Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“‘Can you become a hero without power?’ No, I don’t believe so.”

For the past few weeks, that sentence haunted Izuku’s thoughts. While coming back home that day, hearing about the sludge villain taking Kacchan hostage; while resubmitting his career form, telling the teacher someone had handed the other one in as a joke; while taking down the posters from his walls and putting them in the closet, unable to reconcile the bright smile with the face in his memory.

The reveal of All Might’s true form, mindset, and his answer had left him in a daze that day, one he hadn’t snapped out of until he got home.

He’d even been escorted back down to street level by the symbol of peace himself, no doubt concerned about leaving him on that rooftop alone, before apologizing again and racing off, no doubt having registered the far-off explosion where he hadn’t, and he hadn’t been able to find it in himself to geek out about it or feel awkward about the prior conversation while it happened.

After the initial shock had faded though, back in his room, a somber clarity had descended upon him.

All Might was right.

How was someone without a strong power able to fight against strong villains and survive?

And even without that, arguing that someone with less power could combat less powerful villains and criminals. Had he done anything to prepare for even that? Had he at any point tried to be realistic about his dreams? ‘You have to be realistic.’ Had he ever done that?

After coming home that day, Izuku had feebly flexed his arms in the mirror, taking in the complete lack of physical prowess.

From the moment he’d manifested his quirk, Kacchan had been training his mind, body and quirk whenever he could, with his figure and proficiency at Explosion as proof. What had he been doing? Hoping? Dreaming? How was a set of notebooks of him geeking out over heroes and quirks ever going to help him defeat powerful villains, or even criminals without anything else? Even if the mental training would help out, how was he going to execute any strategy and take down an opponent like this?

In his room that evening, that’s when the true realization had hit him.

A part of him had already given up on becoming a hero, a long time ago. Possibly even after that doctor’s visit. The rest of him had simply been too stubborn to catch on to it until the symbol of peace himself had forcefully shown him what the reality would be.

That didn’t mean the words didn’t hurt. Everyone else always told him he’d never be enough, and it was only now that he came to realize it himself.

He wasn’t good enough to be a hero. Nevermind a pro. He was just a Deku.

Who was he kidding?

Familiar loud voices coming from down the shopping district forced Izuku out of his thoughts.

Seriously? Now? The destruction from the Sludge Villain incident was still visible further down the street. How Kacchan or his hanger-ons even wanted to be here, with half the shops still closed for repairs, was a mystery, though it almost felt like cosmic punishment to him.

Since having needed rescue from ‘some D-list villain’ and the forced rest imposed on him by the doctors, Kacchan’s irritability had skyrocketed. Coupled with Izuku’s simultaneous realization and giving up on attending UA’s hero course, which he somehow saw as a slight against him…

Spotting the nearest off-shoot, Izuku kept himself small as he turned into it, speedily walking down the alley while ignoring the throbbing ache in his forearm.

Several turns into adjacent alleys later and he came to a stop, holding in his breath as his ears took in the silence of the back alleys.

His shoulders slumped with a sigh. They hadn’t noticed and followed him.

Now where had he walked to?

Despite living here all his life, the back alleys wasn’t exactly a place he paid attention to. It was merely a place he could traverse when the regular streets weren’t an option, either because of Kacchan or another classmate, or a villain attack obstructing the way.

…and which way had he come from again?

Knowing he shouldn’t keep his mom waiting, and how dangerous places like these could become, he sped through the alleys, taking several turns.

Eventually he found himself in an especially narrow alley, the decrepit buildings towering over him and casting everything in constant shade.

It was as he passed a peculiar, dented door that couldn’t possibly be locked, covered with ratty purple drapes, that a loud clang echoed through the alley.

Something moved from where he came, and on instinct he turned and barged through the dented door, which thankfully gave way to his shoulder.

Shutting it behind him, his thoughts were already berating him.

Seriously! What a scaredy-cat! It’d probably just been an actual cat, or a rattling pipe.

Hopefully nobody lived here…

With that thought, Izuku’s eyes got used to the dark interior.

The interior was as ratty and in disrepair as the drapes outside. A dusty couch with a table occupied the middle of the small room, with a shelf taking up the back wall, bordering a doorway that led to stairs.

The shelf and table displayed all kinds of trinkets. Decks of cards. Goblets of varying sizes. A cloudy ball. One wall had a row of ofudas hanging from a string.

Izuku frowned as he walked up to it, his fingers sliding over one of the yellowed papers.

Was this a tacky fortune telling shop?

He should probably-

“A visitor?”

Izuku was not proud of the yelp that escaped him.

From the doorway, an elderly woman stood, her legs trembling as she clutched a cane.

Her skin was saggy and wrinkly, covered in liver spots and appearing like leather. Her figure was hunched. Her hair was wispy and mostly gray, with only hints of a once deep green. Her eyes were almost completely closed, though she had no trouble looking straight at him as she hobbled forwards.

“I-I’m so sorry,” Izuku stuttered out, taking a step back. “I got lost in- in the alleys, and I didn’t- uhm, I lost my way trying to get away from- from- uh-”

“It’s very rare that someone truly loses their way,” the woman croaked, delicately lowering herself onto the couch. “Often, what is disregarded as coincidence can be something more. If only people took the time…”

Izuku sent her an odd look, glancing back at the door.

“Please, stay for a moment longer?” the old woman asked. “I haven’t had visitors in a long time.”

He’d rather dash out and brave the back alleys again, but a small part of him was already urging him to stay and make sure the old woman was okay. This wasn’t a place for someone her age to stay at.

With one last moment of hesitation, Izuku stepped forward again, nodding.

The elderly woman didn’t say anything. Somehow, the silence was the most unsettling.

“What is this place?” Izuku finally asked quietly.

“My home,” the woman answered. It only made him feel worse for barging in. “It used to be my shop, but nowadays it’s simply a place where I live and keep the things I won’t throw away.” She laughed, though it wasn’t the most pleasant to the ears.

“You were a…fortune teller?”

“Divination was my interest,” the woman answered. “I enjoyed most fields. From tea leaves to horoscopes to palm reading to tarot. The service most customers came for however was something unique to me.”

Somehow, the woman reminiscing had put Izuku at ease, and he found himself sitting at the other end of the couch.

“Unique?” he echoed. “A quirk?”

Crap. Why’d his mind always go back to quirks?

The woman huffed out a laugh. “Yes, my quirk.” She sighed. “Most people were skeptical when I described it, but it never failed me, even if people were regularly disappointed.”

Despite his self-recrimination, Izuku couldn’t curb his curiosity now that quirks were involved.

“Then…what does it do?”

“It lets me see the threads one person shares with everyone else,” the woman said, sounding listless. “And forges a connection that is needed most.”

It…what?

Apparently his confusion and skepticism was clear on his face, as the woman huffed again.

“Yes, connections. Familial, romantic, platonic, adversarial; established, or merely a possibility. I could see them all. In my youth, my peers simply thought I could see soulmates. They all wanted me to tell them who they’d fall in love with.”

She shook her head, sighing. “They were often disappointed. Generally, a connection that is needed most in the moment isn’t like in the movies. Once, a client gained a connection with an accountant for hire, as he was close to committing a terrible financial decision.”

There was a huffed laugh again. Izuku could see the humor in it.

“And of course, even temporary, the other person involved often wasn’t pleased with a sudden connection forged with them.”

Izuku frowned. What was she even talking about when she mentioned connection?

“Oh well.” The old woman groaned as she tried to get up. “Those days are long behind me. Nowadays, it is simply my own connections that reveal themselves to me. To taunt me, no doubt.”

Given that she lived in a near-derelict building in some back alley, Izuku could see how her social life was lacking.

Maybe…

No, that was dumb. He wasn’t fit to help others.

“‘Can you become a hero without power?’ No, I don’t believe so.”

There it was again.

“Let me help you up,” he said, standing up and moving over to the struggling woman.

It was the least he could-

A loud gasp cut off his thoughts the moment his hand touched her bare wrist.

The woman’s trembling had ceased entirely, her face staring and taking him in.

“Young man…”

“Uhm, ma’am?” Izuku asked warily, jolting when the hand that’d previously been holding the cane shot out to grab his free wrist in response.

He tugged, yet his hand was not released.

“I have never…such a strong reaction,” the elderly woman mumbled.

“Ma’am, could you-” He tugged again, harsher this time.

The elderly woman jolted, head tilting up to meet his face.

Izuku momentarily stilled as he finally saw the woman’s eye.

It was clouded over, but the iris was still very clear. It looked like silvery thread was spooled around the pupil, fraying at places and meandering out radially, staining red and looking like veins.

And now the spool looked like it was turning sluggishly around the pupil.

He tugged again, and the woman’s eyes widened in alarm.

“No, I have to!”

What was she talking about?!

In a rush of panic, Izuku jerked his captured hand back, the remarkably strong grip giving way as a glint of light was caught in the elderly woman’s eyes.

The sudden release made him stumble backwards, nearly tripping over the table.

The woman stepped forward, an arm reaching out to him, and Izuku’s survival instincts fully kicked in.

“Wait, young man!” the elderly woman shouted after him as he dashed through the dented door, sprinting down the alley.

It was only when a turn revealed the open street ahead that Izuku’s footfalls slowed down, gasping breaths taking over as he came to a stop and had to lean against the wall.

What had that been about?!

Questions were racing through his mind, backed up by the constant drum of his heart within his ears.

His gasping returned to heavy breathing, and Izuku shook his head, moving closer to the street ahead, basking in orange light.

Orange?

He gulped. It was already sunset?

He had to get back to his mom!

Despite his shortness of breath, which only further cemented how unrealistic his dreams had been and how little he’d done for them, Izuku got back into a jog, leaving the entrance to the alley network behind him.

It was only as he reached the entrance to the apartment block and slowed down from his jog that his thoughts returned.

Who was that? Why had she reacted like that?

Had she used her quirk? On him?

The thought didn’t sit well with him, something in his stomach squirming as he ascended the stairs.

No, no, it was ridiculous! What kind of quirk lets you see connections that are only a possibility? That meant a connection between one person and almost everyone else on Earth, including people yet to be born!

And picking a connection that would be the most ‘needed’? No, the quirk sounded too intelligent, too sapient, too nebulous to possibly be true. Maybe the old woman wasn’t all there anymore in her age, or she’d misunderstood her quirk, or had simply embellished it.

His thoughts were briefly interrupted by his mom, who came rushing to him as he entered, pulling him into a squeezing hug.

Despite not having said anything, his revelation and change in thinking over the past few weeks had been clear enough to her; she’d started fretting over him even more than usual.

“I made katsudon,” she said, smiling at him as he took off his shoes.

He sent back a grateful smile.

This was the eighth time since that rooftop that she’d made it, and it was clear what she meant by it.

Even though the brief glimpses of relief he’d seen breaking through her fretting and comforting pained him deeply, he couldn’t help but smile.

It could’ve been so much worse. At least he had a mom who loved him the most in this world.

He sat down with a sigh as the table was plated, the pork cutlet steaming from its bowl.

His life and lifelong convictions had been uprooted, and he’d been left aimless since then, nevermind everything from today piling on top of it.

He began with his first piece, eyes closing as he took in the perfect way his mom made it.

But right now he could simply push all those thoughts and feelings aside, and relish in the comfort of his favorite food, in the company of the one person who loved him.

Yet despite that, an odd feeling intruded on his moment of comfort. A strange sort of confusion.

Izuku frowned, pausing his chewing. Now he was definitely confused.

