Disclaimer: I do not own MHA nor am I earning money from writing this. As a rule of thumb, if you recognize something in this fic, I probably do not own it.

"I might be going insane" – Normal speech
'It isn't normal to have voices in your head' – Thoughts, Writing
True – The voices in your head

Chapter 5

Izuku and Katsumi sat on the couch, heads down as the pair of mothers scolded them for the noises they were making. Both of them were holding drawings – Izuku's first portrait of Katsumi clenched in the subject's right hand while Izuku held his work-in-progress of Katsumi's "hero" drawing, the first of his drawings to ever have parts erased and redrawn thanks to his best friend's ever-changing whims.

The lecture that the two were receiving was neither serious nor new – they had heard the same words nearly a hundred times when the two of them had gotten carried away at either of their houses, with the hosting mother usually playing bad cop while the other played good cop with getting the two to acknowledge their wrongdoing. The resulting shame the two would feel usually lasted a few days until they got riled up again, repeating the cycle.

As always, the two families headed outside after the lecture, headed for the local park with both drawings secured in Bakugou Mitsuki's hands. The two four-year-olds ran ahead of the adults, stopping at corners to cross the road together while their moms walked behind at a leisurely pace.

Eventually, the quartet arrived and split off, with the adults taking a seat on one of the park benches while the two children played around, making sure to stay in sight of their mothers.

As Izuku ran around with Katsumi, playing hide-and-seek or tag, varying from moment to moment, Izuku began to think about his best friend's quirk. He knew that quirk analysis was going to be one of the most important subjects for him in the near future, judging by the book on it that he had been guided to in the library. He spent the time they had together, when not actually talking, thinking about how Katsumi's explosion quirk worked.

After nearly fifteen minutes of questioning spread throughout multiple games of hide-and-seek, Izuku had determined how Katsumi's quirk worked. The next time that the two of them stopped to rest, Izuku brought up the subject.

"So, Kacchan, I've been thinking." Izuku began. "Your quirk lets you blow up your sweat, right?"

Katsumi was taken slightly aback. She had never put much thought into how her quirk worked, so she had no idea whether or not Izuku was right in his declaration.

"I don't know, I guess. Why do you think it works that way?" She replied, curious.

"Well, when you run around for a while the explosions get bigger, and your hands are always dry even when you're sweaty if you use your quirk, and-"

"Who are you calling sweaty, Izuku? You're the sweaty one here!"

Izuku was cut off by an exclamation and a punch to the shoulder from his best friend. Despite the playful nature of the punch, Izuku dramatically fell over, grabbing his arm and playing dead. To Katsumi's credit, she showed a minimal amount of remorse as he lay before her before Izuku opened his eyes and grinned at her.

While he was lying on the ground, he asked himself if what he was about to suggest was a good idea. With the affirmative True, he pushed forwards.

"Anyways, if it's just your sweat, why can't you make all of it explode instead of just the stuff on your hands? Can you try to make an explosion from your feet if you take off your shoes first?"

Katsumi honestly considered the idea that Izuku had proposed. The idea that it was her sweat exploding and not just explosions appearing from her hands made sense the more she thought about it, and it supplied a reason for why her quirk worked the way it did. It also was a good explanation for how she "ramped up" the longer she went without making an explosion.

Taking off her right shoe, she took three steps away from where Izuku was sitting up before trying to make an explosion on the sole of her foot. She had not fully thought this through, nor was she immune to the laws of physics, so when she succeeded on her second attempt the resulting explosion sent her nearly a foot in the air, causing Izuku's and Katsumi's eyes to widen before she fell to her left due to the imbalance of forces. Izuku stood up and ran over to where she had fallen as fast as he could, quickly followed by their parents, who had watched the whole scene unfold.

As Izuku arrived, the first thing he noticed was the expression on Katsumi's face. She was in a small amount of pain from the fall, but the sensation was clearly overwritten on her face by the massive grin. Before Izuku could stop her or their mothers arrived, she took off her other shoe and ran further from Izuku before creating explosions on both of her feet, sending her straight upwards before gravity reasserted itself, with her second landing more controlled as she bent her knees and straightened herself.

As her already wide grin widened even further and she bent her knees for a massive explosion-powered jump, Inko and Mitsuki arrived to handle the situation.

