Chapter Text
Hatsume Mei was humming some obnoxiously catchy tune as she welded some metal plates together. She had quite a bit of free time today. Izuku hadn’t had any major cases lately, just a couple petty crimes that were easily dealt with, so his gear didn’t have any major maintenance due. Not only that, but she hadn’t had any orders for support gear lately.
So it was back to her pet project.
She wasn’t really sure why she continued to work on these things. After all, the original recipient had turned her down, saying his career was more or less over and he’d accepted that. Still, she enjoyed the challenge of putting these things together. And besides, Izuku suggested she keep at it.
“Think of it this way,” he said once, when Mei asked him for his honest opinion on whether he thought the project was worth continuing. “In our line of work, those sorts of injuries aren’t that rare. Chances are, someone’s gonna get hurt the same way, they’ll want to keep going, and you’ll be in the perfect position to help them. Just think about how that would impact Hatsume Industries! You’d be singlehandedly responsible for saving a hero’s career from certain death. And then there are the civilian applications-”
Of course by that point Izuku had already convinced her, and her motivation had already been rekindled, so she simply shut him up with a kiss, told him she needed to get back to work, and that was that.
She wiped the sweat off her brow with a rag and sighed. It was exhausting, the programming difficult to figure out, and the assembly a nightmare, but it was finished. Izuku was right, even if her original idea wouldn’t come to fruition, there was no way there wasn’t a market for-
Cat loves food, yeah yeah yeah! Cat loves food yeah yeah!~
On hearing that familiar ringtone she moved the rag to her left hand and picked up her phone.
“You’ve reached Hatsume Industries! How can I direct your call?”
“ I’m sorry, I could’ve sworn this was your personal number. ”
“Oh, Tensei!” she said, recognizing the voice. “It is, I just greet everyone like that. What’s up?”
“ It’s Tenya, ” the retired pro explained. “ He woke up from his coma this morning. ”
On the day of the Hell Class’s first Sports Festival, Iida Tensei, AKA the Pro Hero Ingenium, was attacked and paralyzed by the Hero Killer.
Shortly afterwards, during the class’s internships, his younger brother and hero-in-training Iida Tenya went AWOL to hunt down the Hero Killer and avenge his brother.
Not only did he fail to stop the Hero Killer from murdering another Pro Hero, Native, but he himself was heavily injured. He nearly died from the blood loss alone, but in addition, Stain did severe damage to the young man’s spine. The only things preventing him from ending the student’s life right then and there were the Nomus sent by the League of Villains to attack the city.
Miraculously, Iida survived, but by the time he was found and given medical attention, he had already slipped into a coma, where he remained for 4 years.
When he woke up, word spread through his former class like wildfire and his hospital room was swarming with visitors, though after their first disastrous attempt to crowd into his room at once they started visiting him individually.
The most frequent visitor Iida got was Uraraka. During their time as classmates, the two had gotten along pretty well, and it more or less started during their first Heroics class. They had been assigned as the Villains during that first exercise, with the opposing Hero team being Bakugou and Jirou.
To say it was an absolute disaster would be an understatement.
“So, this is the bomb,” Uraraka muttered as she picked up the deceptively light prop. “All right, what’s the plan?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Iida said, trying to make his voice sound more sinister and failing miserably. “We wait here, and when the heroes arrive, we’ll hold the line until it’s over!”
“I don’t think that’ll work,” she said. “Bakugou’s got a really powerful explosion Quirk, and while both of us have effective short-ranged Quirks, I think he’ll be able to overpower us pretty easily. Plus, I can’t get close enough to remove his gravity.”
“I could keep him distracted and you sneak up on him,” Iida suggested.
“But then there’s Jirou. If she’s around she’ll be able to stop me.”
“Then we’ll divide and conquer!” Iida proclaimed. “Bakugou is clearly looking for a fight, so I’ll give him one. If I understand Jirou’s Quirk correctly, she’ll be able to find you and sneak to your location without Bakugou noticing. Then you can get the drop on her! Once she’s done, I can return to your location-”
“Where we’ll have him outnumbered two to one!” Uraraka finished as she put the pieces together.
“Then we can capture him, or at least hold him until the time runs out.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Uraraka nodded. “Let’s do this!”
“Okay, once we’re in, I’ll use my Quirk to find them,” Jirou said. “If they’re in the same room talking to each other, it’s a safe bet the bomb is there. If they aren’t, I’ll listen to their footsteps and we’ll split up- Are you even listening?”
