Spacetime Anomaly: MHA Fanfic

Chapter 7.2: No Friends

With breakfast taken care of and around another hour and a half to kill, Izuku returned to his room and thought through the potential conversation topics he and Mina might later discuss. As they were both aspiring heroes already accepted into the best Hero Academia in all of Japan and arguably the entire world, they had already talked a lot about Quirks and the various pros they liked. He suddenly found himself panicked as there simply wasn't much to his life besides his obsession with heroics. What else could they possibly talk about? Academics? Medicine? That was basically all the boy knew!

Needless to say, the next couple of hours were spent anxiously brainstorming for conversation points that were worth bringing up to no avail. Eventually, the time to leave was just around the corner, so Izuku put on a rather plain outfit, very much in the style of the tracksuit he donned while at the site of the practical exam. Noticing his depressingly plain wardrobe, Izuku sighed, thinking, 'Guess it's true that the clothes make the man. My plain old clothes are true to my plain personality...'

He didn't beat himself up too badly over it as Mina was bound to be in charge of the whole exchange as she had their conversations since the two met. Only the worry of being too boring for her tastes and discarded as he had in his last attempts at friendship remained as the plain-looking, plain-dressed Spacetime Esper walked out of his house and over to the nearest train station.

The train ride over to the station closest to Yoyoji Park was less than five minutes long, making the whole trip from his house to the predetermined stop less than fifteen minutes altogether. Izuku was almost fifteen minutes early, taking a seat on one of the free benches in the park as he texted Mina that she could find him by the eastern entrance of the park.

He didn't have to wait long for Mina as she didn't even respond to his text, instead, he could hear her shouting his name as she approached from the southwestern side of the park. Clearly, she had gotten there even earlier than him, though for some reason she hadn't said anything through text.

Without missing a beat, Izuku stood up from his seated position and met Mina halfway. "Sorry to keep you waiting," despite being early himself, he thought it was only appropriate to apologize.

Mina lightly smacked his shoulder as she said, "Don't kid yourself, I just got here, too~" She led him deeper into the park with the explanation that it would be better to take in some of the better sights the park had to offer while they talked.

When they finally found themselves in a cozy enough stop to settle down, Mina tested the waters by asking Izuku, "You weren't serious about that only friend thing, right?" It was bothering her that she could see him not kidding about this sort of thing from the way they had previously talked.

"Like I said, you're the only friend I have so long as you consider us friends," Izuku deadpanned. Going by the tone in Mina's voice he figured out the question didn't come from a place of malice or as an insult, but he couldn't find any other way to answer than by setting the cold harsh truth out with little cushioning.

"Damn, I really can't see how that's possible considering your Quirk. You seem approachable enough to me… Has no one really tried to hang out with you at school?" Naturally, from what little Mina understood about Izuku there were simply too many things wrong with his words.

"I… I don't go to school," Izuku elaborated, "until now, I've been homeschooled. And about my 'Quirk...' I don't have one."

"Um… what?" Mina not sure where to even begin, just shot him a confused look. Now much more interested, she first asked, "Didn't you call your Quirk Spacetime Manipulation, when we met after the practical exam?"

"Well, I called my power 'Spacetime Manipulation,' but it's technically not a Quirk. You see, my body doesn't produce Quirk Factor and all the tell-tale signs of a Quirk being present in my body are in reality absent." Seeing the confusion on her face, he explained it as best as he could, "Think of it like this, Quirk Factor is like the hormone the human body produces to regulate and active a Quirk; everyone has it. You, for instance, will secrete acid through the activation of your Quirk Factor, whereas someone like Endeavour will materialize fire. My power comes from what I call mental strength, and though it looks and works like an Emitter-type Quirk, they aren't one and the same..."

"Whoa, it's just like you to be a cut above the rest of us..." Mina mumbled to herself, before she then said, "I figured there was something odd about your Quir- power… since you have so many applications. How deep does this mental strength of yours go? I mean, besides what we've talked about, what other powers do you have?" She was genuinely curious as she now found her previous line of thinking to be too limited. If what Izuku had wasn't a Quirk and if this power he possessed already seemed so impressive, what other tricks could the boy have lying in store?

"Powers?" Izuku thought for a second before he stood up and grabbed a budding flower. With the flower in hand his eyes flickered to life with a cyan hue as he explained, "Well, I can accelerate the rate of time an object experiences." As the flower in his hand lit up with a tinge of cyan it bloomed before withering away within the span of five seconds. "I can also slow down, stop and even rewind time," he said as he let the flower in his hand revert to its blooming state, right when it was at its most beautiful before he gave it to Mina.

"Though, stopping and rewinding time is much more draining," Izuku shook his head helplessly as he further explained some of his powers, "I can see through, lock, contract, warp, and tear space, manipulate gravity, and I'm starting to figure out teleportation."

When he was finally done and stole a glance Mina's way, Izuku thought he had shocked her to death. "Are you… alright?" He worriedly scanned her over for signs of trauma; both physical and emotional…

"I'm alright… It's just a bit too much to suddenly hear you list so many useful abilities. You know, each of them could a Quirk by themselves, right?" She had a point, Izuku was what amounted to the ultimate amalgamation of Space and Time-related Quirks. His self-titled power of Spacetime Manipulation suddenly seemed a lot more reasonable; albeit, a tad under-representative of his true strength.

"I guess you're right… But that just about boils down all of my Esper powers."

"Esper?"

"It's what I've come to call my powers. You know, since they're not technically a Quirk."

"Mhmm..." Mina went quiet for a couple of seconds before she suddenly brought back the topic of his almost-friendless status. "And about you being homeschooled… that's kind of a shocker seeing how rare that is in today's day and age. How long have you been homeschooled?"

"I was homeschooled for about nine years. Last year was when I finally started working towards my Bachelor's and-" Before he could continue any further Mina was flailing about in an attempt to get a word in. She quickly said, "B-bachelors? As in a University Degree?" Though she had been by Izuku long enough to see him confront the Youthful Heroine the day of the U.A.'s Entrance Exam, she'd given him the courtesy of space and was out of earshot to hear that he had earned an M.D.; never mind a mere Bachelor's Degree.

As Izuku showed her the same pictures he had shown to Recovery Girl and told Mina about his life as a self-study scholar, she visibly paled at the thought of all the work the young man before her had done throughout his life. He started homeschool at the age of four. For nine abysmal years, he studied and studied HARD; hard enough to not only complete high school by the time he should have been a middle schooler, but by the time he should have been a senior in junior high, he had acquired a MEDICAL F.U.C.K.I.N.G LICENSE? Mina wasn't one to curse, but even she couldn't help but express the gravity of what she considered to be a hellish life in any way that didn't involve a string of expletives.