My Hero Academia: Symbiosis
OneTrueKingOfWinter
Chapter 4: Stick
Chapter Text
It did not take too long before Katsuki began to slowly, but surely, revert back to his old bombastic and annoyingly cocky, self. He only remained flat out sulking for about 3 weeks or so.
After that, he began to act more and more like how Izuku remembered him.
That's not to say that he hadn't changed though. He certainly had. Some major, some minor ways.
In classes themselves he had drastically changed, having gone from always being loud and obnoxious, to being much more quiet, and seemingly hyper-focused on whatever lesson the teacher was teaching. He still had outbursts in class(especially whenever someone dared to bring up the villain incident. That was a surefire way majorly piss him off) but overall he was way less aggressive during the actual classes.
Except for gym class.
If Katauki had become less aggressive when teachers actually talked, it was as if he had instead transferred all of that aggressiveness and channeled it into gym class instead.
Anytime they ended up at some competition(generally a ball game) he would turn into the most aggressive competitor Izuku had ever seen. Even in cases where it wasn't a direct competition he was still hyper-aggressive against pretty much everyone.
And it wasn't just how he acted either. Izuku wasn't sure if he had become way more aware of such things after unlocking his quirk, or if he was simply hypersensitive when it came to how Katsuki was, but he quickly began to notice that Katsuki began to put on muscles.
He had always been an athletic guy, but it was obvious that he had begun to majorly work out, the way his arms developed from pretty muscular, to just being jacked.
For his own part, Izuku was glad that so far his powers didn't seem to majorly affect his muscles in looks. Other than burning off any excess fat he might have had from before, through his daily training, Izuku didn't look any different than everyone else in the class.
One major downside about hiding his powers was that he pretty much had to deliberately fail his gym classes in everything that wasn't just endurance training, running, or jumping exercises.
He just didn't have enough control yet to actually pretend to be mediocre. He was either amazing or terrible. Not much in between.
The greatest change about Katsuki in Izuku's mind however, wasn't the changes to his temperament, or his seeming obsession with school grades.
No, it was his attitude towards him in particular.
When he had first come back to school after the incident, Izuku had thought he would enjoy a brief reprieve from Katsuki's bullying until the blonde boy got back on his mental feet so to speak.
Instead, what he got, was what he had gotten at the start. Katsuki ignoring him. Outside of gym class, Katsuki seemed to have made it his policy in life to pretend Izuku didn't exist. At all.
Izuku had no idea why this was apparently Katsuki's policy going forward, why the villain incident had changed him in this specific way.
To be honest, though, he didn't really care all that much either.
He had no doubt that if the two of them got into Yuei together, this calculated indifference would vanish like morning mist before the sun, but if Katsuki was going to leave him alone for the rest of middle school, he would take it. With open arms.
As for the school work itself… Well, it wasn't as if that much had changed. He still diligently studied at school to the best of his abilities, that part hadn't changed at all.
The main difference was outside of school.
As the weeks had gone by, he had begun to have a very specific routine.
He would go to school in the morning, go home immediately after the last class was over, do all his homework immediately when he came home no matter if he spent 5 hours on it or 1, then if he had spare time he would go out into the city to look up hero battles(He'd stopped taking his books with him to school, so he didn't get to do it in the mornings anymore) until 17.30, when he would head to the woods to train, spend 3 hours every single day doing one type of exercise as much as he could, then go home and get cleaned up, go to bed and rinse repeat the cycle.
The exception was his weekends.
During his weekends, at day, Izuku threw himself back into trying to recreate his lost notebooks, as far as he possibly could, desperately trying to remember and look up every single hero he could ever remember seeing.
Towards the night, he went to the woods and did his exercises.
It was a very rigid regiment, but frankly, he felt more alive in these months than he had since… Actually, scratch that. Izuku had never felt more ALIVE in his entire life than he currently did.
While he certainly didn't enjoy going back to his hated middle school, without katsuki doing everything he could to push him down, he could grit his teeth and bear it.
In his mind though, the real education he had right now, was his training. His physical education, that would be the rock upon which he would build his entire future.
And he was making progress there too.
