Chapter Text
Mom was the only nice one.
This was one of the few things that Izuku knew for sure, and it was the reason why he was currently curled in the bathroom with the door locked, struggling not to let out a wince as he wrapped the burns and cuts spanning the length of his arms. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Mom to help him, she always tried her best, but her best would never be enough to make it better for him, and only made it worse for her. He heard the pain in her voice back when he showed her the injuries, when she would plead at the nearby hospitals to take him, yell at the principal to punish the kids that did it to him, only for all attempts to fail, simply because he was quirkless. Sometimes the tears Mom cried after the failures hurt more than the injuries themselves, so by the time he was 7, he stopped hiding them, and started looking up first aid online.
He didn’t think he was convincing Mom that it stopped, though. The flash of sadness in her gaze when she asked how his day at school was and the cabinet that was always packed with more stuff for injuries than any normal person had said that much, but there was no point in dropping the act. Even if he still caused her pain, her not seeing the injury made it hurt less for her, and what right did he have to make her hurt more for something that was his fault anyway? He loved Mom, he didn’t want her to hurt, and if this was really about wanting the pain to stop he wouldn’t have been so weak. He wouldn’t have been quirkless.
The point was that he had gotten used to hiding things, even from the people that, for whatever reason, cared about him. That, coupled with the fact that he knew that Mom would always be the only one not to hurt him or treat him like glass once they knew what he was is what led him to where he was now. Staring at Mom’s computer with the big “add account” button on it. He had been thinking about it for a while, but soon decided that there was no reason to give up because people didn’t like them once they knew he was quirkless, but instead make a version of himself people didn’t know was quirkless. Soon enough he was browsing forums, looking at videos, and liking posts under the new name “SmallMight”. The extent of most of his actions were comments, and even those got 50 likes at most. It was fun and relaxing, having a space where he could explore what he wanted, and express himself without being rejected for it. He had even gained some followers, and found a couple users he liked the content of and related to. He was by no means confident, but it was moving that way now that there were accepting people too. Maybe it was that boost that gave him the nerve to do what he did one fateful afternoon.
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It was a normal visit to the website, a lot of posts, the occasional meme of advertisement. That is, until he saw a post on an “ask the internet” thread. He usually wasn’t very good at helping with those, but there was no harm in trying, especially since he was going to become a hero!
This post in particular caught his eye though. Like most of the others, this was a post asking for advice, but it was the nature of the advice that he found interesting. The poster was a mom asking for ways to control her 5-year-olds' recently manifested and dangerous quirk without quirk suppressants as they can damage quirks’ developments. He almost didn’t comment as the answer seemed pretty clear, not to diss on the mom as she was clearly under a lot of stress, but rather that someone had surely answered it better than he could. Better safe than sorry, though, so he started to scroll through the answers, only to frown when he didn’t find it. The comment section was a mix of people just as clueless as she was, people that offered difficult, costly, or temporary solutions at best, and people telling her to just “suck it up and use damn quirk suppressants”.
Izuku frowned and bit his lip. He wanted to give his answer, but he knew that he might not be able to stop himself from writing everything he thought about, and everyone thought it was creepy when he did that. He would be able to edit it and cut out some parts of our course, but he wasn’t very good at telling what was and wasn’t “too much” information to know on the quirk of a stranger. But it was clear how desperate she was for info, and that she wasn’t going to get it without him. How selfish would he be if he allowed his fear of rejection and being called a “creep” or “stalker” get in the way of helping someone? Didn’t he say he wanted to become a hero to help, not to be liked? In the end he ended up writing the comment, with a few different solutions based on the specific workings of the quirk. He shut the tab, and then the computer as soon as it was confirmed to go through, not wanting to see the backlash any sooner than he was ready to.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Izuku took deep steading breaths while looking at the computer in his shaking hands. It had been three days since he sent out the response, and he had yet to check his account for notifications in fear of what he may find. But he was ready now. He would just read the comments, and sleep off whatever negative emotions clawed at him. Sure, he felt a little guilty for sneaking his moms’ computer into his room right before she sent him to bed, but he’d rather not have this weighing down on him a whole day when he was finally ready.
The first mini heart attack came when he clicked on his account to see that he had 2.1k notifications. Over two THOUSAND people responded to him? Why would they-? What were they saying? Did they think he was being creepy? Did they find out he was useless? What if Kacchan or someone else from school had found his account and-? No, panicking wasn’t going to do anyone any good right now. He just had to read the notifications, and hope he didn’t just get bullied by more people than had even talked to him in real life. Just open the notifications-
What?
Izuku sat there in shock for several moments, rereading the reply, but it didn’t change.
Akio_Antics:
reply to @SmallMight: Oh my god, thank you, you are a life saver. I’m so glad you included the option for general skin to skin contact, because most people assume that it’s 5-point contact if I don’t specify beyond “when she touches someone”. I was just so tired that I forgot to include it in my panic ;-;. Anyways thank you again SO MUCH, are you training to be a professional analyst, because your work seems really good if a bit unstructured. If so I hope you don’t mind that I recommended you to a couple of my friends, no pressure to accept, but it would be good practice and they’re more than willing to pay fair rates!
StarBoi26:
reply to @SmallMight: Dude. I am a hero student, and I could totally use some of your analysis. HMU if you take commissions, i sent in some quirk details under this account.
