Credit: MrSketchy
“If it doesn’t work, I’ll just try again.”
- Midoriya Izuku
Better Luck Next Time by nauticalwarrior is a Vigilante!Izuku AU My Hero Academia Alternate Universe fanfic where Izuku has a quirk that rewinds time when he dies.
It updates daily, has over 550,000 words, and is ongoing. It has an official (16+) discord server here.
Tropes:
- A Shared Suffering: Izuku and Monoma become close friends after Monoma copies Izuku’s quirk during the fight with Muscular at the training camp in which they both die painful deaths.
- Accidental Time Travel: After his first suicide attempt in middle school, Izuku accidentally travels back in time to before he jumped, which leads him to discover his quirk.
- Adaptation Expansion: The Gekkeiju are completely original to the fic.
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Izuku, big time.
- Adaptational Dye-Job: Izuku dies his hair as Ace to help hide his true identity.
- Adaptational Early Appearance: Mirko shows up as the person Izuku does his first hero work study with instead of Gran Torino, so she shows up way earlier than she does in canon.
- Adaptational Nice Guy:
- Bakugou is noticeably nicer here than in canon. Although he retains his jerkish persona, early in the story, he apologizes to Izuku for his actions in middle school and becomes a genuine friend.
- Monoma becomes this (to Izuku, at least) after he copies Izuku’s quirk during the training camp, and they become good friends.
- This is also the case for Nighteye. Because Mirio became All Might’s successor instead of Izuku, and that Nighteye doesn’t know that Izuku is Ace, Nighteye has no reason to be rude to Ace upon meeting him for the first time, unlike in canon.
- Adaptational Superpower Change: Instead of having One For All, Izuku has the power to go back in time whenever he dies.
- Adaptational Villainy: Izuku joins the Gekkeiju, but only so he can rescue Mouse and Avenging Angel.
- Affably Evil: Manami, despite having no problem with killing people when they pose a threat to the Gekkeiju, is nice to Izuku once he joins the organization and is therefore no longer dangerous in her eyes.
- Ascended Extra: Monoma has a much more prominent role here than in canon due to him becoming close friends with Izuku after he copies Izuku's quirk.
- Badass Normal: Izuku’s friends think that he’s this for his high performance in the top class of UA, his intelligence, and his impressive combat abilities despite seemingly not having a quirk.
- Beware the Mind Reader: Izuku feels uneasy around Haruta because he’s afraid of him figuring out what Izuku’s quirk is. He later learns that Haruta is the UA traitor and is working with the Gekkeiju.
- Big Bad: Maiko Sasaki, the leader of the Gekkeiju. She's immensely powerful and is the main villain of the story.
- Broken Bird: Mouse. She's a little girl who is horribly abused by the Gekkeiju who only keep her around for her useful quirk.
- Cassandra Truth: Later in the story, Todoroki becomes pretty sure that Izuku can see the future, but his friends don’t believe him.
- Cool Shades: Fury can't turn his quirk off, so he wears sunglasses when he doesn't want to use it.
- Cry into Chest: When Izuku calls for help after being released by the Gekkeiju after being kidnapped, Aizawa immediately goes to rescue him and comforts Izuku while he cries.
- Damsel in Distress: Izuku swears to save Mouse and Avenging Angel from the Gekkeiju. He later adds Haruta to that list.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Almost all members of the Gekkeiju had this in one way or another.
- Death by Adaptation: Izuku. It doesn’t stay this way for long, though.
- Death by Depower: Aizawa temporarily disabling Izuku’s quirk causes him to be afraid of actually dying for real.
- Death by Origin Story: Sasaki's sister.
- Emotion Bomb: Manami’s quirk allows her to intensify people’s emotions.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Sasaki's dead sister.
- Fallen Hero: Sasaki was originally a hero, but later turned into a villain, with the death of her sister being heavily implied to be the main cause.
- Faux Affably Evil: Sasaki. She generally maintains a calm, pleasant demeanor, rarely harms Izuku directly like Fury does, and occasionally offers Izuku compensation for his work. However, this is all a front for her cold, calculating nature.
- First-Name Basis: A while after becoming close friends, Izuku and Monoma decide to be on a first-name basis with each other, which Kendo is surprised by.
- Foreshadowing: Several things are foreshadowed way before they actually happen.
- It's mentioned that Fury did something to Mouse that put her out of her commission, foreshadowing Fury's quirk far before either of them actually appear.
- Monoma says that he sometimes accidentally copies quirks as a reflex, which happens later when he copies Izuku's quirk during their fight with Muscular.
- Good Cop/Bad Cop: Koizumi and Rivera, respectively.
- Good Is Not Nice: Rivera is an agent of the Commission that wants to take down the Gekkeju, but he's perfectly willing to sacrifice the safety of children (Izuku, Haruta, and Shinsou) to do it.
- Hate Sink: Fury, big time.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Though Rivera is willing to sacrifice the safety of children to help take down the Gekkeiju, he does have a point; using them as moles is probably the best chance they have at stopping the organization once and for all.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Bakugou is rude and abrasive to his friends, but he looks out for them and truly cares for them.
- Knife Fight: The fight against Yaoyorozu becomes this once she summons a knife in their battle at the sports festival.
- Living Lie Detector: Tsukauchi's quirk lets him know when someone is lying, and he uses it while interrogating Izuku.
- Mouse's quirk also acts as this. If someone lies to a question she asks, their throat burns on fire until they choke to death. This ends if they tell the truth, however.
- Major Injury Underreaction: After Fury breaks Izuku’s wrist, Izuku is confused when Aizawa refers to it as a serious injury.
