Chapter Text
"You cannot be a hero" the words rang in his mind, as he walked home. Izuku had heard those words so many times, from teachers, other students, even kacchan, but it hurt so much more when the person telling him was All Might, the #1 hero, the symbol of peace, and his idol. He had hoped- no, believed, that All Might would be different. But deep down, a part of him had always known he was wrong.
Izuku bit his lip and furrowed his brow. "No," he thought, "there has to be another way." He thought back to his notebooks, his analysis on his favorite heroes. He thought about how Sir Nighteye, All Might’s old sidekick, fought mostly quirkless, and to Nedzu, who always used his intelligence to take control of mechanisms and built traps for villains. His thoughts drifted to Aquafin, a hero employed by the Endeavor agency for his water quirk, allowing him to dispatch any fires caused by Endeavor’s villain fights. He thought about how, despite his numerous boasts about how he was “enhancement free”, the hero was almost ninety percent support gear.
Izuku stopped walking.
"What if I did that?" He thought, "What if I fought using support gear?" It'd be easy to swap out pieces to suit the moment, and it wouldn't be hard to do. Powerloader was a support engineer and a pro hero at the same time. He could totally do something like tha-
He ran into something, knocking both him and whatever he ran into over.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going, I’m so sorry, please forgive me-”
“Don’t sweet it! I heard you mumbling, pretty heavy stuff. You gonna go to the support course at UA?” Izuku snapped out of his apologies, looking at the source of the voice. He saw a girl, about his age, with pink dreadlocks and steampunk looking goggles, wearing black steel-toed boots, a gray oil stained tank top and baggy gray cargo pants, also oil stained, and with a jacket wrapped around her waist. Most notably though, was the oil and soot marks that covered her face and arms. Her eyes, which had crosshairs in the middle, were locked on his own.
His eyes widened. “O-oh, you heard all that? I’m sorry, I’ll shut up. It probably sounded really creepy-”
“Nonsense! My name’s Mei Hatsume, future CEO of Hatsume Industries. I’m going to be the greatest support engineer to ever live!” The girl, now known as Hatsume, popped up and struck a pose, laughing maniacally. “AHAHAH! So, about my question Greenie, you going to support?”
Izuku blinked, put off by the strange girl’s energy. “W-well, I don’t really… I don’t know. I wanna be a hero, but I also want to be a support engineer. Well, I guess I only wanted to a few minutes ago, but still. But if I go for a dual enrollment, I won’t get the chance to learn enough from both courses, because I’ll be stacking hero course work on top of support course work. I could go for support and then transfer in through the sports festival, but that isn’t a reliable or guaranteed option. Oh!” He quickly whipped out a notebook, quickly scribbling in it. “What if I make something? Yeah, I could make a robot or something to go to support classes for me, and then that frees up my time to take hero course classes while learning from what the robot records for me. And I can make the robot my support course submission, and that’d ensure me a spot, and-” he cut himself off, looking at the girl, Hatsume, who was staring at him intently. “O-oh, s-sorry about that, I know it’s creepy, I’ll stop.”
“Stop? Why would you stop?” Hatsume asked, excited, “It’s so fun watching a fellow support engineer think. What are you going to give your robot baby? Flamethrowers? Cannons? Lasers? Missiles?!” The girl got increasingly more excited with each proposal, and she started to jitter in place.
Izuku took a step back. “Well, I don’t know what I’m going to do just yet. I still need materials-”
Hatsume bolted up in his face. “I know where to get parts! Down at Takoba Beach, it’s a gold mine of old machine parts. I’m 1000% sure you can find whatever you need there! Come on, let’s go!” Hatsume ran off, not waiting for an answer.
Izuku shifted his weight from one foot to the other, indecisive. On one hand, he could get parts, and someone who could teach him. On the other, this could be an elaborate prank that would end him up covered in trash. He weighed his options, before gritting his teeth and giving up, deciding to bolt after her. “Hatsume-kun, wait up!”
___
When Izuku jogged up to the beach, he saw Hatsume, sifting through small piles of trash. When she caught sight of him, her eyes lit up. “Greenie-kun! You actually came! I thought you just ditched me like all my other classmates,” her manic smile didn’t waver for a second as she piled junk together on a tarp. “Here, this is for you!” she patted the tarp, a worn out forest green, “I tried to color coordinate, it’s always fun to do with new people.”
