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“This feels… ill advised.” Julia stared up at the world’s weirdest high school the morning of the entrance exam.
“See, you say that, but then you say something like ‘ill advised’ instead of ‘a bad idea’ in a language you’ve only been learning for a few years.” Izuku, rapidly scrawling quirk analysis of any visible quirk around them, wasn’t impressed with his sister’s foreboding tone. He knew that wasn’t what she was actually worried about, but he also knew she didn’t need to be as worried as she was.
“But-” Julia glanced around at the hundreds of teens brushing past them through UA’s front gate. The gates themselves were made of massive, ornate wrought iron connected to two square, red brick columns. At the moment they were huddled up on the opposite side of one of those columns against the bars of the next section of wrought iron fence so that Izuku could spy on people’s quirks while they waited for their friend. Unlike Julia, he was actually participating in the hero course practical and he wanted to develop his plan day of when he had a better idea of what he was working with.
With so many witnesses, Julia couldn’t say what she wanted to say- UA was the most infamous school on the planet and people got weird about the students who made it in, even if they weren’t in the hero course. The authorities in America never figured out she was behind the assassination of a healthcare CEO just a few years prior, but she was always worried someone would.
The only reason she’d even made it out of the country was because Izuku, on the run from his own issues, happened to be standing there at the right place at the right time and was able to save her escape plan when things went awry. The only reason she was applying to UA at the same time as him was because she was essentially ‘held back’ a year so she could learn Japanese and get therapy. Yay, the wonders of homeschooling and being adopted into a family close to Nedzu. She wasn’t the only one thinking of the rat.
“You trust Nedzu, right? It’ll be fine.” Izuku still wasn’t concerned about it. The chimera could probably take over the world if he wanted, and he wouldn’t hesitate if the world decided to come for anyone he considered pack.
“Trust is a… strong word.” Julia muttered, sinking back into the bars when a large boy with a tale was pushed into her space by the crowd. He turned and apologized despite it not being technically his fault, which was nice of him.
Nedzu weirded her out, but not because he was a chimera. In her opinion, Japan had gotten used to him and his antics. The rest of the world just wanted to know how he got away with putting his students in danger the way he did. Like, sure, he produced amazing heroes, but at what cost? Izuku and their parents seemed content to be under the umbrella of the principal’s dubious safety, but she wasn’t convinced. She’d watched the sports festivals and heard Izuku ramble about his personal lessons with the rat- she hadn’t decided whether under Nedzu’s protection was actually safe.
“He only does that to the hero students, remember?” Izuku finally looked up from his notebook when Julia started fidgeting nervously. “He promised you’re safe, even from him, and he always keeps his promises. And even if someone did recognize you, they’d have to go through him and our dads to get to you, not to mention through me. You’re fine.”
“Are you two talking about your mysterious pasts again?” Hitoshi, the friend they were waiting for, finally slid into the slight gap between the flood of students and the gate on Julia’s other side. They’d met when Hizashi, their papa, got them enrolled in local clubs for ‘proper socialization’.
Izuku’d started taking classes at a local reputable dojo and met Hitoshi, another hero hopeful trying to train his body since his quirk was mostly mental. Julia started attending craft nights at an indie store recommended by their Aunt Nemuri, which both Izuku and Hitoshi both quickly joined her at. Hitoshi even let her ramble about her large collection of house plants, including the locked greenhouse Shouta and Higari built for her that held her most precious collection- her poisonous plants.
“No.” She lied, like a liar, but it was all in good fun. Hitoshi had never once tried to pry, just accepted them as they were. It was one of the things she liked most about him, that and his acerbic sense of humor. They didn’t pry into his previous shitty foster situations either, though Izuku had offered to sic Nedzu on them. Multiple times. He was protective of the people he’d adopted, Julia had noticed. Hitoshi always turned him down though. She peered closer at her friend’s deeper than normal eye bags. “Did you sleep, like at all?”
“No.” Hitoshi sighed dramatically, only brightening when Izuku produced a canned coffee drink out of nowhere for him. Julia was pretty sure he had a secret void quirk despite his quirkless diagnosis. She was also pretty sure he hadn’t noticed his crush on Hitoshi, or the fact Hitoshi reciprocated it. It was adorable.
“I’m sure you’ll be fine.” The greenette told him as the crowd of students finally started to thin out. “Papa’s quizzed us all so much you could probably take the written exam in your sleep and the practical isn’t until after lunch.”
