AN: Hello there! Thanks for all the support for the first chapter, sometimes you think something is good but you never really know until people read it. I apologize for this chapter being a bit info-dumpy. It's necessary and I tried to make it interesting as possible. However, I really like how the two chapters after this one came out, and I'm usually my own worst critic.
Also! Anything remotely "sciency" should be viewed with anime goggles. My reference is anything I remembered from high school chemistry (which I did not do well in), and things I'm looking up on the fly so there will be mistakes, I promise you.
Chapter 2
A Happy Accident
ooOo Izuku oOoo
It took Izuku six months to use his quirk with any sort of purpose. Even after tinkering with his ability ever day after school, he had only managed to move the quicksteel short distances out of its default orbit. It was progress, but not nearly enough to be considered useful, so he kept his practice to himself.
Izuku figured the name he'd chosen on a whim was as good as any. He had read about the element mercury before, and he thought it was cool how it stayed a liquid at room temperature. So, he settled for quicksteel, as a play on the slang term for mercury. The quirk registry didn't seem to mind the invented name once they realized how truly unique his ability was.
The bullying of course, continued, and Katsumi remained as distant as ever, if not a bit quicker to anger than before. Was she really enjoying being surrounded by the classmates that sung her praises so easily? It really didn't look like it. He preferred Kacchan's confident grin much more than the scowl she wore these days.
School was the same, remarkably mundane even in this world of super powered humans. To pass the time, Izuku had taken to meditating in his time alone between classes. finding that having a better handle on his emotions stopped the quicksteel from flitting around out of his control.
Following the referral from the original quirk specialist Izuku and his mother arranged for a sample of his metal to analyzed by a lab out of the country. The results were due any day now. Hopefully they would give him some insight on the potential of his quirk. He'd already filled a notebook with speculation, but he wanted answers.
ooOoOoOoo
"Izuku, honey, it's here!"
The boy in question raced down the hall to meet his mother at the door. His eyes practically sparkled and his All Might hoodie flapped in the wind. Inko smiled knowingly at his enthusiasm aware of how eagerly her son had been waiting for the results of his tests.
Izuku snatched the letter from her hand as politely as possible with a quick, "Thanks, Mom!"
He'd barely made it back to his room before he began pouring over the report.
There were countless pages of data that went over Izuku's head, but several points of interest were summarized at the end.
Izuku had been correct in his observation of the similarities between his quirk and the chemical mercury. They both had a relatively low melting point, resulting in its liquid state at room temperature.
However, that is where the similarities ended.
After extensive testing, it was determined that the material sampled from Izuku's quirk did not occur naturally in the world. Despite sharing similar properties to several elements, it did not match any single one perfectly. Its density exceeded his quirk's namesake, even rivaling gold, one of the densest naturally occurring elements. Perhaps the most crucial detail was the unknown metal's incredible tensile strength when it was cooled below its melting points, changing from a liquid to a solid.
The words overall strength comparable to carbon steel jumped out to Izuku's verdant eyes as they frantically trailed back and forth over the scrawled notes.
It looked like the name he had chosen was more appropriate that he had initially thought.
The pointed tip of Izuku's pencil blurred across the lined paper of his personal notebook as the aspiring hero detailed what this new information meant for his own quirk training. Knowing that his quirk had the potential to be great was one thing.
Now he just had to figure out if he even had the ability to control the temperature of his quicksteel.
Izuku prayed for some sort of influence from his father's quirk. It would be nice to have something from the man, having never actually met him face to face.
He didn't really have anything personal against his dad. But even with his mother's attempts to not influence Izuku's opinion of his father, it's not like he had any experiences to base that opinion on. He briefly entertained the idea of asking his mom if he could contact the man for advice, but something stopped him. Midoriya Inko was always more hesitant than usual when he asked about his dad, and she worried enough without added anything extra to her plate.
No, Izuku would have to figure this out for himself.
oooOoOoOooo
For nearly a year, Izuku dedicated most of his free time towards practicing with his quirk.
He was largely unsuccessful.
Altering the temperature of the material generated by his quirk proved to be much more difficult than he had imagined despite improving his control over its liquid state. He even managed to shape it into various shapes, but until he could solidify those forms his progress was at a standstill. According to the infra-red thermometer he had asked his mother to purchase online, he had barely managed to lower the temperature of his quirk more than a few degrees at a time.
