Fanfic / I Can't Be a Magical Girl!! You, a Magical Girl, Say

Magical Girl Izuku, fanart by Tokaxiy

I Can't Be A Magical Girl!! You, a Magical Girl, Say is a My Hero Academia Alternate Universe Fic by RMXStudio.

Magic.

It's like entropy — inaccessable energy in a system. To have magic is to break the rules of your universe, and to become a magical girl is to take that power and use it for good.

April 10th, Izuku broke the rules of his universe, and now, with the world facing a growing, seemingly undefeatable threat, he and his Handyman get ready for the ride of a lifetime.

This story thus details Midoriya Izuku's life as a magical girl in the world of heroes.

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This fanfic contains examples of:

• A Lighter Shade of Grey: Major governing characters are continuously attempting to prove they are this. Inspector Yayoi has to explain this as far as the magical girl system when asked why young girls were usually chosen to be warriors as well as when she has to convince Inko to allow her son to continue being a magician. Detective Tsukauchi has to prove he's this to Inko after he sent 15-year-old Izuku as Minute Maid to stop a Gray Man attack in which Izuku is impaled through the chest with a pole and experiences another near-death.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Izuku dies and is subsequently resurrected in the very first chapter. Reminders of his death cause him to panic and even dissociate at times.
• Adaptational Name Change: Izuku's current 'heroics-related' name is Minute Maid instead of Deku.
• Adapted Out: While it is a central setting and character cast in the manga, here UA high school is never mentioned by name and never seen. It's only referenced obliquely through Yamada's short mention of "high school memories." The teachers and staff are also few in representation and just as brief in their appearances as heroes associated with any other school. Other Hero schools, such as Ketsubutsu and Isamu, are mentioned by name but are equally peripheral. Breaking fanfic conventions, the story even features a nationally critical investigation on the part of the Heroes and police, yet UA's Principal Nedzu, typically treated in fanworks as the primary person to go to in regards to information-gathering, has no presence in the story at all, let alone in the investigation.
• Alternate Universe Fic: All Might arrives slightly too late to save Izuku, and he is saved by a mysterious entity known as 'The Handyman' who turns him into a magical girl.
• Animal Motifs: Izuku's outfit has a rabbit motif, in the pin on the side of his head and in the rabbit clasp on his backpack.
• Armour-Piercing Question: Mako gives a barrage to Inko: "When was the last time you told [Izuku] he was strong? The last time you told him he could do what he put his mind to? The last time you gave him encouragement rather than just watch him saunter into your house looking like a kicked puppy and feel pity for yourself?”
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Inko gives Izuku a variation. "Is this what you really want? The fighting? The Gray Men? The dress?"
• Awesome by Analysis: Much like in canon, Izuku. Shimuzu Mako, a Muay Thai practitioner notes that he's able to pick up on her moves after watching her a few times (albeit unsure of how to move like he's not compensating for a tail) and it helps him out against the Gray Men.
• Bad Influencer: Tazmine Girl, who has an immediate distaste for Minute Maid that borders on irrationality and hypocrisy, and acts as the main voice in the narrative of the people who scapegoat Minute Maid for the Gray Men attacks.
• Badass Adorable: Izuku, even more so than in canon now that he's wearing a cute magical girl outfit.
• Bag of Holding: Since Izuku was wearing his trademark backpack during the Sludge Villain attack, it becomes part of his magical girl outfit and can now hold way more than what its size suggests when transformed.
• Barrier Warrior: One of the pro hero OCs, Mach Barrier, can create barriers from the air.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: The Handyman has his moments...
• Bystander Syndrome: After Mako expresses criticism to Inko regarding how she's more focused on how hard her own life is raising a Quirkless child than on actually supporting her son emotionally, Inko reacts with defensiveness, denial, anger, and upset. Seeing this, a bystander suddenly intervenes, asking Inko if they need to call the police on Mako, and, after Mako leaves to avoid trouble, commenting to Inko "I’m glad that’s over. They really should up security in this place if they’re going to allow people like her in." Inko does and says nothing in Mako's defense during the clearly discriminatory incident.