“Hm, maybe.” Hitoshi popped the top of his shiny new coffee and promptly drank half of it in one go before giving a (dramatic) blissful sigh. “I think we should start heading in now, they’re probably going to close the doors soon.”
They didn’t sit together for the written exam. Izuku and Julia were with the home school students while Hitoshi was up with the Somei kids, and Izuku and Julia had been sat on separate sides of the home school section to boot.
Izuku had his own specific test created for him personally by Nedzu himself. Julia was still a little too cautious to be a proper shit-stirrer the way literally everyone she knew in Japan was, but she still thought it would’ve been funny if the tests got messed up and some random poor soul ended up with Izuku’s test instead. It would’ve been fine- Snipe was proctoring the exam, he would’ve noticed almost immediately when they started freaking out.
Extra-difficult test aside, Izuku was still one of the first to finish. Julia wasn’t too far behind him; she wasn’t on Izuku’s level, but she was pretty sharp herself. It helped that she got permission to have the exam in English, her native language. UA had a lot of international students apply, there was a precedent for that already in place. She knew for a fact there was at least one exam written in French somewhere in there.
Hitoshi, true to Izuku’s words, wasn’t too far behind her. They quickly got set up in a corner of the cafeteria to wait for lunch and watch as the rest of the students finished their exams. Izuku’s notebook made another appearance with many, many pages scribbled down even since that morning.
“If you have a photographic memory, why do you need the notebooks?” Hitoshi asked. “I’ve always wondered that.”
“It’s how he processes.”
“It’s how I process.” Julia and Izuku, respectively, answered at the same time. Hitoshi, much more awake now, made a face.
“It’s creepy when you two do things in tandem.” He muttered.
“My memory is just my memory.” Izuku explained in further detail, pen tapping against the table as he stared across the cafeteria. “It’s not actual analysis. The notebook is analysis.”
“What are you staring at?” Julia was sitting across from her brother and turning around to figure it out would be too obvious, but there were angled mirrors around the top of the room. Ostensibly they were to help the teachers keep an eye on all the rowdy (insane) teens, but anyone who was smart enough to look up could use them. The issue was there was only a handful of other students that’d finished the exam and they were all keeping to themselves. Julia couldn’t figure out who was making Izuku react like that.
“It’s nothing.” The sigh her brother gave as he turned to a fresh page wasn’t convincing.
“Nope, you’re not getting away that easy.” She pointed at him accusingly. “That was your Thinking Face. Spit it out.”
“What is it with you and your insistence with naming all my faces.” Izuku muttered.
“What is it with you avoiding answering my questions?” She didn’t let up.
“I’m sure it’s fine, Nedzu wouldn’t let him in if he was still an ass.” the greenette finally gave in. “Or if he did, he’d make sure he’s in dad’s class so dad could expel or keep an eye on him. One of my former bullies is on the other side of the room.”
“Which one?” Julia finally demanded, narrowed eyes returning to the mirror over Izuku’s head as she tried to figure out which one looked like a bully. The kid with the tail from earlier was the only one she recognized, but he didn’t seem the type. “Is it the spiky one?”
She referred to a spiky, blonde haired boy who was sitting by himself, glowering down at the table. He seemed like the most likely bet, but she would’ve expected a bully to have an entourage of people hyping him up. They might’ve just not finished the exam yet, though.
“Yeah.” Izuku sighed. “But I’m not concerned about him, not anymore. Don’t worry about it.”
“Are you sure your quirk is plant related?” Hitoshi peered at her. Her ability to just pick things up that she had no business knowing was almost uncanny. Emphasis on almost- Hitoshi was mostly joking. She was a Yamazawa, they were all just Like That.
“We’re sure.” The siblings answered at the same time again.
“If you can’t keep up, that’s your problem.” Julia, only somewhat flippantly, joked back.
“Sometimes I wonder why I put up with you two.” Hitoshi sighed.
“We teach you all sorts of fun things you’d have never known otherwise.” She informed him brightly. “It’s a feature of our friendship, not a bug.”
“Sometimes I wonder if you know what the difference is.” Hitoshi paraphrased himself, knowing full well the entire time that he did, in fact, appreciate the random, sometimes delightfully terrifying facts the pair randomly dropped like it was nothing.
Izuku meant it when he said he wasn’t concerned about Bakugo. If he was still a bully, he’d be dealt with accordingly when it was time. If he’d learned from his previous behavior and changed his ways, Izuku was opposed to letting him have a second chance. Eraserdad had given his former vigilante ass far more than a second chance and his sister legitimately shot a man, second chances were how their family rolled.