"Katsumi, NO!" Mitsuki shouted, getting close enough to place a firm grip on her daughter's shoulder. "What are you thinking? You could fall badly again and seriously hurt yourself! What prompted you to do this in the first place? Put your shoes back on right now young lady!"

As Katsumi reluctantly walked back over and picked up one shoe and put it on, she complained about the perceived injustice. "But mom, Izuku just found out how my quirk worked and I thought it would be really cool if it worked like that! Besides, I'm fine!"

As Katsumi walked over to her second shoe, the mothers turned on Izuku. Under their combined scrutiny, Izuku spilled. "I just thought that her quirk was in her sweat and it let her blow it up, so she shouldn't just have to use her hands. Please don't get mad at her, I told her to use one of her feet, so I'll take responsibility for what happened." Izuku looked downwards at the end of his explanation, ready for the full force of the second lecture of the day.

Two different events stopped this from happening.

Firstly, Inko placed her hand over Mitsuki's mouth, muffling any rant she might begin while also calming her down. She knew that Izuku had probably used his quirk to find out how Katsumi's worked, and he was certainly able to control for any variables that might occur, but just because he could didn't mean he had done so.

The other reason was Katsumi's support of her best friend, trying to prevent him from taking all of the blame on himself. "No, Izuku, that isn't right! Just because you suggested something doesn't mean it's your fault! I carried through with it and took off my other shoe on my own, so I'm just as much at blame as you are if not more!"

As the two children tried to take the blame on themselves for the sake of each other, Mitsuki slowly let go of her anger. Even though the two of them should have passed their idea by an adult first, neither of them looked seriously hurt and this could serve as a learning experience for the two of them. Izuku's theory of how Katsumi's quirk worked was also very realistic – her own quirk caused her to sweat glycerin, so it made sense that her daughter's quirk had something to do with her sweat.

Gently pulling Inko's hand off of her mouth, Mitsuki began her speech. "I want the two of you to know that I'm not mad at you." The opening sentence caused Izuku, who was mid-apology, to quickly stop talking. "What you did could have been dangerous in more ways than one. However, neither of you are hurt because of your reckless actions. Izuku, I'll let your mom reprimand you, but as for my daughter…"

Mitsuki looked to where Katsumi was sitting next to Izuku. "You know that your quirk is dangerous, so why did you try something new with it without asking me first? It's not that you can't try new things, but let someone know before you do it, okay?"

The four-year-old girl nodded, mumbling an apology and an agreement to her mother. Mitsuki looked to her fellow lecturer, giving her the floor to speak to Izuku.

"Izuku, I know that you are creative, but sometimes you need to think things through more. Unless you're sure that what you're doing is a good idea, then you should ask one of us first, and even if you are sure it's better to ask." Inko's speech was the best she could do to reference Izuku using his quirk to predict the outcomes of an action while keeping silent about his quirk in front of others. She would tell him this outright once they were alone to make sure that he got the message.

The two mothers shared a glance, making an unspoken agreement that this was enough excitement for the day. After Izuku and Katsumi said their goodbyes, the families parted ways to head home.

With the Bakugous

As the pair of women left the park, Mitsuki wasted no time in lightly poking fun at her daughter's impulsiveness tempered with genuine concern for her daughter. If Katsumi were a few years older, she would be able to tease her daughter about Izuku, but the two had not adopted the cultural beliefs that boys and girls were different yet.

When they arrived home, Mitsuki handed the two drawings to her daughter. The young girl promptly took them to the section of the fridge that she was allowed to play with, full of magnets and previous artwork from the two of them. In the center of the collage of artwork, she placed the completed image of herself sitting in the Midoriya's living room. As she pushed old drawings to the side, she placed the unfinished drawing of herself as a hero underneath Izuku's other picture.

As she stood before the fridge, eye-level with the completed version of herself, she looked towards the incomplete version of herself before having an unexpectedly philosophical thought.

'I know who I am and so does Izuku, but neither of us knows who I will be. I have to become the strongest hero to complete the second drawing, I have to make it a reality. It has to be real for Izuku to draw it for me as well as he drew me in his house.'

With this thought, her motivation to become the strongest was only strengthened. As she looked at her forearm, focusing on a bead of sweat on her skin, she focused on causing only that bead to explode. She was rewarded with a quiet pop and flash of light, followed by the sight of her forearm without that bead of sweat.

