I messed up on the apostrophes. I did some arcane shit on google docs. I ctrl+F, typed in " on the thing, and somehow replaced all the dialogue quotations with ' . And when I tried to change it back, every apostrophe (Example: I'm, I'll, We'll, etc) changed to I"m, and so forth. Next chapter it'll be back to the usual "".

Edited slightly: I forgot to add one grueling detail, of which I just remembered whilst writing the second chapter. Fixed some other things, too. Like, two things. Uh, I think I should add a date? Right? And this is being cross-posted to AO3. I will be more active on there, since it's easier for interaction there than it is on here. Same name, author and story title. [3/9/25.]

Spectacularly Sticky Fingers!

—

Part One

Stick To The Script, Man!

Stick To An Identity, Man!

—

Chapter 1

Ants & Beetles

Izuku Midoriya made himself an ant in a horde of bustling beetles.

OsCorp Tower was a place of chattering voices overlapping clattering steps, either of springy excitement or the flatness of monotony—the latter consisting solely of his entire group. Even Mari Rudo was slumping in tedium, her deep-gold-orange irises darkened with dejection behind her rectangular glasses. Her short, jaded-black hair with choppy bangs added a layering of shadow atop her lashes, highlighting the lifelessness of her eyes. She was the only person in Aldera Junior High, apart from him, that seemed to show interest in science and engineering. He'd seen her at some science centers and fairs he'd forced himself to go to during summer break. She liked robotics.

Though, admittedly, OsCorp mainly specialized in chemistry and genetics. Explaining her uninterest.

She was nice to him. Sometimes. Rarely. Well, once. In kindergarten.

Don't dwell on it, Izuku thought, stopping in OsCorp Tower's central plaza; a vast—too vast—market-like floor filled with a labyrinth-mesh of exhibits and demonstrational activities, all displaying the latest and newest of the scientific world. Beside him was a wall of glass boxes stacked on top of each other, each containing insects and reptiles. He bent down, stickybeaking inside one of the glass enclosures.

Ants and beetles. Some were deformed and some displayed traits of powers. Quirks.

Ants and beetles, Izuku. You, obviously the ant. And her, the beetle.

Just stay in your mound of sand.

Izuku stared at one ant in particular. It had a Quirk-like trait that made it comically buff—its six legs thicker than normal, mandibles longer and sharper—almost fang-like. It had more biomineral armor to compensate for its added mass, making the thing look larger and stockier.

He stared for a little longer, biting his bottom lip, blinked, sighed, then rejoined his group.

'Here at OsCorp, we take the containment of our synthetic organisms as our number-one top priority,' the lab assistant—taking a shift as the tour guide—said with a charming smile, waving to another shelf of enclosures. This one contained arachnids, all varying in colour and size. Roman numbers on their backs. Izuku's eyes caught another scientist standing behind a section of the shelf, rubbing his forehead and breathing heavily. He seemed extremely anxious.

Izuku focused back on their tour guide.

With clipboard lazily held in one hand, various pens clipped haphazardly to the hem of his generic white lab-coat's patch pocket, and black slacks bulging with crumpled sticky notes: Professor Zenki Flabsstones was what Izuku imagined a run-of-the-mill scientist to look like. A plain guy with a plain face with plain prescribed glasses and oh so plain brown curly hair. Where was the mad-scientist? Doctor Neo Cortex? At this point he'd be ecstatic to see single-toothed Prof. Elvin Gadd in his multi-tech red-leather chair.

The only thing interesting about the man was that he was half-Russian and half-Japanese—as he'd said the moment Izuku and his classmates entered the building, explaining in length his ethnicity.

Explains the name Zenki Flabsstones, Izuku thought. He stood at the back of the group, notebook and pen in hand, as per the ush. He pursed his lips into a line, and his brows knitted in immense concentration. I swear . . . I swear there's a joke somewhere there. I'm profoundly certain—my brain, wisely blessed with profoundness aplenty from birth—that there's a one-in-a-billion joke there. I just . . . It's such a profound joke that it even escapes my raw talent of quipency.

Has something to do with balls—

Someone shoulder-checked him. His profound ponderments stumbled out of his ears like a startled, yipping chihuahua. Not unlike his own floundering lurch—minus the yipping, and instead, an additive of a not-so-manly yelp.

'Watch where you start to think,' came a thorny comment, laced with joyful abhor. 'Makes it look like you're an actual human being, not the table scraps of chemical elements that compose you. I'm certain there wasn't much acetylcholine scraps to spare for you. So God, ever merciful, must've pitied you and instead gave you tons of mercury as a substitute. Fucking retard.'

