It was time. Izuku felt his skin buzz in excitement, in impatience, in anxiety, in fear. On his desk in front of him were two items. The first was a brand new blank analysis notebook (this deserved a new notebook more than anything else in the world). The second was the beaten-up old binder that was his quirk's instruction manual, the margin of every page filled to the brim with notes… a lot of them written in crayon (he didn't take as good care of the binder as he probably should have when he was younger).
He'd been ridiculously tempted to start experimenting with his quirk immediately back near the beach, but he'd held back. Generally speaking, despite the laws against public quirk use, you could get away with it as long as your quirk wasn't obstructive and it didn't affect other people. But experimenting with a quirk with unknown capabilities in public? Hoo boy, the "dumb teenager" excuse wouldn't get him far. If he were caught, he would've been in massive trouble.
So despite every fiber of his being needing to finally use his quirk, he sat there at the bus stop, shaking in his seat. When the bus came, he got on and found a spot to sit, shaking in his seat. And now he was finally home, in his bedroom, in front of his desk, shaking in his seat.
It was time!
He knew what he had to do now. Vocal commands worked! He'd read the user manual front-to-back hundreds of times over the years, and while there were a lot of sections missing, he had memorized a lot of commands that ought to work. The reason they never worked before was because his quirk hadn't been initialized, but now the commands had something to apply to, they should work.
Probably.
Hopefully.
Please please please pleasepleaseplease.
He was so scared.
Planting his arms against his desk in front of him for support, Izuku took a deep breath and announced, "Status."
Nothing happened.
It felt like a hole had been carved out of his gut. He could feel his heart rate increase. His head started to get hot and his breathing had become sharp and ragged. "Status! git status!"
The feeling of his tongue twisting back on itself in an alien, unnatural way was the most pleasant sensation he had ever felt in his entire life. He still had a quirk! It was real. He leaned back in his chair and tried to get control of his breathing. Ten seconds into his quirk experimentation and he was already hot and breathing heavily as if he had just finished a long workout.
Okay, pull it together, Izuku! Don't let your stupid anxiety ruin the best day of your life!
Right. Okay. No screwing around; he had a quirk now and it was about time that he got to use it! A message had been burned into his brain when he had spoken the status command.
» On branch main
» No commits yet
» Untracked files:
» ––(use "git add file..." to include in what will be committed)
» –––––––all-might-figurine [80b16bf]
» –––––––all-might-pencil [c90addd]
» –––––––all-might-poster [415672f]
» –––––––all-might-undergarments [eb367ef]
» –––––––analysis-notebook [84e96b7]
» –––––––ballpoint-pen [3d672a3]
» –––––––desk [242a078]
» –––––––desk-cabinet/ [03cc22e]
» –––––––desk-chair [f089f30]
» –––––––desk-lamp [d58559e]
» –––––––git-reference-manual-(incomplete) [3c3fa55]
» –––––––laptop [06fd15e]
» –––––––pen-holder/ [3d911f8]
» –––––––phone [ff6ce7b]
» –––––––school-binder [58c5176]
» –––––––shorts-(beige) [2f6db00]
» –––––––sock-(white) [4d4f3f6]
» –––––––sock-(white) [877c765]
» –––––––sweatshirt-(black) [c1fc637]
» –––––––waste-basket/ [a33014c]
» –––––––water-bottle [4b77919]
» Message truncated. Only local files listed
» 50,812,699,499,854,712,584,083,048,723,657,999,791,559,909,332,711,067,435,411,106,489,072,587 files remaining
He blushed when he read "all-might-undergarments". Wait, why was he embarrassed? No one else could read this but him, and he knew what clothes he was wearing. Like, that was objectively the least interesting thing written here!
For example, that was a very, very large number at the bottom there. The implications of which were… too much for his brain right now. Put a pin in that one for some other day.
All right. Time to see if all that time pouring over the user manual was worth it. The basic idea behind Git was that it allowed programmers to save and share the revision history of their code. So, it was kind of like creating a save point in a video game. Each "save" was added to that file's timeline, and the user was free to reload to any point in the timeline. If multiple people were editing the same files, then you could create multiple timelines ("branches") where the file existed in multiple different states simultaneously.
The first line—"On branch main". He shivered in excitement. He was so looking forward to making branches. That would have to come later though. For now, it was telling him he was on the main branch. Simple enough.
