Fanfic / If I Only Had A Heart

It's all fun and games until someone turns out to be a super-genius^note All credit for the art goes to its original owners

In a world where 80% of the population has some kind of superpower, it's easy to see being Quirkless as a curse. Being merely ordinary just doesn't cut it when the extraordinary is everywhere.

Enter Izuku Midoriya, a burgeoning Quirkless inventor who is visiting the local pawnshop where he gets the parts he needs for his creations. Quirk or not, he was going to be a Hero, as soon as he could fix up the gadgets he needed to do it. But his plans were severely derailed after a sudden Villain attack leaves him with a missing eye, an amputated arm, and a damaged spine. Quirkless and handicapped, it seemed to be the end of this young lad's dreams.

But who said he had to see it that way? Even if he's damaged, ridiculed, and put down for his impossible dream, he wasn't ready to let it go. No matter what challenges the universe throws at him, he's was going to be strong. Not just strong, but the strongest Hero, one who will change the very society that expects to see him fall.

If I Only Had a Heart is a My Hero Academia Fan Fic written by LumartheDragon on Archive of Our Own. Noticing the abundance of fics where Izuku manages to become a Quirkless hero through raw training (or gaining a Charles Atlas Superpower ala Saitama), they decided to take a different approach to Izuku's path to heroism, making him a teenaged mix of Genos and Iron Man. You can read the story here.

Has not been updated since September of 2020.

Beware of unmarked spoilers.

If I only Had A Heart provides examples of:

• Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: Izuku's third prosthetic arm, which is attached to a base by magnets, is able to move in ways that a regular arm cannot, bending at unnatural angles to help him install new spinal implants. The wrist also rotates almost 360 degrees while installing Izuku's new eye.
• Acting Your Intellectual Age: Izuku is so intelligent that he rarely lets himself be a kid, with most of his excitement coming from the joy he gets from a failed or successful experiment. Deconstructed when Aizawa and Hizashi confront him about it, asking Izuku when was the last time he acted his physical age rather than his intellectual age, to which he's rendered speechless. That said, he still has all of the emotional maturity of a kid and is left in tears over things both big and small.
  • After giving himself a seizure by linking the supercomputer in his artificial eye to his brain, Inko and Aizawa give Izuku an intervention to get him to settle down and think more before performing experiments on himself.
    Inko: We believe in you, Izuku. I...believe in you. I don’t think I’ve made it very clear how much I believe in you, and that’s on me, but this isn’t about what you can build and what you can test. This is about instinct, common sense, and awareness, and you develop these things not from an IQ, but by living. By growing and experiencing life.
    Aizawa: Most kids your age are off being rebellious and breaking bones or scraping knees. But YOU had to go above and beyond and surgically implant a new spine, eyeball, and computer. Congrats, kid, you’re insane.
• Adaptational Intelligence: Izuku was hardly dumb before, but this fic pushes him into absurd super-genius levels to make up for his disabilities and lack of a Quirk. At seven years old he was at the head of his class, finishing entire textbooks in a day and scoring perfectly on virtually all of his exams (to the point that a single 95 out of a 100 left him in tears). He also developed his own replacement prosthetic arm with a more functional four-fingered hand with an opposable thumb to replace his missing one after finding the one issued by the hospital (which amounts to a barely working appendage with a hook for a hand) with one that responds to his brainwaves with a headband with nothing but scrap parts. He was also fluent in both Japanese and English and was studying German before he met Aizawa. He also is a budding chemist who created darts loaded with his own unique blends of chemicals that can cause things they hit to spontaneously ignite, be shocked, or frozen in a device he calls "The Equalizer". Two years later, he chewed through countless neuroscience papers and books to develop a microtechnological implant that he injected directly into his own spine to directly link a new prosthetic arm he created, which has all of the functionality and fluid movement of a real arm, to his brain. Said implant was so technologically advanced and experimental that no doctor would perform the procedure for him. He also devised his own painkillers to help him deal with the transition process and said arm can be modified easily to accommodate weapons implants or simply his own growth. All of this, again, on a working-class budget and nothing but scraps for parts. He's still in elementary school at this time!
