Title: Learning the Ropes
Author: Timothy Wren
Series: Ready, Player: Number One Hero
Episode: 02
Fandom: BNHA/Boku No Hero Academia
Relationship: TBD
Word Count: 4,155
Warnings: None apply, I think.
Author’s Note: Comments welcome, concrit not. This chapter isn’t up on Ao3 yet.
Chapter Two
Alert!
[You have slept in your own bed! HP, Stamina, and Mana have all been refilled.]
Izuku stared at the screen of his quirk.
He had a quirk.
He had! A quirk!
He couldn’t believe it.
It had been on numb lips as he’d walked in the house yesterday evening. He’d nearly told his mom, but something cold stopped him. For so long that memory had been eating on him, her lack of support haunting him in low moments, when he looked into his future and saw only hardship.
He tried not to let it destroy him, the lack of faith. The damning apology. But he should have been able to fall back on that foundation of parental support, and he never had been able to.
Now he could fall back on a quirk.
“Inventory.” Izuku said, just to see. The window popped up obediently. A sword, a spell book, a key. 30 gold pieces.
Now that he had a moment, he noticed the other aspects.
The inventory could be divided into two sections. One showed a spectral outline of Izuku himself, for equipment and armor. It showed what he was currently wearing. Ten boxes were under it, three filled with what he’d put into the inventory yesterday.
“Why are these separate from the others?” he asked.
A small question mark blinked on the panel and Izuku pressed it, not surprised when a new window appeared.
Quick Draw Inventory
[These slots can be drawn upon with a thought or a word. For all other items in Inventory, you must pull up the Inventory interface directly. Customize slots at will.]
He dismissed the window, thoughtfully.
Then he spent ten minutes methodically placing desk pens and art supplies into the various slots.
Then, sure of the methodology, he pulled the sword out of its slot.
It had more weight than he expected, but wasn’t really that heavy. The blade was grey-silver metal and the hilt was metal of a different color, with some kind of cord making up the handle. There was a bit of text above it, just as there was for the pens he looked at. His quirk popped up an option to examine it.
[Item: Simple Sword]
Examine?
YES // NO
Izuku started to press ‘Yes’ with his free hand but paused, considering.
“Yes.” He tried out loud instead, and the window accepted it.
Warning!
[To examine objects in the Inventory, you will need to step inside the Meadow. Enter Meadow?]
YES // NO
“Sure?” He said, uncertainly, and then the world changed around him. Where before Izuku had been sitting on his bed, he suddenly found himself standing in a verdant field, healthy grass stretching off into the horizons on every side.
Small patches of wildflowers, short-stemmed, blossomed in pastel colors, dotted throughout.
The sheer size of it was stunning. He went from a fairly small room, where everything was more or less his size, to a sprawling expanse that made him feel small in comparison.
[Welcome to the Meadow!]
This is the Pocket Dimension that houses your Inventory. In the future, keep the Meadow in mind when you take a step, and you will find yourself here. Step out with a destination in mind to exit the Meadow.
“But wait…” Izuku said to himself. He looked around and spotted a small patch of ground where each item was laid out in a visible grid.
The sky stretched out, blue with only a few clouds to temper the endlessness.
As if reading his mind, the quirk offered:
[Customize the Meadow?]
YES // NO
He gratefully accepted.
A little fiddling adjusted the ‘zoom’ so to speak. He added trees and hills along the edges until the actual Meadow was a less terrifying size, more of an actual clearing the size of a large yard instead of a rolling savanna.
He breathed out a sigh of relief.
“Inventory” He said and was pleased to find the window still appeared. That was more convenient than looking for the physical objects.
The Meadow Customization Menu also had an entire upgrade setting, though he didn’t qualify for any of them yet.
The Menu interface in general reminded him, though.
“Open Menu.” He had earned a Skill he hadn’t been able to see, right?
MENU
Status
Skills
[LOCKED]
Inventory
[LOCKED]
[LOCKED]
Options
“Skills.”
Welcome to the Skills Menu!
[Dedicating yourself to certain tasks can produce a Skill. Skills level up when you use them.]
He waved away the text that he was coming to think of as “tutorial related”.
Skills
[ID Create] (New!)
He clicked it curiously, remembering what he had read before, in a haze of adrenaline and shock.