The next line was "No commits yet". That was also obvious. Well, obvious if you knew what a commit was. A "commit" was the name for a save point.
The third section… this was interesting.
Izuku tapped his pencil absentmindedly against his notebook. His All Might pencil. It wasn't anything special, really, just a normal pencil with All Might's color scheme. The eraser at the tip was colored yellow as if it were a tuft of All Might's hair. He had a few more of this exact kind of pencil in his desk drawer.
After a moment's thought, Izuku placed the pencil down on his desk and stared at it with conviction. "Git add All Might pencil."
He already knew that it hadn't worked before he had finished speaking the command. The words sounded natural while under the effect of his quirk, but he sounded stupid otherwise. He felt his heart rate start to increase again, which further added to his stress. No, stop it! Stop it! God, why am I like this?
Swallowing, Izuku touched the pencil with the tip of his index finger and tried again. "git add all-might-pencil." Oh, thank goodness.
Okay, Izuku, let's not dwell on the fact that I'm apparently one slight inconvenience away from a panic attack. Focus! What had changed now that he added the pencil? "git status."
» On branch main
» Changes to be committed:
» ––(use "git restore ––staged file..." to unstage)
» –––––––new file: all-might-pencil [c90addd]
That made sense based on his understanding of how this all worked. Multiple things could be included in a single save point—a single "commit"—and his pencil was now one of the things that would be included in his next save.
Izuku picked up the pencil to see if there was anything different about it. After looking at it from all angles, he concluded that it was the same as it had always been. He went to place it back on his desk and—oh shit!
A transparent copy of the pencil was sitting on the desk in exactly the spot that he had picked it up from. Izuku's eyes widened. He went to touch it, but his fingers passed straight through it. It was intangible, like a hologram. A smile slowly spread across Izuku's face. His quirk was doing something! This was the first time his quirk affected something that wasn't entirely inside his own head!
Oh wait, actually…
Izuku dug his phone out of his pocket and opened up the camera app. When looking at his desk through the viewfinder, the transparent pencil wasn't visible. Huh. Okay, maybe it still was inside his own head, at least for now. It was probably the case that only he could see the virtual pencil. He'd ask his mom about it later.
The key word there was "later". His mom was going to make it a big emotional episode when he told her he'd finally figured out his quirk—which was nice, don't get him wrong, but it was going to be a time-consuming emotional episode and he didn't have the time for that right now!
"git status."
» On branch main
» Changes to be committed:
» ––(use "git restore ––staged file..." to unstage)
» –––––––new file: all-might-pencil [c90addd]
» Changes not staged for commit:
» ––(use "git add file..." to update what will be committed)
» ––(use "git restore file..." to discard changes in working directory)
» –––––––modified: all-might-pencil [c90addd]
His pencil was listed twice now. Once in the list of things that would be included in the next commit, and also in the list of things that would not be committed. Izuku looked back and forth between the transparent pencil on his desk and the real, solid pencil still in his hand. It makes sense, actually, Izuku decided after thinking about it for a moment. There are two entries because there are two pencils. The bottom one says "modified", so that's probably the solid one that I can move around. The other one is intangible, so I can't touch it or "modify" it.
The status screen had already suggested the next command he should try, so he went for it. "git restore all-might-pencil."
In an instant, the pencil disappeared from Izuku's hand and reappeared on his desk, perfectly overlapping the virtual pencil.
Holy crap.
Izuku burst up from his desk. He just had too much energy to sit still right now. With a massive grin on his face, Izuku started pacing around his bedroom, almost hopping from foot to foot.
That was teleportation! Just that, and nothing else, was the quirk of a Pro Hero! There were so many possibilities for rescue and reconnaissance alone! And it was instant, with possibly no limit on the number of objects, or the size or weight, and possibly even no range limit. He couldn't even think of a quirk like that without a range limit! Oh my god, could he use his quirk on living people? That was an endless rabbit hole all by itself. And, and—
—And it wasn't just teleportation! Izuku scrambled to his desk and picked up the pencil. Like before, a transparent virtual pencil was left behind on his desk. Good to know, so that meant that it was still waiting for him to make his first commit. Oh man, he hadn't even made his first commit yet! In a moment, in a moment. He had an idea, and it took priority. Part of him felt like it was too crazy to be possible, but he was almost completely confident that it would work.
