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It’s a last minute decision to take a trip to Arvala National Park. Izuku would rather spend the last few days before his father flies to America for work excitedly chatting with him about All Might’s latest fight, or what little of it the media have been able to capture.
In retrospect, maybe his mother was tired of hearing them both speculating about Toxic Chainsaw’s quirk for hours on end. Izuku loves her, but she doesn’t have her son or her husband’s passion for quirks and heroes.
He’s going to miss his father so much.
Whatever the reason for the trip, Izuku wishes he’d been allowed to take his phone. They’ve been hiking for hours, his mother pointing out various rare trees and birds. It was pretty at first, but now Izuku is thirsty, his legs hurt from so much walking, and more importantly he’s bored . Trees are trees, and birds are only interesting if they have quirks, which they usually don’t.
Izuku is wondering if there are any official statistics on quirked animals when the ground shakes.
“An earthquake?” Inko looks up at the rocky hill on the left of the trail. Small rocks can be seen rolling down here and there. “Let’s move away from here.”
Hisashi grabs Izuku’s hand in his and they start moving into the trees, away from hazards.
“I’m not a baby,” Izuku complains, wrenching his hand free. “I’m nine you know!”
The ground shakes again, stronger this time, and something crashes behind them. Izuku doesn’t complain again as his parents each grab one of his hands and they start to run.
“This isn’t a normal earthquake,” Hisashi says under his breath, and Izuku realizes he’s right.
The quakes come and go in huge but quick, irregular bursts. Each time there’s a rush of wind shaking the trees. At one point, Izuku thinks he can hear something that sounds like a canon echoing through the valley.
The ground shakes twice in quick succession, and Izuku stumbles on the uneven ground, his hands slipping through his parents’. His mother is helping him up when Hisashi shouts in alarm. Izuku looks up in time to see a huge deer crashing through the trees, followed by another, and another, all heading straight towards them in their panic.
“Run!” He shouts, pushing his mother in one direction and backing the other way, barely avoiding the powerfully hooves trampling the ground right where he and his mother stood just a moment before.
There are more animals rushing towards them, so Izuku takes his own advice and runs. He takes refuge behind a tree, but something large crashes against it and forces him to keep moving. It’s several long, terrifying minutes before the horde has passed and Izuku can lean against a fallen tree, trying to catch his breath. His heart is hammering in his chest and his sides hurt. Around him, the woods are finally silent.
“Oh,” he pants. “The quakes… they stopped.” When did that happen?
As the panic slowly retreats from his mind, Izuku notices another thing.
“Mom?” he calls out, loud as he can in the surrounding quiet. “Dad?”
When no one answers, Izuku firmly stomps on his resurging panic. He can’t afford it right now, he needs to find his parents, or at the very least to find someone . He’s deep into a vast, mostly empty forest, with no phone and a sense of orientation that is used to cities, not nature.
The ground is too trampled for Izuku to find his own footprints and retrace his steps, and he has no idea which direction he even came from. The only thoughts in his brain had been “run” and “survive”. He really hopes his parents are okay.
(He’s aware he’s mumbling, but there is no Kacchan to tell him to cut it, and it helps organize his thoughts, so Izuku lets the words tumble from his lips as he paces around.)
After the earthquakes, there might be some rescue heroes dispatched to check out the area, but Arvala Park isn’t very popular so he doubts there’s any on site. That means it could take several hours until they make it here.
It’s fine, Izuku tells himself. He’s nine, not a toddler. He can survive alone in nature for a few hours. Still, he should make the heroes’ (or his parents’) job easier, get himself somewhere he can easily be found. Maybe on top of one of the rocky hills? If they send out drones or helicopters to look for hazards or potential damages, he would be able to flag them down. Or maybe he could spot his parents from there.
Of course, if there are aftershocks from the earthquake, the hills might be dangerous. But those quakes had definitely not been normal. Izuku can’t wait to find out what had caused them. Maybe someone’s quirk going out of control?
