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One of Izuku's first memories was as a five year old, still sporting a stiff arm brace and sitting in front of a large flat screen tv. Being so young and almost a decade in the past the memory is a bit blurry but he remembers enough for it to be a foundational moment in his life. Izuku had never been the owner of such a large tv so while he doesn't actually remember it he knows the memory took place at his best friend's house. He remembers that blonde, equal in energy to Izuku's own excited vibrating, kneeling beside him on the floor as they sat as close to the action as their parents would allow.
An enlarged stone fist collided with a translucent and glowing shield causing an explosion of concrete bits to rain down around the pair, all of which was captured on state-of-the-art cameras and preserved by a high-definition screen. The shield user pulled another glowing disk from nothing and while still defending with the original they swung up with the second. The fight continued on with strong hits and impressive feats of strength. It wasn't the flashiest fight they would see that day but it was the most evenly matched, the two going blow for blow as the audience roared, Izuku and his friend joining in from so far away.
He remembers the fight ending with the girl, fists still encompassed by stone, throwing her opponent out of the ring both thoroughly bruised and bleeding. Cheers erupted for the victor and filled the large living room. "That was so cool," the boy beside him had awed before turning to Izuku and shaking him excitedly. "When we're older we're gonna go there!" He exclaimed, pointing at the stands housing UA's famous sports festival, and Izuku had excitedly agreed. The wonder duo at UA high school, their dream.
School had never been a good experience for Izuku ever since he walked into his first grade classroom with a lifelong injury and a useless quirk. His issues with schooling ranged from teachers who babied him for his injury yet never gave him the accommodations he needed to peers who found a way to hate every breath he took. Teachers would isolate him from his classmates during recess and free time to make sure he wouldn't aggravate his already physically healed arm while at the same time expecting him to keep up with assignments at the same pace as those peers despite Izuku having to reteach himself how to write. Classmates, on the other hand, would bully him for any conceivable reason, his quirk he couldn't use, his arm that couldn't do what theirs could, his family's money issues, his analysis hobby along with his mumbling habit, anything they could make fun of they would. From exclusion to horrible nicknames to destroyed property school was never somewhere he liked being which means more than it would for most other children as Izuku has always loved to learn. He'd absorb knowledge on whatever his current interest was for fun and he always took the chance to expand his quirk analysis, using animal anatomy to theorize about the limits of a mutation quirk or the workings of the digestive tract to figure out how the common consumable type quirks were similar and how they differed with each user. It didn't hurt that his mom had always encouraged his love of learning as she claimed he'd gotten it from her which he wholeheartedly agreed with.
That was elementary and middle school though, his dream school, the one he was finally attending, had strict and progressive anti-bullying and discrimination rules, it was supposed to be different, he expected it to be different. He thought those rules would bring an end to uncomfortably tight skin caused by dried tears, "Deku"s and "Good for nothing"s playing through his head like a broken record, and singed notebooks that often destroyed the hours of work poured into them. Izuku had expected better days but as he walked out of the nurse's office after having his ear talked off by Recovery Girl complaining about him being sent to her so early in the year Izuku realizes he'd forced on those rose-tinted glasses once again, hoping for things to change when each and every time he was met with disappointment.
He grips tighter on the straps of his subtly All Might themed backpack, the subtlety coming from age wearing away most of the indicators it was merch at all, his clenched fists causing barely noticeable pain to radiate from his finger, completely healed but still sensitive and it would stay that way for a few days yet. After an objectively bad first day of high school all Izuku wanted to do was curl up in bed, maybe nap and definitely break the meal plan he'd been following, save for a handful of adjustments, for the past few years. Maybe later that night he would eat the katsudon his mom would inevitably make and sit in a comfortable silence beside her broken only by the quiet scratches of their writing utensils as they'd work, his mom on grading and Izuku either helping or updating Eraserhead's entry and starting book number fourteen that would contain all the quirks he'd learn about during his time at UA. He wouldn't mind doing those things but later, for now Izuku would do best with uninterrupted peace and quiet. The universe always did like laughing in his face.
"Midoriya!" His name is called and Izuku looks up from where he'd been intently staring at the sidewalk he was trudging down. Standing just inside UA campus with the large, arching gates separating them from the outside world, were two unexpected faces. "Hey, we wanted to make sure you were okay after all of that! You are okay, aren't you?" Uraraka Ochako, the girl with the zero gravity quirk who'd been oddly nice to him since she'd saved him from falling face first onto the ground before the entrance exams, asks.
