Iida sits down with the rest of his class in Izuku-sensei's classroom, quietly working through a new article. It was actually quite interesting, about a new study that may prove the existence of having a quirk that is both a mutation and emitter type. Occasionally, they would do activities like this. Izuku-sensei always said that if you didn't know what an analysis meant, then you took away half of its value.
'Calling Izuku Midoriya down to my office.' The intercom rang, disturbing the lovely silence of the classroom. Izuku-sensei glanced up before nodding at the corner of the room like he was responding to someone and standing up.
"Alright... Iida, I'm placing you in charge while I run down to Principal Nezu's office. I'll be back before the end of class, just make sure you finish the article before then. We'll discuss it next class period." With that, he strode out the door.
"...What do you think Nezu wanted to talk to him about?" Uraraka asked with a small amount of trepidation.
"His last name is Midoriya?" He sees Sero mouth.
"Who even knows," Mina said dismissively. "It's probably something about class plans or something similar."
"Maybe," Todoroki said. "But Principal Nezu has a reputation for being very... Well, he's smart, and he gets bored. I think Kaminari and Mina know just how scary he can be."
Both of them shivered and nodded their heads, likely thinking back to the final exam they had. Iida hadn't seen it first-hand, but he had heard that Kaminari and Mina were pretty much running for their lives the entire time while Nezu was cackling like a madman. Mouse? Dog? Bear?
"Yeah," Kaminari gulps. "I do not want to be Izuku-sensei right now."
The class continues to joke around, and the only reason Iida doesn't lecture them on doing their work is because it was a very short article and he could make sure they did it before bed because of the dorms. It really was a great idea to have them instated. As expected of the top hero school in the country!
"Wait, what's this?" Iida looks at Yaoyorozu who's pointing at Izuku-sensei's desk. Looking closer, Iida can see a notebook lying on the wood. It's one that he's seen the teacher scribbling in before, usually while hanging out in the shadows of their heroics class.
"Well, let's see." A floating top that Iida assumed was Hagakure's made its way over to the notebook and held it in the air.
"Hagakure, no! We must respect our teacher's privacy and-!"
"Oh my All Might!" Uraraka gasped.
Come on, focus. Don't let your curiosity...
"What is it?" Dang it, Iida. This is not the behavior of a class president.
The class shuffled to the side and let him see what was written. He had to stifle an exclamation when the inside was finally revealed. There were lines and lines of writing, all of it tiny and curling around the edges, like he tried to get as much script in there as possible before he had to move to the next page.
"Well... it's not unlike Izuku-sensei to be writing so much. While I agree it may look a little... unsettling," More like it looks like a crazy person wrote it. "I'm sure that Izuku-sensei-"
"Uhh... Iida?" Kaminari said with a stuttering laugh. "We weren't looking at that. Look at what he actually wrote in here."
Taking a closer look, Iida realized that they were notes about them, about their entire class. Flipping through the pages, he could see that there were also detailed sketches of their hero costumes and possible support gear, as well as notes for those. His eyes grew wider and wider, gulping nervously at some of the weaknesses written down.
Sero crowded by his shoulder, grabbing Iida's wrist once he got to one of the descriptions in there. "Hagakure, isn't your quirk invisibility?"
"Can you see me right now?"
"Then why does Izuku-sensei have it in here as a form of light manipulation?" Sero points to the section he was talking about, and Iida leans in closer to read the messy writing. And Sero was right, he did have the quirk listed that way, with considerable writing underneath supporting that statement. The teachers were right! We do use CER in the future!
"Oh, yeah!" Hagakure exclaims. "Okay, so when I went to the quirk doctor when I was little, and since my whole family has that quirk and they couldn't see me, I think they just came to that conclusion. But then Izuku-sensei started asking me some questions a little while ago and he told me they were wrong." Hagakure paused. "I think he was also a little angry about it, because when he walked away he was mumbling something with a sour look."
Oh, yikes. Iida didn't have to imagine what an angry Izuku-sensei looked like, because he had seen it. He really didn't want to be that quirk doctor right about now.
"Wait, what does light manipulation mean?" Kirishima asked. "I mean, we still can't see you."
"I asked that too, but he said that my quirk constantly kind of filters the light around me and changes how it moves. Well, that's not exactly what he said, but there were a lot of big terms used that I don't actually understand enough to repeat them. Right now, my quirk instinctively moves the light away from me, making me invisible. He said it's a tendency that probably comes from my entire family being invisible. And! He said that if I gained more control over my quirk, I could maybe even make myself visible!"
Huh. "I guess that's why it's important to think about your own quirk, and not just listen to some doctor. Even though they are trusted professionals!" Iida said, pushing his glasses up his nose. "Everyone can make mistakes." Including, but not limited to, attempted murder.
