Imaginary Friends

1

I'd apologize for not uploading for like 2 years but honestly i don't care so...
also available under the same name and username on ao3 if you don't want to bother with this heathens website

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Izuku is 6 when he makes his first real friend. Ritsu is a small boy with red hair, and he's Izuku's best friend. The problem with Ritsu was he didn't exist. Inko was sure it was an imaginary friend. This is what all kids go through at some point or another, isn't it? But she also had to wonder why her Izuku was turning to imaginary people when he had Bakugou and his group of friends right there.
Oh well, she supposed, it's just a thing kids do. It will pass eventually.

It didn't pass. Izuku just got quieter about it. Ritsu ceased to exist anywhere but inside Izuku's head.
In fact, as he grew up, he only got more creative. He had Ritsu, his best friend, but also had Izumi, who was the closest thing to a sister he ever had, and All Might. Well, not the real All Might of course. Just one that existed inside his imagination that Izuku could confide in when Bakugou left him on the ground covered in bruises again. There was also Cole, but he was kind of strange. He said he was a coal miner, and he wasn't afraid of Bakugou's explosions because he delt with things like that every day!
Izuku was a quiet student, prefering to talk to the friends inside his head than get ridiculed by Bakugou again for being a "quirkless freak."

Deku emerged from Bakugou's relentless bullying. Deku was quiet, didn't talk much above a mumble and would disappear whenever Bakugou was around.
Deku was quirkless, just like Izuku. Ritsu, Izumi, All Might and Cole all had quirks which they loved to show him, and Izuku loved to study. Izuku fell into a frenzy of studying quirks, finally finding something he was truely both good at and interested in.

The end of elementary school rolls around. Izuku's 10 when he first realized he couldn't remember the day. His friends were quiet and he couldn't remember what happened at school today, but he suspected the bruise on his arm was from Bakugou, regardless of what he would tell his mother later.

Izuku's 11 when he loses his mother. It's some villain attack, collateral damage that their appartement was hit. Izuku doesn't remember the following days. He thinks he cried a lot. He's pretty sure he went numb. He felt like he was walking around in someone else's body. A lot of it is just... Blank. He loses his mother in the battle, and suddenly it's 2 weeks later and he only remembers getting breakfast once in that period of time.
Kimi, he thinks, is a response to losing the only family he had left. Another imaginary friend, she looks kind of like Inko was younger and had short hair.
He's not really aware of what's happening until he ends up in a new home. It's... somewhere. The people are ok. He doesn't remember them. He's only with them for a few months, before he gets picked up by the police for running away. He doesn't remember packing a bag, putting on his shoes, running away, nothing. But he did, didn't he? He must have, or else why would he have ended up in the Musufatu Precinct police station.
There's a nice man there, but Izuku's tired and his name is hard to pronounce. There's also another nice person there with a cat head, and Izuku remembers them bringing him a cup of hot chocolate.
His friends were here the whole time, thought. As they grew, the angrier Ritsu got at the world, the more Deku would recluse into himself, the more All Might and Kimi pushed Izuku and Izumi into their dream of trying to be a hero.
Well, Ritsu wasn't sure that would work. Izumi's quirk worked in Izuku's imagination, but she couldn't just manifest a quirk in real life if it doesn't exist. Izumi was a little put out by that, but her ever positive attitude meant she wasn't hung up on it for long.
Izuku eventually learns that his foster parents are Tominaga Rintaro and Tominaga Nori. His memory lapses are also getting better, and he's remembering more of his time at school again.
Rintaro gets him a journal for his 12th birthday. He studies every hero he can and records. He writes and writes. Stats on All Might (some of which his friend provides him with), stats on Endevour, on Best Jeanist, On Edgeshot, Snipe, Gang Orca, every pro hero he can get his hands on.
Indespersed between the pages of heroes, theres conversations between him and his friends: