Chapter Text
"Alright, Izuku, are you ready to go?" Momma asks, crouching so she's level with Izuku. "Lunch, backpack, uniform?"
There’s a soft nudging at his hands, a reminder that he needs to get something.
"I have those, but, umm, there's..." Izuku knows there is something else. What? The feeling of a nudge changes to a soft pull at his wrist, like someone gently tugging at him. "This way."
"Oh, alright then," Momma says, taking his hand and following him to the closet.
Izuku opens the door and reaches onto a shelf above his head, his hand finds a box and he pulls it down to see it.
Bandaids.
The feeling of a soft pull shifts to settle down, a quiet reassurance of a job well done.
"Oh, bandaids," Momma says with an easy smile. "What a good idea, Izuku!"
A good start to his first day of preschool.
- - -
Another kid scrapes his knee that day. Before he can begin to cry, Izuku is already there with his bandaid.
His teachers praise him for being so helpful and he gets an extra star on the chart.
- - -
That was all it is for a while. A few little intuitions. His hand twitches toward the umbrella as he’s walking out the door and it rains unexpectedly. His hands twitch around problem four on his homework and he finds he’d made a mistake. He brings an extra pencil and gives it to a peer just when a test is starting. Simple things.
He finds he has a certain affinity for plants. His hands always guide him to do the right thing; just the right amount of water, just the right amount of sunlight.
When he’s five, he notices a pair of strange freckles on the backs of his wrists. As he watches, they shift slightly. Dark curving lines begin to grow out of them. Like drawings of vines which flow across his skin. They stretch out toward his fingers and wrap around his knuckles. They’re almost black, with the slightest sheen of green flickering across them.
Izuku watches them for a while, and they guide him to one of his mom’s ferns. He nudges the fronds until the vines around his hands seem content. They shift away again, settling into the pair of freckles on the backs of his wrists. Izuku thinks it might grow out better this way.
Izuku can never quite explain the way that the lines speak to him. It’s nothing like words. And it’s not quite just the shapes that the vines play out along his hands. There’s something deeper underneath. Across his whole chest. Like his entire body is being pulled toward whatever it is he needs to do.
His mother doesn’t understand, but is excited with him and takes him to the quirk doctor.
They name it “Green Grower” and write down that Izuku can make plants grow well. Izuku tries to explain that it’s more than just that, but they tell him that it’s a lovely quirk and that it’s all he needs.
He gives up after a little while. His quirk pulls at his hands just in time to save the doctor’s clipboard from falling off the desk. Izuku doesn’t mention it.
When he and his mom get home they bake a cake together to celebrate how big Izuku has gotten.
Izuku thinks that maybe it’s alright.
- - -
Izuku thinks about being a hero, but there's no familiar tug at his hands.
He hugs his mom and decides to trust his quirk.
It starts with simple suggestions. One day after school it guides him to an unfamiliar classroom. He opens the door to find the fashion club. Izuku joins.
Izuku doesn’t need to think much. He drifts through life with an absent smile and always has just the thing for the job. He’s content, helping other people and being helped by his quirk. He finds that he doesn’t need much more than that.
The bullying starts after they learn about his quirk. They call him names. Wall flower. Useless.
But it doesn’t last long.
The first time was one day when Izuku was walking down the hallway at school. His hands tug him to the left instead of the right, and he listens. He stumbles on the janitor mopping the floor and he pauses in confusion.
Just a moment after he rounds a corner some other middle schoolers, led by their ringleader Kacchan himself, come running after him. He simply steps to the side and the kids slip on the water covering the floor. They go sliding across the hallway and Izuku shrugs at the janitor before slipping away in the other direction.
The kids that Kacchan led stop bothering Izuku, their pride a little too damaged to try and humiliate him again.
He brings extra snacks to the fashion club and is invited to weekly game nights. He learns how to sew, how to change apparent body shape with the cut of his pants, and how to change his face with makeup. He follows the example of the other club members and dyes his hair new colors and tries new styles often.
Kacchan never really changes, but suddenly there are other people in the class who are willing to stand up to him.
Izuku trusts his quirk.
- - -
When he’s eleven years old, his quirk asks him to rob a bank.
Well, it doesn't exactly ask him. All his quirk can do is tell him to do something or go somewhere. So his quirk really just pushes him to buy a ski mask, a hammer, a gun that looks real aside from the bright orange nozzle, and some black paint.
Izuku gets the idea.
The question was whether he should trust what his quirk was telling him to do.
He decides to go with it.
At the very least, it seems interesting.
He paints the nozzle of the fake gun with the black paint. It actually almost looks real.
Izuku wears black clothes, a black backpack, and black gloves.
On the day which his quirk instructs, he leaves home and walks to a bank.
