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Chapter Text

Stratocumulus clouds indicate that the weather is currently fair and clear, although those outside should take note that a storm may be on its way.

It was supposed to be an ordinary day out.

His mama wanted to bring him to the new shopping mall that opened in Musutafu only a few years prior. It had everything, from shops selling all kinds of goods such as toys, furniture, books and electronics, to restaurants with so much yummy food to go around. There was an arcade, but he was too young for that yet, and even an ice-skating rink on the top floor.

He was so excited to go, and he was amazed when he first stepped foot into the sprawling retail complex. He stared in awe at the shimming skylight above, and the noise of hundreds of people bustling around, carrying bags of shopping, laughing and talking to one another, holding hands and generally having a great time.

His mama first brought him up to the food court, since it was lunch time and he was getting hungry. However, when they got there, he was surprised to find that the food court had been closed off. A staff member told his mama that they were fixing the floor, so the food court will be closed for some time.

Undeterred, his mama took him to one of the many restaurants instead, and he had a delicious bowl of katsudon which was almost as good as what his mama made at home.

After lunch, he followed his mama around as she did some shopping. As she browsed one of the shops which sold household goods, he felt the floor vibrating, and the stands shaking back and forth slightly, with the plates and crockery clinking against each other.

He thought nothing of it. Japan is prone to earthquakes, after all, and small tremors are commonplace, to the point that hardly anyone paid attention to them. 

Then, as they were leaving the shop, a loud rumble came from above, a bit like thunder. His mama muttered to herself about a storm coming, but as he looked up towards the skylight, he could see that the sky was clear, blue and bright.

Still, he thought nothing of it. The weather is strange, after all.

His mama then brought him to a popular shop which sold hero merchandise. He went crazy in there, admiring the figurines of the top 10 heroes, but especially All Might, the Symbol of Peace. He begged his mama to get him one, and she eventually bought one that was not too expensive. He was tempted to get more, but his mama reminded him that he already had so many All Might figurines at home.

As they were leaving, he suddenly noticed that it was much warmer. The cooling chill of the air conditioning had stopped, and the heat of the summer was filling the air. An announcement came over the speakers, saying that the air conditioning has been turned off due to maintenance. His mama commented about how unexpected all of this was, especially with the blazing heat of the summer sun. She made sure to always have water on hand, reminding him to drink regularly. 

As the day progressed, it got hotter, and he could see other shoppers looking annoyed and frustrated, wiping their sweat with handkerchiefs and towels. He saw others drinking water too, sweat soaking their clothes.

Thankfully, his mama reassured him that she only needed to get a few more things, and they can then go home. 

In that time, the thunder-like rumble from before came again, louder than the one preceding it. Instinctively, he held onto his mama’s hand tighter. He was not afraid of thunder, but the noises sounded scary.

But nothing could have prepared him for the shrill sound of alarms blaring.

Suddenly, everything devolved into chaos.

People are screaming, shouting, running for the exits, tripping and falling over one another. He heard his mama shout over the din, and she pulled him along. He tried to run as fast as he could, despite the throngs of people all around. Then, came the noises of concrete, glass and steel giving way. 

Clouds of dust rained all over him, and the cracking noises grew louder. Through it all, he never once let go of his mama’s hand, despite being pushed and jostled by the screaming people around him.

But then, something hits his head hard.

It causes him to let go of his mama’s hand, and he falls to the floor. He vaguely hears his mama screaming his name, before it is all blocked out by the roar of the building. 

The last thing four-year-old Midoriya Izuku sees before everything goes black is the floor cracking apart, as the ceiling above falls on top of him.

No one knew it at the time, but the swanky new shopping mall opened in the heart of Musutafu city centre was a ticking time-bomb waiting to go off.

During the construction of the shopping mall, the company who commissioned the building cut costs by disregarding mandated construction and building regulations, resulting in support columns being reduced in size and effectively making the floors thinner by lowering the reinforcement bars. Then, a year after opening, the air-conditioning units were moved because the building’s neighbours complained about noise pollution. However, instead of using cranes to lift the units into their new positions, the company cut corners again by having the units rolled to their new positions, causing the roof to crack and splinter under the immense combined weight of the units, which in turn caused several support columns to crack when the units rolled over them.

Over the course of a year, every time the air conditioning units were switched on, the vibrations caused the cracks on the roof to progressively widen, further weakening the cracked support columns.

Even when the units were turned off by management on that fateful day, it was too little, too late.

Several support columns, weakened by the cracks and a year's worth of strain, simultaneously gave way, causing the roof to cave into the top floor. The air-conditioning units plunged into the top floor, accelerating the collapse. One by one, the floors pancaked down into the basement carpark below. It took less than fifteen seconds for the entire shopping mall to collapse into rubble, and the resulting smoke and dust enveloped the surrounding area for several city blocks.

Videos of the collapse quickly flooded social media, and once the dust had settled, emergency crews, dispatched heroes, and untrained volunteers converged on the site.

Nobody knew how many people were in the building when it collapsed, but given that it is the summer holidays, there are easily hundreds, perhaps even a thousand people inside. Rescue operations immediately got underway. The combined work of the emergency crews, heroes and volunteers ensured that many trapped survivors were quickly extracted from the rubble, hurried into waiting ambulances, and ferried off to nearby hospitals. Tragically, the rescue operations also uncovered those who didn't survive. Quickly shrouded with sheets or blankets, the dead were hastily sent to morgues and funeral homes to be later identified and claimed by the next of kin.

The entire city was in shock. Sure, there have been cases where buildings collapsed due to villain attacks, but this was the first time where a building, and a large shopping mall to boot, collapsed seemingly without a villain being the culprit. Friends and family quickly flooded hospitals and funeral homes, trying to figure out if their loved ones were dead or alive. Scenes of anguish, anger and despair were broadcasted live to a stunned nation, with news channels and social media blogs posting regular updates by the minute.

As night fell, construction equipment was brought in to further help the rescue efforts. In that time, a young woman with long green hair is found.

Midoriya Inko is pulled from the rubble, covered in cuts and bruises, but very much alive. She is seen by many screaming and crying for her son, as she is loaded onto an ambulance to be taken to a hospital. 

It would take another six hours before rescue crews unearth a young boy with matching green hair from the rubble, several metres away from where Inko was found. Just like her, the boy is covered in cuts and bruises, and his face is saturated with blood flowing from a nasty gash in the temple. He is alive, but unconscious, his breathing shallow. Paramedics quickly work to stop the flow of blood, and rush the young boy into another ambulance, which, in an unfortunate twist of fate, takes off for a different hospital from where Inko is currently being treated for her injuries. 

In total, about 500 people are injured in the collapse, while more than 400 are dead. It is the worst non-villainy related casualty event in the city’s quirked history, and almost immediately, calls for justice and recompense started springing up.

Two investigations, one led by the city government and the other by independent experts and analysts, both concluded that greed, corruption, and blatant disregard for building and construction regulations were the reasons for the collapse. And it was not long before the top brass of the company who owned the shopping mall were rounded up. The founder was even arrested at Tokyo-Narita International Airport trying to flee to China in order to escape justice.

In the ensuing criminal trials, all defendants were found guilty on charges of murder, corruption and bribery. The founder and CEO of the company were sentenced to death, while the rest of the board of governors were sent to prison for life. Other investigations into the corruption and bribery charges saw several city officials and safety inspectors tried and found guilty for wilfully looking the other way once they received generous bribes from the company, and were sentenced to prison accordingly.

All in all, justice was served, but the city still grieved and mourned the loss of over 400 friends and family that will never return to them. A different kind of grief wracked Midoriya Inko, who searched high and low for her missing son upon being discharged, combing through hospitals for any news of whether he was alive or dead. 

As Musutafu mourned and grieved, a four-year-old boy with curly green hair lies unconscious on a bed in the children’s intensive care unit. Staff regularly check up on him, making sure that his vitals are stable. They all pray that he will regain consciousness soon, so that he can be identified, and then returned to his loved ones as soon as possible.

One night, a nurse does the routine check, and when everything comes back as normal, she writes on a clipboard, and quietly leaves the room. Just seconds after the door closes, a strange occurrence takes place.

As the boy lies on the bed, unmoving, his hair begin to change colour, and the locks lose their curl somewhat, becoming wavy. 

No one will notice until morning. As the sunlight streams into the room, the boy’s forest-green hair is revealed to now be a light blue. And as the light flutters over his eyelids, they snap open, revealing irises that are no longer a verdant emerald, but a luminous, bright blue.

To Be Continued.

Chapter Text

When Nimbostratus clouds fill the sky, one can expect the weather to be gloomy with continuous rain or snow.

Inko is at her wits’ end.

She has gone to every hospital within the radius of the collapsed shopping mall, desperate for any information about her missing son, Izuku. She needs to know if he is alive or dead, but it is a gargantuan task, when she is only one of many frantic friends and relatives who are flooding into hospitals and funeral homes for any shred of information about their missing loved ones.

In every hospital she came into, Inko often had to push and shove her way to the walls where beleaguered staff have pasted notices and updates about the victims that have come into their premises. There is shouting, screaming, and the wails and sobs of those who discovered that their loved ones are dead. For any normal person, the cacophonic, deafening mix of noise would have been a disorientating, confusing experience, with tensions rising as frantic people fought one another to get to the notices first. 

Of course, there was no real malice in people’s actions. Everything was done out of love, concern, fear and worry for their missing friends and family. Unfortunately, as Inko found out, that undeniable love gave rise to self-preservation, perhaps even selfishness. Everyone wanted to find news about their loved ones first, irrespective of others around them. Even Inko would admit that she feels a sense of urgency in finding her son, and that has caused her to lose thought about those around her.

But, at least, she is not alone in her search.

While she was being treated for her cuts and bruises, Inko was visited by her closest friends, Mitsuki and Masaru. They knew she was visiting the shopping mall with Izuku when it collapsed, and had conducted their own search through the nearby hospitals for any sign of her.

They eventually managed to track her down, and after a tearful, emotional reunion, the Bakugous learnt that Izuku was still missing. Mitsuki immediately offered to help her search, with Masaru readily agreeing to help. Inko was moved by her friends’ immediate assistance, and the search commenced as soon as Inko was given the green light to be discharged.

The trio split up in order to cover more ground. Perhaps, in hindsight, Masaru should have accompanied Inko, as Mitsuki has always been an independent woman and could easily have gone by herself. But Masaru reasoned that he needed to stay by his wife’s side, as the chaos could cause her to lose her temper and accidentally start rows with other families. Additionally, given how much Mitsuki sees Izuku as a son in all but blood, if anyone appeared to be getting in her way of finding Izuku, there is no knowing what Mitsuki would do to that unfortunate soul who crossed her.

At the time, Inko accepted his reasoning, but now, as she is swept up in a sea of desperation, both created by her and hundreds of other frantic individuals, she began to question her decision to go alone.

Personally, Inko is a pacifist, much like Masaru. She absolutely hated the idea of pushing and shoving her way to the notice walls. If it were possible, she would have waited her turn to get to the walls. But her desperation to find any news about Izuku overrode any desire to be respectful. 

Unfortunately, her desperation only added to the storm of tension and fear brewing around every hospital she entered. Perhaps, Inko will look back on how she jostled and pushed her way to the notice walls with shame and regret, but in those moments, her son was her greatest priority, and any shame or regret she could have felt when she pushed people away to get to the notices were thrown into the back-burner.

Even more so, when the longer she could not find any news about her missing son, the more scared and desperate Inko became.

The old saying of “no news is good news” did not apply here. Not when one is faced with no information about whether their loved one is dead or alive. 

In every hospital she has been to thus far, she never saw anything about Izuku. No piece of paper stating whether he is alive, which room he is in, or what injuries he had sustained. Nor was there an obituary which stated that Izuku was conclusively dead.

Nothing.

Every hospital she visited, the result was the same. No information, no pictures, no updates. Nothing.

Even Mitsuki and Masaru’s search also proved fruitless. They found nothing about Izuku either, which only worsened her fear and anxiety. 

One might say that the worst case scenario is that Izuku was dead, killed when the shopping mall collapsed on top of him. But if he was truly dead, and the hospital where his body was sent to put up an obituary which declared his death, at least Inko would have confirmation about her son’s fate. She would grieve, mourn, and curse the world for taking her young son away before he could live his life, but at least Inko could properly send him off with a funeral, and, eventually, find peace and closure, knowing that her son has moved on to heaven, and possibly his next life.

Not knowing if Izuku is dead, or alive, for that matter, is worse. Inko will never have closure until she learns the fate of her missing son. And as time passed, and still no information about Izuku was posted in the hospitals she visited, her desperation and franticness only grew.

She knows that she needs to keep a level head, but with all of the shouting, wailing and sobbing around her in every hospital she entered, and her own desperation rising out of control, Inko is on a downward spiral. She is torn apart in every direction, one part screaming at her to stop and take a break before she wears herself down, while another part begged her to keep searching until she found information about Izuku. What would happen if a hospital posted a notice about Izuku, alive or dead, and she wasn’t there to see it? What if they took down the notice because no one came forward, and Izuku, if alive, is sent into the foster system, or, if dead, is sent to the nearest crematorium to be disposed of and buried in an unmarked grave?

At this point, logic and rationality are rapidly fading from Inko’s mind. The desperation that had been bubbling since being extracted from the rubble is reaching a boiling point.

Very little stands between Inko and a complete breakdown. She needs to find her son fast, before she loses herself to the worst that the human mind can conjure up in a time of crisis.

He wakes up with a start.

A tiny gasp, and he bolts up.

He looks around, alert, but unseeing. 

He is in a room, but not his own. 

Everything is unfamiliar. No matter where he looks, there is nothing that he can recognise as something that could possibly be his. 

Confusion gives way to fear, and fear quickly escalates into panic. He has no idea where he is. There is no one around. The room is empty. He is all alone. It is too scary. He needs someone, fast! He doesn’t want to be all alone! It’s too scary! 

Someone, please, help him!

Suddenly, a shrill alarm starts blaring, and the door bursts open. Two nurses run into the room. One goes to the machine, while the other leans over him and tries to speak to him. However, he cannot hear anything, other than the alarm and a buzzing noise. Fear and panic mixes with confusion, everything spinning in a hurricane of incomprehensibility. 

The buzzing grows louder, and the nurses appear to be speaking to each other frantically. The one tending to the machine runs out of the room, while the other stays and tries to talk to him. But he can’t hear her. Everything is still spinning. The buzzing is making his head hurt, and he thinks he is screaming in pain, but he can’t be sure.

What he does know for sure is that something pricks his skin, and the jolt of pain definitely makes him yelp in pain. Then, the spinning stops. The buzzing goes silent. 

But the world goes dark too, and he falls back onto the bed, and knows nothing more.

It had been an accident.

Although, looking back on it, it was probably less of an accident, and more of an act of fate.

Inko had just entered the hospital, and was about to head towards the notice boards where the staff had put up updates about the injured and dead brought into the premises, when she passed one of the registration desks, and overheard two nurses talking to one another.

“So what happened?”

“The poor boy, he woke up confused and scared. We tried to calm him down, but his panic only escalated. We had to administer a sedative to calm him down.”

Inko, for whatever reason, stopped in her tracks.

“How young is he?”

“Very young, can’t be more than five years,” the other nurse sighed, “Poor thing, we don’t know what happened to his parents, they could be dead for all we know…”

Inko’s feet automatically take her to the desk.

“Please!” she cries, startling the two nurses, “Can you tell me about this boy? What does he look like?”

It takes a moment for the nurses to recover. The senior of the two asks, “Can I have your name, madam?”

“Midoriya. Midoriya Inko. My son is missing,” Inko explains, “I need to know if he is dead or alive. Please tell me, what does the boy look like? Does he have green hair and eyes?”

A look of sympathy takes over the nurse’s face, “I’m sorry, Midoriya-san. The boy in question has blue hair, and as far as I know, his eyes are also blue too.”

Despite the disappointment sinking into her bones, Inko refuses to lose hope, “Did he have freckles, at least?”

“Um…I think so,” the nurse nods.

“Then, do you know his name? My son is Izuku.”

The nurse shakes her head, “I’m sorry, but we were unable to get his name as he was panicking really badly. We can only hope that he will do so when he wakes up and remains calm long enough for us to ask him.”

Inko nods, “I-I understand. Um…if it is not too much trouble, c-can you inform me when the boy wakes up?”

Glancing at the general chaos in the waiting room, the nurse replies, “We’ll see what we can do. Please take a seat in the meantime, Midoriya-san.”

Knowing that it is all she can do right now, Inko bows in thanks, and retreats to one of the few empty seats that remained in the room. Sitting down next to a weeping old woman being comforted by her daughter, Inko wrings her hands as she begins a long, but perhaps hopeful, wait until she gets the answers she had been searching for.

The second time he comes around, it is far more gradual.

Light replaces darkness, and blurriness becomes clear.

His entire body feels heavy, like his bones have become concrete. Moving is extremely difficult, but at least he could still see and look around. 

…

He is still in the room, unfamiliar and strange.

But…he isn’t panicking anymore. The buzzing sound from before is no longer there. As much as it is unsettling, he feels…calm, for lack of a better word. 

It is all still weird, but it no longer feels like he is in imminent danger.

The door opens again, and he looks over.

With his vision clear, he immediately knows that the woman approaching him is a nurse.

“Hello, are you feeling?” she asks gently.

He tries to sit up, but the heaviness in his body makes it too painful to do so.

“Ah, try not to move too much,” the nurse tells him gently, “The sedative will need to go away first.”

A sedative…what is that?

“Anyways, since you are now awake, can you tell me your name?” the nurse asks.

His name?

“I…Izuku.”

At least, he thinks it is Izuku.

Right?

…

…

Why does it feel like it shouldn’t be, though?

To Be Continued.

Chapter Text

Cirrus clouds are delicate, feathery clouds which indicate a change (or changes) in the weather is on its way.

Now, one might have hoped that after surviving the collapse of a brand new shopping mall and eventually being reunited with her missing son, Inko would have been quick to put all the trauma she and Izuku endured in those harrowing days behind her and carry on with life.

And make no mistake, Inko is very much eager to do so.

Except, every day, ever since bursting into the room where her son was purportedly to be warded in, she has been faced with the glaring changes that have occurred since her son was pulled, unconscious but alive, from the rubble.

His forest-green, curly locks are gone, as is the emerald colour of his irises. Izuku now sports sky-blue, wavy hair, and matching eye colours. For sure, his overall appearance remains largely the same. He still sports the freckles he has always had since he was a toddler, but the sight of blue, instead of green, is more than enough to remind Inko of those terrifying hours trapped under the rubble, and the subsequent exhausting, emotionally-toiling search for her missing son. 

And then, there are the other changes.

The most glaring change, physiologically, was the arrival of Izuku’s quirk.

Of course, Inko would never know that her son was never meant to develop a quirk. If her quirk was not weak telekinesis, and instead the ability to break through the metaphorical fourth wall, Inko would have learnt that Izuku was supposed to be quirkless. 

Instead, barely three days after being discharged from the hospital (a painfully bureaucratic process because Izuku’s physical appearance did not match with the picture in his records, and the staff insisted on proper protocol despite both Izuku and Inko’s eagerness to get out of the hospital), Izuku suddenly produced a small cloud in his hands. 

Izuku had come running to Inko to show off the cloud he had made in his hands, and how he could make it move or even change shape and appearance. Inko had been delighted by the manifestation of his quirk, but unbeknownst to her then, the quirk seemed to herald the chain of events which appear to indicate that something had happened to Izuku while he was trapped under the rubble.

First is the lapses in attention.

At first, Inko thought her son had just not heard her whenever she called his name. However, she became concerned when Izuku increasingly failed to heed the call of his name, even when she was in the same room as he was. 

Fearing that her son might be developing hearing problems, Inko brought Izuku to the hospital to have his hearing checked. The tests, bafflingly, came back clear. His hearing is perfectly normal.

To add to Inko’s confusion, it appeared that Izuku’s attention lapses seem to come and go without explanation and warning. There were times that he responded to his name without issue, and then inexplicably, he would go back to failing to respond whenever his name was called.

With hearing problems ruled out, Inko considered the possibility of developmental problems. Once again, Izuku made several trips to the hospital to be tested for the more well-known developmental delays like autism spectrum disorder. However, just like with the hearing tests, nothing indicated that Izuku had any developmental delays.

Understandably, Inko was left baffled and unable to comprehend why her son was acting like this. The specialist however, had a plausible explanation. 

In the wake of Izuku being discharged from the hospital, Inko had made the decision to move the family out of Musutafu, partially because living in a high-rise apartment made Inko uncomfortable, but the houses in the city are extremely expensive, and mainly to get a fresh start away from the harrowing trauma of being buried alive under rubble. The specialist put forward the theory that the move to Saitama city may have had an emotional toll on Izuku, especially having to move away from his childhood friend. The lapses in attention could be because his young mind was still trying to adjust and adapt to a new living environment, and being many miles away from Kacchan. 

With no other reason to go by, Inko was forced to take what she could get, and hoped that Izuku would improve once things settled down more.

After a while, it did appear that Izuku was settling down to his new life in Saitama, and the attention lapses seemed to go away entirely. So Inko tried her best to forget about it.

But then, came Loud Cloud.

At the time, there was no way for Inko to understand the connection between Loud Cloud, her son’s quirk, and the implications the name would have on future events. And in all honesty, the way Izuku talked about this “Loud Cloud”, it sounded, for all intents and purposes, that he was Izuku’s imaginary friend.

Which in of itself is nothing unusual. Young children had imaginary friends all the time, and in some respects, was a critical milestone for a child’s early years.

But what was unusual about Loud Cloud was how detailed he was, uncannily so.