Her familiar, slightly mad grin returned to her face as she made the rest of the beads of sweat she could see explode one after another, almost like popping explosive bubble wrap on her skin. The explosions were quiet enough that her mom couldn't hear them, so she quickly retreated to her room until dinner, practicing her control over her sweat. As she detonated her sweat, she couldn't help but think of Izuku, who came up with an explanation for how her quirk worked that gave her a method to become stronger.

With the Midoriyas

Inko and Izuku's walk home was much more subdued. When Inko was sure that the two were out of earshot of any other pedestrians, she whispered the true meaning behind her lecture to Izuku, and he took the hint to whisper his reply.

When the two arrived at home, Inko decided to take an afternoon nap on the couch after the stress of the day. Izuku sat in the living room while she slept, quietly finishing his drawing of the library from before the Bakugous had visited. By the time he had finished the drawing and cleaned up the mess of drawings from earlier, it was nearly five in the afternoon.

Seeing as his mother was still asleep, Izuku decided to start reading some of the books that he had gotten from the library earlier that day. After he retrieved them from his bedroom, he sat down in the living room and began to flip through the most useful book according to his quirk. With a title like "How to Ask the Right Questions", it was pretty clear that this book would help him with the use of his quirk.

As he read through the first few pages, however, he came across a large stumbling block. He didn't know a lot of the words that were being used, and there simply weren't enough context clues for him to efficiently read the book. Turning to the next book, "Quirk Analysis for Beginners", he found the same problem to an even larger degree. "My First Encyclopedia" had significantly more readable text, being a book aimed at children, and "Path of the Swordsman" was nearly as bad as the first book.

As Izuku was psyching himself up to spend the next few hours deciphering the encyclopedia, he remembered the fifth book that he had found, the dictionary that his mom said they already owned.

After a brief quirk-fueled search of the house, Izuku returned to the living room with his prize and set it down next to the encyclopedia. Upon reaching the first word he couldn't understand or easily guess, he turned to the dictionary next to him before promptly realizing that he had no idea how to find the word in said dictionary.

Using his tried-and-tested method of splitting his problems in half until they no longer existed, Izuku quickly came up with and wrote down a method to find the page he was looking for and then quickly splitting the page into quarters before looking for the word himself. Because the length of the dictionary was just over six hundred pages, he only needed to make twelve statements to his power for every word, which seemed incredibly efficient to Izuku.

With this method, he worked his way through the encyclopedia over the next three hours. Near the end of this period, Inko woke up and went to the kitchen to prepare dinner for the two of them.

Dinner that evening was a quiet affair, with Izuku enjoying the fresh homemade food for the first time in what felt like forever to the young boy. Inko, however, was making a to-do list for both the near and the indefinite future. Though she didn't particularly want Izuku to become a hero for a variety of reasons, including the danger he would doubtlessly be in and the reactions from the rest of the world, she knew that Izuku was more determined than any other boy she had ever known to become a hero.

In the time between the two of them finishing dinner and Izuku getting ready for bed, Inko brought up the prospect of Izuku putting his art on display and eventually selling it for a legitimate source of income. At the time, he was not ready to think about the implications of the idea and just wanted to sleep in his own bed.

After the two had gone through their nighttime rituals and Izuku had been tucked into bed, Inko went to her own bedroom and lay down on top of the covers, unable to fall asleep. Now that she had no immediate problems, and everything was right with the world once again, she could finally try to get some sleep. As she lay there, however, one part of the life-changing events that had happened that day stuck in her mind.

Izuku's voice ran through her head, saying "If I had asked you to think of two more numbers, they would have been a hundred and eighteen and six." She didn't know any of the numbers that she had chosen up until that very moment, yet Izuku had predicted them over a day in advance. All sorts of questions ran through her head the more she thought about this.

'Did Izuku predict what I was going to do or did his prediction cause me to do it? Does observing the future cause it to happen in the way it was observed? Is the future predetermined? If I knew about Izuku's prediction would I have chosen different numbers? Can I change the future if I know that it has been predicted? How many of my choices are my own? Did my choices stop being my own once they were predicted?'

All of these thoughts boiled down to one in the end – 'Do I have free will?'

