The UA LARPing club

"I-It's just been my dream since I was little," Midoriya stuttered, "And I won't know unless I try..."

I was like this: a familiar scene in the back of a classroom. One Bakugo Katsuki, very unhappy with the announcement that Izuku Midoriya was planning on trying on getting into UA.

"Whaddaya mean unless you try?! You're quirkless! Don't try and stand on the same level as me!"  Bakugou sneered back, palms sparking, "Don't think you can try and be a hero, you useless Deku!"

Izuku had been on this end of the conversation plenty of times and as his eyes drifted over Kaachan's shoulder to look at the teacher ignoring the commotion and straightening papers he knew that this time would end the same way as always: with a few new burn marks and bruises to hide from his mom.

Bakugou leaned in closer, "The only one going to UA from this damn school is me ."

Izuku jumped as Kaachan punched his hand into the wall next to his head. He knew what came next and he just really wasn't feeling it today.

"I'm only taking the test!" The words spilled out, "I'll give up once they fail me!"

"You'd better!" Bakugo laughed and the class laughed behind him -- Izuku acknowledging that he couldn't make it seemed to be enough to assuage him, for now.

The rest of class went by in a blur, partially because it actually was, since Izuku was blinking through tears the whole time. After class, he took a long moment to stare down at his hands. It wasn't as though he hadn’t thought about it before, but saying it out loud really made it feel more real.

He knew, realistically, that his chances of getting into UA's hero course were slim to none. Even general studies would be a stretch, considering it was one of the top schools in the nation. He really probably wouldn't make it, but some part of him couldn't stomach giving up either.

Bakugou slammed his hand down on Midoriya's desk, the loud pop jolting him out of his thoughts.

"See you at the entrance exam, Deku," he taunted.

Izuku gave a sigh of relief as Bakugou turned to leave. He'd made a fool of himself enough today that Kaachan didn't seem to feel the need to antagonize him further. He would take what he could get.

That day he walked home slowly, deep in thought; as if the day wasn't bad enough, when he got there he found out that All Might had subdued a villain only two blocks away. And he'd missed him!

His mom, always worried for him, asked if he was okay at dinner, and Izuku swallowed the lump in his throat and said in a weak voice, "Actually I've been thinking. Will you help me look at some backup schools after dinner?"

He didn’t miss the moment of sheer relief that she tried to hide, "Of course dear, I'd be happy to."

When Izuku got home from taking the UA entrance exam, the first thing he did was run to his room, lock the door, and slide to the ground with a sob.

He hadn't managed to take out a single robot.

Oh, the academic portion had been fine. Easier than he was expecting even, but he didn't score a single point in the practical portion - the only robot he had managed to even get near was the Zero-pointer, and that was because he was frozen in fear for so long that it came towards him.  The only good he had managed to do was help the girl he had bumped into before the start of the exam towards the gate once it was all over.

She seemed nice. He hoped she’d made it.

He choked down sobs for the better part of two hours before pulling himself into bed, fully exhausted. Mom had told him dinner was in the fridge if he got hungry, but she didn't sound too hopeful and Izuku knew he wouldn't be able to stomach much of anything right then anyways. He sniffled and curled into a ball, willing himself to fall asleep. Miserable as he was, he was also exhausted… And it wasn't as though he hadn't expected this. He just had to get over himself.

(And thank god for small mercies, Bakugo saw the dead look in his eyes the next day, got bored fast with Izuku’s non reactions and more or less left him alone. Sneering at him that he'd failed didn't do anything to him. He already knew that.)

He had been buzzing with anxiety ever since the exams.

They had gone bad. He knew that. But maybe, just maybe, he had done so well on the written exam they would let him in anyways? Or another person named Izuku had gotten enough points to pass and the two of them would get mixed up--?

(No, no, he couldn't do that to someone else. But still, it wasn't impossible...)

He couldn't make himself totally give up hope for UA until he knew for sure. Though he was already steeling himself for disappointment on that front, his brain also kept telling him that he had somehow failed so badly that none of the schools he'd applied for would accept him. He would end up some kind of... Useless hero fanboy NEET, a stupid useless Deku -

But… He didn't know that for sure. He had to keep telling himself that. So, to distract himself, every time he had thoughts like that he would go out for a walk, and, more often than not, would end up hero chasing. That day he came home ecstatic, bursting through the door with a huge smile on his face.

"Mom, I saw All Might today!" he was already in "rant about heroes" mode, heedless of what waited for him inside, "I heard he had been sighted around the area a few times but I saw him today! He was super cool, there was this shark villain at a gas station. He took him out in just one punch! I- I didn't get close enough to get an autograph or anything but-"

His words slowed as he actually looked around for a moment, to see his mother at the kitchen counter with a pile of letters in front of her.

"That's really great, sweetie!" she said with a watery smile, "Um. You got some mail today."

Carefully, in both hands, she was holding an envelope, one that from all the way across the room Izuku could see had the UA logo on it. His good mood instantly plummeted but he tried to put on a smile. His mom already looked worried enough as it was.

"O-oh, that's great!"

He carefully shut the door and took off his shoes and walked to the kitchen, it all feeling unbearably slow. He didn't reach out to take the letter, but Inko set it in front of him ever so gently, like it was a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. And, well …

Izuku stared at it, pressure building in his throat and behind his eyes, dimly aware of his mom nervously fidgeting. He knew what it said. He knew. And that was exactly why he didn't want to open it.

"Um." He said, and he knew his voice sounded wobbly. He hated the way that it made his mom's face twist up. "Maybe we should wait until the ones from other schools get here before opening it? J-just so we can see all the options laid out."

He managed to keep his voice more or less steady, to his own surprise. His mother nodded, but looked down guiltily.

"Of course dear. That makes sense."

He smiled at her, and she'd known him long enough to not buy it, but she didn't say anything when he said, "I'm just going to go to my room. I have to write some stuff about that fight down!"

A lie, of course, and she knew it. He had the notebook with him, he had written everything already. She averted her eyes as he took the envelope with him into his room and closed the door.

Izuku was really tired of crying. Especially in front of his mom. And they both know what he'd just fled to do.

Like ripping off a bandage, he told himself over and over. If I get over this now I'll be that much happier when another school accepts me. If they even accept me-

He took a deep breath and tried to force his brain out of that spiral of thoughts. Just get this over with.

His hands were shaking as he peeled off the seal ( did they really use a real wax seal? Maybe it was someone's quirk..? ) and pulled out the folded sheet of paper. Already, his heart jumped. It was just one, single, thin sheet. Already not a good sign.

He stared at it for another long moment and let out a shaky breath. Just rip it off!

Izuku Midoriya,

We regret to inform you that you did not score in a high enough percentile to make it into UA's hero course-

Well, that was it, wasn't it? Izuku's vision blurred with the tears that he'd stupidly thought he'd be able to hold back. He had said that when he didn't make it into UA he would give up on his dream. He would never be a hero. He was so stupid to have ever thought he could be. So useless. A waste of everyone's time.

He sobbed, then caught himself and tried to keep It quiet. He didn't want his mom to worry any more than he knew she already was. He swiped at the tears in his eyes a few times to try and finish the letter. Would they tell him just how badly he had done?

-- However, your test scores in the academic portion were high enough for you to be placed in the General Education curriculum if you should so desire. If you wish to proceed with enrolling, you may contact the department of admissions with the information listed at the bottom of this sheet --

Izuku's eyes glazed over at the list of email addresses and phone numbers. His mind ran completely blank for a long minute.

What?

He hadn't gotten into the hero course but… He had gotten into UA? He had gotten into the school where All Might had studied. (And Midnight and Present Mic and Cementoss and --)

He had told himself that when he didn't get into UA he would give up on becoming a hero. But he had gotten in. Kind of.

What was he supposed to do with that?

The fact of that matter was that whether it was the hero course or not, UA was one of, if not the top school in the country. He would be a fool not to accept the offer to attend. That night his mom had cried (the good kind of crying, the happy kind) and hugged him and made him katsudon, and the next afternoon he was again walking onto UA's campus trying to hide the stars from his eyes and stay focused. He had gotten into UA. He’d be there as a student in less than a month, so he’d have plenty of time to marvel then.

Mostly, he was here to do paperwork - it looked like a few others were there doing the same, though most of them paid him only a glance as he walked in. And there, with a fold-out table and chair covered with stacks of papers and folders, was Present Mic with an easy-going grin. If he wasn't starry eyed before, Izuku certainly was now.

"Uh-um!" he started, "I'm here to do some paperwork for the General Education course."

"Course you are, little listener!" His voice, even without using his quirk, was loud enough that the others in the chairs around the edges of the room looked up, looking various levels of annoyed. "What's your name?"

"M-Midoriya Izuku!" The pro hero, kindly, didn't even react to his voice cracking.

Present Mic (The Present Mic!) nodded and rifled through the folders on the desk until he found the folder he wanted, scanned through it and then handed Izuku a stack of papers from inside, as well as a clipboard and pen.

"Just fill those out and get 'em back to me and you're golden!"

Izuku nodded and scurried off to find a chair. There wasn't much- a waiver saying he agreed to be in the General Education course rather than the Heroics one he had applied for, the sizes he would need for his uniform, the information he would want printed on his student ID. Over-thinker that he was, even that small amount took Izuku considerable consideration, and he was the last one in the room by the time he walked back over to the desk to hand it back. Present Mic accepted it with a nod and he was ready to bow and leave when he said,

"One more thing, little listener! We couldn't get records of your quirk from your old school. Mind filling us in?"

You didn’t have to officially register your quirk until you turned 18 because of the changes they could go through as a kid grew. Schools would keep records of quirks as a part of the student’s growth, too, but…

Izuku froze and he really really hoped that Present Mic didn't catch the look of panic that crossed over his face as he realized the question.

Oh. Oh no. If they were asking him about that, it meant that they cared about it. And that meant that when he said ' oh, I don't have one ' they would realize their mistake and revoke his chance to go to UA. And he couldn't give that up. Not now, not when it was the only thing he had left. So he had to say something and he had to say it quickly, but it had to be something invisible. Something that no one could actually prove he didn't have.

He bowed in the hopes that Present Mic wouldn't see his face.

"I'm sorry! My quirk is Luck Manipulation," he winced internally. That sounded way too cool and powerful to not be questioned. "It's impossible to prove so I've never had it formally registered!"

The silence afterwards stretched on for longer than was comfortable, and then Izuku heard the scratch of pen on paper. Did he realize? Was he going to be expelled before he could even start school?

"Alright!" said Present Mic, apparently unaffected by the awkward tension, "No need to apologize, just got to do my due diligence, ya know? Have a good day, little listener!"

Izuku nodded and then turned to make his way out of the building as quickly as he dared without looking suspicious.

Behind him, Hizashi Yamada looked back at the figure that had been slouching in the shadows of the doorway.

"That was pretty weird, huh Shou? You ready to go?"

"Yeah," said the man with a slight shrug, "Someone's probably gonna have to keep an eye on that one."

He had lied to the UA. He had lied about having a quirk.

They were going to kick him out. They were probably going to arrest him!

Izuku tried not to hyperventilate as he rode the train home. Luck Manipulation? Where had he come up with that? A quirk like that had the potential to be way too powerful to go unnoticed!

His mind was racing. Maybe it could be like one of those quirks that was too dangerous for him to use? Like... if someone had a quirk that let them control their bones, but couldn't mitigate the blood loss. Or they could summon lighting  to themselves but weren't immune to being electrocuted. Maybe it could only give people bad luck, or --

He jumped as the train intercom announced his stop.

Or, more likely, they would realize that he had lied and he would be kicked out of his dream school and put in prison.

But the weird thing was, the angry phone calls never came. The police or UA staff never showed up at his door to take him away. In fact, a package did, with his school uniform inside.

As he walked on to campus on the first day of school the main thought racing through his mind was they're not gonna let me get away with this…Are they?

Izuku looked around his new homeroom class nervously. There wasn't anyone that he recognized, which made sense, but it looked like maybe a few people knew each other because there were small pockets of excited conversation around the room. Maybe people were just being friendly? Should he try being friendly? It had never worked in middle school, but now he was with a group of people he'd never met before. High school was supposed to be a new beginning, right?

He slid into his desk and blinked around at his new classmates. The group sitting in front of him were already talking to each other, which left the boy sitting his left. He was probably taller than Izuku, and fairly lanky. His face was framed with purple hair almost even wilder than his own, and he was sitting with his arms crossed on his desk, staring impassively at the front of the classroom as he waited for their new homeroom teacher.

"Uhm. Hi!" he started, and the boy's eyes snapped over to him, face remaining expressionless. Ok, that was a little intimidating. Maybe he shouldn't have said anything, but now his mouth was moving faster than his brain. "My name is Midoriya Izuku, I hope--"

He was cut off by the door of the room being slammed open, and a short blond man in walked in. He wore a somewhat dressy shirt and tie, but the sleeves were rolled up to the elbows and nothing was tucked in. Everyone scattered back to their seats as he turned to the board and started writing out his name in large swipes. When he turned to face them Izuku could see that he had a wide grin of impossibly pointy teeth.

"I am Naoto Rei, which is to say Rei-sensei to you!" He wasn't yelling but his voice was high and drilling. "Some of you may know me as the retired Pro-Hero, Sharp Point, but that was probably before most of your times! Before you ask, I retired from heroics because I found it too stressful, and I do not react to stress well."

Izuku's mind raced. Sharp Point! It was true that he had retired before he had even reached middle school, so he hadn't really looked into him all that much but--

The purple-haired kid was side-eyeing him. Oh no, he hadn't been mumbling, hadn’t he? Already? What a horrible way to make a first impression. He made sure his mouth was clamped shut and tried to drag his mind back to the teacher.

"If you do your hardest you won't get any trouble from me, but if I catch you slacking, if I catch you struggling and not asking for help, that is where we're gonna run into issues. Now we're gonna go over the very tough coursework we have planned before you this semester, but before that, everyone stand up and introduce yourselves. Name and a fact about yourself."

Something inside Izuku relaxed a little at that. Usually at these sort of icebreakers people asked for name and quirk and he had always had to either awkwardly explain or let the lack of explanation be awkwardly passed over by everyone else. Still, most people did just use their quirk as their fact anyway.

"Tsutsutaka Agoyamato!" The first boy announced, "My quirk lets me grow my hair into different shapes!"

"Naito Kyo!" said the next girl, "I can make perfume from my skin. Any scent you want!"

Wow! That was kind of similar to Midnight's quirk, but depending on how it worked the applications could be endless. Could she control the chemical compound? Maybe it was just limited to ones that produced smells...?

He shook his head as he realized that while he had been thinking the introductions had gone on and he had missed some names.

"Chikuchi Togeike." There was a girl talking somewhere in front of him in a monotone, but he couldn't see her through the larger boy right in front of him. "I grew up by the sea so please be patient with me if I talk about missing it all the time."

"Saiki Dai!" boomed the large boy in front of him, "Contrary to popular belief my quirk actually makes me get smaller!"

Smaller? How much smaller? Was it his whole body or could he do individual parts, and if so, did it have to be proportional or-

He lost himself in thought, jolting out of it again when the purple-haired boy next to him bowed his head a little and said, "Shinso Hitoshi." He hesitated for a long moment. "I like cats."

Then the boy's eyes turned to him again and oh, god, he had to say something. "M-Midoriya Izuku!" He was probably being a little too loud. "My favorite Pro Hero is All Might!"

That didn't get the wave of snickers it would have if he had done the same thing in middle school. Maybe things really would be a little better here? His thoughts start drifting again, only to be brought back by another girl talking. She was short, enough so that Izuku had missed her before, and was standing on her desk-chair so that everyone could see her. Her skin and hair were a muddy sort of brown-pink, and there were little lines all up and down her hands and neck.

"My name is Kobayashi Mushiko! I can turn things into worms!" she announced proudly.

Huh? Worms ?

How on earth did a quirk like that work? Was it permanent, or-

He wasn't able to get out of that thought spiral until Rei-sensei had them all sit back down, passed out the syllabus and started talking through it. It looked as intense as he had made it sound, but it wasn't like UA was one of the top schools in the nation for nothing. Between all the introductions and that there wasn't much time left in homeroom before the the bell rang for lunch. Everyone started shifting around and gathering their things, and as they did the boy to Izuku's left (Shinso, wasn't it?) raised his hand. Their teacher raised one eyebrow and nodded for him to go ahead.

"It wasn't covered anywhere so I wanted to ask. If we do well enough this year, is it possible for us to transfer into the hero course?"

Rei-sensei raised an eyebrow.

"No."

At that flat response the energy in the room dropped to zero. Some people silently left, others packed their bags more angrily and stomped out the door. A few people didn’t move, slouching in their chairs or looking angrily down at their desks.

Izuku's heart dropped like a stone too. He told himself he had given up on that dream but here it was, taunting him again. He knew he couldn’t be a hero. He knew it. Why did he have to be so close?

He only didn’t start crying because his mind was racing ahead of him and telling him, Wait, no, this doesn't make any sense .

"What doesn't make any sense?" Shinso was looking at him and Izuku couldn't tell if he was annoyed or if that was just his normal expression. And, oh. He was mumbling. Better own up to it.

"It just doesn't make any sense to me that there's no possibility of transfer," he said, carefully looking at their teacher who was starting to reveal a dangerously pointy smile.

Rei said, "Why not?" in a tone that made Izuku worry that he's going to get expelled just for this.

"If there's no possibility of a transfer, then why wouldn't students who wanted to be heroes opt for another school instead? UA has really strict entry conditions, anyone who made it in could reasonably make it into the hero course of another school." It was something he had considered and discarded when he had gotten the letter. UA was All Might's Alma Mater after all, and he wasn't exactly a candidate for the hero course anywhere else, either.

There was a moment of silence that probably felt more tense to Izuku than it actually was.

"…He's right." agreed Shinso, voice as unreadable as his face.

And Rei's smile, somehow, got even wider.

"Yes! That is true! So congratulations on solving the first piece of the puzzle that is the UA course transfer process. The secret is that you have to want it badly enough! If you don't put in all your effort, mental and physical, into being a hero, then the hero course doesn't want you!" He settled back into his chair. "So if you decided to give up just because of me telling you 'no' once you're probably not fit for the course. Of course the five of you know the secret now. Wonder what you'll do with it?"

Izuku looked around the room. Who had stayed? There was him, Shinso, who was next to him, the punk looking Agoyamato, Kobayashi the worm girl, and, now that he could see her, the girl with the hair in a plain brown ponytail and a pensive expression, who must be Togeike. He swallowed hard, wondering if they would be friendly or see him as competition.

"By the way!" their teacher added, "No one who hangs around in my classroom when I'm eating lunch gets transfered!"

They jumped out of their seats at that.

His mind was abuzz the whole next day. 'Wanting it bad enough' was so vague, but on top of that he also spent a lot of time star-struck that a lot of their teachers were real live Pro Heros! He had known Present Mic had been there for paperwork, but to be taught by him-! It felt like between his first day and the next he hardly had any time to think about it at all. The thing to bring him back to awareness was at the start of homeroom, when Shinso came in and sat down, gave him an odd look and asked, "Do you always mumble like that?"

Izuku half covered his mouth with one hand, waving uselessly in the air with the other, feeling the heat flooding his face, "Uh- uh. No! I mean I hear that I do a lot but I don't mean to. I'm r-really sorry if it bothers you!"

Shinso just raised an eyebrow and said, "I don't care, but if you have something you need to say, do it so people can hear."

Izuku felt his throat tighten a bit, but the way Shinso had said it and the way he turned back to look sullenly at the notebook he had open on his desk made it seem like he really didn't care.

That day, when the bell rang to dismiss them, all five of them hung back back, all moving too slowly to be a coincidence. Izuku didn’t really know why he stayed, too (he knew why, he knew, it was just…).

When the room emptied out of everyone else each of them looked around, tense. It was like they were trying to pin each other down. There was no one new, like all of them had individually decided letting others know that there was a chance would only invite more competition.

"Uhm, Rei-sensei," said Kobayashi, standing up in her chair again, "What did you mean yesterday? Personally I want to be a hero really badly."

Their teacher just smiled with his shark teeth and shrugged.

The five of them turned to each other, eyes still wary. And then an idea struck Izuku, the dim little light of hope still in him flickered a little brighter, a little different. There's no way that he would be able to get into the hero course, but maybe… Maybe he could help someone else do it? Someone who actually deserved it. Someone who stood a chance.

Would that make him feel better or worse? He wasn't sure, but his mouth was already opening to speak.

"They probably want us to deal with whatever weaknesses we had at the entrance exam," he had to clear his throat when everyone turned to look at him, "And supplement whatever we're doing in class with the stuff the hero courses are doing. At the very least."

They all looked between each other for another long tense moment. Izuku wasn’t sure why he continued, but he did, "I-if I remember from when I registered, they have special heroics and rescue classes that other courses don’t get."

Almost mechanically he pulled out his notebook - not the one for class notes, but for hero analysis-to write it down. "I'm pretty sure they do combat training in addition to physical education," Why was he still talking! "And they probably teach like- hero ethics and stuff, since they do internships."

"…wouldn't they do quirk training, too?" said Togeike. Izuku nodded and only hesitated for a moment before adding it to the bottom of his list.

Somewhere in the bottom of his heart he'd already decided. He was going to help them do what he couldn’t.

"I know that you're all thinking that everyone else here is competition," he swallowed, "but really, you should be aiming to beat the hero course kids. I think, maybe, that we should help each other?"

Shinso was still giving him that weird look; Kobayashi slowly sat down in her chair and nodded. Agoyamato slumped down and crossed his arms, "How are we supposed to train our quirks if we're not in the hero course?"

Their teacher's smile had somehow pulled itself even wider. "UA is primarily a hero school. As long as you're on campus there are exceptions. Of course, I'll remind you again, no one hangs around is ever going to get a transfer."

They all stood and packed up their things in a hurry, Izuku included, but he paused to look up. It felt like everyone was actually considering him, but if they had too much time, maybe they wouldn't agree? They would see how stupid his idea was. So he swallowed, and then swallowed again and said, "Do you guys want to meet up after school? To talk about this more? Outside the gym maybe?"

One by one everyone looked at each other and nodded.

Izuku tried hard to focus that day, he really did, but he ended up sprinting to the gym right after class. He had picked a side door out of the way of traffic and while waiting for everyone else to show up his eyes found themselves wandering to the electronic pad secured next to the door. It was a screen that plainly displayed GYM SCHEDULE and a table of times.

He was so caught up reading it that he jumped and suppressed a squawk when someone tapped his shoulder. Togeike pulled her hand away and raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. Shinso was there too, looking bored, and he could see Agoyamato and Kobayashi making their way towards the group, slouching and with an excited wave respectively. He waved back a little nervously, and as they all came to a stop, a silence settled over them, everyone looking at each other, no one willing to say the first words.

"Well, I was hoping we'd be able to use the gym but it looks like we might be a little out of luck," Izuku tried. It didn’t really break the tension but everyone gathered closer to him to look over his shoulder.

If you wanted use of the gym outside of class you had to reserve a spot, and there was a priority on who got the chance: Clubs first, then hero course students (with priority given to those in higher years), and then everyone else. It was the second day of school and third years had already filled up most of the list; across the lawn Izuku was pretty sure he could see what must have been the UA basketball team heading in for practice. The time in which they were allowed to sign up didn't even start until tomorrow, and by then all the slots would surely be gone.

Kobayashi spoke first, cheeks puffed in what was probably anger, "Well what are we supposed to do! How is that very fair!"

"I don't think it's supposed to be," replied Shinso blandly.

But Izuku's mind had already started spinning with ideas since he had seen the schedule. He wasn't sure if it would work, if the people here would ever consider agreeing to it, but-

"We could try forming a club?" His voice rose at the end, and he winced a little when everyone shot him looks of disbelief.

Then Togeike who had been quietly glowering, hands shoved into pockets up until that point, said, "If that's what it takes to get in there, I'm game."

Slowly, the others nodded in agreement.

"It would have to be something that sounds kinda lame so others don’t want to join," Izuku swallowed, "And something that means we'd need the gym."

And everyone just … Stared at him again, as if he wasn't self-conscious enough about this whole situation. 

What if they didn’t want his help? What if they didn’t let him try?

And then Agoyamato said, "…Does UA have an ultimate frisbee team?" And everyone started talking all at once.

"I don't think so, but I think too many people would want to join that," said Togeike, "And we'd probably only be able to use the outside fields."

"I've heard that speed walking is a thing?" Kobayashi piped up to a collective round of shrugs.

"Kendo?" offered Shinso, but Izuku shook his head, because he'd just seen that UA already had a Kendo club that met on Thursdays. He lost track of the conversation as a very silly idea started to form in his mind. He was almost nervous to even suggest it, but-

"Um." He said, finding himself shocked when even that small noise made everyone look at him, "Please don't laugh, but what about LARPing?"

Their looks were, at least for the moment, those of confusion and not derision.

