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The first time Izuku Midoriya accidentally convinced his peers he was sick and/or potentially dying- yes, the first time- was on a breezy Friday morning. The air was nice and cool, the wind was soft enough to not be an annoyance but still danced around him, brushing his cheeks and sending a shiver down his spine. With the sun hidden behind a cloud, it was no wonder that Izuku was a bit cold.
And naturally, when one is cold, they get goosebumps. So Izuku walked into his classroom with goosebumps on his skin, his arms uncovered and exposing the tiny bumps to the world.
Tiny bumps that one of his peers picked up on, and quickly pointed out.
“Midoriya-kun,” Tsuyu started, eyebrows creasing as she looked at him. “What’s wrong with your arms, kero ?”
Izuku paused, glancing down at his arms and looking back up in confusion. “Nothing?” He answered hesitantly, because there wasn’t anything wrong with them. In fact, Izuku would go as far as to say that they were better than usual- they didn’t even ache, like they usually did on colder days thanks to all of his past injuries!
But Tsuyu clearly didn’t think the same thing, because her eyes only continued to narrow, and then she was standing up, walking over to him, and grabbing his arm.
“You want to say that this is ‘nothing’, Midoriya-kun?” Tsuyu asked, gesturing to the arm with her free hand, her expression practically screaming ‘just try to say I’m wrong’.
But...but she was wrong. “Yeah?” Izuku confirmed, nodding his head for good measure. “I- I don’t see anything wrong?”
“Let me see!” Kaminari exclaimed, shoving his way over. Upon looking at his arm, however, Kaminari hissed and leaned back. “Oh, dude, what the fuck is up with your arm?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about?” Izuku responded, now beginning to worry because what was he missing, what could possibly be wrong with him -
“I do believe you might be having an allergic reaction!” Iida explained, startling Izuku. An allergic reaction? To what? And why would Iida think that?
“I-”
“Why is everyone still up and not at their desks?” Saving his skin, Aizawa-sensei walked into the room just as Izuku tried to respond, gathering the class’s attention.
Or maybe not, because Tsuyu just turned to their homeroom teacher and bluntly stated, “Midoriya-kun is having an allergic reaction, sensei.”
Tired eyes turned to him, already exhausted as he asked, “Then why are you still here, Problem Child? Go see Recovery Girl.”
“But I’m, I’m not-” Izuku tried again, only to be cut off once more.
“Dude, those bumps on your arms are giving you away! You need to get healed, fast ,” Kaminari insisted, and that’s when things clicked.
Right. Goosebumps.
Izuku laughed, startling his peers. “That’s not a reaction!” Izuku said once his laughter died down. “I’m just cold!”
“What?” Iida asked, staring at him oddly.
“I’m just cold,” Izuku repeated, smiling placatingly. “Here, look.” Rubbing his arms to warm them up, the goosebumps finally faded away, showing that nothing was wrong. “There’s nothing wrong with me, I just needed to warm up.”
“Is that part of your Quirk?” Kaminari asked, and Izuku had to bite his tongue to keep the truth from spilling out.
Because there’s no way he was going to say, ‘No, actually. I get goosebumps because my body is a stage behind on the evolutionary process, and I still get goosebumps when I’m cold while you all have better thermoregulation.’
“ Yeah ,” Izuku got out after a moment of hesitation. “Yep! Just...excess energy, you know me!”
Clearly, they didn’t know him enough, despite living in the same dorm building, because they believed that answer without further questioning.
Thank God .
Izuku slid into his seat, glad that the topic had been dropped so easily. He figured that that was the end of his peers’ worries over unnecessary things.
He was wrong.
-----
The second time was only two days later, because Izuku had less luck than- well, okay, Izuku had always had bad luck, he can’t even come up with the right analogy for it.
But still. Only two days later, and the next panic occurred. The cause of the matter?
Hiccups.
Fucking... hiccups .
And the day had been going so well , too. Izuku had spent the morning training, he’d even been able to move up ten more pounds on how much he could bench, and had spent the afternoon getting some productive study hours in. He was eating a wonderful meal with friends, and had just taken a drink a touch too quick when the little, high-pitched noise escaped him.
