Fanfic / Heroes Never Die

A My Hero Academia fanfic by AboveTail.

Everybody thinks Izuku Midoriya is Quirkless. They're wrong; he has a very powerful Quirk that has given him skills far beyond his age.

He would prefer being Quirkless.

Every once in a while, Izuku gets caught in a time loop, where he will die in brutal ways until he figures out what he needs to do in order to escape. This has left him with a very blase attitude towards life and his peers, and he is generally described as "weirdly confident".

He still wants to be a hero, however, and he still manages to catch All Might's attention. With both One For All and Death by Design, he begins his time at U.A., aiming to become the top hero.

Can be found here.

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This fanfic provides examples of:

• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: In addition to Canon!Izuku's issue of having to deal with kids bullying him and looking down on him because of his Quirklessness, Izuku in this fic has to go through all of that on top of a Quirk that continuously traumatizes him and makes him miserable.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: The Sixth wielder of One For All shows up in one of Izuku's loops at USJ, when in canon, he doesn't make an appearance until the Joint Training arc.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Played with. Bakugo's personality is more or less the same as in canon (and in some instances, he's even a little nicer). However, his language is WAY more vulgar than in canon. For example, after Iida praised one of Izuku's ideas, Bakugo asked him if he enjoyed the taste of Izuku's dick inside his mouth.
• Adaptational Name Change: Izuku's technique for using One For All is called "Parallel Flow" instead of "Full Cowl".
• Adaptation Personality Change: Instead of being the shy, Nervous Wreck cinnamon roll he is in canon, Izuku is instead quiet, aloof, and pragmatic but also more confident, charismatic, and Wise Beyond Their Years because of everything his Quirk has put him through.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
  • Izuku's relationship with Bakugo is slightly better, as Izuku's unconcerned attitude makes him difficult to bully. Likewise, when Bakugo confronts him about "lying" about being Quirkless, Izuku is able to calm him down by pointing out that Izuku did tell him he had a Quirk, Bakugo just never believed him. By the time of the Sports Festival, Bakugo sees Izuku as an actual rival rather than just a stepping stone, and Izuku reciprocates.
  • Izuku's rivalry with Todoroki gets accelerated when Izuku and Ashido beat him in the Combat Test, and then Izuku gives him a tongue-lashing for not using his full power.
• Adapted Out: While Mineta appears briefly, he is quickly expelled. Since Izuku placed higher in the tests, Mineta placed last, and unlike Izuku he didn't show any real promise for Aizawa to justify keeping him. His absence becomes important during the USJ, when without his Quirk there's no easy way for Asui and Izuku to handle the villains without killing them. Izuku is trapped in that loop for a long time. Later turns out to be subverted. Regardless of Aizawa's proclamations, teachers don't get to just expel students whenever they want. They can however eject them from their course and put them in the General Studies course, meaning Mineta was bumped down to there, and as such, returns for the Sports Festival as a part of that class.
• Armor-Piercing Question: When most of his classmates refused to follow his plan to act as a unit during the obstacle race (admittedly, they did have good reasons), Izuku tells them that as long as the festival lasts, they aren't students, athletes, or even heroes; they're products to be sold, and asks them not if they could beat Bakugo or Todoroki in a competition, but if they could manage to make a bigger impression than them. Other than Aoyama (who is promptly ignored) everybody admits that they couldn't, and agreed to follow Izuku's plan.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Izuku is even better at this than in canon, since he's been trapped in time loops on a regular basis for his entire life and had to find ways to escape.
  Ashido: [thinking] He wrote out five different play-by-play scenarios in the time it took us to walk here? I'm glad he's on my side.
• Awesomeness Is a Force: After receiving One For All, Izuku can exert an intimidating aura when using it, and realises that this intimidation is partly why crime went down after All Might debuted.
• The Bechdel Test: One of the fic's tags is "Yaoyorozu wants to pass the Bechdel Test but Ashido won't let her." Ashido spends her time in the locker room gossiping about the boys, to the annoyance of some of the other girls.
  Yaoyorozu: Can we really not talk about anything else? So far, every time we've actually discussed things as a group, it's been about the boys. We actually did stuff today too, you know.
  [beat]
  Ashido: You are a sad, strange little woman... and you have my pity.
• Berserk Button:
  • Izuku hates whenever anyone implies that anything serious is a joke. His entire life has been nothing but a long, cruel joke, so he snaps at anyone who doesn't take things seriously enough. The first time he activates One For All is when Iida chastises him for muttering during the explanation of the exam and accuses him of not taking it seriously. This also makes him even more annoyed at Todoroki's attitude than in canon.