As much as he loathed Bakugou Katsuki, his insults were quotable. Hell, maybe even epitaph-worthy for the future generations of the Bakugou line—they were that good. His lackeys, extendable-fingies and obese-beelzebub, chuckled hesitantly. Clearly, they didn't understand the pure originality of Bakugou's insult. Admittedly, it was above their intellect.

Bakugou, hands firmly in the crevices of his pockets, glared at Izuku over his shoulder. He seemed to expect some kind of comeback. Izuku didn't so much as make eye contact, staring at his feet.

'Tch,' Bakugou snarled at him. 'Looks like you didn't actually grow a pair. So much for that stunt you pulled back then, huh? Still the pathetic, useless waste of flesh. Still a nobody. Hardly even human.' He grunted, laxly tipping his head back. Chin high and mighty, he exhaled the narcissism and egoism barely contained in his noggin. He turned away from Izuku. 'God, this place is fucking boring.'

He stomped back to the group, pushing—not-so-lightly—students aside to reach the front of the cluster. His lackeys followed, imitating their master's actions like it was some divine act. Izuku continued to stare at his red shoes. Stalling for a moment, making sure they were far enough away, before he attempted to even twitch.

Finally, he sighed softly. He began to slowly trail behind the group, who were moving to the next exhibit: one displaying a pair of bleak-steel gauntlets. Encased in a compact acrylic glovebox for viewing and demonstration, it was sleek and intrinsically layered in metal-plating, impressively symmetrical. Not one thing looked out of place. The hands were adorned with small nodes, one for each knuckle. Across the whole design it was trimmed with a matte-green mesh of padding, between each section of plate. Somehow it looked flexible and rigid at the same time.

'Says the guy who's allergic to most commercial soaps,' he whispered as quietly as he could. Having the last word, even if it was privy only to himself, used to feel good. Well, it once did. Now, it didn't even feel satisfying, nor as brave as he'd once thought it as.

He gently stopped a few feet from the group. Alone, he stood in the middle of Oscorp Tower's populated plaza, scientists and workers and visitors flowing around him like he was a rock protruding in a steady stream. His face scrunched up in frustration, anger, hatred, revulsion, and grief and—and . . . acceptance.

'I really am pathetic. A nobody.'

. . .

He sniffed ruefully, 'Nothing new, I guess.'

He started forward, sluggish in gait. As he approached the designated exhibit, Prof. Zenki Flabsstones was demonstrating the gauntlets through the gloves inside the box, explaining its functions and purpose.

'. . . is what we call 'Force Absorption and Releaser Bracers, MK-XII.' It is one of our top sellers in the Support market. Collaboration with Support Express' engineers, we manufactured these for Hero Agencies in the Rescue and Evacuation divisions. Made entirely of titanium, these gauntlets are lightweight and portable, great for mobility and nimble movements.

'And through years of study, we here at Oscorp and with the help of numerous other volunteers from the engineering and scientific field, have created a one-of-a-kind, never-before-manufactured, viscoelastic material: Forcellallium. A metal-like polymer that absorbs and releases force through vibration. Adding to that, we have created a sequence in which we can lock the forces and release it at will. Truly, a revolutional tech created and overseen by our generation's greatest mind, Norman Osborn. Look here, and you will see the nodes in which we gather the force . . .'

Of course, Izuku already knew all about it. From its dimensions to its circuitry to its programming. He knew most about Support equipment in general, from the newer inventions and models to the archaic.

However, information about Forcellallium was non-existent. Even in the deepest depths of the internet—chat-boards to the ancient degeneracy that is subreddits—there was literally no information about Forcellallium. So, standing here in the presence of the material itself—real and not pixels on a screen—and hearing actual information coming out the mouth of someone who helped manufacture the mystical object, Izuku's heart-rate increased with excitement. Pure, genuine joy flowed through him, momentarily (deliberately) forgetting the gloom caused by Bakugou. It evaporated from him like a patch of frost beamed with heat from the sun. Instead, he focused on the demonstration with apt scrutiny.

Metal-like polymer . . . Izuku awed, mouth parting, eyes wide. He went on his toes to get a better view. So it is a variant of some kind of viscoelasticity! Holy, I can't believe my hypothesis was somewhat right! That never happens! But how is polymer—viscoelasticity—metal-like? Is it more solid than rubber? Or is it hard plastic?

Wait, no. Dumbass. It's obviously rubber-to-metal bonding. But what's the chemical composition of the 'rubber,' to make it able to absorb and release forces? And the sequence that locks the force and releases it at will, how is that done? I need a better view! See it up close! And notes! Take notes! That's like your thing, man!

