Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Izuku, you okay?” Hisashi Midoriya asks, looking at his kid, covered in dirt and scrapes.

Izuku looks up at his father, and tears crawl out of his eyes. He starts sobbing.

“C’mere, kiddo.” His dad kneels down, hugging Izuku as the five-year-old throws himself into his dad’s arms. Izuku, exhausted and emotionally drained from his day at preschool, falls asleep as soon as his tears subside, and Hisashi picks up his kid, carrying him home.

“Ink!” He shouts into the house when he gets back, and Inko Midoriya returns to the living room. “Kiddo got hurt…” Hisashi grimaces when he sees the bruises. Exactly the size for a child’s fists. “I think it might’ve been a bully.”

Inko sighs sadly. “We thought this might happen. But what do we do?”

Hisashi’s mind scans through possibilities, landing on a few. “My brother has a daughter, she’s getting personal tutoring.”

Inko draws a blank, Hisashi can see it on her face. “Okay?”

Hisashi takes a deep breath. “Izuku needs a friend his age, and a new way to get schooling. Gods know if we’ll ever find a school with a genuine no-bullying policy.”

Inko grimaces. Hisashi knows she doesn’t like the idea of homeschooling.

“We’ll give it until middle school, then it’s his decision.” Inko says.

Hisashi nods, and grabs his phone, he has a few calls to make.

—~—

Izuku wakes up very slowly the next day, eyes feeling crusty and swollen. Something was wiggling his leg to get him to wake up.

“Hey sweetie.” His mom says, smiling kindly. “Let’s get some breakfast in you, there’s a long day ahead.”

“Mama?” He asks, flashes of the previous day going through his head. “I… I don’t want to go to school today.”

Inko nods. “I know sweetie. That’s not happening today. We’ve just got some errands to run, okay?”

Izuku blinks and nods, getting up with a bit of strain. “Ow…” He winces, knee hurting from where Yubi had kicked it.

“Yeah, we bandaged you up, but it’ll take a bit for the bruises to fade.” Inko says, sadly. “Just say if it starts to hurt too much, okay? Dad won’t mind carrying you.”

Izuku nods, and follows his mother into the living room.

“What do you mea-? They wh-? Holy shit.” Papa says, talking into the phone.

“Hisashi, Cussing.” Mama says, giving a light glare.

“Kacchan says worse.” Izuku says, then winces as he remembers the other five-year-old’s participation in the bullying. “Sh- Should I stop calling him that? He-He said he didn’t want to be my friend…”

Mama winces and looks at Izuku. “Well… That depends on you, Izuku. Do you want to stop calling him that?”

Izuku chews on his lip. “I dunno…”

Papa briefly mutters “Sorry, hold on a second.” Then pulls his phone away from his ear, “Izuku, kiddo, think of it this way, does he still deserve the nickname you gave him?”

Izuku blinks at his father. “Um…” He thinks to the things Kacchan said. The… Mean things he said about everyone.

Izuku shakes his head, it pains him, but no, Kacchan doesn’t deserve it.

“Then there ya go, kiddo. Call him Bakugo.” Papa says, encouraging Izuku with a challenge.

“B… Bakugo doesn’t deserve th-the nick… Nickname.” Izuku nods, “B-But Bakugo is too hard to say…”

Hisashi chuckles a little, “Well, if all goes according to plan, you shouldn’t need to see him for until the name becomes easier to say. I’m gonna get back on the phone, kay?”

Izuku nods, and starts thinking through the day… The teachers had revealed that Izuku was quirkless, and after school he had to stop Kac- Bakugo from bullying another kid.

Then his dad showed up to walk him home, and he cried… A lot, then he woke up today.

“Izuku, since you missed dinner, you’ll be having a big breakfast, alright?” Mama calls, and Izuku feels a bit of spit form in his mouth at the thought, stomach grumbling.

“Yeah!” Izuku shouts a little.

—~—

Momo Yaoyorozu is… Quite lonely.

She loves her family and the people who work in her house, don’t get her wrong, but they’re all… Old. Nobody her age is around the house.

Her mother walks into her room. “Momo? There’s someone you might want to meet.”

Momo nods and stands up from her desk ‘Hmmm,’ She continues trying to figure out the problems that tutor gave her while following Mom.

It’s mostly lessons on how to be a good person, since according to Mama and Papa it takes a while for Mathematics to become something she can learn. She feels a little bit like pouting when she hears about that, the numbers games are so fun!

Momo blinks as Mom stops, gesturing to a boy, slightly shorter than herself, who’s busy looking at his own shoes. “Momo, meet Izuku, your cousin.” Momo’s Mom says. “You’re both around the same age, and we figured you two might become friends!”

Izuku briefly looks at her, and waves, before darting backwards. Hiding behind who Momo assumes is his father’s leg.

Momo smiles and waves at him, he seems to take a deep breath, and steps out again.

‘He’s… Cute?’ a bit like a bunny or a scared cat. “Nice to meet you… Izu- Izuku.” She stutters around the name.

“Yo-You as well, Momo.” Izuku says.

They both seem to take a deep breath, and realize they’re at least somewhat alike.

“Wanna play games?” Momo asks, bringing around her tablet and turning on her sudoku app.

Izuku flinches at the first mention of games, but when Momo brings out her tablet he tilts his head a little, and nods, suddenly absorbed in the idea.

—~—

Both pairs of parents seem to breathe out sighs they didn’t know they were holding. Hisashi relaxes and stretches his shoulders as he sits in one of the fancy chairs.

Haruto, Hisashi’s brother and Momo’s father, smiles at Hisashi. “They’re both quiet kids, but they’ll get along well, it seems.”

Nemuri, Pro Hero Midnight and Momo’s mother, leans back with a light smirk. “Think they’ll have similar quirks?”

Both Midoriya parents freeze. “Um… Izuku’s quirkless…”

Nemuri tilts her head a little, grimacing as she remembers her own experience as being presumed quirkless. “How’d they determine that?”

“The… the Toe joint?” Inko answers, Hisashi having not been able to attend that doctor’s visit.

Nemuri sighs and leans back in her seat. “So fucking dumb…” She jolts as they wince, realizing how that sounded. “Not either of you! Or anything about this situation! Just, the missing toe joint only means you were born from or had a recent ancestor that had a mutation to their feet. I have the toe joint, and we all know my quirk exists.”

Haruto huffs a laugh. “Yeah, me and Hisashi actually talked about it on the phone. Here’s the quirk specialist that we took Momo to’s info, by the way.” Haruto grabs a paper and hands it to Hisashi, who accepts it with a nod.

Inko sighs and leans back into the couch. “So… Izuku might not be quirkless?”

Hisashi gives her a flat look. “You really need to stop self-flagellating. It’s not your damn fault if Izuku doesn’t or does have one. It’s a combination of stupid shit that’s leading to our kid having a hard life.”

Inko nods, taking another breath and sitting up.

“Why would him being quirkless be an issue anyway?” Nemuri asks, eyes narrowing.

“He… Wants to be a hero. It’s the only thing that keeps him passionate. It would be so dangerous! But… I can’t take it away from him.”

Nemuri huffs. “Okay.” She puts her elbows on her knees and looks sharply at Inko. “I’m a hero. The R-18 hero, Midnight.” She flicks her wrist and suddenly she’s holding a hero license. “You three all know my quirk. Know what someone needs to beat me? A gas mask.”

“I’ve been operating as a hero for 10 years. Several of my takedowns have a situation where someone is prepared for me. All a quirk does is give someone an extra wrench. It’s not the whole toolbox.” She huffs.

“Inko, I get being protective. Gods know I don’t want Momo to get into heroism, but if that’s what she wants to do, then that’s what she’ll do. Period.” Nemuri shrugs. “Especially if she was as determined as your kid sounds.”

“B… No, you’re right.” Inko’s face hardens a little.

Nemuri nods. “Good that you recognized it now.” She hides her hero license again.

Inko then looks at Hisashi. “Um. I might need your help when we get back.”

Hisashi nods, Inko had been agonizing about what she’d said when Izuku and her got back from the appointment.

—~—

“So… You put the numbers in the blank spaces, and make sure there are not dupl-duplicates in the rows, colu-columns, or the same 3-by-3 square as the number?” Izuku asks, clarifying the rules of the number puzzle.

Momo nods, and Izuku focuses on the tablet, slowly working through the little squares. “D-Done?” He asks, hitting confirm.

The numbers all light up green, and Momo cheers. “Good job!” She says, smiling wide.

Izuku smiles back timidly.

They play various games, mostly revolving around numbers, for until Izuku’s parents tell him it’s time to go.

The pair hug briefly before going their separate ways.

—

Izuku nervously sits in the doctor’s office a day or two after playing with Momo… They just ran some tests, and now they’re waiting for a doctor to arrive.

Mama and Papa had apologized the same day as his playtime with Momo, saying even If he didn’t have a quirk, he could be a hero. He couldn’t have been happier.

But then they also mentioned that they needed to get a second opinion on whether or not he has a quirk. According to Mama and Papa the other doctor did tests that left too much room for error, whatever that means.

Izuku jolts and bites his lip as the doctor comes in. “Hello~ sorry I’m late. Other appointment ran long. This the kid?” He asks.

Both parents and Izuku nod.

“Hello there,” He smiles at Izuku. “I heard the previous doctor falsely used the toe joint method to determine if you had a quirk. Can you look me in the eye? It’ll help me see what’s going on.”

Izuku steels himself, and looks up, straight into the doctor’s eyes.

bthmp, bthmp. Something strange, a container of sorts, pulses in the center of his chest. It feels like a second heart, or something.

Izuku blinks, and the doctor does as well. “Congrats kid, you have a quirk. From what I can see, it’s got a special activation condition. Or a sort of rule where it won’t activate until a certain thing happens.”

“Wh… What is it?” Izuku asks, still stunned by the fact that he has a quirk at all.

The doctor shrugs. “Special Activation Quirks are hard for me to work with. I can’t identify the activation or the quirk until the condition is fulfilled. But from what I’ve seen before, you need to search for things that make the quirk thump, like you felt when you looked in my eyes.”

“The faster or stronger the quirk pulses, the more likely it is to crack its shell. You may slowly unlock features of the quirk that way, or one crack could break open the shell all the way, it’s impossible to know until it happens.”

Izuku blinks, dumbfounded. He has a quirk. He has a quirk! He has to tell Kac- no, Izuku doesn’t like him anymore. He has to tell Momo!

“Izuku? The doctor asked you something.” Mom says, and Izuku jolts, blinking and returning from deep inside his mind.

“What do you want to call it, for now?” The doctor asks, repeating himself. “The name might have to change when you discover what the quirk actually does, but for now it needs a name.”

“… Energetic Heart.” Izuku mutters after a long moment of thought. “It feels like it’s st-storing some form of energy, and it thumps like a heart.”

The doctor nods and writes that down.

After a lot of stuff that flies over Izuku’s head, they leave the doctor’s office. Izuku would later excitedly tell Momo about it and the pair would continue to play and slowly become inseparable.

It would be a while before Izuku starts letting his quirk pulses guide him, but a time will come.

Chapter Text

Izuku slowly makes a list of things that cause the Pulses.

So far he’s got when others sing around him, when others dance around him, when watching a hero fight makes the pulses stronger than normal, and the pulses are very faint or very strong when changing his clothes, it depends on the day, really.

The two things he can do anything about, Dancing or singing, cause a vice to form around his ribcage, making mustering the courage to do those things very hard.

He reports this to his parents one day, having forgotten to actually say anything about it until they asked about the pulses nearly three months after the visit that confirmed his quirk’s existence.

They tell him to just let the cracks form naturally, that there’s no need to force himself, so he doesn’t try and force it. He just lets the days pass by, getting tutored with Momo and then playing with the girl when both of them are done. There are a few instances of note when this pattern is broken.

The first time was when Izuku met one of his favorite heroes.

Momo had mentioned at several intervals an ‘Uncle Hizashi,’ It confused Izuku at first because Momo wouldn’t be referencing his father, so when Izuku met Uncle Hizashi, his brain definitely short circuited for a moment.

—

Izuku stares at the man who just patted him on the head and introduced himself as Uncle Hizashi, eyes going wide. “P-Present Mic?”

The man laughs. “Wow! You figured that one out fast!”

The gruff looking man at his side just rolls his eyes and scoots past, going to presumably talk to Auntie Nemu.

“I… I don’t think I’ll be able to call you Hizashi… T-Too similar to my dad’s name, feels weird.” He somehow manages to keep the scream of ‘Plus it’s PRESENT FUCKING MIC-‘ within the walls of his mind.

The man just grins. “Well you can call me Uncle Mic if that’s more your speed.”

Izuku nods, still thoroughly spaced out.

—~—

“Is he okay?” Hizashi asks the kid’s dad. He’d walked over after a few other conversations. The kid’s been zoned out the entire time. Momo seems to be entertained by his blanked out state though.

Hisashi looks to where Izuku is staring off into space, “Yeah, it’s just what happens when he’s thinking. You’re high up on his list of favorite heroes, so he’s probably processing that he just met you. Out of costume, and that you told him to call you an uncle. A little too much at once, but he’ll bounce back.”

“How high am I on that list?” Hizashi asks, a little curious. He didn’t realize someone connected to those he called family rated him highly.

“Last time he rambled about it you were pretty solidly in second place. Nothing can beat out All Might in his eyes, so being second place is pretty prestigious.”

“Second place? Holy shi-” He cuts himself off, remembering the kids in the room.

Hisashi nods, “It was really hard not to reveal that we’re friends. He loves your radio.”

Hizashi hums, a bit stunned and puzzled now that he knows this, “I’m… Really not sure how or what to do with that information.”

The kid’s dad shrugs. “Just be you. Kiddo’ll pick up on it if you try and edit your personality to match his perception of Present Mic. So just be Hizashi and eventually he’ll find a way to separate the two, though it’ll probably be hard.”

