Chapter Text
Izuku Midoriya was really tired.
Actually, he was completely fucking exhausted.
He had been training with All Might for 10 months and tomorrow was the U.A High Entrance Exam.
He was finally going to get a quirk: One For All.
But right now, he desperately needed to sleep.
Izuku Midoriya's eyelids weighed more than All Might’s dumbbells probably did, his limbs jelly from the grueling ten months of hauling trash across Dagobah Beach. The thought of a soft bed sent waves of relief through his aching body as he finally went to sleep.
But soon came along the second body.
"Ugh, I must have slept wrong. Wait, was the ceiling always this low?"
Izuku groaned, rolling off his futon—except his shoulder didn't slam into the tatami mat like usual. His hands hit hardwood, his legs tangled in silk sheets that definitely weren't threadbare All Might-themed pajamas. And when he sat up, the room spun. Not from exhaustion—because his head was *higher* than it should be.
He scrambled to the bathroom to see the mirror.
The boy staring back had sharp cheekbones, clear skin, and *no diamond patterned freckles*. His hair was still green, but thicker, styled effortlessly. His shoulders were broader, his waist just narrow enough—everything perfectly proportioned. Izuku pinched his own enlarged bicep.
Solid.
Then he looked out of the bathroom and saw someone in his bed.
"Who the heck is that person? Wait... It's me."
Izuku's whisper cracked like a dry twig. The sleeping lump in *his* All Might pajamas, sprawled face-down in *his* futon, with *his* freckled cheeks smushed against the pillow—was him. Original Recipe Izuku. Meanwhile, he (the *other* body him, the inexplicably taller, sharper, unfairly photogenic him) was standing there like some Greek statue that had wandered into a discount bedding aisle.
"Okay. Okay. Deep breaths—or wait, *can* I hyperventilate in this body?" He clutched the bathroom counter (which was suddenly lower than he remembered, because *everything* was lower now, including the ceiling fan that he absolutely *could* decapitate himself on if he jumped). The mirror reflected back a stranger with cheekbones that could cut glass and eyelashes long enough to trip over. "I—I look like someone who would be in the modeling industry..."
He quietly ran back to his room so as not to wake his mother, "Uh, excuse me. Wait, I'm speaking so politely to myself. Excuse me. Hey!"
Then he blacked out.
And woke right back up in his bed.
"Was it all a dream? It was a strange but happy dream," Izuku joked to himself before seeing the other body on the floor, "... I wasn't dreaming. Wh... What happened? Hey! Hey?!"
Then he blacked out yet again
And woke right back up on the floor.
"Huh? Huh? Did I just get switched back? What is going on? Did I actually have a quirk all of these years?! Wait a second. Ah, ah, ah. Huh? My voice has changed too."
Izuku's hands flew to his throat—firm, smooth, with an Adam's apple that hadn't existed none minutes ago—just as his other body groaned from the bed, rolling onto its back. The freckled version of his body scrunched its nose mid-snore.
Izuku nearly screamed.
But he stopped himself.
Barely.
He had too.
His mother had work in the morning.
"I've... I've always had a quirk? I've never been quirkless? The applications of this quirk need to be reserached!" Izuku whisper-yelped, scrambling for his notebook and his pen.
And he started theorizing a writing speed that would make his wrist combust.
Pages flipped—no, *teleported*—under Izuku's pen as he scribbled wild hypotheses, his two bodies sprawled across his bedroom like a crime scene where the victim was also somehow the perpetrator.
**Hypothesis #1:** He had *always* had a quirk, lying dormant until puberty hit harder than All Might’s Detroit Smash.
**Hypothesis #2:** This was a cosmic prank. A shapeshifting villain had broken in just to give him the most baffling existential crisis of his life before vanishing without explanation.
**Hypothesis #3 (whispered):** He’d actually died hauling refrigerators on Dagobah Beach, and the afterlife was *this*—alternating between his old, noodle-armed self and some god-tier Graminsta model version of himself who probably had perfect teeth and *never* had to Google "how to stop sweating so much."
But now began the quirk testing phase.
Izuku Midoriya then proceeded to concentrate on staying awake as he woke up his original body by shaking it violently. "Hey! Wake up already!"
The original Izuku groaned as he rubbed his eyes and lifted his head slightly—only to freeze upon seeing his second body now fast asleep halfway on top of him. "H-Huh?! Oh no, oh no, oh no—why am *I* now on *me*?! This is—this is—*is this technically incest?!* W-Wait, no! That's not—that's not the right question! AAAAAAAAAH!"
He scrambled backward, his socked feet slipping on a discarded hero notebook, sending him crashing into his All Might poster—which, honestly, *how dare it betray him like this*—before he finally managed to squirm free. Meanwhile, his second body—long limbs sprawled elegantly, unfairly photogenic face smushed into the pillow—merely sighed in its sleep, as if the universe hadn't just flipped Izuku's entire existence like a particularly aggressive omelet.
Izuku pressed his fingers against his temples. "Okay. *Okay.* Deep breaths. So—so my quirk is *what*, exactly? Temporary body-swapping? Cloning? Some kind of—of *glitch in the matrix*?! Wait, no, that's not a quirk, that's just existential dread—"
He took a big breath.
And released slowly.
And tested the quirk applications seven more times before having a solid understanding now:
1. He has to be unconscious to change bodies.
2. If one body is forcefully awakened, the other body will go to sleep.
3. He is now conscious at all times (he can no longer have dreams).
4. The sleeping body seems to experience all physiological phenomena normal bodies do.
The realization hit him like a freight train. His original body—the one currently drooling onto his All Might pillow—had just released an embarrassingly loud stomach gurgle.
"Oh no. Oh no no no. If it gets hungry... does it starve?" Izuku whispered, clutching his newly chiseled jaw in horror. The implications were catastrophic. He was now responsible for feeding *himself*—twice. His mom’s grocery bill would skyrocket faster than Endeavor’s blood pressure at the mention of All Might.
Then he remembered.
All Might was giving him One For All Tomorrow.
Right before the U.A. High Entrance Exam.
And he had spent at least thirty minutes awake trying to solve this when he should have been resting for tomorrow's exam.
"Oh my god."
Izuku’s fingers curled into his—admittedly much silkier—hair as the realization hit like a truck loaded with existential dread. "I have to get back to sleep but—"
He stopped himself as he realized something:
This second body was bigger, bulkier, more flexible, and just seemed over all better.
The whole reason he and All Might had him train for those ten months was because his body wasn't a proper vessel yet.
But this body sure seemed like it was!
So what if he stayed awake in his original body then got All For One and took the U.A. High Entrance Exam in his second body?
"Holy *crap* this is insane," Izuku breathed lowly.
He then woke up his first body a final time.
Then he blacked out once again.
And woke right back up in his bed yet again.
"Now I can study all night!" Izuku gasped, staring at his second body—currently snoring softly on the floor—like it was a cheat code sent from the universe itself. His sleep-deprived original body wobbled as he frantically flipped through his notebook. "Wait... if *this* body sleeps while *that* body stays awake..." The implications exploded in his brain like All Might’s United States of Smash. "I COULD TECHNICALLY STUDY FOR *TWO EXAMS AT ONCE*"
As you can imagine, he practically flew to his desk and got out some books—because being awake and having two bodies at once is cheating and he's totally going to exploit it!
Although 'exploit' was probably the wrong word in this case...