While he still hadn't become capable of punching without just turning whatever he touched to paste, in every other field he had improved.
In particular his jumps had improved most of all. He had done some math on it, and if he was right, he had roughly one more month of jumping before his balance reached the level he was training so hard for.
His grip control had also drastically increased so now he didn't accidentally crush things in his hands anymore. He had accidentally broken 3 different door handles on the bathroom and one on his own door, and he'd had to go back to the beach and scrounge for replacements every time.
Then there was running… Oh, the running.
If there was one part of his new powers that just gave him joy, it was running at top speed, with not a care in the world, sprinting through the woods, making countless on the spot turns to avoid trees… Of course, it was far less fun to stumble and accidentally hurt himself, but that had become far less of a problem as time went on.
He'd also broken 7 trees so far, accidentally running into them, so he'd decided to only do this kind of training in the deepest part of the woods, far away from his regular spots.
For once in his life, absolutely everything was going great.
The one thing he still hadn't put to the test was his ability to heal himself.
That changed on his 36th training day.
--
Izuku speed through the forest, enjoying the thrill, as he twisted and turned as he moved through the foliage and the forest grounds.
It was at the end of his training session for the day, and he was heading back towards his regular grounds.
He had become familiar enough with the area in a way he had never been in his younger days when he Katchan and the rest had wandered these woods.
These woods had once been an adventurous playground for Izuku, where he had explored what had seen like a brand new world, full of possibilities.
Now that was kinda what they were in truth, not just the overactive imagination of a child. These woods had become something he knew like the back of his hands, where he put everything new about himself to the test.
Happiness.
The feeling coursed through his mind, as it always did when he ran like this.
His quirk wasn't shy about making himself felt, and there was rarely a day where izuku didn't get some emotion that wasn't his own running through his head. However, of all the feelings his quirk had, happiness, true joy, was seemingly only reserved for the times where he ran to the very limit of how far he could push himself.
It just heightened how enjoyable these sessions of sprinting was for him. With all the rest, there was a sense of struggling, of work, of training to master something. But running was different. Moving at great speeds just felt… Right. Like this was what he was born to do.
It was the one part of his powers that he had instantly UNDERSTOOD, from the moment he really began to really use it.
He practically flew across the forest ground, made a quick jump over a rock, sidestepped out of the way of a large tree, smashed through some branches that snapped instantly the moment he touched them. Never stopping, always moving.
He wondered how it would feel when he began to combine this speed with actual real jumps, not just clearing hurdles.
He reached a small river that went through the forest, flanked on either side by dirt walls.
Izuku should have just jumped the small ravine, trusting in his relatively good new balance to carry him across and safely on the other side. However, he knew from experience that the sides of this ravine were just packed dirt and unstable dirt at that. He'd fallen into the water here before after the ground literarily crumbled beneath him.
Instead, he made a hard turn right and kept going along the river. The goal was a rather big log up ahead, that he'd discovered and made note off long ago.
He'd used it to cross before, and he had yet to fall off it.
As he neared the log, he made another quick and direct turn, jumped up on to it, maybe one third across, he instinctually bent down, preparing to make the jump across the rest of the log in one go.
The force of his legs as he kicked off broke the decades-old, weathered, waterlogged and rotten log beneath it in half, and he slipped sideways as the log collapsed out from under him. Then PAIN shot up through his right leg! He screamed as he fell down into the water, the now two pieces of logs falling with him at an awkward angle.
The water in the river engulfed him for a moment as the shock and panic of the sudden pain took him.
Then he wrenched his head and an upper body above water, which just made the pain even worse!
Tears forming in his eyes from the pain, he looked at his foot. It was caught between the two pieces of logs, not deeply, but still enough that he had to move the logs to get it out. He tried desperately to ignore the weird angle of how his right leg lined up with how his foot had to be caught between the two logs.
He carefully tried to hunch over closer to it so that he wouldn't disturb the foot more than he had to. He failed miserably, and a scream through gritted teeth passed through his lips.
When he was close, he hesitated for a while moment, knowing what he had to do, but also understanding the pain that would follow as he did it.
