Chapter Text
The week Izuku spends waiting for the letter from UA to come is one of the most nerve-wracking he's ever experienced.
He gets home from the exam, bone-tired and aching, and falls into his bed in a deep sleep before even changing clothes. He sleeps for 14 hours, and when he wakes, he is faced with nothing to do but wait.
He pushes himself to work harder, focusing on schoolwork with a single-minded determination, and running up and down the now-clean Dagobah Beach until the sun begins to set.
He's running through a set of press-ups when the mail comes through the door, and he hears his mum shout loudly through the apartment. He jumps up, crashes out of his door, and rushes to the kitchen.
"Izuku it's-" His mum is almost as excited as him, and they're both the criers in this household so Izuku thinks they can be excused if there are tears in both of their eyes. "Izuku it's here! You've got mail!"
She hands him two envelopes.
One is a bulky envelope, packed solid and taped at the edges. The other is thinner, but bulging in the middle with something circular. Izuku holds both of them in his hands, and feels - weighed down. Heavier. The contents of these envelopes will decide his future.
He takes them into his room, and shuts the door carefully behind him. He knows his mum is just as nervous about this as he is, but he needs to do this alone.
Sitting down at his desk, he pulls out the envelope with the raised center. Taking a deep breath, he cuts it open in one swift movement, and tips the contents out onto his desk.
Immediately, a hologram starts playing.
Appearing above his desk stands the hologram of a tired-looking man. He is standing in the centre of the frame, and there is a pause before he starts talking that lets Izuku take him in. He looks worn, with dark hair falling in front of his face and a basic black jumpsuit hanging off his hunched frame. His eyes have bags that rival even Izuku’s, and he looks like he hasn’t shaved in a few days. If it wasn’t for the large gathering of cloth at his throat, that is obviously some sort of weapon, Izuku would have mistaken him for a homeless person rather than a Pro Hero.
The man begins talking, running through the words as if he’s said them a dozen times already - which, Izuku startles, is probably true.
“Greetings from UA High School. Yuuei is proud to offer you a place in the hero course, starting this upcoming academic year. You will be placed in class 1A, under the direct supervision of me, Aizawa Shouta, your homeroom teacher.” The man, Aizawa, stands up slightly straighter. “Under the guidance of many Pro Heroes, we hope you will learn over the next three years how to be a professional and effective Pro Hero yourself.”
Judging by the man’s tone, Izuku severely doubts that he hopes that. The man sounds like he would rather kick a cat than teach 20 teenagers how to be heroes.
“Midoriya Izuku.” Aizawa says, and Izuku fixes his entire attention on his soon-to-be homeroom teacher. “Your written exam was acceptable. However, in the practical you failed to get a single villain point, and failed to display any skills that would prove your potential as a hero.”
Izuku freezes. He’s aware of that - of course he is, how could he not be, it’s all he’s been thinking about for the last week - but hearing his teacher tell him that directly hurts him more than he expected it to.
“However,” Aizawa continues. “At the very end of the exam, you destroyed an obstacle worth nothing to you, at great personal cost, in order to save the life of someone you had just met. That action then inspired said person to attempt to give up something of their own, just in order to thank you.”
In the background of the hologram a frozen picture of the gravity girl he’d saved at the exam pops up. She’s in a hallway, clearly at UA if the windows behind her are anything to go off, but she’s nowhere he recognises. Present Mic stands in front of her, his back to the camera as he watches her argue, caught mid sentence.
Aizawa ignores the pop-up. “It was decided by our panel of judges that this action embodied the spirit of a hero strongly enough that it would be awarded 60 rescue points, the secret measuring system used to determine the heroic suitability of potential students. Because of this, you officially passed the exam.”
Izuku falls back in his seat, letting out a sigh as he can finally let himself relax. He’s made it. He hasn’t let All Might down. But Aizawa isn’t done.
“My opinions were not taken into consideration when this decision was made, but starting from the first day of term, I have the ultimate deciding power over who stays, and who goes.” Aizawa looks directly into the camera, and for a moment, his eyes glow a nightmarish red and his hair begins to rise above his head. Then it drops, and Izuku is struck by a sudden sense of familiarity.
“Midoriya Izuku. In order to prove your potential to me, you are going to do something far different from breaking most of the limbs in your body.”
Izuku almost doesn’t hear the last words that Aizawa Shouta - Eraserhead, Eraserhead is his homeroom teacher - says, but despite how quiet they sound over the screaming in his head, the words “This is your hero academia.” drift around his head until he falls asleep late that night.
The hologram ends. Izuku sits back in his chair, and breathes. He’s made it. Into his dream school, onto his first steps of becoming a true Pro Hero. A hero who can save people with a smile.
He can’t wait to tell All Might.
He picks up the hologram base, and feels the weight of it for a moment. It’s lighter than he expected, and he knows he’s going to be rewatching it over and over for the next few weeks. Especially now that he knows which pro Aizawa is. But first, he moves it to the side, along with the UA letter, and picks up the other envelope.
This package is significantly larger. A full A4 block, just bendy enough to make him sure that it’s contents are paper, but thick enough to get him worried about how long it’s going to take to read. There are no markings on the front to tell him where it’s from.
He gently pries it open, and slides out the contents. It’s a wad of paper, secured together with a fixed spine. He rotates it, and reads the title sitting innocently on the front in plain black ink.
He nearly falls off his chair.
Izuku touches the words, unable to quite believe them.
Legal Documents Pertaining to the Extended Internship of a Hero-In-Training at the All Mighty Agency.
Underneath, is a black-and-white rendering of the iconic All Might smile.
-
UA is simultaneously everything Izuku had hoped for, and a chilly let down.
They skip all formalities. Their homeroom teacher, Eraserhead, makes a quick introduction before dragging them over to the training fields for an initial assessment. A quirk assessment.
This has the unfortunate impact of missing the opening ceremony, which Izuku had been looking forward to. He always likes to get an idea for what a school prioritises in it’s student body, be that high grades, extracurricular activities, connections, or anti-bullying. It also helps him get an idea for just how much his teachers are going to care.
But instead he gets 2 hours to either figure his new quirk out, or get out. He gets the feeling that UA isn’t a school that particularly cares about allowing people to learn from their mistakes.
