For Want of a Notebook

An overheard rumor. A missing notebook. An overheard dream. An overheard fight. An overheard secret. - Midoriya Izuku and Yaoyorozu Momo meet months before the events of the manga. Their friendship steadily deepens, along with their feelings for one another, as their heroic destinies become forever entwined. [Set during Izuku's final year of middle school.] (IzuMomo) (AU)

Chapter One

Being Quirkless was not some sort of curse. Not really. Life and the media had a tendency to make people think that way, but it was an unfair judgment. And while you wouldn't see these sorts of people saving the day in tights and a cape, Quirkless folks were as integral to society as any person with super strength or super speed. Law enforcement, emergency services, education, entertainment, food service, transportation, research and development, business, politics...none of these fields required some powerful Quirk in order to succeed, and all of them were important cogs in the machine of society. An absence of any one them could very well bring the machine grinding to a halt. It was no shame to be a part of such a field.

But to a Quirkless boy with a big dream and a bigger heart? To such a boy, that sort of logic felt like no more than empty platitudes.

Midoriya Izuku, age 14, stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Tomorrow marked the beginning of his final year of middle school, the time in every student's life where it became necessary to decide on the course of their future. That part was easy, after a fashion. For Izuku, there could be only one option – Yuuei, Japan's most famous and influential Hero Academy. It was the alma mater of his idol, All-Might, Japan's Number One Hero. No other school in the nation could match Yuuei's reputation or resources. Unfortunately, that all came with a catch.

Getting accepted into a Hero Course was never easy, but Yuuei's entry requirements were notoriously difficult. Exam and Course specifics tended to be kept on the down low, and one needed only to glance at the class rosters, the graduates, the teachers, or the Hero Ranking Chart to know the kind of ability demanded of applicants. Quirks with extreme effects like Mount Lady's Gigantification, or incredibly flashy Quirks like Endeavor's Pyrokinesis, were usually the shoe-ins. Ultimately, whomever Izuku approached always told him the same thing when asked if they thought he could become a Hero...

"It's impossible..."

"You should give up..."

"I'm sorry, Izuku!"

"DEKU!"

In the ten years since he'd learned of his Quirkless nature in that doctor's office, nobody had believed in him. To everyone around him, Izuku's dream seemed a hurdle too high to leap, a mountain too high to climb. Gazing at himself in the mirror, he considered that it might be time to change that way of thinking...

...because today, when he'd gone to purchase himself a new notebook for his Quirk research, he'd overheard something incredible!

"You know about it, right?"

"Oh, you mean that rumor? The one about Yuuei?"

"Crazy, right? I mean, getting into the Hero Course without taking the exam? Without even a recommendation from a Pro? Isn't the point that you have to prove yourself?"

"Well, I mean, it's not so crazy. My cousin has this friend that failed to get in three years ago. She said they stack the deck."

"Stack the deck? What's that supposed to mean?"

"She said the test is totally geared towards combat Quirks. Big, flashy stuff. Stuff like All Might or Endeavor, ya know?"

"So, how does that make it unfair? I mean, you just used the Number One and Number Two Heroes in your example, so isn't that sort of thing better for the job?"

"Well, that's probably true for the rankings. My cousin said his friend's Quirk is pretty amazing, though."

"Oh? Amazing how?"

"She can put living creatures that hear her sing to sleep."

"Whoa. So, kinda like Midnight's Pheromone Quirk, right? How the heck did she fail?"

"They were fighting robots in some sort of points system thing. She had no chance right from the start."

"Bummer. What does that have to do with the rumor, though?"

"Well, she'd aced the written part, ya know? And you have to tell them your Quirk when you apply. Well, the Principal offered her a seat in General Studies. Apparently, there's a way to transfer into the Hero Course after the Sports Festival."

"Sports festival?"

"You know it's a big thing every year? Well, that's so students can show off to all the Hero agencies. And that means that, if somebody from the Support Course or General Studies managed to place in the top three during the competition, the school would all but have to move them over to the Hero Course!"

"Ah! And they do that tournament thing, right? Facing off against other students, right? Her Quirk would totally dominate! Oh...wait, I don't remember that sort of thing happening. Did she not compete? What did she do?"

"She turned the Principal's offer down. Wound up attending some sort of fancy Hero Academy in Europe. Totally shot down my cousin when he confessed his love to her, too, haha! Poor guy was inconsolable for a week! She goes by Lullaby, these days. She's pretty popular in France."

"Hey, uh, dude? I think that creepy, mumbling kid has been listening to us talk this whole time..."

Izuku had apologized profusely for eavesdropping at the time, of course. He supposed he should count himself lucky that they hadn't been the bullying type. If it had been Kacchan's group...

