Chapter Text
Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
Izuku Midoriya was in pain.
That alone was nothing new, he'd been in pain almost every day since around the age of five.
Burns, beatings, cuts and bruises, pain was a loyal companion, something he could grit his teeth and smile through.
This was different. It wasn't just worse, it felt wrong.
He tried to take stock of the situation, to figure out what was happening and why, but it was a pointless effort, his mind was foggy and his senses were just as bad.
He couldn't see clearly, his vision was a collage of far-too-bright colors and vague fuzzy shapes, all of them spinning faster and faster around him until he had to force his eyes closed. It was loud as well, an overwhelming noise of static and ringing that made his head feel like it was going to explode.
It felt like his cells were coming apart, the pain wasn't pulsing and it wasn't localized, it was constant and it was everywhere, and even worse it was growing, stronger and stronger until even his well trained pain tolerance was far exceeded and a scream tore from his throat. Or it would have if his every muscle wasn't so tensed that he couldn't move, even to open his mouth and express his pain, muscles tense to the point that he could feel them begin to tear.
'I should have passed out by now.' Some part of his mind still attempted to rationalize, to analyze 'I should have had a-a vagus response, or gone into shock.' But every time it seemed like he would start to pass out a sudden jolt of energy would rip through his brain and force him awake.
His mother was already out for work and normally he'd prefer that, hiding his pain and injuries from her had become second nature and he hated the idea of causing her to worry about him anymore than she already did.
But again, this was different.
His pain always had a clear point of origin, it could always be traced back to a specific Quirk, or fist, and from there it could be understood and dealt with. This came out of nowhere and was like nothing he'd ever felt before, and every part of his body and mind was completely convinced that he was dying.
It had come on suddenly as he was getting ready to leave for his morning run, so sudden and overwhelming that he didn't even have a chance to get to his bed, instead falling to the floor in a writhing heap.
Despite being in an empty room in an empty apartment in far too much pain to think clearly, something at the edge of his consciousness told him he wasn't alone. It wasn't registering to any of the traditional five senses like vision or hearing, it was closer to proprioception, the way you can tell where your body parts are in relation to each other without looking, except that whatever he was feeling wasn't connected to his body but instead gathered around his room.
He could feel emotions being pushed through these new connections, comfort and worry chief among them. At any other time it might have been appreciated, to know that someone cared about him in a way that was devoid of the pity that he'd come to resent, but at that moment with his senses already overloaded to a horrific degree having an entirely new sense to deal with was only making things worse.
As if in response to that thought the invisible things that he could sense around him sent out feelings of remorse underlined with helplessness before vanishing. He could relate honestly.
It was a feeling that he was far too familiar with, something he felt whenever the other kids at school tried to hurt someone and he stepped in, knowing that there was nothing he could really do to help but needing to do something, anything, to ease the other person's pain, even if it just meant sharing it.
Whatever was in the room with him didn't just disappear however, he could feel them joining the growing pressure in his chest that felt like it was going to explode out of him.
There were stutters in his thoughts, and quick moments when he didn't just not feel pain but couldn't feel his body at all, like his conciseness and physical form were blinking in and out of existence. These moments became more and more rapid, until finally, just as quickly as it all began it stopped.
His eyes opened again and the world was clear and vibrant in a way that it hadn't been before he closed them. The opposite was true for his eyes themselves, the light that had been steadily growing in them over the last five months as he trained and grew under the supervision of his mentor was gone, vanished like it was never there and replaced by an exhaustion that seemed far too deep for one person to hold, like the accumulated weariness of nine generations.
It wasn't only his eyes that changed. All at once the strange feelings at the edge of his mind solidified into seven distinct voices, each one layering him with calm reassurances and gentle questioning about his condition.
At the same time he felt power bubbling up under the surface of his skin, Quirks that he didn't possess moments before already hard at work repairing any damages that his volatile shift had caused him. Twin tendrils of black energy sprouted from his shoulders, gently lifting his body into a standing position before fading away.
He looked around in dismay at the room he was in. He knew this place, the single bed in the corner, the hero posters and figurines covering every wall and shelf. A desk with a shelf above it, hand written books filled with notes and strategies and dreams.
This was his childhood bedroom.
He hadn't been here in years.