"Whatever," Bakugo grunted. "It's creepy anyways. He's like some kind of weird stalker."
"Bakubro! How can you say that?" Kirishima gasped. "Izuku-sensei is totally manly!"
"Yeah, and it's not creepy at all. It's cool he's so smart!" Most of the class nodded resolutely, and Bakugo scoffed and turned away. Iida frowned worriedly at his classmate. It wasn't like they just expected Bakugo to be okay overnight, but if anything he had gotten worse since they had their training match against Izuku-sensei. Iida could hear him yelling obscenities whenever he didn't manage to completely demolish the cement.
He didn't even know that many swear words existed.
"Yeah, and Dunce Face is a genius," He says derisively.
"Hey!" Kaminari squawked. They all watched as Bakugo stalked back to his seat, sending each other concerned looks. Kirishima most of all. The redhead had this terribly forlorn look on his face, an expression of deep helplessness.
I'm the class president... My job is to keep the whole class together and perform as the stellar students of UA we are... If I can't do that, then am I even worthy of the position?
Uraraka nudged his side gently, giving him a small, reassuring smile. He gave her a shaky one in return. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Shinso awkwardly patting Kaminari on the shoulder, the blonde sporting a happy grin. Needing something to distract himself, he pointed it out to Uraraka.
"Oh my All Might!" She squealed. "Those two are just too cute for words. Do you want to get in on the betting pool we have on when they'll get together?"
"What? Uraraka, no! Betting on our friends' relationship is wrong!" He sputters out. "While I agree the two of them are very sweet, and that it is very nice to see them around each other, it would be best to not make bets on these sorts of things."
"Pshaw." Uraraka scoffed. "I'll just go find Mina and we'll make bets over it." She skipped away, throwing her arms around the pink-skinned girl with gusto. The two girls broke away from Sero and Jirou, giggling as they went. Iida sent his two dark-haired classmates a knowing look, shaking his head at the two girls.
Pulling out his phone, he labeled a new note with today's date and typed out, 'Uraraka and Mina will be involved romantically by the start of our second year.'
What? He said it would be wrong to bet on relationships with other people. He never said anything was wrong with making a prediction to himself.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Around 200 years ago...
Izuku sat down in the wooden library chair, pretending to study a book on psychology while he waited. It was actually quite fascinating, but it wasn't what he came there for today. No, that would have to be the two figures entering through the side entrance.
A skinny, middle-aged woman was ushering a small boy over with worried eyes, glancing into the shadows like she thought they would jump at her. He quietly closed the book as she set the child down in the chair next to him, pulling over a seat right next to him.
"Are you... him?" She asked in a hushed voice, gulping as she eyed him nervously. The boy watched with wide and confused eyes.
"Yes." He stared down at the small child and smiled. "Is this Kenzo?"
"Can you help him?"
He looked up at her face, noting the deep circles under her eyes. "Depends. What do you mean by 'help'?"
"Can you fix him?" He swallowed around the taste of bile, studying how Kenzo's hands clenched into little fists and how his face tightened. "Make him normal?"
"There's nothing wrong with him, he's just-"
"Different," She cuts in. "I know, I know. There's nothing 'wrong' with him. He's the exact same he's been his entire life. But other people don't think like that. They don't see that nothing's changed." Her voice breaks a little in the last sentence. "I didn't want to believe anything had changed, so I tried to ignore what he told me. It was only when I saw it for myself..." She trailed off.
Izuku is silent for a moment. "Alright. I can't make the recent changes go away, but I can help you understand them. I just need your son to tell me exactly what's been going on." She nodded frantically, nudging Kenzo on the shoulder.
"Kenzo? Can you tell the nice man what's been happening lately? That cool thing you can do?" Izuku was glad she didn't seem to resent her son. He's seen it happen too many times.
"Okay!" The boy was excited, glad he finally got to talk about the cool things he could do. Izuku couldn't help but smile. Only children could exude the innocence and happiness Kenzo was right now. He almost misses it...
"When I touch things, they start to make this pretty smoke. I made our living room look like there was a magic show going on!"
Izuku hummed thoughtfully, pausing his pen from where it's moving on the page. He always had his notebooks for these sorts of meetings, just in case he needed to go back to it later. He was careful to make sure they never fell in the wrong hands, however.
"Is it everything you touch?"
"No! It doesn't work on most of the stuff in the kitchen or any of the walls. I can do it with tables, though!"
"That's not all," His mother interjected. "He touched a candle and the wick caught fire. That was actually what made me look for you."
Izuku paused. "Did you see him catch the wick on fire?"
