Chapter Text
Once, when Izuku spent his gym period spread out like a starfish under the bleachers, he’d overheard some of the girls in his class talking about the guys they liked. It was less of a conversation and more of a time loop of encouragement and verbal beat downs whenever they’d all ask to see a friend’s crush before tearing him apart, but that wasn’t what surprised him.
Whenever the guys at school would talk about girls, they’d talk about their bodies, their faces, their laughs—and make no mistake, the girls talked about theirs too, but they had a lot more to work with. They said that having the same favorite movie for ten years straight meant an inability to grow as a person, that his habit of never laughing through text and opting instead to explicitly state he was laughing was indicative of a certain maliciousness in his soul, emptiness behind the eyes. They’d hold up a picture on the poor sap’s social media and do a side-by-side comparison of some game character they’d apparently designated as the standard for all men and the lack of overlap was an insult enough.
It impressed him, knowing that much about the people around you, enough to form solid opinions, albeit negative. If he was at the center of a ring of guys and asked to describe some girl he liked, he wasn’t so sure he could, he doesn’t know any of them well enough. One’s got a face, the other’s got a face, they’re the same kind of pretty and scary. He’s never talked to any of them frequently enough to know their voices, let alone held their hand and imagined a relationship. At least with the guys he’s felt them pull his fingers backwards against his wrist and got familiar with their callouses. He’s told that’s the sign of a good hardworking man.
But the girls left him alone, gave him a wide berth, as they did with any guy they didn’t have feelings for—Aldera didn’t have the best selection of guys to keep as friends. But not having feelings for him meant he also wasn’t being dissected during gym, and maybe that was enough to form an opinion. So what he did know about them, which was nothing, he liked. His opinion is only reinforced when in the middle of world history, Ami twists her body around to grip the back of her chair with her pink stick-on nails, looks directly at him and asks:
“Where’d you get that tan?”
A guy would never ask him that.
Izuku’s mouth drops open a bit, as if to respond, but he’s so unused to speaking between the hours of 8 and 3, so unused to questions, so unused to girls, that he kind of just stops there. Ami’s eyebrows raise and he can see the sparkles on her eyelid spread out. She’s pretty, like other girls, but her looks are a common conversation topic among the guys, and it’s when one of them shifts their head a bit to look at them that he considers unfreezing time.
“W-what tan?” He whispers back. As far as he knows, he’s just as pale as her. Only one of her eyebrows raises this, and he thinks that’s worse.
She reaches her arm over to drop an elbow on his desk and hold her hand up right next to where his is loosely gripping a pencil. He was sure it would’ve started shaking and rolling off the desk had it not been for something else grabbing his attention first: his incredibly noticeable tan. It wasn’t too extreme, it must’ve been gradual enough for his mom not to comment on it, but jesus, when was the last time he looked in the mirror? His eyes shoot open and Ami lets out an almost imperceptible giggle, which is to say it’d have been imperceptible if it wasn’t Ami, and suddenly three more guys are cracking an eye open at him.
“So where’d you get it?” She asks, “Spring’s barely started, do you go to salons or something?”
With anyone else he might’ve thought that was an insult, but he’d have to assume anyone as pretty as Ami takes her aesthetics seriously.
“No, just, uh, went to the beach a lot.” He said.
“Which?”
“Takoba?”
Ami dropped her arm on his desk and tilted her head, “The junk yard?” Well.
Izuku gave a shaky smile, “Someone’s cleaning it up.”
“I’ll have to check it out,” She hummed, watching him as he nodded. Her eyes drifted from his face and collar all the way down his arm to the cuff of his sleeve before settling on his pencil, poised over a half filled page. “Is this the scratching noise I hear behind me every day?”
She pinched the corner of a few pages and lightly tugged it from his desk, receiving no resistance from him as his elbow lifted to allow for an easier passage, as if under a spell. “Cute stationary. Where’d you get—?”
And suddenly her hand was empty, leaving Ami and Izuku to stare at one another with saucer eyes at the now gaping space between them. Mr. Zitsuki stood just to the side of their desks, dangling the notebook over them as he stared Izuku down.
“Midoriya, I find it hard enough to teach in this class with your relentless muttering.” He said, slicking his free hand through his blonde tuft of hair before smoothing down the rest of his mauve suit. Izuku’s drawn him a million times, but they all felt incomplete without color, he felt it betrayed a certain maliciousness to his soul. “Now I thought you’d finally cracked down on that habit in the last year, but I don’t see what the point of self improvement is if you’re simply going to replace it with a new way to distract myself and others.”