After taking deep breaths for a while, desperately trying to calm himself as emotions of worry(as if he needed to know more about how badly he'd screwed up) inserted itself through his head.
With one final deep breath before the plunge, he prepared himself mentally for what he was going to do.
Then, tears, still in his eyes from the pain, he forced both his hands between the log pieces, and then he began to push them apart.
The pain tripled at the sudden motion, and with a scream, and a push with all his might, he forced the two logs up and apart, letting him wrench his foot free, before collapsing backwards into the water, heads still ringing with the feelings of worry.
Shortly after he forced his head back up out of the shallow water, harking and coughing. The pain was the worst thing Izuku had felt in his life.
The crushing pressure upon it was gone, so there was that at least.
He took a deep breath, then, lying back on his elbows, he lifted his leg up, so he got a look at the foot.
The sickening sight almost made him faint.
His foot had dislocated so it had gone completely to the side, blood seeping from where the muscles had torn.
He just stared at it in shock, breathing, when the black mass began to move, then, went to the wound. Oh right. He had healing powers. Thank god.
It went around his entire foot and lower leg, giving izuku that same feeling he had back on the apartment.
Then, once it had completely covered the foot with it's entire mass, it wrenched the foot back into it's proper place and direction.
Izuku's scream of pain echoed down the ravine and up through the forest.
He gasped, and for a moment his strength went out, and for the third time that night, his head was dunked in water.
This time, he didn't have to force himself up.
The black liquid pushed from below and lifted his head above water without any prompting.
Which was good, because izuku was in shock and other than instinctually harking out water yet again, he didn't feel like he could do anything at the moment.
He lay there in the water, for what felt like an eternity, just breathing, before he finally began recovered from the shock.
He tried to rise, making sure he didn't put any weight on the leg which still hurt like it had had all it's skin torn off.
Propping himself up against the edge of the water and leaning against the muddy earth wall he sighed looked down at his quirk, still covering his leg as it pretty much just floated in the water.
So there buoyancy to the black liquid, interesting, that meant- Was he seriously making notes, just after nearly losing his foot?
Idiot. Stupid idiot. He'd learn weeks ago that he couldn't trust himself not to break things when jumping. Yet he'd done it anyway, nearly crippling himself in the process. At least… At least he hoped it was just nearly.
The horrible idea struck him, that maybe the quirk couldn't heal the internal damage… Then he crushed it, hard. He WOULD heal from this. He would learn, and not do this again.
Now he just had to get out of the river, rest, and let the healing factor take hold, fix him up, then he'd get home.
He looked up the wall, at least 3 meters from the water surface.
He… He Wasn't going to be able to climb that with only one foot.
Ok, so new plan. He would sit there in the water, soaked through in the darkness until he had healed enough to get up from here. THEN he'd go home.
…And he was actually supposed to be heading home soon. Great.
Given his phone was in a bag in a tree, he'd have no way to call her and tell her he'd be late. She'd be worried about him.
Izuku hit head back into the earth wall in frustration. God, he was an idiot.
He'd learned this lesson on his first day, but apparently, having successfully avoided the problem for over a month, he'd forgotten why he did constantly changed jumping-off places in the first place.
It was so he didn't constantly break things as he jumped off of them. Like he did with the log. But no, he was a stupid idiot tha- Vulnerability.
Izuku stopped in his tracks, his quirks warning of the seeming danger, right before a voice from above sounded. "You need some help kid?"
The voice was rough, deep, and intimidating.
Izuku looked up, at the speaker.
On the opposite side of the river, on top of the ravine stood a tall man, dressed in black and blood red armor, covering his face was a cowl like a mask with pupils as red as his armor, and on his forehead, he had two devil like horns.
All in all, he looked bloody intimidating, standing there looking down on him, covered in shadow and only lighted up by the moon.
Izuku stared silently at him in shock and fear, until reality asserted itself.
The guy was obviously a hero, coming to the aid of someone in need. That one in need being him.
His words failed him, so he just nodded, too embarrassed to speak.
The man jumped down and landed on his feet in the water with no particular difficulty.
He bent down and inspected Izuku's leg.
"Hmmm… That's bad. Pretty bad. I'm guessing this liquid is your quirk?"