He hesitates for a few moments outside, then follows the feeling in his gut and enters. He takes a strange sort of winding way through the lobby, and Izuku realizes that he's avoiding the cameras.
A minute after he enters an explosion goes off from the back room of the bank. Izuku ducks into one of the cubicles and pulls on the mask.
Alarms went off from all around them and Izuku peaks around the edge of the cubicle.
“Put your head down!” shouts the leader. “If you’re smart you might just get out of this in one piece.”
“Yeah! What he said!” shouts another.
Something like a dozen villains wearing almost the same thing as Izuku stream into the lobby from the back room, bags of valuables strapped to their backs.
Izuku stares at them, it was almost something out of a movie.
“You!” the leader shouted, pointing at where Izuku is half hidden. “Get out of there, we’ve gotta get out of here quick, stop your lollygagging!”
That was...a word...that this man had decided to use.
Izuku stands up and slips into their pack, holding his gun like it's real. He's the shortest person in the group, but not by much, he fits in almost perfectly.
“We’re stealing your stuff!” a woman next to Izuku shouts.
“Yeah!” Izuku shouts in solidarity.
They walk right out the front door and into the van that pulls up to the curb. Izuku thinks that this might have been more than he bargained for.
The back of the van is empty save for the benches bolted on both sides. Izuku follows the group and slips into one of the seats. There are no seat belts so Izuku just holds on to the metal handle bolted onto the wall beside him.
The van screeches away from the curb, taking Izuku with it. It keeps moving with breakneck speed through the streets, taking a sharp turn every few seconds. The man next to Izuku sighs theatrically.
“That was something, wasn’t it? Honestly, I was expecting some heroes or something. How disappointing,” he says, slouching into his seat. He pulls a pack of cigarettes and lit one with the flick of his finger, some kind of fire quirk. He puts the cigarette in his mouth and offers the box to Izuku.
Izuku takes one to be polite, though he doesn’t have a lighter. Also he is under the impression that eleven years old is too young to smoke cigarettes. But the man soon becomes distracted with talking to the person with horns on the other side of him.
“Wait a second!” the leader from earlier shouts from the front. He’s standing between the driver and passenger seat, hanging onto a handle in the ceiling. He’s counting everyone in the van. “Didn’t we have eleven people?”
Izuku’s heart lurches in his chest.
“No,” the man beside Izuku responds. “We got twelve.”
“I mean before the bank,” the leader corrects. “I'm sure we had eleven.”
Now everyone is occupied with numbering the people in the van, getting in each other’s way and moving so much that no one can get a good count. The fact that the van is still swaying and turning doesn't help.
“Did you count yourself?” someone calls.
“Of course,” the leader says.
“Did you count the driver?”
“Aha! I forgot the driver!” the leader crows, wheeling toward the front of the car.
The attention of the van moves to the six-armed man concentrating intently on the road. He is also wearing a ski mask.
Izuku sees a giant tree branch barreling towards the van, before the six-armed man takes a sudden right turn to dodge it.
“What’s the next turn, boss?” he asks.
“There’s more important things to worry about!” the leader shouts. “Actually, no there aren’t. You were the missing person.”
“Uh, boss,” one bank robber speaks up, “If you missed the driver, doesn’t that mean we now have thirteen people?”
The leader stares at her.
“Oh no,” he whispers, “two imposters.”
The van descends into chaos.
“The groupchat!” shouts the man beside Izuku. “Everyone write what they look like in the groupchat! Then we can find these imposters!”
Everyone takes out their phones. Izuku takes out his too, blindly hoping that this was part of his quirk’s plan.
Izuku suddenly feels a very strong urge to take the phone of the man next to him.
The car lifts off the ground.
It doesn't flip, rather it just starts to go upward. Izuku holds onto the handle above him tightly and stares past the other passengers and through the windshield.
Mount Lady stares back at him. Her face is larger than the entire windshield.
Someone shoots a blast of light at her eyes.
She shouts and flinches back but thankfully doesn’t drop the van. She sets it down roughly on the top of a building. Izuku manages to grab the phone of the man next to him during the chaos.
Someone throws open the back doors of the van. Izuku stands and grabs one of the duffel bags from the floor, then follows as everyone jumps out. They scatter. Izuku’s quirk sends him to the left and he starts to run. Behind him he hears the sound of Kamui Woods starting to gather up the bank robbers.
Izuku runs to the edge of the building and sees that the next one was only a few feet lower and maybe seven feet away from the one he is on.
He jumps, landing mostly on his feet and continuing onward.
His quirk sends him to one of the rooftop doorways, he tries it and finds it locked.
He panics for a second before remembering that he has a hammer.
With a vague sense of guilt he smashes the door handle.
