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‘Clench your butt cheeks and yell SMASH!’ Really? That’s his advice? Izuku rolled his eyes as he gently opens and closes his fist. He had used that advice and not only broken his right arm, but both of his legs. He was not going to make that same mistake again.
Izuku glanced up at his multiple notebooks of analysis – he was able to analyze all of those heroes, he was able to analyze Kacchan’s quirk, he can analyze this one too. Izuku pulled out a new notebook and clicked his pen a few times. Which of his codes should he use? Izuku had a different code for each subject of analysis he worked on – one for heroes, one for villains, and one for quirks. This code should be special, so he wasn’t sure he wanted to use his normal quirk code. Hmm. . .
Everyone thought Izuku was quirkless, and he had no solid proof that he wasn’t, but he was a lot smarter than anyone else gave him credit for. He was able to remember every single thing that had been said or done around him, or that he had seen since a few days after he turned four. Izuku was 99.9997% sure he had some type of intelligence or memory quirk, but it wasn’t quite strong enough to be obvious.
He had done so much research into various invisible quirks over the years, and the kind he thought he had was the most overlooked quirk-type of them all, further leading him to believe that he had a quirk. The newest kicker, though, was One For All. All Might had told him the quirk acted like a physical enhancement quirk, and that he had never had any issues with the quirk.
So why was Izuku having issues?
He of course had his theories. The first one – All Might was a genius. And as with all geniuses, things just came naturally to him, things such as quirk control, and how to regulate his power to avoid wreaking havoc at every crime scene he came across. There was a slight chance of this being the case, since All Might had been the Number One Hero for so long, but Izuku wasn’t too sure.
The second theory was that All Might was an absolute moron, and he accidentally stumbled on how to use the quirk while Izuku is putting too much thought into what it means to have a quirk. There was a very high probability of this theory being true, since Izuku has spent ten months with the man and knows for a fact that he is, indeed, an idiot.
The last theory is that One For All isn’t a physical enhancement quirk like All Might stated it was, and is some other form of enhancement. Unfortunately, this was the most likely theory.
But All Might is, still, a moron.
Izuku decided to use a new code entirely, a mixture of his quirk and hero codes.
~*~*~*~
Izuku was sitting at the kitchen table as his mother made breakfast, glancing over at him every few minutes to reassure herself that her baby was still safe and sound, not lying in a hospital bed with broken limbs.
“I still can’t believe it, Izuku, how did you manage to manifest a quirk out of nowhere? You’re fifteen! These things are unheard of!” she fretted.
“I know, Mom, I was surprised too!” Izuku agreed. ‘Surprised I broke myself into pieces, that is,’ Izuku amended silently to himself. “But things like this happen! I think Recovery Girl said there was some weird activation requirement for my quirk?”
“Oh, yes,” Mom said, as if she had forgotten that Recovery Girl had spoken to her just yesterday about how Izuku’s quirk had a requirement. “I think the school nurse mentioned something along those lines when she called.”
Izuku nodded. “She said that my quirk might have blown off my limbs if it had manifested earlier, before I had started training.” Izuku watched as his mom turned back to the stove. ‘That’s a good lie’, Izuku had to admit. ‘I put on a lot of muscle, and the quirk still broke my limbs.’
“Well, yes,” she said as she turned off the heat on the stove and started to ladle out their miso soup. “It’s just so much!” Mom brought the bowls to the table and went back for the fish and rice. “Are you sure you want to do this, baby? Can’t you just, I don’t know, pursue a career in something safer? You’re so smart, you could be a lawyer!”
‘I don’t want to be a lawyer,’ he thought to himself. “Mom, being a hero has been my dream for as long as I can remember! You know that!”
“I know, baby, I know, but it’s not safe!” Mom placed the rest of the food on the table and took her seat across from him. “If you still want to save people, maybe you can become a doctor!” she suggested.
Izuku fought back a sigh and said, “Mom, we don’t even know yet if I passed or failed the Heroic Practical. Can we wait until then to discuss an alternative career path?”
“Oh, of course, baby. We can discuss this more when you get your results.” His mom smiled sweetly at him, and Izuku could practically hear her thinking that he had already failed, so why not talk now?
Izuku smiled brightly at his mom and turned his attention to breakfast. While he didn’t know if he had passed or failed, he would not be looking into either law or medicine.
~*~*~*~
One of the things Izuku had decided to learn in his pursuit of quirk analysis, was different techniques of quirk counseling. Almost universally, the first step a quirk counselor tried to get the children to do was meditate, try to connect with their quirk.
