"YOUNG MIDORIYA! WHILE I AM DISHEARTENED THAT YOU CURRENTLY DON'T BELIEVE YOURSELF TO BE WORTHY OF ONE FOR ALL, I AM STILL OVERJOYED THAT YOU DID NOT OUTRIGHT REJECT THE POSSIBILITY!"
On his left, inky voids with specks of blue pinned him down with their presence, or… lack thereof? He didn't exactly know.
"AND AS YOU HAD PREVIOUSLY INSPIRED ME TO WORK PAST MY OWN LIMITS, I, TOO, AM MORE THAN HAPPY TO RETURN THE FAVOR BY HELPING YOU TRAIN FOR THE YUUEI ENTRANCE EXAM!"
And in front of him…
"NOW, ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE YOU TO YOUR NEW TRAINING PARTNER, WHO WILL ALSO BE TAKING THE HEROICS EXAM WITH YOU! WE'VE BEEN ACQUAINTED FOR MANY YEARS, AND I WOULD HAVE FILED A RECOMMENDATION FOR HER PERSONALLY IF SHE WASN'T SO STUBBORN ABOUT TAKING THE REGULAR EXAM!"
Smug fractal eyes pierced into his brain matter and jumbled up the insides.
"YOUNG MIDORIYA IZUKU! THIS IS HATSUME NAJIMI! YOUNG HATSUME NAJIMI! THIS IS MIDORIYA IZUKU!"
「You've got to be kidding me.」
"PLAY NICE, YOU TWO!"
…
…
"IS THIS SOME SORT OF STARING CONTEST?"
…
"A METHOD OF TELEPATHIC COMMUNICATION, PERHAPS?"
…
"Kids, you gotta help me out, I don't exactly understand what's going on here. Is young Hatsume using one of her skills? I don't mean to be rude, but you two are freaking me out. Could you at least blink? Move a facial muscle? Hello?"
「We're well acquainted All Might, no need for introductions, we're well past that. Heya, Anshin'in-san? Mind telling me how you met All Might? Or, you know, why you didn't tell me about it in the… three years I've been living in your house?」
"Don't feel like it right now, later."
「Awesome. Thanks. I can't look you in the eyes and tell you I didn't at least entertain the thought of this being the situation I would be in today, and now that I think about it, I shouldn't have even expected it to be anything else. Of course you know All Might, and of course he's helping you train for the entrance exam if he's also helping the kid he bumped into in the middle of a villain attack, and of course he'd combine the two trainings because that's simply more efficient. I think I just didn't want to face the possibility.」
"YOUNG MIDORIYA! WHILE I HAVE BEEN LISTENING TO YOUR CONVERSATION, IT HAS BECOME APPARENT THAT I AM VERY LOST! WOULD YOU MIND EXPLAINING THE RELATIONSHIP DYNAMIC BETWEEN YOU TWO? IT WOULD BE OF MUCH HELP!"
…
「It's infinitely more complicated then it sounds, but she's my adoptive older sister. I'd say something like welcome to my personal hell, but it seems you've already taken the tour, liked what you saw, and purchased the deed.」
"This is payback for you throwing yourself at the sludge villain yesterday when I told you my precog goes haywire trying to path protagonists."
「I'm well aware.」
And thus began the ten-month grueling task of altruistic, uncompensated manual labor.
He eventually got his answers out of Anshin'in, albeit it took some bribery. It's not like she wasn't able to make money from thin air, she just wanted the satisfaction of him having to fork it over.
She met All Might at the All for One fight five years back, when she tried to support him against the Minus wielder. She's mad at him for throwing himself at a sludge villain? You should have seen the look on his face when she told him she threw herself at a Shishime Iihiko-level threat without a single protagonist as a backup.
She also never told him All for One wasn't dead. Her reasoning? "It would crush his poor heart, I don't want to be the one to break the news to him, you can do that." 「Fuck you too, Anshin'in.」
Since most of the months ahead were just grueling pain upon grueling pain, he'll just skip over to the highlight reel, as follows.
All Might, desperately trying to convince him of his worthiness to inherit One For All, being put against his utter lack of self-esteem and ability to divert the conversation.
All Might jokingly suggesting before a spar that they fight to the death, and then subsequently learning to not do that under any circumstances.