As far as Inko knew, children didn’t go really in-depth into their imaginary friends, preferring instead to see them as playmates for whatever make-believe they got up to. But Loud Cloud, by how much Izuku talked about him, seemed almost like a real person. According to Izuku, they shared the same hair colour and quirk, although Loud Cloud could do far more with the clouds he made. Plus, Loud Cloud had two best friends, Shou and Zashi, and they went to U.A. together. Loud Cloud also carried a bo staff around, and Izuku would often be seen, much to Inko’s consternation, appearing to engage his imaginary friend in spars with the broom he had somehow acquired from the storeroom, which often resulted in more than a few items being whacked off of tables and shelves.

Despite all of that, Izuku’s “imaginary” friend was only the least of things.

About a month after moving to Saitama, Izuku started experiencing nightmares.

Again, that in of itself is nothing unusual. But every night, Inko would awaken to the gut-curdling screams of her son, and once she managed to rouse Izuku from the depths of nighttime horrors, he would, amidst hyperventilating sobs, always describe how he would face off against a villain who then caused a building to collapse onto him. The claustrophobia of being trapped under darkness and rubble became a signature scene in every nightmare Izuku experienced, to the point that Inko had to get a night light for her son’s room, because he was absolutely terrified of sleeping in total darkness. 

Inko also had to make sure that any images or videos of collapsed buildings were kept away from Izuku’s eyes, because the mere sight of rubble and destroyed structures would trigger a panic episode. 

Through it all, Inko wondered where Loud Cloud was in all of this, but the “imaginary” friend remained conspicuously quiet each time.

And to add to Inko’s white hairs, is all of the shenanigans that Izuku got up to with his quirk.

Like before, there is nothing wrong for children to experiment with their quirks once they manifest. And to Izuku’s credit, the experiments started off harmlessly, namely trying out different cloud shapes and seeing how big he can get a cloud to grow in one sitting.

That said, starting off harmlessly didn’t always mean things ended harmlessly each time.

There were relatively minor inconveniences, such as when Inko entered Izuku’s room, only to come face-to-face with a huge cloud that had filled the room from floor to ceiling, with her son buried somewhere deep inside the swirling folds of frozen water molecules. There were more heart-stopping occasions, like when Inko came home from work only to find Izuku zipping around the living room on a cloud, laughing and squealing, as he bumped into walls and sent countless other objects falling to the floor to their untimely demise. And not to mention that terrifying moment when Izuku discovered how to make a thundercloud, lightning and all. 

(The fact that it took a week for the city government to fix the electrical grid because the thundercloud released lightning strong enough to not only knock out the power, but to also melt the circuitry and start fires in several suburban blocks is something Inko would like to forget, thank you very much.)

And now, there is another event that, in time to come, will prove itself to be another source of white hairs for the long-suffering Inko.

Namely, school.

To Be Continued.

Chapter Text

Cumulus clouds are puffy white or light grey clouds that look like cotton balls. Generally about one kilometre wide in diameter, cumulus clouds are usually associated with fair or stormy weather.

“Yamamoto Hirota.”

“Present.”

“Watanabe Yuuko.”

“Present!”

“Tanaka Aoi.”

“Present…”

“Midoriya I -”

The window slams open, “P-Present!”

Normally, this would have startled anyone in the vicinity really badly. However, the class has already lost count of how many times this has happened, so nobody was really phased by it anymore.

The teacher, for his part, merely sighs, “Midoriya, cutting it close again.”

The boy in question, Izuku, hops into the room from the cloud he had used to rise up to the third floor where his classroom is situated.

“I’m so sorry, sensei!” Izuku claps his hands together and bows in apology, “I was caught up on the way here!”

Again, no one is really phased by that reasoning either. 

See, this is not the first time Izuku was nearly late for roll call, nor will it be the last. No one can really explain it, but the reason for Izuku’s constant brushes with being late often stems from him intervening in whatever crime or villainy he encounters on the way to school, or simply helping someone in need of assistance. So far, someone has been keeping a tally:

• Stopping a purse snatcher or mugger: 6 
• Helping an elderly person cross the street or reach their destination: 10
• Saving cats: 7
• Returning lost items to the nearby police station: 5
• Saving people from accidents: 4
• …

The list goes on from there, but we don’t have the time to list down everything Izuku has done that nearly made him late in the past.

“What’s the reason this time?” the teacher asks, almost bored.

“I had to help an old woman get her cat down from an electricity pole,” Izuku rubs the back of his head.

The class collectively turns to their designated tally notetaker. He notes another point for “saving cats”.

“Right, please go to your seat, Midoriya. And next time,” the teacher sighs again, “use the door like everyone else.”

“Yes, sensei!”

Elementary school was elementary school. It was when Izuku started attending Nabu Middle School that things started to change.

See, while Izuku has always been a bright, happy-go-lucky child, his…eccentricities often tend to put his peers off. Like that one time Izuku came in soaking wet because it was raining outside (through the window, obviously), and with him, was a stray cat.

According to Izuku, the cat had followed him to school, and Izuku used his umbrella to shield the cat from the rain, inevitably getting soaked himself. He then asked if anyone had a towel, which no one had, and then proceeded to change into his gym uniform, the only clean set of clothes he had on his person, in front of the entire class, triggering a huge hullabaloo.

That, and other instances where Izuku was spotted chatting with people (the names Shou and Zashi came up often) who weren’t there, made more than a few people wary about him. 

To his credit, Izuku was unaware of what others were thinking of him. And this appeared to continue even as he got older and progressed to middle school. 

However, Izuku very quickly discovered that as children grew older, puberty sets in, and with the changes in hormones and brain chemicals, personalities change, and more often than not, children become assholes.

Which, ironically, is how he made his first, real, friend.

Izuku was on his way to the roof for his lunch. He could never explain why the rooftop was his favourite place to have his lunch. Perhaps the roof gave him the best unobstructed view of the sky and the clouds in the entire school. Maybe it was that the roof, more often than not, had wind blowing through it since it was the highest point in the entire grounds, which always provided much-needed cooling during warm or hot days. Or, perhaps, the rooftop was always a nostalgic place to be in, for reasons he cannot fathom for the life of him.

Anyways, as he headed to the staircase which led to the roof, he saw four students from 1-C, and they appeared to be ganging up on a purple-haired student, who was on the ground, sporting a black eye and a split eye.

Immediately, alarm bells began ringing, especially when the students’ words reached his ears.

“What’s a villainous freak doing here anyway? Thinking he can even be a hero?”

“He needs to know his place. Why not we teach him a lesson?”

They never got to.

Izuku strode over, and without saying anything and with lunch box still in hand, he created a thundercloud and struck each bully with a bolt of lightning. He worked quickly, not giving any of them a chance to realise what was happening. The entire hallway lit up with blinding light four times in quick succession, and the floor shook with the crash of thunder. When everything returned to normal, only Izuku was still standing. The four tormentors were on the floor, unconscious, burned from the lightning strikes and their uniforms smouldering.

Stepping over the lifeless bodies, Izuku knelt down and asked, “Are you okay?”

Evidently stunned, the purple-haired boy was speechless. Still, the sight of his injuries prompted Izuku to take him to the infirmary. 

Sure, Izuku got suspended afterwards for a week for causing grievous bodily harm with his quirk, but it was his testimony, corroborated by the purple-haired student, whose name is Shinsou, that ensured that his suspension was not added to his permanent record.

(Although the “disappointed, not mad” look he got from his mum is something he would rather not experience again. But it was totally worth it in hindsight.)

From then on, and quite reluctantly on Shinsou’s part, Izuku became his friend. Although, that had mostly to do with Izuku starting his first-ever conversation with Shinsou with the line, “Do you like cats?”, and partly because Izuku had a philosophy of “I will be your friend and that is a threat ” towards anyone whom he perceived as lonely and friendless. To which Shinsou, no matter how hard he tried, was unable to wiggle himself free from.

Also, Shinsou is a chronic insomniac, a hereditary condition passed down from his dad. So Izuku, bless his heart, graciously helped ease Shinsou’s sleep deprivation-induced burdens a little by creating a cloud sturdy enough to support Shinsou’s weight, but much softer than the most luxurious mattress used in 6-star hotels, to act as a sleeping pod for Shinsou to nap in. 

Evidently, Shinsou had never experienced anything like this before, because no sooner did his head touch the cloud, he was out like the light.

And while Izuku was never able to completely negate the effects of chronic insomnia (he couldn’t move in to Shinsou’s home to create the cloud for him every night, no matter how tempting the offer for a full eight hours of good sleep might be), the naps Shinsou was able to take every lunch hour was more than enough for him to gradually accept Izuku’s threat of friendship, and to cement the deal, Shinsou became known to Izuku as “Hitoshi”.

So, for the first year of their time in Nabu Middle School, Izuku and Hitoshi could be seen haunting the school roof having their lunch (or in Hitoshi’s case, napping), frequenting Izuku’s house for study sessions (and playing with the cat whom he rescued from the rain near the end of his time in elementary school, whom he named Tamago, because of its golden-yellow fur and its partiality to hard-boiled eggs), or hanging out in different cat cafés around Saitama (the cats always loved the clouds Izuku created for them, or hanging out in his hair). 

Then, come second year, the pair became a party.

With the progression into his second year, Izuku finds himself another client in need of his cloud sleeping pods.

Or rather, Hitoshi brings him a new client.

The insomniac was late for lunch that particular day, so Izuku was all by himself on the roof. Then, Hitoshi arrives, with another student whom Izuku has never seen before.

“Hito, who is this?”

“This is Kaminari,” Hitoshi replies, “He transferred to my class today.”

“Yo!” Kaminari winks, “Is this the dude who helped you with your insomnia? Sweet! How does it work?”

Curiosity piqued, Izuku asks, “Do you have trouble sleeping too?”

“Sort of,” Kaminari scratches his cheek, “See, I have ADHD,” and with no response from Izuku other than a nod to continue on, Kaminari explains, “and it fucks my sleep to no end.”

“In what way?” Izuku presses gently.

“Shit man, like my brain just refuses to shut down,” Kaminari rubs the back of his head, looking a little embarrassed, “My thoughts are like…um…”

The blonde seems to space out for a moment, before snapping back into focus, “ - like they are all over the place! Like a typhoon! My brain just refuses to shut down!”

“Ah, I see,” Izuku nods, “To be honest, I’m not sure if my cloud pods can completely help. Do you take any medication to help with your sleep problems?”

“I do, but they only work for a limited time,” Kaminari admits, “And sometimes, they have no effect. I literally can’t fall asleep, especially with all of that energy buzzing inside me, ya know?”

Again, Izuku’s knowledge of ADHD is minimal, given that he doesn’t have the disorder himself. However, he does empathise with Kaminari’s apparent difficulties with falling and staying asleep.

“Well, no harm in trying.”

Izuku creates a cloud pod for Kaminari, taking note of the blonde’s weight. Kaminari eagerly jumps onto the pod, marvelling at the softness underneath, “Shit, this is so cool! I’ve never slept on a cloud before!”

“Hopefully, it can help?” Izuku offers.

“We’ll find out!” Kaminari beams, before lying back and closing his eyes.

Evidently, it seems to work. Kaminari remained fast asleep through the entire lunch break, and had to be woken up by Izuku a few minutes before the bell rings.

“How did it feel?” Izuku asks, as they head down the stairs back to their respective classrooms.

“Aw man…it was…really unlike anything I’ve felt before,” Kaminari replies, “Sure, it was only about an hour, but…I have to say, that was the best sleep I’ve ever had. And I didn’t even need my meds or anything!”

Izuku smiles, “I’m glad to hear that. And look, I know I can’t stay in your room all the time to create the cloud pods for you. But…if you would like to join me and Hitoshi on the rooftop every lunch break, I’ll be more than happy to create a pod for you if your sleep was particularly bad the night before.”

“Really? Holy shit man, you’re like…a literal lifesaver!” Kaminari beams, “Sign me the fuck up!”

From then on, it has become a common sight to see three students on the roof of Nabu Middle School during the lunch break. 

When they are not eating their lunches (either their own bentos or bought from the cafeteria), at least one of the trio is on Izuku’s cloud pods, napping away when the night before had been particularly rough. And when there is no napping that day, conversations filtered through the air as their lunches were consumed.

“Hey…since Jesus could walk on water, do you think he could swim on land?” Kaminari, or as Denki, as he wanted his friends to call him, wonders out of the blue.

“I…don’t think that’s how things work, as someone who doesn’t ascribe to Christianity,” Izuku replies.

“But surely, if Jesus could walk on water, he could technically swim on land, right?” Denki argues, taking a bite out of his cafeteria-bought burger, “I mean, he has to, right? He is the son of God, after all.”

“I don’t think that’s why this whole “walking on water” thing is all about, Denks,” Hitoshi drawls.

“Yeah maybe, but…shouldn’t it also be within the realm of possibility?”

Such conversations, philosophical but completely off the rails, are commonplace. If anything, the topics are just entertaining and useful to alleviate the monotony of schoolwork and lessons, even if they do appear sometimes out of the blue and without any warning, courtesy of Denki.

And speaking of Denki, some of his rather unexpected purchases, often on a whim and very impulsive, often initiate conversations that, at the time, carry deeper meaning than any of the trio could have imagined.

“Why are you wearing sunglasses, Denks?” Izuku notes on one particular lunch break.

The sunglasses in question, white-rimmed and with orange tinted shades, had just appeared out of the blue that day, without any warning.

“Well…” Denki hums, “I saw them being sold at a hero merch store the other day. I think they are replicas of Present Mic’s sunglasses? I don’t know. I just thought they were cool and just bought them.”

“Did you say that you’ve been broke for a while?” Hitoshi drawls, eyebrow raised.

“Well, yeah, but it’s like…shit, I can’t quite explain it,” Denki rubs the back of his head, “It was just screaming at me, like “Buy me! Buy me now!”, and you know how it goes for me!”

“We really need to reign in your impulse purchases, Denks,” Izuku remarks.

“Yeah, yeah, still working on it,” Denki waves off, “But while we’re on heroes! Who is your favourite hero?”

“Me? Eraserhead for sure,” Hitoshi replies, suddenly a bit more alert, “He is like, so cool, especially his capture weapon, you know? He blends so well into darkness, like he is part of the night itself.”

“And you, Izu?”

“Oh, well…” Izuku puts his lunchbox onto his lap, “I guess…All Might? I know that sounds cliché, especially since everyone seems to think of All Might as their favourite hero. But he’s so cool, you know? Like his catchphrase, “I am here!”. But I think…it’s because he always has a smile, especially when he saves people.”

Both Denki and Hitoshi are now listening with curious attention.

“I always thought that, no matter how tough things get, or how badly you screw up, you should have a smile on your face. You know that pre-quirk era saying, “Keep calm and carry on”? For me, it means to keep calm, don’t freeze up, and carry on. Even if I screw up, which I definitely will, so long as I keep smiling, everything will eventually be okay.”

Silence follows, save for the breeze blowing through the roof.

“Shit…that is so deep man,” Denki eventually says, “I almost couldn’t process all of that!”

“Spoken from experience?” Hitoshi asks.

“Can’t really say,” Izuku admits, “It just feels…natural. I can’t explain it, but I wholeheartedly believe in that modus operandi. Even so, a smile always brings hope, no? And isn’t that what heroes are supposed to do? Bring hope and happiness to others?”

Hitoshi considers this for a moment, “Yeah. I guess it does.”

To Be Continued.

Chapter Text

Stratus clouds are low and have a uniform grey colour that often resembles fog which doesn’t touch the ground. Covering most or all of the sky, light mist or drizzle is an occasional occurrence with these clouds.

Come their third year, things began to pick up steam.

From the very beginning of their friendship, Izuku, Hitoshi and Denki all collectively stated their desire to become pro-heroes someday, and that meant enrolling in the best heroics school in the country, U.A. High.

But there were plenty of rumours on the Internet and within the collective consciousness that the entrance exam for the U.A. heroics programme is extremely biassed towards physical quirks. Which meant that Hitoshi, especially, was at a disadvantage.

It took quite a while before Hitoshi revealed what his quirk is to his two friends - brainwashing, or more specifically, hijacking a person’s mind to do things against their will through a voice trigger. Izuku and Denki noticed that Hitoshi appeared to be bracing himself, as if preparing for the worst case reaction from them both - being so freaked out and breaking off their friendship.

Izuku immediately put those fears to rest by squeezing Hitoshi’s hand, and making sure that his expression was not one of disgust or fear, but that of compassion and understanding. Denki took it a step further by glomping Hitoshi with a tight hug, praising Hitoshi for being so brave and forthcoming.

The moment was made even more poignant when Hitoshi admitted that save for his own parents, everyone whom he encountered would recoil in fear when they learnt about his quirk, or would denounce him as a future villain in the making. Izuku was uncomfortably reminded about his first meeting with Hitoshi, saving him from the four bullies who were ganging up on him. As for Denki, he declared with indignant rage that he would electrocute anyone who dared to call Hitoshi a future villain, to which Hitoshi revealed that Izuku already got a head-start at that.

Which was indeed true. After word got around that Izuku had struck Hitoshi’s tormentors with lightning and rumours started spreading that Hitoshi was under Izuku’s protection, no one had dared to accost Hitoshi ever since. Sure, the general consensus towards the purple-haired insomniac was still negative, but few would rather face Izuku’s wrathful lightning should they dare to open their mouths.

That aside, with the goal of getting into U.A.’s heroics programme in place, then comes the next phase of attaining their goal.

Knowing that the entrance exam will be biassed against physical quirks, the three boys looked to start building up their physical strength. 

Especially for Hitoshi, since his mind-jacking quirk will likely be useless during the exam, having an optimal physical strength will give him a boost in an otherwise unfair battleground.

And while the trio did start off with working out in gyms, following a curated exercise regimen created by Izuku, they quickly found another location to build up their physical strength.

If it were anyone else, it would be the last place on Earth they would ever consider.

Namely, a dumping ground.

It had been entirely by accident. Izuku was just scrolling through social media during one of their lunches on the school roof, when he came across a short article about Dagobah Municipal Beach and Park.

Only, it wasn’t really a beach. More like an illegal dumping ground.

To be fair, Dagobah was indeed a beach-slash-park once upon a time. But years of illegal dumping by unscrupulous industry and manufacturing, plus a lack of oversight and enforcement by the city government, had turned the once-beautiful beach into a polluted wasteland. 

The picture provided in the article was so horrifying, Izuku could almost smell the disgusting odour from the mountains of rotting garbage and tossed waste that saturated the coastline.

Izuku showed the article to Hitoshi and Denki, expressing a proposal to clean up Dagobah. While Hitoshi had been sceptical initially, Denki jumped onto the idea immediately, stating that not only would they be building stamina and muscle by cleaning up the mountains of garbage, it will be a form of community service, which will look stellar in their applications to U.A..

After some more discussion, it was then decided that they will take the train to Musutafu every weekend and during school holidays to clean up Dagobah.

Of course, they weren’t going to go alone and unsupervised.

As is the case, Izuku told his mum about their plans. Inko readily agreed to it, but insisted that she come along to provide some form of adult supervision. While she trusted her son and his friends to not do anything stupid, accidents can and will happen, and Dagobah beach, from her honest opinion, looks like a death trap with discarded heavy objects littered all over the place. 

And so, Inko accompanied the three boys from Saitama to Musutafu, inadvertently returning to her former home before the collapse of the shopping mall which catalysed her move away.

Of course, Inko never told Izuku about the slight curl of discomfort in her stomach every time the train pulled up in Musutafu’s central station. As this was to ensure that her son and his friends are able achieve their goal of getting into U.A.’s heroics programme, she just grinned and bore with it each time.

And so, armed with rolls upon rolls of garbage bags, protective eyewear, masks and gloves, and plenty of rope, the three boys and a concerned mother began their unofficial community service of cleaning up Dagobah beach.

Progress starts off slow. Inko had warned the three boys to not go ham on the larger pieces of waste. Not only did they not have the physical strength to haul them to the roadside, attempting to move these larger objects increases the risk of destabilising the piles and sending avalanches of rotten garbage raining down on them all. 

The trio start with smaller objects and those that are easier to drag to the roadside. Still, even after the end of the first day, ten garbage bags filled to bursting line the roadside, with Inko calling the local garbage collection company to come and take away the bags.

Even so, they barely made a dent in the overall scheme of things. But at least they have a year to finish their goal.

Of course, things are not going to be smooth-sailing.

Inko’s warning about destabilising the mountains of garbage holds true.

And to the boys’ credit, it's not like they ignored her warning and went after the larger objects in the misguided and reckless attempt to speed up their cleaning.

Unfortunately, no one possessed an X-ray quirk which allowed them to see into the piles to determine any weak points or unstable items. 

Izuku had just been chipping away at one particular pile by removing the outer objects which could be easily thrown into a nearby garbage bag and then taken away to the roadside curb, when suddenly, the pile underneath starts to shift. Things begin to bounce off and fall, and in a space of one, terrifying, second, the pile collapses. 

Hitoshi, Denki and Inko are nearby, and hear the collapse just as it begins.

“Izuku!”

All three shout at the same time. In that second, things seem to slow down. All three move towards Izuku, while the blue-haired teen jumps off the collapsing pile, rolling to a stop a short distance away. One second later, and time speeds up again. Terrified seagulls caw and flee, as the roar of cascading garbage finally goes silent.

A beat of silence, before Izuku pops up with a soft gasp, “I’m okay!”

And that would’ve been the end of it, had it not been for the cut on the bridge of his nose starting to trickle with blood.

From that day onwards, several first-aid kits are brought along to the clean-up operation. A white band-aid takes pride of place on the bridge of Izuku’s nose, even long after the cut heals. Denki had stated that it gives Izuku an extremely “bad-ass” look, like those delinquents in shounen manga. Hitoshi points out that Izuku is the literal antonym of a delinquent, but Izuku keeps the band-aid, stating that he likes how it appears on his face, delinquent or not.