Granted, it was validating for Izuku that doing so was even possible in the first place, and he was as enthusiastic as ever as he regaled his bemused mother with tales of how he'd raised it almost two degrees today. Unfortunately, it meant nothing until he could completely solidify quicksteel. It would open a whole new array of possibilities once he succeeded.
Izuku knew he couldn't only rely on his quirk as a hero and fully intended to train his body once he was a bit older, but at the moment, anything past basic fitness would only do more harm than good to his still-developing body.
Izuku felt like his progress had plateaued. He went to school, as was expected of every child, aspiring hero in training or not. He payed as much attention in lessons as he could manage, often catching onto the concepts faster than his peers. Izuku of course kept up his hero analysis, filling volumes two, three and four of Hero Analysis for the Future. Though his peer's overall opinion of him didn't change much, Izuku's ability to brush off their harsh words only improved with his greater emotional control and self-esteem. His daily meditation succeeded at improving his control over his quirk, but a welcome side effect was his reduced anxiety, and the subsequent boost to his confidence.
For some, however, words were not enough to assert their superiority. Izuku had been cornered on several occasions by some of his classmates, though he'd been escaping with less and less hassle, (and bruises) every time. His bullies weren't very creative with their attempts to reassure him of his uselessness, and where Izuku was lacking in strength he made up for in agility, able to slip away given the smallest opportunity.
Izuku might have been a bit more upset that the primary school teachers allowed such blatant bullying to occur in their classrooms. That is if it hadn't led to his first real breakthrough in months.
It was silly really. Izuku was making his way to the back row of their classroom. He'd been lucky enough to be assigned a seat in the back that year. It allowed him to avoid the unwanted attention of his peers for most of the day.
That day was the rare exception.
Izuku's eyes were bleary and unfocused from lack of sleep the previous night. A group of villains had tried to rob a bank in downtown Musutafu and had ended up taking hostages. Of course, being the avid hero fan that he was, Izuku had been up all night watching the live newsfeed of all the action. Eventually Pro-hero Snipe had taken out the aggressors with a nonlethal application of his quirk from long range, keeping the hostages, not to mention bystanders, out of harm's way.
Being in such a state of unrest, Izuku didn't notice the leg stuck out intending to trip him as he normally would. Teiji Kugo was a brat, and his quirk: telescopic knee, wasn't likely to ever be put to better use than tripping up kids in school hallways.
Not that the quirk itself lacked potential, but the ugly personality it was attached to sure did. In fact, if Izuku wasn't one of the boy's most frequent targets he might have been quite interested in how such a quirk worked from an anatomical standpoint. However, Izuku was a frequent target of the boy's bullying, and the rapidly approaching ground lent credence to that fact.
Izuku's hand darted out towards the closest desk in an effort to save himself, but he missed by a mere centimeter, leaving himself at gravity's mercy.
This was it. This is where it all ends.
Until it wasn't.
Izuku gaped at his hand hovering around a foot above the floor, braced sturdily against a flat, wonderfully solid disk of quicksteel. In his shock he pulled his hand away, leaning on a desk by his side. After a moment the slight indentation of his handprint that was left in the metal slowly smoothed over, the quicksteel reverting back to its natural liquid state.
Was he dreaming? Izuku's eyes widened, darting around to see if anyone had noticed.
Katsumi's gaze had darted towards him at the sound of the commotion but judging from the snickers of Kugo's cronies they had only seen him stumble. The quick save from his quirk must have happened under the desks and out of sight! His classmates had seen the orb zip around many times in response to Izuku's heightened emotions, so there was no reason they would be suspicious.
Izuku trudged to his desk, quelling the violent urge to voice the flurry of ideas bouncing around in his head, a habit he had all but broken in the previous year or so.
He wrenched his backpack open and snatched his personal notebook out of the main pocket. The familiar cool touch of paper under his fingers calmed him slightly and settled his thoughts.
He had done it! But how? What had changed, how were the conditions different? All his other attempts at solidifying quicksteel before this point had resulted in lackluster results.
Izuku tapped his pencil rhythmically against a blank page, his mind running a mile a minute.
Had he been thinking about it wrong this entire time? In all his past experiments he was focused on the science behind it all. He'd thought cool this below its melting point. It was logically sound, but entirely too clinical for something that should be a part of him. Like an extension of his own body.
All that had been on Izuku's mind just moments ago was stop falling.
The tapping stopped.
That was the difference. That was the state of mind he needed to achieve, the overwhelming need for a certain result.
