Great Forces Redirected
'Gah, my head!' a boy thought, clutching his curly green hair and clenching his matching eyes shut. Izuku Midoriya was no stranger to headaches, whether from focusing for too long at a time on his hobbyist hero analyses or from his frequent bouts of anxiety.
But this? This came out of nowhere, hurt far more than any other like a spear lancing through his skull … and was gone. He caught his breath but grunted as another migraine pulsed through his head and faded away as if it hadn't been there before.
'What was that?' he wondered silently. Now that he thought about it, the faint nausea he'd carried ever since the beach this morning had faded away with the headaches. 'Maybe All Might's Quirk — my new Quirk — is finally settling?' he wondered. Then he shook his head and focused his not-inconsiderable concentration on the written exam before him.
It was this written portion, and then the practical portion. And that part is what had him worried.
He really hoped those migraines had been his new Quirk emerging …
'Bad! This is bad! There's barely any left!'
Izuku tore through the simulated cityscape, adrenaline surging through him as his panic began to rise more sharply. He hadn't figured out his Quirk yet, if it had even manifested yet, and all of the other examinees were clearing out robots before he had a chance to get to them. And to make matters worse, time was running short!
Of course, actually disabling them with no Quirk would be a hassle in and of itself. Maybe he should talk to All Might after this about his teaching styl-? Nope! No! Who was he, a lowly student, to criticize the methods of the Number One Hero?!
As he thought this, he didn't notice the faint tension growing in his muscles as he ran through the practice yard, absently deciding it was the adrenaline and anxiety. Had he been less panicked for his own performance, he would have marveled at the displays of Quirks around him as his fellows dismantled the robots, but now …?
As if to make matters worse, there was a quake through the ground and out from the artificial skyline ambled a truly massive robot, far too big for even the average Hero to handle. The "gimmick" Present Mic had called it.
Izuku fell backwards, both from the rumbling ground and the totally rational fear such a behemoth brought to bear. And he wasn't the only one who was afraid, as all of the other examinees were fleeing the hulking machine. He rolled to his knees and stumbled to his feet as he desperately tried to think up a last-ditch strategy to pass.
"This isn't funny!" he whimpered. "I gotta run! Run, and somehow get some points …! Dammit, I'm still at zero! If I can't, this'll all be for nothing!" Everything All Might had done for him, all for nothing!
And then he heard it.
A whimper not of fear, but of pain. He looked backward on autopilot … and saw a familiar face. That nice girl with the soft-looking brown hair, the one who had used her Quirk to painlessly keep him from falling as he entered the school. She was trapped under some rubble! Must have fallen from the tremors of the gimmick.
Faster than thought, Izuku turned fully around and charged to help.
In another life, in another time, his resolve would have crystallized into an unstoppable force that had him leap into the air and smite the gimmick with the force of a dozen trains, breaking three limbs in the process and having the nice girl save him in-turn from falling to his death.
But this was not that time.
Instead, Izuku's will manifested in a different way. He forced down his fear at drawing closer to the gimmick and lowered his running stance to slide his hands under the rubble that trapped this girl. 'Clench up your butt,' All Might had said, 'and let your heart cry out-!'
"SMASH!" Izuku shouted, forcing the slab of concrete high into the air with the force of his motion to shatter against the gimmick.
"Whoa, was that from me?!" Izuku gasped. Then he realized the gimmick was still coming toward them, its paneling only dented. He grabbed the girl by her upper arm with a quick "Sorry!" and hauled her to her feet. She yelped as she tried to stumble along, her leg clearly hurt. And so, acting on even more instinct, Izuku flipped her over his shoulder — thank Heaven for the ten months of All Might's training for that! — and ran as fast as he could.
As he ran away, Izuku spied a single one-point drone off to the side that was targeting him and the girl! "Look out!" she shouted and dug her fingers into his back, the force of his steps launching them into an aerial arc to avoid its simulated gunfire. "Release!" she shouted and they descended back to the ground behind the drone.
Maybe-! Maybe if he could summon up that power again, he could get, "… Just one point!" he said desperately.
