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The quirk was about as far from a strength enhancer as it could get, if Izuku was being honest. He’d been playing around with it pretty much since he’d gotten home from his short stay in the infirmary after passing out during the entrance exam. It was pretty simple once he’d gotten the hang of it, actually.
(He broke three glasses before he got the hang of it.)
He had gotten a text from All Might asking if they could talk sometime soon about what was going on with the quirk, but he was busy with UA stuff and had just received notice that he had to be in America for the weeks between results coming out and the start of school. Though, Izuku kind of doubted that All Might had any clue what was going on himself.
Only one person really seemed to know what was going on. “Person”, of course, being a way to look at it.
The strange man that Izuku had successfully ID’d as late Pro Hero Lariat residing in his dreamscape seemed to have a lot to say on the matter.
Apparently the whole "hidden quirks" thing was a part of One for All, which made sense in an extremely roundabout way that mostly relied on the fact that nobody had ever had a quirk that was anything like One for All, so there wasn’t exactly a whole trail of similar phenomena to compare it to. It was a stockpiling quirk, meaning it held onto parts of the “vestiges” that could be stockpiled, like strength and quirks, and, apparently, souls (?). These vestiges' souls were now living in his mind, which Izuku thought was kind of creepy, but he couldn’t do much about it.
They’d stopped him from using the stockpile of strength, because trying to pack the strength of seven people plus himself plus fucking All Might into one small, pubescent body probably wouldn’t be very conducive to a healthy lifestly that didn’t break all his bones while causing a crater the size of a truck every time he took a step. He didn’t quite get how keeping that part of the stockpile away worked, but he was thankful that they found a way to do so.
Digging into quirk theory as he was wont to do didn’t bring that much more clarity to the situation. Lariat wasn’t much of a help, either. Izuku was trying to figure out why he was able to access the quirks of a previous vestige, and all Lariat would say was that they had tried to release this part of the stockpile earlier, but weren’t able to. They could barely even interact with All Might even when he was in a deep meditative or even comatose state as he had been a few times throughout his life, but it was easy for Lariat to make contact with Izuku when he was unconscious.
“Maybe it’s the Quirk Singularity Theory coming into play, and One for All has hit singularity,” said Lariat, one night.
“I don’t know what you think the Quirk Singularity Theory is, but whatever you’re thinking, it’s wrong,” said Izuku in return.
So Izuku filled his days between the entrance exam and receiving the results with research and practice, and by the end of it he had a rudimentary but functional grasp of both the physical and logistical sides of his quirk. Plus, he had some videos of some really cool supermoves that Lariat used to do that he wanted to try out.
A few weeks after the exam he got his letter, and he learned that he made it in! He got forty rescue points that really saved his ass, but he had also managed to get twenty villain points due to the way his quirk activated and tore through every piece of metal in his general vicinity.
Not too shabby, if he was being honest.
So here he stood, moderately practiced and barely self-confident standing in front of the door to his classroom (his UA classroom!) that made him feel really fucking short, honestly, what kind of mutation actually needed that big of a door to get through?
He walked in and gave a terse hello to the pink girl from the entrance exam (her name was Uraraka, apparently) while trying to ignore Kacchan and the dark haired boy he was arguing with, the one who had called out Izuku not once but twice, geez.
(Several vestiges in Izuku’s mind were getting themselves ready to square the fuck up with these boys if there was an occasion necessary, not that it would be requested nor appreciated. They didn’t really care).
The boy with the glasses tried to make conversation with Izuku about the rescue points, but Izuku was quickly distracted by the way his body jolted of its own free will. He had gotten used to this weird feeling over the course of the past few weeks due to the fact that the vestiges would set it off every time he was going to do something dumb.
Lariat told him it was a vestigial part of the fourth user’s quirk that they called the panic button. Or the super-anxiety button. Or the anti-bone-soup button. Or the- actually, Izuku couldn’t remember. He stopped listening past the first three. They were horrifying enough.
Anyway, he turned around to see a caterpillar inching along the ground. Caterpillar-man? Now that he had turned around Izuku was able to see his face, and that part of him was very human.
“Well, at least one of the gremlins I’ve been assigned has some form of situational awareness,” sighed the man, whom Izuku had started to think of as Caterpillar-sensei (Senseipillar? Cateacherpillarman? Man-cater-sensei?). Izuku wasn’t sure he was supposed to hear his comment.