  • By the time he enters U.A., he's fluent in Japanese, English, German, and Spanish, has replaced his missing arm and eye with a special non-metallic polymer called "Hera" that's extremely strong and shock absorbent, and is developing Powered Armor to make up for his lack of a Quirk.
  • On the other hand, his passion for inventing has also dulled his Fan Boy and Otaku traits present in canon. As a result, he's not as quick on the uptake when it comes to meeting then-rising heroes like Aizawa (Eraserhead), Hizashi (Present Mic), and Nemuri (Midnight), failing to recognize his neighbors as the same heroes he's looking up to.
• Adaptation Name Change: Izuku isn't taking Deku as his Hero Name this time, but as of Chapter 13, he's still not sure what it's going to be aside from the opener, "The Genius Hero". Cue Wild Mass Guessing in-verse and out-of-verse to try and figure out what it is. He ends up picking the name "Titan", for being a larger-than-life figure as well as a being that predates the Olympian Gods that he names his inventions after.
• Adaptational Sexuality: According to the author:
  • Izuku is demisexual (meaning that he won't feel attraction until he develops a close emotional bond with someone in contrast to Canon!Deku's clear attraction and embarrassment around girls).
  • Aizawa is asexual but homoromantic.
  • Inko is heterosexual but biromantic.
  • Nemuri (Midnight) is bisexual.
  • Hizashi is pansexual.
  • Katsuki is homosexual.
• Adapted Out: Mineta will not appear in this story in favor of Hitoshi Shinsou according to the story tags.
• All of the Other Reindeer:
  • Izuku and Mashi frequently get bullied and discriminated against simply for being Quirkless.
  • Ken is also bullied and discriminated against for being Quirkless as well as being transgender.
• All There in the Manual: The author sometimes posts details about the series on their Tumblr account, like this list of facts about this story's version of Deku.
• Animal Mecha: Many of the more complex automatons Izuku creates have anatomies based on animals, including the Neko Nurses (cats), Racuum (raccoon), Trotter (horse), Observing Winged Liaison/O.W.L. (owls), Foxy Finder (fox), Submarine Shell (turtle), Block Beetle (beetle), Grenade (hamster) and the Thunderwing (giant bird).
• Artificial Limbs: Izuku created his own prosthetic arm after being dissatisfied with the one the hospital provided him, with each successive model being more and more functional than the last. He plans on loading them up with weapons once he's worked out all the kinks, but they still provide him with enhanced strength in the meantime. He later replaces his missing eye and reinforces his damaged spine to allow himself to walk normally again. He soon develops multiple versions of his prosthetic arm, one that looks human-like, one optimized for combat, and one for medical purposes that he can swap out at any time.
• Artistic License – Economics: Izuku gets paid 600,000 yen to license his miracle material. That's roughly 5,000 dollars, which should be at most a bit more than his mother makes in a month. Yet everyone acts like this is an incredible amount of money. Even if it was 600,000 dollars, it would be a pittance, considering the material can stand Bakugo's explosions, yet was made by borderline poor Izuku using what materials he could afford/scrounge. He also gets 2% royalties, which makes more sense.
• Ascended Extra: Hatsume Mei receives more screentime as Izuku's self-proclaimed engineering rival.
• Auto-Doc: Izuku's "Neko Nurses" are these, being what are essentially cat-shaped Baymaxes to act as first-aid for people who need them.
• Berserk Button: Izuku hates being called useless and being looked down upon for his disabilities, to the point that he once threatens to experiment on Kaito after Mashi gets hurt while trying to protect Izuku from him. He's also borderline hysterical when the grown-ups try to rein him back in by saying that he's still a child, exasperated with the fact that they don't trust him.
• Big Brother Mentor: Aizawa and Hizashi take up this role for Izuku, being supportive, caring, and protective while also trying to ground Izuku and let him act his age. Izuku eventually takes to calling him Aizawa-nii.
• Big Eater: A side effect of Izuku's prosthetic limbs is an increased appetite since his prosthetics use his body's energy reserves to power them with some additional help from solar power.
• Birds of a Feather: Izuku and Mashi bond over their Quirklessness and desire to become heroes.