Pushing it aside, he swallowed and continued eating.

By the time he finished and thanked his mom, getting up to put away the dish and head to his room, he couldn’t deny that his feelings felt…off.

There was his own confusion, and the lingering contentment from dinner, and the simmering emotions that hadn’t truly left since the rooftop, but there was also…more confusion, and now some strange wariness bubbling underneath.

His heart stilled as he remembered the old woman’s words.

No. No, that couldn’t be-

“Hello?” he asked out loud, his voice bouncing against the walls.

No reaction.

He shook his head, dropping on his bed.

Well, he was very tired. Maybe that was messing with his emotions. He hadn’t exactly gotten much high quality sleep recently.

Besides, a quirk like the one she described had never been documented before. It was well-known that all possible quirks could only descend from the original types that had randomly manifested at the Dawn. Since then, every quirk was a combination or amplification or mutation of those abilities. Nothing truly new could ever be added, and nothing documented was anything close to what the woman had described.

Disregarding the odd state of his emotions, he rushed through his evening routine, sending a final ‘good night’ to his mom and collapsing onto his bed, wearing the only set of plain pajamas he owned, welcoming the warm embrace of sleep.

The next moment he registered, he was staring up at a ceiling.

He was still lying in bed, and it was too dark in the room to make out anything on the ceiling. Except he couldn’t move.

Please no. Did he have to add sleep paralysis to his growing list of issues?

Except, even with sleep paralysis he should be able to move his eyes. He couldn’t even do that. They blinked, but when he tried to move them, they remained still.

A pang of muted panic rang through him.

“Hello?” he tried to call out. Tried, because despite his words coming out, his mouth didn’t move.

His vision jolted as he suddenly sat up–again, completely without his input–and was left helpless as his eyes flitted across the pitch-black room against his will.

A second jolt of anxiety ran through him, and then the biggest shock came.

“Who’s there?” his mouth whispered without his input, a voice not his own coming out and echoing through the obscured room.

With a gasp Izuku shot up on his bed, heart racing.

What was that?!

His eyes darted around the room, quick breaths breaking up the deafening silence as he came down from his nightmare.

A nightmare, right?

It…Apart from his lack of agency, it hadn’t been very fear inducing.

Slowly, his breaths diminished in volume, and Izuku strained his hearing as he took in the silence.

He could hear the muffled sounds of someone from the apartment above being restless, the rustling of sheets through the walls as his mom rolled over in bed, the distant clattering of heavy rain.

No, it was nothing. It was…

He gulped. It shouldn’t exist, and yet.

“Hello?” he called out again, restraining his volume to avoid waking his mom in the other room. “Are you still there?”

The brief respite from silence ended, leaving him with his sheets sticking to his sweaty arms.

Nothing.

He breathed out, unsure of what to think. Maybe he should just go back to sleep and look forward to the upcoming golden week.

And perhaps he’d go and check the old woman’s place again too, if he could find it. Despite everything, he didn’t like the thought of having left behind-

“_Mhm.”

Chapter Text

It was like the world stuttered and froze at the quiet hum answering him.

That was-

A voice. A voice that came from inside his head. A voice that sounded like a girl’s, a little girl.

“Hi,” he said before his thoughts could catch up to him. “Nice to- to meet you?”

Another wave of confusion hit him. Confusion and apprehension. Disbelief?

Right, this was pretty unbelievable to him too.

“Uh, I’m sorry,” he continued. The feed of second-hand emotions was enough to confirm there really was someone listening now. Unless this was part of the dream. “I bumped into a woman today. She- uhm, told me her quirk connects someone with someone else, and then used it on me. I guess this is- this is what she meant.”

There was more silence. More apprehension. Confusion had left, at least.

He swallowed his saliva. What was he supposed to do here? If this had been an adult, or a teenager even, they’d be freaking out at him, cussing him out and threatening to call the police. This- he had to assume little girl—she wasn’t saying anything.

Maybe she thought he was an imaginary friend.

What would her parents think if they heard?

“I don’t know how long it’ll last, so- uhm, you can think of me as…an imaginary friend?”

He only belatedly realized that, if he could feel her feelings, and the bond—whatever it was—was two-way, then she probably felt his anxiety that came with the statement.

“…friend?”

He startled at the voice, much clearer than before. Yes, it really was a little girl’s voice.

“If- If you want,” he continued. “I know this is- this is probably really weird. If you don’t like it, I’ll- y’know, stay quiet and you can pretend I’m not here.”

“Where…are you?”

He perked up. Oh, she probably didn’t understand.

“Uh, I think that quirk- it made a connection between our minds. I’m not actually with you, or inside your head,” he explained, before realizing something else. “I- uh, I live in Musutafu, Shizuoka. My name’s Midoriya Izuku. Nice to meet you.”

Despite being unable to see it, he could somehow feel her face scrunch up.

“Mi- Miro- Midora-”

“Or just Izuku.”

“Izu?”

Ah, maybe she just didn’t hear him well. Despite the situation, a smile played on Izuku’s lips. She sounded very reserved and, well, adorable. She also sounded sleepy.

“Yeah, that,” he confirmed. He wasn’t going to ask for her name. This felt bad enough as an invasion of privacy already.

“So…you’re not here?”

“No, I’m not,” he answered, before pausing at the sudden wave of second-hand relief. “But I think- When I fell asleep, I was fully in your head for a moment, because my own was, you know, turned off. I think that’s when you first heard me.” His face fell. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“…I’m Eri.”

Izuku blinked. Oh, her name. She’d just given it to him, just like that.

“Hi Eri,” he said warmly, hoping he could mimic his mom. “You sound very tired. Maybe we should both get some sleep.” And maybe this link thing would be gone by then as well.

“Mhm.”

Oh gosh, she sounded adorable.

After that, silence filled the link. A few quiet minutes later, the muffled emotions coming through the connection dimmed and faded.

He breathed out. She’d probably fallen asleep. Or maybe the link had faded already.

And then he registered the new weight in his head. Not regular weight. It felt like there was someone else watching along with him, a second presence.

A second-hand panic began to bubble up, and Izuku hastily stood up from his bed.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he began, moving for the light switch. “Remember? It’s me. I think you’re in my head now.”

The panic stilled, followed by a quiet, “Oh.”

“You sound louder…” the girl- Eri said.

Ah, so he had been muffled on her end.

He flicked on the lights, and was filled with the second-hand urge to squint.

A few more steps and he moved in front of a mirror he’d placed to fill the void the posters had left behind.

Instantly, he could feel realization hit Eri.

“Hi.” He waved at himself. “I’m sorry. This has to be really weird.” With himself in frame, he could see his fidgeting. “I’ll- I’ll go to sleep too. Then we’ll probably be fine.”

He got the urge to nod, which was confirmation enough, despite how unsettling- no, despite how unusual it was, and he turned the light back off and laid down in bed.

Despite the second presence he knew was there alongside his own, sleep quickly welcomed him.

The next moment he woke, Izuku was hit with deja vu.

He tried to move, but he remained still.

What was-

Oh!

Memories of last night flooded him again.

Was it really not a dream? Was he-

“Izu?” his lips moved, the girl’s- Eri’s voice coming out of them.

“Hi, it’s me again,” he said. It was weird. He could hear his voice, but the lips didn’t move. “I’m sorry, I think I’m still sleeping. Is it morning?”

As if to answer the question for him, something clicked, and the obscured room was suddenly filled with bright light. Despite the urge to blink, his eyelids- Eri didn’t. She instead looked down hastily.

Okay…automated lights?

The harsh buzz and clinical white wasn’t a good sign.

“It’s not a dream,” Eri mumbled to herself, sitting up.

The room really didn’t fit the lighting. The bed itself had purple sheets and was much larger than a typical child’s bed. The walls were decorated with wood paneling at the bottom, with the rest painted a sky blue with white clouds. There was a door facing the foot of the queen-size bed, and in one corner a toy slide stood.

…it looked more like one of those daycares than a kid’s room, or the pediatric ward of a hospital with little funding.

Was she at a hospital?

“Yeah, I don’t think it’s a dream,” Izuku confirmed, wondering if this is how she’d felt before when Eri got up from her bed.

From what he was feeling, she wasn’t wearing anything on her feet, and a nightgown- a dress brushed against the skin. He also felt hair brushing up against the neck, and something strange wrapped around the arms and legs.

Suddenly, a mirror he hadn’t seen before came into view as Eri came to a stop, and with the realization that she was mimicking what he’d done, the person he was connected to finally came into view.

She really was just a tiny girl. Except everything immediately set off his internal alarms, something she no doubt felt too, given the way she shrunk in on herself.

And not internal alarms because of her, for her.

She looked underfed, her cheeks gaunt and lacking baby fat. Her red eyes were dull. Her silvery blue hair was matted and unkempt and he could feel a distant but constant itch coming from the scalp where a large horn sat. Her tan dress was ratty, she was lacking footwear, and bandages were wrapped around her arms and legs, accompanied by a nagging sting.

What was her situation?

…was this why he’d connected with her?

Realizing he was still sending out those emotions, Izuku pushed them down and said the first positive thing on his mind.

“You look adorable.”

Eri startled, eyes shifting away from the mirror, though he spotted a faded pink appearing on her cheeks before her reflection went away.

And he wasn’t lying. If you disregarded the…red flags concerning her appearance, her eyes were big, larger than normal, and the horn sitting on the side of her forehead…

“You remind me of a unicorn.”

She blinked.

“A unicorn?”

She didn’t know?

Pushing the heart-rending realization down, Izuku continued with his strategy.

“Yeah! A unicorn is a white horse with a magic horn on its forehead!”

And yet, despite his comment, she flinched.

“…my horn doesn’t do magic,” she mumbled, a surprising flash of self-loathing and fear hitting him.

And just like that, the wind was taken out of his sails again.

_{“Izuku! Are you awake, baby?”}

The distant voice was a shock to his system, waking him up.

It was the strangest feeling. For a few seconds, it felt like he’d just realized he was in a lucid dream, where he was experiencing one thing, but could feel his real body lying in bed at the same time.

And then his concentration slipped and he opened his eyes to see his own ceiling.

“W-Where’d you go?”

“I woke up, Eri-chan,” he answered. “I’m awake, mom!” he yelled, feeling Eri startle.

So, he’d have to go through the day with this link still up.

After having seen Eri himself, the thought of the connection up and disappearing without him having done anything felt like a far worse option than the alternative now.

He got up, put his clothes on, and headed for the breakfast table, where his mom had already plated some.

Just like last evening, confusion flooded his system as he ate.

At least now he understood why.

“What are you doing?”

Uh…how was he going to do this without looking strange to his mom?

‘I’m having breakfast,’ he tried to think really loudly, attempting to mimic what talking had felt like when he’d been asleep.

Understanding filled him, and pride for his success made a brief appearance. Even better was the additional feeling of awe coming from Eri.

‘You can taste it, right?’ he asked, receiving a mental nod, which probably meant she physically nodded.

It made him wonder…

‘Hey, if you close your eyes and try to focus on me, do you think you can come over?’ he asked.

There was uncertainty as he distantly felt Eri walk and lay down.

And then the same feeling of a second presence appearing in his mind appeared, and he heard a loud gasp.

“That looks…tasty.”

It was a simple sandwich.

He took another bite, glancing at the fruit basket. Another gasp.

“I know that one,” Eri said, sounding almost eager. “Apples taste nice. I like them.”