  • Kaminari implies that Bakugo is gay for Izuku. That doesn't go well for him.
    Izuku: Ooh... he pressed the "Deku Button." He shouldn'ta did that.
• Blasphemous Boast: Bakugo managed to pull one unwittingly:
  Ibara: Hello. I can't say I expected to be picked so early. The Lord truly does work in mysterious ways.
  Bakugo: I guess I am pretty mysterious, aren't I?
  Izuku: She's a Christian, Kacchan. She's not talking about you.
• Blessed with Suck: Izuku's Quirk causes him to revive at a predetermined point whenever he dies. While it does give Izuku infinite attempts to get things just right, he also has to be careful not to give out information he shouldn't have. Also, because Izuku doesn't know what point he'll revive at beforehand, he can be tripped up if he revives later than expected, such as when he kills himself early in the villain attack on the USJ, only to revive just a few minutes before he died.
  • On top of that, his Quirk has given him serious psychological issues both from being unable to prove it's real, even to himself, and from being forced to die and repeat a loop too many times. It's made worse by the fact he can't get professional help since not only would he sound crazy, but the level of danger needed for a hero/hero-in-training to have their psychological history released is considerably lower than it is for normal civilians, meaning speaking to a therapist would tank his career.
• Chivalrous Pervert:
  • Kaminari takes Mineta's place as the class pervert, but the girls immediately note that he's not as bad. Even Uraraka says that his flirting would have been fine, but they were in the middle of a combat test so it was hardly the time.
  • Izuku is chivalrous enough that Ashido initially thinks he's gay. He is a healthy heterosexual teenage boy, though, so when Todoroki freezes the arena and a certain part of Ashido's anatomy gets cold, Izuku is very insistent that she wear his jacket.
• Clueless Chick-Magnet: While not entirely clueless, Izuku still manages to attract the attention of several of his female classmates without realizing it.
• Crazy-Prepared: Izuku carries a lot of supplies in his backpack to make sure that he can escape a loop as fast as possible.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Izuku's blase attitude becomes extremely disturbing once the full context of the time loops becomes apparent. After the USJ attack, he casually tells All Might that he died at least a thousand times, which even with the short loops means he was trapped for approximately three days.
  All Might: A thousand!? And this has been happening since your quirk manifested, at four?
  Izuku: You get used to it. You can get used to just about anything, given enough time.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The Battle Trial between Izuku and Ashido as the villains and Todoroki and Asui as the heroes was one in the villain team's favor. Asui couldn't even enter the building because Todoroki froze the whole thing and had to scout from outside, and when he goes inside alone thinking he could handle both his opponents, it only takes Izuku and Ashido a few minutes to incapacitate him by splashing his face with a weak acid and then sucker-punching him. Of course, it would have gone differently had Todoroki used his full power, something that Izuku later calls him out on.
• Didn't Think This Through: Jirou tries to ease Izuku into the idea of her knowing about his original Quirk by joking he should "Try not to die on the way home" in passing. They realize their mistake when Izuku's heart rate skyrockets and he activates One For All, but it's not until Izuku finally corners them over a week later that they learn how serious the situation is for him.
  Izuku: I need to talk to you. Is anyone nearby? I'm sure you know, but this is a sensitive topic.
  Jirou: Sorry, Midoriya. I'm flattered, but you're really not my type.
  (Izuku activates One For All and smashes the wall next to their head)
  Izuku: Don't. Do not fuck with me on this, Jirou.
• Doom Magnet: This is how Izuku's resets work, basically railroading him into doing things the "right" way by killing him if he does it wrong. In one of the earliest demonstrated loops, he saves a child from getting hit by a car but gets hit himself. When he tries again, he keeps the kid from running into the street, but the car careens onto the sidewalk and kills him there. All of this because his Quirk was trying to force a conversation with All Might.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap:
  • While Izuku can learn to handle One For All better using the time loops, he can't increase his capacity. That is based on the strength of his body, and it's impossible to increase his physical power through time loops. Worse, One For All's power does increase through the loops, so if Izuku loops too much it will outstrip his training.
  • Invoked in the Sports Festival. Izuku does such an excellent job organizing his class the first round (every single one of them places in the top twenty) that the teachers realize he'd dominate the planned cavalry battle. They do a King of the Hill-type match instead and change the way teams are chosen so that he can't control the outcome too much.