Besides, he knew how to deescalate it now if Bakugo tried to start shit with him and if it still came to actual violence, well. Bakugo had no idea he’d been holding back for years before his parents pulled him from the awful Aldera school system post-adoption.
Hizashi wasn’t allowed to proctor the written exam because two of his kids were taking it, but he was allowed to explain the practical exam. Only one of his kids was in the room that time, Julia had gone up to the observation room to watch the test with Shouta and any staff that weren’t keeping an eye on the gyms.
Izuku was now practically vibrating with excitement- he’d only been allowed to patrol a handful of times post-adoption, this was the closest he’d gotten in ages. Bonus points- robots could be fixed. He didn’t have to hold back against them. The only thing Izuku resented about the practical was that it only lasted ten minutes; he wanted to play for longer than that.
(Or at least that’s what he wanted people to think. He had... different plans.)
“Present Mic Sir!” a booming voice sounded from a few rows back, jerking Izuku from his thoughts. He turned around to see Tenya, the little brother of one of Shouta and Hizashi’s friends, chopping his arms up and down. “The testing booklet shows four types of robots but you’ve only covered three! Surely a school such as UA wouldn’t make such a mistake! And you-” he pointed at Izuku, who raised an eyebrow back at him- “have been mumbling the entire time! Hero work is serious business! If you can’t take it seriously, you need to leave!”
Izuku’d only met Tenya a couple of times because he lived with his older brother Tensei up in Tokyo, but he’d always been a sticker for the rules. It caused a few issues between him and the Yamazawa siblings, who took rules as more of… suggestions, to be weighed and either respected or discarded as necessary. Izuku tried not to hold it against the other boy; Tenya had always been a certain level of socially awkward, Izuku didn’t think he had a lot of friends to learn proper interaction with. That or he was giving the guy too much grace and he had no friends because he was just a prick. Tensei was pretty down to earth and charming, though, so that didn’t make much sense either.
Although in the moment, the fact Tenya’d stood up despite the social awkwardness impressed Izuku. At least he had the gumption to stick to his ideals.
“Okay, okay, Listener #112!” Present Mic interrupted the boy’s rant, drawing all eyes away from Izuku. “Let’s leave the other applicants alone, you dig? And there’s been no mistake, I just hadn’t gotten to the last robot yet! This guy’s worth zero points, really only released to be a distraction from the other robots. Not really worth worrying your little heads about. Now, unless anyone has any questions, your information packets have your assigned testing site numbers and the busses are waiting outside to take you there. They leave in fifteen minutes, so be sure not to miss them! C'mon everyone, lets goooo,” the hero paused a beat, probably hoping but ultimately failing to gain support for the infamous rallying cry, “PLUS ULTRA!!!”
He ‘plus ultra’d’ alone. Izuku would’ve felt bad, but his papa had thick enough skin to not let that get to him.
…
Izuku and Hitoshi were split up into different gyms, which wasn’t a surprise. Izuku and Bakugo did end up on the same bus, but Bakugo didn’t say anything to him, probably because he was at the front of the bus and Izuku was at the back. Izuku wasn’t sure the other boy even realized he was there at all.
Izuku kept an eye on him. They’d grown up together, but that didn’t mean much after Bakugo got his quirk and Izuku just. Didn’t. That’s when Bakugo’s bullying nature started to emerge, spurred on by Aldera’s ‘powerful quirks are best’ mindset. He started with Izuku but quickly moved on to anyone he thought was too weak.
He’d kept to himself through UA’s provided lunch for all test takers, regardless of what course they were interested in. Izuku hadn’t been able to tell right away whether that was because he’d changed his ways since Izuku last saw him, or because his minions weren’t able to even sit for UA’s intense entrance exam. The answer was clear now- it was the latter. Bakugo immediately started picking on a tall, quiet boy who’s face looked like it was made of stone.
Izuku almost stood up to intervene despite the moving bus, but the bus stopped moving before he could. The gyms were close enough that they could’ve walked; the busses were only so they could keep the middle schoolers corralled while they were on campus for the exams.
“Go, Go, Go!” Present Mic called out of nowhere, jumping up above the front gate to the gym as it opened. Izuku didn’t hesitate, he just booked it inside. They only had ten minutes for the exam, which meant he only had ten minutes for his gamble. It was worth it though- if anyone could pull this off, it was him, and it very Plus Ultra of someone to begin with. He thought he heard an angry ‘what the hell, nerd’ behind him, but he was no longer paying attention to that.