Hizashi nods, then moves on to the actual purpose of talking to Hisashi. “So, how’s the case against that doctor?”

Hisashi slumps a little, face pinching in annoyance as he lets out a sigh. “Honestly it’d be going well if he didn’t seem to disappear into the aether. Luckily the clinic that he worked at cooperated and provided free reevaluations for those wronged by his botched methods. But we still can’t track him down.”

—~—

It’s about a year after Izuku first started befriending Momo that Izuku met another hero on his personal favorites list.

He just gives Momo a tired glare as he realizes who ‘Uncle Tensei’ is. The Witch just giggles at the look on his face. Giggles! Can you believe it!

“This is my younger brother, Tenya.” Tensei Iida, AKA Ingenium, says. “Mind if he hangs out with you two while I talk with Nemuri?”

Momo and Izuku nod, and Tenya gives a deep bow. “It’s nice to meet you both!” He shouts slightly.

After a solid few seconds of Izuku and Momo staring in silence, the quiet children trying to figure out how to talk to someone so loud, Izuku speaks up. “Um, nice to meet you too.” Izuku says. “Wanna play some games?” He shows the tablet he’d been playing Tetris on.

Tenya seems to blink, and stands up straight. “If you’ll allow me!”

Izuku shrugs at Momo after briefly meeting her eyes, and gestures for Tenya to pick a spot on the floor with them.

They wind up making fast friends, Tenya slotting in nicely with the pair, as he doesn’t really talk much either. Though when he does it is kinda funny, and Izuku is fairly sure Tenya does it on purpose.

Izuku thinks the hardest he’d ever laughed is when Tenya shouted “THIS IS A WAR CRIME!” When he was smacked with a pillow Momo had thrown at Izuku, who had caught it and flung it aside, only to realize too late that he flung it at Tenya.

—

The first and smallest crack appears on the quirk shell three years later, when Izuku works up the courage to sing happy birthday to Momo on said girl’s ninth birthday.

The other years he still sung it, but it wasn’t him actually putting his voice into it, he’d mumble the lyrics, since he didn’t want to draw attention to himself.

The feeling of opening a crack in his quirk’s shell is a bit weird. For the first time, the pulsing calmed, finding a relief, as he hears the sound of cracking glass, and illusions appear around where Izuku is singing, Momo gaining a sash and crown with the words ‘Birthday Girl’ written on them while confetti that disappears as soon as it hits the table falls from the ceiling.

All he does is sing it normally, like the others around the table. It confuses him a little, but he continues the song through till the end, once again, just normally.

He finds himself staring at the confetti, still falling from the ceiling after everyone had stopped.

Izuku then breaks from the trance and looks at Momo. “Uh. H… Happy Birthday Momo?” He asks, hoping she would just roll with it. his best friend and cousin didn’t seem to get what he wanted, as she just rolls her eyes with a laugh, lifting the sash to look at it. She then pokes her fingers through it after holding it up for a moment.

“They’re not solid, you have to be really gentle to move them.” Momo notes, then smiles. “Still, it’s a really cool quirk!”

Izuku blushes a little, and rubs the back of his neck. “This… Isn’t all that it can do… The… The shell only cracked a little.” He can feel if he keeps talking about this he might go on a ramble, and today’s supposed to be about Momo, so he quickly tries to cast off attention.

“ANYWAY!” Izuku quickly waves attention off of himself with a shout. “Happy Birthday Momo!” He says more forcefully. It’s what he’d been attempting earlier, but Momo kept pushing attention on him.

Look, there’s a lot of people here, and Izuku has very little tolerance for people looking at him in general. Still, he recognizes when everyone seems to flinch slightly that he did the wrong thing by shouting and quiets down. “Sorry for shouting… It- It’s Momo’s day, focus on her.”

“Kiddo’s got a point.” Hisashi says, nodding. Tenya stiltedly pats Izuku on the back to try and help him in some way. It does help lessen his anxiety from his mess-up, at least.

The rest of the party goes like normal, and the crown and sash disappear in ribbons of light after half an hour. Momo looks a bit depressed by it, so Izuku sings the song again, remanifesting the items. Strangely this time he doesn’t find any reason to care about people hearing him or paying attention to him sing.

—

“Hmmm…” The quirk doctor from four years ago was luckily still in town, so Izuku and his parents went to him for a checkup a day after Momo’s birthday.

After a moment of staring into Izuku’s eyes and seemingly investigating the shell, the doctor comes to the same conclusion Izuku did. “It’s a small crack, leaking the power Izuku’s quirk uses. I can see a little bit of what the quirk does though… Tell me, do you feel anxiety surrounding singing anymore?”

Izuku shakes his head, he’d actually wanted to sing a lot now, it’s a bit weird. The doctor nods. “Yeah, that’s likely part of what your quirk does. As far as I can tell, it gives you anxiety surrounding a certain topic, like singing, and when you work up the courage to do said thing, like sing, it rewards you by burning the anxiety away and giving you the part of the quirk that pertains to said thing. This is just a theory though, don’t just go leaping into situations that make you feel anxious. It’s also possible you just have normal anxiety and the quirk burns away the ability to be anxious around those topics.”

Izuku nods. “I can feel the quirk pulse when I’m getting close to what it wants me to do. But at the same time the anxiety feels really strong.”

The doctor nods, thinking a bit. “It’d be a good idea to figure out what triggers your anxiety along with the pulses, then recreate certain things in controlled environments.”

Izuku already did that list thing, but he’ll try and narrow down exactly what feelings are where.

“Oh, and finally; right now your quirk is a Performative Emitter, but from what I can see, that’s really only a small fraction of it. So we’ll keep the current name and classification until it either fully unlocks or you figure out a name you like better.”

He once again pays no mind to the rest of the exchange as nobody talks directly to him. Instead focusing on his list, and feeling a bit of dread at the realization that Dance is on there.

He’d heard from Momo how hard dance classes were, Auntie Nemu had suggested them and Momo decided to go for exactly one class, and felt like she nearly died after said lesson, so she decided to postpone starting physical training until at least highschool. She still works on her quirk, but otherwise the only physical stuff she does is morning exercises and a short jog with Izuku every day.

‘Ughhhgg’ He thinks, getting into the car.

His dread must’ve shown on his face, because his dad asks “What’s going on, Kiddo?”

He decides not to lie, forcing through his anxiety to get to the root of the issue. “The idea of dancing makes the quirk pulse.” Izuku says.

His dad laughs a little. “Kiddo, I said it before and I’ll say it again; you don’t have to go to so many lengths, if you feel like dancing, do it, but we’re not going to force you to start unlocking parts of your quirk. Whatever time the shell breaks is the time it breaks.” His mom nods, but keeps her eyes ahead, focusing on the road.

“Plus it’s not like we’ll force you to go to classes for everything your quirk unlocks right away.” Mom says, shrugging a little.

Izuku nods, slowly taking breaths to let the anxiety fade back into the background, “I think it’s part of the same section for the quirk.” He says, changing subject a little.

“Well, dancing is performative. It makes sense.” Hisashi says, shrugging. “But what do you want to do now that you have this part of your quirk unlocked?” He seems to detect the attempt to change direction, but denies Izuku’s subtle request.

Said child sighs, and shrugs. “Choice paralysis, I think Tenya called it. I like my current schedule and set of things I do, but I think singing and learning how to do that would be fun.”

“Well, As your parent I’m gonna say try singing lessons. Like Momo did with the Dancing lessons, if you don’t like how it affects your schedule that much or just decide that learning the ‘proper’ way isn’t for you, then it’s fine to just stop them until later down the road, or just never do it again.” Hisashi says, shrugging.

—~—

A month later and Izuku and Momo are hanging out after doing some homework.

Momo had started researching chemistry in her own time, just little books of things she can easily comprehend, saving the complicated stuff for later down the road.

Izuku has started taking singing lessons, helping develop his voice and general ability to sing. He seems to find it fun, from what Momo has observed.

Momo huffs a laugh as she looks up from her book to see that Izuku had started singing absentmindedly again.

|Might + U - Makayla Philips|

It’s a quiet song, so he’s not really bothering her, and the illusions that pop up are just little stars floating around the room. Still, “Izuku, Quirk use.” She says, just warning him that he might have to recharge if he keeps singing. Granted to recharge all he has to do is walk around in the sun with his shirt off for a bit.

Oh, they figured out what his quirk stores, it's light, they can't really determine what energy from light since it's not like he's invisible or has any mutations that normally come with absorbing light, but walking around in the sun or under the stars seems to recharge his stores relatively quickly.

“Don’t worry ‘bout a thing…” He continues singing, briefly waving at her to say he heard her, but is singing anyway. He’s gotten good at it, by Momo’s measure anyway.

As the song probably finishes and he stops singing, Momo walks over to sit by him. “So what’s going on that you started singing?” She pokes one of the stars, making it fly across the room and bump into her wall.

“I like singing.” He shrugs, making Momo feel a little embarrassed for asking the question. “Good song started playing.” He adjusts his hair to show he had an earbud in. “Want one?” He pulls out another from a case in his pocket.

Momo feels a bit pensive, but accepts it.

She doesn’t regret it, and winds up deepening her own music library and playlists. Tenya ends up doing the same later, when Izuku is drawing and ends up singing a more whimsical folk tune and making little illusion foxes jump around the room.

—~—

It takes until just after Izuku’s tenth birthday for him to gain a new crack, or rather, for the crack from Momo’s birthday to widen a bit.

|Main Actor - Minami|

The first time he’d sang along to this particular one he cried, but it helps him develop his vocals and he enjoys the sound.

Anyways, as he was singing along, reading the lyrics despite already knowing them, he starts getting jittery. The usual cage was around his ribs, but it felt different than he’d thought when he started singing.

It felt a little more like excitement, wanting to start dancing, like something in his mind was screaming at him to just do it already.

After a few moments of processing this, his brain decided it had enough of thinking and he threw himself into dancing. Well, more like gently moving around his room in a more flowy and…

Okay, fine, He’s an uncoordinated mess, as with his singing it’ll take practice for him to actually be able to do these things, but the song is slow enough that he doesn’t do anything too fast. He just slowly spins and jumps around a few times. The sound of cracking and then breaking glass is noted and filed away as he focuses.

An illusion of rain appears as he sings along with the song, quiet enough so he doesn’t eclipse the woman’s voice, and as he steps, little puddle splashes appear around his feet, nothing but illusions.

As the song ends, Izuku walks out of his room, riding a bit of a high, the rain and little splash effects at his feet following him.

“The uh… The shell broke a little more.” He says to his parents, kicking at the ground and making a slight spray of illusion water go flying from his foot, like kicking at a puddle.

“Dancing?” Dad asks, and Izuku nods.

Mom hums and takes out a paper and pencil. “You called it when the crack was small last time, so how cracked do you think it is now? Draw it, if you can.” She sets the paper and pencil on the table.

Izuku takes a moment to think, humming, then draws a circle, and a small crack in the bottom right corner of it. “This was what I think it looked like with singing,” He says, then draws from one of the splinters from the first crack, winding back to the edge of the circle, creating a hole in the shell, which he colors in. “And this is now.”

“That’s… Actually pretty small in the grand scheme of things.” Mom says, tilting her head to the side. “What is your quirk going to be…?” She wonders a little.

Izuku shrugs. “Instruments don’t do anything to make the pulses… Changing clothes does, and some days the pulse is stronger than others… Watching hero fights also makes the pulses strong.” Izuku squints a little, trying to piece it together and failing, he gives up with a sigh. “Quirks are so weird.”

On that, his parents can only nod.

Chapter Text

Izuku looks at Momo, who’s reading a cute romance novel, fully absorbed and turning very red.

Meanwhile he’s been working on his english pronunciation, to make singing in that language easier.

He’s gotten a bit bored and decides to mess with Momo a bit. He makes the gutteral sound from the start of ‘Down With the Sickness’ by Disturbed. He didn’t like the rest of the song very much, but the gutteral sound was in a lot of memes so he learned to replicate it.

She jolts, looks around, then gives Izuku a flat glare and flings a pillow at him. He catches it and sets it down, sticking his tongue out a little.

Momo huffs a laugh and shakes her head. “What’s up, Izuku?”

Izuku shrugs. “Wanted to talk to you. Dunno what about, but practicing english pronunciation was getting boring.”

He’d decided against practicing dance until, like Momo, at least highschool. That way the pair can take the same class together. If Momo wants to anyway.

“Hm.” Momo huffs. “You’re the conversationalist out of us. What do you expect me to do?”

Izuku shrugs. “Why… Why do you want to be a hero?”

Momo blinks. “Did we never talk about this?”

Izuku shakes his head. “Not that I remember.”

“Well… Honestly I think I would’ve become a hero either way, but your line of thinking definitely inspired me. I want to help people. That’s about it.”

Izuku nods, humming. “And if you hadn’t met me?”

Momo squints and tilts her head, looking like it’s hard to imagine that kind of time. “all I can think is because I’d want a side job that I can do when I’m not running the Yaoyorozu business in the future. Or maybe that I wouldn’t want to run the Yaoyorozu business and took after my mother. Either way, what about you?”

“Hm… Well, I think I’d probably be in a much worse place if we hadn’t met, but I’d still want to be a hero. It’s the only thing that’d keep my passion.”

“What about Music?” Momo asks, scooting closer.

Izuku shrugs. “I love singing, but it’s nowhere near as important to me as being a hero. I don’t know how to describe it.” He takes a second, then seems to figure out how to describe it. “It’s like the stars for my quirk. Heroism is the sun, while the stars are Dancing and Singing. I love the stars, but the Sun is just… better?” he asks, unsure of how to describe it beyond that.

Momo snorts and nods a little. “I think I get it.”

After a few moments of the pair just continuing to be quiet and think to themself, Izuku brings up his phone and speaker. “Wanna listen to music and draw?”

Momo nods with a sigh, relaxing her shoulders a little. “Sure, sounds fun.”

