You Only Tell The Truth

1. Cassandra, Cassandra

When Izuku Midoriya is four, he is told that he will never have a Quirk.

Poor Izuku is still shocked by the Doctor's statement hours later; he's sat on his desk chair, the cold pleather thawing against his trembling skin, while his mother comforts him over not being able to become a Hero. Their tears mingle as she pulls him close to her body and wraps her arms about him tightly – just as he'd expected she would.

It wasn't the sense of crushing defeat that had shaken him, so much as the fact that he'd seen the whole event – how he'd trip over his laces going down the hallway to the consultation room, the x-ray machine sounding funny, his All Might Figure slipping from his fingers, and the finite diagnosis and dismissal of his worth as a person – prior to these events actually happening. Izuku had literally seen it all play out before his eyes five minutes before they entered the hospital's lobby, and then had sat numbly through them each moment again. His skin prickled with a feeling of wrongness, but at the same time it was all too familiar and right.

His mother believed that he was only moping over the loss of his dream; she did her best to cheer him with his favourite foods, reruns the anime he liked best, and even letting him stay up a little past his bedtime to watch the news when they returned home. Izuku liked to keep note of the major Villain and Hero battles that had happened, even at his young age; Inko was always amused when her son could predict who would win the fight onscreen.

Naturally, it was the hero, but Izuku would call it far earlier the news announcer or the played footage. Izuku, when older, would look back on those memories. He wouldn't be sure if knowing the outcomes of the fights on the news was a given, or whether the Doctor had been totally wrong.

He sees sparks dance by his shoulder – Kacchan's fault, no doubt – the next day in kindergarten, and sure enough Katsuki Bakugou's hands light up and smack his skin as soon as they're dismissed for playtime. Kacchan's words are always the same, no matter how much Izuku protests.

Quirkless. Crybaby. Useless. Freak.

Izuku hates it when Kacchan and the rest of the children turn away from him, but there's nothing he can do to stop their teasing. Their words cut deep, but Izuku's protests and pleas for them to believe he isn't Quirkless going unnoticed cuts far deeper. Life would eventually move on, though Izuku Midoriya and his Quirk would always be one step ahead of the fates of both himself and those around him.

The only problem was that no one believed him when he tried to help.

At thirteen, Izuku is old enough for his mother not to worry so much about him. He's tried over the years to convince people about his Quirk, to little avail, so she was still overbearingly protective on occasion.

He was her only child, her protectiveness was warranted. His 'Quirkless' status, however, had her wrapping him up in cotton wool for most of Izuku's childhood.

Of course no one would believe the pathetic Quirkless child, who was so desperate for recognition amongst his peers that he fabricated stories. Some of his classmates found it 'freaky' – their words, not his – whenever Izuku helpfully told them to try and avoid certain areas of the city on their way home, not to get the curry from the cafeteria that lunchtime, or even putting his hundred-yen's worth into a discussion about what the result of a major cliff hanger meant when the newest episode of a drama aired that evening.

They would scoff and roll their eyes; tell him to back off and butt out of their business. When Izuku's predictions and advice turned out to be true, they wouldn't thank him for his efforts or excitedly discuss how he knew what would happen. They would call it a coincidence and move on.

Izuku had since learnt that unless he could help with minor emergencies, he shouldn't open his mouth and speak of what he saw in advance. No one believed that he had a Quirk, so why would they believe he had good intentions?

His mother demands he carry his phone with him at all times, should he need it. Inko Midoriya knows her son well – hidden Quirk aside. Izuku gets distracted frequently; his focus ranges from hyper vigilantly documenting the Quirks of Heroes and Villains one minute, to being dazed – as though he walked through his day dreams or saw things others did not – the next. At first Izuku finds this condition of his mother's tedious, but now that he's older and allowed to roam the city afterschool without her fearing him being run over, all because he wasn't paying attention to the road (it had come close to that before, when a vision hit him in the middle of a crossing) he doesn't mind the fussing so much.