So, mind overwhelmed with eagerness to get the answers and write it down, he found himself rounding the chattering and bemused congregation of teenagers without consideration or thought. Izuku placed himself uncomfortably close to Prof. Zenki Flabsstones and the display. Normally, he wouldn't have dared to place himself in front of so many eyes—especially that of his classmates—but science and engineering prevailed, it seemed, over his anxieties and fear of future bullying that would inevitably come from doing so.

The professor cut off his lecturing, surprised at his brusque arrival—and at the blatant curiosity practically oozing out of Izuku. Notebook and pen readied close to his chest (his wrist already moving across the page in a flurry, sketching the gauntlets without even looking), prior feelings of melancholic acceptance that he was a pathetic nobody—and will be for the foreseeable future—pointedly ignored, Izuku Midoriya wanted answers.

'Uh, woah, too close, kid,' the man said, looking down at him. Then he nodded to the floor, 'If you want to ask questions, do it behind the red line—'

'How do you lock the force in the Forcellallium? If those nodes can gather impact force through vibrations, do you also do the opposite to lock it down by a negative-pattern of the initial vibrations? If that's so, how can you apply the perfect negative to the impact force's vibrations? Or, wait, that can't be true. Negative vibration doesn't exist. And you can't lock a force since it isn't physical but conceptual. So you're lying. It isn't 'force' that you lock down, it's energy. Kinetic energy. That you can 'lock,' i.e., store through vibrations. But from the videos I've seen, the bracers don't seem to be vibrating. To store kinetic energy it needs constant work. If the bracers were constantly vibrating, it would explode due to friction heating. So that's where Forcellalium comes through, right? How does that material absorb and keep the kinetic energy while seeming to be a stagnant material? What chemical composition can withstand friction heat and not explode? Wait, is it nan—'

'MIDORIYA!'

Izuku winced at the stern shout. He reluctantly tore his attention away from the professor and the gauntlets, slowly turning his head to the puffed-up face of Mr. Nioi, his homeroom teacher and chaperone of the field trip. He glared at Izuku.

'You're causing a scene.' He barked, voice teeming with unstrained annoyance. His suit was wrinkled and worn, green tie done horribly—knots a mess of tangles—white undershirt stained brown with spilled coffee, most definitely mixed with alcohol. He looked like a divorced man that didn't take it well. He definitely was. 'Again. Back with the group. I don't want another complaint about you causing trouble—and certainly not in a place such as this. Remember what I specifically told you not to do when we got here? Hmm? Or are you that insipid?'

'I—'

'Not another word. You've already said enough. Back. Of. The. Group. Now.'

'But we can ask—'

Mr. Nioi's face got that dangerous glint to it. The same one he got when he was livid. When Mr. Nioi got livid, he got reckless. Stupid. Well, stupider than his general stupidity. Last time he did, Izuku procured a new bruise to his already full collection.

So much for those anger management classes, Izuku thought bitterly. Should attend classes where you manage your hygiene while you're at it.

Clenching his jaw and gritting his teeth to avoid saying that out loud, he set his head down and moved to the back of the group. Mr. Nioi placed a firm hand on his shoulder as he passed. The teacher lowered his head, and whispered into Izuku's ear.

'We're going to have a talk after this trip, Midoriya,' Mr. Nioi's grip tightened harshly. Izuku endured it; it was all he knew to do. 'I've about had enough of your shit. Are you trying to make me look bad, asking all those questions? I'm supposed to be the one to do that. I'm your teacher. Your superior. Just because you know a little more than me doesn't—'

'I think he knows more than 'a little,'' a sharp, authoritative voice interrupted Mr. Nioi's hushed rant.

A rough-looking hand suddenly grasped Mr. Nioi's wrist, not in overt hostility or ill intent—just a calm, gentle hold. The kind meant to defuse a tense, souring situation with lethargic caution.

Mr. Nioi, predictably, snapped at the figure, letting go of Izuku in haste to retaliate at being shelved. The newcomer was outside of Izuku's lowered vision, only able to see the right side of the man in the peripheral, where his hand was still holding onto his teacher's wrist—whose face was as red and puffed as a tomato, unable to restrain his seething anger from boiling out. The man was of doubtless bulky build, judging from the sheer weight of forearm muscle accentuated by a tight-fitting sleeve. He was wearing an impeccably tailored, well-cleaned suit of rich dark-forest fabric. Completely overshadowing Mr. Nioi's own ragged suit.

'Who—!'

Silence.

Impressively, Mr. Nioi stopped himself from lashing out. Izuku heard the man take a breath and hold it. He barely glimpsed the man pursing his chapped lips into a firm line, as though trying to stifle himself of his outrage out of panic. He couldn't see much above his vision as he continued to keep his head down, but could note that Mr. Nioi's eyes were wide with shock. Disbelief? Maybe even a little fear.