Izuku sends one last glance at the fighting behind him. Kamui Woods is trying to pin down the villains while Mount Lady is rubbing her eyes and holding the driver in one hand.
Izuku rushed through the door, leaving the fight behind him. Then he shucks off his mask as he walks down the stairs. He stuffs the bag he’d grabbed into his backpack and tries to make his face as calm as he can.
He gets to the lobby. People are standing around, glancing idly out the front windows at the sounds of the fight. His quirk isn’t saying anything, so Izuku decides to stay put. He finds a couch and pretends to browse his phone for a while.
Eventually the sounds of fighting die down and people start leaving. Izuku follows.
So it turns out his quirk did have a plan after all.
Izuku walks home.
Once he’s back in the apartment, he calls out for his mom. No response, so she isn’t home, at work then. He trudges to his room and slumps into his chair.
After a few minutes of sitting there, he finally sits back up and grabs his backpack, taking out the hammer, bag, and fake gun.
He then opens the duffel bag which he grabbed from the pile in the van and pulls open the zipper.
His brain short circuits.
Inside is more money than he has ever seen in one place. Maybe even more than Mom has in her bank account.
Not knowing what else to do, he closes the bag tightly, then shoves it under his bed.
After some prodding from his quirk, he removes it and instead shoves it into a cubby in his closet. In plain view of anyone who entered his room.
Izuku shifts between his feet and bites his lip, fighting between the urge to hide the bag somewhere sneakier and listening to his quirk.
Eventually the quirk’s history of success wins and he returns to his desk defeated.
Izuku pulls out the phone he’d taken. It's an older model, but not that old.
He presses the home button experimentally and it opens to a lock screen. He stares at it for a long second, then feels a twitch of his fingers.
He reaches out, and follows the delicate twisting and curling of the lines around his hand. It’s half like he’s following the movement with his eyes, half just the feeling of his quirk shifting through his hands.
He types in the phone’s code, digit by digit.
The phone unlocks.
Izuku pokes around the apps for a while, there isn’t much on it but the default apps. Not even any personal texts, just some group chats about setting up the robbery.
Then Izuku realizes what it is.
It’s a crime phone.
The man must have just used it as a burner for whatever shady stuff he was mixed in with.
Why had Izuku grabbed it, though?
Izuku feels a nudge from his quirk. He needs to get something. It's fuzzy, something to do with the phone.
Izuku pokes around, and finds himself gravitating toward the app store.
Then his quirk nudges him towards the Twitter icon.
Izuku stops to stare at the phone, just to be contrary. Now his quirk was just telling him to make social media.
His quirk sulkily pulls at Izuku’s gut, and he gives up and downloads Twitter on the criminal’s phone.
He gets to the account setup page, then stops as he’s about to set up an account. His quirk wouldn’t ask him to make it unless there was a good reason. If the account was supposed to be in Izuku’s name, then it would just have him make the account on Izuku’s phone.
What for a handle though?
Izuku ponders it for a bit, then decides on foresight2020, because why not.
He makes the account using the phone number of the phone he stole, then opens the home page to browse through trending topics.
Then his quirk sends him a nudge towards a certain account.
“Why?” Izuku asks out loud.
His quirk continues to nudge.
Oh well.
Time to figure out how to get a friend request from the Pro Hero Hawks.
- - -
Generally, his quirk doesn't ask much of him. It's just helpful, keeping him from most inconveniences or embarrassments.
Most things it asks of him made sense within a day or two at most and rarely were they totally crazy. But there are exceptions, like the bank, and like today.
Izuku stands in front of the sketchiest building he’s ever seen and internally curses his quirk.
It’s been a few months since the incident with the bank, he is now twelve years old. Nothing much had happened after that, he just occasionally read through the crime group chat and wondered what exactly the point had been.
He’s wearing heavy makeup which make him look older than he was and has a couple thousand dollars in his pocket.
This is incredibly sketchy.
Izuku walks in anyway.
“What’cha want?” asks an older woman reading a magazine, her feet rested casually on the counter.
“Dunno,” Izuku says, completely honestly. “What can you give me?”
There was a certain art he’d learned from having his quirk. It involved showing up to places and letting people come to their own conclusions about what it was he wanted. These days it went quite smoothly.
The woman looks up at him from over her magazine and then looks him up and down.
“What are you, fourteen?” Izuku stares at her, not saying a thing. “I think maybe we could pull off seventeen, but that ain’t gonna let you buy drinks or nothing, ya hear?”
Izuku stares, then decides that whatever she’s talking about is probably alright.
“Let’s do it,” Izuku says.
She raises her eyebrows and takes her feet off the counter.
“Just a card or do you want something that’ll stand up to a bit more looking into?” she asks, typing something on her computer.
