Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In one world, U.A. University was a High School.  In another world, All Might saved a green haired boy from a villain made of sludge.  In another life, Midoriya Izuku was the Ninth Holder of One for All.  In that life, he had abandoned the analysis he had cultivated and cherished for years, and he pursued brawn over brains in the fight against evil.

In this life, he certainly did not do that.

In this world, Midoriya Hisashi was a loving and doting father with a minor dragonic quirk.  He had an overseas job as a support item engineer at I-Island.  He came back home as often as he could to visit his wife and dearest son, and he video called nearly everyday.  His son never outgrew his stuffed animal phase and collection, because Hisashi would always buy him plushie Heroes and dragons to hug during their video calls.  The Support Tech would always hug one of the plushies out of his own hoard.  

In this universe, when Inko could only apologize to her son in the face of his quirklessness, her husband was there to reassure their son.  He was on the next plane to Japan to console his baby boy.

Izuku refused to get out of bed.  He was only four and a half, and everything was awful!  The doctor…

"You should really give up your dream.  It's impossible.  The test says you're quirkless."

And Izuku didn't know it at the time, but something more than just his dreams broke when he dropped his All Might action figure.

Izuku couldn’t see the screens, but The System would find some way to help their User.  That was their own Primary Directive at all.

But the day only got worse for Izuku!  He came home and watched All Might on repeat, hoping that it would cheer him up.  The doctor was mean, and people that were mean tended to lie.  So… he asked Mama.

“Do… do you think I can be a Hero, just like All Might, Mama?”  Izuku tried not to cry, but it was pointless.

Everything felt pointless.

“I’m sorry, baby!”  Mama sobbed, and she hugged him.

Ah.  So, he really couldn’t be a Hero without a quirk.

Izuku wanted to stop remembering all that!  He wished that yesterday had never happened.

Mama didn’t even bother to come get him out of his room.  Normally, she would already be getting Izuku out of bed to go to school.  If… if the doctor was mean and telling the truth, did that mean that his mean teachers could be telling the truth too?  Did… did Mama not care about him anymore?  The teachers said that his parents wouldn’t want him if he was a useless quirkless burden to them.  

He curled up under the covers and cried until he heard a knock at his door.

“Izuku?”

“Papa?”  That was Papa’s voice, but Papa was supposed to be working at his super cool job at I-Island.  Why was he here?

Izuku threw off the covers and scrambled to open his door without another thought.  He latched onto Papa’s leg, only a little scared that Papa would stop caring about him.  Maybe Mama still cared too, and she was just talking to Papa.  

“Oh, my dear hatchling, yesterday was really terrible, huh?”  Papa knelt down and hugged him.

The tiny greenette clung as hard as he could, muffling his sobs in Papa’s shirt.

Papa purred, like he always did whenever Izuku or Mama were upset.  It helped make them and Papa feel better.  Izuku was already starting to feel better, and he tried to mimic Papa’s purrs.  

He stopped when he remembered.

He wouldn’t be getting Papa’s quirk.  He wouldn’t be getting any quirk at all.  He wouldn’t get Papa’s firebreath or Papa’s horns or Papa’s tail.  He already had Papa’s teeth, but the doctor said that it wasn’t a quirk.   He wouldn’t get Mama’s telekinesis either.  Izuku was the most sad about that.  He had really wanted Mama’s ability and Papa’s looks.

“Papa…”  Izuku was scared of what Papa was going to say, but… he had to ask!  “Do you think that I can still be a Hero like All Might?  Even without a quirk?”

“I… I believe that you can be a Hero, Izuku.  No, you won’t be like All Might, but that’s because you’re Izuku and not All Might!  Being a Hero will be very, very hard.  Everyone else will have a quirk, and you won’t.  But a quirk is just another tool in your tool belt.  You’ll have one less tool that everyone else had, but… here’s the thing about tools.  You can always build the tool that you need if you know what you’re doing.  

“And unlike everyone else, you don’t have a quirk to limit you or to work around.  Endeavor can’t use ice beam guns, and All Might can’t use any Support Gear at all!  He just breaks them because his quirk is too strong.  You won’t have that problem.  With enough time and effort, you can learn any skill, any tool, and any fighting style you put your mind to.  I can believe that you can become one of the best Heroes if you really want to and put enough time and effort into it, Izuku.”

His little mind was whirling with all new information.  Papa believed in him!  Quirks were like tools, but they were always attached and probably took up room that could have been used for other tools.  Izuku didn’t have a quirk or a permanent tool, but that meant he had room for more tools.  And tools were skills and support gear and quirks.  Certain types of support gear were sort of like quirks.  Could he… build his own quirk?  But it had to be in an object and with technology and needed to obey the laws of physics.  Ew, physics.

“So… I can just… build tools that mimic quirks?  And then I can be a Hero with those tools!”

Hisashi suddenly felt like he had created a little monster.  His hatchling was going to be one of the best Support Geniuses of all time.  “Yes, there are a bunch of quirks that you can replicate with Support Gear.  Like my own fire breath is extremely similar to a flamethrower.”

Izuku did want a flamethrower, but he had a better idea right now.  “Papa, can you help me make something like Mama’s quirk?  I wanna build it!”

The Support Tech really was making a tiny support monster if he enabled it, but he refused to let the spark in his son’s eye die again.  “That is really difficult for a first project.  I think I have a few ideas of how we can build something similar.  We’d have to go out shopping for all the materials, and it would take a couple of days.”

“Will you be here that long, Papa?”

“Of course, my little dragon.”  Hisashi wouldn’t miss this for the world!

Izuku beamed a thousand watt smile at his Papa before weaseling his way out of the hug.  “Mama!  Papa and I are going shopping!  And it’s top secret!”  The tiny greenette bounced off to get ready.

Hisashi chuckled and went to check on his wife.  “Everything’s alright, Inko.  Izuku is already bouncing back.”

She still fretted.  “A-are you sure?  I know I just said the wrong thing, and I made everything worse for him.  Maybe we made a mistake not joining you on I-Island.”

He kissed his beautiful wife, glad to be home.  “Not at all, sweetheart.  And don’t worry about it, the hatchling conned me into helping with a surprise for you.”

Inko laughed in delight and kissed him back.  “Are you sure I can’t persuade you to give me a hint?”

Hisashi pretended to think about it.  “Perhaps—”

“EWW!  Mama and Papa, you’re being gross!”  And his wonderful little dragon was there to interrupt.  Well, he always could loop back to this after Izuku’s bedtime.

It was off to the hardware store for them!  Izuku was wearing the horn headband, and Hisashi refused to admit he teared up a bit.  His little boy had stopped wearing the adorable horns that made him “look like Papa” in an effort to try and help his quirk come in.  Hisashi had loved his son’s little plastic horns, and he had missed them.  But… it was bittersweet to see them again, because it meant that his son didn’t have a quirk and he’d never grow in his own set.

After breakfast at a small cafe, Hisashi taught his son the importance of blueprints and sketching out ideas and material lists, how to find good deals at hardware stores and find the best items in leftover scraps.  With a haul of several magnets, tiny leather gloves, and a dozen little "make your own drone" kits for kids that were heavily modified with additional wiring, Hisashi started to help Izuku make a working prototype.  

