Quirk: Saving Grace

Quirk: Saving Grace
Relationship: Gen
Genre: Midoriya Izuku has a quirk, Immortal Midoriya Izuku, Repeated Time Travel, Death and Respawning
Length: 6k
[Warnings: Descriptions of violence and death. Suicidal thoughts that are acted upon, twice. Izuku jumps off a building and then again when it doesn’t work. He dies the first time. Every time Izuku dies, he is given a quirk that would let him survive (I.e. if he burned to death he’d become fire proof) and resets him in time to before it happened. This is, by necessity, understandable traumatic.]

–

The first time Izuku dies, he activates his quirk. He keeps his mouth shut as long as he can, closing his throat against the sludge in his nostrils, but finally his lungs scream out and his mouth opens. Sludge pours in, laughter in his ears and all around him, and it burns.

His vision goes splotchy and then dark, his head rushes as the darkness heaves and suddenly he’s stumbling into the same dingy overpass. He sucks in air, feeling shaky and weak.

He thinks a hero saved him, of course, but looking around shows no trace of hero or villain. The manhole cover sits undisturbed.

Izuku blinks.

Did any of that really happen? He forces himself to breathe deeply and take a step forward. Kacchan’s taunting must be getting to him more than he realizes. He hasn’t been sleeping well.

That doesn’t explain his impossibly vivid waking nightmare, but Izuku can’t think of anything else. Maybe, he thinks wildly, he got hit with some sort of hallucinogenic quirk? 

That doesn’t make sense either. It’s hard to think. His head spins, like he’s been upside down for several minutes. Izuku walks through the tunnel, feeling the eerie sense of deja vu.

The manhole cover goes flying, the voice from his nightmare echoes through the tunnel, and Izuku barely makes it four steps of running before he’s enveloped once more.

Not again! He thinks desperately, struggling for all he’s worth. Not again, not–

He holds his breath immediately, this time plugging his nose with his free hand and shutting his eyes tight. He curls into a ball suspended in the sludge, hoping that if he’s inconvenient enough– the villain seems to be in a hurry both times, looking for a body to hide in– it will move on to someone easier.

A tentril of hope takes root in Izuku. If the villain is in a hurry, maybe it’s being chased. Maybe a hero is hot on his tails.

He just has to hold out a little bit longer.

Izuku expects to feel the burn in his lungs, but it never comes. He starts counting, knowing he can only hold his breath for a minute or two at most. To his surprise, he counts past the first minute and doesn’t even feel it.

It must be the adrenaline, or maybe he’s just that desperate. The human body can do many things in extremis. Or maybe he’s counting too fast, heart pounding in his ears.

That’s it, he thinks. That’s all it is.

Suddenly the sludge is blown back, and Izuku lays on his back gasping. Though his lungs are fine, he feels like it’s been ages since he tasted fresh air. Part of him thought he was going to die there. He’s still incredibly dizzy– it must be from the lack of oxygen.

A hero pats his face, calling out to him, somehow familiar. He sits up and shudders to see the villain painting the walls of the tunnel.

He barely has a chance to think. The hero in front of him turns out to be All Might himself, Izuku makes a bad life choice out of desperation and goes on the ride of his life, and learns many things but still doesn’t receive the answer he was looking for.

Afterward, Izuku sits on the lone rooftop. All Might’s voice rings in his ears: You can’t be a hero.

It’s easily the worst day of his life.

He hears his mother’s voice apologizing, over and over again.

Kacchan’s earlier words come to mind, as well: If you want to be a hero, take a swan dive off the roof and pray for a quirk in your next life.

“Don’t be stupid, Kacchan.” Izuku says numbly, with far more courage than he’d had at the time. “Aldera isn’t that tall. A fall from a four story building only has a fifty percent mortality rate.”

Izuku finds a certain comfort in statistics. Some statistics, however, are burned into his brain.

The quirkless suicide statistics, for example, follow him every year. He defies the odds just by living through another birthday. At fourteen, he’s sitting at a 70% chance of killing himself. There’s some debate on the early adult years; experts debate about whether the percentage is skewed because anyone who made it through the teenage years is less likely to do it, or whether the rate sharply increases with each year.

Izuku looks across the roof he’s been left on and thinks of one study of more than 700 fall victims. It found that falls from above eight stories were nearly 100% fatal.

