Chapter Text
All Might stood before Midoriya Izuku, looking to all the world to be the very image of what it means to be a hero, before slicking back one of the two large spikes of hair on his head and extracting a singular hair. Holding it out, he spoke with all the gravitas one would expect of passing on an over century old legendary quirk, “Now, eat this.”
“Come again?” Izuku said, a look of pure confusion on his face.
“Hahahaha! My apologies, but I was hoping you’d make a face like that,” All Might explained jovially. “In order to pass on my quirk, you need to ingest some of my DNA. Now quickly! There are only three hours until the UA entrance exam!”
“R-right!” Izuku said, quickly taking the hair. He fumbled with it for a moment, before eating as he would a singular noodle. Finishing swallowing, he made a face as he looked toward the number one hero. “How long should it take for me to get the power?”
“Depending on digestion, it shouldn’t take more than about an hour,” All Might said, shrinking down to his more skeletal appearance.
‘Or the kid could be a weirdo and start getting it damn near instantly,’ said a voice, seemingly from nowhere.
Startled, Izuku looked around. For some reason he sensed that someone other than himself was confused. Several someone elses.
“Is everything alright young Midoriya?” All Might asked.
“I just heard someone else talk just now, a man, sort of a, I don’t know, gruff sounding voice? I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.”
“I didn’t hear anything,” All Might said, unknowingly stopping a mutter storm before it could begin.
‘Hold on,’ said another voice, this time a woman’s. ‘Can you hear us? ’
“Uhhh, yes woman who I don’t see,” Izuku said. “I can hear you, and I’d really like to know where you are.”
Once more Izuku sensed emotions he didn’t feel, this time a mixture of shock, awe, and confusion. ‘This happened way faster than we were expecting, ’ said a third voice, this time a man who sounded half a breath from a coughing fit. ‘Alright, Nine, One for All doesn’t just pass on the stockpile, it also passes on what seems to be a copy of the personalities of the previous users, who can then share the senses of its current wielder.’
Before Izuku could verbalize the freakout he was having, the woman spoke up again. ‘You should probably tell Toshi this too, so he doesn’t have a heart attack.’
“Oh, right, that’s actually a good idea,” Izuku said, before passing the information on to All Might.
“It what!?” he said, taking a step back in shock. “I knew I would sometimes on rare occasion see shadowy images of the previous users, but to, seemingly pass over the predecessors' very souls?”
There was a pause as Izuku sensed one of the previous users being overjoyed for a moment, before the voice that sounded like it was about to cough said ‘Not now Bruce,’ the exhaustion clear in his tone.
“What was that?” Izuku asked.
‘The third user said something, and apparently blocked you out so you couldn’t hear him,’ said the woman.
‘The exact nature of what we are is still up for debate,’ said a new voice, older than the rest, though not by much. ‘But tell Eighth that his name is Yagi Toshinori, he was given the quirk by Shimura Nana, and that his favorite burgers came from an American gas station brand called Sheetz he only found out on the East Coast near Maryland and Virginia. That’ll prove we’re real.’
When Izuku said as much, All Might took a moment to process it. “It’s true then, but, have I not told you my name?”
“N-not that I can recall,” Izuku said, before looking away for a moment. “And the gruff voice says you haven’t. Oh, and his name’s apparently Banjo Daigoro, and he’s the 5th user.”
“Oh, I thought you’d kept using my hero name out of reverence for me, my apologies. But uh,” he shook his head before continuing, his voice somber and eyes focused on something far away. “Nevermind, it wouldn’t be appropriate. We only have three hours before the start of the entrance exam, and you need to go prepare.”
‘Tell him I already know what he wanted to say,’ the woman said, ‘and that I’m proud of him.’
“Uh, All, er, Yagi-sama, the female user says she knows what you wanted to say, and that she’s proud of you. I’m going to guess that she’s Shimura-san?”
‘She’s the only woman in here,’ said a new voice, a young man.
