Chapter Text
Hero was the #1 dream of every aspiring child, to become someone strong and courageous like All Might.
It had been Izuku’s dream to become a hero, it had not matter which school he went to. However, he was reevaluating his dream thanks to a chain of events that had all started with Kacchan telling him to take a swan dive off the roof and snowballed from there. Then Izuku came to the conclusion that everyone else had arrived to a long time ago the minute he was declared quirkless. It was just impossible for a quirkless child with no support, no connections, no skills, and no strength to ever become a Hero he had aspired to be as a child.
It had always been impossible, but Izuku was only realizing it the moment All Might had told him, staring directly into his eyes full of pity and telling him with no room for pretense that someone who didn't have a quirk simply couldn't become a hero. That Izuku needed to face the harsh reality and find something more suited to his caliber.
Izuku supposed he should be grateful that All Might told him before he did something embarrassing or even killed himself… But it didn’t make him feel any better. It made him feel… Humiliated. More so than whenever the students in his school embarrassed him out of malicious intent. He felt completely humiliated to be rejected by his idol the minute he told him that he was quirkless.
And what was worse above it all? He still wished to be a hero, to help people with a big smile like All Might.
He had to be the biggest fool in the world to still wish to be a hero. To be so optimistic for something that couldn't happen.
So feeling humiliated, sorrowful, angry, he took a step back from everything and everyone and took refuge in his room, dim and empty from every Hero memorabilia he had collected over the years and were now pushed to the very back of his small closet. It was time to reevaluate his entire world. Fortunately his mother, very worried and concerned, respected his wishes to be left alone for a while and called his school that Izuku would be out of school for a few days due to a fever.
Izuku truly did have the best and caring Mom in the world.
Now that he was excused from school, Izuku plotted.
He may be the biggest fool in the world, but he still wanted to be a hero. He needed to be one.
But what did being a hero meant?
According to the internet, being a hero meant being a person to be admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities. All Might was the very definition of being a hero, he was the Symbol of Peace after all.
But to Izuku… Being a Hero didn’t mean being in the spotlight. For him being a hero meant to help people in need. To encourage people that nothing was impossible, that they can do it. Being a hero meant… Smiling, if not for the sake of yourself, but for others who needed a smile.
Izuku wanted to be a hero who smiled for others when they couldn't.
That just left the question. How was he going to be the hero he wanted to be?
His phone vibrated and lit up in the dim room. Glancing at it he saw that his Mom had texted him that she had made his favorite food for dinner, katsudon.
Sending a quick reply that he would eat later, he was about to set his phone down until he paused and stared at the picture of UA he had set as his background.
Izuku didn't know how long he had been staring at the picture of UA, but before he realized it he was grinning with a touch of mischief and probably a bit of hysteria in it.
While UA was mostly known for its Hero’s course, there were other courses that either helped support heroes or help with other pursuits that weren’t entirely related to heroes. The Support Course, the Management Course, and the General Studies Course.
Kacchan was going to kill him… Ah, what the hell. Even when Izuku did nothing to incite the literal bomb’s anger, he was always at the explosive end of it no matter what he did. He bet that when he returned back to school, Kacchan and his lackeys would corner him for being so annoying and pathetic. So while the upcoming beat down was going to sting for a long time when Kacchan realized what he did, to hell with it! Izuku was going to get into UA, and there was nothing his childhood friend could do about it.
He’d have to answer his previous question another time. Now the new and the more important question was, which course should he join that would piss Kacchan off the most?
Izuku made his final decision to join the General Studies Course when he returned to school from his 'fever' and ran into Kacchan with their same song and dance.
The General Course allowed students to move up to the Hero Course should they ever show any promise. Though Izuku doubt he would show the promise the school would be looking for, with him being quirkless and all, there were many other benefits into going into the General Course. For one, the General Course would hopefully help him decide what he wanted to do in the future if he couldn't become a Hero, and being in U.A he hoped it would help him get into college easier. Not to mention to benefits of having a U.A graduate in a resume which would help him land a job easier, assuming if his future employers would look pass his lack of quirk.
Whoops, he was thinking too far ahead. Izuku knew he was smart but he wasn’t that arrogant to think there weren’t people smarter than him out there that would try to apply into UA’s General Studies. Not to mention that most of the spots in the General Studies Course would be filled with those who failed the Hero’s entrance exam who showed promise. So Izuku had to study and get a high score if they were to even consider giving him a spot. If they would give him a spot. He had scoured U.A's rules plenty of times, but he was still worried that he had somehow missed the rule that quirkless people were not allowed into U.A.