Izuku considers the amount of money in his pocket.
“How ‘bout the works?” Izuku asks.
- - -
An hour later, Izuku walks out with an incredibly convincing fake ID for one seventeen-year-old Akatani Mikumo.
The whole thing had actually been quite a bit of fun. For a convincing trail, they’d had to come up with a whole backstory. After a bit of consideration, they'd settled on Mikumo Akatani being a legally emancipated orphan living in a fictional address in Aichi with a vaguely described quirk called Kismet. The fake identity came with papers proving his birth and the death of his parents along with a PO box connected to his name.
After he walked out with the new ID, he's left with sixty bucks left in his pocket.
He uses fifty of them to buy a prepaid flip phone from a corner store.
Then another five to buy bubble tea.
(He ends up needing to use the last five because his bus pass has expired.)
- - -
There is a general trend in his life, Izuku thinks as he intentionally rides the subway into an active villain fight, that he tends to go towards danger rather than away from it.
He supposes that it does make a sort of sense. After all, generally, if you have the initiative, then your enemies will always be on the defensive.
The problem being that Izuku has no idea who his enemies were.
But his quirk does.
Presumably.
So once he's at the stop from where the ear splitting shrieks of metal and insane ramblings are emanating, he steps out from the empty subway car. There isn't any immediate danger where he is, so he sets about finding it.
He gets to the entrance of the subway and takes in the street.
There was some sort of villain group trying to—from what Izuku can see—simply cause as much property damage as possible.
At least four of them had already been apprehended.
Heroes are zipping around, protecting buildings and civilians. One of them catches Izuku’s eye. He's flying around in a cloud of red feathers, faster than Izuku can process.
If Izuku isn't mistaken that is Pro Hero Hawks.
So that's the guy Izuku is supposed to get to follow him on Twitter.
The internet said that he's one of the ‘top young heroes to watch.’ Apparently he's been quickly climbing the ranks, some said he might make it into the top ten Pro Heroes within the year.
And Izuku needs to be friends on Twitter with him.
Why exactly is his life so weird?
Who is he kidding? He loves it.
His quirk isn’t telling him to move, so he leans against one of the pillars and watches the show.
The fight is winding down at that point, the villains are being put into quirk-suppressing cuffs and sent away. Izuku idly wonders what would happen if he was put into a pair of those. Would his quirk just stop? The thought is strange. He’s never really been without his quirk’s intuition. How well would he even function? Who knows. More than likely, his quirk will just never let him get into a position where it could be a problem.
It's as he's considering this train of thought that the building he's in collapses.
Well, that was a little dramatic, he's standing in the entrance to the subway, so it's more like the structure that he's standing in front of collapses.
Thankfully, though he knows that it wasn't due to luck, none of the chunks of concrete hit him. So he is just left coughing in the wreckage. Dirty, but unharmed.
Then something grabs him and shoots him into the air.
“Oh shit, oh shit,” mumbles the person that had grabbed him. Izuku looks up and into the eyes of none other than Pro Hero Hawks.
“Uh,” Izuku says, looking down at the ground, some hundred or so feet below. “Hi.”
“Shit,” the hero says, then lands on a building. He starts patting Izuku, like he can't believe he's in one piece. “I thought that building was empty. Are you okay? How are you okay?”
Izuku stares for a minute, trying to figure out what his quirk wants exactly. He glances back at the street, the fighting seems to have ended. Well, this is as good a chance as any.
“That was...scary,” he settles on saying.
“No shit!” Hawks says, running his hands through his hair. “Oh, no. Sorry, sorry. I thought that building was empty, kid I’m sorry. How did you even get—”
“There’s something I want,” Izuku interrupts.
Hawks’ head snaps toward Izuku, and he is reminded that this is a proper Pro Hero. His eyes narrow slightly, and Izuku get's the sense that his wings have shifted into something more dangerous.
“Follow me on Twitter!” Izuku almost shouts. He doesn’t need to fake the nervousness.
Hawks stares at him.
“Follow you. On Twitter,” he repeats slowly.
“Yeah! That would make me feel so much better, and I—”
Hawks lets out a groan.
“You know what. Whatever. ” He pulls his phone out from his pouch, then pulls it to his face, he clicks some things, then looks back up at Izuku. “Username?”
“Foresight2020,” Izuku chirps. “I’m already following you.”
Hawks clicks some things, then frowns and tucks away his phone.
“There, it’s done, that make you feel better?” Izuku grins and clasps his hands together in response. Hawks rubs his hand over his face and groans, “I’m too young to not understand the kids these days.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t understand me either,” Izuku chirps.
“It does not, but thank you.” Hawks takes his hands away from his face looks down at the street. “Are you ready to get down?”
