"I just… I can't believe it, you have a quirk now!!" Himiko excitedly said, her eyes shining with excitement as she looked at Izuku and he only chuckled.
The sun had now begun to disappear in the horizon, painting the sky in a warm orange as the siblings walked home having finally gotten their bearings from the villain attack and meeting All Might.
"I'm more surprised how you are ignoring the fact that you almost puked in front of the number one hero" He said, teasing his sister by reminding her of her sickly green face. As his words began to process in her head panic began to set in in her eyes.
"Oh god you're right, I almost puked in front of him! What if he tells someone, my entire hero dream will be destroyed, I won't be able to show my face anywhere!!" His sister began to panic as she blew it all out of proportion which was understandable when you make a fool of yourself in front of a world wide celebrity.
"I'm sure All Might wouldn't do that" Izuku said trying to calm down her nerves, his words were filled with confidence almost as if he knew that he wouldn't do that, which he kind of did.
"I hope so… Anyway, your quirk!!" His sister quickly bounced back as she grabbed your hand looking at it as if it was some kind of magical item, the healing quirks had done their jobs as the burns had disappeared before she could notice.
"I can't believe it finally manifested, we have to tell mom, we have to throw a party!! I can't wait to rub this on Bakugos stupid smirk! Oh we can begin then see and…" Himiko kept going, seeming much more excited than Izuku at the revelation of his quirk as he shifted his attention to the vestiges.
"Congrats kid, you are officially a fire bender" First said with a smile on his face but it quickly fell as he looked at Izuku's confused face "You don't… you don't know what those are… uh I..." First struggled with his words as he tried to describe a very old reference to a show that had been forgotten in this day and age and with that came panic and a horrible realization "Oh god… Is this how it feels to be old?"
Izuku just laughed as he listened to his sister excited ramblings and the vestiges conversations.
--
In his defence, Himiko has said a lot of things and while making a party wasn't impossible he had not expected her to actually go through with it and even less for his mom to be on board with it.
"Good god kid, why did you make us all wait so long huh?" Asked Mitsuki as she ruffled Izuku's head, aside from making a party, his mother had also decided to invite the Bakugos to celebrate all together.
"You bastard, are you trying to outshine me or something?" Bakugo asked, his language as course as ever but there were a few hints of pride in his voice that Izuku could find and a grin in his face as he lightly punched his arm.
"Oh, is the big explosion murder lord scared that my brother will take the spotlight?" Himiko said, the challenge obvious in her voice.
"It's King explosion murder lord for you Cheshire and he would need to take the spotlight from my cold dead hands" Bakugo answered with a glare and it almost seems like sparks fly between their determined gazes.
Izuku laughed as he saw the two fight once again as he took a sip from his drink as he enjoyed the nice atmosphere.
Being here with everyone was nice but it also felt… weird, calling a quirk his own and for it to not be One For All made him feel as if he was a different person, not the quirkless Izuku Midoriya but someone else, someone who had a quirk whose life wasn't plagued with insults and people looking down on him.
It left a strange bitter taste in his mouth.
"Izuku" as his mother called for him he quickly replaced the frown in his face with the best smile he could muster as he went back to celebrating with everyone.
The party went off without a hitch and Izuku was exhausted after they asked him to show off his quirk multiple times. It must still be hard to get over the surprise of the quirkless boy suddenly getting a quirk but he knew that things would soon go back to normal.
But for now Izuku had somewhere he needed to go, he did his best to not wake up his sister who was sleeping on the top bunk of their beds as he opened the window and left without a sound.
He walked through the empty streets until he reached his destination, an empty beach with only the sound of the waves to break the silence.
Izuku looked around the beach, memories flooding his head, the days of him cleaning the beach as All Might cheered him on or the different training regimens that he put him through.
The memories made his throat burn, tears beginning to form in the corners of his eyes as the cold salty air made his skin tingle.
"I'm sorry…" He muttered, tears slowly beginning to fall onto the sand. The feelings that he had been bottling up had finally begun to spill as his meeting with All Might came back to him.
He didn't know what to do, fear, sadness, anger, it was all pilling up and he was running out of space to hide it. Those emotions kept rearing their ugly heads and no matter what he did he couldn't stop the thought that they brought with them.
He fell to his knees as more tears kept falling, his breathing becoming faster as the guilt of his actions caught up to him.
The main face that came to him was Stain, Izuku had killed before, it wasn't a new thing for him. In his past life he and his class had done everything to protect civilians and reach All For One but now, things were different.
Izuku was back, he wasn't stuck in some life and death situation, he could do things differently but he ended falling back into those habits and even worse he stole a quirk, the core thing that made someone a person.
Then came the question he had been trying to avoid…
Is he still a hero?
Can he still be a hero?
"Pathetic" A familiar voice made Izuku freeze, he slowly looked up and fear filled his eyes as the red eyes of his older counterpart stared back at him "You really think this will help you, crying your eyes out like some kind of child?" the older Izuku asked, no emotion could be found in their monotone voice but the disgust in his eyes was obvious.