All Might asking if Anshin'in was Najimi's planned hero name, which he had to temporarily defuse by calling it an inside joke and nothing more since Medaka just had to publish a barely edited autobiography which thank god was relatively obscured by history due to not seeming very autobiographical to people who weren't already in on Abnormalities「using nicknames or last names for non-public figures, so I guess I'm lucky she referred to me as Kumagawa-kun instead of Naked Apron-senpai or something equally embarrassing. After all, my Naked Apron days are long behind me, wouldn't be an accurate description anymore.」 And the fact that cluing All Might or, god forbid, Nedzu into the true nature of his existence before he even got into Yuuei would probably have disastrous consequences for him, a la harder homework.
Anshin'in singing 19th century mining hymns as she hauled trash even though he knew she was cheating with a skill and hadn't broken a sweat.
Desperately trying to convince Mei that their secret daily rendezvous weren't something weird, or sexual, or cult rituals, or making babies without her, until Anshin'in got her to drop the subject entirely by bribing her with the daily scrap haul.
All Might trying to find a way to politely tell him he shouldn't use piled-up scrap as target practice for his screws since it apparently goes against the spirit of cleaning the beach if the trash is scattered across it, becoming harder to pick up, before just giving up and telling him he'd need to clean up the mess it made.
If this were manga, the author would be wise to give these moments a couple panels, he thinks.
Oh, and the fact that All Might tried one last time to pep-talk him into accepting One For All, offering his hair to him to consume, yes, consume.
That's putting him off One For All more than his self-esteem issues, gross. He's a fanboy, but not that much of a fanboy.
So yeah. He cleaned the beach. He'd say Anshin'in cleaned the beach too, but it didn't count because she's a Not-Equal and is therefore slacking off if she doesn't will the trash away in an instant.
Being fair, that applied to him as well. But at least he wasn't using skills to clean it up on principle, unlike Anshin'in who definitely used a strength and stamina skill at least half the time and he can't technically prove it but it's Anshin'in and she would. Her arms look like twigs. She shouldn't be able to fireman's carry a fridge.
With his training complete and his mind still stuck on trying to find a less weird or disgusting way to hypothetically receive One For All, he was walking to the entrance exams with Anshin'in, who was probably weighing how many skills she wants to show off today or if she should use an intelligence skill to ace the written exam. 「Not-Equal privilege, tch. Some of us only have one skill! Not me, I have four. But some of us do!」
Speaking of, should he use All Fiction today? Probably not, right? It's his trump card. He could probably pass with Book Maker, or just his screws. He'll save it for later.
He's confident he'll pass the written exam. He wasn't the best student in his first life, but Hisashi made sure to pass on his unhealthy obsession with approaching omniscience. Or a fragment of it, at least. As much of it as he could before he decided to become a quirkist deadbeat. It's not like Mom's was particularly powerful, why was quirklessness the dealbreaker?
Ah, he always gets like this when he starts thinking about Hisashi. Don't mind him. He's sure his father is having a grand old time touring the brothels of the fifty states, since the checks haven't came his way for three years. Don't have to pay child support if your ex-wife is dead! Life pro tip!
Ah, he always gets like this when he starts thinking about Hisashi. Don't mind him…
"You can stop your mental loop now."
After being stuck in a loop of internal antipathy towards his biological father for twenty minutes straight, he suddenly found himself right outside Yuuei.
「Thanks, Anshin'in.」 She probably used a telepathic skill. He was going to mess with her, as always. 「You know I always get like this when I start thinking-」
"If I have to hear that phrase one more time, I will put you in the fucking ground again." The dead glare she leveled at him told him she was serious. She mellowed it when he cowered back slightly. "If you got over your self-resentment and accepted the protein filament of destiny, or if you were gonna use that, I wouldn't pity you enough to say this…"
"Good luck. Watch out for the hurricane, six o'clock."
Something tells him she'd tell him the first part either way, but 「goddammit she's leaving me to temper her alone- and, she's gone.」
"iiiiiiiiiIIIIIIIZUUUUUUUUU-" Suddenly, the familiar taste of concrete? No, brick, overrode his taste-buds. "-KUN!"
He addressed the woman currently on top of him. If this were his previous life, or if this weren't his sister (he can say confidently that he has more dignity than Maguro), he'd probably be tempted by the dark arts of teenage hormones to make a perverted quip about the situation, but he definitely doesn't feel that way towards the slightly-manic pinkette currently straddling him.
「Hey, Mei.」
Mei was, with all sincerity, the most normal person in the Hatsume household.
One may point out a discrepancy. 「But Izuku, you internally monologued last chapter "Honestly, their parents are pretty normal"!」 He is known to be a habitual liar, yes. He also fudged the details on their professions, too. The readers simply have not unlocked his full jump villain backstory, have they not yet noticed?
Eccentric? Yes. At least she's open about the extent of her eccentricities.
Passionate? Who isn't? Sounds like a dull existence.