The boy shook his head, returning to his bedroom. No sense thinking about that sort of thing now. What was important was what he had learned. If he wanted to get into the Hero Course, he didn't actually need to take the Hero Exam! Even if he only aimed for General Studies, he'd have to study hard. If he wanted to get into Support, he'd need to study even harder, and he'd definitely have to learn to build things. And, regardless of which course he aimed for, he'd need to get stronger. He could work out, learn martial arts, maybe take up the use of throwing knives, something, anything, it didn't matter! He now had a way to achieve his dream by the time he reached high school, even if it meant having to wait until his first-year Sports Festival!

Grinning excitedly, Izuku opened his backpack in search of that new notebook he'd gone to buy. He'd use that to start mapping out his grand plan, and...wait...

Suddenly anxious, the young boy opened the bag even wider, going so far as to stick his whole head inside. The only notebook within was his old one, filled front to back with 'hero research' notes. Realization dawned upon him, as all color drained from his face.

"I...I..."

Slapping both hands to his face in embarrassment, despite the fact that there was nobody else around to see, the boy screamed toward the heavens.

"I FORGOT TO BUY A NEW NOTEBOOK!"

In an awkward rush, the boy quickly shoved the old notebook into his backpack, threw the straps over each shoulder, and bolted out the door, bound for the stationery store for the second time that day.

Izuku was very happy that he'd caught his mistake before closing hours, and even happier that it was still daylight outside. The store wasn't really far from his home, just a twenty minute walk, but he wasn't the sort to go wandering the streets after dark. That kind of thing required a bit more confidence than he suspected he'd have for awhile yet. It was simply the way of things for a boy in Izuku's position, after all. He did plan to work on it after today, now that he had a clear goal in mind for getting into Yuuei's Hero Course.

Entering through the shop's door, accompanied by the soft chiming of a bell, Izuku swiftly rushed over to the spot where his preferred brand of composition notebooks could be found.

"In a bit of a hurry today, are we, Midoriya-kun?" the store's owner, a kindly old woman with fangs and mildly feline features, called out to him. "I thought I saw you outside earlier, but you never came into the store. I thought I must have been mistaken."

"Oh, um, I w-was here earlier," Izuku replied, his face coloring slightly as he took a notebook from the shelf. "Um, I j-just got a little, er, d-distracted. B-before I even realized it, I'd w-walked all the way home."

It wasn't a lie, even if he didn't share the part where he'd been eavesdropping on a pair of older teens for an entire conversation.

The elderly lady behind the counter chuckled. "You get too invested in your note-taking? You buy new books often enough that it doesn't surprise me. Probably expected to fill out the rest of your of your old notebook on the way here, but hadn't finished by the time you arrived, right?"

"T-that's not what happened!" the boy defensively declared. That was true...though such a thing had happened in the past. "I just h-had a sort of...e-epiphany, I guess."

"Ooooh, an epiphany," teased the shopkeeper, though she meant it in good humor. It wasn't intended to be mean, she had just been acquainted with the nervous boy and his mother for a long time now, so she knew the best ways to get a reaction from him. "What was it you had this epiphany about, child?"

Izuku's face reddened again. Well, he supposed he could tell her. She'd probably have about the same reaction as his mother, but that was okay. He kind of wanted to share the excitement and hope he was feeling with somebody.

"I, um, finally figured out a way to become a Pro Hero...maybe," he said softly while the old woman rang up his item.

To her credit, she didn't laugh at him. Instead, she simply sighed and shook her head, a typical adult's response to something they didn't care for, but had become accustomed to hearing. A soft chime sounded from the doorway as the shopkeeper counted out his change.

"I'm not going to try and dissuade you, child," she softly remarked. "That sort of thing isn't my place. I take it you know where you want to go?"

"Y-yeah!" Izuku enthusiastically replied. "I'm going to apply for Yuuei!"

There was a loud clatter from behind Izuku, though he noticed no one when he glanced back toward the aisles.

Somebody must have dropped something, he thought, as he accepted his change from the old woman.

In that same moment, the backroom telephone began ringing. With the shopkeeper's back turned away as she rushed to answer the call, Izuku was left helpless when three pairs of hands suddenly hoisted him off his feet, swiftly dragging him out the front doorway and into the alley adjacent to the shop. As the Quirkless boy was roughly shoved against the wall of the neighboring building, he finally managed to get a view of his attackers...and all blood drained from his face upon the realization that mentioning Yuuei to the elderly woman had been a horrible, horrible mistake.