Inko, currently in an existential crisis, was unable to sleep. Standing up from her horizontal position on the bed, she made her way to the room that served as her office and opened a browser window on her computer. Over the course of the night, Inko's worries only deepened, compiling a list of questions on her notepad for Izuku to answer for her when he woke up. Her journey through the internet, from philosophy to records of existing quirks that could tell the future to religion to theories on alternate dimensions and time travel.

By the time the sun rose outside her office window, she was feeling the tiredness of pulling an all-nighter as well as the existential-dread-induced insomnia. She knew that the questions she asked Izuku would be able to resolve some of her worries, though there were some questions that she wasn't sure she wanted the answers to. When she woke Izuku up in the morning, Izuku immediately noticed that something was off with his mother.

"Mom, is everything okay?" Izuku asked, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. Though he couldn't put his finger on what was wrong immediately, a series of confirmations from his quirk guided him towards his next question. "Did you sleep okay?"

Inko suppressed a yawn. "No, I didn't get much sleep last night. But don't worry about me, I'm fine. I just spent some time after you went to bed thinking about the things your quirk could do, and I made this wonderful list for you to look at." This time, the yawn slipped out from between her fingers when she tried to hold it in.

The two walked to the kitchen, with Izuku climbing into a chair and Inko moving the breakfast to the table. Izuku noticed the notepad next to his mother's placemat, and after confirming that it was the list of questions that she had for him, Izuku began to look through the questions. To his surprise, many of the words used were completely foreign to him.

Briefly, he considered getting the dictionary to look them up before dismissing the thought. It would take too long to do that for every word he didn't recognize and arrive at school early enough to explain why he was missing school on Monday. Instead, he came up with another idea to work his way around his problems.

'As mom intended this statement, it is true.'

With this, Izuku thought, he could easily write True or False in the margin depending on the answer he received, efficiently working his way through increasingly harder-to-understand sentences and increasingly worse handwriting.

If Inko noticed him doing this, she didn't say anything as she quickly ate her breakfast and packed a bag of lunch for Izuku.

The two of them made small talk as they walked their way to Haruki Preschool, stopping in the main office and the classroom early to inform them of why Izuku had missed school the day before. The woman behind the desk in the main office, upon hearing the news that Izuku may have been affected by a mental quirk, quickly ran through the roster of employees and their quirks before running through the list of children's known quirks.

Finding nothing related to hearing voices in one's head, she assured the green-haired duo that she would send out a reminder to the parents, reminding them to check if their children had developed a quirk recently. After forwarding the list of known quirks to the hospital for information if Izuku ever returned there, the two left for Izuku's classroom.

While his mom and his teacher talked, Izuku quickly got bored of sitting in his spot for the "morning meeting" and pulled a piece of paper from a shelf on the wall of the room and a pencil from his pocket. Moving over to the non-carpeted section of the classroom, Izuku began to draw a landscape that he had dreamed of last night.

As Inko finished her explanation for Mikami Mitsuru, Izuku's teacher, she looked over to where her son was drawing something that she had certainly never seen before, she thought it would be prudent to let the teacher in on that bit of information.

"Just so you know, Mikami-sensei, Izuku has become quite the artist during his time in the hospital, so please don't be alarmed if he seems different in that regard. I wish you the best, and I'll see you when I come to pick Izuku up this afternoon."

Inko walked over to where Izuku was drawing. Bending down, she kissed her son on the head. "Have a great day at school, okay? I'll see you this afternoon!"

With Izuku's enthusiastic reply, Inko left the school to return home. She wasn't in the right state of mind to go to work today, and as the only employee of her own company, it wasn't like she couldn't take a day off if she wanted to.

After her husband ran away and Izuku was born, Inko found that her then-current job as a telecommunications worker wasn't enough to support raising a child. With her newfound control and strength of her quirk, however, she quickly spotted an opportunity and set up a moving company. As a majority of household appliances were less than one cubic meter in size, she quickly became a force to be reckoned with in the moving industry. Because she had not yet found a limit on the number of objects she could move as long as each object individually was less than a cubic meter in size, she could move the entire contents of a house in one trip, with the only limitation being how far she could walk.

The vastly increased efficiency as well as the normal rates that other movers charged allowed her to both charge a lower rate than the rest of the industry per job and individually earn more per hour that she worked without having to pay any employees. Seeing as she had no pressing demand for her services today, she decided to take the day off and try to get some sleep.