Bakugou didn’t respond, flexing and unflexing his fingers as he glared at the entrance.
“Hey! Bakugou?”
“Shut up, extra,” Bakugou snapped back. “You’re breaking my concentration.”
“We’re supposed to be working together,” she pointed out.
“Like I need your help to take on these weaklings,” he replied.
“You may now enter the building!” All Might said over the speaker.
Jirou opened her mouth to speak, but before she could get the first syllable out Bakugou blew past her into the building.
“Hey, wait!” she called but Bakugou was either having a hard time hearing her over the sound of his explosions, or he just didn’t care. Probably both. Jirou groaned and used her Quirk, plugging her Earphone Jack into the wall to listen for anything. She forced herself to ignore the sound of Bakugou blasting through the halls, when she heard it- the sound of Iida’s engines tearing across the fourth floor, afterwards descending to the third floor.
I think they’re trying to cause a distraction, Jirou realized. Iida will draw away Bakugou and keep him from getting to the bomb. That means Uraraka is probably waiting at the bomb.
She ran up the stairs, up to the second floor, then the third. As soon as she reached the third floor, she was caught off-guard by a loud explosion just a couple rooms to her left.
“Get back here, extra!” Bakugou shouted.
“You’ll never catch me, hero!” Iida replied, evidently taking his role as villain super-seriously.
Not wanting to pull the pin on her walking grenade of a teammate by interfering in the fight, she resumed her original plan of using stealth. However, she encountered a bit of a hiccup when she tried using her Quirk in the stairwell leading to the fourth floor. Bakugou and Iida were fighting so close to her that there was too much interference, and she couldn’t pinpoint Uraraka’s location.
“Gotcha!”
With a surprised yelp, Jirou was too late to react as Uraraka dropped from above and kicked Jirou to the ground. “Sorry about this,” the pink-clad girl quickly apologized as she whipped out the capture tape and tied Jirou’s hands, taking her out of action.
“Jirou has been captured by the Villain Team!”
Below, Iida took this as his cue. With a burst of speed, he turned and dashed away from Bakugou, ignoring the blonde’s indignant yelling. It was time for phase two of the plan he and Uraraka had put together. With Jirou taken out, it was two against one. But since Iida and Uraraka stood no chance of taking on Bakugou head-on even if they worked together, they decided to use their numerical advantage to play defensively, blocking off access to the bomb and stalling until the timer ran out.
The two made it back to the bomb before Bakugou, thankfully. Just as they managed to secure the room, Bakugou came in. With a growl, he tried to force his way into the room, but Iida managed to force him back out by charging at him at top speed, not giving him a chance to react before the blonde was thrown across the hall.
He got up and tried again, trading blows with his armored opponent, his gauntlets protecting him as he struck Iida’s armor. He let out an explosion that knocked Iida down, and he made a mad dash for the bomb.
Suddenly he found himself unable to move and realized he was floating. He turned his head once he figured out which way was up and saw Uraraka. Seeing red, he prepared another explosion, but since he was still weightless, he wound up propelling himself in the complete opposite direction from where he wanted to be.
“Release!” Uraraka touched her fingers together as Bakugou rocketed away, landing hard and skidding a fair distance away. Iida was all ready with the capture tape, but Bakugou used his explosions to launch himself back up and land another punch on Iida, who barely had time to block.
However, Bakugou quickly realized that the bomb was no longer in the room. Uraraka had made the thing weightless so she could carry it at a full sprint down the hall. What’s more, Iida had blasted off to join her, having realized that getting the capture tape on Bakugou was a futile endeavor. They resolved to keep playing defensively and run out the timer.
Bakugou picked up on this fact. Four-eyes wasn’t the worst at hand-to-hand combat, but they both knew in a protracted fight, Bakugou would win eventually. A grim smile came to his lips as he planned his next move.
“If I have it right, we just need to hold out for a couple more minutes,” Uraraka said. “We just need to keep him from getting in until then.”
Just then, Bakugou confidently strode towards the room which now housed the bomb.
“Hey, extras! I’m gonna win this right here, right now!”
“Yeah right,” Uraraka shot back. “No way we’re gonna let you in here!”
“Who said anything about me coming in?” he retorted. He held up one of his gauntlets. “Thing about my Quirk is that it comes from my sweat. These gauntlets here store up all the excess for me to fire off later,” he explained. “And I’ve had a lot of time to work up a good sweat.”