This place hadn't existed in years, destroyed by his enemies soon after his rise to prominence. He was displaced. A person who shouldn't exist yet in a place that should be long gone. His body was changed, and so was his mind. No longer the short and scrawny kid he was before the pain started he was now quite a bit taller, and in optimal physical condition for his style of combat, which relied on rapid movement and powerful precision strikes; extremely strong but not bulky in a way that would make it difficult to move or bend the ways he needed to.
His wild curly green hair was a little shorter than before and no trace of baby fat remained on his face, though his freckles were still prominent. Not all of the changes were positive however as the fingers of his right hand were crooked and covered in scars, haven been broken far too many times to heal quite right. The rest of his right arm was covered in similar scars, as was his left, with a large portion of his upper arm being nothing but scar tissue.
If he looked at the rest of his body he knew that he would only find more marks of the fights he'd been in, including a massive burn scar that covered his entire upper left torso, spreading up the side of his neck until it stopped at the bottom of his chin.
His clothes were a mess too, instead of the high quality tracksuit that AllMight had bought him for his workouts and his red high top shoes he was dressed in heavy leather boots that might have been red at some point but were now an unpolished suede colored only by mud and blood.
The jumpsuit he was wearing was in rough shape as well with visible patchwork of seemingly random fabrics standing in contrast to the dark green canvas fabric that composed the rest of the suit. The sleeves had been torn away from his arms and all that could be found on them now were pieces of steel that had been forcefully ripped into strips and wrapped around his limbs like boxing tape with several parts folded or bent into sharp angles or spikes, especially around the knuckles.
The most intact part of the outfit was a short yellow cape worn around his neck like a scarf, but even that was worn thin in places and the once vibrant color was faded by time, the sowing however was much neater than his suit and all of the patches and threads were constantly yellow, even if they weren't all the exact same shade or material.
He had a belt as well, leather and nylon, it was clearly a tool belt, and while not made for combat it did its job well enough, carrying whatever medical supplies he could scrounge up along with his phone, knife, and a few flash drives.
With physical inventory taken it was time to check his metaphysical inventory, starting with the voices in his head. Closing his eyes and focusing he called out to the warm feeling of power and energy pooled in his chest. 'Rolecall, is everyone present? Any issues or discomfort?'
At this question he heard the seven that had voices call out in his mind and send feelings of warm reassurance that wrapped around him like a hug. "We are here Nine, we are with you."
It was a massive weight off of his shoulders, the fear that the family that had been with him every moment for years might forget him almost stopped him from going through with the plan. He was only placated by their assurances that even if they forgot him they could look through his memories to catch up, and that even if they couldn't they would definitely come to adore him all over again. He hadn't cried at those words, but it was a close thing.
He hoped that the rest of his family that followed him back would remember him too. He didn't want to do this without them. Even if he saved a million lives, it might not be worth it if he lost them.
LeMillion would have had an aneurysm if he knew that someone had a chance to fulfill his dream of saving a million lives, but was hesitating because he might lose a few personal relationships.
Setting those thoughts aside he got back to work, this time taking stock of his Quirks, the superhuman powers that defined the modern age. Izuku was one of the very few non-modified humans to have more than a single power, one of two if he had landed in the correct period of time. 'Three, it's three. Gigantomachia isn't a Nomu, he was just tough enough to handle it.'
He began with his base Quirk, One For All, one of the most powerful abilities in history, and the reason he had more than one Quirk in the first place, something that most bodies weren't resilient enough to contain.
One For All was at its core a stockpile subtype, constantly converting any excess energy from the wielder's body into a nebulous "Quirk Energy" that could then be used to strengthen the user's body's strength, durability, and reaction speed. In addition to that, for reasons that Izuku had been researching and theorizing about for years, it seemed that the reservoir of energy only ever got bigger and never depleted no matter how much it was used. More like digging a deeper well rather than expanding a reservoir. In essence it was a power that could only ever grow in potency with no identified upper limit and effectively limitless use.
That wasn't to say it had no drawbacks however, an x-ray of his arms could attest to that with all the missing pieces of bone. Indeed that was the greatest limitation of One For All, that it had to be channelled through a human body and without extremely precise control it could tear the wielder's body apart from the inside out.
