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After jumping up the spikes to catch the man, Izuku set the villain that Nighteye had just knocked out on the floor gently. He remembered Mirio running off to find chisaki, yelling at them to meet with him as soon as possible. An extra sense of uneasiness settled over him, and he couldn’t quite find the reason for it, but he knew they couldn't stop for a second longer.
“We… have to move on.” He muttered, half to himself. He shot a glance at the other heroes beside him before launching off in the direction Mirio had gone. Eraserhead shouted at him to wait, but he slammed a kick into the wall, shattering it into pieces, before rushing on ahead. He hoped the Heroes would follow him, he didn't think he could take on Chisaki and his henchmen with only mirio.
Wall after wall, spike after spike, he broke them down to keep going, keep moving on. He was careful to leave a clear path for Eraserhead, Nighteye, and Rocklock. His limbs ached from the constant barrage, but he pushed past it, letting his adrenaline fuel his desire. It soon became a mindless pattern. Kick down the wall/spike/barrier, clear the path of any large sections, move on, repeat.
“Shoo-- h--m!” A distant angry shout rang through the building. Izuku’s head snapped up to the direction of the noise and sped his process. After three spikes and one wall, he broke through the wall that brought him into a vast room with four individuals.
He assessed the situation. Mirio was in the middle of diving in front of eri who sat with mirios cape wrapped around her. Chisaki was falling to the ground, a murderous glare on his face, and his henchmen held a gun aimed at eri, moving to be aim at mirio. His mind blanked with a storm of emotions, and without hesitation, leapt to action.
Pouring more power into his legs, he crossed to mirio and eri in a single bound, wrapping an arm around the girl to bring her closer to the ground and he knew she was safe. He then pushed down mirio by the shoulder in an attempt to hide them all below the trajectory of the shot.
It didn't look like he'd get Mirio to the ground in time. He felt a surge of power through his arm that felt new and different, but powerful, and a spark of hope ignited in his chest.
But he was too late.
The bullet hit.
And Mirios quirk was stripped away.
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Izuku sat on his bed, head in his arms, an hour before his alarm to start the day would ring. He couldn't stop thinking about how he should've gone faster, should've broken through quicker, shouldn't have stopped to clear a path for the heroes trailing him.
Maybe if he had made it harder for Nighteye to follow he wouldn't have died.
He couldn’t stop thinking.
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Izuku hid his struggle whenever he was around others. He wouldn't force his friends to bear his burden. Right now he ate breakfast with his classmates in the dorm. Everyone was being much more quiet then usual, and he knew it was because they could tell that something traumatic had happened on their missions.
But he kept eating.
When he finished he sat up to wash out the bowl, and accidentally bumbed into shoji in the process. An apology was halfway out his mouth before he realized he had dropped the bowl. He activated One for All to cath the bowl faster but--
Suddenly he couldn't see.
He had no feeling of direction or gravity, only a mixed sensation of simultaneously falling, rising, and expanding.
And then he realized he couldn't breathe. His mind began to panic. Any attept at trying to calm himself down only increased the feeling. He tried to use One for all to move, to save himself, to do anything , but it did nothing.
In his rush of dread and hopelessness, his fragile grasp on the powers of his quirk slipped away.
And suddenly he could see.
Everything was a blur, and he still coudnt breathe, but the shock pushed all panic out of his system. He began to try to analyse his situation, but he was thrust up past a barrier of some kind and the sense of gravity crashed upon him. He gasped.
Then he hit a more solid barrier.
All the air rushed out of him once again. He began to fall, and for a second he thought he might get trapped in that limbo again, but he landed on a solid ground.
Sounds of yelling and panic echoed around him but it all was muffled in his ears as he tried and tried to stop exhaling and start to inhale. He finally got a little breath in, and after that it slowly became easier to do so. The ringing in his ears quieted slightly, and he heard a familiar voice yelling for everyone to calm down and give him space. Ah, iida, he identified the voice idly.
More orders were given to his classmates but he tuned them out, trying to regain some sort of rational thought to help sort out what had just happened. But his vision began to grow dark, and he didn't fight it soon enough.
Izuku sat up. People gasped and backed up, before rushing in with exclamations of worry and panic. His head grew static and he threw a hand to clutch it as he swayed. The people around him seemed to realize he needed space and backed up, still looking worried.
As he glanced at their faces, he recognized them as his classmates. Then a voice rang from behind him.
“Midoriya!” The usually boisterous tone now had an undertone of seriousness. “Hey listeners! I’d Appreciate it if you could all back up a meter or two!” Mic flashed his classmates a stage grade smile before squatting next to Izuku and pushing his sunglasses to rest on his head. He looked at him with a calm smile, scanning his body for injuries. Izuku couldn't help but think at how well Mic was handling the situation as a hero. “So, listener, what happened?” Izuku scraped together as much as he could remember that happened and tried to reach a conclusion.