He replayed the situation in his mind as best he could remember. Izuku had reflexively moved his quirk to catch himself despite never having succeeded before. But judging from the imprint his hand left in the quicksteel, it hadn't finished, or possibly even started hardening until his hand had touched it.
Could skin contact have anything to do with his seemingly random success? He had touched his quicksteel while training before of course, but Izuku couldn't help but feel his quirk was somehow… stronger in that moment of panic.
He'd never been able to test lifting anything with his quirk since any object would just fall through in its liquid state, no matter how much he compressed the material.
But supporting his whole body? Izuku had felt something in that moment that was new to the boy.
Strength.
Besides the slight bit of give that prevented any permanent damage to his wrist from the impact, his telekinetic grasp over quicksteel held strong. It was unwavering under the weight of his admittedly small frame. Would he be able to recreate what just happened? Could it… support his whole body? His hands twitched, eager to touch the metal again even surrounded as he was by all his classmates.
"Midoriya! Do something about that please, you're distracting the other students!"
His eyes snapped to the front of the classroom where their English teacher had shouted from. Apparently, Izuku's tenuous control over quicksteel had lapsed leaving it free to dance about in the space above his head. Its normally spherical base form wobbled and undulated below the surface, projecting its master's joy for the world to see.
The inevitable round of laughter was a few decibels louder than earlier, but it was nothing in the face of Izuku's newfound success. He muttered a quick apology and the quicksteel settled as he regained a grasp over his excitement. Let them laugh. He'd get his turn when he was finally accepted by UA.
The green-haired boy hid a grin with hunched shoulders and a bowed head. He had years until he could practically (not to mention legally) use his quirk to help people. But he also knew that that time would fly by in the blink of an eye. Izuku certainly had his work cut out for him.
He couldn't wait.
oooOoOoOooo
Izuku stood in the center of his bedroom, lids resting over his normally expressive green eyes. He exuded a sense of serenity, as if he was utterly unconcerned with the world around him.
This, however, was a ruse.
Izuku's focus, razor sharp, was centered on that familiar weight in the corner of his mind. The total command of the mass of metal that was as much a part of him as the rest of his body. Even now, blind to the world around him, he could sense the shifting quicksteel floating before him.
He engaged his quirk, gently coaxing the material into the shape he needed. The quicksteel shivered, slowly thinning out, flattening into a disk around half a meter in diameter.
He'd of course tried to replicate the incident from two weeks previously the first moment he had to himself. He'd rushed up to his room for his first attempt the minute he had gotten home from school, stunning his mother in as he passed in the hall with his vigor. She'd gotten used to the more outgoing boy Izuku had become, but even this had been a bit much for a normal day.
His results had been slow at first, but by the end of the night he had managed to solidify quicksteel into several different shapes. He'd sure payed for it the next morning, pulling two all-nighters in a row couldn't be healthy.
He'd been correct in both of his assumptions. Skin contact was indeed required, at least at the moment, for the hardening effect he had managed to reproduce. Perhaps of even more significance, was the added power to the telekinetic aspect of his quirk if he physically handled it.
The potential of such a development was incomprehensible to the young boy.
The metal he controlled was dense, and his quirk seemed to produce a maximum amount of it, directionally proportionate to either his age, or his body's physical development. Either was a possible explanation at this point since the orb had grown to the size of a grapefruit in the time since it had appeared. Even the small amount his quirk produced currently was enough to pack a serious punch if traveling with enough force. Force he was now more than capable of creating while physically handling his quirk's constructs. Offensive weapons, defensive shields and armor, with enough practice only his imagination would be the limit.
Maybe if he got good enough, he could augment his own strength with the force generated by his telekinesis!
Scenes of Izuku as a fully realized hero bounced around the young boy's imagination, a thin layering of quicksteel covering his arms as he stood heroically between a crowd of innocents and the shadowy villain threatening them.
The fine control needed to keep quicksteel flexible enough to mold to the moving joints and muscles of his arms while retaining its defensive properties was something Izuku knew was simply out of his reach at the moment. That would require years of practice, and for the moment was shelved for something of quite a bit higher priority to the boy.
His focus returned to the disk of metal floating a few centimeters off the ground. As amazing a hero All Might was, there was something even the Symbol of Peace himself wasn't capable of. It was a staple ability of a hero even when the notion was purely fantasy. Izuku believed it was well within his power the minute he felt the strength of his quirk those two weeks previous.
