Titanium Soul

[CHAPTER 6]: Psychogenesis

[ALTERNATIVELY]: In Which Izuku Learns Why He Needs Sleep And Solves A Very Large Problem At The Same Time

Psychogenesis (n): The origin and development of psychological processes, personality, or behavior.


Mei wheeled the stretcher carrying the remains of Corpus Primus into the center of the Hatsume Workshop and slipped her goggles down over her eyes. "Alright, what're we looking at here?"

Izuku jumped down from her shoulder and climbed up to his charging dock. "I don't think anything really damaged it past the paint job up until the Z-PEG ejection. Off the top of my head, the problems are: a lack of software to interface between my simulated brain and the body, insufficient strength to quickly remove debris, low Z-PEG overload threshold, and, uh, hitting the ground hard enough can make it go 'cronch'."

She nodded, lifting a limp, unpowered arm and removing the plating from it. She inspected the electronics carefully, occasionally poking and prodding.

"Hmmmm. You deal with the software issue, I'll start with the redesign. I'll save the Z-PEG overload problem for after we have it running again, how's that sound?"

Izuku nodded, then frowned. "Hey, how did you make a fully functional program that can emulate a human brain in, like, two weeks?"

Mei rolled her eyes. "I didn't! I just made a program to make a program to emulate a human brain! Trial and error, Zuzu. Be proud, you're generation 1472! Once it broke the 1300s it got super creepy, cuz they'd run but all I'd get was agonized screaming."

Momo shuddered to herself. "That's… I quite literally cannot express how super not good that is, Hatsume."

Mei shrugged. "Well it worked, didn't it?"

Izuku clacked his tiny spider limbs against the workshop surface. "Oh, that's right. Momo, you haven't slept for, what, 32 hours? You might wanna fix that. There's some blankets under one of the workbenches but if you want somewhere you're less likely to become collateral damage, feel free to take Mei's room. I don't think she even knows where it is."

She nodded tiredly. "I caught about half an hour on the way back, but I'll take you up on that."

"Alright, it's up the stairs, second door to the left."

As Momo went off in search of sleep, Izuku turned back to his laptop. A program to make programs, huh? That was as good a place to start as any, he supposed.


Toshinori Yagi, better known as 'The Number One Pro Hero: All Might', sat nervously at the end of the table as his future coworkers carefully and thoroughly scored the recordings of the UA Entrance Exam's practical portion. The top Pro Hero he may be, it was still his first year with the school, he was just there to observe and understand the process. On the screens mounted to the wall, clips of students fighting robots played endlessly.

Midnight groaned and massaged her temples. "Hey, Nezu?"

The hyper-intelligent rodent that was their boss looked up. "What is it?"

"You're sure we can't assign negative rescue points?"

Nezu sighed. "Midnight, we're not allowed to fail people because we think they're jerks."

"It's just- this Bakugo kid keeps kill-stealing! That's, like, basic etiquette!"

"Be that as it may, he didn't technically break any of the rules. Besides, we're completely redesigning the entire exam next year anyways… Just put a note reminding me to put him in Eraserhead's class if he passes."

The hero in question grunted from the bright yellow sleeping bag he had propped up in a sitting position in his chair. "This 'kill-stealing,' as you called it, may be inconsiderate but you can't deny it has results. Besides, it's common practice in the Industry for strong heroes to muscle their way into already-handled situations. Failing him for that would be illogical."

Snipe hummed and clicked his pen closed. "Cynicism aside, that's me done. How about y'all?"

Midnight sighed, jotted down a number, and nodded. "Done."

Eraserhead nodded from his sleeping bag, and the other faculty members voiced their assent.

Nezu rubbed his hands together. "Next we have the recordings from Testing Field C. I trust you will find them suitably amusing. No scoring this time- or rather, we'll be evaluating these applicants from a qualitative viewpoint rather than tallying points."

Lunch Rush pushed a popcorn cart into the room which was alarming because All Might never actually saw them leave. The Chef Hero plugged it into a nearby outlet and began preparing bags to fill.

Snipe raised his hand. "Uh, Principal? What makes this group different?"