Thankfully his mom was busy at the kitchen counter, otherwise she’d have seen his face light up at the piece of personal information.

‘I can have one of those,’ he thought out loud, picking one and taking a bite.

The simple joy she radiated felt equally joyous to him right now. Though the lack of an urge to smile he expected to come with that emotion troubled him.

‘Do you get out of your room often?’ he asked idly, an idea beginning to form. It unnerved him just how quickly she accepted that this was a thing. He still hadn’t!

He received a mental shake, along with some confusion.

Now what could she be confused about?

Given everything else, maybe it was for the best if he didn’t fish for an answer.

“I think I’m gonna head out,” he told his mom, getting up from the table and jamming the remaining sandwich in his mouth.

“Don’t forget it’s a day off, Izuku!” she called out after him.

Oh right, golden week!

Perfect!

He was going to show Eri as much as he could, and with some luck he’d have a whole week to do it!

Chapter Text

Izuku didn’t normally consider himself very lucky, for a variety of reasons, but this time…

How lucky a festival was being held in Musutafu, today of all times!

Most years, festivals and other celebrations around this time of year flew past him. It was a lot less enjoyable without others around, and Izuku wasn’t the best off when it came to companions.

But today, someone else was here to experience it with him.

The passenger in his head had remained silent since exiting the apartment he and his mom called home. The second-hand feelings coming through were the only sign the connection that had been forced on them was still around.

And right now, what he was feeling felt like a worrying mix of awe and apprehension.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked as he entered the stall-filled street, snaking his way through the lively crowd. ‘We can go somewhere else if-’

Up until now, every urge Eri felt had been mostly non-intrusive, so it said something about how strong this one was when Izuku forced himself to a stop before he could think, causing someone to bump into him from behind.

Izuku apologized hastily as the miffed adult waltzed past him, his nose sniffing around, once more on Eri’s urging.

What was- Oh!

‘That smells nice, right?’ he asked mentally as he clocked the overly sweet aroma. ‘I think there’s a stall that’s selling candied apples.’

‘C-Candied apples?’

Izuku withheld his chuckle as he followed the smell.

‘Some people take regular apples and dip them in sugar syrup, then stick other candy on it and put it on a stick,’ he explained.

If Eri were physically in his brain, he was sure it was being flooded by drool right now.

A minute later and Izuku was handed a candied apple on a stick in exchange for a couple yen.

Following Eri’s urge to take a bite, Izuku took a restrained nibble as he turned away from the stall.

He was hit by an urge he couldn’t suppress for the second time that day, an adorable squeak of delight exiting his throat.

Izuku coughed, feeling his cheeks light up as he saw the vendor give him a curious glance, and hastily walked away, candied apple still in hand.

Once he got the opportunity to turn into a quieter street, Izuku wondered if the only reason he was having such an easy time sharing his head was because Eri was abnormally passive for a little girl, because he had barely been able to stop himself from devouring the rest of the apple on the way over, something he now surrendered to, knowing he couldn’t get it out of his system otherwise.

“S-Sho good!” Eri said audibly, her voice muffled as if physically savoring the candy.

Despite the realization his autonomy was a bit more encroached upon than expected, Izuku couldn’t help but smile as he finished the last few bites. Today was already proving to be a success, and it wasn’t even 10.

‘Do you want to keep going?’ he asked as Eri continued to savor the lingering taste. ‘There’s a lot more to see today.’

His smile brightened as he felt the urge to nod excitedly.

Okay then.

A lot of the day was spent walking around stalls, taking a closer look at anything that caught Eri’s attention.

Despite the happier mood, Izuku couldn’t help but feel a little concerned. Some of the things she was captivated by were things he practically expected her to know of already. That, and for her to be completely in his head for what amounted to half the day now meant she was literally spending her own day with her eyes closed, lying on her bed.

Didn’t she have other things going on in her life? Parents? Caretakers? Friends?

The biting worry had to stay on the down low, however. The last thing he wanted to do was sour Eri’s brighter mood.

‘What’s that?’

Izuku paused in his steps, following the second-hand urge to look to his right.

The stall he paused at looked to be a classic ‘hit the target’ game, though with the way his eyes zeroed in on something in particular hanging in the corner, he was sure the thing that actually caught Eri’s attention was the gigantic unicorn plushy.

He didn’t need to hear Eri’s voice in his head to know she desperately wanted to touch it.

It- uh, it did look very fluffy.

“Seen the grand prize, have you?”

Izuku thankfully didn’t startle as the owner of the stall spoke up, clearly having spotted his new target.

The man grinned, a barely suppressed smirk.

“If you can beat me and hit the tiniest target I have, it’s free.”

Only Eri heard the mental huff Izuku let out. He knew these types of games, and wouldn’t even think of engaging in one if the good mood of a little girl who clearly needed it wasn’t on the line.

“I’ll try my best,” he said meekly but eagerly.

As the man handed him a simple ball, Izuku let his thoughts run free while he rolled it in his hands.

There had to be some trick here; there always was. But what exactly? Would the target move? Be further back than it looked? An illusion? No, he’d seen the stall from several angles by now, unless it was a quirk in effect.

Ah. Izuku paused and reevaluated. Rearrange that deliberately vague sentence. ‘Hit the tiniest target I have and beat me.’ Clear as day.

His eyes flitted to the easy smiling man. Telekinetic quirks were one of the most common out there, and after having grown up in a household where one was constantly being used for convenience, Izuku knew there would usually be a hard to spot-

There!

A small, barely noticeable distortion in the air, as if a small part of the inside of the stall was experiencing a heat wave in April.

Izuku narrowed his eyes as he stopped rolling the ball and gripped it properly. The ball was going to go off-course, even if he threw the perfect shot. And the owner was banking on taking him by surprise. If he let on that he knew, the man would try harder to stop him, or bar him altogether. He only had this first shot.

Based on the way the barely visible distortion shimmered, and the man’s position and general posture, with an anticipatory, rhythmic flexing of his fingers, plus the angle of the target…

Running through the last estimations in his mind, Izuku pulled back his hand and threw, pivoting and adjusting the direction at the last moment.

The owner of the stall raised his hand and flexed, the smirk finally put on full display, and the ball banked harshly in its trajectory-

Straight into the target.

Izuku displayed a rare, uncharacteristic smug grin as the man’s smirk dropped, eyes bugging out at his own undoing as a loud ding rang out.

“Thank you for the plushy, kind sir!” he said with his most innocent voice as a few people near him applauded his shot, his mind hastily coming up with an excuse as to why a teen like him would even want a unicorn plushy in the first place. “My little sister will love it!”

Knowing he was currently subject to societal norms and expectations, the man begrudgingly handed over his ‘grand prize’ under the watchful eyes of several parents and jealous little girls.

The moment it touched his hands, Izuku understood Eri’s urge to squish it.

It felt like it had somehow been treated by the world’s best conditioner every day of its life, and was several inches of pure fluff his arms, body, and face could sink into.

Even he himself was feeling the urge to hug the life out of the plushy, but he kept himself together for long enough to leave the crowd, avoiding the longing looks and the urge to gift it to one that could accept it.

By the time he found a quiet alley, away from the festival streets, the triumphant, ecstatic mood returned to him.

He couldn’t think of another moment in recent memory where things had been in public and gone so well! Probably the best time to call an end to the day and head back home. The sky was starting to turn orange anyway and-

A loud stomping that was painfully familiar to Izuku got him freezing in his place. The oversized unicorn plushy was still firmly in his hands, and with the potential ways this encounter could go, Izuku spotted a dumpster and frantically stuffed it in.

Moments after Izuku closed the lid and put some distance between it and him, a shock of spiky blond hair rounded the corner, angry red eyes locking onto him.

“Oy, Deku,” Kacchan began. “Heard you were showing off at some carnival game.”

Izuku froze. Of all things, had Kacchan tried that stall earlier that day and-

“You think you can fucking show me up like that?!” he snarled. “You stalker creep!”

‘Izu…?’

He somehow froze even more when Eri’s voice reminded him the alley wasn’t populated by just the two of-

Izuku’s thoughts were cut off when an exploding fist slammed into the side of his face, throwing him into the brick wall beside him.

“And here I thought I finally beat it into your head you’re never gonna amount to anything,” Kacchan yelled, though it was hard to hear through the loud ringing. “But I guess you can’t stop being a worthless pain in the ass!”

He knew better than to dodge the next punch, one that felt far worse now that his body was wedged between it and the bricks behind him.

“You’re never gonna be a hero. You’re never gonna be better than me. Stop fucking trying.”

Truth be told, the rest of Kacchan’s tirade became blurry. Not because of any on-set tinnitus, or any head injuries—Kacchan was smart enough to avoid anything serious—but because Izuku had heard it all before.

Though that this had been instigated by playing a carnival game at a festival was new.

The only reason Izuku stopped tuning out his surroundings was because the yells petered out, and the fading sound of stomping replaced it.

Okay, cool, hopefully that was the only encounter for a while. Usually he had a few weeks to a month before Kacchan’s temper built up enough for another. Trying to hide an outburst like this one from his mom was always the hardest though.

‘You deserve to get hurt too?’

Izuku startled at Eri’s voice, quiet yet…understanding.

‘Too’ was a very alarming word to hear in this context, coming from a little, malnourished girl in rags wearing bandages.

If that word had been left out, Izuku would have simply agreed absentmindedly and pushed the entire encounter back to some faraway corner of his mind, where all the encounters like it blurred together.

‘I- No,’ he settled on answering as he made his way back to the dumpster, feeling slightly mortified at it, before realizing a far better answer. ‘But others think I do.’ He paused briefly as he fished the plushy back out, wondering if he should elaborate. ‘I…am too different from them. I don’t- uhm, have powers like they do. I’m quirkless. I’m not as good as them. They just don’t understand.’

He wondered if a little girl like Eri even knew what quirklesness was, beyond maybe a concept. Even in his generation the rate of quirklessness was negligible, making up less than a tenth of a percent of the total quirkless population. Someone another generation down would be more likely to win big in the lottery and then win the whole jackpot in a reenactment for the local news than to bump into a quirkless person their age.

And that was why the immediate recognition from her was another curve ball, probably more of one than the one he’d thrown earlier that hour.

‘You’re not worse,’ she mumbled. ‘You’re- uhm, special. Not…diseased.’

Izuku didn’t think that sounded better, especially not with how conflicted Eri felt about what she’d just said.

‘Let’s just forget about that, okay?’ he said instead, picking up the plushy. Thankfully it had been spared from any serious stains and trash.

But after Izuku returned home, explained to his mom why he had a giant unicorn plushy—he got too into analyzing the stall owner’s quirk and hit the smallest target without realizing what that meant, something she simply smiled at fondly—and enjoyed a full meal and a loving hug, his mind returned to Eri’s mumbled comment.

“Eri?” he asked at a lower volume, not worrying that his mom could overhear him inside his room. “Why did you say I’m not diseased? Quirks aren’t a disease.”

‘But, that’s what- I don’t understand…’

Izuku smiled gently at the mild confusion. An idea hit him and he turned on his computer, pulling up some old bookmarks he’d made on one of his many research rabbit holes. Something he was usually ashamed of, but currently might just help him out.

“Quirks coming from a disease is a pretty old theory,” he said slowly, making sure she could hear him clearly. “A huge pandemic- uhm, global disease happened just a year before the first quirks showed up. So some people thought it somehow helped create quirks.”

His eyes briefly scanned the article he’d pulled up, refreshing his memories.

