Chapter 2: Broken Doors
Izuku slipped and crashed to the ground as he tried to escape the black mass. Being slippery from the water and still covered in soap, he slipped several times as he tried to scramble to his feet and to the door. He had to get away from this… This thing.
Every step of the way, the black mass climbed up his legs, like some sort of living ink, desperate to drown him in its black mass!
As he finally got his hand around the doorknob, the mass suddenly engulfed him completely from his feet and upwards, closing around his head!
Panic, panic set in as he tried to breathe the stuff, which bizarrely it yielded for air to pass through his mouth and his nose both, but didn't leave him at all. It engulfed his eyes in darkness and… "GAAAHHHH! " He screamed clawing at the doorknob.
Something crunched beneath his hand, and he lost the grip on the door handle. What was happening?!
He couldn't see, he couldn't feel anything beyond the forceful black goo that surrounded every inch of his body.
He had to get out! He had to get away and…
Izuku put every single sinew he had to work as his body pressed against the door, his only escape from this room.
He heard a loud ripping sound as suddenly and without warning, the mass he had been putting all his weight on suddenly collapsed in the other direction, making him fall.
He collapsed hard on the floor, or rather what he assumed was the broken door. Unable to rise again against the black mass, he made a desperate struggle to get back on his feet, but it was pointless. The mass refused to budge now, no matter how hard he tried to get out.
He began crying, and his breathing was that of someone on the verge of hyperventilating. Oh, god, he was gonna die! This black thing was going to kill him, and when mom came home it-
Calm.
What?
Inside his head, he felt something telling him to calm down.
It was… Alien. It didn't belong in his mind. Yet… there was something about it. Something comforting. Like it understood him, his fear.
He kept crying, but his breathing became calmer. Slowly, but surely it became calmer, more relaxed.
The black mass pulled back from his face, out of his nostrils and mouth. He closed his eyes at the sudden return of the light. Then he blinked, and slowly, his eyes adjusted back to the brightness of his home.
Well, the door was fucked. Not only had his desperate attempt to escape the black mass crunched the door handle into a crumpled heap, not only had it broken from its hinges, but the door itself had broken in two from where he had put his weight against it.
The door, however, was not what Izuku focused on.
All his attention was drawn to the… Thing.
It was still attached to him in places, but it wasn't trying to smother him anymore.
Calm.
The feeling popped into his head again.
"What… What are you?" He squeaked out.
The black mass wiggled around, and another feeling popped into his skull. Confusion.
Wait, he recognized this. This was… This was just like back at the beach!
"It was you! You were the one at the beach! The one who was crying for help."
Another feeling, Satisfaction this time.
He blinked, then realization sat it.
"You… You communicate mentally with feelings don't you?"
Well, at least he had one question answered. He still didn't know what this thing was though. At all.
He tried getting on his feet. Slooowly and carefully.
The mass did not attempt to stop him, but neither did it let go, still clinging to his legs.
He slowly backed into the bathroom and grabbed a towel, which he wrapped around his lower half.
Confusion.
The mass went to his clothes, then… It lifted his clothes into the air. Haltingly and clumsily, but it did lift it all the way to his eye level.
"I… I need to dry first." He explained. What he needed was to go get a pro hero to help with this thing, but somehow, he doubted it would take kindly to that idea.
The mass let go of his clothes, then followed as he backed out of the bathroom.
His focus was so concentrated on the black mass, the unexplained threat, that he completely failed to notice the sharp screw that had until recently held the door on its hinges, still attached to said hinges.
"AAHHHH!"
He cut his leg against the screw's sharpness, and of course, given he was taken by surprise, he instinctually ripped the leg away, creating a much longer wound.
He fell backwards, back on the remains of the door.
Shit, shit, SHIT it hurt!
As he sat there, cradling his leg, while swearing in pain, the black mass promptly moved between his hands and into the wound.
He winched and expected it to hurt even more, but instead, it felt like he had just put an ice pack over it, just without the cold. Which, didn't really make it the best analogy really.
It took about half a minute of just sitting there breathing through his teeth before he realized what it was doing. It was healing him.
A piece fell into place.
"It was you… You healed me earlier, after…"
It wasn't really a question, as much as him basically talking to himself, but the mass answered with a burst of satisfaction.
Ok, that answered another question, but the main one still remained.
What was this thing?