“I’m not certain myself,” All Might said, his voice heavy with emotion, “but thank you, Nana.”
‘Not to ruin the moment,’ Daigoro said, ‘but there’s something else she’s been complaining about for the last few months.’
‘Oh right,’ she said. ‘He needs to sit your parents down and explain everything. I’d’ve done the same to him when I gave him the quirk, but well, he knows why I didn’t.’
‘Eighth’s an orphan,’ the young voice explained.
‘Didn’t need to know that,’ Izuku thought to himself, idly wondering if the previous users could hear his thoughts before saying “Shimura-san also wanted you to tell my mom everything about One for All and all that. It would certainly help explain why I suddenly have a quirk.”
“Ah, of course. Meet me here after the exam, and I will explain. Though if I may, why just explain to your mother, and not your father?”
“He’s got a job overseas in America and doesn’t come by often,” Izuku explained, before thinking ‘comes by so rarely I don’t even remember seeing him in the flesh once.’
‘The trend of us coming from broken families continues,’ Daigoro said, his voice smiling.
‘Nana and I had perfectly happy families, I'll have you know,’ the young voice replied.
‘Two out of nine is still enough for it to be a trend,’ the voice on the edge of coughing said. ‘And Ninth, if you didn’t figure it out already, yes we can hear your thoughts. There’s a way to shut us out, we’ll teach you it while we’re on the train.’
‘Ok. And I’d prefer if you called me by my name, not my number, if that’s alright.’
‘Fair. Though to tell you the truth, we mostly call each other by our number unless it’s our immediate successor-slash-predecessor.’
Izuku said nothing, just nodded slightly before making his way to the train.
“I made it,” Izuku said, marveling at UA’s massive main building.
‘Now you just gotta pass the exam,’ Daigoro said, ‘which given we’re here? It’s gonna be a cake walk.’
‘Wouldn’t that be cheating though? ’ Izuku thought.
‘UA has a policy where anyone with intelligence enhancing or sentient quirks are allowed to talk to them during tests, given certain restrictions like communicating or looking at other people’s tests,’ the older voice, who’d introduced himself as Hikage explained.
‘Restrictions we couldn’t break if we wanted,’ En, the younger voice, said.
“Move it Deku!” Bakugo yelled from behind Izuku, bringing him out of his head. “Get out of my way or you’re dead.”
“K-Kachan!” he said, startled. “G-good morning! Let’s do our best—” Bakugo just walked past, shoulder checking Izuku as he passed.
‘He seems pleasant. Friend of yours?’ Nana asked.
‘Known each other our whole lives, used to be the best of friends, but we fell apart when he got his quirk and I didn’t get mine.’ Izuku remembered back to the day he first learned that not all men were created equal, when the then four-year-old Kachan first used his quirk on Izuku.
Izuku sensed a rage coming from one of the vestiges so great he tripped on his own feet. ‘This is how I die,’ were his last thoughts as he fell, before noticing the ground had stopped coming up to meet him.
“Are you ok?” asked a brown haired girl holding his arm who was, in all ways save her stomach, cute and squishy looking. He let out a startled “eep!” as she turned him around weightlessly. Once he was upright, she brought her fingers together, which let out a slight pink glow as he felt himself return to the clutches of gravity. “Sorry about using my quirk on you like that,” she said, “I just thought that falling on your face would be a rough start to your test.”
Izuku stood there, awestruck for a moment, as she walked away. Once she was gone, Daigoro spoke up, laughter in his voice as he said ‘Hello? Earth to Izuku?’
‘I talked to a girl!’ Izuku mentally yelled in excitement.
This time, Daigoro actually belly laughed at him.
‘You need to actually say something to her for it to count,’ En said, his smile audible.
‘Er, right, sorry,’ Izuku thought, hanging his head as he entered the school.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve seen worse,’ Nana said kindly. ‘You should’ve seen Toshi the first time he tried to ask someone out.' All of the vestiges laughed at the memory.