They worked in the living room, with Inko being a great sport about not peeking.  Izuku had an idea to make the gloves a "keyboard".  

Hisashi's wiring and programming skills brought it to life.  Of course, the keyboard was heavily simplified.  It would be good motivation for Izuku to learn programming himself.  His kid had already shown a stubborn streak when it came to pursuing knowledge, and he'd figure it out.  The controls couldn't be reconfigured, but Izuku figured out how to control two drones at a time to pick something up.  He could also switch which pair of his drones to control.  Powerful electromagnets helped the process along and guided the items to his hand.

Both boys, after working all day and the next, showed off their project to Inko.

"Look, Mama!  I don't need a quirk to be just like you!"  Izuku, with determined hand gestures, commanded the drones to carry over one of his action figures.  When it got close enough to his hand, he turned on the magnet stuck to it to attach it to his glove.  The little kid then did a little tada gesture, as little kids did.

Inko burst into tears, this time out of pride instead of maternal guilt.  Because Izuku was four, he cried because his mom was crying.  Hisashi started crying too, because he was a Midoriya.  It didn’t matter if it was only by marriage.

Inko finally managed an apology for doubting her son, for not saying the right thing in her worry.  For not supporting his dream right away.  

In this life, he could trust both of his parents with anything.  There was no teacher that could whisper poisonous lies that his mother would abandon him just like his father if he was a burden to her.  It only took him a week to confess that his teachers had been mean to him, and his parents transferred him to a different pre-school right away.

He might not have a quirk, but Izuku had the best family ever!

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Izuku thrived at his new pre-school.  The teachers were so much nicer and let him do whatever he wanted during recess.  The lessons had a lot more “lee-way” too!  Mama and Papa called it guided self-study, so everyone could do different assignments as long as they learned the lesson.  Some classmates colored in their letters, others liked their typical worksheets, and others drew the letters and made them super fancy.  

The tiny greenette was thrilled to keep a sketchbook and a notebook.  If he wanted to figure out how to replicate quirks with support items and technology, he needed to take extensive notes on how quirks worked and the science behind each one.  

(In one world, he analyzed quirks to try and find their weaknesses he could exploit as someone without a quirk.  It was a skill he forgot when he gained a quirk himself.  In this world, he dissected the mechanics to make them for himself and to build countermeasures.  Weaknesses and strengths were not his emphasis in analyzing each quirk, but he observed them to optimize his own equipment.  He also was showing a terrifying ability to mimic the movements and fighting of others.)

(Hisashi was already taking his own notes on his son’s terrifying kinesthetic mimicry.  Even without lessons, the play fighting moves were all starting to look like mixed and matched traditional martial arts.  A few lessons, and his son might not even need support gear at all to become a Hero.)

His sketchbook was for blueprints for his own gear.  Some were still a little complicated for him to read, so he listened to some audiobooks too.  His new teachers also loved it whenever he would ask for help with a new word instead of calling him stupid like his old ones did.  Izuku got really good at sketching, and he grew to absolutely love drawing.  Crayons were also perfect for light contrast coloring to highlight different parts that connected together.  He didn’t understand why some kids hated crayons, but each to their own.

Programming was still a little out of reach for him, Izuku still had some problems reading in Japanese!  Let alone learning a whole new super complicated language!  He was focused on learning English for now though.  Papa’s co-workers spoke in English all the time, and Izuku wanted to learn how to talk to his Papa’s friends.  

Hardware was slowly becoming easier for him.  Mama and Papa kept buying him learning kits, and it was challenging to figure out how to make what he wanted out of things designed to make something else.

Flamethrowers were vetoed without Papa’s in person supervision, and Izuku didn’t mind it too much.  Dangerous elements were above his skill level now, but he’d figure it out.

He mostly learned about theory and blueprint work before he made his next “quirk replicating device”.  Completely ignoring all his kits after reluctantly building the intended thing, he came up with something else entirely with an all new material.

Izuku built a fully functioning gatling rubber band gun.  It worked completely mechanically without a single bit of software involved.  It took a while to reload it, but twelve long bars had rubber bands stretched over them with a string underneath.  When you pulled the string, it would lift each rubber band in turn and fire it.  The outer “barrel” would then turn as you continued to pull on the string and fire the next rubber band.

After the first test, Izuku was no longer allowed to test things in the house.  Luckily,  all of the objects in the house that he knocked over weren’t breakable.

He also wasn’t allowed to take it into school, but he could show all his new teachers pictures of it.  They all praised it and complimented him!  Izuku felt like he was going to melt in happiness.  Adults other than his parents and the Bakugous hadn't ever been nice to him before.

His new school was the best, and the teacher's thought his horn headbands were adorable too.  Izuku had been worried for a bit that they might go against dress code and a teacher would yell at him.

The only thing that he didn’t like about his new school was that Kacchan wasn’t in his class.  Auntie and Uncle had pulled Kacchan out of their old daycare too, but he was in a different pre-school.  All of the neighbors were still going to the same place, and the only time they got to see each other was hanging out in the park.  And when they did get to hang out, Kacchan would always play Hero. 

Izuku would’ve been fine with that, but he wasn’t allowed to play Co-Hero or even Villain anymore.  He always got downgraded to Hostage now, and it was getting really annoying.  

It was starting to get a little mean too.  Kacchan’s explosions were starting to get bigger, and he liked to scare and startle other people with them.  If the “extras” complained about him playing Hero, he’d let off a big scary explosion.

Izuku thought Kacchan was still really cool, but he was becoming a bit mean and scary.  He didn’t really like playing Hero Agency anymore, especially when he couldn’t play Hero Duo with Kacchan.

The tiny greenette started to spend his outside time on other things instead.  He started to test some of the small gadgets he made.  His favorite to play with was the drones and magnets made to mimic Mama’s quirk.  He wasn’t up to tinkering with what Papa had made him yet, but he would get there.  He really, really wanted to make his keyboard gloves.  He’d be a mastermind of technology, and it would be so cool to be like a conductor.  With a few wiggles and taps of his fingers, he would be able control a full orchestra of support gear!

Honestly, the idea was so much cooler than just any one quirk!  He could control so many things, and he loved his drones.

The year came and went, and soon Izuku was in his new elementary school.  He still wasn’t in the same school as Kacchan.  Kacchan was apparently going to a place called Aldera Elementary.

And at this new school, Izuku really didn’t have any friends, but he had a number of friendly acquaintances.  No one was really mean to him, because he was going to a special anti-discriminatory and advanced education school.  He kept forgetting the name, but he thought it was called Sakura.  

Anyway, a lot of the other kids had mutations that Izuku thought were super cool, but he was in a smaller class of quirkless kids and late bloomers.  The teachers here didn't care about his plastic horns either, but he made sure his headband was visible in class.  He didn’t want the other kids to think that he had any “ves-ti-gal” mutations other than his baby fangs.

The first months of school were really fun and like preschool too.  He got to do a lot of self-study and alternate assignments, and he got a whole desk to himself and was encouraged to tinker around a lot more.  Izuku wanted to learn how to start coding next year.  Even though he would only because six and a half then, he’d be allowed to bring in a small laptop.  (He was a very mature five and half at the beginning of that first school year.)