That was the first incident. The second comes about three months into their clean-up operation.

By then, more of the beach had been cleared, although much of the coastline was still polluted. As Izuku and his friends grow stronger, packing on more muscle and stamina, they have progressed from removing small items to larger, heavier ones which require the rope to haul and pull from the piles and then drag to the roadside curb for subsequent disposal. 

It is during one such disposal (a broken washing machine), that someone screams at them.

“So it was you!”

Izuku looks up from his end of the rope, just in time to see a wrench come hurtling towards him. He ducks down, the wrench sailing past where his head had been just a second prior, followed by a metallic clang as the wrench buries itself in one of the piles behind Izuku.

He barely has the chance to look up again, when a teenage girl with pink dreadlocks, in a tight-fitting tank-top and baggy cargo pants, storms up to him.

“You were the one stealing my resources!”

Izuku goes cross-eyed, as the slightly shorter girl pokes his nose with a gloved finger. It is coated in what seems like oil and grease, leaving a stain on the tip of his nose. 

“What the hell is going on?”

Izuku hears Hitoshi and Denki coming forth, followed by Inko. 

The girl peers around, her eyes narrowing, “Are you lot in this too?”

“First of all, who are you?” Denki asks.

“Hatsume Mei, future CEO of Hatsume Industries!” the girl jabs a thumb at herself, “And you lot are stealing my resources!”

“Um…no,” Hitoshi drawls, “I don’t think you can just claim an illegal dumping ground as “yours”.”

“Well, no one has ever done that, so I just went and declared it as “mine”!” Hatsume retorts, “And now, you lot are stealing from it!”

Ever the diplomat, Izuku intervenes before things could degenerate further, “What are you using all of this waste for?”

“For my babies, of course!”

That…triggers several reactions.

Denki chokes loudly, Hitoshi loses his deadpan look when a surprised wheeze breaks through, and Inko raises a quizzical eyebrow.

For his part, Izuku further clarifies, “Your babies?”

“My support inventions, duh!” Hatsume rolls her eyes, as if she hadn’t just stunned the life out of two of the three teenage boys in front of her, “They are like my babies to me!”

Behind Izuku, Denki and Hitoshi regain the ability to breathe normally.

“Now it’s my turn!” Hatsume breaks the release of tension, “Why are you taking away my precious resources?”

“Well, we were clearing the beach because it is an eyesore, and we are training for the U.A. entrance exam,” Izuku replies.

Just like that, the look in Hatsume’s eyes changes, turning into something more calculative, considering.

“Hmm…heroics?”

“Yes, all three of us,” Izuku gestures to his two friends behind him.

Hatsume appears to sink into deep thought. She glances to the side, inaudibly muttering to herself. Izuku, his mother and friends wait in anticipation of how Hatsume would respond. 

“Hm, I’ve decided!” she declares, pointing a finger at Izuku, “Let’s work together! You help me to bring this stuff to my workshop, and I’ll help you guys prepare for the entrance exam!”

“And you’re doing this because…?” Hitoshi asks with a raised eyebrow, still not entirely sold on this sudden proposal.

“Publicity!” Hatsume replies immediately, “It’s simple. I can create all manner of support equipment for you three. You guys rock the entrance exam using my support equipment, people find out about you guys, and the support equipment you used during the exam. You guys provide free publicity for Hatsume Industries, and I help you guys to become heroes!”

For sure, it all sounds very calculated, methodical, even coldly transactional. However, Izuku can see benefits in that. While his thunderclouds will give him an advantage, as does Denki’s electricity, Hitoshi can only rely on his physical strength to get through the exam. If the purple-haired insomniac has support equipment in-hand, it will give him a second leg-up against whatever they will be up against during the exam.

Izuku hesitates to sign a deal with someone based on words alone. As such, he says to Hatsume, “Let’s see what you have to offer.”

Despite the clear lack of a deal, Hatsume doesn’t lose the glimmer in her eyes, “You won’t be disappointed!”

As it turns out, Hatsume has a lot to offer to the trio of prospective heroes.

Hatsume Industries, while not as grand or well-established as the girl made it out to be, was what Izuku and his friends imagined a support equipment workshop would look like.

The entire basement, located underneath the Hatsume residence, had been converted into a workshop that is filled with machines, wires, worktables, even a furnace complete with a blacksmith’s tools. Hatsume gives them the grand tour, although the basement in of itself is not hugely expansive in terms of floor space. Izuku and Hitoshi very quickly lose count of how many times they have tripped over stray wires or component parts. And Denki has to be pulled away from touching anything that could result in injury or death far too many times for anyone’s liking. 

Still, despite the complete organised mess the workshop is in, Hatsume shows off several of her “babies”, which pique the interest of all three boys.

Despite her youth, her prototype inventions are reasonably well thought-out and put together. It is very clear that Hatsume qualifies as a “child prodigy”, but doesn’t have an avenue to show off her inventions.

After some further discussion between Izuku and his friends, an agreement is eventually made. Izuku and Hatsume, who insisted on the trio calling her Mei, shake on the deal. And from then on, the clean-up operation takes a different term.

Instead of sending off all of the garbage with the disposal truck, Izuku and his friends sift through their efforts to separate the metal and electronic objects from the general refuse, and haul the former to Mei’s basement workshop. There, Mei takes apart the metal objects and electronics, reusing any components that can be worked with into new inventions, and melting down the metal into liquid in order to recycle them for future use.

While Izuku and his friends continue to decontaminate and clean up Dagobah, Mei works on support equipment which can be useful for them during the entrance exam.

There is quite a bit of back-and-forth discussion on the group chat they created for easier communication. Eventually, Mei finalises one piece of support equipment for each boy, while taking into consideration their quirks, or disadvantages during the exam.

For Hitoshi, a reinforced bat with spikes embedded along the length, which can be used against targets or opponents. Denki is to receive a modified diffuser which works in tandem with his electrokinetic quirk. While extremely powerful and effective, the drawback of his quirk is that overuse could result in Denki becoming effectively brain-dead, since the indiscriminate, explosive electricity could backfire and fry the circuits inside his brain. By using the diffuser, which doesn’t conduct electricity, but instead channels the electric currents towards a specific target, and not indiscriminately, Denki is at a much-lower risk of accidentally electrocuting himself during combat.

And as for Izuku, Mei combines both practicality and emotional sentimentality. She fashions a bo staff made with reinforced metal to give it strength, and attaches an electric taser on one end. Izuku had expressed his desire for a bo staff, something out of nostalgia for reasons he couldn’t really pinpoint. Still, Mei didn’t ask prying questions, and took his request into her stride.

Once the prototypes of all three support equipment have been made, the three boys test them out during their clean-up at Dagobah beach. 

Of course, since these were still prototypes, they didn’t last long after repeated use. Denki’s electricity diffuser even exploded after the voltage of his electricity went beyond a certain threshold. Mei simply laughed off the failures, and worked to create better and improved versions of her “exam publicity babies”, ensuring that each successive model is more durable and powerful than the last.

Time passes, and after much cleaning, equipment testing, explosions and near-misses that required the use of Inko’s first-aid boxes, their efforts bore fruit.

Exactly a week before the U.A. entrance exams are due to begin, Dagobah beach has been fully restored to its former glory.

As the sun rises over the horizon, the early morning light shines over a beach that has shed its sordid, polluted past. Light glistens on grains of sand, washed clean by seawater that has been progressively cleared of all pollutants. The air smells of crisp, fresh salt, no longer putrid from the odour of rotting garbage. And for the first time in years, seagulls walk on the beach, when just 10 months prior, the sand was completely hidden by mountains of garbage.

Also, the rising sun shines its light on four teenagers. Three of them are shirtless, sweat glistening under the morning rays, the light bringing their built and hardened muscles into starker clarity. The fourth, the only girl of the quartet, routinely shifts between the sight of the morning sunrise over a newly-restored beach, and the equally tantalising sight of three shirtless, muscular boys.

“This feels…so damn surreal, y’know?” Denki breaks the silence.

“I’m having a hard time believing it myself,” Hitoshi admits quietly, not exactly awake due to a lack of coffee.

“But we did it,” Izuku states, “Through sheer grit and will, we actually did it.”

“And, we made so many babies!” Mei pipes up, although whether or not her unsolicited statement ruined the atmosphere is up for debate, “I can’t wait for you guys to show off my creations!”

“Yes, Mei, we will,” Hitoshi drawls.

“U.A. heroics, here we come!” Denki cheers, pumping a fist into the air.

It is a real pity, though, that such announcement goes unheard by anyone other than the other three members of the quartet.

It might have prepared those within the best heroics school in the country of the emotional turmoil to come.

To Be Continued.

Chapter Text

Cirrocumulus clouds are thin, sometimes patchy, and they resemble sheets. In some geographic locations, they indicate fair, but cold weather. But in the tropics, they are a warning sign that a hurricane is on its way.

It should have been a routine process.

Running through applicants for all available programmes is part and parcel of the year for the principal of the best heroics school in Japan.

In fact, the process is so boring that he personally devised a computer system to scan through all application forms from every middle school in the country that make it into the database. 

The process is simple, approve candidates with clean or exemplary applications, and flag those with critical comments or suspicious details. Those flagged applications would then be examined under his own critical eye, before deciding whether or not to add them to the “approved” list, or rejecting them outright.

In truth, he doesn’t often get applications which are flagged. During his tenure as principal, he scanned through less than 10 applications, the most recent being that of one of his current staff. 

Aizawa Shouta’s application, on its own, should have been tossed into the rejected pile. However, he wasn’t one for taking things at face-value. Upon further investigation, he had determined that many of the negative comments were simply untruths and fabrications, a smear campaign by the then-teen’s teachers hoping to perpetuate an image of a future villain who could take away people’s quirks simply by looking at them.

Unfortunately, Aizawa had not been able to pass the heroics practical exam because of his quirk, but because the teen had also applied for general education, he enrolled him in that particular track, and had a whale of a time tearing down the then-teenager’s school and carting the teachers off on a one-way ticket to prison.

He then watched as Aizawa tore through the sports festival and earned his place in the heroics programme in his second year. There, the lonely, antisocial teenager met his first real friend, Shirakumo Oboro, and then subsequently, Yamada Hizashi.

He remembered the trio, despite Aizawa’s initial hesitance, becoming inseparable. They did everything together, even having their lunches on the rooftop, despite the area typically being off-limits to students. 

And he remembered the day when Shirakumo was tragically killed during the trio’s work-study programme, with Aizawa bearing witness to his first-ever friend being declared dead by paramedics, and his body being taken away, shrouded in a sheet.

He witnessed Aizawa spiralling into a never-ending void, only being rescued by his remaining friend, Yamada. Reduced to a pair, they clung onto the other in their grief, finding solace in each other as they mourned their dead friend. Their bond in trauma brought them closer together, and after graduation and becoming licensed heroes, they began a romantic relationship, tied the knot, and moved in together.

That said, he never forgot about Shirakumo, who despite being dead, brought his two friends closer together, creating something more beautiful than just simple friendship. Despite it being 15 years since that day, when he received the news that the promising young man had been killed in a building collapse, the memory of Shirakumo’s bright smile and sky-blue hair never faded, despite the world moving on, and time continuing undisturbed.

And it should have remained like that. A memory of the past.

But the memory became a mystery, when the system flags an application for him to view.

And he comes face-to-face with Shirakumo’s image.

Immediately, his curiosity is intrigued. Not the alarm bells, mind you. Not for a second did he believe that this was someone attempting to steal his dead student’s identity. That would have been jumping to a superficial assumption, taking something at face-value. 

He digs deeper, first looking at the basic personal information included in the application - name: Midoriya Izuku, age: 14, quirk: Cloud Manipulation. Then, the accompanying photograph. The sky-blue hair and eyes, the bandage on the nose, and the freckles are extremely uncanny, but he notices subtle differences in terms of face shape and positioning of the features. 

And then, he looks at the accompanying documents, and Midoriya’s background. 

Midoriya has quite the unconventional track record in both elementary and middle schools. Being nearly late for roll-call innumerable times, but entirely for, by definition, heroic reasons. One of the accompanying documents is a tally for every single reason why Midoriya was nearly late for roll-call, with some of the highest numbers attributed to, among other things, saving cats.

The more he reads, the more Midoriya becomes eerily reminiscent of Shirakumo. Of course, there are differences. Shirakumo worked on making his clouds sturdy enough for transport and protection, while Midoriya took things to the next level by developing a comprehensive list on how his clouds can be used for practical purposes. A product of commendable analytical skills developed since childhood, something he notes with a hint of pride and gleeful anticipation of whether such skill can be further honed and developed under his guidance.

(Somewhere, a certain insomniac hobo is broken out of a much-needed nap, and a sense of doom inexplicably settles on his nerves.)

But anyways.

Perhaps, he thinks, if he lets Midoriya through to take the entrance exam, and he passes and subsequently enrols in the heroics programme, quite a few members of his staff would have nasty shocks waiting in the wings for them. Especially Aizawa, whom he already foresees Midoriya being placed in his class.

But, there is a certain thrill in anticipating what Midoriya will bring to his school. Sure, his staff may suffer heart attacks at seeing a near-carbon copy of their deceased friend walking in the halls and sitting in their classrooms, but the boundless opportunities for further growth compounded everything else. For all intents and purposes, Midoriya has what it takes to become one of the best heroes Japan has ever seen, and, perhaps on a more nostalgic note, he could continue Shirakumo’s legacy, which was tragically cut short well before he had a chance to shine and make a lasting impact.

So yes, he will let Midoriya’s application through. Plus, he is always partial to a bout of chaos every now and then. It keeps away the monotony of running a school and the drudgery of dealing with a school board who think they know better than everyone else and a hero commission who, until this very day, keeps trying to wrestle control of the school from him.

As such, the principal who is famously known as Nezu approves Midoriya Izuku’s application, and, quite gleefully, sits back to watch the imminent chaos unfold.

“Shit man, this is really it, huh? We’re actually here, taking the heroics entrance exam.”

“Even though this is what…the fifth time you said that, or some variation of it, I still can’t quite believe it myself.”

“I mean, it’s U.A.!” Denki exclaims, “The best heroics school in the country! C’mon, Izu, back me up on this!”

…

…

“Izu?”

The blue-haired teen in question had stopped walking, even when Denki and Hitoshi, and pretty much thousands of other candidates continued up the path beyond the front gates towards the main twin buildings. Izuku appears frozen, staring at the twin buildings with an unreadable expression.

“Hey, Izu? Izuuuuuuu….” Denki goes up to him and waves a hand in front of his face, “Earth to Izu! Earth to Izuku!”

Finally, Izuku seems to snap back into focus, “What?”

“Dude, you okay?” Hitoshi comes up to him, “You just blanked out on us there.”

“Yeah, I’m fine, I think…” Izuku scratches his cheek.

“What happened?” Denki asks, slightly concerned, as they resume walking, “Exam nerves?”

“Not quite,” Izuku shakes his head, “I…I don’t know. It sounds completely insane, and you guys might think I’ve gone mad, but this all feels…familiar? For lack of a better word?”

“Familiar? Like deja vu?” Hitoshi raises an eyebrow.

“Yeah!” Izuku snaps his fingers, “That’s what I was looking for.”

“Have you been here before?” Denki asks, before gasping dramatically, “Have you been holding out on us?! Were you already taking secret lessons from some all-knowing being who runs U.A. and is merely taking the entrance exam as a front to hide your advantage?! Izuku, how could you?! I thought we were your friends!!!”

(Somewhere in the main buildings, a certain rodent sneezes, spilling some of his morning tea.)

“Cut that shit, Denks,” Hitoshi lightly whacks the blonde’s head, “There’s no way Izuku wouldn’t have “secret lessons” without telling us. He’s too honourable to keep secrets like that.”

“Well, Denks isn’t wrong about the feeling of me being here before…” Izuku trails off, as they enter the building, and once again, he seems to go blank from his surroundings. Thankfully, he is able to snap back into focus by himself, “Sorry, it just hit again.”

“That’s really freaky,” Denki remarks, “Are you sure you’re okay to take the exam?”

“I’m…sure,” Izuku nods after a moment, “I’ll be fine.”

To his credit, Izuku doesn’t have any further episodes where he just spaces out. Although, Denki and Hitoshi do hear him muttering every now and then.

“I’ve seen this.”

“Huh, it wasn’t like that before.”

“Oh, this is new.”

Still, neither of them make further comments about these occurrences. The trio arrive at their designated classroom where the academic portion of the exam will take place. The room is already half-full when they take their seats, and the remaining candidates arrive over the course of the next fifteen minutes. 

At about 10 minutes to half past nine, the door opens, and the pro hero Snipe, complete with his gas mask and cowboy outfit, strides into the room, carrying a large stack of papers under his arm. He sets the papers on the lectern, and turns to the candidates, “G’mornin’ young sprouts, I will be your invigilator for the exam. Please ensure that all of your mobile phones are switched off throughout the duration of the exam. Cheating of any sort will not be tolerated, and if caught, you will be disqualified from the exam. I will hand out the exam booklets now.”

Snipe spends the next five minutes handing out the papers to every candidate in the room. And once the clock strikes exactly half past nine, “Alright sprouts, you have two hours. You may begin.”

There is the sound of booklets being opened, followed closely by pens scribbling on paper. Izuku immediately gets stuck into it, and while the questions are no walk in the park, his analytical brain helps him to process the questions and produce answers which he hopes will score him the best marks possible.

As the minutes tick past, there is hardly any sound in the classroom, save for papers rustling, and the hushed whispers of a candidate who requested additional sheets for answers from Snipe. Then, about an hour into the exam, the classroom door slides open.

Most candidates remain focused on their exam, as pro heroine Midnight stalks into the classroom, apparently to speak to Snipe about something that ultimately matters little to the candidates.

However, the reason why anyone knows it was Midnight in the first place was because Izuku had momentarily looked up when the door slid open, and his pen pauses, when he sees the heroine who is famously, or infamously, depending on who you ask, known for her sultry and sexualised appearance and hero persona.

For that matter, Midnight didn’t realise that someone had seen her enter the room. That is, until a hint of blue appears in the corner of her vision, and she subconsciously turns towards it.

And makes eye-contact with Izuku.

It had been completely accidental. Unintended on her part.

In fact, the only reason why she stepped into the classroom in the first place was to see if Snipe has any extra examination booklets, since there was an issue where one batch lacked enough booklets to go around. 

While more could have been printed just as easily, she had been tasked to go around and ask if any other staff member had any spares on hand, to reduce the number that had to be printed, thereby saving paper. 

As it was, Snipe (who she still doesn’t know his real name even after all these years) did not have any extras that he could give to her, and that should have been the end of it.

But a peek of blue had come into her field of vision, and she instinctively turned towards it.

And that was when Kayama Nemuri made momentary eye-contact with her dead kouhai.

At least, it seemed like it.

But it mattered little.

Her heart was not prepared. Her mind could not stop the ensuing cascade of memories that she tried to lay to rest. Everything began to spin, and had it not been for Snipe’s voice snapping her back into reality, she would have been bowled over by the resulting flood of emotions.

“Kayama, are you okay?”

She immediately jumps at the chance to look away, “Never better! Gotta go now.”

She makes a quick exit, making sure to not look in the direction of wavy, sky-blue hair that has been styled upwards. 

Sliding the door shut behind her, she drops the fake smile she had plastered in response to her colleague’s concerned question. Immediately, her head begins to spin, and she stumbles away to a staircase away from the hallway she was in. Thankfully, with the exams currently in progress, no one is around to see her mental and emotional spiral. 

Upon reaching the staircase, her feet give out from under her, and she falls onto the steps, her hands cushioning her descent. The spinning in her head continues to worsen, and she can feel her heartbeat rapidly accelerating.

She thinks a panic attack might be taking place, but inside, she knows better.

This is not an episode brought upon by fear or anxiety. This is something much worse.

Her breathing ragged, she slowly adjusts herself until she is sitting on the steps, and not sprawled on them. She rests her spinning head against the wall in a small attempt to stabilise herself. She hugs her legs to her chest, looking incredibly small and vulnerable, far from her show-woman image of a confident and sultry pro-heroine. Her ragged breathing is soon mixed with choked sobs as tears begin to pool in her eyes. 

However much she tried to convince herself that what she saw, even for a moment, was not really her kouhai, She could not shake the unmistakable sight of sky-blue hair styled upwards, and the white band-aid on the nose. Quite without her permission, images of a teenage boy with the exact same blue, wavy hair styled upwards, white bandage on his nose, and bright, easy-going smile flooded her visual consciousness. She keeps seeing Oboro, her sweet kouhai who always lit up whenever she was around, who was a huge fan of her prototype heroine costume and encouraged her to go all out with the fan service; and who, while impulsive, always respected her decisions and worked well together with her and Shouta.

To make matters worse, the unwanted images of a beaming, idealistic Oboro who had big dreams and an even bigger smile suddenly become mixed with memories of her receiving the news that her kouhai had died during his second-year work studies internship. Images of the collapsed building on the television, receiving the phone call from a distraught Hizashi, sprinting to the site and seeing Shouta staring, catatonic, blankly, as Oboro’s corpse, shrouded by a white sheet with red staining where his head is, was taken away by paramedics into a waiting ambulance, further muddled her spinning head and caused even more tears to fall.

Soon, she is keening and choking in anguish, as she rapidly spirals into a dark void. Wounds that had scarred in the years since Oboro’s death were violently torn open. She didn’t care if someone had encountered her there and then. Years of progress that she valiantly made in the years since that fateful day are undone in an instant, and she very quickly regresses into despair as the pain escalates into unbearable agony.

