefuls.
Aizawa's voice was mournful, drawing his attention back to the pair's conversation. "They're still so young, Zashi. They shouldn't have to deal with that shit until after they graduate, at the very least. They shouldn't have to have so much pain so young. They're too young. Oboro was too young. It's not fair!"
Izuku had been considering making his presence known when the unknown name caught his attention. Oboro? He didn't know anyone by that name and he was pretty sure that he wasn't a student at U.A. He also didn't know any heroes by that name and he prided himself on his hero knowledge of even the most obscure heroes.
Based on the way his teachers were talking, it sounded like this person had died. But when and how?
Aizawa continued, bitterness filling his voice. "And to make it worse, he was used as a puppet for years as Kurogiri. You heard that doctor, it should've been me that died that day, Zashi. I should've been the one, not him. Why did it have to happen to him?"
Izuku slammed a mouth over his hand to cover his gasp. Kurogiri? But hadn't Kurogiri been a nomu? Which meant...
He sucked in a deep breath to settle the sudden nausea swirling in his stomach. Yet another thing to hate AfO for. From the sound of it, his teachers had lost a friend, a close friend, to that monster who had turned them into a nomu. Not only that, but it sounded like AfO had been aiming for Aizawa in the first place.
It made sense, Erasure was a powerful quirk and he could not imagine it in the hands of someone who had no morals or qualms about hurting people. But still, Eraserhead was everything that a hero should be. The thought of him being taken and turned into a monster added another hairline crack into Izuku's rapidly cracking sanity.
He felt like a glass that was on the verge of shattering, hairline cracks spreading and spider-webbing across the clear glass. It was both beautiful and terrifying at the same time, because when he finally shattered, he had the feeling that even kintsugi wouldn't be able to piece him back together again. Instead, he would be just a pile of jagged shards, dangerous to anyone who tried to pick up the pieces and ultimately worthless.
A loud exhale drew him from his spiraling thoughts and he cautiously peeked over the A/C to see Aizawa stretching his back, his spine popping loudly as he twisted with a sigh before resuming the slouch that Izuku was accustomed to seeing. "All right, Zashi, I'm good now. You head back and I'll start the rounds."
Mic hesitated, "You sure you don't want me to wait a few more minutes, there's no rush."
Aizawa shook his head, making his way back toward the rooftop access door. "No, something feels out of place. I'd better do the rounds now. If I'm not back in an hour, check the kitchen and the main area. May be feeding a kid or there might be a pile passed out in front of the TV again."
Izuku's throat tightened at the weary care he could hear in his teacher's voice. He had given so much to keep them all safe, had suffered repeatedly and was carrying burdens that they all knew nothing about, and still did so much to take care of them. Izuku had lost track of the number of times he'd passed out on the couch in the common area, only to wake up the next morning with the TV switched to a soft music station and a blanket tucked over him and whoever else was in the pile.
He waited until the door had shut before making his way across the roof and slipping off the ledge. He was a few feet above his balcony when Black Whip flickered out and he fell the last bit, landing with a quiet thump. Pushing to his feet, he scurried inside and closed the slider as quietly as he could before hurrying over and sliding into bed. Hopefully, Aizawa-Sensei was still busy on the other floors and hadn't heard the noise.
His heart rate calmed when a minute passed and then a second and no one came bursting through the door. In fact, it was nearly ten minutes later when he heard their teacher's uneven gait coming down the hallway. Many wouldn't have picked up the slight hesitation in his step but Izuku could tell that his prosthetic was hurting tonight. Although they all knew that Aizawa could move silently, he made an effort to make sound when he checked on all of them so that they knew that he was there.
He paused outside of Izuku's door for a minute and Izuku made sure to keep his breathing slow and steady. After what seemed like an eternity but no time at all, the quiet steps resumed, on to check on the next student.