Izuku sifted through the piles of trash on the tarp, finding servos, motors, wires, and a bunch of discarded electronics. He choked up, tears welling in his eyes. “W-wow, Hatsume-kun, this is the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”
“The nicest thing someone’s done for you is sort trash for you? Wow, you need better friends,” Hatsume stated matter-of-factly.
“I don’t really have too many friends, on account of me being, um, quirkless,” Izuku facepalmed, too afraid to look at Hatsume. "Great, first friend and they already hate me now," he thought, "Could this day get any worse."
Hatsume didn't move, blinking a few times. “Quirkless? Oh! That’s why you wanna become a support hero, right? To use support equipment to help you get stronger? Well I can help you with that!” She pulled a jar out of her pockets and uncorked it, releasing a small swarm of metal bugs. "Locusts," he noted, as they began jumping around, chewing through metal and dragging small pieces of metal.
“What are they doing? What even are they?” Izuku whipped around, watching the small metallic locusts work.
“They’re my lab partners,” Hatsume announced proudly, “They help me get metal and they can build some complex shapes by joining together. Watch.” She pulled down her goggles, and began directing the locusts around, as they coalesced into a single mound, creating a sphere, a cube, and a 1:1 replica of Hatsume’s body.
Izuku looked at the locusts, surprised. “Wow, that’s so cool! How do they work? Do they each have an operating system, or is it a hivemind? If so, is there a controller, or is it all just one task programmed into them?” He soon devolved into a mutter storm, as Hatsume looked more and more excited to answer his questions.
“I made them using another one of my babies, which helps me to build smaller things, like these locust babies,” She gestured to the locusts, “And they all work on a hivemind. I’m their controller, with these,” she pointed to her goggles, “and these babies.” She showed off her gloved hands, with the gloves having a keypad on each palm and circuitry boxes on the back.
Izuku studied the gloves and goggles, writing every note in his notebook. “Wow Hatsume-kun, that’s so cool! The mini builder machine would be so useful, and your controllers are an ingenious idea!”
He frowned, thinking of his own support item. “But how am I supposed to come up with my own support item? I need armor that needs to be easy and quick to equip in the event of an emergency, as well as being strong enough to suffer hits from heavy hitters. But there’s nothing I can create that can fit that criteria in such little time, that type of tech takes years to make, not ten months.” Idly, he began to scribble in his notebook, writing down his ideas. “I also need it to be able to switch it out at a moment’s notice in order to suit the situation. Oh! What if I made it my hero costume too? Then I could wear the armor as undersuit, and then swap to a different outer armor. But I still run into the problem of how I’ll get the armor on. A mobile armory? No, then villains could also reach it. Maybe I could equip it via a drone? Yeah, a drone could carry the armor to me and I could put it on that way. But what do I even make my hero costume look like? Animals? Yeah, animals are all approachable, and they could reach out to larger audiences. But what do I make the armor look like?”
Hatsume interrupted him, grinning from ear to ear. “Well, it looks like you have a pretty good plan already. I’m about 1000% certain this plan could work.” She pointed down at his notebook.
Izuku looked at his notebook, seeing it filled with scribbles and diagrams of a theoretical armor for him. He paused, looking at the diagram for his armor, which featured two horns that pointed up in a “V” shape, mimicking All Might’s hair.
“Those kinda look like antennae,” Hatsume noted, pointing at the head, “Y’know, like… uhh… oh! Like a grasshopper!” She pointed her fingers above her head, mimicking antennae.
Izuku looked back at the diagram, noticing the similarities. He smiled, tracing the page with his thumb. “Yeah,” he started, his eyes slightly watering, “I guess they kinda do.”
“So… what are you gonna call it?”
“Huh?” Izuku looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”
Hatsume threw her hands up dramatically, “Your baby! The project, what’s its name?”
Izuku brought his pencil to his cheek, thinking for a moment. All Might and Kacchan’s words ran through his mind, before he came to a solution, his eyes twinkling as a smile played on his lips.
“I think… I think I’ll call it… Project RealxEyez”