So that was Izuku’s first step as well.
He sat on his bed, leaning against the wall, and closed his eyes. Izuku took a deep breath and let it out, repeating it a few times to ensure he was calm. Once he felt he was in the right head space to focus, he turned his attention inside.
The first thing he noticed was the seemingly endless depth of soft green energy buzzing just beneath his skin, almost like a vast ocean. The second thing he noticed was the multiple orbs of separate energy, most of which were submerged in the ocean of energy. There was one, a small, deep, forest green orb, that was pulsing just on the surface of the ocean.
Interesting.
Izuku managed to touch the soft green energy of the ocean and felt his entire body light up. This must be the power of One For All. Izuku tilted his head, taking in the feeling of warmth that was coursing through his veins, pulsing through his whole body.
Well, now. This was much different from what he had been instructed. This is most definitely not ‘clench your butt cheeks and yell SMASH!’ That method felt more like directing the power to certain limbs, only where he needed it to go. This, however, felt more like it wanted to be a cloak, it wanted to cover his entire body.
And really, wasn’t that obvious? Izuku, how could you have missed that? All Might’s transformation isn’t just whatever limb he’s using, he transforms his entire body, even his hair! Of course, he needs to spread the power through his entire body. The answer was so simple!
Izuku opened his eyes while still slightly touching that vast well of power and looked at himself. He didn’t notice anything different, but he was, admittedly, barely even touching that power. If he was going to notice or feel anything, he would need to use more than just a slight touch of power. Izuku took another deep breath, held it for a moment, and then let it out.
He was going to pull the power forth, but he wasn’t going to try to use any of it. Pull it forth, hold it, then release it back into the ocean inside himself. Izuku decided to pull the power along with his breathing. Pull the power in for four, hold for four, then let it out for four. Shouldn’t be too hard.
~*~*~*~
Izuku was grabbed by the collar of his gakuran and slammed into the wall right as he walked into the classroom. Blinking back the initial shock, Izuku looked up into blood red eyes. ‘Fantastic,’ he thought, ‘it’s Kacchan.’
“Deku, I saw you at the exams! What did I tell you, hah?” Bakugou seethed at him. “I told you not to apply, and what did you do?” Bakugou punched him in the stomach and then kicked him when he was down.
Izuku coughed, trying to catch his breath. “I really don’t see what my taking a high school entrance exam has to do with you, Kacchan,” Izuku muttered.
“What was that, Deku?! Are you talking back to me?!” Bakugou grabbed him by the hair and pulled him back to his feet. “I didn’t say you could talk back, Deku.” Bakugou punched Izuku in the stomach again and left him on the floor to go to his desk.
‘Huh,’ Izuku thought to himself. ‘Kacchan wasn’t as scary as normal.’
~*~*~*~
Izuku had been doing his breathing exercises with One For All for two days now, and pulling the power in with each breath was as simple as, well, breathing. But now he decided to up the difficulty. He was going to hold the power through several breaths.
Izuku took his breath, pulling in some of the power, and held it close as he released the breath. Izuku started a timer on his phone to see how long he could hold the power. It wasn’t as difficult as he had thought it would be. Huh. Well, in that case – no. He still needs to be able to hold the power for a length of time before he works on increasing the amount of power he’s pulling in.
Right now, Izuku was pulling in and holding maybe 0.5% of his power, and he knew he would need to be able to wield a lot more than that if he wanted to be successful in the Hero Course. He doubted he had made it in, but he knew there were ways to transfer into the course throughout the year. After all, one of Izuku’s favorite heroes, Eraserhead, had managed to transfer in from the General Education Course after winning the Sports Festival. That event was four months away, so Izuku had plenty of time to train.
He glanced at his phone to check the time and was pleased to note it had been almost thirty minutes, and he wasn’t having any issues. If he is able to make it to an hour, he’ll try to increase the power to 1%. With that thought in mind, he closed his eyes again.
~*~*~*~
It had been five days since Izuku had taken the entrance exam, and in that whole time his only concern had been to focus on increasing his control over One For All. He was fairly certain that he had failed the exam, so it stood to reason that he would need to win, or at least place highly, in the Sports Fest to get his first chance at transferring into the hero course.
His mom, however, seemed to be taking his lack of anxiety differently. After the two of them had eaten breakfast, she decided to bring up the subject of Izuku’s anxiety, or rather, the lack thereof.
“Baby, are you okay? You haven’t seemed to be yourself lately,” she fretted, placing her wrist on Izuku’s forehead, testing for a fever.