• Captured on Purpose: Kronos pulls this to be taken to Tartarus, where the authorities have places all the other Gray Men they've captured. Armed with the stolen ability to control metal, Kronos escapes, devours the other Gray Men, attains more power than any other Grey Man seen to date, and goes on a rampage for more.
• Clingy MacGuffin: Handyman takes the form of a watch on his right wrist that can't be taken off.
• Combo Platter Powers: Izuku being infused with magic gives him Super-Strength, Super-Toughness, regeneration, and the ability to spread his Magic Enhancement onto other things. It also makes his attacks uniquely destabilizing to the Gray Men, who develop gold lichtenberg marks at the places where his blows impact and fall apart entirely after enough damage from him. The variety of powers Izuku demonstrates confuses the public, who are used to One Person, One Power.
• Cowardly Lion: Izuku suffers from an accelerated version of the canon bullying, leaving him stuttering in front of company, self-deprecating, and timid, but he is noted to visibly calm and become more stern when defending his friends.
  • He becomes especially more focused whilst fighting, though he does go back to his old self after the adrenaline/excitement wears off.
• Crack Fic: The author describes the premise as 'Crack Treated Seriously'.
• The Cutie: Partially averted, but mostly it's just Izuku being himself. He can't help it. The boy's a cinnamon roll. That being said, he has more in mind than just petting bunnies.
• Death by Adaptation: Izuku dies in the first chapter.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Handyman, apparently. They have been described as being a strange, white rabbit with glowing pink eyes and multiple pupils, but they apparently have many more eyes, enough to fill a whole room with many of various sizes. The rabbit form also sports a set of very sharp fangs with which they grin.
• Evil Evolves: The Residue/Gray Men are constantly evolving their abilities and sizes, either through feeding off of human quirks or through Monstrous Cannibalism in their pursuit to become human.
• Eye Color Change: When transformed, Izuku's eyes are yellow four-pointed stars against white sclera, with no discernable iris or pupil. After his body suffers catastrophic damage in the battle against Kronos, his untransformed eyes also become half-yellow, reflecting that a much greater portion of his body now is made of, and reliant on, magic.
• Fan Boy: Izuku still has his several hero notebooks, with even the police impressed by his attention to detail.
• Fanservice: Handyman occasionally suggests this by teasing Izuku with the idea of putting him in panties but they have yet to commit to the action. It seems to be more out because of Handyman's and Izuku's occasional Friendly War and it amuses Handyman in a nice way.
• Fantastic Ableism:
  • Being quirkless is specifically noted to be classed as a disability. Inko notes that when she tells others Izuku is quirkless, she usually receives condolences, wishes for his health, pity, and, from his school, questions about his IQ and physical health, under the implied assumption that being quirkless comes with mental impairment and physical defects. Izuku is also very visibly heavily bullied and suicide-baited for his quirk status.
  • In the same section as she details this, Inko is shown to ignorantly share some of these same prejudices and gets called out for it by Mako. Inko clearly loves her son but refers to his quirklessness as his "condition" and treats him like he's less capable than other children because of it. After learning about his vigilante activities, she's furious the authorities enabled his vigilante actions and still insists that he "can't defend himself like other people," not comprehending how capable he has proven to be and, indeed, critical he is to everyone's safety as Minute Maid. She's under the mentality that he "needs" a quirk to be a fully functioning person, considers her inability to provide him one a personal failure, and admits to being against her son's dreams because she thinks he needs to learn there are things he can't do.
• First-Episode Resurrection: Izuku dies in the first chapter, but is resurrected shortly after.
• Flowery Elizabethan English: Or, Japanese. The pro hero Nightquake talks like this. Mach Barrier is surprised that they actually just talk like that, and aren't just putting it on.
• Frills of Justice: Like many examples in the genre Izuku's magical girl outfit has a frilly skirt, collar, socks, fingerless gloves, and an apron.