Before him stood Bakugou Katsuki and his two cronies, his once-friends that long ago had become his most fervently terrible bullies and tormentors, glaring so ferociously at Izuku that he very nearly pissed himself in sheer terror. Kacchan – for Izuku still thought of him as such, even after nearly a decade of abuse – looked positively murderous, his face twisted into a snarl, and his left hand clenching open and closed as he used his Quirk to set off miniature explosions in his palm.

"Just what the HELL was that NONSENSE you were spewing, DEKU?!" the blonde teen growled as his two henchmen sneered from either side of him toward Izuku.

There it was.

That name.

Izuku only ever heard that moniker from his former friend anymore, ever since the day his preschool class learned that he had no Quirk.

Deku. An object with no value, like a bucket with a hole in the bottom.

Worthless.

"I asked you a QUESTION, you pathetic piece of gutter trash!" Kacchan raged. "Where do you get off sayin' that some talentless, Quirkless, worthless pebble like you is gonna go to Yuuei?!"

"Oi, Bakugou! Get a load of this!" said one of Kacchan's cronies, who'd taken to looking through Izuku's pilfered backpack. "The nerd's already studyin' for exams! Check out his notebook!"

No, thought Izuku, as the bully opened up the notebook. It was Izuku's old one, the one where he wrote all of his observations, the one he'd filled up. No, no, no! Don't touch that! That isn't yours! Stop it!

Crony Two swiped the notebook from Crony One's hands, laughing uproariously as he flipped through the pages. "Pfffffft, Hero Research! What the hell kind of otaku bullshit is this?"

The bully's laughter suddenly died off, however, as he turned to a particular page. The boy's sneer turned into a menacing scowl as he looked over the contents.

"Dude, Bakugou," he muttered, holding the notebook out to Kacchan with only his thumb and forefinger, as if it was a disgusting old gym sock. "The little creep's been writing shit about you!"

Unable to take anymore of this, Izuku made an attempt to grab the notebook. Catching the movement, Bakugou clutched at the boy's shirt collar, using Izuku's own momentum against him as he sent the boy hurtling toward the wall opposite his previous position. It had been Kacchan's intention to slam him back-first...

...that, however, hadn't been what happened.

Izuku's shoelaces had come untied as he'd been dragged out of the store. As such, when Bakugou redirected the boy's movement, he'd wound up losing his footing. The end result was Izuku face-planting into solid wall. Hard.

The boy cried out in pain as the left side of his face smashed against the barrier. He clutched uselessly at the wound with both hands, dropping to his back and writhing on the ground. He could hear Bakugou's pair of goons laughing at his misery, though Kacchan himself remained noticeably silent.

"Tch! Seriously, Deku? How pathetic can you get?" the blonde boy said. He spit out the words like he was trying to clear a bad taste from his mouth.

"Shit!" called out Crony One. "Bakugou, someone's coming! We need to go!"

The telltale boom of a miniature explosion rang in Izuku's ears, followed by the slap of a notebook hitting the ground near his head. His Hero Research had been thoroughly toasted by Kacchan's Quirk.

"That injury ain't my fault, Deku," Bakugou snarled at him from right next to his ear, the sound of his voice even more terrifying as a whisper than it had been as a shout. "You tripped over your own damn feet. Remember that, and think twice before you ever try to reach above your station again. Know your place in this world, because I will not allow you to get in my way."

There was the sound of rapid footsteps in both directions as Kacchan and the other two made their escape, signaling to Izuku that somebody else had approached the alley from the storefront side. The green-haired youth managed to sit himself up against the wall, left hand covering the side of his face that bashed against the side of the shop. His vision was a bit hazy, and he could tell from the tenderness of his face that he'd be pretty bruised, but his eye hadn't swollen shut or anything, so that was a plus. He brought his hand away from his face to glance at it. There was blood on his palm, though not a lot.

I probably got a small cut on impact, he thought, returning his hand to his face. But it isn't too bad. Mom's still gonna have a fit when she sees, though...

"Oh, my goodness!" cried a voice. It was feminine-sounding, though not the voice of the old shopkeeper. Younger, probably his age. A teenage girl? "Sebastian, bring the car around! Someone's hurt!"

Izuku felt a hand on his right shoulder, and he turned to face the person whose arrival had inadvertently frightened away his bullies...

...only to peer directly into a pair of large, almondine eyes, with irises so deeply brown in color as to be near-black, mere inches from his own face. For half a moment, he utterly failed to process the other person's proximity. Those eyes...

Then the moment was gone, and Izuku felt his face flush.

S-she's too c-close! Too close!

He tried to scoot away from the girl (it was a girl!), but there just so happened to be a wall there. Fortunately for Izuku's blood pressure, the girl seemed to notice that she'd moved a bit too deeply into the boy's personal space. Swiftly, she backed away from him, coming to a sitting position on her knees and glancing off to one side.