"Yeah," Izuku answers lamely with a shrug, not having the energy for much more, "I'm fine."
The girl deflates looking relieved at his answer. "Good. Your ball throw was really cool, by the way. I'm glad you didn't get as hurt as you did in the entrance exams," she says and Izuku's mood only dims with the reminder of that day. "It's dumb you got hurt at all thought, that Aizawa guy is a real jerk."
Izuku chokes on a laugh, having not expected his classmate to be so blunt with her opinion on the man who would be their teacher for the last few years. Iida on the other hand did not seem to find it as amusing. "Uraraka! That is highly disrespectful, Aizawa-sensei is our teacher!"
"What am I wrong? It was rude of him to call out Midoriya for using his quirk in a quirk apprehension test," she reasons and Izuku can't help but think she's right. Not completely though, their teacher did have a point but he also had a pretty crappy way of proving it.
"Even if you believe Aizawa-sensei to be "a jerk"," Iida argues and cringes slightly with the basic insult, "you still shouldn't say it aloud."
"Not on campus, I've heard the principal has eyes and ears everywhere," Izuku adds.
"Oo that's an interesting quirk."
"What? No, it's an expression," he corrects but Uraraka only laughs.
"I know, I was messing with you," she explains with a lopsided smile. "So have you heard anything else about the principal?"
"Not much that isn't common knowledge," he admits and hesitates before continuing, "but I do know a bit about Aizawa-sensei."
"Seriously?! Like what?" Uraraka turns seamlessly switching to walking backward as she looks at him in anticipation, like she actually wants to hear him talk about their teachers' quirks.
"We shouldn't be talking about our teachers like this."
"It's just a bit of gossip Iida, I promise it won't kill you."
Their classmate in question splutters indignantly which Uraraka giggles at but not like the cruel one's he'd had directed at him so many times before. It sounds kind and lighthearted like Iida's uptight attitude is something she likes and that she's closer to laughing with him than at him. "Well," Izuku starts which quickly regains the brunette's attention. "His hero name is Eraserhead, he's an underground hero who operates here in Musutafu, and his quirk is erasure which gives him the ability to stop transformation and emitter quirks when looking at them although I didn't know that last bit until earlier today."
"Woah, do you know that kind of stuff about other heroes too?"
"Yeah," he admits after a minute then, without learning from a lifetime of mistakes, hopes they won't find his hobby as creepy as his past peers did. "I like doing quirk analysis and it's easiest to get data from heroes because they use theirs so often."
"Seriously?!" Uraraka exclaims and for a moment Izuku thinks it was happening again. "That is so cool! Do you have anything on Thirteen? They're my favorite hero," the girl rambles, each word sounding alarms in his brain but not screaming This is a dangerous situation, get out of it instead all he can think is This is unprecedented territory and I have no idea what to do.
"I agree," Iida nods and the alarms grow louder, "that sounds like an interesting hobby to have and I'd like to hear more about it if you'd be willing to share." Uraraka had just claimed to find Izuku's analysis cool not creepy, not boring and Iida agreed.
Izuku can feel his mouth gape like a beached fish's, gasping for air but instead he grasps for words. The only one he finds is just a repetition of Uraraka's question. "Seriously? You don't think it's weird or something?"
"What? Of course not."
"No, analysis is an intelligent hobby and I suspect it will be helpful in your goal to become a hero." Helpful in your goal to become a hero - Intelligent - Helpful - Hero, hero, hero.
"Oh," he breathes and for the first time since his mom lovingly babied him that morning over his first day in the best hero course in the country his eyes fill with happy tears. Those tears don't spill but they do cause cracks in his next words. "I have a notebook of them if you'd like to see?"
Izuku steals another glance from his phone, the screen lit up with his depressingly short list of contacts. He hadn't been able to keep his eyes off it for long in the past few minutes because now that depressing list has a bit more color in the form of two new contacts; Iida Tenya and 💫 Uraraka!!!💫 now joined the ranks of his parents, therapist, and a number long since disconnected but one he hadn't had the heart to delete and what's even better is the two new names were entered in by the people themselves, giving the contacts a personal touch that made his heart light in his chest.
An unconscious smile still graces his lips by the time he arrives at the door of his shared apartment. Iida had boarded a different train heading for his home in Tokyo while he and his bubbly classmate lived in the same direction, Uraraka having moved closer to UA to cut down the cost of travel. They'd ridden together until her stop a few before Izuku's own, time which was spent with Uraraka asking questions about the notes she was still skimming through, something only his mom had ever done before.
