Chapter Text
In most universes, by a simple twist of fate, Neito Monoma and Izuku Midoriya end up on opposing teams in the U.A. first year’s joint training. In slightly fewer universes, Neito Monoma attempts to snag a copy of Midoriya’s quirk for his own. Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for pretty much the entirety of Class 1-A, in most universes, Monoma’s quirk doesn’t copy One for All properly and it's assumed that One for All is a stockpiler. This universe is not one of those universes.
Many scientists have attempted to string together theories about how quirks appear to not only disobey pretty much every pre-quirk law of physics, but tend to outright spit on most of them. These theories tend to be riddled with exceptions, scientific mumbo-jumbo, and outright guesswork. The prevailing theory that most non-crackpot scientists end up at can be summed up as, “We don’t know and quirks are bullshit.” And that’s from scientists that haven’t looked at One for All, the bullshittiest quirk of them all.
One for All is essentially a hodge-podge Frankenstein monster of quirk that allows wielders to tap into what a man named Yoichi Shigaraki once described as “The One Force” before seven and a half other ghosts told him in no vague terms what a stupid name that was. Regardless, since the user of One for All is tapping into an extradimensional wellspring of power, through a large amount of quirk bullshit, they don’t actually have the quirk when they’re not actively using it.
In most universes, when Neito Monoma leaps at Izuku Midoriya, Midoriya is just barely too exhausted from learning exactly how bullshit his quirk is to react in time. Midoriya not reacting in time to Monoma means that he’s unable to use his Full Cowling technique; leading to Monoma being unable to copy One for All, concluding that it’s a “blank.”
In this universe, Izuku Midoriya, at the age of 12, found a series of papers written by a certain Dr. Kyudai Garaki that detailed his slow descent into madness thanks to how every quirk he studied spit on every known scientific law. Thanks to this late-night reading binge, Izuku Midoriya is well aware of how bullshit quirks are. So when he heard that he was going to be manifesting six new quirks from within One for All (an already particularly bullshitty quirk), he thought, “Sure. That might as well happen.” And so he was a little bit less exhausted, and therefore a little bit faster to bring up Full Cowling. And so Monoma manages to snag a copy of One for All.
Approximately eight minutes and three seconds later, Class 1-A manages to narrowly win the final joint training match with a score of 4-2.
Approximately thirty seconds after that, Neito Monoma is in the second bed from the left in Recovery Girl’s office, getting lectured by said heroine about his very broken arm. Luckily for Monoma, Vlad King sent one of his classmates with him to make sure that he makes it safely to Recovery Girl’s office and back. Unfortunately for many people, including (but not limited to) the underground’s rumored de facto bogeyman and leader All for One, Vlad King chose to send Pony Tsunotori, Monoma’s close friend.
Approximately eight minutes and forty seconds after Neito Monoma copied Izuku Midoriya’s quirk, Monoma is in the second bed from the left in Recovery Girl’s office with two perfectly functional arms and a sudden wave of exhaustion and hunger. In a continued streak of unluckiness for All for One, Recovery Girl is, thanks to a series of intense training exercises, out of her typical gummies.
Approximately nine minutes after Neito Monoma copied Izuku Midoriya’s quirk, Neito Monoma is supplied with a Recovery Girl certified juice box. Upon request, nine minutes and one second after Neito Monoma copied Izuku Midoriya’s quirk, Pony Tsunotori is supplied with a juice box as well.
Approximately nine minutes and thirty seconds after Neito Monoma copied Izuku Midoriya’s quirk, Pony Tsunotori sets down her juice box to gesture with her hands, in the midst of explaining how frustrated she was about her performance in the third match of the Joint Training. “I wish I could help her get stronger,” thinks an equally frustrated Neito Monoma.
Approximately nine minutes and forty five seconds after Neito Monoma copied Izuku Midoriya’s quirk, Monoma sets down his juice box to make a point of his own. Nine minutes and fifty eight seconds after Neito Monoma copied Izuku Midoriya’s quirk, Pony Tsunotori picks up Neito Monoma’s juice box and takes a sip.
Approximately ten minutes after Neito Monoma copied Izuku Midoriya’s quirk, Yoichi Shigaraki, younger brother to All for One, sits bolt upright in the timeless void he calls home and quietly, but with no little amount of feeling, utters three words: “What the fuck.”
Somewhere, deep in the bowels of U.A., a principal begins cackling. While Nedzu is unclear as to why, precisely, he felt the urge to start, he knows, like all geniuses, when the urge to cackle strikes you, you cackle.