• Frilly Upgrade: Izuku gets one in chapter 32 after recovering from being impaled, with new shoes, a slightly different dress and a maid headband.
• Glamour: In his transformed state, the only thing witnesses can remember about his face is his Wingding Eyes. This allows him to go unrecognised without needing a mask or Clark Kenting. It also affects camera footage.
• Government Agency of Fiction: The International Special Forces Unit.
• Gratuitous Japanese: The characters often use Japanese suffixes when referring to each other. Not in all cases, as hero names and job titles get English prefixes instead. i.e. Detective Tsukauchi and Mx. Nightquake vs Midoriya-san.
• Groin Attack: Izuku, as Minute Maid, does this to Fraction, hence the latter's grudge against the former.
• Healing Factor: Part of the transformation into a magical girl is that his cells now run on magic, allowing him to quickly heal small injuries. Bigger ones need more time.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Izuku constantly doesn't recognize the improvements he's made since starting his battles against the Residues/Gray Men. In those moments, Handyman acts as his Best Friend by praising him.
• Humans Are Flawed: There are several characters who make many mistakes that have either a minor or major affect on the world around them. Acknowledging and attempting to correct those flaws will be important in improving their own state of being as well as others.
• Imagination-Based Superpower: It's implied magic is this, as the form and powers it manifests appear reliant on how the magical girl wielding it expects such power to work. In the case of Izuku, it manifests as superpowers. Other hints that magic manifests and is limited by the magical girl's mind include the incorporation of "cute" styles that Izuku privately likes but never admitted to, and the fact that magic didn't bother imitating a heartbeat until Izuku woke out of his coma and expected to have one.
• Immediate Self-Contradiction: Tazmine Girl has a major problem with this.
  • After Minute Maid is discovered by the public, Tazmine Girl insists she loves Minute Maid, right before diving into a conspiracy theory with no evidence publicly accusing Minute Maid of being the cause of the Gray Men attacks and questioning her co-host's hero fan credentials when they disagree with Tazmine's theory.
  • In the aftermath of the Kronos attack, she tells Hiboshi off for suggesting the heroes are to blame for the casualties, telling him "This isn’t the time for a manhunt, it’s the time for recovery!” She then almost immediately dovetails into suggesting Minute Maid left the heroes to die, and then repeats her baseless claims that Minute Maid was responsible for the attack.
• Immortality: Handyman makes clear that for as long as he is able to help Izuku, Izuku will never have to fear death.
• Instantly Proven Wrong: While discussing Izuku over lunch in the hospital cafeteria, Inko deflects Mako's criticism and defends her own flawed mentality towards parenting Izuku by telling herself Mako couldn't possibly understand the fear that someone would hurt Izuku for who he is. Inko's own upset attracts the attention of a bystander who asks her if they need to call the police on Mako, chases her off, and then comments that the hospital "really should up security in this place if they’re going to allow people like her in." Inko does and says nothing to correct the man's assumptions about her and Mako's interaction or defend the person she chose to meet up with for lunch.
• Interactive Narrator: Handyman is heavily implied to be a part of the narrative voice of the story, who literally grants Izuku magic through Deus ex Machina as he's dying. They sometimes narrate "outloud" (when Izuku can hear), much to Izuku's confusion. They explain this as them accidentally leaving their microphone on. Handyman also serves as a character in their own right, fulfilling the role of both Izuku's Mentor Mascot and Transformation Trinket. As time goes on, Handyman becomes more distinct from the rest of the narrative voice, even arguing with the rest in frustration over how little support Izuku receives.
• It's All About Me: Inko, regarding Izuku, is eventually revealed to have been making parenting choices based on what makes her feel better and what she can accept, rather than what helps Izuku emotionally handle his problems and feel good about himself in spite of them. It gets to the point where Izuku, her child, very clearly has to put aside dealing with his own pains and repress expressing his own feelings and opinions in order to comfort his mother and help her cope with his traumatic experiences. She eventually gets better.
• Kill the Cutie: Izuku dies in the first chapter.
