It took me a day to really settle in. Inko took me shopping for some clothes and let me pick out which ones I liked. She even did as she promised and had a meeting with the Aldera Junior High principal, where she convinced him to let me start classes there as long as I took remedial courses. Unfortunately that meant uniform shopping, too. The gakuran was weird. After wearing polos and khakis for school my whole life this was very strange to me, but I tried not to let that show.
After getting school supplies, I had to regain my resolve. It was okay that I was enjoying my time in the world, but that wasn't the reason I was here. I started classes the next day and Izuku started training with All Might as well. I can't let him outpace me if I was going to be the one protecting him… I thought for a while on the train ride home. Every time Izuku, or anyone for that matter, gained a power increase it wasn't usually because they got any more powerful, but instead that they learned something new about their quirk or how it functioned. My quirk was based on light… so I had a lot to work with. I knew the basics that light acted as both a wavelength and a particle, and while at university I learned about how researchers performed experiments to make solid light. I started taking mental notes for ideas that I would try later. Secondly, Izuku has 10 months of physical training to even get his quirk. Lucky for me, I physically was the same that I was at 14, which is right after I started working out for school athletics. I wasn't nearly as strong as my 20-year-old body, but I was hopeful it would at least put me ahead of some of my classmates.
"Ryoshi, honey, what are you thinking about? You look so serious." my new mother suddenly chimed in.
It took me off guard but I had to quickly save the situation.
"Um... honestly, a lot. I'm worried about school, I'm worried about Izuku, and I've been trying to figure out what to call you because I don't know if you want me to call you mom or not…"
Inko shed tears and hugged me tightly. Honestly, if the dirty blonde hair didn't peg me as the black sheep of the Midoriya family, the fact that I didn't cry over everything would.
Inko continued talking through tears, "Oh, Ryoshi, I would love it if you called me mom, but you can call me whatever you want! And don't you worry, Izuku likes you a lot; I've never seen him so happy to talk about heroes with someone! And if you need help in school we'll be here for you every step of the way!"
I didn't even mean for it to end up in such an emotional moment, but Inko and Izuku really had a way of tugging at my heartstrings. I stifled the urge to tear up and returned Inko's embrace.
"I know you will. Thank you so much."
It wasn't much longer before we reached home. I needed an excuse to experiment with my quirk, so I told Inko I wanted to spend some time alone on a walk to think about things. I didn't really know where else to go, so I went to the trashed beach to put some of the ideas I had come up with earlier into practice.
I had forgotten how awful Takoba beach looked before Izuku cleaned it… Regardless, I needed to get some training in. After that I would go home, crack open one of my notebooks, and start writing down everything I would need to think about for the foreseeable future, as well as solutions for the problems ahead. I picked a spot that was semi-clean and started brainstorming.
"Okay, I don't have any immunity to my own light, so it's effectively worthless as a blinding tool against others unless I close my eyes or get a support item to help mitigate the light's effect on me."
I had tactic number one down. At the cost of my own sight, or with the appropriate equipment, I could blind opponents with a basic use of my quirk. Next thing to think about was the solid light theory I had pondered. I recycled my dial analogy from before, but this time I imagined the dial changing the light's speed, slowing the light particles down enough to become tangible. I stretched out my hand like I was trying to use the force and imagined the photons in the air moving 100,000 times slower than their initial speed. After some concentration, I had a glowing mass of hard light floating at my fingertips. That ability alone could have all sorts of applications that I wanted to try out, but at that time I needed to move on.
Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. Lasers. This ability brought me to 13's talk about how quirks can kill if not used carefully. If I actually managed to excite light particles based on my powers alone, I would be a very dangerous person for everyone involved… but I absolutely had to try it.
I checked the coast to ensure there were no pedestrians nearby on the shore or in the waters behind where I would be aiming. Once ensuring scene safety, I stretched my hand forward, and pointed at the pile of litter in front of me. It only took me a few moments of focusing my power before I emitted an intense beam of energy directly into the trash pile, singeing it and melting through to the sand below.