“But it’s been proven wrong a long time ago,” he continued. “The way quirks appeared doesn’t match how disease spreads. They even found- uhm, remains of a woman with bits of some kind of proto-quirk here in Japan who was middle-aged when the first quirks showed up.”

‘Oh…’

Izuku waited for the feeling of understanding to fade. He sadly didn’t know much yet of Eri, but if she was any bit curious, as the day out in the festival showed-

‘But…where do they come from?’

He smiled, feeling an excited flush fill him.

‘We have no idea!’ he thought loudly. ‘Maybe it was a secret experiment gone wrong, or we had quirks for much longer, and they only got too obvious to ignore. Or…’ That last one was his personal pick, but he thought another might be more wondrous to her, even if very unlikely. ‘Quirks are magic and myths, and the Earth was filled with witches and wizards, and dragons and unicorns and elves, and they just disappeared, and we forgot, until quirks showed up.’

Izuku was glad to be immediately proven right, the feeling of awe pulsing in exhilaration through their connection.

‘Unicorns were real?’

Oh boy, careful, Izuku.

‘Maybe,’ he said, before his mind flipped to another unicorn. ‘But maybe-’

Before he could finish his sentence, the urge to jolt filled him, before a wave of sheer panic accompanied it, Eri’s presence abruptly vanishing from his presence.

Alarmed, Izuku dropped all other thoughts. ‘Eri?’

With no response, he hastily laid down and closed his eyes, hoping the trick Eri figured out would come to him as easily as it did her.

It took an agonizing few seconds, but finally Izuku felt a pull away from his lying body, and the darkness behind his eyelids was replaced with harsh lights and the return of anxiety.

Izuku instantly understood what had startled Eri. The door to her room was open, and a person anyone would clock as bad news was standing expectantly in the doorway, with unkempt blond hair, side-burns, and a face mask.

“Get moving, stupid girl. Time for your wash.”

Izuku growled at the harsh tone. Instantly, his fears were being confirmed.

Eri jolted, realizing he was there with her, and stumbled to run after the man as he turned away from the door.

She was pulled along when she got close, her hand being grabbed harshly enough by the man for Izuku to know it was going to bruise if it kept up for long enough.

Several minutes was indeed long enough, with Eri dragged through drab, concrete tunnels lit up only by harsh lights. The walls had no defining features to them, beyond the occasional ventilation shaft. Though they were placed haphazardly, some near the ceiling while others were practically on floor level, even tilted at angles, as if parts of the walls had melted at some point in the past.

Finally, they entered a dim room with perfectly clean tiling and several drains.

Izuku would’ve paled if he were in his own body. He did not want to stick around if she really was about to be washed.

But there were no shower heads in here…

He quickly got his answer when Eri braced herself, and Izuku spotted the man picking up a hose from the corner.

The next moment, she was assaulted by a blast of frigid water, and Izuku felt every awful moment of it.

Several more blasts took up the space of the next few minutes, until the man finally dropped the hose and sent her a disdainful glare.

“There, good enough,” he said, lazily wiping his hand.

As Eri was dragged back out of the room, her hospital gown and hair still dripping and her skin damp, Izuku pulled back into his own body, feeling worse than ever before.

It was like all the joy he’d managed to build up over the day, in spite of Kacchan’s interference, had been completely drained away.

A few minutes of sobering silence later, Eri’s presence returned, albeit faintly. Not fully here with him, just her throwing her attention in his direction.

Truth be told, Izuku was paralyzed with indecision. What could he even do in response to what just happened? Before, his worries had not felt so real or grounded in reality.

He was not equipped to deal with an abused little girl.

But right now, sitting in his room and no one else knowing any better, he was the only one who could.

“Hi, Eri-chan,” he whispered softly, returning her attention with a gentle brush up to their bond.

She didn’t answer back.

Izuku sighed, still none the wiser to what he could do. “Do you want to sleep?”

He didn’t even know if she could, still shivering and her hair dripping, her only sleepwear soaked to the bone.

It was a heart-wrenching testament to the normality of the event that she simply crawled under her sheets with not a sign of protest, leaving wet stains wherever she touched the thin cloth.

Izuku felt his lip tremble, the full brunt of the situation hitting him. He couldn’t just let the day end like this. Every inch of progress they’d made had disappeared without a trace, and Eri had been so excited before to eat all the food and see the sights and hug the plushy he-

His brain lit up as it stumbled on the last topic it had thought about before the man’s entry had interrupted them.

A blip of confusion came from Eri’s side as Izuku got off his bed and put on his pajamas, before grabbing the only slightly dirtied unicorn plushy.

“It might not be there with you, but do you want me to hug this for you?” he asked softly to the mirror as her presence appeared in full.

His head nodded hesitantly, his hands clutched the plushy tighter, and Izuku smiled back at the mirror in response.

He crawled into his bed, throwing the covers over himself and the plushy.

In any other scenario he’d feel embarrassed, and he sincerely hoped his mom wouldn’t see it come morning, but this felt like the least he could do—the only thing he could do.

And so Izuku rolled on his side and wrapped his arms around the insanely fluffy unicorn plushy, hugging it close and getting lost in the layers of soft fabric.

In his head, the apprehension and somber feeling cloaking Eri’s presence slid off her, and the second-hand urge to bury his face into the cloud-like fur came in to lift his spirit.

Feeling Eri’s presence slowly dim and relax, Izuku slipped into a contended, relieved smile as he let his eyes go heavy.

As his thoughts slowly quieted and he basked in the comfort radiating on both sides of the link, a small part of him quietly wondered if this was what it was like to not be an only child.

In the process of nodding off, Izuku barely noticed how the presence of the girl living vicariously through him slowly drifted away from him, until it overlapped with the plushy.

And if he felt the way two small phantom arms sleepily embraced him in return, it only made him fall asleep with a bigger smile.

Chapter Text

Izuku woke slowly, feeling warm and heavy.

Next to him, hidden mostly under the covers, a mop of silvery hair and a horn was cuddled up to him, breathing softly.

Another moment passed and the haze of waking lifted. The sight of Eri was replaced by a unicorn plushy, phantom arms fading from his senses.

Disappointment was the first thing Izuku felt as his thoughts returned to him and he remembered the events of yesterday, before distress made its unwelcome appearance.

A mirror spike of alertness clued him in to the fact that Eri would’ve returned to awareness the moment he woke up, if his experiences yesterday and the day before were holding true.

“Hi Eri-chan,” he whispered into the fluff of the plushy he was still holding. “I hope you’re sleeping well.”

He got a groggy, muffled ‘hmm?’ in return, coupled with the urge to stretch arms that weren’t his.

“Don’t worry. I’ll stay right here until you wake up.” The promise was easy to make. Izuku himself couldn’t remember a time where he’d felt so comfortable and unwilling to get out of bed. Usually his mind was already fully awake and racing with thoughts and things he wanted to do.

He got a sleepy urge to nod, and quieted his thoughts to where Eri wouldn’t hear them.

Finally, an unknown amount of time later, her presence shuddered and disappeared down the connection in his mind. Izuku stuck to his own body, not wanting to intrude just yet.

‘Did we…sleep?’ Eri’s voice finally returned, remaining on the other side of the bridge.

‘We did,’ Izuku agreed, glancing at his clock, which didn’t have an alarm set for the rest of the week. ‘It’s pretty late, actually.’

Confusion pooled through the connection.

‘Are you okay?’

Eri was silent for a moment.

‘Sleep…is never so nice.’

Izuku winced, wondering how many times Eri must’ve woken up in the middle of the night, with no natural light or anything except a locked room to give her any sense of time.

‘Sleep can be bad, yes,’ he conceded, pushing the awful feelings down. ‘But it can also be extra great. Like when you’re scared and you snuggle up to your parents in bed.’

That Eri needed a moment to understand what parents meant was becoming disturbingly, depressingly predictable.

‘So, like you?’

Izuku’s thoughts stumbled over each other at the innocent question.

‘No, no,’ he said hastily, instantly realizing he had to say more if he didn’t want to upset her. ‘I’m not old enough to be like parents. I’m…’ he paused, but his brain had already picked the better alternative, zeroing in on his last coherent thought last night. ‘More like a big brother, I guess. That’s what parents and older siblings do. They make sure you feel nice, and safe.’

Now, would Eri find that explanation weird?

‘Oh…’ she said, before casually dropping, ‘Everyone here calls each other big brother and little brother. Except-’

Izuku froze, not registering the sharp cut-off. What did that mean?

But his brain was sharp enough to quickly put the pieces together. A complex filled with unsavory people who called each other variants of brother?

With every revelation, Eri’s situation grew worse and worse.

She lived in the middle of a yakuza compound?!

‘I’m not…like those kinds of people,’ he said carefully. He wasn’t even sure if Eri understood people could not be yakuza if those were the only people she knew. ‘They don’t have to make sure you feel nice or safe.’

He felt the urge to nod along. Yes, it was very clear they did not care.

‘But I do,’ he said, and meant it with every inch of his being. A far cry from the flood of anxiety and apprehension he felt when he first realized he’d somehow been connected against his will to a complete stranger of a little girl. ‘I promise.’

A little girl who had now moved to the very top of his priority list, far beyond things like ‘make sure mom doesn’t worry about me’, ‘get through the next school day’, and more recently, ‘figure out what to do with my life now that heroism isn’t in the picture for me.’

Gratitude flashed in his mind, and Izuku smiled, his worries pushed aside.

What could he even do? He had no information to give to the heroes, not about Eri’s location, the yakuza she was subjected to, or anything. Heck, he couldn’t even be sure if Eri’s name was her full name. Maybe it was a nickname that stuck. Not like Eri was old enough to know any better. And without kanji for him to see, there were too many first names like it to ever fish out the right one.

Not that anyone was going to believe, let alone entertain the dumb, ‘attention-seeking’ quirkless kid anyway.

So, until he knew more. Until he had something he could use to help her, Izuku would do what he’d done yesterday. What he knew he could do.

‘So, do you want to go out again?’ he asked. ‘There’s no festival today, but there’s still a lot of stuff to see.’

Eri gasped and gave him the urge to nod, and Izuku simply thanked the universe that he had the rest of golden week to do and see as many amazing things as possible.

…because who knew how long this connection was meant to last?

Thankfully, the rest of golden week played out exactly as Izuku hoped it would. Minus two more ‘shower sessions,’ one every other day at night.

Izuku had gone out in that one week more than he ever had in the past. The pocket money he spent only on rare hero merch was instead used for much more worthy goals.

In one week, Izuku had shadowed several big hero fights, had gone to the beach—not the dump every local knew as Takobah, a real one—to let Eri feel the waves rippling past him and the sand under his feet, had visited a zoo filled with quirked animals and petted a pony with a unicorn horn, seen a parade, had watched several age-appropriate movies and eaten plenty more snacks and candies, and had even gone to the nearest amusement park, Universal Studios Japan.

For that trip in particular, Izuku had only intended to go on the calmer rides. But in a surprise that wasn’t depressing or distressing for once, they both discovered Eri enjoyed the more extreme rides, something that became a slight upset for Izuku’s stomach after the fifth ride in a row on the park’s most intense roller coaster.

An unexpected consequence to the week of trips was his mom’s demeanor. Despite not asking her to come with him, in worry she’d pick up on the strange things happening to him, she looked more relieved than confused about his sudden desire to go out.

And despite the now constant, deep-seated worry for Eri’s unchanging surroundings, Izuku found he was in a better mood these days as well. The torpor of the previous month was difficult to find amid the moments of joy and worry.