The department store building he’s on is well over that threshold. His fingers dig so hard into his palms that the nails draw blood and he fights to breathe evenly.

Late Life Quirk Manifestation Statistics also stick with him for obvious reasons. Unlike the Quirkless rate of survival, his chances go down with every passing year. In the last decade, there are less than a hundred documented cases of someone developing a quirk at age 14 or later. Of those cases, ninety five were people who didn’t have the extra toe-joint, and were aware that they likely possessed an ‘invisible’ quirk with highly specific activation requirements.

Izuku’s personal research into heroes with mental quirks, or whose quirk has no combat potential, yields less reproducible statistics. It’s nothing published or verified, merely his own observations, based on the entirely restrictive heroes he’s able to analyze.

It’s not bad to dream, but you have to be realistic, young man.

Realistically, his chances of living past his fourteenth birthday were less than ten percent.

Izuku had made it this far in life defying reality, stubbornly believing in his dream. He wanted to be a hero more than anything. He fought to make that dream a reality.

Be realistic.

I’m so sorry, Izuku.

Give up, kid.

What can you do, you’re quirkless!

Izuku sat down. It felt like his legs could hardly hold him up. He let his legs dangle over the edge, the sunset beautiful in the distance. Wind brushed through his hair.

He’d never been this high up before.

Had never allowed it of himself.

Because it was easy not to jump off Aldera Junior High, with its measly four stories. It was easy to keep his chin high and ignore absolutely everyone when his feet were firmly on the ground, taking one step after another into the future.

As long as there was a chance, Izuku would hold onto it with every breath in his body. Ten percent, five percent– even one percent. There was even a chance Izuku could be the very first quirkless hero, and create that hope for all the kids who came after him.

No, there’s no chance. All Might’s voice echoes in his ears. Be realistic, young man.

Every single day of his life is hard, and it’s harder still to face a bleak future with no hope, at all. Jumping off Aldera would be hard, knowing he’d most likely wake up in a hospital in horrible pain, with his mother standing over him, with dozens of doctors and police officers who aren’t even surprised once they learn he’s quirkless.

(He has a higher chance of surviving a fall off the school than he does living past his fourteenth birthday, and sometimes that’s enough to make Izuku laugh and laugh and laugh.)

Walking up the steps would be hard. Every step he took to the edge would be hard. Imagining his mom’s face as he struggled to jump would be hard.

But Izuku is already here, and he doesn’t have to jump. He’s sitting down.

Hearing his hero– The hero– crush his dreams had been hard.

And slipping off the roof is easy.

–

He braces his palms a little, savoring the rough grit of concrete biting against his skin. His thighs slide a little and suddenly gravity’s not in his favor– or suddenly, it is.

Izuku’s stomach plummets to his feet, wind rushes through his hair, and air stings as it whips at his eyes. He has just enough time to squeeze them shut, to hold his breath and tense up– limp or unconscious people can sometimes survive freak heights that should be fatal–

Impact.

PAIN.

Darkness.

Izuku stumbles along the rooftop, gasping. His head is spinning. He flinches, mind prompting the memory of his abrupt stop, the sickening sound, the half-instant of wrenching agony, over so soon he might have imagined it.

He shakes his head, biting his lip hard enough to bleed. What the fuck. What the FUCK?

Tears stinging at his eyes, Izuku takes a deep breath and runs for the edge. He pitches over the side before he can begin to get his balance, head first and fast.

His heart thuds, his stomach jerks to his throat, and a migraine blooms at his temples. The wind rushes past. The ledge he’d chosen was between two buildings, an alley far below. No need to traumatize any pedestrians.

Izuku has spent his entire life being told he’ll die before he’s twenty years old, and a consequence of that is considering the least messy ways to go about it.

Someone will have to scrape him off the pavement, of course, but with a fall there’s the element of deniability. Despite the doubt that will always linger, they can at least tell his mom it could have been an accident.

Izuku has always held tight to probable deniability. He had vowed early on to at least make it look like an accident.

The sharp punch of wind, the body-panic of fighting against gravity, and Izuku braces himself for the impact he knows he remembers. He tenses up hard enough to break every bone in his body.

It feels like time slows down, this time. His perception speeds up, making the fall seem to grow softer and softer. Izuku grits his teeth, bearing it; it’ll only last seconds at most.

Then everything will be over.

He waits. Why is he waiting? He shouldn’t have to fucking wait. That’s the whole point.