"You know, when people pretend to be vampires and wizards and stuff-" and the words started rushing out all over each other, because if he was going to embarrass himself he might as well go all the way, "I thought it would be fun when I was little until I found out that hero LARPing is uh- very frowned upon. But I think most people would think they're too cool to do it so we wouldn't have to worry about people joining. And- uh. We could probably get away with using whatever facility we wanted by saying we were doing different scenarios?"

His voice rose in panic at the end, he was so so sure that they'd all just start laughing and walking away. And well, Shinso did laugh, but it was short and sharp and after it he said, "Is it stupid of me to agree that it might work?"

And maybe Izuku was hoping for too much but it doesn't sound like he meant that in a mean way.

"I'm in!" cried Kobayashi, "I'm going to be a vampire!"

And everyone else laughed too, and again Izuku felt the tension leech out of his body. Somehow, some way, he was going to make this work.

"Well, if everyone agrees…?" A round of nods. "Then we should go get the forms from the office and start as soon as we can! There's no time to lose!"

And… Without prompting the group just started moving with him. If he wasn't so excited, Izuku would find the moment surreal, but in the moment he was already lost in thoughts of the sort of training he'd have to come up with for everyone to do. It seemed like everyone's level of physical fitness was… Varied, but lacking at best.

"Hey, actually," said Togeike as they walked, "Midoriya, right? What was your quirk? I don't remember you saying it on the first day, did you? Are you charming us right now or something?"

She said it with an easy smile, and Izuku went red at the compliment, because no, he was not, but then the whole question registered in his brain and he froze - he knew what he had planned to say, but-

"If I recall, you didn't say yours either." Shinso’s expression was still bored and blank but his tone bordered on sharp.

Togeike tilted her head and looked away like she was embarrassed, but in that moment Izuku was a little more focused on the barely perceptible nod Shinso gave him before looking away.

"It's just- It's kelp. I can make kelp come out of my fingers. I know it's not a very hero-like quirk, but-"

And Izuku's eyes lit up , "Kelp? What kind? How much? How long? It would probably be great for rescues at sea or-" He forced himself to shut up when he saw that Togeike just looked confused, "S-sorry I just, uh. I get excited about quirks."

She waved one hand around, "It's not a problem, I've just never really… thought about it before. It's just like… Kelp, you know? Should I be studying kelp?"

"Well, if it's your quirk and you want to be a hero, then… Probably?"

"I know all about worms!" supplied Kobayashi, and the conversation was suitably derailed away from that topic to that of worm anatomy until they made it to the main office. There, they found your standard shelf of various forms, and one, labeled for them all to see was "Club Registration".

Izuku pulled the paper out of its slot. "O-okay, it looks like they just need our names and-" he stopped. He'd never been in a club before so this particular problem with the plan hadn't really occurred to him, "A faculty sponsor."

"…Do you think Rei-sensei would do it?" Kobayashi chewed her lip.

"We'll probably have to ask around," said Agoyamato.

"Uh, actually, not to put a damper on things but… If I don't leave pretty soon I'm gonna miss my train," said Togeike, and Kobayashi jumped up with wide eyes and said, "Oh! Me too!"

And, really, Izuku didn't know why he did it; before he came to UA he never would have. Maybe it was just that all the success he'd had today had gone to his head, but he said, "We could exchange numbers? You know, so we can plan this out better."

And the lump in his throat didn’t go away when everyone nodded and pulled out their phones and after a brief exchange he started getting the notifications that he had gotten a text, which he'd only ever gotten from his mom since he gotten the thing. The last notification to come up, the one that he stared at said:

From: (Unknown Sender)

    It’s Kobayashi !! Please call me Mushi-chan because we are friends from now on!

He couldn’t stop himself from smiling.

Mushiko, Togeike, and Agoyamato all walked off, the former two offering at least somewhat friendly waves. After a long moment, Izuku started walking too, though slower, since he didn’t have to worry about his train for a little while.

Izuku's phone buzzed again and he looked at it in confusion.

From: Shinso

[Link]

This is the faculty list at UA. We should probably divide it up and ask everyone we can?

Since this is real weird and we dk who might say yes

Izuku opened the link and started scrolling through the list. UA had a lot of Pro Heroes as teachers who probably didn't have the time to run clubs, and of those that did he would have to guess that most of them were already tied up by official sports teams. They also, preferably, would like get a someone who would either support their secret training or who would be indifferent to it and not stop them-

"You're mumbling again" Izuku only barely suppressed a jump as Shinso tapped him on the shoulder. He had forgotten the other boy was there. "You do that a lot."

"S-sorry…"

"Didn't say it was a problem." Shinso raised an eyebrow. And… Kept... Walking with him?

"Uh- Shinso, p-please don't take this the wrong way please but do you… Need something?"

He felt like he must have said the wrong thing because Shinso's voice sounded a lot more tense when he said "I'm just… On my way home."

"Oh!" Izuku tried his hardest to bring up the mood, "I didn't see you on the train this morning!"

Shinso shook his head, "This isn't my usual line. I'd have to run right at the final bell to make that one."

"T-then… Maybe we could ride home together!" Oh, he hoped he wasn't overstepping-, "I mean, only if you want to, I mean, you don't have to-"

"It's fine" Shinso said it so bluntly, but Izuku thought he sees the other boy's lips quirk up in a tiny smile, which was a first.

Not that riding home together was some magical friend making experience. Instead the two stood next to each other and sent messages to their newly formed group-chat.

From: Shinso

We should probably split it up by department?

Hero, business, general, support, and then the rest of the faculty

Thatd be one group each

From: Mushi 

Ill take Business!

From: Togeike

I'll take gen-ed ig

From: Agoyamato

support guys might just sign off on whatever you put in front of em so ill go there

On the train Shinso and Izuku looked up from the conversation at each other. Of course, they both wanted to talk to the teachers in the hero course but it was an intimidating option. To Izuku the idea of him going up to someone like Present Mic again, or heavens forbid, All Might , and having to explain LARPing, or worse, that this was their plan to get transferred into their course sounded like it might kill him.

Izuku's phone buzzed.

From: Shinso

Ill take the hero department then

Izuku let out a tiny breath and nodded.

Sent:

I guess that leaves the rest to me!

He opened the faculty list again and scrolled down. Not that most of his list weren't heroes. This was going to be so embarrassing either way.

Izuku looked to his left where Shinso had slumped against the wall of the train, still looking at his phone but not doing anything to it. He craned his neck around to see that he was staring at the same text conversation he had just closed on his own.

"…Are you worried?"

Now it was Shinso's turn to jump at the question, looking at Izuku a little guiltily before sliding back down the wall.

"Sort of."

And Izuku smiled his bright sunshine smile at him and said, "I'm sure It'll be okay."

Before Izuku had time to ask anything further the intercom crackled to life, announcing his stop and he jumped up just in time to be sent stumbling forwards by the train braking. He righted himself after a moment and turned back to Shinso with his brightest smile and an enthusiastic wave.

"This is me! See you tomorrow Shinso-san!"

Izuku ran to the door and waved another time before running off. All Shinso seemed to be able to do to do in the face of that was hold up one hand in a vague response.

Izuku swallowed as he looked down at his list. Most of whom he had to ask for this were already crossed off- Lunch Rush had given him a thumbs down, Recovery Girl had told him that she wasn't available to act as a club sponsor. Actually that was the case with most of whom he had asked, which thankfully meant he hadn't actually had to explain the idea of the club to any of them. Until just now, that was.

Sent:

Hound-dog was a 'maybe'

Said he thought the uh

Roleplaying aspects sounded 'interesting' ?

From Agoyamato:

So hes gonna be nosy?

Sent:

Probably, yeah.

From Mushi:

Everyone in business was bust :(

Some 3rd years laughed at me!!

From Togeike:

Everyone ive found in gen ed is bad too

I think a big negative of having such high profile teachers is that theyre gonna be busy all the time lol

Sent:

I have one more person to ask but don’t get your hopes up

This was a bad idea and Izuku knew it. Realistically they wanted to not draw attention to what they were doing, since it seemed like if they did the faculty at UA would make things as difficult for them as possible.  Hence the club plan in the first place; if there was anyone in the entire school that Izuku knew of who would catch on to their plan then it would be who he was going to talk to right now. He took a winding route around campus, to the top floor of the admin building until he stood outside a door that he assumed most students prayed to never have to go to. There was a little plaque outside the door that read 'Principal Nezu' and no sign of a secretary in sight.

Izuku looked around. Was he supposed to go downstairs to schedule a meeting? That was the main reception area for all of UA, so it was possible, but normally a school principal would have --

He squeaked and froze up as the door in front of him swung open on its own. Was that meant for him? Was it motion activated? Should he go in, or...?

"Midoriya Izuku, come in, sit down!" says a voice from inside "I have some tea already brewed"

And oh no. The principal knew his name. That meant he was already in trouble, but now that he was here there was no way he could back out. With a gulp, Izuku forced his feet to move forward in a way that he hoped passed for 'normal, casual walking'.

Izuku had seen the principal at the orientation ceremony, listened to him talk about how great UA was, knew he was a little white-furred creature with a massive intelligence. He still wasn't really expecting to see him sitting at his desk, two cups of tea at the ready, paws folded and face with a smile. Izuku thankfully managed to make it to the plush couch across from the desk before his legs give out.

Principal Nezu slid one of the tea saucers towards him and Izuku gave him as polite a nod as he could before picking it up. Hopefully his hands wouldn't start shaking too badly.

There was a beat of silence while Izuku tried to gather his thoughts, where neither of them said anything, and then Nezu took his own cup of tea and said "So, Midoriya-kun , what can I help you with today? Is everything going alright in your studies?"

At his old middle school the best he could hope for from the principal was indifference but This? This friendliness just put him on edge, and gave him the distinct impression that the Principal wanted something from him.

"Uh actually I was, I mean we were-" Izuku's mouth went cotton. He took a sip of the tea, "It's going well so far. But actually, me and some of the students in my class are trying to form a club so we're looking for someone to sponsor us."

"Oh? Straight to the point!"  Izuku shivered, his homeroom teacher had a scary smile but it didn't make him feel as quite as hunted as the one Princial Nezu just gave him, "You know in all of my years of being the principal here I can't think of a single time anyone has asked me to sponsor their club? Could you tell me what sort of club it is?"

"Uh. LARPing sir." His voice cracked a bit. Yeah. This was a stupid idea "Live action roleplaying. It's-"

Nezu nodded sharply and Izuku cut his explanation short.

"It sounds quite interesting. I'd love to be your sponsor!"

"W-really?"

The principal nodded. Did he already know what LARPing was, or-

"Of course! That is, if you tell me what this club is really about." Ah. There it was. "Unless of course you want to tell me the story of how 5 students who have never met suddenly discovered they shared this new niche interest?"

Izuku felt a shiver travel up his spine.  What? How? Did he already know? Was this a test? Was he supposed to lie?

"Uh!" his voice cracked again and he very carefully set the tea he had been given back on Nezu's desk. It wasn't as though there was actually anything wrong about what they wanted, besides the lie, right?

"We. Want a chance to use the gym so that we can train to make it into the hero course!" His voice didn’t waver, thank goodness.

Nezu's whiskers twitched and Izuku felt like he wanted to vomit. The principal was so scary! He had been so nice just a moment ago!

"Well I'm not going to be one to deny the drive of my students! I'd be happy to sponsor your LARPing club!"

Huh.

Izuku stared for a long moment, and then startled and reached into his school bag and unfolding the paper with everyone's names on it. He slid it across the desk and Nezu nodded approvingly, scribbling down his name and oh god, did he just stamp it with a little pawprint?

The grin that the principal offered him as he slid the paper back felt a little less predatory and a little more mischievous. "Good luck to you and your friends! You're going to need it."

As scary as that send off was, Izuku stood up and bowed as deeply as he could without embarrassing himself.

"Thank you Nezu-sensei" he almost screamed. Then he took the paper and tried not to run out of the room as Nezu gave him a friendly wave.

The door shut on its own behind him, too.

In his office, the principal did a celebratory spin around in his chair.

Oh, kids. He couldn't wait to see what kind of chaos these ones would bring to campus. Plus Ultra and all that!

From Midoriya:

GUYS

From Mushiko:

Huh?

Sent:

?

From Midoriya:

I GOT OUR SPONSOR. PRINCIPAL NEZU IS IN!!!

From Agoyamato:

No way

From Togeike:

Huh. Wow?

So we should meet up right?

Sent:

The gym?

From Midoriya:

Omw!

Hitoshi was the first to arrive.

Truth be told he had been dragging his feet on talking to the teachers of the hero course, for reasons he hoped would be obvious if anyone asked. He had sort of tried, but in reality, he had taken one step into the Heroics building, seen a slouching Eraserhead talking to a boy with a bird head who must have been one of his students, and frozen in place with the sudden realization that he was going to have to talk to his childhood idol about something very embarrassing. He hadn't been able to move until the student had left and Eraserhead had looked up and fixed him with a tired dull stare that he knew meant 'I don't recognize you, what do you want .' Hitoshi had wound up turning on his heel and walking stiff-legged back outside the building to try and gather his nerves, telling himself that he could just… ask everyone else first, or something. That idea wasn't much easier to stomach and he wound up steeling his nerves for forty-five minutes until he had gotten the text from Midoriya that said he'd had success and was all too happy to walk away from the embarrassment he'd been stewing himself in.

Though, as he stood at the side entrance and stared past the well-manicured landscape he couldn't help his thoughts turning to other things. 

To be blunt, Hitoshi had no idea what to make of Midoriya Izuku. He was alarmingly friendly compared to what he was used to, and he wondered if maybe he really did have some kind of charming or charisma quirk. There had to be something to it, because Hitoshi had found himself fine, almost excited, to go along with him on what was, with real examination, a very ridiculous plan. And then Midoriya had gotten it to actually work, apparently, which was only more evidence against him.

But then, if he had a quirk like that he certainly didn't act like it: always getting flustered and stuttering when he was given even a little attention. Every time Hitoshi pointed out his mumbling - which happened way more often than Hitoshi had called him out for, even in the few days they had known each other - he would go red-faced and embarrassed. Maybe he was just a very good actor but something told him that wasn't right either.

In the end, he settled on something's up with Midoriya and a more tentative and I'm going to figure out what it is .

Agoyamato showed up next, seemed happy enough to just exchange a nod with Hitoshi and stand in silence - one that didn't last long as Mushiko arrived with Togeike trailing after her. The shorter girl was talking excitedly about how her parents had taken her to a cat café as a reward for her first day of class and Hitoshi had to clamp his mouth shut tight as she continued. They did not need to know that he knew the café Mushiko was talking about, and they certainly didn't need to know that he was familiar with the exact cat she was fawning over from his own frequent visits to the place.

There wasn't enough time for him to get roped into their conversation however, because Midoriya was running behind them, waving a paper in one hand and panting as though he had run all the way here. He didn't wait for a greeting and instead proudly held out the paper for everyone to see; Hitoshi found himself crowding closer to confirm that yes, that was the Principal of UA's signature on the bottom of the page, pawprint and all.

Oh, and there was another mystery about Midoriya - how he managed to smile so much, so big, without his face hurting constantly.  It was a little concerning, but if this was what he had to deal with to use the gym, well it could be worse.

Togeike was still leaning over, squinting at the paper like she wasn't sure it was real.

"…Does this mean that our club room is the principal's office?" She asked slowly.

"Oh, we should nominate a club president!" Mushiko's hand shot up in front of Togeike's face.

"Uh!" Midoriya's huge smile was quickly replaced with a more nervous one. "Well, I think as a club we're too small for that, but as for a club room we shouldn't need one right? This is all to use the gym. Actually…"

The boy paused and looked down at the ground, "Actually you guys need to know that to get this I told principal Nezu the, uh.. The truth? About what we're doing?"

Midoriya cringed away like they were all going to attack him but the only real emotion that Hitoshi felt was confusion.

"He knows we're lying? And he's fine with it?"

"Y-yeah! He m-made me tell him everything and then just signed off on it anyways?"

There was a long moment of silence at that, and then Agoyamato said, "Well… Good then? Right? That means he's letting us try."

Midoriya visibly relaxed as everyone else murmured in agreement; was that something he should be suspicious of?

Still, Hitoshi couldn't help himself but play the devil's advocate as he pointed a thumb over his shoulder at the pad on the wall.

"Yeah, but we can't do much until the week is over. Everything's already filled up."

Agoyamato groaned. "Well, what are we supposed to do until then?"

"Uh, um-" Midoriya was stuck somewhere in between shy nervousness and boundless enthusiasm and clearly had no idea what to do with his hands, "Well, the outdoor track is open to everyone a-and-" the green-haired boy reached into his book bag to pull out a stack of papers, "It's still very much a work in progress but I wanted to see what you guys thought about this?"

Hitoshi accepted the paper and his confusion - no, his shock - only grew as he realized what it was .

"Midoriya, did you come up with custom workout plans for us?"

Midoriya only grew more red, hiding behind his waving hands as his voice edged closer and closer to a high-pitched nervous mumble, "I wouldn't say personalized because I don't actually know what level you guys are at yet, and to be honest I don't know much about the subject myself, this is all based off of the research I did last night…"

Hitoshi missed whatever Midoriya said next as the shorter boy turned away, bright red with embarrassment.

It looked as though Togeike and Agoyamato were just as bewildered by this as he was, Togeike eventually tilting her head with a slight frown, "Midoriya, you seem to be putting in a lot of effort for us. I appreciate that you're friendly but… Why?"

Midoriya jumped and looked at the ground, Hitoshi immediately recognizing his expression as one that screamed you caught me, I'm guilty!

Then Midoriya answered, "I-it's just. I've wanted to be a hero since I was a little kid, right? Only I realized recently that I don't-" he sniffled, "I don't know if I can be? But I think you guys can and I want to help!"

He fixed them all with a watery smile, eyes shiny, and his voice grew quieter, "I-I understand if you don't want help from someone like me."

"Oh, Bullshit." Histoshi usually didn't speak before thinking but he did now; he forced himself to swallow the rage that was building in him. It wasn't like he was just going to let this boy repeat his own worst insecurities back at him and say nothing. "If you plan on getting us into the hero course then I for one plan on dragging you with us."

"Yeah!" cheered Mushiko. Togeike for her part snorted but it seemed in good nature. Midoriya, impossibly, grew even more red, the tears in his eyes finally starting to spill over and frantically he started nodding and wiping them away.

Agoyamato scratched at his chin, obviously the one who was most unsure at all this, "My big bro is into working out, I'll ask him what he thinks. But uh... I dunno, if we can run today, shouldn't we?"

"Mhm!" was about as affirmative a sound as Midoriya could make in his current state. Mushiko took off, and Togeike and Agoyamato were slower to follow. Hitoshi paused to look back at Midoriya who was still lingering, still wiping at his eyes and nose.

"You coming?"

Midoriya nodded and started after him, mysteriously huge smile back in place.

Well alright. This was happening, then.

Hitoshi was pleasantly surprised to find that he had the highest stamina of all of them, though he knew full well that the reason for it wasn't very nice. Midoriya, small and lanky as he was, actually ended up being a close second, only peeling off when the other three waved their goodbyes to head home. Hitoshi finished his lap, watching Midoriya clean himself up out of the corner of his eye. Despite the whole conversation he still seemed very enthusiastic, immediately going to his back and pulling out a notebook to write down something. He slowed to a stop as he finished his lap, Midoriya looking up and giving him another huge smile and wave.

"Shinso-san! You did great today!" Hitoshi blinked in shock at the sudden praise but Midoriya didn't seem phased, "I didn't have a proper timer but I think you were way above the national average!"

Hitoshi's hand flew to rub at the back of his neck. His very brief time knowing Midoriya should have led him to expect this but still…

"…Thanks?"

Midoriya nodded and start packing his bag again, though as he moved to take his phone he startled.

"Oh! Shinso-san, we should get going if we're going to make the train!"

Hitoshi just nodded dumbly. He sort of prided himself on being able to get a read on people, at figuring out what they wanted from him. Every time Midoriya did or said anything it made Hitoshi feel like he knew nothing at all. The boy in question jumped to his feet, still smiling so Hitoshi just… Followed him. He had been doing that a lot lately.

Another feeling nagged at him too, and considering what had come up today it would probably be a good time to ask about it.

"So…" he started slowly. Midoriya turned to look at him, as cheerful as ever, "You're going through with all this but you don't think you can be a hero?"

Midoriya's smile instantly dropped and his eyes slid down to the ground. He shook his head, voice falling back to the wobbly quiet of someone trying not to cry.

"It's, um… I already failed the entrance exam, you know? I didn't- I couldn't even get a single point."

Midoriya had stopped moving and was looking at his shoes, so he wasn't able to see Hitoshi's expression fix into a deep frown.

"You don't think you can be a hero because you couldn't destroy a robot?" Midoriya didn't respond, but Hitoshi could see the drip of tears hitting the sidewalk. He wasn't sure if what he was feeling was pity or anger, his own voice became something closer to a growl, "You know, I only got one."

Midoriya's head shot up at once, hands waving back and forth even as more tears dripped off his face.

"Oh no! No! I know that the exam is really weighted towards people with flashy quirks. I… It's more complicated than that."

Midoriya's shoulders slumped back down and his eyes slid back to the ground. Hitoshi felt his heart start beating in his throat as his anxiety spiked. He didn't know for certain what this was about but he had a pretty good idea.

"It's my quirk." Midoriya's voice wobbled and was so quiet Hitoshi had to strain to hear, "It's not… It's not good. I can't use it."

Yeah. That was exactly what Hitoshi had been worrying about; his emotions started to conflict and boil over onto his face and he was more than a little thankful that Midoriya wasn't looking at him right now. He knew all about bad quirks, knew what Midoriya had probably been told to feel that way about himself. One half of him told him that he should say something, Midoriya might understand while the other screamed if he thinks his own quirk is bad then wait until he hears about yours!

Well, he was going to have to tell people eventually, wouldn't he? These few days had been nice but he knew it was probably better for him to not get used to people pretending to like him. Hitoshi took a breath, trying to keep his own voice from going ragged.

"Can't be that bad. If you tell me yours I'll tell you mine."

Midoriya finally looked up at that, though Hitoshi had no idea how he looked right then. He knew his jaw hurt from how tight he was clenching it. He knew his throat and eyes were starting to burn. From what little he knew of Midoriya, he could also see that he'd guessed correctly, that the excitement of learning about his quirk would be enough to cut through whatever else was running through his head. He could only pray that excitement would last a little longer, but it looked like it wasn't going to as Midoriya dropped his head back down.

"It's bad luck." Hitoshi had to lean in closer to hear Midoriya's near-whisper, "My quirk. It, uh- It causes bad luck. It's not something that can be controlled. I can't use it."

Hitoshi leaned back and considered that for a long moment. A quirk so dangerous that it couldn't be used at all.  One that probably would be considered villainous even if it could be. He wondered how many of the same things he and Midoriya had been told growing up. Not that it would mean he understood where Hitoshi was coming from, but still, a deal was a deal.

"Brainwashing." Midoriya cringed, then looked up at him with confusion. Not fear, at least not yet. "My quirk. It's brainwashing. If someone responds to something I say I can take control of them and command them to do things."

Really, Hitoshi was proud of how steady he managed to keep his voice. He usually never got that long into the explanation. And he certainly wasn't prepared for Midoriya's tear-stained face to be suddenly facing him with a huge smile.

"Shinso-san, that quirk sounds amazing! Does it only work on the first response or can it be later? Does it work through speakers? Could-" All Hitoshi could do was stare, until Midoriya cut himself off by biting his lip, looking back down, shoulders pulling in, voice dropping, "Sorry, I… Get excited. It seems really cool though. I bet it would make you a great hero!"

The burning behind Hitoshi's eyes returned with ferocity and he snapped his head forward as he blinked. Midoriya didn't have some kind of charming or manipulation quirk and he had just said that, and said it like he meant it.

"You really think so, huh?" He tried, oh, how he tried to slip back into his usual deadpan sarcasm. His voice broke, and Midoriya just nodded.

"I do. Everyone is capable of being a hero with enough effort," and then, just barely perceptible, "I have to believe that."

And yeah. Yeah. Hitoshi did, too.

The silence between them as they walked to the train station and boarded their train was… Weighty. Not bad , but neither of them knew what to say after spilling their guts to, essentially, a stranger. Midoriya kept looking at him, and then looking away every time he saw Hitoshi looking back, and he still couldn't pin what the boy was thinking. They had been on the train home for ten minutes before Midoriya finally looked up at him through his lashes and said, "Shinso-san?"

Hitoshi must have been doing a bad job at keeping his expressions controlled today, because he hadn't even said anything and Midoriya was starting to smile again. Just to make things a little less awkward, he nodded, and Midoriya went on.

"I don't mean to poke at a sore spot but could you- could you tell me more about your quirk?"