“I’m fine, Mom,” Izuku tried to reassure her. “Just been tired, I suppose?”
“Well, yes, you have seemed a bit off, lately, but you’ve never acted like this even when you were tired! What’s going on, Izuku?”
Izuku tilted his head at her. What was going on? “I’m not sure, what do you mean?”
Mom looked at him with a disappointed expression. “Izuku, have you been taking drugs?”
Izuku’s eyes widened at that. “Of course not. Where would you get that idea?”
Her look of disappointment turned into one of suspicion, as if she’s not sure if she’s caught him in a lie or not. “This isn’t like you, Izuku. Baby, you’ve always been anxious, just like me, so the fact that you’re not at all worried about the exam results is very unlike you!”
And oh, that made sense. Huh. Why wasn’t he anxious?
“I’m fine, Mom, really!” he started waving his hands in front of his face like he normally would when flustered. “I don’t know why I’m not nervous, but it’s going to be okay! Maybe I’m just being optimistic for once!”
“Okay, baby, if you’re sure that’s all it is,” Mom still didn’t look as though she believed Izuku, but she let him retreat back to his bedroom. She did have to go to work, after all.
‘I wonder what’s going on?’ Izuku thought to himself. ‘I really haven’t been as anxious as normal, lately. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve cried once since I took the exam.’ Izuku stepped into his bedroom and closed the door, getting ready for school. ‘I’ll look into this more when I get home tonight.’
~*~*~*~
It had been less than a week since Izuku had received One For All, and while he was making improvements with that quirk, he was currently able to bring in and hold 3% of the power at an hour at a time, he had noticed a disturbing lack of his emotions. Something wasn’t adding up, and Izuku needed to figure this out.
He had always been an emotional boy, a trait he had inherited from his mother, and in the past five days he had not only not been worried about whether or not he passed the Hero Course entrance exam, he was also noticeably no longer afraid of Kacchan. Something was wrong, and it started when he got One For All.
Izuku decided it was time to meditate again. Maybe one of those orbs of energy were the cause of this?
Closing his eyes and focusing on the deep well of power within himself, it doesn’t take long for Izuku to once again find the glowing ocean and the several orbs. The first thing he’s noticed is the dark green orb that had been lightly touching the ocean the first time he looked within himself had grown massively – it was almost ten times larger than it had been before.
What was it?
Instead of reaching out to the ocean, Izuku reached to the green orb. Instantly he was able to access it to its full potential, and he felt himself grin. He knew it, he knew he wasn’t quirkless! The green orb was his natural quirk!
Izuku always knew that when he was analyzing he fell into something like a trance, so it wasn’t all that odd to realize that while he had tapped into the energy of the green orb to analyze it, he had fallen into a trance as well. It didn’t matter, in any case. He needed to figure out this quirk, understand why his emotions seem to be… muted? Missing?
Hmm. Upon examination, it seems his natural quirk has evolved. It had at one point been simply a memory archive/analysis quirk – useful, but not too powerful. Now, however, it seems to have incorporated more logic and increased the speed of the analysis. Fascinating. The side effects seem to be his loss of emotions. Well. He’ll just have to learn to fake them. It’s not as if he’s forgotten what they feel like, he’s sure he could cry with little effort, smiling has never been difficult.
Izuku nodded and released his hold on his quirk. He checked the time, his mom was supposed to be home from work at 9, and he’d probably been meditating for about 5 hours, but no. The phone said it’d only been thirty minutes. Huh. He had noticed that the speed of his analysis had increased, but he hadn’t noticed that time slowed down.
This will be fun to play with.
~*~*~*~
Izuku, perfectly faking his anxiety, took his UA letter to his room to open. He was already certain that he had failed the exam, but at least this way he could put off his mother’s upcoming talk about changing his career path to something in the Law or Medical fields. He knew the talk was coming, but he wasn’t interested in it right now.
Hopefully he at least managed to make it into General Education.
Izuku knew that if this letter had come just over a week ago, he would have been so nervous he would have simply ripped the envelope down the middle, but since he was perfectly calm, he instead carefully slit the top and pulled out a small round disk. Upon examination, it seemed this disk was likely a playback device of some sort. Izuku smiled at that – no way they would spend this much effort to tell him he failed.
The question now was, did he get in to Heroics or General Ed?
“I AM HERE! AS A PROJECTION!” Well, that solved that question. No way was All Might recording messages for General Education students. Izuku must have somehow gotten accepted into the Hero Course. He tilted his head, wondering how, since he hadn’t managed to defeat a single robot. Well, a single robot that was worth any points.