"THAT'S ALL, FOLKS!" came Present Mic's voice over the loudspeakers. "TIME'S UP!"
'No!' Izuku cried out inside, stumbling to a halt and gently lowering the girl to the ground before sinking to his knees and clutching at the gravel. Not even a single point! He'd failed. Izuku didn't bother trying to hold back tears as despair began to well up from within.
It didn't matter that people were whispering to each other, probably judging his uselessness. He had no way of knowing that they were wondering how he'd become so timid with an apparent strength-enhancing Quirk. He didn't even feel the soft, consoling touch of the girl's hand on his shoulder.
All he knew was that he'd let his mother and All Might down.
A week later found Izuku mindlessly curling a dumbbell as he sat on the couch in his home and pondered his probable failure. Sure, he was certain he'd passed the written exam, even if it was just barely. His mother mentioned that the acceptance letters should be arriving any day now, and he absently hummed in agreement.
But with zero points in the practical, there was no hope for him to have passed.
All Might's radio silence since the exam only made him feel more sure of it. He'd failed. Not to mention he'd been keeping the whole thing a secret from his mom. Granted, One For All wasn't his secret to tell, but it still made him feel guilty.
"Izuku!" his mother shouted. He spun on the couch to find her fallen to her knees, beads of sweat dotting her face as she held out an envelope. "It's here! It's finally here."
Izuku took the letter and quickly hugged his mom before heading to his room. As he looked at it, he felt his spirits start to plummet. But, best to get it over quickly, right? Like removing a bandaid. He tore open the envelope to find … a metallic disk?
A metallic disk that flared to life and projected a holographic screen bearing the Number One Hero.
"I AM HERE! ON THIS PROJECTION!"
The next several minutes were a rollercoaster of emotions as All Might's recording explained so much. That he was now teaching at UA and that, as Izuku had predicted, getting zero points in the practical was an automatic failure. But then he'd switched gears and shown footage of the nice brunette girl offering her points since Izuku had saved her. Present Mic's response: he wouldn't need them?
All Might continued to explain that not only villain points were rewarded for smashing drones. Rather, the test also looked for those who would protect and rescue others even at the cost of themselves — just as Izuku had done — and rewarded points for such genuine heroism. As such, Izuku had been awarded a whole sixty points, and the girl was awarded forty-five for saving him in turn!
"YOU'RE IN," All Might finished. "COME NOW, YOUNG MIDORIYA! THIS WILL BE YOUR HERO ACADEMY!"
Izuku's tearful cheers practically shook the building.
That evening, Izuku was still buzzing with relief, excitement, and sheer, unadulterated joy when he got a text from All Might.
Meet me at the beach tonight at sundown. I will be in my true form, so please keep a low profile.
Just as requested, Izuku met his mentor at the beach. The first several times he'd seen the powerful All Might, known far and wide as a musclebound hero of epic proportions that Izuku had slapped images of all over his room, it had been almost dizzying. The cognitive dissonance from knowing that this still-tall but shriveled, almost skeletal figure was what he really looked like.
Nowadays, Izuku took it in stride. Ten months was quite a while to get used to something. In his head he called him by his given name, Toshinori, in this form. It helped a little.
"You passed," All Might — Toshinori — rumbled. He nodded and ruffled Izuku's hair. "Congrats, from the bottom of my heart. And just so you know, I didn't tell my colleagues about our relationship. Figured you wouldn't want to worry about favoritism."
"Thanks, sir," Izuku said. "I guess that explains why we're meeting here and not your office."
"Just so," Toshinori said, tapping his temple.
"I didn't expect you to be teaching, though," Izuku noted.
"I figured I could find a worthy successor at the school," Toshinori explained.
"Oh, right," Izuku said, looking down at his hands. A student with an inborn Quirk and actual talent.
"Guess I didn't need to after all, huh?" Toshinori grinned. "Perhaps it was fated for us to meet." Then his faint resting-scowl returned. "Though since you're here, I have to ask. When you tossed that slab of concrete off the Uraraka girl … how did it feel?"