For now though, he prefered drawing over talking to the other kids.  While Izuku knew that the other kids were like him, the bullying was a little too fresh in his mind.  He knew he was probably considered weird with all his tinkering, so he stayed at his desk and worked on his projects.

Summer break eventually rolled around though, and Izuku was back to playing at the park with the neighborhood kids.  Kacchan was being even more mean than he had been.  It was… it was like he was a bully.  His new school must’ve been just as bad as their old preschool, because Kacchan was saying the same stupid things that their teachers had.

Izuku had to step in between Kacchan menacing another kid three times already, and the explosive blonde was back to calling him Deku again!  It had barely been a week!

The tiny greenette had to do something to stop his best friend from being mean.  

He could’ve tattled, but that wouldn’t really help.  He could maybe… train Kacchan.  Like a dog, except Kacchan didn’t act like a dog even if he looked like an angry pomeranian sometimes.  No, Kacchan was more like a cat.

So, a spray bottle.  A really big spray bottle.  That would stop his explosions too, because his sweat would be too diluted to work.  Now, Izuku just needed to make a super soaker that could work really fast.  It was really easy when compared to some of the other things he had been working on.  They made really tiny and quiet air compressors, and that was pricey but within his summer toy and birthday budget.  He could hook that up to a water chamber to compress the water, an adjustable value here and there, and he had a super soaker that could pressure wash.

Izuku marched into the park one day.  Mama was beside him and trying not to giggle as she went over to talk to Auntie.  The tiny greenette guessed that he might look a little funny with a water gun half his size strapped to him, but he needed to really soak Kacchan a few times for this to work.  It was kinda heavy, but Izuku had practice carrying lots of heavy stuff to build his ideas.  The second part of the plan involved running away, and he jogged with Mama a lot in the morning.

Deep breath.  In and out.  He wasn’t facing down a villain or anything.  It was just Kacchan, and Kacchan just needed to be reminded that he was going to be a Hero!  And Heroes weren’t mean!  They were super nice and kind and helped everyone!

The tiny greenette found Kacchan, and he wasn’t surprised that Kacchan was picking on an extra again.  No, Izuku was just disappointed.  Kacchan really needed to be nicer, even to NPCs!  

Izuku huffed and walked into Kacchan’s view.  He didn’t bother saying anything yet; he just hefted his super soaker up and aimed it.  (It looked a lot like something a heavy gunner would use, shoulder strap, perched on his hip, and a barrel the size of his leg and a gallon sized water tank.  It had one handle on the barrel and one handle on the water tank.  The handle on the tank had a trigger in it.)

“Bad Kacchan!  Heroes shouldn’t be mean, and they’re not allowed to be bullies!”  Izuku pulled the trigger and shot about a quart of water at Kacchan.  The stream wasn’t fast enough to bruise, but the blonde didn’t have time to react before Izuku shut it off, reslung the water gun onto his back, and bolted off.

He didn’t run back to Mama, because then he’d have to explain and tattle on Kacchan.  That wouldn’t help, so it wasn’t an option.  Instead, he ran around all over the place and in zigzags.  All of the other kids saw Kacchan soaking wet and unable to set off any explosions, and that would be a better check to his pride than anything Auntie or Mama would do.  Eventually, Kacchan lost his tail for a moment, and Izuku climbed a tree and hid in it.  Green hair was really great sometimes.  

A few more deep breaths.  No laughing at Kacchan looking like a pathetic wet cat.  Wait for him to go away.

And now.

“Mission Success!  I only have to do that a couple more times now, and I’ll have Kacchan trained to be nice.  Or at least not mean anymore.”

And so, Izuku did that a few more times and ended up in a few more hiding places.

But one day, Kacchan didn’t chase after him.  Izuku was a little unsure what to do now that it seemed to work.  He jogged back to his best friend, who looked absolutely miserable on top of being completely soaked.

“Kacchan, are you okay?”

Kacchan sniffed.  

Oh.  Oh no, oh no!  Izuku had made Kacchan cry!  Oh no, now he was being mean!  Izuku didn’t want to be mean!

“W-what am I doing w-wrong?  I don’t get it, Zuzu!  The teachers always say I’m the best and t-that people with weak quirks a-and without ones at all a-are b-beneath me.  They said I-I shouldn’t talk with them or y-you!  T-they s-said it was my j-job as a Hero t-to t-teach them their place!  Cuz it’s dangerous!  B-but, you won against me!  All summer!  And you don’t even have a quirk, Zuzu!  I j-just don’t get it!  You said I was being mean and a bully and I don’t— I was just doing what I was told to do at school!”

Oh, oh.  Kacchan was sobbing now, and Izuku was going to make an even bigger rubber band gatling gun and Rubber Band Murder™ all those extras!  Being a little mean was okay, especially to teachers that were lying to his Kacchan.

“I’m sorry, Kacchan!  I should’ve explained better, but I know that the teachers in my school and Mama and Papa all say that it doesn’t matter what quirk anyone has.  It doesn’t make them better or weaker at all.  So picking on people because of their quirks is… really mean.  It’s a type of bullying.  I don’t know why your teachers told you to bully other people, but we should tell Auntie and Mama about it.  That’s the same kind of stuff that people said in our first preschool that was super wrong.”

“O-okay.”  Kacchan sniffed again, and Izuku glared at anyone that dared to look at his best friend as he escorted him to their parents.

It was decided that Kacchan would go to a different school and that Auntie was going to sue the whole Aldera school district.  Izuku was a little upset that Kacchan wasn’t going to go to his school, but he understood that his school wouldn’t be able to help Kacchan like it helped Izuku.

Izuku was just happy that he got his best friend back.

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Chapter Text

Izuku was six now!  It was his birthday today, and normally, the actual day of his birthday wouldn’t mean much to him.  He normally celebrated whenever Papa came home, but Papa couldn’t come home this year around his birthday.  He had very important work at I-Island to do right now.  It made Izuku a little sad that he couldn’t hug his Papa or get hair ruffles or get little tugs on his plastic horns.  

(He also couldn’t build a flamethrower or a plasma coil or anything that could explode without Papa there to supervise.  Mama said so.  Which sucked, because he wanted to try and mimic Kacchan’s quirk!  He wasn’t allowed to build a mech-suit to mimic All Might either.  Mama and Papa both agreed that it would be pointless to build one now when Izuku would just outgrow it.)

But!  He got to video call Papa for most of the day!  And Papa said earlier that he had a special surprise for Izuku!  Izuku loved surprises, especially from Papa; they were normally super cool and fun toys or tools or building kits.

And well, he might have a super cool surprise for Papa too.  

Izuku bounced out of bed and put on the new onesie Mama had bought him.  Now, Izuku still had a bunch of All Might merch, but he had expanded his collection to a lot of other Heroes.  He needed to research their quirks after all!

So Mama wasn't too surprised that Izuku wanted a onesie that wasn't All Might.  But she was delighted when Izuku picked one out that wasn't Hero themed.  It was dragon themed!