Hitoshi opened his mouth and nothing came out so he shut it again. This... Was a first. Midoriya started to wilt in front of him, "I-I mean. Only if you want to, obviously. I just- It's so interesting and uh- you're probably going to have to train your quirk if you want to get into the hero course and I - I sort of have a hobby of analyzing quirks and I w-was hoping It would be helpful."

Finally, Hitoshi managed to force out the words, "I don't know what else to say. If someone responds to something I say I can take control of them. If I tell them to do something when they’re like that they'll do it."

Midoriya nodded and - oh for the love of god he'd gotten out the notebook again and started writing. The only feeling Hitoshi could muster anymore was bewilderment .

Over the course of the train ride, Hitoshi learned a few things about his quirk, mostly that he really didn't know anything about it at all. He knew about the call and response, he knew that making his voice electronic or jolting the person controlled broke it. He didn't know how many people he could control at once, or for how long. Honestly, he wasn't sure if the person had to actually respond to him or just near him, he had no idea how people responded to being given impossible tasks or if he could ask them to do things like forget or remember. And every time he admitted he didn't know one of these things, that he'd never really had the opportunity to test, Midoriya just smiled a little wider and mumbled about how they would have to try it out, then.

By the time the intercom crackled and announced Midoriya's stop he had come fully back to life and turned to give Hitoshi a grin and wave before running off the train.

This… Was going to be a strange year.

Izuku hadn't really decided what he was going to do about lunch.

The first day he had walked into the lunchroom he had been met with a violently loud reminder that, yes, Katsuki Bakugo had gotten into UA, too. He had been across the room, exploding at some red-haired boy but, thank goodness, he'd made himself obvious right away and Izuku had been able to duck back behind the doors before he got noticed. He was very aware of how badly things would go for him if Kaachan realized he was here, and that extended far beyond the beating he would most certainly get if he were seen.

(He had to know Izuku was here, too; their moms talked. The only reason Bakugo hadn't raised a fuss yet was because he was in Gen-Ed -- because he hadn't seen him yet)

The second day he had packed his own lunch and gone to sit outside, but had been scared away from that when he saw Bakugo again, strutting around with what must have been a group of classmates as they decided to sit outside too. He had only barely gotten away from that one; he was pretty sure that the pink girl with the horns had seen him run off.

Today he was going to try the roof, and if that didn't work, he was going to have to resolve himself to eating in the bathroom for the rest of his high school career.

All things told, he really should have felt lucky that it was Shinso who he found sitting cross-legged on the roof. Shinso, who he really wasn't sure how to approach right now, because he had lied to him about his quirk and then made him feel sympathy over the lie and then he hadn't been able to shut up and had kept asking about his own quirk that he was clearly sensitive about.

Izuku swallowed hard. Shinso had also told him that he should be in the hero course too. Sort of. He wouldn't have, if he knew the truth, but that probably counted for something, didn't it? He would just ask if it was okay if he sat there, and when Shinso said no then he would go, and that would be that. With a deep breath, he walked out onto the roof and turned to look at the boy who was leaning against the wall.

Shinso was asleep; One knee pulled up to his chest, the rest of his limbs sprawled out over the concrete, head leaning so far to one side that he was almost certainly going to wake up with an aching neck. Izuku considered the scene for a long moment. Whether or not Shinso had meant to take a nap, if he was able to fall asleep like that in the first place he probably needed it.

In the end, he ended up asking, softly enough that he wouldn't actually wake the boy, "Is it alright if I sit here, Shinso-san?", and when he didn't move, sliding down to sit against the wall a few feet away. He pulled out his own lunch and ate in silence for a long few minutes. The sun beat down on the roof, but today there was a constant cool breeze. He could almost see himself drifting off to sleep up here, too…

Suddenly, his phone announced a new text with a loud "I AM HERE!".

He jumped and scrabbled for his phone to silence it but it was already too late. Shinso had woken up and pulled himself to the corner of the wall with his hands before fully waking up and fixing Izuku with a wide-eyed stare.

"…Midoriya?"

Izuku was half on his feet too, stuck in an awkward squat as he wasn't sure whether to stand or keep sitting.

"Uh!" his voice was already high and squeaky, "S-sorry Shinso-san, I was just looking for somewhere to eat, and you were asleep a-and I didn't want to wake you, but my phone-"

His voice wavered. That was really all the explanation there was. Shinso would probably tell him to leave now, which was fine, it was probably deserved-

Shinso blinked. Raised an eyebrow. Said, "…Alright?"

His face settled back into the passive blank expression he usually had, his shoulders fell back into their usual slump. And then he reached into his own bag and pulled out his own lunch and started eating like there was nothing weird about this at all.

Izuku slowly sank down until he was sitting again.

"Uhm," his voice was louder and less confident at the same time, "Is it alright if I eat here?"

"You're already here. So I guess."

Said in that same impassive way that made it seem like he really, actually, didn't care.

And, well, even if things were a little weird, it was still better than the bathroom. And Izuku knew that Shinso probably came up here to be alone so he tried his best to keep his mouth shut and focus on his own food.

Then Shinso pointed at him, same deadpan expression and voice, and said, "You're definitely some kind of fairy."

All Izuku could do for a long moment was stare, brain short-circuiting at the non-sequitur. Shinso's expression relaxed into a long cheshire-cat grin, and he held up his phone by way of explanation. His hands scrambled for his own phone; he hadn't even looked at the notification that had woken Shinso in the first place.

From Togeike:

Mushi-chan has pointed out something to me today that might actually kind of important

I know our club sponsor knows but does that mean everyone else will?

Do we have to pretend to Rei-Sensei that we all just decided to start roleplaying together or

Like

Is this a situation where we know that he knows but we just keep playing along

From Mushiko:

I just think we should have cover stories!!!

He already seemed kinda mean about the hero course thing!

From Togeike:

Ugh

From Agoyamato:

I mean its stupid but we should at least pretend

If he actually pushes we drop it but we went this far already

Its probably another test

Like 'how long are you willing to pretend to be a dork ass nerd for this'

From Togeike:

Lmao

From Mushi:

:)

In that case if anyone asks about club stuff then I'm the Highest Vampire Matron Esmerelda

From Togike:

oh my god

All five of them wound up meeting in the library after school for the rest of the week, doing their best to plan a workout regimen, a diet, a proper schedule insofar as they were able to. And then, finally, it was Monday morning and Izuku managed to slip away from his mother by telling her he was going to try running more of the way to school- and, well he was going to do that, just not today.

The sign-up sheet on the wall was waiting for him, but when he looked it over it was with a frown. There were a lot fewer free spaces on it than he was expecting, groups of third years already taking up every free period. Further investigation revealed that students with ongoing internships could request blocks of time, too. Not a lot to work with, but still, it was possible.

He spent several minutes entering in information to the pad, still a little surprised to see that yes, the LARPing club was actually technically an official thing. With one slot taken per day and a satisfied smile, he got out his phone and took a picture.

Sent:

[Image]

Sorry this was the best I could get :(

From Shinso:

man

you really had to pick all those morning times huh

From Mushiko:

I hope they let us use the showers before class if we do that!!!

From Agoyamato:

Wait

UA has a skating rink?

UA had all sorts of state of the art facilities, mostly meant for the hero course: There was your standard open gym, a boxing ring, climbing wall, several pools, the ice rink -- technically the huge training grounds Alpha, Beta, and Gamma were open for use as well though he hadn't tried to get time at any of those. Izuku had taken what they could get when they could get it which led them with quite the strange range for whatever training they could manage to pull off. He would just say that they were trying to be well-rounded. It wasn't the best he could have hoped for, but it was something. It was a start.

Somehow, they had all managed to make it awake and on time. 6AM wasn't the most popular time to play basketball so the court had been available, and that was what Izuku had taken. Agoyamato was slouching on the bleachers, and Shinso was all but sprawled on the floor. Mushiko, to her credit, seemed exited, and Togeike was there and on her feet by virtue of the iced coffee she had managed to snag before arriving.

Izuku was there. He was awake. He was very, very, nervous.

"So, uhm-" It would never not be weird for him, for people to just turn and listen to him when he spoke, "I talked about this with Shinso-san a little before but-"

He very carefully reached into his bookbag and pulled out a notebook, a new one, writing clear on the front: Hero Analysis for the Future No 14. Just not his future, this time. "-I sort of have this hobby? I like to analyze quirks… A-and I was thinking that one days like today when we can't really get into really heavy training we could work on those? Since we can work out at home, but we can only really practice our quirks on campus!"

Those who were awake enough to function gave him slow nods of consideration, Mushiko sprang up and shouted "Start with me!" so loudly that Shinso startled out of his stupor. The girl jumped off of the bleachers to the ground and raced over to a rack of balls at the side of the court.

"I just call my quirk worms!" she said as she picked up a ball, "When I touch something I can turn it into worms!"

And there was no longer a basketball in her hands, but instead a pile of orange rubbery worms at her feet. Izuku was already writing as fast as he could handle . So interesting! So they probably weren't actual worms, but worm-like constructs-

"Shouldn't we have like- a teacher here for this or something?" Togeike prompted. Everyone else stared at the worms with wide eyes.

At that there was a chime overhead, a very slight crackle, and a cheerful voice announced "No worries! You have an eye being kept on you!"

Everyone stopped moving for a long moment. Then Agoyamato sucked in air through his teeth and whispered loud enough for everyone to hear, "The fuck? The fucking principal is here watching us at six in the fucking morning? Security cameras?"

Shinso groaned and pulled himself to his feet, though he looked really loathe to do it, "If he is then we probably shouldn't be slacking off, huh?"

He gestured vaguely at the court then started dragging himself to the other side of it. Togeike and Agoyamato followed him with a groan. If Izuku remembered right they had also planned to do cardio today…

"Uhm, Mushi-san…Before you go over there, could you tell me a little more about your quirk?"

Worms worked like this: Mushiko could turn a solid object into worms. If they were given enough time they would crawl back into the shape of what they were before and the object would be restored. It was also all or nothing, as far as Mushiko had ever been able to tell. She couldn't turn part of something into worms, it had to be the whole thing. It was for that reason that she wasn't sure if her quirk worked on living creatures (she didn't think so, but had never purposefully tried).

When Izuku had mumbled, more to himself than anything, that he was surprised that she hadn't passed the hero exam, she had laughed a little nervously and said that she thought she did okay , but she was pretty sure she hadn't done so well on the written part. And when Midoriya had smiled and said that it was a good point and they should plan some study sessions for after school she had grinned back and agreed.

He managed to talk with everyone else that way, too. When Agoyamato took a break from doing push-ups he took a moment to show off his hair- he could manipulate it into any shape he wanted, it functioned almost like sort of an extra limb. It was a quirk that was flashy, but not actually powerful; in the end, it was just hair, there was no muscle behind it, no force or lift beyond what the scalp could handle. Agoyamato had squinted and tilted his head when Izuku mumbled that "it would be better suited to precision work, anyways…" but he hadn't argued.

Togeike showed off her kelp, flipping it out of her fingers with a frown. It wasn't prehensile like the hair had been, just a long, brown leaf-blade. She said that she had tried using it like a whip, but it was just too floppy , and that in order to make a lot she had to make sure to eat a lot of salty foods. She stood there and watched as Izuku made a proper botanical sketch of the kelp she had made, leaning over him with a curious expression, even if he didn't notice it himself.

"Hey, Midoriya-kun?" she tapped her chin, "You and Shinso-kun were kinda avoiding it the other day, what are your quirks?"

Izuku's shoulders tensed up to his ears. He knew what to say to this, he had been practicing the lie in his head all week, but he had been hoping that he would be able to keep Shinso out of it. He didn't look up from his notebook.

"My quirk isn't something I can use, so I won't be practicing with it." There. Not technically a lie, not yet. He hoped his voice didn't sound too miserable.

And Togeike gave him a quizzical look and then just… dropped it . 

"Okay. If you say so." Izuku's head shot up to see her point at Shinso, who was sitting up from a set of curls to watch the conversation, and ask, "What about you, then?"

Shinso's expression was flat. If the question bothered him, he didn't show it.

"…It's brainwashing." Even if his face was blank it would be hard to miss the way he pulled his limbs in, "If you respond to something I say, I can command you to do something."

There was a long, tense moment of silence, and then Togeike nodded seriously and said, "Well, I'm glad you're trying to be a hero then."

It was like they all released a breath at once as Shinso nodded back; everyone started to get back to exercising without further comment. Izuku let himself smile as he looked back down at his notebook and kept writing.

Izuku stared at the blackboard in shock. Today at the start of homeroom their teacher had announced that it was time for everyone to vote on class rep. Today, he had written Izuku's name on the board with six votes next to it. Today, without expecting it, Izuku had been elected the vice representative of class 1-C.

He shakily pushed his way to his feet and made his way to the front of the class. This was a joke, wasn't it? He was going to make it to the front of the class and everyone was going to start laughing at him for believing them.

At the front of the class, the girl who had gotten the most votes - Kondo Yasu, his brain hazily supplied - smiled and shook his hand. She had reddish hair, short pointy ears and a squirrel-like tail. Izuku had never spoken to her before. She smiled widely at him and shook his hand with gusto.

"I'm looking forward to working with you, Midoriya-kun! I heard that you've already established a club so I'm sure you're really responsible!"

He hoped the way his head lolled around looked somewhat affirmative. He was dimly aware that everyone was watching him, waiting for him to say something. He should accept this, shouldn't he? If everyone put their faith in him he shouldn't let them down. Only they shouldn't put their faith in him, but he couldn't let them know that .

"Uhm, thank you everyone. I'll do my best!" His voice felt like it was coming out of someone else. But everyone nodded approvingly, there were no snickers or surprises waiting for him as he bowed and made his way back to his desk.

He blinked down at his own hands. Everyone in the room was talking but it all flowed past him. He only caught his name being called on the third "Midoriya?"

Shinso was leaning back in his seat and looking over at him, one eyebrow raised, "You alright?"

He nodded and smiled, but Shinso remained unmoved, tilting his head to the side. Izuku had talked at him at lunch long enough to know that he was asking for more explanation.

"I-I just… Wasn't expecting anyone to n-notice me, is all."

Shinso shrugged with one shoulder, "I voted for you. You seem like you can get things done."

Izuku felt the heat rise through his face all over again. He wondered if the other club members had voted for him, too. But even still, that meant that two more people had noticed him-

"-club did you make exactly?"

Izuku's attention snapped back to the boy who sat in front of him, who had turned around to ask him… Something?

"The LARPing club," Shinso replied for him, absolutely deadpan, "I play the Death Wizard Razzmadaz."

The boy in front of him - Saiki Dai, his brain offered unhelpfully - looked shocked for a moment and then nodded uncertainly, "…Sounds like fun?"

Izuku caught the barest hint of a smirk on Shinso's face before he buried his face in his arms in embarrassment. It wouldn't occur to him for a long time how no one questioned the club to him again after that.

It was nice that Midoriya was so talkative, but Hitoshi really did worry that the boy was going to get tired of him eventually. Between lunch, training, class, studying and the occasional train ride home, they were spending a lot of time together. He was always just so overflowing with enthusiasm it seemed like a matter of time until he would get bored of Hitoshi's own lack of it and go somewhere else. Until then he would just try and enjoy someone being willing to talk to him, for once.

So on that Thursday afternoon, when he was still alone on the roof halfway through lunch period and Midoriya hadn't shown up he tried to tell himself that it was bound to happen, eventually. Only he couldn't get the uncomfortable weight of anxiety out of his stomach. When something was wrong, Midoriya was pretty bad at hiding it, and he'd seemed perfectly fine as he'd left class. Even as Hitoshi pushed himself to his feet and down the stairs he told himself that Midoriya had probably just been distracted by someone more willing to talk back to him and dragged to the lunch room.

Those thoughts dropped from his mind as soon as he got far enough down the stairs to hear the faint echoing of shouting from somewhere down the hall. He hadn't even registered that he'd started running until he skidded to a stop. The voices were definitely coming from the bathroom, one of them was definitely Midoriya's and he was definitely not okay in there.

He just could make out the words from here "-the only one from that shitty school, and you ruined it!" from someone very loud and angry.

He took a deep breath and stepped around the corner, eyes sweeping around the room to take in a scene he had been on the receiving end of more than once himself. There was Midoriya, face tracked with tears, arms held up in defense, held up against the wall by an angry blond boy - a hero course kid, based on the uniform.

"How'd they let a quirkless loser like you in here anyways?"

"K-kaachan, I didn't --"

Midoriya's eyes found his and filled with some unreadable emotion the same moment Hitoshi said, "You know if you get caught doing something like this it’s automatic expulsion, right?"

He had, in fact, looked very thoroughly into how UA handled these things, but he wasn't sure if such a hard policy would help or hurt him here. He had been planning on avoiding it for as long as he could, but right now, with this in front of him?

Well, it wouldn't be very hero-like of him if he walked away.

So, anxiety building back up in his gut, quirk buzzing on his tongue and behind his eyes, he locked eyes with the angry blonde kid as he turned and fixed him with a glare. He stared back for a long moment -- and then the guy dropped Midoriya and turned to face him, face screwed into a sneer.

"It's fine, we were just having a conversation."

Hitoshi bit back his own quirk from catching the boy. No need to use it, thank god, as the blond stalked towards him, past him, making sure to hit him with his shoulder as he went. Hitoshi swallowed the anger at that, too. He could deal with that later. Right now, Midoriya was squatting on the bathroom floor sobbing into his knees.

He hesitated - as often as he'd been where Midoriya was right now he didn't know what to do from where he was standing. What would he want someone to do for him?

He took a deep breath and walked across the short distance, he squatted next to Midoriya so they were on the same level, he put his arm across his shoulders in a way he hoped was comforting.

"You okay?"

Midoriya gave a faint affirmative, shaky hands moving to wipe at his face.

"H-he didn't hurt me." Those four words confirmed everything Hitoshi had been wondering. Midoriya didn't think UA would care if two Gen-Ed kids reported a Hero kid, either.

"Did you… know him?" It seemed like the only option based on what he had heard, and Midoriya confirmed it with another sniffly nod.

"We… went to middle school together. He wanted to be the only one from there to go to UA."

"…Did he do that to you back then, too?" Hitoshi was pretty sure he knew the answer, was unsurprised when Midoriya quietly replied, "…Yeah."

"And he's the one who got into the hero course. Of course." He felt the anger he had pushed down earlier crawling its way back up his throat. But Midoriya shook his head.

"He's gonna be a great hero," his voice sounded a little more steady, "He's angry, he's got problems, but he's gonna be a great hero."

Hitoshi blinked, then sighed. By now, he was well acquainted with the the tone of a Midoriya who had made up his mind about something.

"If you say so. Personally I was gonna suggest that he's the one we boot out when we get into the hero course."

Even though his eyes were still filled with tears Midoriya barked out a small laugh at that. "Yeah. Maybe we could try that, too."

Really, Shouta was torn on how UA handled it's admission process. The test was biased towards flashy physical quirks that could destroy robots. It made sense for a school who wanted to boast high ranking heroes as graduates. But he also, personally, knew how unfair it was to those with the potential for heroism who lacked that raw destructive power. So, UA had this compromise that let promising students join the Gen-Ed course instead, and dangled the promise of transfer to heroics over them. The trouble was that most years, the kids who ended up in Gen-Ed had just as little potential as the kids he expelled from his hero course class and would come find him demanding transfer.

This year, that hadn't happened. And that was strange, because he'd seen the test results and well over half of the Gen-Ed course had been heroics hopefuls.

Shouta rated Naoto Rei fairly high as a co-worker, mostly because the man rarely bothered him. Their interactions were entirely work-based, and limited mostly to the beginning of the year when they talked about said hopefuls’ chances. The man didn't usually hang around in the teacher's lounge so when Shouta caught him there today he figured it was as logical a time as any to ask.

"Did you totally crush your kid's hopes this year?" he said without preamble, "I haven't had anyone asking me for transfer."

Rei just laughed and held up one of his hands.

"You wouldn't know it, but you actually have five troublemakers this year. Went and made their own club to use the gym and everything."

Shouta raised an eyebrow at that. Usually only one or two students approached him per year, and usually they did that before making any meaningful progress with themselves. And…

"This wouldn't have anything to do with the 'damn nerd club taking all the gym time ' I keep hearing my students complain about, would it?"

Rei gave him a shark-tooth smile and nodded, "One and the same! They're quite motivated this year. Though I imagine they'll knock it off after the sport's festival, one way or another."

Shouta blinked, Rei gave him a half-hearted shrug back and went back to his work. He watched for a moment and then made his way over to the coffee machine, one hand fiddling with the dial while the other reached for his phone and started scrolling through until he found the gym schedule. It looked like they were meeting after school, and he decided that he was feeling especially nosy today. These kids certainly had gone farther than most transfer-hopefuls ever tried, anyways. And no one but Hizashi would ever know he'd taken a few minutes out of his day to go assess them.

So, that afternoon after classes were over he'd stretched out in his chair and waited for the halls to empty out before making his way over to the little side gym that this group of first years had taken over today. He didn't go in, instead looping around the side of the building and climbing up to a platform outside the windows to look down through the windows.  Five kids, as promised; there were two boys splayed out on mats, panting like they had just finished sparring, and two girls in the middle of the room in the process of sparring - the taller one swung her arm back in a way that was too wide to be a punch and some sort of leaf came out of her fingers to wrap around the other girl. If he really squinted, it wasn't all that dissimilar from his own capture weapon, but the form was all wrong. The girl dropped the kelp and another boy came towards them, tapping at something in  his notebook, then gesturing with his hands. Then the girl did it again and, no, yeah that was more or less the proper form, even if she was unsure about it, and the smaller girl ended up wrapped in plants that dissolved into something small and wriggling a moment later.

Well that was… Something. Shouta squinted through the window to get a better look at the kid with the notebook. He looked familiar, and after a long moment of consideration the memory of 'someone's probably gonna have to keep an eye on that one' found its way to him. He huffed a small sigh. Leave it to him to pick out the problem children in other departments, too.

What had been the problem with him? He had been weirdly unsure about his own quirk? Something like that, he thought

The children swapped sparring partners, the girl with the plant quirk pulled the guy with the hair quirk to the ground. The short girl moved to throw something at the boy with purple hair only to stop dead, turn around, and walk to the edge of the mat. And that was something else. He really did hate the exam format, sometimes.

He watched them for a while longer. For kids with presumably no training they weren't doing that horribly. Better than half of his current class would do sparring, probably. And it was mostly thanks to that green haired kid as far as he could tell. He was the one going back and forth between his notebook and his phone, adjusting stances, likely offering advice if all the head movement down there was indicative of conversation happening. He was strange when he sparred, like everything he knew about fighting was out of a book. And as far as Shouta could tell he never used his quirk once, though it was impossible to be 100% sure with things like that.

His phone buzzed in his pocket and he took a glance at the text from Hizashi that read babe where are u before rolling his eyes and descending to the ground. Well, he would leave it be. For now.

Izuku was more than a little worried about what Shinso thought about him.

Shinso was the first person he met who would listen, actually listen to his little rants about hero's and quirks -- would nod along, and very occasionally offer input. He was the first person to ever tell him to speak up . Shinso also seemed like the kind of person who would tell him to get lost if that was what he wanted, and he hadn't yet.

Shinso had also, one hundred percent certainly, heard Bakugo call him quirkless.

He wasn't acting any differently, which meant that Shinso was probably assuming it was nothing. Based on the story he had cooked up it would make sense for Shinso to believe that he had a quirk he didn't use, and that of course a bully would latch onto something that wasn't true. Only it was true and if he thought about it too long it made him feel sick to his stomach.

Really his anxiety boiled down to one main point: Would Shinso still like him, if he knew? Would any of them?

And he was really bad at not being obvious about it too. That afternoon as training wound down he kept finding his eyes wandering back to Shinso. He jolted when a foot tapped the side of his own.

"You okay there? You seem distracted." Togeike was looking down at him from where he was hunched over a notebook, one eyebrow raised, "Something happen, or…?"

"I'm fine!" he lied, folding over his notebook, "Nothing happened. I was just… Thinking?"

He couldn't see her roll her eyes, "You're always thinking."

His eyes flew down to his notebook for help -- he had been thinking about other things, too and he had to talk about one of those before he said something stupid.

"Yeah, I was uh-" he eyes found a messy scribble in the margins, a half formed idea scribbled down he hadn't had the time to think about more, "Thinking that we should try and observe the hero classes? For ideas?"

He looked up to see Togeike looking unconvinced so he sputtered on, "S-since, you know, if we get into the hero course, they're the ones we'd be fighting for spots. So maybe we should think about looking for weaknesses and things…?"

"And that has to do with Shinso, because…?"

She said it in a way that was mostly teasing, and for some reason the thought the sprang to his mind was a half-remembered echo from down the hall as they went their separate ways for lunch, of Mushiko announcing that 'Kuchi-chan must be the best matchmaker in the whole school', and Izuku didn't have or really want context for that until right now because surely, she didn't think--! She didn't think he thought--? And he knew his face was going red at the mere idea, and if that is what she thought, and it might be with how she was starting to smile at him, this reaction wouldn't be helping.