The room went silent, allowing the next hiccup to fill the quiet. Izuku blushed, embarrassed, but the redness in his face only served to worsen everyone’s reactions.
“Deku-kun?” Uraraka asked, lips tugging into a nervous frown. “Are you okay?”
“Ye- ah !” Izuku’s answer was cut off by another hiccup, and he watched as his peers showed obvious disbelief at his words.
“You sure?” Jirou asked. “That doesn’t sound okay.”
“It’s fine,” Katsuki cut in, and Izuku was grateful until the blond added in, “Deku is just so pathetic that he chokes on his own air sometimes. Makes him sound like a fucking dog toy.”
“He’s choking ?!” Half of the class seemed to scream at once, and just like that, the room was in full panic mode. Voices quickly began to cut over one another, and Izuku was too busy hiccuping to get a single word in.
“Fuck, what are we supposed to do if he’s choking?” Sero asked.
“You ask him if he’s choking, obviously!” Ashido piped up helpfully.
“Right, right!” Sero turned to Izuku and asked, “Midoriya, are you choking?”
“No- hic !” They didn’t believe him, only growing more worried with every additional hic .
“Someone get Aizawa-sensei!” Hagakure shouted. “He’ll know what to do!”
“On it!” Iida shouted, and then he was zooming through the halls, ignoring Izuku’s cries of protest.
“He’s still choking!” Kirishima shouted. “He needs help!”
“I don’t need h- elp !” Izuku said for the nth time, only to be ignored and feel two arms wrapping around his chest.
“Good idea, Kirishima-kun!” Yaoyorozu cheered. “The heimlich maneuver is the best course of action against choking!”
“Wait wait, no!” Izuku shouted, struggling to get out of the redhead’s grip. He broke enough bones on his own, thank you very much, he didn’t need someone else to do it if they did the heimlich incorrectly. But Kirishima didn’t listen, instead beginning to perform the maneuver as Izuku tried to flee, their classmates only continuing to encourage the boy.
And then, once again, Aizawa-sensei came to save the day, following an anxious Iida.
“Sensei!” Half of the class screamed in relief.
“Let me see hi- he’s not choking,” Aizawa stated, the sudden lack of concern causing Kirishima to let go of Izuku, letting the greenet drop back into his chair.
“He was!” Uraraka protested. “He was making these odd squeaking noises, and his breath kept hitching when he did!”
“I was literally able to t- alk ,” Izuku muttered, ears reddening as he hiccuped once more, causing his peers to point at him while looking at their teacher, as if saying, ‘See? We were right.’ But Aizawa just stared back at them blankly, sighing and rubbing at his face.
“That’s not choking,” Aizawa said slowly. “When someone is choking, they can’t speak. Noise doesn’t come out like that- it’ll be more of a wheezing sound.”
“I tried to tell you guys,” Izuku said, and this time his peers had the sense to look guilty. “It happens occasionally, I just- hic - need to let it run its course.”
“Is...is this another Quirk-related issue?” Hagakure asked tentatively, and Izuku sighed, ignoring the hiccup that came with it.
“Sure,” Izuku agreed. He’d go with that.
It’s technically a Quirk-related thing. A Quirk less -related thing, but still related nonetheless.
Because hiccups were useless , and Quirked people got lucky and just...stopped dealing with them.
Lucky.
Izuku went back to his meal in peace, ignoring how his peers kept an eye on him every time he let out that awful squeaking noise, and hoping that that was the final time his lack of evolution messed with his day.
He really needed to stop jinxing himself.
-----
One day, potentially in the near future, Izuku might end up punching Kacchan for non-training purposes.
It might be soon, like, in the next hour soon, because Izuku was up to here with Katsuki’s shit. Seriously, it was like Katsuki was trying to out his past Quirklessness, throwing all of the obvious signs in his peers’ faces.
Okay, okay. So maybe Izuku was overreacting, but really . It hadn’t even been a full week since the Hiccup Incident, only four days, when the next issue came up.
Because Katsuki knocked out one of his teeth during a sparring match.