Izuku tried to retort but the words only got stuck in his throat "Look at you, a small little pile of weakness, I told you that you couldn't keep wasting your time and yet here you are" The old Izuku looked down at the trembling boy as they began to stretch their hand out a menacing red glow coming from it "We already warned you and since you don't seem to be able to keep going we'll just-" the older Izuku was stopped as someone grabbed their hand and actually managing to make contact with them.
Their eyes turned hostile as they turned to look at the figure who touched them but instead there stood a humanoid looking ball of golden flames? Light? Izuku could not figure out the correct words to describe the person in front of him but they gave him the same feeling as the other vestiges so maybe…
"All Might?" Izuku softly asked and the golden being turned to him, their eyes softened and even though they didn't have a mouth Izuku could tell that they were smiling.
His vestige.
With everything going on he had completely forgotten about it.
"You" The other Izuku's eyes flashed with a dangerous gleam as they looked at the man who had stopped them with anger clear in their face "Do you really think you can stop us? You will fall and that boy will go down with you" the red eyed Izuku glared at All Might as they tried to pull their hand away from his hold but were unsuccessful.
All Might turned once more to Izuku who looked at him with surprise, suddenly a voice sounded inside his head " It's okay Young Midoriya " It was his voice, just as warm and soft as he remembered it to be " You haven't done anything wrong "
Those words were more than enough to break Izuku's dam as even more tears began to come from his eyes.
The golden flames that made Toshinoris body began to spread to the older Izuku as they struggled for freedom "This isn't the end! We will get revenge even if it means tearing all of you from the inside!" The red eyed Izuku screamed before the flames fully consumed them and then disappeared completely.
Before the process was done, Toshinori turned to look at the young green boy and with an invisible smile said " I am proud of you my boy " before disappearing alongside the other Izuku.
Izuku only stayed there speechless as the words kept bouncing around his head.
He was proud.
He didn't hate him.
All the walls that Izuku had put up in the last two years came crashing down at that moment as he openly began to wail to the night. Only him and the moon that watched over him.
After what seemed hours, his crying finally subsided, his throat was sore from screams that he had been letting out but now his chest felt much lighter than before but now there was a question on his mind.
"What Toshinori is doing, right?" Nana surprised him as she appeared beside him looking at the ocean with a smile on her face.
"When that evil version of you materialized we all realized that we needed to do something, we couldn't get rid of it since it was a kind of vestige like us" First said as he appeared sitting on the sand next to Izuku "So we decided that we should put them in some kind of prison, or ironically, a kind of vault. We all voted on my brother but Toshinori actually offered himself to hold them back and no matter how hard we tried he didn't back down" FIrst smiled at him "You should be happy, even now he still wants to protect you"
Nana softly chuckled "A reckless, selfless idiot, that's my Toshi"
"I may hate that blonde idiot but… I owe him one for protecting my child" His father said being uncharacteristically nice, Nana, while annoyed at the insult, couldn't bring herself to be angry.
The four of them stayed in silence for a few more minutes until Izuku shakily stood back up and placed a hand over his chest, a small but comforting warmth where his heart should be bringing a small smile to his face as he walked back home.
--
Izuku was not surprised as he saw that he had been right yet again, after the initial shock of his new quirk everyone quickly got over it and acted as if he always had one.
His classmates tried to talk to him but Himiko and Kacchan still gave them the stink eye so they were too scared to go further than just some small talk. His training sessions with his sister and Kacchan changed to focus more on their quirks since the UA entrance exam was closer than ever; they needed to become better at handling their quirks.
Izuku had a really unfair advantage at having years of experience and had more than enough people that he could 'borrow' moves from but that also meant that he had more than enough tips for his friends, like for example with Kacchan he had already pushed him in the right direction for helping him change from just explosions to different types like his stun grenade.
Toga was a different story, her quirk was very straight forward and her ability only allowed her to do more once it awakened but for now Izuku was just excited to finally be able to analyze her quirk.
She had been gaining more and more confidence in herself and her quirk after seeing how much interest Izuku had in it and having a family and friends that didn't see her as a monster finally began to show changes in how she thought about herself and being excited to see just what she was capable of.
They began with the normal stuff, how long she could last transformed, did blood type affect the time, that kind of tests.
Nothing really interesting popped up, at least until they began the much interesting part. They discovered that if she focused she could transform only a part of her body, they discovered this when she only changed her arm to look like Kacchans and another thing is that the smaller the portion she changes, the longer she can last with it.
If a full cup of blood made a full body transformation last roughly a day, the arm focused one could last a day and a half.
Izuku seculates that if she manages to improve her control in her quirk she could even manage to change even smaller parts of her body while keeping everything else like normal, from just changing her hair to her finger tips, she could make the perfect spy.
Like this the trio spent their days thinking of ways to use their quirks and training for the exam, the three of them were going to make UA the beginning of their legends as the greatest heroes.
Izuku bitterly smiled at the statement as he hoped that he would be there to see them both shine even if it had to be in from the shadows.