Izuku’s gaze flickered back to Ami, whose eyes were planted firmly at her feet as she slowly turned back around, pink nails disappearing from view. He liked to imagine she was mentally sympathizing, and only situationally barred. What did he know about girls anyway?
“And can I assume whatever you were looking at had nothing to do with the lesson?” Mr. Zitsuki asked, getting a better grip on the notebook’s spine to flip through the pages. He closed his eyes and stopped at a random point, dramatically dragging his finger across the page to choose a line and getting a quiet laugh out of the class right before he read it out, “Rural discontent can lead to unprecedented political consequences.”
His teacher read the line again, in his head this time, before looking back at Izuku, who truly had nothing to offer besides a newfound tan. The man went back to flicking through pages, scanning them at random for anything incriminating, but upon finding nothing he dropped the notebook with a loud slap and stalked back to the front of the class. Everyone else’s heads turned back around with nothing left to be entertained by and Mr. Zitsuka picked the chalk back up, poised over the board, “Where were we, 1937?”
Three months ago he’d have found a record of that morning’s updated hero rankings every few pages, but it was too late, there was nothing to find. The last hero Izuku wrote about was Kamui Woods, and it was gonna stay that way for the unforeseeable future.
⋆✦⋆⋆✦⋆⋆✦⋆
The first lesson he learned from All Might was that he, too, can be a hero. It moved him so much he pulled out his notebook on the way home to write it down, a routine he’d follow for the next few weeks whenever the number one hero would drop a nice quote, or recommendations for protein-packed snacks. On the third week, All Might told him to start bringing sunscreen to Takoba before their training session began, and Izuku felt it was so important he took his notebook out right then and there. All Might caught sight of the thing and Florida Flung it into the waves, something about a rule against written records; that was the second lesson.
As you can imagine, though, Izuku finds it hard to keep track of anything exclusively within his head, not with everything else that’s going on up there. Hence the tan, the confusing grocery requests he leaves for his mom consisting of whatever protein rich foods he can remember, the subtle disproportionate muscle growth between his upper and lower half. But there was growth, wasn’t there? Maybe it didn’t matter so long as it fit together in the end to produce some kind of result, so he stuck with it.
Scrambled eggs before class, yogurt between passing periods, whatever meat he could grab from the cafeteria before he shoved it down in one of the bathroom stalls, whatever All Might brought him at Takoba, and whatever fish his mom got for a bargain for dinner. Unless, of course, his mom was working the night shift, and he stuck around at Takoba long after All Might had left to run through the drills a couple more times, and ended up falling asleep during what was supposed to be a short break, waking up at the crack of dawn with sand in every hidden crevice of his body.
In that case, he’d run to Aldera, slip in through the window Mr. Zitsuki always left unlocked, and wash off in the showers. Then it’d be nothing for breakfast, chicken for lunch, whatever All Might brings him, and as much as physically possible during dinner to make up for what he’d missed that entire day. That, though, left him mindlessly sick the next morning, which meant water, milk, water, and throwing up into the sea before training—then repeat.
But it was working, he was stronger. When he didn’t skip gym, he could run the mile just fine, keep pace with everyone else and then some. And his mind was sharper, his focus heightened, everything heightened, he swears. What was a little discomfort when he had everything to gain? Enough unending discomfort became momentum, and after ten months of momentum he was practically a still life of success. A break would throw him off, it’d throw a wrench in everything and he’d probably blow up and die, or whatever All Might had said about One for All blowing him up and killing him. He doesn’t remember, he didn’t write it down.
So when All Might places a firm hand on his shoulder to stop him from warming up the afternoon after the Ami anomaly, Izuku almost wants to tell him to save it for later. He’s having one of those milk days and it’s usually not till the end of his beach jog that he empties the contents of his stomach, so until then he’s just plain ill. But he doesn’t, and All Might doesn’t.
“My boy,” He starts, and Izuku’s mouth twitches despite it all, “You still have a long road ahead of you, but it’s starting to look like you can do it.”
He looks sincere, serious, there’s even a sun sinking behind the waves to their right—it’s so scenic and perfect that suddenly his sickness goes away, replaced by much more severe heart palpitations.
“All Might?” He says in lieu of I’m going to convulse at your feet. The man just smiles.
“I’d even go so far as to call you ready.”