He notices the wind has stopped. Izuku clenches his jaw. If he opens his eyes on top of the rooftop again, he’s going to be incredibly pissed.

His feet touch the ground gently.

Startled, Izuku loses his balance entirely. He’d somehow righted himself in the air. He’d somehow lost all momentum.

Baring his teeth, he looks around with burning green eyes. Someone used a quirk on him to stop his descent. Someone saved him. The knowledge sears down his throat like acid.

Saved twice in one day by a hero and he won’t ever be able to save anyone.

Only, to his slowly dawning shock, there’s no one in the alley. There’s no one even paused at the ends of the alley, or looking his way from either sidewalk.

He is utterly alone.

Izuku looks at his own hands in incomprehension.

A very, very small voice in his head whispers: less than one percent of late-life quirk activation occurred in individuals with the toe joint present.

He jerks like he’s been slapped, lowering his hands, which are now shaking. His head throbs like a fresh bruise, temples beating like war drums.

Izuku forces his breathing to even. He takes a shaky step and then another. His feet are on the ground, so how he feels isn’t important. His feet are on the ground, so all he can do is put one foot in front of another into the future.

Some people live paycheck to paycheck. Some people live day to day. Some live meal to meal.

When things get hard, when the weight of all he’s feeling is like the world on Atlas’ shoulders, when he can’t possibly endure another moment of his life, Izuku lives from step to step. His world narrows to the sidewalk in front of him.

It’s a cold, familiar comfort, and he reaches to it now out of desperation, letting his eyes find the street signs until he’s on the path home, body on autopilot as his mind checks out. It’s safe. He’s floating away from his body, from the things he can’t handle, his mind checking out for just a little bit when things get too hard.

And it’ll never get any easier.

Izuku stumbles. He clutches his chest through his shirt, feeling every beat of his heart in his throbbing head. He grits his teeth, ignoring how it makes a fresh wave of pain wash over him.

He puts one foot in front of another.

It’s all he can do.

It’ll have to be enough.

–

He maybe chalks it up ot some sort of fever dream. It’s not the first time that day that he hallucinated his own death.

The most likely scenario is that he got hit with a quirk on his morning commute, and for twenty-four hours, any dangerous situation he finds himself in plays out like a movie in front of him.

Some kind of strange foresight– it would be a good quirk for heroics, allowing someone a flash forward of danger that, forewarned, they can avoid.

Izuku’s favorite habit is taking any quirk and making it suitable for heroics. He’s certain he could be a hero with any quirk, any quirk at all.

His feet take him home. Eventually, his thoughts return to his head– cautiously he thinks of things that don’t hurt, quirk analysis and wondering what his mom will cook for dinner.

He still feels detached, tentative, as though anything more substantial will send him spiralling. He focuses on what he can see in front of him, absent observations. He focuses on what he can hear and smell, letting the mindless data go in and out of his mind like clean water.

Observations, not thoughts.

He observes foot traffic abruptly switching directions. He observes a crowd forming ahead of him. He observes smoke.

Explosions sound, horrifically familiar. His mind is still damp cotton, protecting him from the world; his brain still feels like one big bruise, throbbing.

Izuku works his way to the front of the crowd numbly.

There are heroes on the scene. Out of habit, Izuku’s mind recites basic data. Data is safe.

“Are the fire trucks here yet!?”

Backdraft. Quirk: Water Pump.

“I can’t hold him!”

Kamui Woods. Quirk: Arbor.

“There’s no room, it’s no use!”

Mount Lady. Quirk: Gigantification.

The villain they are fighting is the sludge villain from earlier. That doesn’t make sense and the inconsistency nags at Izuku. Where are the explosions coming from? There are no heroes with explosion quirks. He’d know.

“We’ve got to get the kid out of there!”

Death Arms. Quirk: Death Arms.

Izuku’s unfocused eyes slide over the scene, taking in the details with a foggy kind of apathy. There’s some sort of kid involved. His heart stutters in his chest, then begins beating overtime.

He inhales and the taste of air is suddenly noticeable, bright and overwhelming, and the weird detachment vanishes so suddenly his skin feels raw and new. 

Kacchan is inside the sludge villain, struggling to keep his face out of the slime. His eyes beg for help.

The rest is a blur.

–

Izuku says yes to All Might before he can think.

