He's on a trip with his mom into the neighboring city when he sees it.
He doesn't see the great, hulking mass of a probably-villain first, though that's certainly what everyone's focusing on. What he would usually focus on.
No, first Izuku sees a boy, his age maybe, standing with his feet planted as if to run. He's trembling, and Izuku recognizes the look on his face. It's carnal; an utter, guttural desire to sprint forward, step in. Be the hero.
And, as Izuku watches, as his eyes slide to the villain, to the girls he towers over, to the cracking concrete of the building caving inward, it's not the black-haired boy who moves.
Instead it's a girl, bright pink all over, wearing a middle schooler's uniform. She gives the villain directions—false ones, Izuku knows; the Springer Hero Agency is half a kilometer in the opposite direction—and, as it lumbers away, she falls to her knees and cries.
Izuku thinks she is very brave for this.
He also knows that the boy thinks so, too, and his face betrays exactly what her bravery means to him: a lost chance.
Beside Izuku, his mother clutches his wrist with both her hands, tight. She's still staring off in the direction the villain went. Since the slime villain, she's kept just a little tighter of a grip on him, like she's afraid he'll slip (run) away.
"Mom," he says, his attention not really on her. "I'll be right back, okay?" She sputters out a question, but he's already moving, his wrist slipping through her sweaty palms as he beelines for the boy, who stands stock-still on the street corner, his face twisted like grief.
Izuku has not made a friend since he was four years old. Since then, the only person he's talked to on a regular basis has been his mother, who is decidedly not his age. It would not be untrue to say that Izuku has absolutely no clue about how to interact with other kids, and before this past spring (before slime, vile and choking, before Kacchan, before All Might gold and brilliant) he probably wouldn't have been able to take those steps toward this boy.
But he's not Deku in this moment, he's Izuku, and the black-haired boy on the corner is his mirror image.
"Hey," Midoriya Izuku says to Kirishima Eijrou, pre-high school debut. "Are you okay?"
Kirishima (who will become Eijirou to Izuku before they take their first steps into UA's halls) is the first person Izuku invites over to his house in nine years, and it's only not ten because little four-year-old Izuku had still been holding out hope that Kacchan would change his mind. He'd invited their entire class over for his birthday (three guesses as to how many of them came).
Kirishima comes. He's a fair bit brasher than Izuku, but they're the same amount of energetic when it comes to something that really matters to them, and they've each got their idiosyncrasies—Midoriya Inko will lose track of how many times Izuku devolves into muttering, Kirishima listening on, enraptured. Of how many times Kirishima starts up with an impassioned speech while Izuku watches, stars in his eyes.
Izuku has not had a friend since he was four years old. Kirishima has, and it matters—Izuku trips up sometimes, on what's acceptable and what isn't, what's normal and what isn't—it's just that Kirishima doesn't care. Here is a boy who knows inadequacy. Here is a boy his mirror image. No matter how strange Izuku can be, Kirishima's not going to let him just slip away, not when his school friends do so easily.
(Kirishima spends less and less time with his school friends. They drift off. Every time that had happened, when Kirishima was on the receiving end, he'd latched on tight. Now they just… blow away in the wind, as if they'd never been rooted in the first place.)
Izuku isn't like that. Kirishima is his first friend in ten years and he grips so hard it hurts, and Kirishima grips back. His mirror image.
They breach the quirk conversation earlier than Izuku would have liked. He's always been analytical, and some of that lends to manipulation. Some of that lends to the voice in the back of his mind that says, sly, desperate, wait. he'll be less likely to leave you, quirkless wonder, if he likes you already. wait. He knows, somewhere deep inside him, that it's wrong to coerce someone else into friendship. But he's been alone for so, so long. He's wanted for so, so long.
As it is, Kirishima doesn't wait long enough for Izuku's little voice to be satisfied. Their inadequacies both stem from their quirks. Of course it would come up.
Kirishima lets Izuku trace the little scar above his eye, and demonstrates for him—hard skin, but not too hard. You could still probably take a knife to it.