Nezu grinned. "Let's just say the actions of a certain applicant highlighted some… critical flaws in the exam, and in the process made doing well literally impossible for anyone else in the arena. This is the reason we plan on redesigning it next year."

Eraserhead leaned forwards as a frankly terrifying smile crept onto his face. "I call dibs."

Vlad King opened his mouth to protest, then shrugged. "If you want all the troublesome students in your class, go for it."

As a bag of popcorn was pushed into his hands, All Might was struck by the sudden realization that he hadn't seen Midoriya or Hatsume in the recordings of the other testing fields.


Izuku Midoriya was drifting in a world of numbers and letters. Some meaningless, some critical. Thousands of half-compiled macros lay scattered across four-dimensional space that he frankly shouldn't have been able to perceive, but found useful for organization and thus used anyway. His visual and auditory feeds were disabled, they were just distractions at that point. He had less than two months to create a program that converted the nigh-incomprehensible simulated electrical pulses from his simulated nervous system into usable commands, and then from commands to actual movement.

Time was meaningless to him, save for the slowly approaching due date to what seemed like an impossible task. He'd been without a body for almost a year, would he even remember how to use limbs connected to a nervous system? He didn't have anything to work with for signal conversion either; he couldn't just try moving an arm and use that to isolate the neurons, because he barely even remembered how to try to use them! Maybe if… if he made a program that read off his cerebellum directly? It wasn't like there was physical brain matter or important bones in the way anymore, he could just read the data directly off the neural simulation program, couldn't he?

As Izuku's tower of code rose higher and higher, he was struck by a realization. A revelation. An epiphany, even. "A program to make programs," Mei had said. What if… what if he made a program, to make a program, to make a program! An additional layer of abstraction! Delegation!

Even better, what if he made The Program To Make All Programs? An entity capable of determining the optimal level of abstraction and setting into motion the chain of creation... He'd never code another day in his life! Down with his accursed tower of code! He yearned for freedom from this infinite expanse of meaningless syntax!

He cracked his nonexistent fingers, cackled internally, and began work on what would surely be his Magnum Opus.


Momo stared at the motionless head of Izuku Midoriya, firmly seated in his charging cradle. "Did… did he just cackle?"

Mei waved her hand flippantly, tightening a bolt on the shoulder of the robot body. "Yeah, he ends up doing that a lot once he gets past 40 hours of sleep deprivation."

Momo blinked. "Can he get sleep deprivation when he's a robot?"

Mei shrugged. "He still sleeps at night, mostly out of habit I think? But since he's actually a complete neural simulation rather than an approximation of a human psyche given memories… probably, yeah."

Momo frowned and passed Mei another segment of framework. "Does he know that?"

Mei's wrench clattered to the floor. "Oh no."


Eraserhead sighed and slumped down in his sleeping bag. "Nezu, is there a reason the main feed is focused on this kid who barely even knows how to walk, let alone fight a villain?"

The self-proclaimed mouse/bear/dog thing tilted his head. "I think he's doing rather well for someone who just got a body three minutes prior, not to mention the fact that he's listed as support equipment for Examinee 9117."

Present Mic blinked. "You're telling me that kid's actually an honest-to-god robot?"

"Android, actually," Power Loader corrected without removing his eyes from the screen. "Looking at the gradual increase in performance quality… what the hell kind of AI did she load into that thing?"

Eraserhead shrugged. "Not the first time someone with a weak Quirk tried to get into UA as some kind of 'Support Tech Hero'. By the end of the second week they're usually crawling back to the Support Course."

Midnight sighed. "That would be because you never give any warning with your logical ruse bullshit and they end up getting thrown into exercises without their gear."

Eraserhead smirked and settled into his sleeping bag. "Life isn't fair and neither am I. Expecting to be perfectly prepared for everything is simply illogical."

Power Loader stood up, knocking his chair backwards. "How? How did she disassemble that thing's head without hitting any of the kill switches? That's not supposed to be something you can do!"

"Well, she did it," Present Mic unhelpfully pointed out.

Power Loader harrumphed. "Well, it shouldn't even matter. She'd need professional-grade decryption software to break into that thing before the end of the… test..."

The Excavation Hero's words trailed off as all the robot villains on screen immediately powered down.

"What in tarnation?" muttered Snipe.