"I was just thinking we could go spy on class 1-A!" his voice sounded strangled but he hadn't been loud enough to attract the attention away from where Shinso and Agoyamato were sparring again.

"Mm-hm," she put a hand on his shoulder conspiratorially, "Just you and Shinso, going to spy on the hero class, huh?"

"Y-you can come if you want!”

“Oh no, no, I think the rest of us should look at 1-B, shouldn’t we?” Izuku kept his eyes fixed on the corner of his notebook. 

“I… Also want to look at 1-B’s quirks?” he offered weakly. Togeike patted him on the shoulder.

“If you say so!”

Mercifully she walked away to leave him staring at the ground. 

So, now that thought was in his head, too. As if he hadn’t already been anxious enough.

It had been a half-baked idea when Izuku had said it, but they did end up going to spy on the hero classes after all. Him and Shinso, that is. Togeike had declined to join them, Mushiko had been trying to actually study, and Agoyamato had disappeared as soon as their free time started.

It was mostly thanks to the luck that their free period lined up with 1-A’s gym period that they could manage it. Today it looked like they were doing plain-old sparring, in the same room that they themselves had used before class that day.

Peeking through the windows required scrambling up a stone ledge and sitting awkwardly perched on the slope, heads ducked down so they would be harder to see. Izuku was glad that Shinso was so tall, because without the other boy lifting him until he could scrabble for purchase on the window frame he probably wouldn’t have been able to get up on his own. Shinso grabbing his leg to pull himself up was a little more awkward, but it worked well enough.

As they shifted next to each other on the rough concrete Izuku found himself distantly thankful for Togeike’s comment. It was still embarrassing, but it was almost like his anxiety about one thing canceled out his anxiety for the other, and he was able to make himself act relatively normally. Or if he wasn’t, Shinso had taken it in stride and not mentioned it.

As he looked through the window he couldn’t help but heave a sigh. Of course, he should have known that Bakugo would be in 1-A. It would be interesting to see how he’d changed since he’d entered the hero course (the answer was, not that much, not yet), but there were 18 other students for him to watch too.

There was so much for him to see. He could only take a guess at what all the benefits a mutant-type frog quirk could have, was pretty sure that the kid with the engines in his legs must be related to Ingenium, wondered how sticky the tape coming from that other kid’s elbows must be. This all punctuated by Shinso’s own quiet observations- the kid with the laser in his stomach didn’t look like he could fire it for very long, the girl with the gravity quirk was getting motion sick from something, the kid with half-toned hair looked tense and uncomfortable every time he went to melt his own ice.

Izuku wrote until his hand started to cramp. Even if this information wasn’t going to come in useful it was still really interesting. He barely registered it when Shinso said, “Their teacher is leaving for some reason.”

So when something grabbed onto his ankle and he was pulled off the ledge to be dumped on the ground it was with a surprised yelp. When he got his bearings it was looking upside-down at the unimpressed eyes and crossed arms of 1-A’s homeroom teacher. He waited for the two of them to right themselves and watched them for a long moment afterwards. Was he- waiting for an explanation? An excuse? Shinso seemed absolutely frozen in place, not that Izuku felt much better. Before he could work out what to say, the man sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“If you’re going to spy on my students...” he said slowly, “...Make sure you don’t get caught doing it.”

Izuku forced himself to nod, acutely aware that Shinso was still not moving. 

The man watched them for another long moment, and then turned to walk away. Izuku let himself breathe. He wasn’t sure how something like detention would affect letting Shinso become a hero but he was glad they didn’t have to find out.

Beside him, Shinso let out a miserable sounding whine and buried his face in his legs. Izuku froze up, unsure of what to do -- this was easily the most emotional he had ever seen Shinso get. He floundered for a moment before settling for a pat on the shoulder. Shinso mumbled something in response and Izuku had to ask him to repeat himself before Shinso revealed his -- very red -- face to say, “We just got scolded by Eraserhead.”

Izuku blinked and looked around the corner of the building but the man had already disappeared back inside.

“...That was Eraserhead?” He didn't know whether to feel excited or mortified. Shinso nodded and let his face drop back to his knees, clearly feeling more of the latter. Izuku didn’t really know what else to do but squeeze Shinso’s shoulder.

“It wasn’t that bad.” he said, hoping Shinso would believe him, “It wasn’t just a scolding, he was also giving us advice!”

“Was he?” Shinso’s voice was still muffled.

“Mm-hm!” Izuku reached for the notebook that had been pulled to the ground with them, “I think he was basically saying that we should work on our stealth and observational skills.”

Shinso made a sound that Izuku hoped was a laugh before raising his head again, though he had a faint smile this time. 

“Trust you to take a lesson like that from this.”

Izuku smiled back, flexed his hand, and kept writing.

"…And of course there's one more thing to address before we finish homeroom today." Rei drawled on, "As I'm sure you all know, the sports festival will be coming up in two weeks. For those of you who still think you have something to prove, it will be a great opportunity to show off."

He hadn't said anything outright, but Izuku saw who exactly in the room perked up at it. When their teacher said those of you with something to prove he felt in his bones that he had meant those of you still trying to become heroes. He was saying your hope of transfer lies here.

He managed to keep his mouth shut about it until their after-school meeting - in the library, that day, since they had trained that morning -  but as soon as he slid into the chair hell broke loose, with Togeike leaning in on him from one side and shoving her phone at his face and Mushiko leaning in on the other to see what was happening.

"You see this! That shit he fed us at the start of class about no transfer was bullshit! We wouldn't even be the first!"

Izuku made himself focus on the article Togeike had pulled up - Surprise Upset at UA Sports Festival - General Education Kid Destroys Competition!

It was an old article -- She must have bought the subscription to see the paper's archives for this.

"Where does he get off being like that! I did some digging and they've transferred at least four students to the hero course."

"Four… What, like, ever?" To his credit, Agoyamato had a textbook on the table on the pretense of studying.

Togeike pouted and pulled her phone back to tap at something "Four that I've found . All I'm saying is that there's a precedent, apparently."

"I-I'm sure it's like… Making sure you really have the dedication for it? Plus Ultra and all that?" Izuku offered. He was given a cheer from Mushiko and a wry raise of the eyebrow from Shinso in response, "…Anyways, I guess this means we should really focus on the Sports Festival, right?"

Agoyamato grunted, "I mean, I watch the damn thing every year. I dunno how we're supposed to focus on it though."

"No, no-" Izuku pulled out his notebook, "I mean the actual events. I usually watched the 3rd years but the for the first years..." He hummed, tapping his pencil on his bottom lip, "I know that they do an obstacle course every year, but the things in it vary…"

That afternoon they studied the sports festival instead of any school subject, pulling up as many old video clips as they could find to figure out patterns. The first round was always the same obstacle race; the hazards varied so wildly they'd be hard to plan for - though it seemed that the school did a good enough job of making sure the students with mobility quirks wouldn't have too much of an advantage. The second round varied the most: they had done everything from capture the flag, to scavenger hunts, to king of the hill -- indeed the whole point of the second round appeared to focus on coming up with and executing a strategy on the fly. And then the third round was the one-on-one battles. Izuku hoped that their spying on the hero class would be enough to help there, but that was if they even made it that far.

"So to sum it up, we can't actually really plan around this because they change it up so much," Agoyamato drawled, "And the best training we could do is what we've already been doing?"

Izuku flushed and fixed his eyes on a blank spot in his notebook.

"Y-yeah. It seems like it."

The general attitude leaving the library that day was one of discontent. They all knew they were behind the kids in the hero course, at least in the ways UA cared about, and they knew those kids were getting better training than they were.

Something else was bothering him about the sports festival, too. True, if he somehow managed to do well he could maybe get transferred, maybe, somehow become a hero like he'd always dreamed of. But that path forward was murky at best -- the far more pressing concern was that he really, really shouldn't bring more attention to himself than he already had. Which meant even if he wanted to try winning the sports festival, and some small part of him still really wanted to try … He couldn't. Or shouldn't.

Izuku kept his eyes on his feet all the way to the train station, only looking up at Shinso when they were well on their way home. The other boy was usually quiet, but he wore a faint frown as he looked out the window. He really didn't know what to say to help with this either, nothing he could say felt like it would be enough --

"Hey," said Shinso, suddenly looking a little uncomfortable as one hand moved to the back of his neck, "…There's an abandoned gym sort of near where I live. I've been there a few times. Do you--" he cut himself off as he shifted from foot to foot, "I've been going there for some extra training after school. You can come if you want to."

Izuku blinked.

"That's… Trespassing, isn't it?"

Shinso's expression didn't change but if Izuku squinted he looked like he might have gone a little red.

"Yeah, it is," he admitted, "I've never been caught. But it is."

Izuku considered it for a long moment. Really, they were unlikely to get more than a slap on the wrist for trespassing, especially if it was a first offense. Shinso seemed confident enough about the idea to tell him about it. And, most importantly, Shinso was willing to take that risk for the tiny chance of becoming a hero.

"…If you haven't been caught then I guess it's fine."

Sunday morning Hitoshi woke up early, pulled on a hoodie and gym shorts, grabbed a water bottle and a granola bar and left the house before anyone else woke up. He and Midoriya had agreed to meet at that old gym again today. There was a little less than a week left until the sports festival now and he wanted to get as much of an advantage as he possibly could.

Even on a weekend this part of town was pretty much abandoned this early in the morning. Hitoshi slipped through the gate on the side of the chain-link-surrounded building. The side door  he used was a little sticky, but wasn't actually locked; it was all as unsecured as the day Hitoshi had found the place, which made him feel a little better about all this. It wasn't like he was breaking and entering or anything.

He looked around, squinting as the morning light streaming through the windows highlighted just how dusty this place was. He may have been a little generous calling the place a gym - it would have been a lot more fair to call the place a warehouse that someone had left some gym equipment behind in.

Still, there was a weight bench, a pull-up bar, and some old deflated crash mats on the ground. It was better than nothing. And the place was within walking distance of his house, and apparently close enough for Midoriya to feel comfortable jogging there. He started stretching, only tensing up a little when he heard the door open and shut, and Midoriya came in looking about as guilty and suspicious as he possibly could. When his eyes locked onto Hitoshi he gave a small wave and smile.

"I don't know how long I can stay today, my mom wanted me to go out shopping with her later. And um...She's probably gonna want to meet you at some point."

Hitoshi waved a hand, though he didn't stop the small smile that formed on his lips, "That's fine. After the sports festival maybe. If you're short on time maybe we should get right to sparring?"

Midoriya nodded, his nervous smile growing to one of his usual sunshine-bright grins as he moved to take his spot on the mat.

The truth was that Midoriya was horribly frustrating to spar against. Out of everyone in their little club he did it the least, preferring to watch from the sides; when he did step in his movements were stiff and robotic. For the first half of the week Hitoshi had been able to beat him without issue; the trouble was that Midoriya was a scarily fast learner, and he could feel whatever edge he had slipping away with every match. If he showed a weakness, Midoriya would exploit it without hesitation. He was still winning most of the time, but it was a closer and closer thing every round.

And Midoriya, being Midoriya, would continue to offer him advice even as he himself was pushed to the mat.

"That reminds me!" Midoriya pushed himself onto his elbows from where he'd been pinned to the ground, voice still a little wheezy and breathless, "I have an idea. Actually two ideas."

"You know I'm ready to hear them." Hitoshi replied, diligently looking away from how the other boy turned pink at the barest of compliments.

"W-well, uh. First, I guess that maybe you should practice using your quirk while you fight? It doesn't really matter what you say as long as you get a response, right? So…"

"So I should just ramble about anything?"

Midoriya nodded seriously, "I think getting used to doing both at once is important, what you actually say comes later. Though on that note my other idea is that you should go talk to the hero course kids!"

Hitoshi blinked, but Midoriya was already rambling before he could think of a response.

"I mean, it would be best if you got to know them of course, but even figuring out who's likely to respond to a taunt and who isn't would be good intel. Anything personal to make them more likely to respond would be a good bonus…"

"You think I should taunt the hero course kids?" Hitoshi asked numbly. Midoriya nodded back, expression serious, and Hitoshi knew that he was going to do it.

He extended a hand to Midoriya to pull him to his feet, and the other boy went to check his phone for the time.

"I probably have time for a few more rounds, if you want? Maybe you could try talking?"

"You're sure you're okay with me using my quirk on you?" He knew what the answer would be even before Midoriya nodded emphatically. Midoriya was certainly the first person he'd met who thought that being brainwashed was cool .

Just thinking of a topic was hard enough - he ended up rambling about cats and was so distracted about not saying anything embarrassing that Midoriya pinned him in record time.

"I think you're thinking about it too hard. Just try a stream of consciousness." Midoriya told him as he pushed himself to his feet.

"You mean like mumbling?"

He let himself smirk as the boy squeaked, "Y-yeah, sort of."

They both got back into position, fists raised, but neither of them made a move. Hitoshi struggled for a topic; the only thing in the room that was all that interesting was the boy in front of him.

Well, if he was going to do this, he was going to embarrass himself eventually. Might as well do it in front of someone who didn't seem capable of blackmail.

"So, Midoriya-" The boy grinned and started moving towards him, throwing a punch that Hitoshi ducked past, "What is even up with you?"

Midoriya was usually the one most easily caught by his quirk but he didn't bite so easily this time, the grunt he let out as he blocked a jab wasn't enough for him to latch on to.

"I mean, I really appreciate your help with trying to get into the hero course and everything, but I don't really get what you're doing." He rambled on. Now that he had gotten started it was easier to let his mouth keep moving, even as he caught Midoriya's wrist and tried to twist it, "It's like you want me and everyone else to be a hero more than you want to be. Which is kind of weird. Like if I got into the hero course and you didn't, what's your plan then?"

Midoriya didn't respond, he wasn’t brainwashed, but for a moment he froze up as if he had been. Hitoshi took the opportunity to push at him with one arm while hooking his ankle with the opposite leg, sending the boy tumbling back onto the mat. He raised an eyebrow as his brain caught up to his mouth. It was a question he wanted to know the answer to, in the end.

Midoriya stared up at him from the ground, eyebrows knitted together in pure confusion like he couldn't understand how he'd been knocked down. He didn't move for so long that Hitoshi almost started to worry that the boy had been hurt -- And then a chime went off on the phone he'd left sitting on the weight bench and he started and sat up, smiling like nothing weird had just happened there.

"That was really good, Shinso-san! I guess you can distract people without them even having to respond to you that way too." Midoriya dragged himself to his feet and grabbed his phone to silence the alarm, "I should probably go though, I have to shower before going out with my mom. Good luck!"

Hitoshi nodded and watched the boy leave, very aware of how he hadn't answered the question.

Izuku knew why his mom had done this -- she was lonely. In middle school he had spent most of his time at home with her. Now, between the commute to school and all the after-school activities he'd been doing it felt like they barely saw each other. Going to lunch with her had been great, but…

"Um… the blue one?" he offered. Inko nodded sagely and put the pillow she had been holding into the shopping basket.

He wasn't really sure why she wanted his opinion on things like throw pillows and drapes . She had to know he'd just pick the ones that reminded him most of a hero, right?

He blinked when he had that thought. He hadn't even realized how little he'd been looking into pro-heros since he started UA, ironically enough. His notebook was filled with information on hopefully future pros, not current ones. And he hadn't written anything about himself inside.

It wasn't fair to his mom, she was trying to spend time with him and he was distracted. But Shinso's question kept echoing back in his head -- what's your plan, then?

He didn't have an answer. He did his best to help his mom shopping, and later as she made dinner. She'd probably noticed his distraction because she'd opted to make katsudon, and kept staring at him with worry, not that it was unusual for her.

He hadn't told her about the club, only that he'd joined a study group with the students in it. Which was also true, but it meant she had no idea about the chance of transferring to the hero course. As far as she knew, he'd given up on that dream when he'd failed to get in the first time. Izuku wasn't sure whether he really had or not.

He excused himself after dinner, going to his room early just to stare out his window and think.

What's your plan then? If he didn't become a hero, then what would he do with himself? There were options, he knew there were: cop, doctor, quirk counselor -- hell, that wasn’t so different from what he was doing now -- but none of them were hero . Could he really stand not trying when the opportunity was right in front of him? Would he be happy with himself, knowing he came this close and gave up?

What was the worst that could happen if he got noticed? He'd get caught for lying, get expelled, and still wouldn't be a hero. 

Well, that really only left one option for him then, didn't it? He had to try his hardest to be a hero, and when he failed his life would be the same as if he hadn't tried at all.

He reached around his bed until he found where he'd left his phone and opened a message to Shinso.

Sent:

I have an answer to your question by the way

My plan is to become a hero no matter what :)

From Shinso:

thought so

Hitoshi knew something was different with Midoriya the next time he saw him. He watched green haired boy out of the corner of his eye all through class- he wouldn't have described the boy as sad before, but the difference between when he had seen him leave the gym and that day at school was stark. It was like there was a new light in his eyes, a spring in his step, a confidence in his shoulders that hadn't been there two days ago, like some kind of switch had been flipped.

It made him feel a sort of warm fuzzy feeling in his chest, though Hitoshi tried to ignore it. Sure, it was nice to see Midoriya so alive, but it wasn't as though he had caused it, had he? Anything could have happened between then and now.

The real difference was obvious the next time the club got a gym they were able to spar in. At first, Midoriya kept off to the side observing and offering advice as usual, and then Agoyamato walked to the mat and Midoriya sprang up to take a place across from him without being prodded or asked once . When the two moved, Agoyamato grew his hair out to make sort of a shield between them - a move Midoriya had suggested - but the boy didn't falter, and instead grabbed at the hair and yanked it, pulling an unprepared Agoyamato close enough to take a fist to the solar plexus that left him wheezing on the floor.

Other matches went much the same way. Midoriya wasn't even really that good , he was more inexperienced than everyone else, and they had only really been learning how to fight since the school year started. But it was like before in the abandoned gym, now that he was actually doing it he learned quickly enough that by the end of their time that day he was winning as often as any of them. The one time Hitoshi had sparred against him it felt like the only reason he managed to win was because he'd distracted Midoriya by telling him his fly was open. It was a little funny but mostly Hitoshi just found himself annoyed that he didn't save that tactic for a more important moment.

Midoriya just laughed, pulled himself up, and ran over to his notebook. Their time was almost up that day, so the rest of them watched as they did their own cool-down exercises. Mushiko was still panting with exertion from where she sat on the floor but after a long moment she said, "Midori-chan, you were really intense today!"

Midoriya smiled but he didn't look up from whatever he was writing, "I don't know why I didn't start sparring like that sooner, it's so much easier to understand things that you're actually doing."

She nodded and reached out a hand, which Togeike grabbed and used to drag the smaller girl to her feet.

"Well we only have one gym day left before the festival, you know. You guys feel ready?"

"No," Hitoshi admitted dryly, "But that doesn't really matter, does it? I plan on winning anyways."

"Wow, confident." Togeike poked at his shoulder, equally as droll, "You'll have to beat me for that honor you know."

"And me!" Mushiko’s hand shot up from beneath his vision. Agoyamato acknowledged the challenge with a snort.

"I know." Hitoshi replied, "And I will."

"Sure you will." Togeike gave a final push at his shoulder as the three of them made their way to the door, but her tone was teasing. Hitoshi waited behind for Midoriya to finish writing as they waved their goodbyes.

Then he silently watched for a long minute as Midoriya furiously sketched something into his notebook.

"So now that you've got the confidence or whatever, are you going to write anything about yourself in that notebook?"

"Huh?" Midoriya stopped writing and looked up at Hitoshi with a smile. Only this wasn't a too-bright sunshine smile or a thin and watery it's-okay smile, but the grin of a predator, "Shinso-san, who do you think the notebooks are for ?"

Hitoshi swallowed thickly, pushing down the weird tangle of emotions that look and tone of voice made him feel. Yeah, something had definitely changed since Saturday morning. He didn't have to make himself respond though, because another thought flickered past Midoriya's features and slapped the notebook down on the bench as he stood up.

"Oh yeah, Shinso-san! Were you planning on doing extra training today? In-" he hesitated, all his killing intent being instantly replaced with nervousness and embarrassment, "You know?"

He nodded, hiding a slight smile as Midoriya jumped to his feet to grab for his school bag,

"You can just ride with me to my stop, it's closer."

"I have so much I want to try after today, and I had some more ideas about your quirk -"

Hitoshi let him talk as he followed him out the door.

Shouta watched the kids walk out of the gym from his spot against a nearby tree, the sight of the green-haired kid chattering away as the taller tired-looking boy gave back the barest of smiles making him remember something bittersweet that he pushed back down.

He hadn't actually meant to spy on the kids today, he usually took some time after work to use the gym on the days where he didn't have a patrol scheduled. This was actually a coincidence, though it hadn't stopped him from peeking in to note their surprisingly rapid improvement. He didn’t react as the two boys noticed him, gave each other a panicked look and started walking faster. It still wasn't his place to meddle with anything, yet.

When the two of them stopped casting glances back towards him he pushed himself away from his resting spot and ambled over to the doors of the gym. He scanned the room; it wasn't as though he was expecting there to be a mess, but it would be telling if there had been. But the only thing out of place was an open notebook sitting on a bench to the side. Shouta considered it for a long moment - it was most certainly the notebook the green kid was always writing in, open for the world to see. It would probably be rude for him to look through it, but it had just been left here and he was curious. Plus the kid seemed to wave it around in his friends’ faces constantly, so it stood to reason that it wasn't private.

The page it was open to was filled with scribbles and sketches of hand-to-hand combat moves. Odd way to learn, but whatever. Shouta flipped to the first page and blinked. There was a series of what appeared to be hastily written but highly detailed analysis of the students he'd just watched leave the gym. Most of it was about their quirks but there were sections on the sort of combat style that would best suit them, ideas for support items and, in smaller, more hesitant writing, psychoanalysis. Attitude changes to be a better hero .

His eyebrows shot further up his face as he turned the page to be confronted with the same sort of analysis for his students. It wasn't as detailed, was focused more on weaknesses than improvements, but it was a lot. Clearly the kid had found some way to continue to watch his class and not get caught. He flipped to find the same sort of analysis for 1-B as well, but when he reached the end of those he flipped back. Every first year hero student was accounted for, except for Katsuki Bakugou. Another odd thing to note then.

He snapped the notebook shut, hearing the pounding of footsteps long before the door was flung open. The green haired boy's eyes snapped to his, wide with recognition and fear.

"U-uh. Sorry sir, I just realized I left my notebook behind." His voice was strangled.

Shouta looked down at the cover of the thing - Hero Analysis for the Future No. 14. Fourteen? Another note.

He tossed it at the kid who caught it like it was made of glass.

"T-thank you, sir!"

He was dismissed by a nod of the head, all too eager to bow his apologies and back out the door.

Shouta gave a long suffering sigh before moving to start his own routine. He'd changed his mind. He would certainly be meddling.

Of course, something like this couldn't have happened any other night than the one before the sports festival.

Hitoshi had argued that they should have taken the day to rest, but Midoriya had looked up at him with his big green eyes and said that he promised they wouldn't train that hard and he'd relented. The boy's ability to get what he wanted was evidently not a quirk, but sometimes it felt more dangerous than Hitoshi’s own. They had ridden to Hitoshi's stop and meandered their way into the dusty abandoned gym like they had every afternoon that week. They had taken things easy, like Midoriya had promised, though it was a close thing, stopping him from going a round too far with how enthusiastic he was prone to getting.

The sun was starting to set, painting the room in a deep orange that was quickly growing darker. Midoriya was sending a text to someone while Hitoshi rolled his shoulders as they prepared to leave. 

And then there was the sudden bang of a door slamming open and the sound of a muffled scream and they both dove behind a box of gym equipment. There was the sound of a scuffle, someone was whimpering, a gruff voice was saying "I'll kill you, bitch! I'll kill you and no one will come looking for you," and it was immediately clear what was going on. A large man in dark clothes was brandishing a knife at a younger woman in a red dress who he'd pushed to the floor. They were about to witness a murder.

Hitoshi tensed and he felt Midoriya tense beside him. He blindly reached out to grab at the other boy, hand ending up on his wrist. When he looked, Midoriya was looking back at him with a determined gaze, jaw set in a hard line.

"Don't-" he hissed, "It- we can't . This- this is vigilante shit, we're not even supposed to be here . We need to run and find a hero- "

"She could be dead by then," Midoriya snapped back in a harsh whisper, and he pulled his hands away and reached into the half-open box in front of them to pull out a frayed jump-rope and a wiffle ball, "You don't have to use your quirk. I just- I'm not going to stand by when this is right in front of me. What kind of hero would do that?"

Hitoshi tried hard to muster a coherent thought from the fear coursing through him. There was a horrible thing happening in front of them. Midoriya was going to rush in and do something about it and there was nothing short of brainwashing him Hitoshi could do to stop it. And he didn't want to stop it, because that sharp look in Midoriya's eyes pierced right through him and he knew that he was right .