- Non-Powered Costumed Hero: Izuku pretends to be this.
- Oh, Crap!: Nighteye is startled when he uses his quirk on Ace for the first time and sees that Ace plans to kill himself right after their conversation ends.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Aizawa immediately knows something is wrong when Monoma, who is normally composed and confident, suddenly has a panic attack in the middle of one of the remedial classes seemingly for no reason.note
- Playing Sick: Izuku pretends to faint at the beginning of his fights against Todoroki to get him to drop his guard.
- Perky Female Minion: Manami.
- Politically Correct Villain: Fury respects Haruta, a trans guy's, pronouns, but this doesn't keep him from torturing him.
- Posthumous Sibling: Sasaki had a sister that died long before the events of the fic.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Mr. Clean mentions that he's really just a part of the Gekkeiju because it pays well.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Gold, in this case. When someone looks into Fury's eyenote , he subjects them to either extreme pain or pleasure.
- Regretful Traitor: Haruta only became the UA traitor because the Gekkeiju threatened to kill his sister, and he deeply regrets his actions.
- Reset Button: By using his quirk, Izuku can go back in time and prevent undesirable events from occurring.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Izuku can remember everything that happens before he uses his quirk, allowing him to use his gained knowledge of future events to learn information and avoid danger.
- Sadist: Fury is known to regularly use his quirk on Izuku, Mouse, Miura, Avenging Angel, Haruta, and presumably others for any slight mistakes they make while working for the Gekkeiju, and seems to take genuine pleasure in doing so.
- Secret Identity: After discovering his quirk, Izuku creates a secret vigilante identity, Ace.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Izuku uses his quirk to prevent events like a little girl’s kidnapping or Iida’s death in his fight with Stain and Fangirl from happening.
- Siblings in Crime: Fury and Manami are siblings.
- Spotting the Thread: Izuku finds out that Haruta is the UA traitor when Haruta slightly reacts while Izuku thinks about the upcoming hideout raid, something that Haruta shouldn't know about because he isn't in the hero course.
- Standard Evil Organization Squad: The Gekkeiju.
- Start of Darkness: It's heavily implied that the death of Sasaki's sister is what turned Sasaki from a hero to a villain.
- Stealth Expert: After a training exercise, Aizawa and Maka mention that Izuku has a surprising knack for parkour and stealth, especially in urban environments, and tell him that he should seriously consider becoming an underground hero.
- Telepathy: Haruta can hear people’s thoughts.
- Temporal Sickness: Overusing his quirk causes Izuku to have migraines and become nauseated, weak, and anemic.
- After witnessing Izuku using his quirk by committing suicide several times, Todoroki begins to vaguely remember seeing Izuku injured and get worried about him in bathrooms even after time is reset.
- The Family That Slays Together: Manami sees the Gekkeiju as a family, with Fury being her actual mother and Sasaki being her surrogate mother.
- The Mole: After UA finds out about Izuku's involvement with the Gekkeiju, he, Haruta, and eventually Shinsou become moles for the school to help take down the Gekkeiju.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Izuku yells at Aizawa when he admits that had Izuku not asked Ochako for assistance during the quirk apprehension test, he would've expelled him for a few days.“How could you not consider what that would do to me?” Izuku says before he can think better of it, and Aizawa blinks in surprise, reeling back slightly at the venom in his tone. “I’m quirkless. All Might, my idol, told me I should give up on being a hero. My mom didn’t believe I could be a hero. I got into UA,” he’s practically snarling at this point, but he can’t help himself. “And I got in by fighting tooth and nail through everyone and everything working against me. And you— you would have expelled me to teach me a lesson? You would have let me think for days that my dream had finally been crushed once and for all, that there was no chance of me being a hero, because it’d make me think outside the box?” Izuku clenches his fists, feels the blood drain out of them. He swallows, jaw clenching, before he says, “How could you do that to someone?”
- There Are No Therapists: Averted - After Izuku is kidnapped, Hound Dog acts as his therapist.
- Time Loop Fatigue: Izuku faces negative physical effects when he uses his quirk too much, and the story suggests that using his quirk has affected him mentally by causing him to grow tendencies of self-harm.
- Time Travel: Izuku’s quirk is that him dying causes him to go back in time.
- Time Travel Escape: Iida would have died in his fight against Stain and Fangirl if it weren’t for Izuku using his quirk to save him.
- Tragic Villain: Miura. She has killed countless people, including children, for the Gekkeiju, but she says that she has no way out of her situation and that she’s accepted that she’s only getting out of the Gekkeiju dead or in handcuffs.
- Trauma Conga Line: Haruta. His parents die in a car crash when he was a child, leaving only him and his sister, Ema, then he learns that he can’t pursue his career of choice because of his mind-reading quirk. Then, after following Ema to UA, he gets captured with nobody noticing by the Gekkeiju, who then threatened Ema with death if he didn’t comply with their demands. By the time he tells Izuku all of this, he’s so emotionally broken that he wants to die once Ema is safe.
- Vigilante Man: Izuku becomes a vigilante under the name Ace.
- Weak, but Skilled: As useful as Izuku's quirk is, it doesn't actually give him any strength or physical combat advantages. Izuku has to think of practical combat strategies on the fly or find creative ways to talk his way out of situations given information he knows from his quirk, and he's pretty good at it.
- Wham Line: From chapter 106:“Shinsou,” Izuku says, his voice a croak. “We’re not going on the mission,” he whispers as he lets his eyes slide shut and slumps back against the side of the car.
- You Remind Me of X: Izuku panics when meeting Nighteye for the first time because he reminds him of Fury.