Izuku ignored for a moment how he had apparently just seen through his liquid and inspected the leg itself and just answered "Yes".
"Hmmm… It's healing the wound. You have healing powers as well?"
"As well?"
The man looked him in the eyes. God those red pupilless eyes were unnerving.
"You have to have super strength and durability. If you didn't have the former, you'd never be able to move as you did, you certainly wouldn't have broken that thing just by using it as a springboard" He pointed a thumb at the pieces of the formerly whole log. "And if you didn't have the latter, your leg would have either be ripped off, or crushed so hard it didn't even resemble a foot anymore."
His blood went cold.
"You've were watching that?"
Was this guy a stalker? A kidnapper? What the hell was he gonna do? He couldn't fight like this, he'd-
"Don't take it personally kid, I watch a lot of people around me for quite a distance, whether I want to or not."
Oh. It was just his quirk. He relaxed again.
"So you have some large scale observation quirk?"
"...That's one way to put it."
"Anyhow, we can continue this chat after we get out of the water."
Before he could argue the man lifted izuku up and slung him over a shoulder, much to Izuku's protestations and grunt of pain for his leg. The feeling of Anger shot through his mind, his quirk being pissed at the sudden change.
"Sorry if this hurts a bit."
Then with remarkable speed, he crossed the river and began to climb the side one-handed with no problem, Izuku still slung across his shoulder. Once he was up, he gently unslung Izuku and laid him up against a tree, making sure his right leg rested over a tree root and his foot not actually touching the ground.
Then the hero went over to another tree to pick up something.
Izuku blinked then realized it was his bag.
"Thought you might need this. In case you want to call for home. Whether I take you to a hospital or you just heal that on your own I'm gonna take a wild guess you'll be late home tonight."
Izuku took the bag, but he didn't fish out his phone yet, instead staring at the man.
" I… I have a choice?"
"Of course. If you want me to take you to a hospital, I'll do it. Of course, that would mean you'd have to explain how you got the injury. Now, I might be wrong, but you don't strike me as much as a liar, so I'm guessing you might say something you might regret."
Izuku bit his lip, then opened his mouth to talk.
Then the realization hit him. This was a pro hero, who had seen him train. Using his quirk. Shit. Shit, shit, SHIT!
Wait. He'd given him a choice.
"You're not gonna arrest me?" he said, hopeful that this night wasn't about to get even worse.
"Kid, if I arrested every single new hopeful hero candidate who I saw take some liberties training their quirks, I'd never get anything done."
He motioned his arm to the forest.
"You think you're the first kid who thought to go out into the woods and train his quirk? You're not. I literarily come across that at least once a month."
Izuku felt like an idiot. Of COURSE, this was common. This was the most obvious spot someone would use for this. Some hero was bound to discover him sooner or later.
A short silence followed before the hero broke the silence.
"Well, kid? You wanna go to the hospital? Or you wanna just heal it yourself?"
Izuku stared at him, then fished out his phone. "I… I'll just do it myself."
He debated whether he'd call his mom, or just send a message. He decided a message. That would be simpler. He'd explain more when he got home.
-Hey mom, I'll be out late tonight- He Hoovered his thumb over the send button, debating if he should write more. What more could he send in a short message? That he'd broken his foot and had to stay out to heal it?
No, that was something he'd have to talk about in person. He sent the message, then turned off the sound on the phone.
As he put the phone back in the bag, he realized incredulously that the hero had sat down opposite from him leaning against a tree.
"You… You're staying?"
"Of course I'm staying. What, you think I'm gonna leave you here? Alone? At night? With a broken foot and no means of escape if something were to happen?"
Yeah… When he worded it like that, it made the idea of him leaving seem kinda… Unheroic.
"I… Don't you need to go and patrol in case there's someone in need you have to help?"
"I AM helping someone in need."
Izuku blinked at that and just stared at the man. Then he began to tear up.
He quickly began to try and dry away the tears. Idiot. He was wet all over. All he did was smear more water over his face.
The hero got up and went over to him, knelt down, and put a hand gently on his shoulder.