Izuku snapped the pencil in half.
Fingers trembling, he placed the two broken pieces on his desk next to the virtual pencil. As expected, the virtual pencil was still whole and unchanged. "git restore all-might-pencil," Izuku said.
The two broken halves of the pencil vanished, and the newly repaired whole pencil reappeared in the location of the virtual pencil.
Izuku squealed with glee.
—
After spending some time jumping around his room and chattering to himself, it was back to business. There was still so much he needed to do! Sure, his quirk was complicated and it would take a while for him to fully understand it (the user manual was a testament to that), but he'd barely scratched the surface so far. He still hadn't even made a commit!
Oh, and he needed to talk to Mom! She didn't know he'd figured out his quirk. He'd talk to her, he would, he would. Soon. Just not yet. There were more things he needed to try first.
Izuku sat back down at his desk. Let the quirk testing continue! The next thing to try was obvious; he'd already thought about it a couple of times. It was time to make his first commit.
Commits were the backbone of his quirk. They were the official "save points"—permanent records that he'd be able to access for the rest of his life, in theory. It was kind of lame that his first irreversible imprint on the timeline of the world was going to be the location of a pencil, but hey, he had to start somewhere.
Looking down at the solid pencil and the virtual pencil next to each other on the desk in front of him, Izuku announced, "git commit."
The next thing that happened wasn't what Izuku expected. His mind's eye was taken over completely by… blank whiteness? It was similar to how he "saw" the words in his mind, but it was just blank. Like a fresh piece of paper, waiting to be used for… something. He felt an urge, a sense of indistinct anticipation. What was going on?
Oh! He was being dumb. The manual explained this, but he forgot about it in his eagerness. For each commit, you had to provide a description of what that commit was. Like, why you made it, and what you changed. Which made sense because if you had a lot of commits then it'd be hard to find the one you wanted otherwise.
The blank sheet in his mind was waiting for him to give an appropriate message. Wait, he wasn't ready! This was his very first commit; he should have something cool to say! Like, when Neil Armstrong first stepped onto the moon, he had a good quote ready. He didn't say, "That shuttle was so cramped! Man, I'm hungry." Izuku needed something good, too!
He couldn't think, though. The blank whiteness was pulsing in his mind impatiently. He was already taking too long. Okay, look, I'm not going to think of something profound in the next two seconds, and I'm literally the only person who's ever going to see this. Keep it simple. This is my first commit, so just say that.
"Th-this is my first commit," Izuku said weakly.
» Th-this is my first commit.
Izuku was horrified by what he saw written on the blank paper in his mind. "No, don't record my stuttering!"
» Th-this is my first commit. No, don't record my stuttering!
His face fell into his hands and he groaned. "Ugh, how do I make this stop?"
He waited a moment, leaning back on his chair with his hands covering his face. Soon enough, a new message appeared in his mind.
» [main (root-commit) 82493c9] Th-this is my first commit. No, don't record my stuttering! Ugh, how do I make this stop?
» –1 file changed
» –create mode 100644 all-might-pencil [c90addd]
Izuku was mortified.
He'd have to live with this for the rest of his life. Every time he viewed his list of commits, it would be there, right at the beginning! Was there a way to change the message of a commit? There was nothing in the manual about it, but was that because it wasn't possible, or was it because that section of the manual was missing?
Was it worth dropping everything he was doing to reread the manual cover-to-cover yet again in the desperate hope that he missed something the first million times he read it?
There was a saying, "Comedy equals tragedy plus time." Was that the case here? Decades from now, when he was old and grey, would he look back on his first commit message and chuckle with fond nostalgic amusement? Perhaps.
On the other hand, "Comedy equals tragedy plus time" was also how Izuku had justified every school day he'd had for years. Years from now, when he and Kacchan were Pro Heroes together, they'd look back and laugh at the innocence of their youth, all of the insults… all of the beatings… all of Izuku's desperate misery as he tried and tried and tried…!
Dammit, pull it together! This was not the time for another depressive spiral! Literally just a few minutes ago Izuku was so happy and excited that he was bouncing around the room because he couldn't keep still. That was more like it. Let's do more of that.