• Bully Hunter: Izuku's new friend Mashi is quick to attack those who demean him, particularly Kaito and his gang, and is flabbergasted that Izuku wants to continue his friendship with Jerkass Katsuki.
• …But He Sounds Handsome: With Mashi and Izuku oblivious to the fact that Aizawa, Hizashi, and Nemuri are in fact Eraserhead, Present Mic, and Midnight, the adults have a lot of fun singing their own praises and doing impressions of themselves while soaking in the kids' admiration.
• Childhood Friend: Izuku and Katsuki as per canon. Izuku also bonds with Hatsume Mei over their shared passion for inventing and Original Character Mashi Haganehato.
• Child Prodigy: Izuku in spades. See Adaptational Intelligence for details.
• Country Matters: A potential name for their school club was "Club for Unrecognized, Natural Talent". Mashi thought it was a good idea (and was pretty much the only one).
• Cyborg: Izuku is slowly turning himself into one, replacing his missing arm and eye and reinforcing his damaged spine.
• Deadpan Snarker: Izuku around his Cloudcuckoolander Tomboy friend Mashi.
  Mashi: My own personal xenomorph would be so cool though...
  Izuku: [bluntly] You'd be dead, Mashi. [she blows a raspberry at him]
• Deer in the Headlights: Aside from the villain attack that left him handicapped, Izuku just hasn't been exposed to danger that isn't self-inflicted. So when he chases down a monster (implied to be a Noumu) that's following Eraserhead, Izuku loses his composure when he comes face to face with it and ends up setting it ablaze with the Equalizer.
• Determinator: Izuku wants to be a hero so badly that he continues pushing forward through things that would easily break the wills of most kids his age. He's so driven that he is fully willing to perform surgery on himself in order to remove his own disabilities, powering through the inevitable resulting pain even while dosed up on his own brand of painkillers.
• Disabled in the Adaptation: In canon, Izuku has no health issues aside from his own Quirklessness. Here he's Quirkless and legally disabled due to his missing arm and damaged spine, but he's working on remedying the latter.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": Mashi refuses to be referred to by her given name or her surname even though Last-Name Basis is standard in Japanese culture.
• Dream-Crushing Handicap: Two-fold this time, being both Quirkless and legally a cripple. He's working on remedying the latter part. He also defies this since he sees his Quirklessness as more of an opportunity than a curse, as he's free from the expectations of those with Quirks have, allowing him to do his own thing.
  Izuku: When you don’t have a Quirk, you don’t have as many expectations. Some people just stop, think that this means that they have no future, but I think that just means that our future is all the more open to our molding. When you have a quirk people assume what you’ll be because of it, right? If you don’t become aware of that what you can become a slave to those expectations, thusly limiting your imagination. You don’t have that issue if you don’t have a Quirk. When you’re Quirkless the possibilities are endless!!
• Electronic Eye: Izuku replaces his missing left eye with a cybernetic one of his own design that glows a vibrant blue. In addition to restoring his depth perception, it's equipped with telescopic and thermal vision and is a miniature supercomputer that allows him to connect to the internet. He hopes to eventually be able to use it to directly interface with other pieces of technology to remotely control them. It's also removable, allowing Izuku to use CT scans without a hitch and monitor his nerves to prevent damage. He also has a camera function installed so that he can record what he sees, uploading it to a computer via a USB drive in his prosthetic arm.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Aside from the canon "Deku", Mashi calls Izuku "Zuzu".
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Mashi is adventurous enough to want to become a hero despite her own Quirkless and wholeheartedly supports Izuku's craziest inventions. But when it comes to actually implanting them in his body, even she starts feeling squeamish.
  • Katsuki is shocked and horrified when Ken talks about how it'd be better if he were dead, to the point he sticks around to keep an eye on them.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Izuku decides to begin growing his hair out and tying it into a bun to match Mashi's and to look less "normal". He also plans on styling it like Aizawa's since thought it looks cool, though whether or not it's going to stay that long is an experiment in and of itself. By junior high school, Izuku has let his hair grow out into bangs and puts it in a ponytail.