He has spent his entire life convinced he only needed a quirk– any quirk, any quirk at all– to make it. He’d prayed, begged, and sobbed his way through life swearing up down and sideways he could take any quirk and make it a hero’s quirk for sure.

The number one hero says Izuku can become a hero and he falls to his knees with tears streaming down his face. He feels like he’s been awake for a week, like he’s lived through a year in a single day.

Everything that’s happened is so much and so full of impossible things and Izuku gasps with relief and sobs with so much more, a hundred emotions he can’t begin to name.

You can become a hero. 

It’s everything he’s wanted to hear. From his teachers, his peers, from Kacchan, from his mother who apologized over and over again.

Please, he thinks. Please.

He thinks of how easy it was to shift his weight and fall over a ledge, how he’d smiled a little. He thinks of taking a running jump, and how the concrete felt under his shoes.

Izuku’s skin feels raw and exposed; the opposite of his detachment from earlier. It feels like All Might looks into the naked heart of him– ribs bloody, broken and spread– and breathes in hope.

–

The next year is something of a daze. He isn’t totally convinced it’s real. Sometimes it feels like he’s dreaming. Most of the time, even.

Sometimes it feels like he really did die on a lonely rooftop, but then– isn’t it more likely he died with the sludge villain, and everything else is an impossible fantasy?

What are the chances that All Might himself would save Izuku?

He decides that if it is a dream, he doesn’t want to wake up.

If he did die, he’s grateful for this ‘next life’ with the promise of a quirk, after all.

He cleans a beach under the tutorship of All Might. Every ridiculous detail goes into a folder in his brain labeled ‘Don’t Worry About It’ and he just goes with it.

He learns the coffee All Might likes, but not his full name. He learns the man’s wardrobe, full of coats and scarves and designer track suits. He becomes familiar with All Might’s sense of humor and when he’s not joking, at all.

Some moments stick out in a golden haze. He falls asleep, exhausted, against a hero’s shoulder. He is carried more than once. All Might brings him snacks or juice-boxes, and asks about Izuku’s favorite flavors.

He receives encouragement for the first time in his life and it’s addicting. With All Might riding ahead of him on a scooter, shouting praise, he finds he can run until his lungs give out.

With every “one more” or “you can do it” Izuku feels like the desert receiving scant drops of rain, greedily absorbing every molecule of moisture.

“I believe in you, Young Midoriya!” All Might says, like it means nothing at all, like Izuku lifting a refrigerator is worth the words he’s wanted to hear since he was old enough to eat dirt under Kacchan’s popping hand.

At the furthest shores of his ability, Izuku reaches deeper and endures.

Time passes.

For once, he is not living step to step. He’s putting one foot in front of the other so fast that he’s running into the future, and for once it is bright.

–

Quirks: Featherfall (Arrestos your momentum). Anaerobia (Doesn’t require oxygen). A refrigerator falls on him and he thinks he fell asleep for a second (v sleep deprived) but ignores the refrigerator anyway. Tank or Nokia/Shock Absorption (Uncrushable, impact-proof).

–

Or just ignore the fridge thing.

–

The next time Izuku has one of his strange waking dreams, he’s rushing the zero-pointer with All For One coursing through his body. His legs shatter as he jumps. The pain is blinding.

If his target were not so overwhelmingly large, he wouldn’t be able to aim. As it is, Izuku pulls back his arm and screams, “SMASH!”

He falls softly to the earth, somehow not rushing as he should. He wonders if it’s the adrenaline slowing his fall, again– his perception of time wonky in the face of his imminent demise.

Before he can reach the ground to find out, the light-headedness makes his vision go spotty. He can’t feel his arms or legs. Then he can’t see at all.

Izuku stumbles because he’s suddenly running across the tarmac to the zero-pointer, All Might’s quirk powering up in his body. The girl is still pinned by a large piece of debris. Even if it hurts him, even if he passes out from the pain, he has no choice but to commit.

Izuku jumps. Surprisingly, the pain is bearable. His legs ache immediately, with none of the numbness or wrongness of before. When he pulls back his arm for a mighty punch, he sucks in air in preparation for destroying it, for rendering the bones into pieces.

The zero-pointer is struck back by the force of his blow and agony blooms. Izuku gasps. He has a headache, but that’s all. As he falls back to the earth, he feels the now-familiar cessation of gravity, and a hand smacks into him.