‘Sorry, just, not used to it. I’m pretty sure that’s the first time since kindergarten that a girl talked to me without mocking me or beating me up.’
At that, the joyous emotions of the vestiges faded, mostly replaced with concern, save for two, who were livid with anger.
‘So not only did your best friend turn into a bully, but so did everyone else?’ said either the 2nd or 3rd user, Izuku wasn’t sure which as they hadn’t introduced themselves.
‘I mean, yes?’ Izuku thought back on all the bullying he’d experienced through the years. ‘It got worse when I got into middle school, but the last few months aren’t as bad as they had been.’
‘And the teachers didn’t do anything about it?’ asked the other dark age vestige.
Rather than reply with words, Izuku recalled back to the morning of the day he met All Might, where the teacher had done nothing as all his classmates used their quirks in the classroom, something they weren’t supposed to do, before telling the whole class he’d planned on attending UA, resulting in mocking and ridicule. That same teacher had even still been in the room when, at the end of class, Kachan had told him “why don’t you take a swan dive off the roof of the school and pray for a quirk in your next life?”
This time the inferno of rage seemed to come from all of the vestiges.
‘And all of this because you didn’t have a meta ability?’ said the first dark age vestige to speak.
‘Meta ability? Oh right that’s an old-timey way of saying quirks. Yes, they did all of this because I’m quirkless.’
Izuku didn’t know how, but this somehow managed to make the vestiges more enraged. He reflexively started to shake in his chair from terror, which seemed to calm them down somewhat.
‘We’re not mad at you, Izuku,’ Yoichi said. ‘We’re mad at the people at your school who decided to let you get abused all because of their bigotry.’
‘The written portion is about to start,’ Nana said, her voice cold and even as a blade. ‘Once that’s done and you can have your lunch break, we’re having you text Toshi all of this.’
‘Before you do that, can you walk me through how to actually use the quirk? I think A-Yagi-sama was about to do that, but got distracted by all of you.’
‘Right, after the practical then.’
‘That cannot have been that easy,’ Izuku thought as he walked out of the testing room.
‘Kid, that was a test for high schoolers,' Daigoro said, ‘you’ve got over half a dozen adults in your head, and we were around for most of the history questions. Of fucking course it was that easy.’
‘I did tell you it was going to be a cakewalk,’ Hikage said. ‘Now head to the bathroom, we need to get you ready to use One for All.’
Izuku took a handicap stall and locked the door. Letting out a breath, he whispered aloud “What now?”
‘Clench your butt cheeks and say smash,’ Nana said, entirely serious.
Izuku blinked several times, his thoughts still. “Huh?”
Nana and Daigoro laughed at that, her a light chuckle, and him a hearty belly laugh. Izuku could swear he felt several of the others amused by that, but they at least blocked themselves out so he couldn’t hear them laughing at him.
Yoichi spoke up as the laughter died, saying ‘No but legitimately the way to manifest One for All’s power is to tense up your muscles and to conceptualize the idea of the energy you’re calling upon. Easiest way to do that? Clench your ass and say smash.’
‘But make sure you remember it’s just supposed to be like training wheels on a bike,' called either the 2 nd or 3 rd . ‘You don’t actually haveta say it every time, and if you do I’mma strangle you.’
‘But Yagi-sama says it for all his moves?’
‘And that is one of several reasons me and three can’t stand the blonde buffoon,’ the other dark age ghost, presumably the 2 nd user, said. ‘Imagine a pro biker doing the Tour de France with kiddy wheels stuck to his bike.’
‘Alright,’ Izuku thought, uncertain, before letting out a huff. “Here I go. Smash.”
Lines of red energy coursed all through Izuku’s body, his whole body glowing with power. ‘NINE DON’T MOVE!!’ the 2nd screamed.
Startled, Izuku dropped the energy and took a step back. ‘What, what happened, what’d I do wrong?’