“I mean- I just- Are you sure?” He asks, psychotically. What’s he expecting? No, Midoriya, you’re right, I’m not, thanks for checking in. He’s worried he’s sounding unsure himself so he tries his best to cover his footprints. “I just, I don’t know, I feel really…” He grapples with the phrasing, searching for something that encapsulates the emotions he’d been experiencing ever since that encounter with the Sludge villain. Grateful, scared, breathless, improbable—like his life comes down to the die he’d lost under Kacchan’s bed in kindergarten. “…lucky.”
“Young Midoriya, luck is an accident, and you don’t get rewarded for being lucky, you get them for being deserving. Remember that, will you?”
“I…” Honestly don’t think I will. “Yes, okay, yeah. Yes.”
All Might reaches up to pluck a strand of hair from the sticking-up bangs, bringing it back down until it’s equidistant between them, held up like he’s about to perform a magic trick. Remember this strand of hair, he’ll say, keep your eyes on it. Izuku couldn’t imagine looking at anything else ever. If there were checkpoints in life, he likes to think this would just be the first, that with any luck he’ll forget everything that came before One for All, like some strange and terrible dream.
“So, Midoriya, are you ready for that reward?”
Izuku’s in another strange dream imagining a life after quirklessness when, looking up at All Might’s smile for one last bit of reassurance, he finds the man’s face tinted a candy-like pink, dulled out behind a large rectangle bobbing up and down in the air.
It looked to be made of pixels, slightly less defined at the edges; that is, if it was real. It left no shadow on the ground, no reflection in All Might’s eyes as they looked down at him, nothing. There was nothing to suggest it was there besides Izuku’s own eyes, which, honestly, may not even be trusted after today’s liquid diet. That and, of course, the sentence displayed at its center:
Minimum requirements satisfied. Proceed with storyline? [Yes/No]
“Midoriya, my boy?”
Izuku flinched and his mouth dropped open, ready to say something along the lines of, All Might, don’t freak out, but there’s a something right in front of your face and OH my god sorry you just leaned really close to it STOP doing that PLEASE and you know what? Let me just wipe it away for you, like an eyelash. And he had said that, he swears he did, but none of it came out. All he could manage were the breaths in between the panicked openings and closings of his lips.
“W—?” All Might’s eyebrows furrowed, “Water? Is your mouth too dry for it? Do you need water?” The last thing he needed was water.
The Thing kept bobbing, though, all throughout that, a glimmer faintly speeding across its length like gold coins in a game. The thought made Izuku pause his incessant mouthing, which had been growing more aggressive by the second. Things don’t shine unless they want you to come closer, don’t they? You collect gold coins, you open the treasure chest, you press the red button. Is that what this Thing wanted him to do? Press it?
The Thing locked his answer in for him without him ever having to lift a finger, a firm No, and suddenly the grip on his vocal cords were loosened.
“All Might,” He gasped, “There’s something—”
He choked in the middle of his sentence, dry heaving for air as the same box reappeared, just with less options.
Minimum requirements satisfied. Proceed with storyline? [Yes]
He didn’t even hesitate this time.
“Yes, Midoriya?” All Might tilted his head to get a better look at him, scope out whatever was making him act like this at such a crucial moment, but for all that maneuvering Izuku himself could only make out slivers of his head through the boxes’ gaps.
Instead of just the one, five more had come to replace it. One was to his left with five thin bars within them, all filled to varying lengths with percentages at their side: reputation, power, quirk mastery, intelligence, and health. There was another one just like it floating above All Might’s head, but it was greyed out with a padlock dead at its center, which maybe didn’t count as a box, but it was still something weird—all of this was weird. Most notably, the main box at the center, which had remained, but its text had been replaced, and three more had appeared up under it.
New mission unlocked: A Hero’s Journey. Do you accept? [58s]
A. “Yes!”
B. “I-I’m sorry, I can’t…”
C. “Does it have to be hair?”
Izuku’s eyebrows furrowed, honing in on that last one despite it all; did what have to be hair?
His face must’ve looked all kinds of screwed up, because now All Might was fidgeting in his tracksuit as the silence stretched on, and Izuku whirled around to maybe give them both some breathing room, some time to think. It was only by some last remaining shreds of mercy that the boxes didn’t follow him, leaving him alone with his thoughts, since apparently that’s all he had to work with. Whatever this was had siezed his control, parts of his vision, and maybe had even infiltrated his hearing if those little dings he heard earlier weren’t a hallucination. But god, at least he could scream in a hallucination, all he had to work with now were the options it gave him, and one of them even had his stutters built in.