He doesn't stall opening the door and entering his long time home, announcing himself as he does. "I'm home!"
“Welcome home Izuku!” His mom happily returns the greeting. Izuku, after having removed his shoes by the door, follows her voice to find her sitting on the couch with papers laid out around her. “Hey baby, you look happy. Did you have a good first day?”
“Not really" he admits and shrugs off his bag before taking a seat on a clean part of the couch, "but I think I might have made friends. We didn’t get to talk too much but we exchanged numbers.”
“Oh Izuku, that's great! What else happened though?”
Izuku picks up a stapled stack of papers and one of the extra pens laying about. He always has preferred multitasking, it’s why he mumbles and fidgets and it’s why he’s going to help his mom with her grading now. There are a number of reasons he does it, usually it’s to help him concentrate but right now it’s to help him talk about his day without picking at the skin around his fingernails. His mom works as a math teacher for year six elementary students and with math being his best class, thanks to both his mom’s career and his in-depth analysis hobby, he is easily able to help her out. “I don’t think my homeroom teacher likes me. He had us do those physical apprehension tests instead of orientation except we were allowed to use our quirks.” Izuku feels his mom tense beside him.
“Did you use yours?” she asks, not hiding her anxiety. She hadn't been happy with the story he came home with from the entrance exam but she had agreed it could have been much worse.
“Yeah. He said that whoever came in last place would be expelled and I tried doing it without my quirk but everyone was doing so much better than me so when it came to the ball throw I used it. I didn’t want to, obviously, but I used my quirk in my arm and threw the ball but it didn’t work. It turns out the teacher is a hero with a quirk that erases other quirks so he stopped me. He kinda yelled at me in front of everyone for almost breaking my arm,” he admits, the lines coming from his red pen becoming thicker, popping out against the white surface he writes on. “He said I’d never be a hero with my quirk.”
“I-I’m sorry he said that Izuku,” his mom comforts after fully lowering her stack of worksheets.
“‘S fine. Um anyways he let me throw the ball again. I knew that I had to use my quirk but that I couldn’t break my arm so I concentrated it in my finger,” he brings up his still bandaged finger to cooperate his story, “and threw the ball. It went 705.3 meters which was even further than Kacchan’s but in the end it didn’t matter cause I still got last place. After all that Aizawa-sensei revealed the threat was a ‘logical ruse‘ and that no one would be expelled." He shrugs and after his rambling retelling of the day Izuku realizes his mom went silent sometime during it. “Mom?”
She gently holds the hand he’d been writing with and looks it over from every possible angle. “You can still use it?” She asks unbelieving.
“Yeah, Recovery Girl healed it so it’s only a little sore.”
“Oh my god,” she breathes before lunging and wrapping her arms around him. “I’m so proud of you baby.”
“Why?”
“This is progress, it’s amazing and you did it all on your own, of course I’m proud.”
“It was stupid," he denies and clenches his fists that still lay in his lap, "My finger is weaker, I could’ve blown it off or something.”
“But you didn’t and that’s what matters,” she argues over his shoulder and Izuku’s eyes once again begin to water. He wraps his arms around his mom, awkwardly returning the hug from his position and the two of them cry together for minutes. “Come on,” his mom encourages and helps pull him up once they’ve put themselves together if only a bit. “We’re going to celebrate. Change into something nice, we’re going out.”
“Can we afford to? I know money's tight with-“ he fights well aware of the cost of him going to UA is putting on his parents even with his scholarship but he's cut off by a stern voice.
“That is not your problem, Izuku. Things may be tight but that will never be your concern, do you understand me?”
“Yes, Mom,” Izuku reluctantly agrees and is awarded a shining smile for his half hearted words.
“Good now go,” she urges, pushing Izuku in the direction of his room while she heads to her own. The small smile he'd grown hearing his mom's determination dims at the thought of going back to that school tomorrow with a teacher who already doesn’t like him and sitting in a seat directly behind his worst bully but he forces those thoughts away. He can think about it all later when the anxiety inevitably keeps him awake late into the night but for now he’s going to eat expensive food (though hopefully he can convince his mom to settle on something more reasonable) as he celebrates his progress with the person he loves most in the world and after that he’ll text his new classmates he hopes will become his new friends because today wasn’t a good day but it wasn’t all bad either.