In the end, nobody would find her. Once her tears have stopped, and the pain dulls into a hazy ache, Kayama Nemuri would shakily get to her feet, and like a zombie, amble her way back to the staff offices, where she would simply collapse onto a sofa, and not get up for several hours.

“How was the exam?” Izuku asks, as they take their seats in the briefing hall.

“Fucking hell…I think my brain is dead,” Denki groans, “I’m pretty sure I messed up many questions.”

“It do be like that,” Hitoshi drawls, “Entrance exams are not supposed to be easy, especially since we’re in the best hero school in the country.”

“Yeah, but…shit, what if I fail, guys?” Denki starts to panic, “What if I fail to get in, and I won’t be able to join you guys?”

“That’s assuming that we pass too,” Hitoshi points, perhaps in a rather backhanded way of reassuring the frantic blonde, “It wasn’t a walk in the park for me either, and my dad specifically told me to also apply for the general education track too as a back-up.”

“Ah…dammit,” Denki sighs, “I should’ve done that too.”

The conversation, though, is cut short when the briefing commences. The lights dim, while those on the stage brighten up. 

“Hey hey hey listeners!”

With all of the deafening exuberance and showmanship that he is famous for, the voice hero known as Present Mic steps out onto the stage.

“Welcome to the briefing for the heroics practical exam! Can I get a ‘YEAH’?!”

Absolute. Silence.

“Wow,” the voice hero chuckles at a more reasonable volume, “tough crowd, aren’t you lot?” The silence continues for another awkward moment, before Present Mic clears his throat, “Anyways! Welcome to the briefing, so lend me your ears, and let’s get the show rollin’!”

A screen descends behind the hero. 

“You all have been grouped into different testing sites within Ground Beta, which have been modelled like actual cities, buildings, streets, cars, everything you can imagine. It is in these testing sites where you all will face off against your opponents. Namely, giant robots!”

To Izuku’s right, Hitoshi snorts quietly, “Thank goodness for my bat and scarf.”

See, it wasn’t just the bat with spikes that Hitoshi had cleared for the exam, since there is actually a process where any support items had to be allowed by U.A. to be used during the exam. As a last-minute gift from Mei, she had taken note of Hitoshi’s admiration towards the underground hero, Eraserhead, and essentially recreated the enigmatic hero’s infamous capture weapon, fashioned like a scarf, but which can be used in all manner of practical purposes, from acting like a grappling hook to swing from one point to another, and, as its name states, to capturing targets using its hyper-strong material which is an amalgamation of carbon nanofibres woven into a durable cloth fabric, and strengthened with steel alloy wire, making it almost impossible for any conventional blade to cut through.

It seems that despite the last-minute gift, it had been a blessing in disguise, now that all three had the confirmation of the rumours that the practical exam is extremely biassed towards powerful quirks.

The screen flickers on, showing a display with four silhouettes on it.

“However! These aren’t just your ordinary giant robots, oh no!” Present Mic continues with a flourish, “These robots carry different numbers of points on them! That’s right, the more robots you destroy or incapacitate, the higher your chances of being accepted into the heroics programme!”

As the voice hero explains the point system in greater detail, Izuku had produced a clean notebook from somewhere and was busy in the midst of one of his trademark muttering spiels. A habit from childhood, Izuku is never seen during the day without a notebook and pen at the ready, just in case he stumbles across some villain attack, or if he sees a particularly interesting quirk.

Right now, though, the subject of his latest mutter-fest involved estimating how many points they will need to stand a good sporting chance of qualifying for the heroics programme, where the robots are likely to come out from based on their designs, and if there are secret, hidden components about the practical exam that could potentially influence, or even determine, whether they qualified for the heroics programme at the end.

In all fairness, Izuku’s muttering was not that loud to begin with.

But someone else definitely was.

“EXCUSE ME!”

Izuku pauses in his writing, as he, his two friends, and virtually everyone else in the hall turn to a broad, primly-dressed bespectacled young man, who appears to be chopping the air with his hands.

“You did not explain the purpose of the fourth robot, nor the points that it carries!” he calls out, his loud voice carrying easily across the hall, “And you!” He chops a hand at Izuku, who blinks in surprise at being singled out, “I can hear your muttering all the way from here! You are disturbing everyone else attending this briefing! If this is all a joke to you, then you do not belong here!”

Before Izuku could even begin to process the accusation, let alone open his mouth, Denki leaps up to his feet.

“Hey! Not cool, man! Izuku wasn’t even being that loud to begin with!”

“Also, do you not have any fucking manners?” Hitoshi throws in his two yen, as he too gets up and turns his exhausted exasperation on the bespectacled boy, “As far as anyone could see, you didn’t even raise your fucking hand and wait to be called on. If anything, you don’t belong here, you entitled snob. Who would even want a hero who doesn’t even have any basic fucking manners to begin with, hm?”

Evidently, he did not expect for people to turn on him, if his splutters were any indication.

As it is, Present Mic sees the escalating confrontation and applies damage control to diffuse the situation, “Alright, alright! Calm down, listeners, no need to get your knickers all twisted up. I was about to get to the fourth and final robot, so thank you for the reminder!”

Properly chastened, the bespectacled boy bows deeply, and sits back down, red to the face. Present Mic then turns his line of sight towards Hitoshi and Denki, who also sit down, vindicated.

But then, Izuku turns back to the stage, and Present Mic visibly freezes, followed by an audible wheeze, almost as if someone had just punched the man in the chest, forcibly expelling all air from his lungs.

Understandably, it is an unusual sight, and more than a few candidates whisper to one another at how strangely the hero is behaving.

But then, just as quickly as it came, the man is back into his exuberant, showman persona.

“T-The fourth and final robot is worth zero points, so it’s up to you whether or not you want to take it on! So to wrap up, get as many points as possible, and your chances of getting into the heroics programme increases! Have fun out there, and break a leg!”

Present Mic then bolts off the stage, leaving the candidates to file out of the hall by themselves.

“Hey, is it just me, or did Present Mic act a little weird towards the end?” Denki asks.

“Probably swallowed some air the wrong way,” Hitoshi shrugs, “Happens to the best of us.”

“But…it looked as if he was rushing to wrap up, and did you see how fast he bolted off the stage?” the blonde points out.

Izuku glances at his watch, “Actually, he might be in a rush. Maybe he’s proctoring the practical exam?”

“Hm…I guess that makes sense.”

Once he had left the hall, the mask dropped, and the lid that he had forced down to keep the shock within control burst outwards with explosive force.

He is again left without air, his lungs burning from his inability to breathe. He stumbles to a staircase hidden behind the hall, before his feet give out, and he crashes to the floor in a completely undignified manner.

He gasps, the noises from his throat coming out as choked wheezes. Very quickly, his head starts to spin, and everything around him blurs in and out of focus, the colours mixing and melding together into a confusing canvas of uncertainty, doubt and fear.

In desperation, he crawls over to the adjacent wall, and rests his head against the solid surface, trying to centre himself before he slips further into the void of insanity. 

He tries to tell himself that what he saw couldn’t be real.

That his deceased friend from over a decade ago wasn’t actually sitting in the hall, attending the briefing for the practical exam. 

It couldn’t be, right?

Oboro wasn’t actually there.

And, didn’t the blond listener sitting next to the look-alike say that his name was “Izuku”? Then it couldn’t be Oboro. Perhaps, it was just one huge coincidence. There has to be plenty of teenage boys in Japan who have sky-blue, wavy hair that is styled upwards like clouds…

…right?

Regardless of logic and common sense, he consistently failed to push away the unwanted memories that he had buried in solidarity with his remaining friends. While he did seek therapy following Oboro’s death, he avoided mentioning his deceased friend’s name in front of Shouta, who stubbornly refused to seek professional treatment and threw himself into becoming the underground hero he now is. Shouta had always been emotionally-constipated, and it was Oboro who started the process of bringing Shouta out of his shell.

With Oboro dead, Shouta retreated back and refused to come out, armouring up against the trauma and his vulnerabilities. Even he and Nemuri were never able to fully replicate what Oboro managed to accomplish. Shouta has always been infuriatingly stubborn, and perhaps, if he wanted to be devil’s advocate, it was all that Shouta knew what to do when faced with life-shattering trauma - armouring up and not letting something like emotion or vulnerability get in the way.

Now, though, everything has been turned on its head. Even for a brief flash, he saw an Oboro look-alike in the crowd of candidates sitting before him. And the instinctive need to tell someone about it is clawing at his throat. 

But he knows he can’t. Everyone would think he has gone off his rocker. They might put him in the looney bin for seeing a deceased friend in the crowd. And not to mention, it would jeopardise his relationship with Shouta. 

He and Nemuri learnt very quickly to never mention Oboro when Shouta was in earshot. Heck, he had to salvage as many photos and mementos of Oboro as he could and store them at his place, because any he didn’t take were all destroyed by Shouta shortly after news came that Oboro’s body had disappeared without a trace, snatching away the chance to send him off and seek closure.

The last thing he needed was to alienate the one who, despite all odds and being the literal antonym of who he was as a person, he had developed romantic feelings for in their shared trauma of losing one of their dearest friends.

But right now, all it does is put him into a quandary. He needs to tell someone, otherwise, he might just explode and cause untold collateral damage from uncontrolled use of his quirk. But he can’t risk driving his friends (and crush) away in the process.

And also, despite his fervent reasoning against it, that brief look of sky-blue hair had unleashed a hurricane of buried memories, happy and sad, which made his ears ring horribly and his throat close up, depriving him of air and the inability to make a sound.

He can’t remember when was the last time he had such an episode. Usually, he would just scream his pent-up emotions to high heaven, often with Shouta’s quirk activated so that he didn’t obliterate every glass window or object across Musutafu. 

Now, though, he is all alone, with a hurricane in his head, his ears ringing unbearably, and his vision going in and out of focus from the dwindling availability of oxygen in his system. 

He needs to get it out somehow, without causing untold damage to the surrounding landscape. And he needs to do it fast, but he needs to proctor the practical exam within the next hour.

But how can he achieve that, when flashes of his deceased friend continue to wreak havoc inside of him?

How can he, Yamada Hizashi, do what he is supposed to do, knowing that a spectre of Oboro will be vying to become a student in the school that he teaches in?

Thankfully, Izuku and his two friends have been grouped together in the same testing ground. And even more of a thanks to whatever divine intervention is at play here, that bespectacled snob who interrupted the briefing and publicly humiliated Izuku in front of everyone present was not in the same testing ground as them.

As it is, all three are now waiting in front of a large gate, along with a few dozen other candidates. 

“Nervous?” Izuku asks, his bo staff slung over his shoulders and his arms resting on it.

“You aren’t?” Denki shoots back, “I feel like I’m going to electrocute myself out of fear!”

“We’re sticking together,” Hitoshi states, adjusting his capture scarf, “And if you do knock yourself stupid from your electricity, I’ll just use you as a wrecking ball.”

“Hey!”

“I don’t think you’ll electrocute yourself into stupidity,” Izuku reasons, “Mei’s latest version of your diffuser has a voltage limit far higher than you’re currently capable of producing.”

“See?!” Denki jabs a finger at Hitoshi, “Izuku has my back! Friendship cancelled with Hitoshi, Izuku is now my only friend.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hitoshi drawls, not affected even in the slightest.

The conversation peters out from there. Izuku creates a cloud large enough for all three of them to sit on. A few other candidates eye them curiously, but are unable to do so much as open their mouths, as the massive gates rumble open, and Present Mic’s amplified voice yells, “START!”

Izuku immediately propels the cloud forward, and both Hitoshi and Denki hold on for dear life, as they shoot upwards into the fake city. The rest of the candidates continue to stand around, looking rather stupid. 

Apparently, this seems to be a common issue throughout all of the testing grounds, “HEY HEY HEY! What are you all just standing around for?! There is no countdown in real life! Get going, go go go!!!!”

Ensconced in an observation tower with a panoramic view of Ground Beta, Nezu sits with his staff, watching various screens which zoom in on every single testing ground, with the ability to zoom in on any point of interest in real time.

So far, it all seems very routine and standard-going, but Nezu already sees his decision to accept Midoriya’s application beginning to bear fruit.

Kayama had been the last to join them, looking a little worse for wear. Despite the fresh application of makeup, her eyes are still rimmed red from serious crying, and she is somewhat more subdued than usual. 

Of course, if someone engages her in conversation, Kayama would put on a mask and respond with, at least on the surface, her usual sultry and energetic vibe. Naturally, Nezu sees through her mask without any trouble, and she is terribly shaken underneath, her emotional wounds still bleeding.

His thoughts then shifted to Yamada, who is not actually in the room with them but perched on the roof of the observation tower. Nezu’s security feed had picked up the man’s near meltdown in the emergency staircase behind the briefing hall, and a shiver had tickled his spine from what he saw. 

Not out of pure malice, for sure, just the thrill of seeing his experiment produce results.

And now, there is only one member of Nezu’s target group that has yet to encounter Midoriya in the flesh. 

Sitting several seats away from Nezu, watching the screens with seeming disinterest, which mask the hidden alertness for any notable candidates, is Aizawa, the man who was arguably closest to Shirakumo of the trio, and was most affected by the boy’s untimely death.

At the moment, the sleep-deprived hobo doesn’t seem to notice the near carbon-copy of his dead friend propelling into his assigned test city on a cloud, which suits Nezu just fine. 

He wants a front-row seat to Aizawa encountering Midoriya, preferably if the boy is in his class. That said, given that Midoriya, along with his two friends, are decimating robots left, right and centre using a combination of lightning, electricity, and support equipment, Nezu is all but certain that he will be able to allocate the trio into Aizawa’s class.

As an added bonus, it will keep Aizawa on his toes, especially since he expelled his entire class last year on the first day of school, and didn’t have the burden of a class to teach. With his infamous track record of expelling students who are performing below par, Nezu is a just a tad bit concerned that the insomniac hobo is becoming a little soft.

Never mind, that is for future Nezu to tackle. Now, though, it is now time for the real fun.

“Release the zero-pointers!” he cackles.

Two Weeks Later…

“This is…really surreal, right?”

“For once, I agree with you, Denks.”

At the front gates of U.A., three teenage boys stand at the threshold, staring up the path towards the twin buildings that loom over Musutafu city.

They were here, a fortnight ago, for the entrance exam. But now, they are here once again, but dressed in the standard-issue U.A. students’ uniform, with the signature grey blazer, red tie, and dark green trousers. 

They were candidates two weeks ago. Now, they are full-fledged students in the coveted heroics programme.

The practical exam seemed like a whole world away. In the exhilaration of hunting down robots and attacking them with electricity and a spiked metal bat, the trio had lost track of time, only snapping back to reality when the zero-pointer robot, which was a gargantuan beast of metal and circuitry that towered over the city blocks, forced them into the retreat.

Of course, they hadn’t just gone around smashing and exploding robots to smithereens. There were multiple occasions where their adrenaline-fuelled rampage temporarily paused when another candidate needed saving from projectiles or was in the path of imminent danger. Hitoshi’s capture scarf had its moment in the spotlight during these rescue operations, as did Izuku’s clouds. 

Unbeknownst to them at the time, whenever they rescued another candidate from serious injury or harm, a second tally of points was being racked up. While they were already making good work decimating the robot army that came at them, the second tally of “rescue” points, as it was coined, further boosted their scores.

None of them realised the impact of these “rescue” points then, but a week after the exam, three personalised letters arrived in the mailbox. The trio immediately congregated in Izuku’s home, and simultaneously opened their respective letters.

One holographic video hosted by the principal of U.A. himself, Nezu, later, all three have been granted their hero academia, courtesy of the ranking table bearing their names in the highest three positions, with Izuku at the very top with the most points.

There were cheers, tears, glomping and absolute chaos. For Hitoshi especially, this was both the most poignant moment of his life, and a huge middle finger to all of the naysayers who looked down on him and condemned him as a future villain because of his quirk. 

Their uniforms came a few days later, and now, they stand at the threshold of their shared dreams of heroism. Homeroom is not due to start for another half hour, but still, none of them have taken the first step into their new school as the latest batch of hero students.

Izuku breaks the silence hanging over them, “Shall we go?”

It takes some time before they are able to locate their classroom. All three are in the same class, 1-A, but the main campus buildings are massive, and even with the help of directories, there is only five minutes to spare when they finally find the right floor, and the right classroom.

“Holy shit, why is the door so freakin’ huge?!” Denki exclaims.

“I guess U.A. is trying to be inclusive to as many quirks as possible, including those that affect height and size?” Izuku proposes.

Hitoshi huffs, “If they really wanted to be inclusive, they would make the practical exam less biassed towards physical quirks.”

“Well, we’re here now, so I guess that’s something?” Denki points out.

Izuku slides the door open, and immediately, loud shouting hits their ears.

“Get your feet off the desk at once! It is unbecoming of a U.A. student to be disrespectful to those who came before us!”

Hitoshi sighs, exasperation blooming on his sleep-deprived face, “Oh for fuck’s sake, why is the snobbish robot here?”

The same bespectacled teenage boy who rudely interrupted the exam briefing is looming over a spiky blond-haired student who looks all the world like a stereotypical delinquent from some generic school manga. Lacking the red tie and white shirt unbuttoned in a blatant ‘f-you’ to the dress code, the blonde does indeed have his feet on the desk, which appears to have offended the robot enough for him to make his displeasure heard.

Eyeing the delinquent curiously, Izuku has a strange feeling of familiarity. Although, he can’t quite pinpoint where in his life had he seen the blonde before.

“Hah? Who the fuck are you, four-eyes? You got a fucking problem?”

As if oblivious to the antagonistic tone from the blond delinquent, the bespectacled robot chops the air with his hand, “My name is Iida Tenya, from Soumei Academy!”

“Hah? Soumei? Are you some fucking elitist snob or something?”

“You know, that kinda tracks,” Denki whispers to Izuku, as the argument seems to further degenerate from there.

Unfortunately, given that they appear to be the last to arrive, there are only three seats left in the room. Two of them are directly behind the antagonistic blonde, meaning that two of the trio have the unfortunate luck to be directly in the line of fire.

After a moment of discussion, Hitoshi and Izuku volunteer to take those two seats. Hitoshi offers to take the seat directly behind the blonde, so that in the event that they come under fire, he will be able to ensnare the blonde with his quirk, with Izuku acting as back-up if needed.

As the argument continues on with no signs of stopping, they enter the classroom, Denki breaking off to head to his seat. Hitoshi and Izuku take their new desks, which are adjacent to the window. As it is, the argument is too loud for Hitoshi to grab a quick nap before the start of homeroom, so trying his best to block out the degenerating argument in front of him, he turns back to Izuku, “Who do you think will be our teacher?”

“No clue,” Izuku shrugs, “but the staff are all pro-heroes.”

“Hm…that doesn’t narrow things down.”

Izuku is about to respond when the door slides open. A bedraggled man who looks mere minutes away from death, unkempt black hair that falls to his shoulders, and his neck covered in what appears to be a scarf of some sort, saunters into the room. 

Apparently, no one other than Izuku and Hitoshi had noticed the man’s arrival. However, his presence is very quickly realised when, upon seeing the argument between the two boys, the man suddenly unfurls his scarf, and his hair levitates upwards. 

The two arguing boys are ensnared by the scarf, and thrusted up like Thanksgiving turkeys. 

“Quiet down,” the man orders, his eyes glowing red. Hitoshi lets out a shocked wheeze, and Izuku blinks, “I didn’t get any sleep last night, and you two are grating on my nerves.” He releases the two boys, sending them crashing to the floor, “Go to your seats, we are wasting enough time as it is.”

Flushed red with embarrassment, the bespectacled robot leaps to his feet, bows a perfect 90-degrees in contrite apology, and rushes to his seat on the other side of the room. 

The man’s hair floats back down, and his scarf winds back around his neck. Sighing audibly, he produces a small bottle of eyedrops, and drips a few droplets into his tired eyes, which are noticeably bloodshot from sleep deprivation. He saunters over to the lectern, and faces the class.

“Good morning, my name is Aizawa Shouta, your homeroom teacher. It’s a pleasure to meet you -”

At that precise moment, Aizawa’s line of sight falls upon Izuku, and the man very visibly freezes. When they had been dull and tired before, suddenly they are alert, all exhaustion draining away, as does the blood from his face. 

The gathered students glance at one another, confused to varying degrees about their teacher’s unusual behaviour, especially since he appeared to be staring at one particular student with sky-blue hair.

Izuku, for his part, is growing increasingly uncomfortable. That unsettling stare from Aizawa, boring holes straight into him, is kicking his flight-or-fight instincts into high gear. 

Something is clearly wrong. Emotions are flashing one after the other on the previously bored and exhausted man’s face, and his body is beginning to visibly tremble. No teacher has ever behaved in such a manner when they first laid eyes on him, and it is honestly beginning to scare Izuku greatly.

“Um…Aizawa-sensei? Is everything alright -”

For the second time in less than a minute, Aizawa’s scarf unravels and shoots out, ensnaring Izuku and yanking him out of his seat. Shouts and screams rock the air, as Hitoshi and Denki jump to their feet on instinct. Izuku finds himself being thrown onto the lectern, and glowing red eyes glare deeply into his soul.

“Who are you?”

Izuku is unable to move, his limbs immobilised by the unyielding material of the capture scarf. His quirk, inexplicably, is not cooperating with him. He is completely hapless, unable to fight back or escape.

“Aizawa-sensei, please, what is going -”

“I said. Who. Are. You?”

Anyone in Izuku’s position would be pissing their pants. Aizawa looks positively demonic, his glaring eyes glowing with bloodlust, his mouth twisted in a deadly snarl, and his hair rising upwards like some possessed creature. The deadly aura rapidly fills the room, paralysing those watching the unfolding scene with sheer terror.

However, instead of pissing his pants in fear, a strange feeling washes over Izuku instead, one which hasn’t occurred ever since he met Hitoshi for the first time back in middle school.