Read more replies (242)
Izuku was in shock. What had he done to fool these people into thinking that he was competent? Was he actually competent? No, people wouldn’t have made fun of him for his analysis if he was any good at it. But the internet seemed to think-. He glanced back up at the number of likes and comments, his brain mentally adding them together. And then doing it again. And again. It didn’t add up, he had had 2.1k notifications, but these only added up to 1.9k. Where were the extra… “I recommended you to a couple of my friends” no, “I could totally use some of your analysis”, his heart skipped a beat as his eyes caught on the particular line of the reply no, no, no, there was no way-
He quickly switched over to his direct messages tab, and sure enough, there were 185 messages from random numbers. He didn’t read through them all, but from what he could see, they all started out with asking him for his analysis and telling him generally who they were (hero student and parent of a volatile quirk were the most common, but there were some teachers, and even people who had recently gone through quirk evolutions, or even just civilians with difficult powers). The rest of the messages, however, were full of lines of text explaining everything the people knew about their quirks, some even including PHOTO AND VIDEO EXAMPLES of the wielders using them!
He was so excited that he didn’t even let himself worry about what would happen to him if all these people found out he was just a quirkless 9-year-old, and certainly NOT a professional as he dived into the familiar comfort of dissecting quirks.
30 minutes later and he felt like he had a sufficient amount of tips and tricks for his first client; the boy in Skiketsu whose comment was near the top of the list. He had a super cool metal manipulation quirk that allowed him to basically take any metal he touched, and form it as though it was clay, and with concentration, warm it up and cool it down! He could use it to make weapons, or even make it molten in… And he was getting off track again. No, he had just spent the last half hour geeking out over this guys’ quirk (and if he could use it to make more intricate things like keys or was it limited to…not right now Izuku), what had made him freeze in his tracks was at the bottom of the page.
What’s a PayPal, Venmo, MoTro etc. account I can send the money to? You didn’t give me a rate, so I was just going to go with the standard for whatever length of analysis you sent me at semi-professional quality. I’m willing to negotiate if you want more though, just make it reasonable.
…what? He-he didn’t need payment, it was only 30 minutes! Besides, he enjoyed analyzing more than almost anything else in his life, there was no way that the first time someone wanted him to do it they would also pay him for it! He felt like he was scamming someone! Was this some sort of test? He decided the best thing to do right now was just look at what this person wanted to pay him so he could reassure himself it wasn’t that bad. Actuallyl looking up the going rates for analysts did the opposite. Because it wasn’t that bad. It was worse. 12,500 yen for one 5 page analysis? Surely, Surely that couldn’t be right. The font size was probably too big, or the pages too small, or too wide of line space.
Except that it wasn’t. It didn't matter how many sites Izuku went to, they all spat out the same result, which was that his analysis was in the expected intermediate format. He- he couldn’t just accept that money! At this rate, he’d have enough to buy his own computer after only 6 analyses! That actually wasn’t a bad idea if he didn’t think about the fact that he was practically robbing strangers on the internet. It would be nice to have a device all to himself so he could talk to his friends or clients on the go.
In the end, he went with a compromise. He insisted on discounting it to the hero student, and after a considerable pushback, they agreed on 12,000 yen. Still not ideal, but it's hard to bargain with decent future heroes at all where their morals are concerned, and this guy found it immoral to not pay him his “proper dues”. Whatever. It eased the guilt a little to know he had tried everything he could to deny it, but in the end he made a new Venmo category on his mom’s account for “Izuku’s Analysis Commissions” which sounded fancy for just sharing a bunch of his notes and getting overpaid for it. He ended up doing three more commissions that night before one made his eyes go wide in shock. In the subject line was the fact that he had been recommended by the mother whose post started this whole ordeal, but that wasn’t what caught his attention. No, that was the fact that there was an ACTUAL FREAKING HERO messaging him. Him! Nightfox was an underground hero who patrolled the area a few blocks over. He’d seen her a couple times in action during late night grocery runs, but he never thought he’d get to TALK TO HER, no matter how digital and formal it was. He was talking to a hero. And actual, real, goddamn HERO!
Sure, she didn’t explicitly state that she was a pro, and most people wouldn’t be able to recognize any non-daylight hero by just recording and notes of quirk use, but most people also hadn’t been analyzing and scouring the web for detail on any and all heroes they could find since they were four. Her mutation quirk not only gave her the appearance of a fox, but also night vision, increased navigational skills, heightened sense of smell, and slightly increased speed, though it did come at the cost of increased fragility based on her frame, her fighting style and hero consume more that makes up for it by redirecting…
He ended up spending two hours on hers, due to the increased quirk knowledge he had prior to the analysis, as well as suggestions for hero costume and fighting style adjustments he had several pages on in his notebooks. A lot of the process was reining and detailing, which made this one the highest quality analysis out of all the ones he sent out. (not that he didn’t TRY to make the others high quality, or that this one could be that good anyways, but he had extra information!). He was surprised the stalker allegations hadn’t come yet, but before Nightfox, all the info he offered was taken from only what the users gave him, so that was probably a part of it. He looked at the clock, only to startle at the time reading 11:13. Sure, he knew he started when mom sent him to bed, but it didn’t feel like that long. Time flies when you’re having fun, he guessed. That’s not an expression he usually had experience with.
He bit his lip, he should really get to bed. Plus, Nightfox was an underground hero, she was probably preparing for patrol right now, if not already out on it. It might be a weekend tomorrow, but price negotiations weren’t really available right now. Before he could think better of it, he just added the Venmo address at the bottom of the analysis and went to sleep.
A few hours later, unbeknownst to him, 50,000 yen would be deposited to his account, and “SmallMight” would already be spreading through the mouths of the hero underground like a plague.