"Uraraka?" Izuku asked. So that was the girl's name. He looked down at his hands again, this time contemplatively. "It felt … like someone was pushing with me? Like there was a greater force beneath my hands pushing too." He shook his head and ran his hands through his curls. "I don't know how else to describe it."
"What has me a bit … concerned," Toshinori said, "is that I'm almost certain that it was not One For All."
Izuku blanched and stepped back in shock. "What? How?"
Toshinori placed a hand on his chin in thought. "After the incident I told you about when we first met, the battle I asked to be kept secret that destroyed my organs … I started doing serious research into the origins of One For All." He sighed. "I had hoped to tell you this later, but you need to know in order to understand what I think has happened to you."
And so Toshinori regaled his successor with the story of One For All.
The story of a truly evil man known by the name of his Quirk — All For One — who could steal Quirks for himself and redistribute those Quirks to those who would serve him, of his steady rise to power, of his younger brother who knew these actions were wrong and tried to stop him. Of the power stockpiling Quirk that All For One had forced upon his brother either to enforce his servitude or as a twisted act of kindness.
Of the seemingly Quirkless younger brother who secretly to all, including himself, bore a unique Quirk that could only be passed to others … which had merged with the stockpiling Quirk to forge One For All.
He spoke of the Quirk being passed on through the generations after the brother failed to stop All For One, each passing allowing it to grow even stronger than before until it came to Toshinori's predecessor and mentor, Nana Shimura, who had trained him and passed One For All on to him … a Quirkless boy who desired to save others.
"You're Quirkless?!" Izuku asked in shock, looking up from the fresh notebook he had produced to record every word Toshinori had said.
"Genetically, I am," Toshinori confirmed. "And while I'm thinking about it, I owe you an apology."
"For what?"
"For telling you that heroism is beyond you without a Quirk," Toshinori sighed. "Kid, I've said it before and I'll say it again: you have the heart of a true hero. I saw that when you jumped into the fray to save the boy who had been cruel to you for years. And I saw it again when you saved that girl without any experience with a Quirk." He lowered his head in shame. "With a will like that, I now think you really could have been the first Quirkless hero. And I'm so sorry I didn't see it until it was almost too late."
"I'll admit, it hurt," Izuku said. "But you were also kinda right, y'know?" Toshinori arched his brow curiously. "I could have been killed trying to save Kaachan, and would have been if you didn't intervene. I also could never have helped that girl without One For All. So, you weren't wrong."
"Maybe we should save the philosophy for another time," Toshinori snorted. "You have a Quirk now, and we need to discuss what happened now that you're up to date on its origins. Now, why do you think I would be concerned about you not using One For All as I know it?"
Izuku thought it over for a moment, muttering to himself in a way that honestly creeped Toshinori out a little. But if it helped the kid think, he'd deal with it.
"Was it not powerful enough?" Izuku asked.
"Actually, I think power would be the opposite problem. You probably would have really hurt yourself," Toshinori said. "And that may be part of the situation. I think your subconscious recognized that it could harm itself by tapping into the raw power of One For All, and somehow found a workaround of sorts."
"A workaround?" Izuku asked.
"Remember how the Quirk was first created? What happened?"
"The stockpiling Quirk from All For One merged with-" Izuku's eyes widened as pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. "It merged with the brother's first Quirk. The one that could be passed down."
"And if it could happen once, who's to say it couldn't happen again?" Toshinori said. "I've had a hypothesis for a long time that One For All had been adding Quirk factors from its bearers into the core Quirk. I was just never able to test it. Even with its exponential growth across eight bearers, which I believe has actually empowered the other Quirk factors too … it wasn't ready." He smiled, a grizzly sight tempered by real warmth. "Until you."
"I still don't understand," Izuku said.
"I think that to protect your body, your subconscious mind somehow cycled through the Quirk factors stored in One For All and settled on one that was similar in practice, but wouldn't harm you. At least not nearly as much."
"What Quirk?" Izuku asked, his fingers itching to write more.