“Are you sure you’re alright?”
Still, if he didn’t choose one, he might never speak again. Izuku spun back around with a deep breath—
0s. TIMES UP! Auto-play initiated.
“Does it have to be hair?” he asked. Except it wasn’t him; it was his voice, rushing out like a popped balloon, but it wasn’t him. Izuku was too shocked to even test out his speech again.
All Might laughed, hearty chuckles mixed with genuine relief, and his outstretched hand shook with humor, “Ahhh. Yes. Anyway, ready?”
A Hero’s Journey. Do you accept? [60s]
A. “Yes!”
B. “I-I’m sorry, I can’t…”
And suddenly it hits Izuku that the whole time this had been happening, he hadn’t even stopped to consider why. It couldn’t be a hallucination, because if there were any points in his life that could’ve prompted some kind of mental retreat, there were a lot more better ones to choose from than this. And it couldn’t be a villain’s quirk, or they’d have aimed for All Might first—but it had to be someone’s quirk, there was no other explanation.
42s…41s…40s…
And if he was right, then how did it work? Who decided the questions, the responses? Who calculated the stats and deemed him an overall 2/100 in reputation? Was that entirely impartial? He’s hoping it isn’t, but he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything, he’s forgotten it all, it’s been ten months since he could get his quirk analyses down in written order so sue him if he’s losing what little remains of his nerve.
27s…26s…25s…
He wants to find out, though, and if the first part of that means playing along with its stupid game, then he’s gonna goddamn win it. And who knows, he could end up discovering a whole new type of quirk. Maybe then he can help anyone else struggling with this kind of thing, even those who afflict it onto others. Take whoever had just done it to him, for example; a five year old just discovering their quirk, or maybe a late bloomer, or a really late bloomer judging by the complexity of the—
Izuku stilled, the invisible grip around his throat extending all around his body to freeze him where he was standing as the timer ticked dangerously close to zero. He hadn’t gotten One for All yet, so why was quirk mastery at 3?
6s…5s…4s…
Call it a hypothesis, a harmless one if his mind is still uncompromised and no one else can hear the faint echo of him daring to wonder. Yeah? Yeah.
“Yes!” Izuku shouted, so in sync with his not-voice no one could tell who’d started it.
The boxes cleared to make way for All Might’s wide grin once more, “Right answer.”
Then the hair was pinched between his fingers, his body moving on its own as his mouth cracked open to let it lower onto his tongue. The power bar shot beyond its own bounds as it moved down his throat, the Thing dinged like crazy as smaller pink boxes popped up and disappeared in the other corner like phone notifications, and the padlock over All Might’s head unlocked with a shine of light, revealing a purple bar a little over halfway full. It was incredible. Mind-altering. It undid itself and poofed out of existence five seconds later as the contents of Izuku’s stomach emptied itself on the sand.
He stayed like that for a little while, hands on his knees and head hanging as the waves slowly washed away whatever had just happened; not that either of them would be forgetting any time soon. He kept his eyes screwed shut, though, sure that if he had to open them and see more timers he’d just do it all over again.
“Um,” The man began, seemingly unsure where he was going with it once he’d started. “Okay. Okay. Let’s say you get some more food in you and try that again in a bit, that sound good?”
Izuku nodded.
“Great!”
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An hour later, All Might offered him a sip of the strawberry milkshake they’d gotten delivered from The Slice diner, and his vision did a redo of the whole shebang, stats and all. Licking ketchup from his fingers, Izuku wanted to ask the guy what he’d rate him out of a hundred, objectively and for no real reason, just to see if it lined up with the with the 65% that remained over his head. It was only a theory, but he was sure it had to be an affection bar of some kind directed towards Izuku and not the other way around. If it had been, he’s sure it would’ve surpassed 100 by now, maybe 99 after the clear lie about it having to be hair, but still.
He decided to save it for later, though, if just to savor the moment. He was sitting atop a pile of scrap metal with All Might eating burgers and passing the honey mustard for the fries. He had a quirk—or, no, quirks. Two of them! One of which might blow up and kill him, but he isn’t quite sure which one, so he makes a point of remembering to get another notebook on the way home; All Might would understand, given the situation. And, perhaps best of all, the Thing had decided to leave him alone for the night, collapsing into a small, nearly transluscent box floating behind his head, which he had to turn 180 degrees to see, and leaving just one final notification in its wake.
Prologue complete! Dialogue limitation removed. Manual Speech enabled.