Chapter Text
It had been a week, and Izuku Midoriya still believed that he must have been dreaming. But no matter how hard he pinched himself, he would just. Not. Wake. Up.
So there were two options. Option 1: It was a very stubborn dream. Option 2: It was all real. Secret Option 3: Izuku was under the effects of a quirk. Secret Option 4: He was in his last moments and hallucinating vividly about his middle school years as his life slowly slipped away. Secret Option 5-
Suffice to say, there were probably very many, very logical reasons behind all of this. But he had to be true to himself….
It was most likely a dream. A very long, very realistic, well-constructed dream.
Because if the truth was actually Option Two, then he’d have to face the mortification that he was acting out of character all week, and he was probably pinging Kacchan’s “What-the-Hell-is-Going-On-with-that-Freaking-Nerd” radar.
Please, please, please don’t let it be Option 2! It’s just a dream. Only a dream.
Regardless of whether it was a dream or not, he wasn’t just about to go to Kacchan and tell him, “Hey, Kacchan, you’re ‘What-the-Hell-is-Going-On-with-that-Freaking-Nerd' radar is actually nothing to worry about. I’m just not used to seeing you so unhinged since we became a lot closer in high school, and you've actually calmed down quite a bit! No, I didn’t mean that you aren’t being calm! Which high school? U.A. of course! Quirkless? Well, actually…”
No, no. That wouldn’t go down well at all. He’d just have to keep living this dream as well as possible. Maybe if he just followed along with the dream's intended course, he could finally wake up! Yeah, there's nothing to worry about. All he has to do is allow the dream to take control, and he shall be just a simple pawn to the dream. Speaking of which, the bell rings signaling that school is over (and holy crap, he's back at Aldera, what is happening, why am I here-) and he begins to pack his bags carefully just as Kacchan comes up to his desk.
He's played this moment in his head many, many times before that he can't help but zone out through what Kacchan is saying. Telling him that Izuku's not going to U.A.? Check! Says he's better than all these extras here? Check! Burns Izuku's shoulder when Izuku says he's going to try anyway? Check! Oh, and a nice surprise, telling Izuku to take a swan dive off the roof! Check. He may have upset Kacchan by accidentally not paying attention, because he grabs Izuku's backpack and singes the straps- he only stops when Kacchan realizes he's burning too close to Izuku's All Might keychain (not that Kacchan would admit that ever, but Izuku swears that he saw some concern in Kacchan's eyes).
Really, the only difference is that Izuku had already packed his notebook away, so at least Kacchan didn't throw it out this time for it to land in the koi pond. Izuku makes his way home with a dry notebook and a slightly burnt bag, traversing through the path that he knows by heart. It's specifically chosen to avoid the path the other students at Aldera use. But this path was still advantageous because he was still close enough that he could hear if any hero was fighting some villains, and Izuku could rush in to take notes anytime he wanted.
As he's walking, Izuku thinks back to this whole dream thing. Was he perhaps lucid dreaming? Izuku tried very hard to imagine All Might appearing suddenly in front of him. And it worked! He felt arms begin to wrap around him in a warm hug. A hug from All Might! Except it wasn't a hug. It was sludgy and gooey and Izuku gave himself a mental facepalm because how could he have forgotten about the Sludge Villain that attacked him from before!
Izuku shouldn't panic. He just needs to let the dream play its course, which means that All Might will show up at any moment. He shouldn't worry. And he's sure he'll wake up if he dies in the dream. So it's fine. All Might should be here any moment…
Just before the Sludge Villain clogs Izuku's breathing, he hears a loud Wooooosh! Followed by a phrase burned into Izuku's being.
"I…AM HERE!"
The moment rushes by in a blur as Izuku grows dizzy from the speed All Might is moving. All Might gives a definitive blow, knocking the villain out. Then he scoops the villain up into two soda bottles. Izuku opens his notebook, only to find that All Might has already signed it.
"Well, young man, you look quite all right now. But I must be off!" All Might coughed into his fist, and if Izuku hadn't known what to look for, he wouldn't have noticed the blood collecting in All Might's palm.