“ID Create,” He muttered, reading it off the screen. “Instant Dungeons, huh? ‘This Skill allows for the creation of Instant Dungeons inside an Illusion Barrier. What happens in an Instant Dungeon stays in an Instant Dungeon.’”
He huffed out a laugh.
He thought about creating a Dungeon right now, but something stopped him. He didn’t even know if he could create a Dungeon inside the Meadow. And what if he couldn’t get out?
Last time he went into an Illusion Barrier, he could have died fighting a real Villain. Sure, the Villain existed before the Barrier happened, but what if the Dungeon created deadly enemies?
He set that aside for now, though apparently reading the Skill’s description took away the blinking ‘new!’ next to it, and the Skill now read:
ID Create LV- 1 (0%)
He backed out of the Skill menu and, curious, pressed Status. An icon of himself took up half the window, with the left half showing a page of stats.
Name: Izuku Midoriya, 14
Level: 1 (250/200 EXP)
Health (HP): 100/100
Mana (MP): 25/25
Stamina (STA): 50/50
Quirk: The Gamer
Title: None
Stats:
STR (2)
DEX (2)
END (2)
VIT (2)
INT (2)
WIS (2)
Unused Stat Points: 0
[!] Ready for Level Up
Izuku pressed the Level Up bit with interest and wasn’t surprised by the resultant window that appeared.
You Have Leveled Up!
+5 Stat Points
+25 MP
+50 HP
+50 STA
EXP to next level: 350
The ‘Unused Stat Points’ now read 5 and his stats looked like this:
Name: Izuku Midoriya, 14
Level: 2 (50/400 EXP)
Health (HP): 150/150
Mana (MP): 50/50
Stamina (STA): 100/100
Quirk: The Gamer
Title: None
Stats:
STR (2)
DEX (2)
END (2)
VIT (2)
INT (2)
WIS (2)
Unused Stat Points: 5
EXP until next level: 350
He eyed the difference curiously, well aware that he could get lost for hours in the mechanics of even a regular quirk, and this one came with stats already drawn up. He could get lost analyzing someone else’s quirk for hours, but this one was his, and he still wasn’t over that.
For once, he had to have some self control. This quirk would be with him at all times; spiraling into that kind of hyperfixation was a dangerous one-way street. Especially since it talked back. Kind of.
Izuku forced himself not to try to figure out the math behind his quirk. He had all the time in the world to figure out how it worked on the deeper levels; for now he needed to figure out how to use it practically.
A chime sounded.
[+1 WIS!]
[Your quirk now rewards good decision making.]
Somewhere, an underground hero squinted his eyes in suspicion, then rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. It was far too early in the morning on a weekend to try to figure out what student pinged a disturbance in the force.
Izuku dismissed the interface thoughtfully.
Was his quirk prescient? How could it know whether he’d made a good life choice, without seeing the results of the choice? Then again, it did know Kacchan was in danger before Izuku did.
It also could create pocket dimensions, so Izuku took a deep breath and decided not to make himself crazy thinking about it right now. No further pop-ups appeared to praise his re-affirmation.
“Inventory” Izuku called again, and looked at his Equip tab.
It displayed the clothes he was wearing.
“Sleep” Shirt, clothing
[You’re as funny as you think you are. It’s a shirt that says “Sleep” on it, soft with wear.
Guaranteed to give the wearer a good night’s sleep.]
–
“All Might” Sweatpants, clothing
[A pair of gray sweatpants with a little golden-age All Might on the thigh.
The stat benefit of gray sweatpants will become clear when you’re older.]
It also had his underwear but Izuku didn’t need that kind of scrutiny from this quirk. He moved on to the sword, almost forgotten in his spare hand, which was now listing slightly from the weight.
A stat card appeared as he squinted at it.
Item: Simple Sword
Type: Weapon
Rank E, Unenchanted
Description: A simple beginner’s sword, picked up after defeating the Sludge Villain. +5 Damage.
Not that exciting, actually. He was a little disappointed. In games there were always really cool weapons with cool magical effects.
However, he reasoned, the rank system that apparently existed and the ‘unenchanted’ note certainly implied that higher tier, enchanted weapons existed. Plus, he already had a way to go into new dungeons, and he didn’t even have to worry about getting in trouble since they were inside Illusion Barriers.
Well, in trouble with the law, at least. He could still get in over his head in a fight. But having a sword was a lot better than having only his fists, especially against an enemy without a proper body.