“MIDORIYA IZUKU! I AM SURE YOU ARE WONDERING WHAT I AM DOING HERE IN YOUR UA LETTER! HAHAHA! I WANT TO BE THE FIRST TO INFORM YOU THAT I WILL BE TEACHING THIS COMING YEAR AT UA!” All Might’s projection stated.
‘Great, we’ll be taught by one of the biggest morons I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting,’ he thought. It wasn’t that he disliked All Might, no, not at all! It’s just, after ten months, Izuku was fairly certain that a feral kitten would be a better teacher than All Might. Izuku sighed in displeasure as the projection continued.
“NOW THAT I HAVE DELIVERED THE GOOD NEWS, ON TO YOUR EXAM RESULTS! MIDORIYA, YOU EARNED AN IMPRESSIVE 98% ON THE WRITTEN EXAM, PLACING YOU AT FIRST PLACE ON THE WRITTEN PORTION! CONGRATULATIONS!” Izuku smirked at that. Of course he had scored high. He always did, so long as the teachers didn’t mark him down for ‘cheating.’
“ON TO THE PRACTICAL EXAM! I AM SORRY TO SAY, BUT YOU DID NOT EARN A SINGLE VILLAIN POINT IN THE EXAM.” All Might seemed very disappointed as he delivered this news, as though Izuku wasn’t very well aware that he hadn’t managed to destroy any robots.
Izuku narrowed his eyes. He had mentioned ‘villain’ points. That means there were other points besides villain points. Izuku was aware that the projection of All Might seemed to have frozen, but that was okay, it just meant that Izuku had succeeded in activating his analysis quirk.
So, if he didn’t get any villain points, but he was still accepted into the Hero Course, that meant there were other kinds of points. What had he done that could be considered Heroic? Well, he had saved that girl who was trapped under the rubble from the massive 0-P robot. Hmm, perhaps there were rescue points? That would make sense, after all, being a hero wasn’t all about defeating villains, the main duty of a hero was saving people. There were Rescue Heroes who almost never engaged in villain battles, and then there were the Investigational and Support Heroes, while they occasionally assisted in the field, they primarily used their abilities to work difficult cases and collect intel for raids.
With those three branches of Heroics not centered around actual combat, it would make perfect sense for battling robots to not be the only way to earn points. Izuku let the analysis drop, and All Might’s projection resumed.
“BUT WHAT KIND OF SCHOOL WOULD WE BE IF WE ONLY JUDGED SOMEONE BASED ON HOW WELL THEY DESTROY A ROBOT!” The scene changed and the girl who had been stuck under rubble showed up, telling Present Mic that he had saved her, and that she wanted to give him some of her points. After Present Mic reassured her that the boy likely had enough points to get it, the scene changed back to All Might. “THAT’S RIGHT! YOUR BRAVE ACTIONS INSPIRED OTHERS INTO SELFLESS ACTS! AND NOT JUST THAT! YOU SAVED THAT GIRL IN AN AWE-INSPIRING PERFORMANCE! FOR THAT, YOU, MY BOY, HAVE RECEIVED 60 RESCUE POINTS!”
’60 rescue points? For breaking my arm and legs? Hmm. Seems a little suspicious.’ Izuku narrowed his eyes. There is no way he should have received that many points for doing something so reckless. With a sigh, Izuku decided not to question it. All Might probably pulled some strings to make them award him enough points to get into the Hero Course.
“CONGRATULATIONS! MIDORIYA IZUKU, THIS IS YOUR HERO ACADEMIA!”
Izuku smiled. Looks like he wasn’t going to have to force his way in through the Sports Fest after all.
~*~*~*~
Izuku had decided that since he was going to be in the Hero Course, he should probably focus on actually doing something with the 3% of One For All he could hold on to at any given moment. That had led him down to Dagobah Beach, with its currently pristine, white sand.
Originally, Izuku had wanted to come during the night, but he had noticed that when he held more than 2% of his power, his body had been giving off sparks of green lightning – sparks that would be extremely noticeable at night, possibly attracting the attention of an underground hero due to public quirk usage, and he didn’t want to risk that. He had just gotten accepted to the school of his dreams, he couldn’t have a charge of public quirk usage take that away from him.
Izuku started running on the sand, at first not using any of his quirk just for a warmup. After about ten minutes, he pulled forth 1% of his power, and instantly felt the difference – his limbs felt lighter, his steps had more of a spring in them, running just felt… easier. Izuku wondered how long he could keep running at this pace for and decided to just keep going until he either couldn’t, or until an hour had passed.