After realizing I was now officially a weapon of mass destruction, I continued to do the last thing I could think of with my quirk. I turned the imaginary dial down, envisioning the wavelengths of the light getting closer together. Suddenly, my hand contained a small ball of darkness. There were visual distortions swarming the outsides of the sphere from the light surrounding it, but I had successfully made the photons under my influence move out of the scale of visible light.
I decided that was good for the evening, and made my way home. Inko stopped me on the way inside.
"Hey, Ryoshi, you're just in time for dinner!"
Inko had apparently just set out the plates of food, and Izuku was already digging in. I took my seat and started to eat as well. Izuku took a break to hold a conversation with me.
"Ryoshi! You want to be a hero, right?"
"Yeah, of course I do."
"You should try out for UA with me then! It's where All Might went to school and it's the best hero course in Japan, maybe the world!"
I smiled at his proposition. "That sounds really cool! I'd love to go to the same school as you! And I bet they have really cool pro heroes as teachers there!"
Me and my new brother were having a good time talking about our hero career to come, but I could feel Inko's doubt and sadness coming from her side of the table. She still didn't think Izuku could do it, and I understood why. I'm happy to know he's going to be able to prove her and everyone else wrong.
After dinner, it wasn't long until it was time to lay down for the night. I had been given a futon to sleep on in Izuku's room. It was the Japanese futon, not the American kind. So essentially I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor. However, I definitely wasn't going to complain, as it was certainly better than nothing. Once I was sure Izuku was asleep, I took one of the notebooks I had been given for school and started jotting down everything I could think of that was to come: the USJ, Stain, and everything else. I had some solutions immediately, but others took some serious thought. It absolutely pained me to admit something to myself, but I realized soon that I needed to get some rest… I had my first day of school in the morning.
Getting ready for school was just as tedious as I remember it being. Lucky for me, my "quirk" from my past life was getting dressed and washing up at the speed of light. I had to develop this ability because I usually overslept. My first day of school was the official start of Izuku's 10 months of training to inherit One For All. After this school year, the UA entrance exam was upon us. I had three main objectives. One was obviously to pass middle school, or "junior high," I guess. If I couldn't even do that then I don't think I even deserved to try and become a hero. The second goal was to get ahead of the other students' progress. I needed to bulk up a little more and get a significantly better handle on my quirk. The other applicants will have had the better part of 15 years to practice, while I had just formed a solid understanding of my own abilities. My final goal was to get in the circle of trust for One For All. Izuku would probably tell me, because at the time he was still a bit of a pushover and a crybaby. However, I didn't want to interrogate him and maybe hurt our relationship. I had other ideas but I had quite a bit of time to narrow down exactly how I would proceed.
It barely took me two months to show the teachers as well as the principal at Aldera that I was more than capable of understanding the school work they would give me. I had quite honestly astonished them at my ability to comprehend every subject and recall information. The principal arranged a meeting with Inko to tell her that she believed I was something of a child prodigy due to my aptitude for academics without having any formal education. He insisted I should consider taking advanced courses and applying to the top academic high schools in the country. Inko supported the idea, but for obvious reasons, I politely declined. It was truly ironic, to see someone get disappointed after hearing another say they want to become a hero.
As far as my training went, I had taken to going to the Shizuoka Prefectural Forest Park. After school I would pay the small train fee and get there within an hour, where I would go off the paths into the woods to practice using my quirk as well as train my body. When I would go for a run or do workouts where my hands were free I would practice summoning pure, bright light in one hand and dim solid light in the other. The light color I had settled on was basic white light, as it was naturally the brightest and looked the best to me. Another tactic I implemented was creating gauntlets of solid light around my hands and forearms. After creating them I would punch trees or other hard surfaces, which would in turn help me gain endurance, while increasing the density of my hard light. The results allowed my hard light to take more punishment before breaking.
The last set of things I typically worked on was movement and non-movement based quirk usage. I had seen many times where heroes or villains alike were immobilized and were left powerless to do anything about it. Only those with ridiculous or niche quirks like Overhaul or Kurogiri could usually manage to escape such situations. I wasn't going to be one of those people. I drew heavy inspiration from the bending in the Avatar: The Last Airbender series. The exact movements of the bending styles assisted in the precision and power of the benders' abilities. Those who were the best benders could even manipulate their element with hardly any movement, like King Bumi or Ming-Hua. I sought to emulate that level of control, if I was going to strive to be one of the greatest heroes.