On its own, the ability to stockpile power was impressive but not something that could really stand out against the other crazy powers that people had. It was the other ability that made it truly extraordinary, the ability for it's current user to pass both it and the power it had collected to a new user, and after two-hundred odd years what could originally do nothing more than dent a steel plate, became a power that could split the clouds with a punch from the ground using air pressure alone.
But there was something else to it as well. A theory published some hundred years before warned of a possible 'Quirk Singularity'.
As a child's Quirk was, barring rare exceptions, a combination of the parents Quirks, the resulting 'Quirk Factor' would increase in both power and complexity.
The idea was that by the time the ninth generation of Quirks came around these 'Factors' would become so powerful that the incomplete remnants of earlier Factors in the DNA would be made complete, granting the wielder the Quirks of their ancestors, with the overabundance of Factor making each Quirk drastically more powerful.
This would be dangerous enough on its own but Quirks usually developed at the age of four, to children who had little to no idea of how to control them. There was a reason that some people called it the 'Quirk Doomsday Theory'.
It was supposed to be too early for any Quirk to reach such a point, but One For All never played by the rules, and after reaching him the Quirk had finally met all of the conditions to reach its own singularity. The effect was an astronomical boost in its base power, as well as access to everything else that it was storing.
Because One For All didn't only store power, it stored the Quirk Factor of every previous wielder, and as he would discover, a person's Quirk Factor contained a mimetic imprint of its holder's mind, or maybe even part of their soul.
Izuku didn't just get the Quirks of the past users, he was effectively haunted by them. living in his mind were eight 'Vestiges', seven fully formed of the dead users, and one like a golden shadow of Izuku's mentor who was, at that point in the past, still alive.
So with that he had One For All, the Quirk of Yoichi Shigaraki, the First wielder.
Gearshift from Kudo, the Second.
Fa-jin from Bruce, the Third.
Danger Sense from Hikage Shinomori, the Fourth.
Blackwhip from Daigoro Banjo, the Fifth.
Smokescreen from En Tayutai, the Sixth.
And Float from Nana Shimura, the seventh.
He didn't receive a Quirk from his mentor, Toshinori Yagi, AllMight, because the man had been born Quirkless like Izuku
He also had a few additional Quirks that he'd... acquired over the course of the war.
He walked over to his desk and the shelf above it where all of his analysis notebooks were kept, only thirteen at this point in time, and grabbed a fresh one and a pencil, putting them in his belt so that later he could start writing down what he discovered about time travel and make plans for a better future.
First though he needed to ensure his team's safety, so as they agreed upon before traveling back he grabbed his phone and created a private chat with a previously agreed on entry password on a website famous for not keeping user logs or cooperating with the police. He remembered it being a big news story around the time he started at UA that the servers that hosted the site were destroyed by thermite charges as soon as the police acquired a warrant to seize them.
All things considered it seemed like the safest way to communicate for the moment.
SomeMight created a new private chat: The Winds of Destruction
SomeMight added 3 guests!
SomeMight: Role call and status.
En-danger: Present, no noticable side effects.
CawCaw: I'm here I'm fine
FeralRabbit: I'm back, it's difficult to walk on real legs again and weird to type with real hands
SomeMight: So your physical condition has reverted to how it was in this time originally? Does that go for all of you?
CawCaw: It's been a while since I had wings. Htf do I fly again?
FeralRabbit: I don't remember exactly what my body was like the first time around but I'm pretty sure this is it
En-danger: Yes, I no longer have scarring on my face. Also the way you asked implies that the situation is different for you, please elaborate.
SomeMight: Yeah I'm still. 20 something?, Or whatever I was before. I'm still in uniform as well. How about Quirks, mine stayed the same.
En-danger: I believe that the additional flame resistance you gifted me is gone, and I currently have bruises from whatever I was doing at this time so the regeneration is likely gone as well.
CawCaw: No regen or fire resist don't ask how I know
FeralRabbit: Ignoring that, my regen's gone, shock absorption too
SomeMight: It's fine, I thought this might happen so I brought spares.
FeralRabbit: You knew all of our injuries and extra quirks would be gone but yours wouldn't be?
SomeMight: Considering the role I played in the process I accepted the possibility, and it's fine that I didn't de-age, the body I had at this point was a child that didn't even have OFA yet.