"Wait-" Izuku began to say, hoping to ask All Might his Question. Izuku must have been reverted to that moment, that time, into his old mindset of being so lost and unsure what to do. So even if it was a dream, he wanted to ask again, to hear All Might tell him once more that he can be a hero, despite being Quirkless… Perhaps that's why he hadn't woken up yet. Maybe once All Might told him those words again, he could finally awake, reminded of the only person who believed in him… He needed to allow the dream to follow its course, waiting for his limbs to move on their own to All Might. He's going to latch on without thinking, take that step towards All Might…
And then All Might zips into the sky, nothing but a speck of dust in a few short blinks.
Wait. That means that Izuku was left here. Left behind… he didn't grab onto All Might!? Did he just miss his chance to!?
Well, it was only a dream, but Izuku had thought that it was just another retelling of the most important moment in his life. It's not like he hasn't had dreams like that before. Usually, he would be forced to follow how the memory went. But now what? What was the path for the dream? He hadn't yet woken up, so that means that it wasn't over. Maybe that meant that this dream wasn't just a retelling but an alternate version where he missed his chance at getting into U.A.?
Well, that sucks. Losing his chance, losing his dream. Was he really just going to let it go so easily? Was his dream telling him that the only reason he got into U.A. was because of All Might? Well, now he wanted to prove that wrong. Even if it was just a dream, he couldn't just ignore his goal of getting into U.A. just because of it. He still wants to prove Kacchan wrong, and he wants to prove to the world that he can still be a hero despite being Quirkless! Screw the dream, he was going to U.A. no matter what!
…Okay, so maybe he jumped the gun a little. This was just a dream anyway, and it wasn't like anything that he could change here would affect anything in the waking world. As he continues walking home, he thinks once again about his dream situation. He must have fallen asleep. The last thing he could remember was… Eri's face.
Eri!?
That's right— hadn't he been fighting someone? He was trying to protect Eri from getting hurt… so what the heck was he doing asleep!? He should be fighting right now! But for the life of him, he couldn't remember who he had been fighting and what had happened to Eri. Was she safe? Had he defeated the villain? Or had he, like a fool, got caught like a fly in a web in a villain's quirk? He needs to figure out how to break out of it!
It would be easier if he had remembered any quirk activating, but he'd have to make do with his analysis. Was this perhaps an illusion quirk? Or did a quirk recreate a world or pocket dimension based on Izuku's expectations of the world? He could perhaps push the quirk to its breaking point by focusing on any weak areas. Or was there perhaps some sort of unlocking mechanism that needed to be activated that releases him? Maybe he could see if there were any laws of physics that were being broken. Perhaps he needs to gather information based on an aspect of the world he is unfamiliar with, thereby breaking the conditions of the pocket dimension being limited to what knowledge Izuku already knows. However, how could he verify that any information he learns is accurate? Could this be a quirk that could learn and improve with use? Perhaps this was a quirk dimension that would continue to accommodate and adapt to Izuku. It seemed unlikely, only because of the scale of detail already within the pocket dimension. It would be hard to continuously disrupt and reconstruct it. This world could even be a part forced hallucination of Izuku's mind, but he might still be able to potentially break it by testing its limits.
All this theorizing merely means that Izuku needed to test things out first. He guesses that this "dream" is a representation of the world using his mind's knowledge as a basis for the representation. If that were the case, then by pushing his knowledge into something that he has no previous knowledge of, the representation (the dream or pocket dimension or alternate world) will begin to fail because there is nothing to fill the gaps with. Hopefully, it doesn't function like the brain's memories, which often fill in missing memory gaps with new or made-up information based on other knowledge.
For the next week, Izuku tries testing out his theory. He heads to the library after school and picks out the biggest, oldest, heaviest book he can find. Statistical Thermodynamics for Chemists and Biochemists. Perfect. He lugs it to a table. It's barely legible. Half of the page is faded beyond existence and into another plane of existence. He reads a sentence. Statistical thermodynamics is a mathematical tool that bridges the gap between the properties of individual molecules and the macroscopic thermodynamic properties of bulk matter. What does that mean? Who knows!