Izuku looks out at the field, at the wide range of physical quirks, flashy and perfect for heroics and billboards both, and then down at his clenched fist.
Well, if UA is telling him to sink or swim, then he’s going to go above and beyond and fight until he’s made it to dry land.
Maybe if he tried breaking only one finger…
-
Izuku leaves Recovery Girl’s office at the end of the day, his finger only aching slightly. Which is an amazing thing, considering only hours ago it was purple and broken.
He’d gone through all his afternoon classes with a broken finger. He’s lucky he learned how to be ambidextrous years ago, after an incident with Kacchan left a burn on the underside of his right arm that made it painful to write. He thinks it was part of the test, Aizawa seeing if he lived up to his declaration of still being able to fight, even with a broken finger.
Lucky for Izuku, a broken finger is nowhere near the worst injury he’s ever had to work through.
As he reaches the gates, he pulls out his phone, and pauses to scroll through his recent texts. He’s just clicked on strongest bunny, when he hears a shout and hurriedly closes his phone. He turns, and sees Iida Tenya speed walking towards him. Izuku panics, jumping to the side, but thankfully Iida stops before hitting him.
Iida asks him about his finger, and he seems so bluntly honest about his intentions that Izuku finds himself being drawn into the conversation against all his instincts. And then Uraraka shows up, and Izuku finally gets to introduce himself to her, and then maybe remake himself a bit. Deku sounds like something so innocent coming from her mouth, that he almost wants to reclaim it. She calls him Deku, and it sounds like a name again.
She asks if they’re heading to the station, and they make conversation as they walk. The station is busy at this time of day, the evening commute just beginning. As they wait for a train, Izuku checks his phone, pulling up the directions All Might had sent him early that morning.
He stares, slightly lost, at the poster board of train routes, trying to find the one he wants. Uraraka comes up behind him, and asks him what he’s looking for.
Izuku winces. He’s never been an amazing liar. “I’m starting at a private gym with a new coach today, but I’ve never been there before. I don’t know how to get there.”
Uraraka hums, and tilts her head to look over at his phone. Izuku quickly snatches it out of view with a speed that startles both of them. For a moment, they are both lost for words.
Uraraka lets out a nervous laugh. “Bit of a secret?” she asks, not unkindly, Izuku can tell.
Izuku feels a bit bad. She’s his second ever friend, and he wants to do good by her, but this is one secret he can never let out. All Might told him not to tell anyone, and Izuku is going to follow that advice until he has enough experience to know who to trust himself.
So Izuku also laughs, and nods, and says “My teacher is a very private man, but it’s somewhere in this region, I just have to figure out which train will get me there.”
Uraraka just smiles, and tells him about the time her family took the train there while apartment hunting, and she gives him a list of stops, and Izuku pretends extremely hard that his secrets aren’t going to end up tearing this friendship apart.
-
The gym isn’t really what Izuku expected.
The location is a lot grungier, for one. It’s not like he’d expected flashing lights and a big ‘ALL MIGHT FAMILY FRIENDLY GYM, ALL AGES WELCOME’ sign, but he’ll admit, he did expect it to look like a gym.
Instead, the address takes him to a dirty street several roads off of the nearest main road, one lined high with warehouses. Izuku checks his instructions again, questions the structural stability of the location, and knocks on the hidden backdoor like the text had told him to.
Just as Izuku is contemplating how much his mum is going to kill him if he dies in an abandoned warehouse just because the number one hero told him to, the lights in the warehouse come on.
Izuku’s immediate realisation is that the warehouse is a lot larger on the inside. He immediately suspects the work of a quirk, and then remembers how reluctant All Might is to involve others in his private affairs, and realises it’s much more likely that the entire row of warehouses had been bought and made into one large gym.
The gym itself is fairly rustic. The walls are plated in layers of thick material, and Izuku recognises the subtle logo as one he saw on display at the last I-Island exhibit. He wonders how All Might was able to afford for the warehouse to be fitted with something as expensive as unreleased I-Island tech.
Despite the investment into the walls of the gym, the rest of the place is incredibly sparse. A large punching bag hangs from a thick chain in the middle, dangling horribly still in the emptiness. The size of it is comically large, and Izuku doesn’t know how he would ever be expected to move it. There is a large stack of weights in one corner, and a raised training mat in another. Aside from that, there is nothing.
The space seems to stretch out into the distance. Izuku feels horribly overshadowed by the sheer scale of the warehouse. How is this all just for him?
He puts his bag down by the door, and steps forward, shrugging his blazer off and swinging it over his arm. Warilly, he takes a few steps in, and all of a sudden he’s falling forwards, hurtling towards the floor, hands flying forwards to break his fall—
“Midoriya, my boy!” All Might says, appearing from nowhere to catch him. “Wonderful to see you. That push was my first lesson.”
Izuku blinks, his mind still processing the shock of the fall. And then everything clicks, and he can understand the situation. “You pushed… what do you mean that was my first lesson?”
All Might grins, and then coughs, his hero form going up in a cloud of smoke to reveal the gaunt truth underneath. “Situational awareness is everything as a hero. A threat could come from anywhere! Anyone! And if you’re not prepared, then it’ll stab you in the back and leave you dead.”
All Might loses his posture, and Izuku can almost see him shrink into himself. Without his bolstering, the man looks a lot more weary. “When we first met, I told you that you couldn’t be a hero. And while you proved me wrong, the fact remains that being a hero is dangerous work, and no one person is above their own mortality.” His hands drift towards his broken stomach.
Izuku stands up straighter.
All Might continues, walking forwards into the room. Izuku leaves his blazer where he dropped it, and follows, far more cautiously. “UA is my Alma Mata, and it taught me a lot, but it did not teach me everything I needed to know. When I left that school, I wasn’t yet prepared for many of the situations I came across as a hero, and sometimes I wonder if I’d only had the right teacher…” The man trails off, his voice becoming faint. Izuku hurries to catch up.
“Heroes have become far more complacent since I was at school. It’s become a celebrity sport for most, but if you truly want to save people, then you’re going to have to learn how to fight. Fight like your life depends on it. Because one day, no matter how powerful you become, it will.” All Might stops, facing the punching bag in the middle of the room. Izuku can’t see his face. “And on that day, it won’t just be your life you’re fighting for. It’ll be for everyone you’ve ever promised to protect.”