Later, she tells him it’s her quirk, and he is so relieved by his admittance that he attributes the time fluctuation to all the adrenaline. He could have sworn he stopped falling well before she touched him, at all.

His arm and legs are black and blue, the tissue bruised so deeply that Recovery Girl has him remain behind for observation before he can go home.

All Might tells him he’s lucky he didn’t blow off his limbs and Izuku remembers the waking vision that felt so real, when he couldn’t feel them at all and ‘passed out’.

For the next week, he has dreams of jumping so hard his legs blow off, his arm ripped away by the force of a punch. The blood loss always gets to him before the fall.

[Quirk: Unbreakable.]

–

As Izuku goes to throw the softball, a strange feeling hits him, sort of like he imagines stepping under a waterfall of ice would feel. One for All sputters and dies.

And, like a wall slamming into him: PAIN.

He chokes, unable to breathe. Something hits him like the fist of god, and suddenly there is nothing. 

Eons or eternities later, he comes to in shuddery jerks. His lungs don’t want to work right. Every inch of him hurts– his head, his skin, his legs and arms. He can’t sit up, much less stand.

“All of you– stop. Back away.” Cold fingers at his neck check his pulse. “Midoriya. I had just started to use my quirk on you. What happened?”

“Wass yur quirk?” He slurs.

“Erasure.” The man says perfunctorily and Izuku’s brain helpfully connects the dots.

“Eraserhead.” He manages, “Ah, tha’s so cool.”

“Focus, Midoriya. Why would half an instant of Erasure do this to you?”

Half an instant? But he’d had enough time to drop the soft ball, enough time to panic, enough time to feel One for All fall to embers before he began to choke.

Ah, he thinks. A waking dream. I’ve lost time, but not as much as they have.

“‘S an ov’rall ‘nhancement quirk.” He says. “M-maybe enhances all’f’me?”

“All of your organs, including your heart and brain?” Eraserhead’s voice is urgent, but professional. “Think back to the exact terminology your quirk counselor gave you, if you can.”

Izuku’s head swims like so many fishes. He slumps over from his meagre attempts to rise and is faintly surprised when Eraserhead catches him.

“D’dn’t have ‘un.” He manages, dizzy. There are two Eraserheads. “Late man’fest.”

“How late?” Although he can’t see the details of the man’s expression, he sounds perturbed.

“Mm, Entrance Exam.” Pretty, pretty colors float in front of his eyes. So much more color than the black of nothing that greets him when he dies, but before he wakes up.

He’s too tired to keep his eyes open. Above him, he hears Aizawa tell someone to get Recovery Girl.

“But sir, we missed orientation! We don’t know the layout of the school.”

Izuku’s body tries to laugh; it’s not very successful. A wheeze sounds out instead. He gives into the pull of sleep.

[Quirk: Permanence]

–

“Stop, Bakugou! If that hits, it’ll kill him!”

“Not if he DODGES!” Bakugou detonates his gauntlet.

Izuku takes his words to heart, ready to dodge. He’s faced Kacchan’s explosions before.

There is no dodging an explosion. Nitroglycerin detonates, exploding from molecule to molecule thirty times the speed of sound. Nitroglycerin detonations create a shockwave that expands out at seventeen thousand miles per hour.

The fire– the flash– has been and will always be a distraction, one that happens faster than the sound. Izuku has rarely been burned by his childhood friend. Nitroglycerin is not that kind of enemy.

The overpressure sends him flying and blows out the entire first floor of the building. A gallon of nitroglycerin is the most ridiculous thing Izuku has ever heard of giving to a teenager.

He can’t breathe, his ears ring like a struck bell, and the next thing he knows he is fighting Kacchan again, the trigger unpulled.

Alright, this is possibly starting to become a reproducible phenomenon. Izuku will address that later.

Currently, he crosses his arms in front of his face, already planning to fling himself back with One For All– and hopefully clear the blast radius. He wasn’t given enough time; the blast detonates.

It washes over Izuku like a warm hug, the shockwave bypassing him without even knocking him off his feet. His jaw drops open. Kacchan looks furious.

Then they both have to get out of dodge because the building is coming down around them, and Izuku doesn’t have time to pull on the full breadth of One For All, nor even direct it to his legs. He grabs Kacchan around the waist and yanks his quirk up, taking the barest bit to propel them out in time.

It doesn’t hurt.