Izuku knew what had happened the moment he felt something drop onto his tongue, and he held up a hand, signalling to Katsuki that he needed to time out for a second.
“Giving up already, Deku?” Katsuki taunted. “Can’t even fight me in a Quirkless spar, huh?”
“Just give me a moment, Kacchan,” Izuku said, already lifting up a hand. He was glad that everyone was in their P.E. uniforms, because that meant he wasn’t getting his suit’s glove bloody as he opened his mouth and spat the tooth into his open palm. “I, uh, need to go throw this out somewhere.”
Katsuki winced at the sight of the tooth, hands finally dropping from their offensive position. “Whatever, nerd. Just hurry up already.”
“Of course!” Izuku turned and raced to the edge of the gym, eyes set on the trash can and ignoring how his peers sparred around him. He’d normally watch, but Katsuki would be pissed if he got distracted.
However, Izuku’s ‘quick trip’ ended up becoming very delayed as Aizawa stopped him, eyebrow raising as he asked, “What are you doing, Problem Child?”
“Just throwing out a tooth!” Izuku explained, missing the look of alarm in his teacher’s eyes as he tossed the old tooth into the bin. “I’ll go right back to sparring, don’t worry!”
He only managed to get a few feet away before Aizawa called out to him, making him turn back around.
“Midoriya,” Aizawa said slowly, eyes trained on Izuku with such intensity that Izuku flinched back automatically. “Problem Child, you said you lost a tooth ?”
“Yeah,” Izuku nodded, smiling to show off the new gap in his mouth. “It’s alright, sir! That was from the original set- the last one, actually! Which is odd, because I think it should’ve grown out sooner, but,” Izuku shrugged, letting out a laugh, “what can you do, you know?”
“Original set?” Aizawa repeated, incredulous. “Are you implying that you have had more than one set of teeth ?”
And that’s the moment that Izuku remembers- most people only have one set. When people gained Quirks, their bodies began to focus on efficiency. One form of that was removing the whole ‘baby teeth and second set of teeth’ thing that Izuku had grown up with. Instead, teeth had become tougher, and were practically impossible to knock out for most people, due to how the skull had rearranged itself. Izuku had forgotten, having only known the once normal standard of growing out of his smaller teeth and gaining new ones in their place.
Oops.
“I...yeah,” Izuku finally responded, wincing.
“Is this another one of your Quirk’s oddities?” Aizawa asked, sounding exasperated, and Izuku laughed nervously. “What, did your body decide to start replacing bones with how often you break them?”
That was a good excuse. Izuku took it quickly, nodding. “Yep! You know me, with my old exploding bones habit, haha!” Oh kami, he just said ‘haha’. That was it, Izuku was done for.
Or maybe not, because Aizawa just sighed and sent Izuku on his way back to Katsuki, who was waiting impatiently.
“What took you so long?” Katsuki asked, and Izuku laughed nervously.
“I forgot most people don’t get more teeth,” Izuku admitted, and Katsuki snorted.
“Fucking idiot,” Katsuki muttered. “Just don’t go losing any more teeth and you’ll be fine.”
And really , Izuku should have known what would come next after that statement was uttered. Alas, he lived in denial once more, and the fourth time was as unexpected as the third.
-----
Izuku was used to random, annoying pains. With how often he had broken his arms, and the few times he’d managed to break his legs, he knew that phantom pains were forever going to be a part of his future. When his limbs ached uncontrollably, Izuku sucked it up and continued on. When he had a splitting headache from hours of overworking himself, he drank some water and toughed it out.
But when Izuku’s teeth felt like they were out to kill him? Yeah, Izuku wasn’t dealing with that. He called up his mom, and after some research on old, random tooth pains, they quickly realized the issue.
Izuku needed his wisdom teeth removed. All of them, because they were currently trying to fight his other teeth for space, and he wasn’t putting up with that any more than he had to. So on a nice, early Saturday morning, Izuku and his mom went to a special dentist, and Izuku got the extra teeth removed.
It was only once Izuku got back to Yuuei that afternoon that he remembered why it was so hard to find out that his wisdom teeth were the issue.