All Might suddenly turns, and Izuku flinches back half a step. There’s something in All Might’s eyes that Izuku never wants to see again. This isn’t his childhood hero. This is a man who tried to be Atlas and succeeded.
This is the legacy Izuku signed up for. To save people, no matter the cost.
He grits his teeth, and steps forward, balling his hands into fists.
All Might doesn’t smile. But he does bare his teeth, and the light in his eyes turns into something that makes Izuku want to help everyone who’s ever been hurt and give them justice, and Izuku think’s that’s worth so much more.
It’s the little things.
“Let’s begin.”
-
Everyone gets very excited when on their second day of term, Aizawa-sensei takes them out to the training fields. The size of the Yuuei campus is a thing of legend, and as Izuku walks from sprawling metropolis to rocky mountain to deep forest, he imagines he can see the heroes that were made on the same grounds he now walks on.
Aizawa explains UA's philosophy on heroes as they walk. He leads the group at a brisk pace, barely giving them time to take in the landscapes, leaving the groups that fall behind to catch up on their own.
"The reason so many top heroes come from UA," Aizawa says dryly, between sucks of the juice pouch he's been working through since he greeted them that morning by throwing a gym uniform on them and leaving. "Is not because we train our heroes to be the strongest. It is because we train them to be the smartest. We push our students beyond their limits, because we know that one day, the training you do now will be the difference between life and death. But limits are more than just physical strength, or quirks."
Izuku isn't sure if he imagines Aizawa's eyes fixing on him. He definitely doesn't imagine how Aizawa's stare lands on Kacchan, staying resolute until Kacchan begins to squirm.
"We will push you beyond your limits." Aizawa continues, still fixed on Kacchan, unblinking. "Your quirks, your bodies, and your minds. Being a hero requires a clear mind, and complete confidence in your own decision making. But you are also civil servants, which means how you conduct yourself in the field will be everything. You cannot hang on to ideals and goals that directly contradict the one purpose of a hero: to save as many people as possible." He pauses. "Some of you will find that harder than others."
There's barely a second to view what happens next. Kacchan, who had been getting more and more worked up at Aizawa's lackluster attitude to teaching, and had been cracking under his gaze for the duration of the speech, erupts. A loud bang and a flash fill the scene —and Izuku hears the start of a "Die!"—before the smoke clears and Kacchan is wrapped in Eraserhead's capture weapon, Eraserhead's red eyes keeping him utterly helpless.
The only person Izuku has seen take down an opponent quicker was All Might.
Izuku could see Kacchan trying to speak, but the capture weapon had bound his mouth so only muffled screams could emerge. Eraserhead was tense, his stand rigid and imposing. He stalks forward, stray wreaths of capture weapon floating around him.
"You," he says calmly. "Are going to be a problem, I can tell."
He raises his voice, making his message loud enough to reach the whole class.
"If you came to UA just looking for a fight, or looking for legal permission to use your quirk however you want to, then you can go somewhere else. UA is not here to make adrenaline junkies, or vigilantes, or reckless celebrities who'll die at their first real fight." Okay, he definitely glanced at Izuku for one of those three. "UA is here to make people who understand that sometimes the best way to win a fight, is to not let there be a fight at all. UA is here to train you so you all live beyond your 30s in this profession."
He releases Kacchan. "UA is here to make you into heroes. But it's up to you whether you can cut it."
He blinks, eyes losing their unnatural glare, and his capture weapon falls away. Kacchan falls, feet landing hard on the floor, and his hands begin to spark. But under Aizawa’s cold gaze, he seems to realise it wouldn't be a fight he could win, so instead he just scowls at the floor. The people around him nervously step away.
Aizawa looks their class over, almost as if appraising a meal. Izuku's group has been attentive for the whole tour, but Izuku notices a crowd near the back that had spent the trip alternating between getting lost and left behind, and rushing to catch up and loudly asking what they'd missed. Aizawa's brow creases when he looks at that crowd, and Izuku wonders if he finally means to go forward with his threat of expelling them all.
Instead he just turns, and gestures for them to continue following them through the city. "Before you even start using your quirks, you'll need to pass a basic safety assessment. UA requires this, and if you fail it, you'll be moved to General Education. This is not optional. Just because you’ve made it to the starting line does not mean you will all finish. There are many others who might deserve to be here, and if you cannot prove yourself, then you will find yourself gone without a second thought.”
He lets them dwell on that as they walk through the city. Izuku can’t hear the group at the back anymore, though when he looks back, he sees them keeping pace with the rest of the class, heads bowed in awkward silence. He guesses they realised who Aizawa was talking about.
They reach the edge of the city, and open into a large clearing. The terrain is rough and grassy, and Izuku notices strange rings of concrete embedded at increments towards the center, and pokes the end of his shoe into the outermost one. It’s completely solid, but strangely clean for the outdoors.
Izuku slows, pulling gently on Uraraka’s arm so she does the same, and tries to make eye contact with Aizawa. The man has been evading eye contact in general, but something about his present aloofness raises alarm bells in Izuku’s head.
“Hold on Uraraka, I think my shoelace just came undone. Can you wait for me?”
Uraraka nods and stops completely, and Izuku bends down to his shoe. He pretends to tie his laces, and takes the chance to get a closer look at the concrete.
The colour is completely untarnished, and that shouldn’t be suspicious, but Izuku trusts Aizawa as far as he can throw him without breaking a limb, and there’s been a surprising lack of surprises from UA so far today. Izuku doesn’t trust this peace, not after the chaos and subsequent twists of everything UA has thrown at him so far, and if a trap is about to be sprung then Izuku is going to try and avoid it.
Life has never been fair for Izuku, but if he hadn’t taken everything life had ever given him and turned it into an advantage, then he would never have made it to where he is now.
As he stands up, he catches sight of his watch. It’s 30 seconds till the hour. He wants to believe in chance, but faith has never done anything for him before.
He stands up straight, and steps back from the concrete, placing himself clearly outside of the circle. The rest of the class have moved further into the clearing, right in the middle of the smallest concrete circles. Only him and Uraraka are still on the outskirts, and Aizawa isn’t making any indication that they rejoin the class, so Izuku puts on a grin for Uraraka and stretches upwards.