Well, that's surprising, Izuku thought, savoring the rare expression on his short-tempered teacher. . . . Then it hit him.

The newcomer was defending him. The anonymous man had seen Mr. Nioi snare Izuku by the shoulder, heard him berate him for asking questions and for supposedly making 'him look bad.' He hadn't stood by as Mr. Nioi physically forced Izuku into submission. Nor had he turned a blind eye to the grating way Mr. Nioi condemned him for doing something as basic and harmless as asking a question. He, instead of ignoring it like everyone else always did, had decided to intervene and stop it.

Izuku started with mounting incredulity, eyes snapping to Mr. Nioi's arm, of which the newcomer's rough-looking hand still held to. He trailed his head slowly upwards, teetering to the right slightly, following up from the hand to the face. Who . . . ?

'Mr. Osborn!' Mr. Nioi stuttered, struggling to regain his composure. Trying, and fumbling, to straighten his tie and suit wrinkles. 'I—It's a pleasure—to— It's with my great esteem to meet you, sir! I would shake your hand in gratitude— I wasn't informed that you were here, or I would've greeted you first thing when arriving—!'

'Yes, yes,' Norman Osborn, founder and CEO of OsCorp Industries, said dismissively, as if Mr. Nioi were little more than a stain on the streets of Musutafu's East District. 'I'm honored as well. And other dialogue my secretary scripts for me for meeting various individuals.'

Izuku was experiencing a state of some kind of hysteria. Norman Osborn—the Norman Osborn—was standing in front of him. In the flesh. In the bubble of Izuku's small little world, Norman Osborn invited himself in and became his sole attention. Everything in the entire world became a blur to him, from mind to vision.

Even the constant recitation of All Might's deleterious reply from a few months ago became a mere, trivial memory. Subsequently, the piercing shrill of his dreams shattering—which still tormented him like a chronic, seething scar—became a muted thing.

Norman Osborn. Norman Osborn. He was arguably the greatest mind of the century. No. He was the greatest. In a mere thirty years into his career, Norman Osborn had been awarded three Nobel Prizes: one in Physics, one in Chemistry, and one in Peace. The first scientist in recorded history to have attained such an impossibility. Three Nobel Prizes. Three!

But most notable of his achievements, even dwarfing those of former stated accomplishments, his research in genetic engineering and Quirk Theory was . . . revolutionary. Izuku read that, in the next decade or so, OsCorp's Department of Genomics estimated that they will be able to begin human-testing on artificial Quirk cloning. Testing in various animals and insects had been underway long before the founding of OsCorp Industries, and before it became International and a part of the HPSC.

In his autobiography, Norman Osborn—seventeen at the time—stated that he'd begun genetically altering the DNA of un-Quirked lower life-forms (insects and rodents) to engineer them to developing Quirk-like traits borrowed from more intelligent animals—as higher IQ was vital for Quirk manifestation, which was abundantly clear even back in the Meta Ability Era—via Quirk Theory. i.e., he used an old—then still considered unproven and implausible—hypothesis called 'Awakening.' An archaic study that explored and established the DNA structure of Quirks (in wildlife specifically, as they were less complex than human Quirk DNA structures) and how it evolved, then how it could be replicated during the time when it was considered an anomaly rather than normality.

He did that when he was only in high school. With less resources than his fathoms deep today. Conducting a historically significant experimentation at only seventeen! Though the experiment was a complete failure, with a single instance of a spider (weirdly, the only consistent animal with an 80% success rate since, 20% more than lizards) developing a Quirk-like trait that made it produce voltaic silk. It lived only three days. Still, it was a momentous breakthrough in science as a whole.

Izuku read that autobiography 137 times, from the 70-page introduction to the 1,458 page conclusion. He annotated where there were—if there were—spaces large enough between other annotations to ink or lead. If there weren't any space for noting or logging or footing, he'd buy another copy and start all over again. That book had too many concepts and—bordering on maniacal—documented webs of experimentations that a mere dozen annotations couldn't possibly explain, or record, all of them. Even his 25 volumes of notebooks, dedicated to the entirety of Norman Osborn's autobiography—14 segregated to his Quirk-cloning and Quirk Theory alone, plus the 7 volumes—with his marginal notes and scholiums—of the memoirs hadn't touched the surface of comprehending them.

Needless to say, Izuku practically worshiped the man to an unhealthy—almost profane—degree.