• Magic Enhancement: Izuku gains strength and durability through this. He's also is able to enhance other things around him.
• Magical Girl Warrior: Izuku becoming one instead of receiving One for All is the premise of the story.
• Meido: Justified and partially subverted, because Izuku is a boy. And though Handyman likes making magical dresses, actually, Izuku does like wearing them, even though it took Handyman putting him in one to admit it.
• Mentor Mascot: Handyman. He aids Izuku in his quest against the Residues/Gray Men by explaining his powers, regulating his Healing Factor, and occasionally upgrading items Izuku finds to be more useful in combat. Unlike most examples, he's not a cute animal, but a watch that doubles as a Transformation Trinket.
• Momma's Boy: A huge element of this fic. Just like in canon, he has a very close relationship with his mother. Their relationship, though, is a mess due to their lack of communication. It is partially rooted in Midoriya Inko's, and thus Izuku's, belief in his lack of power and lessened capabilities. It is one of the causes for Izuku's low self-esteem, even if Inko didn't intend for it.
• Necessarily Evil: While the reasons and the point at which the line is crossed varies between the characters, no adult involved feels proud of their complicity in encouraging a fifteen year old child to battle and suffer for them. Unfortunately, Izuku's Unique Protagonist Asset means that while many are doing their best to support him, nobody can spare him. In Tsukauchi's talk with Inko over why he chose to let Izuku fight, he openly says that his position is understandable but still wrong and not excusable, and the authorities who review his decision ultimately rule the same: it was morally awful, but also the only known effective option at a time when the risk of ineffectiveness was mass casualties.
• Normally, I Would Be Dead Now: Izuku takes a pole to the chest in the battle with Chronos which destroys a significant portion of his internal organs including the entirety of his heart, but he's able to remain conscious for the rest of the battle even while impaled and power up the arrow he gave to All Might towards the end so All Might can deliver a killing blow. He even survives to regain all bodily functions without those organs after a several-week-long coma.
• Not Too Dead to Save the Day: Izuku dies in the first chapter, but is so stubborn his will to live is implied to have broken the laws of entropy, enabling his wish to survive to reach out to the forces beyond his world. Handyman responded, reanimating him as a magical girl.
• Oh, Crap!: Detective Naomasa and company have a massive one when they realize that the Gray Man they just captured intends to absorb all the other Gray Men that were defeated without the aid of Minute Maid and contained in Tartarus.
• Original Character: Oh boy, there are a lot of them. Handyman, Inspector Yayoi, Detective Hashiro, Nightquake, Climantine, Mach Barrier, Blackjack, Falcon, Copper Devil, and Shimizu Mako are just to name a few.
• Outside-Context Problem: The "Gray Men." Society initially has no idea what they are, what they want, what's causing them to appear, what they do to their victims, or how to stop them. All they know is that Gray Men somehow permanently disable a person's ability to regulate their Quirk, often kill people, are seemingly invincible, and if not destroyed, pose an existencial threat to the human race.
• Parasol of Pain: A cute umbrella Izuku buys gets modified into this by Handyman. It's used more in the shield sense to protect civilians from a collapsing building.
• Parental Substitute: Shimizu Mako, to an extent. She gives Izuku the support he wishes his mother would give him.
• Parental Abandonment: It's strongly implied that Izuku's father walked out on his family after Izuku was diagnosed Quirkless. The pain of this abandonment manifests most noticeably with Inko, as it contributes heavily to her unintentionally self-centered parenting choices—she still isn't over the effect Izuku's diagnosis had upon their family and her other relationships, and is still pitying herself years later.
