Chapter Text
Izuku Midoriya was numb. The type of numbness that leaves noises drowned below rivers, vision clouded in fog, touch distant, as if his fingers were frozen. Numbness felt like a sort of violent sea, waves crashing into his mood and submerging him in almost suffocating silence. This feeling wasn’t exactly new, especially to him, but it was weird for it to occur today. The disassociation he experienced was often a result of something, whether emotional or physical, but today it was simply there.
His tent was below a bridge, one that passed over a small river in the more rural areas of Musutafu. It was often quiet, with the occasional car or frequent biker; only the gentle sounds of flowing water and cicadas in the grass could break the peace. The only other occupant of the underpass was Mr. Watanabe, a kind elderly man who was able to make a bit of cash from neighbourhood chores. That’s how Izuku managed to stay fed after leaving home. The man was kind, much more than his parents, if he could be so generous as to call them that.
They’d been in America for over 4 years now, having disowned their quirkless son at the meagre age of 11. The process had been swift and easy for the two elder Midoriya’s, and Izuku was taken in by child services within a week. He’d run from his first foster home barely a month later and was both thankful and disappointed that no one had come to get him back.
So here he was, numb in the early morning of a beautiful day, with a bottle of peach water and a half-eaten container of white rice from the family mart. He’d thank Watanabe when they both got back that evening.
He went through the motions, eating, walking, sitting, and writing; school was always simple. Beyond the typical neglect and outright abuse many quirkless children faced in the school system, Izuku’s actual education went relatively smoothly. He had one teacher, a kind woman by the name of Honda, who was thankfully in charge of organizing the students' grades and academic work. She had little influence over the sheer amount of discrimination Aldera Middle suffered with on student records, but she treated Izuku’s grades fairly. That’s truly all he could have hoped for.
See, Izuku Midoriya was an intelligent boy, incredibly analytical and logical when it came to how he perceived the world. Though empathetic, the kid had issues understanding certain concepts and ideas when they contradicted basic facts and principles.
Either way, he was smart, incredibly so, and despite his lack of tact in regular social settings, he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut around Katsuki Bakugou.
He vaguely remembered the boy from their childhood, though the memories weren’t very clear, considering he was 5. When he’d gotten his diagnosis, he’d been almost immediately pulled from elementary school and hadn’t seen the blond until well into junior high, when they were put in the same 2nd year class. Izuku hadn’t recognized him at first, and it was plausible Bakugo hadn’t either, but that signature sickly sweet smell was a dead give. It was one-sided acknowledgment for a week before their absolute bigot case of a homeroom professor announced his quirklessness aloud. Recognition came over Bakugo’s features, and a target was placed snugly between Izuku’s shoulder blades.
The blond wasn’t ever overly hostile towards Izuku, at least not verbally. There were times he’d outright beat him—assault, if we're being direct, though it was really odd. He never said a word, never jeered or spat at Izuku like the other lackies he begrudgingly led around. He was always quiet when burning marks into the smaller boy, focused, and violent. He’d stare at the mottled canvas of bubbling red flesh and peeling pale skin. He’d stare with an unwavering expression, his crimson-red eyes almost mirroring the mutilated body before him in its grotesque state.
Today was no different, and Izuku was passively thankful to be so disassociated. The gods above could only know of the white hot pain he’d be experiencing right now: blackened flesh on his shoulder, flaky and warped, pus oozing from the hand-shaped wound.
Today shouldn’t have been different. It really shouldn’t have, but with a single whisper of death on Bakugo’s tongue, the dynamic changed.
“Take a swan dive off the roof, do yourself a favour.”
It cut through the safety of the ocean waves, ripping him above the tide to crash into violent waves, salt water down his throat, and ice in his veins. It shook him to his core. Sure, he’d been suicide-baited before, but it hadn’t been like this. The blond had been so horribly earnest, so genuine in his statement that it was almost a command.
He’d never been affected by people’s words before, but when submerged back beneath the water, with numbness so deep in his bones he couldn’t feel the ground beneath his feet, he could do nothing but take it. Take it as thick green mucus filled his lungs, resigned to clawing out of nothing but human instinct at the villain’s slimy green flesh. He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t mind.
He didn’t care when All Moght, an older favourite of his and the number one hero, was the one to rescue him. He didn’t feel anything when he was accidentally dragged by the leaping Hero do to an unfortunate loop in his back that had caught on the pro’s pants. He barely registered the question falling from his lips.
“Can I still save people without a quirk?"
Didn’t process the crushing words.
“No, I don’t see ho..” the words clouded over, whisked away by the waves, and gone with the man who’d disappeared from the roof.
Izuku’s brain kept many irrational decisions from even daring to fully form—anything from impulsive actions to stupid thoughts. It’s a shame that one man’s words had such an impact, could sever the ties his logic had on his consciousness, on his decision-making.
He stepped casually towards the edge, his bag still on his back and his feet firmly planted in his shoes. His throat burned from the likely toxic bacteria that had entered his system, his shoulder ached with the mottled mess of peeling inflamed skin, and his limbs were sore from the day’s taxing strain.
He stepped without hesitation, as if taking a simple stroll. There was no waver in his pace, no stop and go, nothing but a direct trajectory from the roof’s centre to falling swiftly down. He watched the buildings tinted windows as he plummeted, smiled when he felt the ground near, and laughed moments before he collided with the pavement. His body cracked sickeningly with the impact, pain overflowing his senses until he could feel absolutely nothing. There was nothing.