In contrast to meeting All Might a couple months back, however, Izuku had completely froze in the face of Norman Osborn. Deep, wavy short auburn-red hair, styled into a perfect side-part. Face square with a stubble nearing to a full beard, accentuating the roughness of his jaw and chin. Mouth quirked at the corners subtly, an imperceptible smile complimenting the curiosity of his bleak-blue eyes. Izuku's incredulity folded to the size of a mountain, the summit piercing the ozone layer. Was the man . . . staring at him with . . . was that intrigue?

As Norman Osborn's gaze lingered, some kind of . . . expectation built up inside of Izuku. The same kind as . . . when he met All Might. A dangerous expectation. The one that broke him, almost entirely. He'd been in this exact scenario before.

It ended with him staring over the lip of a high-rise for an alarmingly lengthy amount of time.

Right then, a chilling fear wrapped around his spine. A familiar feeling of dread slithering between vertebral discs, its frosty fangs gnawing at his spinal cord within. It felt masticating. The sensation of it almost brought him to the floor.

I can't handle . . . Izuku thought, ribs threatening to pierce his heart.

He couldn't endure another of his dreams imploding with a reality check—not again. He was fine with his magnificent ignorance at the moment. He needed to get out of here, lest he—

'Izuku Midoriya, is it?' Norman Osborn said, voice sharp and definitive. The cadency of it was that of flowing water—calm, steady, but sharply cool. And like water, nothing disrupted its ever-going flow—it knew what its purpose was, the fact of its existence. Norman Osborn embodied that; from appearance to his inner verity. He knew what he was: the most powerful stream of water in an otherwise calm river, making himself known by the waves arising from his mere existence. Until eventually, he became a whirlpool, attracting surrounding waters to himself.

Everybody—except his employees—in the market-like plaza stopped their travels to gawk at Mr. Osborn.

And he knew his name. Sure, he heard Mr. Nioi shout his surname not a minute ago—inciting this whole situation—but he didn't use his given name. Why did he know his name? He didn't want to know the 'how,' but the why. Either he read the registration log in the lobby or . . . He saw it. The why.

In Mr. Osborn's other hand was his . . . notebook. One of the 14 dedicated to the very man's autobiography and published research. The one that was supposed to be in his hands, eating his notes. He glanced down, discovering the absence of anything but his palms and a singular shoddy pen.

Norman Osborn read his notes . . . and the very personal footers in every page. Deku luck strikes once more. The ones where he logged basically everything from feelings, thoughts—Please tell me he didn't read my calculations of his BMI from that magazine photo—events, dialogue, his collection of one-in-a-billion-jokes (it'd suck if he stole some, all were Izuku Midoriya originals) . . . And his pathetic desperation for a Quirk. Things no one knew about. Even his mother had no knowledge, the only person he was semi-honest with.

Except now, in the eyes of Norman Osborn, he saw Izuku Midoriya—the real one.

The boy dreaming machines and inventions, always in an abandoned garage near a trash-filled beach. Making useless, meaningless gadgets with equally useless scrap-material. The boy delineating amateurish research and studies on a rickety, deteriorating leather office chair behind a chipping, rotten wooden desk; trying to understand—maybe even solve—scientific problems that were beyond him. The boy trying to make his own groundbreaking, ingenious chemical formulation. The boy fantasizing illusions of making a theory become reality.

The boy dreaming himself an inventor turned hero through artificial Quirk cloning.

Izuku Midoriya, specialized delusionist.

That made the dread inflame in sensation, harrowing swaths of igneous heat down nape to toes. It made him want to be nothing. If he was nothing . . . then that meant his dreams were nothing, too. Nothing to crush. Nothing to hurt him.

Nothing to make him feel worthless.

But how does one become nothing, if he was nobody in the first place?

He wanted to vomit.

Endure . . . he forced it down. All of it. Every emotion coursing through him, he compressed tightly into a single knot of a blazing headache. He'd release it later. Like always. It was a routine, a procedure. Endure until you bloat and explode. He put his head down, closed his eyes, and steeled himself for what was another dream about to be dissected into atoms of nothing-nucleuses—no mass, no form.

'I . . .' Izuku shuddered out, clawing at the fabric of his uniform slacks. 'I—I . . .'

He heard the quiet snickers, felt the eyes of mockery. His entire group, all consisting of his classmates, were whispering to each other, some taking out their phones and pointing their cameras at him, Mr. Nioi and Mr. Osborn. Capturing and cataloging this moment of his vulnerability to a plethora of his other similarly embarrassing moments.

He'd heard they'd shared and saved the photos to a group chat centered around making fun of him. Evidently, he didn't get an invitation. Teenagers were brutal creatures.