The green one looked too cartoony and didn't match Papa though, so Izuku insisted on black one.  But they didn't have a black one in stock.  But, they did have a sewing machine at home! 

With the powers of the Internet and his Mama's hemming knowledge, Izuku designed and figured out how to make his own dragon costume.  He soon had a black dragon onesie with a tail and spines and even wings that velcroed to his sleeve.  The underbelly in Izuku’s design was rather minimal.  Just a little bit of embroidery by hand of a golden or green scale here and there.  Izuku wanted to give the impression of irri-des-ence.  He finished the whole thing up with pockets and a hood with eyes and fangs and horns that could fit over his other horns.

It was so awesome!

He rushed through eating his breakfast with Mama, and he patiently bounced in place as Mama set up the computer.  It was fun to flap his wings while he waited.  Having wings was awesome.  He really needed to figure out how to make a set for himself that worked.  Flying would be so cool!  And flying with a pair of mechanical wings would look so much cooler than a jetpack!  Izuku needed to know a lot more about physics, but he figured that a strong enough pair of motors with a constant flapping subroutine would work.  If that failed, he could always make jet boots and have a pair of wings to glide around.

“Izuku, dear, you’re mumbling quite loudly.”  Mama chuckled in that way that meant she was endeared by him and not making fun of him.  

“Thanks, Mama!”  Izuku needed to work on not mumbling.  He couldn’t spill his plans in front of the villains he would fight!  But it was hard not to mumble what he was thinking when he was focusing really hard on something.  Papa called that hyper focusing.  Izuku needed to remember that term.  Maybe he should build some kind of mask?  Something that could block out what he was saying?  And he could turn on a speaker or something when he wanted other people to hear him.  Oh!  And a built in comms unit, so he could share plans with other Heroes without villains being able to listen.

Izuku grabbed his design sketchbook and wrote that idea down.  He would really want something like that in his costume.  

He looked up from the mask like thing he was sketching to finally see Papa’s face on the screen.  “Papa!  Hi, Papa!”

Papa laughed, sounding a little surprised.  “Hello to you too, my little hatchling.  Is that a new onesie you’re wearing?”

“Yeah, I made it myself!  I’m a dragon, just like you!”  He stood up and showed off the whole thing with a little twirl before sitting back down.

Papa looked really happy; his smile was so wide.  That made Izuku happy too.  He knew that Papa was also upset that he couldn’t come home, maybe even more upset about it than Izuku.  “What a lovely surprise, Izuku!  Now, I’ve got a bit of a surprise here too.  You’ve been working really hard on learning English lately, right?”

“Yeah?”  Izuku was a bit confused, but he was even more excited.  Was Papa going to introduce him to one of his co-workers?

“Well, I’ve been working on a super special project here with a friend.  He doesn’t know a lot of Japanese, but my friend is close friends with All Might.  In fact, he makes All Might’s costumes, and he tried to make All Might some Support Gear.  Of course, his quirk makes it incredibly difficult for him to wear Support Gear without breaking it rather quickly.  That didn’t stop my friend, David Shield, from trying though.  And he has quite a few stories about it too!”

Izuku was stunned in complete shock, before he exploded into an excited squeal.  “Papa!  You’re friends with David Shield!?”

Of course, Izuku had practically learned English on everything All Might.  He could only listen to half of the Hero’s interviews in Japanese, after all.  He had struggled through some of David Shield’s essays before, but he barely understood some of the technical terms in it in Japanese, let alone English!  And Mama didn’t know some of those words at all, so she could only help so much.  They were learning together though!

Sure enough, David Shield walked into the camera view in Papa’s personal lab.  The man had so many funny stories about All Might that Izuku would never be able to find in any interview, and the Support Expert would slow down and stumble through an explanation in his limited Japanese if Izuku couldn’t understand something in English.

And somehow, that wasn’t even the best part!  Papa and Mr. Shield had shipped him some Mighty Merch that was personally signed by All Might himself.  Izuku was so excited that he might die on the spot!  And the day got even better.

Mr. Shield had a daughter that was a bit older than Izuku, and he got to meet her.  She wanted to be one of the best Support Techs in the field too, just like her own Papa.  Melissa Shield wasn’t really sure if she wanted to be a Support Hero like Izuku did, but she wanted to do her best to Support other Heroes with her own genius.  She liked Heroes a lot too, but she liked a lot of really old comics about Heroes too.  There were so many cool fictional ones like Spiderman and Thor and Superman and Wonder Woman and Aquaman.

There were even Heroes in those comics that didn’t have quirks or any superpowers at all, like Batman and Ironman and Robin and Green Arrow!

Melissa was Quirkless like he was, and she totally got it.  That people could be so mean, and that life wasn’t fair.  That they didn’t need a quirk to excel in whatever they wanted to.  She understood Izuku’s dreams of wanting to become a Hero, now to prove that he could do it.  He could be the inspiration everyone like them needed and wanted.  

In the span of an afternoon, they became fast friends and confidants.  Melissa had some really awesome ideas after listening to some of Izuku’s Quirk Analysis.  The Vigilantes Crawler and Pop Step were super interesting to her after hearing about Izuku’s Quirk Replication Tech.  Melissa helped him draw up the blueprints for some hover boots and gloves and jumping boots.  They each worked on the concept on their own work desks for hours.  With a pair of hover gloves on her desk and a pair of hover boots on Izuku’s, both quirkless support geniuses made a vow.

One of them would be the first Quirkless Hero.  Melissa was personally rooting for Izuku, but the idea sounded so inspiring.  She loved being in a lab, but the idea of being out there and saving people herself with her gear was something that never occurred to her.  She’d have to seriously think about it some more.

Having a quirkless friend was so much fun, especially one that loved Support Gear as much as he did!  Izuku had thought that he would’ve weirded out the kids in his class with his life’s dream.  The kids in the neighborhood thought he was weird after all, but they weren’t quirkless.  They didn’t understand that he was trying to be an inspiration to everyone like him.  He was going to make so many friends when he got back to school after Summer Break!

Chapter Text

School was back in session, and Midoriya Izuku had one goal: make friends.

The only problem was that Izuku wasn’t exactly sure how to make friends?  Kacchan had been his friend since he was born, and he had just clicked with Melissa.  But he couldn't ramble on about Support Technology with his classmates!  What was he going to do?

Maybe Izuku should ask his teacher!  Megane-sensei should know all about making friends!

Izuku skipped his way into the classroom, glad that he was early today.  None of his classmates were at school yet, so Megane-sensei was the only person in the room.  Perfect!

“Hi, Megane-sensei!  Can I ask you a question?”  He bounced over to her desk, tilting his head to the side a little as he looked up at her.  People always seemed happier when Izuku tilted his head at just the right angle.

Megane-sensei smiled at him.  “Go right ahead, Midoriya-chan.  Thank you for asking.”

“How do I properly make friends?”

“Oh.”  Megane-sensei seemed surprised for a moment, but she took a moment to think about his question.  That meant she was really considering his question and thinking hard about finding a good answer for him.  “Well, there are many different ways to make friends.  I would say I made most of my friends through conversation about our common interests.  I’m friends with a lot of teachers, because we all like teaching, but I became friends with my life partner because we both wanted to play with the building blocks when we were about your age.  We decided to share the building blocks that day, and we talked about what things we liked to build.”