As she passed by the kitchen on her way to her bedroom, she noticed the notepad sitting on the table out of the corner of her eye. It had moved from where she had placed it in the wee hours of the morning, so she went to pick it up. As she got closer, however, she noticed Izuku's handwriting on the left margin, each bullet point marked with a defining answer. She averted her eyes and flipped the paper over.

It was odd, that after spending the whole night searching for answers that she would react so badly when the real thing was sitting before her. Even if she didn't want to know the answers to her questions right now, she wasn't even sure that knowing that the questions had a definite answer was good. She only remembered half of the questions that she had written clearly, and some of them she was sure were the type where a "wrong" answer could drive a person to madness.

Pulling open the printer drawer with her quirk and bringing a sheet of paper towards herself, she shut her eyes before placing it on the notepad. To check the questions without immediately revealing the answers, she pulled the paper to the left until only the left margin was covered.

The first question read, 'The future as predicted by Izuku's quirk can be changed.' Surprisingly hard-hitting for the first question, but she carefully moved the paper down to reveal Izuku's response.

True.

She breathed out a sigh of relief. The following questions were merely looking for insight on how his precognitive abilities worked, so she revealed them all in one go.

'The future can be changed if one is unaware of the prediction.' False.

'The act of predicting the future changes the future.' True.

'The future is uncertain until predicted.' True.

'After the future is predicted the people involved in the prediction have free will.' False.

The answer to the last of these questions sent a chill through her body. It was considered unethical in every system of ethics she had found during her search last night to deprive others of their free will, and Izuku was apparently doing that every time he made a prediction that involved other people. Feeling a sort of morbid curiosity, she kept sliding the paper downwards, revealing more answers she wasn't sure she wanted.

'People uninvolved with predictions of the future have free will.' False.

'People have free will so long as it does not affect Izuku's predictions.' False.

'People lost their free will when Izuku awakened his quirk.' False.

'I have free will as of the time that I am writing this.' True.

'As of the time that I am reading this I have free will.' True.

'Izuku has free will.' True.

Maybe it was selfish of her, to think so little of other people not having free will, but Inko was willing to ignore the other answers on the page, revealed and unrevealed, as well as the horrifying reality that they described, just to know that she and her son had free will. She was sleep-deprived, and now that the most important part of her existential dread had faded, it took all that she had to set her alarm for an hour before she needed to pick Izuku up from school before she crashed into a dreamless sleep.

With Izuku

Izuku was sitting in the classroom, happily drawing and filling out the strange city he had found himself in while dreaming last night while his classmates slowly trickled in. At first, the other children ran around before settling down in their spots for the "Morning Meeting", occasionally looking over at Izuku or their other classmates before getting up and talking to them. Izuku was happy to talk to his classmates about why he was out yesterday or the newest exploits of a local hero, the speed of his work suffering greatly but not the quality. Only one of his classmates, one of the girls that was a friend of Katsumi's and therefore his by association, commented on the drawing.

The parents who dropped their kids off, mostly mothers, all took a strange glance at Izuku and his artwork before shrugging it off and moving on with their days.

This flow of events changed when Katsumi and Mitsuki arrived, with the taller blonde patting Izuku on his head as she passed and the shorter one plopping down next to him, simultaneously giving him a friendly greeting and warding off others who might try to talk to Izuku when they came close to her best friend. As Izuku drew, she told him about the progress she had made with her quirk – mostly just the fun she had with popping individual beads of sweat. She couldn't demonstrate it in the classroom, as quirk use was forbidden unless one had a mutant quirk.

When their last classmate was dropped off, Izuku rolled up the drawing and placed it next to his lunch bag in his cubby on the far wall of the classroom. After returning to his spot next to Katsumi, the two chatted about whatever came to mind, usually inane topics like what they dreamed about or things they were looking forward to.

Shortly after, the "Morning Meeting" started. "Okay everyone, settle down." Mitsuru called out, causing the level of noise to quickly drop until everyone was fixated on the teacher. The Morning Meeting was just a time for the teacher to go over what was going to happen that day. Today was a Tuesday, so the activities outside of normal class would be art and physical education. Before his experience in the hospital, Izuku would be looking forward to physical education significantly more than art, but now he longed for the free time to draw and experiment with his quirk instead of the forced socialization of a sport.