Most importantly of all though, Eri was happier than she’d been before, and for longer too.

Even after the next two ‘shower sessions,’ her mood picked back up soon after, though it probably helped that the unicorn plushy continued to be her and Izuku’s cuddling intermediary every night.

Though this night was different. Izuku was still browsing the internet, stopping on occasion when Eri wanted to know what something meant, but he knew it was nearly time to go to bed.

And tomorrow, school would be back in session.

Izuku had no idea how to handle that, not with a second person in his head. Eri was happy now, though worryingly there had been no urges to smile yet, but would that remain when the depressing reality of school came back in full force?

That, and since waking early that morning, Izuku could detect a worry stirring under the generally happy demeanor on the other side of the connection. One that was making itself more and more known as the day progressed.

Without mercy, the other shoe dropped as Izuku explained the quirk of All Might’s former sidekick, Sir Nighteye.

One moment he’d been talking about the man’s ability, and how the activation requirements were so well hidden that even the best of fans could only speculate on them, the next, Eri was submerged in sheer terror, fading from his head in an instant.

Izuku abandoned his computer, barely remembering to turn it off before dropping on his bed and letting himself sink into the connection.

“You can sleep when we’re done today, Eri.”

Despite his body being an unknown distance away, Izuku felt a full-body shiver at the very first sound that graced him through Eri’s ears.

She was being escorted through the maze of concrete tunnels again, but this time, the person with her felt…worse.

The man’s gait was purposeful, emotionless, uncaring. And if the purple feathers lining his jacket hadn’t been enough, the burgundy, gold-plated plague doctor’s mask that came into view as he glanced back at Eri made it more than obvious this wasn’t just a yakuza grunt.

This was someone a lot more important, and with Eri’s treatment so far, that did not bode well.

What was even worse was when a simple door came into view, what seemed to be the final destination.

Izuku felt an unnerving amount of despondence fill Eri as the man opened the door for her, revealing a dimly lit medical room, with bags of…things hidden in the shadows at the edges and a large, metal chair with a worrying amount of restraints lit up as its centerpiece.

And then something far more worrying happened. As if Eri hadn’t registered his presence until now, his recent welling up of worry alerted her. The next moment, Izuku felt an intense force pushing him away.

He barely managed to gain a mental foothold, digging in with feet that didn’t exist.

What was-

Was Eri…pushing him out?

The force only became more overwhelming, tinged with desperation, as another man, already waiting for them in the room in a white hood, tied her to the chair and a scalpel was brought out.

Izuku pushed back, but only felt a wall where the connection was.

Never before had Eri shown this much willpower, but now he could barely even stay on this side of the bridge.

And even then, he was in real danger of being shunted all the way back to his own body, with no way of reaching back through until Eri opened back up. Even now he was in a strange halfway state. Despite still feeling the same sensations as Eri did, albeit muffled by the wall of willpower keeping him away, it was like he was looking at things from a third person’s perspective, floating in the air near her rather than occupying the same space as her.

Like she was attempting…and succeeding at dissociating. Like a skill she’d mastered long ago.

The push-back didn’t let up, and Izuku was forced to watch from a distance, still pressing against the connection, as cuts were made in Eri’s skin with flawless but cruel precision.

Over and over again, slicing deeper into cuts that already existed, through pink, inflamed skin, then muscles, with blood staining the tarp below, and then sawing through bone.

Izuku barely held back his body from throwing up and letting himself choke on it as the nameless tormentor dispassionately carved out small pieces of Eri’s bone marrow.

Even with the several feet of mental wall holding him back, the intense pain could still be felt leaking through. A pain his own classmates only wished they could come close to inflicting.

And if that wasn’t enough, the man decided there were several other places he could take marrow out of. The reason behind the bandaged limbs had become hauntingly clear.

Worst of all, Izuku could barely feel any of Eri, beyond her sheer desire to keep him from feeling anything more.

Until the man stepped back, spectating his ‘work’ with a sigh.

“Looks like I’ve reached the limit,” he spoke up for the first time, his voice as apathetic as his actions. “Take care of the rest once I’m done.”

“Yes, Overhaul-sama.”

Dread filled Izuku and Eri as he peeled off his thin, surgical glove.

Even without knowing what this was about, Izuku’s pushing returned in full force and desperation.

“Eri-chan!” he screamed, the full weight of everything he’d seen crushing down on him.

What was going to happen to her? ‘Take care of the rest?’

All rational thinking was long out the door as Izuku threw his entire presence against the mental wall, uncaring of what he could even accomplish if he did suddenly appear in that room.

He had to save her. He had to save her! He had to-

The man- Overhaul’s fingers deftly pressed down on her arm.

Eri exploded.

Izuku’s entire existence froze, becoming witness to blood and guts turning into a fine red mist.

And then, mercilessly, all senses cut to black, and the wall holding him back was ripped apart into nothing, the other end of the connection left non-existent and frayed.

And Izuku, poor Izuku, trying with all his might to push through till the end, found himself tumbling into that dead connection with no way to stop himself, until darkness engulfed him and he felt no more.

Chapter Text

Izuku awoke to the feeling of being thrown, followed by a tumble on something soft.

“You really do cause Overhaul-sama so much trouble, Eri.”

Heavy eyes blinked against harsh lighting filling in through an open door.

The man in the doorway, covered in a white hood and a full plague doctor mask, shook his head.

“Be thankful you haven’t lost consciousness in over a year now, or Overhaul would be far less merciful than to order me to carry you back.”

What was he-

Having said his piece, the door letting in the light shut and locked, leaving Izuku in complete darkness.

What…

Izuku’s entire body felt sore, it trembled and ached in ways he didn’t know how to stop. It felt uncomfortable in every possible way as he tried to gain some semblance of control over his muscles. It-

He froze. A shake of his head caused some hair to shift into view. Far from curly or short. The weight pulled on his head in ways he wasn’t familiar with, except for when he was tagging along in…

His hand shook as he brought it to his forehead, where it was met with painfully stretched skin surrounding hard keratin.

A soft, painfully familiar whimper escaped him, all his own this time.

No.

His last memories bubbled to the surface, and his brain mercilessly put the pieces together.

A man- a villain named Overhaul. A man with a quirk that tore someone apart and—based on Eri’s body surviving—put them back together.

Izuku, a desperate boy trying to reach the one being torn apart and finding himself falling into a place he was surely never meant to enter.

“Eri?”

He squeezed his- Eri’s eyes shut, throwing out his mind for any response.

Nothing.

In the distance, he felt his own body, like the times when he was asleep while Eri was awake, except it felt just a bit too far, disconnected, unresponsive.

If he was…somehow here, fallen into Eri’s body the moment it disappeared and came back. Had he displaced Eri? Into his body, or…

Izuku opened his eyes and shook his head, feeling them start to sting.

She was just unconscious. That’s right. His- His body was just knocked out, not…comatose or- or empty, or devoid of- of-

His eyes continued to sting as they darted across the unlit room, the darkness remained pitch-black, not even a trickle of light coming in through the sealed door. Nothing to distract his mind but the same darkness he’d tumbled into when Eri-

One thing couldn’t be denied, no matter how much he wanted to.

Eri wasn’t in her own body. He was, and in his recklessness he’d pushed her out, or down, or-

His- Eri’s- His hand gripped the sheets tightly, unable to muster the force he was used to. His breaths turned faster and shallower.

He hadn’t. He’d just wanted to help. To be there for her. That was all…

…

He- He should’ve told someone. He should’ve told a hero.

Why had he even been worried about people dismissing him? Why, when a little girl was in a terrible place and only he knew? Why hadn’t he just tried doing something? Told someone?! And now he was somewhere he shouldn’t be, in someone else’s body, in the body of an innocent girl who he might have-

A loud crackle startled Izuku, hot energy buzzing violently against his head as a warm gold pierced the darkness.

What-

Eri’s quirk. Izuku breathed in and out, feeling the static warmth shock him in uneven pulses.

No. No. Stop this. Slow down. Think. You can’t do this right now.

Slowly, his breathing, and the flashes of Eri’s quirk evened out and calmed down, until finally the room returned to darkness.

Right, he had Eri’s quirk now. The quirk she never talked about. The horn she thought ‘wasn’t magic at all.’ The one this Overhaul wanted to exploit for some reason.

A part of Izuku knew the panicked breaths and anxiety would return relentlessly if he let his thoughts wander. And so, his thoughts shifted to the one thing he knew best. The one thing he’d been deprived of ten years ago.

He began to analyze the quirk he’d gained a hold of.

Keeping up his even breaths, the next period of time was spent in complete silence and darkness as Izuku focused on the horn attached to the forehead.

Years ago, when he hadn’t yet long passed his fourth birthday, when others with earlier birthdays were happily exploring their newly manifested quirks and people weren’t yet suspicious of his increasingly late quirk manifestation, Izuku had excitedly asked everyone who’d gone to a quirk counseling appointment about what it was like. How their quirk had manifested. How the counselor had helped them explore and figure out what theirs did.

He never got to put the many answers he received to use himself. But now, in a desperate bid to spend his time productively, he tried.

After a week of letting himself dissociate to enter Eri’s presence, meditation didn’t seem all that hard anymore. Letting his surroundings and thoughts fade into the background.

Slowly, he shifted his attention from nothing to the weight attacked to his forehead. And somewhere in that horn, disconnected in a way like his real body felt back home, a soft, warm buzz brushed up against his awareness.

It was like holding his hand over a pot without a lid, filled with boiling water. Heat that could burn his skin barely brushing past him, leaving only an uncomfortable sting on his palm.

Izuku took several more breaths, observing the feeling, molding it in his mind’s eye until he could sense the phantom bubbles on the surface. If strong emotions fueled it, to the point his panic caused it to bubble over, then…

He imagined the weight on his forehead as the pot, standing on a stove, and slowly turned up the gas. Until the pot came to a boil.

Immediately, yellow filtered through eyelids, sparks and static coursing through the horn.

This time though, he had called on it.

With trepidation, as if too much movement would undo the progress, Izuku carefully opened his eyes, staring at the familiar dark room, now lit up in a cozy gold that cast long shadows.

From the corner of his eye, the mirror he remembered Eri using earlier that week to talk to him face-to-face showed the horn on her forehead ablaze, gold enveloping it and rippling like waves. The rest of Eri’s- his body had errant sparks rush down the dress, as if the same golden flames were hidden just below the skin, like water boiling over and spilling down the sides.

The buzzing heat flowing past his bones made it more than clear that’s what was going on.

Okay. Got the quirk to turn on. Most basic part. Second most basic part, turning it off.

Izuku squeezed his eyes shut, imagining the stove turning off and the water to stop spilling.

It was proving much harder than expected. The horn didn’t feel as agitated, but there was still buzzing and heat pressing up against his skin, and he couldn’t shove it back up.

Izuku shook his head, feeling nerves bubble up. That visualization didn’t lend well to cramming things back in.

Or…he could turn off the stove, but had to use up what he’d already ‘spilled’?

On what?

Taking in his newly lit surroundings, Izuku cautiously reached out for the cover of Eri’s bed.

The gold sparked, jumping between the small, dainty fingers and the sheet, but nothing happened.

What followed was several nerve-wracking minutes of exploration, where it quickly became clear the energy zapping his bones didn’t want to be shoved into anything inanimate.

So, people, but even if he was alone and locked in this tiny underground room, he didn’t want to just go and…

His eyes drifted off to the side, where a basket lay haphazardly.