He needed a platform, somewhere where he could stand! He flooded his body with the will needed to convey the command as he lightly stepped onto the shimmering pool. The metal was cool, but not uncomfortably so on his bare feet. The shining metal platform seemed to shimmer in the air, its form wobbling for a moment, before it settled into a solid disk.
Izuku braced himself for this next part. Keeping quicksteel solid through contact with the soles of his feet proved to be significantly harder than doing so with his hands. For a moment he had considered that he might be working backwards by learning to channel his hardening through his feet, before mastering using his hands. But what would that accomplish always taking the easy way?
He wanted to fly dammit!
Could Kacchan shoot explosions from her feet? As far as he knew, skin contact of any nature gave him increased control over his quicksteel, but maybe it changed from quirk to quirk.
Izuku gently shifted the weight from his left foot to his right, still planted firmly on the surface of his platform before stepping up with his full weight. This is where he had fallen the most in the past week. Simultaneously balancing himself on his disk while controlling it mentally was incredibly taxing, taking all the aspiring hero's concentration.
For a few seconds he stood steady letting out an ecstatic cry at his success before a brief lapse in concentration sent him sprawling to the hardwood floor. The dull thud of his fall shook the hero figurines decorating his shelves and echoed throughout the small apartment.
"Izuku are you alright?" came the worried call from his mother down the hall.
"Fine mom!"
Despite his apparent failure, Izuku had a wide grin adorning his features as he rubbed at his future bruises. That had been his most successful attempt to date.
This totally might work!
oooOoOoOooo
When Izuku asked his mother to buy him a longboard a few weeks later he was prepared for many reactions. Luckily, or perhaps no so much, spontaneously fainting was indeed one of the reactions he had predicted. As such, he was prepared with a sheet of quicksteel that gently cradled her form and lowered her to the couch conveniently located several meters away.
His mother's nervous disposition was a part of her personality he had already grown quite used to. While it was a result of her highly empathetic nature and would never change that part of her, it did leave her a bit out of order in times of stress.
He put a kettle on to boil, knowing his mom might appreciate a cup of tea when she rejoined the land of the living.
She woke just a moment later as Izuku knew she would, with a cry of "Not one of those rolling death traps!"
He sighed, convincing her might be a bit harder than he had imagined.
There were several excuses he could use to explain away his request, but in this instance, he settled for the truth. His request was entirely reasonable after all. He only hoped that her worry for him wouldn't override her sense of reason.
"I can ride my quirk like a board," he explained quickly, shucking off his shoes to demonstrate to his mother. He settled on floating platform with a fraction of the time and effort, a testament to having practiced religiously over the last few weeks.
"Honey, that's amazing!"
Izuku yelped as his feet left the platform, and while he was shaken around like a rag doll in his mother's hug. "You're going to be such a cool hero Izuku," she whispered warmly.
Izuku relaxed in her grip, returning the hug as his chest glowed with affection for this woman. She had said so many times by this point, but frankly he would never tired of his mother's confidence in his success.
"I can hover in place just fine," Izuku said once she had released him. He hopped back onto the disk in one fluid motion, wobbling slightly as the surface drifted around the room at a consistent height. "But my balanced still isn't the best," he explained, scowling uncharacteristically at the focus it took just to stay upright.
"That's still wonderfully impressive Izuku," his mother replied with stars in her eyes.
He blushed lightly, still working on accepting compliments with grace, though this time was easier as he was personally just as satisfied with his own progress.
Its what drove him to keep improving, seeing himself grow stronger with each day of practice.
"That's why I wanted the longboard," he said, stepping down to the floor and returning autonomy to his quirk. It floated airily to shoulder height, the orb's preferred location to flit around while Izuku wasn't exerting his will. "I figured it would improve my balanced while learning without having to be too far above ground or having to focus on controlling the platform itself."
Inko took a few moments to think to herself before nodding simply, "It's for your safety then?"
He smiled at his mother, the hard part was done with. "Right mom, its for my safety… in a way."
"Then I see no problem," she smiled sweetly. "As long as you wear a helmet."
He nodded with a bit of exasperation. It wasn't an unreasonable request, and Izuku was sure he'd be falling plenty of times before getting the hang of it.
They shook on it, and Izuku rushed off with his mother's credit card to make the purchase, having preemptively decided on a board after weighing the pros and cons of each model extensively.