“Uh, you can catch people who are falling from buildings, right?” Izuku asks, a fantastic idea forming in his mind.
“Yes?” Hawks says carefully, turning to Izuku.
Too late. Izuku is already jumping from the lip of the building. Hey, his quirk didn’t tell him to stop, so might as well, right?
Hawks’ shout of surprise and utter confusion follows him down.
The feathers do catch him though.
Izuku should retroactively make a bucket list, just so he can scratch that off it.
- - -
One day, not long after that, his quirk tells him to buy a certain phone charger, and when he gets home he finds that it perfectly fits the crime phone. Huh, he never charged that, did he? At some point in the past year or so it'd died when he hadn't been paying attention.
After a few minutes, his quirk calls him over and he picks it up and turns it on. Within moments, notifications begin to pop up.
[LEADER!!!]
Good evening my fine friends! It has been long since our last conquest, but it seems time to once again try our luck in the endless game that is life!
[Viena]
Uh, didn’t almost all of us get arrested last time?
[LEADER!!!]
A truer thing has never been said, my favored teammate! However, the time has come that we have once again achieved freedome! Thus, it has come time for a new venture!
[Slingshot]
Would it cause you, like, physical pain to not use an exclamation point?
[LEADER!!!]
No! It would not!
[Paper Cup]
Leader! Did you break out of prison!? I thought you were going to be another two months?
[LEADER!!!]
No I did not! I got out early on good behavior! Because I kept giving other prisoners heartfelt and life-changing advice which led to positive habits and happier lifestyles!
I did this for VERY nefarious reasons! Like FRAUD!!
Anyway! My new plan! That is the thing which we should talk about now!
[Slingshot]
..is…?
[Paper Cup]
I think he’s typing, give him a minute. He’s told me that the phone is too small for his thumbs.
[LEADER!!!]
The plan is simple, but in that simplicity is complexity! There is a building which has been destroyed in a villain attack, before it is completely demolished we shall go through it for any valuable items! The relevant paperwork will be filed within a few weeks! We shall be stealing from directly beneath the heroes' noses!
[Slingshot]
Is that...even illegal? If you;ve filed the paperwork to do it?
[LEADER!!!]
Yes!!
[Paper Cup]
You heard him, it’s illegal, he would know. He’s the criminal mastermind here
[LEADER!!!]
You flatter me! Continue!
[Paper Cup]
You have beautiful eyes
[LEADER!!!]
This has become too much and I must now leave!
[Slingshot]
So, we’re doing this?
Izuku’s quirk pushes him to answer.
[sparky]
I’m in.
- - -
When he’s thirteen, Izuku stands in front of another building, this one is an incredibly expensive mansion. It looks like something celebrities would live in.
With the fake ID in his pocket and newly bought gardening gloves, Izuku walks through the front door.
There’s a man with a mustache and two heads who opens the door as soon as Izuku knocks.
“Oh, you’re here to apply?” he asks.
Izuku nods, because that seems the thing to do.
“Thank you for coming.” The man shakes Izuku’s hand, then starts to give him a tour of the entryway and kitchen.
“My name is Konishi Kazuo,” the man says. “I’m the manager of the property.”
“Mikumo Akatani,” Izuku responds. For some reason Izuku’s quirk is pushing him to avoid the cameras, so he does.
Eventually, Konishi takes Izuku to the back yard, then sighs. “I’m sure you’re wondering where the owners of the house are, yes?”
Izuku is not, but nods anyway.
“They are currently on a vacation. That’s where you come in.” Konishi nervously looks at Izuku. “You see, the master of the house made me swear that everything on the list he gave would be completed by the time they get back.”
The man conspiratorially leans forward, grabbing Izuku by the shoulder.
“It’s impossible,” Konishi hisses.
“Really? Can I see the list?” Izuku asks, wondering why he’s here.
Konishi shows Izuku a list, then shows him the lawn, the gardens, and the other gardens.
Izuku starts to get it.
“Why don’t you have another person to help you?” Izuku asks.
“I did, I had a gardener that did all the landscaping. But she quit a few days ago,” Konishi says miserably. “Will you help me?”
Izuku stares at the huge lawn, with the expensive and complicated looking garden. He’s worked with plants before. He’s got near a whole rainforest of houseplants in him and his mom’s apartment. This seems like something a little bit bigger than that.
“Of course,” Izuku promises, shaking Konishi's hand.
He spends a few hours pretending to know stuff about having a real job, then leaves after settling on a frankly ridiculous hourly pay.
He passes the front gate and remembers to check the name plate.
Todoroki household.
Huh.