Izuku grimaced. One of those yakuza grunts had thrown it in earlier that day and called it her food for the week. It was filled with purely apples, so either they were weirdly considerate for her favorite fruit, or it was her favorite fruit because she never had anything else.

But wait…

Slowly crawling over, Izuku nervously reached out for one of the apples in the basket, one that was overly ripe, with several bruised spots. Something his mom would’ve thrown out without thinking.

This time, when the sparks jumped between him and the nearest object, Izuku was taken off-guard when the entire mass of energy stored inside him jumped out, a wave of bright gold flooding into the apple.

Wait-wait-wait!

Izuku only distantly took in the way the apple turned fresher, then smaller and green as he desperately tried to slam a lid on the boiling pot and turn the gas off.

The glow cut off abruptly, as did the flow, and the room was plunged into darkness once more, leaving Izuku to pant from exertion.

Oh, that was- That felt very rusted. He couldn’t imagine Eri had much, if any practice with her quirk if it was that unresponsive.

Eri…

Izuku shook his head, pulling thoughts of analysis and experimentation back to the forefront before everything he’d pushed down came rising back up.

Okay, good. He could activate and deactivate the quirk…with difficulty, but-

What the heck was it?!

Had he just seen an apple get rejuvenated in front of his very eyes?

With even more caution than before, Izuku squeaked the stove back open, sparks providing new light to the bedroom.

Lying on the floor, the previously overripe, rotting apple looked as good as new.

No, it looked under ripe. More the size of a cherry than an apple. Barely still around.

Not rejuvenation then. Was it…turning back time?

No, no, time manipulating quirks did not exist. If any did, or were even remotely possible, then people with time travel quirks from countless generations into the future would’ve shown up already. If anything looked like it influenced time, it was just doing something else that looked indistinguishable. Like speeding up perception, or freezing others’, or any other mechanism.

Izuku eyed another apple, also on the overly ripe side.

Now that he had a feel of turning it on and off, he could avoid a panic and try things with some more control.

He couldn’t discount anything right now. So, was it something with time, or rejuvenation?

His stomach growled as he took note of the other apples. Well, there was one way to distinguish between the two…

With hands that were too small and delicate, Izuku picked the freshest-looking apple of the bunch and held it up. Inspecting it briefly before taking a tentative bite.

“Mm!”

Izuku choked.

So sweet!

He coughed, thankfully not lodging the piece of apple in his throat, and carefully chewed and swallowed as he composed himself.

Apparently he was experiencing things through Eri’s taste buds too, because that was far sweeter than any apple he’d ever tasted.

Unless this was a brand of apple he didn’t know of, in which case…he’d figure out which after-

After what?

No.

Izuku shook his head, forcing his thoughts back to the test at hand.

A neat but small bite had been taken out, more of a nibble, but the missing chunk was noticeable enough.

He sighed and carefully took the lid off the pot, letting hot water spill down the sides and through the body.

Though he should have let go of the apple first, because the free energy instantly rushed for the apple in his hand.

Izuku yelped and dropped it, but the flow of energy happily kept churning, a bundle of gold flowing from his hand to the apple now rolling on the floor.

Crap, crap, off!

No, wait- look!

The apple had come to a standstill, pulsing with gold as it seeped into its skin.

And rather than simply shrink and turn green, the gold pooled into the missing chunk, filling it up, before dispersing like embers, leaving only perfect apple skin where it shouldn’t be anymore.

Okay…turning back time, not rejuvenation.

Izuku swallowed, taking in the flow of gold, before the apple began to shrink down and turn green anyway.

Crap, right!

His face scrunched up as he tried to force the stove back off, but his lapse in concentration made it even harder to try now that things were flowing at full force.

Finally, the flow cut off, the glow dimming to only the sparks coming from the horn.

Okay, good-

Before him, the apple had been reduced to a seed.

Not good.

Izuku gulped as he picked the small seed off the concrete. Had he stopped it just in time? Or was it forced to stop because the apple couldn’t go further back?

And what would have happened if he’d been affecting another person instead?

Alright. First things first, he had to get some grip on how the energy flowed, or he was never going to make any progress.

So far, holding anything meant he had absolutely no control.

Izuku frowned, letting more spill down and watching gold sparks arc across the skin.

Maybe electricity was a good analogy too. He’d just seen the quirk travel through air after it had first made contact with that apple. Maybe direct contact was like completing a circuit with no resistors to prevent a short-circuit? Could he use the air as some kind of resistance?

He put his concentration on another apple in the basket, then shifted it to the heat buzzing in his hands.

Instead of picturing the water underneath, he imagined steam coming off the boiling water and escaping through the skin, lazily wafting away from him.

The hand slowly began to glow, an aura rising up and into the air.

His face scrunched up as he imagined blowing the steam-like energy away from him. The aura drifted, flowing away from him and towards the basket.

When it made contact with one of the apples, the mostly inert aura bridging the hand and the apple began pulsing, flowing straight into it.

Izuku’s eyes widened and he smiled, a distressingly foreign pulling of the muscles. As the apple began to shrink and turn green, he stopped focusing on creating steam and letting it flow. Slower than he would’ve liked, the stream of gold traveling through the air petered out, before fading.

Seeing that the apple was still around and looking the least affected of the ones he’d experimented with, Izuku fell on his butt with a shaky sigh.

Oh boy, that took more effort than he’d thought.

But it was workable.

Now he could- Now he could…

The sparks of the horn cut off as Izuku blacked out.

Next thing he knew, he woke up again.

Sore back. Limbs too small. Room too dim.

Izuku dazedly blinked crust from his eyes, sinking into the connection.

No. Things were still the same. What he remembered wasn’t some nightmare. His body was still laying in his bed where he’d left it after Eri’s sudden spark of terror, unresponsive and distant.

With his eyes closed, he couldn’t even see the time on his clock. And his eyelids didn’t want to respond to him. Though…the chirping of birds meant the night was over.

‘E-Eri?’ he said, his voice weak and not his own.

Please. Please. You can wake up now. You somehow got in there, didn’t you?

But what if…

No. No.

Still waking up from his disorienting collapse, a single idea sparked in his mind.

Simultaneously, the horn that was currently his sparked up, motions he only just got some slight control over carried out as the buzzing heat flowed out. Without thinking about it too much, Izuku pretended the connection was like the air, and envisioned the energy flowing through and into the other side of the eerily quiet connection.

The heat of the quirk wafted away from him, in a metaphorical direction that was impossible to describe, before vanishing from his mental senses.

Izuku blinked, the blackness of his closed eyelids disappearing as he panted from exertion, back in the reality of the dim prison room.

Slowly he let his breaths even out, lucidity making a return.

That was a stupid thing to do. Or pointless. Or both.

But all he could do was wait.

He…didn’t think he had much stamina to try anything to distract himself.

All he could do…was wait.

…

…

And so he waited. The lights clicked on in the room at some point, returning harsh fluorescent whines to the previous silence, but it barely registered.

What was he even going to do? How would his mom react when she came in to check up? What was going to happen to him when the week was over and- and that Overhaul man came back? And- And was Eri-

_{‘Nngh…’}

Izuku shot up, the heart in his chest skipping several beats when something stirred through the bond.

‘Eri-chan?’

Another groan. Izuku closed his eyes and sunk into the bond, dread warring with hope.

‘Eri-chan!’

On the other end, light flooded the senses as someone startled awake.

“M-Mm?!”

‘Eri-chan! Oh thank god!’ Izuku shouted, only startling his body more.

He forced himself into silence as his body struggled to open its eyes. It was like she was having trouble getting anything to move.

‘…Eri-chan?’

There was another low moan of pain. The emotions trickling through felt hazy and clouded.

‘I-Izu?’

Izuku let out another loud gasp, relief finally flooding him, but he forced himself to stay quiet.

‘Hi, Eri-chan,’ he began, nerves now creeping in. She clearly had little grasp on her surroundings yet. How was she going to react? ‘I…I think something went wrong with the bond. I pushed too hard, and I think- I think we’re stuck on the wrong sides now.’

More confusion flooded him, less muddled than the previous feelings.

Finally, the vision on the other end of the bond cleared up, revealing his bedroom the way he’d left it last night.

‘W-Wha…’

Suddenly, a loud knock came in. Izuku startled, but quickly realized the knock wasn’t from his end.

“Izuku, baby?” his mom’s voice came through his- Eri’s ears. “You’re running late for school.”

Izuku was left panicking as his bedroom door opened. The heck was he supposed to do? What was Eri supposed to do?! His mom was going to straight-up faint if she found out about everything, and from the little girl he was sharing the connection with no less!

When Eri remained mute and confused, still in the process of waking up, his mom rushed over in a hurry.

Her hand pressed up against his- Eri’s forehead, and she gasped.

Oh, wait…

“Baby, you’re burning up!” she exclaimed, confirming the though he just had. “Oh, I knew you could catch something from all that traveling around last week.”

“Hmm?” Eri croaked in response. The way she sounded drenched in a feverish haze was only now clear to him.

His mom was already moving away, casting back a concerned glance.

“Don’t worry, okay? I’ll call off school for the week. You just sit there while I make you some soup. Don’t talk. Your throat must be sore.”

And just like that, the panic-inducing scenario of having a barely lucid Eri explain everything he’d been hiding from his mom last week left with a door gently closing.

Izuku collapsed on Eri’s bed, exhaling in relief.

Somehow, he’d caught the flu.

‘I-Izu?’

Right, right!

‘Eri-chan, I’m so glad you’re okay,’ he said, his voice breaking. At least, in his mind, his voice still sounded like his own, and the same went for Eri. ‘Please, don’t panic, but…you’re in my body.’

On the other side, Eri blinked, groaning as she clumsily lifted herself up into a sitting position. Even more confusion, laced with recognition, flooded her as she took in Izuku’s bedroom.

‘You’re…where I was?’ she asked. Confusion was washed out by anxiety and despair.

‘It’s okay!’ he assured her. ‘I- I’ll figure something out, okay?’ He ran out of words, but his mind was already racing.

This was…

This was perfect.

He was where she had been, yes.

But she wasn’t anymore.

For the first time since Overhaul had made his appearance, tension and anxiety left him.

Eri was in his bed, being tended to and fussed over by his mom. Nowhere close to Overhaul or the yakuza or her prison of a room.

He’d wanted to save her, get her out so desperately, and somehow he’d gotten his wish.

Yes, recklessly, and he’d taken her place as a result, and things could have gone so very differently, but…

‘I’ll figure it out,’ he repeated to her, more certain than before. ‘I’ll get out of here. I’ll get your body out. I’ll come back to you, come home, and then we’ll figure out how to switch back.’

But either way, she was free.

Eri clearly didn’t like it. Apprehension was at the forefront of her emotions.

‘W-Why?’ even with her voice being mental, a projection, it was the faintest he’d heard her talk.

‘I promised, didn’t I? Yesterday, I told you.’

‘Because that’s…what you do.’ Through the apprehension, Izuku was sure he could detect a faint, weary form of acceptance, and something he couldn’t pinpoint.

He nodded, not completely sure what message he’d gotten across.

As soon as her lucidity came, sleepiness returned to Eri’s side of the bond.

‘Sleep and relax, Eri-chan,’ Izuku said. ‘I’ll make sure everything’s okay.’

_{‘Okay, Izu…nii.’}

The other end went silent, eyes closing, and Izuku sank in Eri’s bed, mind still racing and focused on too many things at once.

