Fanfic / Hammerverse

Izumi

When All You Have Is a Hammer… Use it to make all the other tools you need. Izuku's quirk is not suited for hero duty, anyone else could tell him. But Izuku isn't anyone else, so instead he sets about making it work anyway.

Izuku’s quirk? Gender-Swap.

When all you have is a Hammer is a My Hero Academia For Want Of A Nail Fan Fiction written by Flitty. It can be read on Archive of Our Own here and Fanfiction Dot Net here

Note: This page is called Hammerverse rather than When All You Have Is A Hammer, in order to avoid it appearing as a link on the trope page of the same name.

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This fanfic provides examples of:

• Adaptational Badass:
  • Izuku. Without anything but a backpack with some dumbbells inside, they break four of the Sludge Villain’s teeth, tear out an eyeball, and then hold it ransom for Bakugo’s life.
  • Uraraka’s shaping up to be this too, if her performance in the Entrance Exam is anything to go by.
• Adaptational Intelligence: Izuku is much more observant (noticing that something is odd about Uraraka’s quirk during their first meeting, as well as realising that All Might has an injury before meeting him), as a result of spending so long analysing their own quirk.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Downplayed with Izuku. Their quirk gives them a hefty boost in confidence compared to canon, but they still tiptoe around Bakugo and mutter when their nerves get the best of them. They also identify as non-binary as a result of their quirk and a load of time spent on the internet looking for help with said quirk.
  • Both Izuku and Inko are more secretive than Canon. Izuku hiding their quirk, and Inko hiding that she already knows about their quirk.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: Izuku has a Gender Bender quirk instead of One For All.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Canon!Izuku already has this trait, but in this fic Izuku takes it even further, turning their own seemingly weak quirk into a powerhouse by identifying and exploiting its Required Secondary Powers, realising that All Might is injured before meeting him and giving him a notebook full of ideas on how to use his quirk better to retain his hero form, giving suggestions to their classmates during the Quirk Assessment Test which allows many of them to perform better, and noticing that there's more to Uraraka's quirk than simply canceling gravity.
• Broken Record: Inverted - after overusing their quirk in the practical exam, Izuku’s mind starts skipping words. It wears off.
• Combat Pragmatist: Izuku shows shades of this versus the Sludge Villain, when they break the villain’s teeth while he’s distracted, steal an eye and hold it for ransom. They also quickly realise that they can team up with Uraraka during the Entrance Exam, bolstering each other’s quirks with their own.
• Didn't See That Coming:
  • The first time Izuku discovers their Quirk, they stay as a girl for a week to see if it has a time limit. Upon turning back into a boy, they immediately collapse of dehydration and starvation because both forms need sustenance.
  • Izuku didn't realize that overusing their Quirk in a short period of time would result in some rather nasty backlash. After the practical portion of U.A's Entrance Exam, their brain is so fried that they fail the written portion.
• Didn't Think This Through: Izumi gives All-Might her notebook filled with ideas to retain his strength as a hero and when asked, gives him her real address. A few chapters later, All-Might visits the Midoriya residence looking for "Izumi Midoriya".
• "Fawlty Towers" Plot: Because Izuku hid their Quirk from Bakugo, the latter thinks Izumi is a completely different person. As time goes by, Izumi has to lie more to hide that she's also Izuku, such as claiming the reason Bakugo didn't see her name on the scoreboard for the Entrance Exam is because non-passing scores aren't posted and declaring that since she failed, she's going to become a vigilante instead.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: After Izuku and Uraraka collapse from exhaustion from fighting the Zero-pointer, they tell each other their names, but the part where Uraraka says her name is left blank. This is because Izuku didn't actually hear her introduce herself. The backlash from overusing their quirk fried their brain so badly that they start mentally skipping words, leading to them eventually failing the written exam.
• For Want Of A Nail:
  • Although Izuku meets All Might the same way as in Canon, they don’t get One for All, with their interaction with All Might being more about giving him a way to retain his strength as a hero.
  • Izuku and Uraraka team up during the Entrance Exam, which allows them both to earn way more points, even allowing to Izuku place first.
  • On the flip side, Izuku overusing their quirk during the practical exam leads to them failing the written exam, so they've been placed in Class 1-A on a probationary basis, and have to work to get properly accepted into the Hero course during the Sports Festival.
  • The teams during the Battle Trails are changed, with Izuku and Tsuyu as the Villain team to Todoroki and Mineta's Hero team. The former team wins thanks to Izuku figuring out a way to negate Todoroki's quirk, then misleading Mineta on the location of the bomb, causing time to run out.

