Music: Ian Gomm - Hold On (1979)

Chapter IV: Wave-Function Collapse

"Out of my fuckin' way, Deku!" A bulldozer came from behind and pushed Izuku to the side, nearly making him fall over, "Not like you're getting in anyway…"

Fucking Asshole!

Izuku gritted his teeth and held back from cuffing the prick in the back of his spiky blond head. Even with his newly gained muscle mass and with them being nearly the same height now, he knew damn well he wouldn't win a fight against Katsuki, not without a gun.

Damn that bastard! How could he have ever called Katsuki his friend!? Idiot!

Taking a deep breath, Izuku calmed the indignant fury in his heart just enough to let the creeping anxiety over the coming exam flow back in.

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a match. He used his thumbnail to light the phosphorus; ash came out of the ether and assembled itself into a post-it note.

No Spoilers…

And a rough drawing of a cartoon mouse creature doing a shushing motion. On the back…

P.S. Please update your quirk registration post-haste. And I also look forward to seeing you at UA for the next three years… If you pass the Entrance Exam fair and square that is…

Am I a Mouse, a Bear, or a Badger,

Nedzu

Figures…

Izuku stuffed the inverted note into his pocket.

Let's get this over with…

That… wasn't as bad as he was expecting.

Sure, some of the questions – especially the open-ended ones – were brutal at times, but almost all the material was your standard middle school and early high school fare, with the occasional university-level question sprinkled in to make sure you were paying attention.

Izuku suspected it probably had something to do with his obsessive studying after every workout. His mind had always been on the more active side, ever since he'd been little. It was how he maintained his stellar grades, despite all the teacher not giving him a single quectometer. Really, it was something he had to do if he wanted to go to sleep at a reasonable hour, otherwise he would be up all night thinking about stupid hypotheticals; his body may have been exhausted from Yagi-sensei's training, but his brain could only be quelled by a barrage of boring lecture notes.

"Ah-hem…"

He heard a grunt – he turned around to find a… homeless man? Just… standing around in front of a classroom…

Izuku pointed at himself with a "Me?" motion – the man's baggy, bloodshot eyes replied, "Yes, you.", as he pulled out a post-it note from his pocket.

Oh, right!

"The principal wanted to give this to you." The man explained, voice slightly scratchy.

Izuku accepted the note, "I understand. Thank you…"

The man only grunted in reply, as seemingly out of thin air, he pulled out a large yellow sleeping bag and crawled in. Lying down on the ground, he went to sleep within seconds on the floor, looking like a puffy cocoon.

Okay then…

Throwing that encounter into the dustbin of his memory, Izuku continued walking down the hall toward one of the exits. Without even reading the note, he pulled the inverted one still in his pocket and let his quirk do its magic. Now, no evidence of its existence remained moving forward – it was between him and Nedzu, as the animal wanted.

Well, Gee, wonder who that obscenely American pickup truck could possibly belong to. Wasn't like there was a certain person he knew who was more of a westaboo than All Might himself…

Izuku made a beeline for it, long before even seeing the lanky blond man giving him a goofy grin. He climbed up into the oversized passenger seat, letting the frigid air-conditioning was over the near-spring heat.

"So, how do you think you did?" Yagi opened.

"Alright… I guess…"

"You guess?"

"Well, you know, It's UA, after all – the top school in the entire country. Nothing is really guaranteed–"

"Come on, Young Midoriya, I've seen you study – I don't think I've tried a quarter as hard as you have in my entire academic life," Yagi dismissed Izuku's worries, "They'd be complete morons to reject a brilliant young man like yourself!"

"Still… I…" Izuku started, before throwing away the rest of the sentence.

"Still, what?" Yagi pulled away from the curb and started driving, "You can have all the 'still's, 'if only's and 'what if's you want, but all that's accomplishing is making you forget the 'why'. Why do you work so hard? What are you working towards?"

Izuku thought about it for a moment, and said the first thing that came to mind, "…To be able to have a comfortable life, and to make enough to take care of Mom when she gets older."

"Do you think a pile of papers saying 'You're not going to UA' is gonna stop you from getting to that?"

"No! Of course not!"

"Right! UA's just one school out of ten thousand. Worse comes to worst, you try again for a different school," Yagi leaned back, wiping a bit of blood from his lip, "No use stressing about it now. You'll cross that bridge when you come to it, just like all the others."

"I guess you're right," Izuku sighed. UA was his first choice, but it wasn't like he didn't have backup options. He was taking a couple other entrance exams later in the week, and with all the studying he'd been doing the past year, it wasn't like he could fail all of them outside of an act from the Devil himself.

"Of course I am – I learned all this the hard way." Subconsciously, the man's bony hand covered that old injury again.

There were a few data niggling around in the back of Izuku's head, sticking out like badly hammered nails. Like how All Might had been slowly making less and less appearances in public for the past five years. Or how he'd never caught a recent glimpse of hero, even on social media, when Yagi was mentoring him… Or, really, how Yagi kinda looked like a funhouse mirror of his own boss.

Izuku wasn't sure how this all connected together, but having known him for almost a year now…

"There's a good Korean BBQ joint down in Suruga, something I know you'd like." Yagi gave a wide smile, that seemed almost familiar, "My treat!"

…he knew for certain that his mentor was hiding something.

What, exactly? He hadn't the slightest clue.

"Back up… Back up! Back up! BACK U–" Izuku nearly crunched his controller into shards of plastic when the death screen appeared. He spectated the idiot responsible for his death being headshotted seconds later, "What the fuck were you thinking Handm4n!? I told you not to–"

"Oh, shut the fuck up, D3Ku! If you didn't choose that bum-ass, noob-ass loadout, we would've been fucking fine! But nooooo!" The speakers screamed into his ears.