The slots in the Equipment window certainly implied he’d be able to get armor at some point, so that could only help him in combat as well.
He put the sword back and pulled out the key.
Item: Unknown Dungeon Key
Type: Dungeon Key
Rank E, Standard
Description: A normal Dungeon Key, unused. It is unknown where it leads. This key can be used at Dagobah Beach. Suitable for Players Level 3-5.
Well, he wasn’t level three yet, but it looked like he could use it soon. It was strange that he had to go to a specific place to use it, though that made sense when he thought about it. Keys tended to require certain doors, and it was the key that was portable while the door was fixed in place.
Unlike, say, completely random Illusion Barriers that appeared in the middle of town.
But wasn’t Dagobah Beach famous for the illegal dumping? It was a ten minute jog away, so Izuku could probably go between breakfast and lunch just to check out the area and figure out how the key worked.
Wait, breakfast!
Izuku put the key back into his Inventory and tried to remember how to leave the Meadow. It had just said ‘take a step’, right?
He fixed his bedroom firmly in mind and let his toes touch the grass, then flinched hard as he suddenly appeared there. There was no great sense of motion but the suddenness of the walls changing almost felt like they were rushing at him.
He was at the door, which his mother was opening. He sent up a silent prayer of thanks that he hadn’t reappeared when she was watching. If he’d stayed any later, She also might have been worried if he was just suddenly gone so early, without a note or anything.
“Izuku, breakfast is ready– oh!” She said, surprised to see him functionally about to open the door as she opened it. She smiled at him and he smiled back.
Breakfast turned out to be pancakes.
When Izuku looked at them, curious, a label appeared from his attention, simply reading ‘Pancakes.’ Sometimes his mom went on Western kicks, definitely not because he’d gone through a phase where he only wanted American things because All Might was touring in America a few years ago.
His mother had “Midoriya Inko” above her head.
Alert!
[A skill has been created through special action! Continuous inspection of your surroundings has created the Skill: Observe]
He blinked, surprised. His other skill had come as a quest reward.
He mentally opened the Skill Menu and read through the little blurb that his quirk gave him, the announcement itself fairly repetitive. He waived through the new Skill notification and discovered it already showed some EXP progression from being used.
Skills
ID Create LV- 1 (0%)
Observe LV- 1 (5%)
When he looked back at his mom, she had an indulgent smile on her face and her words had changed. They now read:
LV- ?
Midoriya Inko
He wondered what her level was. It was intriguing that people who weren’t the Gamer had levels, at all, and being able to see them seemed like an amazing benefit to heroics.
Granted, his Inventory itself seemed like a miracle, and Izuku would have been happy for a quirk that turned shirts yellow every third Tuesday of the month. He would have made anything work.
He looked down at his pancakes and was surprised to see a small blurb.
“Pancakes, food. Restores 10 HP, 10 STA, 20 MP.” He mumbled to himself. He paused before taking a bite. They smelled good, but he was surprised to find he wasn’t exactly hungry.
Alert!
[You’ve discovered “Gamer’s Body LV- MAX”, a passive Skill that gives you the body of a video game character! When you are injured, you lose HP, and when your HP is restored, all injuries heal as if by magic. If you fall to 0 HP you will fall unconscious. Trivial things like food and sleep are mechanically useful, but not mandatory.]
Izuku stared at his fork and then decided he was going to eat a pancake anyway. There were eight on his plate and they was good enough that he ate two before sliding the other two into his Inventory when his mother wasn’t looking.
The glass of milk offered 10 STA. He drank it down and then wiped his mouth.
“Hey mom, I’m going to go for a walk after cleaning up. Do you need anything from the store?”
“No dear, that’s fine. Try to be back for lunch, I’m making your favorite.”
Izuku couldn’t wait to see what kind of amazing benefits Katsudon gave.
By the time he finished doing the dishes and cleaning up the small mess from breakfast, Observe had leveled up. The chore took twice as long as usual because he kept pausing to look at every single item in wonder.
He made it to the beach in record time, unable to walk when more quirk exploration was literally on the horizon. He found himself jogging and then, for the challenge, sprinting the last leg.
[+1 END!
Running is a persistence sport.]
As he thought, Dagobah was that beach that was stacked several stories high with garbage.
Quest Alert!
His quirk told him cheerfully, and he didn’t even know why he was surprised anymore.