The hour passed and Izuku felt he could probably have kept going, easily. He’d have to revisit this experiment later, at a higher percentage of power.
~*~*~*~
The night after Izuku got his letter, he got a message from All Might, asking him to meet at the beach he had cleaned. With a shrug, Izuku put on his jacket and headed out to the beach. All Might had been ignoring his texts all week, most likely because he didn’t want to let slip to Izuku that he had been accepted into the hero course. Annoying, but mostly harmless.
When Izuku got to the beach, he easily recognized him in his smaller form, staring out into the ocean.
“Sensei!” Izuku greeted as he got closer. “It’s good to hear from you again.”
“Young Midoriya, congratulations on getting accepted into the hero course!” All Might said with a smile. “I knew you could do it!”
“Thank you!” Izuku grinned back at him. Izuku wondered if he would admit to pulling strings to get him admitted or not. That ‘rescue’ really should not have been worth 60 points, there is no way Izuku had legitimately gotten into the class on his own merits. ‘I’ll just have to prove to the teachers that I really do deserve my position there,’ he thought.
“I do want to discuss something with you in regard to the quirk, Young Midoriya,” All Might started, sounding serious. “I should have warned you that there was a possibility you might injure yourself the first time you used it, but to be honest, I never had any sort of issues when I first got the quirk, so I didn’t remember my own mentor’s warnings until I saw you hurt. For that, I deeply apologize.”
Izuku nodded, accepting the apology. “I have managed to figure out a lot about how to control the quirk in the past week,” Izuku admitted. “I have been putting a lot of work into this, but I haven’t tried to actually use the quirk yet.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the quirk is extremely powerful, and I still can’t manage to use it at 100% like you can. It is going to take a lot of work before I am at that stage, but I have been able to hold about 3% at a time.” Izuku demonstrated by pulling in 3% of the quirk and showing off the green lightning that collected when he did so. He quickly dropped it, though, since it was too flashy to show off at night. “I have been able to run along the beach for hours at a time while holding the power, but I haven’t pushed myself.”
“Well then, that is the next stage you must complete!” All Might stated. “You will need to be able to actually use the quirk if you expect to excel in the hero course!”
Izuku hummed in agreement. “The issue is, I don’t have any way to safely test the quirk. I want to ensure that I not only don’t do any damage to something, but that if I hurt myself, I have quick access to medical. It would make me feel better about testing the quirk if you were there to supervise?”
All Might seemed to just realize that yes, as his mentor, he probably should supervise. “That is a great point, Young Midoriya! I think we should get you access to a special quirk training gym, and we can do all of your training there until the first day at UA!”
Izuku smiled up at him. “That’ll be perfect!”
~*~*~*~
All Might was in the corner of the gym, staying out of Izuku’s way, as he cracked his neck. He had managed to run the beach easily for two full hours straight at 3% yesterday, but the one thing he hadn’t dared try to do yet was test his full capabilities with his power. He wanted to have someone… well, perhaps ‘responsible’ wasn’t the right word to use with All Might, but the man technically was his mentor. In theory, he should be able to supervise his training, and get him medical assistance if he needs it.
With this in mind, Izuku stood at one end of the gym and fired up 1% of One For All. He crouched down and then trying to go as fast as he possibly could at this power, took off for the other side of the gym. Izuku sprinted to the other side so fast he almost didn’t stop in time to avoid smacking into the wall. Wide eyed, Izuku looked back at the other wall. That… was a lot faster than what he had thought he could do.
“Young Midoriya, that was incredible, my boy!” All Might called from the corner he had been observing from. “And you didn’t hurt yourself, did you?”
Of course he didn’t hurt himself, Izuku had been practicing pulling this amount of power into himself for days now, he can hold this for hours with no ill effects. That said, Izuku also knew that he shouldn’t actually say that out loud, All Might wouldn’t understand that there were other changes going on with Izuku other than One For All strengthening his body.
“No, I’m okay!” Izuku plastered on a fake smile. “I didn’t expect to be that fast, but I’m okay!”
“Fantastic news, my boy! Although, that seemed fairly tame for what the quirk is capable of. I wonder why?” All Might wondered.
“Oh, that’s easy to answer!” Izuku aimed one of his signature sunshine smiles at the blond idiot. “I was only using about 1% of the power just then. I’ve been practicing with the quirk over the past week, and I can currently only handle about 3% before my body feels like it’s starting to overload. I can hold up to 4%, but if I do, I can’t make myself move just yet.”