He hadn’t noticed that he was walking in a random direction as he thought, but his steps falter as he enters a large clearing. The place is full of small craters, broken boulders and broken trees, and dark puddles of what Izuku’s nose informs him must be blood.
What happened here?
With a tight throat, he takes a few steps away from the treeline, looking around for any sign of threat. What he finds is a body, bloody and mangled but still visibly breathing. His feet move on their own, and before he knows it Izuku is kneeling beside the blond, injured man, staring at a gaping wound in his side. The hero —it must be a hero, the tattered remains of his costume include a cape— looks vaguely familiar but Izuku doesn’t instantly recognize him.
“What do I do, what do I do??” he frantically asks himself, hands already moving to put pressure on the wound. “I need something to stop the bleeding!”
“Who…?” The man opens his eyes, blue and foggy for a moment before they focus on Izuku. “What…?”
His body rattles with a wet cough, blood splattering Izuku’s face, and Izuku can feel tears starting to stinge his eyes. But he can’t cry! He needs to be strong for this stranger, this hero. So Izuku forces a smile, puts a hand on the man’s shoulder to push him down.
“Don’t try to talk,” he says, as brightly as he can. “Everything’s gonna be alright, you’ll see. I’ve got you.”
With shaky hands, he tears up the remains of the cape and bundles it up to press it into the wound. His hands are already filthy with blood, and he doesn’t know how much he’s helping, but he does know that it’s important to keep injured people awake.
“My name’s Izuku, and I’m gonna be a hero like you.” Keeping his smile up is difficult, especially as he can practically hear Kacchan’s scoff in his head, but now is not the time for that. “Since I’m gonna be a hero, you can’t d-die, okay? I won’t let you. So you need to hang on until help arrives.”
The man raises a trembling hand to Izuku’s face, long fingers cupping his cheek, and he smiles back. There is something incredibly familiar in that smile, something that makes Izuku believe in his own words. Of course they’re gonna be fine.
Izuku would like to take the man’s hand, squeeze it reassuringly, but he’s still pressing the cape into the bleeding wound and he can feel the fabric getting wet and sticky from blood under his fingers. So instead he leans into the touch and he keeps talking, ignoring the coppery taste on his lips. He keeps the hero’s gaze focused on him, and smiles as he tells him about his best friend’s amazing quirk, and about his dad’s new job in America, and about his favorite heroes. At some point, the hand slips down from his face but the hero keeps looking at him, listening with a smile.
He’s not sure how long it is until he hears voices. They’re far away, but clearly call out, and Izuku looks up as he shouts back.
“Over here! I need some help, quickly!”
When he looks back down to tell the hero that they’re going to be fine, those intense blue eyes are closed. Izuku starts shouting again, louder, panicked, as he presses two fingers slippery with blood against the man’s throat, looking for a pulse. He thinks he can feel it, weak but there, but what if he’s only imagining it?
The tears he’s been holding start flowing now, warm and wet on his cheeks, along his nose, over his mouth as his breathing hitches. The taste of salt mixes with copper on his tongue as his vision blurs.
There are suddenly hands on his shoulders, pushing him back as someone takes the tattered, bloody cape from his fingers. Someone is bent over the wounded hero, but all Izuku can see is a yellow-clad shape.
“We need to get him to a hospital immediately,” the man says.
“If I flag a helicopter the media will find out,” the one still holding onto Izuku’s shoulders says, his fingers tightening their grip. “And it won’t even be that fast.”
“I’ll carry him to the car and drive,” the yellow-clad man replies in a tone that suffers no objection. You take care of the kid.”
“Is… Is he gonna be okay?” Izuku asks as the short man gathers the much taller one in his arms.
“He better, or I’m gonna kick his ass,” comes the muttered answer, before the man and his charge disappear into the woods thanks to some sort of speed quirk.
