What's Hidden Behind a Quiet Mind

by DepressionFuelsMe

Summary:

After even just one conversation with Midoriya Izuku anyone could see it. He was smart, soaking up any information he came in contact with quicker than a sponge. He could ramble away about almost anything for hours, coming up with theories that even the most creative couldn’t think of. After school he would sit at his old computer and research anything and everything. Izuku wanted to learn, and that was very clear, but no one paid attention to him.

Or

What would happen if someone found out just how smart Izuku really is.

Notes:

Hey :) I'm super excited that someone decided to read this, I hope it's better than I think it is. I do apologize if you find any errors, this is my first fic that I've written in over 3 years.

I hope you enjoy :D

Chapter 1: Chapter One

Izuku didn’t think of himself as anything special, if anything, he was rather boring. He didn’t really do anything outside of school other than study. He loves looking up the things he had been learning in school recently, he studies everything. He has spent hours researching the human body, and even more learning about quirks. However, no one really cares what he has to say because he’s quirkless.

Because of this, Izuku has been following a carefully crafted schedule he made when he was four.

Wake up and get ready, but be careful not to disturb Inko. He refuses to call her mom, I mean, she stopped acting like one year ago. If he’s lucky, then she leaves for work before he wakes up. Afterall, being a nurse has some pretty chaotic hours. If he’s unlucky then she is already awake. If it’s the latter, then he sneaks out his window. If it's the first option, then he's usually able to grab a granola bar before leaving for school.

Once he gets to school, however, he follows a strict set of rules, which are necessary if he wants to graduate middle school. Starting with number one, don’t speak unless spoken to. His teachers don't like him, so they like hearing him talk even less, to fix this he just simply says as little as possible, only talking when addressed directly.

Number two, don’t answer any questions, ever. Answering any questions in class, unless he is specifically called on, can only end in one of two ways. The first is that he answers the question correctly. In that case his teachers usually accuse him of cheating and send him to the principal's office. The second, getting the question wrong usually ends up with him getting made fun of for being ‘dumb’ and ‘stupid’ whether he got the question wrong deliberately or not.

Number three, don’t fight back. This is one of the first rules that he learned, fighting back only makes it worse. If they were already physically hurting him, then he usually ends up with much worse injuries than what he was probably going to get away with before. If they hadn't gotten physical yet , then he also ends up with pretty bad injuries.

Number four, don't do good on any assignments. Just like in rule two, if he does good on anything, whether it be a test or a worksheet, they just accuse him of cheating and send him to the principal. Although, he has learned that if he gets a D, then he can usually get away with a passing grade and not get accused of cheating.

Those are the main rules that Izuku follows, and if he follows all of them perfectly, then he has a much higher chance of making it home with no new injuries. This seems to be one of those days. He had managed to get away from the school unharmed, although he can’t say the same for his notebook. Katsuki had thrown it out the window, and it had landed in a koi pond. Izuku knew that he and Katsuki weren’t friends anymore. He let go of that childish dream a couple years ago, I mean, friends don’t beat each other up. But, Izuku is smart enough to know that calling him anything other than Kachan to his face would be a bad idea.

He tried it once. Let’s just say that Izuku went home with a black eye that day. Only god knows why, but Izuku never made that mistake again.

He stuffed his notebook into his old backpack. Honestly, he should get a new one, but where would he get the money? He barely has enough for food and his library card, a new backpack would mean no eating for a month.

While Izuku was thinking about stitching up his backpack when he got home, his thoughts trailed back to the advice Katsuki had given him not even 15 minutes earlier. He couldn’t say that he was surprised, he was quirkless for heaven's sake, he’s been suicide baited hundereds of times. In fact, it’s got to be on the daily by now. Really, he has to come up with better insults, that one was pretty unoriginal.

Izuku, now muttering his thoughts aloud, didn’t hear his notebook hit the ground behind him. He would come to regret not sewing up his backpack sooner. When he got lost in thought it was as if he genuinely were lost and couldn’t find his way back to reality. Unfortunately, this meant that Izuku did not notice the sewer grate rattling in front of him, and walked directly into danger.

What seemed to pull him back to reality was the sewer grate flying past his head at a lethal speed. That is definitely not normal. Any normal person would have probably gone running if something came flying at them in a shady alleyway, but Izuku Midoriya is definitely not a normal person.

Before he could do anything other than look down to see the source of the flying man hole cover, Izuku was forcefully grabbed from where he was standing. He was so busy panicking that he hadn’t even realized he could no longer breathe until he felt the sludge try to make its way down his throat.

Izuku clawed at the sticky slime that seemed to encompass his entire body. In his panic he completely missed what the mucilaginous villain had to say.

It felt like hours of clawing and tearing at the goo that was withholding his freedom. He could feel himself getting weaker every second. Izuku started losing hope. He stopped fighting back, just accepting what he thought was his fate.

Izuku’s lungs burned as fresh air rushed in.

The force of All Might’s punch basically sent Izuku flying.