“Students," he continued, "It took you far too long to settle down. I’m your homeroom teacher, and you may call me Aizawa-sensei. Put on these gym uniforms and go to the field.”
The students, having the fear of God struck deep into their souls by a single glare by this man, took the gym clothes and scurried out of the room. Izuku knew he had no clue where the changing rooms were, nor the field, and he was fairly sure nobody else did, either.
God, Izuku needed to learn how to glare like that.
Eventually they made it to the changing rooms and got dressed, though it seemed to Izuku like none of them actually knew what they were supposed to be doing on the field. They stepped out of the locker room and onto the field with a healthy dose of fear in their hearts, which only grew when their teacher spoke again.
“You all need to be faster. Minutes spent changing could kill when you’re in heroics.”
The class shivered.
“Today we will be doing a quirk apprehension test. The person who places last will be expelled.”
Izuku could almost feel the air vibrate with fear and rage and other bad emotions that make you want to piss your pants.
His teacher had Kacchan throw a ball and told them how far it was, then had them take other tests with their quirks.
(Internally, a certain invisible girl began planning how to get away with the homicide of a Pro Hero if she were expelled. Fucking quirkist asshole teacher, how the hell were the abilities in stealth that she’d been training for years supposed to help her with running as fast as the guy with fucking engines in his legs?)
Izuku was doing pretty good, he thought. He’d gotten second in the grip strength test and first in the side-steps, even though he had almost given himself a concussion when he fell at the end. Plus, he’d managed higher scores than he could’ve gotten in most of the other tests with just a strength quirk, like when he pulled his body closer together during the flexibility test.
Some of his classmates had really impressive quirks, like the girl who had made a scooter and an actual fucking rocket launcher. Others just had really impressive ways of applying their quirks, like the boy with some sort of electric quirk who zapped his heelys to go faster, which was the epitome of all things fucking sick.
Now it was his turn to throw the ball, the last person to take the last test. He knew he had good enough scores to beat out several other members of his class even without this test, but he was still going to do the best that he could. Plus fucking Ultra.
He stepped into his circle and took the ball from his teacher, placing it into the grip of one of his tendrils of Blackwhip. He then swung it around like a cowboy with a lasso to build up momentum, releasing at a point that he knew would toss the ball far.
384.8 meters. Not bad.
Though, just the same as almost anything else he ever did, earning that score pissed off a certain classmate that had been sending him hate- and confusion-filled glares that entire day.
“Fucking Deku! What the fuck is this? Are you going to explain the tentacle hentai shit or what, huh?” He ran at Izuku with his signature right hook, which the younger boy was barely able to dodge.
(The vestiges in his head became extremely keyed up for a fight, cursing All for One that they were no longer in the physical realm to kick this kid’s ass. Nobody hurt their kid and got away with it.)
Aizawa had apparently had it with the two of them, as he reached out his capture scarf and tangled the explosive teen in its grasp. He then flicked his quirk on to cancel both of their quirks, and that’s when it all went wrong.
Blackwhip, which had begun writhing around Izuku instinctively when Kacchan tried to blast him, slunk back into his body within a millisecond of his teacher’s eyes on him. He pulled on the tether that would usually be connected to the tendrils half-consciously as the comfort was taken away from him, trying to tug it back into place where it normally belonged, but he could feel it like a piece of rope that had the middle of it suddenly taken out. He tossed his conscience around that weird liminal-quirk-space and grabbed something that felt just like Blackwhip, only… it wasn’t?
This was about the time when his feet started floating off the ground. Now, Aizawa, being the teacher with a quirk-erasing quirk that he was, tried to erase the quirk that was causing his student to float. However, he was, well, already erasing Izuku’s quirk.
Awkward.
Aizawa, obviously wondering what the fuck as happening (Izuku, who was floating in the air while whispering “what the fuck, what the fuck” over and over, could relate), took his eyes off his student for a second. That’s when it all went worse.
Izuku was still floating upwards, despite the only student in the class that could make things float shouting “Release!” over and over as she tried to get him to stop floating. Aizawa stopped erasing his quirk, so Izuku gained Blackwhip back, which would’ve been a good thing except for the fact that he barely knew how to use one quirk, let alone two at once.
He dropped. Like a stone.
He managed to catch himself on the building nearby with Blackwhip, but unfortunately it did nothing but redirect his momentum.
His freefall became an arc, and…
He slammed face-first into one of the glass walls of the school.
Hopefully there wasn’t a class inside.