Chapter Text
I took a deep breath and straightened my gray-and-green uniform for maybe the tenth time.
Ahead of me loomed the door to my future.
The door to my future, in this case, was an actual door, emblazoned with the characters 1-A. The looming was partly metaphorical, because of what the door represented, but also partly literal. Because the door was absolutely enormous, and I was very short. Apparently, even death and reincarnation weren’t enough to change that about me. In fact, I was even shorter now! How was that fair? I’d blame it on my bad karma, but… well, if karma were real, I would have reincarnated as a worm or something.
Madison Clements had been a monster, preying on the weak and the lonely for no reason except to prop up her own ego. Her attempt at redemption had been too little, too late; cut short before she could even really try. She didn’t deserve another chance at life. But she got one anyway, and I was going to make sure I didn’t waste it this time around.
I opened the door and stepped inside.
It seemed I was nearly the last to arrive, since nearly every desk was already occupied. I swept my eyes across the room, taking in my classmates. A boy with the head of a bird sat brooding in the back; a girl with pink skin and horns waved excitedly as I looked her way; a boy somehow even shorter than me with hair like purple Jell-O openly leered at me.
It had been a shock when I’d first realized that this world was made up of over 80% parahumans–or rather, people with Quirks, as they called them here. People we might have called monster capes on Bet or Gimel were just an everyday sight. Having powers… it had been the kind of thing kids dreamed about, back in my old life–at least until you dug up the dark secret of how you really got them–but here it was simply a matter of what you were going to do with yours.
At one of the seats nearest to the door, a tall guy with black hair and shiny glasses was engaged in a heated argument with a blond who had his feet kicked up on the desk. When he noticed me, the glasses-wearer broke away from their fight.
“Welcome! My name is Tenya Ida,” he said stiffly.
“Oh, uh… Misaki Kuremoto,” I replied, holding out a hand to shake.
An awkward moment of silence later, he grabbed my hand, shook it exactly once, and then turned around to start shouting at the delinquent again.
Taking a couple seconds to recalibrate after that weird encounter, I double-checked the slip of paper I’d tucked into my pocket and headed for my assigned seat between a boy with spiky red hair and a big guy with noticeably thick lips.
Not long afterwards, the final two students in the class arrived, a green-haired boy who immediately got caught in a conversation with Ida and a brunette girl who quickly joined in.
“Ahem.”
Simultaneously, the heads of the entire class swiveled towards the doorway, where an imposing figure stood over the excitable group.
My eyes just about popped out of my skull at what I saw.
The newcomer was as tall as I was short. She was dressed in an armoured bodysuit, dyed in shades of gray, white, and electric blue, with a matching mantle and sash. Long, curly black hair spilled down her back. A pair of blue lenses stared out from an insectoid mask. A mechanical prosthesis replaced her right arm from mid-bicep down.
“Please take your seats,” she said in a hauntingly familiar voice, and the three kids still standing scrambled to their desks. Apparently satisfied, she stepped through the door, closed it behind her, and took her place at the front of the class.
“Welcome, everyone, to class 1-A of the U.A. High School Hero Course,” she said. Her Japanese was good, but I still noticed an American accent. “I am the pro hero Weaver, or Taylor Hebert.”
I stifled a gasp.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you all. I will be standing in for Eraserhead as your homeroom teacher for the foreseeable future.”
With that, she carefully pulled her mask off and donned a pair of glasses from a pouch on her costume. The large eyes, the wide mouth… it was really her. Older, maybe, and sporting a faded circular scar on her forehead, but unmistakably the same Taylor Hebert that I–that Madison–had once known. My mind whirled. How could she possibly have come here? It couldn’t have been the same way as I had, since I’d reincarnated as an entirely different person with only some similar traits to my previous life, while she was clearly the same.
“I’ve never fuckin’ heard of you,” scoffed the blond boy who’d put his feet up earlier. I nearly gave myself whiplash with how fast I turned to look at him. Even putting aside my current existential crisis, who talked like that to a teacher?!
“Language, Mr. Bakugo,” Taylor (or should I call her Ms. Hebert?) said, though she received only an eye roll in response. “And for the record, I normally teach at a hero school in America. But I owed some favours to certain members of the faculty here at U.A., so when Eraserhead had to take a leave of absence, they called me in as a replacement.”
Bakugo grunted, and after a brief moment to make sure she wouldn’t be interrupted again, our teacher began to go over some introductory topics, which I mostly tuned out in favour of just… watching her. I was practically enthralled, and judging by what I could make out off the stream of fast-paced muttering coming from the green-haired kid, I wasn’t the only one. The pure confidence in every motion, the broad smiles, the unrestrained chuckles when she made a little joke… it was hard to believe she was the same sad, withdrawn girl I’d tormented at Winslow, a lifetime ago. Was this who she’d really been, beneath that? Was this what we’d destroyed to create the warlord Skitter?
That thought sat heavy in my gut.
“Alright,” Ms. Hebert announced, and my attention snapped back to the present. “With that out of the way… My predecessor had something of a tradition for his first days, and while I don’t agree with his exact methods, I think there was a nugget of a good idea in there. With that in mind, I have some gym clothes here. Come get a set, then go get changed. We’ll meet at the P.E. grounds.”
She smirked.
“Bring your A-games.”