"I'll back you up" he said, mouth dry.

Midoriya didn't need any more than that, taking off at a sprint across the room.

Hitoshi hadn't revealed himself fully, yet, but he was watching - Midoriya was halfway across the room before the man noticed, snarling.

"What the fuck, some kid-?" he grunted raising his arms to block the ball that was thrown at his face, "You think you're fucking fun-oof!"

Midoriya hadn't stopped moving, had tackled the man to the ground and was currently wrestling him to get the knife away. He was smaller, but based on the way the man was yelling he was putting up a fair fight.

Hitoshi moved forward now, standing between the two of them and the woman, hands shaking as he watched Midoriya grab at the man's wrist and send the knife spinning across the floor, leaving a splatter of blood behind it. He had to do something, had to say something-- "Losing to a kid?" his voice was strangled and not at all confident, but the man snarled "Fuck off!" and it was enough. Midoriya froze at the same time the man did, careful not to undo the brainwashing as he crawled off of him.

"Put your hands behind your back," Hitoshi commanded. He had found control of his voice, even it was a little hoarse. Midoriya wasted no time in grabbing for the jump rope that had gotten tangled under them and binding the man's wrists. He was definitely bleeding.

Hitoshi stared with wide eyes. Fuck. Fuck . He had just done that.

Midoriya seemed to have a better handle on things, looking past Hitoshi with that same determined expression and saying, "If you call the police, can you tell them you did this in self-defense?"

Whatever the woman's response was, it was good enough for Midoriya who nodded and then looked up at Hitoshi, "Tell him to forget the last five minutes, and don't let him go until we're gone."

"It- will that work?" Hitoshi couldn’t hear himself very well because his blood was roaring loudly in his ears, "We've never tested that."

He barely registered that Midoriya had stood and grabbed his wrist, gently pulling him towards the door. "Well, we are right now."

Hitoshi swallowed, stumbled, looked at the man who was staring blankly at the floor and the woman who was staring blankly at them.

"Forget the last five minutes."

He didn't process much as Midoriya pulled on his arm harder, out the door, through the gate, into a nearby alley, and then another and another. By the time he stopped, both of them were wheezing for breath; he didn't know where they were at all. Hitoshi let the control of his quirk lapse and it snapped back to him, making him flinch - he had never held someone for that long, or from so far away. He could feel the headache bloom but he didn't really register the pain, yet.

Midoriya looked back at him and it seemed like whatever had fueled him to go this far had run out. His legs gave out and he crumpled to the ground, still panting and gripping Hitoshi's arm for dear life. Brain as scrambled as it was, it took Hitoshi a long moment to realize that Midoriya's other hand was clutched over his shoulder, doing very little to stop the blood that had stained his shirt. He was also distantly aware that, somehow, Midoriya had also had the thought to grab their school bags, both of them slung over his uninjured shoulder.

"Oh, fuck. " The sight of blood finally spurred Hitoshi's mind to give him back control of his body, moving in front of Midoriya and squatting down on his level, "That looks- it's-" he took a deep breath, "Let me see it."

"S' not that bad." Midoriya's voice was hoarse. He looked down at his ruined shirt and winced. "Not that deep," He corrected.

He moved his hand away when Hitoshi pulled at it and he was relieved to see that he had been right in his assessment. It was just a thin red line, the bleeding had already mostly stopped, but it was long, running from the middle of the chest to the shoulder in a curving line.

"That's-" Hitoshi chewed on his lip, desperately trying to make his brain continue to cooperate with him, "Still bad. We should go to a hospital."

"Shouldn't," Midoriya argued back, "After what we just did? And like I said, it's not that bad. I'll be okay." 

"You still need first aid!"

"I have a kit at home," Midoriya mumbled.

"…We might be closer to mine." Hitoshi said after some consideration. He really didn't want to have to explain this his mom but he wanted to send an injured Midoriya home alone even less. He fumbled for his phone and opened a map to confirm that somehow Midoriya had in fact run them closer to where he lived. He would probably recognize the street if he walked out onto it.

"Get up." Now he was the one pulling on Midoriya's arm, "We're pretty close to my house so we can just go there and patch you up."

Hitoshi helped pull Midoriya up, struggling harder than he should have had to.

"Hold on," Midoriya's voice was thick in a way that Hitoshi knew meant the boy was holding off tears, "Give me your shirt."

And that was not what Hitoshi had been expecting to hear. He slowly turned back to look at Midoriya, who was stuck somewhere in between his determined look and scared out of his mind.

"…My… Shirt?"

Midoriya nodded.

"I-If people see someone running around injured they'll notice us, but I can cover it up with your shirt, and you won't look that out of place because we were just working out."

How the hell was Midoriya still able to think enough to process that?

"…Right."

After only a moment more of hesitation Hitoshi peeled off his shirt and held it out to Midoriya, who was making an attempt at tying his old one into a makeshift bandage. It would probably be fine, Hitoshi wore baggy clothes when he could and Midoriya was much smaller than him. He slipped it over his head without issue and nodded.

"Ok. Let's go."

There was nothing wrong with the walk back, even though Hitoshi desperately felt like there should have been. There weren't many people out walking, and those that were didn't give them second looks. He kept waiting for the sound of a police siren, for a Pro to show up and arrest them, but it didn't happen.

"You should do more weightlifting," said Midoriya out of nowhere. Hitoshi stopped and looked back at him incredulously, and Midoriya went red. At least he still had enough blood to blush.

"I'm staring at your shirtless back right now and I’m trying to focus on that instead of t- the other thing. A-and… I don't know. You looked like you were panicking too."

"We're almost there," he said instead of dignifying that with a response. He fought to keep the pink off of his own cheeks… This was really, really not the time to think about things like that.

Other than that, the walk to Hitoshi's house was perfectly normal. He opened the door to his house with surprisingly steady hands and peeked inside. No one downstairs, which was a little surprising, but which Hitoshi was thankful for. Midoriya needed very little prodding to get into the bathroom, and Hitoshi followed, reaching for the first aid kit under the sink. Midoriya stripped off Hitoshi's shirt and his own ruined one. There wasn't that much more blood on it than there had been before the walk, which was probably a good sign.

"Try and keep it down," he said lowly. To his credit, Midoriya only hissed and jumped when Hitoshi started cleaning the cut with an alcohol pad. Hitoshi had done this more than once, and based on the way Midoriya reached for the gauze, he had too.

"Can you handle it?" Midoriya nodded seriously, "Then I'm going to get you another shirt."

He crept out of the bathroom and up the stairs.

"Hitoshi?"

He froze, recognizing that his mother had poked her head around the wall at the top of the stairs. He could just make out her frown.

"Is everything alright?"

He nodded. This was okay, this was fine, he'd had this kind of 'conversation' a thousand times

"…Where is your shirt?"

He pointed up the stairs, vaguely in the direction of where his room was.

"Are you going to tell me why you don't have one on right now?"

He shook his head. Gave a half shrug. It wasn't important.

"…Dinner's in the fridge."

His mother frowned like she always did but she didn't pressure for more because she knew she wasn't going to get any. She backed up and gave him space to go into his own room and start digging around for shirts. A plain black one for him was fine but he took a little extra time to find the smallest shirt he owned for Midoriya. It was a garish bright purple thing he had gotten from a store that sold bootlegs when he started middle school, a low quality iron on decal on the front read ' birthday cat' in English. He hated to part with it, but it would probably fit the boy perfectly. He crept out of his room - no further interference from his mom, thank god - and back into the bathroom where Midoriya had packed the first aid kit back up and was sitting with a deep frown directed at the floor.

Hitoshi didn't really know what to make of that, so he ignored it. Instead he tossed the shirt at Midoriya's face, who started and stared at him with wide eyes before pulling it on.

"Ok." he said quietly, "We should probably get you home. How far is it from here?"

Midoriya thankfully took the hint and whispered back, "You live closer to the gym than I do… I think it'll be 45 minutes if we run?"

They probably shouldn't do that.

"I'll... Walk you to the train station."

Midoriya let Hitoshi pull him to his feet again and he obligingly followed him out the door. He was exhausted . He was usually exhausted, but this was the kind of exhaustion that made him feel like he would actually be able to fall asleep if he was able to lie down.

He kept his hands in his pockets to keep them from shaking.

Evidently Midoriya was exhausted too, because he was quiet for once, still staring at the ground with a hard frown. Or at least that was what Hitoshi assumed, until Midoriya said, "…Is it always like that at home? Do you- Are you not allowed to talk when you're there?"

Ah. He had noticed then.

Hitoshi stopped and Midoriya stopped with him, looking up at him with huge, concerned eyes. He didn't want to have this conversation today. He didn't want to have this conversation ever.

"I. It's not like that. I can talk, I just don't." Midoriya's expression didn’t change; he should have known better than to think that would have placated him. He sighed, "I've never been told not to talk, I just don't want anyone to get nervous, so I don't."

And that was the truth. Not once had his mother ever told him not to talk to her, but every time he did talk there was a long nervous silence that he had long ago grown tired of causing. So he had stopped causing it.

That answer only made Midoriya's frown deepen.

"Why would they get nervous?"

Hitoshi opened his mouth and closed it again. Midoriya was so good and sincere and stupid. He looked at a quirk like brainwashing and thought of all the ways it could help people, not the fact that a three year old who could get anything they wanted would strain anyone's trust.

"Midoriya, I'm not going to talk about this right now."

Midoriya ended up basically pouting at that, but he kept walking when Hitoshi reached out and prodded at his uninjured shoulder. He didn't say another word until they got to the station and the train he was waiting for pulled to a stop. Midoriya turned to him and gave him a smile that was big, but sad.

"Shinso-san? I think you're a good person."

Hitoshi froze, absolutely unable to respond, and Midoriya didn't give him time to think as he stepped onto the train with a wave.

He doubted Midoriya could see him, but he turned around before wiping at his eyes, anyways.

Hitoshi had been wrong in his hope about sleeping, of course. It was nearly one in the morning and he was still laying in his bed, annoyingly awake, mind unable to stop running through the events of the day over and over again. He wished he could make it stop, his headache was only getting worse.

Then he sat up with a sudden realization and reached for his phone.

Sent:

fuck I just realized something

From Midoriya:

Everything alright?

He ignored the fact that Midoriya was also awake this late.

Sent:

nope

the knife

even if my quirk worked theyre going to wonder whos blood that is

He could feel the anxiety that had been fluttering in his chest explode with a force that made his hands start shaking all over again and his head started to swim and god fuck his dream was ruined, his life was over and he probably fucked up Midoriya's too. It was so hard to make his eyes focus that it took him a minute to read the message that Midoriya sent back.

From Midoriya:

Oh!

No, it's okay.

It's not illegal to have a knife with your own blood on it

:)

Shouta couldn't quite recall how he had gotten roped into announcing for the sports festival all those years ago. He was sure Hizashi had something to do with it, had probably threatened to have Nemuri do it in his stead. That sounded right, the two of them in the booth would have left him with a massive headache at best.

As it was, he still grumbled about it, but he also managed to prod his husband into getting him a fancy coffee for his trouble every year, so it could have been worse. He arrived at UA long before the festivities started which gave him plenty of time to do what he did every year and dig up the files on students that had caught his eye; this time they had already made it easy for him and formed a club. For the most part, it was about what he expected - most of them had had middling scores on the physical examinations they had done at the start of the year, though Gen-Ed weren't allowed to use their quirks so it wasn’t very surprising. Kobayashi Mushiko's scores were abysmal, actually, to the point where he had to wonder if there was some kind of mistake.

Well, they had all clearly been training so maybe she stood a chance.

He saved Midoriya's file for last. Same, average, physical scores as the rest of them, decent grades in class that had only risen once he had come to UA. The thing that really drew his eye was the line for quirk. Luck Manipulation, with a fat red underline and asterisk, meaning that something wasn’t right. And that something turned out to be everything that could be wrong: not confirmed with the official quirk registry, not confirmed with last educational institution, not confirmed in current institution. And really, there was no reason to bother with stuff like that for a Gen-Ed student, as long as the quirk wasn't dangerous. But the kid was clearly aiming to be a hero, and from what he had seen clearly wasn't using his quirk. He looked over the file with a frown for a long minute. It would be rude of him to do, but it was well within his job description to clear up things like this. His eyes hovered on the contact information for the boy's middle school for a long minute. He had already decided to meddle, so it wasn't much of a decision in the end.

It was still early and the voice on the other end of the line sounded sleepy. "Aldera Middle School."

"This is Aizawa Shouta calling on behalf of UA, I need to confirm a student's quirk."

"Mm. O-Of course sir!"

Since he was alone, Shouta let himself grin. It was always funny, the way people fell over themselves when they heard it was UA. There was supposed to be a whole official proccess for this, but the only time he'd ever had to go through it was with fancy private schools. Most middle schools, this one included, would just break the rules and do whatever they thought would get them into UAs good graces.

Revealing a student's personal information didn't tend to make him think highly of a place, but Shouta took advantage of it anyways.

"Can you confirm the quirk of Midoriya Izuku?"

There was a long silence on the other end of the line, Shouta strained to hear the shuffling of paper or typing but heard nothing.

"…He's quirkless sir. I do hope he hasn't been causing any trouble there."

"…Nothing like that, just had to confirm. That's all."

He hit the end call button and stared at his phone. That was... A bit of a bombshell, but it did make sense. The kid couldn't use a quirk if he didn't have one, and had clearly tried to pick a quirk no one could prove he didn't have. The reasons why he would lie were pretty clear with just a little thinking -- Shouta had seen the statistics, the kid was most certainly bullied, probably worse based on the immediate assumption that he had been causing trouble. He was a little ashamed to admit that he didn't know much about UAs own policy towards quirkless students. It had never come up before.

He looked at the little red asterisk by the quirk, willing some easy answer to this strange situation to come to him. He couldn't let the boy keep lying of course, but there wasn't any real difference between a quirk that wasn't used and a quirk that didn't exist. He had seen potential, it didn't disappear at this revelation.

Still, being a hero without a quirk would be a hard thing. He clearly had the drive, but…

He would just have to see how the kid and his friends did today.

Sent:

I'm assuming you already knew about gen-ed's problem child?

From Nezu:

You're going to have to be more specific than that!

Somehow, amazingly, things didn't blow up in their faces. Hitoshi eventually found himself in a fitful sleep, the kind that left him waking up exhausted right before his alarm went off. It was annoying, but nothing new. There was no police officer at his door when he left for school, no one stopped him at the gates and put him under arrest. His scroll through the news that morning found no mention of a man in a gym.

If Midoriya had a certain maniac look to his eyes that morning, Hitoshi didn't mention it. He was sure he looked the same.

Class 1-C gathered in their classroom for a brief pep-talk and were sent out to put on their gym uniforms and march out in front of a stadium of people, a certain group of five sharing knowing looks before they lined up.

("Everyone watches the sports festival, you know," Rei-sensei had drawled, "So do your best.")

Midoriya couldn't stop mumbling. He would do it for any reason, but mainly if he was excited or nervous. Hitoshi figured it was probably both, but mostly the latter.

"You know I'm pretty sure I saw Ms. Joke in the stands?" He was still talking as they lined up to start the first event, "And, like, I'm pretty sure that Kamui Woods is watching too. Oh-! Shinso-san, I forgot I thought of a new strategy for you last night when I couldn't sleep! Which is uh - I mean, first of all you should only try and brainwash people who aren't going to continue so they can't tell the competition, but also you should try and hide the method of your brainwashing? Like try and touch them or something? And I was thinking-"

Well, some of it was actually good advice. But the boy was clearly spiraling.

"Midoriya." he put one hand on each shoulder and the boy squeaked and stopped talking, "We're fine, you know. It worked out."

Midoriya nodded but he looked away, hands still fidgeting with the hem of his gym uniform. The tight pack of people gathering in the tunnel wasn't helping things.

"Hey." The boy's eyes flicked up to him and back to the ground. "Midoriya. Hey."

He ended up squishing Midoriya's cheeks in one hand and pulling his face forward to look at him.

"You still want to be a hero, right?" There was a faint nod against his hand. "Then this is your chance. I'm going to do everything I can. You should too."

(It was a little weird how much more true it sounded when he said things like that to Midoriya than when he told them to himself).

Her released the boy's face as tears started spilling out of Midoriya's eyes. Maybe he had come on a little strong, but he figured it was probably worth it because the panic and fear was replaced by that hard determination that Hitoshi had decided he liked much better.

Midoriya sniffed and wiped at his face and then smiled his bright, bright smile up at Hitoshi. He didn't really know what expression he made back, but Midoriya didn't seem to mind.

More people shuffled in behind them, until the tunnel was packed with people from shoulder to shoulder.

"Shinso-kun!" Oh, that was new. Hitoshi blinked and looked to the side where Midoriya was giving him a thumbs up, smile still plastered on, "I'll see you on the winners’ stand!"

And then the race started.

Kobayashi Mushiko thought that the physical fitness part of being a hero was a little unfair.

She had been trying so hard, she really really had. And it was cool to see how with a little bit of work her friends had been able to run farther, lift more, fight longer.

She wasn't able to do things like that. For all that she'd trained with them she was still left wheezing for air after running a kilometer, and the fact that she was so short really didn't help things. When people started running through the tunnel she got pushed and battered around to nearly the back of the pack. She made up for a little time, running fearlessly towards the robots around the edge of the group, turning one to worms to slow the people behind her. Then she grabbed a rope and wriggled to one of the platforms halfway over the fall and wasn’t able to get her breath back as other students passed her by.

This… happened to her sometimes, if she pushed too hard. It was like her muscles started burning and wouldn't stop no matter how long she sat there and rested.

And well… There was nothing for it! This was the Sports Festival! This was do or die! She wanted to make her friends proud!

So with a stumbling gait she wobbled to the edge of the platform and started down the rope to the other side. Her arms and especially her legs felt like they were screaming when she reached the minefield. There was a huge crater in the front, and a lot of the mines had already been triggered. Crossing it would be easy--

Distantly, there was the sound of a horn, the announcement that the race was over, and without a moment of hesitation Mushiko collapsed on the ground panting. She reached out a dizzy hand to pull at the leg of the next kid to go past her.

"Could you get Miss Recovery Girl for me, please?"

When Izuku ran out of the tunnel to the announcement of "First Place, 1-C's Midoriya Izuku", he was pretty sure he was hallucinating. He also kept running because he could hear Kaachan’s shouts echoing in the tunnel behind him. He turned around and froze when he heard Present Mic announce him as second place. Bakugo's eyes were fixed on him as he stalked across the field, palms still sparking. He couldn’t make his body move, but his eyes locked on Kaachan and he forced them to look up to where the cameras were filming and back. The blonde sneered but he got the message, abruptly turning to the side to stalk away.  Izuku let out a shaky breath and let his shoulders slump. He couldn’t let Kaachan get to him. Not today.

Only the first three winners were announced -- Todoroki had obviously been third -- so Izuku watched the scoreboard as each student arrived, smile returning when Shinso arrived (20th place), Togeike and Agoyamato not long after (30th and 33rd). But no Mushiko.

That was… Sad. More than he thought it might be, honestly. He had been worried about what would happen when one of them got eliminated and it happened right off the bat. There was a part of him that had really hoped that he had managed to help everyone enough to get far in the festival, far enough to get noticed, at least, but…

"Hey, what's with the frown, First Place?" Shinso found him first, poking at his chest with a lopsided grin, "What the hell did you do to pull that off?"

"I'm betting you made that huge explosion," Togeike came from behind him looking suitably ruffled, her gym clothes dusted in dirt and the pink glitter from the land mines of the obstacle course.

Izuku just blushed and ducked his head at that, drawing a pair of snorts from the other two.

"Only you, Midoriya."

Izuku would like to imagine that Shinso said that affectionately.

Agoyamato wasn't far behind and looked even worse for wear, the end of his pompadour frayed into countless burnt ends. He gave Izuku a once over and rolled his eyes; that was all he could do before Midnight was up on the podium announcing the next event. A cavalry battle, with each player given points depending on their place in the race. And Izuku stared at the screen with glassy eyes as Midnight announced that as the first place winner his headband was worth ten-million.

He only snapped out of it when Shinso put a heavy hand on his shoulder and said, "Full offense, but I need to not draw so much attention to myself. You know how it is."

Shinso gave him a sharp smile, and the one Izuku sent back was equally pointed. The taller boy wandered off, waving without looking back.

"So." said Togeike.

"Ten million points, huh?" Agoyamato's mouth was a hard line as he looked from Izuku to the rest of the groups that were quickly forming.

Izuku gave them a smile that he knew didn't hide his mounting panic, "It's fine! Actually I think it's better if we split up! T-to increase our odds in case someone gets eliminated."

And they nodded and listened to him, like they always did for some reason, even if he wasn't really sure he wanted to be listened to right then.

Izuku felt his heart sink as the two split up to go talk to the other students. He had no idea how he was supposed to form a team like this. Everyone was trying to stick to their own class - though it looked like Shinso was having some luck, there was a blonde from 1-B - Monoma, with the copycat quirk - announcing how he would lead Gen-Ed to rise above 1-A and put them in their place. Togeike looked to be heading that way as well.

In fact there was only one person on the field who he didn't recognize from the hero course or from his own class - she had pink hair and a bunch of support items strapped to herself. When he caught her eye her face spit open into a maniac grin as she marched across the field to grab at his hands.

"You! You're going to help me show off my babies!"

Tsutsutaka Agoyamato was freaking out.

He had managed to find a team for the cavalry battle: a black-haired girl had looked him up and down appraisingly, laughed and said, "You look strong enough to carry us to victory!" He was pretty sure that they were from 1-B, and they definitely knew each other. The hairy boy had grunted at him, and the one with the white hair had told him he looked manly.

Then the game started and all hell broke loose. There were lasers and explosions and a god-damn nightmare shadow creature. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted someone wrapped in kelp, face slack for just long enough for a blond kid on top of the formation to rip off a headband. Midoriya was somewhere in the air, beating back an assault from some kid with exploding hands who looked actually murderous. And then there was the ice wall .

"Holy fuck!" he said, at the same time the girl on his shoulder screamed, "Fuck yeah!" and disconnected her hand to try and grab at a headband.

He thought, not for the first time, that maybe he wasn't cut out for heroics.

Hitoshi wasn't able to force the stupid grin off of his own face as the results were called. Three Gen-Ed students had made it to round three and had beat out the hero course kids to do it. They would have to notice them now.

Togeike followed at his shoulder, probably in a similar state of mind based on the smirk she was wearing.

Their team was in fourth place, and no one in it had placed particularly high in the race. Hopefully, he'd succeeded in making himself the dark horse and not someone insignificant, to just be a win for someone stronger.

A look around the field showed a lot of sullen-faced hero students wandering off. Hitoshi saw Agoyamato pulling at the burnt edges of his pompadour with a frown as an excitable 1-B girl patted him on the shoulder with more force than was probably necessary.

Midoriya was at the far end of the arena, unsurprisingly in tears but with a huge smile on his face, too. He was talking animatedly with a girl who Hitoshi could not remember the name of, but who he recognized as the one with the gravity quirk. Which made sense, considering how long Midoriya had spent the cavalry battle in the air.

Midoriya waved at them as they approached, wiping off his face on his shoulder.

"We did it!" he cheered, "I bet they'll hear us out for sure, now!"

He saw Togeike gesturing out of the corner of his eye, "We totally did. Now get your new friends together and let's go get lunch."

Hitoshi was more than a little surprised at how easily the hero kids went with them, though the other girl declined to go, saying that she needed to make some 'last minute repairs and tweaks to her babies’. Whatever that was supposed to mean.

He kept quiet as everyone ate, letting the conversation flow over him.

"It's really cool that you're trying to get into the hero course," Gravity Girl was saying, "I totally thought you deserved it when you helped me after the exam! They'll totally let you in now!"

"Oh, I hope so. I-I'm sure they'll have us take some extra test or something but- uh. Well, we're all trying to be heroes!" Midoriya gestured at him and Togeike, "I'm a little worried that they're only going to let one of us transfer, so we all have to do the best we can!"

Gravity Girl nodded and flexed an arm, "Well you'll have to beat me too! I want to win this thing!"

Midoriya nodded seriously, "We're all giving it our all!"

Beside him, the Bird Kid clicked his beak and turned to Hitoshi, "I apologize that as competitors we met on antagonistic terms. I will be trying my best as well."

Hitoshi nodded, silently thankful that neither of them had brought up the challenge he had issued their class. There was still a large part of him bitter at the hero kids, the feeling of resentment that told him that they'd had it easy, but here, off the field, he was able to concede, at least a little, that they'd had to work to get here too. He’d had to work harder, but still.