- - -
Some time later, the leader of the group sends out the time and place of his proposed meeting. Within a moment his quirk settles into his stomach, telling him to join them in the meeting.
It leads him to get his makeup set and he begins the now familiar routine of making his face look older with contour.
He pauses in the mirror. He looks a few years older, maybe sixteen or seventeen. He’d dyed his hair black a few weeks ago and had used a bit of gel to style it away from his face. He smiles in a practiced way at his reflection. He looks clean cut but harmless.
He grabs a sturdy pair of shoes and leaves the apartment. He rides the bus to the address that the leader had texted. As he gets close he sees the rubble that used to be a building. It had once been some office building, but now most of it had collapsed to the bottom floor.
Out front of the building is a group of people casually chatting. As Izuku walks toward them, the tallest of the group waves enthusiastically.
He has wild, pale hair and a wiry frame. The way he moves reminds Izuku of a hummingbird.
"Good morning!" he shouts, though people are really not that far away from him. "I hope you are prepared for a productive day of villainy!"
Someone beside him gives him a smack on the back of the head and another two glance around them in alarm.
The woman who’d smacked the one Izuku assumes to be “LEADER!!!” looks similar to him, enough that Izuku suspects they're related.
"Why would you do that to me?" Leader whines.
"Because," the one who'd smacked him says with particular emphasis. "We are, not, doing anything illegal." She coughs and glances around. "We are a legal salvage party who will not be getting in trouble with the authorities today."
"But, Seiko," the leader says slowly. "It is actually legal. I just kept saying it was illegal so more people would come help."
"You…You!" Seiko makes a strangled noise and throws up her hands. "You've been insisting on this crime thing for weeks! You kept trying to convince me that it really was illegal!"
"And lo and behold; you came to help!" the leader answers cheerily.
Seiko turns and walks away.
"Alright!" The leader says after a few moments of silence. “Time for introductions!”
A few people glance around at each other.
One man, tired looking, with an air of easy going amusement, raises his hand.
“Yes! You!” the leader shouts happily.
“I don’t think giving one another our real names would be wise,” he says evenly, "perhaps we should exclusively use nicknames.”
“Oh! Code names!” the leader says, fascinated. “I love it! I am leader with three exclamation points!”
“Are we using the names from the group chat?” the tired man asks, looking a little stricken.
“Of course, anything else could be confusing!” Leader says.
“Oh.” The tired man spends a few moments seeming to muster strength. “My name is Paper Cup then.”
There are a few muffled coughs around the circle. Leader eyes Paper Cup with renewed interest.
“And I’m Slingshot,” the woman who Leader had called Seiko said from just outside the circle. She had the same pale hair and tall frame as Leader.
Introductions continue around the circle in a similar vein. Some members of the group find themselves with more reasonable names than others.
“I’m Sparky,” Izuku says when it comes to his turn.
There’s a bit of a silence when attention lands on him. Leader and Slingshot send each other wary glances and anxiety rises in Izuku’s gut. But nothing comes of it and introductions continue.
Once introductions are done, Leader begins going through the safety procedures of salvaging. For this process, he actually slows down and listens to questions.
After safety vests and hard hats have been passed around, the group disperses around the site to begin the salvaging.
It continues on for some time, the group carefully pulling apart parts of the building and prying loose anything that seemed valuable.
Izuku finds that the process is unexpectedly fun. It’s careful work. Each area that they explore needs to be first cleared as safe, then meticulously searched through for valuables.
But the group is in high spirits and Izuku finds himself joining in with the jokes and cheerful chatter as they start clearing new areas of the building. They often send him to look through the new areas first and the group give him praise or congratulations each time he finds something else interesting.
After a few hours the safe parts of the building have all been cleared and the group decides to call it.
They stack everything that has been salvaged into the truck which Leader has brought. The man himself runs to a nearby store and returns with drinks and snacks for the whole group. They sit together on the front steps of the building and enjoy the shade. The heat had grown intense during the hours they’d spent working and it’s a relief to sit and enjoy the rest.
Izuku finds himself with a juice box and a box of crackers.
To his left is the man who’s resigned himself to being called Paper Cup. He’s sipping a soda and lounging against the step. On the other side of him, Leader is excitedly telling the group about the friends who he’d made while fulfilling his community service hours. Apparently one of them had been a fan of the same TV series as him and they planned to visit some convention together. Izuku listens idly.
Eventually members of the group begin to leave, each thanking Leader for his plan. Leader promises to contact them once he sells everything they’ve salvaged to pay them for the day.
Once only a few members remain, Izuku decides that he should follow their lead and return home.
“Thanks for the plan, Leader,” Izuku says, standing and stepping off of the steps. “I really enjoyed today.”