• Dude, Not Funny!: When it looks like Izuku and Jirou had sex, Ashido immediately starts teasing them. Jirou puts her foot down since U.A.'s policy on student relationships means this could get them expelled. Ashido tries to brush it off since "everyone knows" all the upperclassmen are hooking up, but Izuku counters that while the administration can ignore general rumors like that, especially if no names are known, rumors about specific students would have to be investigated. He does give her permission for more light-hearted teasing, though.
  Jirou: Midoriya! [to Ashido] No, don't tease us in any way! We aren't a thing! We won't be a thing! [to Izuku] Tell them!
  Izuku: Look, just give her this. If you ask for too much, she'll get invested in doing it anyway and won't ever let it go.
• Eating the Eye Candy: When Izuku takes his shirt off during training, Jirou can't stop staring at his abs. She tries to distract herself by thinking of a recent time she was genuinely scared of him... but that doesn't actually help.
• Flashback Echo: Izuku has a traumatic flashback in the USJ, where looping multiple times and being unable to escape causes him to remember one of his earliest loops as a child, in which he was trapped for so long and tormented so many times by Bakugo that it finally made him snap and murder Bakugo over and over again. This flashback causes Present day Izuku to freak out.
• The Generic Guy: In-Universe, that's how people who don't know Izuku see him, something he's aware of; he's neither ugly nor good-looking, has a polite, pleasant but low-key personality, and his Quirk isn't that visually spectacular. Many characters use words like "plain" and "unremarkable" to describe him, somebody who doesn't stand out for either good or bad reasons.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: How Izuku's Quirk works. Every once in a while he gets caught in a loop and has to figure out what he has to do to escape it. The loops are usually only a few minutes long and are reset by his brutal death. He puts a suicide pill on his hero costume so that he can reset at will.
• Had to Be Sharp: All Might praises Izuku's analytical abilities as being at least as good as a veteran hero, as he is able to quickly and accurately come up with a plan in any situation. Izuku privately notes that if he hadn't learned how to analyze situations quickly, he'd still be in elementary school. Literally.
• Heroic RRoD:
  • Izuku gets past this issue much faster than in canon, since he is able to run the practical exam twenty times until he figures out how to make One For All work, with no worry about permanently injuring himself. However, he does still have problems. When he fights the zero-point robot, he activates Parallel Flow at 100%—meaning that instead of just breaking his legs and arm, he breaks every bone in his body. He's in a coma for five days.
  • Blackwhip's power has severe backlash as well, meaning it takes a while for Izuku to get used to it. And he can't rely on the time loops too much, since One For All is getting stronger with every loop.
• Hope Bringer: Izuku is already starting to become this to his classmates. During the USJ, he is impressed with Asui's courage, but when he stops being strong, she quickly breaks down.
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: Despite his Wise Beyond Their Years status, Izuku is still a teenager. Occasionally he is reminded of that by his attractive female classmates in their skimpy costumes.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Bakugo will sometimes say something that everybody will agree on, but will criticize his extremely vulgar choice of words and arrogant and dismissive tone.
• The Leader: Izuku becomes a cross between the Mastermind and Charismatic types. His high intellect as well as his experience with the timeloops means that he's very capable of analyzing situations quickly to come up with optimal plans that make use of his teammates' strengths, and despite his slightly more aloof nature, he has a magnetic presence and a level of intensity and focus that draws others in and inspires confidence in them. He combines both of these traits to come up with a plan that turns his classmates into a singular fighting force that allows them to dominate the first event of the Sports Festival.
• Mistaken for Gay: Both Bakugo and Izuku are separately mistaken for gay. Bakugo because of his insane focus on Izuku, and Izuku for being seemingly unconcerned with all the girls in skin-tight and revealing clothing.
• The Needs of the Many: While One For All can't be stolen, if people knew about it they would take hostage everyone who Izuku ever met in an attempt to get him to give it up. Izuku likens it to a nuclear bomb (he actually calculated All Might's power and figured he was at least as powerful as a nuke) and says that he would have to refuse to give up the power no matter what. He makes Jirou say it aloud to make absolutely sure she understands.
• Narm: In-Universe, Izuku realizes that his metaphor of being "that guy who ends up playing a tree in the school play" was rather corny. And indeed, it earns him the nickname Great Deku Tree.^note Mina, who came up with the nickname, says she's a fan of the Legend of Zelda games.