Sleep eluded Izuku as he lay there after Aizawa had left, his mind racing as he thought about what he'd overheard. It wasn't fair that good people had suffered so much, that they gave and gave and gave and only got pain in return. If only there was a way he could turn back time to prevent it from ever happening.
Rolling onto his side, he gave an irritated huff. The problem was, time travel was impossible. He had researched it thoroughly after Kacchan had ever so helpfully given him life advice in Middle School and he'd learned about All Might. He'd even discussed it with Mei during the start of the war, during one of their rare, quiet conversations together.
The problem with time travel was that it would take an enormous amount of power, equal to a nuclear bomb, to succeed. And there just weren't any sources, quirk or otherwise, that were both safe enough and powerful enough to manage such a feat. It would take accumulated power, like AfO had possessed for it to be feasible, but the megalomaniac had never wanted to turn back time. Why would he? He was at the top of the food chain, why would he want to change anything?
By Izuku's reckoning, it would take at least six to seven quirks building on each other in order to get that kind of power, maybe even eight, and there had to be an amplification effect, with all of the quirks growing stronger each time a new quirk was added. Such conditions were impossible to...
He froze as he suddenly realized where his train of thought had led him. It was true, such conditions were impossible to meet normally. But OfA had been an anomaly since the very beginning. Not only that but it had been proven that there was an amplification effect each time the quirk was passed to a new user. This had been proven by the tests Recovery Girl had run on him and Toshinori before the quirk had been passed on and afterwards. The quirk factor had doubled by two and although Izuku wasn't able to tap into the strength aspects as much as All Might had, it was part of the reason that he'd been able to access the other quirks.
Rolling out of bed, he padded silently over to his desk and pulled out a clean notebook. Although it would take some thought and several tests, time travel, as impossible as it sounded, might actually be feasible.
X
It took Izuku eleven days to work out the logistics for how to feasibly invent time travel for at least one person. He could've done it in ten but Shinsou and Momo had teamed up to slip a sleeping aid into his late-night coffee. He'd thought that Shinsou would at least respect the sanctity of insomnia and coffee but he'd simply said it was that or have Kaminari stun him like a human taser, so Izuku would take what he could get.
Standing in front of Nedzu's door, Izuku did his best to still his racing pulse. He had thought every scenario through multiple times during planning and now he just had to find a way to convince Nedzu to support his endeavor. He didn't think that the Principal would be thrilled at the idea of a student yeeting himself through time on a mutual destruction mission, but High Specs could also maybe be useful in arguing Izuku's logic.
The door slid open and he sucked in a deep breath. It was now or never.
X
As the door slid shut behind Midoriya, a teacher stepped out of the small room where Nedzu put people when he wanted them to listen in on certain conversations.
"I'd forgotten that today was the day he came to see you."
Nedzu sighed, gesturing for him to sit and sliding a cup of tea across the desk, even as his eyes sparkled. "I knew this day was coming but I hadn't expected the depth to which he'd already worked out the equation and potential pitfalls. It's a pity that I didn't find him younger, the things we could've managed together with his mind and my resources."
They picked up the teacup, cradling it delicately in their hands. "He's so young, so broken. He looked like he was a hairsbreadth away from shattering. I'd forgotten just how desperate this time was. Time is kind, even when it's cruel."
Nedzu gave them a commiserating look, even as he picked up his own teacup. "Ah, but Midoriya is strong too. He has a strength of soul that is often overlooked in favor of brute strength these days. Many people would've already given up at this point but he's still looking for a way to fix things. That's true strength."
Silence lapsed between them for a long minute before Nedzu clapped his paws. "Well, the question is now, do we permit Midoriya to try or do we try to stop them."
The teacher laughed. "If you think we can stop them, your quirk must've gone haywire in the past few minutes. There's no stopping him. And look at it this way, we both know that it worked, don't we?"
Nedzu gave him a feral grin. "Right. Well, let's go give some people a heart attack. This is going to be so much fun!"