All right. Izuku slapped his cheeks. Putting aside the message for now, I've made my first commit. What's changed?
He looked down at his desk. The solid pencil hadn't changed… oh, but the virtual pencil had disappeared. Things looked normal again.
How did that affect the commands he'd been using so far? "git restore all-might-pencil," Izuku said.
The pencil disappeared and reappeared in the location that the virtual pencil was in before, even though the virtual pencil was no longer visible. It worked exactly the same as it had before.
Right, okay, this makes sense, Izuku thought, strumming his fingers on his desk. The transparency thing is basically showing me a preview of what my next save point will look like. But once it's committed, the save point is invisible, and there's no indication of where it is. I guess that's understandable since I'm going to be making new commits all my life, so things would get cluttered if they were all visible to me at the same time, but… yeah, I'm going to need a lot of notebooks to keep track of all this.
Izuku picked up the pencil and moved it to the exact center of his desk. "git add all-might-pencil." Picking it up, he saw that it left behind a virtual pencil. Yep, same as before.
He placed the pencil down again, now at the far edge of his desk. "git add all-might-pencil." Upon saying the command, the virtual pencil in the center of his desk disappeared. Once again, he picked up the pencil, and he saw that it left behind a virtual pencil on the far edge of his desk.
This was what Izuku expected. Each time he added the pencil, it updated the location of the "preview" that showed what his next commit would contain. The transparent objects were temporary by nature. He was free to play around as much as he wanted without the commitment of a permanent record that he would live with forever.
"git restore all-might-pencil." Again, as expected, the pencil disappeared from Izuku's hand and reappeared at the far edge of his desk, overlapping the virtual pencil.
Huh, but how was Izuku supposed to restore it back to the location the pencil was in when it was committed? "git restore all-might-pencil," he tried.
No change. The pencil stayed exactly where it was.
"git status."
» On branch main
» Changes to be committed:
» ––(use "git restore ––staged file..." to unstage)
» –––––––modified: all-might-pencil [c90addd]
Well, it was nice that his quirk was willing to give him help… after completely failing to do so for ten years. "git restore ––staged all-might-pencil." (Ew, those dashes tasted weird in his mouth. His tongue wasn't designed to make those shapes.)
Nothing seemed to change at first, but when Izuku picked up the pencil he noticed that it no longer left behind a virtual pencil. All right, so that command was how you removed virtual objects that you didn't want anymore.
And if there weren't any virtual objects getting in the way… "git restore all-might-pencil."
The pencil disappeared from Izuku's hands and reappeared on the right side of his desk, precisely where he had previously committed it.
Cool. Well, that was one way to do it, although it would only work for the most recent commit. Once he made more commits, he'd have to figure out how to specify individual ones. He'd leave that for later though. First, he had to—
Wait a minute. Izuku's thoughts halted as he suddenly realized an inconsistency. When I first "added" my pencil, I had to physically touch it. It didn't work when I just spoke the command alone. But since then I've "added" my pencil multiple times without touching it.
Time for another test. Izuku around for something to try it with, and he saw the blank, unopened quirk analysis notebook in front of him on his desk. Oh yeah, he was supposed to be writing all this stuff down, wasn't he? His pencil was supposed to be used for, y'know, writing, but instead it'd become the main subject of his experiments. Oh well, he'd do that soon, just… later.
…If nothing else he should start writing a list of everything that he was putting off for later…
Later!
Izuku held his hands in the air so that he wasn't touching anything. "Git add analysis n—okay, I can already tell that's not working." He then placed his index finger on the cover of the notebook. "git add analysis-notebook. Huh."
He slid the notebook to the other side of his desk, and a transparent notebook was left behind. He lifted his hands so that he wasn't touching anything, then tried again. "git add analysis-notebook."
The commands were working. The virtual notebook's location updated to the real notebook's location. So, the first time I add an object to my quirk I have to touch it, but every time after that I can just use its name. Cool.
But what if he had multiple objects with the same name? He had multiple "All Might pencils" in his desk drawer, after all. So many endless questions. He really did get the perfect kind of quirk for his personality, didn't he? He'd be able to experiment for years and still probably discover new things!