Izuku Midoriya, the Quirkless fiend, had somehow—someway—made an idiot of himself again. In front of the CEO of OsCorp Industries, of all people; acting like a child caught stealing from the cookie jar, stuttering like a broken gear. Already, Izuku saw the social media posts and photos, all being shared with everyone at school. And to the local residents of his neighborhood. To his mother.

He saw the worry on her face.

This is going to be a rough week.

'Uhm, I'm sorry, Mr. Osborn,' Mr. Nioi chuckled awkwardly, still adjusting himself. He stood to the side, in the space between the congregation of teenagers and the both of them. He shot a glare over his shoulders, trying to silence the group. He shot a rougher glare at Izuku next. 'I assume this student of mine has troubled you? Well, people like him do try to take center of any situation. I'll . . . talk some sense into him. Of course, that is after we have a conversation about . . . uh . . . ahem. Well . . . stuff . . . I guess?'—he quickly glanced away—'Oh! Yes! What is that Professor Flabsstones is demonstrating? I'd like the input of its creator, naturally!'

Mr. Osborn still continued to stare at Izuku.

'Well, we can talk about, well, that . . . Forcelium?' Mr. Nioi continued, his eyes flickering from the impervious man and Izuku. He pursed his lips in frustration. 'Is it true that those gauntlets can lock force? Or, well, if we think more clearly, you can't lock a force since it's not physical but conceptual. I believe it's kinetic—'

Mr. Osborn frowned, his eyes slowly turning toward the teacher. He seemed utterly bemused.

'Plagiarism is the worst of all thievery, Mr. Nioi,' he said, each word crisp and frosty. Izuku'd never heard such clarity of cadence and pronunciation as Mr. Osborn's voice. Every syllable thought of, then used. 'It's looked down upon from my line of work. Well, it's looked down upon in general. And yes, Forcellallium doesn't necessarily lock force—it's just a fancy, alluring sentence the people over at the Marketing Department conjured up for advertisement. Though the works of it is largely as advertised. And Mr. Midoriya over here came to realize that impressively quickly, without—according to his notes—ever having any notable information about my material whatsoever. Until now.'

'I—well, plagiarism is a strong word . . .' Mr. Nioi trailed off, swallowing under the hard eyes of Mr. Osborn. 'I like to think that Midoriya learned that from me—'

'Follow me,' Mr. Osborn interrupted, looking at Izuku. He turned sharply, walking past Flabsstones towards the back of the plaza. 'I'd like to speak with you in my office without nuisances.'

Izuku stood there, dithering. Mr. Nioi glared at him, and when he glanced over his shoulder, his classmates stared at him with mild surprise.

Green met red.

Izuku quickly caught up with Mr. Osborn, entering an elevator shortly after.

Gentle shafts of light pierced through the large window of Mr. Osborn's office. Its glow—warm in saturation, not so overly bright as it was setting—flowed over the room's walls, floor and ceiling, reaching furniture and glossing them over with an orange tinge. Shadows stretched where light was absent. Mr. Osborn stood in front of the window, hands clasped behind him. The light seemed to bend around him, cascading off to the side. His shadow slithered from him across the floor like an endless ravine, pitch-black and free from colour.

Izuku found himself neck deep in that ravine.

'Tell me, Mr. Midoriya,' Mr. Osborn finally said, jolting him. He'd not spoken at all since arriving here five minutes ago. He just . . . gazed out his window . . . in complete silence. It was extremely awkward. To only Izuku, it seemed. He even started on the profane pilgrimage of counting each mote of dust wafting through the beams of light. 256 and counting, irregularly. The rich knew nothing of lower-class social cues. 'What makes a scientist true? His or her breakthroughs, or the journey to that breakthrough?'

'. . .'

What does that even mean? Izuku groaned internally. As much as he'd glorified in the absence of floating eyes, and the soft winds of whispers, he still wanted to vomit. He'd come to a realization that he was nothing more than a speck of lint in a dune, in the great cacophony of his only dream that was still intact—and soon to be shattered, if this interaction was where it was inevitably heading to. And the man holding that aspiration in his palm, only a tense away to crush fragility, threw at him a riddle.

Izuku wasn't a riddle prodigy. He was a quip prodigy. A quipigy.

Huge difference, that.

'Normally, when in conversation, the recipient tends to reply, Mr. Midoriya,' Mr. Osborn said, still not looking at him. He watched the tips of sky-scrapers and the horizon, refusing to even glance down toward the city's pulsing vein—the streets. Izuku was scared of heights, too.

Right, lower-class social cues, Izuku swallowed, nervous. You know some of the basics, right? Hopefully.

'Uhm . . . right, well . . .' sweat dripped down from within his head of hair, crossing forehead to the tip of his nose. 'I guess . . . Answer B?'