In the end, Izuku got half an hour done of reading a dictionary from another planet, but no progress on dismantling the world-dimension-hallucination-dream quirk. He tries again, a second time, then a third time, then a fourth, each with a different book. No luck. Okay— that simply means that reading incomprehensible wafer prints wouldn't work on the quirk acting on him. Plan B: push past his limits!
Izuku tries to run a marathon. Key word: tries. He had thought that if he could remind his brain that he was actually, currently, very fit (because he was a student at U.A., and wasn't that amazing!?), then he might disrupt the control the quirk had over his brain. Izuku knows that he has One For All, but the whole "there is a quirk that's pretending that you're in the past" leaves him without the feeling of One for All, despite knowing that it's there. He had attempted to use the quirk before, but it was hard to visualize anything because the pathway to his quirk… didn't feel like it existed anymore.
But it had to, didn't it? Even if he thought or was being tricked into thinking that it was missing, One For All would still be there regardless. The only way it could have been taken away was if it was voluntary. So it couldn't be gone. But… it didn't feel like One For All was being suppressed. It felt missing. Like… not only had it disappeared, but like it had never been there in the first place. Exactly like..
Exactly like how he had felt when he was his Quirkless middle school self. Exactly like he had been reverted to his middle school self. Weak, shy, quirkless. And still dreaming of being a hero.
What was it that he had been thinking earlier, when All Might had just saved him from the Sludge Villain? That he felt like he was back to his mindset of being lost and confused, looking for any guidance to his dream? He thinks of the fresh stings of today's bruises, the painful stretch of burns across his back. He didn't feel like he was in the muddled fog of a dream. His tears feel fresh and raw. Real.
Time Travel Quirks weren't impossible or unheard of, but to such an extent must be improbable. Even quirks that could be called Time Travel Quirks didn't exactly behave as simply as a time machine that transported its contents to different "whens" of time. It had to be something else. A mental simulation.
But it seemed too complicated. Too detailed. Too real to be in some sort of world matrix or the effects of an illusion quirk.
But Time Travel? There had to be something else that made more sense. Like a simulation. But if it was that… then where was One For All? Even under Shinshou's quirk, it was never repressed. So wouldn't One For All still be felt, even in the back of his mind? Even if it was just a fraction of its presence? Its energy? Its predecessors?
If All For One had taken it…
But that didn't seem to be likely. For one, Izuku would never give it to him voluntarily. Second, his quirk doesn't feel missing, like it had left its spot vacant where it had been previously held. It was like it had never been there in the first place. There was no room for it anywhere inside Izuku's body.
Had One For All never existed, then? Did he make those memories up? What was even real anymore?
No, the past months at U.A. had to have been real. His training, the pain of broken bones from a quirk unfit to him, meeting his new friends… there's no way that had all been fake.
But… time travel!?
He may not believe it 100%, buttt he may have researched a bit about time travel and Time Travel quirks. Time traveling to the future was a bit problematic, but time traveling to the past was theoretically possible. Yay, Einstein!
There had been instances of "time travel" quirks, but often they were misinterpreted. The quirks would typically act only on a designated "system": an object or subject, say an apple. The quirk can act completely on this system. Perhaps it's a quirk that reverses a bitten apple into an unbitten one. But therein lay an issue. The quirks couldn't act on the surroundings of the system; essentially, everything else besides the system (like the universe!). Incorporating more into the system (two bitten apples) was sometimes limited to the amount or the mass. And for some quirks, time could also be limited, for example, only reversing an object back an hour or so. No quirk could affect Time itself by incorporating the entire universe (including Time and Space) into its system. Essentially, the quirks typically only worked on small physical objects. In one case, there was a rumor that a politician could add a person into their system and turn time back an hour for the system (and make the person younger by an hour). But Izuku wasn't sure if he believed what was said on some sketchy online forum.