Quirked people didn’t have wisdom teeth .
Fuck.
“Midori?” Ashido asked as he walked in, half out of it from painkillers, the other half focused on the bloody cotton swab in his mouth, and making sure that it stayed in its place. “Where have you been?”
“Oh, you know,” Izuku said, smiling sluggishly. “Out.”
That was the exact moment that blood trickled past his lip, because of course it did. The effect was instantaneous, gasps filling the room.
“Midoriya! You’re bleeding!”
“Are you hurt?”
“I’ve seen All Might spit up blood, is this a genetic illness?” Well, at least Todoroki would always be himself.
“It’s fine,” Izuku consoled, pointedly ignoring how Iida was, once again, running off in pursuit of their teacher. “I just had to get some teeth removed, no big deal.”
“You got teeth removed ?” Uraraka asked.
“Why did you do that?” Ojirou added on, and Izuku shrugged.
“Well, some of my teeth were trying to shove the other ones out of their way, and it started to hurt, so my mom took me to a dentist and he just ripped them out.” Izuku mimed a faint pulling motion, then giggled, missing how more blood trickled out of his mouth in his loopy state.
“Why is he bleeding?” Oh, Aizawa-sensei had arrived. Izuku turned around, smiling at his teacher- accidentally showing off blood-stained teeth, the cotton swabs really hadn’t done their job- and said, “Sensei! I’m alright! I just had to get rid of some teeth!”
“You...you lost more teeth?” Aizawa asked. “Did you use too much of your Quirk again?”
“Nope! They were just being troublesome, so we got rid of them!” Izuku chirped, then giggled again before frowning. “Oh, ew. Blood tastes disgusting...how can All Might deal with this all of the time?” He wandered over to the kitchen’s trash can, spitting out the cotton swab in his mouth, ignorant to how the swab looked like a giant glob of blood to his peers, then smiled at them. “But again! I’m fine! I’m going to sleep now, I’m really tired and the painkillers are making me feel floaty.”
He got concerned looks for the next two weeks for that one, everyone watching him closely to make sure he didn’t start bleeding from the mouth or suddenly lose more teeth. It was a bit annoying, sure, and Izuku wasn’t sure how many more incidents he could get through before someone realized , but he was sure that everything would be fine.
And then, only six days after his peers stopped watching his every move, his Quirklessness came to bite him in the ass one more time.
-----
The appendix. An organ that had long become unnecessary, even decades before the first Quirk appeared. An organ that just...sat there, in a person’s body, doing practically nothing. It mainly just took up space, and, usually, wasn’t a concern.
Usually.
Because occasionally, someone’s appendix could just up and decide, ‘You know what I want to do? Fucking explode. ’ And explode it would, if not caught in time.
It might be easy to guess what the fifth incident was for Izuku, but he’ll spell it out anyways.
His appendix ruptured. In the middle of class. Homeroom, to be precise, if that mattered at all.
It probably did, because Aizawa-sensei had been in the middle of passing out graded papers when Izuku felt something burst , and then all he could feel was white, hot pain coursing through him, and suddenly he was crying out and falling to the floor, curling in on himself.
“Deku!” Uraraka was the first to shout, and Izuku wanted to comfort her, wanted to promise that he was fine , but the moment he looked up another wave of pain shot through his body and he groaned, hands clutching his stomach.
“Everyone get back!” Aizawa commanded, and Izuku heard the sound of footsteps backing away- when had they gotten close?- over the blood rushing through his ears. Before he could ponder that question, however, he was being lifted up and suddenly time seemed to blur as his teacher raced him to Recovery Girl’s office, slamming the door open and startling the poor heroine.
“What’s wrong?” Recovery Girl asked as soon as she saw him, to which Aizawa angrily replied, “I don’t know . He collapsed from his desk and-”
And that’s all Izuku heard before he passed out, welcoming the sweet embrace of unconsciousness and the lack of pain it promised him.
He just hoped that no one would ask any questions, because he really didn’t know how he’d answer them.
