Timeloop Trouble

Chapter 34 - Quirk Counseling

"Yeah, that's not gonna happen kid."

God fucking damnit! Izuku clenched his All Might plushie, still somewhat feeling the stab wounds Himiko had inflicted on him. Logically he knew they weren't there, that he wasn't bleeding, that he was safe, but the phantom pains still lingered. Toga remembered... Of course she did, Izuku didn't put something in place to assure she wouldn't. And she knew about him, about Jikan. She knew, and she found him and she killed him. And she would do so again.

Fuck!

But how was he supposed to interfere there? The moment she got her memories back was the moment she fell in love, wasn't it? Izuku didn't know it was with him or with Ochako, or whether just being in love or saying it out loud was the trigger. If it was him, removing him from the picture should've been enough. Himiko shouldn't have know who he was- Except he won two rounds of the sportsfestival and ended up getting third place. He showed the world how feral he could be and the League had been watching, and Toga must've fallen in love.

Okay, so, that's his hypothesis then. Now, on how to test it... He needed to remove himself from the picture, from the sportsfestival, from... From UA. Izuku couldn't keep attending UA if he wanted to make a difference in this timeline... Maybe big hero schools in general were best avoided. But those schools also had the best support course tracks and his engineering knowledge was still lacking. He still didn't know enough about quirk integration to fully get how the time machine was supposed to work. But maybe... Maybe he could approach it from a different angle? Maybe instead of going into machinery, he could go into the quirk aspect of it all..?

"Oh, I... I see," Inko breathed, giving the doctor a tight lipped smile, forcing her true feelings down for the time being. Izuku blinked as she put a hand on his shoulder, guiding him off the chair and telling him to say goodbye to the nice man. Guess he zoned out during the entire conversation again...

"Bye doctor," Izuku mumbled, getting lost in thought again the moment they stepped out of that room. Izuku was good at quirk analysis. It was his passion, his hobby, and he could technically use that knowledge to become something like a professional quirk analyst. He could try and get into contact with engineers that way, work together to make quirk infused items and machinery. It would most likely link him back to the hero world in one way or another, seeing as quirk analysis was mostly used in either quirk counseling or for quirk training.

Which should be fine as long as it didn't involve UA. Yeah, Izuku could stay under the radar! He could become a nobody, a face no one recognized, a footnote in this society's advancements. He didn't have to make an impact to learn, didn't have to make a name for himself in order to figure this out. No, Izuku could have a normal life on the sidelines. He could stay clear of villains and heroes all together, and find out what Himiko's trigger was all at the same time. Which... Which also meant he needed to stay clear of Kacchan. That their paths would separate before long.

Izuku had never been apart from the blonde, always standing right there beside him. Always having those red eyes watching him, a speck of blonde lingering on the edge of his peripheral. The most they'd been separated was in the last timeline, actually, when Izuku pursued a course other than the hero course for the first time ever. It was the first time they'd been apart, each standing on their own and doing their own thing. They always held the same aspirations, were always in the same class, the same line of work... And then they weren't anymore. But at least they still went to the same school. That wasn't an option anymore, either.

Unless Izuku could convince Kacchan to stay away from UA, too..? No, he wouldn't be that selfish. It was Kacchan's dream to attend UA! It wasn't something Izuku could take from him, not in any timeline, no matter how much he missed him. Cause fuck, Izuku missed him. Missed Kacchan- His Kacchan. The boy he grew up with, the boy he fell in love with, the one who'd traversed countless lifetimes with him, by his side. But Izuku couldn't bring him back. Not yet. Not until he figured this out and had some concrete results to show his peers. If he came back empty handed, all of this would've been for nothing, after all.