“Hold on, let’s just wait here for a moment. We can rejoin the class in a moment, but UA is… a lot.” He breathes out, and begins stretching his other arm. Uraraka nods.
“Okay, yeah. This has all been a lot more than I was expecting. Very exciting! But tiring.” Uraraka looks slightly pale, her pink cheeks more rosy than usual. Izuku looks closer at her.
He hesitates, and then asks, “Have you eaten today?”
Uraraka’s eyes widen, and then her cheeks get even redder. Izuku can feel his own get hot, and he goes to apologise for asking such a personal question, but Uraraka interrupts him before he can even get a word out.
“Ah, I had a breakfast bar, but that was hours ago and I didn’t know we’d be doing so much walking in the sun today. We couldn’t afford a close apartment for me, so I was in a rush to get here. I haven’t quite learned the train times yet.” She takes a swig from her water bottle and averts her eyes.
Izuku reaches into one of his pockets, and pulls out a high-energy bar. He offers it to her with a smile, and she takes it, her face lighting up in thanks. She opens her mouth-
WOOOSH.
Next to them, large concrete walls appear out of nowhere, frighteningly close to their bodies. They both jump back, adrenaline coursing through them. Izuku takes in the smooth concrete, the strange cleanliness and perfection of it, and knows he was right. Their class is trapped in a ring of concrete, and Izuku and Uraraka are on the outside.
Uraraka looks determined. “Is this a villain? Or another of UA’s tests?”
Izuku reaches forward to touch the wall. It’s completely solid. “Another test, I suspect. Aizawa was leading us into the middle of the rings, and the timing coincided perfectly with the hour.” He looks at Uraraka. “Sorry for not telling you why I was keeping you back. If my suspicions were wrong, I didn’t want you to panic unnecessarily.”
“Nah, it’s fine. Seems like it worked out well for us.” She walks forward and places her own hand on the wall, leaving her pinky finger sticking up. “I guess our class is still in there.”
“Well,” Izuku says, the beginnings of a plan starting to form. “We are training to save people.” He stands back, and looks at his hand. His finger from yesterday is still slightly crooked, but it no longer hurts. “If I shatter this wall, can you grab one of the bigger pieces with your quirk? Then we can be prepared for what we find inside, and give an escape for our class.”
Uraraka grins, teeth bared. “Plus ultra?”
Izuku laughs. They might have more in common than he first thought. He gestures for her to step back, and places his finger on the wall. Concentrating, he feels for the lightning spark of one for all always riding under his skin, and pushes the full force of that power into his finger. He holds it for one terrifying second, feeling the full throttle of a thunderstorm in his bones, and then he pushes it into the wall.
A sharp crack like thunder, and the wall shatters, deep grooves breaking the wall up into large pieces, clearing the space around where they were standing. They stare for a moment, slightly shocked by the size of the destruction, before Uraraka runs forward and picks up one of the larger pieces of concrete, a sharp jagged piece, and Izuku snaps into gear, running towards a second wall, behind which he can hear the sounds of fighting.
“Deku!” Uraraka calls, and he turns to see her pointing at the top of the next wall. “I can get you up there! We can try and learn what’s going on before rushing in!”
Izuku nods, and slows down, bending his knees in anticipation. Uraraka slaps him, and he jumps up. He can feel one for all tingling in his legs, but he doesn’t feel any bones snap so he doesn’t let it distract him. He lands with a slight stumble on the edge of the wall, looking down at his class.
Aizawa has completely disappeared. Instead, his class is surrounded by clones of a masked man, slowly being drawn into the middle like caged animals. A lot of them are fighting, but Izuku can see many already tied up on the ground, and most of the powerhouses look to have been taken out immediately by thick, metal, quirk restraining bracelets. Kacchan is fighting pitifully without his quirk against a clone in the corner of the circle, far from anyone else.
It’s a bloodbath.
Izuku hasn’t been seen yet, so he can see the full battlefield laid out in front of him. From his position, he can see how all the clones are moving, and spot the patterns they make before his class can.
Just like the original clone must be able to.
His head jerks upwards, and he begins scanning the wall. It’s more than thick enough to stand on, and if someone had been standing on it as it rose, they would’ve been able to get up there without the use of a quirk like Uraraka’s. And there, in the far distance…
Two figures, standing steady on the other side of the ring, looking down on the battle. Izuku can spot the bright white capture weapon of their teacher, and the bright coat that matches the distinctive look of the clones.
Izuku jumps down, and points to the area of the wall where Aizawa-sensei and the clone hero were standing. Uraraka nods, and they begin making their way over. Izuku begins to feel excited. This is proper hero training. If they can pull this off, he’ll be able to truly prove to Eraserhead that he deserves to stay at UA.
One for all sparks again in his legs. He pushes on.
They get quieter as they reach the area just under where their teacher is standing. Uraraka holds her chunk of concrete loosely—it’s size just a bit too large for combat—and Izuku gets an idea.
He gestures for her to pass it to him, and she does.
It’s still light, but as Izuku kneels down and aims, he focuses on the feeling of one for all in his legs again. He thinks about what All Might said, about clenching his buttcheeks and smashing, and he jumps.
He shoots too high. He hears a crack in one of his feet, and then the much louder sound of the sound barrier shattering. He zooms into the air, higher than he even did for the zero pointer, and then in one swift moment, swings the jagged piece of concrete around and aims it directly at the clone hero.
It soars through the air at a speed impossible to block. At the last second, Izuku hears Uraraka shout “RELEASE” and the clone hero falls forwards off of the wall. Immediately, Izuku begins to fall.
The pain in his legs barely fazes him, and he prepares to brace the landing, when he is caught in midair by the long, white, wreaths of Eraserhead’s capture weapon.
Aizawa stares at him, hanging in midair with a broken ankle and an expression of sudden surprise. In the distance, Izuku can hear the fighting continue, with a little more vigour than before. Aizawa continues to stare.
“You’re a problem child, aren’t you.” It isn’t a question. Izuku just smiles sheepishly, and lets himself be put down on the ground, and watches quietly as the rest of 1A is rounded up and drilled down by Aizawa.
Him and Uraraka stay at the back, and not once do Aizawa’s eyes drift towards them.