Kirishima asks, "What about you?" and Izuku isn't a liar.
Izuku says, "I'm quirkless," and Kirishima looks. And he blinks. And he understands.
"Oh," he says quietly, his eyes softening, and Izuku could cry (does cry) then and there just simply for the fact that it's not absolute, immediate rejection.
Kirishima folds Izuku into his arms, and they spill out into each other: Haven't had friends since I was four. Bullied every day. Burn scars. Take a dive off the roof. and Scared of my own quirk. Not strong enough. Ashido Mina better, braver than me. Laughed at. Beat down. and Want to go to UA but I'm scared I won't be enough, both of them.
Izuku sketches them both hero costumes, then, tears still drying on each of their cheeks, his tongue running a mile a minute, muttering nonsensical things about Kirishima's quirk, his strengths, his weaknesses, how flashy his costume should be to compensate for his quirk. His own costume (he's never been able to envision it quite right) is a knock-off of one of All Might's, as it always is. Kirishima does not point it out, not when he subtly adds to his own design a few tributes to Crimson Riot.
There, in Izuku's room, cheeks wet, Izuku tucks a strand of hair behind his ear and out comes the fact that he was that dumb middle schooler who raced forward, scrabbling at slime for a boy who hated him.
"That was you?" Kirishima asks, incredulous, some stupid mix of betrayal and awe in the back of his throat. (Mirror image, but not quite. This quirkless kid is who he wants to be. He's already taken those first steps).
"Yeah," Izuku says, and cringes. "It was stupid of me."
"It was incredible of you," Kirishima tells him, implores him, catching up his hands and sending the pencil Izuku had been drawing with cascading to the floor. "I've wished I could be like you for so long."
And isn't that something? Midoriya Izuku, being looked up to?
(They shed more tears, that day.)
Izuku meets Ashido Mina officially a week before the entrance exam. He sees Kirishima when he can, between training with All Might and school and running errands for his mom. Kirishima knows he's training, and he knows Kirishima is, but neither of them have ever tried to get together. Part of it is Izuku wanting to keep All Might squirreled away, his mentor, no one else to know. Part of it is that they both would feel weak in the face of the other.
So it's a surprise when Izuku gets a text, Kirishima asking if he wants to train with him and Ashido. One last workout before the exam arrives.
(It will not be Izuku's last, but, to be fair, he does have a pro setting his schedule.)
Ashido Mina is blinding. Izuku stutters before her for a few different reasons. One is that she's a girl, and he's genuinely never spoken to one. The second is that she's incredible, all muscle and reflex. No matter how much Izuku's been bulking up these past months, she's been strong for far longer.
Ashido Mina has grown into her strength. She's comfortable in her own body in a way Izuku has never learned to be, and the way she moves is something to be admired. Izuku can see that Kirishima subtly mimics her, when he thinks she isn't looking. It's not a surprise when he realizes, a few hours later, that he's doing the same, completely subconsciously.
Midoriya Izuku does not deal in absolutes. He tends toward analysis; he works in probabilities, in maybes and possiblys, and nothing is ever certain.
That being said, he's sure that Ashido will get into UA. There is simply no other path for her.
Bright pink, blinding hero.
(He can see why Kirishima was so jealous. She's incredible. She's everything he wants to be, save the twin rabbit ears of golden hair.)
Eijirou (who had become Ei so recently it's still foreign on Izuku's tongue) is not put in the same group as Izuku for the practical exam, which is fine. More than, really; he'd been afraid of all those what-ifs—what if I look stupid compared to him? What if we have to compete? What if?
Afterwards, Eijirou and Ashido, in their recently-created groupchat, are the first to hear Izuku's panicked ramblings of I didn't get enough points, I'm sure I failed. He does not tell them about his quirk. He doesn't know what lie to give them, yet.
And, a little after that, they're all the first to hear each other's excited shouts, on a group call, of I got in!
(We got in!)