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Izuku is walking down a deserted street when he hears it.
A rush of crackling ice fills his ears, and for a second he's worried that a villain is attacking him, before he hears a triumphant cry so jubilant and cheery it can't be from anyone but a pro hero. Before he realises it, he's rushing down the street and turning the corner, eyes darting around in search of the fight. Before him stands a diminutive man with blonde hair that sweeps to the side. Hero Analysis For The Future #10 is in his hands in an instant, a pen already scribbling down notes on the next blank page.
"An ice creation Quirk that moves around people without a problem," he writes, noticing the way the hero's opponent - a villain with a minor transformation Quirk, by the looks of it - seems to be encased in ice without any damage. Izuku can see him struggling against the ice with his few free limbs, but those in the ice are completely immobilised. He marks the first line with a checkmark, an assurance of his confidence in that particular observation. "Costume appears to be a plain white shirt with a rose; maybe it's like All Might's sidekick's costume? No damage..."
He's still writing theories about what the Hero's costume is made of - some sort of kevlar weave, or perhaps a Quirk-infused material, he'll have to sort through the internet when he gets home to see what might work - when he hears the hero speak. "Don't worry, ma'am! You won't have to bear those wounds anymore, kuma!" Izuku's halfway through writing 'First Aid skills' when the man shouts "Bearsona!" and a massive thing appears behind him, vaguely shaped like a missile and garishly coloured. Izuku stares at it for a second longer as he watches green energy envelop the villain's victim, healing a set of scratches on her arm.
"A summoning Quirk with restorative abilities? But how would that explain the ice? Is he using it to close the wounds and then freeze them shut?" Glancing over his notebook, he can't help but note the woman's shocked look, the hero's somewhat confused but still smiling face, and the villain's unsubdued anger, only now it's mingling with desperation. Not sensing any danger, Izuku walks forwards as he writes. "No scars or lingering damage from the healed scratches. No ice, moisture, or signs of frostbite." The hero's Quirk is beginning to make less sense the more Izuku thinks about it. He's seen Quirks with more than one 'ability' to them before - Endeavor had been sure to flaunt his son's ability to use both fire and ice in his interviews, though Izuku had never seen footage of the fact.
Still, he's having trouble figuring out how exactly it works in this hero's case: those particular Quirks had always come with certain limitations, like only specific parts of the body producing each effect. How did that combine with a summoning Quirk, of all things?
Izuku flushes when he realises that he'd asked the hero that same question, now standing just a couple of feet away. "That's a beary easy answer, kuma!" the hero shouts, and Izuku quickly jots down 'bear puns and verbal tic?' in his notebook. "I don't use a Quirk!" Izuku stops writing only two strokes into his next word.
"What."
That's impossible, he thinks, and a quick glance at the woman he'd saved proves that she's thinking much the same thing. Even if his Quirk - whatever it was - had at least three effects, it was still very much a Quirk. "It's a bearsona! Or, I guess, a 'persona'." Izuku blinks at the man, who stands at equal height with him (a rarity, his mind unhelpfully supplies) as he tries to make sense of what he's saying, and how he seems to struggle with the last word. "I'll show it to you again, kuma!" he exclaims, then shouts "Kuma-i Moshiri!" Izuku watches as the man bats at an ethereal card with his hand, smashing it into pieces and summoning the clown-bear-missile from earlier.
He wastes no time in beginning to sketch the man's Quirk - tentatively titled Persona, for now - including notes that expand on the details that can't be included in pencil, like the rainbow adorning the head of the missile. "This is my bearsona!" the man shouts again, and Izuku wonders if he'll have to explain Quirks to the man. He's about to open his mouth to speak again when he looks up and notes the intense stare he's receiving from the blonde.
Izuku shrinks away, folding his notebook slightly and clutching it to his chest. He's being weird again, isn't he? Izuku knows he should stop it, but his mind just starts going and going whenever he sees a Quirk and he just can't help it. He's a second away from excusing himself and running away before the hero can shout at him like Kacchan when he feels a light tap against his forehead.
A wave of nausea washes over him, and he clasps a hand over his mouth to keep any potential vomit from spilling onto the man's shoes. "There, now you try it, kuma!" the man shouts jubilantly, as if anything about what he'd said made any sense.
"W-What do you mean," Izuku stutters out from behind his fingers, balance fading as he struggled to stay standing. It was difficult enough to even keep up with what was happening, let alone trying to acquiesce to the man's demands.
"Try to-"
"Kumada!" A woman shouts, stomping over towards them. Izuku flinches at the sight. "Stop harassing the local kids, he looks dead on his feet. We need to get going, anyway, before people start taking photos or something." The woman glances around the area, making a once-over of the frozen man and the confused lady. Izuku grimaces when she looks at him and stares for a few seconds, as if unable to comprehend what she was looking at. "...Kuma," she says, and Izuku can tell there's a hidden threat to her words from the tone alone. "What did you do?"
Inexplicably, the man smiles up at her. "My senses went bear-wild!" he exclaims, and Izuku has half a mind to note 'crazy' under the man's personality section. "This boy had the soul for heroics, I could smell it, kuma! But he didn't bear any sort of powers like everyone else, so I paw-t I might give him a hand!" His legs are quickly becoming too unstable to stand on, and Izuku takes a seat on a frozen patch of asphalt. "Sensei got his bearsona like this, so I gave it a try!"
"What."
Izuku snorts at the woman's response, and she glances at him for a moment - he shies away and covers his head in a mixture of embarrassment and guilt, though she mutters something under her breath and crouches down in front of him the next second. "Hey, hey, it's okay," she utters in a quiet, reassuring voice. "Um... Here, you'll feel better if you take this." She reaches into her pockets and pulls out a small throat drop, handing it to him even as Izuku's mental alarms blare all throughout his being. The man had obviously used his Quirk on him, in some way, shape, or form, and now she was handing him something to ingest? Izuku glanced down the street, eyeing an escape route. He wasn't far from home, and he doubted that the two - who were villains posing as heroes, maybe - would be able to follow if he weaved through the alleys on his way there.
Kacchan never could, at least.
The two hardly have the opportunity to shout at him again before he's whipping around the corner, frantically trying to keep his notebook in his hands and the scraps of his lunch in his stomach.
Three street corners and five alleyways later, Izuku was pretty sure he'd lost them. He slipped the bag off his shoulders and shoved the notebook into it, then pocketed his pen. It was a wonder he'd managed not to lose anything during his run, but he knows when to count his blessings and move on.
It's not far to his apartment, and he's there within the next half-hour. "I'm home!" he calls out from the door, stepping in and slipping off his shoes.
"Izuku!" his mom exclaims, already rushing over to greet him. "How was school?" she asks, before noticing his long face. "...Did you run into another villain fight?"
He shakes his head and smiles as he sets his backpack on the table, just glad that he'd managed to avoid Kacchan on the way home. "No, I'm fine," he lies, "just a bit tired." He leaves out the whole potential 'hero-pretending villains' bit from earlier, not wanting to worry her with what had happened.
Mom smiles slightly, a hint of worry in her expression before she heads back to the next room over. Izuku lets his smile drop a little, then heads into his room to sleep away the rest of his lingering exhaustion and nausea. Finishing his notes on the man's - his name was Kumada, a small part of his brain says - Quirk can wait until later. The second he's out of his uniform and settled into his bed, he's out like a light.
---
Two years later, when all he can taste is bile, death, and sewage, a word comes to him unprompted and it's all he can think of. "Per... so... na."