But as they leave to go to lunch, Aizawa gives him a single appraising nod, and Izuku thinks they might’ve just proven themselves to the man.
-
When Izuku gets into the gym, and after he’s avoided All Might’s ideas that a sneak attack constitutes a welcome, he tells All Might about how it felt to use one for all. He also tells him about Aizawa.
All Might hums thoughtfully. He’s wearing an ill-fitting white shirt, with dress pants that hang sadly around his legs. Izuku has seen a lot of both forms in the last 9 months, but at training Izuku has noticed the man switching between forms more often. There’s something about the enclosed space, Izuku thinks, that makes the man more nervous.
“I’ve never worked with Eraserhead, so I can’t speak for his methods. It seems he’s interested in seeing you all graduate, but not without passing his standards first. I wonder if Nedzu would let me take a look at the training footage…”
“All Might,” Izuku asks, in the middle of a set of weights, a few minutes after the conversation has trailed off into silence. “If UA is so great, why didn’t you go and work there?”
All Might pulls out his whistle and tells him to change sets, and then looks at him with a strange expression. “Well, how would I be able to train you and work at UA at the same time? Teaching is a time-consuming job, and even with my time limit down to three hours, I’m still the number one hero.”
Izuku pauses in his lifts for a moment, and All Might blows a shrill whistle for him to keep going. “You passed up training the next generation of heroes to train me?”
All Might laughs, a loud booming laugh that Izuku will always love but is starting to sound less genuine as the months go on. It only ever seems to come out when All Might is in his hero form. “My boy, you are the next generation of heroes! And besides, I did consider taking Nedzu up on his offer to work there, but then I met you! I would’ve been searching for a successor at UA, when I already had a perfectly good one right here!” He coughs, sliding out of his hero form, his face becoming sallow. “I’ve still got a lot of work to do, kid. Can’t settle down and retire just yet.”
Izuku nods. Duty is a heavy burden to carry.
They practice sparring.
All Might demonstrates his movements, slow enough for Izuku to see them, and Izuku tells him about how it felt to use one for all.
“It didn’t feel like a smash, like you said it would.” Izuku explains as he practices the motion for an uppercut. “I tried the smash, but it just felt like danger, and I couldn’t control it. But I tried just feeling the electricity of it, like when I was running, and it was more manageable. Just not very strong.”
All Might hums, and easily blocks his surprise punch. “That’s interesting. I guess since you’re not a natural, how you use the quirk will be different to me. I remember my master…”
He trails off, and the next punch he blocks is more instinctive, and it sends Izuku back a few steps.
“All Might?”
All Might’s eyes refocus, and the sharp blue lands on Izuku. “Come on now,” he says, and Izuku gets the feeling the conversation is going nowhere else. “Try the swing again.”
The night goes on. Izuku takes the late train home.
-
Izuku groans, dramatically laying his head on the school dinner table next to his plate of food. Next to him, Uraraka laughs, and pats him gently on the back. Izuku hides a smile in his hands.
“Come on Deku,” she says, in between giggles. “It’s not the end of the world! It’s only class president!”
Izuku sits up, wiping his face and sighing. “Exactly! It’s class president! Who voted for me?”
“I did.”
Izuku turns to Iida in surprise. The taller boy had been wearing a petulant expression on his face since he had received no votes, and Izuku hadn’t wanted to ask, but Izuku had a strong suspicion that Iida had been hoping for the position.
“I also did!” Uraraka says, taking a ball of rice from her plate and waving it in the air. “You knew exactly what to do during that first training exercise, and you were the only one to figure out there was a trap before it even happened. I didn’t want to vote for myself, so I thought you would be perfect.”
“But-“
“I also voted for you for similar reasons.” Iida interrupts. “Ever since the entrance exam you have displayed heroic spirit in a way that I have been completely unable to. You have treated every task like a true fight, while the rest of us are still acting like students.”
Izuku hesitates. “There’s nothing wrong with being a student, Iida.” he says gently.
“No,” Iida agrees. “But you may have heard of my brother, Ingenium. One day I hope to grow up and be a great hero, just like him.”
Uraraka grins. “I’ve heard of him. The Turbo Hero, right?”
“Yes!” Iida nods, hands chopping wildly as his excitement grows. “He is my inspiration!”
So Iida has his own All Might. Izuku’s gaze drifts, and his eyes fall on an open window. UA’s gates stand tall and unbroken, and Izuku thinks about All Might, somewhere in the city, maybe thinking up whatever exercise they’ll be working on that night. Or maybe not thinking about Izuku at all.
He thinks about what All Might would tell him to do. Would he encourage him to take on the responsibilities of Class President, seeing it as practice for when he takes up the mantle of the symbol of peace? Or would he see it as a distraction, a waste of time when Izuku could be focusing on tactics or strength training or his quirk instead?
A loud buzz shocks him out of his own head. He looks up, trying to find the source, and then realises it’s just the school bell.
“Ah!” Iida says, as Izuku focuses back on the conversation. “I guess it’s the upper year's lunch time as well. We should probably hurry up and eat.”
Izuku smiles, and picks up a rice ball. “So, does your brother tell you much about being a Hero? I’ve always been interested in how hero agencies run, and Idaten is one of the biggest agencies out there, with dozens of sidekicks and…”
-
Right before the end of lunch, Izuku, Uraraka and Iida walk into 1A to find Aizawa already at the front of the class, completely ignoring the few students sitting chatting at desks. Izuku notices the sparkly blond kid with an elaborate lunch of strong cheeses sat still halfway through his lunch.
An idea falls into his head.
Letting Iida and Uraraka overtake him, he goes up to Aizawa.
“Sensei?” he asks quietly. Aizawa turns a tired eye towards him. “I was wondering if you think I would make a good class president.”
Aizawa is silent for a good few seconds, and Izuku spends every moment of that eternity cursing himself for thinking Aizawa would care in the slightest. Then:
“Problem child, I couldn’t care less. Just,” He sighs, and waves an absent hand over the class. “Know your own limits. If being Class President means you can’t keep up with hero training, then you have no one but yourself to blame.”
Izuku startles. That was a much better answer than what he was expecting. He nods, bowing slightly, and then says “Can I make an announcement before class starts?”
