001. YOU CAN BE A HERO! (click to expand; arrival memory)
[ The light of day is fading. Sunset is happening, the warm yellow-red light washing over the street. Izuku's walked this path a thousand times before. It's the way he goes from Aldera Junior High to the apartment he shares with his mother. He'd had his shoulders hunched, eyes on his red sneakers and the ground (the shadows seem darker than he remembered) as he thought about everything All Might had said. Everything Kacchan had yelled. It had been a long day and he wasn't sure if it was bad or good, back in that moment before everything changed.
He thinks about this memory a lot. His life before All Might said the words that changed his entire universe and his life after that are two very different things and these days he has a difficult time thinking about a universe where it hadn't happened. All Might runs up and shocks him and it plays out the same way it did back then. All Might in his thin and gaunt form saying: "Kid. I've come to thank you and revise what I said earlier...I also have a proposal. Without you...if I hadn't heard your story...I'd have been nothing but fake muscles and insincerity! So thank you!!"
Izuku's mouth opens. He feels smaller than he knows he is, shorter and slighter and he can kind of see himself looking that way, the noodle he'd been in middle school as his voice comes out a little younger. "That...no. I mean, it was all my fault from the start! I got in your way...even though I'm quirkless, I dared to ask if..."
"Exactly!! Of all the people at the scene...it was only you, timid and quirkless, who acted! You spurred me to action! Most of the top heroes show signs of greatness even as children...many of them claim that their bodies simply moved before they could think! That's what happened to you back there, yes?"
His own choked voice, wet with tears, feels quiet (but there's some other sound beyond it that he can just about make out now - ?) "Yes..."
And then the final words: "You can be a hero." They hit him like a physical blow and Izuku goes to his knees - before he's walking down the same path again, tripping immediately as he loses his balance. When his hands catch on the pavement they aren't the soft and uncalloused hands he'd had in middle school. These are his hands at sixteen, scarred and crooked. When he stumbles to his feet, looking around wildly, Izuku can feel the injuries he knows he has and his middle school uniform is replaced with his hero costume - wrecked though it is from battle. ]
What - ? [ This time his voice comes out clearer, less of a stuttered and shy mess and more a frantic and firm tone. He whirls around, looking for anything out of place. He can just about make out a shape - until you enter the scene and he falls back into a ready stance like there's a threat. Behind him a memory version of himself continues walking to meet All Might, two years ago now. Now he can hear the voices. "Humility," says one - "Diligence," says another, and - ] A Quirk...there has to be a way out!
▶ 002. AMPLITHEATER.
A. THE DEEPS. [ When his initial memory bursts, Izuku finds himself suddenly drowning in cold water. Or...he should be drowning. Instead his luck has come in the clutch and his first-timer Amplitheater role is as a Merfolk. Specifically an octopus merman because that isn't just for sea witches, damnit (this time). Water rushes in but he can breath fine even as he flails for a minute or two adjusting to the fact he now has many limbs. Luckily it's kind of like controlling Blackwhip so the skill translates into him figuring himself out relatively quickly, but...
Then as he looks around trying to spot the people he'd seen and perhaps interacted with before, he find that he's in the ocean. And also is part octopus. And is IN the OCEAN. Before Izuku can fully progress to muttering frantically about this new development, another bubble pops. Yours, probably? And maybe for the sake of this you're a little less lucky and don't have the ability to swim underwater, so...There is suddenly a teenaged octomer coming to your rescue, reaching out with both his human arms and a few of his octopi limbs as he shoots through the water. Shit, okay, he can get to the surface - ]
Just hang on! [ Especially if he activates his Quirk to get them moving even faster. At least the need to save someone always overrides the need to freak out for Izuku. ]
B. WHAT DO YOU WISH FOR? [ So he's probably been warned by NPCs or something about not taking deals from evil sea witches. Actually, he's been warned about strangers and danger from his mother, so Izuku has absolutely no good reason to stop when a creepy voice asks him what he wishes for. Izuku Midoriya is a smart guy and he knows that's a question that absolutely opens you up to a whole lot of bullshit about nine times out of ten. But knowing all of that doesn't stop the minor compulsion to answer anyway. It doesn't take much of a compulsion to make Izuku blurt out what he wishes for because he's kind of a chatterbox so talking is a normal state of being for him a lot of the times - ]
The rare commemorative All Might wall hanging from his 1st anniversary celebration! There were only one hundred ever made and they almost never go on sale and when they do go on sale they cost more than I've ever been able to save up. It's so frustrating! I mean, I know EXACTLY where I would put it, too. I saved a spot for it just in case in my room...