• No Social Skills: Zigzagged with Izuku. While he's charismatic enough to make friends and inspires confidence in people, his past of being bullied by his peers also means that he doesn't really trust his classmates and sometimes flounders in social settings, like when Ashido invited him to karaoke the day after the USJ attack. It also takes him a while to understand how Jirou having spent the night in his apartment would be interpreted by people, not helped along by his poor choice of words.
• Not What It Looks Like: Bakugo sees Jirou coming out of Izuku's apartment in the morning and overhears her complaining about how he "worked her too hard" and now she can barely walk. Bakugo yells at Izuku for endangering his enrollment over a fling (U.A. has a policy against student relationships), and it takes Izuku a moment to realize what Bakugo is thinking. After he gets over his embarrassment, he points out that in addition to other reasons, he wouldn't bring a girl over to have sex in his mother's apartment.
• Old Maid: Bakugo calls a reporter who was hounding students in front of U.A. a "Christmas Cake Hack". The reporter takes offense and claims that she's only 23.
• Parents as People: Inko admits to Jirou that she was this during Izuku's childhood. When Izuku's Quirk first manifested and he told his mother what it did, she refused to believe him, dragging him from Quirk specialist to specialist and telling him that he shouldn’t make up horrible stories, all the while thinking that she was the reason his Quirk was that way. Even after she eventually accepted the truth and tried to support him, there was no real way for her to help him and by that point Izuku had already decided to hide his thoughts and feelings so as to not worry her, leading him to becoming a Stepford Smiler.
• Poor Communication Kills: Discussed. During the combat trial, Bakugo was paired with Hagakure as the villain team. Since she's invisible, he ordered her to defend the objective while he went on ahead to attack the enemy (Jirou and Kirishima). Without her around he didn't have to worry about his wide area of effect attacks, and he targeted Jirou first because her Super-Senses were the best counter to Hagakure, so if Kirishima managed to take him down Hagakure should be able to handle Kirishima on her own. They won, but since Bakugo didn't bother telling Hagakure any of this, the class assumed he was just an asshole who thought she was useless, and Hagakure admits she almost abandoned her post to attack the enemy and "prove him wrong", which would have been a disaster. Aizawa tells Bakugo to pay more attention to his leadership style, and Bakugo actually takes it to heart.
• Pragmatic Hero: Countless times dying has given Izuku a very pragmatic approach to life. Unlike in canon, he doesn't use the hero costume his mother made for him because it was too cheap to be suitable in real combat; he feels guilty but refuses to compromise. He also gives Uraraka a very frank assessment of her costume along these lines, specifically informing her that high heels are never appropriate for hero work.
  • During the Battle Trial, Izuku kept resetting using a suicide pill specifically so he could be partnered with each of his classmates during different loops and interrogate them on their Quirks, making special note of their weaknesses. He then plants bugs on the opposing team to justify having this knowledge.
• Rage Breaking Point: When Izuku was five years old, he kept replaying the same afternoon in a park over and over, where no matter what he said or did, the result remained the same — within a few minutes of his encounter with Bakugo and his cronies, something would inevitably kill him and send him back to when Bakugo decided to "play hero" by bullying another boy. Absolutely nothing he tried would stop Bakugo from tormenting that boy, with Izuku's death occurring a short while later. And then Bakugo decides to use All Might's catchphrase, "I am here", to justify his bullying. Hearing the words of his idol, which had become a lifeline to him after his Quirk manifested, being twisted in a fit of childish cruelty by his bully makes Izuku finally snap, and he beats Bakugo to death with a rock. And then he kept murdering him. Over and over and over...
• Resurrection/Death Loop: Izuku's Quirk is this. Once in a while, the universe or fate decides according to certain unknown requirements, that he's on the wrong "path", and he'll die and return to a previous moment in time. And then he'll keep dying, over and over again until he takes the "right" path.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: After Izuku and Ashido beat Todoroki and Asui in the Battle Trial, Izuku gives the other boy a heavy tongue-lashing about how he purposely handicaps himself.
  Izuku: I know that you'll never become the number one hero with your current attitude. Besides me, there's at least one other person in this class shooting for that title, but do you know what makes us different than you? We aren't the kind of losers who refuse to do our best out of spite. I suggest you either grow up or quit being a hero before you get yourself or somebody else killed. Because if what happened today happened in the real world, you'd be dead.