No sense of boundaries? Not exactly normal, but no one in that house is totally neurotypical.
Genius? Thank you. She deserves the recognition.
So Mei is a prodigal Mad Scientist with no sense of boundaries.
Anshin'in is a nigh-omnipotent being who's lived for trillions of years, who may or may not have body-snatched a three-mo- and we're terminating this line of thought, with a simulated reality complex and a temporarily quelled (as much as she claims she's past it, he knows a thing or two about relapsing) lust for self-termination.
He's on his second life, hasn't fully recovered his memories (he might be repressing his death, which is something that he's more than comfortable with doing for now. For all he's concerned, whatever was able to kill him, at the ripe age of thirty-eight, no less, can remain in the pits of his mental Tartarus, oh and some other things but they're not important), and he's pretty sure any Abnormality, especially Minuses, would be referenced in psychology textbooks for years to come if they went to any other person besides Doctor Hitoyoshi with their problems. Doctor-patient confidentiality in play? They'll tell them they aren't equipped to handle it. He knows this, he was, after all, he did the sleepless work of collecting profiles on the life of two thousand yet-untracked abnormals just so his parents wouldn't beat him when they found out their method of raising him made him a special child, courtesy of protocol followed by Hitoyoshi-sensei.
Juuuust kidding! Too dark? His parents were only emotionally neglectful, and he had a chronic fear that disappointing them would lead to them escalating it to physical neglect. Case in point, he's probably the most psychologically fucked up minus there is, and if it were him specifically going to an actual psychologist, especially just before he went to Hakoniwa, he'd be put under the finest of psychological microscopes for decades to come.
Yes, yes, he's a very special boy, he's an M.C. Escher-esque maze of psychological problems self-cannibalizing like a weird, noneuclidian Ouroboros. This isn't his pity party, he's talking about the Hatsumes.
His adoptive mother, Hatsume Haia, is a lawyer who keeps giving him tips on how to break the law without technically breaking the law. Even if she agrees with said law. He's pretty sure she's also moonlighting as a vigilante, or something similar, because she is extremely bad at hiding things and there is no way she developed field combat experience in the courtroom. Did she? He's actually not sure. No, seriously, apparently she publicly challenged a coworker who tried to recommend her disbarment (reportedly, she was telling her obviously guilty client that he was breaking the law wrong and wasn't even breaking it in a fun way, he's been to her office, he's heard the rumors) to a duel, mano a mano.
The man resigned in disgrace a week after said duel. He'd say he doesn't want to know what happened in the duel that was so humiliating for the desk-job lawyer to resign from his desk job, but he'd be lying. No one at her firm has tried to bring up her disbarment anymore. Partly due to cowardice, partly because she's way too good at her job and disbarring her would mean losing their ace. He's pretty sure that's a form of corruption. She winked at him when he brought it up. He'd rather not dig any deeper after that.
His adoptive father, Hatsume Eito, is the CEO of a national Support item conglomerate who is also somehow the four-(soon-to-be five, according to him)-term democratically-elected head of the International Hero Support Worker's Union. One would think that is a conflict of interest that would put him out of the running, yes, one would think. Where his adoptive mother keeps relatively hush about her past (she likes 'being a cryptid', in her words), his adoptive father wears it on his sleeve. Typical rich-kid upbringing, actually grew up really spoiled monetarily, except for the time he tried to defect to an insurrectionary cell out of spite for his emotionally distant father after graduating his private middle school and came back the next day with a bag of textbooks and a harsher vocabulary, but he's made it a point that that is a family-only conversation point and that "we don't talk about those fucking dogmatists" in front of the union. He inherited the company from his late father at age 20, and immediately fired 60% of the entire company's management due to "gross exploitation and also half of them only had their jobs because of nepotism so it was inevitable." Immediately raised the companies minimum salary two-fold. Held democratic elections for said open managerial positions within the factories themselves for local management, and then had individual factories send elected representatives from their own factories for a final, all employee election for company-level management.
The mere thought of organizing this projects the concept of a logistical nightmare into one's very soul, but apparently he wanted a larger challenge. Put his own position up for election within the representative base that the workers sent up, for them to report to the workers, tally a vote, and report back, and won. Apparently, his first stunt really warmed him up to the workers, and the elections after were the tipping point. By then, the company board tried to oust him. The strike following almost bankrupted the company, lasted three months before they ran out of goodwill with the strikebreakers. In his own words, "Scabs can only take so much picking at before the wound reopens." Or in non-metaphorical terms, the strikebreakers got tired of the working conditions themselves, and ironically, started gradually joining the strike. The board eventually gave.