No, he couldn’t get all pessimistic now. He had to focus everything on studying for the General Studies' Entrance Exam.
And so for the next few months he did his best to avoid Kacchan and his lackeys as usual. There were times he would get caught and beaten up or mocked mercilessly for his quirklessness, but once they left him alone he would bounce back and focus the remaining of his energy to studying, learning everything and anything he could. After all even though the Hero’s Entrance Exams were difficult, the General Studies’ Entrance Exams were just as difficult as the other.
It was certainly a challenge to get to UA when the time came, trying to avoid Kacchan, but when the test came… He found himself answering the questions easily. He didn’t even bat an eye on the strange questions on the written exam. Roughly 50 minutes into the exam he had been the first to finish, followed closely by a red-haired student wearing an easy-going smile.
As he turned in his test and shuffled out of the testing room, Izuku wondered if he should be worried about the test. It definitely had questions that made Izuku pause and think about and work through mentally to cross out the answers that made no sense, and the written exam focused mostly about the tester’s morality and belief, but it felt… Too easy. And as he reviewed back to the questions he answered, ignoring the red-haired student calling out to him, his anxiety started to pile up.
Did he actually answer the questions right? He had made sure to reread and go over his questions twice and made sure that his answers were circled correctly, but what if he had done something wrong? What if he had actually misread or misunderstood the question and gave the wrong answer? And those written answers, he knew that they didn’t exactly have a right or wrong answer given it was about the tester’s own beliefs, but what if he just answered wrong? What if his handwriting was illegible? What if-
“HEY!”
Izuku yelped, and stared wide eyes at the red-head who had wrapped his arms around his shoulder and gave him a small pout. Izuku flinched at the contact, which the other noticed and quickly backed up, holding his hands up as he wore an apologetic smile.
“Sorry, sorry didn’t mean to get all touchy like that.” He laughed easily. “But anyway, I don’t know about you but that exam was strangely easy wasn’t it? It almost makes me feel like I probably rushed through it too fast and answered all those questions wrong, right?”
Izuku stared at the red-head, who continued on even when he didn’t get an answer from the other.
“But I bet it’s all fine! We probably did good considering how fast we went through it! But still, I’ve been studying for weeks when I decided on going to UA and I don’t think I’ve ever been so nervous about taking a test. Oh yeah, my name is Hiro Tokande, though I'm still not sure what I want to be in the future. What about you?”
“I-Izuku Midoriya and…” Here, he took a small pause. “I’m not really sure what I want to be in the future either.”
Hiro smiled widely from ear to ear and held out a hand for Izuku to take. “Well we’ll just have to figure it out together when we get into UA Izuku!”
Izuku stared at Hiro’s beaming smile and hesitantly took the other’s hand in his. Hiro’s smile grew bigger, his bright brown eyes practically dancing with happiness. Feeling himself be infected by the other’s joy, Izuku couldn’t help but smile back.
For some reason, Izuku had a feeling that everything was going to be okay.
Well this was quite an interesting development.
Nezu stared at the two top highest scores coming from the General Study entrance exam. Coming in with a staggering 93%, definitely a high percentage compared to the average 49%, was one Izuku Midoriya, along with the interesting written paper that told Nezu that Midoriya was a very good kid who was grossly overlooked just because he had been born quirkless.
Following close behind Midoriya’s high score was one Hiro Tokande, scoring 90%. While his written exam wasn’t anything to write home about, given how generic most of the answers sounded, there was one interesting response in the last question that Nezu had added himself, curious how middle school graduates would answer.
Question 20:
If you had a chance to redo a past mistake, what mistake would you fix?
As tempting as it sounds to redo something I regret so I don’t feel the pain or humiliation of that, I wouldn’t fix anything. My mistakes are what helped me become the person I am today, and they help me make sure I don’t make the same mistakes again. And if I ever do make that mistake again, I want to make sure that my behavior doesn’t hurt anyone ever again.
Well, there was certainly a backstory to that, but as the principal and out of politeness, Nezu refrained himself from pulling up Tokande’s personal history that wasn’t part of the general file.
Midoriya and Tokande certainly earned their spot on the General Course Study, but they weren’t the only ones. Nezu glanced over the other files that had caught his attention with their scores going over 70%.
Nezu then looked over the files of the students in the Hero Course, along with the Heroics Teacher, and his smile widened more.
Well, the next three years were certainly going to be interesting, that's for sure.