"Yes. Why?"
"How did he touch it when it caught on fire?"
"What do you mean?" She was eyeing him, slightly suspicious.
"Did he need to touch it with all five fingers, or was it only one? And did it work on multiple objects? You told me it worked on the wick of a candle, but does it work on wood and marble?"
"U-um... when he touched the wick, he pinched two of his fingers together on it. I... I don't know what he was able to do with the other objects. He did tell me that he used it on our wooden table, but I don't know about anything else."
"Kenzo? Do you remember what you used it on or how you did it?" Izuku tried.
"No. I just wanted to see the pretty smoke." The boy was still happily kicking his feet, completely oblivious to the stress of his mother. He was holding her hand tight, though.
Izuku dug through the small bag he had brought, searching for a specific object. "Ah! Here, I want you to try your ability on this." He held out a metal marble triumphantly. "But I want you to try it in two different ways. First, I want you to just touch it, not pinching it like you did with the wick."
"And then?" The woman didn't let the marble settle into her son's hands, pursing her lips.
"We'll see if it works first. I'm just seeing how his ability works, and how it activates."
She let her son grip the marble in his little fingers, and Izuku watched with rapt interest as it rested on his palm. The little boy's face scrunched up in concentration, but nothing happened. He looked upset, like he had done something wrong.
"Why-why didn't it work? It always worked before!"
"Don't worry," Izuku comforted. "This is actually very common. I want you to pinch the marble between two fingers and try again." He smiled. "If you're worried it's not going to work, just think about how it felt when you set that candle, okay?"
The kid nodded, and then did exactly as Izuku had instructed. There was no smoke or any outward indication that something was happening, and the mother was starting to wring her hands nervously. Kenzo closed his eyes in concentration, squeezing his fist tighter.
"All right... Can you hand the marble back to me now?"
"No! I-I can do it! I'm not lying!"
"I don't think you're lying, I just want to check the marble. There's going to be some limitations, and I'm not sure if making things smoke is what you can do, or if it's something else entirely." Kenzo was still glaring down at his hand, so Izuku tried a different approach. "When you're sick and you're throwing up, is throwing up the only thing that's going to happen, or are you going to have a headache and fever too?" Kenzo shook his head slowly. "I'm just trying to figure out what's making you throw up, or in this case, make things smoke."
Kenzo reluctantly handed it back. To Izuku's surprise, the metal was hot. Not warm, like it would be if he had held it for a minute, but hot. He almost dropped it from the high temperature.
"Okay, I think I'm starting to get a better idea of what's going on. I'm going to ask you to do a few more things, just to confirm what I'm thinking, okay?" He waited for Kenzo and his mother to look at him before continuing. "I want you to curl your entire hand around the edge of the chair, like this," He demonstrated. "Then I want you to try again."
Kenzo did the experiment, and once again, nothing happened. This time, he didn't have the same frustration, he just looked at Izuku for what he wanted him to do next. "Now try pinching it in between two finges again."
All three of them watched with baited breath as Kenzo scrunched up his eyes again and tightened his fingers until they were turning white. After just a few moments, wispy, light grey smoke started to trail upwards. Izuku's breath caught in his throat at the sight, Kenzo squealing in amusement.
"I did it! I did it! Momma, look! Just like with the candle!" Izuku can't help but release a small chuckle at the boy's excitement, and while the mother did look a little nervous about doing this in public, she smiled too.
"I-I see it, honey. You were right! It is so pretty." She's obviously holding back tears. "Is that all you need?"
Izuku worried his lip between his teeth. "Yes, it should be. Kenzo," He addressed the boy, but made sure the mother was paying attention when he said, "I think your ability works by heating things up when you pinch them between your fingers. When the material affected was wood, there was smoke. When it was metal, the marble got hot. The reason it didn't work on any of the larger objects was because it would take too much heat to warm up the entire object." Izuku paused and thought for a moment. "When you were holding the marble, the second time, did your fingers start to feel hot?"
Kenzo looked up at him with wide eyes. "A little. Did I do something wrong?"
The woman clutched Kenzo tighter to her, and Izuku rushed to say, "No, no, of course not. But that does tell me your hands don't protect themselves from how hot the object is when they heat it up. When you're touching something like that metal, you could accidentally burn yourself."
The mother sucked in a breath of air and cradled her son in her arms. "What can we do to make sure that doesn't happen?"
"I'm guessing that if he were to heat a small object for a long time, that's when it would happen. All he would have to do is take his hands off of whatever object it may be."
She paused. "Does he have to use his... ability?"
Izuku saw Kenzo tighten up and curl around his mother, shutting his eyes. "He... he... there wouldn't be any medical reasons to use his ability, as far as I can see. But that doesn't mean he shouldn't."