—

The next day, Tenya comes over after his school finishes out, and Izuku decides to talk with him a bit. Mostly because after asking Momo the previous day he’s curious.

“Why do you want to be a hero, Tenya?” He’d heard the boy talk about heroism a lot, so he knows the boy wants to be a hero, but not much else.

“Oh, I want to be like my brother.” Tenya says, managing to keep his voice low after years of practice.

“So… because you look up to your brother?” Izuku asks, and Tenya nods. “Huh, I thought because…”

“Because Iidaten has been a family agency for generations that I would be forced to inherit it?” Izuku nods, and Tenya huffs, “No, my family is quite adamant that both me and my brother could do whatever we want. But growing up around and with heroes tends to inspire one to become a hero, so from a certain perspective it might be manipulative.”

Tenya scratches his chin as he thinks on that for a moment, then shakes his head. “But no, I could’ve declared that I would be an accountant or something and my family would respect my wishes.”

“An accountant?” Izuku asks.

Tenya shrugs, not really sure why he said that job particularly.

—

It’s at eleven years old and nearing twelve that Izuku and Momo’s parents sit them down to have a talk.

“So.” Izuku’s Dad starts, sighing, seeming a bit tense. “You both are nearing middle school age. This is a choice we were already planning on giving Izuku, but your parents have also decided to extend the option to you as well, Momo.”

Inko sets her hand on Hisashi’s shoulder. “Basically put, we’re giving the two of you the choice to start Middle School when the new school year starts in a few months. Since you’re both the same age as Tenya, you’ll be going to the same Middle School as him, if you want to.”

Izuku tilts his head to the side a little. “Why is dad so tense?”

Dad shrugs. “That’s… Something we’ll tell you about after the decision is made.”

‘Hiding the reason to make sure we don’t become biased.’ Izuku thinks, humming, he looks at Momo. She looks caught, a bit scared and unsure. “I think I’d like to try it, at least, but if you don’t wanna then I won’t.”

—~—

Momo continues to think. ‘On the one hand, more people to deal with, more stuff to deal with in general. It’s a big change in my schedule… On the other hand, I need to get used to people. Izuku and Tenya will be there, and we might meet more friends.’

Momo takes a breath, and nods.

“Great!” Aunt Inko says.

Both her parents smile and nod, sighing a little in relief.

“So, why were you all nervous?” Izuku asks after a moment.

“We really wanted you to properly go to school. But we weren’t sure if you would take the chance.” Momo’s Dad says, shrugging.

—~—

Somewhere in the countryside of japan, All Might nods into his phone. “Right, thanks for the information, Nedzu.” He hangs up, and arranges a few pieces on his chess board.

He grins, and it’s not All Might’s grin, but rather Yagi Toshinori’s, the grin he gives is closer to that of the immortal chimera principal of UA. Sharp, predatory, and with an undercurrent of rage.

‘The pieces are in place. The stage is set.’ All Might thinks. ‘Time for Dauntless to perform his final mission.’ He grabs his underground hero license, and makes his way out the door.

—

‘Endeavor, Eraserhead, and Gran, huh?’ Toshinori thinks, happy he put in colored contacts and that his underground persona has a vastly different outfit, covering his hair with a black bandana.

He was the one to put together the mission, so he briefs them all.

“Basically put, we’re up against an immortal, powerful, sociopath. And my apologies to all of you, but this isn’t an arrest mission. We do not have the technology that could keep this man in any kind of cell.” He says. “This is a kill mission.”

A bit of tension rises, and Dauntless nods. “The man wants to bring the world down, to destroy it. He is the bogeyman, those stories parents tell their children? About bad kids getting their quirks taken at night? It originates, from him.” He says.

“The HPSC and the government have both given their ruling. He’s far too dangerous to give fair trial.”

“… Now, since none of you have left, I assume that means you will be fine with this?”

Gran nods, then Endeavor, and slowly, Eraserhead does as well.

“But, how do we know we have the right guy?” The youngest hero here asks.

“Clairvoyance and other, stranger, quirks. It took a lot of research and investigation. But we found him.” Dauntless replies, sighing.

“Okay, the plan then?” Gran asks.

Dauntless nods. “Gran, you are on evacuation, Endeavor, I want you to be at least a street or two away. The man can steal your quirk and apologies for sidelining you, but your job is going to be cleanup, since any injury I can give him he can probably heal somehow. Myself and Eraser here will be the main force. Oh, and for participating in the mission…” He presses a button and several cases appear from the wall.

“There is an inventor on I-Island who also wants this monster dead. These are made with the full extent of tech from the island”

Everyone gets upgraded hero suits and new gear where possible. All made of the same stuff as All Might’s costume, making it burn, cut, and bulletproof.

“So I know of Eraserhead’s power, but what is yours that you can be on the frontlines?” Endeavor asks.

Dauntless hums. “As of right now, due to me constantly running my quirk through my body, it’s impossible for Eraserhead’s power to turn my own off. And I have roughly twice the strength of All Might. We arm wrestled once. It destroyed the building we were standing in, but I won.”

It’s technically true, since in All Might form, he generally needs to use around fifty percent of his power so he doesn’t destroy windows when he runs by. Though the arm wrestling thing was a lie.

He feels something attempting to press down on his quirk, it resists in return.

Eraserhead blinks, and nods. “Yeah, I can’t do anything to stop it, not without giving myself a migraine.”

Dauntless nods. “And, while I cannot elaborate further on this, so do not press it, my quirk cannot be taken without my consent. He can steal other quirks, but mine has some special rules to it.”

Endeavor nods. “Alright then. So long as I get the reward in full, I do not mind. Just my curiosity.”

Dauntless nods. “We’re moving out in an hour. Be ready by then.”

—

Dauntless takes a moment to take in the night air.

This is it. The day One For All finishes it’s mission. The day he can finally look towards more things than just hunting All For One.

He gets the notification from Gran Torino, and starts, gesturing at Eraser to focus up.

He blasts down through the roof of the warehouse, leveling it instantly as his fist meets All For One’s skull.

“Not even a hello first?” The man asks, tanking the hit and trying to punch back at Dauntless, who dodges easily and uppercuts the man. He feels his quirk almost getting suppressed, but once again it resists without him needing to do anything.

‘Boot to cockroach’ He thinks, grabbing the man’s skull and slamming it into his knee as All For One realizes most of his quirks aren’t working. Fear adorning the man’s face for the first time in probably centuries.

As the man remains dazed, Dauntless grabs his head again and squeezes, All For One screams and grabs his hands.

A dark void, mist surrounds them. All For One laughs as he tries to take One For All, and it doesn’t work. He seems confused, until Dauntless darts forwards and punches him in the chest

The wind seems to get knocked out of the man almost supernaturally, his hands coming off of Dauntless, and with a squelch, All For One’s head pops from the force of Dauntless squeezing it.

After briefly going to drop the body, he decides to hold onto it’s wrist. ‘I don’t trust that he can’t somehow come back from this.’

He signals for Endeavor with the commlink, and the man shows up shortly, landing with the new jetpack installed on his suit.

“You really didn’t want to take chances…” Endeavor says. “Are you sure this is the guy?”

Dauntless points at the canyon his first punch carved out. “That was what my first punch did. It’s why I got a silent evac of nearly 20 blocks. The block this building was on was the only one Gran Torino needed to evacuate. He took it, to the face, and didn’t even get knocked over. Eraser getting his eyes on him was the only way I avoided getting a hole punched in my chest.” Dauntless sighs and gestures with his chin.

“Plus he tried to take my quirk. I felt a little bit of it almost get sucked away before he seemed to get punched in the chest by whatever failsafe my quirk uses. And that’s when I exploded his head.”

“Anyway, light him up, then we can all leave this nightmarish situation behind us.”

Endeavor nods, lighting a fire in his hand, and pressing it to the corpse’s chest, before letting off the full force of his heat. “Prime Burn.” He states.

The corpse is burnt to nothing but ash, and Dauntless holds onto it’s wrist the whole time, gloves made by David Shield keeping his hands from being burned.

Dauntless then disappears for a split second and reappears with a large urn, and scoops all the ashes into it. He picks it up afterwards, “I’m going to throw all of this into a volcano.” He states. “You’ll never see me again, so best get your questions out now.”

“If you’re this powerful, then why haven’t I heard of you?” Eraserhead asks, walking out from the alley he was hiding in.

Dauntless shrugs. “I don’t actually move with Underground circuits much. My quirk’s too powerful. The only thing I got my license and used it for was the pursuit of this man’s death.” Technically true, only reason he has his Dauntless license was to eventually and invisibly kill All For One.

Dauntless is not an identity Toshinori likes, but it’s one he needed to be able to take out the man who killed his mother.

He’s come to terms with the fact that Nana is dead, and that he’s not going to feel better now that All For One is too. But he does take satisfaction in that he can now look towards retirement of both All Might, and Dauntless, as well as that the asshole can no longer take the lives of anyone else.

Though he still has one more mission before he can fully retire Dauntless, and that’s tossing an urn into a volcano.

“Oh, and Endeavor, cook any blood that got onto the concrete. We’re fairly sure one of his cohort does DNA and genetic experiments. Don’t want to give more material than that particular one already has.”

Endeavor nods and kneels down, igniting to temperatures that can boil blood as Dauntless and Eraserhead back off.

Gran appears in a burst of wind, landing at Dauntless’ feet “So, it’s done then?”

Dauntless nods, showing the large urn.

“Good, come by my home when you’re finished with the rest of the mission.”

Dauntless nods, smiling a little at his old teacher, closed mouth, so as to not give away his identity.

Endeavor starts cooling down, and Eraserhead walks over. “Go to the World Heroes Association HQ in Japan to get the reward. The HPSC of Japan is shit at it’s job, and I wouldn’t trust them with this mission.”

Nods from the other heroes, and Dauntless walks back to the crater. Any questions they might still have, they’ll have to live with, since they took too long and Dauntless isn’t going to delay this damn ‘burial.’ “Anyways, I’ll see all of you around, though you won’t see me. Goodbye.” He crouches down, and launches towards where he knows a volcano he can use is.

—~—

As he lands on one of the unsettled islands formed around japan, he walks to the volcanic crater, super heated air blasts at his face, and he just… doesn’t have the will to give a rat’s ass. He grips the urn and throws it directly into a lava pool he can see, watching it instantly melt and boil, the ashes being turned into less than that.

Toshinori sighs, and pulls his gloves off, then his bandanna. He, despite all the will in his body trying to resist the urge, feels the need to say… something.

“Congratulations, All For One.” He says. “Your plan almost succeeded. I was so paranoid that I almost didn’t want to bring anyone with me to kill you.”

“But…” He chuckles. “You took it a little too far. After a certain amount of time, I decided that I wouldn’t be able to kill you permanently if I tried alone. Not to mention if I did it with my normal personality.”

“So, I created a persona, one who would not stop, would not even talk, until you died.” He shuffles off his jacket as well, wrapping the gloves and bandanna in it.

“You created a monster you couldn’t fight, and in the end, despite how much I didn’t want to give you it, you got a poetic death.”

“Dauntless’ mission is over though, buried here with you.” He tosses his gloves, bandanna, and jacket into the volcano “But if needed, unlike you, he can be revived.”

Toshinori tenses, and jumps. In four long leaps, he lands at his home, and gets changed for going to Gran’s house. He’d probably have a beer with his old mentor, then plan out his next steps.

Chapter Text

Enji Todoroki walks into his home office, having changed out of his new suit and into more comfortable clothing. He shuts and locks his office door.

Something about the haunted and paranoid look in Dauntless’ eyes had made Enji think. Something within him twisted in a way he hadn’t felt in a while. His parental instinct. It asked the question of if this was really the job he wanted to force his kid into.

And that caused a rapid fire of guilt when he could honestly not say it was something he wanted for his kids. That man had more power than All Might, and what happened to him? He became paranoid and utterly emotionless.

Enji takes a deep breath, and sighs. He needs to write some things down. Talk to his children rather than at them… What has he been doing for these past years?

His heartbeat rapidly rises into his throat when flashes of images and memories go through his mind.

Shoto, on the ground, only seven years old and already throwing up from overtraining. Rei, confused and scared as she’s being taken away for… Nothing? There’s no injury on Shoto’s face.

Toya, also scared and confused as he’s kicked out of the house. The forest behind the Todoroki estate burning, as Enji had lit it up for no other reason than rage.

‘What? When… When did this all start…’ he searches through his memories, and he feels rage spike his heart. ‘You.’ He snarls, finding the PR manager for his agency, who was hired by the recommendation of the HPSC. The memory of the PR Manager has his mouth glowing as he said something, and illusions started forming in Enji’s mind.

“The HPSC of Japan is shit at their job” Dauntless had said.

‘You will pay dearly… but first I need to make sure my family will make it okay.’

First thing is, he writes a letter.

It’s what his father did for him, to avoid an abuse cycle, he left Enji with his mother, who was a kind woman, and would certainly have ripped Enji a new one if she was around to see this happen.

He then puts the letter away just in case he needs to leave and come back at any point.

Next, he starts the process to arrange for Shoto to go back to school, kids should be allowed to socialize.

‘Now I need to find Toya and arrange for Rei to be brought back home.’ He thinks, pacing a little. ‘Rei first. I’ll need someone else to find Toya, because if I go on his trail he’ll probably try to incinerate me, which is warranted… Did… I never even planned to stop him from becoming a hero originally! What the fuc-’

He takes a deep breath. ‘Guilt later, fix now.’

He messages the hospital he’d imprisoned Rei within and says he wants to meet with her primary carer. First he’d get Rei out, then he’ll point Nedzu at them for the shit they’d let him get away with.

He hums to himself. ‘Message for Rei that won’t get discovered by the doctors… Her favorite flowers. Rindou, right?’ He asks himself, searching up the name and finding the picture. He can’t help but smile. ‘Yes, definitely those.’ He feels his eyes burn a little with unshed tears.