“It is none other than my duty as your leader!” the man chirps, waving happily back at Izuku. “If I ever find myself in need of minions again—”
“Don’t call them minions,” Slingshot interrupts.
“—helping hands for my nefarious deeds,” Leader continues, “then I will be sure to call for your aid! Thank you for your help my friend.”
“Of course, see you again sometime.” Izuku smiles and waves as he continues on his way.
He heads in the direction of the bus stop, but has only gone a block before his hands begin to shake and he stops to stare at them.
His fingers shake, but the vines look worse. They’re spasming across his fingers, growing and shifting in wild waves. Izuku feels a sense of nausea growing from his stomach, along with a deep sense of wrongness and a faint hiss of static in his ears.
He winces and presses his hand against his eye, the hissing quickly growing louder.
He manages a few more steps for it becomes too much and he leans against a wall. His heart begins pounding and he glances around.
The feeling rises up even more and he takes an uneven breath. He watches the vines flicker across his hands. Then they completely stop.
They’re frozen on his skin. Like a drawing or a tattoo. Black with the slightest sheen of green. They’re frozen as they were. Jagged and fractured across his fingers.
Something is wrong, very wrong. Something about his quirk has shifted, it's something like pain, but deeper.
The comforting presence in his chest is gone for the first time. There's an empty place in the pit of his stomach and something like nausea is creeping into its place.
He glances up and in front of him there's a man walking down the sidewalk. He has dark tinted glasses and one of those white and red canes in his hand.
He doesn't seem to notice Izuku and he continues onward, but then he raises his own hand to his face like he's feeling something similar to Izuku.
He stops, then seems unsure of what to do.
“Ugh,” he says, tapping around him with the cane. “Hello? Is someone there?”
Izuku thinks the man is talking to him.
“Yes? I, uh, something’s—” Izuku trails off, not sure what he should say. There's a new anxiety building in his chest. Something new and unsure that he’s never felt before.
“Oh,” The man reaches to his left and lightly touches a fence, “You have some sort of future seeing quirk then?”
Izuku jerks upright, mouth open. He leans backward again, mouth closing and opening.
“I, uh yeah I do,” he manages eventually. “Why?”
He’d never said that to anyone before. He’d let that secret lie for almost a decade now.
“Ah, you're just a kid?” The man asks, nodding his head like anything here made sense. “Have you ever run into someone with a future seeing quirk before?”
Izuku shakes his head dumbly.
Then realized that the man is blind and that was stupid.
“No. No I don’t think so,” Izuku manages.
“Well this is your first feedback then,” the man says. “My quirk lets me see exactly eight seconds into a future where I don’t act.”
Izuku pauses, trying to figure out what this means. But the man continues.
“Say I’m walking down the street.” He gestures around. “My quirk tells me what the street will look like in eight seconds if I don’t take another step forward.”
Izuku doesn’t quite get it.
“Whatever, details.” The man waves his hand. “You’ve got some quirk that lets you see into the future. When two quirks that see the future interact you get feedback.”
“Feedback?”
“Like with audio, the two quirks will both be seeing and reacting to changes that the other one causes. This causes a loop where both quirks are continually effecting the results of each other. Eventually both quirk users can’t see anything with their quirks.”
The man shrugs.
“What happens?” Izuku asks, anxiety rising.
“Oh, nothing, just some temporary inconvenience.” The man gestures at his glasses. “Particularly for me, since I can only see things which happen in the future. If you’re around for a while like me, these things can happen a lot.”
Izuku tightens his hands around his waist.
“Oh.” He glances around. “What do we do?”
“Well,” the man says. “One of us needs to walk away until the feedback stops. It might last for awhile, but it’s not permanent”
“Oh. Oh!” Izuku jumps to his feet. “Yes. Of course. Thank you for your help. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
He bows, he doesn’t really know what he’s supposed to do but it feels better than nothing.
“No problem, take care out there,” the man replies, still lightly holding the gate.
Izuku returns the way he’d come at a fast pace, glancing behind him.
Once he’s a block away. Izuku sits down and stares at his hands. The vines are moving. Just barely. They’re still splayed and awkward. Nothing like their normal graceful sprawling. But they are slowly moving across his skin.
He can feel just the slightest pressure of his quirk in his chest. It’s not quite comforting. It’s not leading him like it always does. It’s just there. Like it’s sleeping or something.
He looks back. The man has continued on his way.
Izuku waves, after a pause that Izuku suspects is exactly eight seconds, the man waves back, then turns a corner.
Izuku can feel his quirk, but he still feels anxiety. It feels slow and disconnected, like it doesn’t quite know what’s going on yet. He sits down on a set of stairs and presses his face into his knees.
He stays like that for awhile.
- - -
“Hey! Sparky!”