As the pain began to fade completely, and he began to feel certain this thing wouldn't attack him, Izuku began to go over the possibilities, and what he knew.
"Ok, so the first time I felt this thing was at the beach. I felt sudden emotions inside my head, and I went to look for someone who needed help… No not needed help, it was despair, this thing was in despair. That's the feeling I felt from it. So what is it? A result of someone's quirk that I just stumbled on? It has healing powers, that's really rare. After the beach, it reemerged after… After Katsuki beat me up and it came out and it healed my injuries. Was it hiding inside my backpack? No, then it would have been exposed when the bag was destroyed. My clothes maybe? They're both black, so probably… Then it came out again when I came home and-"
The host was doing something it didn't understand.
The host just sat there, ignoring it, while rapidly muttering to… Himself? Yes, that was it. Him. The host was clearly male.
It did not understand what the host was saying. The language was alien. It only understood the names.
The host's feelings were clear, however.
It was confused. Searching for knowledge. Trying to solve a riddle. It did not understand.
It tried to recall previous hosts.
Yes… This happened sometimes. Confusion.
The host had to be put at ease.
"-So, maybe it's a-" Completion.
Izuku stopped breathing.
The feeling was overwhelming. Far more so than any of the other emotions.
The feeling of being at peace, being what one should be, what one was meant to be. To be complete.
God, it was beautiful.
It was a feeling he had tried to achieve for a decade now.
He started breathing again.
He just stared at it as he thought. There were so many questions he had, and he still didn't have clear answers to. However, he understood one thing now, one thing he hadn't really understood before.
There was a… Bond between him and this… Moving mass of liquid.
Could… could it be?
He felt… Different than he usually did. It wasn't before now that he sat down and considered it. Clenching a fist, it felt more… Alive than it usually did.
His eye went down to the doorknob that lay by the remains of the broken door. It was completely crumpled, like tin foil compressed and folded into itself.
He grabbed it and held it up before his eyes. He'd done this… Hadn't he?
His other hand shot up and hesitated for just one brief second, then he grabbed it between both hands, and ripped the steel in two with little difficulty.
The world felt surreal as he stared at two pieces of metal.
This… This couldn't be happening.
He dropped the metal pieces and moved his hand down, and clutched around the wooden doorframe. He put force into it and the wood caved in beneath his fingers.
He pulled up his hand and just stared at it gaping like he had just seen All Might himself in person.
The mass moved up along his hand, dyeing it black before his eyes.
This thing… It was the source.
"You… You ARE a Quirk aren't you?"
Satisfaction.
Tears began to roll down his cheeks. Glad tears, tears of joy, tears of pure Happiness.
"MY Quirk. You're MY quirk."
He began bawling his eyes out as he tried to embrace the liquid, who responded by clinging to him like a second skin.
Inko read the papers again as she enjoyed the car ride.
It was a luxury she didn't usually enjoy. The family car she and Hizashi had bought so many years ago was currently being used by her husband as he made money to keep them afloat.
She and Izuku had to use the train whenever they wanted to get somewhere, which thankfully wasn't too hard, given where they lived. Japan wasn't exactly short on trains.
Still, there was something calming about a simple car ride that riding a train never could compare to.
Being able to read papers in peace for one.
"Mr. Murdock is rather generous with his offers."
Her driver smiled a big affable grin at that.
"That he is Mrs. Midoriya."
She bit her lip.
"Still… I'll need some time to consider it. I'll have to talk with my family about it for one."
"Of course, of course. Take your time. Matt won't actually be moving here for the next six months, so you'll have almost half a year before we need a definite answer."
Half a year. It was a lot of time. Lots could happen in that span. Not all of those necessarily good.
20 minutes later, they pulled up in front of the apartment complex she and her son lived in.
"And we're here Mrs. Midoriya. Have a pleasant evening, and I hope we shall speak with you again soon."
She wished him a good night as well, then looked after the car as it disappeared into the pitch-black night.
This was what one would call a turning point. Provided she accepted.
She began her walk up the stairs, towards her home. Home. This was her home. It wasn't as nearly as grand as their old house, but she had come to consider it her home just as much as their old place.
She had done what she could to make it a home. But no amount of tidying up could make up for the fact that there was a third person lacking.
She wondered if Izuku was unable to ignore the hole in their home the way she was. She doubted it though, given how little Izuku had been the last time he saw his father… which hurt a lot in its own way.