• Parents as People: Inko dearly loves her son, but the discrimination against him for being Quirkless has cost both of them a lot, and she's allowed her own self-pity to taint how she treats him, becoming a force that seeks to impose limitations to "protect" him rather than helping to mitigate the emotional damage of the discrimination by supporting him and helping him feel good about himself. This means that while she loves her son, she also damages his self-esteem by reinforcing the idea that he's weaker and less capable than everyone else. Mako notes that even when Inko talks about how much she loves Izuku, she only ever mentions his weaknesses and never his strengths. Inko also takes criticism of this as a personal attack by people who don't understand how hard raising Izuku has been for her, even when the criticism comes by way of concern for how she affects Izuku. In her mind she justifies this by telling herself she's "protecting" Izuku to provide "what Izuku need[s]," but she's so self-pitying that Izuku has long developed the habit of not discussing what he needs in order to help her cope, even when he's the one experiencing direct trauma because she unintentionally makes these conversations revolve around herself and what she can accept. However, when she finally realizes Izuku feels unable to confide in her she's willing to put aside her own baggage and respect his decisions, resolving to be a more supportive parent.
• Pink Heroine: Gender-Inverted Trope - both of Izuku's magical girl outfits are pink, and he's the hero of the story.
• Point of Divergence: Izuku becoming a magical girl changes the story drastically, from extremely visible points like Izuku dying and becoming the front-line warrior against Residue/Gray Men to commonly overlooked points like Bakugou never being caught by the sludge villain because of Izuku's death.
• Poor Communication Kills: The police's announcement that they are seeking to apprehend Minute Maid is made not with the intent to arrest the presumed girl but to find her so she can aid the authorities. However, they botch the messaging to the point where everyone else—Heroes, media, civilians, and Minute Maid himself—assume the police are stating their intent to arrest Minute Maid. Because of this, interactions between the authorities and Minute Maid from there on out are aggrevated—Minute Maid regards the authorities as a threat to his person and the force and manner with which the Heroes try to capture Minute Maid only reinforces the misunderstanding. It also means the public sees Minute Maid and the authorities as being in opposition, which earns both the Heroes and Minute Maid unnecessary negative PR. But by far the worst consequence is that it delays a proper exchange of information between Minute Maid and the authorities until it's too late to correct for the government's dangerously flawed Gray Men storage practices in time to stop the formation of Kronos.
• Power Glows: Izuku in Magical Girl form. It makes All Might believe he has a quirk when they first meet this time round.
• Prehensile Hair: The pro hero Nightquake has incredibly strong hair that can be used to restrain opponents.
• Really 700 Years Old: Inspector Yayoi Gin, of the International Special Forces Unit called in to investigate Izuku's activities as Minute Maid and the Gray Men. She’s confirmed to be older than All For One.
• Recruit Teenagers with Attitude: Justified Trope, as said by Inspector Yayoi:
  “Because even when the adults are called on, it doesn’t mean they’ll act. Girls, young ones, who are often socially discriminated against, who have their emotions demeaned and caricatured, who are often told more what they can’t do rather than what they can, would fight tooth and nail to feel important, like the things they do actually mean something, like they can affect the world around them. It's often the young girls that feel the need for power, and so the universe grants it to them, knowing they often will use it when given a target…”
• Required Secondary Powers: If a Gray Man manages to make physical contact with a victim, it can strip them of these. The Gray Men can't steal Quirks, but they can steal aspects of or potential to use them. In Chapter 9 a young man with an ice quirk later revealed to be one of Shouto Todoroki's older brothers is attacked. Later on, it's mentioned that the Gray Man took his ability to regulate his own temperature, and that he now can't create more than a mild frost without getting hypothermia and going into a coma.
• The Scapegoat: Izuku, more specifically, Minute Maid. Mass media moguls like Tazmine Gal will often directly correlate Residue/Gray Man activity to Minute Maid, even going as far as to say that Minute Maid is the cause of the disaster. Through glimpses of media, like Twitter posts and interviews, it's shown that the media personalities aren't the only ones suspecting Minute Maid of being Obviously Evil or a Devil in Plain Sight.
• School Bullying Is Harmless: Averted big style. Handyman points out at one point that if Izuku's Healing Factor wasn't there, one of Bakugou's attacks should have left 2nd-degree burns and that covering for him in order to not screw up Bakugou's chances of becoming a hero won't help either of them in the long run.