Keep in mind, this is his icebreaker. He just starts monologuing. He goes on like this. For ten minutes straight. Then he takes a breath. And then he goes for another ten minutes. Eventually, one memorizes the story after prolonged exposure to his adoptive father. It is inevitable, it takes no energy to recall, so Izuku is laying it out for now. Mostly.
Then, there was the I-Island Attempted Uprising Incident, which is something that Izuku will leave to explain itself for now. Eight years pass, he's the head of the union for four years as of now, turned it from a national union to an international union. He'd like to believe his father's insurrection days are over, but he's caught him mumbling about "guillotining these fucking ghouls" while he brooded in the corner at the annual International Support Gala staring at the Military Support entourage, which he was his plus one for the year he was adopted, after which he started taking Mei again for… reasons.
Look, he's not sorry he indulged his request. He's probably more bitter about the fact that he undid it, anyways. He saw the shine in his eyes after he did that, he's not a blind man, but he's past the whole 'senseless massacre' thing he used to do to people who annoyed him. Even if it was cathartic after having to hear them hypothesize about how to equip their autonomous gun drones for max effectiveness.
He's just hoping his adoptive father can temper his lust for government overthrow at least while he's still in hero school. It would make parent-teacher conferences very awkward.
The Hatsume household heads are abnormal for practically opposite reasons, now that he thinks about it. One's a probably corrupt intentionally cryptic lawyer who beats up people who have problems with her, the other's an ideologically-charged way too transparent rich-snob-turned-insurrectionary-communist who broods in the corner and glares at his enemies. It's a match made in hell. They both refuse to tell him how they met. He almost doesn't want to know.
So, a suicidal almost-god with a simulation complex, a born-loser M. C. Escher-style Ouroboros diagram of psychological trauma with a major inferiority complex, a cryptid ace lawyer who freely and openly tells people how to break the law correctly, and an extremely talkative heir to a national conglomerate who unionized a fifth of the mainstream support industry out of spite for his emotionally neglectful late father.
Yes, the prodigal eccentric gearhead is definitely the most objectively normal person out of the bunch.
"Iiiiiiiiizuuuuuuuuuuuuu." Speaking of her, she was repeatedly poking into his cheek. "You're in your own head again. You've been staring into space for the last ten seconds. I'm bored."
「Sorry, Mei, long morning. Did you get enough sleep and eat breakfast? Did you remember to take your meds? I don't want you blowing up your lab desk in the middle of the test, please tell me you at least took your ADHD medication.」 He really hopes so. She needs to be ready for the written exam, there's no claiming your test blew up. Mei… could probably manage that actually, best not to tempt fate with that one.
"I got 8 hours of sleep, a nutritious breakfast, and I remembered to take my medicine. You, on the other hand, look like a ghoul." She accused him, which, fair, but he has dignity.
「You wound me, Mei! You know my eye-bags are chronic!」 He said, unconvincingly.
"When was the last time you had more than 5 consecutive hours of sleep?" Not answering that one. "That's what I thought. See, I can be a responsible older sibling! Relatively." She tacked on that last part quite hushed. He'll call her bluff.
「Yes, Mei, you are a very responsible older sibling who is definitely living the healthiest lifestyle in the household.」 He said, monotone. 「Speaking of, your shirt is inside out.」
"Really?" She said, worried and gullible.
「No.」 He intoned, as flat as he possibly could. 「Could you stop straddling me? Just because I know the taste of brick doesn't mean I enjoy being pinned to it.」
She looked confused, then looked down. "Oh right! I forgot I was doing that, sorry." She stood up, brushed herself off, and waited for him to get up so they could talk face to face. He was a bit shorter than the height he plateau'd at last life, but he was still taller than Mei by nine centimeters, which he weaponized. "Make sure you pass the exams! I'm a shoe-in, but you might be unlucky, as usual. See ya!"
「Good luck, Mei! Don't blow up your lab table!」 She turned around and made a face as she was running towards the support exam location, so he had to double down. 「Seriously! I'm still not sure if they fine us for these things! I'm not paying for that! You better not make me!」
And, he was alone. Time to fully don his mask again, to make a good impression. He's pretty sure he saw Katsuki pass earlier while he was staring at the sky from the pavement, if the scowl directed at his supine form, and the muttered "Damn Deku." was enough indication.
Now, he'll make his way towards the testing center- and he's falling. Oh boy, he can't wait to taste-
「Eh?」 He stopped falling. He didn't use All Fiction, and if the abrupt sensation on his back and lack of ground on his feet was any indication…
"Are you ok? Sorry, I used my quirk on you without permission. It's a bad omen to trip and fall." Huh, she's cute. No, bad hormones! He's 38+15, it's weird. He took a second to recompose himself and his mask, to the best of his ability. "Hey, are you crying?"