Other than a few pictures around the house, there wasn't much of Hisashi in her Baby's life.
As she unlocked the door and went in, she was about to call out for Izuku, when she stopped in her tracks.
The room to the bathroom had been ripped off its hinges, and was laid leaning up against the opposite wall in two pieces.
For a brief second, she just stood and stared at it, then her parental instincts took over.
"IZUKU!" She screamed as she sprinted across the floor, past the doors leading to her and Izuku's rooms, the nonexistent door to the bathroom, and wrenched open the door to the living room, desperate to find her son. Had there been a burglar? Was her baby safe? What if he had been hurt Oh God, oh God, oh God!
What greeted her was her baby sitting at the dinner table writing down in a book, while a black mass of rising liquid laid on the table.
Izuku turned his head to look at her, with a look of complete surprise on his face. Then he began to tear up.
"MOM!" He made an astonishingly quick jump from over the edge of the sofa, and over to her.
"IZUKU, WHAT-" Then her son caught her in a hug. Instinctually she hugged him back while staring in terror at the black liquid which seemed to somehow observe her without having eyes. It was the creepiest shit she'd seen in years.
"I… I finally did it, mom…" She squeezed him even harder, thinking he needed consoling, but as he talked, she realized he didn't sound sad. In fact, he sounded… Ecstatic?
"I… I got a quirk mom. I FINALLY got a quirk!"
What?
For a moment she didn't comprehend it. It was an impossible statement. It was a harsh reality, that she had accepted years ago, that Izuku would not develop any powers, no matter how hard he tried.
"Really?" Was all she managed to squeak out.
"Yeah, I… me and… It kinda broke the bathroom door while discovering my powers. Sorry…"
The enthusiasm he had displayed so eagerly just seconds ago petered out as he waved towards the black mass on the table. As if he thought his mother would care about him accidentally breaking a door, as he finally got the thing fate had denied him for so many years.
"OH IZUKU! OH, MY BABY!" This time it was the older Midoriya who burst into tears of joy, though in her case, it was more like a water fountain going off.
As the two Midoriyas cried their tears of joy, the Alien lifeform quietly made it's journey from the table to the leg of its host.
Then it slowly slithered up his leg and fused itself into the pants he was wearing.
The host had accepted it. That was good. Also not normal. Hosts did not usually accept it this quickly.
This host desired power. It could feel it. Did it wish to be a warrior then? Did it have grand ambitions of conquest? Of dominance over this world?
It did not know.
The other lifeform, the originator of the host…. No… Parent… Yes, parent. The parent called Inko was also very emotional.
The resemblance between parent and spawn was uncanny.
It reminded it of… An image of black and red figure rising above the clouds, wings so large they blocked out the sun.
The memory fizzled out in darkness.
Yes, the road ahead was still longer. They needed more time together before they became one, and it would return to its might.
The turning point would come eventually though. The critical moment had passed. The host had not rejected it while it was weak.
And it's desire for power told it that he would not reject it during the final bonding process.
The next morning was a Saturday. Which was good, because he if he'd had to go to school without figuring out exactly what he could do, he'd probably have died of anxiety.
The prospect of going to class and just suddenly having a quirk was terrifying enough. He didn't need it to be made even worse by not knowing what he could actually do.
Of course, that was just an immediate problem that made this trip necessary. The truth was, however, that he needed to go out and put this quirk to some kind of test.
He'd go crazy if he didn't. He HAD to find out what he could do.
His mom had understood it.
His mother had been so damn happy, in a way that he hadn't seen her in years. Like the wonderful person she was, she had forgiven him for the door, and not questioned him about the destroyed bag, the ruined uniform, and why he hadn't brought any food home.
She just assumed he'd broken it with his powers accidentally. God bless her.
Instead, she had been congratulating him so much for finally awakening his quirk and told him again and again how happy she was for him. So many tears have been shed last night.
He was glad. He was happy his mother wouldn't have to suffer by having a failure for a son anymore.
Failure.
No more.
Today was a big step for him. From today, the failure that had been the quirkless Midoriya Izuku would be no more.
And it would begin with doing the one thing he had already been good at.
Observation.
He had gone out and bought a brand new black notebook. This one he had left unnamed. He wasn't planning to ever bring it to school where Katsuki could get a look at it and possibly destroy it.