For all the Sports Festival was a novel experience, this lunch thing was too. Sometimes Midoriya or even Gravity Girl - Uraraka, he re-learned - would look at him for input on the conversation and it was wanted. It was… Awkward for him. Really, there was solace in the fact that the Bird Kid looked as uncomfortable as he felt. Or at least Hitoshi thought he did, but he wasn't really an expert in bird emotions.

"Oh! Shinso-kun!" Uraraka snapped him out of his thoughts, "I saw you in the cavalry battle but I couldn't figure out your quirk! What is it?"

She asked so genuinely, and didn't seem to notice the way the atmosphere at the table grew tense. Midoriya bit down on his lip and Togeike was giving him a side-eye.

"It's a secret." he said, thankful that he had the perfect excuse for that answer.

She frowned but nodded seriously, "That's pretty smart-"

There was a chime from the ceiling and a robotic voice announced, "The pairings for the third round have been posted. Winners of the second round, please make your way to the waiting rooms."

Uraraka waved at them as they separated and Hitoshi found himself feeling confident as they made their way to the 1-C waiting room. It was just the three of them, now. Three kids who had been denied the hero course and stood on the same stage as them despite that.

"Oh, look!" Said Midoriya, pointing at the TV hanging in the corner, "The bracket!"

When he saw it, Hitoshi's heart sank. It was probably the worst person he could have been paired against. Because of course it was .

Hitoshi breathed in. Breathed out. Turned to Midoriya with a forced grin and said, "Well, good luck."

Midoriya nodded back, but his jaw was clenched shut.

Well, fuck. There went that plan.

...And he knew, deep down, that this was different, but it still stung to have Midoriya refuse to respond to him.

"I think you two both have a match to prepare for." Togeike's comment sliced through the tension like a knife and they both took a step back, shaken. Midoriya was still looking at him, eyes screaming that he wanted to say something, but in the end, he bowed his head and turned to walk towards wherever he was supposed to go.

Hitoshi shot a dull glance at Togeike, "What, no words of encouragement?"

She shrugged back, "I'd say the same thing to both of you. So uh… Win, I guess? I'm going to the stands to watch."

Hitoshi rolled his eyes, only letting himself sigh once she was gone.

Why him ? Why in the first round? Midoriya wouldn't hold anything back and that meant Hitoshi's chances of beating him in a fair-fight were pretty damn slim. And Midoriya knew all about his quirk, probably more than Hitoshi did himself so it wasn't worth relying on, either. Midoriya responded to him more than he should, but he wouldn't, not here.

...Only, he was sure he could say things that Midoriya would respond to. The boy was too… good. Hitoshi wasn't and he knew he'd be able to rile him up. All he'd really have to do is threaten to bring up what happened last night and he would probably panic; maybe bring up that bully who had him cornered in the bathroom, or the quirk he was obviously sensitive about. If Midoriya was right and they were only going to transfer one person, it would be the person who climbed the highest in the fights. If he wanted that to be him, Hitoshi should hurt his feelings.

He chewed his lip as he made his way to the tunnel where he would wait to start the match. He didn't actually want friends anyways, right?

Midoriya was a very forgiving person, so it would be fine. Right?

The echo of Present Mic announcing their match echoed down the tunnel -- something about a fated match from General Education . He wasn't really listening. The only place he was looking was right in front of him - squinting his eyes in the sunlight as he walked across the field to the stadium.

Midoriya Izuku was on the other side of the ring, and he was smiling. Not one of his bright sunshine smiles, but the feral one, the scary one, the one that said I know how to beat you.

Hitoshi let himself smile, too. If that was how it was then there was no reason to hold back.

They both crouched into fighting stances and above them Midnight snapped her whip down and told them to start.

Midoriya took off running and Hitoshi knew he had to meet him in the middle or risk getting pushed out of bounds right away. Midoriya tended to favor fast takedowns when he could help it, which meant that he didn't have time to waste. He ended up just barley dodging the first punch.

"I wonder about your quirk sometimes," he panted. The hesitation in Midoriya's jab was barely perceptible, but it was there. "I mean, I've been working pretty hard on learning mine but you haven't touched yours at all, have you?"

He had to throw up his arms to block another punch to his throat. Midoriya had talked at length about that being a weakness and when the option of the school nurse healing them was there clearly had no qualms exploiting it. His smile had dropped but there was still a hard light in his eyes and Hitoshi desperately grabbed at an arm to deflect the next punch.

"I mean, I get it. I have a villain's quirk. But I'm trying to use it to do good. Whatever you've got, you're not using at all--" his voice was ragged with some kind of emotion, but he didn't have the time to figure out what it was as Midoriya pushed at his shoulders from behind and sent him stumbling to the ground. He rolled himself over as quick as he could -- he was going to lose if he didn't do something --

He knew Midoriya was wounded there, knew it was a weakness he could exploit and so, in a bid to make sure he wasn't pinned, Hitoshi let one of his hands swipe upwards and push against the cut on Midoriya's shoulder. The boy hissed and stumbled back and Hitoshi rolled to his feet, still talking.

"You go on about doing everything it takes to be a hero, but you won't use it. You won't even talk about it--"

The look on Midoriya's face was some strange mixture of fear and worry and sadness; his eyes were glassy.

"Shinso-kun-" Midoriya's voice sounded strangled, for the brief moment that he was able to talk. Hitoshi grabbed at his mind more on reflex than anything else.

"Turn around." Hitoshi usually felt confident when giving commands but right now his voice sounded alien to his own ears, "And walk out of bounds."

And that was it. Present Mic was up in the booth asking "Whoa! What Happened? Midoriya just gave up?"

Midnight announced Hitoshi as the winner with a confused glance at Midoriya. And Hitoshi gave a small bow to her before turning and walking away, not sparing a backwards glance when he released his control.

Well, he had won. One step closer to getting into the hero course. Felt great. Plus Fucking Ultra.

Hitoshi ended up finding an empty side tunnel, leaning the side of his head against the cool concrete of the wall and closing his eyes as thoughts and the low pain of a headache buzzed around his skull. He was tired. He was probably going to have bruises. He was really worried that he'd just upset someone who he cared about, which was not a thing he thought he'd be admitting to himself about anyone less than a year ago. They had both agreed to do their best; Midoriya had insisted to him before that he should say anything to get a response, but it sure didn't feel good to see him basically on the verge of tears because of him.

"He's over here!"

Hitoshi squinted into the fluorescent lights. His eyes adjusted to see… Ochaco? She gave him a smile and a wave before skipping off, much to Hitoshi's bewilderment. Was someone looking for him, or...?

"Shinso-kun!"

Midoriya appeared from the corner where Ochaco had just disappeared, eyes red and puffy but smile plastered on his face -- not the bright sunshine one, it didn't reach his eyes --

"Um." Hitoshi said.

Somehow Midoriya closed the space between them faster than he had when they had been fighting and- oh. Huh.

Hitoshi's mind ran blank as Midoriya pulled him into a crushing hug. At least it was the kind that pinned his arms to his sides, so he could put his thoughts back together before having to do anything else. First, he had to figure out what Midoriya was mumbling --

"--did really good! The fight lasted so long that people probably won't be able to figure out how you activated your quirk, and you were talking the whole time but your footwork was really good-"

"You don't… Think I fought kind of dirty?"

Midoriya shook his head, and then as if only just realizing that he was still holding on, let Hitoshi go and took a step back, "I would have done the same thing. I… tried to punch your throat?"

Hitoshi let out a breathy laugh, surprising himself with how much better he felt from just that. But Midoriya was still staring up at him with big green eyes, something still swirling in them that was a far cry from the determination he'd had not that long ago.

"Sure." Hitoshi said, flatter than he'd meant it, "Midoriya, are you… Okay? After all that?"

After all, he probably just ruined his chances of making into the hero course...

"What? Oh yeah!" The smile came back, but the eyes stayed the same. "I'm fine!" A light tug on Hitoshi's hand, "We should go to the stands to watch the matches! To see who you're up against!"

Hitoshi nodded and let himself get pulled along into the hallway. He didn't believe it, exactly, but he wasn't about to push things.

They walked in silence, Midoriya's hands fidgeting with each other as his pace got slower and slower. Hitoshi tried to keep his hand from scratching at the back of his neck.  Their conversation wasn't finished, it seemed.

"Shinso-kun," Midoriya said his name very carefully, looking up at him with that same swirl of fear and sadness, "D-do… You want to hear about my quirk?"

The true, honest answer was yes, Hitoshi was very curious to hear about whatever it was about Midoriya's quirk that was so horrible.

"…Midoriya, I said that stuff so I could get a response out of you. If you want to tell me I'll listen, but I promise I don't care what your quirk is. I'm in no position to judge something like that."

Midoriya's eyes slid back to the floor. What he said next was very quiet.

"Shinso-kun… Do you think it's possible to become a hero without using a quirk?"

Damn. It was really that bad, huh?

"…I don't know," He admitted, "But I think if anyone could do it, it would be you."

Midoriya didn't look up at him, and Hitoshi knew full well that an answer like that would just sound like an empty platitude. He stopped walking, which did the trick of getting Midoriya to look up at him, though Hitoshi pointed a finger at him, too, for good measure.

"I mean it, though. Think about Eraserhead, right? He turns fights quirkless, but with the way you think, you don't need that, because you can just turn someone's quirk against them or something."

The look Midoriya gave him, teary-eyed as it was, was kind of incredible. Like Hitoshi had just told him the best news on earth. And weirdly, in that moment, all Hitoshi wanted to do was stare back.

Ah. Hitoshi realized as whatever butterflies had been in his chest decided to take flight all at once. This was a very bad time to be having realizations about feelings .

He was thankful that as smart as Midoriya was, he also seemed to be totally oblivious of some things, like the fact that Hitoshi was no-doubt blushing up to his ears. Midoriya smiled -- the real one, the bright sunshine one -- and tugged at his hand again and the spell was broken.

“Then let’s go watch the matches and come up with some strategies so you can win!”

Hitoshi let himself get pulled along, trying to fight off a stupid smile from crawling onto his face. He had followed Midoriya to get this far, after all.

All Izuku had to do was to delay his breakdown until after the Sports Festival.

The annoying thing about it was that he was happy. He was proud of himself for getting as far as he had, was proud that Shinso had gotten farther.

He just wished that he had done better, too.

It made sense, his traitorous thoughts told him, of course he would get further than you. He has an amazing quirk, he deserves it more than you do.

The worst part was that Shinso believed in him. Even without a quirk. Which made the fact that he was the one who Midoriya had lost to all the more confusing and painful. If the loss made him want to give up, Shinso's confidence that he shouldn't made him so incredibly hopeful that he could make it after all.

Iif he were to cry again right now, he wouldn't be sure if the tears would be sad or happy.

But he couldn't do that, Shinso was sitting next to him in the stands and he was clearly feeling as nervous and guilty enough as it was, constantly fidgeting and looking everywhere but at him; not to mention Togeike, who had moved from her spot to sit next to Izuku and basically demand the strategies he had offered Shinso.

It was fine. This was fine. The whole reason he had formed the club was to make sure everyone else had a chance at getting into the hero course. Shinso and Togeike still had a shot, so even if he felt a little like his dreams had been crushed all over again he would push it down until he got home. Luckily, the sports festival was a great distraction.

The next two combatants were making their way across the field, and Izuku had his notebook at the ready in his lap after retrieving it from the waiting room.

"I think Sero is at a pretty big disadvantage" He started, and was all at once overwhelmed and relieved with the pressure of Togike and Shinso leaning in closer to listen to him, "His strength is mostly in mobility, but there's nothing for him to latch onto here, so that'll be a struggle. He probably has a hard time with close range fighting, but I think Todoroki is the same in that respect so I'd say getting in close is the way to go. I still haven't seen him use his left side for anything but melting ice so it'd probably be best to target --"

He had talked through the start of the match but cut himself off abruptly as a three-story tall glacier appeared in the middle of the stadium, trapping Sero inside.

"Ah." said Izuku, swallowing thickly "I guess my best advice is to not get hit by that."

Izuku felt Shinso tense beside him, the other boy leaning forward to get a look at something. Then Shinso groaned and scrubbed at his face with his hands.

"I think with competition like that, it'd be better for me to be down there figuring out how to get him to talk. In a fight with him…"

"You could still win" Izuku interrupted, "We've never seen him get in an up close fight, and the way he holds his stance to use his quirk I bet he wouldn't be any good at it. But…" His eyes trailed to the glacier that had started to collapse and turn to slush under the touch of Todroki's left hand, "…It might be a good idea to get some intel, yeah."

Shinso groaned again and pulled himself up to his feet, muttering something about a headache, but he stopped and looked back before going back down to the prep rooms and tunnels below the stadium. Izuku was used to Shinso's sharp sarcastic smiles, he wasn't really prepared for the one Shinso sent him right then to be something bordering on soft.

"I'll be expecting a full analysis of that guy by the time I'm back up here, you know."

Izuku nodded and Shinso saw himself off with a half wave. He stared after Shinso for a long moment, trying and failing to work out why he could suddenly feel his heart in his throat.

Togeike looked from where Shinso had gone to him and back with narrowed eyes a few times before settling back in her seat with crossed arms and a smirk.

"Right after you beat the shit out of each other, huh? I don't think I'll ever understand men."

Izuku did not ask her to elaborate. In fact, he very consciously decided to set aside what she had been implying to examine for later, because emotions were running high enough today as it was, and he had a job to do.

The next match went by in a flash and Izuku was silently thankful that Hatsume Mei had decided to forfeit her round. Iida was a powerhouse, certainly, but he was predictable (fast, but couldn't take sharp corners well, would have trouble keeping his balance if something went for his legs-). Mei was not; he could only have guessed what her support equipment did before she showed it off, and the amount of versatility on display was staggering. He had gotten a small taste of it in the cavalry battle, but the fact of the matter was that if she had wanted to, she could have won, even without giving Iida any equipment of hers to sabotage him with. 

And, well that was something, wasn't it? He had notebooks filled with analysis of the costumes and support items of other heroes, but the designs he'd made for himself when he was a kid hadn't had anything because he'd been waiting for a quirk to show up to design around . If he didn't have one, if he had that kind of freedom… If he was at UA, with the best student Support Lab in the country?

He smiled to himself, any self-depreciation he could have had over not realizing how big this could be disappearing beneath the wave of ideas that he started to scribble on the pages between matches.

Knowing what he had learned that morning, Shouta watched the group of Gen-Ed kids with a critical eye. He had figured that they would place somewhere in the middle of the pack, and most of them did, but not the one he expected.

Short, green haired, apparently quirkless Midoriya Izuku had carried a metal plate with him from the first obstacle to the last and used it to get first place. It had been so explosive, so surprising that Hizashi hadn't even commented on the maniac grin it brought to his face -- the one he got when he was excited by something. That maneuver alone would have been enough for him to argue for the boy's placement into the course, and then the second round had started. He had expected the four remaining members of the club to group together, it seemed like they were going to, with the way they all looked to Midoriya… And then they didn't. And instead the kid used the intel he had gathered on his class to good use and made a damn good team; not good enough to keep the ten million point headband, but good enough for second place.

Two of the others had made it through, too, and when he realized that Hizashi shot him a worried glance because he did not normally smile that much. His husband switched off the mics at some point during the recreational games and shot him a sidelong, almost concerned look.

"We uh… got a lot of hot blooded kids this year, huh Shou?"

He had wrestled his face back down into apathy by that point, but he knew that Hizashi had noticed his outburst.

"You could say that. Did you know that this is the record number of kids from the non-hero courses to get to the third round?"

It was a very loaded question. He himself had gotten into the hero course through the sports festival so he paid closer attention to that than most. Most years only kids from the hero course made it to the second round, much less the third. If an outlier did make it through to the third round it was only one; the record he was talking about had been set the year before he started teaching, two support students had teamed up to make it to the third round and then both got immediately knocked out. He'd heard that they had gone on to start their own highly respected company afterwards.

Students often complained that they were being used to make the hero course look good, and they were pretty much right. But that made it all the more impressive when kids beat the odds and made it through the rounds anyways. This year, between the three Gen-Ed kids and Hatsume Mei the record had been smashed. He wouldn't have to worry about getting her where she belonged but the other three had certainly made an impression.

Hizashi raised an eyebrow and his face fell into an easy smile once he realized what his husband was thinking.

"You see someone with potential out there?"

"...I might."

That was a glowing recommendation coming from him. Hizashi didn't need to know that it might apply to three people.

If he was disappointed when the kid got knocked out in the first round, he didn't say it. It would have been real damn funny if he'd managed to win the whole thing, but he was an untrained first-year with all the cards in the deck stacked against him. He'd done well enough as it was. And as for the winner of that match, well, Hitoshi Shinso was pretty interesting, too.

"Do you think Ashido's acid can normally burn through rock? Or if Kirishima's quirk only makes his skin harder but not actually change its chemical composition-"

"I don't know," replied Togeike, exasperated, "I hope you figure it out. I'm going to get ready for my match."

Togeike Chikuchi had not realized quite how out of her league she was until this moment.

In theory, the kids in the hero course shouldn't be that much more in shape or battle ready than she was. She was in shape, she exercised. She had gotten a lot more intensive about it when school started, just like they had. Sure, the training they were getting was more formal but she didn't see how the difference it made could be this large.

A wall of air slammed into her chest and she went stumbling backwards with a grunt. She sent a tendril of kelp from her left hand arcing towards the boy only for him to dance out of range. Which was annoying, she'd been able to get the strands a lot longer once she'd started practicing at it.

More annoying were these damn walls -- they wouldn't be too bad if she could only see the damn things. Moving forward anything but carefully meant she'd run right into one and she'd get boxed in.

Which, well, she was boxed in but that meant he couldn't get to her, either. They had an awkward stare-off, Togeike grew a coil of kelp in her hand as she held eye contact.

How long until these walls started to disappear? Ugh, she should have read Midoriya's notes more  

The 1-B student across from her took a step back and tilted his head with an expression of intense consideration. Then, he gave her a lopsided smile and said, "I'm gonna try something. Sorry, it might hurt!"

She saw him taking a deep breath, started moving as she realized that whatever he was doing had caused the walls of air around her to disappear, and promptly got slammed backwards by a pillar of solid air, knocking her fully out of bounds.

He'd never even had to touch her.

When Togeike returned to the stands, it was with a bag of popcorn that she ate so angrily Izuku could have thought it had personally offended her. She hadn't seen Shinso and she didn't have anything more to say about the upcoming matches, which was fine. Midoriya had been disappointed when she'd lost, of course, but he'd been disappointed by a lot of things today and he'd already found a groove in focusing on something else. Which was to say the battles.

He was a little let down by 1-B's Monoma. His quirk had so much versatility, but he'd come to the field with Kendo and Tetsutetsu's quirks. Which would make him an absolute beast in close combat, but he was up against Kaminari Denki, who feasibly only had to touch him to knock him out. Which was exactly what wound up happening, with a little floundering on the 1-A student's part. Izuku couldn't help but wonder if the choice of quirks had been poor planning on Monoma's part, or if he hadn't been able to get anyone else to agree to let him copy theirs. Maybe it was both, based on what he had seen of the boy's personality.

Tokoyami beat Yaoyorozu similarly decisively, which Izuku didn't find surprising. Dark Shadow seemed incredibly powerful, which was why he had asked the bird-headed boy to help him in the cavalry battle. Yaoyorozu was smart, but she didn’t seem to know Dark Shadow’s weakness. She’d only had the time to make one item and it hadn’t been in the ballpark of ‘flashbang’ so she was quickly overpowered.

And then came the match he was second-most nervous about. He liked Uraraka, she had been nice to him. More than once, even! But he also knew Kaachan. And he could see the beatdown he gave her coming from miles away. He took notes on the match with a frown. She had a really good strategy, too. If she'd been a little better at hand-to-hand combat she probably could have used the distraction she made to get a hand on Kaachan to use her quirk, and then probably would have been able to end the match. Sadly it wasn't to be.

Well, Bakugo was Bakugo and he was almost certainly going to make the finals unless someone had a surprise in store. He just had to make sure Shinso was the one he was fighting against.

Though, when he thought of Shinso he looked up and around the stands. He still hadn't returned and the staff were starting to get set up for the second round of matches, of which his was the first. He must have found something good, then?

Hitoshi got the impression that he really wasn't meant to overhear this.

"You're acting disgracefully, Shoto. Do you understand? Even if that works for now…"

There was the sound of someone walking away, a frustrated grunt, the sound of someone walking towards him, and oh god was it hot in here?

Endeavor spared him only a passing glance, but that glance was more of a glare that froze him in place until the number two hero rounded the corner and was out of sight, dismissing him like he was trash.

Holy shit .

Right. Okay. He had known, somewhere in the back of his head, that the Todoroki kid was related to Endeavor, but it hadn't really hit him until just then. And they were having some kind of fight or something, so that was all the intel he could really hope for.

The idea of using it settled like a lead weight in the bottom of his chest. The way that man had spoken to his son was a threat.

It took him a few seconds to realize that his phone had buzzed and he numbly reached a hand into his pocket.

From Midoriya:

Hey I hope you haven't fallen asleep down there, your match is soon, remember?

I hope you found something useful!

Sent:

i mean

something like that I guess

Hitoshi stood at one end of the arena with his heart in his throat. This fight would have been nerve wracking enough before he'd heard what he had. Now, staring across the field at Todoroki's blank expression, he was honest to god scared. His plan, flimsy as it was, had been to mock the fact that he had been a recommended student, that he had his spot in UA handed to him on a silver platter, that he hadn't had to work for it. The thought of saying that, when the person who had recommended him had most certainly been Endeavor -- when that platter was probably not silver at all -- made the back of his throat taste sour.

He could taunt him about Endeavor himself, about how he clearly had daddy issues, but that was even worse.

Maybe he was reading too much into things, maybe Todoroki's father was just strict. Maybe the kid had a damn burn scar over one of his eyes worse than anything Hitoshi had ever seen Endeavor give to a captured villain. Had anyone ever asked the story behind that?

So what did that leave him with?

"And…Start!" Cried Midnight with the crack of her whip. The crowd roared behind her.

Fuck.

A trail of ice shot towards him at lightning speed and Hitoshi jumped to the side, catching himself in a roll as he went too far. It wasn't the huge glacier from before. Maybe, if he was lucky, Todoroki wouldn't be able to do that again. Not that it would matter if he didn't do something -- he had to get closer, like Midoriya had said. He had to start talking.

"You-!" He started, only to have the words be ripped away from him as another trail of ice shot across the field. He wasn't quite fast enough to dodge fully, he got his feet away but the tail end of the ice spiked up higher than the rest, catching his arm in a snare. Not a tight one- he was able to yank his arm free with a grunt, ice cracking and shattering and leaving thin cuts up his arm that he couldn't even feel for the cold.

"You are so damn annoying" he finally managed to spit at the hero course student, his plan of verbal attack suddenly clarifying in the front of his mind, "You've got fire, don't you? I've seen you melt shit."

Todoroki's eyes darkened but he didn't respond with words, instead shifting forward and sending another stream of ice towards Hitoshi. This one was larger, faster, angry , and Hitoshi only got away because he dived for it, losing a shoe as the tip of it got caught in the ice, and earning himself more cuts on his arms as he landed on the sharp chunks left over from the first attack. He pulled himself to the other side of the floe, where the ring was more clear, before bouncing back to his feet.

"I got this far with my damn villain's quirk," he hoped the audio wasn't being broadcasted, if anything because he would have to deal with Midoriya crying to him about that choice of words later, "I'm not going to respect someone who thinks they can half-ass being a hero."

Another path of ice, but this one was slower, easy enough to dodge with a side step, and when Hitoshi really focused on his completion…

"You're fucking shivering! You could fix your own damn problem!"

Alright, maybe the anger he was spitting was pretty real.

Todoroki frowned at that, one hand gesturing to send a wave of ice curling over the back half of the stage -- it would have been a deadly rival to the glacier of the first round, if he wasn't already so slow, and Hitoshi was able to get in front of it, leaving him awkwardly perched in the swell of the wave, shoe-less foot shooting shocks of pain up his leg from the cold.

"You don't understand anything."

Todoroki said it so low that Hitoshi probably wasn't meant to hear it, but Hitoshi had -- yes, he had -- and he snatched at the string that would connect him to Todoroki's mind like manna from the heavens. He might not understand anything, but oh could he fucking guess.

One of the things he had learned about his quirk was that that people he brainwashed could remember what happened to them, if he wanted them to.

"I don't know what your beef is with your father, or with your fire, but quirks are about how you use them, not what they are. I know that better than anyone." He hesitated, thankful he was shielded from the cameras and most of the crowd by the ice at his back, "If your old man gives you too much shit for losing then send him to me. And if it makes this any easier, I'm gonna win the whole thing."

Then he took a breath, and with intent to command, in the way that was making his throat start to feel scratchy, he said, "Put your arms up like you're defending yourself when I come towards you."