It was quiet, so dark, so absolutely nothing for the briefest of moments. It was so calming until he felt a thud in his chest. So fleeting when his index finger twitched. So hopeful, until his eyes fluttered open.
— 0 —
It took an embarrassingly long amount of time for Izuku to actually begin processing what the fuck just happened. He’d bolted up at a 90-degree angle a few minutes after his eyes opened to a starless night sky. He hadn’t even noticed the time of day when he jumped- or stepped off the roof. Observing his surroundings, he’d landed somewhere near a side street, off to the side of the main entrance of the building. It was a one lane street with a thin sidewalk and many condemned buildings along the road. This area of town used to be central Musutafu during the pre-quirk era, and now that the city's centre has moved to a much more modern cluster of buildings, the area here is largely considered abandoned. Crime was a popular activity, but it was thankfully rather quiet.
After his surroundings, Izuku took note of a far more pressing matter. His blood was pooled beneath him, soaking uncomfortably into his uniform and already clotting beneath his hands. It was gross, absolutely vile, but interesting. He was in tact, alove, with blood pumping healthily through his veins, despite the large sticky puddle of his own blood.
That was just it, though; his body was working in perfect health. Izuku was not healthy. His body was intact, but it wasn’t ever this in tact. Gone was the grotesque hand shape on his shoulder; vanished were starburst scars and deep wounds along his torso; free was he of muscle fatigue and lingering exhaustion. He was in mint condition. It was honestly fascinating.
He quickly flung his bag off, grimacing at the blood-soaked bottom but navigating his notebook out of its safe pouch. He didn’t really trust it not to get damaged, especially with how much he got flung around.
Flipping it open to a blank page, he internally grieved the neatness of volume 13. Before he’d begun neatly organizing his analysis, volumes 7–10 were a mess of word vomit and thought garbage. Unfortunately, analyzing what actually happened to him was an occasion that warranted rambling barf, and thus the death of volume 13’s spiff organization.
He began to write with one simple sentence.
“Izuku Midoriya
Quirk: ??”
He sat for a moment, tapping his pencil against the page, before he was diving in.
is it immortality? no that’s silly because i very clearly ceased a heartbeat. reincarnation? most likely. tho self-regeneration is not out of the question, the heart can restart itself after all. it would explain why i have no wounds. why it heals scars. but it shouldn’t have manifested only now. so reincarnation. does it have a limit? how many times could i die until its permanent? would a certain type of death cancel everything out and halt me from waking up? would i ever gain scars? do i heal now that my quirk is active? or do i only regenerate after i’ve died? how long do i remain dead? what are the side effects? is it only when I kill myself? no. that’s illogical. even tho i chose to jump off the roof, the ground, impact, momentum and everything involved killed me. if i kill someone could i bring them back?
He paused. Yeah, that was a bit dark, wasn’t it? He never really dwelled on being called creepy, weirdo, stalker, or freak. He’d heard them before, and if he were any less intelligent, he’d probably take it a lot worse. Unfortunately for his aggressors, he was smart enough to know how important analysis is in the hero community. It’s valuable to civilians with all sorts of harmful quirks. How necessary it is when treating quirked patients. He knew analysis wasn’t creepy, but that point was a bit grim.
would i have to be the one to end their life? or could i resurrect any dead person? does my quirk only affect me? if i can how would that work? stupid thought I can’t resurrect the dead. i likely can’t heal others either. my injuries are healed tho, so are my scars. how severe would an injury need to be to regenerate after death? would it be any at all? only when a certain qualifier is met?
He once again took a pause. “Was this a one-time thing?" He murmured absently.
And yeah, it was pretty impulsively stupid of him to do this, but he was anything if not a very curious boy. So, peeling himself off of the concrete, he gagged at the squelch of blood in his shoes. Pushing past the absolutely nauseating feeling of blood-soaked pants, he climbed the fire escape on the building’s side, leaving a red trail behind that honestly blended with the bright red paint peeling from the metal. Once on the roof, he had even less hesitation, skipping off the roof with a tilt to dive headfirst onto the street again.
Maybe the head would cause a different outcome, considering that was where the quirk factor was stored. You know, in the brain?
He landed with a wet crunch, feeling that the familiar safety of the unfeeling void would overtake him once again.
Maybe it was because he was anticipating seeing the sky again, or maybe the more he died, the easier it got; maybe the regeneration of all his scars and wounds healing made the process take longer; maybe the head injury was close enough to the quirk factor to activate it faster.
Either way, his fingers gained feeling in what felt like a shorter amount of time than before, his heart hammering in his chest as he sat up. He smacked his lips, whipping blood that was dripping from his forehead and spitting out what had pooled in his mouth. His hair was matted with it, with clots in his bangs and dripping into his eyes. It was a bit gross—actually, it was a lot gross. However, it did bring something into question. If his limb was cut off, would it reattach to his body, or would he grow a whole new one? Would he be able to regrow lost organs? That’s a fascinating, if not unsettling, thought. Could he have someone remove all his organs for donation and simply come back with a new, perfectly healthy, well-functioning system?
He whipped the blood from his hands on the front of his uniform shirt, which had stayed relatively undrenched, before scooping up his notebook.
It was only a few minutes of note-taking when he heard frantic footsteps slapping at the ground. Snapping his head up, Izuku spotted a vaguely familiar silhouette. It took a few seconds for him to give a name to the shapes of flowing thin fabric and dark hair, but when the man, no, the hero, slid to his side, it clicked.
“Pro hero Eraserhead?"