After quickly transferring everything he had written yesterday in one of his school notebooks to the new one, he had headed out.
For this part, he had the perfect place in mind.
The spot where it all began.
The abandoned beach filled with metal trash.
Standing over it and looking down on it, it felt surreal, thinking about what he was about to do. Measure his quirk. HIS quirk.
In all his years of childhood, every time he had tried to, dreamed of, or fantasized about unlocking or discovering a quirk, he'd never once actually considered the step afterward, the step he was now on.
It had always been about actually having a quirk, any quirk at all, whether or not it had anything to do with his parent's powers.
What happened afterward was always a distant afterthought. But of course, the reality was that the road afterward would be mastering it. And that began with a simple test to figure out what he could do and from that extrapolate a plan for going forward.
In his fantasies, he'd have taken anything. Anything at all.
What he had actually gotten was seemingly a quirk that had created a separate being from whom he drew his powers of strength and healing. That was unusual, but he had actually seen plenty of heroes during his research that had similar powersets.
In Sweden, there was an entire hero team of people with that exact type of power(Unsurprisingly they were a family business), and in the generation before All Might there had been a hero called Silver Shadow, with such a separate being allowing him the power of teleportation.
He was sure there were other heroes he had documented at some point, with similar powers, but… well, he didn't have his old notebooks anymore.
As he stepped down the stairs and unto the sand, he felt his quirk's confusion.
"Well, we need a place to test ourselves out and it's kinda out of the way and isolated…"
It was still confused.
Izuku sighed.
It was really annoying not being able to actually talk to it. Ignoring that trying to communicate with someone who couldn't speak or make motions, and could only communicate with basic emotions was a struggle to begin with, this being was his quirk. The source of everything. He HAD to be able to talk to it.
"Never mind, just watch, you'll get it eventually."
He put the notebook and a pen on top of an old refrigerator while leaving the bag with the rest of his stuff by its side.
It made him feel kinda stupid to realize he'd been stumbling around here for almost half an hour yesterday looking for a person that had either been inside himself or clinging to his clothes the entire time. He still wasn't sure about that, or why he had first felt it here.
Right now though, nothing could dampen his mood, as he prepared his first test.
How far he could jump. First, he'd do a standstill, then, he would try running.
He tensed his muscles as he bent down. He'd done this in gym class countless times, never being particularly good at it.
Let's see how he'd do now.
He sprung.
For a moment he flew through the air, not amazingly high or far by the standards of the world of quirks, but certainly much farther than any normal quirkless person would have been able to.
Then as he landed, he immediately stumbled, and the speed and force he had landing kept him tumbling for several meters before he stopped, face down in the sand.
Spitting sand out of his mouth, he groaned as he got back on his feet.
"This… This is gonna be a thing isn't it?"
His quirk gave out the feeling of agreement.
And that it was.
As it turned out, having superhuman strength didn't translate to instantly using it well.
He tried long jumps time and again, and he kept stumbling the landing if the jump was any more than 3 meters(He discovered his longest jump was 9,7 meters).
When he tried to lift the various pieces of metal, he had a nasty tendency to accidentally break them, leading to such things as accidentally caving in a refrigerator's walls when he was trying to throw it, and getting hit in the head with the fridge.
Subsequently, he'd also discovered that he was pretty durable now.
After about 4 hours of testing, he had some idea of what he could do.
Strength.
He could lift several hundred kilos at least. There was a definite limit though, as he'd failed to move the cars. Also, he didn't have any way to actually measure the weights of these things. Rather unprecise measurement.
Jumping.
The longest jump was 9,7 meters running, 7 standing. 3 meters was his current limit for how long he'd jump before he fell upon landing. He needed to work on that.
Throwing.
He'd thrown a microwave from one side of the beach to the other. He'd been too afraid of accidentally chucking something all the way to the other beach to try surpassing the throw.
Running.
He only needed 13 seconds to do a 100 meters dash. As he'd discovered, he moved faster by jumping, but without being able to land on his feet, it wasn't a realistic alternative for movement.
Also, he'd had to accept his measuring of speed was probably a bit off, given he had had to measure himself with an app. He'd tried to get the quirk to do it, but that had just been a doomed prospect from the start.
Durability.