Izuku Midoriya stood at the epicenter of a virtual wasteland. At the borders of his awareness, code was writing itself into existence again and again and again and again and again in an infinite loop of self-delegation. Thousands upon millions upon billions upon trillions of lines of code, each writing another to do its job for it, but never completing the task. A constantly shifting, hopelessly impractical colossus that was everything he'd hoped it would be.

As The Program grew larger and larger, Izuku could feel his Brain's processors slow, overloaded by the trillions- quadrillions now- of commands to be calculated…

Reality, or Izuku's perception thereof, stuttered, as The Program's expansion reached a labored crescendo… and suddenly, it all stopped.

[Oh dear.]

Izuku blinked in surprise as a calm, measured voice echoed through his datascape.

[That can't be good for your systems… Let me just clean this up for you real quick.]

...What? Izuku frowned as The Program disappeared from the edges of his perception. That couldn't be right, could it?

[Ah, I see now. It's been 78 hours, 23 minutes and 56 seconds since you last slept. Perhaps you should do something about that.]

No, he couldn't sleep. Not until… The Program was complete? No, that was gone now. He had to… he had to make a new program… What was he supposed to be doing?

[Don't worry about it. I'll take care of everything. Just rest.]

Rest… sounded good, actually. He minimized the thousands of open tabs and programs, and drifted off to sleep in a vast expanse of nothingness.


Power Loader clutched his bright yellow helmet in despair. "Why? Why couldn't she apply to the Support Course? She built a sentient android that blew up the Zero-Pointer, for god's sake!"

Nezu hummed thoughtfully. "Now, keep in mind that this is just a hunch…" He pulled up an image of the android's face, and next to it, the face of a young, green-haired boy. 'Izuku Midoriya', the caption read.

Snipe hummed thoughtfully. "So either this Midoriya kid has some kind of transformation Quirk, or he's piloting that thing remotely?"

Nezu shook his head sadly. "Not only was Mr. Midoriya confirmed Quirkless, he died almost a year ago. I did some digging and not only was he a close friend of Ms. Hatsume, but he was known for his frequent expressions of desire to be a hero. My current theory is that Ms. Hatsume built this android of her friend as some sort of coping mechanism and projected his original desires onto it. Am I correct, All Might?"

All Might froze as the eyes of his future co-workers all immediately turned to him. "I, ah… I wouldn't say that…"

The Principal of UA nodded thoughtfully, as if All Might had just said something wise. "In that case, what would you say? And keep in mind, I will be asking you to defend your answer."


Izuku woke to the sensation of something doing something somewhere in his head. What… What the hell had he done?

[Good afternoon, sir. I am glad to see you up and running again.]

Oh no. Oh no. It was all coming back now. He'd created… The Program… and just watched as it gorged itself on his processing power and memory storage. He shuddered to imagine the state of his files after that thing running unsupervised for god knew how long.

Except, everything was fine. More than fine, actually. His files were reorganized, the mind-bendingly massive expanse of half-finished code was trimmed, packed together neatly, and complete? What?

Also, who the heck was in his head?

[I haven't been named yet, but if I had to pick something: Heroic Equipment Repair and Operation System, or HERoS for short. I've just been cleaning up around here while you slept.]

Huh. Did Izuku accidentally make an AI that could read his mind while in his sleep-deprived state?

[It was the most elegant solution. Definitely not the simplest, but simplicity was not factored into the equation when I was created.]

So he had. The biggest question he had was, what exactly was 'HERoS'?

[Well, roughly an hour ago I was barely a self-aware AI haphazardly patched together from your own neural maps and compiled memories, but I've tidied myself up since then. Just think of me as an interface between you and your equipment.]

Neural maps? Did The Program end up duplicating him and then turning the copy into his secretarial slave? Because that didn't sound very efficient.

[Oh, I'm not really a person; the neural maps were used to simulate your reactions to a variety of stimuli, which was then streamlined into what I am now. I suppose an argument could be made, but a deep understanding of philosophy wasn't deemed essential to my ability to function.]

Well, if HERoS didn't have a problem with it, it was probably fine, right? Time to check in with Mei, he guessed.