Later, Izuku will reflect on that as the strangest part of his day.

[Quirk: Blast Proof.]

–

Izuku learned two things that day– well, two things that have to do with his quirk.

…Quirks?

It feels illegal to even think it, but there’s no other explanation.

By his count, he’s died four times. In the sludge villain incident, jumping off a high-rise, saving Uraraka, and at Kacchan’s hand. He wants to devote more thought to it but he’s a little terrified to consider the implications.

Secondly, and more important: if he pulls on only a portion of One for All, and lets it flow through him in equal amounts, he doesn’t damage himself.

Or kill himself.

The idea that he actually died by traumatic limb amputation is too much for Izuku to handle on a Wednesday morning, so he nopes hard.

He focuses on the field trip instead.

Fortunately, USJ proves to be a sufficient distraction.

Unfortunately, it’s not because of how much fun they have learning about rescue work.

In fact, Izuku is of the firm opinion that all of them need rescuing, preferably soon. He uses his new, uncertain grasp on One for All to bullet around the atrium, helping his classmates thwart a warp-gate villain.

It’s for nothing; he is sucked in through a portal. He comes out of it in what resembles a hurricane.

Rain thunders down and wind blows strong. Izuku finds his descent slowing with no Uraraka in sight. He’s forced to admit that it’s his own quirk. If he concentrates, he can even start to feel the mechanics of it working– but then he’s landing softly on his feet, the encounter too fleeting to discern much.

(He thinks of how he jumped once, without the quirk, and died. On the second attempt, his fall was softened. Something changed between those experiences and his mind flinches away from the obvious answer.)

His classmate with the bird head is in the zone with him. He catches himself with a dark, shadow-like monster that erupts from under his clothes.

“Tokoyami!” Izuku hollers, cupping his hands over his mouth. The other boy has the high ground. Before he can come down to Izuku or vice versa, the villains waiting in ambush jump them.

Izuku does not have any formal martial arts training. He relies entirely on the newest facet of One For All, on being too fast to hit. His kicks land poorly and don’t send the villains in the directions he hopes. The best he can do is make them crash into each other.

Tokoyami’s quirk falls on them like the wrath of a dark god, sweeping them off their feet and delivering mild head-wounds. Objectively it should be terrifying but Izuku is enraptured.

“That’s such a strong quirk!” He finds himself exclaiming.

“Thank you!” The shadow says, somehow bashful.

“Oh, you’re sentient? It’s nice to meet you!”

The shadow wraps around Tokoyami in glee.

“Ahhh, Fumigake, look– he’s so cute!”

“Enough of you.” Tokoyami bristles. “Back from whence you came.”

The shadow pouts before it retreats.

“I think we took out the big group of villains.” Izuku says, surprised. “They didn’t seem to be very good– or prepared for our quirks.”

“Canon fodder for the true villains, no doubt.” Tokoyami says solemnly. “Should any of them get lucky and beget our untimely demise, it would only serve to further their nefarious plans.”

“You’re right.” Izuku bites his knuckle. “If they kill any students, that’s just a bonus for these guys– not their main goal.”

“They want to kill All Might.” Tokoyami follows him to the point, eyes widening. “With an operation of this scale, they must have some confidence it will even work.”

“A trump card to kill All Might.” Izuku’s blood runs cold. Could they possibly… know?

One for All is a burning sun under his skin, only serving to remind Izuku that All Might himself is left with embers. He’s already reached his time limit for today– was even that arranged? How deep did the enemy’s knowledge run?

“Eraserhead was overwhelmed by cowardly numbers.” Tokoyami’s voice breaks him out of the dark train of thought.

“We need to help him.” Izuku says, already turning toward that direction.

“It would be illegal and perhaps futile.” Tokoyami says, which is notably not a ‘no.’

“Even if we can get two or three off him, that heightens his chances of success.” Izuku rationalizes. “Moreover, we’re still on campus– and Thirteen told us we were allowed to test the limits of our quirks within the facility.”

“Legality pales in matters of true life or death. I would rather break the law than see someone perish due to my inaction.” Tokoyami nods.

Together they leave the downpour zone, walking stiffly against the harsh winds.

They come upon a scene of carnage. For all that he’s fighting one on dozens, Eraserhead has the clear upper hand.

Unfortunately, the enemy decides to break it.