• Eyepatch of Power: Izuku wears an eyepatch to cover his missing eye. Unlike most examples, he does suffer from a lack of depth perception, but his missing eye does nothing to dull his intelligence. He ditches it after finishing his artificial eye.
• Fiery Redhead: Mashi is Hot-Blooded with the red hair to match.
• First Time Feeling: Izuku is very happy when he completes one of his prosthetics, breaking into Tears of Joy when he gets his third prosthetic arm, which has all the functions of a real arm and then some, to work without a hitch. He does so again once his spinal implants allow him to walk normally again. He also calls the feeling of being able to see and feel both eyes moving in their sockets again to be "spectacular" after installing his new artificial eye.
• Freakiness Shame: Izuku knows that most people will judge him by his scars, prosthetics, and Quirklessness, and instinctively flinches when someone tries to touch his prosthetic arm (though he Hates Being Touched in general).
• Free-Range Children: After school, Izuku and Mashi have so little oversight that they basically do whatever they want, which usually consists of Izuku building stuff while Mashi watches and requests her own builds when she's not helping him install devices into his body. Aizawa, Hizashi, and Nemuri mitigate this somewhat, but Izuku and Mashi are still unattended for much of the day.
  • Inko has become painfully aware of this after Izuku gives himself a seizure while installing his new eye. From then on she began walking him to school and having Aizawa, Hizashi, or Nemuri look after Izuku when she's not home after grounding him.
• From Stray to Pet: While there are many stray cats that flock to Izuku and Aizawa's apartment complex, Pumpkin in particular is constantly referred to as being “very bad” at being a stray due to his overly affectionate demeanor and habit of going into Izuku's room to spend time. He's basically Izuku's pet in all but name.
• The Gadfly: Compared to his canon counterpart who Cannot Tell a Joke, Izuku's overwhelming intelligence and association with Aizawa have given him a dry wit, prodding at others for a quick laugh, like the time he pointed out Mashi's crush on Midnight to Nemuri.
  Izuku: [bluntly] Mashi has a big fat crush on Midnight.
  Mashi: [Luminescent Blush and shrieking] ZUZU!! [Izuku smiles back]
  Izuku: She shows a lot of skin.
  Mashi: [groaning] Oh, give it a rest, Zuzu! Please!!
• Gadgeteer Genius: Izuku is a budding chemist, engineer, programmer, roboticist, and neuroscientist who creates all of his inventions from pawnshop pieces and junk from the scrapyard.
• Genius Cripple: Izuku is ludicrously brilliant and has to be in the face of his missing eye and arm as well as his damaged spine. He's working on removing the "cripple" part with his own inventions.
• Genki Girl: Mashi is a loud and excitable girl who insists on having a staff with two cannons strapped to either end and wants her own pet xenomorph.
• Handicapped Badass: Izuku's future plans. Even with a missing eye, an amputated arm, and a damaged spine, he refuses to allow his disabilities to define him and strives to work past them to achieve his dreams.
• Hates Being Touched: Izuku here doesn't like being touched if he hasn't gotten to know you, but once you're good friends with him, he'll be very touchy-feely.
• Heel Realization:
  • Watching Izuku make all of his amazing inventions even while handicapped and Quirkless makes Katsuki realize that he's spent his entire life up to that point obsessing about how powerful his Quirk is, as well as the fact that everyone else did too. He admits that he was jealous of Izuku for being smarter and more creative than him and that he was terrified of losing his position as the best to the kid he called worthless, leaving him all alone. This was enough for the two to agree to work side-by-side rather than constantly being at each other's throats while trying to outdo the other.
  • After Inazumi has a breakdown and screams at him about the fact that he doesn't understand what the members of CUT go through every day, Katsuki makes it a point to try and be more sympathetic.
• Hook Hand: What Izuku's first prosthetic amounts to. He hates it so much that he makes his own prosthetic arm to replace it.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Katsuki eventually becomes this, realizing that Quirks aren't everything and that he can respect other talents outside of them, mending his relationship with Izuku in the process. He's still abrasive and foul-mouthed, but it's more for reasons closer to Anger Born of Worry than outright malice.
• Just a Kid: Part of his unwillingness to let others in on his work is his belief that the adults were stopping him since he's "some stupid kid", regardless of how much work or testing he puts into his creations.