Midoriya Izuku wakes up at 4 in the morning for a run, goes to school for heroes until 3, and then trains with All Might until 8. Midoriya Izuku is currently struggling to find time for sleep.
Aizawa steps aside.
At the final lunch bell, Izuku stands up on the teacher podium and addresses his class for the first and last time as class president. He promotes Yaoyarozu up from deputy, and then recommends Iida as her deputy, and that’s as far as his power lasts. He steps down, ignores Iida’s thanks, and makes brief eye contact with Aizawa. The man isn’t disappointed, as far as Izuku can tell.
If anything, and Izuku wouldn’t put bets on it if his life depended on it, the man almost looks reluctantly proud.
-
The USJ is not quite as good as Universal Studios Japan, but Izuku probably enjoys it more. They are introduced to Thirteen, the Space Hero, and Izuku gets to watch Uraraka literally jump for joy. They get a nice lecture on quirk safety, and then it's off to working in groups, each of them learning a different aspect of rescue at each section.
Izuku finds himself in a group with the frog girl, who introduces herself as Asui Tsuyu but asks to just “Call me Tsuyu”, and Mineta, the small kid with the purple balls for hair. They work together to safely rescue the fake drowning civilians, Tsuyu making the exercise a breeze with her speed underwater, and Mineta’s sticky balls allowing the victims to stick onto the rescue floats. Izuku feels a bit useless, so he practices his aim with a little bit of one for all in his arm, throwing the heavy life buoys out into the water beyond what his normal strength could manage.
The water section is easy, but the burning city forces them to get creative. Tsuyu proves vulnerable to heat, and Izuku has to stop Mineta from wasting his balls on sticking civilians together. Instead, they use the balls to stabilise the buildings, and Izuku carefully creates wind with one for all, putting out some of the fires so he and Tsuyu can pull out the fake bodies with ease.
They learn a bit more about being a team. Between sections, Izuku learns that Tsuyu has a little brother and sister, and that Mineta wants to be a hero in order to ‘get girls’. Privately, Izuku thinks Aizawa will have something to say about that, but Mineta does prove himself to have a brain on him, when he’s not actively panicking, so whether it’ll be an expulsion or not, Izuku wouldn’t know.
As he’d learned from All Might, Aizawa did have a reputation for expelling students, and had no tolerance for those with no potential. It had made Izuku horribly relieved for his last ditch effort on the first day, but as the week has passed, Izuku has been starting to see where Aizawa was coming from.
A lot of their classmates aren’t what Izuku expected. Some of them, Iida, Uraraka, Todoroki, Yayorozu,—Kacchan, obviously—are so dedicated that it makes Izuku want to do more on top of his already crowded schedule. Uraraka had even confided in him that his motivation had inspired her to double down on her own training.
But so many of their class don’t seem to realise the amount of effort needed to become a hero. A lot of them, and Izuku knows Aizawa thinks the same, act like getting into UA is the same as graduating. It’s not. The amount Izuku has grown in the last week alone is evidence enough that it’s not.
Tsuyu seems level headed however, and they speed through most of the exercises in record time. They make their way over to the centre when they’re done, and Izuku spends a nice few minutes listening to Kacchan’s screams in the background as he finds something he isn’t immediately perfect at, before he decides to start practicing holding one for all in his body for as long as possible.
Then Tsuyu stands up, and he asks her how she makes her kicks so fluid, and by the time Aizawa and Thirteen return from wherever they were supervising Izuku is showing a small group of his classmates the basics of the punch All Might showed him last night.
“The trick is in the legs,” he explains, holding out a fist. “You need to be stable to get the maximum amount of power in the punch. Your legs should be about shoulder width apart—like that Koda, that’s good!—and if I tried to push you over you shouldn’t…” He looks up, to find the rest of the class staring as Aizawa stands menacingly behind him. “Oh! Sorry Sensei. I was just…”
Izuku steps back into the crowd, and their circle of classmates disperses. Aizawa coughs, and any staring eyes turn immediately back to Aizawa. Izuku resists the urge to hide his face in his hands.
“Whatever.” Aizawa says. “We’re leaving now. We’ll be going over how each of you did back in class. Think about what you all could’ve done better on the journey back.”
And that’s it. Izuku finds Uraraka again, and they discuss how they each found the simulation on the bus back. Izuku furiously scribbles down every mistake he had made as they go over their thoughts on the day, and writes down everything he can learnt about his classmates' quirks in a different notebook. He’ll ask All Might if he can request copies of the training videos like he did last time, and then it’s the end of the day, and Izuku hops on a train and trains with All Might until he can finally sink into his bed at the end of a long day.
And that’s it.
-
The next day, Aizawa spends the full day going over their performances at the USJ. He is nothing if not ruthless. No student is saved from his wrath.
Izuku endures a full 40 minutes of watching every inch of his performance be judged in excruciating detail, along with Tsuyu and Mineta. After a few minutes however, he starts to realise what an invaluable experience he is receiving. A Pro Hero, taking an incredible amount of time, to go over exactly what he needs to do to improve? This is the sort of thing Pro Heroes pay consultants thousands for, and he’s getting it on a daily basis.
Once he realises this, the notebook comes out. He starts scribbling down every word Aizawa says, and when their teacher moves onto the 2 hour lecture that the lightning haired kid’s group caused, he keeps writing. This is expert advice, given to a class of ungrateful teenagers wanting to be celebrities. Izuku isn’t going to waste it.
Aizawa continues the moment lunch ends. He got through a surprising amount of groups in the morning, but a few obvious groups are still left to go. Endeavour's kid—the boy who has barely spoken 10 words to anyone—and Kacchan.
Before he carries on however, he gives a quick speech.
“I mentioned on our second day you would all be assessed on basic quirk safety. Yesterday was that test.” Discussion immediately starts, and Aizawa instantly silences it. “Quiet. Obviously you all passed, or else you would not be here right now. However, for many of you, it was very close.”
He rakes an eye over Kaminari, the lightning kid, who from what Izuku heard, let loose over a million volts of electricity at one point, only a few metres from his teammates, and then passed out for the rest of the exercise. Kaminari clearly gets the memo with the way that he’s shaking in his chair.
Izuku wonders how he isn’t already expelled. Perhaps Aizawa sees something in him that Izuku doesn’t.