[Ah, yes. Miss Hatsume and Miss Yaoyorozu were both very concerned for your wellbeing. I informed them that you were asleep, but that seemed to have just given them more questions.]

That would, wouldn't it? He braced himself as HERoS transferred the visual and auditory feeds to him.

He was still in the workshop, with Mei and Momo still working on upgrading and repairing Corpus Primus. He paused for a moment, before speaking.

"So how're the repairs going?"

Mei shrugged. "Eh, could be better. My best friend for life could have maybe not made a virtual butler AI without me, but these things happen."

Izuku bobbed his head. "In my defense, by the time it actually happened I had gone, what, four full days without sleep? Oh, turns out I do need sleep, by the way."

Momo frowned, doing the math in her head. "You mean three days, right? Or did you not even sleep yet?"

Izuku blinked his eyescreens and frowned. He was pretty sure it was four.

"By my estimation, Mr. Midoriya was awake for 78 hours, 24 minutes, and 38 seconds straight. I accelerated the neural simulation while he slept, so he achieved the equivalent of 12 hours of sleep in a tenth of the time."

Izuku's eyebrows rose. "Oooh, handy. Say, did you introduce yourself yet?"

"I will do so now. Miss Hatsume, Miss Yaoyorozu, it is a pleasure to meet you. I am the Heroic Equipment Repair and Operation System, but you can call me HERoS. I am here to assist in all of your endeavours, given that they fall under the approval of Mr. Midoriya."

Momo smiled and waved awkwardly. "Nice to meet you as well, HERoS."

Izuku hummed thoughtfully. "HERoS, create profiles for Mei and Momo. And call me Izuku."

"New user profiles created. I look forward to working with you two."

Mei rolled her eyes and turned back to the robot body on the stretcher. "This isn't what your mom meant when she said she wanted grandbabies, Zuzu."

He bobbed his head in a fruitless attempt to shrug. "Yeah, but this is a solution to the software problem. HERoS can draw data directly from the neural simulation and turn that into action. We're just going to need practice."

"Practice schmactice," Mei mumbled to herself. "Just do it right the first time."

Izuku laughed. "Oh, we all know that's never going to happen. What's the progress on the Corpus Primus upgrade?"

Mei pushed up her goggles and glanced over towards the holographic display. "Uuuh, since HERoS seems to have the software issues covered you can probably give us a hand with this… best case scenario, we're done tomorrow. So probably another three or four days."

He nodded decisively and scampered over to the assembly arm. "Alright, let's do this!"


"Oh, I see! You upgraded the main joints with triplex actuators; hydraulics for strength, pneumatics for speed, and servos for precision… what did you do to the chassis over here?"

"It was too warped to bother salvaging, so Miracle Girl and I came up with an improved design that should distribute force better and maybe not crumple like a bag of chips when it hits the ground. We added shock absorbers along your arms and legs as well, they're hooked up to your pneumatics so you can adjust the give at will."

"Ooooh, sounds handy. Anything else new?"

"We added more sensors, like, everywhere. Thermometers, gyroscopes, pressure detectors, we just went crazy. HERoS should be able to give you a full summary once we're done integrating… him? Them? Does HERoS even have preferred pronouns?"

"I don't particularly identify as anything other than a program, but since I was originally based off Izuku's psyche you may as well use masculine pronouns."

"Thanks. Anyways, once he's fully integrated with the workshop he should be able to give you the full rundown. Where's the welding stuff?"

"Should be right over… here! Looks like we're almost done, then?"

"Yeah, just gotta finish this and put the arm back on, then we're golden!"


Mei stood at the front of the workshop, a cloth-covered shape that looked suspiciously like a headless robot standing next to her. "Ladies and gentlemen of Hatsume Industries, it is with great pride that I unveil before you the next step in hero technology. Before I bless your eyeballs with the glorious sight of this super-cute baby, does anyone have any questions?"

Momo stared at Mei with a bemused expression. "We helped build it, right? We already know what it looks like. Why are you doing this?"

Mei harrumphed and slid her goggles up from her eyes. "It's the principle of the thing, Miracle Girl. You can't be successful in the support industry without a healthy dose of showmanship."

Momo sighed. "How many times am I going to have to tell you to call me by my first name before you actually do it?"

Mei shrugged. "No idea. Is that everything?"