Izuku thought that was a really good way to make a friend, but it worried him a little.  “But… what if I want to make a friend with someone and we don’t have any common interests?  I don’t know if my classmates like Heroes or tinkering or drawing or support items.”

“So, this is about wanting to make friends with your classmates?”

The tiny greenette nodded.  He knew that Megane-sensei was fishing for an answer for his sudden change of heart.  She had been worried earlier in the year that he didn’t want to make friends.  “I made a new friend over the summer.  It was really fun, but normally other kids don’t like me or think I’m really weird.  I didn’t know what my classmates would think about me, so I avoided them.  I didn’t want more kids to think I was too weird to hang out with.  I mean, I know I’m weird, but I’m a good and fun kind of weird.  It just makes me unique!  And think that it’s worth talking to them if they might think I’m the fun kind of weird too.  I just… kind of miss having a lot of friends, sensei.”

“I think those are very good reasons to not want to make friends and to want to make friends.  Thank you for sharing them with me, Midoriya-chan.  It might be a good idea to sit with your classmates during free study time.  I know you prefer to sit at the back corner and watch them sit together at the center table.  Sitting with them would be a good sign to show them that you’re open to conversation and becoming friends.”

“I will!  Thank you for the advice, Megane-sensei!”  Izuku bowed in an attempt to be formal, but he bounced up and held his arms out to ask for a hug.  Sensei gave some of the best hugs, and she bent down to hug him.  She ruffled his hairs around his plastic horns before sending him off to his seat.

Izuku got out his sketchbook and notebook while waiting for free study time.  It would be a while, so it wasn’t worth hyper fixating on the wait.  He flipped open to his analysis page on Pop Step in his notebook and started on designing a set of jumping boots.  It was theoretically really easy, but it kinda wasn’t.  While you could just wind up a pair of shoes with springs in the soles, controlling the direction of the jump and the landing would be difficult.  Maybe instead of putting the spring in the heel, put it under the toes of the foot.  Yeah, a springboard for the front half of the shoes, and shock absorbers in the heel.  Definitely boots for proper ankle support.  

He noted down a remote trigger mechanism instead of a movement with the shoes itself.  Footwork was important in a fight, and accidentally shooting yourself up in the air would be really bad.

At this rate, Izuku might need an AI system to keep track of all the tech he had in his costume and help quickly switch his controls to control the thing he needed at the time.  Even keyboard gloves would have a hard time keeping up, and he’d sometimes have to use his hands.  He scribbled the possibility of voice controls in the margin of his blueprint.

The sketching out of that project somehow got him all the way to free study time.  

Suddenly, Izuku was super nervous.  The center table with all his classmates seemed so intimidating now, and there were only three other kids there!  The tiny glanced back and forth from the table and Megane-sensei, hoping to convey with his eyes that he changed his mind and wanted to do this on a different day.

Sensei smiled at him, silently wishing him good luck, and he folded like wet tissue paper.  Izuku couldn’t disappoint Megane-sensei.

The tiny greenette reached up and tapped his plastic horns like they were a good luck charm.  And they totally were in that “mind over matter” thing.  Izuku believed they worked, so they did.  

He took one deep breath in and out before he grabbed all of his stuff.  It was just his imagination being dumb as his walk over to the center table seemed to feel like a death row walk to the gallows.  Izuku resisted the urge to run away when all of the other kids stared at him when he dropped his things.  He quickly sat down and opened his sketchbook and pretended that he was doing a completely normal thing instead of breaking every single previously established routine of the class.

“Hi, I’m Midoriya Izuku.  I don’t really remember anyone’s names.  Kacchan normally refers to everyone as ‘extras’, but that sounds mean and I don’t like being mean.”  Izuku glanced over to Megane-sensei, and she smiled at him and gave him a thumbs up of teacher-endorsed encouragement.

He still wanted to curl and hide under the table and cry.

The largest kid in their tiny class was to his left, and he smiled at Izuku.  He looked as awkward as Izuku felt.  “Hi, Midoriya, I’m Yoarashi Inasa!  Nice to talk to you!”

Izuku smiled back.  He could do this!  He could remember names and be friends with other kids!  “Hi, Yoar- Yon- Yao- Yora-”

He could not do this.  He was going to run away from Japan.  He was going to board the next plane to I-Island and live with his Papa in exile and never step foot in this country again.

The other kid laughed loudly.  He seemed to do everything loudly.  “Don’t worry about it, Midoriya!  Just call me Inasa.  My name is hard to say.”

Okay, change of plans!  Izuku could work with this.  “Then, you can call me Izuku!  Can I call you Ina-chan?”

“Sure thing, Izu-kun!”  

Izuku laughed in delight.  Ina-chan gave him a nickname too!  This was working great!  Why was he ever worried about making friends?

The blonde girl on his right smiled wide before quickly covering it up with her hand.  “I’m Toga Himiko!  You can call me Himiko if I can call you Izu-kun too!”

“Can I call you Hime-chan instead?”  Princess was a really good nickname, much better than Deku.  He didn’t really like it anymore.  Izu-kun was so much better.

Hime-chan smiled really wide before hiding it again.  “Yeah!  I love it!”

The boy across from him had hair like his, but the other kid’s was properly black.  The boy frowned at Izuku, and Izuku didn’t know what he had done wrong already.  “Why are you only talking to us now?  I thought you had better things to do by yourself in your own corner.  You didn’t want anything to do with us until today.”

Izuku flinched at the harsh words, but the other kid wasn’t wrong.  He wanted to run away back to his corner, but he wouldn’t get any friends if he didn’t explain himself.  “My… my old friends think I’m weird now and don’t like me anymore.  I didn’t want to go through that again, so I started avoiding everyone instead.  Sorry…”

He was not going to cry.  Izuku hadn’t even been upset when those extras stopped playing with him.  They weren’t really friends anyway, more like Kacchan’s obsessive lackeys than anything else.  But Kacchan was his best friend, and their opinions didn’t matter.  Izuku wasn’t going to cry over something so stupid.

The tiny greenette sniffed back tears anyway.

“Fine, I’m Shindo Yo.  You can call me Yo, I guess.”

Izuku beamed at the boy, quickly scrubbing off any possible tear drips.  “Yo-chan then!”

“Ugh, fine.  What do you do all the time back there, anyway, Izu-kun?”

“Oh!  I like to analyze quirks and design support tech.  I’m gonna specialize in re-pli-cating quirks with super cool gadgets!  I was working on designing a pair of boots to mimic Pop Step’s quirk.  She’s a pretty cool Vigilante!  She’s also a street idol and does alley concerts!  Her music is really good, and I hope she applies for a Hero License so the Pro Heroes don’t have to legally arrest her.  There’s plenty of Heroes that do side gigs like modeling and acting, and she’d be super good at both.”

Izuku flipped open his blueprint sketch and his quirk analysis on Pop Step and her quirk: Leap.  He hoped that his classmates thought the stuff he analyzed and made was cool too.