Now the phone is a useful tool. It's been upgraded through the years from a fairly basic flip-phone, with just enough money placed on it for simple distress calls or reassuring texts to his panicked mother, to a sleek touchscreen that he can be trusted not to lose or drop. Izuku knew the expensive phone was being gifted to him a month or so in advance, so discreetly pooled his allowance together a week prior to Inko dropping the gift bag in his hands in order to buy the sturdiest case he could find, and a tough screen protector too.

Four hours after setting the phone up and placing the extra protection on without his mother noticing, she sends him to the store on a quick errand. The phone slips out of his hand as he trudges down the apartment block's stairs, but there's no signs of cracking, scratches or dints on it when he hurriedly checks the device over.

The case had been a good idea.

The new phone's wide, vibrant screen displays the time in large lettering unlike his last one. He'd even found an application with a clock that ran like a stopwatch, precisely ticking off the points-of-a-second rather than just the regular minutes and hours.

Izuku is meandering through the city, trying to make his way home. The clock on his phone reads 17:43:59 – no, 17:44PM. He places the device back into his pocket with a despondent sigh. There has been a distinct lack of Villain activity today. Nothing notable for him to write down; the new phone allows him to make notes and back them up onto the computer at home. It was far superior to handwriting everything in notebooks like he did when he was younger; there was less to go wrong and no deciphering his sprawling handwriting at the end of the day.

Izuku feels the skin at the back of his neck go cold. He suppresses a shiver as he stands by a crossing, waiting for the green walking man signal to appear on the lights. He pulls his phone from his trouser pocket and stares intently at the clock on the home screen. The whirring numbers are transfixing to watch after what his eyes have just witnessed.

This part of the city is quiet. Workers and school students are either already home or staying out later – thus missing the lull of activity before rush hour began. One other person waits at the crossing with Izuku. Their skin is flushed, the sleeves of their suit jacket scrunched. The man beside Izuku has a bad habit of pushing up his shirtsleeves then, possibly when he's agitated or stressed; he'd done it to his suit jacket unconsciously. The man is red-faced and huffing out short restless breaths.

Is he angry, in a rush, or both? Izuku wonders.

All of Izuku's guesses are correct, though he's not to know that. The man's knuckles are white from how hard he grips his briefcase handle; the wedding ring on his hand is basking in the flushed, bloody hue of his fisted fingers. He shifts restlessly from foot to foot, like a sprinter settling into the blocks before a race.

The man is in a hurry. This man should really calm down and look both ways before he strides across the road, even if he's preoccupied with other things, like rage. Izuku's eyes flick back to his phone. The pedestrian signal turns to green. There are no cars waiting behind the now red lights, so it should be safe to walk across.

Izuku has ten seconds to act.

The angry man tugs his briefcase close to his side before he steps out onto the crossing – Eight – Izuku grabs hold of the back of his suit jacket – Five – despite the man's best and enraged efforts to shake the strange middle schooler off, he is tugged back to the pavement where the two had been stood only moments prior.

The man drops his briefcase in surprise. "What do you think you're-"

Further up the street, a distracted driver hits a small but significant oil spill. In the confusion of the car's resulting skid, the driver panics and hits the accelerator instead of the break peddle. – Three – The car careers about the road, spinning past the crossing until it finally collides with a bollard on the other side of the street the car would initially be driving on.

Had Izuku not held the man back, he would have been taken along with the car.

The outcome would not have been a pretty sight for anyone to behold.

– Zero –

"I'm sorry to have inconvenienced you. You looked as though you were in a hurry." Izuku murmurs a polite apology, offers the startled, gaping man (who's face is now bone white instead of angry red) a sincere bow, and then crosses the road as though nothing had happened at all.

Later, when he'd finished his science homework and finally logged onto his computer to check if the notes on his phone had been backed up, Izuku would check the local news webpage and find that the only thing significantly damaged in the accident was the car.

He breathes a tiny sigh of relief, powers down the computer, and calls it a night.