“Well, that’s something you need to work on, my boy!” All Might said sternly, but with a bit of a smile still.
“Y-yes sir!” Izuku replied, pretending to be the same meek kid he was a week ago.
“Well, back to it!”
Izuku nodded and went back to what he was thinking before All Might interrupted him. He didn’t really care about what All Might had to say right now, the man was a terrible teacher and Izuku had to figure out how to use this quirk totally on his own, so he was going to work at his own pace.
~*~*~*~
Izuku knew he should be nervous, today was the first day of school, after all, but he just couldn’t bring himself to be all that worried. He had been putting a lot of work into his quirk, well, both of them, since the week of the entrance exam, and he was now able to use 5% of One For All with ease.
Izuku probably would have been able to use even more by now, but he had spent a lot of the past two months also working on his other quirk, which Izuku had decided to name Deep Analysis. He was now able to trigger the state of mind where time seems to stop whenever he wanted, and no actual analysis is needed to trigger that state.
He has found it to be quite useful when dealing with the bullies at school. He was able to pause things around him and analyze which bullies were likely to attack first, how he should respond, best route to escape. He was interested to try using his quirk in a real battle situation, and he was certain that UA would provide a scenario like that soon enough.
Izuku walked up to the door for Class 1-A and he frowned slightly when he heard voices coming from inside that sounded annoyingly like Bakugou, and was that other voice the blue-haired boy who had scolded him for his muttering? Great. ‘This is fine, I’ve been dealing with Bakugou my entire life, what’s another three years?’
Izuku opened the door quietly and was glad to see no one noticed him. He went to the front of the class to see the seating chart and was once again mildly annoyed to see his seat was going to be directly behind Bakugou. Well, it’s not like this is the first time he’s been seated behind the explosive boy. Shrugging, Izuku made his way to the back of the class so he could approach his desk out of sight of the two arguing boys.
Just before Izuku reached his desk, however, the blue-haired boy seemed to notice him. “Hello! My name is Iida Tenya, and I’m from Somei Academy! I wanted to say, you understood the true meaning of the exam, and I apologize for-“
Izuku interrupted him. “I didn’t understand anything. I just felt that I probably shouldn’t let some giant robot run over someone who was trapped under rubble and unable to escape.” Izuku shrugged. “I’m Midoriya Izuku, by the way.”
“Deku,” hissed Bakugou. “What the fuck are you doing in my class?!”
With a raised eyebrow, Izuku replied, “Attempting to get to my desk. According to the seating chart, I’m right behind you. Again. Isn’t that fun?”
Just as Bakugou was about to reply, a girl with a round face and bright pink cheeks jumped over to them. “Oh, it’s you! I never got the chance to thank you for saving me at the exam!”
Izuku smiled at her briefly. “Well, I couldn’t just leave you there.”
“I’m Uraraka Ochako!” she smiled brightly.
“Midoriya Izuku,” he replied simply. Izuku wasn’t too interested in a conversation with this girl, and he wanted to just be left alone, so he turned to his desk and sat down calmly. Both Iida and Uraraka seemed to get the message and walked off to mingle with others.
Izuku felt eyes on him, so he glanced over to the doorway where there was a man in a bright yellow sleeping bag staring at them, seemingly waiting for someone to notice him. He glanced at Izuku and Izuku could tell he had passed some sort of test with the man as he nodded before returning to studying the rest of the students.
Izuku tilted his head slightly and narrowed his eyes at the man. He seemed familiar somehow, but Izuku was certain he had never met him before. Activating Deep Analysis, Izuku tried to remember where or how he knew this man. It didn’t take long for him to remember blurry footage of an underground hero at night. ‘Eraserhead is my homeroom teacher.’
Dropping Deep Analysis, Izuku resumed just sitting and waiting patiently for class to start. And kept waiting. And kept waiting? What was the teacher waiting for? The bell rang almost 5 minutes ago, when is he going to start class?
Somewhere around the 8-minute mark, the teacher unzipped his sleeping bag slightly and started sucking on a jelly pouch, purposefully making noise, and he got the attention of one of the students at the front of the class. He sighed tiredly as the blond boy shrieked at him.
“It took you all over eight minutes to notice me. You have terrible situational awareness.” Eraserhead stood up and stepped out of his sleeping bag. Walking to the podium in front of the class, he said, “I am your homeroom teacher, Aizawa Shouta. Pleasure to meet you.” He stated this in such a deadpan way, Izuku was sure he was more annoyed than anything.
