Chapter Text
Izuku is one and is like most boys his age. He giggles and smiles and crawls and learns to walk. He loves bright colors and toys and he babbles to his first words to his mother. (It’s mama, Midoria Inko cries and does not stop for hours.)
Izuku is two and is like most boys his age. He laughs and runs and shoves crayons up his nose when he’s supposed to be taking a nap. He loves outside and makes massive messes and throws temper tantrums that leave all the toilet paper in the house unfurled on the floor and toothpaste tubes squeezed out into sinks.
Izuku is Izuku is three and is like most boys his age. He is short, and sweet and hugs his mother goodbye when it’s time to go to pre-school. He loves heroes and Kacchan and his lets him save her when he plays All Might.
Izuku is four but he is not like most boys his age. His classmates shout and run during recess while the teachers look on fondly. He gets beat up behind the school by boys three times his size. His classmates find frogs in the creek and fireflies after dark. He goes from doctor’s appointment to doctor’s appointment and prays the doctors are wrong; that they find something (anything) that would let him be normal, that would let him be a hero. His classmates’ parents tuck them in at night with a bedtime story and a kiss. He falls asleep to the sound of his parents arguing over a fact of his genetics. His father leaves, and he never comes back. His classmates learn kanji and numbers. He learns a single truth: everyone is not created equal. Izuku is four and he is quirkless.
Izuku is five and he buries himself in schoolwork and hero news to ignore the stinging burns and scent of smoke that follows him home. He learns to lie and mislead and distract. He learns and plots and schemes and prays that this is all just a bad dream and he’ll wake up any moment and his dad will be home, that Kacchan will play with him again, that he won’t fall asleep to his mothers muffled sobs at night and that everything will go back to normal. (It isn’t, and it won’t, this is permanent, even if he doesn’t want to admit it.)
Izuku is six when his life changes again. He had made a sort of routine in the past year and a half since discovering he was quirkless. He wakes up, gets ready for school (he’s in proper school now, its not any better) and eats breakfast before hugging his mother goodbye. He walks to school and when he gets there, endures harsh words and harsher actions as he tries to stuff his tiny brain full of knowledge about everything he can until lunch. (Heroes have to be smart) Kacchan and his lackeys always steal his lunch (no matter where he hides or who he tells) but Izuku tells himself its okay and tries to ignore the ringing of Kacchan’s explosions in his ears. He gets beat up instead of one of Kacchan’s victims at recess and struggles through afternoon classes. He runs home as fast as possible. (He doesn’t want to be around Kacchan any longer than necessary.) and he lies to his mother about why he smells of smoke and is covered in minor burns. He sits himself in front of the news and writes his hero notes for the future.
It starts simply enough, with a special interview with two new heroes that Izuku had been really interested in learning more about. The excavation hero: Power loader, and the telekinetic hero: Push-and-Pull. Izuku sits on the edge of his seat as the two heroes answer the host’s questions. Both heroes heavily rely on and/or build their own support items, and they spend most of their interview stressing their importance in heroics. Izuku finds himself writing down their every word and wondering (If he could learn to build, could he be a hero too?)
Izuku is six and he can’t stop himself from delving into the world of support and design and engineering. He sits at his desk and fills his notebooks full of battle strategies and weapon designs. He spends hours pouring over the support items of heroes and how they use them. From Present Mic’s directional speaker to push-and-pull’s net gun. He fills notebook after notebook of ideas and childish blueprints.
Izuku is seven and writing isn’t enough. Izuku bothers his mother until she enrolls him in an online engineering course. He spends hours watching videos about physics and chemistry and everything in-between. He chases heroes to see them in action and he develops a mutter. He writes out ideas and considers what concepts he’d need to master to build them. Izuku spends his time watching how it’s made and hero interviews and studying for his schoolwork. (He finds Kanji boring and math simple, he doesn’t understand why he should care, not when there are so many other interesting things to learn)
Izuku is seven and he’s acing all his schoolwork without even trying, he can do math better than most middle schoolers' and knows more kanji than anyone else in his grade. (it’s to be expected, with how much he writes these days) it angers Kacchan but he can’t find it in him to care. Not when there are so many other things to care about. Like his chemistry homework and that English dictionary (he wants to better understand English blueprints and engineering textbooks.)
Izuku is eight and he discovers an abandoned beach full of trash. He spends his allowance on tools and supplies at the hardware store and his free time building strange devices in the sand. He comes home covered in sand and soot and oil and happier than he was before he left. Kacchan and his lackeys beat him up after school and the teachers ignore it. Izuku learns to be sneaky and he watches and he learns. He learns that Kacchan always leads with a right hook and can never protect his left knee. He learns that the boy with the fingers’ bones are brittle and would be easy to snap. He learns that prehensile eyes is slow and would be easy to get behind. (He never acts on this knowledge, but it’s always there; he can’t decide if it’s a comfort or a curse) He begs and begs his mother to enroll him in a martial arts program. They visit no less than seven dojos and only receive apologies from the owners who don’t want to take on a quirkless kid. (Izuku turns to his inventions with renewed vigor and stinging in his eyes.) He Doesn’t cry, not anymore, he won’t give them the satisfaction. (And if he looks up videos on self defense when no one is looking, well, no one has to know.) Izuku finds comfort in pre-quirk era comics and video games and lets them inspire his inventions.
Izuku is nine and he meets mister Kurasuma. Mister Kurasuma is the science teacher who wanted to be a support technician but wasn’t quite creative enough to make his own designs, and settled for teaching science (not really science Izuku thinks, too simple, too certain, not nearly enough of the uncertainties that fill any true scientific discipline.) to a bunch of raucous nine- and ten-year old’s. (Izuku doesn’t understand his choice of profession, kids are mean) But Izuku likes mister Kurasuma. He’s a tall -slightly spindly- man with salt and pepper hair and prominent laugh lines. He doesn’t let anyone bully Izuku in his classroom and is willing to go to extreme lengths to keep it that way. Mister Kurasuma is the first person Izuku tells about his hobbies and -much to Izuku’s surprise and eternal gratitude- completely supports him. Mister Kurasuma gets him set up with more difficult work and pays for him to take an online engineering class. (Inko, to her credit, tries her best to tell him it’s unnecessary, Mister Kurasuma insists it’s an honor to get to support such a brilliant mind as Izuku’s and refuses to accept a cent)
Izuku is nine and he drinks in the positive attention from someone other than his mother like it’s the only water in the desert. (It might as well be, Izuku is dreadfully lonely) Mister Kurasuma’s attention and kind words are a desperately needed balm against the endless teasing from his classmates. (and to Mister Kurasuma’s endless rage, other teachers) Kacchan’s quirk has developed significantly since they were four, and wounds that used to sting for a few minutes burn for hours and leave him in the nurse’s office with a bag of ice. (No one seems to care that Izuku now spends more time out of class than in it)
Izuku is ten and Mister Kurasuma signs him up for a science fair in the inner city and Izuku (despite mounting excitement) would never guess how much it would change his life.