The class starts talking again, and Aizawa bangs loudly on his desk. They all shut up, and for the rest of the afternoon, they all give their full attention to their teacher.
-
That Saturday, All Might takes Izuku somewhere a bit different.
They still spend the morning training in the gym, with All Might taking periodic breaks to go answer hero calls, but around lunch All Might takes Izuku out to a cafe, a while from the gym.
“I’ve got a press conference this afternoon,” he says, between bites of his child’s ramen. Izuku only ever sees All Might eat small meals, which he thinks has something to do with his lack of a stomach. “And I’d like you to come and watch. Being a hero is about more than just fighting villains. You’ll need to learn how to speak to the public, how to reassure them through your words alone. But don’t worry,” and this is the moment where Izuku would expect him to laugh, or grin, but All Might is in his human form, so he doesn’t even smile. “Because you won’t need to do any of that just yet. Today, I just want you to watch.”
Izuku nods, and thanks his own consistency that he never leaves home without a notebook.
They make their way over to the location of the press conference once they’ve finished eating. All Might buffs up just before they enter, and sends Izuku to the back of the crowd. The conference is in a large building, hundreds of seats for reporters, and a divided stage for the speaker. The room is massive, but with the sheer number of newsgroups and journalists spilling out of every wall, the place almost feels crowded.
Izuku tucks himself into a corner at the back, right next to the exit, and gets out his notebook. From the moment All Might walks on stage, he is scribbling down his thoughts.
He makes careful note of how All Might conducts himself, how his posture never falters or slumps, how any sign of human weakness is carefully concealed. He never winces, even when he is forced to bend over and Izuku can see the edge of his belt digging right into the centre of his wound. His face remains a perfect smile.
He takes questions easily, and then twists them when the answer he would give would be unsatisfactory. The talk is regarding a possible quirk classification system, one that would objectively assign each quirk a danger rating. Izuku knows All Might’s views on the idea, that he thoroughly disagrees with it, and thinks it would bar some of the best heroes from ever starting. His own personal experience has taught him that.
But All Might can’t just say that. If All Might wants to express an opinion, he has to present it as common sense, and make anyone who disagrees look like a fool.
A reporter asks All Might whether the decreased number of villains and therefore lives saved would be worth the possibility of a few lives changed. All Might asks him since when did the public have such little faith in heroes that they would see any quality of life decreased for the greater good?
Izuku takes notes. All Might wins over the crowd. By tomorrow, this debate will have been completely forgotten.
Izuku’s pencil snaps. He blinks, the sudden sound shocking him out of his writing-filled haze. Since when did he get strong enough to start snapping pencils? He shakes his hand out, and reaches over to his bag to see if he has a spare.
The door beside him begins to open.
“ROOOOOOAAAAARRRRRRR!”
Everything happens at once.
Izuku is flung backwards, crashing headfirst into the row of seats in front of him. A loud ringing fills his head, and it takes a moment for him to reorient himself. When he looks up, he finds himself in the middle of a disaster.
The hall is in ruins. Chairs are fallen and broken, the ground is cracked, and large pieces of the roof have fallen to the floor. Izuku blinks and his vision clears slightly, and he realises he is looking at a bloodbath.
In the centre, near where the stage once was, All Might is fighting a large creature. Izuku lacks the words to describe the abnormality of the thing. It's an unnatural black, with a wide stocky body, and muscles that look like rocks had been pushed underneath it's skin.
Worst, and seeing it pushes Izuku close to throwing up, is it's pink exposed brain, blank beady eyes stuck right into the tissue. Izuku has seen strange quirks before. Nothing like this.
Oh god, who would create something like that? What sort of monster would bring something so full of suffering into this world, and then not give it the power to leave?
All Might and it are exchanging blows, and—no, that can't be right. Izuku has never seen a villain match All Might in strength before, and now that he knows about one for all, he finds it unlikely that he ever will.
One for all is a unique strength quirk, because unlike most, it grows in power exponentially. What started off as just a spark 200 years ago has now become a raging inferno, uncompetable by any other quirk. All Might, even after passing it on, retains enough of it that he could continue for another few years if he used his time wisely.
So something else must be going on here.
Izuku scans his surroundings. The thing isn't the only villain in the attack. There are a lot of small timers, mostly going after civilians, but most people seem to be attempting a speedy evacuation. However, with most of the doors blocked by villains, a lot of people are getting hurt.
Izuku doesn't think. He just moves.
Activating one for all in his legs is instinctive, and he dashes over to the far wall in less than a blink. In one action, he charges up his arm, picturing an unmovable punching bag instead of a wall, and shouts "SMASH!"
A hole forms in the wall, daylight streaming in, and Izuku spins around to see the villains that were chasing civilians turn around in the sudden light.
Most of them are looking directly at Izuku.
Izuku swallows. He's not in his hero costume, just casual clothes, and he technically has permission to fight due to the conditions of his internship, but he's only been training for a few weeks, and he's never fought a real villain before.
Despite this, he still falls into a fighting stance, clenching his fists and activating one for all in his entire body.
He grits his teeth.
There are two only a few metres from him, right near the makeshift exit, and Izuku gives himself only moments to consider them. One has a fingers shaped like metal tubes, held up in the air like guns. A good quirk for long range battles, but easy to disable if he’s quick enough, and he won’t even get penalised for it, since causing damage inorganic quirks doesn’t fall under any laws regarding excess violence.
The other villain has a formless blue body, one hand shaped into a hammer, the other a baton. Izuku takes him in. Formless body quirks often have some kind of instant weakness; often this would be fire or water, but Izuku has read about other exceptions. These quirks tend to make the user invulnerable to force attacks, but judging by the weapons on the villain’s hands, that invulnerability has an obvious weakness. When the villain attacks, he removes the invulnerability from his hands.
Izuku quickly analyses the situation, and then jumps in, speeding over to the first villain before he even gets time to shoot and squeezing his hand with an overpowered grab. He lands steady on the floor, just in time for the other villain to lunge forward with his hammer.
Izuku jumps, and the villain misses him by a mere inch. With intention in his feet, Izuku drives his legs back down to earth, smashing directly onto the hammer.
His theory was correct. The hammer cracks, and the villain cries in shock as his body shudders, falling backwards onto the floor.