  Aizawa: You’re eleven, Izuku.
  Izuku: SO?? Why does that matter? I can do stuff adults can’t. Why does my age determine how reliable my technology is?? You and everybody else always see my inventions as cute parlor tricks or a quirky part of my personality, but they aren’t! I can do this! I can DO this!!
• Kids Are Cruel: Many of the kids at Izuku's new elementary school are quick to mock Izuku for his disabilities and even steal his prosthetic arm just to get a reaction out of him.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: Aizawa takes care of the stray cats in his neighborhood. Izuku also picks up on this habit, being especially close to a fat, orange, dull-witted stray Izuku calls Pumpkin. They're so close that Izuku refuses to move Pumpkin when she sits on his head pillow, getting into an uncomfortable position instead.
  Izuku: What kind of hero would ever move a sleeping cat?
• Locked Out of the Loop: Most of the people in Izuku's life aren't given the full details of how his inventions work simply because he uses so much Techno Babble and jargon that it's difficult for anyone around him to understand. The underlying reason for him keeping it that way is his fear that they will stop him from continuing his work out of fear for his safety since no one will know quite how dangerous his experiments can be if they can't comprehend the full gravity of what he's telling them. It gets him chewed out later when his artificial eye (which doubles as a supercomputer) accidentally gives him an epileptic seizure.
• Metaphorically True: To keep his mom from worrying, Izuku told half-truths and left out certain details when he made the final decision to use his spinal implant on himself. The only thing he had completely lied about was the fact that it wasn't painless, it was excruciating.
  • When his mother finally confronts him about his self-experimentation, he agrees to talk to her about it before doing any more to reassure her, conveniently leaving out the fact that he's already installed everything he's wanted to.
• Mix-and-Match Weapon: At Mashi's behest, Izuku develops a "gunstaff", or a staff with functional blasters (that shoot bursts of compressed air and pyrotechnics) at either end. These blasts are powerful enough to damage a new polymer Izuku designed more than Katsuki's explosions could and required Mashi to wear a vest and helmet to protect herself.
• Never Recycle a Building: By Chapter 10, Mashi's connections led her to point out a decayed and abandoned two-story building for her, Izuku, and Katsuki to use as their "clubhouse". She justifies it by pointing out that it's in an inconvenient location and that it would cost too much money to knock it down or renovate it. Katsuki and Izuku point out that this is technically trespassing, even if it's a condemned building, but Mashi brushes this off by expecting Izuku to come up with a cloaking device. Even a full year later, they've still managed to get away with running around in it and are busy renovating it in their free time (though robots built by Izuku do most of the work, often while they're away). It becomes moot when Izuku ends up buying the building.
• No Indoor Voice: Hizashi, as in canon, is very loud even without his Quirk, with his "whisper" being any other person's normal volume. Mashi is also loud, and the two together send Aizawa reaching for his POMs.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: At just nine years old, Izuku has accomplished feats of mechanical engineering, computer programming, chemistry, pharmacology, and neuroscience that would leave most real-world scientists stumped.
• Original Generation: The kids at Izuku's new school are entirely original, albeit most of them aren't fleshed out and are mainly there to demonstrate Kids Are Cruel with the exception of Mashi.
• Parental Neglect:
  • Hisashi is more present in Izuku's life than in canon at first but finds himself spending long periods of time away from home after Izuku's injuries. By the time Izuku is twelve years old, he has stopped calling Hisashi his father, going so far as to derisively refer to him as a "sperm donor".
  • Shinsou's parents aren't much better. They provide food, a roof, and other things to survive, but don't cook for him or really have anything to do with him. He mentions that one time he ran away for three days, and when he returned home they didn't even realize he'd done so.
• Persona Non Grata: Izuku's prosthetics are so ridiculously beyond the doctors at the local hospital that they're bewildered on how to treat him after he gives himself a seizure. After he recovers, Dr. Kenta tells Izuku that he'd better not end up back at the hospital because of his prosthetics again.
• Powered Armor: According to the author, Izuku will be using this as his main weapon as a hero.
