Izuku had honestly expected it to take longer than just a few weeks before he could go back to school. Between that and the time he'd been... Gone... He'd lost a month.
(Moments where his body was moving without his will. Words slipping from his mouth that he'd never spoken. A puppet. A meatsuit. An invisibility cloak. Then dropping deep into something like sleep and the feeling of flight. Power. Rage and Despair.)
But he'd gained a lot of things to compensate.
Sometimes, Alec would bring Eri over and offer his mom some money to watch the girl. She was so shy to begin with. Izuku didn't really know what to do about that. What he could do for her.
Talking with her didn't accomplish much. Eri would nod, shake her head or hum but she didn't talk back to him. Offering her snacks, while appreciated, would just see her take whatever he'd given her and make it disappear into a pocket.
They finally found some common ground on her third stay. He'd put on some cartoon instead of the news covering some crazy guy with a Blue Fire Quirk (So cool!) getting arrested and Eri had perked right up. It wasn't anything amazing, some edutainment show for little kids but she'd been transfixed.
Izuku was a little bit old for it, really, but he'd caught a few episodes when the shows would change and he was too busy with homework to change the channel.
In the end credits they had a little animated duck that was waddling about, looking like it was trying to dance. It was supposed to get little kids to get up and be active, make them feel like they were joining an activity and having fun.
Eri had gotten up from her seat and made some motions like she was trying to remember how to do things before she'd looked at Izuku and then nervously sat back down.
If she felt anxious... Well, Izuku was used to feeling anxious, too. His was usually spiked by a screeching pomeranian with anger issues and a habit for verbal abuse.
Izuku had gotten up and flailed about in a manner that reasonably approximated the duck on screen and gotten the first laugh out of Eri that he'd ever heard.
The subtle tension that had filled the apartment slowly faded after that. Bit by bit, day by day.
In between that, Izuku had needed to go and see doctors. And Quirk specialists. They'd looked him over with machines he didn't know the names of. Then they'd looked over his mom because they had to make sure that Izuku wasn't some doppelganger with some kind of manipulation Quirk.
They'd wanted to look at Eri, too, but the sheer weight that Alec could fit into the word 'No' was surprising. One of them had tried to make an argument about a public safety law that somehow gave him the right to examine Eri's Quirk without Alec's permission.
Izuku still felt the chill that had filled that room. Alec, rather than yelling or arguing, simply snapped his fingers, picked up Eri and left. Completely ignoring the doctor that was yelling at him to come back.
Apparantly, legal rights only mean something when someone else is willing to respect them.
The Quirkless young(er) man adjusted his backpack, a new one purchased with the babysitting money from Eri since his was probably still on the roof where he'd jumped and walked into the gates of Aldera Middle School.
There was a palpable aura of tension in the building. The students were talking to each other in hushed whispers and looking around nervously. More than a few eyes lingered on him with naked curiosity.
"Who the hell are... Deku?" And that was Kacchan. One of the most popular students in school, a teen that Izuku looked up to.
Primarily because he was significantly taller than Izuku, reduced as he was to the form of an eight year old.
"Hey, Katsuki." Izuku smiled and waved. The flutter of nervous energy that he'd been expecting was absent. He was still anxious but it was just the normal amount.
Bakugo Katsuki just... Wasn't that important. Not compared to what Izuku had Seen.
"...The hell happened to you?" Katsuki had spiky blond hair and small, red eyes. His Quirk, Explosion, turned his sweat into a compound that was similar in effect to Nitro-Glycerin.
It, like its wielder, was incredibly unstable. Izuku wondered, idly, just how it was that his name so perfectly encapsulated his Quirk and Personality given that his parents shouldn't have known who and what he'd become.
"A few things." Izuku admitted as his eyes slid over to Katsuki's cronies. Even among the unusual Quirks present among his classmates, those two were just... Underwhelming. One could extend his eyes beyond their sockets, but only by about ten or so centimeters. The other had wings that allowed him to fly but he didn't have the stamina to do anything with it.
There was a red-headed girl in their class that could literally turn into a living flame. One boy, his head was a giant wooden chisel. Even the boy with the long nose would have been of more use than Eyeballs, he could afford to lose a bit of what his Quirk exaggerated!
"I took some advice, had an odd adventure." Izuku continued, watching as Katsuki rubbed his fingers together and sparks lit up in his hand. Once upon a time, that had been a nervous habit for the blond. Now it was a habit that made people nervous.
"Tch." Katsuki clicked his tongue in irritation. Which may have meant something if the boy had more emotions than 'Irritated' and 'Angry'. "I doubt a deku like you actually did anything. Or did your Quirk come in? Is that why you look like a midget?"
"No, no." Izuku tilted his head to the side slightly and smiled. Wide and fake, showing off all of his teeth. Katsuki huffed, the only way he would admit to being unnerved.
Izuku spent a lot of his time watching people. Watching Alec had shown him how, even if you lacked natural social skills, at least some of them could still be learned.
"You see, I took your advice." Izuku was glaring directly at the spot in between Katsuki's eyes. It was less uncomfortable than actually meeting his gaze. "I took a swan dive off of a roof."
Wings and Eyeballs shared a very uncomfortable glance between them. Katsuki, meanwhile, had gone very, very pale.
"I didn't find a Quirk on the other side, though." Alec... Absolutely did not count as a Quirk. "So I came back. I think I might have overshot things a bit."
"You...!" Katsuki looked sick, his eyes wide and his pupils shrunken into tiny dots. "Stop messing with-"
"Everyone, settle down!" The class representative shouted from the front of the class, cutting Katsuki off mid-rant. "Now, altogether- Rise, bow, sit!"
Izuku grinned as he adjusted his desk back into the way he liked it while the teacher droned on and on about English. He wasn't the same person he used to be. He couldn't be.
But he was eager to discover who he was going to be!
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