“I don't know,” He admitted. It was all so overwhelming, and tears began to prick at his eyes like he knew they would. He tried to blink them away to stay focused.
“Um, sensei?” Hagakure said. Mic looked over to her, eyes moving, calculating the mood in the room.
“Whats up, Hagakure?”
“Well, Midoriya kinda fell into the floor, and after about half a minute, he shot back up from over there,” Her sleeve pointed to a spot near the couch. “Hit the ceiling, then the floor, and passed out. Then he woke up and you came.” Mic cocked his head and frowned.
“Like Togata’s quirk?” He asked. The class all quieted at those words. Izuku stilled. It… was extremely similar to his quirk. Now he had a bit more context, he could imagine his body falling into the earth, sinking, sinking. Then as he released his quirk, rising, shooting up, up through the floor. Then kaminari voiced the question they all had.
“How?” Mic sighed, but smiled again.
“I don’t know! It just sounded like that’s how it was.” He turned to Izuku. “We should get you to the infirmary. Can you stand up?”
Izuku pushed himself up and stood, limbs shaky. He took a step forward and tripped. Iida was the fastest to reach him, and he held out his arms to steady Izuku. But, his robotic movements simply passed through his shoulders. Phasing through.
His rush of panic and dread was stopped when Mic laid a hand on his shoulder, that thankfully connected, and nodded to Iida.
“Thank you, iida. We should get going!” He smiled at the class and steered Izuku onward.
——
“I can’t see that anything has changed,” recovery girl stated. “He looks exactly the same as always.” She paused. “Besides the… occasional phasing.” Midoriya curled into a ball on the bed. Toshinori chest tugged painfully. He wished he could fix this for the boy.
He didnt like the possibility that continued to surface in his mind no matter how often he shoved it down. It just wasn't possible.
But it was the only explanation he could think of.
“Do we have any idea how this is happening?” Aizawa spoke up from the corner of the room. When Toshinori glanced over at him, his eyes looked more exhausted than he’d ever seen. No one in the room answered. Toahinori was at war with himself. A part of him would hate to ever suggest the thought, but the other side knew they had to make it as clear of a situation to be able to solve it.
With a sigh, he stepped forward. “The only possibility I can think of… Is that Midoriya has All for One’s quirk.” Everyone’s faces snapped to his. Midoriya’s face was so panicked and he began to drop through the bed, but aizawa reached out with his capture weapon and activated his quirk. He caught midoriya's wrist, and the boy was repelled up a foot, then landed on the bed. Though, he kept sinking into the mattress and popping back up, making it look as if he was glitching in his distress. Aizawa huffed a sigh of relief, letting his hair drop, but keeping an eye on him just in case the ‘glitching’ got worse.
Midoriya clutched at the part of the scarf still wrapped around his fingers. As if aching for some physical comfort. Toshinori wanted to reach out to him, to give him what he so clearly wanted, but the possibility that he wouldn't be able to, terrified him.
“How is that possible?” Recovery girl asked. “Surely Afo just took the quirk from mirio and placed it in Midoriya.” But Toshinori shook his head.
“It has to be consensual. And Afo wasn't there when Mirio got shot. He’s in Tarturus.” Recovery Girl’s eyebrows raised in acknowledgment, and she shook her head slowly, rubbing at her eyes.
“How it’s happening isn't really the most pressing issue at the moment. It’s Midoriya. And how we can help him learn to control the quirk." Mic said. He’d been strangely silent, and Toshinori figured this is how he was when he got serious. “Ill go inform Mirio, and ask him how his quirk works. You all.” He looked around the room as he stood. “Try to figure out what you can, but don't push yourself.” He ended the statement looking directly at Midoriya, who nodded stightly.
Mic walked forward and reached out to ruffle Midoriya’s hair. Toshinori held his breath. But it touched. He made the hair a bit more wild, smiled at the boy, and walked out, nodding to the other people in the room.
“Well. Problem Child. What do you know about mirio’s quirk. Everything.” Aizawa asked. Toshinori noticed that the man hadn’t withdrawn his capture weapon from being wrapped around the boy’s wrist. He was suddenly hit with the thought that Aizawa truly cared, and a rush of gratitude crashed in him for the man.