As they went through their normal morning schedule of reading and learning, Izuku was struck by how much easier the activities were after having used his quirk to learn the new words required to understand the encyclopedia yesterday. There was only one word that he hadn't known before class, and it was easy to figure out from the context clues and a quick application of his quirk.

So Izuku sat there, with half an hour left in the time allotted for the activity, with nobody to talk to because they were all still working. Izuku folded his arms on the table before him and silently began to think about the proposal to sell his art that his mom had passed to him from Auntie Mitsuki.

'It is a good idea for me to sell my art.' True.

Always good to make sure that the basic premise was true before spending hours focused on the details.

'Selling my art will give me the money I need to make better use of my quirk.' True.

'Selling my art will give me enough fame but not too much to put me, mom, or my friends in danger.' True.

'There is currently a better way of making money that follows my last three questions.' False.

Well, it looked like he'd be selling his art in the near future. After a much more varied series of questions, he figured out the best time to put his art on exhibition to make the largest but safest amount of money. He had also determined the type of artwork that would sell the best, the skills that would be most useful to learn in the time between now and the exhibition, the phone numbers of the people who would be most likely to want to buy his art, and what medium would be the best to use.

Figuring out the phone numbers may have seemed like a waste of nearly forty questions to the average person, but Izuku wanted to test an idea of his – that his quirk gave him an enhanced memory with things related to questions he asked. He had already determined that it helped him build skills like drawing well, but whether it helped with remembering strings of otherwise useless information would be a fun way to pass the time.

Sure, he could just ask whether it did or didn't, but the instant gratification that his quirk brought him would quickly get old if he didn't make himself try things the normal way. It was also just good practice to not rely too heavily on his quirk, for that had been the downfall of many a hero and villain.

After this, the class went to recess, where they went outside and played on the playground. Izuku spent this time with Katsumi, watching and commentating as she popped the sweat away as it appeared on her skin. Izuku had an idea for how she could create a larger explosion by storing up sweat, but like the last time he introduced a new idea for how his best friend could use her quirk, he had to check whether or not it was a good idea.

Unsurprisingly to most, giving a four-year-old access to larger explosions was not considered a good idea by Izuku's quirk. He shrugged it off, figuring that it would be okay if he told Auntie Mitsuki first. The affirmative response to this stray thought put the thought out of his mind.

After lunch, the class lined up for art by the doorway while Izuku grabbed his unfinished drawing from his cubby. The walk to art was short, and soon they were let loose in the art room to create whatever they wanted with the supply of crafts materials. Izuku found a quiet corner and kept working on his drawing. When he finished and set it aside for one of the few wholly intact pieces of blank white paper, he noticed that the teacher was staring at him with an odd expression on her face.

Thinking nothing of it, Izuku began to draw another of his dreamscapes while ignoring the chaos that was occurring in the rest of the room.

When Mitsuru came to pick up the class, the art teacher pulled her aside. "Mikami-san, something is vastly different with Midoriya Izuku-kun today. Take a look at what he drew – it's the best drawing I've ever seen a four-year-old produce by a long shot, and I'm not sure what to do or how to feel about it."

Mitsuru winced. "My apologies, Mi-san. His situation is difficult, and I really should have let you know earlier. His mother let me know that something like this might happen, so you shouldn't be worried about it. Other than that, I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to say because of the nature of his situation."

Watanabe Mi accepted this uneasily, waving goodbye to the class as they left, some carrying finished products that they wanted to take home with them. Izuku has two rolled-up drawings in his left hand as he walked back to class, placing them in his cubby before teaching began again.

When the school day ended, Izuku gave Katsumi a goodbye hug before leaving the room with his mom. Inko looked much more well-rested than she did in the morning, and while they walked home he told her about how school was that day and what he found out with his quirk that day. Happily, he remembered the three phone numbers that he had found earlier that day, so he added that tidbit of information as well.

Upon arriving home, Inko brought Izuku to the kitchen where after dropping off his lunch bag, the two sat down to talk. Izuku wasn't sure where this talk was going, seeing as he had already done the heavy work for planning the art exhibition.

