Chapter Text
Izuku stared at the box hovering in the air in front of him. It was small, around eye level, and printed with crystal clear characters along the title bar that indicated the program to be The Gamer. Inside the box itself, more characters sat, waiting to give more information.
Izuku blinked once... twice... and rolled out of bed. He flinched violently, dumping himself onto the floor in a tangle of sheets, when the text box moved perfectly in sync with his turn. Incredulous, Izuku let his eyes bounce around the room but the only thing that happened was he realized the box *wasn't* perfectly in sync and actually had a very slight delay when his eyes started moving and a soft bounce back into position when he focused on something. He blinked as it occurred that that might help with motion sickness. Was this real? It was far to early in the morning to deal with this, but the box was also in the way so he *had* to deal with it.
Still rough from sleep, Izuku croaked, "Accept." The dialogue box shrank down out of view only for a new one to pop into place.
Izuku stared at the box. "Accept?"
"Right, got it, accept," Izuku grumbled, waving a hand at the still persistently floating, intangible box. It shrank out of view again and he headed to the bathroom to wash his face and brush his teeth. It was an early Monday morning, mid-winter break, so he had the apartment to himself with his mom at her nursing job at Musutafu General Hospital. He took it upon himself to make a dead simple breakfast of scrambled eggs on rice with ketchup. He was finally waking up as he washed his dishes when it hit him and he stared off into the middle distance for a solid 30 seconds, hot water rushing over his hands and the glass he was cleaning.
"Wa... wait a minute." He finished rinsing and tucked the glass into the dish rack before drying his hands off and backing up a bit. Cringing a bit, he whispered under his breath, "Main Menu?
Izuku stared for another 30 seconds while his heart attempted to break free of the cage his ribs had built around it, beating the shit out of his lungs while it was at it. His ears were rushing. His vision began to tunnel and-
Izuku woke up for the second time that day, but rather than the comfort of his plush full-sized mattress, it was on the harsh tile floor of the kitchen. The only thing that hadn't changed from this morning was the hovering green square in his vision, though the contents had changed.
"What happened?"
Still sprawled on the floor on his back, Izuku continued to stare at these green squares. "Okay, fine, I'll bite. Journal."
"...I did not faint. I passed out."
"...Don't you sass me." Rolling over - and flinching again as the dialogue box moved with him - Izuku climbed back to his feet and rubbed his head, finding a small bump on the back from where he hit the floor. "Close journal." The box shrank away. "Main Menu." Up it popped. Eyes growing wide in tandem with his excitement, Izuku forced himself to calm down. After all, this could be an especially cruel prank being played by one of his classmates... not that they knew where he lived. Well, Katsuki did but this wasn't the kinda thing he'd stoop to, honestly. But it wasn't too difficult to test.
Instead of speaking out loud, Izuku covered his mouth with both hands and more mouthed than whispered the word, "Options." The box was still a moment before it blinked over to a new screen.
Well, that was underwelming. Not a lot in the way of options, though they looked usef- wait... Import/Export? Box Settings?! Alone in the apartment, Izuku took a seat at the kitchen table and stared at the screen. Forgetting to use words, he poked at Box Settings and a new screen opened up.
Izuku scrunched his face in thought for a moment before tapping appearance. It seemed pretty standard with option to let him change the size, shape, and color of the box and text until he got to the bottom.
Izuku stared at it a moment. He might appear less insane if he was holding an actual tablet in his hand and not madly poking at the air or muttering words under his breath, a habit he admittedly already had and didn't want to make any worse than it was. He activated it and promptly dropped the moderately sized tablet that abruptly appeared in his hand. The moment it left his grip, it spun wildly before slamming corner first into the ground and shattering into thousands of shards of green light that disappeared as they scattered across the floor. He stared for a moment, then took a breath and held his hands out flat again. The tablet reappeared, balanced on his palms, and he squeaked in surprised.
"Ah! It's real!" Flipping it towards himself, he noticed it was still displaying the appearance settings with the Yes highlit to show tablet mode was activated. He backed out and futzed a bit with the appearance, removing the The Gamer logo that appeared at the top of every screen, as though someone were afraid he'd forget the name of his quirk.
This quirk was so weird.
Backing out to settings, he took the screen in again.
Import/Export? Tapping on it, he was brought to new screen.
Izuku stared at the description for a moment before tearing off for his room. Practically throwing himself into his chair, he pulled his notebooks from his deskshelves. "Hero Notes for the Future" Volumes 1-13. Putting them in a pile on his desk, he set his tablet on top and hit import. At first, he'd assumed it'd import them one at a time and he would have to adjust his pile as it shrank but, instead, there was a brilliant flash of light and a clattering noise. As the spots faded from his eyes, Izuku saw his notebooks were gone and his tablet was now sitting flat on the desk by itself. Picking it up, he doubled back the main menu, now changed.
That red icon must mean there was something new in there, Izuku reasoned as he opened it and saw a new folder titled Hero Notes for the Future Vol 1-13 by Midoriya Izuku. Opening that revealed 13 separate documents appropriately labeled for every notebook he'd just imported. And when he opened the first file, he saw the childish scrawl and drawings of his 4 year old self perfectly preserved. If he went back to the Import/Export screen, he could pop the notebooks back out but their condition was improved; creases were smoothed out, stains removed, and the binding made like new. He tucked them back into his tablet. After all, several of the stains had smelled of burnt sugar and been accompanied by burn marks. They were safer in his tablet. He also took the time to import all his homework, too. Kaachan might not need to steal his homework, smart as he is, but that didn't stop Kesseki-san from doing it. It wasn't only his fists that were made of stone, after all.
Finally, he backed out completely to the Main Menu and clicked Stats.
No, yeah, that tracks. He's pretty clumsy and not particularly strong. He didn't get sicker any more or less often than the majority and he always got straight A's in class, much to the chagrin of several hero hopefuls, magically excluding Katsuki since they got the same grades. He wasn't so sure about that Charisma stat, however, considering most of the people in school didn't like him, but that might be explained by the debuff. Why did he have a debuff? He tapped on it.
Never mind, that absolutely tracks. Sighing, he stared at his stats and wondered how he could improve them. Some seemed obvious, like strength was probably improved by working out, dexterity by doing things that were considered dextrous tasks; gymnastics, parkour, lock picking, etc, and Intelligence by studying or something equally challenging to the brain. But how did you increase your constitution, wisdom, or charisma? He tapped them but only got a description of the stat in question. Groaning, he slumped in his seat and squeak out a soft, "Help."
A soft ding had him sitting up again. He looked at his tablet and saw a small window had superimposed itself over the stat screen.
Izuku stared. He tapped accept and the screen whipped through several iterations of itself before opening Quests on the Main Menu.
Well... that was a thing.