The woman's tone is practically scathing when she says, "With all due respect, that's ridiculous. You know what it's like for people who present as... different. I don't want for him to go through that. If he doesn't have to show himself as different, he could be okay. I just want for him to be okay." Her voice breaks.
She just wants for him to be okay.
A lot of the parents he's seen say that, that they just want their children to be okay. And they do mean it, most of the time. But they don't understand how difficult it is to cut a part of yourself away like that. He'd seen people lock down the things that made them different, hid them away from the rest of the world, and he'd seen them be miserable afterwards. He himself understands what it's like. He couldn't imagine life without his ability.
Softly, he says, "I know that. And I'm guessing that he does too. But forcing him to hide won't make him happy. I'm not saying he should show it to everyone on the street, but he shouldn't have to never use it again." He cleared his throat and directed his next statement towards Kenzo. "If you ever do use it, make sure that you're in a place that's safe and won't catch fire. And always try to do it only around your mother, or by yourself. I know that you think it's awesome and amazing, and it is, but other people don't always think like that. It's not fair, but they don't. Okay?"
Kenzo nodded, picking on his fingernails and not meeting his eyes. Glancing up at the mother, he sees her nod through teary eyes.
"O-okay. Thank you..." She realizes they had never given each other their names.
He makes a split second decision. "Just call me Izuku."
"Thank you, Izuku. Kenzo? What do we say to Izuku before we go?"
"Thank you, Dr. Izuku!" Izuku froze.
"I'm sorry, what? Doctor?"
"Doctor! Because you're really smart and you helped me!" The kid was happily swinging his legs, giggling softly at the dumbfounded look on Izuku's face. His mother smiled one last time at Izuku, then pulled Kenzo away and left hurriedly through the back doors.
Izuku felt floored. It never occurred to him that people would think he was a doctor, and it felt... uncomfortable. Not quite right.
But then again, he was a little like a doctor, wasn't he?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Izuku smiled softly at his old notebook, reading between the ink smudges and blotches on the page. For some reason, he had felt the urge to go through all of his early analysis books. Most of them had been done on children who had just developed their quirks, or 'abilities', as they had called them. Kenzo had been one of his earlier 'patients,' and he never quite forgot about him. Every now and again he would thumb through the old pages and let the memories come back to him. One of the few times he was actually happy that happened.
Lost in thought, he absently closed the notebook. School was set to start in less than an hour, and he was planning on observing class 1-b's special move training. They had already made incredible progress, and he had all sorts of delightful things to write in prediction for what would come next.
The provisional license exam was only a week away, and some students were more ready than others. Almost all of them had been focused on the combat portion of the exam, and he hadn't seen a single one of them prep for what could be a rescue scenario. It wasn't really their fault, the licensing exam changed every year and most of the applicants stayed quiet about what happened, either because they became heroes or were embarrassed that they failed. Still, they could have looked through the commission's records and found the pattern of how they did the test and properly prepared for it. Same with the Sport's Festival. Nezu loved to see if anyone would pick up the hints he left lying around, and the Hero Commission just didn't care.
Nezu had called him into his office to talk about what to do if the first-years actually got their licenses. It was unprecedented that they had the entire first-year hero course take the exam at once, and they obviously weren't going to send them out to handle cases that were overly dangerous or have them take work studies with heroes that weren't qualified to take them on.
In the end, they had had the entire staff come and talk over whether or not to let them do anything with their licenses if they got one. Most had argued to let them do it, with some stipulations in mind. They had to choose from a list of pre-chosen hero agencies that would be able to make sure they were safe, and there were going to be some restrictions on how long they could do it as well.
When asked for his opinion, Izuku wasn't quite sure what to choose. On one hand, he knew that his students were capable and needed to have as much experience as possible before they sent them out into the world as heroes. On the other hand, they were first-years. They had only barely begun their heroics training, and now they were letting them fight villains? It was a difficult decision.
The provisional licensing exam was supposed to tell you who was ready, and who wasn't. But things weren't as simple as that. You could do amazing in the exam, get a perfect score, and still completely freeze up when you were in the real world. There was a psychological difference.
But his students had already inadvertently fought villains and not frozen. They had already gotten past the mental block that usually took a year or two to overcome. It was eventually that that made his decision. In his eyes, they had already crossed a huge threshold, and he wasn't going to deny them more growth. He would watch them and help them through it, making sure they weren't going to get hurt in the process.
A shrill bell snapped him out of his musings, and he quickly flipped to what they had planned for the day. After all, they didn't have much time until the provisional licensing exam, and he was going to ensure that they had all the skills they needed to pass.