The medium sized army of robots trundled along in plain sight down the street from the gate, but Izuku wasn’t paying that much attention to them either. He immediately hung a right, darting along the outer wall of the miniature city.
Not enough students actually read all the info on the entrance exam publicly posted to UA’s website; Izuku had heard all the staff bemoaning that at some point or another over the last year. He was already going to read it all anyways, he wasn’t stupid, but when that many teachers- including Lunch Rush- complained about it, it was too pointed to be anything but a subtle nudge. Turns out, there were a lot of ways to earn points on the practical exam, not just hero points by taking down robots.
A decent amount of people knew about the rescue points, if anything they were considered an open secret. Fewer knew about the other kinds of points, like espionage, strategy, and informational. They were harder points to actually score given the short time-frame of the practical, but most of the subsets of pro careers had some form of representation in the exam.
There was also one auto-pass option, but the few who actually found it just thought it was a joke. If, before the exam was over, you could successfully sneak your way into the observation box most of the staff watched the exams from without getting noticed, you not only had guaranteed access to any course you wanted, you had the option of choosing your homeroom teachers.
Not only did Izuku want the greater challenge (it was very plus ultra of him), he was certain Nedzu expected more of him than just going after robots. Plus he wanted to be in his dad’s class- with the way the rules were set up, this was the only way that would happen. Otherwise he’d have to be put in Kan’s class, and Kan was fine enough, but that’s not what Izuku wanted.
The two minute bell rang as he finally found the access panel he was looking for in the outer wall, seconds later Izuku was inside the access tunnels built around and under the entire mini-city. Step one of his plan was completed, now he was onto step two.
…
“Am I allowed to un-recommend a student?” Julia stared down at the essay she was ‘pre-grading’ for the staff. She wasn’t really doing much (if she’d taken up Nedzu’s offer of being his personal student that might be different), she just found herself curious about the essays the hero hopefuls had to write. Nedzu, infamously unconcerned with nepotism, was fine with her reading them whether or not she was actually being helpful. “Like, how likely am I to actually be listened to if I point out how creepy this guy is?”
“Let me see.” Nemuri reached over for the essay- written by a Mineta Minoru, that Julia was holding by the corner like the paper itself was disgusting. Julia passed it over, shuddering when she finally let go of it and wiping her hands on her slacks (she and Izuku had dressed up for the exam despite being home schooled). She wanted to take a shower just from reading the first few paragraphs.
Shouta reached an arm around her shoulders, rubbing her opposite arm. She leaned into his solid warmth, already feeling better. She hadn’t been sure about him from the beginning- they’d all been strangers and he’d been high from pain killers after getting shot- but she trusted him implicitly now. It wasn’t that he and Hizashi replaced the first set of parents that she’d lost, she’d always love them, but they’d joined Jerry and Fiona’s ranks as Good Parents.
Julia was pretty sure her mom and dad would be happy she’d ended up with them, as absurd as the whole chain of events that landed her here was.
“Oh yeah, no. He’s not getting in.” Nemuri also only needed to read a few paragraphs before handing the essay over to Nedzu to take care of. “That might be one of the worst essays I’ve ever seen, both in grammar and content.”
“I wanna see.” Oboro, the other of their dads’ best friends on staff, leaned forward to snag the paper. He almost immediately put it back, shuddering. “Nope, never mind, I’m good actually.”
Julia was done reading essays after that, once burned twice shy and all. Besides, it was more entertaining watching the teachers dissect the practical in real time. It was also entertaining just watching all the teens go wild against robots- her favorite moment was when Hitoshi stopped a pink girl, who immediately and happily melted off the top third of a stop sign for him. The purple with a stop sign bat (racket?) was simply delightful, plus he got strategy points to boot.
“Did I make it in time for the zero pointer?” Izuku asked, suddenly sitting on Shouta’s other side. At least three teachers were startled enough to curse loudly (he didn’t get any screams though, which was disappointing), including Oboro. In Oboro’s defense, Izuku dropped out of a vent practically into his lap. He was allowed to have a bigger reaction.
“You’re right on time.” Nedzu assured him, reaching out the switch for the greenette to push. “Would you like to do the honors, Izuku?”
Izuku took the box, but he didn’t press the button. He passed it to Julia to do instead. They both watched with wide grins as the building sized robots were released, sending students scattering through every gym. Julia didn’t implicitly put all her faith in Nedzu the way the rest of her family did, but there were still times she really, really loved that rat.