He feels Enji melt into Endeavor. ‘Can’t deal with emotions yet. Finish the mission first.’

‘Natsuo might be able to help me find Toya.’ Endeavor thinks. ‘I wronged him too though.’ He remembers the glare the young man had leveled at him not three days ago.

‘Fuyumi might be willing to help, I’m not worthy of that, but at this point I might need it.’ He takes a breath. ‘Does she plan on pursuing higher education, or… Why don’t I know that!’

Endeavor frustratedly stands up and stomps to the training room.

He blinks as he sees Shoto already there. Right, they normally train at this god awful hour. How long had he been in his office…?

Endeavor takes a breath, pushing that thought away, and kneels down. “Shoto, listen to me carefully. Go to Fuyumi, and tell her to find Natsuo, then I want you all to hide somewhere on the other end of the house together and cover your ears, or play some loud music, once it’s set up, I want her to text me, alright?”

Shoto blinks at him, and nods. Running off.

‘Deep breaths, and wait for the text, Enji.’ He says to himself, slowly starting to repeat it like a mantra as memories keep flooding back in their now unaltered forms.

|Like Flames - MindaRyn|

Enji blinks as he hears the music start, they must be really blasting it.

He gets a text shortly after from Fuyumi.

=Fuyumi=

Fuyumi: It’s set up!

===

Enji takes one final deep breath in, and roars in rage. He powers his quirk up to full force, before slamming his fist through a punching bag, melting it. He doesn’t pay mind to it, and flips the whole frame holding the punching bag onto it’s side, grabs the leg of said frame, and slowly starts bending it into a pretzel.

—~—

“FUCKING ILLUSION-MANIPULATION QUIRKS! FUCKING HPSC! GRAAAAAAH!”

Fuyumi blinks as some of her father’s shouts reach over the music Natsuo’s blasting.

“Do… Do you think?” Fuyumi asks Natsuo.

Natsuo shrugs, looking as confused as Fuyumi felt. She jolts as a message comes in from her father on her phone after a few hours of just… vibing to music and the sounds of destruction.

=Father=

Father: Show this message to the others, Fuyumi.

I’m done. The Dojo door will remain closed and locked, since I have destroyed all traces of the outer wall and the dojo’s ceiling. Shoto, there will be no training, ever again if you wish, but definitely not for a long time.

If any of you have contact with Toya, tell him that he may come here if he so wishes. After I have fixed all that I can, I will be leaving for however long. If you don’t have contact with him, your mother will be able to find him. She’s the best damn investigator I’ve ever seen. Either that or I can get Nedzu in on the search.

I may have realized my mistakes, but that doesn’t heal the scars left on any of you. If you are even the slightest bit uncomfortable meeting with me, Do Not. This includes you, Fuyumi. Leave me to correct my mistakes on my own.

There will be a note left on my office desk when I have left entirely, with the full details of everything I have done to correct my mistakes. If you do not wish to see me, I won’t be walking through the hallways anyway, as there is an entrance built into my office that I will be using to come and go.

Fuyumi, do not make me food, I will be getting takeout and other such things while I work on this.

===

Fuyumi passes the phone around, and as she thought, nobody knows what to do with this information. All three of them just remain silent with varied confused expressions.

Well, Fuyumi knows one thing she can do with this information.

=Touya=

Fuyumi: Hey! So, Father sent this message to me earlier.

Fuyumi: [Screenshot_12.img]

Touya: Lol.

Touya: Thx fr the msg. I’ll drop by soonish. After he’s contacted Nedzu.

Fuyumi: Great!

===

She quickly closes the contact screen and pats Shoto on the head. “Wanna hang out with us for the day? Since Father’s busy and everything…”

Shoto flinches a little at being patted on the head, but soon unconsciously presses his head into Fuyumi’s hand, then nods when her question is asked.

—~—

Izuku hums along to a song in his headphones as he walks alongside Momo, the pair heading for Somei Private Academy.

He actually finds himself liking the uniform, Momo seems to dislike it, but that’s fair, since she normally wears pants or ankle-length dresses. And for whatever reason the uniform for girls has a skirt. A long one, mind you, but still shorter than Momo usually wears.

Honestly Izuku’s fairly sure he’d be comfy wearing a shorter skirt than that but he’s not sure why he knows that.

“So, do you think you’ll survive?” Izuku asks.

Momo gives him a flat look. “I will, but not comfortably for a long while. You?”

“Honestly? I’m not too worried, but there’s some stuff buzzing around in my brain.”

“Really? Like what?” Momo asks.

“Changing rooms seem a bit… Egh. I dunno. That and I’m not really sure what actual people our age are gonna be like, since you and Tenya are likely… Unique.”

Momo gives him another flat look. “You are the most unique of us all.”

Izuku shrugs, not willing to deny that.

—

Later on in the day, luckily they didn’t have PE or anything that day, so the only thing that happens is they all introduce themselves.

“Uh, Midoriya Izuku. My quirk is called Energetic Heart. I like singing and music in general.”

“Oh, you can sing? Can you sing…” One of the students rattles off the name of a song.

“I have practiced that one, but my quirk is performance based, if I did, my quirk would activate no matter what.” That student seems a bit miffed about that, but doesn’t ask anything else.

“Why’s it called Energetic Heart?” Someone else asks.

“Special activation, felt like it was an energetic thumping ball next to my heart, called it that when I was four, should probably rename it sometime but I’m still not sure exactly what it is.”

“You haven’t gotten your full quirk yet?”

“Nope, taking my time, plus some of the stuff that would unlock things are a bit… much for me to do.” Izuku releases tension in his shoulders he didn’t know he had when that kid just nods and mutters an ‘Understandable.’ He sits down, no longer comfortable with answering questions.

‘Why am I so tense anyway?’ a fuzzy impression of a blonde boy with red, angry, eyes is how his memory answers. ‘Ah… What was his name again? B..Bak… Bakugan?’

He shakes his head as Momo speaks this time.

“Yaoyorozu Momo. Quirk is ‘Creation’. I like number games and novels.”

She sits down, making it clear she’s not really down for answering questions.

Tenya stands up next and gives his name, quirk, and hobbies of ‘Organizational games and puzzles.’

And then another kid, this one with red hair growing on one side, and white hair on the other, stands up.

Izuku can practically feel his confusion as he introduces himself, not used to self-introductions.

“Todoroki Shoto, my quirk is Half-Hot, Half-Cold, and… I’m not sure what I like to do.” He sits back down immediately, practically hiding in his chair.

‘… A new friend.’ Izuku thinks, smiling a little at the guy when his eyes dart around the room.

After everyone gets introduced, the day continues like normal until lunch.

“Todoroki, wanna eat together?” Izuku asks, walking over to his desk as he looks overwhelmed by people talking at him.

“… Sure.” He says, quiet. Reserved, almost resigned sounding for some reason.

—~—

Momo watches as Izuku talks to Todoroki casually. ‘… Is he an extrovert?’ She wonders, listening to her classmates talk about stuff she generally doesn’t have an interest in. She doesn't necessarily ignore them, when a question is posed she answers, but she doesn't really absorb anything they're talking about.

Tenya walks over to Todoroki and Midoriya after managing to bore his classmate mob to tears with a deep analysis of the rulebook. He tends to memorize the rulebook, both because he finds it funny the looks on people’s faces when he starts rattling off the rules and so he knows exactly how far he can bend said rules. It’s a bit infuriating when playing board games against him, but he tries to make it fun for everyone at least.

Momo places her head in her hand and blinks as a timid looking girl with mushroom shaped eyes walks over.

“H-Hello.” Kinoko Komori says, quiet.

Momo nods to her. “Hi.” She states, not really sure how normal social interaction works still.

“Um. So, are you and Midoriya friends?” Ah, so that’s what this is about.

Momo nods. “Cousins, but yes.”

Komori blinks, but moves on from that relatively quickly. “Ah. I-I wanted to talk to him. But he’s busy talking to T-Todoroki.”

“I heard my name?” Momo jumps. At this point she should be used to it, but Izuku’s uncanny ability to just appear out of nowhere like a cryptid is still pretty surprising. “Oh! Komori! Your quirk is so cool!”

Komori yelps, and stares at Izuku like a deer in headlights. “… Um… I’d like to hear more about your quirk, actually.” She says, voice quiet.

Izuku nods. “Sure! But I’m gonna ask you some questions too!”

“I thought you were talking to Todoroki?” Komori mutters, looking frantically at Todoroki and then at Izuku.

Izuku shrugs. “Yeah, but I can tell his social battery ran out, besides, it’s not like I can’t be friends with both of you.”

“… He really is an extrovert.” Momo mutters to herself.

Izuku blinks and looks at Momo. “Huh. Yeah, I guess I am.”

Chapter Text

It’s the third day of school when Izuku is forced to change in a locker room, and he feels his quirk pulse so hard it’s like it’s trying to burst out of his chest. The location seeming to make the pulses stronger.

He lets out a sigh and a few of his classmates look at him weirdly. He hears the telltale crack of glass.

Four pointed stars of light burst from his chest, becoming ribbons of these lights and wrapping around his body, changing his clothes as he floats just slightly above the ground. Shortly after he lands with a slight click that his soft-soled shoes normally don’t make.

He looks down at himself with a hum. He’s suddenly wearing a star themed three piece suit, with fingerless gloves and actually quite comfortable dress shoes. “This is… Odd.” He says, then focuses on that feeling again, forcing the quirk to rest. Stars burst from his body and fade out into the surroundings as his clothes change back to normal. All of a sudden the changing room doesn’t feel as anxiety inducing as he changes into his PE kit.

“Sorry, quirk stuff. Changing in a room with people was apparently one of the triggers.” He says to the others who are still staring at him.

As everyone filters out to go about today’s activity, Izuku hums to himself. ‘Singing, dancing, changing clothes instantly… And yet it feels like my quirk is only a quarter discovered… Still, I have a guess as to what my quirk makes me, and I’m not sure if I like that or not.’

His daily conversations with Komori have taught him a bit about Idol pop-culture, both it’s history and it’s current trends. That stuff does seem a little interesting to him, but he has a feeling there’s more to his quirk than just singing, dancing, and changing his clothes. After all, it only looks like it’s a quarter of his quirk!

Still, he knows Komori will find the new ability exciting, and she’s quite cute when she gets excited.

—~—

When he gets home, Izuku tells his parents about the new facet of his quirk, changing into the outfit.

—~—

Hisashi blinks star-shaped light imprints out of his eyes as his son’s quirk calms down, and he’s wearing a suit. It looks… A little weird, on a twelve year-old, but it’s Izuku’s quirk so whatever.

Plus Izuku seems to like it, and it’s not like he looks dressed for a business exchange, more like he’s dressed to sing at a concert.

The suit has a white jacket with black four-pointed star patterns along the trim as well as covering the inside of the jacket. The vest is black, and the dress shirt under it all is a deep evergreen color. Oh, and his tie is black, as in, no light reflects off it, and it has a glowing green night sky within.

His pants are white with the same trim design as the suit jacket, and his shoes are black.

“What’s it do?” Inko asks.

Izuku shrugs. “I dunno. I just got back from school. I do feel lighter though… Stronger, I think.”

“Hop, just a little.”

Izuku nods and nearly hits his head on the ceiling with how high a slight ankle jump sends him. He yelps a little as he hits the ground, luckily landing properly.

“… Yep. I think it increases your strength.” Hisashi says, snorting a little as Izuku pouts up at him.

—~—

A week later, and Momo blinks as Izuku shows off his new ability from his quirk. They’re all gathered in the garden of the Yaoyorozu estate. Herself, Tenya, Komori (Who still looks scared as hell being somewhere so fancy.) And Todoroki.

He grins as he looks at them all after the light dissipates, “I’m pretty sure it makes all aspects of the quirk just a little bit stronger, I can kinda… Feel it. Hold on a sec…” He pulls up his phone and starts humming a tune, before finally finding the right song and tapping it.

|Play Dice! - Hakos Baelz|

The world around them all seems to reshape as Izuku sings, suddenly becoming a casino-like area with all the lights and machines rapidly operating with the beat of the music. Komori, the most unbothered by the change, walks over and passes her hand through the wall of the illusion.

Izuku’s voice sounds much louder than normal. it seems like a microphone, glowing green like Izuku’s quirk energy, has appeared in his hand while he sang, he automatically held it to his mouth to sing.

Tenya also walks over to the machines at puts his hand through one. So it seems like the whole thing is an illusion, which makes sense, since Momo didn’t feel a change in the way the ground feels.

Still, adding audio and visual enhancement with his singing is a pretty cool powerup.

When the song finishes, Izuku sighs, seeming exhausted from doing that. The illusion fades and he flops backwards into the grass with a heavy sigh. “Energy depleted.”

As Momo moves to look at him, he blinks, eyes widening. “Oh, cool. Being in this suit ups my energy replenishment really well.” He sits up, then does a slight jump into a standing position. “So, when I wanna sing while wearing this outfit, it manifests a microphone that I can sing into to boost my voice. The illusions are also much stronger.”

“… How much of your quirk is this?” Komori asks.

Izuku shrugs. “A quarter of it, from what I can tell.”

“So this is the changing clothes part… all that’s left is the ‘Hero Fights’ thing.” Tenya says.

“I have a feeling that there’s another facet besides the Hero Fights. After all it did pulse harder depending on the day when I was changing. Still not really sure what that’s about.” Izuku says, shrugging.

Momo hums, and continues on with the fighting thought. “I think you might have combat abilities.” Momo says, adding her own two cents. “It’s probably why it doesn’t pulse enough just watching fights, you need to get into a fight for it to fully unlock that facet.”

Izuku scratches his head a little. “Maybe. I have a feeling you’re right, but how would I test that?”

“When you’re a little older we plan on enrolling you and Momo into martial arts classes.” Dad says, startling Izuku a little. “It’ll probably crack away if you fight in a spar.”

“Ah… Thanks, Uncle Haru.”