Midoriya was silent for a bit, looking down at his wrist, shaking, face filled with anxiety. He still glitched, but it had slowed in frequency after Mic had ruffled his hair. “It’s called permeation. When he activates it, he can move through anything, but he cant breath or see.” He started out soft, and everyone else stilled to better hear him. “He still has mass, though, so he sinks into the ground as fast as if he was free falling. When he lets go of his quirk while he’s still under, he gets shot back up to the surface.” His voice grew stronger now. Toshinori knew that losing himself into an analysis grounded him, his glitching barely noticeable. “He can activate certain parts of his body if he wants to, and whether he can see or breathe depends on where he activates it. He had a lot of trouble with the quirk as a child, and would constantly loose his clothing, which is why they made his hero suit out of his hair to avoid that.”
Midoriya paused, then looked up at Aizawa. “Thats all i know.” Aizawa nodded.
“It also seemed to activate whenever he felt strong emotions.” He added, and Toshinori realized that Aizawa had come to the same conclusion as he had with analysis for the young boy. “Now talk about Uraraka’s quirk.” Midoriya stared at his teacher, not understanding, before comprehension dawned on his face.
“It's called anti-gravity. When she touches something or someone with all five finger pads on at least one hand, she can essentially de activate gravity for that single object.” He went on, explaining much that Toshinori had never known about the quirk. After he finished with Uraraka’s, he went on to Iida’s. Aizawa caught his eye, and gestured for Toshinori to move forward and try to touch him. Toshinori’s eyes flicked from Midoriya to Aizawa, and he shook his head slightly. Aizawa’s eyes hardened into a glare, and Toshinori cowed under the gaze.
The constant stream of words pouring out of Midoriya’s mouth never wavered as Toshinori stepped forward hesitantly. The boy looked at his own wrist still, and didn’t seem to notice him. Not wishing to startle him, he walked a little louder. Midoriya looked up, and the stream of words faltered. He reached out to touch the boy’s shoulder, and the boy trailed off. His heart clenched, but he didnt let it show, smiling at his- the boy as his hand reached to connect with Midoriya’s shoulder.
It didn't.
His hand fell through Midoriya’s shoulder. His smile fell, his eyebrows pulled together in sorrow and he drew back. Aizawa activated his quirk at him, but Midoriya hadnt sunk through the bed at all. The boy looked at him, stricken, but his eyes pleading for help.
Toshinori wanted to give it to him.
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Izuku curled up a corner of the school he’d run off to. He didn’t like crying in front of others. But he knew it was only a matter of time before they found him again. He let the tears stream down his cheeks, dripping onto the floor and gathering in small puddles. He hated what was happening. He didnt understand.
How could he have Mirio’s quirk?
How could he have AFO?
Mic had called, saying that mirio’s quirk often activated when he was triggered, or with people he had been in traumatic situations with, as well as when he felt strong emotions like Aizawa had said. Which meant he was in danger of accidentally activating it right now. But at this moment he honestly didn’t care. He half hoped the ground would swallow him up,
Suffocating him, making him die a lonely death
No. Stop.
He just wished this had never happened.
Footsteps echoed through the hallway and he knew he’d been discovered. He quieted anyway, in a vain attempt to stay hidden.
“Problem child…” Aizawa sighed from somewhere in front of izuku.
———
Shouta found Midoriya curled up against the wall in a remote hallway, hidden in shadow. His sigh and call of, “Problem Child…” seemed to break something in the boy, and he began to cry, sobs rang through the hall. The kid started to ‘glitch’(as Yagi had called it) as he spoke.
“I do— n’t want to have— his quirk,” he spat out the word in a way he never had before, and it was odd to see him despise a quirk. He always looked at them with such awe and admiration.
Shouta crouched in front of him beginning to reach out to grasp his shoulder, but his arm hovered, unsure. “I know.” He said simply. Shouta wished he could do something, fix it, make it never happen, but it wasn't in his power. All he could do was be there and support the boy.
“I don't want to be a— a villain.” He sobbed. Shouta threw away his hesitation and reached forward.
“You won't be.” His hand passed through the boy’s shoulder, and Shouta’s heart sank. Midoriya didn't seem to even notice. He withdrew his arm.
Shouta paused before activating his quirk, which stilled the boys jumping around, and reached forward to pull Midoriya into his arms. The boy came easily. “Do you remember Shinsou Hitoshi?” He asked, not unkindly.
A short shaky nod against his chest confirmed his question. “Well. People say his quirk is a villain's quirk. Does this make him a villain?”
“N— no, but. It's different than this.” Midoriya heart broken words were muffled by the material of Shotas shirt.
“Not by as much as you might think.” Shouta moved a hand to rub at the boy’s neck. The short stubs of hair there pricked softly at his fingers.
“It'll be ok. We’re here to help you.” Shouta promised him.
Those words may well have comforted Midoriya the most, though it was a close contest. Shouta’s unintentional mimicking of the boy's most idolized hero’s catchphrase would soon be a repeated mantra in the weeks to come.
And they would be. There for him.