They’re too far to hear him but the apparent leader capitalizes on Eraserhead’s downtime, slamming one of his two natural hands on their teacher’s elbow. Horrifically, it starts to crumble before their very eyes.

“No.” Izuku gasps. Tokoyami’s hand clasps on his wrist, stopping him from jerking forward. It gets worse; the boss calls on a veritable monster, something that can’t possibly be human.

It smacks Aizawa aside like a child; like Tokoyami’s quirk had punished the pitiful street criminals calling themselves villains.

There’s an idea.

“Tokoyami, can you–?”

“Yes.” The boy’s answer is tense. They move forward together. He calls out “Dark Shadow!” 

And his sentient monster launches itself at the horrific one.

“No!” Aizawa shouts from the ground, “Stay back! Get out of here!”

Dark Shadow parries and jumps at the monster, unable to overwhelm it. Izuku leaps in with green lightning cloaking him, carefully lifting Aizawa over his shoulder.

In fact, Dark Shadow is barely holding it back. Aizawa’s head drips blood from where the monster gripped him.

“It’s as strong as All Might!” Aizawa calls out. “Tokoyami, retreat!”

Izuku makes it to the water line. Tokoyami backs up toward them, losing ground to the monster even as Dark Shadow screeches defiance.

The warp villain arrives. Thirteen is not dead and a student escaped, hopefully calling for reinforcements. That means they have a chance; they only have to get out of the range of the jammers to call for help.

Though they might not know who to call, exactly. Izuku has All Might’s number burning a hole in his contact list, but what should they do in the event of an emergency?

It was probably something covered in orientation.

The villain covered in hands becomes visibly more unhinged to receive this information.

“Then we’ll have to damage some of his pride as the so-called Symbol of Peace!” He shouts, and then he’s moving. He’s fast.

Izuku drops Aizawa in his panic, the villain suddenly turning on them.

“Kid–” Aizawa reaches for him but the momentum of being dropped sends him rolling, facing away, just as a dry hand grabs Izuku’s face.

His eyes widen, horror settling into his chest, and it hurts. He screams. The quirk eats through each skin layer and then bone. Aizawa jerks to his hands and knees, hair flying as his eyes burn red, but it’s too late.

Even with the quirk erased, it continues to crumble Izuku’s head. He scrabbles at his own face, fingers digging into wet muscle, before the sharp jerk of death tugs him into the past.

Izuku takes his first breath strangling on a scream, hearing Kurogiri tell Shigaraki Tomura about their escaped student. He’s already in motion, forcing his protesting limbs to act. His legs are jerky but strong under him as he pulls Aizawa out of the way.

“Nomu!” The villain snarls, outraged to find his prey escaping, and the big monster abandons Dark Shadow to move across the atrium with a horrific speed.

Izuku doesn’t know how he dies. The big hand reaches for him, too fast to parse, and there’s a sick squelch and a sucking pain.

He stumbles into the present, ears ringing. The throb behind his eyes is borderline unbearable, giving him double vision. He drops Aizawa and funnels One for All through his body, dancing just to the left of the outreaching hand. He grabs the back of Shigaraki’s shirt and hauls him away from Aizawa’s prone form, throwing him toward the warp gate and landing in a defensive crouch.

“You little–” The villain snarls. He straightens up, scratching his own neck. Lightning dancing along his skin, Izuku prepares to move in any direction– or to die, if he has to.

Either way, they won’t be getting Eraserhead while he’s here.

They won’t be killing anyone at all.

That’s when the doors slam open, heralding the entrance of a hero. Izuku hears All Might’s voice and goes weak in the knees, a wave of relief sweeping over him like a tsunami.

He knows, now, what all those people felt to see that smile and hear those words.

It’s alright now. Why? Because I am here.

In that moment, Izuku understands a fraction of what he’s being asked to live up to.

[Quirk: Negentropy. Quirk: Indurable.]

–

Reference–List of Quirks Obtained so far:

Quirk: Saving Grace– Grants User the quirk that would have prevented their death, and sends them back in time before the fatality
Quirk: Anaerobia– User does not need to breathe oxygen
Quirk: Featherfall– User’s momentum is arrested during a fall
Quirk: One for All– A stockpile quirk passed on for nine generations
Quirk: Permanence– Erasure does not work on the User
Quirk: Blast Proof– User is immune to blast damage
Quirk: Negentropy– Decay does not work on the User
Quirk: Indurable– User has unbreakable skin