‘That was way too much force,’ Nana warned. ‘There was no way your body would’ve been able to handle that much so soon, we could already feel your body straining under the pressure. Let’s try that again, but let’s start at half power and we’ll adjust it from there.’
Izuku nodded and did as instructed, going to 50% of his max output with One for All and working his way down, farther and farther, until eventually he didn’t even think he was using a full percentage of the quirk’s full power, and the red veins disappeared, leaving him standing there, body arcing with minty green lightning.
‘Don’t worry about using so little of it,’ Yoichi said, feeling Izuku’s emotions before he even said anything. ‘That’s about the outage I had near the end, and we calced it to be about a ten-fold increase.’
‘But-’ Izuku began, only for En to interrupt, ‘Yagi-sama rarely uses more than about 20% of his full output. That punch he threw against the slime villain drowning explode-bitch? That was with 80% of One for All. How often does an All Might fight end in changing the weather?’
Izuku thought, before taking a deep breath to steady himself as he deactivated One for All. “Alright,” he said aloud, “let’s do this.”
He must have spent a long while figuring out a safe percentage to use, because by the time Izuku got out to where he was stationed to take the practical, several others were standing around, waiting for the test to start.
Izuku scanned the crowd, silently hoping that no one from Aldera had been stationed at the same testing grounds as him, when he saw the girl who’d stopped him from falling when he’d first gotten on campus. He was walking over to her when he felt a hand grab his shoulder.
“That girl appears to be doing some kind of meditation,” said the stern voiced owner of the hand, “Why are you bothering her? Do you intend to interfere?”
“Eep!” Izuku shrieked, “N-no, sorry, I was just, she did something nice to me when we first got here and I wanted to thank her for it!”
“Hmm, you can thank her by leaving her be to maintain her focus,” the boy said, removing his hand but blocking Izuku’s way with a very mechanical arm chop.
‘But I just wanted to thank her,’ Izuku thought dejectedly. Before his headmates could say anything, Present Mic’s voice came screaming out from the main building “Begin!”
‘Izuku now,’ Daigoro commanded, and in an instant Izuku was once again glowing as he ran into the mock city. A 1-point robot came barreling out from around a corner, only to get punched in the chest by Izuku, shattering its torso and severing its arms and head.
‘These things aren’t that durable, ’ Izuku thought. ‘There is no way that this little amount of One for All is able to do that much damage if it were well built. Probably not even steel, but aluminum.’
“What are you waiting for!?” came Present Mic’s voice. “The test’s already started!”
A quick glance back, and Izuku was surprised to see that he was the only one from his group who’d entered the exam.
‘Think later, kill robots now ,’ the 2nd commanded, his voice cold. Izuku shook his head and continued on.
As quickly as he could, Izuku ran from the entrance deeper into the city, demolishing any robot he saw with no less than two blows. Once he’d made it about half way through, Hikage spoke up. ‘We should be deep enough in that the others can carve out their hunting grounds.’
“Hunting—" before Izuku could even finish his thoughts he saw a 3-pointer and ran for it, dodging a missile before decapitating it with a single kick. “Slow people are gonna have a hard time with the 3-pointers, what if they get hit!?”
‘Turning back around and destroying every 3-pointer we see?’ En said. ‘I like that plan.’
In truth Izuku spent more time keeping people out of the way of the 3-pointers than destroying them, but that didn’t stop him from leaving a trail of destroyed robots in his path, each one having taken two blows or less.
“49,” Izuku said, having just bisected another 3-pointer before turning to the tall boy with tentacles it had knocked over and was about to shoot. “Are you ok?”
One of his tentacles shifted to have a mouth at one end that said “I’m fine, thanks,” before he flinched. “Did someone just destroy a building?!”
“I hope they made sure it was—” Izuku stopped talking as one of the multi-story buildings across the street crumbled to reveal a giant robot that towered over the street and the test-takers on it.