• Professor Guinea Pig: His spinal implant was so experimental that no doctor would dare test it on a person, much less use it on Izuku himself. So Izuku did it to himself anyway to get his new arm working. When the adults find out, they're understandably cross with him due to how dangerous and stupid it was for a nine-year-old to experiment on himself, even if he had performed thousands of tests and trials beforehand.
  • When Izuku tries implanting his new spinal reinforcements and eye at the age of 11, it doesn't end quite as well as his new arm, resulting in a seizure that makes him lose consciousness. Luckily for him, it turned out to be a minor case of Sensory Overload from having his brain connect to his new eye's miniature supercomputer, and he's just fine afterwards.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits:
  • Frustrated with their inability to join a club in junior high school due to being continually rejected on the basis of being Quirkless, Izuku and Mashi decide to make their own club, the Club of Unrecognized Talent (CUT for short) where those ostracized like them, be they Quirkless or not, can gather (though it's also named after a place in Horizon Zero Dawn). Hitoshi Shinsou is one of its first members.
  • The Midoriya "family" is one of these, which includes Aizawa, Nemuri, Hizashi, Mashi, and Shinsou.
• A Rare Sentence:

  Mashi: This was fine. This was totally fine. She was just an eleven-year-old performing surgical-like procedures on her best friend’s spine. Totally normal.

• Real Men Wear Pink: Literally yet subverted. Aizawa wears pink sweatpants not for any personal preference, but simply because they're cheap. His favorite color is actually purple, but Aizawa refuses to let Izuku make him new sweatpants for free.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Played with.
  • Mashi points out that Izuku wouldn't even have to be a hero to help lots of people if he could just mass-produce his amazing inventions. Izuku then points out that there are still tons of kinks to iron out (namely the intense pain that comes with getting things like his prosthetic arm to work) and he doesn't feel ready to reveal his inventions on the world stage.
  • When Katsuki insists on Izuku selling his inventions to fund new projects, Izuku points out all of the difficulties in the process as well as his fear that his new technologies could be weaponized to dish out severe harm if they fall into the wrong hands since patents involve making the process used to create and mass produce an invention along with its properties public. He does patent and license his Hera material for sports equipment, receiving 600,000 yen^note $5,469 from one of his two licensees as an upfront payment and 1,200,000 yen ($10,833.60) as his 2% monthly royalty check, allowing his mom to leave her stressful day job (though she still goes in if they need help or someone calls out sick).
• Robotic Reveal: Izuku tried to spend his junior high school debut like a normal kid, hiding his prosthetics by making them as life-like as possible so no one would judge him for them. Izuku drops the act when a bully harasses another Quirkless boy, allowing his eye to glow red before stopping the bully's fist with ease.
• Scars Are Forever: Even six years after the accident, the left side of Izuku's face is still badly scarred from the incident that took his eye and arm, with scars streaking from his eye to his jaw. The bones of his eye socket are also visible. While he still managed to keep his eyelids, one of them has a clearly healed split down the middle. He thinks it looks freakish and laments that he won't be able to get rid of his scars even after he installs a new eye. Mashi is initially shocked at the sight of them but then tells him that no one will care once the eye is completely installed.
• Sensory Overload: Izuku's new eye subjects him to this, giving him an epileptic seizure after it's turned on for the first time due to the influx of information he was getting from the internet and was being beamed directly into his brain. Luckily for him, there's no lasting harm, as his brain was simply trying to get used to sharing its processing power with a computer.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: This Izuku uses words well above his age level as yet another display of his incredible genius.
• Shout-Out: To Yesterday Upon The Stair. While recuperating at the hospital after the villain attack that left him crippled, he meets a girl named Rei whose Quirk allows her to melt and reconstitute her body. She loves using this to scare others, not unlike the Rei in Yesterday Upon The Stair.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Katsuki, as usual. Mashi isn't much better.
• Struggling Single Mother: Unlike her canon counterpart, Inko has to take up a job in order to pay for Izuku's medical bills while Hisashi is continually absent from his son's life. This means that she can't spend much time with Izuku, leaving him to his own devices while she worries about all the things he's doing to himself.