(A few hours later, and he’d claim that his Quirk had activated on its own, rupturing an organ. He’d purposely leave the exact organ unnamed, because he knew he was the only kid in that room who had ever had an appendix.)
(It’d be the last time that people took his words at face value, and the last time he’d have to lie to his friends about the first fourteen years of his life.)
-----
When Izuku walked into class the next day, he really should have expected someone to finally call him out. After so many abnormalities in such a short span of time, it made sense that someone would look into it, try to figure out why a simple enhancement Quirk could have so many odd facets to it.
He didn’t expect it to be Aizawa-sensei who brought it up. And he definitely didn’t expect it to be in front of everyone.
Well, in Aizawa’s defense, it wasn’t supposed to be in front of everyone. And, technically, it wasn’t. Aizawa had left the topic untouched all day, and had only called for Izuku to stay behind once the bell rang.
He couldn’t have known that all of 1-A got the idea to listen in from the other side of the barely cracked-open door, too concerned for their peer’s safety to focus on the ethics of eavesdropping.
But Aizawa didn’t know, and neither did Izuku, so Aizawa hopped straight into the issue as soon as he thought they were alone.
“You’ve had quite a few... incidents , these past few months, that you’ve brushed off as side effects of your Quirk,” Aizawa began, eyes locked with Izuku’s as he spoke. “The odd bumps on your skin, the squeaking noises, the additional sets of teeth, teeth needing to be surgically removed, and even one of your organs bursting at random. I’ve never heard of a Quirk having so many drawbacks, and never one with such diverse issues. A power Quirk wouldn’t cause your skin to grow tiny bumps when you were cold. It wouldn’t cause you to squeak on air. It wouldn’t cause your teeth to grow in incorrectly. But do you know what I found out, when doing some research on your symptoms?”
“N-no, sensei,” Izuku said, like a liar, and Aizawa’s eyes narrowed.
“I found out that all of your ‘symptoms’ are actually issues that the human body has grown out of. Problems that people have evolved past with the rise of Quirks. Problems that only Quirkless people face today.”
Aizawa tilted his head, and Izuku felt like his very soul was being judged as Aizawa asked, “Isn’t that just odd? That the boy who came into my class with zero control over his Quirk, who improved the most rapidly of all of his peers, who acted like he’d lived his whole life without a power...has the same issues that Quirkless people face?”
Izuku gulped, wishing he could break eye contact with the man but unable to. He felt like doing so would mean losing whatever game they were playing, the wrong move that would lead to an automatic victory for his teacher.
“R-really? How strange,” Izuku squeaked out, and Aizawa nodded.
“That’s what I thought. So I did some double checking. Looked through some files. And Problem Child? I have a question.”
“Yes?” Izuku tensed, waiting for the final blow to land. Aizawa knew he was Quirkless, he was going to get expelled, All Might was going to make him give up One for All and-
“Why didn’t you tell me that you were a late bloomer?”
Izuku froze, and then blinked up at his teacher. “What?” He managed to get out, and Aizawa sighed, crouching down to make even eye contact with him.
“Problem Child, kid . I can’t help you if you don’t let me know when you need extra help. If I had known that your Quirk came in late, I would’ve given you one-on-one training. If I had known that your body had all of these... abnormalities , I would have been able to prevent your peers from freaking out every goddamn time your body decided to work against you. You just have to speak up, got it?”
Izuku blinked, feeling tears well up as relief coursed through him. He wasn’t exposed, not fully, and he wasn’t judged for his past. He was being offered help -
And this time, Izuku would happily take it.
“Got it,” Izuku promised, and Aizawa’s lips twitched into a small smile.
“Good. Now, is there anything else I should know about? Any other life-risking problems, ways your body might self-destruct?”
“Nope!” Izuku said automatically, then paused, remembering a certain issue that humanity had luckily evolved past. “Well...if I stay out in the sun for too long, my cells might mutate and I could die.”
When twenty gasps reached his ears, Izuku tensed.
So maybe he shouldn’t have mentioned skin cancer, but how was he supposed to know his peers were there?
(At the very least, his peers stopped panicking so much after the partial reveal of his past. Izuku could look on the bright side for this one, thank you.)