It was a plan to preserve the secret of his quirk, though a part of him wondered why he bothered. Hopefully Todoroki wouldn't figure it out, or if he did he would be a good sportsman and not tell anyone. He just wished he could give a more complex command than that; if he didn't already have a headache, several wounds, and a possibly frostbitten foot, he probably could have handled it. Instead of ordering Todoroki out of the ring, he slid down the ice using the momentum to run fast across the field. Todoroki raised his arms, like he was going to block a punch, and Hitoshi, knowing there wouldn't be any resistance, held his palms out and pushed instead.

Todoroki stumbled two steps back and onto the ground. Over the line. Midnight was announcing it, but Hitoshi wasn't paying any attention to that; instead he looked down at the boy on the ground who was looking up at him with eyes filled with shock.

"You…How did you…?"

Todoroki's voice was quiet and small, but to Hitoshi's relief the boy didn't look or sound afraid -- though he was still visibly holding back shivers. Hitoshi didn't intend to answer any version of whatever question he was going to ask and instead offered a hand to him. Todoroki didn't take it, eyes flicking from the hand to the ring behind him. Then he said "…You should go see Recovery Girl."

Hitoshi blinked and turned to look at the stage behind him. Over half of it was covered in a field of crushed ice, and the back third of it was covered by that icy wave -- and all of it was covered with smears of blood enough for it to look positively grizzly. Hitoshi looked down at his own arms to confirm that, yes, they were streaked with the stuff. Really, it didn't hurt as bad as it looked, though the rational bit of his brain told him that was only because of the cold and adrenaline.

Well, it was an easy out.

"Yeah. I'll… Go do that."

There were two robots with a stretcher between them waiting for him at the mouth of the tunnel, so he sat on it and let them wheel him off.

Ow. He realized as his ride was slightly jostled when they turned a corner. It was the adrenaline. Those cuts and scrapes hurt exactly as bad as they looked.

Recovery girl had frowned and tutted at him before herding him onto a cot.

"You kids take this way too far. It's not worth getting yourself hurt for the Sports Festival."

Hitoshi had flinched back as the little old woman swiped at his wounds with alcohol pads, but kept his mouth shut. If this was just a festival, then sure, he had gone too far. But it wasn't a game, not for him, or for Midoriya or Togeike or Agoyamato or Mushiko. He just obligingly held out his hands as she started wrapping him up to his elbows in gauze.

"Normally I would use my quirk on you, but it's exhausting, and with those bags under your eyes, I'm afraid you wouldn't wake up in time for your next match. But you will come back here at the end of the festival." Recovery Girl's frown was deep and brokered no arguing, so Hitoshi didn't try. She was right, anyways.

She pushed a handful of gummies and a bottle of water into his hands and trundled off to go fuss with one of the other patients in the room, hidden behind a privacy screen. So he ate, and he drank, and then he waited, nervous energy leading him to swing his one leg back and forth; His foot just barely brushed the ground from where he sat on the cot.

Now that he was sitting still, the weight of everything he had just done came crashing down on him. His arms and his head still hurt, and his throat was starting to as well, but it didn't seem like Recovery Girl was going to be able to do much else for him right now.  He should probably go find Todoroki again and give him a proper explanation, and barring that he definitely needed to watch the matches that were after his. Was he even free to go?

He stretched to the side and glanced to the back of the room, where he could see the back of Recovery Girl's head, cut off by the curtains between beds, but his eyes flicked back to the door as he heard it slide open. Midoriya was on the other side, smile wide and eyes glassy. Hitoshi looked up at the ceiling instead of at the boy, hoping that it hid the smile he couldn't help forming on his face.

Midoriya wasn't the one who spoke, though. Instead it was Togeike's voice that said, "Well, you've got everyone's hopes on your shoulders now. Better win."

"Was already planning on it. You lost?" He looked down to see her leaning in the doorway with crossed arms and a frown, which answered his question. Before she could respond, there was a slight gasp from behind him, and then Mushiko's voice, sounding drowsy, said, "Shin-chan? You won?"

It was from the bed Recovery Girl was fussing over, the old pro huffed a sigh and said, "Don't move around too much, dear," but she obligingly pulled the curtain back so that the three of them could see Mushiko lying in bed, limbs covered in alternating heat and cold packs. She looked mussed and dirty, but she smiled up at them as Hitoshi turned to face her and the others moved around his bed to get closer, "I don't know what round is going on right now but congrats!"

Then she stopped, blinked, tilted her head, "Hey, where's Ago-chan? And Mido-chan, why are you holding a shoe?"

Midoriya jumped and turned back to Hitoshi with an apologetic smile, eyes crinkling. There was, in fact, a shoe in his left hand. "I thought you'd want this back?"

"Yeah, thanks."

This was horrible. His reputation as a stoic asshole was going to be ruined if he couldn't stop smiling.

Mushiko watched Shinso toe his shoe back on with wide eyes. Togeike rolled hers and said, "You didn't hear it from me, but Agoyamato has been adopted by 1-B. I think they bullied him into sitting in their section of the stands."

Mushiko giggled at that, but winced just as quickly. Midoriya was the one to step closer to her, hands flying out to hover over her as if he could do anything, "Ah- we didn't even ask what happened to you! Are you okay?"

Mushiko slumped back into the pillows, but her smile returned, "I'm okay! I just tore… Some stuff. I'll tell you all about it later!"

At that Recovery Girl hummed her approval and started swatting at Midoriya's leg, "Yes, the girl needs rest, and you lot need to go back to the Festival."

Hitoshi took that as his cue and slid off the cot, only to earn himself a nagging, "Make sure you come back before the end of the day."

"We'll make sure he does, ma'am!" Midoriya piped up.

Hitoshi was shepherded back to the stands in time to see the end of the fight between Iida and Ashido. The pink girl had a sound strategy - she had been dodging her opponent's moves well and had taken every opportunity to fling acid over the field, eating away at the concrete and making it harder for him to maneuver. But in the end she had gotten a little too over-confident, or maybe a little too tired, and had tried to dodge a kick too low. The blow sent her rolling back to the edge of the ring, and a second kick sent her out of bounds before she could recover. Midoriya mumbled something mostly unintelligible, but Hitoshi could gather he was working out some strategy about making him kick high to waste more energy, though he wouldn't have to worry about it if he just threw a punch or two.

Considering who he was going to be going up against next he knew he should be paying closer attention, but Hitoshi found it hard to focus on much of anything now that he had wound down from his fight.

Which… Wow . He had beaten Todoroki Shoto, son of the number two hero, recommended student in the hero course at UA, on national television. That certainly didn't feel like it could be real, and in fact the part of his brain that was currently still working was doing it's best to convince him that no, this was all a dream, he was going to wake up in a jail cell because of what happened yesterday. Then Midoriya turned his notebook around and started lecturing him on the best way to trip up someone with a speed quirk and the moment passed.

They had their attention dragged away by the fight between Tsuburaba and Kaminari -- the former's air barriers made for decent insulators  against electricity, but ironically, weren't air tight enough to defend him from the latter's indiscriminate shocks.

"He's got to be reaching some kind of limit ," Midoriya mumbled into his hands, " I'm pretty sure he has one-"

And then, between that match and the next, there was an announcement-

"It seems that Tenya Iida has had to resign from the competition for personal reasons," It was in Eraserhead's monotone, not the boisterous shouting of Present Mic, "So Shinso Hitoshi is moving on to the finals."

He didn't even register it at first, it took Midoriya grabbing his upper arm in a death grip and Togeike nailing him with a rather hard flick to the back of the head before he shook out of the stupor that had put him in.

"I'm… In the finals? I'm on the podium at least. I-"

Now he was the one getting choked up. By default wasn't exactly the ideal way of making it to the finals, but who was he to complain? As if one of his potential plans hadn't been to brainwash his competition before the fight started and have them give up. Midoriya gave him a few moments to blink the tears from his eyes before saying, "So you're definitely going up against Kaachan. He always leads with a right hook, and if you want to get him to talk --" he hesitated, "Well it's tough to say what he'll respond to and what will make him angry enough to start attacking right away. Don't bring me up, he'll attack for sure--"

The fight between Bakugo and Tokoyami was exactly as brutal as Midoriya predicted it would be, the bird headed student having a massive disadvantage from quirk alone.

"Still could have won it," Midoriya muttered, " Even if Dark Shadow is weakened it can't ever be truly ignored, Tokoyami can always be in a 2 on 1 situation…"

The break between fights maybe wasn't as long as it should have been, considering Bakugo was about to fight three people in a row, but if Midoriya's explanation of the boy was correct that may well have been due to his own aggressive arguing to move on faster. Bakugo versus Kaminari was even more one sided, with the explosive teen using his quirk to get himself into the air and out of range of Kaminari's electricity. Midoriya had been right about Kaminari having a limit, he was a stumbling mess after his single attack, and Bakugo wasted no time grabbing him by the front of the shirt, hauling him to the edge of the ring, and tossing him out of bounds.

And then, filled with nervous energy, Shinso made his way down to the waiting room for his match. Despite all his bravado about winning, he hadn't actually imagined being in the finals, being this close to doing it. The break between matches was both too long, and not long enough, the waiting made his nervous energy build and there wasn't enough time for him to talk himself down from it. All he could do was walk down the tunnel onto the field, and face down the kid who had threatened Midoriya in a bathroom and probably done a lot worse.

God, he hoped he won.

"The highest scorer in the entrance exam, the explosive Bakugo Katsuki!" Crowed Present Mic over the roar of the crowd, "Versus the mysterious dark horse from General Education, Shinso Hitoshi!"

"Ready, boys?" asked Midnight, pulling a suggestive pose,  arms up to signal everything was about to start.

Hitoshi did, actually, have something of a plan in mind. The space between them was too far for a handshake, but he extended a hand anyway, "May the best man win?"

Bakugo just scoffed at him, unfortunately. Then Midnight snapped her wrist and shouted "Start!" and he was off like a rocket.

He always leads with a right hook , Midoriya had told him. Hitoshi didn't feel confident enough in his hand-to-hand abilities to counter a punch when the hands giving it created explosions, so he ducked around them instead, circling around him and cracking a grin, "Damn, you just go for it don't you? And here I was trying to be all sportsmanlike."

"Shut up you damn extra!"

Hitoshi caught him. Bakugo slowed to a stop and stood still, arms hanging loosely by his sides

That was... it? He blinked at where Bakugo stood with a blank face, one hand coming up to run through his hair.

It couldn't have been that easy, but it was. And instead of doing the smart thing and sending Bakugo out of bounds he turned to where Midnight stood on the judge's stand and yelled up at her, "He can't move, by the way."

Midnight stared at him for too long and he started to regret it - Bakugo was fighting him hard, and he could feel his headache start to bloom into a full grown migraine behind his right eye. She tilted her head and then asked, over the microphone for the crowd to hear, "Bakugo, can you move?"

"Shake your head." Hitoshi commanded, and mechanically, the loud blonde did. Midnight hesitated for another long moment, eyes flicking between the two, clearly unsure of what she was seeing. Hitoshi grimaced as the resistance started to stab behind his eyes, "Actually, you know what, I'm doing this for my own safety. Walk to the end of the tunnel and wait there."

And Bakugo did. The crowd was filled with quiet murmuring for a long moment, and then there was the crackle of speakers and Present Mic's voice saying, "Well there you have it! Your winner of the first year's Sport's Festival. From 1-C, Shinso Hitoshi! "

He blinked as the stadium erupted into cheers. Was this real? It certainly didn't feel like it. He should probably celebrate or something though, right? Experimentally, he raised a fist in the air, which the crowd seemed to like.

Out of the corner of his eye, Hitoshi saw himself on the screen. He was smiling, which he hadn't realized. He also had a nasty nosebleed. He let his fist fall and wiped at it, obliging Midnight when she smiled at him and told him to get himself cleaned up by walking off the stage.

He was met at the entrance of the tunnel by another tearful hug from Midoriya, plus a marginally more cheerful looking Togeike and a still-pretty-sullen-but-less-than-when-he-last-saw-him Agoyamato.

"I knew you could do it!" Midoriya sobbed, "I told you! You even beat Kaachan! No one has ever--"

"Oh yeah." Said Hitoshi, mostly to himself. The snap of letting Bakugo go made him wince, and he was all at once swarmed with worried hands.

Hitoshi was pulled back to Recovery Girl's office more than he walked there. Midoriya had fixed him with a frown and his big green eyes, and it wasn't like he was not going to go, but having the company was nice. In the end, the old hero had decided there wasn't much she could do for him that day, handed him some painkillers, bonked him on the leg with her syringe-shaped cane, and told him to come back on the next school day after getting plenty of food and rest.

The awards ceremony was mostly a blur to him - he stood on the first place podium trying not to sway on his feet. Below him on the left, Bakugo was clearly fuming - hands constantly releasing small sparks.

"Fucking Deku fed you those lines, didn't he? I know you're friends with him." Bakugo growled lowly to him, before the ceremony proper started.

"I don't know who that is." Hitoshi replied. He knew he probably shouldn't engage, if all went like he was hoping, then this was going to be a future classmate, but he couldn't really help himself. "No one fed me any lines. You lost because you're a rude loudmouth."

Before Bakugo could retort, All Might arrived in the arena with a booming "I AM HERE!"

Hitoshi wished he had been able to focus a little better, being given an award by the number one pro hero in the world was a huge deal; probably one of the highlights of his life, actually. It was a shame that at some point between winning and the lanyard with the medal being placed over his head that the main emotion he was able to feel had become exhaustion.

Midoriya had met him again on the way off the stage and asked if he wanted to do anything else at the festival, to which Hitoshi had honestly replied, "I would like to go home and sleep for one hundred years."

Bless his little heart, Midoriya had just smiled and walked with him to the train station -- which was its own new type of hell. Hitoshi had done all that he'd done to get recognition from UA, to get into the hero course. Recognition from the general public had never crossed his mind. Strangers kept telling him that he did a good job, that he was amazing, that he gave those hero kids a run for their money. That, more than anything else, was too much. Strangers knew about him, looked at him, and thought he was good. Was this what being a hero was like? Sure, he got dirty looks, too, but that was hardly anything new. If he’d had the presence of mind he probably would have started to break down over all of the sudden positive attention, but as it was every comment got an owlish blink and a nod of the head simply because he couldn’t process anything more.

Midoriya seemed to recognize the fact that he was overwhelmed and pulled him to the end of the car with fewer people -- things quieted down after a few stops anyways, and once Hitoshi got a hold of himself enough to stop shaking it became a hard fought battle to stay awake. Only, he couldn't fall asleep, even as badly as he wanted to. Something was nagging at him, and it took him a long, slow minute of thought to look up through hooded eyes at Midoriya before he realized what it was. Thinking Hitoshi was dead on his feet enough not to notice, he had let his cheerful expression lapse into one a lot more thoughtful and sad.

Ah, Hitoshi thought, I don't like that look at all .

Hitoshi hadn't expected to make any friends at UA. His plan had been to get into the school and fight tooth and nail for a way to get into the hero course, without any distractions. When that green-haired kid sitting next to him had suggested they all train together Hitoshi had tentatively agreed because he knew he needed to use every resource he had to get there. And he still hadn't meant to make any friends at the time, except Midoriya had been so overwhelmingly kind and friendly and… Had been the first person to ever tell him how heroic he could be, with no hesitation, like it was already a foregone conclusion. And based on the way he acted, Midoriya had a hell of a lot of shared experiences with Hitoshi on what people thought of quirks that weren't so suited for heroics. So, sure, he had started liking the aggressively helpful boy, but he would be an idiot if he didn't. Even if he just treated Midoriya like an tool to boost his own chances of becoming a hero, he would be stupid not to befriend him. And fuck, had he befriended him.

Before UA he would have been hard pressed to name one person he enjoyed talking to. Who enjoyed talking to him -- and wasn't that something. As many times as Hitoshi had brainwashed him in training, Midoriya never once hesitated in responding to him. Which at first Hitoshi had taken for naivete, but after getting know Midoriya, after realizing how scarily fucking smart he was, could draw no other conclusion than the fact that Midoriya trusted him, for some reason. Maybe he liked being trusted. And maybe he liked spending time with Midoriya.

So, sue him, he had made a friend even after promising himself he wouldn't. Multiple, if he counted everyone else in the club, which he kind of, sort of did. And maybe he liked having a friend for once. And maybe that friend also happened to be really fucking cute. Fuck.

He had a friend. A very cute and kind and smart friend. And if part of friendship was helping friends reach their goals, then Midoriya had done a hell of a lot for him, so shouldn't he try and repay him, somehow?

"Hey Midoriya." The boy in question looked up at him with surprise, like he hadn’t expected Hitoshi to be talking at all, which given the way he felt was fair, "Do you remember when we started all this, and I told you I'd drag you into the hero course with me?"

Midoriya's expression only grew more confused, he opened his mouth but nothing came out, like he couldn't figure out what to say. So Hitoshi continued, "I meant it, you know. If they try and move just me up I'll brainwash them into letting you in, too."

Midoriya finally smiled at that, gave a nervous laugh, "You shouldn’t do that Shinso-kun, It's okay--"

"Fine." He interrupted, "No brainwashing, but I'll… I don't know, I'll dogeza in front of the principal and beg him to consider you, too."

Midoriya looked like he was about to burst into tears again, though Hitoshi had no idea how that was even possible given how much he'd cried today already.

"You deserve it, you know. I wouldn't have gotten this far without you." He said it almost too softly to be heard, he wasn't even sure it had been, until the tears finally spilled over Midoriya's cheeks and he was fixed with another smile.

Somehow his tired brain had been smart enough to plan that embarrassing admission right before the train pulled into Midoriya's stop, so the most embarrassing thing Midoriya could do back was squeeze his hand and offer a tearful, "Thank you, Shinso-kun" before departing for home.

Shouta wished the Principal of UA would make coffee for a change, but today green tea would have to suffice. He knew that Nezu knew why he was in his office right now, but for once the reason wasn't urgent or bad, so they both took their time finishing their drinks in relative silence. It was far from the first time Shouta had come to ask about the transfer of a student. Usually it was out of his class, but that wasn't the point.

"So!" Started Nezu cheerfully, setting his teacup down with a quiet tink, "The first year's Sports Festival was really something this year!"

Shouta grunted and leaned back on the uncomfortable couch the sort-of rodent kept in his office. He hadn't exactly been subtle about his interest, at least as far as Nezu was concerned,so there was no reason for him to beat about the bush.

"Three Gen-Ed students made it to the third round. One of them won. I know that they've formed a club with an intent to transfer to the hero course."

"Yes, they have. Aizawa-san, you aren't asking to take over club sponsorship from me, are you?"

Shouta gave the not-quite-rat a flat stare back. He should have known the principal was already tangled up in something so troublesome. And annoyingly, a club format would be a convenient way to train a bunch of hero hopefuls. He also absolutely did not have the time or energy for all that would entail.

"No." he said, "I want to sponsor their training and transfer into the hero course."

Nezu's nose twitched, face still fixed in what passed for a smile, "Well you're going to have to pick one of them, I'm afraid. It wouldn't do any good for one teacher to be able to radically change the makeup of a course, would it?"

Shouta buried his face in his capture weapon and grimaced at that. That rule had never come up because there had never been more than one student he cared about transferring, but technically each teacher could only sponsor one kid. The not-quite-a-bear continued, "I think both Shinso-kun and Togeike-kun would benefit from your teaching, though of course one of them is much more similar to you."

Shouta raised an eyebrow at that, "Not Midoriya?"

He tried not to let his hackles rise yet. While he hadn't exactly been expecting Nezu to argue against Midoriya's transfer, he had also been prepared for having to argue for him. He knew he was fully capable of handling whatever shit would come his way for supporting a quirkless kid who was trying to be a hero, knew he was probably one of the people best suited to teach him.

Nezu chuckled, his smile quirking upwards into something more animalistic, "The young boy has almost made something of a teacher of himself, hasn't he? You don't need to worry Aizawa-san, if all goes well you'll be seeing more of him."

Oh no. He didn't like that. The little creature had a plan. He almost couldn't bear to ask "…How so?"

"I'll be the one sponsoring him, of course!"

Shouta was glad he had finished the tea because that would have left him sputtering. As it was, he just let his eyes slide closed and took an even breath.

"And what about Togeike?"

The not-quite-a-dog hummed, not acknowledging that Shouta had just picked his student of choice, "The other teachers aren't as familiar with the process, but I'm sure that with a little reminder we could find someone happy to sponsor her training as well!"

Shouta did not move as Nezu started shuffling papers around. He only opened his eyes when the principal announced, "I believe you have a training regimen to work out! I'll schedule you and Shinso-kun in here first thing Monday morning!"

He grunted in response and pulled himself to his feet. The door opened on its own, as it always did, and Shouta kept walking until he was out of the building. Only then did he finally heave a sigh. It had gone both better and worse than expected. And he could deal with another loose end right away.

Sent:

you're going to sponsor Togeike Chikuchi into the heroics department

From Zashi:

????

The weekend after the Sports Festival passed both very slowly and far too quickly. Hitoshi was finally able to get some good sleep -- once he finally nodded off he netted a good 8 hours, which he was pretty sure was new record for him. He got an awkwardly stilted congratulations from his mom -- he bit his lip and bobbed his head when she asked, "So, they're gonna let you into the hero course for sure now, huh?"

He was pretty sure she meant it in a sort-of supportive way. If he were more confident that the answer was yes, it wouldn't have been a problem, but it wasn't exactly like someone had come up to him after the festival and started talking to him about transfer. As far as Togeike had been able to find, there had been only four transfers ever. For all he knew the Sports Festival wasn't even the only thing he needed to win. Maybe his grades weren't high enough. Maybe they just didn't want him to transfer. So all that question did was spike his anxiety for twenty minutes. Though they did end up going to a teppanyaki-style place as a sort of celebration, which was nice.

He spent the rest of the weekend wandering around the house and texting, wishing desperately that the gym wasn't a crime scene he could never return to.

Sent:

I dunno

do you guys think I should ask right away or at the end of the day or something

he made a big deal about wanting it at the beginning of the year so maybe I should show up early?

From Togeike:

darling you're spiraling

just ask him after homeroom

From Midoriya:

You did win the whole thing! They're probably going to call you in to talk about it or something!

From Agoyamato:

I mean it would be an embarrassment if they didn't let you transfer after schooling all the kids in the hero course

From Mushiko:

you're going to be a hero for sure!! ヾ(＠^∇^＠)ノ

He appreciated the sentiments, but they weren't doing much for his nerves. Nor was the attention he got on the train to UA in the morning; the hype of the Sports Festival hadn't really died over the weekend, and his own surprise victory had been one of the highlights that had been circulated over and over. He headed for the corner of the train car as soon as he got on, but between the school uniform and the purple hair, he drew eyes. And they were not all as positive as they had been the day he won. A few people offered him congratulations, which he accepted with a nod and a mumbled 'thank you'. The few UA students who got on as they traveled down the line shot him glances and went off to stand in their own little groups on the other side of the train car.

It stung. Somehow, he had almost managed to forget the way people treated him once they found out. He had thought UA was different, but -- it was, it was different, he tried to remind himself, he had friends now, and they didn't care. Hell, one thought it was cool.

And as if the morning wasn't already bad enough, the old man hunched over in the seat across from him was glaring. Hitoshi shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. He wouldn't do anything to him of course, not here, except --

"Where do you think you get off beating real heroes, kid? You think what you did was funny?"

"I'm trying to be a hero, sir." His throat felt tight. It shouldn't, this was nothing new to him.

The man's mouth drew into a thin line but he didn't retort. The specifics of his quirk hadn't been specifically announced, but most everyone had figured out that it was triggered by speech somehow, what with the way he had been mouthing off during the 1v1 fights. If there was a positive side to how his quirk worked, it was the fact that he didn't have to continue this conversation. He moved to go stand closer to the middle of the train, away from the old man, and he must have gotten some of his intimidating aura back, because no one spoke to him again for the rest of the ride.

His nerves did not abate once he reached UA. There was a swarm of reporters at the front gate as usual. In fact, there were maybe even more than usual. He wasn't in the hero course, normally he could pass through without issue, but he got the impression that wasn't going to be happening today. He took a deep breath, then another. If he just power-walked through and ignored them --

Hitoshi yelped as a hand grabbed his elbow and pulled him into the bushes off the side of the road. In a panic he reached over and twisted the hand off of him, which earned an "Ow fuck. Really?" from Agoyamato, who had apparently been the one to pull him there. Hitoshi gaped at him as he shook out his hand.

"I- sorry. Had a rough morning."

"Yeah, I figured." Agoyamato shrugged and pointed his uninjured hand over one shoulder, "There's a side entrance we can use. Still some assholes parked out there but not as many."

Hitoshi just nodded his silent thanks and followed his friend -yes, his friend, if he was going out of his way to do this for him - around the side of the UA wall. His plan of walking through and ignoring the media worked better, here. They hadn't really been prepared for him to show up out of the woods, he was pretty sure they best shot they got of him was of the back of his head.

