“Midoriya… why do you just let us hit you whenever we’re training?” “I’m learning your attack patterns. This time next week, I’ll show you my quirk.”

Good ol’ quirked Izuku AU time.

——

Midoriya Izuku took a long time to figure out what his quirk actually did, mostly because Aldera was a shithole.

For a long time, Izuku didn’t have a quirk. He was sad, disheartened even, and bullied relentlessly because of it, but he still wanted to try, so he studied hard to get good grades and learn everything he could about what being a hero would entail. Fortunately, it turns out that he was simply a very late bloomer, and a year before graduating from Aldera, his quirk came in. Unfortunately it didn’t seem to actually do anything, and he still had the toe joint that indicated quirklessness, so everyone besides his mother thought he was lying just to have something to put on his quirk registry. But he wasn’t! What was that quirk, you ask?

STATUS INDICATOR. Much like in video games, above everyone’s head, Izuku could focus on a person and see a series of bars and icons: on top, a large red health bar, beneath that, a green stamina bar, below both of those, a thin white bar that never seemed to change no matter who he looked at, which he couldn’t figure out what it represented. And of course, just above the health bar, small icons would appear to indicate active status effects such as sicknesses, lingering or active quirk effects, or even just a desperate need to go to the bathroom.

Izuku had plenty of ideas to use his quirk to help people- after all, being able to tell at a glance exactly how hurt somebody is, and diagnose what might be wrong with them faster would be an excellent ability for a rescue hero! Plus, being able to tell exactly how tired an opponent was by looking at their stamina bar would be a great advantage in taking down villains. But for as much as he was willing to come up with ideas for what he could use his abilities for, he could never shake the feeling that the small white bar was something important… and indeed it was, as revealed on the day he was attacked by a villain made of slime.

It happened in a flash- one moment, he was walking underneath a bridge on his way home from school, the next, about to die. He’d never fought back before, but when something huge and nasty is coming straight for your face, well, instinct kicks in. A wild, open-handed swing aimed at the incoming slime slapped one of the villain’s eyes by pure chance, doing barely a speck of damage to his health, but more notably, taking a sizeable chunk out of the white bar. Of course, Izuku was then engulfed by the villain, All Might showing up in the nick of time, (yet despite the mighty SMASH! that hit the villain, the white bar didn’t move… could only Izuku affect it? And why was All Might’s bar divided into five segments!?) only for the hero to leap away in a strange hurry the moment he was finished signing Izuku’s notebook, bottled villain in tow… but somehow All Might’s urgency must’ve caused him to drop the bottles, because the villain went after Kacchan next! (Though when did his bar get split in two…? No time, his health’s getting lower!) Nobody was doing anything to help, the heroes were waiting for “the right quirk”, All Might was nowhere in sight- so with nothing more than a half-baked plan, Izuku grabbed a nearby metal trash can lid and decided to give his quirk a trial by fire.

KLONG. Right in the eye again, the bar had refilled from earlier, but now already half gone.

THWAP! A slimy blow forcefully deflected by the lid, and that took the bar down a little, too. Forty percent left.

CRACK! The villain’s latest irate taunt interrupted by having his teeth hammered by a large blunt object. The villain looked strangely punch-drunk for how few hits he’d actually taken. Izuku was choking again, but that was fine.

The bar was empty. Overlaid atop it, five life-saving words.

Approach to initiate Stun Attack.

Using the last of his body’s strength, Izuku kicked off the ground to get closer to the villain’s face. After that, it was like his body moved on autopilot. Tearing the villain’s teeth from the slime in one smooth motion, causing the slime to recoil in pain, before backhanding the villain right across both eyes with his own jaw, somehow instantly knocking him out, causing the slime to collapse straight into the open trash can from which Izuku had claimed the lid. (And three quarters of the villain’s health gone, along with all their stamina… ouch. Hopefully the police wouldn’t hold that against him.)

The day was saved. Izuku finally knew what his quirk did.

STATUS INDICATOR. A quirk that displays status effects that a person may be suffering from, as well as three primary “combat stats”: Health, which is a person’s physical wellbeing, reduced by damage or injury. Stamina, which appears to be combined from both normal physical energy and the energy one uses to make use of their quirk. And finally, Stun, a special statistic which only Izuku can make use of, which is reduced whenever he lands a strike on an opponent’s weak point, hits a spot where their guard is down, or deflects/parries incoming attacks. Once the stun bar is empty, the opponent will briefly enter a state of severe confused delirium, during which Izuku may use a devastating Stun Attack, a trance-like state where Izuku can almost puppet his enemy’s body around to ensure optimal angles and positioning for maximum impact, often using the environment or his opponent’s own quirk or weaponry against them. Tougher, more experienced opponents will, however, take much more effort to be rendered vulnerable to a Stun Attack, and may not be completely out of the fight even after a Stun Attack is used.

With this new ability, Midoriya would be a hero.

Critical, The Counterattack Hero!

——

“Stupid fucking Deku… /COUGH HACK/ How… how the hell, did you…?”

“Kacchan I’ve had literal years to study your attack pattern. Sure, it took me a while to figure out how to parry an explosion, but having three stun bars just means I get that many more chances to practice my defense.”

——

Basically, to make sense of “literal teenager who had ZERO combat training besides getting beaten up in school somehow clocks the fuck outta experienced older villains within literal weeks of starting to learn how to fight”, why not give Izuku a quirk that functions as practically a win button against any opponent that he can engage in battle with on even terms as long as he can hold out for long enough, assuming he fights smart? So many fics make him act like a genius, why not give him a quirk that FORCES him to act like a prodigy in the school of “just don’t get hit lmao?”