CawCaw: found some ice. Wdym you didn't have OFA yet? The entrance exam is five months away and I'm pretty sure this is the year you go. I know you had control issues at the start so how far in advance did he give you the Quirk and teach you how to use it?
SomeMight: He didn't.
FeralRabbit: What do you mean he didn't, I thought he gave you your quirk?
SomeMight: I meant how far in advance he gave it to me and when he trained me to use it.
He didn't, 1: give it to me in advance, or 2: teach me how to use it. He gave it to me three hours before the entrance exam and told me to "Clench your butt cheeks and scream SMASH from the bottom of your soul!"
En-danger:...
FeralRabbit:...
CawCaw:... Are you fucking serious?
SomeMight: He's a great hero, he's a great person, but he has no clue how to teach and assumes that you'll understand something because he has no interpersonal relationships and only spends time with trained professionals.
En-danger: I understand that, however I'm still angry that your Quirk was hurting you as late as the sports festival, where you sustained permanent nerve damage.
SomeMight: And that's why we all love you, because you always look out for us.
SomeMight: Speaking of looking out for someone, I need to get to work now, the sooner I get Nezu on side the sooner I can rescue Eri.
CawCaw: He really gonna drop that on us and then bail?
FeralRabbit: Chaos
CawCaw: You alright there En?
En-danger: It's been an emotional day.
The chat gave Izuku a few important pieces of information to make note of in his journal.
'Enji, Rumi, Hawks: Status: Healthy/De-aged/Additional Quirks lost/Destroyed Quirks restored (Fierce Wings)
Eri, Kaina: Status: Unknown'
It was stressful and infuriating to not know what was going on with his kid and his partner, and knowing that at this point in the past both had been prisoners denied basic human rights.
He would rescue them soon, he reminded himself, all of this was so they could have a better life in the future.
Finally pulling himself back together he continued writing.
'Izuku: Age unaffected, Quirks retained, Equipment retained'
He could already hear the Vestiges snickering about him not caring enough to note his own physical state like he did for the others.
Well if they were going to be like that about it he would just revise his entry.
'Izuku: Age unaffected, Quirks retained, Equipment retained, status: I'm fine'
He could feel them groaning at that addition as much as he could hear it. The team had basically banned him from using those two words as soon as they knew he was comfortable enough with them to listen, instead demanding a more comprehensive answer.
It didn't stop him from saying it to be annoying however.
For the moment though he couldn't spend time joking around.
It was early afternoon and his mother would be at work for several more hours. He was supposed to be at the beach right now for his workout routine and there was a chance that Toshinori was already there waiting for him.
'Toshinori'
He was alive, Izuku could feel it through One For All, he could feel his teacher, his friend, his father, out there in the world only a few miles away. In the first timeline Toshinori gave Izuku his own 'One For All' and kept only the embers to continue his work as AllMight, and even with only those embers a connection was still formed, the ability to vaguely sense each other's emotions when nearby.
Now with both of them having the full power of One For All at the same time Izuku could already feel a much stronger bond forming, he could sense Toshinori's confusion, concern, caution and... feelings of reassurance?
From Toshinori's perspective it would seem like some stranger with an empathy Quirk had invaded his mind, probably flooding him with the conflicted and panicked emotions that Izuku was feeling, and instead of being angry about it he was sending calm reassurances to the person invading his mind.
It was such a Toshinori thing to do.
There was a reason why just being around the older hero made Izuku feel invincible.
He knew that he shouldn't wait any longer, from what he could tell Toshinori was at the beach already. Even if the Toshinori of this time didn't see him as a son yet, AllMight would still help him for no other reason than that he was a person in need.
Izuku took a calming breath, not for the first or last time that day, before, for the first and hopefully last time that day, opening up a window to throw himself out of. As flew his way towards Toshinori's location he acknowledged to himself that this was going to hurt, seeing Toshinori again and not having Toshinori remember everything they'd been through together.
But that was okay, there was time now, to make new memories. He was alive again, and Izuku was going to make sure it stayed that way.
Toshi might not have wanted to live forever but for Izuku's own sanity he needed him to stay alive at least until the war was over, and preferably until his Vestige was completely formed. He didn't want to have to mourn someone when there wasn't enough of them left to hold onto, but too much of them left to let go of, not again.
As he neared his destination he held onto that resolve tightly.
'Never again.'