That said, he should probably start winding this down soon, though. After all, he still had to tell Mom about everything. He hadn't written anything in his notebook yet either, although that could wait until tomorrow. He should probably do most of his experimenting only once he was prepared to take it seriously and record his observations. Thank goodness he had the whole weekend ahead of him.
So yeah, he'd learned enough for now. He should probably let Mom know about all this.
…
…One more thing.
One more thing, then he'd tell Mom. There was one more thing he just had to try. He had to. He'd been waiting for most of his life to try this, ever since he had first learned just enough English to kinda-barely understand what the manual was talking about.
When he was a young kid and his classmates asked him about his quirk, his problem wasn't just that he didn't know how to use it, it was also that he didn't know what his quirk was supposed to be in the first place.
"Hi! I'm Hana! What's your name? Look, look at this! I can make flowers bloom and make them any color! What's your quirk?"
"Hi, I'm Izuku. Your quirk is so cool! Um, I can't use my quirk."
"Why not?"
"…I don't know what it is…"
He wasn't surprised that his classmates eventually decided that he was a big fat liar pretending that he had a quirk. Sometimes Izuku even felt the same way. He couldn't answer what his quirk was, or when he'd be able to show them it, or why he wasn't able to use it, or even what his quirk was supposed to do if he could use it.
So when he had learned enough English to barely comprehend bits and pieces of the highly technical gobbledygook written in the manual, he wanted so badly to come up with a good answer to the question "What's your quirk?" And between his poor understanding of the concepts within and his desperation to make it all worth it, he latched on to the coolest-sounding concept written within those pages:
"I can make alternate timelines!"
That was his answer. Sure, in follow-up questions he'd have to admit that he didn't know how to actually do it, but he insisted that his quirk was that he could create alternate timelines. It was by far the coolest quirk he'd ever heard of, and it was his!
His classmates didn't believe him one bit, of course. It was an even dumber-sounding lie than claiming that he didn't know what his own quirk did. But Izuku latched on to it regardless. It meant something special to him. It meant something special because, despite what Kacchan thought, Izuku knew he wasn't lying. It truly was his quirk. Once he figured it out, he'd be able to do it! He had so many daydreams of one day showing them all, at long last proving everyone wrong.
…Which made it a little disheartening when some years later—after his understanding of both English and Git jargon had increased—he came to understand that the "branches" described in the user manual didn't work anything at all like the "alternate timelines" he had bragged about. Hopefully, no one remembered his wild claims about how, in the future, he'd be a Pro Hero who could defeat villains by making timelines where they never became villains in the first place.
But whatever. "Branches" were still amazingly cool. And now it was time. He'd been waiting for this all his life. It was finally happening!
He was going to make a goddamn alternate timeline!
The user manual was unnecessary for this; he knew the commands by heart. Currently, he was on the "main" branch. "git branch normal-pencil." That command would create a new branch—a new alternate timeline—branching off from "main".
"git branch broken-pencil." And this would create a second branch, also splitting off from the main branch.
"git switch normal-pencil." This switched him from the main branch to the "normal pencil" branch. Nothing had changed in the room around him, which was obvious. All of the "timelines" would remain identical until he made changes to them.
Izuku once again moved his pencil to the center of the desk. "git add all-might-pencil." Then, "git commit."
The blank whiteness appeared in his mind. Right, this again. He was pretty sure that he was doing something wrong here. He knew that the manual had described a way to include the message in the command itself, but it had never seemed important to him so it had slipped his mind. Another thing to figure out later. "A normal, unbroken pencil."
» [normal-pencil 7b32e17] A normal, unbroken pencil.
» –2 files changed
» –create mode 100644 analysis-notebook [84e96b7]
Now for the fun part! "git switch broken-pencil." This switched him to the other branch.
He picked up the pencil and snapped it in two. Placing the pieces on his desk, he spoke, "git add all-might-pencil." Then, "git commit." He was ready for the blank sheet to appear in his mind this time. "A broken pencil."
» [broken-pencil be05e17] A broken pencil.
» –1 file changed
And that was all it took. He now had one timeline where the pencil was broken, and one timeline where the pencil was whole. Both timelines had their own history and could continue to evolve over time.
"git switch normal-pencil." A normal pencil lay on his desk.
"git switch broken-pencil." The pencil was broken in half.
"git switch normal-pencil." The pencil was whole again.
Izuku started giggling.
His quirk was so cool!