The last thing he remembered was his head colliding with the wall.
-

-

-

-

-

-

Izuku’s consciousness came and went multiple times. Each time, becoming more and more aware of the soreness in his throat, the pain in his chest, and how every time he tried to breathe it felt like swallowing sandpaper. He laid there for awhile, waiting to see if the pain would go away. After what could have been either minutes or hours, Izuku didn’t know, he opened his eyes.

Luckily it was still light out, but it definitely seemed like it would be getting dark soon. After a brief moment of panic, Izuku noted that there was no longer a sludge monster anywhere near him. He sat there for a bit, trying to make sense of what happened. He went over it in his head, walking home, thinking, and then there was something trying to kill him. Turns out today wasn’t going as well as Izuku had hoped. Now both he and his notebook were broken. God, his brain felt like it had been scrambled and then run over by a truck.

Izuku slowly pushed himself up. Briefly stopping halfway when his brain felt like it was going to explode out of his head.. Although, if the bullying was good for one thing, he had an insane pain tolerance, but Izuku could think about that later. It was starting to get dark, and he knew how dangerous it was to be out after dark, injured, nonetheless.

He grabbed his backpack from where it had apparently been propped up next to him against the wall, and started making his way home. His pace was pretty slow, but if he kept it up he might be able to make it home before it was pitch black outside.

At that thought he paused. Home. He didn’t know if Inko was working tonight or not, and he definitely couldn’t climb the fire escape like this, hell, he was barely able to walk. But, he had no other choice, he would have to risk using the front door. He knew the risks. If she caught him, then he would definitely be punished, and being punished on top of being injured would end very badly.

Apparently if his thoughts were good for one thing, it was distracting him, as he soon found himself standing in front of the apartment.

~

Maybe in a different universe things went differently. Maybe All Might was closer to his limit causing his punch to be less powerful, stopping Izuku from passing out. Maybe he wouldn’t have shown up at all, adding one death to the news.

Maybe somewhere his mom helped him fix the holes in his backpack, stopping his notebook from falling out of his backpack. He could have gotten All Might's signature.

One can spend hours thinking about what could or could not have happened, but at the end of the day, they never did, but even the smallest of things can change what happens next.

Chapter 2: Chapter Two

Summary:

A Nedzu POV, wow.

Notes:

Yay, another chapter :D

I hope you guys enjoy!

Nedzu loved going to his favorite cafe that resided in a less populated area of Musutafu, which had some of the best tea. Every now and then he would invite a few of his staff members to accompany him; however, when he entered the staff room, they all seemed to be preoccupied with work of some sort. Aizawa was sleeping, which is normal for the usually very tired man. The other two teachers that were in the room at the moment seemed engrossed in some papers on their desks.

The other faculty had either left, or were somewhere else in the colossal building that was UA. Nedzu enjoys being in the company of his staff, but he also enjoys the days he gets to sit in the small cafe alone. As both a hero and the principal of the number one hero school in Japan, he rarely gets time to relax

Making his decision, he walked out of the staff lounge preparing for the short walk there.

It was a small cafe that seemed to be hidden from the main streets, as he had never seen many people occupy the tables inside. It was run by a lovely woman named Yukiya, she was older than most other humans that Nedzu knew, but that didn’t stop her from running the cafe as best as possible.

Yukiya wasn’t always able to run the counter, sometimes she had to bake pastries and couldn’t do both. She also had errands to run, going to the grocery store, and handling the business side of things.

When this happened, she usually had her daughter greet customers and take their orders. Yukiko was about the age of his second years and she inherited her mothers talent for making tea. However, something about them that first caught Nedzu’s attention was their appearances. They both had long white hair with contradictory black eyes. Similar to Nedzu himself.

He had been coming here for years, since they first opened. That, of course, means that he has had a lot of conversations with Yukiko and Yukiya. One topic that they had never brought up in their conversations was their quirks, although Nedzu believed that had something to do with their eyes.

While he had met lots of other humans with dark coloured eyes, none were as dark as theirs. They were akin to blackholes, sucking and pulling in all light around them.

His thoughts quieted down when he stepped forward and found his foot on a notebook, rather than the ground. That's odd. Finding things on the ground is pretty normal in this area, there were lots of school children on their way home. But what isn’t normal is for the page of this notebook to have a very detailed drawing of him on it.

After reaching down and picking up the small white notebook, Nedzu could see what the page said and-

How interesting…

If there was one thing Nedzu excelled at, it would be analysis. High Specs allowed him to instantaneously pick apart the different components of a quirk. This allowed him to create unquestionably complex and high level analysis in a matter of minutes. Of course, this means that at UA he assists with teaching the students how to do so.

Periodically he will get a student who exceeds the expectations in that class. Typically he gives them harder work sheets to do and more complex lessons.

But Nedzu’s favorite years are the ones that hold a student who is clever enough to get the privilege of learning as his student directly. Of course these students come few and far between, his last student was Night Eye, and that was years ago.

Even at first glance he could tell that this analysis was far better than any of his third years’ work. And UA prided itself on its exceptional analysis classes for a reason.

It seemed to be both organized and messy at the same time. Random thoughts written down, but organized into different sections.

Nedzu decided that he would finish his journey to the cafe before sitting down and looking through it.