Dad nods and goes back to where the adults are sitting, talking with the Komori parents as well as Todoroki’s mother along with the usual adults.

“So… What do we do now?” Komori asks.

“Myself and Izuku usually exercise a bit. Just a jog around the property, while Tenya does ten laps.” Momo says, and she doesn’t miss how Komori pales in response. “But I think myself and Izuku can afford to shorten the distance back to the amount we did before starting middle school.”

“How long was that jog?” Komori asks.

“Well, it started out as one lap around the house, because we got a bit too hyper one day and found that we actually quite liked the ‘Punishment’ Uncle Zawa put us through.” Izuku replies. “Plus it helps us with our energy pools, my starlight has a much bigger fuel tank than when I first started jogging. And her Reactor has the same.”

“… Our quirks are actually quite similar in that aspect.” Momo admits, tilting her head a little. “But why are they similar.” She questions.

Izuku shrugs. “I gave up trying to understand exactly how my quirk works a while ago.”

Momo sighs. “I should have. Ever since we realized it wasn’t direct conversions of my lipids I should have just stopped questioning it.”

The others are staring at them. Komori mutters. “I’m suddenly glad my quirk isn’t all that complicated.”

“How exactly do you make mushrooms?” Izuku asks, a rhetorical question since they all already know Komori has no idea exactly how it works.

“You know what I meant!” Komori huffs.

Izuku nods, lifting his hands in surrender. “I do. Anyway, wanna go for the jog? You guys don’t have to. Me and Momo just enjoy being able to run for a bit. If you don’t join us we’ll be jogging around the fence line though.”

“And I will be doing so either way, because running helps my engines.” Tenya states.

Todoroki stands up and huffs a little. “I’m willing.”

Komori stutters out her own affirmative, so when Izuku changes back to his normal clothes, they all start off in an evenly paced jog around the house.

—~—

Rei Todoroki sighs slightly. “Honestly when Shoto told me he was invited to a friend’s house I was a little surprised. He’s so new to socializing.”

Hisashi Midoriya shrugs. “Izuku has a weird way with people. Not in a bad way, he’s just good at making friends and even better at dragging people out of their shells. Dunno where he got it from, considering both of us aren’t all that charismatic.” He gestures between himself and his wife, who nods, agreeing.

“Maybe it’s a facet of his quirk that he just has from the beginning, considering the running theory he has about the theme of it.” Inko murmurs.

Hisashi shrugs. “Maybe.”

“… Where are they going?” Sango Komori asks, pointing at the children all getting up and walking to the edge of the house.

“Ah, probably for the same jogging that Izuku and Momo do every day. Though they are toning it down, since normally now they run along the fence line.” Haruto Yaoyorozu replies.

He then leans forwards, placing his forearms on the table. “Now, how is the investigation going against that PR manager?” He asks Rei. Probably having found out from the news articles.

Rei feels her back straighten, a glint entering her eye as she grins, lightly sadistic. “Guilty. Of all charges. The hospital’s already been torn to pieces for being complicit too.”

Hisashi whistles. “Damn. If only we could get stuff done that quick.”

“I’m an investigator, Enji’s a pro hero. It just works out like that. Plus Nedzu helping us and everything made it so the whole process just went like dominoes. Sadly the HPSC is hard to fight, so that’s a battle that’ll have to take a while longer… That and the battle of getting Enji to go to therapy.” She groans a little. “Everyone else in our family is doing it, but he thinks he should deal with it alone.”

“Hm…” Inko hums to herself. “How about saying…”

The parents conversation continues from there, and Rei leaves with several numbers from said parents and a few ideas on how to deal with Enji’s stubborn nature.

Though the best part is the fact that Shoto seemed happy after hanging out with the kids for a while.

—~—

Later, Izuku would try dancing while in the performance outfit, and discover that there is a bit more effect when he performs certain dance-styles. Fast-paced ones increasing his speed and slow ones making him feel even lighter than he already does.

A few more years go by, and the children grow into teenagers quite quickly. Reaching fifteen and thus entering highschool in what feels like the blink of an eye and an eternity at the same time.

Highschool for them is much the same, but with one big difference. It’s when the small friend group started actually training to become heroes.

Kinoko had decided to become one because of both the performance aspect of it, and because she can help people.

Shoto decided on still going down the hero track after a lot of deliberation. He was a little disillusioned from it because of his dad, which he did tell the friend group about. Izuku already kinda knew about the nonsense behind hero work because of all the hero news and social stuff he scrolls through constantly.

Izuku kinda finds it sad that most of his friends can’t keep up with his energy all the time. But then again nobody outside of his friend group seems to be able to keep up with his energy at all.

The group of five also start going to martial arts lessons, starting with several unarmed combat styles, before nearly half a year into it also learning a bit about weapons.

The first lesson in weapon stances is when Izuku unlocks another quarter of his quirk.

—~—

Izuku’s mouth pinches in annoyance as his quirk pulses, a feeling he’d gotten a lot while sparring, but hadn’t actually felt crack yet.

“Today we’re going to learn basic kendo swings.” Sensei says, standing at the front of the room. “Pick up your weapon.”

He feels his second heart Pulse as he picks up the Kendo stick, then the telltale cracking of glass is heard in his ears. “Ah, shit.”

His body bursts with Starlight as he’s put into his Quirk Outfit and a Kendo stick made out of the same material as his tie appears in his hand, the original one having fallen out of his hand.

Izuku stares at it for a few moments, before dropping the weapon and changing back to his attire for the dojo.

“Midoriya, what was that?” Sensei glares. He really hates when people use quirks in the dojo.

“Ah, apologies.” He bows a little. “My quirk is special activation. I still haven’t unlocked all of it. You saying ‘Pick up your weapons’ and me trying to follow that order made a facet break and… apparently I can create weapons from my Starlight.” He blinks and looks at his hands, before shaking his head. “Anyway, I’ll do a punishment exercise.” He says, shrugging. He likes the exercise.

Sensei nods, seeming a little less harsh, and throws a dart at a dartboard, not even looking at where the dartboard is.

He then reads off the paper the dart hit. “100 pushups. Hop to it, Midoriya.”

Izuku nods and starts on his punishment.

—

After that, Izuku started also taking dedicated weapon fighting classes with Momo on top of the other classes he attends. His other friends, besides Momo and Tenya since they know him and his unrelenting interest, kinda stare at him in horror when he explains his rather dense schedule, but he likes being busy. It’s fun.

During weekdays he has various Dance lessons, singing lessons, and a couple of instrument lessons that he took up just for fun. other exercises like Yoga, Gymnastics, and regular gym stuffs are also fitted into that schedule.

During weekends he does the combat stuff as well as occasionally going to a parkour gym, once again, just for funsies. Plus a lot of exercise also means he increases his Starlight Tank further, so it works towards improving his quirk.

As the years pass by, the pulses continue to happen when he changes clothes most of the time. But it isn’t until he turns 17 that his quirk finally cracks that part of itself open for him to use.

Chapter Text

Another quarter of the quirk is unlocked on a rather annoying day for Izuku. He’d turned seventeen the other week and was perfectly fine for a while. But today nothing about his body looked or felt right, every time he looked in the mirror he felt like he was dissociating, squishing at his face like that’ll help remove his masculine features.

As soon as he parses that what he’s annoyed with is his masculine features, he hears a sound he loves and hates.

Crack.

And much like with his performance outfit, Starlight flows out from his second heart, however this time, instead of flowing out of his chest as ribbons, the starlight flows through his veins before bursting out of every pore of his body in an explosion of stars.

Once the light is gone, he looks in the mirror again, and blinks. “What the… My voice changed too?” He… She? That feels right actually. Like… Really right. Even her voice sounds amazing and makes her heart feel like a weight has been lifted off of it.

She touches a hand to her throat and tilts her head at the mirror, and smiles a little, before her brow furrows. “… Am I transgender? No… That would mean I would always have days like this, constantly, right? That’s what the sex-ed teacher taught us…”

She decides to leave the bathroom. “Uh, Mom?” She asks, walking into the living room and feeling… Her boobs, she guesses? Move around under her shirt.

“What’s up, Izuku?” Midway through saying the now-girl’s name, mom startles as she sees her. “Is that you?” She asks.

Izuku nods her head. “Uh… I don’t. I don’t understand what happened. But apparently this is part of my quirk. I think I can change between this and male too.”

Mom nods, scratching the side of her head. “Well, whatever it is, do you want to go back to being male?”

Izuku shakes her head. “N… No. Not right now at least. I was staring into the mirror because I couldn’t figure out why my face was so… off-putting today.”

“Okay.” Mom stands up. “This is probably scary, hm? Do you still want to be called a boy-” she’s interrupted from even finishing the question as Izuku feels a pang in her heart and shakes her head rapidly.

“N-No… I don’t know what it is, but I really hate the idea of being a guy right now.”

Mom nods. “Well, if you’re right and you do eventually want to go back to being a guy after this, then you’re likely genderfluid.”

Izuku nods. That seems… Accurate. “What do I do?” she asks.

Mom presses her hands into Izuku’s shoulders, seeming to sense Izuku’s panic and deciding to ground her to the present. “There’s a procedure for this. First off we need to go to your school and get a girl’s uniform that you can use on female days. Then we need to get you… Basically a whole wardrobe, or at least suitable underwear.”

Izuku seems to recover at some point during her mom’s explaining. She hums, “Hm… underwear first. Unless you want me to go there in my… Does my performance outfit work in this form?” She wonders, and focuses on that facet of her quirk. Starlight bursts, and she looks down at herself.

“Okay, now I’m definitely never getting Kinoko to stop comparing me to an idol.” She mutters.

Her performance outfit had changed to be a white half-corset and cropped jacket, a black poofy skirt covering up to halfway down her thigh along with a black shirt underneath the jacket. Her shoes are white loafers this time, still comfortable to wear luckily, and she has thigh-high socks that glow like her weapons. Her gloves remained the same, though resized themselves to fit her more slender hands.

She’s also wearing appropriate underwear, from what she can feel.

“… This is… Fun.” Izuku says, swishing her skirt a little.

—~—

Inko blinks as her child starts playing with her dress. ‘This is a seventeen year-old.’ Inko thinks. A little flat in tone, but mostly because she finds it funny that Izuku is reacting like a seven year old girl.

Hisashi had to move to the US temporarily to help shift some stuff around before coming back, and of course that’s when Izuku would discover Gender Stuff.

Inko takes a moment to think, before nodding to herself. “Right, this is going to probably be awkward as hell, but revert to your normal outfit. I need to measure some stuff.”

Izuku blinks owlishly, but nods. Inko closes her eyes briefly as the starlight bursts from the clothing.

It is kinda interesting how Izuku now resembles Inko more than Hisashi, straight, long, green hair, larger and more naturally kind eyes, generally cuter features...

“Little Kinoko is going to be all over you for this.” Inko says, getting the tape measure.

Izuku blinks. “… Oh. Huh, yeah you’re right…” She grins dopily. "That'll be nice."

Inko blinks a little, and nods just slightly, not willing to inquire about what Izuku means by that when they have so much to do. “Well, let’s go to the bathroom.”

—~—

Inko was right in saying her measuring Izuku was going to be awkward as hell, but having a stranger do it would’ve been worse in Izuku’s opinion, so she just tries to focus on that.

They then went to a mall and got Izuku a few pairs of underwear, athletic wear and other necessities before going to the school to get an appropriate uniform. After that she went to Momo’s house (as is her usual for days like this,) and successfully snuck up on the heiress.

“Boo!” Izuku shouts, making Momo create a pole out from her back to smack her in the forehead. Izuku blinks as when it impacts it doesn’t even hurt. Normally that reaction would actually leave a bruise.

“… Izuku?” Momo asks as she turns around, staring at the girl.

“Yep!” Izuku gives a thumbs up.

“You… got shorter.” Momo muses.

“Of course that’s the first thing you notice.” Izuku rolls her eyes. It’s true, she was around 180 cm but lost 20 cm when going ‘Her’

“… You’re a girl?” Momo asks.

Izuku shrugs. “For now. Might be a guy tomorrow, but for now I like this form better than my male one.”

“… You can swap at will? No, should’ve expected this…” Momo murmurs. “Magical Girl Quirk.” She says, snorting as Izuku pouts a little.

“Fuck it, that’s going to be my hero persona.” Izuku says.

“What?” Momo asks, stunned.

Izuku shrugs. “You’ll find out. Anyway, wanna spar? Gotta see what this stuff can do.”

Momo stares incredulously for several seconds before rolling her eyes with a nod. “Sure.”

—~—

Izuku’s male form resembles his father, tall, strong, and slightly intimidating. (Hot, if you ask many of Izuku’s classmates.)

His performance outfit actually has many functions besides being able to summon his weapons only when wearing the outfit.

First of all, he’s stronger and faster when wearing it. However, for some reason, he bruises quite easily, and thus finds himself practicing dodging more often than not. The cloth of the outfit is cut proof but he very much is not.

He heals slightly faster while wearing the outfit. It’s not really all that strong, but a papercut heals in a few minutes rather than an hour, so it’s a little worth it. Plus all the bruises he gets get healed in moments.

After gaining the female form and using it, Izuku can tell already that her Starlight capacity increased, but she also noted she’s a little more durable.

Make that a lot more durable, as she blocks one of Momo’s bo-staff hits with her forearm and doesn’t even feel hurt.

Momo spins her staff, going for one of her stronger hits, and Izuku thinks ‘Shit, I need to block.’ In response, a shield made of her night-sky material forms on her arm, and Izuku can tell it came from the same ‘Weapon Creation’ part of her quirk, she uses it to block Momo’s hit.

Izuku holds up a hand, signaling a pause for the spar. She looks over the shield for a bit, before nodding to herself. “Right, okay, let’s continue.” Izuku says.

Momo nods and takes a swing again, this time at Izuku’s unshielded side and said girl tanks the blow before ducking under Momo’s guard and punching her in the stomach. She’s met with much more resistance than she’s used to.

