Not powerless

Chapter 7: library

Izuku was placed gently on the ground. It didn’t feel like silk as the void bridge had. Instead it was course and rough. When he opened his eyes, he didn’t see the red of the bridge and the inky blackness of the void. He saw grass and dirt. He was back in the forest. Behind him was the cliff face, nowhere near as tall as he’d originally fallen.

A small shuffling had him lifting his head. Red, Blue and Green were there, somehow conveying concern in their features. Izuku let out a small huff.

“I guess I lived.”

The animals approached him. Red lay down next to him, while Blue fluttered down on his other side. Green skittered up to sit on his shoulder.

“Though if you jump off another cliff, I’m not following you.”

They all made noises like laughing. Izuku leaned back, staring up at the sky. That had been the craziest thing he’d ever experienced. Had anyone told him something like that was possible, Izuku would have called them crazy. Hell, part of him thought that he was crazy, but there was a budding warmth in his chest which said otherwise. It was like a fire cozied up next to his heart. With each beat it pulsed through his body, reminding him that it was there.

The sky was still bright and clear. How much time had passed? Had any time passed at all? Hopefully it would still be warm because Izuku could already feel a chill whenever the wind blew through. Sitting up again, he took stock of himself and grimaced.

He had ran away from home with only the clothes on his back, and now they were torn to shreds. His sweatpants were now shorts, barely held together and shorter than he preferred. His t-shirt had been torn open, revealing much of his chest, and the only thing left of his hoodie was the hood. His shoes were also gone. What was responsible for what, Izuku had no idea, but between the fire, the beast and the raging ocean, this was all he was left with.

The painful twinge of scrapes and bruises made itself known when he stood up. Craning his neck around, there was dried blood on his back but the shallow cut was no longer bleeding. He’d have to find some way of cleaning it to make sure it didn’t get infected.

What to do next weighed heavily on his mind. Before this, he had been planning on getting as far away from his family as possible and try and claw together some semblance of normality. Now though, he had a power, he could feel it in his chest. Depending on what it did, it would be very easy to pass off as a quirk. Having it changed everything.

As he thought of his new power, he felt the heat of it move through his body. Wisps of pale green energy leaked out of his hands like a mist. Feeling it was one thing, but seeing it was confirmation. All of that had been real. His happiness grew and he clenched his hands into fists. The mist pulsed out of him, slamming into the nearby trees. They creaked and cracked, threatening to fall. Izuku was quick to back away.

The animals didn’t look impressed.

“Cut me some slack. I’ve never had a power before.”

He may have never had a power before, but he’d studied quirks for years. Surely quirk control would translate over to … whatever this power was. Most of the time, volatile quirks responded to emotions. Izuku had been really happy when that blast happened, so he just needed to calm down. As he did so, the wisps of energy shrank to what they had been originally.

But they didn’t stop. Izuku almost worried that it was leaking, but it felt more like it was cycling, dissipating into the air only to sink back into him.

“So it’s a work in progress,” he said.

The sky above was turning orange. This place wasn’t great shelter so Izuku set off into the woods. He kept the cliff face to his left, hoping to find a cave of some sort he could use. The animals followed. They were nice company, listening to their noises instead of the ominous silence of the forest around him.