“So… you want to be a Support Tech guy or something when you grow up?”  Izuku was a bit surprised.  Ina-chan, whose presence as whole seemed to be so jarringly loud in a way that was completely different to Kacchan, was so quiet now.  The boy that was taller and broader than the rest of them was now hunched over and looking so much smaller than them.

The tiny greenette didn’t know how to cheer up his new possible friend, so he just told the truth.  “Nope!  I’m going to be the first Quirkless Hero!  I’m gonna inspire everyone like us and show the world that you don’t need a superpower when you can just build your own!”

Ina-chan and Yo-chan looked too stunned to say a single thing, but Hime-chan squealed in excitement.  “You really don’t need a quirk to be a Hero!?  Do you think I can be one too!?”

Izuku didn’t know it, but the next thing he said practically shattered the timeline.  In a split second, he decided it didn’t really matter to him if he was the “proper” first quirkless hero or not.  Sharing was caring, and it was super fun.  Being a quirkless hero with other people sounded way more fun than being one by himself.  “Yeah, I don’t see why not?  We can start a Quirkless Agency or something!  I’ll have to design you some gadgets.  We don’t have tools that we’re born with like quirks, so we have to practice a lot with the tools we want and that feel right.  Other Heroes have quirks that they learn a lot more naturally, so we have to practice twice as hard to be good at them, Hime-chan!”

“Okay!  I can do it!  Why don’t all of us be quirkless heroes together?!”

Ina-chan could barely be heard over the other two.  He was that quiet now.  “C-can I join too?  The doctor says I might develop a quirk, and I have the toe joint.  But Pops has the toe joint too and he has wings and wind current quirk.  I don’t have an appendix though, so it’s hard to tell either way…”

Yo-chan scoffed.  “I don’t have the toe joint or an appendix.  And my blood test shows that I already have a quirk factor, it’s just stagnant.  The doctor says it means that my quirk is strong enough that I can’t develop it until my body can handle it.  It’s called postponed development.  I don’t wanna join your club just to get kicked out in a couple of years.”

Izuku blinked.  He didn’t know what an appendix had to do with anything.  He already knew that some people with mutations still had the toe joint, but he had no clue what the end of books had to do with quirk development.  He’d look it up later when he got home.

But he could totally solve the other problem.  “Well, we don’t have to call it the Quirkless Agency.  I don’t know what we would name it, but we can start an Agency together meant for a new and different type of Hero!  A lot of Heroes in Japan hardly use any Support Gear or very minimal gear.  That means that the Heroes in our country, when they run into a Villain that completely counters their quirk, are almost entirely helpless.  Then, another Hero has to come and save the first Hero!  We can just start an Agency together that specializes in working with a lot of Support Gear, so we can all counter a whole bunch of different situations and villains!  After all, a jack of all trades is better than a master of one.”

Everyone looked at him and then each other before Hime-chan broke the silence.  “To the start of Jack Agency!”  She thrust one hand out towards the middle of the table and grinned, showing off a glimpse of fangs before covering her smile with her other arm.  

Izuku showed off his fangs with a smile of his own, putting his own hand on top of Hime-chan’s.  “To Jack Agency.”

Both of them looked at Ina-chan, eagerly waiting for the bigger boy’s approval.  His eyes grew hopeful again, and his laugh was loud and boisterous as he placed his much larger hand over theirs.

All three of them looked at Yo-chan, practically begging him to join with their combined cuteness.  Yo-chan huffed and pretended to be disinterested as he clapped his hand on top of the pile, but he had that same spark of hope and excitement in his eyes that the rest of them did.  “To Jack Agency.  We’ll workshop on a better name if I’m going to join your Agency.”

Izuku grinned in delight at all of his new friends.  His new confidants.  He counted them off with delight and threw their hands up in the air.  “To our new partnership and friendship!”  

“Yeah!”

The rest of the day passed in what felt like no time at all!  Izuku was basking in the addictive power of friendship.  He was going to help start a Hero Agency straight out of his dreams!  He already wanted to help design QR Tech and costumes for his new friends, but he didn’t know their preferences just yet.  He’d just have to work on the jump boots at home before and wait until school again tomorrow.

Izuku was ready to go home with Mama at the end of the day when Hime-chan pulled him aside and out of hearing from everyone else.  Yo-chan and Ina-chan had already left with one of their parents.

Hime-chan was clearly struggling to find the words to say something, but Izuku waited her out.  “You have fangs.  Mommy said that people without quirks aren’t supposed to have fangs.”

“Yeah, I have fangs.  They’re ves-ti-gal mutations.  You don’t have to have a quirk to have them.  Ves-ti-gal mutations are something that anyone can have, it’s just a part of someone’s physical appearance that doesn’t have to do anything with their quirk.  Fangs are actually the most common.”  He did have baby fangs.  He loved his little fangs, but it worried him a little that Hime-chan’s Mommy would say something like that to her.  Even parents could be mean adults.  

One kid in their neighborhood, Izuku thought his name was Tsubasa, moved away with his Mama because his Daddy was really mean to both of them.  They ran away ‘cause he hurt them.  Later, the man was arrested, but Tsubasa didn’t move back.

He hoped Hime-chan’s Mommy wasn’t mean to her.  It was really hard to prove that parents were abusive, and Izuku didn’t want his new friend to have to live with someone that hurt her.

“Oh.”  Hime-chan looked a little like she was going to cry, and Izuku didn’t know how to console her.

A compliment would work, right?  “I… you probably didn’t want me to notice, but I think it’s really cute when you smile all wide with your fangs showing.”

Hime-chan smiled wide and bright at him, not bothering to hide her adorable fangs this time around.  She grabbed him in a hug, and Izuku hugged her back.  “You really think my smile is cute?”

“Yeah, of course I do.”

“Mommy says my smile is really creepy and scary.  She said I need to hide it, so I don’t scare people.  Thank you, for not thinking that my smile is scary.”  Hime-chan kept smiling, even as she backed out of their hug and scrubbed away her tears.

Izuku was really concerned about his friend now, but there wasn’t anything he could do to prove Hime-chan’s Mommy really was mean to her.  

“You don’t need to thank me for that.  Is your Mommy picking you up today?”

“No!  Daddy is picking me up today!”  Hime-chan didn’t stop smiling or start crying, so Izuku stopped trying to pry.

“Well, my Mama just showed up, so I’ve got to go with her for now.  See ya tomorrow, Hime-chan!”

“See ya tomorrow, Izu-kun!”

Chapter Text

An appendix was an internal organ and that doctor was a fraud!  Izuku was so mad and upset about it!  What if he really had a quirk this whole time and just didn’t know it!?  It was a good thing Mama could go to a local store and pick up basic blood kits.  Izuku didn’t know whether or not he had an appendix, but he didn’t show up as having a quirk on the at-home test.

It was a weird mix of relief and disappointment, and he ended up complaining to Melissa about it over dinner.  Of course, she was eating breakfast now.  What if he had a quirk this whole time!?  What would he tell his new friends!?  Would they think he was a fraud?