Izuku was pleasantly surprised when the package came the next day. But his mother had commentant that nowadays postal services often augmented their standard delivery routines with individuals whose quirks were suited to the task.
It was a gentle reminder to Izuku that there were literally billions of people on the planet with quirks, and only a miniscule percent of them became pro heroes. It really put his goal into perspective. To be considered great, he would have to work harder than every other kid with the same aspirations as himself.
It wasn't exactly rare to dream to be a hero after all.
oooOoOoOooo
Izuku coming home with a couple scrapes and bruises was the norm in the Midoriya household for the next couple of days. But for once, Inko looked on with fond exasperation instead of anxious fretting. Maybe it was because these were injuries from pursuing a passion rather than those inflicted by his classmates. He knew she probably didn't believe his excuses about the cause of some of his previous injuries.
Izuku had bought a drop-down longboard, thinking it might simulate the motion of flying with his quirk better than a shorter deck. He road to school for the last two days of the school week before spending hours over the weekend coasting around an empty parking lot he'd found just down the street from his apartment.
Izuku was stuck somewhere between training his balance for his quirk and genuinely enjoying the sport of it. The rush of the wind in his face and his already gravity defying hair whipping around his head was incredibly calming. But the rush as he flew down even a reasonably gentle slope was exhilarating. He could barely imagine what it would be like when he finally managed to slice through the sky with his own power.
He took some spills of course, some nastier than others. However, that was a natural part of the learning process, and learning to fall correctly was never a lesson that would go to waste for a hero. Izuku didn't lack intelligence and was indeed a quick study. Even a more physically leaning task, which he'd struggled with in the past, was no match for his perseverance. Once he gotten a decent amount of experience under his belt Izuku took to it like a fish to water.
He honestly may have been hooked.
Life continued for Izuku as he fell into a comfortable routine. He rode to and from school, and as he grew older, spent increasing amounts of time prowling the streets after they'd been let out for the day.
Chasing down heroes to catch the action live proved much easier with wheels than on foot, and Izuku found himself spending hours after school tracking down heroes and documenting new quirks firsthand. What started as a personal hobby of taking particularly detailed notes turned into something much more. His hero analytics were as good as if not better than an encyclopedia of every relevant hero that had hit the big time in the last several years. Analytics and stat charts detailed everything from a hero's level of physical fitness to their quirk's strengths and weaknesses. Volume seven was coming along quite nicely with only ten pages or so left to fill, leaving the last couple pages for an index of course.
Weekends were reserved for Izuku to practice with his quirk as he was under no illusions that he could ride on an extra axis without any practice.
Honing his skill at manipulating quicksteel was slow progress as usual, and Izuku suspected it would always be so. The only way to truly master one's quirk, and anything really, was with mileage.
So he practiced. A lot.
Izuku found convenient spot to practice at the local junkyard. At least that's what he'd thought it was, until his mom told him about the pristine beach it was when she was younger.
Clearing a space to work with took several hours, but in the end, it was time well spent considering he'd been able to test out augmenting his strength with his quirk. The result was a space on the sand where falling from his hoverboard wouldn't cause permanent injury. Izuku planned to clear a bit more of the trash out with every visit over the next several years. Hauling the junk littering the sand would work as well as anything else to help hone his quirk, and hey, maybe he could clear out the beach with enough time.
He eyed some of the stacks of abandoned vehicles that loomed meters over his head. Maybe not.
The metal that clung to his hands now was misshapen and clumsy-looking, more like two platforms stuck to his palms than a thin coating. But it was the bare minimum he needed to move the larger pieces of junk, and it was all Izuku could manage yet. It did the job, aiding Izuku in lifting the old appliances that his still-developing body normally wouldn't be able to tackle.
Controlling quicksteel in separate pieces seemed to half the force he could exert on each, not to mention the added difficulty of focusing on two things at once. The seemingly mindless task of clearing the beach one weekend at a time would serve Izuku in two ways. Flexing his quirk in more strenuous situations would hopefully strengthen it over time while simultaneously gaining some finesse with his ability.
Now however, he stuck to hauling trash and during rest periods, tried to harden quicksteel without the crutch of skin contact. He imagined his control would always be stronger with, than without, but being able to move things, or people, remotely would be exceedingly useful.
He continued in the same vein as the seasons changed, time passed, and his life was stable for once. It wasn't until Izuku's first day at Aldera secondary school that everything was thrown out of balance.