The point was, theoretically, it is possible to travel back in time, but not likely from a known quirk. Izuku tried researching mental or forced hallucination quirks that could trap a person in their own minds, but he only got results for illusion quirks and a forum for quirk-specific hypochondriacs. Apparently, it said that it was very unlikely (but still not impossible!) to have a quirk that could cause an "internal world" to be created, because that charted into unconscious and conscious quirk theories and pseudoscience.
But, Izuku mused, a quirk like Sir Nighteye existed that could see the future. Fate lay into a more metaphysical aspect: therefore, if something like Fate could be seen through a quirk, then why couldn't a quirk affecting time or create an internal world on a larger scale not exist? Then again, many quirks got misinterpreted, and in Japan, only heroes could use their quirks in public, making it much easier for heroes to improve their quirks to a greater ability. A guy with a simple enhancement quirk was just a guy. But if you said All Might with his enhancement quirk, it'd be a different story.
What about Shinshou with his mind-control quirk? Didn't that play into the subconscious and the conscious aspect? Then again, the subjects who were being controlled couldn't think or act for themselves.
So maybe this random, potentially unqualified stranger on the internet stating an opinion was correct about pseudosciences.
But none of that had convinced him just yet. No, it wasn't until his favorite quirk analyst on Herotube uploaded their weekly video: a video that he had watched at least 10 times and one he could recite in his sleep. But it had just been posted an hour ago, at 1:52 am. Izuku should have gone to bed a while ago, but at 2:46 am, he clicks the video.
Yep. Word. For. Word. He could recite it perfectly. And, oh look, a comment he had liked isn't there yet. If he just refreshes the page… yep, there it is!
Hah hah hah. Hah.
Hah.
He is not losing his mind. He isn't. He just needs a nice, long nap. He will wake up and realize he was hallucinating. Just a dream. He would forget everything about going to U.A. and getting his friends and meeting All Might… Nope. Just a dream.
Okay, it doesn't work. It's not a dream. This just has to be his new normal.
He may have, potentially, traveled back in time. (Or is under the effect of a quirk- the jury is still out on that one). There was nothing indicating that this was a simulation that he was trapped in (but there was nothing to disprove that theory either!).
If he traveled back in time… doesn't that mean that he could predict future events? He might be able to stop any villains before attacking his classmates at U.A.!
Wait, what if Izuku accidentally makes an alternate universe by messing with anything? Like the Butterfly Effect? And eventually, he could run out of things to predict and be left in uncertainty about new events. Then again, that's how he and his classmates at U.A. faced threats before, hadn't they?
But… hadn't he already changed things? He didn't latch onto All Might before he left. Not to mention, Kacchan never got captured by the Sludge Villain, did he? Izuku went the same way home as he always did, looking for any crowds that could signify a hero. He hadn't spotted anything.
And if that's the case…
That means that he missed his chance at meeting All Might. Kacchan never got attacked, which means Izuku's legs never moved without him thinking, which means he never impressed All Might enough for him to offer his quirk after Izuku told All Might he was quirkless and asked him if Izuku could be a hero…
If he never got One For All, how could he get into U.A. now? How could he ever become a hero now? He knows what All Might told him, that he can become a hero. But what if he can't?
Izuku thinks of his middle school self, always writing in his notebook of heroes and always wishing. Always waiting.
Is he going to wait for another chance in this lifetime? Will he wait until he gets told those words again, but never put in the physical effort to train until then?
No!
Izuku will become a hero. He's already made it once into U.A. That means he can do it a second time. And he has to, because he needs to stop Shigaraki and Overhaul from attacking U.A. He needs to find and protect Eri. And to do that, he needs to get into U.A.
To get into U.A. (again), he needs to train. And he knows exactly the place to start: Takoba Beach. If he needs to become a hero quirkless, then he will. He can use inspiration from Eraserhead, and he can probably search up martial arts videos to follow. He still remembers All Might's All-American Dream Plan that he made for Izuku, so he can follow along with what he vaguely remembers. When he cleans enough of the trash at Dagobah, perhaps he can arrange some of the objects he finds to practice parkour. If this is what he has to do to be able to help people and save his classmates, then this is just how he's going to do it.
The other question is: should he tell anyone else about this?