Pulling out a box of gym uniforms from under the podium, he then grumped out, “Put these on and meet me at Field Beta.” Aizawa then slinked out the room.
Izuku was the first one to get up and look in the box for his uniform and left the class to find the locker room.
~*~*~*~
“It took you almost fifteen minutes to get here. That is unacceptable. From today on, you will be here within five minutes,” Aizawa glared at the students who had finally arrived. Izuku had, once again, seemed to pass some sort of test from the teacher by being the first one to arrive.
"Now, on to the reason we’re out here. You kids have been doing these since junior high, too, right? Physical fitness tests where you weren't allowed to use your quirks. The country still uses averages taken from results of students not using their quirks. It's not rational, especially for heroes in training. Bakugou,” Aizawa looked at the growling blonde who had decided he liked glaring at Izuku. “In middle school, what was your score for a ball toss?”
“67 meters,” Bakugou stated, reluctantly moving his glare from Izuku to the teacher.
“Then try doing it with your Quirk. You can do whatever you want so long as you stay in the circle. Hurry up. Give it all you've got.”
Bakugou caught the ball Aizawa threw at him and got into the circle. “Anything goes, huh?” His smirk turned sharp, and he pulled back and threw the ball with a shout of, “DIE!” and set off a massive explosion.
A moment later the score 705.2 meters showed up, and Aizawa showed it to the class. “Know your maximum first. That is the most rational way to form the foundation of a hero.”
"So manly!" Kirishima exclaimed while punching his fists together. "I'm getting pumped up!"
"Awesome! This looks like fun!" Izuku raised an eyebrow when he heard that comment from Ashido. With a hero like Eraserhead, there was no way he’d consider training to be ‘fun.’ And sure enough, the teacher donned a creepy grin.
"It looks fun, you say? So… You all were planning to spend your three years here having a good time while making friends? What happened to being a hero?" Aizawa’s tone and expression made the entire group fall silent. "All right then, new rule. Whoever gets the lowest score,” Aizawa paused for the dramatic effect, “will be instantly expelled."
"What!? But that's not fair!" Uraraka complained, but that was instantly shut down by Aizawa.
"Unfair? Then what about natural disasters? Massive accidents? Or how about villain attacks?" Aizawa’s unnerving grin was intensified as he lifted his hair out of his face. "All kinds of unfairness are hurled at heroes on the daily, and it's our job to turn that unfairness around. If you were expecting to have a fun filled, normal high school experience, then you're sorely mistaken. For the next three years of your life in this school, UA is going to be throwing one hardship after another at you. ‘Plus Ultra’ and all that stuff."
Bakugou’s ball toss had been just for demonstration purposes, Aizawa had decided that the first test they were going to perform would be the 50-meter dash. Izuku felt a little smug, or anticipatory, or something right about now since he was going to be using 5% of his quirk for as many of these tests as he could.
He watched as people used their quirks to take the tests, from Ashido sliding on her acid, to Uraraka removing gravity from her clothes, and Asui leaping the distance. Izuku thought everyone was using their quirks well. Eventually it was his turn, and he stepped up right next to Bakugou.
“I don’t know how you got in, Deku, but I’m going to make sure everyone sees you don’t deserve to be here!” he snarled at Izuku.
Izuku simply hummed and got into position to run. When the signal came to run, Izuku fired up One For All and took off. 1.24 seconds. Izuku did some quick calculations, and yeah, that seemed about right. Izuku was able to sprint about ninety miles per hour when he had 5% of his quirk activated.
Bakugou was a few seconds behind Izuku at 4.13, and he let Izuku know full well how displeased he was at that, screaming at him about cheating. Izuku simply tuned him out and got ready for the next test, the long jump.
Izuku watched as Asui jumped over the sandbox for the long jump, and as Aoyama turned around and used his navel laser to propel himself across, and then as Bakugou smugly used his explosions to hurtle across the field. Most of the class had gotten past the sandbox. As Izuku approached, he wondered if he should pull back on his quirk for this jump – after all, they were just expected to pass the sandbox, not jump into the next field.
Izuku nodded to himself, and only pulled forth 3% of his quirk before jumping, easily clearing the sandbox, and landing further than any other student had yet. As Izuku was walking back to the group of students, he passed Aizawa. “The lighting wasn’t as bright,” he stated.
“No, it wasn’t. I didn’t feel like landing in the trees.” Izuku gestured to the line of trees he likely would have landed among if he had used any more power.