"Pardon me," the girl spoke, her voice soft. "Are you alright? You're injured. Were you mugged?"

Izuku had some trouble finding his tongue for a moment. A girl his age was talking to him! She was concerned about him! She...witnessed the aftermath of him getting beat up...wow...that was some depressing first encounter. The boy didn't notice that his focus had shifted back to her eyes, or that she cocked her head to one side with a look of curiosity. When he did realize he'd been staring (and mumbling – Oh, god, he'd been doing the mumbling thing!) he let out a nervous cough that was very nearly a yelp.

"Ah! U-um, no!" he declared, a bit too loudly. He flinched at his own volume. "N-no, I wasn't m-mugged. Those were j-just...some guys I h-happen to know..."

"Did they do that to you?" she asked, her voice becoming shockingly stern.

That injury ain't my fault, Deku.

Izuku cringed back at Kacchan's words in his mind. "No, they...t-they didn't do it. I t-tripped on my s-shoelaces..."

Even though he knew it was true in a strictly technical sense, the words still seemed hollow to the Quirkless boy's ears.

The mysterious girl frowned, but said nothing in response. The seconds steadily ticked by, neither teenager speaking a word. In the silence, Izuku noted the girl's appearance. She hand long black hair, tied up in a voluminous high ponytail, with pale, smooth skin, and even seated on her knees Izuku could tell she was tall. Taller than him, that much was certain. Even though she was dressed in a skirt and blouse uniform from some high-end private school that very much complemented her shapely figure, Izuku hardly noticed. His gaze kept returning to her eyes. They weren't abnormal, or an odd color, or any number of things that might seem remarkable considering the sheer possibility of Quirk mutations. Even so, the green-haired boy found himself utterly transfixed.

The sound of a vehicle pulling up alongside the alley brought Izuku sharply out of his daze, while the girl swiftly got to her feet, hands idly straightening her skirt as she did so. Looking down at Izuku, the soft smile returned, and she held her hand out to him.

"My name is Yaoyorozu Momo," the girl introduced herself. "Can you walk?"

With an almost imperceptible nod, Izuku slowly reached up and grasped the proffered hand. Immediately, there was a strange sensation like the warm tingle of static as their two grips closed over one another. Time seemed to slow to a crawl, and for a very brief instant, Izuku felt as though all of his anxieties of the past few minutes had vanished, and his heart raced in his chest. After the boy had regained his footing, the two teenagers simply stared at each other, still-joined hands forgotten.

What is...happening here?

"Ahem!"

The moment came crashing to its end, as the two teenagers frantically separated, looking toward the direction of the interruption. A foreign-looking man, possibly in his late sixties, with a perfectly trimmed white beard, equally white hair in a professionally maintained side part, and a jet black driver's uniform, stared coolly at the two of them. The expression on his face was one of stony discipline, pure and utter business.

"The car, young miss," the man bluntly stated, his accented voice a powerfully deep basso.

"Oh! Yes, of course! Thank you, Sebastian," responded Yaoyorozu, who then turned to look at Izuku. "Please, allow us to give you a ride home. I can bandage your wound on the way, um..."

The girl trailed off, and the green-haired youth realized he'd never introduced himself. "O-oh! I'm s-so sorry! I'm Midoriya Izuku! It's a p-pleasure to meet you, and t-thank you for your g-generosity!"

"Not at all! The pleasure is mine. As I mentioned before, I'm Yaoyorozu Momo. This gentleman is my driver, Sebastian."

Said driver opened the rearmost passenger-side door of the car, which Izuku only just realized was actually a sleek, black limousine. He fought to keep himself from gawking. Had he been rescued by some sort of princess?

"Please, young miss," the driver pleaded, though his voice was the epitome of dutiful propriety. "We are quite late, as it is."

"Of course, of course. Well, Midoriya-san?"

Under normal circumstances, Midoriya Izuku would have never even considered stepping into that vehicle.

Under normal circumstances, Midoriya Izuku would have stuttered his way nervously through fifty excuses before running home at a sprint.

Under normal circumstances, Midoriya Izuku might have realized he'd had an actual conversation with a girl his age for the first time in his life, and promptly fainted.

...but, of course, Midoriya Izuku wouldn't have been there under normal circumstances. He'd have never needed to come back to buy a new notebook, he'd have never been injured in altercation with Bakugou Katsuki and his pair of sidekick bullies, and he'd have never been rescued from further humiliation by the timely arrival of a girl out on a drive. She'd saved him.

And...the tingling feeling from when he'd held her hand...it hadn't abated.

So, with a nod, Midoriya Izuku gathered his fallen backpack and notebooks, and climbed into the back the car with Yaoyorozu Momo.

His hero.