He had to get out of here. That was how he could save Eri completely.

And he had a time limit. Because Eri had tried to desperately to keep him out when Overhaul had come to cut her open, he was sure she’d be equally desperate to attempt a repeat of what he’d managed the next time Overhaul returned, and Izuku had no doubt she’d succeed at it too.

He would never be able to live with himself if he let her manage to swap them back before she got her out. Getting out came first, figuring out how to swap back without either of them getting disintegrated by a sociopath of a madman came second.

And though he still had absolutely no idea how to achieve that, the knowledge that Eri was alive and, most importantly, in save and kind hands, gave him the room to breathe and think. To organize his thoughts.

His eyes drifted to the pile of apples laying on the floor.

And if he knew anything, then figuring out how Eri’s quirk worked would be the key to his escape. He had to use all the tools at his disposal, and right now he only had one. That, and his mind.

The rest of the day, accompanied by the occasional waking of Eri, Izuku continued to work on training the flow and activation of the horn on his head. Experimentation could come later.

He didn’t have many skills that could help him escape an underground yakuza compound, but the one thing he was good at, he’d use to the fullest.

To save her.

Chapter Text

Focus. Concentrate.

Izuku stared at the apple with narrowed eyes, gold sparking down the arm.

This was the last one. He’d already used the quirk on the others over the course of a day.

…except for the ones he’d eaten whole.

Another hum, accompanying a crazy idea.

Maybe…

Rather than use the quirk, Izuku instead picked a small, plastic knife that came with the basket, and attempted to cut the apple down the middle.

It…went as well as it could go, using a plastic knife, turning one apple into two, uneven halves.

Taking one of the halves, Izuku went through the by now familiar steps of calling and directing the quirk. If the sacrifice of all those unfairly delicious apples was worth anything, it was that familiarity.

Gold flooded to the halved apple, pooling on one side.

The act seemed to siphon much more of the quirk. And when the gold faded, the halved apple had turned whole.

Izuku’s eyes widened, flitting to the other half, which was still laying on the floor, yet also now perfectly attached to the first half.

Another repeat, and now he had two instances of the exact same apple.

Lips twitched and grew into a brilliant smile. On the other side of the bond, Eri stirred in her sleep, vaguely present in his head but close to a state of dreaming.

Looks like there were a lot more apples to work with. And less than a week to get real results.

Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine-

During the next second, the plastic knife made a tally in the apple skin, accompanying four other ones.

One second, two seconds, three-

‘Izu?’

Izuku paused, a smile growing.

‘Hi, Eri-chan. Awake again?’

‘Your- Your mom made breakfast.’

Izuku nodded, sinking into the connection.

Even though the previous week had already made it crystal clear, Eri was one of the most precious people alive.

Yes, Izuku missed his mom’s cooking. But Eri definitely hadn’t been told that. She’d somehow figured that out on her own. Since then, whenever she got a meal brought to bed, she waited until she could share the experience. Like the reverse of the week before.

‘Itadakimasu’ he thought aloud while Eri dug into the bowl of katsudon.

It was pretty clear by now that she had gained Izuku’s obsession with the pork dish from the swap.

‘Izu?’

Izuku hummed as Eri finished the last of the bowl.

‘Why…Why is your mom so nice?’

A pang of hurt was pushed back down.

‘Because she cares.’ At times, so much it worried him if she found out about everything that happened in his life.

‘…About you?’

Izuku winced. ‘No, not just- Yes. But when- if she knows about you, she’ll care for you just as much as she loves me.’ That was something he knew for sure.

But, even though more than a day had passed since the switch and his body falling ill, Izuku still had no idea how to tell his mom, through Eri no less.

And not even about the situation, as otherworldly and stressful as it was. No, the fact he’d landed in it and then decided to keep it quiet. Then again, if he’d spoken up about it immediately, what would his mom have done?

‘Do you…think so?’

Izuku smiled. ‘She’ll love you.’

He just had to get out, find a pro, get to Eri, and then figure out how to switch back.

Hopefully he’d be able to find the old woman. He’d tried doing just that last week whenever he wasn’t busy letting Eri experience as much as possible, but the maze of alleys had proven too much for him.

Otherwise, maybe someone like Eraserhead could help? Or maybe just touching physically would be enough.

The very last option he wanted to even consider was repeating what happened to land them in this situation in the first place. Because that would mean Eri still wasn’t free, and instead jumped right back into Overhaul’s hands.

Izuku was just lucky it seemed that the ‘extractions’ were weekly or less frequent.

But yes, escaping, and his only tool at doing just that.

He let his focus drift back to the present and away from the link, sensing Eri losing her focus again in the haze of fever.

His hand clenched, the horn sparking as he glared at the regularly etched tallies on the apple, seven by now.

Controlling by how much time he turned something back was proving nearly impossible, even when sending the quirk’s energy over through the air, which did slow down the rate.

He sighed, sagging. Maybe it was just inherently impossible. He had to keep focus on maintaining the flow, and keep track of how the apple was reversing. And stopping the flow was paradoxically equally hard as keeping it going.

Maybe it was a multitasking issue. But if it was, how could he ever think of circumventing that?

He chuckled. What was he even expecting? Mastering a quirk in a week’s time? Could anyone? He didn’t exactly have an instinctual grasp on it. He wasn’t like Kacchan…

And then, a thought struck him, taking him back to a simpler time.

~~~

“Kacchan! Kacchan!”

His friend barely noticed his arrival, grinning at his sparking palm. It had only come in recently, but it’d been all he did when he wasn’t required to pay attention or do something he needed his hands free for.

“Kacchan!”

“What, nerd?!” he barked.

It had been back when annoyance remained friendly, and not a lead-in to a beating, verbal or otherwise.

“Your- Your quirk, it’s sweat that you explode, right?” Izuku asked, trying to make it sound like he hadn’t already memorized it after the first explanation he’d given after coming back from the quirk counselor that first time.

“Heck yeah it is!” Kacchan smirked, letting more of it spark.

“But I was thinking!” Izuku continued, pausing to remember to take a breath. “You make sweat come out and com- comb- uh, explode. But it’s- it’s like when you work hard. If you work more, the drops gets bigger!”

Kacchan cocked his head, giving him a frustrated, confused look, before Izuku’s own, somewhat poorly conveyed idea was understood.

His grin was gigantic as the sparkles coming from his hand stopped. A few seconds later, the both of them winced and clutched their ears when the first real explosion detonated.

~~~

Izuku smiled. Kacchan had been so excited about his quirk at first, he’d been detonating the droplets of sweat the moment they welled up from his palms, creating only harmless sparkles. He would’ve figured out that the real explosions needed more sweat to build up, but he’d just been too taken by his quirk manifesting.

After that, little Izuku had suggested measuring how big the droplets were, to map size with explosive power, but Kacchan had bonked him on the head, saying he was too much of a nerd.

Then again, having to see how big the drops were before making every explosion took a lot of focus. Kacchan had ignored the idea outright and just figured everything out by feel. And instinct was something he was amazing at. The real explosions were mastered within a month, something Izuku would later come to regret once his fourth birthday came and went.

But reminiscence aside, that warm, dusty memory held just the answer he needed.

Izuku stared at the palm of Eri’s hand, imagining it containing a smaller pot, currently empty of water.

“Bursts, not flow,” he mumbled to himself, imagining the stove turning on.

The horn sparked and heat flowed through him as the imaginary boiling water spilled out, flowing into the smaller pot.

Without the burden of keeping up the flow and observing the apple, it was easy to stop the spill, letting the last of it flow from the horn to the hand, which now sparked with gold.

Finally, forgoing the need to push it all through the air, Izuku carefully pressed the fingertips against the apple skin.

A flash of light and a burst of flow forced him to shield his eyes, but without even looking he knew he’d had his breakthrough.

Blinking the last spots away, Izuku saw that the apple had lost four of its seven tallies. Turned back to four-hundred seconds ago.

The burst had been intense, moreso the flash than the sensation, but it was controllable.

Izuku felt muscles pull in a familiar yet unfamiliar way as a smile crept up on him, taking in the past version of the apple.

As soon as the triumph washed over him, Izuku’s mind went right back to formulating new ways forward.

Okay, so the amount he’d stored in the smaller pot was equivalent to between four- and five-hundred seconds. So if he quartered that…

With much more confidence than before, Izuku reiterated the last few steps, pooling what felt like roughly a quarter of energy in his hand and letting it sink into the apple.

This time he anticipated the flash, a smaller one too.

And then his preconceptions about Eri’s unnamed quirk were smashed one more time, because rather than only three tallies remaining now, or even less, there were once more seven.

What the-

“How could it turn back into the future version of itself if I’m turning back time? That could only be- Unless what I undid isn’t the future, but the newest bit of the past. Maybe it’s not turning back time…transformation? Yes, that makes more sense! If the apple’s not actually going back into the past, then using the quirk is just the next step forward from the present, meaning every state of the apple is still around.”

Izuku chuckled quietly, things becoming clearer with every second he ruminated on it. It wasn’t time manipulation, just as he thought. Those didn’t exist. Instead, a quirk that could see into a living thing’s past, still, but those types of quirks existed. Heck, Sir Nighteye’s Foresight saw someone’s future. All Eri’s quirk had to do was be capable of the opposite, maybe using the energy in the horn, and then using more of it to perform the transformation.

Returning the chunk he’d bitten out of one of the first apples he’d experimented on had taken more energy than rewinding an untouched apple by the same amount. It all fit with what he knew.

Working with a type of quirk that had never before been documented felt impossible, but working with a transformation quirk?

That, that felt much easier.

He shook his head. Less thinking, more practicing and testing. He didn’t have much time.

How little time there was became evident even sooner than Izuku had hoped for.

After two more days of practice, Eri’s awareness had only grown more feverish.

It had been in the middle of another experiment, with Izuku watching the skin of their forearm knit itself back together under a golden glow, that their mom entered the room on the other end of the bond.

“Izuku?”

“‘m not Izu,” Eri mumbled.

Izuku startled. Not because of the admission. No. Because they realized Eri had barely talked recently. The silence had become custom, and helped with concentrating, her presence through the bond enough to assure them she was alright. But that wasn’t normal. Not compared to before.

“Baby, what do you mean?”

“‘m someone trapped in here. Not Izu. He’s…in a bad place. He’s stuck too. He wants…t’ help.”

Izuku continued to panic at her delirious rambling.

“Izuku…”

Just barely they managed to move through the bond and see through Eri. There, their mom was on her knees, leaning over them.

“Baby…just lay there, okay? I’ll- I’ll go get the car.”

Suddenly she got up, picking up her phone with a tremble and walking off.

What was she-

Oh.

She thought it was just them being in delusion. The car? To bring them to the hospital?

Izuku paused, only now taking the time to fully take in all the sensations Eri was experiencing.

Had the fever actually gotten worse?

From her side, everything felt cold and clammy at the same time, vision and feelings felt foggy. It was-

Had it gotten worse? If it had, it was gradual enough to escape notice.

Izuku returned to the prison room disguised as a kid’s room, the pressure of time heavier than ever before.

There wasn’t much time. But by now, the only reasonable way to escape was when they were outside the room. The door was otherwise locked at all times. But that meant figuring out how to escape anyone acting as escort, and to escape notice for long enough to make the distance. And the only thing at their disposal was Flashback—or whatever Eri’s quirk was called.

Izuku shut their eyes, face scrunching up as a mumble storm kicked off. There had to be a way, and it had to be found before tomorrow.