He utters just one word.

“Shou?”

To Be Continued.

Chapter Text

Altostratus clouds are either grey or blue-grey in colour, and are composed of ice crystals or water droplets. Usually covering the entire sky, they are indicative of continuous rain or snow.

It was just one, single word.

And it was arguably the worst thing Izuku could have said.

Aizawa visibly freezes, the furious red flooding his face draining away in an instant. For a brief moment, nobody moves, not daring to breathe.

But, just as quickly as before, indescribable rage returns with an unholy vengeance.

Izuku finds himself being yanked off the lectern, and slammed into the blackboard, as screams fill the air once more. If Aizawa looked demonic before, right now it really does appear that a demon had completely taken over the exhausted hobo. 

“I’ll kill you,” Aizawa snarls, as he chokes Izuku, suffocating him with vicious intent, “ You think this is some sick joke? You think you can just waltz into my classroom with his face? You think you could just steal his face and pretend to be him? I will kill you. I will rip that face out of your head. I will -”

“¡Calmate, papí!”

Aizawa whips his head towards the voice, bloodlust suddenly halted, “What…did you just - ?”

“Sensei.”

The hobo whips towards the second voice, “What -?”

Hitoshi activates his quirk, “Let go of Izuku, and knock yourself out by bashing your head into the blackboard.”

The rage drains out of Aizawa as he is ensnared by the insomniac’s quirk. The hobo’s capture weapon releases a battered and bruised Izuku from its grasp, and Aizawa robotically, with one decisive swing, bashes his head hard against the blackboard, knocking himself unconscious and crumpling to the floor in a dead faint.

Silence fills the air for the entirety of a second.

“Holy shit…” Denki wheezes, before turning to a gasping Izuku, “Oh my god, Izuku, are you okay?! Are you hurt anywhere?!”

While Hitoshi is undeniably just as worried for his friend as the electric-quirked blonde, he does give Denki a cursory raised eyebrow, “Seriously, Denks? You had to use that?”

“Hey!” Denki retorts back indignantly, “Could you come up with anything better?! And it worked, didn’t it?”

Whatever argument that would have devolved from there is thankfully interrupted by the PA system crackling to life. 

“Shinsou Hitoshi and Kaminari Denki, this is Principal Nezu speaking. Please bring both your classmate and homeroom teacher to the infirmary at once. Thank you!”

The PA system deactivates, and both aforementioned students blink at each other for a moment. 

“How are you feeling now, sonny?”

Izuku swallows, subconsciously feeling his throat, “The pain is gone?”

Recovery Girl nods, “Good, now have some gummies. It will help with your energy.”

Hitoshi shudders, “It was really scary, though. Aizawa-sensei just started strangling the crap out of you. Completely unprovoked. Had Denks and I not stepped in…” he shudders again, “I don’t want to think what would have happened.”

As he runs a hand through Denki’s hair, the blonde wrapped tightly around him like a quivering rabbit seeking comfort, Izuku turns to Recovery Girl, “How is Aizawa-sensei?”

“He is still unconscious,” the medi-heroine replies grimly, “We are waiting for him to wake up, so that Principal Nezu can question him about what happened.”

“That won’t be necessary!”

Denki shrieks, leaping right into Hitoshi. A rodent-like being that was very clearly not there a moment before is now sitting on a nearby bed, legs swinging back and forth.

“Good morning, Midoriya-kun! Am I a mouse, dog, or bear? Either way, I’m Principal Nezu!”

Izuku blinks, while Recovery Girl sighs audibly, and appears to roll her eyes at the principal’s dramatics.

“I have a tried-and-tested way of making sure Aizawa is awake and lucid enough so that we can get to the bottom of this conundrum,” Nezu chirps cheerfully, which does nothing to ease the nonplussed look on Izuku’s face. Without waiting for a response, the principal hops off the bed, goes to an adjacent bed that has its privacy curtains drawn around it, and pulls them apart.

The three boys (and one exasperated medi-heroine) are greeted to the sight of an unconscious Aizawa in the bed, with his head wrapped up in bandages. Seemingly without any care for the hobo lying on the bed, Nezu climbs onto it, pulls what appears to be a paper fan out from somewhere, and gives Aizawa a hearty whack to the head with said fan.

Izuku and his friends flinch at the sound of the impact. Just like that, Aizawa’s eyes snap open and, for a brief moment, they glow an angry red as the hobo’s quirk is activated. However, as soon as he notices Nezu with his paper fan, Aizawa’s eyes snap back to normal, and the rage from the rude awakening immediately dissipates.

“Principal…”

“Good to see you awake, Aizawa-kun! You gave us all quite the shock when you viciously attacked a student of yours, completely unprovoked,” Nezu grins, “I hope that you would be able to give us a reason why you decided to cause grievous bodily harm to an innocent student, since it would be most regrettable if I have to fire you for attacking a student without provocation or reason!”

Aizawa makes eye-contact with Izuku. The latter instinctively flinches, and his two friends brace themselves for a possible attack.

“He…looks like Oboro.”

…

…

“What?”

That single word is said, questioningly, by all three boys at once.

“Ah, I see,” Nezu nods, rubbing his chin with a paw, “it appears that your unaddressed trauma from seeing your first real friend die back in second year has finally breached the lid.”

Understandably, Izuku is beyond confused. Who is this Oboro? How did Oboro die? And…why did Aizawa-sensei say that he looked like this Oboro?

As it was, Aizawa had different priorities, “You knew, didn’t you?”

“Hm?”

“You knew he looks like Oboro,” the hobo’s voice is accusatory, but it doesn’t raise in volume, “You knew, but you still accepted him. He took part in the entrance exam, and he passed. And you…you put him in my class.”

“Why yes, I did,” Nezu nods without hesitation, “Who am I to deny Midoriya-kun a valid chance to apply and enrol into the heroics programme?”

“Um…pardon my interruption, Principal Nezu,” Denki raises a hand, “But…surely, you wouldn’t put Izuku, who apparently looks like Aizawa-sensei’s dead friend, of whom he has not gotten over till today, into his class, knowing that he could flip his gasket upon seeing Izuku?”

“Hm, I guess that there was a slight possibility,” Nezu agrees, “Especially since there was no record of Aizawa-kun seeking professional help after the death of his friend when he was a student. However, if I wanted to play devil’s advocate, I could also argue that Aizawa-kun was within his rights to seek out help after he became a licensed hero. After all, once a student graduates or leaves U.A., they are no longer within my purview.”

Hitoshi, for his part, looks incredibly disturbed, “That…sounds like victim blaming to me.”

“Perhaps,” Nezu shrugs, “But we are digressing. If there is someone who is 100% a victim right now, that would be Midoriya-kun,” his beady eyes turn to Izuku, “Despite the facts, your teacher did assault you without any provocation. You are within your rights to press charges.”

Izuku glances at Aizawa, who on the surface, looks as blank as ever. However, a look towards the hobo’s eyes reveal a hurricane of emotions, not just stemming from any possible repercussions from his unprovoked assault, but also the unaddressed trauma, as Nezu described it.

Of course, Izuku lacks the context and background information on how this Oboro’s death eventually resulted in Aizawa physically assaulting him at the start of homeroom. However, even without contextual background information, Izuku can recognise a trauma response when he sees one.

After all, didn’t he suffer from nightmares for some time after he was pulled out of the rubble from the collapsed shopping mall ten years prior, and was scared of the dark on top of that too?

“No, I don’t want to press charges,” Izuku shakes his head resolutely, “I just want…Aizawa-sensei to seek professional help.”

The hobo in question doesn’t appear to visibly change in terms of facial expression, but one would have to be blind to not see the slight drop in his shoulders from relief.

“Excellent! I will sort out the necessary logistics, so please excuse me, everyone! Time is precious, after all!”

Nezu bows, and leaves the infirmary without a further word.

Recovery Girl sighs, “I swear to everything that is holy that I will suffocate that rat and use his fur as a coat…”

Shaking her head in frustrated resignation, she turns back to the three boys, “I think it’s best if you return to class for now. I will sort out your teacher.”

“Right, let’s go then,” Hitoshi gets to his feet.

Denki and Izuku are quick to follow, although Izuku would continue to feel the lingering gaze of his teacher, long after the door closed behind him.

Goodness, things are going to be hella awkward going forward, aren’t they?

To Be Continued.

Chapter Text

Stratus clouds are so thin, they seldom produce much rain or snow, if at all. Still, they have a gloomy appearance, especially in mountains or hills where they resemble a dreary fog.

In another universe, Aizawa would have remained as 1-A’s homeroom teacher, and in that universe, he would have put the class through a quirk apprehension test, pushing them to their limits on pain of expulsion from the heroics programme.

But in this universe, after the spectacle that was Aizawa brutalising an innocent student completely unprovoked and seemingly without reason, the students of 1-A were understandably traumatised and nervous about having such a monster be their homeroom teacher, and they told their respective parents or guardians as such. 

Principal Nezu’s office was flooded with angry phone calls, with demands being made to remove this errant teacher who dared to attack an innocent student who did nothing wrong. 

Being used to such outraged callers, the rodent’s reassurances was measured and diplomatic, almost akin to the insincere, cookie-cutter responses made by big brands and corporations whenever they fucked up and were caught red-handed. However, unlike such bastions of capitalism while being a huge dick, Nezu actually carried out what he promised to the irate parents and guardians.

Aizawa is swiftly removed from his teaching position, with both students and their parents told the next day that the man is no longer employed in any capacity within U.A.. However, in a slight twist of misdirection, Nezu didn’t outright kick the hobo out to the curb. Instead, unbeknownst to the students, Aizawa remains in U.A., but not as a teacher, rather as an unseen aide who assists the remaining staff with whatever work they might have.

Additionally, Nezu kept Aizawa in U.A. so that he could receive professional help from Hound Dog, the school’s career guidance counsellor and trained therapist. This was partly so that the hobo can begin the process of healing from the untreated trauma that triggered his unprovoked assault, and also to help Aizawa figure out what other kinds of employment he might take up, if he so wishes.

Because it was not just the students and their parents who were outraged. 

Despite the fact that Nezu explained that Aizawa’s assault on Izuku was due to a mental break from untreated trauma, tongues were still going to wag. From the parents, word begins to spread, and once the story of a U.A. teacher attacking a student reaches the press, a scandal of hellfire proportions erupts.

Two days after the fateful assault, a crowd of news reporters and camera personnel could be seen camping outside the gates, hounding the arriving students and generally being a huge nuisance.

Such a sight was what greeted Izuku, Denki and Hitoshi when they arrived.

“Sheesh, don’t they have something more important to report on?” Denki exclaims.

“The press are nothing but vultures,” Hitoshi drawls, “Anything salacious is like leaving a rotting carcass out for them to sink their claws in.”

Izuku remains silent. 

He had to talk his mother down from suing U.A. into the ground when she found out about Aizawa attacking him. Yes, he was the victim, and he was injured during the unprovoked assault, but it was not out of malice or a broken, insane mind that the press seemed to falsely frame the event with. He had to explain to his irate mother that, somehow, he looked uncannily like Aizawa’s deceased friend, whose death traumatised his former teacher so much that the mere sight of him triggered the mental break. 

It had been a close thing, but Inko gradually agreed to not press charges herself or demand compensation from U.A.. However, she had a stern talking-to with Nezu over the phone, threatening to not only destroy U.A. from top to bottom if nothing was done about Aizawa, but also skin the rodent of all of his fur and use it to make a coat out of it. 

Izuku was more than happy to move on from that day, although the sight of the reporters threw a spanner into his efforts.

“How the fuck are we supposed to get in?” Denki gestures helplessly at the crowd.

Izuku jumps at the opportunity.

Creating a cloud, he says, “Get on.”

Not looking a gift horse in the mouth, both Denki and Hitoshi clamber onto the cloud after Izuku. Then, without the reporters any the wiser, the cloud carrying three first-year students floats up the wall, and disappears over to the other side.

The students who managed to fight their way through the sea of reporters and get into the grounds stop in their tracks at their descent. The three boys ignore the blatant staring, hop off the cloud, and Izuku dissipates it with a flick of a hand.

“Have I told you how much you are a lifesaver, Izuku?” Denki says, “You are a lifesaver.”

“No thanks needed, Denks.”

“Honestly, I was half-tempted to ask you to strike those reporters with lightning,” Hitoshi says, “But then again, you’re too honourable for that.”

“No, I just don’t want to give them any additional fodder,” Izuku replies.

“...but you aren’t against the idea, right?”

“...no comment.”

When Izuku thought that things were going to be hella awkward moving forward, he wasn’t wrong.

Despite his repeated insistence that he is fine, the air in 1-A remained tense.

Sure, Aizawa was no longer their teacher, but Izuku still received uncertain and wary looks from his classmates in the days after that fateful homeroom. If not for his experience being friendless, Izuku would have found the entire situation uncomfortable and suffocating.

Plus, Denki and Hitoshi remain steadfastly supportive through it all, always accompanying Izuku around and warding off any unwanted attention. 

The most notable incident involved that pretentious snob from 1-B, who got on the wrong end of Hitoshi’s quirk after he tried to heckle Izuku for supposedly being an attention-seeker. Hitoshi ensnared him with his quirk, with the order to go flush his head down in the nearest toilet bowl.

The screams that subsequently come from a nearby female bathroom leave Hitoshi and Denki filled with vindictive satisfaction. Izuku, though, remains conflicted.

He is grateful for his friends’ steadfast support, but he knows that it is doing nothing to alleviate the awkward tension that remains pervasive whenever he is around. 

Make no mistake, he is fine if his classmates and peers don’t like him, but this continuing wariness aimed towards him is beginning to wear away at his psyche. He can tell that some of his classmates are pitying him, what with him being the victim, but he would have to be blind and stupid to not know that the wariness aimed at him was due to the broken trust in the overall system that many of his classmates are now left to endure with in the aftermath of a teacher assaulting a student, despite what the principal of the best hero school in Japan said in response to the unprovoked attack.

Honestly, it was a miracle that U.A. didn’t become inundated with lawsuits in response to the assault, and despite their hushed voices, Izuku still overheard several of his classmates contemplating transferring out of U.A. for another hero school. That said, nothing came out of it in the end, and 1-A retained all twenty of its original students.

Still, Izuku remained the focal point of the wariness and tension. And it wasn’t just his classmates, even the other teachers seem to see him as the indirect reason why the world as anyone knew it had shattered beyond recognition.

Present Mic and Midnight taught English and Modern Art History respectively, and so far, Izuku found it especially hard during those lessons specifically, as it was incredibly difficult to focus whenever their lingering gazes pierced at his soul, and both teachers found whatever reason possible to avoid directly interacting with him, even when he raised his hand to answer a question posed, or if he had any questions pertaining to the assigned homework. 

It was incredibly stressful, and Izuku wondered if the rest of his time at U.A. was going to be like this.

Luckily, 1-A has their Foundational Heroics class coming up soon, and so long as Present Mic or Midnight isn't in charge of that lesson, things should be somewhat better…

…right?

To Be Continued.

Chapter Text

Cumulonimbus clouds form when warm, wet air rises very high into the sky. Often, these clouds are warning signs of imminent rain, hailstorms, and even tornadoes.

Izuku was excited. That is literally the only word that can describe what he is feeling right now.

All Might, the Symbol of Peace, is their teacher for Foundational Heroics class.

Never in his lifetime did Izuku expect this to ever become a reality. That the number one hero in the entire country is actually a teacher in U.A., and will be teaching them how to be heroes.

His excitement knows no limits, and it does a wonderful (and incredibly welcome) job of overriding the general uneasiness that has been plaguing him for the past two days. 

Even now, the wariness aimed at him from the vast majority of his classmates has not waned. While Hitoshi, and to a smaller extent, Denki, have argued that such wariness is not only unwarranted but also reflects badly on their classmates’ characters, Izuku can understand why the rest of the class feels the way that they are.

His mere presence has uprooted everything his classmates either believed in, or assumed should’ve been normal within U.A.. 

Not only did it seem that their homeroom teacher assaulted him without any rhyme or reason, but it was said assault that got said teacher fired from U.A. and the subsequent media and public relations nightmare that followed. Despite Nezu’s official reasonings and explanations, such a traumatising and harrowing experience can never be explained away by official sources, at least not in the impressionable minds of youths that have yet to develop into full maturity.

And besides, while Izuku is incredibly social and outgoing, he has his closest friends in the form of Hitoshi and Denki, who have proven their loyalty by sticking by Izuku through this debacle. While it is a little sad that the rest of his class is afraid of him, Izuku knows that he can’t get everyone to like him for one reason or another.

He’d rather focus on the excitement of having All Might as his teacher, and what the hero has in plan for Foundational Heroics.

Namely, battle trials.

Now, in a locker room, Izuku opens his case, bearing his hero outfit that he’d sent U.A. the design for shortly before the school year started.

Everything is in order, from the brown aviator jacket, the dark-blue martial arts Gi, leather boots, black fingerless gloves, and the blue aviator hat that will go on his head with an opening to allow his hair to protrude from. He puts his costume on, and checks that the sheath in which he’ll store his bo staff that Mei made for him is in working order.

Satisfied, he gives his reflection a look-over, before checking on how Hitoshi and Denki are coming on.

“Looking good, you two.”

“You’re looking rad yourself, Izu!” Denki gives him a thumbs-up.

Hitoshi grunts in agreement, adjusting the capture weapon that Mei also made for him prior to today’s lesson. She never revealed how she managed to make an almost-carbon copy of Aizawa’s capture weapon, only that it works just as good as the original. 

Hitoshi’s costume in general is akin to an upgraded homage to Aizawa’s outfit, with the main differences being the colour palette being mostly purple instead of black, protective padding in vulnerable areas like the shoulders, forearms and legs, and a mouth-guard which contains voice-altering technology instead of Aizawa’s trademark yellow goggles.

Denki himself has some references to Present Mic, mainly the orange-tinted sunglasses the voice hero is never seen without, and gear that resembles the trademark speakers that are around Present Mic’s neck, but are actually upgraded emitters that Denki can channel his electricity through, as an accompaniment to the diffusers on his hands. 

“Shall we head out? We shouldn’t make the class wait,” Izuku says.

“I’d say that we should,” Hitoshi grumbles, even as he and the others head out, “Inconvenience them as much as possible.”

“Toshi, don’t be rude,” Denki scolds, “Just because our classmates have been sort-of assholes to Izuku, that doesn’t mean we should stoop to their level!”

“And besides, would you inconvenience All Might?” Izuku points out.

“Honestly, I’m half-tempted to do so, but I won’t, purely for you,” Hitoshi replies, eyes on Izuku.

“Aww, love you too, Toshi.”

“What am I, chopped liver?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Honestly, watching the live feed of 1-A’s Foundational Heroics class is pure hell.

All because Midoriya, the student whom Aizawa assaulted and subsequently decided to not press charges as he was rightfully allowed to do, looks uncannily like Oboro, blue hair, bandage on nose, and all. Furthermore, to throw salt into the ripped open wound, Midoriya’s costume is a literal carbon copy of what Oboro wore on the day of his death, right down to the bo staff that is casually slung over Midoriya’s shoulders.

Aizawa squirms in his seat, the churning in his stomach and the ache in his heart almost unbearable. He feels nausea creeping in his throat, and his head throbs from the unwanted, intrusive memories that play in his subconscious against his will. 

The logical part of himself knows that he deserves this. As much as it was the result of a mental break, he did assault an innocent student, completely unprovoked. As far as anyone who isn’t him is concerned, Midoriya did nothing wrong, nothing to warrant getting attacked. Aizawa knows he deserves much worse, and it was only because of Midoriya’s merciful decision that ensured he isn’t sitting in a prison cell right now.

But the bigger, traitorous, emotional part of himself cannot be reasoned with. No amount of rational thinking or logic can take away from the fact that Midoriya looks exactly like Oboro. Quite literally, it seemed that his first-ever friend has come back from the dead and is now, by some fucked-up roundabout way courtesy of Nezu, a student of U.A., and before his ill-fated mental break, was supposed to be Aizawa’s student.

Aizawa struggles to reconcile the images of Oboro’s dead body being carried out of the collapsed building, hidden until a white sheet, by the paramedics in his second year, and the live feed of Midoriya standing in between Shinsou and Kaminari, both of whom Aizawa notes, with some level of manic incredulity, bear some striking resemblances to himself and Zashi.

It was almost as if the universe (and Nezu) was conspiring to induce even more trauma onto Aizawa. Highly ironic, since one of the stipulations for him to not be immediately carted off to prison for assaulting Midoriya was to seek medical help to treat his trauma from years past. He had already begun the process of seeking regular treatment at the Olympus facility, and currently, the ball is in Olympus’ court to settle the paperwork and inform him of when his therapy sessions will start. In the meantime, Aizawa is stuck with whatever task Nezu assigned him to do, and right now, that task is monitoring 1-A’s first Foundational Heroics class and making sure that nothing goes wrong.

Sue him for being pessimistic, but he can already think of a thousand and one ways that this will go horribly wrong, not helped by the fact that the lesson is being taught by All Might, who might be the number one hero in the country, but is the absolute worst “teacher” Aizawa has ever seen during his tenure within U.A.. The oaf doesn’t even have a teaching licence for crying out loud!

Already, Aizawa has witnessed All Might fumbling and winging his way through introducing the lesson, which is currently taking place in one of the fake cities in Ground Beta. The oaf was actually reading off of notes in order to explain what the lesson will be covering, which is a battle simulation within an enclosed environment, specifically a building. As the bumbling oaf reads off, the class will be split into pairs, and two pairs will be randomly chosen to be a “hero” and “villain” team respectively. The “villain” team is supposed to protect a “bomb” within a building, and the “hero” team is instructed to either intercept the “bomb” or neutralise the opposing team within a set time limit. 