“… Huh. I’m physically weaker? But I don’t get hurt as easily… odd.” She lifts the shield to block Momo’s knife, her backup weapon for close quarters.

“I also feel physically slower than normal, but blocking attacks seems to let me speed up briefly… Girl is defense mode, while guy is attack?” She wonders aloud, conjuring another shield on the other arm to block more of Momo’s knife strikes.

“Finds it really hard to attack, but blocking barely requires anything… Weird.” She then parries one of Momo’s strikes and successfully wraps her arm around the taller girl’s throat with a small hop, putting the taller girl into a headlock. “Still easy to do grabs and grappling maneuvers though.” Momo taps her arm when it’s clear she can’t escape. Izuku releases the hold.

“You good to stop, or do you have more energy?” Izuku asks her. “I still need to test the performance aspect of this part.”

Momo shrugs and tosses her staff aside. “I’m good.”

Izuku nods. “Right, so time to start singing I guess.” She feels a headset microphone manifest on the side of her head, rather than the hand-held one her male form uses. “There is a song I’ve been missing being able to sing in the right key.”

She hums a little, and feels a tingle across her skin as she starts. “You’re… Not alone.”

|Might + U - Makayla Phillips|

As soon as the first words leave her mouth, the world disappears, becoming a black void with green stars floating all around. Constellations that she can somehow tell represent her family and friends appearing in the empty sky, filling it with other colored stars besides the green.

The instrumentals actually start playing without her setting it up on her phone. Her quirk is pulsing some just from singing, and she squints a little, but keeps singing all the way to the end of the song.

“Okay… Odd.” Izuku mutters, tapping her chin with a fist. “That’s not normally how that song’s illusion goes… and I can tell I can get a much larger range out of this than is available. I’m gonna go outside and test something again.”

She steps into the sunlight with Momo, who decides to follow her out.

—~—

Inko Midoriya is having tea with her sister-in-law, Nemuri, when the world around the two shifts, fades and becomes a night sky that seems much brighter than they normally get, green stars shining down onto an eerily calm ocean.

There’s the echoey sound of her daughter saying… something, that Inko doesn’t really understand, but somehow she knows it means ‘One Word brings another.’

|Reflect - Gawr Gura|

Instruments start playing, and Inko realizes. “Oh, Izuku’s quirk got stronger.”

After a few flourishes of the music, Izuku starts singing, and Inko looks into the water she’s standing on curiously, to see herself looking at her as well, but with a sad, scared, look on her face.

‘… Psychic stuff, huh?’ Inko mutters, realizing what this particular song is about from one of Izuku’s ramblings about symbolism. The words ‘My reflection in the water speaks to me, she says I am a bad, bad shark’ confirming her fears a bit. ‘This is not going to be a fun illusion.’

“Probably a song about insecurities, given the fact that I’m not turning into a shark.”

Inko looks around to discover that Midnight no longer seems to be near her. She’s alone with the stars and the ocean along with the strange illusion of herself.

She does have insecurities, but she worked past them, her wanting to protect Izuku but taking away her happiness in return is a big one.

As the song enters the first chorus, it seems like the original writer of the song had worked past their own too, but the reflection returns, this time viciously grinning and trying to grasp Inko’s ankle, which it doesn’t manage to do since it’s still just an illusion. It feels oddly like someone’s hover-handing her as it still looks like the illusion has it’s hand on her ankle, Saying something in english about it not being that easy to get rid of her.

“… This would be scary if I didn’t know my daughter was the one singing.” Inko says, chuckling a little.

The song ends soon after that and Inko blinks as light pierces through the sky, revealing that she’s still just sitting in one of the chairs next to Nemuri, who still seems a little shaken.

“That… That was Izuku, right?” She asks. Inko nods, and Nemuri hums. “Well, the illusion is much stronger, and far more real seeming… I even felt it touch me.”

“You did?” Inko asks, face scrunching a little before she jolts from remembering. “Right. Forgot about mental powers giving more resistance to other mental powers.” Despite her quirk being a weak telekinesis, Inko has strong mental resistance because of a few mutations in her genetics.

“Yeah, a slight jolt of my ankle was still enough to pass through it, but it scared me a little.”

“I guess it kinda makes sense that in female form she’d take after parts of my genetics. Mass Hallucination was actually a quirk in my family tree, and that quirk let him also create almost-physical illusions, but the singing part is still odd.” Inko starts muttering to herself, trying to figure out how this works.

She feels a tap on her arm and looks up just in time to see her daughter slam into the ground in front of her. “Hey mom!” She shouts. “Uh, did you see the illusion?” She asks.

Inko nods. “Yes. Why?”

“I was by the gym when I started singing. I could tell the illusion extended in range, but I’m still not sure how far it went. It also stayed within the gates of the property, but that was more me holding it here than anything.”

“Oh, also my floating dance works a lot better. I think the emitter parts of my quirk work better in this form, while as a boy the physical aspects are better. Though I’m a lot more durable in this form I’m also a lot slower and weaker unless I’m protecting myself or others. Also I seem to be lighter, but when I’m blocking strikes my feet don’t even skid.” She begins to rapidly go through all of the changes that she’s noticed, muttering and bouncing a bit.

There’s a year before she and her friends go off to college, and Inko smiles as she realizes she raised her kid as well as she could have ever.

Chapter Text

Izuku hums to himself a little as he waits outside the classroom. He’s required to tell the class about his new form, which he’d hidden from his other friends besides Momo by promising the girl she’d play dress up with her.

It’s still a bit odd to figure out his pronouns, but right now it’s just ‘If I was a girl at the time or a girl in the moment, it’s she, and boy at moment, it’s him.

Soon enough the teacher waves him in and he grins at the confusion on his class mates faces. He’s standing in his performance outfit, so when he transforms…

Starlight bursts from his skin and Izumi (A name she agreed to) is standing before the class. “Hi! I’m Izumi. Though friends may call me Mimi.” She says, smiling brightly and letting her performance outfit dissipate, revealing the school’s female uniform. “Today is actually more of a girl day, I was just lumbering around as Zuks because I needed to demonstrate the transformation.”

“And before you ask, no, this still isn’t the final facet of my quirk. Even I have no idea what that part is going to be.” She says, more than a little annoyance creeping into her voice. She moves to sit beside Momo, which just so happens to be the seat behind Kinoko, who tilts her head back to stare at Izumi.

“Yeah, yeah, I know Kino, ‘Magical Girl’ quirk. You win.”

Kino’s lightly deranged giggle makes Izumi blush a bit. ‘Okay, so still into Kino. Good to know.’ She thinks, smiling nervously at her girlfriend.

She and Kinoko had gotten together during second year of highschool, just going on a few dates here and there, but neither were particularly sure if they wanted to kiss and stuff like that yet. Especially when Mimi wasn’t discovered so they had no idea why Izuku was having all these episodes of self-hatred.

Granted they didn’t tell anyone that. Because it’s funny.

As soon as she spots the nervousness in Izumi’s gaze, Kino boops her on the nose and grows a mushroom. Bright Purple, Dark Green, and Bright Red.

‘Purple: Happy, Green: Jealous, Red: Loving. She’s happy for me, but a little jealous, and sends assurances that she still loves me like this.’ Izumi plucks the mushroom off her nose and tosses it into her mouth. Staring Momo directly in the eyes as she does so.

Momo hates the texture of Mushrooms. As Kino says; it’s too ‘Mush’ for her. The raven haired girl just rolls her eyes at Izumi’s mischief fueled look.

“No snacking in class, Midoriya.” The teacher says, and Izumi gives them a respectful nod, swallowing the mushroom.

—

Later, in the gym, Izumi and Kinoko are working on something that Kino has been trying for years to perfect.

“Alright, again.”

Kinoko sighs and glares at the magical girl before focusing. Black mycelium spreads over her skin, knitting together in strong patterns like spider silk. When that stage is complete, other forms of fungi spread out, coloring her in red, white, and glowing green.

When she’s finished, she’s wearing a pair of white gloves, a red and white dress shaped like fly agaric, with thigh high socks that glow green, and red shoes that have the appearance of leather but are really just made of more mycelia.

It took a long time for Kinoko to trust them with the knowledge that she’s essentially just a walking mushroom because of her quirk’s mutant status, but pretty much as soon as she did, Izuku decided to help her with achieving her dream of being able to do the whole ‘Quick Change’ thing that he’s able to do with the Performance Outfit.

This is the idea they wound up sticking with.

“20 seconds, not bad.” Izumi says with a smile and nod.

“Faster than anyone else besides you can change into a hero costume.” Kinoko says with a slight grin.

“You figure out anything with the moisture collectors and dispersers?” She questions.

“A bit… Though getting ammo for the disperser is still so-so.” She demonstrates by creating a ball of spores in her hand and dropping it on the ground. The spores burst and create an area of mycellium, then mushrooms with blue tops pop up. “The blue stuff is how much liquid the mycelium has collected, but how to create something that’ll disperse the water into the air…”

“Well, there’s crushing them, which could make them act as moisture grenades.” Izumi suggests, “Or you could get a specialized support item that siphons off the moisture then acts like a powerful spray bottle. Hell, a mix of both would probably do great.”

Kino nods, smiling at Izumi. “That’d do it.”

—

Another time, Izuku is practicing for the practical part of the entrance exam. It was decided that Momo would do much better in the Recommended exam than the rest of them, so the other four parts of the friend group decide to enter through the normal route.

“Is there any way I can convince you not to do this?” Momo questions.

Izuku, holding his new best friend, the ‘Squeaky Warhammer’, grins and shakes his head. He flips the weapon around in his hand and slams it into the concrete, cracking it and letting loose a loud Squeak like a dog toy.

He’d honestly liked using things like Warhammers the best, though he’s trained in and can conjure several other weapons. Blunt weapons were easier to make non-lethal though, so he tends to stick with those. He pulls a trigger and the hammer’s head bounces back up with a cartoonish ‘Boing’ noise.

That’s the best part of his conjured weapons. He can make them all create sound effects and despite Momo’s protests, he can give them far less realism than her creations.

His other favorite is a bat that makes a hollow bonking noise when he hits with it, despite it being what amounts to a solid steel baton.

—~—

Momo huffs as she gets ready for an obstacle course, already pulling up her best invention in her mind.

The proctor lets loose a “Start!”

After printing out a bracer full of nano machines that’ll boost all of her physical abilities with the right programming, she taps a few buttons and uploads the programs. Suddenly she’s surrounded by a suit of metal.

Something great about Zuks is that he’s absolutely deranged when it comes to quirks and their capabilities. He found out that her reactor is what powers her fueled equipment, then he figured out that draining her reactor is what helped it grow rather than physical exercise, though the second does help a little, draining her reactor helps a lot.

So, he got their parents to give her a massive storage battery blueprint, and she just repeatedly made one and filled it until her reactor shut down. At first she could only fill a tenth of one, and now she has to make five every day. The extra power is anonymously donated to places that need it.

Her suit forms thrusters on her hands and feet when she gets to the climbing wall, and she crouches down and clears it in one jump. She hops off the ledge they’re supposed to dive into a pool from, and her suit forms a stronger thruster at her back and pulses itself until she’s landed safely on solid ground. The boost pack config returns to the mass of nano machines and she continues her run.

She reaches a small cave she’s meant to squeeze through so she quickly lays on her stomach. Wheels form on her chest and knees and begin dragging her through. ‘Izuku really thought of everything’ She thinks with a sigh. He’d given her a truly absurd number of scenarios to run her armor through for stress tests over the years.

When she reaches the finish line after sprinting through a waterfall, the dark green haired woman that seemed to split apart and fly was already waiting for her, though she seemed shocked by Momo’s armor. The mask falls away and Momo grins a little. “Nano machines, son.”

—~—

Todoroki Shouto has had a strange life thus far.

His father was kind when they were small, then had a few years where he was being the worst man imaginable, then he went back to his normal self, though very much unwilling to train them. Mom calls it trauma.

So Shouto has been training with Izuku, Momo, Kinoko, and Tenya for the past five years.

In that time, he’s learned a lot, like how to make clothes out of his quirk, because it was good training.

Shouto’s fairly sure that Izuku just doesn’t want be the only person who uses their quirk to create a suit, but it genuinely was good training and it helped him figure out how his fire works.

It works through movement, unlike his ice, which is precision and solidification.

But the greatest part about that training was the ability to mix together his elements to create a form of cold fire that acts as a framework for his armor. Plus it acts as a form of ice that just dissipates, so he’s able to train up both sides of his quirk without worrying about water damage or creating some kinda monument.

As soon as Mic shouts “START!” he pulls on his cold suit, smiling a little. As soon as he’s in the city and out of the way of other participants, He surges forwards on a wave of ice and collides with a three pointer in a burst of blue fire that melts through it.

—~—

Kinoko stretches a bit as she lets her ‘Mushroom Wet-Suit’ grow underneath her clothes, then tosses off the jacket of her track suit as the next layer, the ‘clothes’ section grows. She’d designed the process so it would pull in any clothes she’s wearing, but the jacket would make things feel a bit too layered when she also has a shirt and bra on underneath it.

After everything is fully formed, she makes a little ‘Hydro’ spore ball that she’ll put in a hard to find place.

The best part about making friends and then… more, with Zuku was that he seemed to always love every part of her, be it quirk, obsession with mushrooms. They do seem bonded through the love of idols and magical girl stuff though.

Izu can deny it all they like, but one does not binge watch and read all of the magical girl anime and manga they can get their hands on without liking it a little bit. (Also he cried a few times, so she knows they got more invested in the shows than just liking the fight scenes.)

When Mic calls out “START!” She rushes inside the fake city and quickly finds a building that nobody is nearby to, tossing down her spore ball, it quickly expands and she feels her mycelium network connect with the dirt underneath.