• Gender Bender: A rare example where Izuku begins gender-swapping from a young age because of their quirk.
• Hammerspace: Izuku has a limited one, with its size relying on how well they can visualise the objects they store. Anything light enough to carry can fit in there.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Izuku firmly believes in this; that there is no such thing as a useless Quirk and that the only way to not have potential would be to give up finding it. During the Quirk Assessment Test, they give their classmates ideas on how to creatively apply their quirks, leading to many of them, especially Mineta and Hagakure, doing better. They also manage to instantly come up with a way for a hypothetical person with the quirk Chromatic Eye to be a hero when Aizawa challenges them to, which impresses the teacher.
  He did it. The problem child actually did it. He thought up better uses for that quirk - the very quirk that taught Shouta that pretending anyone could be a hero was an irrational over-simplification - than Shouta had in his entire life, in the span of two minutes. Without so much as a stutter.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Every chapter title so far is a single word relating to money in some way, such as ‘Investment’, ‘Charity’ and ‘Gamble’.
• In Spite of a Nail: Izuku still grows up wanting to be a hero, meets All Might, attempts to rescue Bakugo from the Sludge villain and gets into Class 1-A at U.A.
• Irony: Izuku thinks that the written portion of the U.A exam will be "almost upsettingly easy". As a result of some unforeseen quirk backlash, the written portion is the part they end up failing.
• The Nicknamer: Izuku tends to give all their classmates nicknames, mostly cause they're really bad at remembering everyone's real names.
• Oh, Crap!: Izuku's response to All-Might showing up at their house looking for "Izumi Midoriya".
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Izuku is rather short but the use of their Quirk along with Uraraka's nets them the highest score on the practical exam.
• Portal Cut: Izuku can choose to send only part of an object to Hammerspace, resulting in this.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Downplayed. While Izuku's team (him and Tsuyu) win handily against the opposing Hero team (Todoroki and Mineta) in the Battle Trials, Izuku still feels very dissatisfied that they couldn't wear the non-binary colors based hero costume that their mother designed for them, because they weren't ready to make that kind of declaration.
• Required Secondary Powers: Exploited for all they’re worth and then some by Izuku. They don’t carry injuries or exhaustion between forms so they can fight for twice as long; they can train each form differently to give themselves more options in a fight; they can store objects in Hammerspace as they switch forms (and after some practice, at will); Portal Cut objects to craft weapons; teleport (though they haven’t figured that one out quite yet) and much more - all as a side-effect to their Gender Bender quirk.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: Inko knows the basics of Izuku's Quirk and does what she can to surreptitiously help them, such as "not paying attention" at meal times so Izuku can eat in both forms or causing some training bras to be "accidentally" shipped to their home. After All Might visits their home looking for "Izumi Midoriya", Izuku finally realizes that their mother has known about their Quirk all along, and the two finally properly confide each other in, with Inko even designing a hero costume based on the non-binary flag for Izuku.
• Sobriquet Sex Switch: After the meeting with All Might, Izuku begins referring to their female form as Izumi. When talking about themselves in general, they still use Izuku, however.
• Spit Take: Nedzu chokes on his tea when Izuku reveals their quirk to him. It happens again off-screen when they show off their teleportation.
• Stations of the Canon: So far, has visited five of them: the meeting with All Might, the Sludge villain incident, the U.A Entrance Exam, the Quirk assessment test, and the Battle Trials.
• Superpower Lottery: Downplayed and referenced in chapter 2:
  Izuku didn't win the quirk lottery, Inko will readily admit. But when you can take two-thousand yen, invest it and get hundreds of millions in return, the lottery doesn't seem all that important anymore. And metaphorically, that's exactly what Izuku's done.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: When Izuku's hairdresser notices that cutting their hair takes much longer than it should (because they change genders during it to make sure both forms get a haircut), Inko pretends he has a "deja vu" Quirk that undoes the hairdresser's work. Izuku plays along.
• Swiss-Army Superpower: Once more, Izuku’s quirk.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Ironically averted, despite the name of the fanfic.
• Write What You Know: According to the author’s comments, they identify as non-binary themselves.