The remaining man steps in front of Izuku and crouches down to be more of a height with him. Through his tears, Izuku can make out gold eyes behind a pair of glasses.
“Are you hurt?” He asks, voice clipped, and Izuku shakes his head. “That’s good. What are you doing out here?”
“I was hiking w-with my parents,” he replies between sobs. “We got s-separated because of the-the quakes and the d-deers. I don’t have my phone but I know mom’s number.”
The man sighs, like he’d rather be doing something else than take care of a lost, sniveling child, but pulls out a handkerchief from his pocket and holds it out to Izuku. He keeps a hand on his shoulder as he makes the call to Izuku’s mother, and keeps it there until his parents stumble into the clearing. Then Izuku is engulfed in his mother’s arms and he starts crying again.
*
Izuku hates that he can’t talk about what happened. Not because he wants to brag about it, but because maybe if he was allowed to talk through it he wouldn’t have so many nightmares.
But Sir Nighteye had them sign a lot of papers preventing them from telling anyone of what happened, for the injured hero’s safety. So no therapist for Izuku, just his parents, who he doesn’t want to worry too much, especially as his father is leaving. And then it’s just him and his mom, trying to find their new balance without Hisashi there.
Izuku’s nerves aren’t great at the best of times, but they’re a fragile mess as he gets to school a few weeks later. He had a particularly gruesome nightmare that night, in which the dying hero he’d found had been All Might, which has been a recurring theme ever since the HPSC announced the Number One Hero would be away for an undetermined period of time on a secret mission abroad.
(It has not escaped to Izuku that All Might hasn’t been seen in public ever since the Incident, nor that Sir Nighteye is All Might’s sidekick. He tries not to think about what it means.)
But then the recurring nightmare had morphed into something new, something strange and disquieting. Izuku shudders as he remembers the feeling of floating into an endless void, the whispers just as the edge of his hearing. There had been others there, indistinct silhouettes whose attention was resting heavily on Izuku.
“Out of my way, stupid Deku!” Kacchan sneers, shoving Izuku aside so he can enter the classroom first.
Behind him, Izuku hears amused snickers. He sighs and makes his way to his desk, trying to ignore his classmates. His eyes fall on his best friend lounging indolently in his chair, and he frowns. He knows that their friendship has been rocky ever since he was diagnosed quirkless, but Kacchan’s been getting worse lately. He’s stronger, has a better handle on his quirk than any of their classmates, he’s still amazing, but he’s also been growing…mean.
Izuku briefly remembers sky blue eyes, filled with pain but also infinite kindness. His chest hurts as his gaze finds Kacchan’s scarlet eyes. There used to be kindness there too, under the bravado. He struggles to find it now.
There’s something bubbling in Izuku’s veins, some emotion he can’t really identify. He fiddles through the morning classes, tapping his pen against his desk, jiggling his leg restlessly.
When the bell rings for recess, he takes a few moments to breathe, trying to quell the excess energy coursing through him. He isn’t sure he’s successful. As he comes out into the school playground a minute or two after his classmates, he feels on high alert. A pained noise reaches his ears, and his head snaps to the left. There’s a kid, maybe a couple of years younger than him, lying on the floor.
By the time he blinks the memories of bloody grass and bloodier clothes out from the back of his eyes, Izuku is standing between the kid and the one who pushed him down. He doesn’t remember running, despite his uneven breath. He stares at Kacchan, pushing down his fear and his disappointment.
“This isn’t your business, Deku,” his friend growls.
“Leave him alone,” Izuku tells him, voice quivering slightly. “You’re better than that.”
“Go away, useless nerd!” Kacchan shouts, throwing his right fist towards Izuku’s head.
Izuku hurriedly raises his arms to protect his face, but doesn’t move out of the way. Kacchan’s knuckles crash into his forearm, hard enough to knock it into Izuku’s cheek. The strength of the impact has him clenching his teeth, accidentally biting into his tongue, and the taste of blood fills his mouth.