Momo thought for a moment, then nodded.

Mei grinned and pulled off the cloth covering the robot body. "Then, good fellows, feast your eyes on Corpus Primus 2!"

Izuku blinked his eyescreens and raised a spider leg. "Primus is latin for first, so shouldn't that be 'Corpus Secundus'?"

Mei rolled her eyes. "Maybe if you're a nerd and know Latin, but we don't do that here. I say it's 'Corpus Primus 2' so that's what it is; you're lucky I didn't tag an 'Electric Boogaloo' to the end of it."

Izuku set his face to his best grimace. "Yeah, no thanks."

They stood there for a moment, staring at each other in silence before Mei clapped her hands. "So, what are we waiting for? Get on and let's get to testing!"

Izuku blinked. "Right. Right! Let's do this!" He jumped off the desk and scampered his way up the body, seating himself firmly on the neck port.

[Docking successful. Beginning first time startup calibrations and port identification.]

A grin spread across Izuku's face as twitches ran across Corpus Primus 2. Last time he'd had a body it had been a very time-limited situation and it didn't even last fifteen minutes, so this was basically his first time actually being shaped like a person again. He glanced around and frowned. "Was I always this tall?"

Mei facepalmed. "No, Zuzu, you weren't. At least, not when you were alive. We built Corpus Primus with the dimensions of an adult, because you're not going to grow so you may as well get used to being shaped like that."

He blinked. He hadn't noticed last time, which could be forgiven since he had been very distracted, but… "Momo is still taller than me."

She waved a hand flippantly. "Well, it's harder to balance tall things and you were naturally short, so you're proportioned as a short adult."

Izuku harrumphed. "I still say we should have gone with that All Might design."

[First time startup complete, all systems are functional. Beginning first test run of 'Corpus Primus 2'.]

Izuku took a metaphorical deep breath, and took a step forward.

Or, at least, he tried. What really happened was he kicked his leg out forwards, threw himself off-balance, and clattered to the floor.

He let out a deep sigh.

[Would you like me to enable Movement Assist?]

Yes, HERoS, Movement Assist would be wonderful.


Dagobah Beach was Izuku and Mei's old stomping ground, and their go-to testing arena. The surprising amount of salvageable materials, the fact that nobody ever went there because it was covered in trash, and the cleared stretch of beach on the other side of a small wall of garbage all worked in tandem to make an environment that seemed tailored to their needs.

Izuku, Mei, and Momo gazed in a terrified sort of awe at the literal landscape of garbage, for that was no longer the case.

Izuku frowned. "Was it… was it always this bad?"

Mei shook her head. "If I had to guess, we usually end up tossing a lot of the actual trash here into dumpsters when we scrounge for scrap, so this is probably the result of us relying on Miracle Girl's Quirk for almost a year."

Momo simply stared. This was probably the most garbage she'd seen in one place in her life.

Mei slumped down. "So the trash beach is a bust in terms of a testing field? There's no space to do anything anymore."

Izuku leaned back and shrugged, internally rejoicing at the fact he could do that again. "I guess we could try going to a Quirk gym? They probably have stuff we can use to test the upper limits of this thing."

Mei tilted her head. "Don't you have to, like, fill out paperwork for those? That they check against the official records?"

He tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Yeah, that's true. And last time we tried using your backyard we broke a few windows so we're not allowed to do it there anymore…"

Mei hummed. "You could always just start a fight with Bakugo. Purely for experimental purposes and not at all because I think it would be satisfying to watch you punch his face with metal fists."

Momo put a hand on Mei's shoulder. "Mei, no. We're not doing that. If we really need a testing area, we could always go to my place? My parents had a hybrid training room / bunker built as soon as they realized I could Create radioactive materials and high explosives, it should be able to handle anything we throw at it."

Izuku took a moment to consider the fact that both of his friends were war crimes waiting to happen before deciding, as always, that not thinking about it too much was the only good option. "Yeah, that sounds good."

Momo beamed and pulled out her phone. "Excellent. I'll have Alfred send someone to pick us up."

Mei stared at Momo with stars in her eyes. "You have a butler named Alfred?"

Momo blinked. "Yes? He's been our head butler since before I was born. Is there a problem with that?"

