Chapter Text
It had been ages since Izuku last thought about U.A.
He hadn’t been on campus since the entrance exam, which he’d failed miserably, without a quirk to support him. For weeks after, as he studied at the only online school he could find, he’d told himself it was okay that he’d failed. That he could pick himself up and become a hero anyway.
It didn’t take him long to figure out how much of a lie that was. All Might was right.
After spending a couple more weeks in misery, working through his schoolwork as quickly as he could, he started to pick himself up again. He found new passion in his notebooks. He started doing more and more in-depth research into quirk theory, trying to learn everything he could about something he’d never been able to have. Maybe part of it was fueled by the hope that by learning about quirks, he’d get one himself. Even if he never did get one from all the work and research he did, he didn’t think it mattered now. Because the fact was he loved learning about quirks.
Izuku practically flew through school. It was partly because he didn’t have anything else to do, of course, but also he was genuinely excited about learning the material, especially from the electives he’d managed to get on quirk theory. He finished his first semester in a matter of weeks, and managed to convince administration to move him into the advanced classes.
He was done with his first year of school in three months.
The administration of his online school told him that he, unfortunately, couldn’t move onto second year until it was actually time for him to be in second year. So he asked for more electives on quirk theory, and they gave him some. They also gave him the opportunity to do an internship of his choosing. He said he’d think about it.
About a week after that conversation, he had his first encounter with quirk therapy. A person on an online forum sent up a call for help after their kid’s quirk came in, a powerful one called Hive, which made bugs attracted to them. The only problem was that their kid was terrified of bugs. And they couldn’t figure out how to turn off the quirk.
Izuku had whipped out his phone in an instant, going through old medical journals. After an hour of research, he wrote a lengthy reply, explaining in detail how he thought they could turn off the kid’s quirk. Or, in the event that it was involuntary and couldn’t be helped, how they could lessen its effect. A day later, he received a glowing thank you note, telling him his recommendations had been more than helpful, and their kid could turn their quirk on and off at will now.
That was all it took to get Izuku hooked on quirk therapy. He started looking for offices where he could intern. They were all… relatively unsuccessful businesses, full of people who didn’t care, or were only in the work for the money. There was one office he found with a few therapists who seemed to know what they were doing, even if they were relatively low-budget and tended to miss appointments occasionally. He sent in an application, explaining to his school what he was doing.
He was accepted.
As he started work there, he was mostly shut out of all the discussions about quirks. So he started finding other ways to help people. Giving them advice as they walked in, taking the phone from the receptionist and giving in depth quirk analysis, waiting for Hoshino to be out and then taking all her appointments for her-- sometimes deliberately clearing Hoshino’s calendar so she didn’t know she had appointments. Was it illegal? Probably. Did he care? Not particularly.
He loved the thrill he got when his suggestions worked, the light that came into people’s eyes when they understood his advice.
He kept up his online presence, making his own online forum where people could ask him questions. People asked him for his credentials sometimes and he told them he didn’t have any, which was true. Surprisingly, it was rare for them to leave, even after he told them that. His advice was too valuable, and he was the only one around giving actually useful support. He helped heroes online, he helped little kids, he helped teenagers, he helped stressed parents. Over time, people started to know that he was the person to talk to if they needed help with their quirks, and people came flooding in for his advice. He gave it willingly, living for their thank yous.
Then Eraserhead came into Hoshino’s office with a young girl who had the most powerful quirk Izuku had ever seen. He was so glad Hoshino had chosen this day to run errands until she was late. Because now he could analyze this beautiful, terrifying quirk. It was the type of thing that was so powerful, so strong, that it was breathtaking, like looking at a huge waterfall, or an avalanche. There was always the knowledge that it could kill you in an instant, but its epicness was what made it so captivating.
And Eri was the opposite. She was the type of beautiful that one didn’t notice until they looked closer, like a tiny daisy in a crack of the sidewalk. The quirk matched her, somehow, but it was too powerful for her little body.
So Izuku threw himself into figuring out how to help her. He spent hours researching quirks like hers after she left, diving headfirst into the quirk singularity theory, reading accounts from people who’d learned to control impossible quirks. And he figured it out.
He never would have guessed that all that would lead to this. To him having his own office (his own office!!!) in U.A., right next to Hound Dog’s office (Hound Dog!!!) , where he could talk to Eri whenever he wanted and was surrounded by the coolest quirks of all existence. And he still had his online presence, so he was continuing to help people outside of U.A. too. This was easily the best thing that had ever happened to him.
And the students at U.A. were so interesting! He’d only met a few of them, some of the people that were graduating next year and were concerned about not being prepared. They’d left beaming, which naturally made him want to smile more too.
Today, however, one of the second years had asked to see him, probably at Aizawa’s prompting. He remembered Uraraka Ochako’s quirk from the sports festival, but it would definitely be interesting to talk to her and learn even more about it and what she was having trouble with. Needless to say, he was excited. It had been a while since he’d gotten to talk to someone with a tactile quirk, and Uraraka had a five point activation quirk with a ten point deactivation, making it really one of the most interesting quirks he’d ever seen.
A knock fell on his door and he launched himself out of his beanbag (he’d specifically asked that his office be filled with beanbags) and whipped the door open, beaming.
Uraraka Ochako, he realized suddenly, was very cute.
He felt his face start to heat up. A girl. A girl his age. A cute girl his age. And he was standing within a foot of her.
“Um,” he said intelligently.
“Are you Midoriya Izuku?” she asked, cheeks flushing a delicate shade of pink. “I’m Uraraka Ochako!”