He remembers a blood-soaked hand on his cheek, intense blue eyes fixed on him, and a smile that made him feel like he could do anything. Izuku grits his teeth, straightens his stance, and smiles.
The electrifying energy that has been building up in him for weeks, has been bubbling through him all day, is surging up to steady him. He can hear the kid behind him scrabbling to get up, can hear him whimpering in pain as he does.
“Come on Kacchan,” Izuku says, and his voice isn’t trembling anymore. “You’re going to be a hero, we both know it. But heroes save people, they don’t bully them.”
“Who are you calling a bully, you quirkless Deku?” Kacchan roars, reaching towards him with an open palm like he does when he uses his quirk. “You looking down on me?”
Fear and adrenaline course through Izuku as he closes his own fist. In a move that he’s copied over and over through the years, punches Kacchan’s arm away from him and lets that wild, eager energy in him explode.
Pain rips through his arm as green lightning erupts around his skin. He feels his bones shatter, barely hears Kacchan’s howl of pain beyond the rush of blood in his ears. His arm is in agony, all he wants is to drop to the ground and cradle it against his chest, but there is still a hurt child behind him so he stands his ground, blinking rapidly through his tears to try and make sense of the scene in front of him.
Kacchan’s arm looks broken, and the classmates who’d been crowding around him have taken several steps back. There are teachers running towards them, shouting to be heard over Kacchan’s screams, demanding to know what happened. It all sounds very far away.
“I think Dek— um, Midoriya’s quirk came in,” someone says, voice incredulous.
Izuku blinks again, because that doesn’t sound right. There are little sparks dancing at the edges of his field of vision, like tiny fireflies. The kid he’d been protecting limps into view, looking at him with a mix of awe and worry. Is he no longer in danger?
That’s good, Izuku thinks as the dancing fireflies leave way to creeping darkness. His legs give beneath him, and the pain in his arm is ripples though him as he lands on the ground. Hands try to steady him, someone calls his name, but the darkness wins.
He passes out.
*
The nurse kindly answers Izuku’s questions about her quirk as she adjusts the pain medication in his IV. They’ve been slowly lowering the dose in anticipation of his going home.
His arm is in a cast now after several rounds of surgery and a few healing quirks. He’s under strict orders not to use his new quirk until his future quirk counselor gives him the go-ahead, but the doctors think he’ll make a full recovery.
He still can’t believe he has a quirk. A late bloomer, the quirk specialist called him. He thinks that if Izuku had manifested his quirk sooner, it might have killed him. As it is now, it nearly blew his arm off. It’s a nice theory, but Izuku hasn’t told her about the bones in his toes that belie it.
It should have been impossible for him to manifest a quirk, late or not. But wherever this miracle came from, Izuku is determined to make good use of it. Strengths quirks, after all, are incredibly versatile and make for great heroes.
“And we’re all set,” the nurse tells him, pulling him out of his musings. “Now, you have a couple of visitors who are waiting to see you. Do you feel up for it?”
“Of course!” Izuku gives her a blinding smile, wondering who it could be that they didn’t just come in.
They enter as the nurse leaves, closing the door behind her, and Izuku’s breath catches in his throat. There, sitting on a hospital wheelchair pushed by Sir Nighteye, is the hero from the clearing. He looks emaciated and frail, with his limp blond hair, the bags under his eyes, and the IV drip he’s dragging along with him.
“You’re alive,” Izuku croaks through the tears that threaten to flow. “I’m so glad you’re alive.”
“So am I, young Midoriya,” the hero replies with a soft smile. “I’m told it is in great part thanks to you that my condition isn’t worse.”
“You were in a healing coma for almost a month,” Sir Nighteye chastises him.
“But I’m awake now!” the hero grins, and Izuku can’t help but smile too. “I came to thank you, young man, and to explain a few things.”