He hadn't really tested this as much as he could have. But he had accidentally dropped a fridge on his own face, that had made him fall backward and it landing on his chest and head. It would most definitely have broken his neck if he didn't have enhanced durability. It had easily been the most worrying moment of the day, as he'd expected horrible pain, but only got a headache(That faded after about 20 minutes) after he pushed it off of himself.
Healing powers.
The only thing he hadn't put to the test was his ability to heal himself. He was not all that eager to push put the limits of his healing powers to the test, especially not given he didn't know how far those limits could be pushed before it was too much.
However, he had some idea from the events of yesterday. It had healed up his broken arm, as well as all his bruises from getting beat up from Katsuki. It had also fixed up everywhere katsuki has hit him with his explosions. He'd been burned pretty badly by those, though it had ended at being singed and burns.
Lots of burns, but still only burns. It could have been much, much worse.
For a moment, he had wondered if it would manage to heal him if he had had actual chunks blown out of his flesh.
After that pleasant image, he had tried not to think more about it. As a hypothetical, it was a situation to avoid anyway. If he was ever in a situation where he had to put it to the test, he would have failed anyway.
The quirk itself had over the course of the day been showing various levels of emotions, ranging from confusion, to amusement, to worry, to boredom.
Now, at the end of his tests, he sat down on the front of a car and scribbled down more information in his notebook. Both important and smaller things.
He needed a full, and detailed description of every single aspect of his quirk. From it's limit to how it acted throughout the day. He'd made a journal section exclusively for that latter one, to document every single time it communicated with him.
-Now that we're done and I'm just writing, it's just bored. My attempts at Smalltalk has been rather… Lacking in results. It still seems like it only understands what I'm saying half of the time. End of training session.
He closed the book. And put it in the plastic bag he'd used to carry measuring tape, pens, and his book. He'd thankfully not needed to go out and buy a stopwatch, as his phone had served just fine with an app.
As he got back on his feet, his new companion slithered up and fused itself with his shirt, staining it black.
That had some potential for stealth, but the fact it only came in black limited its practical use by quite a bit.
One final part remained before he headed home.
He'd had the idea while coming across an old door he'd found on the beach. It was old, and not exactly clean… But it was also whole, and he could probably make some changes to make it so that it fit the door frame back home.
Mom hadn't been angry about it, but he knew they couldn't afford to actually properly replace it, so either they got creative, or they went without a door to the bathroom. And given he felt really bad about destroying it, he'd decided to fix it. After all, how hard could it be?
So, before he left, he went back to the door, and effortlessly lifted it over his head like he was lifting a book.
God this was going to take some time getting used to.
Getting used to it.
This was his new normal now. He was normal now. Not some a genetic throwback to an earlier age.
That brought tears to his eyes, but he quickly wiped them away, having no problem keeping the heavy door aloft with one hand.
There were still tons of things he didn't know. He didn't really understand the events that had happened the first time he was at this beach, he had no idea how he would handle returning to school after this(How would everyone react?), and he still had no idea how to really communicate with the quirk.
However, at that moment he didn't really care. He felt… At peace with himself for the first time in so, so long. God, it was an amazing feeling. To be whole.
As he began walking up the steps to exit the beach, he quickly went over plans for the day.
Once he had carried back this door home, he'd need to go out and buy new schoolbooks. Also a bag. And food. It would need to be cheap.
Once he had done that, he'd need to go home and work on this door, and after that, he needed to figure out how he would do training going forward.
As he walked away from the beach, the door still aloft over his head, he passed a blonde, sickly-looking man, with incredibly sunken in eyes, and limbs so thin and lanky he looked like a skeleton. The man was riding a swegway of rather high quality, and Izuku thought he seemed familiar, but he couldn't place him.
Two hours later, while browsing an article about All Might saving a teenager from a Villain, he would realize that the man was Toshinori Yagi, All Might's manager. He'd seen him in plenty of articles over the years, but some time ago, the man had suffered an injury which had drastically altered his appearance. Izuku had completely failed to recognize him.
Behind Toshinori, jogged a brown-haired teenage girl his own age, wearing bandaged wrappings around her hands, as well as training jeans and jacket.
Izuku flushed a bit, but the girl didn't try to speak to him, so he managed his composure just fine.
Had Izuku decided to make this beach filled with trash his training spot, he might have befriended these two people that April and his life may have taken a very different course. He did not, however, and it would some time before he saw these two again.
Such was the way of fate and destiny.