Izuku was nervous and jittery about his diagnosis now.  Apparently, all the tests in the world couldn’t be 100% accurate.  He might just develop a quirk anyway!  Even if he does have an appendix!

That would just mean that he would have a “primordial constitution”.  And it was really rare, but even people with primordial constitutions could somehow develop quirks later on in life.

He was happy Melissa listened to all of his panicked ramblings.  She was really great.  She knew just what to say and reassured them that they would still be the bestest of friends and be Support Techs together, even if he developed a quirk and she didn’t.

Izuku felt a lot better after talking with her, and he felt a lot better a little bit after that for no discernable reason.  Yeah, it didn’t matter whether he would develop a quirk or not.  He’d still have all of his Support Gear, and Jack Agency was going to have Heroes like Yo-chan too!  Heroes that had quirks and used a lot of Gear!

He didn’t need a quirk!  And a quirk was just another tool in his tool kit!  

Everything would be okay, no matter what!

And now Izuku was sleepy.  He yawned loudly before heading off to bed. 

He slept really well that night, even if his dreams were a little weird.  He doesn't remember what he was trying to do in the dream, but he remembered the fog that wrapped around him like a second skin.  It was warm and it felt like a hug from Papa, and it had glowing lights in strange 2D squares within the dark and wispy fog.  It was nice and felt like it was mimicking the plastic horns Izuku liked to wear and a pair of large dragon wings and a scaley tail too.

He wanted to remember more of his strange dream, as he ate his breakfast and got dressed, but he soon forgot all about it in the excitement of going to school again.

Izuku was bouncing all the way to his class, and he waved to Megane-sensei before sitting at the center table right away today.  While he liked having a big table to himself, he wanted to sit next to his new friends.  He could fit his notebook and his sketchbook in front of him.  It would be a bit annoying to constantly get out and put away his crayons and markers and colored pencils and highlighters.

Oh wait, he could just share everything and ask his friends to pass him the colors he wanted.

He was the first one to class again, so he opened his sketchbook up.  He drew really basic thumbnail sketches of all of his new friends from memory.  Izuku wanted to get the estimated shapes and colors of them right before jumping straight into costume and gear designs.  Something felt a bit off with his beginning sketches though, so maybe…?

Izuku took a few wild guesses and drew all of his friends aged up quite a bit.  He figured Ina-chan would be a muscular hero type, so he drew him broad and tall.  Not nearly as big as All Might, and maybe a bit more buff than Endeavor.  He put all of his initial basic drawings in civilian clothing, and a bomber jacket, jeans, and scuffed work boots fit his larger friend.  Hime-chan was easily sketched up as an older version of herself.  Izuku had a pretty easy time designing her, because the greenette could already picture Hime-chan as a less pop idol version of Pop Step.  He drew her in the summer version of the U.A. University uniform before he really thought about it.  

She was really cute, in the middle of a twirl and smiling toothily at the “camera” view.  Izuku was just practicing dynamic posing, and he really really liked the sketch.

He pictured Yo-chan in a business casual suit like his Papa wore sometimes.  Yo-chan was leaning back in a desk chair and drinking a cup of coffee, like some serious business people sometimes did.  His friends came in as he was drawing a whiteboard behind Yo-chan with a bunch of sticky notes and lines on it, just enough to really sell that Yo-chan was probably an Intelligence Hero like Sir Nighteye.  

Izuku went back and adjusted Ina-chan’s pose to make him lean against a motorcycle.  He didn’t really have any practice drawing a motorcycle before, so he only gave it a really basic outline.  

The tiny greenette looked up and grinned at all of his friends, absolutely delighted to see them.  “Hi, everyone!”

Yo-chan was staring at his sketchbook, so Izuku flipped it around so that the boy across from him could see what he drew.  “Morning, Izu-kun.  You’re… good… at drawing, but why do you decide to draw us?”

Yo-chan sounded confused, and maybe a bit like he was uncomfortable complimenting Izuku.  Like, he was a bit upset that Izuku was better than him at something they weren’t competing in, and he didn’t want to seem upset.  And he was swallowing his pride a bit in forcing himself to acknowledge Izuku’s skill.

Izuku didn’t mind though!  Kacchan did the same thing all the time!  It was a Kacchan being Kacchan thing, and Yo-chan could do some Kacchan things too.

“Because!  I was thinking I could help everyone design prototype versions of their costumes and gadgets today!  And it’s really good to have a simpler reference image when you’re drawing complicated clothing like Hero costumes or Support Gear.”  not that his references were really simple, because he was an overachiever.

“Wait!  Really!?”  Hime-chan sounded so excited next to him, and Izuku was overjoyed to see her not hiding her smile today.

“Yeah!  I was thinking we should have an idea of what kinds of tech we want in the future.  Better to practice now and figure out what might work before we make a permanent choice.  But it’s ok if you don’t have any ideas yet, I haven’t really settled on a design I want either.  I’m just focusing on what I can make rather than picking one theme and sticking with it.”

Izuku had thrown away the whole Mighty Boy idea.  He knew that he probably wanted to be a dragon themed hero, but he didn’t know much else.  He liked wearing his plastic horns and his keyboard gloves and the drones he made to mimic Mama’s quirk, but he drew up a blank on everything else right now.  The tiny greenette wasn’t even sure that he wanted a flamethrower to further mimic Papa’s quirk.  Maybe some hover tech and the jump boots?  Parkour skills seemed like something he really wanted to have.  Getting to the scene of a crime fast was one of the most important things he could do.  If he wasn’t there, he couldn’t save people or defeat the villain.

“C-can you do something windy for me, Izu-kun?”  Ina-chan was a little quiet and con-tem-pla-tive today.  Izuku figured his new friend just 

“Well, Papa has a wing mutation with a slight air current control quirk.  And Daddy has a minor weather control quirk that really only lets him affect small things like temperature and h-hum-midity and tiny windstorms.  The doctor says that in all my scans, I don’t have any signs of growing wings like Papa.  Which is a good thing!  Because Papa says wing breaching is super super painful, and that sounds horrible.  But I… really wanna fly too.  It looks super fun.  Even if I’ll never have wings like Papa.  Um, it’s okay if you can’t figure it out, Izu-kun.  Flying is super hard, even for people with quirks designed for it.”

Izuku blinked, and he actively repressed the urge to hyperfocus on Ina-chan’s parents' quirks.  He wanted to know a lot more, but his friend needed help and reassurance more.  Izuku guessed that Ina-chan had a lot of the same issues he had before Papa showed him that he could be a Hero.  It might’ve even been worse for Ina-chan, because everyone around him was probably saying there was a chance for him to develop a quirk and be a Hero.  That was even worse than a definitive breaking of his dream.

Izuku knew how to fix his friend’s confidence in his dream though!  

“Alright!  Jetpack, artificial wings, or mostly gliding?”  

“W-what?”  Ina-chan looked at him in startled disbelief.

The tiny greenette shrugged.  This wasn’t a big deal.  He was already thinking about ways he could fly already.  It sounded really really cool to him.  “Well, jetpacks are pretty easy, but the downside is that they’re difficult to steer and don’t do sustained flight well.  Of course, with modern advancements, coming up with a much more efficient fuel is easy enough.  Wings are difficult to create enough lift and a set to carry you would easily be the size of this room.  Gliding is a lot easier to steer, but you have to start from a much higher place.  Honestly, I think some combination of all of the above would be optimal?”