“No, no, you don’t need to thank me, I did what anyone would do!” Izuku argues, shaking his head vigorously. “I’m just glad you’re okay. I was very worried.” He swallows, hesitates, but those blue eyes and that smile are just too familiar, so he adds: “Especially after the HPSC announced you were gone on a secret mission.”
Sir Nighteye’s eyebrows rise immediately in alarm, but All Might —for it really is All Might!— just laughs.
“They said that? That’s a good cover for my absence I guess. Not that anyone who knows me would believe it, I’m terrible at secret missions.”
“Or keeping your identity secret, it seems,” his sidekick sighs, before turning a hard gaze on Izuku. “You’ve known all this time?”
“S-suspected,” Izuku replies sheepishly, stuttering. There’s something about Sir Nighteye that makes him very much feel like the child he is.
“And yet, not a single rumour anywhere…”
“See?” All Might exclaims loudly, gesturing towards Izuku. “I told you I saw greatness in him. He’s already shown kindness and courage, and now we know he can keep secrets when it matters. He’ll make a great hero.”
Izuku blushes under the praise, bewildered. Did All Might really just say that? For years now, people have been scoffing and smearing whenever Izuku says he wants to be a hero.
“I supposed that’ll be up to the child to prove it, now,” Sir Nighteye says. “What do you say, Midoriya-kun, do you think you’re up for the task?”
“I’ll de my b-best,” Izuku replies, raising up his chin. “I won’t let you d-down.”
“We’ll need to work on that stutter,” the hero declares matter-of-factly. It still makes Izuku flinch slightly.
“Mirai!” All Might chides him. “He’s nine. He has the time to grow. There is no rush, after all. Not anymore.”
“What do you mean?” Izuku asks, frowning slightly.
“That’s a long story,” All Might answers with a kind smile. “Which, I guess, is as good a place as any to start the conversation I came here to have. You see, at the Dawn of Quirks, there were two brothers…”
*
Izuku peeks at Kacchan’s exam card when Present Mic’s explanation wraps up. It gets him an elbow to the side, which he returns somewhat playfully.
“I guess they’re splitting up students who come from the same school,” he says, slightly disappointed but not surprised. “So we don’t help each other.”
“Like I’d help you anyway,” Kacchan rolls his eyes, getting up from his seat.
“Isn’t helping people the point of heroes?” Izuku teases him, and Kacchan just grunts in response.
They reach the top of the stairs, where there are signs pointing to the different testing areas for the practical exam.
“Good luck,” Izuku says with a grin as they’re about to part.
“I don’t need luck, nerd!” Kacchan growls in reply. It’s a little unfair how low his voice has already dropped (and how tall he’s become), when Izuku’s is still on a higher register. “You, on the other hand…”
Izuku laughs, because Kacchan is still accepting his fistbump, and they each go their own way. He is crammed into a minibus with dozens of other hero hopefuls, all vibrating with varying combinations of excitement and nerves, and for once Izuku feels like just everyone else.
His mentors told him he was ready. They said they expected him to do great. He wants to make them proud, to prove to them that the last five years of teaching and training were well worth it.
With All Might retiring from active duty other than major catastrophes two years ago, Japan has lost its Pillar of Peace. It needs new heroes to take up the mantle, to lead and inspire. Yagi-san and Sasaki-san and even Torino-san all think that Izuku can do that, and that starts right here, at UA.
It’s been a long road to get here. One For All had proved tricky to master, and came with a few surprises along the way. He’s sure the future holds even more, because if there is one thing Izuku has learned by now it’s that you can never know what life has in store for you next.
The bus stops in front of a life-size fake city and the students spill out of the bus. Izuku rocks back and forth on his feets, letting his quirk fill him, the energy fizzing right under his skin, ready to burst. Green lightning coats him the moment Present Mic shouts “GO!” and he’s off, grinning wildly as he hears others hurriedly following him. He turns a corner, spots a robot, and jumps into action.
There is no time to lose, for the future starts right now. It always does.