He grabbed the pin on his grenade-shaped right gauntlet and pulled it out.
“Bakugou, stop! Do not fire your gauntlets! You could seriously injure-”
Unfortunately, All Might didn’t get to finish his warning.
KRAKOOOOM!
“Ngh…” Uraraka groaned as she sat up. She blearily took note of where she was and remembered that she was in Recovery Girl’s office, laid down on a bed. “Oh right…” she looked around and saw Iida, similarly incapacitated, on another bed that had been wheeled in. The sun was starting to set, resulting in a reddish glow filling the room.
“Good to see you’re awake, dearie,” Recovery Girl said pleasantly. “Once your friend here wakes up I just need to look you both over a bit and then you can go. Here, have a gummy.” Uraraka nodded as she took one. “Oh, and congratulations on your victory.”
“Huh?” Uraraka reacted with a start. “We won? But how did we-”
“On a technicality, yes, but you still won. If that had been a real scenario, then where would Bakugou’s actions have led?”
Uraraka’s eyes widened in realization. Letting off such a massive explosion in the same room as a nuclear warhead would be the literal worst thing to do in that scenario. No wonder he’d gotten disqualified!
“I saw the footage. You and your friend played your parts perfectly,” Recovery Girl continued as they heard a stirring from the other side of the room. Iida sat up and opened his eyes slowly.
After Recovery Girl had made sure they healed properly and filled some forms, they were free to go. The two were the only students left in the building so it was just the two of them walking to the train station.
“You did a great job today,” Uraraka said, not wanting to walk in awkward silence.
“As did you!” the taller bespectacled boy replied. “I fear that I didn’t get into character as well as I would’ve liked, but it was an enlightening experience! To see such a situation from the perspective of the villain has done wonders to make us more familiar with a villain’s mindset, a skill which will greatly benefit us as heroes! That must be the true hidden genius of this test!”
Uraraka giggled, knowing full well All Might literally just drew names out of a hat, but said nothing. After their ordeal at Bakugou’s hands, she’d let him have this.
“I think we work pretty well together, ya know?” she asked.
“I couldn’t agree more, Uraraka-san,” he replied as they arrived at the station and had to part ways.
“You can just call me Ochako if you want.”
“All right, Ochako. I’ll see you tomorrow!”
“Same to you. I can’t wait to train alongside you, Tenya!”
And so here they were now, catching up like old friends in a hospital room four years later.
“Wait, how many classmates wound up in the Top 50?” Iida asked, incredulously. He had just returned to his hotel room after a session of physical therapy, and Uraraka had just dropped in for a friendly visit.
“I know, it’s kind of insane, but it makes sense,” Uraraka replied. “Those villains from the USJ came back in force, and they wound up being the real deal."
Indeed, the League of Villains was an annoying thorn in the Hell Class's side throughout their time at UA. They weren't slowed down whatsoever when their leader, All for One, was killed in his battle with All Might, who later succumbed to his own injuries. Sure they were running around like chickens with their heads cut off, but that just made them more unpredictable and more dangerous in some ways.
"They kept targeting us for reasons that are beyond me, though they seemed to keep going after Kirishima for some reason… anyway, all those high profile villain battles kind of dragged us into the limelight kicking and screaming, and now, everyone knows about the Hell Class.”
“Well, let me just say that I am so happy for all of you!” Iida said. Uraraka felt the urge to giggle as Iida attempted to make that chopping hand motion he always did whenever he got passionate about things, but he looked like it was real uncomfortable and a little painful to do, so she immediately felt guilty.
“Muscle memory’s shot, huh?”
“Indeed… physical therapy has been an ordeal.”
The two sat in silence for a moment before Uraraka asked another question.
“Do you think you’ll go back to UA once you recover?”
The question confused him. “Aren’t I expelled?” he asked. “I disobeyed direct orders from the hero I was interning with, ran off on my own after a villain during a crisis and tried to kill him. Why wouldn’t Aizawa expel me?”
“Funny story… we asked Aizawa the same thing. He said he didn’t want to make it official until you were conscious enough to answer for your actions. But since he doesn't teach at UA anymore, that’s no longer an issue.”
“Aizawa-sensei is no longer at UA?” Iida asked, surprised. “Why not?”
“Oh wow, you mean I never told you about Sleeper Hit?” Uraraka gasped.
“Who’s that? A villain?”