"That I'm not entirely certain of," Toshinori admitted. "I know that every bearer before me had a Quirk, and I know it wasn't Nana's Float Quirk, which essentially allowed her to fly." He held his chin again. "One of the heroes before her was Lariat, who possessed the Blackwhip Quirk, also clearly not it." He hummed and shook his head. "We'll figure it out as soon as we can. But while we do that, perhaps we can deduce some of its functions ourselves."
"We?" Izuku asked.
"Oh, please," Toshinori scoffed, gesturing to the notebook in his hands. "I doubt you're writing down recipes in there." He held out a hand and Izuku handed it over. Toshinori shook his head and gestured at Izuku's backpack, which Izuku then passed instead. Toshinori pulled out a random journal and flipped through it, humming in thought. "Hmm, impressive," he noted. "Untrained, but all the more impressive for it." He clapped the book shut and returned it and the backpack. "Now, let's put that analytical mind of yours," he tapped Izuku's forehead with a grin, "to work, shall we?"
Izuku rubbed his forehead with a smile and thought about his experience. "I'm guessing it's not a strength-enhancing Quirk?" he asked.
"Given how you described it, I think not," Toshinori confirmed. "So what else could have helped you move that slab of rock?"
Izuku thought about it. His interest, verging on obsession, with Quirks and heroes had pushed him to study the sciences as deeply as he could while growing up. So he examined everything he knew about strength, weight, interia, forces- Wait …! "Could it be based around kinetic energy?" Izuku asked.
"An interesting conclusion. Let's find out," Toshinori said. And then he exploded into steam to reveal his massive, muscled, smiling All Might form and held out his palm. "STRIKE AT ME WITH THE POWER YOU'VE DISCOVERED," he commanded.
Izuku took a breath and tried to find whatever had motivated him to tap into it in the first place. He thought of that kind, pretty girl in trouble and the fire in his gut that pushed him to help. He clenched his fist as he felt something gather, like static cling under his skin. He snapped his eyes open and tried to direct that force as he shouted, "SMASH!" and punched All Might's fist.
The air was displaced around them from the dispersing force, and Izuku yelped and drew his hand back to shake away the soreness.
"That certainly wasn't base One for All," Toshinori said as he reverted to his true form. "Every bearer has a kind of … sign when they tap into it. For me, it's the bolstered musculature, though before my injuries that wasn't near as extreme. My predecessor using One For All formed a kind of faint halo of golden light that hung around her head and shoulders, like an angel. And she once said that her predecessor had a kind of shimmer around him like the air above a campfire."
He again took his huge, All Might form. "AGAIN!"
Izuku nodded and focused … but that tension wasn't there. He searched for it, but couldn't find it. He shook it off and gathered himself, charging forward with another punch that slammed into All Might's palm … and yelped in pain at bruised knuckles.
"INTRIGUING," All Might said before reverting again. "It seems you ran out of juice."
"What? But I feel fine!" Izuku replied, shaking his hand to dispel the aches.
"And you didn't feel any power building up that time, did you?" Toshinori asked.
Izuku hung his head with a muttered, "No."
"I've got an idea," Toshinori said, "Take, say, ten laps up and down the beach." When Izuku looked up and opened his mouth, Toshinori held up his hand. "I'll explain if this works. Now hop to it!"
Say what you will, Izuku was certainly dutiful. He took those laps without a single word of complaint and hardly a broken sweat. Toshinori smiled to himself at the evidence of how far the scrawny, timid kid had come in such a short time. "Add in two passes at a walk for a cool down!" he added.
When Izuku returned and brushed the misty sweat from his brow, Toshinori once again transformed. "TRY AGAIN," he thundered, once more presenting his palm.
Izuku dug down … and there it was again! The well of energy he'd felt before! He took hold of it and channeled it into his fist to strike at All Might's palm, and though the hero did not budge, the air was displaced again.
"So what was the difference?" Toshinori prompted.
"Between the first and second run?" Izuku asked, receiving a nod. He thought about it and could only come up with one conclusion. "The actual run," he answered.
"Indeed. I've seen Quirks before that require gathering of something to work, such as fat, certain emotions, power, mass-"
"Accumulation Quirks!" Izuku shouted with excitement, hands clenched in front of his chest. "I've read about those! So you think that this Quirk of mine is an Accumulation?"