Eyes trailed back to the smooth patch of skin, where the last experiment had just taken place.

Hm, if that…and if the quirk could then also…

The idea hit out of nowhere, and Izuku hastily reached for a piece of paper and crayons—one of the few things Eri had been given by her reluctant caretaker, and began scribbling.

A few minutes and a disorienting flash of gold later, Izuku stared down at the scribbles and slowly smiled once more.

This could actually be just the thing they needed.

Chapter Text

Six days. It had been six days since the switch. Thirteen days since the bond had been made.

By now, Izuku was fairly certain of the schedule Eri had suffered under for two years.

Every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday she was visited by her ‘caretaker’ and brought to the shower room, where she was hosed down, something Izuku found was as unpleasant in person as it sounded.

And then, on late Sunday afternoon, Overhaul would come to extract whatever it was he needed from Flashback.

In a way, Izuku had been lucky not to encounter that old lady and receive the bond until Sunday evening, no doubt mere minutes after that last visit.

It was Saturday now, nearly evening, meaning the third and final ‘cleaning session’ before Overhaul, and the last opportunity to be outside Eri’s room, would soon arrive. It couldn’t come soon enough. Somehow, Eri’s fever had gotten way worse with time. Izuku could barely make out her mutterings, if she even spoke, and vision was almost impossible to experience through the mental fog. All she knew was that her mom had rushed Eri to the hospital late yesterday, too worried about the worsening fever to let things be.

Izuku was worried too, but there was one final thing to be mastered before the caretaker showed his face again.

With a crayon, she began drawing numbers alongside a mental count, keeping one number in mind in particular. Once things settled into a rhythm, she imagined the energy in the horn spilling into a pot right near it, inside her skull, before mimicking the way she’d once pushed energy through the connection, just slightly off to the metaphysical side-

Izuku blinked, the crayon coming to a stop. The last thing she remembered was deciding on keeping the specific number she’d been writing in mind, and now she was seventeen further than it.

A smile made itself known. It had worked, and with the precision needed to pull this off.

Things were ready.

‘Eri-chan, I’m almost ready,’ she whispered. Since yesterday, there had been nothing but muddled feelings and one word answers.

_{‘…okay, Izu-nii.’}

Though, Izuku thought, that one was becoming her favorite.

The moment of truth arrived a few tense hours later, with a loud, sudden slam of the otherwise locked door.

“Oy, brat, time for your shower.”

Izuku hid her scowl as she scurried over. That he was still calling it a shower. The nerve.

As they exited into the underground maze of halls, Izuku had to hide the growing anxiety and excitement.

Now was the time. And time to see if the plan she’d come up with would work.

If not…

Best not to think about that.

Izuku kept her nervous breaths down as they walked to the shower room. After five times, three through Eri’s eyes, twice after the swap, she was more than familiar with it. Especially with the one vent, towards the end of the journey. The wall was oddly melted, leaving its entrance near to the floor—after guilty but careful probing, Izuku had learned it was the result of the quirk of one of the higher-ups Eri had interacted with a rare couple of times, a man that could possess and shape inanimate objects.

Most importantly of all, only visible when she and her clothes were completely soaked from the hosing, a faint, cold breeze could be felt when passing it.

Izuku eyed the vent grate as they passed it, about to round a corner that led to their destination. Over the course of their walk, she had gradually slowed her pace, until she walked after the ‘caretaker.’ The man was far too comfortable and used to this. He didn’t even spare a backwards glance, too sure in Eri’s meekness and passiveness to care about any rebellion. Last time, Izuku had managed to pick-pocket the man’s pocketknife, and he hadn’t even noticed.

With her heart beating rapidly in her too small chest, Izuku reached out, pulling on the water boiling in the pot inside as the man began to round the corner.

A flash of gold was washed out by the artificial lights buzzing overhead, and Izuku just barely saw the man stumble past the corner in disorientation.

Immediately, Izuku stifled her breath and stepped back, keeping her footsteps light as she headed for the previous bend in the hallway, just in case.

After all, she had no idea how the man would react to having his memories rewound by exactly one day. The labyrinth was big and empty enough for her to avoid his sight, but the plan required her to be in close proximity at the start.

“What the-” she heard the man mumble to himself, out of view, as he got out of his stumble.

“Ugh, dammit, did I seriously zone out again? Fuck am I doing down here when I don’t have to be?”

Izuku finally reached the previous corner and hid behind it, silently waiting.

Everyone had moments where they thought it was yesterday or tomorrow. And for someone like a low-level yakuza grunt without a real job or schedule, the days could blur together even more. Losing a day of memories, beyond the exact moment of erasure, would be easy to dismiss, especially if he had no idea what he’d just been doing, or what power he’d been subjected to.

“Whatever. Time to get dinner,” the grunt said in defeat, before his footsteps picked back up.

Izuku breathed in…

The footsteps became more distant, fading away.

She slumped against the wall in relief. It had worked. Flashback had done its job. Hopefully the man wouldn’t even notice, and she’d have a full day before he realized it was the wrong day.

Of course, she probably wouldn’t be that lucky. Someone higher up might clue him in when they asked him about his tasks. That just meant she had to get things done quickly.

Fishing the pocket knife from the sleeve of her hospital dress, where it had been wrapped to her arm with bandages, Izuku tiptoed back around the corner, to the vent entry. She shivered as she got down on her knees, feeling the slight breeze coming through.

Flipping out the knife, she began to unscrew the grate, her heart hammering as her eyes constantly darted to both ends of the hallway.

At any moment, her luck could run out. The hall, besides the two corners, was completely exposed, with no hiding spots.

The screws of the vent were rusted too, jostled and slightly bent from whenever that one yakuza must’ve used his quirk on this section of wall, but after too many nerve-wracking minutes the last screw fell to the concrete.

Izuku grunted as she gripped the grate, its slightly warped shape only adding difficulty to her task.

But then, finally, the thing gave way, and Izuku pulled it out of its frame.

Once more taking a moment to control her breathing, she gathered the loose screws and brought them into the vent, before crawling in herself, lifting up the grate and pulling it up against the frame.

For once, its bent nature helped, and the thing got stuck into place again.

‘Eri-chan,’ she thought quietly.

‘M-Mmm?’

‘I’m gonna get you out now, okay?’ she thought. ‘Stay in there. I’ll be there soon. I promise.’

‘O-O…kay.’

Izuku sent out a mental hug, squeezing her metaphysical arms around Eri’s faded presence, before returning to her present. A small, cold, metal vent.

Oh, she just hoped it would be traversable.

At first, the vent was as warped as the outer wall. A strangely twisting passage of metal that gradually sloped upwards. At some point, the edges and corners returned to their straight selves.

Izuku didn’t take any of it in. All she cared about was following that breeze. Around every corner, around the heart-stopping vertical segment that thankfully was barely taller than her body, around every horizontal bit that groaned under her aching, chafing knees and grates that let through voices from below.

When Izuku was nearly forced to give herself a break from the aching and stiff limbs, a streak of sunlight brought hope.

Crawling over with renewed vigor, Izuku craned her head to find a grate at the top of a long, vertical segment.

There it was.

Her heart nearly dropped at the height, but thankfully, small rungs were attached to one side of the shaft. Clearly people had needed to perform maintenance down here. Or maybe some drunk people or lost kids had fallen through from up top and the rungs were installed later.

With sweaty, aching, trembling, tiny hands, Izuku climbed the rungs, the breeze getting more and more pronounced as she got closer to the light.

Thankfully, the horizontal grate at the top wasn’t secured, just heavy, and with an unsteady, final heave, Izuku threw it off, giving her clear access to the sky.

With arms and legs that could give out any moment from the aches, Izuku hauled herself out of the hole, sighing in relief when she realized it exited into a deserted back alley, and flopped on her back, taking in the beautiful oranges of the late afternoon sky as she finally got her rest.

But it wasn’t meant to last long. After a moment of hesitation, Izuku carried out the by now familiar motions and felt a warm buzz wash over her from her horn.

The alley flashed gold, and the aches and exhaustion disappeared.

‘Eri-chan, your quirk is such a blessing.’

A faded sense of something indecipherable washed through her as she got back up on her feet.

The first thing she did was put the cover back in place. The next, shivering from the wind, was to locate a nearby dumpster.

With some effort she lifted up the top, and somewhat clumsily climbed over, yelping when she lost balance and tumbled into its contents.

“Ow,” she whispered, still not used to hearing Eri’s voice come out whenever she talked out loud.

Okay, okay. So, best to assume the entire yakuza knew she’d made her escape. Either right now or very soon. If she wanted to find help, she couldn’t just wander around as she was. A small, barefooted girl in a ratty dress and recognizable eyes, hair, and a horn couldn’t even make it one block before any yakuza in civilian disguises would find her.

Hopefully there was something useful in here, but there was one thing she could do with what she already had.

Flipping the knife out, Izuku gulped as she bunched up the long mass of silvery hair in her tiny hand behind her back.

Then, with one laborious swipe, she cut the hair off at the shoulders. Instantly, Izuku was reminded of how used she’d gotten to the mass of hair tugging at her head, now that it was gone.

Up next, she stared at her bare feet. Gently, she tugged at the bandages around her arms and let them slip off, grimacing at the surgical scars dotting the skin. Ignoring them for now, she gathered the bandages and began to wrap them around her legs, extending the bandages already there down to her feet, creating makeshift socks.

Great, great. But what she really needed…

Izuku gasped when she found a highly recognizable bit of brightly colored fabric poking out from the trash around her.

A children’s sized All Might golden age hoodie!

‘What moron would throw that away?!’

Izuku squeaked a moment later, silently sending an apology through the link. Being in a yakuza base may have rubbed off on her there.

Thanking her luck, Izuku carefully put on the hoodie, pulling it up over her head. The horn just barely fit under it.

Okay. Sunglasses? Or would that make her too suspicious?

Maybe a face mask…

On second thought, if a face mask was in here, it definitely shouldn’t be worn.

And so, feeling a bit more fortified and certain of her plan, Izuku stashed the pocket knife in the pouch of the hoodie and got out of the dumpster.

Okay. Next step, find a good vantage point.

Thankfully, a rusted emergency ladder nearby hadn’t been rolled back up, though it seemed it had unfolded on its own after a latch had rusted off. The moment Izuku found herself on the flat rooftop, she took in the skyline around her, crested by the setting sun.

Where was she?

It took her an embarrassing amount of time, part of her hoping things had been made easy for her and Eri turned out to be kept in Tokyo. But finally-

‘Osaka!’ she exclaimed once she finally recognized the skyline.

Okay, great! A major city and not some smaller town! That meant there were plenty of heroes around!

Izuku briefly considered finding the nearest policeman, but stereotypes of officers on yakuza payroll made her hesitant.

No, heroes were her best bet, but which one?

She perked up.

Sir Nighteye was based in Osaka!

Perfect!

A good thing too. Sure, Izuku knew a lot about heroes, but the addresses of their hero agencies was usually not part of that. Unless your name was All Might, or you once were his only known sidekick.

And even if it wasn’t All Might, his sidekick was the next best thing!

“‘Can you become a hero without power?’ No, I don’t think so.”

Izuku winced as the memory rose up unbidden. No, not important right now. She had an unknown amount of time before an entire yakuza was searching for her. And from the looks of it, she had surfaced in a suburb. There was still a long walk between her and the Nighteye agency.

She just hoped she could make it through without trouble.

‘Hang on there, Eri-chan. I’m almost there.’