Another great thing she was taught by being friends with the group of nerds is that she found out quick that she can do some supernatural weirdness with her quirk. Like having mushrooms that absorb moisture from the ground and store it in their caps. When all of the caps have fully grown, she grabs them all and places them in her cushioned pocket.

She leaves the room after ensuring that her patch of mycelium would continue growing her Hydro Shrooms.

She grins horrifyingly wide when a robot rears to look at her and fires rubber bullets into her. They bounce off the mycelium making up her clothes, and she grabs one of her Hydro caps and lobs it at the robot.

When it explodes in a mist, she knows she got the exact right amount of water collection. She then touches it and spreads mycelium all over the robot.

“Now… Let’s see how your electronics work…” She giggles in the way that Izu finds cute, and gets to work playing with the electricity of the bot.

Soon enough her hijacking mushroom figures it out and the LEDs of it’s eye indicators turn the purple of the mushroom. Thus she ends up riding a one pointer around while dragging other robots into her influence, instructing her shrooms to help the participants if they seemed to be in trouble, while also spreading their spores onto as many robots as possible.

—~—

Tenya Iida closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, feeling the world come into focus as time slows down around him. Uncle Zashi had just called START, so start he will.

He runs up and delivers a high kick to a one pointer, then turns and starts slaughtering robots or kicking debris to keep others from getting hurt.

He doesn’t have any fancy emitter quirk stuff like the rest of his friends, but his mutation is quite strong and he’d discovered how to focus enough that his speed doesn’t harm his turning and control. His bones are stronger than titanium while still being light. His muscles and skin are far tougher than anything an average human has.

So while he can’t create fancy armor on the fly, his body is still tough enough to handle anything thrown his way, and even if it isn’t, he can still dodge.

He delivers a reversed ax kick to a bot, before flipping back up into the air and sending a piece of debris into another bot from where it was about to hit another examinee.

Not nearly as chaotic or dramatic as Kinoko or Shouto can do, but surely strong enough to be admitted into a school such as this.

—~—

Izuku stretches his back out with a grin, nearly folding backwards because of his flexibility. When it seems everyone’s done getting themselves in the zone, he activates his Performance outfit and walks up to a girl who’d helped him out.

“Hey.” He says. “Thanks for the help at the gate. Didn’t manage to say that before you took off.”

She turns to look at him and blinks owlishly. “Oh, uh… No problem.”

He gives a small smile, then conjures his Squeaky Warhammer. “Good luck, hope you get in.”

“You too-“

“START!”

Izuku, already slightly bent and ready to run, sprints off into the city and swings his hammer straight down onto a 3 pointer that had immediately rushed at him

SQUEAK

Boing

He managed to make the hammer also make a boing noise when it bounces, and as small motes of starlight bounce off the robot and dissipate into the air, he knows the illusion effect also worked, and he laughs as it activates before swinging down again. When he does it this time, the hammer uncompresses and the robot crunches like a tin can.

SQUEAK

He dissipates the hammer after that and conjures the bat, smaller weapons seem a bit more feasible for this setting. He also remembers to do a quick breakdance maneuver before doing a handspring as he feels the speed boost activate and slamming his bat down on a two pointer’s head.

Bonk

Sparkles once again burst from the point of impact, though this time there’s also a tweeting noise and illusory birds fly around the two pointer’s head before it crumples under it’s own weight.

He laughs to himself again. He then starts singing to himself.

“It’s the Calm before the storm…”

|The Revolution - Egzod & Neoni|

Since he’s not singing into his mic, all it does is create the instrumentals and an army of angry looking clones of Izuku and Izumi.

Once again, not very strong since they’re just tv static if you hit them, but it’s enough to confuse one and two pointers, though the three pointers seem to use thermals.

He idly spots a purple haired girl with… earlobes? looking at him and he smiles at her, giving a wave before jumping up and smacking the head off a three pointer that tried to attack him. Still singing all the while.

—~—

If you fill out the right forms, you’re allowed as a recommended student to watch the regular entrance exams. Momo had, of course, filled the forms out and was now sitting in the observer’s room, watching a wall of monitors while also having a tablet in front of her that shows clips of certain events and actions.

Momo sighs and facepalms a little at her cousin’s antics.

“See someone you don’t like?” The girl she’d met at the finish line, Tokage Setsuna, asks.

Momo shakes her head. “No, I like him well enough. We’re basically siblings, but he’s doing ridiculous things with his quirk again.” She shows the other woman a clip. The one of Izuku taking his ‘Bonking Bat’ to a two pointer’s head. “He doesn’t need any of the effects, he just finds it funny.”

Setsuna shrugs. “If he finds it funny, then why dissuade him?”

Momo huffs. “It’s using up a lot of the energy for his quirk to do that.”

Setsuna looks at her for a moment, then slowly nods her head. “Okay, I can see why you’d be annoyed with that. Still, he’s probably a little responsible with it.” She points at the screens showing the live footage, where Izuku is now wielding the least modified weapon ‘Katana,’ and using a mix of Iaijutsu and kicks to destroy robots and keep other participants safe.

“Probably just wanted to have a bit of fun before getting serious.” She hears Uncle Shouta mutter ever so quietly.

Momo nods a little, then continues watching.

—~—

Izuku continues to ravage the robots, then about halfway through his third song, he hears the sound of wires snapping, and turns to see a large robot rise out of the ground.

‘That’s the zero pointer?’ He questions blandly before realizing that he should probably run.

“HELP!” he hears a voice scream as he turns to do exactly that.

He turns, and spots a brown head of hair poking out of the rubble.

And for the final time of his life, he hears a fateful sound.

Thump! like a heart pumping.

Crack! like glass breaking.

And without a moment’s hesitation, he reaches into his pocket, and pulls out a conductor’s wand. A white handle with the standard void-starscape taking up the rest of it.

Chapter Text

Izuku doesn’t even care to look at the wand as he starts rushing forwards and Izumi takes the stage.

She doesn’t notice the transformation her body goes under, the patches of four freckles becoming green, glowing, four-pointed stars, with the tips of the points being where the freckles once were, her pupils become the same glowing green stars. Her hair turns into a void of black with glittering stars within.

She skids to a stop over the girl who helped her at the gate, and waves her wand. Metal growls coming from her throat. The guitar and instrumentals coming to life.

|Shade - Heart of a Coward|

A massive shield bubble takes up the sky above them, turning day into night as the green stars and black void become all you can see around the pair.

A sound like a gong hits the shield, and Izumi feels a small amount of strain from holding back the robot.

As soon as she feels even the slightest bit less pressure, she transforms into Izuku and holds the wand like a bat.

A pair of arms form in the sky, the same material as the weapons he conjures, then a huge bat forms in it’s hands as they take the same stance.

“SUFFER!” The instrumentals pause for a moment, then as he swings the wand forwards, “BITCH!” He shouts with an echoing growl, the instrumentals cutting back in. The arms follow the movement of the wand and a loud slam along with the scream of shearing metal is heard throughout the testing site, followed by a woosh as the zero pointer is taken off of it’s tracks and sent flying through the air. It hits the wall opposite to the gate and explodes, it’s fuel tanks combusting.

“AND STOP!” Mic’s voice screams across the entire grounds of UA.

Izuku sighs heavily and instinctively turns his wand into a cane, leaning on it a little as he waits for his Starlight Reserves to recharge. “S-Sorry, but I don’t have the energy to free you.” He says to the woman.

She stares up at him, and shakes her head. “It… It’s fine. The Proctors’ll probably get me.”

Izuku, after a moment, kneels down and lifts the rubble pinning her. “I didn’t mean to say it’d take me long to get the energy. Just that I didn’t have it. The silence was getting to me, sorry.”

The woman laughs and army crawls out before laughing a bit more. “It’s fine…”

“Midoriya Izuku.” He extends his hand down for a shake.

“Uraraka Ochako.” She gives it.

“Sadly despite the versatility of my quirk, I do not have healing powers.” He says, and she giggles a little.

“Then I’ll just lay here for a while. Jokes on them, the sun feels nice anyway.”

Izuku snorts. “You sound like me when I’m out of energy.” He flops over onto the ground as well, flinching a little as he gains a bruise to the back of his head that’ll probably heal in an instant. “Do you know someone named Kinoko Komori?”

“She’s my cousin. Why?” Uraraka asks.

“You look a lot like her. It’s what caused my reaction to be so extreme.”

“You’re… You’re her boyfriend?” Uraraka asks. “She’s always nearly swooning over something you did. It’s both adorable and slightly terrifying.”

Izuku grins dopily, imagining her little unhinged sounding giggle. “Yep, that sounds exactly like her. According to everyone I tend to also be like that. Though don’t tell my friends we’re dating. We’re seeing how far we’ll have to go in front of them before they realize. She sat in my lap during a study meet and no direct accusations were made.”

“Are your friends that dense?” Ochako questions.

“When it comes to romantic situations? Yes. Plus we’re both very tactile in our affection, so it’s not like being physically close to eachother has ever been an oddity even when we were just friends.”

“Well, you have a deal when it comes to keeping your relationship quiet, as long as you don’t do anything bad.” She gives him a harsh glare.

“Trust me, if I find myself with the hots for another girl, Kinoko will be the first to know, and we’ll go from there.” Izuku says.

“Go from there?” She questions, seeming curious.

“Well, we already had the polyamory discussion and decided we’re a package deal. If you want one unhinged goofball, you need to want the other before anything happens. Plus apparently she’s a disaster of a bisexual while I’m personally both straight and a lesbian.”

“You’re… Both?” Ochako questions, sitting up.

Izuku leaves the stage and Izumi takes it. “Call me Izumi.” She says with a smile.

“Ah, okay.” Ochako nods.

“Sadly my dating pool is limited to bi, pan, or demisexual girls. Woe is Mimi.” Izumi says with an airy giggle.

—~—

“Your class.” Kan says, and Shouta can’t even shake his head, he knows Kan is right.

“You’re taking Fukidashi and Yanagi then.” He says in retort.

—~—

The Zero Pointer attacks right after Kinoko was refilling on her Hydro Caps, so she sends an order to her zombie bots and forces them to start herding participants away.

She grins as the large robot spots her while she’s skipping towards it. It tries to loom ominously, but she doesn’t really care about that. Her boyfriend is far too tall for height to be intimidating to her.

(She doesn’t realize that there’s normally a little bit of a difference between being 180 centimeters and being over a hundred meters.)

“Let’s see… You’ll make an excellent Shroom sculpture.” She throws all of her Hydro caps at it’s legs, then creates a new spore ball, one that just creates very rigid and strong green mushrooms that also periodically elevate the humidity as long as they have moisture in the ground near them. She tosses it at the legs and watches as the network of mycelium forms and practically fuses the tracks it uses to the ground. She feels as the mycelium also grows all over the machinery.

Several glowing green mushrooms spring up, then release moisture, making the mycelium crawl further up the robot and thus creating more mushrooms. She pouts as time is called before the robot could be fully covered in her little babies. She sends the command for her hijacking mushrooms to return to her.

They do, the robots touching the black of her outfit and the fungi slithering out and returning to her. She doesn’t like burning her sentient fungi so she tends to just reabsorb them. “You cuties did good.” She says with a smile, patting the little purple mushrooms that popped up between the cracks of the robot before reabsorbing it.

She looks to a nearby drone. “I should have all of my hijackers with me by now, but I’d put all of your robots and this testing site through a fire wash sometime soon. Without me nearby my fungi can grow out of control.”

The Drone seems to blink at her, but it nods. At least, she assumes it nods.

—~—

“That menace is in your class. I don’t care if she’s mutant, I’m not prepared for that sort of absurdity and she doesn’t even have blood according to her diagnostics.” Kan says to Shouta, who sighs.

“Fine, you’re taking Ojiro then. He’d do better in your class anyway.”

—~—

Shoto blinks at the massive robot. ‘Right… Should stop it here, so nobody gets hurt.’ He thinks, sending a pulse of cold through the area, just to make sure. His ice side tends to detect barriers and people easier, though everyone feels the initial chill so he can’t do that for stealth purposes.

“Fire-like ice pillar.” He says, snapping his fingers and creating a tower of his Icefire around the robot, the icy flames swirling around the robot until Shoto can’t feel any heat, then he sends a fireball straight at it’s chest, knowing the physics…

With a loud bang! a wave of rapidly expanding air slams into the chest of the robot and sends it tumbling backwards.

—~—

“We already knew he was going to my class. You’re taking Shouji Mezo.” Shouta says, and Kan nods.

—~—

Tenya looks at the large robot and feels his mind focus up even further. He slows down a little to shout “RUN!” at the examinees who were just staring, then speeds back up while watching a number of them begin sprinting away.

He grabs a few stragglers, finding it a bit difficult to do without hurting them. The robot bends down and places it’s hand on the ground, as though trying to squash them. He grins as he sets down the people he’d grabbed near the gate, then mutters out “Gear Nine”

Gear Nine is the gear his brother uses to do his ‘Recipro Burst.’ And it burns out the engine after just ten seconds.

But with his Focus, Tenya feels each of those seconds as though they are minutes.

He runs up the robot’s arm and pulls a lever on the side of it’s neck, having read the full report on each robot, he found out that there’s an off switch on each one, and the Zero Pointer’s was the hardest to reach.

He runs back down the arm of the robot and skids to a stop near the gate, breathing deeply and slowly while returning to first gear.

“And STOP!” Uncle Mic says, and Tenya bites back the retort of ‘We already did!’

—~—

“My class?” Shouta asks.

“Yeah. I could work with him, but my class and teaching methods are a bit too bolstering and such. He doesn’t seem to need that.”

Shouta nods. “You’re taking… Monoma. I don’t think my class’ style would work well with the kind of quirk he has.”

The two continue to go back and forth from there, telling the other who they are going to take.

It’s how they’ve determined placements for years, as it makes things faster and it tends to go easier since each knows the other’s strength and their own weaknesses in teaching styles.

—~—

Outside the gate into UA, Izumi lightly taps her foot and hums along to a song stuck in her head while waiting for Kinoko to leave.