“The opposite, actually. He's a Pro Hero. Remember that green haired kid from the first day? The one who failed the Quirk test? The one who-”
“ The one who saved you from the Zero Pointer, ” Iida realized in awe.
When the ground started shaking and the massive robot appeared, Iida did the thing that most sane people would do: Run in the opposite direction. Of course, he was not most people. He was applying to train to be a hero, which is also not most people. But Present Mic had made it perfectly clear: There was nothing to be gained from taking the thing on. So he ran.
Most of the other examinees had the exact same idea, running for dear life. But in the corner of Iida’s peripheral vision, he saw a green blur dash in the opposite direction of the crowd.
Iida recognized him as the disruptive kid from the written exam, and the one who he had caught trying to throw off that brunette’s focus.
Whatever is his damage? he thought to himself, until he traced the green boy’s path and realized where he was running and why.
Trapped beneath rubble, directly in the path of the hulking tank, was that aforementioned brunette.
Is he…? He shook his head. No way is he going to try to take on the Zero Pointer.
He was correct, at least at first. Midoriya Izuku had no intention of going up against a massive building-sized robot with nothing but a grappling hook and a dream. He fired said grappling hook, assembled from spare parts he found cleaning up Dagobah and with the help of a tutorial he found online, and swung over one of the many light poles that lined the fake city and swung towards her. He quickly landed near her and bent down to try and lift the rubble pinning her legs.
“Rgh… your Quirk is Zero Gravity, right? Can you use it on the rubble?”
“Can’t…” she weakly managed. “Broke one of my fingers, an’ my other hand is stuck too.”
“I getcha. Um…” he scanned the area. He looked at her, then the rubble, then the Zero Pointer, and got an idea. “Okay. Just sit tight.” He jammed the prongs of the grappling hook underneath the rubble trapping Uraraka’s legs, took the other end in his hand, and both Uraraka and Iida both watched with a mix of fascination and horror as he ran directly towards the Zero Pointer.
If I’m going to get the leverage I need for this plan to work, I’m gonna need height. But I can’t throw the hook while it’s attached to that piece of rubble. The only way I’m getting the momentum I need is to climb up the Zero Pointer!
Silently thinking about how grateful he was for learning parkour along with his cleanup of Dagobah Beach, he scaled the sides of the robot’s massive legs. The hulking behemoth took no notice of the ant trying to climb it, and when Izuku had enough height, he targeted the nearest light pole and kicked off, pressing a button on the grappling hook and withdrawing the slack as he fell.
The cable went taut over the light pole and yanked hard on the rubble, Izuku’s weight and falling speed producing enough force to lift the debris off Uraraka. It didn’t keep it in the air forever, but it lifted it up enough that Uraraka was able to scramble away. Once it fell back down and Izuku retracted the grappling hook, he ran like crazy, using the hook to make his getaway, since it was faster than running. However, as he swung into the air via one of those light poles, Izuku’s heart stopped as he heard a SNAP.
The cable of his grappling hook immediately went slack as it detached from the grapple gun, followed by a couple of key parts that held it together. Izuku cursed himself for putting too much strain on a homemade device made out of literal garbage, and helplessly started plummeting to the ground, bracing himself for the inevitable impact.
Said impact felt a lot more like a hand slapping him, and he was more surprised when the sudden loss of momentum didn’t break every bone in his body, and he just realized that Uraraka had used her Quirk on him to stop his fall.
“TIME’S UP!” Present Mic shouted over the loudspeaker. The massive robot slowed to a stop as Uraraka hunched over and started throwing up. Iida just watched on in admiration. If this had been a real battle and not an exam, he might have done the same thing.
He would later kick himself for that line of thought when he got his acceptance letter and learned about Rescue Points but that’s neither here nor there.
“Yeah, he enrolled in another school, and he wound up being a Pro Hero and... hey, are you okay?” Uraraka asked, concerned, noting that Iida had gone quiet.
Iida sighed. “I don’t think I ever apologized to him,” he said. “I misjudged his actions at the entrance exam and singled him out in front of everyone, when he was the only one who saw the test for what it was, and I didn’t have the chance to talk with him before he was expelled.”
“Well, I’m sure he barely remembers,” she said, before reconsidering. “...Either that or he’s been harboring an obsessive grudge all this time. Fifty-fifty shot.”
“I see.”
They remained in silence for a bit.
“In answer to your question,” he said finally, “I would like to resume the hero track, but I can’t. Even after physical therapy is done, it would take me years to get back to where I was. All the years worth of muscle memory for controlling my Quirk is gone. There’s no way I’ll be fighting fit in any realistic length of time.”