Me and Izuku would both get home around the same time, exhausted from training, and eat dinner with Inko. Our family dynamic had grown a lot closer, especially with me and Izuku being in the same class. One evening we were looking over his hero notebooks together. I pointed at the sketch that I knew to be his own hero costume.
"Who's that?"
Izuku grew nervous upon my asking, "Oh, i-it's nothing, really. Just something I made for a hero costume, you know?" He chuckled uneasily.
I smiled to him. " I can see what the inspiration is… you should probably work on it though. You have good ideas here, but I think this is more rough draft material."
Izuku sort of frowned at the response. "Oh… yeah. I should probably just start from scratch, huh?"
I shook my head, this kid takes everything so personally. "No way, man! I'm talking about optimizing your design, not replacing it with someone else's. Look, everything here is absolutely awesome." I pointed out the rest of his design other than the head. "But it's the design for your hood and mask that I'm 'eh' about. I mean, think about it this way, you want to be like All Might because people see his smile and feel hope, right?"
"Yeah, that's right!" He perked up a bit at that.
I had him hooked. "Well they can't very well see your smile and feel hope if they look at a guy covering his face in a rabbit suit…" I gave him a plain look.
He sweatdropped at that realization and looked back at the sketch. "I-it does look like a rabbit doesn't it…"
"Very much so. You look like you're imitating Miruko instead of All Might." I chuckled at my own joke.
Izuku blushed from embarrassment at that. "S-so what would you suggest?"
I looked over it for a moment. "The costume would be better suited for night activities if it was a darker green and you made most of the white trim black instead. Honestly, I'd get rid of the hood and the mask unless you were going for some sort of support item function. If you're the kind of hero that's going to be front-lining and exerting themselves physically, you're going to want to have maximum visuals and movement. That hood and mask are going to limit your mobility and how well you can see, not to mention the fact that those things give more area for an enemy to grab you."
Izuku nodded along as I spoke, taking my words into account. "I think you're right, I hadn't really considered it before but identity and function actually make up a big part of a hero outfit, not just the looks. That makes me wonder if every pro hero has optimized outfits like that, adding a whole new level to being a hero I hadn't considered befo-"
I grabbed his shoulder because I could see he was about to go into one of his ramblings. "Woah, stay with me, man." I grinned at him.
He snapped back to reality, and looked at me, smiling nervously and rubbing the back of his head. "Haha, sorry. Guess you're probably used to it by now…"
"No sweat, bro. It's a unique quality, I find it endearing." I told him honestly.
He smiled genuinely to me. "Thanks, Ryoshi. I know it hasn't been very long, but honestly… I think you're the best brother I could have asked for. You've been so supportive and nice to me since you showed up... it makes me feel like I never even had real friends before you. I'm... I'm just really happy you came into our lives, and I want you to know how much I appreciate you."
Sappy little bastard was going to make me cry. "Aw, thanks man. That really means the world to me. I hope you know you can always trust me and count on me."
We agreed we should probably turn in for the night after that. I stayed up just a while longer planning out my hero suit. I had two main things I wanted to add. The first was actual armor. I know they make it because of Ida's costume and All Might's old support item. It didn't need to be Iron Man's suit or anything; I wasn't trying to resist tank missiles. But I wanted it to be enough to resist basic bullets and blades. There were a number of times in the story where something catastrophic happened because of a gun or someone with a sword or knife. The other main thing was a helmet with a visor. I needed the visor to have an adjustable anti reflective coating that could keep up with the intensity of my own light. Did I have any idea how they would do it or the science behind it? No. Did I care? Not particularly, that was the support company's job.