Who is he kidding? No way! All Might would think he's some crazy fanboy. His mom would definitely overworry, say she believes him, while frantically dialing Auntie Mitsuki. Who would believe him, some quirkless middle schooler who would probably be labeled as an attention seeker if he said anything? Yeah, no. There's no one he can trust or say anything to. He'll just have to rely on himself. He'll make do. He has to.
After school, Izuku heads to the beach to begin his new (familiar) project of cleaning up Takoba Beach. It brings him a sense of nostalgia as he sees the garbage mountains, all piled up in blobless heaps. Seagulls are scattered about in the sky and on the ground, looking for any remnants of food buried in the trash. The smell of garbage wafts towards Izuku. He remembers his first time here, and how excited he was to see All Might, anxious about whether All Might would really come, hopeful for what lay ahead of him. He was fresh-faced, not knowing yet the responsibility he would receive once he accepted One For All. The biggest worry during those months was the sore muscles he'd feel the next morning. He misses watching each sunrise and sunset every day next to the man who shone brighter than the sun. The man who was ready to lend the sunrays to him, to Izuku, a quirkless nobody.
Izuku hoped to repay the favor and make him proud.
For a moment, he goes back to that time, imagining that All Might is there beside him again, watching and guiding him like the North Star in the abyss of Izuku's hopeless desperation. All Might was tall, yet he stood quietly, hunched over as he watched Izuku's work with his piercing blue eyes. Izuku had never thought those eyes were sharp despite All Might's more angular features in his smaller form. No, All Might was All Might, no matter what form he took. But now all he had was the remnants of a memory of All Might by the wall next to the stairs, imagining that he was still watching him…
Wait.
He wasn't imagining All Might. All Might was actually there. He was by the ledge that walled off the higher street from the sea-level beach. The brick walls made their way into railings that led to the stairs down to the beach. The beach looked as tall as the roads and sidewalk only because of all the trash piled on it. All Might seemed smaller from this distance down below. Izuku almost wouldn't have noticed him if he hadn't been looking for his spot— right where he would call out to Izuku to let him know that he had arrived. Then he'd climb down the stairs, where he'd give Izuku a brief smile— then start scolding him if Izuku had already been working out early.
But why is All Might here? Shouldn't he be worried that some stranger would spot him? Wait, no, there's nobody at the beach— wait, yes, there's Izuku at the beach. But All Might doesn't know that; he probably thinks that nobody else will be here. Izuku briefly raises his head from his mumbling and glances again at All Might— only to realize he's made another mistake.
All Might isn't in his hero form. He's in his civilian form. Izuku shouldn't have recognized that the emaciated man was All Might, because no one, least of all him, should have known of one of Japan's greatest secrets. Izuku didn't latch onto All Might's leg, nor did he save Kacchan, which means All Might never trains Izuku nor gives him his quirk, which means that All Might will think of Izuku as nothing more than a stranger, a random civilian, and not the future user of One For All.
Izuku won't have those morning runs with All Might or those lunch breaks where All Might talked about his hero work. Because, to All Might right now, Izuku Midoriya is nothing but a nobody.
He's broken out of his thoughts when a deep voice calls out to him.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to spook you! I didn't even realize someone beat me to here!"
Izuku looks up to see All Might calling to him, hands cupping his mouth, even though Izuku can hear him perfectly clear. "Uh-um, no, it's alright! I didn't realize anybody else would be coming here either!" Least of all, All Might!
Izuku places the trash he's carrying down, as All Might traverses down the steps. Is Izuku bothering All Might? Does All Might want him to leave?
"I hope I'm not interrupting. My name is Yagi Toshinori. I was hoping to ask what a young man like yourself is doing here at this garbage dump."
Izuku's brain stutters. Does he really expect me to call him Yagi?? But it's not like I can call him All Might! Otherwise, he might think I'm some creepy fanboy that stalked him!
"Well, I'm hoping to train for the U.A. Entrance Exam, All- uhm! Sir!" Izuku sweats as All Might stares deeply at him. Usually, he's used to All Might's more intense stares, but it feels especially insidious today, like he will point at Izuku and say, "You don't belong here!"