'I'm not your page of an exam, Mr. Midoriya,' Mr. Osborn chuckled. Izuku didn't catch the mirth of it. 'Nor the host of a jeopardy round. I'm a man who expects answers of detailed responses, not the laziness of abbreviations. You will do so, Mr. Midoriya. My impression of you is unusually high for a first meeting. That doesn't happen every Tuesday.'

Great, you hit a nerve already, Izuku groused.

'I . . . Thank you,' Izuku said, voice shaky. 'For the, uhm . . . compliment? Sorry . . . I guess? For my response, I guess. Well, uhm . . . I'm so sorry, Mr. Osborn. I'm just . . . nervous. I mean, I'm talking to . . . to you. And if you've read my notebook—' which I hope you didn't '—you know how much of an . . . inspiration you are. T—To me. So . . .'

'Yes, your notations,' the man said. 'It's very impressive. The quality of it, though scrambled in some areas, is beyond college-level. The detail and depth . . . I've rarely seen that much passion these days. Aside from the personal dictation of your daily troubles—' Izuku winced. '—your research of my works could be a fully published study. You won't get any better praise anywhere, I assure you of that, Mr. Midoriya.'

The man finally looked away from the window, facing him with a smile. It looked somewhat genuine.

'What makes a scientist true, Mr. Midoriya, is the journey toward a historical breakthrough,' he continued, walking around his massive desk and in his direction near the doorway. He picked up Izuku's notebook while he did. 'A breakthrough that makes all breakthroughs seem trivial. A man wakes one morning with a mathematical conclusion, and spends the rest of his life crawling to it. Through every equation, through every number, through every experiment, he crawls. Solely for the satisfaction of seeing the end of a calculation he dreamed of in a cold-sweat night, succumbed in a hopelessness he'd seen no surface of. Until finally, he sees waves.'

He stopped in front of him, looking down at him with eyes sheening of nostalgia.

'You're talking about . . . your Quirk cloning experiment,' Izuku guessed.

Mr. Osborn smiled, a little more genuine. He gently pushed his notebook to Izuku's chest, holding it there with splayed fingers.

'Yes. It was a Saturday night, 17 years ago. I was unravelling into a pitiful man, on my bathroom floor, hugging myself. Hopelessness acted like my cocoon, my pupating evolving into something pathetic. Then I awoke from a nightmare a genius. Finlay Armstrong's theory on the evolution of Quirks struck me as odd—if you've read it, you'd know what I mean. I dug deeper into it than some, fervor in my research. I—' he stopped abruptly, realizing he was oversharing. 'To make a long story short: Let's just say that our evolution was . . . not natural.'

Izuku swallowed harder.

'What makes a scientist true, Mr. Midoriya,' Mr. Osborn leaned down, leveling their faces. 'Is extensive—nigh maniacal—research. That's the journey. I see that in you, Mr. Midoriya. Myself. Regarding your research to make synthetic webbing come to fruition. Though the core of your theory, the equations, is heavily inaccurate, I see it—the maniacal zeal to see it done.'

'I—wait—I—' Izuku sputtered, his heart breaking a BPM record. His hands reached up and clenched his book, and his very silly musing of a theory within. 'You think—You think my chemical formula of synthetic webbing . . . You think it's possible!? I was just—That—That theory is just a theory. I didn't think it was—'

'Quirk cloning wasn't seen as probable, either,' Mr. Osborn said quietly. He stepped back, then placed a hand on his shoulder. 'I'd like to offer an internship to you, Mr. Midoriya. You'd be able to achieve things far greater in a proper environment than in some abandoned garage. You'd learn from the best, and if you're as smart as your notebook suggests, you'd become one of the best. Potential in you is vast, and I'd be damned if I didn't see it progress to maturity.'

'Wait, wait, wait,' Izuku finally forced out, the shock soothing out from him slightly. 'This—This is all going so fast! Internship? Here, at OsCorp? I mean, I appreciate the offer! But . . . But I don't have the money for it. And with high school exams around the corner, I—Just—It's too much. I'm sorry, sir. But . . . I . . .'

'No worries, Mr. Midoriya,' Mr. Osborn assured, patting him lightly. 'Perhaps a full internship without some experience is too extreme, especially for a boy your age. Excuse my eagerness, Mr. Midoriya.'

