Decided to cross post my current stories from AO3 to SB and here.
It's a crossover with the 2nd edition of the Sufficiently Advanced tabletop RPG, probably the only crossover fanfic with the transhumanist sci-fi RPG. I made a character sheet to use as a base for Izuku but the story won't follow the rules of the game exactly.
---------------------------
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Clarke's Third Law
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a superpower. - Izuku's Corollary
Izuku Midoriya
Izuku Midoriya was four when it all fell apart.
His father died in a villain attack in Hawaii.
The doctor diagnosed him as quirkless.
His mother cried and apologized when he asked if he could still be a hero.
His teachers and classmates ignored him in an instant when his condition was revealed.
His friendships withered, especially with Katsuki Bakugou, his first and best friend.
In fact, it went hostile.
Bullied, beaten, and burned by his best friend, no matter how much he was in denial about it and how much he hid the pain from everyone, especially his poor mom.
But despite it all, he still had the stars.
He loved to look at the stars through a telescope his late father passed down to him. He was an astronomer, listening through ancient ham radios to hear the stars and Izuku inherited both his genius and technical ability.
It was during such clear nights when he was five that he noticed something in the skies. A moving shadow that blocked the light of the stars perfectly. Izuku, curious smart child that he was, calculated and realized that it followed a route that went back and forth from the planet, landing in the nearby woods somewhere at night.
It was a spaceship.
Izuku kept silent as he planned out first contact with the aliens in the coming weeks.
And so, he made a plan and committed to it. A bag of things for the trip kept hidden in a tree, a note to his mom already written, a toy or two he can't live without, and his dad's star pendant for good luck.
It was night when the Midoriya family came to watch the fireworks for the festival. The night of the ship landing.
He smiled and lied to his mom about wanting to see the stars at his favorite spot, a nearby hill.
Instead, he placed his letter that was sealed in a zip lock plastic bag on the spot before running off to grab his bag and be the one to initial first contact with the spaceship.
When he reached the location, it was an empty clearing but Izuku knew there was more to it.
And as the fireworks shot into the sky, there he saw it, the rippling shadow landing without any sound onto the clearing. It shifted in color to better hide itself among the trees and plants.
It then opened, revealing two people in festival clothes. They appeared to be human with some minor looking quirks but Izuku could tell that aliens could blend in easily in the age of quirks.
"You got your knowledge of the local cultures updated?" the first alien said as he looked around before walking ahead.
"Downloaded into my neural mesh, no worries." the second alien said as she followed her partner.
The two then walked away casually.
When they were far enough away, Izuku saw the door closing and he ran into the ship before he missed his chance to make first contact.
He then hid somewhere in the ship, somewhere vent like.
When he was comfy, he looked at the photos of himself and Kacchan when they were still best friends, and his family before his father's death, of happier days, before putting it away and going to sleep.
It was quite a shock to the two aliens when they left the planet and found a stowaway.
Izuku hoped that being a stowaway meant forcing to reveal themselves to the world below. But it wasn't the case.
The two aliens turned out to be explorers visiting primitive worlds and checking if they could be brought into the universal community.
But Izuku's world was deemed too socially unstable for proper first contact and was placed under a protective watch list, to the annoyance of the more pro-uplift civilizations.
Izuku was placed under protective custody but he was quite a problem child.
It was the first of many adventures into the stars for Izuku.
He simply told himself that he was useful now and everyone back home was happier without him pulling them down.
Unfortunately, it wasn't the way things worked back home.
I'm sorry for having to go mom. But don't worry. I'll be back soon. If only papa could see this. He would have loved this. - Izuku's Note
Inko Midoriya
She thought her son would be safe. Until she saw the note on the hill he usually went to stargaze.
She called Mitsuki, hoping her son was at her friend's house.
She called the police.
There was a small search but when the police found out about her son's condition, they practically gave up. An open-and-shut case they said.
After that, everything went dull.
She lost her husband when a villain attack nearly destroyed the Mauna Kea observatory he worked at when her son was four.
Now she lost her son through no fault of her own.
And no one would help her find him, already thinking that he was good as dead.
Only the Bakugous came to visit her regularly, helping in their own way.
Masaru made some tea to help her relax.
Mitsuki slowly made Inko open up bit by bit.
Katsuki tried to look tough through it all but Inko knew even he was grieving.
Days turned to weeks turned to months turned to years and still no sign of Izuku nor anything about his kidnappers.
Musutafu would in time be covered in paper posters with Izuku's photo. The posters would end up thrown away, aged, or washed by rain in time.