「No! These are happy tears! That someone would care enough to make sure I don't eat brick!」 His smile was a little more genuine then usual, he wiped his tears. Fake crying was so much easier with this body, it's amazing. 「It's not like faceplanting into bricks powers up my quirk or something, can you imagine? You come to the Heroics exam, ready to fight for your dreams! You look forward, and see the breathtaking visage of Yuuei! You look off to the side, and you see a kid hunched over, repeatedly slamming his face into the walkway. He's clearly freaking out about the exam, so you go over to comfort him, make sure he's alright, but when you ask him if he's alright, he reprimands you for interrupting him! That's when the big reveal comes: The boy's quirk is that repeated cranial contact with hardened clay allows him to power up and shoot lasers from their fingers! Sounds like a stand, honestly, I can see it.」 He's rambling, dammit. Well, at least she seems to find it funny, given how she's barely containing herself.
She composes her facial expression, and plays along. "His superhero name: Blockhead!" She looks like she's about to laugh at what she's got queued up. "The 'Don't Try This At Home' Hero!" That's his queue to follow up!
「Got it in one!」 He equipped his trivia voice. 「Fun fact: his title used to be the Cranial Hero, but he caved in to public pressure to change it after an incident with an overenthusiastic cosplayer and a wayward construction palette.」 And, scene. That's a wrap everyone. Good bit!
Take a day's rest, you've earned it! Wait, there's still a test he has to take, damn.
She sighs, built-up tension in her shoulders releasing to a much more clearly manageable level. "Thanks, I needed that. This is really nerve-wracking! I think I kinda psyched myself out. Sorry for bothering you right before the test, I was coming up to you because I thought you looked kinda familiar. I think I thought you were like, one of my old classmates, or something, I don't know, you've kinda got this, familiar aura? I don't know what I'm saying, uhh, deja vu, I guess." A fellow rambler! Improvisational monologuing, an under-appreciated art form. "And it's weird, right? Because, like, we clearly go to different schools, I've literally never seen hair like that I mean I'd think even in the age of quirks that's a one-of-a-kind hair color/style mix, you look like Spike Spiegel, you know, from that old anime Cowboy Bebop, sorry!" Tough, but fair. He preferred manga, but that doesn't mean he didn't partake in animation from time to time. "I didn't mean to insult you, you've just got really bushy green hair which I have literally never seen before and I think I already said that but I thought you were familiar so I thought I'd wish you luck on the exam because that's common courtesy-"
Her breath hitched, but only for a brief moment.
"Right! The exam! We have to go!" She suddenly grabbed his hand, to the surprise and brief, but repressed pleasure of Izuku, and then immediately started running. He took the hint, too caught off guard to refuse. "Come on! We're gonna be late!"
「Holy… shit… what the fuck…」
He thought, as he was currently dying of… whatever the fuck was happening to his lungs…
「She's… so short!… How the fuck… can she… run like this!」 He's pretty sure he said at least part of that out loud.
"Oh, sorry! I meant to carry you with my quirk, but then I remembered I needed to ask permission, which I was going to do, but then I kinda just forgot to do both, I'm sorry! I really hope I didn't just ruin the exam for you, sorry!"
How the fuck… is she still talking after that?
「No…」 … 「No you're good…」 … 「Just gimme a second…」 … 「to breathe…」 …
"Sorry, I think we're just a bit late, let's go in. Oh, I'm Uraraka Ochako, you?" She'd have to wait like… five more seconds for her answer…
「Midoriya…」 … 「Izuku.」 He finally started to collect his breath. 「Midoriya Izuku.」
"Oh! I thought it was Deku, that's what the blond guy called you, after all. Like, dekiru! You can do it! Kinda reminds me of that. Sorry, is that a nickname between friends or something? Am I intruding?"
Huh.
This is a conundrum.
On one hand, he hated that nickname. On the other… it would piss off Katsuki so much if the word he introduced to make fun of him lost its impact.
Fuck it, he can take it back later if he really wants to by properly explaining it.
「Why not?」 He wondered allowed. 「Sure. Call me Deku. After that stunt, you've earned it.」
…
「Oh shit, the exam!」
"We're LATE!"
A/N: If Kumagawa seems out of character at certain points that's because he is. He's mellowed out somewhat at the tail-end of his first life, and he's now dealing with an entirely new set of problems and psychological trauma.
I will be using this excuse a lot, yes.