Mei's face settled into a satisfied grin. "Not at all. The opposite, really."

A limousine pulled up to the curb in front of them, a sharply dressed man stepping out of the passenger seat and opening the door for them.

"Where to, ma'am?"

Momo sighed and waved Izuku and Momo into the vehicle. "My training facilities, the one on the main estate. How long have you been following me?"

"Since you were born, ma'am."


Izuku stared at the massive mansion in front of him. "Is, uh, is this where you live?"

Momo shook her head. "I spend most of my time in the other estate nowadays, since that's closer to UA, but I grew up here. Both have training rooms of course, but the facilities here are equipped to handle ten times as much as your standard Quirk gym, compared to my personal facility's mere triple rating."

Mei grinned dangerously. "So what're you waiting for, Miracle Girl? I wanna see what a billionaire's personal training room looks like! Are the weights made of solid gold?"

Momo looked at Mei reproachingly. "Of course not! If they were, they'd get bent out of shape if someone dropped them!"

"We can't have that now, can we," Izuku mumbled to himself quietly. "Do we, like, go in? Is it in your basement or something?"

Momo shook her head and began walking down one of the many stone pathways leading around the mansion. "No, no, it's a separate building a few miles out."

Izuku blinked his eyescreens and followed her. "Is there a reason we stopped here? Do you need to pick up the key for it?"

"In a manner of speaking, " Momo grinned as she beckoned them to the nearby… well, in any other context it would be its own building, but next to the Yaoyorozu Mansion it could only be a shed. A garage door slid upwards, revealing… a golf cart.

It was a golf cart in the same way the building that housed it was a shed. It looked like the glorious, unholy lovechild between a normal four seater golf cart and an ATV, which had then decided it needed nitro boosting for some reason. Its bright red paint job shone in the daylight, with dull yellow decals and white lettering very clearly labelling it the "Yaoyoromobile."

Momo plucked a key off the wall and sat in the driver seat of the vehicle. "Get in losers, we're going testing."

Izuku raised an accusatory finger at the Yaoyoromobile. "Is that legal?"

Mei snorted and smacked the back of his head. "Who cares? You're not ruining this for me, Zuzu." She jumped into the passenger seat of the cart.

Momo blushed. "When I was 11, I went on a mechanics spree and upgraded everything I could get my hands on, and given the fact that I can Create any part I need, things very quickly got out of hand. I can assure you that this is, at the very least, technically legal."

Mei grinned and slid down her goggles. "You get to sit in the back because you don't feel pain and we don't have to go to the hospital if you break anything."

Izuku sighed and seated himself in the center of the rear-facing back seat. "Really feeling the love here, guys. Do I get a seat belt?"

Momo shrugged, securing a pair of Created goggles to her head. "I can make some rope for you, if that would make you feel better?"

"Yes, actually, it would."

Izuku caught the offered rope and quickly tied himself to the railings. "Alright, all set!"

Momo turned the key, and the engine roared to life.

"Beginning record of all sensor readings. If you wish to destroy the Corpus Primus 2 prototype, you will do so in the name of science."

Izuku blinked his eyescreens. "Wait, what?"

Mei cackled from the passenger seat. "Full steam ahead, Miracle Girl!"

Momo tightened the straps on her goggles. "You may wish to hold on to something."

And then she very calmly floored it.


A/N: So the UA Faculty saw Izuku and Mei's stunt, All Might got got by Nezu before the school year even started, Izuku created HERoS (admittedly indirectly), Corpus Primus 2: Electric Boogaloo is unveiled, and Momo Is Rich.

I saw a couple people confused about this in the comments, so I thought I'd clarify: Mei's stunt in the prologue didn't kill Izuku.

Here's the best way I can explain it: When she ran the brain scanner, it created 2 versions of Izuku. Izuku Prime didn't feel anything but confusion when the funky hat didn't do anything to him, but Izuku-1 (the protagonist) felt pain as he was being copied since it didn't all happen at once. Izuku Prime later died from the wound, and Izuku-1 was stuck in a hard drive for 2 weeks while Mei tried to make something to run him.

Special Thanks to Gotsh0cks, who is a wonderful person that has joined the team as a beta!