Fundamentally, there is nothing overtly concerning about this particular exercise. Well, other than the fact that all 20 students have been given free reign to use their quirks however and whenever they pleased, so long as the objectives were completed. 

Adding to Aizawa’s growing anxieties, Bakugou Katsuki, who has an explosion-emitter quirk and an explosive temperament, is in the class. Explosions, mixed with a building, is only asking for something to go terribly wrong.

Aizawa is by no means a religious person, but when the class is split into the pairs and All Might begins the process of random selection, he begins pleading to every known deity in the history of mankind that, somehow, Midoriya would not be paired with Bakugou, or would have to face off against Bakugou.

The first part is answered, the second, unfortunately, went unheard.

Midoriya is paired with Tokoyami, and will be facing off against Iida and Bakugou, with the latter pair as the “villain” team.

Aizawa is already calling it, something is going to go wrong. 

He just hopes, against all hope, that history somehow doesn’t repeat itself.

In truth, Izuku is a little disappointed that he isn’t paired up with either Hitoshi or Denki.

But what All Might said earlier about the selection process does hold water, in the sense that as a pro-hero, he won’t always get the chance to choose who he would work with when out on missions.

While it wasn’t ideal, Tokoyami appears to not hold the same level of wariness that the others in 1-A held against Izuku. Though, that said, it was hard to discern what Tokoyami was actually thinking or feeling, since his default expression seems to be set in an unreadable stare that gives no clues about what the bird-head teen is thinking or is about to say.

The “villain” team, composed of Iida and Bakugou, are sent into the building first. Izuku and Tokoyami have five minutes to come up with a game plan, before the trial starts and they are to enter the building themselves.

“So, how do you suppose we tackle this pressing advancement of darkness?” Tokoyami asks.

Izuku scans the building for a moment, “We’ll go through the roof. It’ll be easier to get into the building without being spotted.”

“I don’t have the ability to fly, and neither does Dark Shadow,” Tokoyami states.

“That won’t be a problem,” Izuku reassures his teammate, creating a cloud, “I can carry us up there.”

“...I see,” Tokoyami nods, “Then, what is our next course of action?”

“From what I can tell of Bakugou, he seems impulsive, and would most likely go off in search of us,” Izuku slips into analytical mode, “That’ll leave Iida to protect the bomb. Best case scenario, we are able to reach the bomb and intercept it before Bakugou finds us. Worst case, I’ll handle him. I presume Dark Shadow is vulnerable to light?”

Tokoyami nods, “Yes. She isn’t in favour of bright lights. It hurts her.”

Izuku nods in confirmation, “I will be able to use long-range attacks to keep Bakugou from getting too close. Hopefully, though, we wouldn’t have to actually face him. In the best case scenario, I’ll distract Iida, and you have Dark Shadow go intercept the bomb. Is that okay?”

“That works for me,” Tokoyami agrees, with Dark Shadow emerging briefly to flash a thumbs-up.

All Might’s voice then crackles from the intercom, informing them that their five minutes of planning are up, and they are now to enter the building.

Izuku gets on the cloud, and helps Tokoyami on. Then, they rise up to the building’s roof, and step off without issue. Izuku dissipates the cloud, and goes for the roof access door. With it unlocked, the pair enter the building itself, and begin scoping for Iida and the bomb. 

Thankfully, they didn’t have to spend too much time looking. They find Iida relatively quickly, in one of the rooms, hyping himself up into a stereotypical villainous persona from the pre-quirk era, while maintaining a close watch on the fake bomb.

In all honesty, Iida’s over-the-top antics nearly gets a chuckle out of Izuku, but he forces the instinctual urge to laugh down, and charges straight for Iida. 

Iida spots Izuku rushing towards him, and immediately tries to block his advance. That said, with Iida entirely focused on Izuku, he fails to notice Dark Shadow surging out from Tokoyami, and slamming her taloned hands onto the fake bomb.

“Captured ~”

Iida whips around so fast that Izuku swore he heard bones creak, “W-What?! NO!”

“The bomb has been intercepted! Hero team WINS!”

“Oh my lord! That was so fast!” Denki gushes.

“That was indeed fast, much more than I expected,” Yaoyorozu Momo comments.

Over in an observation room, the rest of 1-A and All Might watch live feeds of the building where both teams are in. The general consensus, even if most don’t actually verbalise it, was that the entire trial was over faster than any of them anticipated.

Hitoshi watches Iida visibly droop with embarrassment from being so easily distracted, but he can’t really bring himself to feel much sympathy for the bespectacled robot. Not after the debacle during the entrance exam briefing, at any rate.

But then, Hitoshi notices something concerning.

When Izuku and Tokoyami rode the former’s cloud up to the building’s roof, the explosive pomeranian that is Bakugou had stalked off in search of the hero team, anticipating that they would come in via the front doors. Instead, Bakugou hadn’t even reached the ground floor when All Might announced the hero team’s victory, courtesy of Izuku’s analytical planning and the admittedly admirable teamwork between him and Tokoyami.

Hitoshi sees the moment where all of the blood drains out of Bakugou like a running tap. The blonde is frozen stiff, eyes wide with apoplectic disbelief. Barely a second later, he begins trembling, his body shaking from the rapid build-up of rage. On-screen, Bakugou spins on his heel and storms back towards the stairs leading up to the top floor.

“Sensei!” Hitoshi calls out, “Bakugou is about to do something!”

“What?” All Might turns to him, visibly confused.

“Bakugou is going to -!"

All eyes immediately swing back to the screens, as shouting comes from the speakers.

“You fucking bastard!”

Izuku and Tokoyami turn around. 

Bakugou is standing by the doorway, glaring daggers at Izuku specifically and his hands quivering.

“How the fuck did you get past me, you fucking cunt?!”

“The roof,” Izuku points upwards.

“You were supposed to go through the fucking doors, bastard!”

“Um…no?” Izuku raises an eyebrow, “All Might-sensei never said that Tokoyami and I had to enter via the doors.”

For some inexplicable reason, that seems to tick Bakugou off even more.

“You motherfucking piece of shit, you looking down on me?! You think you are fucking better than me?!”

“Bakugou!” Iida chops his hand, “This is extremely immature behaviour and unfitting of a prospective hero - !”

“Shut the fuck up, four-eyes!” Bakugou screams, raising one of his gauntleted hands, “You think you’re so good? Then why don’t you dodge this!”

“Bakugou Katsuki! Desist right now, or else you will be - !”

But Bakugou simply ignores All Might’s warning, and pulls the pin on the gauntlet.

Immediately, Izuku dives towards Tokoyami, pushing the shorter teen down to the floor and covering him with his own body. An almighty explosion rocks the room, and then comes the unmistakable sound of concrete giving way. 

Looking up, Izuku sees the moment when the ceiling starts to cave in. Immediately, he creates a cloud which he hopes will be strong to protect both Tokoyami and himself from falling debris.

And to be fair, the cloud does prevent the falling concrete rubble from hitting them.

But it does little to protect them both when not just the ceiling caves in, but the entire building buckles and pancakes down to the ground in a terrifying cloud of dust and rubble.

To Be Continued.

Chapter Text

Mammatus clouds are actually other types of clouds that have pouch-like shapes hanging out from the bottom. When these clouds fill the sky, take immediate shelter, because severe weather is on its way.

The moment he sees young Bakugou pull the pin on his gauntlet, he is already running.

When he hears the resulting explosion, muted and distant, he runs faster.

Never mind that he is down to one lung and eating away at his limited time in his hero form. Bakugou had just let rip an explosion loud and powerful enough to be heard a great distance away, and, though he hopes against all hope that he would be proven wrong, most likely decimated the building where he had sent four young students in for an exercise that should never have gone this bad!

Toshinori bursts into Ground Beta and beelines for the designated building.

Immediately, his heart drops to his ankles. His prayers hadn’t been answered.

Where a building once stood, is now just a pile of rubble, twisted metal and broken glass.

He immediately begins throwing debris about, searching for his four students. He works quickly, desperately , because the longer the four students remain buried, the smaller their chances of survival.

He can’t. He won’t . He will not let innocent children die in his hands.

Not when he is supposed to be their teacher!

“Sensei!”

Briefly, Toshinori looks up. 

Somehow, miraculously , young Iida rushes to him, his costume scraped up and his glasses chipped and cracked. But he is unharmed, save for a few scrapes, and alive .

“Bakugou, he - !”

“I know, but not now! I need your help, young Iida!”

The boy gets the message, and he joins Toshinori in tossing rubble and debris away. There are three still unaccounted for, buried somewhere inside the rubble.

Thankfully, with an extra pair of hands, the effort is now shared. And they quickly manage to find the second student.

Bakugou.

The one who deliberately ignored Toshinori’s order to stand down, the one who knowingly used a dangerous Support item within a confined space, and the one who caused the building to collapse in the first place.

He doesn’t appear too seriously injured, save for a couple of burns and minor cuts that are leaking blood on his face. However, while breathing and has a pulse, he is unconscious.

“Young Iida, get Bakugou out of here.”

“Yes, sensei!”

Iida quickly moves Bakugou, noticeably not being at all careful by the way he jostles the blonde about. Maybe he’ll get some flak about it later, but that isn’t Toshinori’s focus right now. There are two more.

More rubble and debris get tossed away, with Iida rejoining the effort once he sets Bakugou down. A minute or so later, something shifts in the rubble, and a piece of concrete pops off. A shadow-like being emerges, which Toshinori recognises as young Tokoyami’s quirk.

“Big hero, please help! Fumi’s hurt!”

“Where is he?” Toshinori asks.

“Just below me! Please, hurry! He’s not moving! And he’s bleeding!”

Toshinori and Iida work faster, though they take extra care to not jostle the rubble too much, lest they exacerbate young Tokoyami’s injuries, and perhaps even Midoriya.

Thankfully, after Toshinori lifts a concrete slab off, he finds them.

Young Midoriya is draped over Tokoyami, evidently trying to protect the shorter teen from the full brunt of the collapsing building. Tokoyami’s feathers are matted with blood, and his exposed leg is bent in unnatural angles. But it is Midoriya who appears to be the most injured, with an absolutely horrific gash on his forehead that is bleeding liberally , and his back also bleeding from serious cuts caused by falling debris. Additionally, his arms and right leg are definitely broken, whether from the fall of several floors or from debris currently unclear.

What is clear, though, is that both teens are alive. But unlike Bakugou, their breathing is much shallower, and both require urgent medical attention now.

“Young Iida, take Bakugou with you! I got young Midoriya and Tokoyami!”

“Yes, sir!”

The moment he saw the explosion go off, Aizawa’s world shattered .

He prayed, he hoped, he begged for history to not repeat itself.

And it did just that.

The building collapsed. He watched , frozen and unable to do anything , as the explosion caused the roof to cave in, and the floors beneath pancaked down on top of the other, until nothing remained but rubble and cloud of dust that blanketed the surrounding blocks.

The only saving grace, if it could really be called that, was that Iida was thrown out of the building by the explosion through a window, and used his engines to slow down his fall, thereby only getting a few scrapes and a damaged pair of spectacles that Aizawa knows can be easily replaced, given the teen’s insane collection of spectacles back home.

But three students remained inside the building when it collapsed. 

In truth, Aizawa didn’t care much about Bakugou. The explosive brat was the one who caused it all, deliberately ignoring All Might’s order to stand down and let rip the explosion that destroyed the entire building.

But in the few seconds before the live feed cuts out, Aizawa saw Midoriya ( Oboro ) throw himself over Tokoyami in an attempt to protect his classmate from the falling debris. Aizawa had his heart practically ripped out of his chest when he saw the all-too familiar cloud manifest over Midoriya’s hand, in a desperate bid to shield them both from the collapsing roof.

Only, it didn’t work.

A cloud can’t do anything against the entire weight of a building crashing down onto it.

No sooner had the live feed cut out, Aizawa was already flying out of the chair and racing to the door.

Only - 

“Aizawa-kun, stand down.”

He freezes.

Of course, he should’ve known.

He might not be a teacher anymore, but he is still on U.A. property, which means that the satanic rat has this room bugged to no end.

But - 

“Nezu, let me out! I need to - !”

“You can’t, Aizawa-kun.”

And to prove his point, the electronic lock on the door firmly clicks shut, effectively imprisoning Aizawa in the room.

Against his better judgement, Aizawa begins tugging and struggling against the door, even throwing himself against it in a hopeless attempt to force his way out.

“Nezu, you bastard, let me the fuck out - !”

“The students don’t know that you’re still here.”

At this, Aizawa goes still.

“They don’t know that you are still technically under my employ. As far as anyone knows, you have been kicked to the curb. If you rush out there, and the students somehow see you...”

Shakily, Aizawa’s hands drop limply from the door knob.

“All Might is already on the scene. And Iida-kun is helping him. If I’m not mistaken, they had just managed to dig the three boys out.”

He startles at this. 

“A-Are they - ?”

“All three are alive. However, Tokoyami and Midoriya are in serious condition. They are being taken to Recovery Girl right now.”

Aizawa’s knees give out from under him.

“Have faith that Recovery Girl will do whatever she can. And I will be monitoring the situation. I won’t let another young life end before his time.”

The intercom cuts out, and Aizawa hears no more.

In the ensuing silence, he can only curl into himself on the floor. He hears nothing but his own thundering heartbeat, and the growing hurricane of thoughts and emotions spinning inside his head.

He sees nothing but blurry shapes and colours, as tears begin to fall involuntarily from his sleep-deprived eyes. He can’t stop them, and he probably won’t . There is literally nothing else he can do but cry.

Logically, he knows why Nezu is doing this. He risks being thrown into a prison cell for real if anyone saw him outside. But he is already in a prison cell, one created by his own traitorous heart and mind, and there is nothing scarier and disorienting than the horrors that the emotional part of human intelligence can create when faced with such unbearable trauma and pain.

Aizawa is intelligent, but he squashed down his emotions in a misguided bid to never feel such horrendous agony again.

Now, though, the pain has returned with a furious vengeance, and Aizawa can only curl into himself deeper, as he is stuck, helpless, and unable to do anything.

To Be Continued.

Chapter Text

Nimbostratus clouds, along with bringing continuous bad weather, are so thick that not even a speck of sunlight can break through.

Two seconds.

Two seconds was all the time between All Might rushing out of the room, and for the live feeds to cut out, just as a distant explosion rattled the room.

Two seconds was all the time needed for the students to descend into bedlam.

Horrified, confused screams ring indiscriminately, as the students fretted aimlessly in a panic, shouting over one another in a vain attempt to make sense of what just happened.

Unlike their panicking classmates, Hitoshi and Denki are silent, paralysed with horror to make any sound. Hitoshi saw what Bakugou was going to do, and he tried to warn All Might about what was going to happen. And to the hero’s credit, he did order Bakugou to stand down, but not only did the bastard ignore said order, he then proceed to pull the pin, unleashing an apocalyptic flash of light, coinciding with the live feeds going dead, and the explosion going off in the distance.

It all happened too quickly, too fast for Hitoshi or Denki to see what happened. All they knew was that Izuku, and two of their classmates, were in the same room when Bakugou unleashed the explosion. Such an apocalyptic rush of force at such close range…

Denki finally makes a noise, a broken, anguished cry that seems to ring louder than the panicked noises of their classmates. His legs give out from underneath him, and had it not been for Hitoshi immediately grabbing him, Denki would’ve crumpled to the floor from the grief and horror rattling his very soul.

Hitoshi is no better, but he is able to keep some wits about him, “Denks, we need to go. We need to get out of here.”

Normally, such a move would be unwise, but this situation is far from normal. 

Despite being overcome with shock and grief, Denki is cognitive enough to nod. With Hitoshi fully supporting him, the pair leave the monitoring room as fast as they could, completely unseen by the rest of their panicking classmates.

There is only one destination in both of their minds. 

They know that All Might would do everything in his power to rescue Izuku and the others, and undoubtedly, they were going to be injured. An explosion of that magnitude? It would be a miracle if any of the people inside only come away with serious injuries at the very least .

Despite being on Ground Beta, and perhaps through sheer muscle memory alone, they make it back to the main campus and beeline towards the infirmary. A couple of students from other classes stare at them as they go, though thankfully none of them stopped to ask awkward questions, and simply parted ways for them to get through unhindered. 

By the time they reach the infirmary doors, both are out of breath and dizzy from a mix of sprinting and adrenaline. Before they could kick down the doors, though, they open, and All Might emerges.

“Y-Young Shinsou, young Kaminari, what are you both - ?”

“Izuku!” Denki cries, hysterical and delirious, “Where is he?! Is he alive?! Is he - ?!”

“Young Kaminari, calm down!” All Might tries to placate the blonde, though given Denki’s hysteria seems to be causing his words to devolve into even more sobs, it doesn’t seem to work.

“Listen, you dumb oaf!” Hitoshi is no better, “Is Izuku alive or not?! Answer the damn fucking question!”

Obviously, this sort of behaviour would’ve warranted detention at the very least. However, All Might knows full well that this reaction he is getting from both students is not from rudeness or a disregard for authority. 

No, he is not dealing with two students right now.

They are two grieving, panicked friends of one of the victims he pulled out of the rubble mere minutes before. Young Midoriya’s loved ones, if he will. Like how parents would react if their child was buried in a collapsed building, or a child if the opposite happened. 

And right now, All Might can’t, and shouldn’t, act like a teacher to them.

No. He needs to drop whatever pretence of a teacher he had been, and address them like a hero would.

He opens his mouth, but before he could so much as utter a word, the door to the infirmary slams open.

“What in the hell is all this noise?!”

Three pairs of eyes, one more frightened than the others, swivel towards the shrill, no-nonsense voice that came from below. 

Shuuzenji Chiyo, also known as Recovery Girl, glares up at them with an expectant look.

“I have three students in serious condition and you all are causing a racket outside!”

“Izuku, is he safe?!” Denki blurts out, desperate and manic.

Recovery Girl’s glare changes into one of questioning.

“They’re in shock, Chiyo,” All Might answers, “They’re worried for their friend.”

Which was a severe understatement, to say the least.

Understanding blossoms on Recovery Girl’s face. 

“Right,” she turns to both teens, “Midoriya suffered the worst injuries of the three, but he is alive, and stable.” Both boys promptly sag with relief, Denki even clasping his hands together and thanking every deity in the history of mankind, “He is currently unconscious, as a result of my quirk. Also,” the questioning look is back, “shouldn’t you be with your classmates?”

“They don’t matter,” Hitoshi immediately answers back, “Not when Izuku could very well be dead because of that fucking explosion bastard.”

Such language would’ve warranted a hit to the head with her cane, but Recovery Girl had been brought up to speed about what happened by All Might. And given the circumstances, she let it slide.

“I presume then, you two want to stay here until Midoriya wakes up or his parent takes him home?”

“Yes, please!” both boys nod at the same time.

Teenagers, she inwardly huffs. However, she does empathise with them for the harrowing situation they just went through, which honestly shouldn’t have happened in the first place. 

As Recovery Girl ushers both boys inside, she is already preparing her condolences for the coming death.

More specifically, Bakugou’s enrollment as a student of U.A..

Suffice to say, Midoriya Inko was not amused to receive news that her one and only son had been seriously injured in a class activity gone horribly wrong.

Never mind that she was in the midst of preparing for a criminal trial to represent her client, she sped down to U.A. as soon as that fateful phone call came in. Like a wraith hellbent on revenge, she stormed into the campus, black aura burning all over her petite frame. Any students she encountered immediately fled, terrified for their lives and not even daring to be in the same breathing space as her.

It had been one thing to learn that her son’s (former) homeroom teacher had seemingly attacked him out of nowhere, without reason or provocation, but U.A. had promised her that such incidents would never happen again. And then what happened? Her Izuku gets buried alive in another collapsed building, apparently caused by his former childhood friend , furthermore. 

Despite the fact that her son was pulled out alive and is currently stable, this was the second incident in two days, and Inko has had enough .

She kicks down the door to Principal Nezu’s office with enough force to rattle the entire room.

“Principal! What is the meaning of this?!”

The rodent himself is sitting at his desk, expression grim and stormy. Across from him, are two people whom Inko was once close to, but over the years, has drifted apart due to their considerable physical distance and busy lives.

“I-Inko.”

The green-haired demon that Inko has become spins on Mitsuki and Masaru, eyes glaring with an unholy fury. However, before she could lay waste to her former close friends, Nezu cuts right through, “Midoriya-san, please, have a seat. I understand your anger, with me and the Bakugous, but right now, we have an important matter to settle.”

“Yes, I am very much aware, Nezu,” Inko seethes, anger plummeting right down into a frigid iciness, “You both,” she gestures to both the principal and the Bakugous, “have plenty of explaining to do!”

The sterile air within the infirmary could’ve been stifling, and to be fair, Denki and Hitoshi feel sick, sitting by their comatose friend’s side, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest, and hearing the rhythmic beeps of the ECG monitor that he is hooked up to.

The only reason why they haven’t choked or suffocated under the oppressive tension is the other’s presence - they refused to let go of one another, seeking solace in physical touch, and the fact that Izuku is alive , badly injured, but alive, and most importantly, healing under Recovery Girl’s quirk.

So far, there hasn’t been any deterioration. While the ideal situation would be for Izuku to wake up, and laughingly joke off the entire debacle, as unrealistic as that sounds, Denki and Hitoshi take comfort in knowing that Izuku is still stable, which still bears hope for improvement, and hopefully, eventually waking up.

And so, they never moved, perhaps only to use the bathroom, but that was only once, and on Denki’s part. They held each other throughout it all, even as the final bell rang through the entire campus. They never moved even as Recovery Girl did her rounds, checking on the three comatose students, though she also never bothered them, letting them stay, so bless her. 