[Clean the Beach!
You can’t use your Dungeon Key here with all that trash in the way. Clean the Beach and improve your whole community! Objective: Clean a fifty meter swath of Dagobah Municipal Beach Park from the street to the surf!
Quest Reward: +300 EXP
+ 50 Relationship Points with (Unknown)
+ 300 GP
Unlock Store
1 Weapon Rack
Bonus Objective: Clean the Entire Beach Park in One Month
Bonus Reward: +100 more Relationship Points with (Unknown)
Training with (Unknown)
Option to take U.A. Recommended Student Exam
+200 EXP
Accept Quest?
YES // NO ]
He could hardly breathe. Izuku pressed yes so fast his head spun. Or maybe that was the lack of air.
How did cleaning the beach translate into getting to take the Recommended Exam? He wasn’t going to question it. He’d spend every day and every night out here for that opportunity.
(He wouldn’t give a limb, per se, but there were a lot of organs on the table. Nobody needed an appendix, or tonsils, and Izuku in particular had two toe joints he’d sell to the devil for one corn chip).
Izuku looked out at the dumping grounds, literally stacked taller than his apartment with junk, and started frantically working the numbers. He’d have to find someone with a truck, probably, and some of it was recyclable, and he’d have to make some kind of arrangement with a proper trash facility…
Why did his quirk only give him one month!?
Wait.
Halfway through berating himself for not even bringing along trash bags, Izuku realized something kind of obvious, and also kind of mind-breaking.
He could just use his quirk.
He could use his quirk.
His Inventory hadn’t given him a limit, beyond the quick-draw slots. Sure, it might mess up his Meadow for a bit, but actually even then– things he put into the Inventory were automatically deposited in neat rows off to the side of where he spawned in.
Izuku walked down the stairs to the beach from the road, and the few feet it took him to come to the nearest pile of garbage. Soon people wouldn’t even be able to dump here because it was almost out of room.
He held his hand out above a tire and it dissolved into a stream of blue light that ribboned into his open Inventory window. A picture of a tire appeared.
Izuku breathed out a sigh of relief. Being able to will something into the Inventory if he was touching it was a lot easier than having to lift stuff up to the window, which was pretty close to his body anyway—the screen hovered about thirty inches away, so he could only fit so small of an object physically into that space.
And with no upper limit to the size of things he could store, it would have been pretty awkward trying to force something huge into the screen.
The tire had been leaning on a crooked plastic chair that was missing one leg. Even as he put it into his Inventory, Izuku wondered what he was going to do with all this stuff.
Well, it would have been useful during the fight against the Sludge Villain, if only to have something– anything– to throw at him. He’d been truly empty-handed at the time and relying on the environment for ammunition.
Now he could just hurl a tire.
Izuku made it a game to decide how each specific item he took could be useful in a fight, or in a rescue situation, entertaining himself as he placed item after item inside.
After about an hour, he stopped, surprised to find himself winded. He had ended up moving some things around after all, mostly to get at the more interesting things buried underneath big ones, when he couldn’t contain his curiosity.
He wished he’d brought a bottle of water, but in his haste he hadn’t even grabbed a backpack. Well, it wasn’t like he needed backpacks anymore, but it would have been nice. He made a mental note: in the future, anything he might possibly need could be kept in his own personal pocket dimension. Why not keep several spare bottles of water on hand?
Izuku wiped his brow, looking at his progress.
He found he had fully cleared about two square meters and partially cleared even more. He was surprised to discover his Stamina bar had actually decreased, but not as far as it ought to have. He clicked on it and discovered he was actually regaining Stamina at a rate of 5 STA points per minute. His current Max Stamina was 100, so at full depletion it would take 20 minutes to restore. He was at 80/100 Stamina, and he had been working for around sixty minutes, so he had used enough Stamina that it still wasn’t fully topped off after three refills. Or, more likely, he had just steadily worn it down as it refilled.
Izuku eyed the cleared space with a small amount of disappointment; he probably wouldn’t be able to try the Dungeon Key right away. The Illusion Barrier from yesterday had taken up entire city blocks.
Mostly, however, he was exhilarated. He was totally right that Inventory would be an amazing quirk all on its own, but The Gamer was something out of this world incredible.
He’d studied quirks all his life and he’d never even heard of anything with as much raw potential, and he could already tell he’d barely chipped the surface.