• Team Mom: Midoriya Inko has pretty much taken up this role for the Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits in her home, including the (younger than her) adults Aizawa, Nemuri, and Hizashi. Aizawa even calls her 'mom' once (to his embarrassment once he realizes it). The first time he brings Shinsou to visit, Izuku even tells him she has a habit of taking in people who need help.
• Theme Naming: Izuku has gotten into naming his most useful inventions after the Olympian Gods.
  • Hera: Super shock-absorbing material with multiple states.
  • Ares: Offensive Weapons System
  • Nike: Mobility System
  • Hephaestus: Machine Building System
  • Hermes: Teleportation System
  • Apollo: High Capacity Memory System
  • Poseidon: Ocean and Water Cleaning System
  • Persephone: Land Cleaning System
  • Demeter: Resource Gathering System
  • Artemis: Tracking System
  • Mashi names her inventions after Egyptian Mythology while Katsuki's are named after Norse Mythology.
• Throwing Off the Disability: Izuku's final goal is to become a hero and be able to make up for his physical deficiencies with his inventions, which he has already started by becoming strong enough to walk again (albeit not without aches and pains if he's moving any faster than a brisk walk) and by replacing his missing arm. He's been working on replacing his eye since he was seven, succeeding in Chapter 12 along with installing spinal reinforcements to allow him to walk normally again.
  • He finally installs his new eye and spinal implants at 11 years old, allowing him to walk normally and have full depth perception for the first time since the fateful villain attack. But then something goes wrong and he has a seizure.
• Time Skip: The story regularly skips through entire years to get to the parts where Izuku has finished an important invention.
• Tranquil Fury:
  • Kaito's gang at school ends up giving Mashi a concussion, Izuku is stunned and panicked as he tries to resuscitate her. When Kaito begins to taunt Izuku about his disabilities again, our hero becomes menacingly soft-spoken to the point of sounding like a Mad Scientist while under the influence of Kaito's Truth Serum Quirk. When Izuku snaps to his senses, even he is horrified by what he just said, to the point that he questions his own qualifications to become a hero.
    Kaito: But you’re quirkless, Midoriya-kun! You can’t be a hero. Come on, you must have been taught this before?
    Izuku: People have attempted to teach me, yes, but people also used to teach that the Earth was the center of the universe, or that diving under your desk would help you survive a nuclear explosion, or that we only use ten percent of our brains at a time... [Izuku tilts his head] Why would it be out of the realm of possibility for me to be one of these many false lessons? [gives Kaito a Death Glare] Although… That ten percent of the brain thing may still apply to you. I am uncertain. Would you be willing to let me run tests on you?
  • A boy mistreats Ken in school and Izuku calmly and silently tases them.
• Villains Out Shopping: The gang is visited by Tomura Shigaraki, who is genuinely friendly to Izuku and co. and expresses interest in their inventions.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Izuku and Katsuki become this after mending their relationship, making jabs at each other every now and then but remaining genuinely helpful and overall amiable compared to their canon relationship.
  • Katsuki has this relationship with Mashi, Ken, and Shinsou as well.
• We Used to Be Friends: Izuku and Katsuki. When they were younger, they were extremely close, designing all sorts of gadgets together, including the Firework Flasher that was Izuku's last gift to him before they had to move apart due to the Midoriyas' financial troubles. The next time they see each other, Katsuki has gone full Jerkass as he is in canon, deriding Izuku as a worthless Quirkless cripple. They begin to mend the bridge later, but he still derisively refers to Izuku as Deku, but Izuku notes that Katsuki left out the "shitty" part at least.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Original Character Inazumi Ken is mentioned to have worn skirts and had his hair in pigtails in elementary school. Turns out that Inazumi Ken is a trans boy and thus was Recursive Crossdressing as a girl.
• Workaholic: When Izuku is invested in an idea, he easily loses track of time, to the point that he once spent days working on worker robots and forgot the last time he slept.
  Mashi: This is... really intense... Like… holy shit, Zuzu, this is SO COOL, but, uh... When was the last time you slept?
  Izuku: I’ve... slept... [Beat] Recently...
  Mashi: How recently?
  Izuku: I... I don’t know...? I just… I just really wanted to do this... There was... so much... [begins to keel over]

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