Aizawa hummed and nodded, so Izuku rejoined the class.
Their next test was the endurance run, and Izuku didn’t think he’d really need any more than 1% for this. The only goal here was to keep running until you had to stop, and Izuku already knew he could run for at least three hours on the beach. He didn’t really see Aizawa keeping them all out here for three hours, but he didn’t really think many of these students could keep running for three hours or more.
An hour later, there were only three of them left, Izuku tirelessly jogging, Yayorozu on a bicycle, just starting to tire, and Bakugou, barely hanging on by a thread, but refusing to lose once again to Izuku. With a smirk on his face, and more than a little bit of petty in his heart, Izuku started to lap Bakugou again. “I’m on lap 72. What are you on, Kacchan?”
Bakugou screeched in rage and did his best to catch Izuku, but he’d only increased his output of One For All and got far enough away from Bakugou to be unreachable. Moments later, Bakugou finally collapsed.
Aizawa called the test to a close five minutes later, upon seeing that both Izuku and Yayorozu weren’t going to stop anytime soon.
After Aizawa marked the both of them down as a tie in the endurance run, he brought everyone back to the field for the ball toss. Izuku already knew who he had to beat, Bakugou at his 705.2 meters. Sure, others might do better, like Yayorozu will most likely create some type of gun or cannon or something to get a ridiculous score, and Uraraka will probably remove the gravity from her ball, but all Izuku’s petty heart needed was to beat Bakugou.
So, when it was Izuku’s turn, he picked up his ball, fired up One For All at 5%, and threw as hard as he could. As he watched the ball fly, he could hear Bakugou’s rage filled scream, mere seconds before he fired off a blast and tried to tackle Izuku.
Key word: tried.
Aizawa’s capture scarf shot out and bound Bakugou while he turned his quirk on the blond boy. “You have been screaming at Midoriya the entire day. If you don’t stop right now, then I won’t wait for the results of the assessment, I will expel you on the spot. Do you understand me?” Aizawa hissed at Bakugou.
Bakugou glared at the teacher for a moment before he nodded sharply. “Good.” Aizawa then released Bakugou and looked at the tracker to find Izuku’s score. “1,125.4 meters.”
The class soon moved into the gym to finish up the remaining tests. Izuku realized he needed to seriously work on his flexibility, since he was just barely able to touch his toes, let alone past his toes like Asui, Ashido, and most of the class. However, he exceled in both the side steps and the grip test, coming in first place on both – and accidentally breaking the grip machine – before he moved on to the last test, the sit ups. Izuku didn’t have the highest score on the sit ups, Kirishima was able to get a slightly higher score than him, but he did reach second place.
Once all of the tests had been completed, Aizawa had everyone gather outside again. “I’m not going to bother saying everyone’s scores individually, so just look your names up on this list,” and a holographic image showed up depicting everyone’s scores. Izuku was at the top at first place, followed by Yayorozu in second, Todoroki in third, and Bakugou in fourth. At the very bottom of the list was Mineta.
Izuku glanced over at the boy who was openly sobbing. He had noticed that the girls in the class had been apprehensive around him, so he had most likely been doing something to deserve their ire, and they all seemed relieved that he had gotten last place. Izuku looked back to Aizawa and noted that the teacher was grinning.
“Mineta, not only did you take last place, but you were seen multiple times harassing the female members of this class. I would have ignored your last place in the assessment if you had kept your hands to yourself, but as it stands, you are a walking sexual harassment case, and I don’t want or need anyone asking me why I let this continue. You are expelled.”
Yayorozu gasped at that. “I didn’t think he was serious,” she whispered. “I thought he was just saying that to make us go all out. Can he really expel a student on the first day?”
“The syllabus is in the classroom on your desks. Once you collect it, you’re free to go. I’ll see the rest of you tomorrow,” Aizawa dismissed the students, all of which started towards the locker rooms to change. “Midoriya, I’d like a word with you.”
Izuku turned back to him. “Yes, Aizawa-sensei?”
Aizawa narrowed his eyes at him. “Your performance today was much different from your performance at the entrance exam. Would you care to explain?”
Izuku thought about it for a moment. Would he like to explain? All Might told him not to tell anyone, but Aizawa was his homeroom teacher. It would probably be best if he knew. Logically, the man would be able to help him improve more if he knew what was going on, after all. Besides, if Izuku could trust anyone with this secret, it would be Eraserhead, right?
Nodding, Izuku tilted his head slightly at his teacher. "Sure, sensei, but would you mind if this conversation was in private?"