Izuku started to sketch out a couple of versions of what he thought would work and look good on his friend.  He started with a full set of armor that he had seen in some of the sci-fi movies he had watched with Papa recently.  The Mandalorians in Star Wars had jetpacks as part of their armor after all.  He drew another design with lots of tubes and steampunk elements.  He indicated and colored the various air compressors and engines before sketching a mechanical set of wings.  He noted down in the margins that the piping through his whole outfit would output lots of air in specific directions that Ina-chan could control.  The wings shot air through them to help create enough lift and properly steer.  Izuku noted down that that design would have to be tested when he was older and was allowed to play with proper combustion engines without Papa’s supervision.

The third also had the piping, but Izuku designed it with a much more Underground concept.  The Hero Suit was much quieter overall in design and was more suited for an Underground Hero like Eraserhead in case Ina-chan didn’t want to be a Spotlight Hero.  It started with a dark jumpsuit, and Izuku added a rigged section of cloth that could be hooked to the wrists to be used as a glider.  He rounded out this outfit with air compression guns, grapple hooks, and gloves that could fire small bursts of air.  

“So these are the concepts that immediately came to mind.  The third is a stealthy version that I recommend if you want to be an Underground Hero.  The second seems more in line for the proper flight you want, and it can cause gusts of wind to both help you fly or knockback villains.  The first is optimized for jetpack use, but we can add a whole bunch of gadgets built inside the armor.  Like a flamethrower and tiny missiles!  Do you like them?  Or do you want something else?”

Ina-chan stared at Izuku’s sketchbook in shocked silence.  The large boy was really quiet when he spoke up.  “I… can really be a Hero?  Oh…”  

Izuku reached over and patted him on the shoulder.  He knew the feeling.  He didn’t say anything and let Ina-chan have a few moments to process.

“So what do you two want?” 

Yo-chan shrugged, even if he looked a bit longingly at Izuku’s sketchbook.  “I don’t know.  I should probably wait until my quirk comes in.  I wouldn’t want to get attached to a design that just becomes redundant.”

“Can I have something red!?  And maybe something with… knives…  Are knives too villainous, Izu-kun?”  Hime-chan looked a little upset again, so Izuku rushed to assure her.  

“Not at all!  A lot of Heroes actually have a utility knife hidden in their costumes!  As for red, any particular shade?”

“Carmine, or maybe scarlet?”

“Style?  Like pants or skirt?  Spotlight or Underground?”

“I’d like a dress!  With pants underneath, and tall boots too.  And what do you mean Spotlight or Underground?”

Izuku blinked.  He guessed most kids his age wouldn’t know about Underground Heroes.  “Spotlight Heroes are like All Might and Best Jeanist that are really popular and patrol during the day on main roads.  They often interact with the media too, and they help everyone feel safe on the streets with their presence.  Underground Heroes are completely different though!  They patrol at night around alleys and avoid being seen by civilians.  They don’t really assure the public or interact with the media at all, but they specialize most of the time in villain capture and base raids.  Mostly drug dealing and human trafficking ring busting rather than petty thievery or chaos causing.  They do a lot of the more serious things while being sneaky.”

“Like spies?”  Yo-chan perked up in interest when he made the connection.

“Yeah, Intelligence, Scouting, and Infiltration Heroes are all considered to be types of Underground Heroes.  There’s also Twilight Heroes, which specialize in Spotlight and Underground Heroics.  Spotlight is also called Daylight or Limelight.”

Hime-chan hummed in thought.  “Can I go with Twilight for now?”

“Yeah!”  Izuku started sketching immediately.  If Hime-chan was going to wear a dress, it would be really easy to wear sets of knives on her thighs.  They would be kind of hidden and easy to access.

Drawing a red dress that flared a little was rather easy when paired with black leggings and matching red knee-high boots.  Izuku knew that he was going overboard with the ruffles in the skirt when he drew it, but he could easily hide armor panels that way.  Plus it would be cute and spinny!  It was very recognizably a Hero outfit though, which was good in the daytime, but by night…

Izuku drew a black cloak over top with a red lining.  It was still rather suspicious, but it would still hide a lot of her costume and help her blend into the shadows.  Izuku designed a few more ways to make her outfit “blend in” and look normal.  A black blazer or hoodie sort of worked.  On the other hand, a full trench coat made her standout even more.

It looked very vampire-esque, which at least was super cool.

Hime-chan noticed that too.  “I look a lot like a vampire, don’t I?”

Izuku nodded, staring at some of the ribbons on the dress.  He was pretty positive Auntie would call this style “Goth Lolita”.  Maybe they could be removable for night time patrols?

“Isn’t that… kind of a villain look…?  Is a vampire allowed to be a Hero?”

The tiny greenette looked up from his drawing, worried that Hime-chan was upset again.  “It’s totally a Hero look!  If you like it, don’t feel pressured to switch to something else, Hime-chan!  Besides, there’s plenty of vampire themed Heroes already.  Vlad King is one based here in Japan, and he’s super cool and modeled after the Dracula myths.”

“Oh, then I really wanna keep it then.”  She smiled again, and Izuku smiled back at her.

Yo-chan frowned for some reason, but Izuku didn’t really know why.  He finished coloring Hime-chan’s outfit before flipping to Yo-chan’s page.  The boy across from him had said he didn’t want anything designed for him yet, but Kacchan always said he didn’t want things when he actually wanted them.  

“Do you have any ideas now, Yo-chan?  We can just brainstorm a few items that are pretty basic and won’t interfere with your future quirk, and we can skip the costume design for now if you want.”  Izuku tried to be non-cha-lant about it.  Like when he tricked Kacchan into splitting one of those double stick ice pops with him, saying that he didn’t want a tummy ache by eating both parts of it.

The boy that sat across from him took a few seconds to think.  “Spy drones.  Goggles with a screen to see through the drone cameras.  And a cybertech outfit.  I think something with green piping would look really neat.”

Izuku agreed.  He quickly sketched up a mostly black outfit with neon green piping and stripes.  Black cargo pants with green stripes on the sides and around the pockets where he could store the drones, a black muscle shirt, and a black blazer with the requested green piping.  He threw in some leather fingerless gloves, boots with green laces, and a pair of matte black vambraces.  

The tiny greenette was really pleased that Yo-chan liked the cyberpunk Intelligence and Scouting Hero concept he had gone for.  Even the goggles that looked a bit more like sunglasses.

But with all of his friends taken care of, Izuku had to come up with his own design.  He scrunched up his nose as he drew a shorter version of his Papa with curly green hair.  He gave himself a typical support tech outfit, and he glared at the reference sketch.  

Something looked wrong with his older self.  He added his plastic horns, and it still felt weird for some reason.

He drew another sketch for a costume, but he couldn't detail anything more than the drones and keyboard gloves.  It kinda frustrated him a little that he couldn't come up with something for himself.  

But, well, he had a little over a decade to come up with a design that he liked!  He'd figure something out eventually!