"How are you feeling kid?" The voice was much softer now, more filled with compassion.
How did he feel? He had no idea anymore.
He felt humiliated for screwing things up so badly and needing help to even get out of a shallow river.
He was angry at himself for forgetting a lesson he learned on day one here, for forgetting such a simple lesson that would easily have avoided any of this.
He also felt… he felt incredible gladness, joy, that someone, that ANYONE who wasn't his mom cared enough to ask how he felt. If he was okay or not.
It was so stupid. Yet somehow it made him feel so glad. Like he actually mattered. It was a simple question, yet somehow just hearing someone, a complete stranger ask it of him without a hint mockery brought such happiness with it.
After some fumbling at his belt(Izuku just realized he carried a belt full of pouches) the man pulled out something that resembled a cleaning rag, though fully clean, and he handed it wordlessly to Izuku, who grabbed it and began to dry his face clean of tears.
"Thank you…"
"No problem kid. Also, keep it if you want."
He choked.
"Not that! Thank you for… Thank you, for… For caring."
The man stared into his eyes with those pupilless red ones.
The man didn't answer, but he kept his hand on Izuku's shoulder, firmly, but gently.
After Izuku had finally calmed down completely, he finally spoke again.
"You wanna talk about it?"
He almost did.
He almost told him everything. About Katsuki, his life, how he had been worthless for most of it, and how even with his quirk how he still somehow managed to screw things up, his guilt for being a terrible son who made his mom worry about him all the time.
"No… But… But thanks for asking."
--
"Sure you don't want fire?"
The two of them once again sat opposite each other, leaning up against trees.
"Yeah, I'm not really bothered by cold anymore."
Well, that wasn't entirely true. He was still affected by ice-cold temperatures, but he'd discovered early in his training he wasn't affected by just being wet at night.
His quirk had been pretty erratic tonight, ever since they meet this hero, he had been all over the place, rage, suspicion, annoyance. At the mention of fire, rage returned.
"It's quite the multitasker this quirk of yours."
He blushed.
"It's... It's not that special. Just a general strength quirk really."
"No, that it's most certainly not. The strength itself is pretty decent, but healing… Healing is exceedingly rare, even amongst quirks that cover it exclusively, much less those who only have it as a side power."
Izuku flushed even harder. A pro hero was praising his quirk! An actual pro hero!
"Cold resistance isn't anything to sneeze at either. It's way more useful than you might think. During winter, even passive cold resistance is such an upgrade from the standard."
Well, it wasn't like Izuku didn't know that, but hearing it spoken by a pro somehow made it seem real. Not just something you read on message boards.
"So… You think I have a shot at being a hero then?"
The man looked at him with a… Kinda inquisitive look.
"Why do you want to be a hero kid?"
He was taken a bit aback, but he answered honestly.
"To help people… Like… Like you did tonight." He blushed furiously as he said it, but it was true enough.
This was what he wanted to be. Someone who helped people who needed it.
The man gave a small smile.
"I'm flattered to be someone's inspiration, but surely you had some other inspiration before tonight."
"Yeah… I did."
"Well, it's kinda stupid, but… I wanted to be a hero since I was 4..."
"I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess your inspiration was All Might was it not?"
"Yeah." He smiled at the memory of seeing All Might's debut video. Then it vanished remembering what came afterwards.
"Yeah…"
"You were a very late bloomer, weren't you? With your quirk I mean?"
Izuku's head shot up as he stared at the man's mouth agape.
"How… How did you know?"
"There were quite a lot of signs. For one, you are training far, far more to master the basics than anyone who grew up with their quirk reasonably would. In particular, your complete inability to do a punch that's something other than full force and a love tab REALLY stands out. Kids with strength quirks learn very quickly growing up to control how strong they hit something. It's way harder to learn if you have to learn it in your teens."
"You… You know a lot about this stuff."
"I've lived quite a while now. In my profession, you learn a lot of things."
A short silence, then…
"To answer your previous question kid, I think you have a shot at being a Hero."
Izuku's breath stopped cold.
"Your quirk is pretty good, you still need to work on your punches quite a bit, but frankly, I've never cared much about quirks. It's a man's motivation and what he does with it, that defines who he is. Not whether he's strong enough to have made a rank."