All Might suddenly grins. He points to himself and says, "I actually know a bit about hero training myself. I know I may not look like much, but I actually used to train hero students back in the day. Since you're training for U.A., I'd love to give you some beginner tips—so whaddya say? No pressure, of course." He gives a thumbs up.
Izuku blinks, shocked that All Might would ever give him a second chance— not that he knows he ever gave Izuku a first chance, but it still counted to Izuku. In all honesty, All Might's offer would probably only work on Izuku because he knows exactly who he is already, and he knows that this man wasn't just some weirdo hanging around a dump. He was All Might! Izuku nods enthusiastically. "Sure, I'd love any help I can get!"
He knows he most likely won't be as close with All Might as he had been, especially since he wouldn't become the ninth user of One For All. But he should still appreciate every moment he spends with All Might. Plus, he doesn't remember entirely the All-American Dream Plan, and, well… at least he'll have some sort of closeness with All Might, even if it wasn't going to be the same.
"Very well. Let's meet up here tomorrow morning. I think this beach needs something like a makeover, and you're gonna be the one to make it happen!"
Izuku tries to remember what he had said last time, but his mouth is already moving without thinking. "Me!?"
"Yep! I'll discuss everything tomorrow, but I'm sure you'll be up to the task. I'll see you then, Midoriya!"
Izuku waves All Might off, and since he isn't sure if he should continue cleaning up the beach or not, he decides to pack up his bag and head home.
Because Izuku is essentially doing middle school work for a second time, and because U.A.'s coursework is much more advanced, all he has to do for his homework is to refresh himself on the content, and then he gets the homework done pretty quickly. He's finished so early that he keeps the momentum going and completes next week's homework too. However, Aldera isn't like U.A., where it has a specific calendar and syllabus to keep track of work to do. The teachers assign homework weekly, on a whim. Meaning that he can't complete the entire semester's homework early because he doesn't know (or remember) what the homework even is going to be. Teachers, especially at Aldera, change their minds all the time. It frustrates him that he won't be able to get it all over with early, but at least he can get it done mostly quickly. He doesn't have to pay too much attention in class (not like he ever did that at Aldera, he understood better by reading the textbooks). But now that meant that today, he has extra free time. He searches up the hero forums he usually frequents, but he has seen the content all before. He could exercise, but he already did two pushups, cried, cried more at the fact that he used to do more than 100 (with All Might on his back), and promptly burrowed into his bed to hide from his shame. So that was out.
What else then? Herotube? No. Movies? No. Read his favorite non-fiction book about All Might's villain fights? N— Yeah! Great idea!
He was reading the fight with Toxic Chainsaw when he shudders from his spine to his fingertips. This was the year that All Might had also faced All For One— and lost his stomach and lung. That's why All Might had gained his emaciated form, why his hours of hero work were decreasing, and why he was going to be teaching at U.A. as a cover-up.
All For One…
Holy crap! Izuku is an idiot! He slaps his forehead. That was what he forgot! His first semester at U.A. wasn't just hero coursework and training— villains attacked them already in the first week! Izuku was so busy worrying about All Might and time travel and metaphysics and Eri that he forgot that he now has a responsibility and a duty to stop his friends from getting attacked, and stop Eri from going through what she had.
He researches the names that he can remember. But anything on All For One or Shigaraki has no results. Overhaul doesn't either, but the Shie Hassaikai do. Perhaps Izuku could leave an anonymous tip? Izuku writes out the information he remembers on the location to find Eri— only to pause. At this point, Eri isn't being tortured yet, and the previous boss of the Shie Hissaikai would be in charge, not Overhaul. So even if he gives out this information to the authorities, it would be incorrect if they were to try to verify Eri's conditions. Instead, he writes down where their drop-off points might be. He remembers some of the locations from the debrief meetings that Nighteye managed when Izuku first joined Nighteye's agency. Maybe he could send in an anonymous tip? Frustratingly, Izuku can't do anything about Eri right now. He just has to play things by ear. Now that he thinks about it…
Izuku doesn't remember if he actually defeated Overhaul.