'No, no, you don't have to apologize—'

'If you're unable to accept an internship, perhaps you'd accept a recommendation to U.A.'s Support Department,' Mr. Osborn interrupted, ignoring the complete shock on Izuku's face. 'I'm one of the school's benefactors, funding such and such to the Support Department. My recommendation will get you into the school without any trouble on your part. U.A. is one of the best institutions for science and engineering in the country. Prodigies such as yourself thrive there. You'll start next April—'

'I'm—I'm—I—Sir, that is kind of you, but—'

'Midoriya,' Mr. Osborn said firmly, looking at him sternly. He slapped his other hand on Izuku's shoulder. 'Another piece of advice. Always take the risk. No matter how damaging or successful. Take the risk—for it is the only way for progression. Progress is more important than any setbacks or breakthroughs. I learned that the hard way in my youth. It is easier now for your generation than it was mine. I suspect you will be by my side in a few years, as equals or otherwise. I'm 60% sure. I'm offering you a chance at greatness. Of your own.'

'I—' Izuku's mind was numb. This was all . . . all so much. The man's words—his praise—was . . . It was something he'd needed all his life. And it was just. So. Much. He wanted to cry, to scream, to jump in joy. For the first time in his life, Izuku felt like . . . he was something. Something that could become someone.

So why was he hesitating to accept that?

He chose not to. He chose not to.

'Thank . . . Thank you, Mr. Osborn. I'll . . . I'm taking the risk.'

Norman smiled.

'Good decision.'

Izuku Midoriya found himself hugging the murky floor of an abandoned train, scalding all over.

'You were laughing at me, weren't you!?' the seething voice of Bakugou bellowed, echoing down the empty car of the train. He slammed a foot into Izuku's side. 'The way you looked at me before you went dallying to that fucker's office! You looked so smug! Like you'd beaten me, or something! You think because some fucking big, nobody of a CEO wanted to talk with you, you're better than me!?'

The next one was to the nose.

'Well, let me show you—let me make you feel—what it's like to think to be "better" than me!'

Bakugou picked him up by the collar, his body limp. Izuku's vision swam, the rusted interior of the train becoming a swirling brown vortex. He felt an agonizing burn at his right side. He cried out, reflexively reaching to try and stop the pain. His palm experienced the same burn.

The next thing he knew, he was stirring awake from a metallic floor. Vision popped and crackled, shadows vignetting around his eyes in a haze. Once it settled, enough to just pick out blobs of objects in his immediate front, he saw a silhouette. The figure blurred, and he felt a crushing tension around his chin.

'Just because—recommended—scholarship—U.A.—Support—' Izuku's ears hurt, like they were filled with grains of metal rippling with a grating choir. 'You'll never be a hero.'

. . .

'You . . . don't think . . . I know that . . .?' Izuku tried to yell that, but it came out hoarse—a grunt. He could practically feel the widening of Bakugou's eyes. 'I . . . knew . . . accepted the moment I . . . the moment I found out I was Quirkless . . .'

There was a long moment of silence.

Long enough for his vision to return with clarity and the throbbing, burning pain to subside into a static warmth.

Izuku laid there, on the dirty floor of an empty train, staring at the rusty, rotting ceiling.

'I'll never be a hero.'

That, Izuku Midoriya accepted long ago when he was diagnosed as Quirkless.

The notion, the feeling of its crushing weight every day of his life afterwards, was always on his shoulders.

He just endured it; it was genuinely all he knew to do. He'd thought that if he did it unbroken for as long as he possibly could, he would be rewarded for his discipline. He'd stand up against the burden, defying its implications and truth. He'd be a hero for resistance, his battle against a darkness that'd have consumed someone weaker far faster than it did him. He'd have been strong. He'd have been praised for his self-dominance and triumph over an unfair verity. Overcoming a ruling dogma and sculpting it to his own dictum.

He failed.

He was crying, sobbing.

Not out of sadness, but of joy. Though temporary it was.

Today, he was rewarded with a chance of being someone.

A different kind of hero.

Then a spider bit his finger, and all went to shit.

My big ah dih is pulsing, fellas. I hope you will enjoy this rewrite. My Spider-Man phase is back, and it has a rock hard boner and is very horny and very touchy with my keyboard. Thinking of very different things for this version of my previous work. I'm sorry about this chapter, it's very slow on the upkeep. But in this version, I assure you, Izuku will have his web-shooters at the end of this first arc—which is the very end of the Sports Festival. 15 chapters, give or take, around 60 or 70k words in. Izuku will be in U.A. this time, boys! :3

And I never realized that Izuku didn't interact with Norman at all in IOTAIBSTCOL, so this is already differing. Oh, and way, way shorter word-count. I can't believe I clocked out nearly 20k works every fucking chapter before. I was a monster. Though, admittedly, those big chapters had no substance. I was just yapping.

And can you guys, like, review? I worked hard on this bruh, a full month of revision and shi. :(