• Sensei-chan: Mostly Averted. She is a subjectively attractive teacher with a close relationship with her student, Izuku, but she has explicitly expressed no romantic interest in him whatsoever. She is also too young to fully fit the trope, as she's 22. Still, her age in relation to Izuku causes her to feel uncomfortable with being called "sensei", which prompts her to prefer being called "senpai" instead.
• Secret Identity: Because Minute Maid is obviously a girl with a Light Quirk, Izuku reasons no one would suspect a Quirkless boy to be "her".
• Shark Man: Izuku's Muay Thai instructor, Shimuzu Mako has a shark mutation quirk similar to Gang Orca.
• Socially Awkward Hero: Izuku, big time. Because of his quirklessness and his social status, he's not accustomed to talking with other people than his mother very often. This comes particularly strongly when talking with law enforcement because he became a vigilante when he started using his magical powers.
• Stock Shoujo Bullying Tactics: Coming back to school after the Sludge Villain incident, Izuku finds himself on the receiving end of the flowers on desk for a funeral tactic, complete with envelope for the next life with "A Quirk " written inside it. It's as upsetting as it sounds.
• They Died Because of You:
  • Played with and discussed. Tsukauchi knows that All Might will take him revealing the origins of Izuku's magic this way given that Izuku was murdered by the Slime Villain just before All Might could intervene, especially since that villain was non-violent until he felt cornered by All Might.
  • Izuku's middle school class are a more straight example. They're utterly shaken when his replacement transfer, Iwakage, whom they also have begun bullying, unceremoniously announces that the rest of the school believe them to have drove Izuku to suicide, frequently call them murderers behind their backs, and suspect the class will kill her, too.
• Touched by Vorlons: Having been reanimated by Handyman, Izuku's body runs on magic even when not transformed.
• Transformation Trinket: Handyman.
• 20 Minutes into the Future: Despite it being about two hundred years into the future when compared to 2016 (specifically, the year 2224), there is not much different from normal society save for the heroics and villainy that's a common entity in various Boku no Hero Alternate Universe Fic.
• Ungrateful Bastard: While the criminal aspect of the investigation is justified due to Minute Maid's actions being assumed illegal under vigilante laws, the city of Musutafu also chooses to sue Minute Maid in civil court for the damages caused by the Gray Men once their identity is known, effectively holding Minute Maid responsible for the damages caused by the "villains" they saved the town from. This despite the fact that Minute Maid is a child who is at that very moment in a coma after having saved the city from its own incorrect Gray Men holding practices and had their heart impaled out of their body in the process.
• Unique Protagonist Asset: While other heroes can battle and even contain the Gray Men, only Izuku can injure or destroy them. The longer the Gray Men are around, the more likely they are to consume each other and grow in power, so the world desperately needs to eliminate them as fast as possible and thus desperately needs Izuku. Inspector Yayoi tells Inko directly that without Izuku helping to get rid of the Gray Men, society as they know it could collapse within two years.
• Weather Manipulation: Pro hero Climantine is able to manipulate water in the air and thus change the weather.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Oh, Izuku. It has the effect of helping him hide his identity since everyone meeting him in his Frills of Justice immediately concludes he's a girl.
• Wingding Eyes: Part of Izuku's transformation turns his irises and pupils into yellow four-pointed stars. The stars change size in accordance with his emotions—smaller for shock and stress, larger for joy and sorrow.
• Wrong Context Magic: Quite literally—in a world of superpowers, magic has no natural manifested presence, isn't widely known, and makes no sense with their present-day understanding of biology and physics. And, like an invasive species with no natural predators, "Gray Men," being magic, face little resistance from the world's native powers. While there have been "magical girl scenarios" before, the magical nature of those situations weren't widely known and are implied to have been kept quiet.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Implied by Yayoi, who states that once the Magical Event is over, the magical girl loses her magic. However, Izuku is being kept alive by magic; Handyman even says his body no longer maintains itself on its own. This heavily implies that, unless some unknown nuance to the situation changes the circumstances, Izuku will die permanently once the Gray Men problem is solved.

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