• Secret-Keeper: Izuku's mother becomes one for All Might early on, because Izuku was in a coma for five days and there was no way he could get away with not telling her anything. Later, Jirou finds out about both All Might's secret and Izuku's time loops, and is given the full explanation.
• Seen It All: Aizawa notices that Izuku has the demeanor of an experienced veteran, being completely unconcerned with potential death and only worried about solving problems in the most efficient way possible.
• Shipper on Deck: Ashido tries at several points to set up Midoriya and Uraraka, mostly after noticing the Luminescent Blush Midoriya was sporting while talking with Uraraka on the bus to the USJ.
• Split Personality: Downplayed, but in one of his time loops at USJ, Izuku meets his own mental representation of his darkest and most violent desires, who tries to urge him to simply kill the villains to end the loop.
• Stepford Smiler: Izuku can usually be seen with a calm, pleasant, and unaffected smile. Said smile hides some serious psychological scars that have come from a lifetime of living with a quirk that tortures him.
• Suicide Pill: Izuku puts a suicide pill on his hero costume so that he can trigger his resets quickly when need be. He mentions that he had to make the pills himself since there was no way he could ask the Support Class for something like that.
• Suppressed Rage: Although Izuku comes off as calm and self-controlled to others, he actually has a deep well of hidden rage and resentment that sometimes slips out, such as when he got angry with Ashido for interrupting him when he was trying to explain his plan during their Battle Trial, and more prominently, how he reacts to Jirou eavesdropping on his conversation with All Might and finding out about his original Quirk. He usually apologizes immediately for his outbursts, but it doesn't stop him from being very intimidating in those moments.
  Izuku reminded Jirou of a dam—a featureless, smooth construct designed to hold back an enormous reservoir of feeling. The day he confronted her, Jirou witnessed a crack in his facade, and caught a glimpse of the emotions hidden behind his polite, calm mannerisms and his serene smile.
• Tempting Fate: Right before the second event of the Sports Festival, Izuku thinks to himself that the events aren't truly random, but thinks that it isn't a problem as they can't really change them on the fly. Cue a scene with the staff discussing what event to do next with what rules designed specifically to handicap Izuku's ability to tip the odds in his favour as he did in the first event.
• Time Loop Fatigue: While he takes pains to hide it, dying over and over has taken a serious toll on Izuku's mind. In fact, the only reason it's not obvious to others how deeply miserable and angry Izuku is is because of his unruffled seeming demeaneour and the fact that he's been Conditioned to Accept Horror.
• That Came Out Wrong: Izuku makes an extremely poor choice of words to address Jirou being stiff after he put her through Training from Hell.
  Izuku: How are you feeling? Any lingering soreness from yesterday?
  Jirou: (thinking) He did not just ask me that in front of Ashido of all people.
  Izuku: Did you go see Recovery Girl like I told you? It’s to be expected after everything we did, but I heard that you were walking funny earlier- (Jirou kicks him in the shin) Ow! What was that for?
  Jirou: For the love of god, Midoriya, pay attention to the words coming out of your mouth!
  Hagakure: Wow, who would have thought? You sure work fast, huh Midoriya?
  Ashido: Oh. My. GOD!
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Heroes in general try to avoid killing, but Izuku absolutely refuses to do so under any circumstances. Partly because he knows he can keep trying until he gets it right, but also because he knows how terrible dying is. This is also because he doesn't wish to return to the mentality he used to have as a child, as in one of his earliest loops, he finally snapped and beat Bakugo to death with a rock. And then he kept killing him. Over and over and over...
• Training from Hell: U.A. has this as standard. And then there's Izuku's, which is even worse than it was in canon. He trains for hours every morning, to the point that he needs Recovery Girl's help just to be functional for the rest of the day. Jirou does a "light workout" with him, skipping some of the worst parts at the end, and after she gets a chance to rest she falls dead asleep and can't be woken. The next day, she can barely walk.
• You Are Not Alone: Izuku makes contact with the vestiges far earlier than in canon, after being trapped in a loop at the USJ for at least a few days. The Sixth holder assures Izuku that he doesn't have to deal with the loops alone anymore, because the rest of them are there too.
• Weight Woe: Played for Laughs. At one point the fanfic goes with the "women don't want their weight to be known" stereotype:
  Ashido: (while reading her entry in Izuku's notebook) Let’s see here, "Ashido Mina, Height: 159cm; Weight: unknown." It better stay that way too!
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Dying over and over has given Izuku experience easily comparable to Pro Heroes. Death Arms internally notes that when he first saw Izuku rush to save Bakugo, the look on his face made him think he was a pro who had just arrived on the scene.

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