Heck, they will stay for as long as it takes, even as the sun sets and the night takes over. They will not leave, not until they see their friend open his eyes again.

“Trust me, Midoriya-san, I am just as outraged as you rightfully are,” Nezu says, tone polite but simmering just beneath the surface, “I made it my promise to you that Izuku would be kept safe, despite what happened with his former homeroom teacher. Now that this incident has happened, it is only right that you, as the victim’s mother, have sole discretion over what punishment should be meted out to Katsuki.”

Inko can feel both Mitsuki and Masaru’s eyes on her. Despite the room being as silent as a graveyard, she could practically hear their nonverbal pleas for mercy and forgiveness.

No. Too bad.

There will be no forgiveness or mercy. Not when Izuku, who did nothing wrong, suffered injuries twice within the span of two days. And unlike Aizawa’s apparent psychotic break, Katsuki held full responsibility for his actions. He consciously made the decision to destroy the building and injure Izuku and his classmates. And moreso, Katsuki’s behaviour spoke volumes of his parents’ failure to raise him properly. This was Mitsuki and Masaru’s fault, as much as their son's. 

“I want him expelled,” Inko says coldly, “Also, I want to press criminal charges against Katsuki. He should never have been allowed to roam freely to begin with, let alone any hero school.”

Mitsuki cries out in anguish, even as Nezu nods, “Very well. I will fill out the necessary paperwork, and inform the local police division to send personnel down.”

“Inko, p-please! You have to understand -”

“Oh, I do understand perfectly well, Bakugou-san,” Inko turns her ire on Mitsuki, “Because of your failure to raise your son to be a decent human being, my son, as another, were badly injured because his ego was bruised so badly that he decided to become the very thing he always said he wouldn’t! That is right, I’m calling your son a villain . He chose to unleash his quirk in that confined space, despite knowing the unchecked power the support equipment provided. He deliberately targeted my son and two innocent classmates, despite being told to stand down by his teacher, and now, he has to face the consequences. I don’t want to hear any more from either of you, and especially not my first name.”

It feels weird.

He knows he is alive, but at the same time, it feels like he is…

…dead.

But…maybe this is the afterlife? Did he die, and his soul has moved on?

He looks around. All he sees is an empty void, black as a starless night, but also filled with rolling clouds and mist, similar to the ones he can create, but unlike the blues that his clouds are made off, the rolling swirls are white, blank, and empty, just like the void.

If this is the afterlife…he wants out.

He doesn’t like it here. It’s completely empty and still. There is literally nothing.

He wants to go back. He has his mum, as well as Denki and Hitoshi. He wants to go back to being alive and with the people he loves!

He looks around for a way out, some kind of doorway that will take him back. But there is nothing, nothing but swirling clouds, mist, and - 

- himself.

He startles to a halt, freezing entirely. 

About two paces in front of him, stands a mirror-image of himself.

Or, rather, a desaturated mirror-image of himself. 

One that is dull, lifeless, and looking very much dead.

The cheeks are somewhat sunken, the hair falls limply over the head, and the eyes are hollow and empty. Not empty and bleeding as one might see in a horror movie, but just…lifeless…like nothing is there to indicate life.

In truth, he is getting increasingly unnerved.

What is going on?

“You can’t fucking do this! Unhand me now, fucking bastards!”

Inko watches, almost akin to a cold indifference, as Katsuki is shoved into a police cruiser by an officer with a cat mutation, all the while the boy rants and raves like a deranged lunatic.

Once the call has been made, Principal Nezu had made a big show of bringing Katsuki into his office, the boy escorted by a man whom the rodent introduced as Vlad King, the homeroom teacher of 1-B, and telling him, under no uncertain terms, that he is expelled from U.A. entirely, blacklisted from all hero schools in Japan, and as of that moment, the police are on their way down to arrest him, because Inko had decided to press criminal charges against him.

Inko took no pleasure in seeing all the colour drain from Katsuki’s face, before he attempted to lunge at Nezu, screaming profanities and threatening to blow his head off. It took Vlad King using his quirk to subdue Katsuki long enough for the police personnel to arrive. 

The charges were read out to him - assault with an intent to harm and kill, wilful discharge of a weapon despite knowing the life-threatening danger it posed, and destruction of property. The cat-headed officer slapped quirk-cancelling handcuffs onto Katsuki’s wrists, and hauled him out of the office. 

The only silver lining in the entire debacle was that Katsuki was led out of the campus through a secret elevator that bypassed the main hallways, preventing any students or staff from seeing him being manhandled out of the building. It also saved Mitsuki and Masaru the disgrace of having bystanders watch their son being hauled off by the police, looking like a rabid animal on its way to be euthanized. 

As soon as the door is slammed behind Katsuki, Masaru tries to speak to him, “Son, please, don’t make this anymore difficult for yourself. Keep your chin up.”

“Shut the fuck up, old man! You fucking did this! You -”

The window is rolled up, preventing those outside from hearing the rest of the boy’s rantings. The cruiser drives off, leaving Inko to watch things come to an end with a contemptuous sniff. 

“If that is all, Principal Nezu, I would like to see my son.”

“Most certainly, Midoriya-san. If you could follow me, I will take you to the infirmary. Meanwhile, Vlad King will escort the Bakugous out.”

“A-Are you…me?”

He tries to ask, talk, get the doppelgänger to tell him what is going on.

He is met with silence.

The mirror-image of himself just continues to stare at him, never speaking, or indicating that he heard him in the first place.

Then, without warning, he walks over to him.

Footsteps echo in the empty void, as the doppelgänger comes right up to him. They are the same height, he realises, their eyes meeting at level.

“W-What do you want from me?”

For a moment, he expected silence.

“Justice.”

He blinks. Did…did he just hear that?

“W-What?”

“Avenge me.”

Then, before he could clarify, or ask anything , the doppelgänger leans in, and presses his cold, chapped lips against his own.

The void, once black, then explodes in white.

To Be Continued.

Chapter Text

Altostratus clouds, while usually bringing about continuous rain or snow, are sometimes thin enough for sunlight to peek through.

“It’s not your fault, you know.”

Hitoshi never thought that he would face so many instances of emotional whiplash in the space of a few hours. 

When Izuku’s mother entered the infirmary, both he and Denki jumped to their feet, irrational fear surging through their nerves. Though to be fair, she looked like she had just come from raining hellfire upon some poor, unfortunate souls, so the fear wasn’t entirely irrational.

But still.

That said, their fear was quickly absolved. 

Izuku’s mother, introducing herself as Inko, sits by Denki’s side, giving them both a compassionate look that belies the storm of emotions under the surface, “You weren’t the one who collapsed the building. He is facing the consequences of his actions.”

“You mean…Bakugou -?”

“He’s been arrested,” Inko reveals, which comes as both a surprise, and not at the same time, to both boys, “He deliberately chose to unleash the explosion, despite knowing the damage it will cause.” She turns to meet their eyes, “He was no better than a villain.”

Perhaps, such blunt words would’ve been a huge slap to the face, but Hitoshi and Denki couldn’t help but feel wholly vindicated by it. Even though they were a considerable distance away, they still watched as Izuku was exposed to a massive explosion at close range . Honestly, it was a miracle that no one died .

Speaking of which…

“Midoriya-san…” Hitoshi speaks up, “are you going to pull Izuku out of U.A.?”

A flash of conflicting emotions races across Inko’s face. She sighs, “Honestly, I did think about it. My son…he’s been injured twice in two days. If I want to be generous, I can excuse his teacher because of the apparent psychotic break, but this?” Her eyes roam over Izuku’s unmoving form, “U.A. should’ve prevented this. What happened with Aizawa should’ve been all the warning they needed to ensure that nobody, not my son or his peers, would be hurt again in the future. And yet, my son…this was the second time he was buried in a collapsed building.”

Hitoshi pales, “This…isn’t the first time?”

“No,” Inko shakes her head wistfully, “the first time happened when he was four. We were visiting a shopping mall, when it suddenly collapsed on us. I…I was rescued, and so was Izuku. But it took several more hours to find him, and he was sent to a different hospital from the one where I was being treated. It was…harrowing, trying to find if he was alive or dead. Everyone wanted to know whether their loved ones were alive. I…I still dream about the noise, the shouting and crying, the desperation, from time to time. And Izuku…he made a full recovery, but it wasn’t easy for him either. He suffered nightmares, and…so many strange things happened since that day.”

“Like him suddenly blanking out into space and muttering about things that don’t make sense?” Denki suddenly says.

Hitoshi winces, instinctively reaching to smack the blonde over the head for being so tactless, but to their surprise again, Inko simply nods, “Yes. At first, I thought it was just because he had an imaginary friend. Loud Cloud was his name. But as he got older, as you mentioned, he had moments where he just spaced out, sometimes in mid-sentence, and other times, I found him muttering things that never made sense, especially involving some people named Shou and Zashi.”

Denki and Hitoshi share a glance, those two names don’t ring a bell to them either.

“I was worried that these occurrences were signs of something problematic, especially since Izuku suffered a head wound when the mall collapsed,” Inko continues, “But barring these occurrences, Izuku grew up healthy and, for the most part, happy. While he did have trouble making friends at first, he met the two of you,” Inko gives Hitoshi and Denki a smile, which while small, was no less grateful, “You both gave Izuku something to be even happier about. I can see how much you mean to my son, and he is to you both. And, in all honesty, you two are the only reason why I’ve decided that, despite what happened earlier, I won’t be pulling Izuku out of U.A.. Unless, of course, you two are willing to leave along with him.”

The teasing lilt at the end helps to relieve some of the tension in the room.

“Honestly? If he decides to go villain because of this, I will happily go along with him,” Hitoshi admits.

“You’ll just give the naysayers all the confirmation their biases needed,” Denki points out.

“They won’t matter if it’s Izuku. Plus, if he goes villain, there won’t be any naysayers left,” Hitoshi rebuts.

Denki blinks, before remembering, “Oh yeah, didn’t he, like, strike several bullies who were tormenting you with lightning?” 

To his side, Inko sighs.

“Yes, he did. It was beautiful,” Hitoshi grins.

Inko proceeds to facepalm from exasperation.

Then, as if on cue, Izuku stirs, and his eyelids snap open. With a loud gasp, he bolts up from the bed.

“Izuku!” Denki cries, all levity lost.

The ECG monitor promptly goes bananas, and Recovery Girl rushes to Izuku’s side. Hitoshi has to hold Denki back from leaping onto Izuku, so that Recovery Girl can assess the situation and do what needs to be done. Inko stands nervously by the side, watching Recovery Girl intently as she tries to calm Izuku down, who appears to be caught in a state of confused panic. It requires the need of a mild sedative, but Izuku eventually calms down enough for Recovery Girl to carry out a more thorough assessment. He answers all questions with either nods or shakes of the head, to which the medi-heroine eventually deems him stable enough for the time being. 

“If anything happens, regardless of how minor, notify me immediately,” Recovery Girl tells Inko and the two boys, before keeping away her clipboard and leaving them to have some privacy.

Hitoshi immediately reaches forward, “Izuku, are you okay?”

Izuku turns to meet the insomniac’s sleep-deprived, but very much alert eyes. He blinks, and then utters one word.

“Shou?”

The very air feels like it just splintered like glass.

“Holy shit, Shou! You cut your hair? And purple too?! Did you decide not to look like a hobo anymore?!” Izuku laughs in surprise, which just makes Hitoshi’s stunned expression even more stupefied. He then glances over at Denki, “Oh my god, Zashi! Trying out a new style? That looks real rockin’ too, by the way! And -” when his eyes turn to Inko, Izuku suddenly freezes, the excitement he had draining away like an opened sink, “W-Wait…no, t-this isn’t right…?” He swings back to Hitoshi, “Y-You’re not Shouta, b-but you look like him?”

“Err…what’s going on?” Denki asks quietly, though no one answers him.

Inko, looking decidedly haunted, gets to her feet and runs to get Recovery Girl.

“I-Is this an alternate universe?” Izuku, or at least, what physically looks like Izuku asks, “W-Was I hit by a quirk? How did this happen?” He turns to Hitoshi again, now increasingly panicked, “Mini-Shou, I-I can call you that, right? Do you know what happened? What happened while I was asleep? What do I need to do? What do I- ?!”

For the second time, the ECG monitor goes haywire. Thankfully, Recovery Girl returns with Inko and immediately jumps into action. Another sedative, stronger than the first, is administered, and Izuku promptly goes slack, and falls back onto the bed, the alarms from the monitor ceasing into an unsteady calm.

Only when the air itself feels breathable again, does anyone actually dare to exhale.

“W-What the fuck was that?” Hitoshi asks weakly.

To Be Continued.

Chapter Text

An Arcus cloud is a formation of low, horizontal clouds that appear as an accessory to a cumulonimbus cloud. Also known as roll or shelf clouds, such clouds are indicative of turbulent weather to come.

Those in the infirmary weren’t the only ones to witness Izuku’s bizarre and concerning behaviour upon regaining consciousness.

Within Nezu’s office, the mammal himself monitors the unfolding situation via closed-circuit cameras, something he rarely does, given the private nature of the infirmary and the adherence to patient confidentiality laws. However, given the unique circumstances of the situation, Nezu has activated the cameras within the infirmary to monitor what is going on, and he isn’t alone.

Yamada Hizashi and Aizawa Shouta are with him, the latter finally released from his unwilling confinement after it is deemed safe for him to emerge without being spotted. Both men are watching the recorded feed with extremely disturbed looks. Yamada is pale, his eyes blown wide. Aizawa is no better, looking inches away from actual death and noticeably trembling.

“W-What…the fuck?” Yamada curses, barely heard.

“I understand your concern,” Nezu remarks, the greatest understatement in that moment, “I have, in all honesty, never anticipated such a development before.”

Aizawa simply levels a disbelieving stare at the mammal.

“Yes, I know,” Nezu continues, beady eyes glimmering, “You don’t believe me, and I understand. You must be thinking, Aizawa-kun, that after all the bullshit I pulled off by allowing Midoriya-kun to enrol into U.A. despite bearing an uncanny resemblance to Shirakumo, I should’ve anticipated this. To tell you the truth, I did not. There was nothing that indicated that Midoriya-kun bore any connection to Shirakumo beyond that of his quirk and physical appearance. Now, though,” Nezu glances back at the screen, “it looks like we’re dealing with something far greater than any of us could imagine.”

Yamada wanted to call bullshit, he truly did. After all, how could Nezu not have anticipated this? Isn’t the sadistic rat arguably the smartest being in the entire world? How could, in all of his grand schemes and manipulations, not have foreseen this happening?

But the more Yamada thought about it, and the limited number of interactions he had with Midoriya (he had to stop himself from calling the little listener Oboro far too many times -), the more rational part of him reasoned that, despite looking too uncannily like his deceased friend, Midoriya had his own distinct personality, his own mannerisms. He can’t explain how Midoriya came to possess the same appearance traits as Oboro, but in essence, Midoriya was a distinctly different person.

So…how does anyone explain what he and Aizawa are watching right now?

“It’s…like Oboro is back, but in…?”

Nezu hums, “From what it looks like, Aizawa-kun, Midoriya is Shirakumo’s reincarnation.”

“But…isn’t reincarnation just spiritual talk with no basis in evidence?” Yamada asks shrilly, “Maybe it’s a result of a quirk accident?”

Nezu shakes his head, “There was no record of Midoriya being the victim of a quirk accident, not now, not before. The only accidents on record, if we’re talking about that,” both Yamada and Aizawa wince, “is the collapse of the building he and his classmates were in on Ground Beta, and a little more than ten years ago, when the relatively new Musutafu Grand Plaza collapsed due to shoddy construction practices and corrupt management.”

“T-This…wasn’t the first?” Aizawa utters.

Nezu sighs, “Midoriya and his mother were in the building when it suddenly caved in on them. And while both were rescued, Midoriya apparently suffered a head wound, and according to the medical records that I obtained from the hospital where he was warded, there was apparently some confusion during the discharge process because, somehow, Midoriya’s hair and eye colour changed from green, which he inherited from his mother, to his current blue.”

Yamada has a pinched look, “It…as much as it sounds batshit insane, it…it makes sense. But…what do we do? How do we navigate this?”

“In truth, I’m not sure myself,” Nezu admits, though with an undercurrent of excitement that isn’t lost on both men, “As of now, the situation is developing. Midoriya is still in the infirmary under Chiyo’s observation. Furthermore, as per the agreement I made with Midoriya’s mother,” he glances momentarily at Aizawa, “Aizawa-kun cannot be seen with Midoriya, lest he face criminal charges. Also, I don’t think it will be wise for you to be in close proximity to Midoriya at this time too, Yamada-kun. It’s not ideal, I know, but Chiyo agreed to keep me updated on all developments in the coming hours and days. Whatever she relays to me, I will pass it on to you both, as well as Kayama, you have my promise on that.”

Recovery Girl gave him an extremely mild sedative that is supposed to prevent another panic attack from taking place. Regardless, it is all still very confusing.

There is a part of him that knows he is Izuku, Midoriya Izuku, whose mother’s name is Inko, and his best friends with Hitoshi and Denki. However, ever since waking up (the second time, after the second, stronger sedative wore off), there is an… unfamiliar part that…surfaced, for lack of a better word.

He knows he is Izuku, but he…also feels like someone else.

Someone by the name of Oboro.

It is so confusing, and so, so, terrifying .

Even as he lies on the bed in the infirmary, with Inko promising to return the next morning with a fresh change of clothes and all of the materials he needs for the day’s lessons, Izuku can’t sleep. He is too alert, too afraid , as he tries to make sense of what is happening to his mind. He knows he is Izuku, but Oboro feels, inexplicably, like him too. The memories, they blend together so closely that he can’t really tell whether they were his, or Oboro’s, or something else altogether. It disconcerts him to realise that he and Oboro share so many habits, like eating lunch on rooftops, saving cats from trees, zipping around on clouds - 

What is even happening? What is going to happen to him?

“Dearie?”

The privacy curtain around the bed is gently pulled aside. Recovery Girl peeks inside, “How are you feeling?”

Admittedly, he feels guilty. She should be at home by now, but because he is effectively warded here until tomorrow, Recovery Girl has to stay the night, periodically checking him, instead of getting a good night’s sleep. Yes, it is her job as a medical professional, but Recovery Girl isn’t young as her hero name states, and definitely not as young when he was - 

No, he stops himself, answer the question.

“I’m…okay? I guess? No pain, whatsoever.”

Recovery Girl nods, “That’s good, I’ll check back in later on.”

Before she pulls away from the curtain, though, Izuku quietly says, “Recovery Girl…I’m sorry. You’re unable to go home and rest because of me -”

“Dearie, don’t apologise,” she cuts him off, “I’m a medical practitioner. I am obligated to ensure that the wellbeing of my patients is maintained, and to intervene when things are going wrong. Your situation is unique, and is therefore important that I stay close by to ensure that your safety and wellbeing aren’t compromised in any way.”

It does help him relax a little, if anything.

“...you haven’t changed, after all these years.”

It is testament to Recovery Girl’s unparalleled professionalism that she doesn’t even comment on that unsetting remark. She simply nods, and asks, “Do you need something to help you sleep?”

“T-That…would be nice, yeah.”

The medi-heroine nods, and briefly leaves, returning with a small paper cup containing a liquid that smelled of elderberries. Izuku sips it, and slowly, he feels the hurricane of thoughts, inner voices and images dull down into an uneasy silence. He knows that this is only a temporary solution, but it’s already late, and he really wants to sleep.

So sleep he does.

Unfortunately, sleep remains elusive for two teenage boys in Saitama city.

After the harrowing events of the day, Denki had confided to Hitoshi that he didn’t want to be alone, as his parents were away on business trips. So after a few quick phone calls, Denki shows up at Hitoshi’s house with an overnight bag containing a fresh change of clothes and the materials he will need for the next day’s lessons. A spare futon is taken out from the wardrobe, and laid out next to Hitoshi’s bed. 

But despite the lights being turned off, Denki, and it seems Hitoshi as well, could not fall asleep.

“I wonder how Izuku is doing now…”

“I’d imagine that Recovery Girl gave him something to sleep.”

“Lucky bastard…”

…

…

…

“Hey, Toshi?”

“Hm?”

“What do you think is going to happen now?”

Hitoshi rolls over to face Denki.

“Like, we saw what happened when Izuku woke up. He…he clearly wasn’t himself. Or at least, not his entire self. I don’t want to talk smack about him or anything, but it was…really creepy.”

Hitoshi sighs, “He’s not here, and I also agree that I was unnerved by what we saw. Thing is, we don’t know what’s going to happen next. That’s why Izuku’s with Recovery Girl right now. If anything happens, she will know, and she’ll tell us.”

And he knows that for a fact. Hitoshi made the medi-heroine swear up and down that she would inform them of any changes or developments that happened during the night in exchange for them both leaving the infirmary and going home. 

Silence follows for several moments, or it could’ve been minutes or hours, neither of them know, and probably don’t want to know. 

“Hey, Toshi?”

“Yeah?”

“C-Can…” Denki swallows, as if bracing himself, “Can I share your bed?”

…

…

…

“Why?”

Denki takes the lack of disgust or incredulity as his cue to continue, “I…I want to be close to someone, like physically close. A-And I know it’s really weird, but I just feel like -”

“Sure.”

Denki cuts his rambling, and carefully slithers out of the futon. Hitoshi already had adjusted himself, although both teens know for a fact that the bed is far too small for them both. Regardless, Denki climbs into the available space, and Hitoshi pulls the blankets over them.

“You don’t have to explain, Denks,” Hitoshi says quietly, “This whole clusterfuck is beyond bizarre. And you don’t want to be alone, in any sense. I get it. So do I, really.”

“Ah…oh,” Denki mumbles, “T-Thanks…”

No further words are said. It takes considerably more time, but eventually, both boys finally drift off to sleep. Uneasy as their slumber will be, it is made a little more comforting by the fact that they have each other in close proximity.