“The 0-pointer,” the tentacled boy said in awe.
“We should run,” Izuku told him, offering his hand.
“Don’t have to tell me twice,” the boy said as he took Izuku’s hand and turned to run.
Izuku was about to do the same, when he heard a girl groan in pain. Glancing back, he saw the girl from the front gate, lying on the ground, her foot pinned under the remains of what appeared to be a 2-pointer, directly in the path of the 0-pointer.
In an instant Izuku was running toward her. ‘Too far away, not gonna make it in time to pick her up and run. I’ll have to use more of One for All. Anyone have an alternative?’
‘At this point you’ve probably got enough points to make it,’ En said, his voice tense.
‘And they’ve got Recovery Girl on their payroll, so any injuries should be recoverable,’ Daigoro pointed out.
‘They’ve got limits on the robots so that—’ if Nana said anything else Izuku wasn’t listening. He called upon all 100% of One for All’s power, focused it into his legs, and leapt towards the robot. With a shout of “Smash!” he flung his fist forward, creating a shockwave strong enough to make scrap metal of the robot’s head.
‘NINE YOU ASSHAT I FUCKING TOLD YOU NOT TO USE THE FULL POWER YET YOU IDIOT!!!’ the 2nd yelled. It was only at this point that he noticed the pain in his limbs, as both his legs and his right arm were shattered, their skin a horribly bruised brown as they flapped helplessly in the wind as Izuku fell back down toward the asphalt street below.
‘Blame later, stop from being a crushed watermelon now!’ Yoichi said, his voice stern and commanding.
‘Any ideas?’ Izuku asked.
‘You’ve still got one good arm,’ En pointed out.
‘Chiyo can heal a broken arm much better than a splattered head,’ Daigoro said.
‘Punch the ground at the moment of impact, got it. Too early and it won’t work, too late and I won’t have the chance.’ Letting out a scream of agony, Izuku willed his broken right arm to face down toward the ground as he poured One for All into his left. ‘Once I touch the ground I punch, that good?’
‘Good enough for now,’ Nana said, ‘but we’re gonna have a talk about this later!’
Izuku was about to reply when he felt something slam into his chest before breaking. The impact sent him spinning, letting him see that it was the now broken hand of the girl he’d tried to rescue, now laying atop a 3-pointer’s detached missile rack floating high in the air.
‘She’s got a telekinesis or gravity quirk right? Would be really helpful if I wasn’t spinning, now I can’t gauge distance!’ he thought.
‘But you’re slowing down,’ Nana pointed out.
Sure enough, the slap and the wind resistance was enough to stop Izuku’s fall moments before he hit the ground, leaving him floating less than 30cm above the ground.
“R-release,” came the pained voice of the girl above him, before Izuku fell the rest of the way to the ground, followed by several robots that were smashed to pieces, and lastly the missile rack with the girl on it, who chose that moment to empty the contents of her stomach onto the ground.
Fortunately for the both of them, the exam ended then, with Recovery Girl arriving soon after to give them a kiss and send them on their way.
“That sucked,” Izuku said, rising to his feet and palming the gummies Recovery Girl had given him.
“I would think so,” the little old lady said, a knowing look in her eyes, “why if I didn’t know any better I’d say your body wasn’t used to your quirk!”
‘She knows,’ Daigoro said. ‘She and I were best friends.’
‘Good to know,’ Izuku thought. “Sorry about that, I’ll, uh, it won’t happen again.”
‘It had better not,’ said Nana and the 2nd user in chorus.
‘Not to stop the give-Izuku-shit-for-being-an-idiot hour,’ En brought up, much to Izuku’s simultaneous elation and dread, ‘but he needs to get home so he’ll be there when Eighth shows up to explain the sitch.’
‘Oh right, that. Be prepared for tears, my mom’s a cryer.’
‘Yeah, and I don’t imagine she’ll like learning about explode-bitch’s treatment of you,’ grumbled the 2nd.