"Shove it up your crusty ass, you fucking try-hard! The rest of us are trying to have fun!"

"Try-hard!? It called being a fucking professional, scrub! Git gud!"

"Izuku!..." He heard from outside – he ripped off his headset.

"Yes, Ma!?"

"It's here! Your results are here!"

Oh, right…

Izuku brought the mic close as he started to leave the game, "Alright, man, I gotta dip"

"See you around, have a good one" The scratchy voice on the other side replied, as if the whole gamer-rage argument never happened.

"You too, man – See ya!" He powered off the console, rushing off to the living room the very second his TV became black.

On the coffee table, there was a simple manila envelope with the UA logo lightly emblazoned on laying there, separated from the typical bills and junk mail. Over at the kitchen, his mother looked at him expectantly as he turned on the stove and filled the teapot.

Izuku started at it for a moment, as if it was going to suddenly open itself by some magical force. Then, like an old bandaid, he took a deep breath and pulled it open.

Riiiiiip!

A few pieces of laminated paper fell out, nothing else. Guess the rumors about the fancy holographic disks were bullshit… or they were for the hero course students only.

Izuku took the first piece and read it aloud, "Dear Midoriya Izuku, we would like to extend our congratulations. You have… Holy shit, I made it in–" Was all that he could get out before he was tackle-hugged by his sobbing mother.

"IZUKUUUUU!"

"M-mom!" Izuku squawked.

"You did it! My baby is in UA!" She cried, tears staining her blouse and Izuku's t-shirt t-shirt.

It took her a good minute to stem the flood of tears; Izuku took the time to read the rest of the letter. On one of the other papers, there was a list of the top ten highest scorers on the written exam:

10. Todoroki Shouto – [185/200]

9. Uino Jingorou – [186/200]

8. Shinsou Hitoshi – [189/200]

7. Bakugou Katsuki – [191/200]

Heh… Must be pissed about that one, huh, Kacchan?

Izuku skipped to the end.

2. Yaoyorozu Momo – [196/200]

1. Midoriya Izuku – [198/200]

…

…

…What the fuck!? No way! No way in Hell!

"Oh, I gotta tell Mitsuki!" His mother released her vice grip over his body. She ran off to the kitchen to dial her long time friend on the house phone.

Izuku did a double take over the list, only to realize that no, he wasn't going crazy. Out of the entire damn country, the hundreds of thousands who dared to apply, he, of all people, got number 1 on the exam.

Just… Holy shit!... Probably best not to tell mom about this, lest the neighbors downstairs start complaining about flooding.

Izuku speed-read the rest of the papers – they were the typical "getting started" guides for the start of the school year: where to buy uniforms, the first day of school, what time classes start, the schedule for the first trimester, et cetera, et cetera.

Going back to the original letter, he found a tiny, almost microscopic strip of fine print near the bottom.

P.S. Congratulations on making it in! And good job at updating your quirk entry to be vague enough to avoid the attention of the powers that be. I look forward to seeing what you can do… –Nedzu

He suppressed a cold shudder that went up his spine.

Wait, if the principal wanted him in UA that badly, did that mean he tipped the scales… Hold on…

There was an even tinier strip of text below the postscriptum:

P.P.S. That test score is entirely legitimate and all yours. I wouldn't lower myself to interfere so blatantly, especially in matters of academics. You ought to give yourself more credit! – A winking face with mouse ears.

…What the hell was he walking into.

In the middle of the night, that familiar itch in his hands jolted Izuku awake. Some part of his subconscious reminded him of the letter which he had long stuffed behind the bookshelf.

Was it time already?

Groaning, Izuku forced himself up quickly, ignoring the rushing blood in his skull. From where he kept his office supplies, under his computer, he retrieved an envelope and an empty piece of printer paper.

!hsoooooW

He raised his hand, catching the inverted envelope as it flew out over the bookshelf. Unlike when he first found in the fire months ago, it was in pristine condition, not a mark or speck of dust on it…

Shit, It really was that time now. Here's hoping he wasn't too terrible at writing backwards. He pulled out a pen and started inking down the letter, knowing the words by heart.

...

Hello Izuku,

This is going to sound strange, but your quirk is so much more than you think it is.

No, this is not a prank.

I'm not sure that I can put it to words what its true nature is on paper in a way that you can understand right now, but this letter you hold in your hands is a product of it (sorta). If you really want to know what it does, I suggest you pay a visit to Dagobah Beach. You will find someone who knows all about it there. All that I can tell you is that it has temporal implications.

I'm not really sure what's a good way to end this letter, but whatever happens, happens, and you'll be fine in the end.

Trust me, I'm from the future,

You

P.S. Try not to think about the implications on free will. I still can't wrap my head around it as of the time of writing this letter.

...

With a nervous sigh, he folded the letter and stuffed it in the envelope, not even bothering to seal it.

"Whatever happens will happen." The mantra was a cold comfort to him, now that he was truly ignorant of what the future held. On the envelope itself, he wrote: FOR ME

In his hands, he held both, letting his quirk do the work. Both disappeared in his hands, any evidence of its existence now stuck in the past, to ignite the sequence of event which led him here in the first.

The future was now a path through a dark forest, branching with possibilities. A wave function left undisturbed, unobserved… uncollapsed.

So, Izuku wondered, what did it hold for him? How would what's to come fold out when he finally comes to it?

He already knew the answer. It was all one track the whole time, from birth to grave. Probably for the best that