"Izuku, do you remember the list that you marked true or false this morning?" Inko began, simultaneously desperate for more detail but wary of overwhelming Izuku. At his nod, she continued. "Did you understand what the questions were? How did you confirm whether or not they were true?"

Izuku shook his head. "I didn't know what some of the words were, and I couldn't read some of the questions, so I asked if the questions were true or false based on how you intended them. Were any of them bad?"

The final question was given with a wide look in his eyes and a tilt to his head. Inko shook her own head and reassured her son. "No, Izuku, everything is okay. The questions were about how you predicting the future works. Could you just confirm or deny some more questions I have? It doesn't matter if you don't recognize the words I'm using, I'm sure you'll find what they mean sooner or later."

Izuku nodded, always ready to help his mom when she needed it.

"I currently have free will."

"True."

"You currently have free will."

"True."

"People who have not interacted with you currently have free will."

"False."

Only three questions in, and Inko was already fearing the worst.

"The act of making predictions deprives people of free will."

"False."

"I have not had free will at some point in the past three days."

"True."

"You have not had free will at some point in the past three days."

"False."

"Being aware of future events gives people free will."

"True."

At this point, Inko decided to take a much-needed break from her line of questioning. If what she remembered from her journey through philosophy last night was correct, then the answers she had just gotten agreed with determinism far more than free will. The bright side, however, was that people could have free will if they were aware of a prediction that Izuku made concerning them. It was demoralizing to think that a majority of the world had no free will, but from a certain point of view it made sense.

Everyone was shaped by everything they experienced and their genetics, so it made sense that reality was highly deterministic – every thought had a reason behind it, a cause. From the point of view of the future, all decisions that were going to be made that could influence the future had already been made and had brought about said future.

If you knew how the future was going to turn out, however, you could make choices that would change the future. Suddenly, she became aware of another moral dilemma – did Izuku have the responsibility to give other people free will?

She shook her head, dispelling these thoughts. Her son was four years old, and he was both unable to get the rest of the world to listen to him and unaware of the ability he had. She let Izuku know that she was finished with asking questions, and he scampered off to the living room to get started with his next book.

In the time between their discussion and dinner that night, Izuku finished "How to Ask the Right Questions" and had started to read "Path of the Swordsman". The first and most useful book to him was very insightful – the main takeaway that he had gotten was that with enough knowledge of how things happened, he could make increasingly educated guesses about why things happened, the major weakness of his quirk.

'With enough time and knowledge,' Izuku thought, 'I can do anything.' True.

The second book was seemingly just a fantasy novel, written before the advent of quirks. It told the tale of an amnesiac who had lost everything, and with his father's sword managed to fight on his own against all sorts of opponents and win. From superpowered individuals to aliens to demigods, he faced them as an equal and persevered for the sake of finding out who he was and what had happened to his family.

So far, Izuku had only made it a third of the way through the book, but the determination and drive that the main character had were the inspiration he was taking away from the story. There were a great deal of one-liners that made little sense to him, due to the change in language over the years, but the image of the main character stuck in his mind.

Izuku went to bed happy that night, with images of a swordsman cutting through hordes of monsters filling his dreams.

Author's Note: I realized while writing this that a majority of people are unfamiliar with searching algorithms, so here's a brief explanation of binary search, the main one that Izuku uses.

Take an ordered set of data, for example from one to one hundred, where you are trying to guess a number within. If you guess that the number is greater than fifty, no matter whether it is a true or false guess, you have split the range of possible numbers in half. In this way, it only takes log2(100) guessed rounded up, and therefore one needs seven guesses to guess this random number. For a thousand, you only need ten guesses, and so on. For more information, look up "binary search" on Wikipedia.

I have also realized that a majority of people are not philosophers. "Free will" refers to the ability of someone to make a choice between different actions without being influenced. "Determinism" is the opposite, and it refers to all events and choices being nothing but a result of the events and choices that came before them.

If you believe that you have free will, then you made the choice to read what I write, which I am extremely grateful for. If you believe that everything is deterministic, then you were always going to read my writing, and I am equally grateful for that.

For the sake of the story, I chose to apply determinism outside of characters who interact with Izuku because I am not writing them when they are not interacting with him, and therefore they have no ability to make non-canon choices when they are not being written.

Please leave a review if you have any questions or anything else you wanted to talk about or know. I would love to hear any feedback that any of you have for me.