The months passed with much of the same routine of school, training, and family bonding. Until one day, with about 3 months until the UA entrance exam, I finally came up with a plan to insert myself into the secret of One For All. I asked Inko to let me have an early dismissal from school because there was a free hiking class I wanted to take at Shizuoka Forest Park. I lied to her, again. It didn't make me feel good, but I needed to talk to All Might without Izuku there. Once I left school early, I started venturing towards Takoba beach, hoping it would be a day when All Might was there early to meet Izuku. I had to mull over my thoughts; I spent time thinking about how I would essentially interrogate the world's greatest hero. Eventually I caught up to him. It wasn't "All Might" in the flesh, however. It was ordinary Toshinori Yagi, looking skeletal as usual. I approached him.
"Excuse me, sir?"
"Hello, young man. Is there something I can do to help you?"
"I think there is… you've been training my brother, Izuku. I know that you're All Might. I want you to tell me what's going on."
His face was awestricken. He looked down, deliberating with himself on what to do. He clenched his fist and looked at me gravely.
"Young Midoriya hasn't mentioned having a brother, and if you wanted popularity you would've already turned in photographs or something to the media. So you're either here to blackmail me or you want something else."
My face became gravely serious. "You told my brother he could become a hero. You're having him push himself through hell so he can achieve that goal he's always dreamed of, but you still know he doesn't have quirk. What I want is to protect Izuku. His mom took me in when I had nothing and I have to make it up to her by making sure both of her sons stay safe! So, All Might, you're gonna tell me what your plan is to keep my brother safe and not crush his dreams... Because you and I both know that even with all the spirit in the world, he doesn't have a chance without a quirk."
Toshinori looked on solemnly and then sighed. "I'm training Izuku to inherit my power. It's a unique quirk that has been passed down through multiple generations. Young Midoriya inspired me one day with his character and his actions, so I have chosen him to be my successor."
I didn't pretend to look shocked, though I could have. "I need to be in on this, then. You're not always going to be there for him, and in those moments, he needs someone he can go to with this. So in just a while, when he gets here, you tell him that I'm a part of this circle of trust."
Toshinori sighed once again. "Alright, kid. You got guts and you lay it down straight, I respect that. What's your name, anyway?"
I smirked. "Ryoshi. Ryoshi Midoriya."
All Might and I talked more about the history of One For All, and its abilities. I feigned ignorance for the sake of the conversation, though it was slightly aggravating to pretend I didn't already know all of what he was saying. Soon enough, Izuku was running his way towards the beach, stopping in shock when he saw me on the scene.
"Ryoshi?! What are you doing here?! U- uh why are you talking to this stranger- uh guy? I don't know him! I think I should get going!"
I chuckled and Toshinori just shook his head, waving his hand in a dismissive way to Izuku as he spoke.
"It's alright, fanboy. He knows everything. I told him. Apparently your brother here was doing reconnaissance on us and thought to approach me today."
Izuku turned to me, not quite angry but certainly confused with a bit of frustration.
"You were spying on me?!"
I defended myself, "You were coming to a beach that was essentially a junk yard that hardly anyone went to! I was just making sure you weren't meeting up with bad people or doing drugs or something! After mom took me in, I promised myself I would always make sure you were safe! You're my best friend and she's done everything for me…"
He looked down, taking a moment to understand. "I get it, it's okay. But you can always just ask me about these things. You told me I could count on you, remember? I take that to heart."
I nodded my head, reaffirming his point. "You're right. I'm sorry I didn't just ask you, Izuku. From now on, no secrets between us, okay?"
He smiled confidently and nodded. "Promise!"
I sighed and started to walk away.
"W-wait, where are you going?" Izuku questioned.
"Well, you have a beach to clean don't you? This isn't my training." I grinned and proceeded to leave the area. "See you tonight!"
- Author's Notes: -I hope this chapter didn't seem too boring or tedious, a lot of that was due to explaining the MC's quirk and how he was going to train it.
Next chapter will likely have more action with the UA entrance exam.
After some deliberation, as far as pairing with the MC goes I'm leaning towards either Yaoyorozu or no one. Time will tell which I go for.
I still need someone to storyboard this fic with, so again if you're interested you can email me at LukeWindsortheAuthor or let me know in the comments below!
Thank you again for reading, as always leave any constructive criticism you may have in the reviews!
This story will be cross-posted to AO3 (Archive of Our Own), where it will receive updates first.