Although, as Hitoshi’s father discovers when he comes in in the morning to wake them up for breakfast, such close proximity becomes practically nonexistent as both boys have snuggled into each other’s arms and warmth sometime during the night.

To Be Continued.

Chapter Text

Cumulus clouds, despite being associated with fair or stormy weather, are also known to be the type of clouds that form hurricanes.

Despite the confusing and terrifying events that took place, Izuku seems to be stabilising, at least emotionally. 

He still has issues where his train of thoughts and speech are disrupted when he abruptly shifts between… personalities , so to speak. 

And to make things clear, Recovery Girl did not diagnose Izuku with dissociative identity disorder. In fact, the term “personalities” doesn’t really shine an accurate light on the situation. 

For those in the know, primarily Nezu, Aizawa, Yamada, their friend Kayama and Recovery Girl, Izuku randomly switches between himself and Oboro, despite the latter being deceased for about 15 years at this point. No doubt, it is still very unnerving to witness Izuku, while under a controlled setting with Recovery Girl closely observing at all times, answering questions posed by Nezu about what he knows about Oboro’s life.

For Aizawa, Yamada and Kayama especially, it is heart-wrenching, disconcerting, and paradoxically nostalgic all at once, to watch Izuku recount about moments that, as Oboro’s friends when he was still alive, only they would know, other than the boy himself. To complicate things even more , Izuku talks about how he, as Midoriya , would also do similar things when he was younger. 

Nezu’s theory about Izuku being Oboro’s reincarnation, despite sounding completely outlandish and ludicrous, seems to be gaining more and more plausibility. The only other way Izuku could’ve revealed so much information that no outsider would’ve known was some sort of quirk accident, which was definitively ruled out long ago. Truly, they are faced with something that transcends even beyond the comprehension of humanity, and like it or not, they will have to deal with the situation as it evolves.

Because at the end of the day, Izuku is still a student of 1-A. Even as he grapples with his current identity as Midoriya and his apparent past life as Oboro, Izuku is still enrolled in the U.A. heroics course. Recovery Girl has deemed him physically fit enough to be discharged, and there is no basis for her to keep Izuku within the confines of the infirmary any longer. The only condition she did add is that should Izuku suddenly show signs of mental or emotional deterioration, he must stop whatever he is doing and be brought back to her immediately.

Which is how, despite the lingering tension and uncertainty hanging over their heads, Izuku is cleared to join his classmates in their trip to the Unforeseen Simulation Joint, or the USJ facility, for their lesson on search and rescue.

Whatever excitement Izuku might’ve had for this trip is tempered by his continued struggles between himself and Oboro. Thankfully, Kayama-sensei (and isn’t that strange, to call someone whom at least one part of him knows on a personal level, being just one year older when he was - nope, pulling the plug there!) informed his classmates about his situation, and instructed them, with the most uncharacteristic severity, to not bombard him with questions, lest they want to have detention for the rest of the year at least . 

Izuku was also informed that he would be observing the lesson, rather than taking part in it. Even though he was physically fine, Recovery Girl didn’t want to risk any unexpected accidents in such an uncertain environment. This isn’t like regular practical lessons in a controlled setting. Given the nature of the USJ facility, it was better to err on the side of caution. Kayama-sensei had been the one to tell him that, even though Izuku was more focused on the conflicted storm of emotions in her eyes.

Which is quite understandable really.

Throughout the bus ride to the USJ facility, Izuku is squished in between Hitoshi and Denki. He appreciates the gesture, even if he has to stop himself from calling them “mini-Shou” and “mini-Zashi” respectively. Not only would that arouse unwanted attention, but it would be incredibly awkward to address. 

Izuku sighs. He hopes that…whatever is going on inside his head sorts itself out soon. The moment where it all started, that creepy dream (at least, he thinks it is a dream) with the doppelganger, something about avenging him…whatever that meant. Nothing seemed to make sense, though he can sort of understand the whole reincarnation aspect. And if reincarnation truly is what is going on here, well…then there is little Izuku can do to make head or tail about it.

“You sure you’ll be okay?” Denki asks quietly.

“I…I’ll be fine,” Izuku replies, though his expression betrays his uncertainty, “I’ll just…stick to Snipe-sensei.”

(Snipe is a safe bet, he thinks. Unlike the…others, he doesn’t have an intrinsic connection with the masked gunslinger, not in this lifetime, or the -)

Thankfully, the bus coming to a stop jolts him before he could fall down that particular rabbit hole again.

The students alight, and are greeted by the Space Hero, Thirteen. They are led into the massive dome structure that is the USJ facility, and are introduced to the various landscape zones that simulate a variety of man-made and natural disasters. As Thirteen is talking, though, Izuku feels his stomach churn uncomfortably.

He doesn’t know why, but he just knows that something isn’t right. There’s something off in the air, and its - 

Overhead, the lights shatter one after the other, interrupting Thirteen’s speech.

“Is this part of the lesson?” Kirishima asks.

Izuku’s eyes are on the central plaza at the bottom of the stairs. The air warps and pulses, before tearing apart as a dark, swirling purple cloud manifests from nothing. The class collectively flinches, as a hand reaches out from the swirling purple cloud, followed by a body, and then more, and more, and more - 

“Thirteen!” Snipe yells, already whipping out his gun, “Get the students out! These are villains!”

Izuku is already spinning on his heels, as do his classmates. However, before they could reach the doors, they are suddenly blocked off by the same purple cloud. From the swirling dark mass, a pair of eyes appear, yellow in colour, and absolutely sinister.

“Greetings, children. We are the League of Villains.”

Izuku freezes, eyes wide with terror.

“I apologise for disrupting your lesson, but we are on a mission, to kill the Symbol of Peace, All Might.”

He can feel his breath get stuck inside his throat, as his classmates react with confused horror. Izuku, however, then has a second reason to be terrified, as the yellow eyes turn towards him. They stare intently at him, never appearing to blink, digging deep down into his very soul.

“How strange, you are quite the interesting character.”

It doesn’t take any effort for anyone to know that the warper, whoever they are, has their sights zeroed in on Izuku.

“Interesting, interesting indeed -”

The warper is suddenly interrupted by Kirishima lunging at them, quirk activated and ready to attack. It was a fool’s errand, though, as Kirishima simply disappeared into the swirling warp clouds and spat back out onto his classmates.

“My, you nearly caught me by surprise. Well, if you’re so desperate for a fight, little hero, you can fight our minions all you want. They are itching for a fight, after all, and will have a wonderful time killing you all.”

Before anyone could shout, let alone move, the swirling clouds surge towards the class. Izuku is engulfed, and suddenly, the floor beneath him vanishes. He falls through a void, for how long he doesn’t know. Darkness then gives way to light, and Izuku lands with a thud near what is the fountain.

He can hear the pinging of bullets ricocheting off the ground, and the shouts and cries of villains as they are cut down by Snipe’s gunfire. However, as the villains thin out and Snipe goes in pursuit of those who are fleeing, Izuku quickly realises that not only he is in the central plaza where the villains were first warped in, but he is mere metres away from the apparent ringleader, a gangly young man in desperate need of spa day and some kind of weird hand fetish, and a towering, hulking monster with a hideous beak and exposed brain.

“What’s this?” the ringleader rasps, his voice scratchy, but also a really misplaced child-like quality that just sounded so wrong on him, “Kurogiri, what did you bring me?”

Another warp cloud appears, and a man that seems entirely made up of smoke steps out, bearing the same yellow eyes and dressed in some kind of uniform that, perhaps, a waiter or bartender would wear. 

“Master Tomura, this child intrigues me. I do not know why, but he does.”

Izuku breaks out in cold sweat, as the ringleader, Tomura, turns his attention back towards him, “A child of interest, hm? Not just some random NPC? Hmm…what makes you so interesting then?”

Tomura reaches out to him, and entirely on instinct, Izuku scrambles backwards, right into the warper himself. By pure coincidence, his hand smacks into Kurogiri’s chest.

The warper suddenly seizes up, goes completely still, and without warning, crumples to the floor like a puppet cut from its strings. 

“W-What did you do?”

Izuku, equally confused himself, looks back towards Tomura.

“What did you do to my warper?!”

Tomura suddenly lunges at Izuku. He leaps away, barely dodging the ringleader by the slimmest of millimetres. Tomura crashes onto the ground in an undignified heap. Pushing himself up again, Tomura screams, “Noumu! Get that -!”

Izuku doesn’t wait, even for a moment. He doesn’t want to risk becoming whatever that…eldritch abomination’s target. Izuku conjures a thundercloud over Tomura, and without missing a beat, releases the strongest lightning bolt upon the ringleader.

Tomura screams in pure agony, so loud that it almost sounds like he is tearing his throat apart. His entire body jerks and spasms, as a lethal voltage of electricity ravages his bodily systems beyond any point of returning. Burnt black and smouldering, Tomura’s corpse crumples to the ground. For good measure, Izuku unleashes two more lightning bolts on the body to be absolutely certain that the villain would not ever get back up again. 

Heaving hard, Izuku turns back to the eldritch monster, the “noumu”, as it was apparently called. It is just…standing there, like some hideous statue. It is breathing, but it isn’t moving, no indication that it is going to attack him.

After a few moments, reasonably convinced that he is in no immediate danger, Izuku then registers the smell of burnt flesh, and has to fight the urge to gag. He doesn’t regret it, he would’ve died if he let the villain, or the noumu, get to him. But he now totally understands why some people say that the smell of burnt human flesh was so horrible that one would never forget it for the rest of their lives. 

Forcibly stopping his reflex from gagging again, Izuku tears his attention away from the charred corpse towards the warper, who has, until now, remained on the ground, not moving. Izuku goes over to Kurogiri, crouching down to get a better look. Perhaps, against his better judgement and all reasonable course of action, he reaches out, and his fingers brush against the warper’s chest -

There is a sudden flash. Izuku thinks he gasps, before all goes black.

Hizashi thought the day couldn’t get any more surreal.

Make no mistake, there was the whole shebang that was Midoriya being - … Oboro’s reincarnation, and while Hizashi has never been the religious type, it seemed like the only theory to hold any kind of plausible water. How else could anyone explain how uncannily similar Midoriya looks with Oboro?

He, Shouta and Nemuri are still trying, in any way they can, to wrap their heads around all of this, when suddenly, a code 5 alarm blares across the school.

Immediately, all thoughts about Oboro dropped from his mind. A code 5 alarm is the severest of all alarms in U.A.’s security protocol, even more dire than the code 3 alarm tripped by the press when they broke into the campus the day before. It means that U.A. is being attacked by hostile forces, by villains .

Hizashi’s worst fears were proven true when a harried and terrified little Ingenium burst through the door of the staff offices, having apparently run all the way from the USJ facility itself, to warn about the villains that had invaded.

Hizashi and Nemuri immediately spring into action, gathering with all of the available staff and rushing back to the USJ facility with the little Iida as fast as they could. All kinds of nightmare scenarios played on loop inside Hizashi’s imagination, absolute destruction, traumatised little listeners, his fellow colleagues Thirteen and Snipe laying injured or dead, even worse, the listeners themselves injured or dead - 

The iconic dome of the USJ facility couldn’t come fast enough. Hizashi, leading the charge, practically kicks the doors down, shouting, “Everyone, fear not! We’re here - !”

He could never have foreseen the sight that lay before him.

Across the central plaza below the stairs, several of the apparent attackers lay on the ground, moaning and crying in pain from gunshot wounds on their bodies. However, what caught Hizashi’s eye the most was, first, the towering abomination that looked like it had stepped out of some Lovecraftian horror story, second, the charred corpse not far away that was still smouldering , and then - 

For a moment, a very long moment, Hizashi thought he was dreaming. He pinched himself, three times . Seeing as he was not jolting up from his bed, he rubs his eyes, thinking he must be hallucinating, seeing something that isn’t really there. Maybe it was an effect from one of the villains’ quirks? 

Because…how else could anything else explain there being two Oboros? 

To Be Continued.

Chapter Text

Cirrostratus clouds have a thin, sheet-like appearance and cover the entire sky. Made up of ice crystals, they are known to create haloes of light that appear white or in the colours of the rainbow.

He finds himself in the void again.

The empty blackness, and the white, rolling clouds and mist, it is the exact same one. He remembers the last time he was here. When he was caught in the collapsing building, and he met his doppelganger. 

It was the start of the sequence of events that led to the villain attack at the USJ facility. He remembers killing the ringleader, and then blacking out when he touched the warper. He has no idea what is happening beyond the void right now, but at this moment, there is one thing he could do.

“Hello?” he calls out into the void, “Are you here?”

For a few moments, all he hears is silence. 

“I’m here.”

He spins around, and comes face-to-face with his doppelganger. 

Unlike last time, his doppelganger now looks healthier. Sure, he is still desaturated and nothing like how a healthy, alive human being would look like, but he notes the doppelganger’s cheeks are no longer sunken, his hair less dead and his eyes, for lack of a better word, are brighter. Especially, given the halo of light surrounding the doppelganger. 

If he wanted to be cheesy, he would describe his doppelganger as some kind of angel, minus the wings.

“Hey, you look…better.”

“I am. And it’s thanks to you, Midoriya.”

“I’m glad I could help,” he nods, “although…I’m not sure how I did it.”

“You don’t need to know, Midoriya. It would just drive you insane. All you need to know is that you did it, you have avenged me.”

He nods, “So…um…what happens now? I’m still alive, right?”

“Yes,” the doppelganger nods, “In due time, you will wake up again. But before you do, there are a few things you need to know.”

“Which is?”

“You may have avenged me, but the one responsible for all of this is still at large. He won’t be too happy, knowing that two of his most successful projects have been eliminated from the equation. He will come for you. You need to be prepared.”

“Who is this person?”

“I don’t know his real name, but as Kurogiri, I served him under the moniker he chose for himself, All For One.”

“Right…” he nods, “What else do I need to know?”

For the first time, his doppelganger shows a different emotion, one that looks incredibly close to guilt, “My death has caused untold pain for my loved ones, Shou and Zashi especially. When you wake up, tell them…I’m sorry. Tell them that Oboro is sorry for causing them so much suffering and heartbreak. Please, help me convey my apology, because I won’t be able to do so myself.”

Remembering how the days leading up the attack on the USJ facility were a confusing mess of emotions and more importantly, memories, he nods. 

“I promise. So…is this the last time I’ll see you?”

“Yes. I have been avenged, so there is no reason for me to linger around anymore.”

“Then, what about me? Will I still have your memories?”

His doppelganger nods, “Yes, because while you are Midoriya Izuku, you were Shirakumo Oboro in the lifetime before, even if that life was tragically cut short. In a way, your life will be a continuation of the one I never got to live. We share the same dream, but it will be you who will become a hero, and form a hero agency with your two best friends.”

“I…I get it. Thank you, and I promise to tell Shou and Zashi everything, and I promise to be the hero you should have been.”

“I know you will. Thank you as well, Midoriya.”

His doppelganger, Oboro, comes to him, and wraps his arms around him in a hug. At least, he thinks, while returning the embrace, Oboro didn’t kiss him this time. 

While it certainly isn’t the same as a kiss in the waking world, he’d rather have his first, actual kiss with the people he loves.

The void around them shifts and pulses. The clouds and mist rise around them, blanketing everything in an endless sheet of white. He feels himself fading away, the same with Oboro.

Then, he knows nothing else.

Such a scene has become uncomfortably familiar.

Hitoshi and Denki, after emerging from the clusterfuck that was villains attacking the USJ facility, find themselves back in the infirmary, sitting by Izuku’s bedside, as their closest friend lies unconscious and motionless on the bed. He is still breathing, but that only provides so much solace to the pair that the third of their trio is still alive. 

Sometime after, Izuku’s mother had been called down. It isn’t lost on either Hitoshi or Denki that the woman must be thinking that all of this must be some kind of sick cosmic joke - the third time in less than a week where she has to be called down to U.A. because of an incident involving her son. Once might be happenstance, twice a coincidence, but thrice? 

At the very least, Inko hasn’t shown any indication that she is about to pull Izuku out of U.A.., but the thought isn’t lost on either Hitoshi or Denki.

Regardless, what happened to Izuku doesn’t stop her from subjecting both teens to her motherly concern, “Are you both alright? Did you suffer any injuries?”

“No, ma’am,” Denki shakes his head, “Actually, the whole attack seemed…slapdash, for lack of a better word.”

“The vast majority of the “villains”,” Hitoshi uses air quotes while speaking in the most sarcastic way possible, “were no better than thugs. Cannon fodder, if I want to be more honest.”

“I’m glad,” Inko nods, before sighing. She turns to her son, who is still unconscious, “How many more times will my son have to suffer because of the actions of others?”

“Well…if I want to play devil’s advocate, Midoriya-san,” Denki says, “I don’t think U.A. or Principal Nezu could’ve anticipated the villains to have a warper within their ranks.”

Inko sighs, “Yes, I suppose so. But, I guess a mother’s worry for her son easily overrides any logic or reasoning.”

“That’s understandable too,” Hitoshi agrees, “Izuku…he’s one unlucky son of a gun, isn’t he?”

Inko doesn’t reply, though she can’t help the sardonic grin that comes from Hitoshi’s quip.

Suddenly, without warning, Izuku’s eyes snap open, and he bolts up with a gasp.

“Izuku!” Denki cries, all but ready to leap onto his friend, if not for Hitoshi immediately grabbing him by the collar and holding him back. Having heard the ensuing commotion, Recovery Girl rushes over and assesses the situation. Inko and Hitoshi immediately step back, the latter dragging Denki along with him. They are worried, yet hopeful. But they won’t get any answers if they impede on the medi-heroine’s work. They simply stood back, watching silently as Recovery Girl checked Izuku’s vitals, and asked him several questions to assess his current cognitive status. When all seemed to come back clear, Recovery Girl nods, and with a firm reminder to Izuku to immediately call for her if anything feels off, she releases him to the frantic questioning of his loved ones.

“Izuku, are you okay?”

“Does it hurt anywhere?”

“Oh, my baby, you worried me so much, you know?”

Izuku weathered the worrying and coddling without a word. Eventually, though, he speaks up, “Mum, can you…um…can you get Present Mic and Aizawa here?”

Inko blinks, “Sorry?”

“There’s…something they should know. It is really, really important. Please?”

Both Hitoshi and Denki know that Aizawa is a contentious issue for Inko, even with the knowledge that the man hadn’t attacked Izuku, whether for no reason or out of malice. That said, the pleading look Izuku levelled on her eventually makes her acquiesce. 

Inko talks to Recovery Girl about Izuku’s request, who passes it on to Nezu. Ten minutes pass, and the infirmary door opens, heralding their arrival. The air takes on a slightly tense heaviness when Present Mic and Aizawa make their presence known, accompanied by Nezu, arguably the only one who even looks remotely excited about the current situation. Present Mic and Aizawa certainly don’t share in their boss’s anticipation, if the flashes of grief and pain in their eyes are any indication.

“You called for us, little listener?” Present Mic says, breaking the silence. Hitoshi and Denki note that the voice hero had to force himself to greet Izuku with that nickname.

“Yes. There’s something you all need to know,” Izuku swallows, as if bracing himself, “Oboro says that he’s sorry.”

Just that one sentence causes ice to race through the veins of everyone present, with the exception of Nezu, whose fur pringles with surprised static.

“W-What?”

“Principal Nezu was right. I…was Oboro. In my past life, I was Shirakumo Oboro.” Seeing that Present Mic, and Aizawa, were not going to speak, let alone interrupt him, Izuku continues, “I…I had suspicions for some time, but when I was knocked out during the battle trials, I…met Oboro. Or rather, Oboro’s…memory? He came to me, telling me to avenge him. I…I think there was some inner conflict or overlap between his memory and mine, but when the villains attacked the USJ…”

He explains what Oboro told him while he was unconscious. Both Present Mic and Aizawa rapidly pale, so much so for the latter that his unhealthy eyebags came into even starker relief. Even Nezu has lost his excitement and is now looking rather grim.

“...he never wanted to cause so much pain, for anyone, especially you, Aizawa-san,” Izuku says, “He didn’t want to see you lose yourself more and more every passing day since his death. And…maybe it doesn’t help much, since I still look like him, but because I managed to avenge Oboro, I believe he is at peace now. And…he would want for you to be so as well, Aizawa-san, and you too, Yamada-sensei.”

Silence takes over. Hitoshi and Denki turn to the two men, anticipating their reactions. Present Mic is utterly speechless, reduced to producing unintelligible sounds. Aizawa, on the other hand…

“Uh…are those tears?”

Those who really know the insomniac hobo that is Aizawa Shouta, if they had no context on what just happened, would’ve wondered if the world was coming to a violent, apocalyptic end. The no-nonsense, hardass underground hero has tears dripping from his eyes, and he makes no move to stop them, or brush it off with some lame excuse. 

Then, his knees give out, and he falls to the floor by the foot of Izuku’s bed. Clutching the metal frame, Aizawa trembles helplessly, his face buried in his free hand.

“I’m sorry…” he chokes out, voice scratchy with heavy emotion, “I should’ve saved you. I’m sorry.”

“You can’t change the past, Aizawa-san,” Izuku replies quietly, “At least Oboro is at rest now. Do not feel burdened by what happened. He wouldn’t want that of you.”

His words may not mean much, but at least Aizawa isn’t apologising anymore. His tears continue to fall, punctuated by more broken weeps. Present Mic holds him tightly, still silent but unwavering. Hitoshi, Denki and Inko merely watch, themselves not saying anything.

Truly, no words can be said in such a moment.

That is, until said moment is broken by something else entirely.

A gasp is choked inside Denki’s throat, “Izuku, your hair…”

To Be Continued.