“H-hi,” his mouth felt very dry all the sudden and he shook himself internally, trying to at least act like a normal human being. “Yes, sorry, I’m Midoriya Izuku.” He smiled awkwardly at her, suddenly feeling an intense urge to rub the back of his neck. Instead, he stepped back, opening the door more widely. “Why don’t you come in?”
“I didn’t realize you were a teenager!” she said, coming into the room and looking around curiously, grinning at the beanbags. “I thought you’d be all old and wrinkly.”
“You know, I get that a lot,” he said.
She laughed, disbelievingly. “Really?”
“No.”
That made her laugh again and Izuku grinned. She had a nice laugh. He kind of wanted to hear it again.
“So what can I help you with, Uraraka-san?” he asked, launching himself into one of his beanbags and looking at her expectantly.
“Ohhh so many things,” she sighed, plopping down in the beanbag across from him. Then she flashed him a smile. “No, actually-- only one thing. I was wondering if you had any way I can improve the versatility of my quirk.”
Izuku nodded, ideas already spiraling around in his head. “Let me just tell you what I know about your quirk first, and you can correct me if I get anything wrong, okay?”
She nodded, a happy light in her eyes and Izuku felt a smile start to trail across his face in mimicry of her expression. He shook it away with an imperceptible jerk of his head. Not now .
“So you have your quirk listed as removal of gravity on five point contact with a ten point contact deactivation that occurs when you press your fingers together?”
She blinked, taking a second to think through all the words and then nodded, looking a little surprised. “Yeah, that’s it.”
Izuku shook his head. “I don’t think that is it, I think your quirk is listed wrong.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Really?”
He nodded. “Yeah, because… I watched you at the sports festival, and…” he got up, grabbing a book off the wall of bookshelves he had in his room, settling down again a moment later. “Float this,” he said.
She took it from him, pressing five fingers to it. It floated into the air and hovered in the middle of the room.
“My point,” he said, gesturing at it. “See? You’re not removing the gravity, you’re just manipulating the gravitational field.”
“What does that mean?” she asked, watching the book floating in place.
“If you’d fully removed its gravity, it would have flown away-- hit the ceiling. But your quirk doesn’t do that. What does your quirk feel like?”
“Bubbles,” she said automatically.
“Bubbles, okay.”
Eri’s quirk felt like a waterfall, like a roaring torrent of water flooding out of her horn. When she had it under control, she said it felt more like a stream or a trickle. That was probably because when she used her quirk, a flood of time came out of it, an unstoppable force rushing out.
Uraraka’s quirk felt like bubbles. What did that mean?
“Could you float me?” he asked, reaching out his hand to her. She pressed five fingers into his forearm and he felt himself start to float up. It was a bit of a nauseating experience, like being on a ferris wheel made of glass.
She moved to release him, lining up her hands.
“No, wait-- I need to think.” He wiggled around in the air until he was sitting cross-legged in the air. Carefully, he reached out a hand into the empty space around him. Nothing happened and he brought his hand back in, resting his chin on it as he thought. If he wasn’t sitting in a bubble of anti-gravity, then… what? Involuntary restricted telekinesis? He uncrossed his legs and jabbed one of them straight downward. Two things happened at once-- Uraraka threw up into his trashcan and he plummeted two feet up, nearly smacking into the ceiling.
“Aha,” he said happily. “Release me.”
She shakily pressed her fingers together and he fell to the floor. “Did you figure out how my quirk works?” she asked groggily, holding the trashcan close.
He nodded. “I did.” Well, the basics of it, anyway. He still didn’t fully understand the physics behind it. “I think what you’re doing isn’t exactly exempting things from gravity, you’re more like… matching it's effect. Right now you’re only moving it vertically, directing the gravitational field down, so people float wherever you send them. I’m pretty sure up until this point their trajectory has been involuntary, but I have a few things I’d like you to try…”
The new quirk therapist was easily one of the coolest people Ochako had ever met at this school, and she’d met a lot of people. Within the span of thirty minutes, he’d fully grasped the inner mechanics of her quirk and given her suggestions on how to improve, all while being the cutest, most nervously happy person she’d ever had the pleasure of speaking to.
She went to class the next day extremely excited and happy. The rest of 2-A all looked up when she walked in, probably surprised by how extra bubbly she was today.
“You seem to be in a good mood today, Uraraka-san!” Iida said.
“I am,” she said, grinning. People started to crowd around, eager to hear what she had to say. “Yesterday I met the new quirk therapist-- he is so awesome, you guys have to go see him.”
“How do we meet him?” Tsu asked.
Before Ochako could answer, Ashido butted in, “What’s his name?”
“It’s Midoriya Izuku, and--”
There was the sound of a huge crash from the front of the classroom. Bakugou appeared to have dropped all his textbooks on the floor. “Fucking what ?” he shrieked at her.
“Oh, we’re just talking about the new quirk therapist,” Ashido said, leaping off the desk she was sitting on to help him clean up his books. “Apparently he’s really good.”
“Yeah, I heard all that,” Bakugou snapped, scowling. “What was the name again?”
Surprised by his interest, Ochako answered, “Oh! Midoriya-- Midoriya Izuku.”
Bakugou’s face went ashen and then very red and he looked like he was about to explode when Aizawa walked in. “What are you all doing? Get in your seats! Now!”
And everyone snapped into motion, diving into their seats as quickly as possible.
Aizawa started the lecture and Ochako looked curiously over at Bakugou, who was either fuming or very confused-- it was hard to tell sometimes. She wondered briefly how he knew Midoriya, and then turned her attention back to the lecture. It probably didn't matter, anyway.