[ The NPC Sea Witch probably did not expect all...that. There's a long pause, during which you can totally object unless you wait to hear: "...Well, uh, I can grant you what you most desire...so long as you're willing to give me your soul."
And again. This is very obviously a terrible deal he should not take and he should run away right now and also why would a random sea witch be able to grant him the wall hanging of his dreams. AND YET. And yet. Izuku looks very legitimately tempted by this so maybe now would be a good time to stop him from doing something absolutely stupid for a piece of merchandise that wouldn't be good wet anyway. ]
C. WHAT DO YOU WISH FOR? ("EVIL" REDUX) [ Or maybe you catch him on a different Amplitheater entry when he is a Sea Witch instead even thought he looks mostly the same but now he doesn't have cute underwater animal companions but is trying to wrangle a less cute electric eel who seems to want to bite people. Specifically you. Izuku grabs it with whips of black energy and smiles sheepishly as he draws it back in, then gives in and asks: ]
So, er, weird question but...is there anything in particular you want? [ He's...sort of trying to play along with the story and stuff and figure out how a sea witch works but there's a solid chance he won't be able to make a "mean" deal to save his life. He does kind of want to help someone out, though. It can sort of be like granting wishes, right? That's kind of cool! ]
D. LIGHT IN THE DARK FOG. [ Or maybe you run into Izuku when he is either a Mariner or a normal Merfolk chasing balls of light through the fog in either a ship or like...in the water, if he's a meroctopus at the time. If you'd like him to catch something of yours just let me know what it is! Or if you'd like to catch something of his feel free to choose from: his voice, red gauntlets or boots depending on if he's a merfolk or a mariner, or the sudden ability to Float or use black whips of energy. The latter can be pretty hard to control and he will need both of them back however... ]
E. WEDDING BLUES. [ Today is Izuku's wedding day. ...APPARENTLY? HE GUESSES? He's kind of just going with it at this point since one day he was an evil sea witch and today during his stint as a mermaid prince he's now getting married to...someone? HE GUESSES???? Although other people might be getting married? He doesn't totally get how the Amplitheater works despite having at least one or two notebooks worth of thoughts on it so far.
So anyway, Izuku is getting married and this is of course, by the properties of his luck as a protagonist, the day the Blood-Drinkers decide to attack the wedding ship as cursed merfolk. He...actually doesn't hate this because he was trying to figure out how to politely extract himself from the situation with the apparently-part-of-the-story-NPCs and hadn't figured out a way to do it. A zombie merpeople attack seems like a good out, though. So he sort of brightens just a little for half a second before it dims and he gets all worried. ]
We need to evacuate the ship! And don't let any of them bite you! [ So he just turns to whoever happens to be around, automatically trying to find a team to work with. ]
▶ 003. CITY OF 7.
A. I'VE GACHA BACK. [ Izuku has a bit of a problem with merchandise. This is specific to hero merchandise and even more specifically to All Might merchandise...but he's that guy who absolutely plans to buy everything his friends put out because he wants to support them and he loves them. So the fact that a bunch of gacha machines are producing little figurines of people he's met here or back home (you know, if anyone else is on the TDM) as well as himself (which is embarrassing actually, but) is really tempting. Too tempting to turn down, so...He's absolutely going to all of the gacha machines on a hunt for rare figurines of people he's met or known, and if he spots someone he knows or someone he doesn't after he just does one more pull and gasps happily when it's the Rarest Kind Possible he'll hold it up to show them. ]
Look, I pulled you! [ Please don't take it away collecting shit is his reason to be (well, okay, being a hero is his reason to be but he really enjoys collecting shit too)...but if you try to take it he probably won't stop you. ]
B. CROSS-STICHED. [ Honestly Izuku probably could have just been asked politely to attend a cross-stitch meeting and he would have attended because occasionally he has trouble saying "no" if he has nothing better to do and someone seems particularly earnest. But when he comes to after hearing a song and then following it, he finds himself seated in a circle with a cross-stitch on his lap and several messy stitches done, and blinks. Then leans over to you, someone else who was probably musically lured here: ]
Er. What are we actually supposed to be making, here?
▶ WILDCARD.
[ If nothing here works feel free to throw a wildcard at me or to PM me to discuss other options! ]
Izuku Midoriya | My Hero Academia | OTA
001. YOU CAN BE A HERO! (click to expand; arrival memory)