A woman with dirty blond hair looks at her, and decides to approach. “You waitin’ for someone?” She asks, voice slightly airy.

“My girlfriend, yeah. She always takes a while to explain exactly how to dispose of her quirk’s waste because she’s paranoid about starting an apocalypse.”

“Mhm. I’m waiting on my goofball of a bestie.” The other woman says with a shrug. “He gets really engaged when talking to people, so I bet he hasn’t even realized that he was supposed to leave. Utsushimi Camie.” She gives a wave, signaling that she’s introducing herself.

“Midoriya Izumi.” The green eyed girl says in reply. “And Izuku, sometimes. Don’t worry about it. Are you applying for UA?”

“Yeeep.” Camie says, “I think I passed. Dunno tho’. Did it by tricking bots into hitting eachother or smashing walls when they thought it was an applicant.”

“Illusion quirk. Probably breath related considering how breezy the way you speak is.”

Camie laughs. “Yeeeep. Yours is probably music related. All the humming and tapping gave you away.”

“… My quirk does have an illusion and performance aspect, but from there it’s a bit more absurd than you’re thinking.”

“Ooooh. Really? Can’t wait to see it in class then.” Camie says with a slight smirk, before shifting so she’s standing properly. “There’s my doofus. Seeya, Midoriya.” She walks off to join a man with a buzzcut, who she talks with.

“Mimi~” Izumi turns from where she was watching Camie walk off to see Kinoko rushing towards her. They collide in a hug when Kinoko gets within range. “Sorry it took me so long! Needed to make sure they didn’t let my babies cause a robot uprising.”

“So the hacker shrooms worked?”

“Like a charm.” Kinoko says with a giggle. “Still never going to grow those on people unless it’s a last resort. Their movements were unnatural even for robots. Could you imagine a human moving that unnatural?” She shivers a little.

Izumi nods. “I’d never expect you to.” Giving into an impulse, Izumi kisses the shorter woman on the forehead.

Rather than blushing, Kinoko has always had an odd issue of her hair turning red when she’s embarrassed, so Izumi is unsurprised when the color rises to her hair rather than her cheeks.

“C’mon, let’s go do something to unwind from the exam stress.” Izumi says, grabbing her hand and pulling her along.

The two go to a cat cafe, the cats always seeming to really enjoy both of their presences.

Chapter Text

“So my conjuring of weapons and quick-change of clothes comes from my dad’s side, the illusions, shapeshifting, and other internal abilities are from mom… But what the fuck is with the wand stuff?” Izumi mutters to herself, pacing around Momo’s gym while thinking.

“Exaggerated mutation stemming from an excessive absorption of energy stimuli?” Momo guesses.

“Then it wouldn’t have existed prior to my prep for the entrance exam.” Izumi points out, grabbing her wand and with a quick gesture, conjuring a shield wall. “And it wouldn’t be nearly as intuitive. Remember how hard Shoto had it with the Ice-Fire?”

There were so many times that Shoto would either suddenly burst into flames at full force or suddenly create a glacier while he was mastering his Ice-Fire that they still have extra strength fire extinguishers and flamethrowers stashed around the gym.

“Manifestation of everything at once? Plus telekinesis from your mom’s side, which you hadn’t exhibited before.” Kinoko says. “Plus you sorta accepted that your quirk is a magical girl-idol thing, that might’ve affected the manifestation of your conjured conduit.”

Izumi huffs and waves the wand a little, humming to herself while thinking.

‘’I need a wall here’ seems to make a wall… So it’s a bit like conjuring my weapons… Hmmmmmm.’

She flicks the wand in a different way, and several kite shields start floating around her in a ring. She starts walking and they move with her.

“Okay, so if that works… I wonder if…” Izumi leaves and Izuku takes the stage.

He waves the wand, imagining what he wants to happen, and grins as the exasperated look on Momo’s face and deranged giggling from Kinoko immediately tells him all he needs to know. Still, he turns around to see five swords made from his conjuration material floating in the air.

“… Awful.” Momo says. “You’re already unhinged enough, and now you can just fucking make swords fly!”

Izuku raises an eyebrow at her, and snorts when her face turns red, quickly becoming embarrassed by her outburst. “Honestly I thought of much weirder shit I can do with this now. Like, since I can make shields separated from my body now, can I make a bouncy house out of this energy? Cover someone in armor made from my shields? Coccoon criminals…” Izuku waves his wand and the swords disappear, turning into arms like the ones that held the bat. “Maybe conjure arms?”

“Why on earth would you need those?”

Izuku shrugs. “Intimidation factor.”

He then starts muttering about his previous train of thought. “If I could somehow sing with both my voice and Izumi’s voice at the same time, by finding a song that essentially creates a version of her, would I be able to create a full-on knight made using shields and the weapons?”

“Wait…” Izumi takes the stage again and flicks the wand, forming a hollow shell of a knight. It kneels down in front of her.

“Well, this way I wouldn’t have to fight while guarding an objective. Momo, mind taking a quick shot at it?” Izumi asks, and said taller girl sighs and flicks her wrist, creating a pistol that she fires right into the thing’s chest.

Izumi blinks, feeling some kinda muscle lightly strain as the knight is sent flying. “My weapons and shields don’t really have much weight unless I’m swinging em, so that makes sense… Though I think… Let’s try again.”

The knight stands up and walks back to it’s starting position, and Momo sighs, firing her pistol again. This time, Izumi resists the weight being pressed against the construct, and huffs a little when the weight finally abates.

“Okay, so I can resist the force being applied against it, though it is very draining.” Izumi hums. “Now let’s try this.” She ‘Roots’ the knight in place and once again signals Momo to fire. This time the knight is unbowed, and Izumi doesn’t feel a headache coming on from telekinetically holding the energy in place.

“Okay, so it can be stuck in place, or it can be ‘floating’ for lack of a better word. Good to know.” She mutters.

“Now the only question is… Why can’t I make giant weapons?” She questions.

“Might be a stress-activated ability.” Kinoko says, and Izumi nods, conceding that that might be it.

—~—

Toshinori Yagi reviews the footage of the entrance exam, specifically of candidates that Nedzu had lined up.

After reviewing everyone, he winds up going back to one person in particular. Many of the candidates were very good contenders, but for some reason this one was the one that he got caught on.

They’re powerful already, which irks the part of him that wants to choose someone like he was back when he wasn’t All Might, but something about them makes One For All reach out. He can tell. The quirk wants that one.

Toshinori nods to himself. “Midoriya. One For All is pointing me at that kid.”

Nedzu blinks a little, then slowly nods. “Understandable. From what we understand their quirk is a stockpile. Most likely the quirks mesh well together and that’s why One For All wants it to go there.”

All Might nods. A bit irked still, but willing to go with it. “Plus this way it’s harder to trace me back to them.”

Nedzu nods. “Very true.”

-Meanwhile, in the Vestige Space.-

“Why, First?” Second asks.

First normally gives everyone an even vote and chooses based on that the next holder of the quirk, but he used his override of being the one who had the ability to pass the quirk down first to force the decision.

“We need a vacation. This quirk can only be passed to heroes so we’re always going to have stress in life, but at least we can have fun if we choose someone with a fun quirk. Plus I think it’ll be really interesting to see how One For All might upgrade a Magical Girl quirk.”

Most of the vestiges agree with him on that front. “One For All technically isn’t needed anymore.” Seventh says. “We completed our task. All For One is dead. So now we need to figure out what, if anything, One For All is. Do we let it die with the Ninth? Do we become a Dynasty quirk of some kind, eventually becoming more an army of one situation than we already are by having an actual army of immortal advisers when we get to the one-hundred-and-first user?”

“Toshinori’s Stress-Awakened Quirk; Adaptation, won’t let us grow too strong for anyone since we all know that the next user is getting our quirks. We don’t even know what Ninth’s quirk and personality will do to us. We’re at a point of change.” Seventh finishes.

First nods. “And I figured ‘Might as well have fun while having an existential crisis’ and chose the Magical Girl.” He shrugs. “No regrets & all that. One For All is locked in now.”

—~—

The Study Group has a party (Read: Hangs out at Momo’s since they’re all still fairly quiet, Izuku and Kinoko being exceptions in the group,) when they all get accepted, and not only that, get into the same class!

“I started listening to more metal after the entrance exam. I kinda like using my vocal chords like that and the look on some of the examinees faces when they saw Izumi doing metal growls was funny.” Izuku says. “Found out something interesting though.”

He clears his throat a little and everyone hears an ominous technological hum pass by. “Against all the evil that hell can conjure, all the wickedness that Mankind can produce, we will send unto them only you. Rip and Tear, Until it is Done.” His voice comes out altered somehow before with with a possessed sounding breath in instrumentals kick in at full blast.

Izuku twists his hand after a moment, like twisting a knob, muting the instrumentals and canceling the song. “Apparently as long as I have the song memorized and it has a vocal component somewhere, I can use the song, even if there isn’t that much.”

“I still don’t like metal like Heart of a Coward and other ones that are so heavy on the growls that I’m not quite sure it’s not a bear singing, but lighter stuff’s a bit fun. Especially as Izumi. Nobody expects the whole Eragh! thing from her.” He does an improvised growl.

“Also I don’t really require a Duet, but a song with lots of overlapping vocals or a distinct shift in the singer’s voice makes Izumi or Ku manifest externally, which means Metal songs are actually quite good for my quirk.”

“So, anything from you guys?” Izuku asks.

“When on earth did you find the time to train any of that?” Momo asks.

“Multitasking. I was honestly just trying to find music that I liked in the metal genre and it spiraled from there.”

“Of course.” Momo rolls her eyes.

“Oi, I do not want to hear that from the woman that found out she could reabsorb the things she creates because she accidentally created a figurine she wanted to buy! Sometimes shit just happens.”

Momo huffs. “Well, I’ve been working more on improving my blueprints and programs. So far I’ve added a repulsor like Iron Man’s suit to the hand jets.” The oddest thing about Momo’s quirk is that it’s probably the most ‘grounded’ of the group. She needs to hand-program items that need programming if she wants them to have that programming when she creates them later. So she’s hand-programmed her nano-machines to do every operation that she can think of. (And that Izuku can think of, but that’s besides the point.) She’s a certified genius because of the brain power it takes to do this.

“I discovered a Tenth Gear.” Tenya says, shrugging at the looks of shock he gets. “It nearly melted my exhausts, but as you know they get stronger when they overheat, so I’ve been periodically fueling them with those capsules- I still cannot thank you enough for that idea, Izuku, our family has benefitted greatly from that- and going up to that gear. After I discovered it, my brother started working out with me to increase his own quirk’s strength. He anticipates getting his own tenth gear in a week or two.”

“… Hot Ice.” Shoto says to them after a long pause.

“… Isn’t that- Isn’t that just boiling water?” Momo asks.

“You’d think so, right?” Shoto sighs. “But no. It’s basically solidified, extremely hot fire, and I am never using it except to possibly destroy evidence if you all need. Or if I’m up against an ice villain, I guess.”

“… Oh, but think of the things you can do with that!” Izuku shouts.

“Zuku, lemme say my bit before ya go off on Shoto.”

Izuku sighs. “Fine, fine.”

“So I figured out something… Interesting.” Kinoko holds her arms out and her spores form, turning into mycelia that shifts and transforms until she’s holding a gun-like weapon that looks extremely organic. “Since we figured out I can make clothes I’ve been trying to figure out how to make solid objects as well. It requires a shit-ton of concentration and very liberal use of my supernatural abilities, but this bad boy can produce my spores and absorb moisture from the air then spray it out as a mist.”

If Izuku was feeling happy about Shoto’s new ability, his happiness at his girlfriend figuring out how to form items out of her mushrooms leaves him at near ecstasy. He barely manages to not give up the game, restraining himself to smiling widely and giddily muttering out plans for her new facet instead of tackling her into a french kiss right then and there.

“… Good god will you two just make out already?” Momo mutters, probably meaning it as a joke.

Kinoko, whose hair had turned red when Izuku started muttering, grins widely, and the pair decide mutually to give up the game. Kinoko hops into Izuku’s lap and promptly latches her mouth onto his.

Izumi takes the stage pretty quickly, so Kinoko doesn’t feel what being so close does to her boyfriend. And so Izuku doesn’t get irresponsible.

The following make-out session lasts a long time. Almost an absurd amount of time since Izumi has mild photosynthesis mutations from her mom’s side that fused with the Starlight Heart to give her a near unlimited oxygen supply and Kinoko can create new oxygen receptors by growing mushrooms on her skin.

But still, eventually the need for eachother eventually subsides and they grin at their friends, who are staring at the pair in shock.

“… How long.”

“Second year. Highschool.” Kinoko says, breathing heavily. She’d only remembered to grow the extra mushrooms after she’d run out of breath.

“Ha. 2000 yen. Both of you.” Momo says, holding out a hand towards Shoto and Tenya. Both boys groan and fork over the cash. Then Kinoko feigns a groan and gives Izumi another kiss on the lips, this one shorter.

“Bets?” Izumi asks.

“Momo had a feeling you two had gotten together last year. We thought it was even earlier.” Tenya explains.

“Mimi bet that you guys would already know and just wouldn’t say anything by the time we ended the game. We just bet kisses though, since we’re together.”

“That is… both adorable and terrifying.” Tenya says. “I’m extensively happy for both of you, do not get me wrong, but… You’re both extremely unhinged.”

Both of them grin.

“We know! It’s amazing, isn’t it?” They say at the exact same time with the same inflection. (They sometimes do Karaoke duets and got used to singing at the same time, so they know how to match eachother’s vocals.)

Momo giggles. “I’m happy for both of you.”

“… Good job?” Shoto questions, his social awkwardness rearing its head.

“Good enough, Shoto.” Izumi nods. “Anyway, we’re so going to play around with your new abilities later. For now, back to having fun!” She starts up Momo's game console.