Izuku just stared at him, tears forming up. In his eyes again. He tried to force them down, but they came anyway. This time though, he didn't feel sad or conflicted. Just… Relieved. Incredibly relieved.
His quirk was horribly, horribly confused.
Another silence followed, where Izuku finished crying and drying away the tears.
Then something struck him.
"Wait… How long have you been watching me? I didn't do punches today."
"4 days" He admitted.
"I've been patrolling just south of this forest this entire week. You weren't exactly inconspicuous or hard to keep an eye on, alone in the forest, running around like a cheetah."
Dear god, Izuku was lucky this guy hadn't just decided to call the cops or arrest him.
Izuku blinked.
"Oh… Oh, I'm so sorry, but I just realized… I never asked for your name!"
He winced. He just now realized that, and just randomly blurted it out?
The hero didn't seem to mind.
"I think it would be better if we don't do names kid. If I never know your name, I would not be lying if someone asked me for the name of a green-haired teenager who's a bit liberal with the law while training. But, if you must have something to call me, you can call me Stick, for the time being."
He took a wild guess the name came from the two sticks he had in a holster at his belt.
"No problem. Stick."
A short silence followed, but somehow it didn't seem hostile or forced.
"So, how did you figure out I was inspired by All Might?"
He was genuinely curious. He had All Might shirts of course, but he didn't use them while training. The only things he had with him were a set really washed out clothes he used for training, his keys, his black notebook, and his phone.
"Well… Don't take this the wrong way, but 9 out of every single hero I've met in this country was inspired by All Might to become heroes."
That… Sounded just about right.
"Wait… You're NOT from Japan?"
"No."
"Wow… your Japanese is REALLY good, for it not being your native language."
And it was, Stick spoke perfect Japanese, he had for sure pegged him as being a Tokyo Native.
"So I've been told."
A quick silence followed, but this time it was stick who broke it.
"It's a peaceful land, this Empire of Japan."
He wasn't entirely sure how to respond to that.
"It's not peaceful in your homeland?"
"No. It's not been true peace there since the start of the second Millennia. There's always something going wrong."
He sighed.
"But don't let my worries trouble you. How's your foot?"
Izuku blinked. Oh yeah, the reason they were still here. He wiggled his toes a bit. Pain immediately shot up his foot. It wasn't anything compared to the pain of getting it janked into place, but it was still bad.
"Pretty bad still."
Stick stared at his foot, still covered in black liquid.
"The healings pretty fast. I think you should be able to walk with help in maybe 3 hours."
So 02.00 then. Great. He really was going to spend the rest of the night before he got home.
Izuku sighed.
--
The trip back to his home took around 3 and a half hours. Meaning it was 05.17 when Stick and him reached the stairs to his apartment.
The pain in his leg had thankfully begun to actually fade by then. He couldn't put too much weight on it, but at least he could actually walk now. Though slowly.
At the stairs, he turned to say goodbye to Sticks.
"Thanks… Thanks for all the help."
"No problem kid. One final thing though, before I leave you to yours."
"Yes?"
"Punching. Your current training regiment isn't gonna work. If you want control over them, you need something that isn't so weak that it just instantly breaks when you put some force on it, but isn't so rigid that it can only break when force is applied."
Okay…
"What do I need then? It sounds like you have something in mind."
"What you need kid, is a punching bag."
Izuku blinked.
That… Was so simple and obvious that he couldn't fathom why he hadn't thought of it himself.
How he was going to afford a punching bag was another thing entirely, but it was good advice. Much better than continuing to punch rocks anyway.
"Thanks, thanks for the…" Izuku blinked.
He had looked down for a couple of seconds to consider the advice, and in that time, Stick had suddenly disappeared into thin air.
He stood and just looked for a moment. Then he turned and began the slow and kinda painful journey up to his apartment.
As he got to the door. He carefully checked if it was open.
It was.
That meant mom was still awake waiting for him.
He stood there, for a second, contemplating it, then stepped inside to talk to his mother. This was going to be pretty bad he had no doubts.