The police should be within minutes, and more heroes even sooner. Until then, Izuku just has to…
There’s a man at the back of the room.
A boy, perhaps. In his late teens or early twenties. White, shaggy hair; skin so painfully dry Izuku winces from half a room away. Most of his face is covered by a decorative severed hand, which would be enough for Izuku to easily profile him as a villain, but unlike everyone else in the room he’s not moving.
He’s just… watching.
Behind him is a shadow, purple and formless. White eyes peek out from beneath it. Izuku shudders.
Izuku looks around, but there’s still no one else. The civilians are starting to exit out of the hole he carved into the wall, but the villains are still causing trouble, and All Might is still struggling in battle against the beast-with-no-mind. He needs backup.
Right at that moment, the wall smashes open again. A large hand picks up a pile of bricks and rubble, and through the gap of daylight she’d created Mt. Lady looks into the room.
“Oh, this just won’t do!” she says with a smile, and begins picking off villains so she can make room for an exit. Her size suits rescue operations, Izuku thinks absently, as he fights off another villain. It gives her a perspective on the situation that could be invaluable in…
“Lacquered Chain Prison!” Kamui Woods shouts, wrapping several villains up at once. More heroes begin to spill into the room, ushering civilians out while trying to avoid the many low-grade villains taking petty hits at any opportunity.
The heroes are slow coming, but the tide is clearly turning. Izuku considers stopping fighting, letting the Pros take over. He’s not even meant to be in real fights yet. It’s only on a technicality that what he’s done so far is legal, and if he continues for much longer, it won’t be.
Until he has his provisional license, there are only very specific situations Izuku can use his quirk in, and most of them require explicit permission from All Might. Which right now, he doesn’t have.
He kicks a villain in the head, and lands firmly on the floor. He breathes.
Slowly, he turns his head to the back of the room.
The man with the severed hand is still standing there. Unmoving, relaxed. Almost as if he’s bored.
Izuku isn’t allowed to use his quirk. The law doesn’t say anything about using his words.
Izuku activates one for all softly in his legs, and parkours over to the back of the room, landing so briefly on the backs of chairs that they barely feel his presence. He lands a good distance away from the ringleaders, and stands up straight, smoothing out his casual blazer for good measure.
Checking the space around him is clear of any other villains, he calls out, “Is this you guys?”
The white-haired boy snaps his head over towards him, and the shadow behind his shoulder flares menacingly. But the boy puts out a hand, and the cloud of black smoke settles.
“A mini-boss…” the boy mutters, his voice scratchy and rough. “Or perhaps an easter egg? Kurogiri, who is this?”
The black cloud - Kurogiri? - turns a set of glowing purple eyes on Izuku. Izuku evens his breaths, and tries to portray a stance of calm confidence. Finally, his years of middle school anxiety have given him something useful.
“I don’t know, Shigaraki Tomura.” Kurogiri says, his voice unnaturally doubled over. “There’s no reason for a child to be here. We couldn’t have foreseen this.”
Shigaraki’s mouth - or what Izuku can see of it beneath the severed hand that covers the majority of his face - turns down into a pout. “Hmmm.” he says, and Izuku chances a glance at All Might. He’s still fighting the mindless creature, pummelling it with 100% blows far beyond what any human could stand. And yet the creature is taking every one with the same steady stance.
“Well?” Izuku says, an eyebrow deliberately raised. Oh god, what is he doing? All Might is fighting a villain he cannot defeat at full strength, and he’s trying to make casual conversation with an incel gamer! His mum is going to kill him! “Did you do this? Because I have to say, I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
Shigaraki relaxes, pushing his weight onto his back foot. “Are you a side quest? Or a hacker? It doesn’t really matter right now. What do you want?”
Izuku shrugs, taking a pencil from his pocket and twirling it around his fingers. “I don’t want anything. The heroes are here, and everyone is being evacuated, so all that’s left to do now is wait for All Might to defeat the thing you brought with you. I figured I might as well try and work out why you’re here while I wait for him to be done.”
Shigaraki lets out a wheezy laugh, which somehow makes Izuku feel a sense of dread down his spine. “Isn’t it obvious?” he says, and Izuku stops spinning his pencil. “We’re here to kill All Might.”
Unlike the rest of his words, Shiraraki sounds dead serious.
Izuku tries to remember his notebooks. Pages on hostage negotiation. Find out what the enemy wants, and convince them that your way is the only way to get it.
Shigaraki wants to kill All Might. But does he really?
“Kill All Might?” Izuku asks, and he’d throw in a fake laugh if his throat wasn’t moments away from closing. “You’re not doing a very good job. And besides, even if you succeed here, all it’s going to be labeled as is a sudden villain attack. Who even are you?”
“Kurogiri-” Shigaraki begins, and Izuku desperately cuts him off.
“I’m so sorry.” Izuku blurts, wondering if he just made a serious mistake. “It’s just, you guys clearly have power, and I’ve thought a lot about system reform in my life, and there are a lot better ways to go about it, if that’s what you’re aiming for. I was just pointing out that, well…”
Izuku points over to All Might, where the creature has just been punched out of the ceiling and several miles into the stratosphere. All Might jumps into the sky and follows. “Killing All Might doesn’t seem to be going so well.”
Shigaraki stills, looking over at the hole now in the roof of the building. Slowly, he takes in the rest of the room - the villains he brought in all being taken in by heroes, the civilians all sitting in ambulances, and the press taking hurried photos.
“Kurogiri?” he asks. Izuku stands still.
“I think,” Kurogiri says, eyes still dangerously on Izuku. “It is best we cut our losses here. There will be other chances.”
Izuku holds his breath for three long, terrifying seconds, before Shigaraki nods, and turns his head back towards Izuku.
“I’ll be seeing you again.” He says, as a portal the exact colour of Kurogiri appears behind him. “Tell All Might that the League of Villains sends its regards.”
With that, he steps backwards into the portal, and is gone.
Izuku waits one, two, three seconds before allowing himself to breathe out.
The sounds of destruction are still ongoing, and in the distance, he hears All Might shout ‘I AM HERE’, but they are only the faintest of whispers in the back of his mind.
Slowly, Midoriya Izuku lowers himself to the floor and begins to cry.
