Detective Midoriya

Chapter 34

As time crept by, Izuku couldn't help but feel more and more anxious. Eri definitely picked up on his nerves, and she responded in kind.

The good news, though, was that they were making real progress with Eri's quirk. He'd had his suspicions about the details of it, but Chisaki wasn't very forthcoming about the nature of her quirk, and Eri herself knew almost nothing about it.

It definitely had some correlation with her horn, more specifically, the size of her horn. It fluctuated in size between her appointments with Chisaki, which led Izuku to theorize that the horn worked as a sort of storage for the power of her quirk. At first quir,k training had mainly consisted of Izuku trying to ask Eri questions about it that she couldn't answer until he actually saw the quirk in action.

Izuku had found a potted plant that he gave to Eri to take care of. It was supposed to teach children responsibility, or so his favorite parenting blog said, but it was also something Izuku himself had done; he'd adopted his own bonsai tree when things with Kacchan first got really bad. It had been calming to know that there was something that depended on him. He mattered, even if it was only to a plant.

Ironically enough, Katsuki had exploded said bonsai tree one night the Bakugous had come over for dinner. Izuku had nearly - actually, none of this was relevant.

Eri had been enthusiastically tending to the plant when her horn began to glow. Izuku was alerted when Eri murmured, "No, please no!"

The plant was shrinking, and the look of terror on her face was heartbreaking. When Izuku moved to help her, she flung herself backward. "No, I'll hurt you. You have to stay away! Go get him, he needs to disassemble me."

So this was Eri's quirk, the power to rewind. He'd never seen anything like it, but he and Dr. Meiji had discussed conditions like this, where the user seemed completely disconnected from their quirk.

"I'll stay over here, Eri, okay? But you need to listen to me. Can you do that?" The little girl nodded, eyes fixated on him in desperation. Taking a deep breath, he continued, "I need you to focus, Eri. What feels different right now while you're using your quirk?"

"I... I don't know!"

"That's alright, it will be fine. I know you're scared, but you'll be fine, and I'll be fine. Do you know how I know that?"

"How?"

"Because this quirk is part of Eri. Eri would never hurt someone on purpose, and she would figure out a way not to hurt me." The light coming from Eri's horn seemed to be dimming, so Izuku kept talking. "It's an amazing quirk! You could help a lot of people with it one day. It's probably not registered, so we could pick out a really cool name for it! It's definitely an emitter quirk, and..."

It seemed to calm Eri the longer he talked, and gradually the light from her horn went out. Deeming it safe, Izuku moved to Eri, crouching down to give her a hug.

"Did you mean that, Mr. Deku? Do you think I could help people one day?" Eri asked, so incredibly small. "Is that why he is experimenting still?"

Unconsciously, her arms tightened around the girl. "Things won't always be like this, Eri. I promise."

Afterwards, Eri's quirk training moved rapidly. She was an excellent student when she wasn't so scared of her quirk anymore. It wasn't a perfect thing, she definitely had a limit to how much she could use her quirk, and it would spiral out of control when she was emotional. But Izuku would definitely have to thank Dr, Meiji for forcing his classes to learn the basics of quirk control.

As things moved, Izuku couldn't help but concentrate on Eri's quirk training. He knew everyone was doing all they could to make this a successful operation, and he needed to do his part as well.