Izuku jerks his head up. He blinks. The sun is beginning to set, but the sky is still bright.
In front of him are Leader and Slingshot.
“Oh,” Izuku says, feeling a bit slow.
“What’s going on, kid?” Slingshot asks. Her voice is flat but not unkind.
“I—uh.” Izuku feels something unfamiliar. Indecision. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do. He glances down at his hands. They give him nothing. He wants help though. He wants someone to understand and tell him what he should do.
“I had some trouble with my quirk,” he says. He feels like he’s stepping off a cliff.
“Your quirk?” Leader asks.
“Yeah.” Izuku pauses. “Foresight.”
“Foresight?” Slingshot glances at him searchingly. “I thought it was something with fire?”
Izuku shakes his head dumbly.
“I—” He swallows. “I lied. About my quirk.”
The words feel strange.
Leader pauses, he seems like he’s buzzing with energy, but doesn’t know which direction to move with it. He sits down next to Izuku. Slingshot glances around, shrugs, and sits on Izuku’s other side.
“Why did you lie?” Leader asks, voice sounding understanding, but a little hurt.
“It’s not an easy quirk to explain. I guess.” Izuku hugs his knees, looking down at the concrete in front of him. “I don’t tell most people.”
His quirk isn’t guiding him for once. It’s just settling around his hands, not telling him to talk, but not pushing him to stop. Just there, present but still.
“Well, would you try?” Slingshot tries.
“It—It tells me things that I need. Or things I need to do.” Izuku starts. “Sometimes it’s simple, like I always grab an umbrella when it’s going to rain. Or I have an extra pencil when someone else needs to borrow one. Like my quirk knows everything I’ll need.”
“That sounds useful,” Slingshot says, her tone is reserved.
“Yeah, but sometimes… Sometimes the things that it asks me to do are just… They just don’t make sense. Sometimes things that I do only make sense months into the future. For years I’ve just been doing these things because my quirk has never led me into trouble.”
Izuku pauses, not sure what else it would be right to explain here.
“You said you're having trouble with your quirk?” Leader prompts.
Izuku glances at him.
“Well… It’s just that I’ve learned about something called feedback. I was walking down the street and I ran into someone who also had a quirk that let him see into the future and—”
“Ah,” Leader interrupts. “Feedback.”
“You know about it?” Izuku asks.
“You know something?” Slingshot asks at the same time.
Leader waves his hands dismissively.
“Yeah. It was at school. This kid Tamaki Kin had this quirk where he knew what the weather would be, and there was this other kid who could tell which way a coin could land.” Leader was gesturing wildly as he talked. “One time I was talking to Tamaki Kin and the other kid walked by and they both flipped out. So we had a whole thing where we got the kid to try and tell how a coin would land. He couldn’t do it and got really mad and started chasing Tamaki Kin. And I couldn’t stand that, so I started chasing the kid. Then the teachers were called, and I ended up getting detention. Which is where I met this other kid called—”
Slingshot interrupts him by flicking a pebble at his knee with remarkable accuracy.
“We don’t need your whole life story,” she says.
“Oh yeah right. So anyway, yeah, feedback, it’s like a whole thing.”
“Oh,” Izuku says. “I’d never heard about it.”
“Wow kid,” Slingshot says with a whistle. “That must have been a shock then. Glad that it didn’t turn out too bad.”
“Yeah,” Izuku says. Something about the whole conversion has settled him. “It was really…I’ve never had my quirk cut out before. It’ll come back I think, but I just…”
He shrugs, not sure what he wants to say.
Leader stands then.
“Well, all’s well that ends well. Glad to hear that you’re feeling better.”
Slingshot sends him a look.
“You want a ride home kid?” she asks, she stands up and offers Izuku a hand up.
He takes it.
- - -
The offered ride is cramped. They are in the truck that Leader (or Izuku suspects, actually Slingshot) had rented to haul back the salvage they’d collected earlier today.
Slingshot drives carefully through the cramped streets.
Leader sits in the middle, filling the silence with his seemingly infinite number of stories. Most of them ended in him being in trouble with one authority figure or another.
Izuku sits in the passenger seat. Feeling light and relaxed in a way he hadn’t before.
He thinks it’ll be alright.
- - -
It takes the better part of a day for his quirk to be back to normal. The next afternoon, as he’s watering his plants, he finally gets a clear impulse.
His hands twitch away from the plant he’s been watering and he holds his breath for a second.
His quirk pushes him to store away the water spout and bring out a pair of clippers. He prunes a few new shoots off of his goldenchild ivy. Once that’s done. He watches as his vines retract back into the pair of freckles on his wrists. They settle down, a deep and comforting feeling.
The wave of relief is so strong that Izuku needs to sit down for a few minutes.