Luckily, the trip was short and pretty soon Nedzu could hear the bells on the door ringing as it closed behind him. Today Yukiko was the one who greeted him with a smile, his order already made and waiting on the counter.

Their interactions tended to be silent, the same thing happening everyday. He would go in, grab his drink, pay, and sit in his spot sipping on his tea before leaving. Today was no different and he soon found himself sitting in his usual spot in the corner of the cafe.

After taking the first sip of his tea, oolong, it’s his favorite. He flipped the notebook back open to the page of himself.

Now, after actually reading through the pages, Nedzu found himself thoroughly impressed. IT isn’t easy to impress him, but this notebook held a very high level analysis of himself. There were, of course, a few stray theories that held no truth to them, but the majority of what was written was surprisingly correct.

The author had accurately guessed what Nedzu was. A stoat. Most guess that he is one of the three animals he introduces himself as, but they're wrong. Of course, he has had people guess what he was before, but they also interacted with him on the daily and could see his features up close.

Nedzu is sure that he has never met this person before. He would notice if someone he knew had such a high level of intelligence.

If there was one thing that he now had to do, it would be finding this person.

He instantly started reading it from the start, looking for any sort of identifying information such as a name, age, or quirk. After reading it front to back, without any sort of new information, he started taking in the condition of the book. It was worse for wear, burnt around the edges with obvious water damage on all the pages.

He had originally assumed the damage was from being on the streets for an indefinite amount of time. He now realized that was an oversight on his part. Sure, it had rained recently, and if it was outside long enough that could be the reason for the water damage. But there was no reason for it to be burnt.

If Nedzu couldn’t find the owner from the notebook itself, he would find out what happened to it and try to find anyone who could identify the owner for him.

He grabbed out his laptop that he brought with him, expecting to get some work done, and started looking for any events in the last week that had a fire or explosion of some sort. The most recent event he found had been not even 30 minutes ago. A young boy, younger than his students, exploded his surrounding area while being attacked by a villain.

He quickly skipped past it, that couldn’t be the cause, it had happened on his journey here. He’d found many different villain attacks or accidents that had happened in Musutafu in the last couple of weeks, but he was starting to get frustrated because he could not find any that could explain how it ended up there.

Deciding to take a break, he picked the notebook back up and started looking at the damage more closely. He had ruled out any incidents that only involved fire, as the damage on the cover had patterns that lined up more with explosions. Almost as if it was hit directly with one on purpose. God Damnit…

Nedzu never thinks of himself as dumb, but he got awfully close to it at this moment. Why he hadn’t thought of quirks, he didn’t know. But with this new idea he started looking through the quirk database. He quickly started looking for any quirks that had any sort of explosion aspect to them.

The first person that pops up is Katsuki Bakugou with his quirk name literally being ‘Explosion’. He quickly puts him down in his list of possibilities. He also notes that Bakugou goes to a middle school not too far from where he found the notebook.

He went through the majority of the list before looking at the time. 6:00. It wasn’t too late, but he should still think about leaving soon. Anyways, he managed to make three different lists.

The first one held the names of the most likely candidates, whether it be because of proximity or their quirk alone. This was the shortest list, but that would just make it easier to go through later.

The second one was people who it could be, but it was less likely. That includes people who live here and have quirks that could, in theory, do it, but it makes less sense.

The third list is people who have quirks that do it, but don’t live around here. This will be a last resort list, as most of these people live on the other side of Japan.

Nedzu decided that with the time he had left in the day, he would try to cross off someone from the list. He went back to list one and took a look at the first name, Katsuki Bakugou. After a little bit of searching, he found that the boy had been involved in the villain attack that took place earlier that day, and was currently in Musutafu General Hospital.

Lucky for Nedzu that happened to be within walking distance of the cafe, so he set off.

Notes:

Woah, this chapter was actually sort of hard for me to write :( I ended up completely deleting it and re writing it about three times, however I am now happy with how it came out, so that's good, I guess. Because Nedzu is a genius I have a hard time writing him and making him seem like him and not majorly out of character. Wow who would have thought, a not genius, not knowing how a genius thinks, crazy.

Anyways, I just want to thank everyone for reading, I meant to post this earlier, but as I said I was having trouble with making seem right. Just like I said on the last chapter feel free to leave any suggestions in the comments, After Nedzu finds Izuku I have no idea what I'm gonna do with the plot. If you see any problems with this chapter, feel free to let me know :D

Notes:

Hey! I hope you enjoyed this chapter.

My updating schedule is terrible; I actually don't even think it could qualify for a schedule. I usually just write when I want, or when I get motivation. I know most creators don't actually like when people ask for updates, but I'm the opposite. If I haven't written in a while, feel free to ask for more, I most likely just forgot about this and need a reminder.

Of course, I know I'm not that good at writing, so feel free to leave any tips or things that you noticed in the comments. Really, anything helps. Even things that you liked :)

I actually don't have much planned out for this fic other than the basic plot, so feel free to leave any suggestions or ideas you may have. Because only have enough ideas to last a couple more chapters, but after that I got nothing.

Anyways Bye :) I have school, so I probably won't be updating every couple of days or anything like that.