Before Uraraka could reply, someone else barged into the room.
“Hey, is this the right room? Your brother told me but I forgot to write it down, and I barged into like three rooms before this one, but then I overheard what you just said and I realized my timing couldn’t have been better,” Hatsume Mei stated as she walked in like the owned the place.
Considering one of the last things Iida remembered before his coma was his utter humiliation at her hands during the Sports Festival, he panicked a bit, flinching away. “Hatsume-san! What are you doing here?”
Hatsume grinned, seemingly oblivious to how uncomfortable Iida was in her presence. “I just wanted to say hi to you, it’s been a really long time! But also, I heard you want to get back to hero-ing and I’ve got a baby in the works that’ll really help. I actually made it for your brother but he didn’t want it, and I’d hate to see it go to waste.”
“Uh… I think I’ll pass on that,” Iida said nervously, not wanting to be subjected to any more of her “babies” in his condition.
“Oh, don’t worry,” she said, her tone softening a little. “There won’t be any explosions or anything, I promise. That’s a Hatsume Industries guarantee.”
Iida looked over at Uraraka. “Hatsume Industries?”
“Yeah, it’s a thing now.”
“I see… Hatsume-san, I appreciate the offer, but after what happened at the Sports Festival-”
“Oh, right,” she said, remembering. “I getcha. Don’t worry, I’m not going to use you as advertising this time. When I first designed it for your brother, I wanted to use this baby for publicity to get my support company off the ground. But he turned it down, but said he’d pay me to design it for you, so I kept working on it and it just felt… wrong of me to take advantage of you like that again. That and I don’t really need the free advertising anymore. If you don’t want my help, that’s totally fine.”
Iida was taken aback. Was this really the same Hatsume Mei who had used him as a commercial back at the Sports Festival? He mulled it over, and sighed. Oh well, what have I got to lose. “You know what, I accept your offer.”
Mei’s trademark domineering grin suddenly returned to her face. “Glad to hear it! I’ll see you once you’re discharged from the hospital, and we can get to work.”
“So… if you don’t mind me asking, what exactly is this “baby” anyway?”
She simply smiled. “It’s a surprise!”
A month passed before Iida was finally discharged from the hospital. He was able to eat, walk, and do most of his normal activities, but getting back into fighting form was going to be a challenge, one that Hatsume had assured him she would handle. After finally spending some time at home, the time came for him to go to Hatsume’s workshop.
“So, first thing you gotta know,” Hatsume explained, “A lot of this stuff was my fiancé’s idea.”
“Your fiancé?” Who in their right mind would agree to marry… no, stop it, Tenya, you’re being rude.
“Yeah, the guy’s in love with Quirk Theory. Anyway, after what happened to your brother, he noticed that a lot of heroes have difficulty with Quirk control after getting injuries like yours. Quirks have their own muscle memory separate from the normal kind, since each Quirk is different and all. He came up with the idea for constructing a leg brace geared towards your Quirk that would use data gathered from the recordings of you at UA to help you redevelop your old moves, by using controlled bursts of Quirk stimulants and Quirk suppressants to match what you were able to pull off before your injury. The whole point is to simulate and accelerate the repetition of your Quirk-related moves so you can perform them second-nature.”
She reached under her desk and pulled out a pair of devices that, indeed, looked like they would fit around Iida’s legs and knees, with openings designed to match his exhaust pipes. There was some wiring and gadgetry on the inside.
“I just need to install the algorithm I programmed into this thing, put it on, and…”
The door to the workshop opened and in walked in a bruised but otherwise energetic Izuku.
“There you are, Mei! I heard he finally got discharged. That MLA copycat took all week to deal with so I missed…”
He saw Iida there, and the two made eye contact. Iida remembered this guy being much more meek and, for lack of a better word, wimpy at the entrance exam. Both he and Mei had grown up a lot, and here he was, having slept through what should have been a defining time of his life had he not made such a horrible mistake. And he felt so out of place there.
But he was pulled out of his ruminations when he offered him his hand. “Iida Tenya, right?” he asked. “Midoriya Izuku.”
“We’ve met,” Iida observed, shaking his hand.
“Not properly,” Izuku said. “I have the worst luck with first impressions.”
“Now that we’re all acquainted,” Hatsume interrupted, “I think it’s high time we get to work. Iida Tenya, Your Hero Rehabilitation has officially begun.”