"I do. More specifically accumulation of kinetic energy."
"So the run … It gave me a chance to gather kinetic energy!" the boy continued. He retrieved his notebook and began scribbling notes, muttering all the while. Toshinori let him wear his theories out, indicated by his slowed writing, before gently taking the notebook and looking it over. Again he was surprised by the thoroughness of his ward's observations and hypotheses. One in particular …
"You wonder if it is your own personal movements or being in a state of motion that can gather kinetic energy," he read.
"Yeah!" Izuku said. "Like, could I, uh, 'charge up' by jumping out of an airplane and just falling before I pull my parachute? Or do I personally have to move, like running or walking?"
"How much, erm, charge do you have now?"
Izuku thought about it and examined the faint tingle beneath his skin. It wasn't unpleasant at all, just … present. Like the weight of the atmosphere on his shoulders or the feeling of air in his lungs. He didn't even notice until he'd been prompted to look for it. "Not much?" he decided.
"Then let us test that question," Toshinori grinned before he burst into All Might and swept Izuku into a sitting position on his shoulder. With a mighty leap, they were hurtling into the night sky!
"Whoa! This is still weird!" Izuku shrilled as the airspeed made his cheeks flap and his eyes water, holding tightly onto All Might. "I know you can stand the landing, but what about me?!"
"TRUST ME, YOUNG MIDORIYA! I WON'T LET YOU COME TO HARM!" They slowed to a stop, pausing for a moment to see the beautiful sight of the city lights. Then gravity took full hold and they plummeted toward the beach again. Izuku couldn't help but scream. They grew faster and faster, until they neared the sand and All Might turned in the air to punch toward the ground, the burst of air from the sheer force slowing them enough for him to right himself and land on one knee with Izuku in his arms, trembling but unharmed.
"THERE WE GO," he thundered jovially before reverting to his true form. "Now, is your store of energy different?"
Izuku was practically hyperventilating as he calmed his heart. When he'd settled, he examined himself and found the tingling hardly different than before. "No, not really." He ran that through his mind. "Which means I have to move myself to store up energy."
"It would seem so," Toshinori said. "And other questions you wrote down such as if the energy will drain away with sleep or time, whether the stored kinetic energy matches your motions, is less than, or somehow more than the your own motions, effects of releasing it from your whole body or just one limb at a time … we can figure those out later." He clapped his hand onto Izuku's shoulder. "We've got a few weeks until term starts. I have a good friend who can send us some equipment to help monitor, and we can upkeep your fitness while we work out the kinks in your Quirk, too."
Izuku nodded, his eyes welled with beads of fiery tears. "Yes, sir!"
And here we have it: The starting point of my first multi-chapter "My Hero Academia" fic. I've been seeing a few premises popping up of "What If: Izuku got another Quirk inside One For All instead of the power stockpile?" I haven't seen one for Fa Jin yet, so I thought I'd do that myself. Here's hoping it's a fun ride!
*The title is kind of a play on words. It refers to Fa Jin itself redirecting kinetic energy ... but also in One for All redirecting its focus on Fa Jin rather than the core power stockpile to protect its new bearer.
*I like to think Izuku has a strong inclination to general sciences. For one, it would tie in well to his analytical mind and his examination of Quirks. For two, he knew off-hand how fluids respond to tremendous forces back in the USJ arc - that to me serves as evidence.
*For the sake of writing, I'm differentiating "All Might" and "Toshinori." Toshinori will refer to him when he's in his natural, emaciated form and will have his speech written normally. As opposed to All Might, which refers to his huge, heroic form where his dialogue will be written in all caps whether he's shouting or simply speaking in his booming voice.
*As we have little detail on Fa Jin's mechanics besides "builds up kinetic energy through repeated motion" - and I scoured the wiki and a few Reddit posts for more, but nothing on the latter was concretely canon - I'll be taking a few creative privileges on it, which will be outlined in chapter two.
Anyway, I do hope this was a good start! Leave a review if you can, I'd love to hear your thoughts! And may your own works be fruitful and multiply!