It was also convenient for his personal life. For example, Izuku always forgot his watch. He’d find it, wear it, and then take it off to take a shower, setting it on his desk, or in a drawer, and completely forget about it for three months. Not too much of an inconvenience in the world of smartphones, but now his HUD had the time in the upper corner and he could literally just glance at it.
Actually, for that matter, he could also just store his watch in his Inventory and pull it out again; though he was honestly more likely to lose it in there than he was in his bedroom. His bedroom’s space was finite, unlike the Meadow’s.
For now, Izuku could glance at his HUD and see immediately that it was time to head home for lunch.
The mini-map in the corner–which he had learned could be toggled on-off in [Options]– guided him home. Knowing the way didn’t make it any less satisfying to watch his progress. Izuku would never be tired of his very own quirk.
“Mom, I’m home!” He called, taking off his shoes in the entry way.
“Dinner’s just about ready! Why don’t you come serve the rice into bowls?” Her voice filtered in from the kitchen. He made his way over to the rice cooker, still not tired of the way words hovered over everything.
And then, mere moments later as they sat at the table, Izuku let his eyes fall pointedly on his very favorite food.
Katsudon, meal
The Gamer’s favorite food, prepared by Midoriya Inko with love. Completely restores all Stats, heals all wounds, and removes all negative Status effects.
Stars danced in his eyes.
Exactly as he thought!
The only trouble was, he doubted he’d ever be able to keep any in his Inventory, because that would mean resisting the urge to eat it on the spot!
Maybe when she packed a portion into his lunch bento, he could keep it stored away. He resolved to make more gold on quests just to buy empty bento boxes, to give back to her at the end of the day so she wouldn’t notice the hoarding.
He walked back to the beach slowly this time, planning it out. His inventory now contained a pair of gardening gloves borrowed off Inko, some large trash bags– he felt bad about using household supplies, but hopefully he would be making money off his quirk fairly soon in order to supplement those expenses– and three bottles full of water.
His mother had also taken some of the leftover rice and made him a snack.
Mom’s Onigiri
Tasty Treats for the road! Three wrapped Onigiri, each packed with enough love to heal 100 HP, 50 MP, and 30 STA.
While drinking water didn’t restore health, it did increase his Stamina regeneration rate by 5% when he consumed a whole bottle. It really only meant he refilled his Stamina bar in 9 minutes and 30 seconds instead of the full ten minutes, but he would take it.
This time when Izuku got to work, he kept an eye on his Stamina bar. It actually turned out that just walking around in the sun using his quirk didn’t use very much Stamina at all. He had to do something actually strenuous, such as lift a heavy object.
By the time the afternoon rolled into being truly warm, he had cleared away a section of beach about twice the size of his living room. A lot of it had been proper junk; thrown-out appliances like old toasters and microwaves, discarded plastic and containers, a surprising amount of damaged furniture just shoved in any-which-way, and then stuff you might expect to find in a real dump, like tires and old clothes and general trash.
When he got home, he was going to go into the Meadow and organize it, though hopefully without having to touch any of it. He wanted to just pick up the little icons from the Inventory and group them together. He had already discovered that it was possible to stack identical or similar items within one square.
Now, though, Izuku’s curiosity had finally come to a head.
He figured either the key would fail to activate or he’d end up fighting a villain or something on top of all this trash, the environment preserved exactly as the destroyed street had been when he entered the Illusion Barrier yesterday.
“Dungeon Key.” He said, the silver key having been placed into a quick slot for just this occasion. It fell into his hand easily.
“Now, how do I…?” But the answer seemed obvious.
Izuku took the key, held it up about chest-level, and plunged it into thin air. It caught, the air seeming to ripple around it. Breath held cautiously in his chest, Izuku turned the key.
There was a clicking sound, and color poured out of the point of contact. He hastily pulled the key back and deposited it back in the Inventory, backing up immediately.
It was fast, almost too quick to see; one second there was a ripple in space, the next color flooding his vision, and when he blinked there was—well. A portal.
A red-pink portal of wild energy, moving like tamed fire.
Alert!
[You have opened a Dungeon Portal. This Portal leads to Galen Forest. Once inside the Dungeon, you will have to defeat the Boss or use a Hearthstone to return.
Enter the Portal?
YES // NO ]
Izuku pressed yes and walked through it.