It was in the fifth year since his disappearance that Inko finally decided to bury her son. A wake was performed and there was no body to cremate but it was a simple ceremony. Only the Bakugous arrived to pay their respects.
"This is not for me." Inko said to the Bakugous. "No matter what the police said, Izuku's still alive."
"Inko-" Mitsuki said before Inko raised her head to look at the three. There was cold steel in her wet eyes.
"I'm not a fragile doll Tsuki. Remember that. My son will come back to me someday. He promised me that." she walked to the photos of Hisashi with a background of stars and Izuku with a background of his hero toys.
"This world is harsh, crushing those with beautiful dreams." she touched Hisashi's photo. "A dream of humanity among the stars." she then touched Izuku's photo. "A dream of being a hero despite his condition." the hand then clenched into a fist.
"I was happy to see my boys dreaming a way to make a better world. But now the world took them away from me."
Inko turned to the three with a smile on her face.
"Only make sense for me to make the world safe for future dreamers right?"
Katsuki Bakugou
He was only four when Izuku was revealed to be quirkless.
He was only five when Izuku disappeared with only a letter remained.
He was only ten when Inko finally snapped, in his opinion.
He remembered it well. Her subtle fury, her steel hidden beneath her smile.
He saw how his parents reacted.
His mother supported her. Apparently, the whole thing reminded her of their high school days. Being told that Inko was a delinquent gang leader with his mom being the group muscle was shocking to say the least.
Turned out Izuku's dad turned Inko from a cold gang leader into a sweet woman with nothing but his dream for the stars.
In Katsuki's opinion, it sounded like a cheesy romantic comedy.
But now auntie's going down a dark path and his parents were basically enabling her.
All because Izuku kept wanting to be a hero.
'Deku just wanted to hog the spotlight.' Katsuki thought to himself as he looked outside the window during a lunch break in middle school, ignoring the extras chatting among themselves. 'I'm suppose to be the hero. He would had been my best analyst or support. For a fucking kid genius, he's such an idiot.'
He looked up at the clouds.
'Auntie still believed he's alive somewhere.'
It was during these rare moments that Katsuki let himself wonder about his old practically forgotten friend. It seemed that no one outside a handful of people remembered him. Fingers and Wings had long forgotten the shrub haired kid they used to play with, then bully at. Of course, Katsuki lost sight of those two extras after elementary school.
Yet he wondered. Maybe he got adopted somewhere, or he used his smarts for some villain group in need of rescue, rarely he wondered if he was killed and dumped in a ditch given how much he learned about the lives of the quirkless people.
The New Burakumin, he recalled a rare article about it on an online search. He managed to download the article before the Hearts and Minds party took it down for 'promoting discrimination'. But it was a stark reminder at the grime of the heroic age society.
The quirkless oppressed the quirky in the early years of quirks, then the quirky oppressed the quirkless practically the moment they lost the demographic majority, and society called it both justice.
Auntie's Alliance for the Oppressed was steadily growing, helping out the quirkless and those with so-called villainous quirks into its support network and group membership.
But Katsuki knew what's really going on. It was a gang, an army, a growing mob.
Katsuki knew he can't do anything about it until he finally become a pro hero.
He told the police about his suspicions, only to be told that he was being paranoid at best.
After all, who in their right mind fought against a group that started soup kitchens and opened up communal homes for the homeless.
Yet Katsuki knew the signs of a struggle.
Fires raged at AO locations more often than not.
The same sort of villains indirectly attacked the communal homes.
Auntie's group earned the anger of some one or some group, and Katsuki can't decide whether to protect her or join in the fight in the future.
Of course, things changed.
No plan survived contact with the enemy, especially when that enemy is time.
One day, some time before the UA entrance exam Katsuki was training himself for, a familiar photo appeared on the news.
Well kept green hair, green eyes that seemed to stare back from the screen, freckles below his eyes despite the age, a smile that seemed casual and normal if it wasn't for the fact that he was missing for almost ten years.
He vaguely heard his mom shouting at her phone to call Inko about the news.
Katsuki was transfixed at the news.
Midoriya Izuku, disappeared ten years ago, reappeared at the same hill he left his letter behind.
"Deku?" Katsuki didn't realized he whispered it out as he thought he was dreaming.
The door slammed and a car drove away, waking him from his shock. His mother left for auntie's apartment.
Katsuki simply returned to the screen, listening intently at the news of Izuku's return.
Plus *punk seems more like an aesthetic that Stardwellers, Masqueraders, and Mechanicans would adopt rather then something a splinter of the Tao would get up to. I do like that someone is doing something with SA, since the fandom is very small.)