The tension didn't bleed out of him when he got on campus though, if anything is only got worse. Everyone here recognized him, and positive or negative, all the attention was really starting to get to him. All he could do was keep on Agoyamato's heels as the boy plowed forward to the 1-C classroom, apparently heedless of the whispers and stares.

When they made it to the classroom everything was as normal, Rei-Sensei was reading over some stack of paper, and students were grouped up and chatting, Agoyamato wandered over to where Togeike was sitting on top of Mushiko's empty desk. But before Shinso could make his way over to his own, his teacher put his hand up to stop him. Rei didn't even look up from his paper, he just waved a hand and said, "Don’t bother sitting down yet, go ahead to the principals office."

That didn't make the tension in Hitoshi's shoulder's fall away, not at all, but the pain that had been building in his chest disappeared as he lowered his shoulders and stared back at his homeroom teacher. A glance around the room told him that everyone was looking at him. Midoriya was smiling his huge sunshine smile and Togeike almost looked proud. He bowed his head and turned back into the hallway. Never in his life did he think he would be exited to go to the principal's office, but today he was. Not blindly, a small part of him was still arguing that actually he was about to be expelled for making the hero course look bad. But that wasn't very likely. Hopefully.

The walk was not long, though it felt like it took ages. When he reached the door to the principal's office, he paused. It was big, clearly meant to be imposing. He vaguely recalled something overheard from one of Midoriya's rambling sessions about how the door opened on it's own, probably cameras, though he couldn't see any. Hitoshi looked around too, to see if he could spot one. The only thing that caught his eye was a bigger than normal dark spot on the spackle of the celling tiles. He squinted up at it, but there was no way that was even big enough to be a camera --

He involuntarily took a step back as the door swung open. Even though he had been sort-of expecting it, it was a little creepy. Hitoshi let out a long breath, rolled his shoulders, and stepped into Nezu's office.

The first thing he noticed, before anything else, was that Eraserhead was there. Eraserhead, who had graduated UA and become one of the most infamous underground heroes with a so-called villain's quirk. Eraserhead, who had come back to teach at UA, and who was now the homeroom teacher for class 1-A of the heroics department. Eraserhead, who Hitoshi had kind of idolized since he had first learned about him, and who he had also managed to embarrass himself in front of at least twice since getting into UA. It was… Probably good that he was here?

He hoped the way he froze up and stared for a moment wasn't obvious, but the pro hero's raised eyebrow let him know that it very much was. The second thing he noticed was the principal himself, the little white creature was leaned over his desk, pouring a cup of -- based on the smell -- mint tea into a set of cups on the edge of his desk. Hitoshi awkwardly hovered between the desk and the couch until Nezu took one of the cups and leaned back in his chair.

"Shinso-kun! Take some tea and have a seat. I believe we have much to talk about this morning!"

He nodded his head at both the adults in the room and pulled the cup of tea to cradle in his lap as he sat down. And then the room fell silent -- the principal's beady eyes and slight smile only made the weight in Hitoshi's chest build. Did they want him to say it? Is that what this was? His eyes flicked back to Eraserhead for a brief moment, before he said, "…I won the Sports Festival trying to get transferred into the hero course. I'm really hoping that's what we're here to talk about today."

Eraserhead snorted. Hitoshi did not jump at it, but his tea came dangerously close to spilling.

"Well, you do get right to the point." The pro's voice was flat, but not unkind, "The sports festival is a good way to get noticed, but getting transferred is at the discretion of the faculty."

Hitoshi felt somehow even more tense at that. So they didn't want him to transfer after all?

Eraserhead blinked slowly, then continued, "For you, that means you're going to spend some time being mentored by one of the teachers here so they can make sure you're ready for the course."

Hitoshi's mind raced at that, before it immediately came to a screeching halt. He could do the mentorship thing, would do it, would learn as much as he possibly fucking could from it even if they decided to not let him be a hero at the end of it. But who at UA would possibly mentor him, there were only a few heroes that made sense, and the one that made the most sense was --

"Is that why you're here? Eraserhead, sir."

His voice shook only a little, only at the very end, but both of the adults in the room were pro heroes who had trained for years to read that sort of thing and it wasn't missed.

"Yes." said Eraserhead, "Unless that's a problem?"

"N-no, sir." Hitoshi couldn't stop the heat from rising to his face no matter how hard he tried, but he couldn't let Eraserhead think he would ever not be okay with that offer, "I'm kind of a fan, actually."

Hitoshi couldn't quite tell, but he was pretty sure that this time the raised eyebrow was what passed for surprise on the pro's face.

"In that case you're going to be having after-school training with me three times a week. And next week you're going to be pulled from your classes for a week-long training camp with me. That's when the heroics course has their work-studies. After that you'll take an exam, and if you pass, you'll get to transfer."

…Fuck, that was a lot of hoops for him to jump through, and he had won the Sports Festival. But it wasn't as if he was in a position to argue with them, so instead he bowed his head and said, "Looking forward to it."

"Wonderful!" piped up Nezu, "I'm going to send you back to class with some paperwork that you can bring back later this week. Unless you have anything else to add?"

The principal was looking more at Eraserhead than he was at Hitoshi, but… Yeah. Yeah, Hitoshi did have something else to add. He carefully set the untouched cup of tea back on the desk, bit his lip and said, "Actually I have a request."

Both of the heroes looked sharply at him, but he held their gaze as he got to his feet. Then he broke it as he bowed at the waist. Again, embarrassing, but this was something he had promised.

"I have a friend." God, that felt weird to say out loud. "He… Didn't place as high in the festival as I did, but I wouldn't have made it as far as I did without his help. He wants to be a hero too. I think he at least deserves a chance."

"Hm… Midoriya Izuku, correct? The founder of your club?"

Hitoshi's eyes snapped up to where Nezu had folded his paws together on his desk, smile now side and showing a row of pointy teeth. Hitoshi managed a small nod.

"It's funny you should mention him, I was going to ask you to send him to me when you got back to class. He and I have so much to discuss!"

When Shinso came back to class with the same smile he had worn after beating Kaachan, Izuku knew things had gone well. His heart ached, just a little, but he had come to peace with things over the weekend. Shinso was going to be a hero, and he was going to do it through UA. Izuku might not get that chance, but he was going to be a hero, too. If that meant transferring schools, or doing it all on his own, then he would do it. And in the meantime, his friend had done something amazing, and he was happy for him. All his feelings besides those had been boxed up because they were too confusing to deal with.

So he didn't really pay attention when Shinso said something to their teacher when he came back in the room. He smiled at Shinso as the taller boy sat down at his desk. And all that had been fine and normal. Then Shinso leaned over to him, still smiling, and said, "Principal wanted to talk to you next."

Izuku's thoughts came screeching to a halt. That was… It was bad. Yes, it was what he wanted, but it was also decidedly bad. He hadn't had the time to plan for this, because he didn't think it was going to happen now. It might be all fine and dandy walking in, but as soon as the topic of his quirk came up…

Shinso must have noticed his nervousness because his smile fell just a bit as he reached out to put a hand on Izuku's shoulder.

"Hey, it'll be fine. You deserve this."

Oh he did, didn't he? How could he tell Shinso that actually, I've been lying to you since we met and I'm about to be expelled, so you’re never going to see me again, not that you would want to once you’ve realized the truth--

Shinso didn't seem entirely convinced by the smile Izuku plastered onto his face, but he took his hand off of Izuku's shoulder and gestured at the door.

"I already talked to Rei-sensei about it, they wanted me to send you in after me, so…"

Izuku pushed himself to his feet and walked to the door on wooden legs, pausing to give an awkward wave to the class before sliding out the door. He tried to keep his breaths even as he walked towards the principal's office, though it got harder and harder the closer to the door he got.

He… He was going to be a hero. Maybe he would get closer today, maybe he wouldn't, but nothing that happened here was going to change that.

When he arrived at the door he only had to wait a moment before it swung open for him, which was probably for the best because if he'd had to wait outside Izuku knew he would have started overthinking everything worse than he already was. Principal Nezu had a cup of tea waiting for him, which Izuku accepted with a small bow. His mouth was already dry so he took a long sip as soon as he sat down.

All he was doing was drawing this out, making it painful for longer. He wasn't able to read much from the principal's beady eyes, but it seemed like he thought so, too.

"S-so, you wanted to talk to me, Principal Nezu?" his voice was already nervous and warbling but if there was one thing he couldn't let himself do right now, it was break down. He was sure of it; if he couldn't explain himself that would certainly be the end of his time at UA.

Nezu's nose twitched and he fixed Izuku with a charming little smile, "No need to be nervous, Midoriya-kun. We're just here to discuss your performance in the sports festival! You placed quite highly, after all."

Izuku nodded, swallowed, said, "I… I think I did quite well, considering. I'm pretty happy with my performance."

The sort-of-rodent folded his paws, "Yes, you were quite driven to get that far. All that training for the hero course really paid off for you, didn't it? Which I suppose leaves us with a rather large question… Are you actually going to transfer?"

Izuku tried very hard to ignore the way his chest grew tight at the question, "W-well I suppose that's up to you, isn't it?"

Nezu closed his eyes and took a long drink of his own, seeming to revel in the tense silence.

"It is no small feat to make it into the hero course here at UA, you understand. We train our heroes to be the best they can be, honing the abilities that will suit them best on the field. Combat techniques, information gathering, PR… Quirk training."

Izuku's heart didn't drop at the words as much as he thought they would. He had been expecting this; Principal Nezu was incredibly smart and had been watching them, if anyone would have been able to guess at Izuku's quirklessness, it would be him. Still, even as he opened his mouth, he couldn't make himself say anything. It would be easier if he just admitted the lie, he knew that, he just… He didn't want it all to be over.

"Luck Manipulation is quite the interesting quirk, Midoriya-kun."

Nezu continued to smile as he said it, but Izuku had to very gently set the cup he was holding down before he broke it in his grip. Somehow the idea that Nezu hadn't figured it out, that he would have to keep faking his quirk, was even worse.

"Th-that's not it, sir." he croaked out. Nezu tilted his head to the side, as though what he had said was just oh so curious and Izuku knew he had to spill it all now, or he never would, "I-I … I told that to Present Mic because I panicked, sir. I w-was afraid that UA wouldn't want me as a student a-after all. Once they realized I was --" the last word was hard to spit out, " quirkless."

Nezu nodded at that explanation like it was satisfactory and Izuku couldn't help but take a shuddering breath. Of course he's satisfied, he finally caught you, you liar --

"You are aware, of course, that lying on the quirk registry is a very serious offense?"

And that -- well that was true, but the statement sent a spark of confusion through Izuku that burned away a little at the building panic. It wasn't like it mattered what he said, at this point, he was as good as expelled, so he let the words spill out, "It is, but I never lied on the quirk registry, only to the school. S-so… Any punishment is actually entirely at UA's discretion. Uh. Sir."

At that Nezu grinned a decidedly sharp toothed smile for just a moment before schooling his features into something more serious.

"That is so, and I'll be getting to that in a moment. But Midoriya-kun, I do want to point out that UA has a very strict anti-discrimination policy. In no world would we have turned you away for being quirkless."

It was almost nice to hear him say the word -- just quirkless. Not due to your condition, your fragile constitution, the fact that you're weak and stuipid and useless . Too bad he could certainly be turned away for lying.

Izuku managed a thin smile, "I-I know what the policies are, but what's written down isn't always what's enforced. Sir."

The principal returned his smile with a thoughtful frown and nod, and a not so subtle push of the tissue box on his desk closer to Izuku. Oh, had he started to cry?

"No, I suppose they're not. And I can imagine you've had some difficulties with that in the past."

Izuku nodded and things fell quiet between them again, so much hanging in the silence that Izuku didn't want to acknowledge. Maybe he’d given enough of a sob story that he wouldn't be expelled on the spot, or maybe Nezu was trying to make sure he wouldn't be able to enroll in any high school in the country. He didn't dare reach for the tissues, because he was sure the moment he acknowledged to himself that he was crying he would break down into a sobbing mess. He was going to do that anyway, if he had to sit like this for too much longer.

"Principal Nezu, sir." He was a little surprised by the conviction in his own voice, but this was something he had been thinking about long and hard. The sort-of-bear blinked up at him, and he continued, "I'm going to become a hero, no matter what. Even if it's not at UA. Even if it's not in Japan. Even if I can't get a license --"

He froze as he caught Nezu's bright eyed expression. That… was not the best thing to admit in front of any pro hero, much less the incredibly intelligent pro hero who ran the top hero school in the country.

"Midoriya-kun, heroism without a license would be vigilantism. A crime, if you'll recall."

It should have been enough to send Izuku spiraling again, but instead there was another spark of confusion because, no, no it wasn't --

"…Vigilantism is defined as illegal quirk usage. Which I… I can't be charged with." he swallowed and it suddenly felt like all of the courage he had been speaking with before drained away, "I- I'm sure that I'd be caught f-for something eventually, b-but if I'm careful it would take quite a while."

And Principal Nezu cackled. Izuku jumped in his seat and found himself shoving himself into the corner of the couch.

"Well that does sound like it would be quite the pain to deal with, doesn't it? I suppose we'll just have to make sure you get your license then, won't we?"

What. What.

That was a joke, right? It was a mean spirited joke, and the papers that Principal Nezu was pulling out of his desk were for expulsion, and the flicker of hope he had blooming in his chest was about to be crushed.

"Now, transfer isn't so simple as me saying that it's going to happen. You're going to go through a bit of extra training. I've taken the liberty of rearranging your class schedule so that you'll spend your free period in lessons with me, and you'll be having more after school with whoever I can round up for the task. I'm sure you'll benefit from a variety of teachers, especially when it comes to learning to fight. I'm afraid I'm too busy to personally mentor you during the entire week of first year work-studies, but I have quite the line up for you to learn from, there. And then you'll take a formal exam, which should you pass, would net you transfer to the hero course! And of course there's the matter of your punishment; I'm thinking an essay on the pros and cons of lying to authority, though I still must work out the details on that. But I'll be in touch. Any questions?"

Izuku stared, only really aware of the tears dripping onto his hands. That was awfully complicated for a joke. Surely he couldn't be serious. The meltdown he'd been holding back reared dangerously close.

"Y-y-you r-really want to help me?"

Nezu jumped out of his chair, pulled the box of tissues on top of the handful of paperwork he was carrying, and stepped over to Izuku to place a fuzzy paw on his knee.

"I'll say that I want to help you as much as you want to be helped. Is that fair?"

Izuku nodded, and then he cried .

Izuku drifted through the rest of the day in a daze. Shinso seemed to be in the same boat, for once his resting blank expression had a bit of light in the eyes. He was probably just as excited as Izuku felt, for once taking control of the conversation at lunch to rant about how he was being trained by Eraserhead with a smile as wide as Izuku had ever seen. Afterwards he had gone red and sworn Izuku to secrecy, and as they made their way back to class Izuku had lagged behind a little and blinked a few times and thought that it was weird how every time he had a lot to think about, Shinso being cute would inevitably be a thought that got muddled around, too. Perhaps it was just the result of a tired brain.

(And god, him possibly transferring into the hero course was a lot to think about. So much so that he didn't have a thought to spare for the fact that Present Mic asked Togeike to stay behind after English class).

He had been so caught up in it all, the fact that there was another pretty big hurdle for him to cross didn't even occur to him until he was home and taking off his shoes. Oh, he was going to have to talk to mom about this.

She had been proud of him, if not a little freaked out, after the sports festival. She was always worrying about him getting hurt, and why shouldn’t she, when through all of middle school, he was . The hero course was his dream, but he knew it would be a hard sell for her. If he worried about being to weak, she knew he was. She had raised him, she'd seen all his failings.

This couldn't be one of them, though. He'd have to make extra sure of that.

Embarrassingly, he'd made a list in a notebook of ways to talk to mom when he was about seven years old, and most of the advice from then still held true. The first idea, the step he usually didn't have to get past, was to bribe her. Tonight that meant he was already most of the way through making two bowls omurice when she opened the door.

Inko blinked owlishly at him for a moment before smiling and saying, "Oh you're so nice to me Izu, here I was thinking how I was so tired that we might just order takeout tonight!"

There was a hint of sharpness to that smile, a sharpness that Izuku had recognized and inherited. She knew he was about to ask for something, and he knew that she knew.

When they ate dinner, it was all smiles and easy conversation, and Izuku was very used to deflecting her questions, "Oh, how was school today?" usually got a non-committal response of oh, it was fine. Today he reached down to where he'd set his schoolbag by his feet and grabbed a stack of papers.

The second step his seven-year old self had supplied was to cry, and for things like ice-cream and All-Might toys it worked like a charm. Today he bit his lip and skipped that step because the last thing he wanted was for her to think he couldn't handle it.

"Actually I talked to the principal today." He offered her a slight smile. In middle school that had meant he had been riling up the other students, taunting them to use their quirks on him. It was no wonder her eyebrows pulled together at that announcement. He held out the papers for her to take, but before she could read them too deeply he continued, "He thought I did well enough in the Sports Festival that I might be able to transfer into the hero course."

Inko's mouth opened wide and her eyes flickered down to the papers in her hands. As she started reading them over, her mouth closed into a thin frown.

"Oh! That's so exciting Izu! But… Isn't this a little… Dangerous?"

He gripped at his legs beneath the table. He wanted to tell her, no, no, not at all, UA is very serious about keeping their students safe, but that wasn't the question she was asking. The cut on his chest, now to the stage of healing where it was starting to itch and be overall very annoying, was the answer she was looking for.

"Yes." He said, "Probably."

The third step was to be mature . His mom always got emotional when he took things seriously. The only other time he'd had to go this far down the list was, for all things, a marimo-moss ball, which, for the record, he still had alive in a jar in his room eight years later. Today, he licked his lips and said, "I think it's going to be safest if I get my license through UA though."

Inko looked up at him with wide eyes, paper crinkling in her hands, "…Izu, what…?"

Despite his valiant efforts to not cry, he couldn't stop the emotion from building in his chest and behind his eyes. Even If she didn't believe in him. Even if a lot of the time he didn't believe in himself… There were people that did. He couldn’t let them down.

"I'm going to be a hero mom. No matter what."

Despite everything, and much to Hitoshi's chagrin, they met in front of one of the school's pools early on Tuesday morning. Izuku had still shown up early and gotten them a week's worth of meetings, not knowing how things would go after the festival. 

In the end, three of them had wound up with plans to transfer into the hero course, though Togeike still seemed confused whenever she talked about how Present Mic wanted to bring her along with the other students on his work-study.

Technically, he had his first after-school training with Eraserhead that day, too. Hopefully he wouldn’t be much more tired than he usually was.

Mushiko was limping; not as badly as she had been right after the festival, but still bad enough that two raised arms and pleading eyes were enough for Agoyamato to carry her across campus. When he set her down on one of the diving platforms and moved over to slouch on one of his own, the tension in the air became palpable all at one. Three of them were maybe soon to be hero students.

Two of them weren't.

Unsurprisingly, it was Midoriya who broke the tension, fists balled up by his chest like he was about to give an inspirational speech, "Guys, I know it sucks that you didn't get further in the sports festival, but if anything we learned that wasn't what we needed to do. If we focus on impressing a teacher --"

"Can it, Midoriya." Agoyamato put up a hand to stop what would inevitably devolve into a mumbled rambling plan, "Just accept that not all of us are fit to be heroes."

Hitoshi bristled with some kind of misplaced anger. To just give up...

Izuku gave a tiny gasp and he stepped forward, "No, you can definitely be a hero -- "

"It's not about if I can --" Agoyamato spat, "ugh, fuck. Look, it's about… It's about why , right? Why do you want to be a hero so bad?"

Midoriya blinked, face screwing up in confusion. Agoyamato gestured for him to speak.

"…I just want to help people, you know? To make them feel like it's okay when they see me." Midoriya let out a nervous laugh, "You know, I am here? "

…It was annoying that something so cheesy could make Hitoshi's heart swell like that. Ugh.

Agoyamato swung a finger around to point at Togeike, "And what about you?"

She pouted and crossed her arms, "I mean I want to get famous, y'know? People listen to what popular pro heroes have to say even when they don't know what they're talking about, so if I make it as a pro people will actually listen to me about important shit."

Hitoshi snorted, "That's a real long winded way to say you want to be an activist."

Her face went a little red, "You don't know that! Maybe I just want to advertise a bunch of brands I like!"

Agoyamato just frowned and drummed his fingers on the diving board, "What about you, Shinso? You obviously want it real bad if you tore yourself up that bad getting first place."

Hitoshi hesitated for just a moment. Before he got into UA the answer would have been simple. Now it was muddled with all of these weird ideas about making people proud, and making sure others could live their dreams. The original motivator was still there though, and still plenty strong.

"Spite." He said, "I don't know why you're expecting something nice from me, but I want to be a hero to prove all the people who thought I couldn't be wrong."

He didn't look at the reactions of the two standing next to him,a little afraid of what he'd see. Though, he could depend on Agoyamato to raise one quizzical eyebrow and otherwise not react.

"Shinso-kun…" Midoriya's soft voice came from beside him, "I don't think that's as bad of a reason as you think it is."

"Yeah, I'd say breaking stereotypes is a pretty good motivator." Agoyamato grunted, "As for me? I wanted to be a hero because it seemed cool."

Hitoshi blinked in the moment of silence. Agoyamato balked. "That’s it. I wanted to be a hero for the same reason kids want to be sports stars and actors and shit. The sports festival made me realize that I'm not the kind of person who can just jump into danger without thinking. So… In the end, I'm fine with not being a hero."

He looked up at them defiantly, like he was challenging them to try and convince him again.

"…I thought you were getting along with the 2-B kids?" Togeike asked tentatively. Agoyamato literally shivered in front of them.

"Maybe. I guess. They also really helped me realize that hero kids have to be a little unhinged, in a way I ain’t." He went quiet for another moment, gaze sweeping out over the pool. "…I'll stay in the stupid club or whatever. I know you guys are gonna need the gym, and I sure as hell know you need the study groups."

Mushiko had been quietly sitting behind him, but now she piped up, "Oh yeah! I want to keep doing the club and study groups too!"

When all eyes turned to her, she shrank in on herself, just a bit, "…Um. I kind of want to be a hero for the same reasons Shin-chan and Ago-chan said. I wanted everyone to think that the weird worm girl was cool, you know? And I still want to be a hero, but I…" her voice wavered just a bit, but she forced it away with a fake smile that could rival Midoriya's, "At the sports festival I found out that my quirk makes my muscles work different. It takes me a long, long time to build up muscles like you do, and if I push them too hard they can tear a lot easier. So I wanna stay in the club, and I wanna be a hero, but it's gonna take me a real long time."

Izuku's voice was quiet, but filled with that hard determination that Hitoshi… Liked. A lot. Ugh. Still, he found himself nodding along at the green-haired boy's declaration.

"Mushiko-kun, if you still want to be a hero we'll help you, alright? As long as it takes."

Hero training was probably the hardest thing Hitoshi had ever had to do. Sure, he had absolutely tired himself out on most days, training for the sports festival, but this was something else.

He couldn't suppress his groan as he was slammed to the mat the seventh time in a row. Eraserhead -- sorry, Aizawa-sensei -- worked him ten times harder than he had ever worked himself, and he thought he had been working himself pretty hard. It was starting to feel like his whole body was a bruise. He was so tired.

Still, he would be willing to go through much worse than some aggressive teaching to become a hero. He didn't complain, either. Partially because he was afraid of annoying his new mentor out of teaching him, and partially because when Aizawa told him that he depended on his quirk too much and needed to get better at combat, Hitoshi knew he was right. If Midoriya hadn't talked, he would have been knocked out in the first round of the sports festival. And because he had won a lot of people knew about his quirk, now. He was back to getting suspicious looks in the hallway, again, at any rate.

He made an effort to push himself back to his feet only for his arms to give out and for him to collapse back to the ground.

"If I were a villain, you'd be dead by now."

"Mmph", Hitoshi said into the mat, "Sorry."

He didn't manage to get to his feet, but he was able to roll onto his back and push his way up into a sitting position, just in time to be nailed in the chest by a thrown water bottle that he scrambled to grab before it rolled too far away from him. He chugged half of it in one go, watching his new teacher beneath his eyelashes.

He wanted, desperately, to impress the man, but the impassive way Aizawa stared at him gave him no clue of what he was thinking.

"Kid, your arms are shaking."

Hitoshi wiped at his mouth and looked down at his own arm, which did, in fact, have a slight tremble to it. He hadn't pushed himself hard enough to do that since the afternoon he and Midoriya had been vigilantes.

"I -- uh. Sorry." He tried again. He hated this a little bit, too. The fact that he felt like he was constantly walking on eggshells. Was Aizawa concerned ? Or just disappointed in him? The wrinkle between his teacher's eyebrows didn't give him much to go on.

Finally, Aizawa said, "…Did your club meet this morning?"

The fact that he knew about that at all was more than a little mortifying.

"Yes?"

Aizawa grunted and folded his arms, seemingly considering something for a long moment.

"Take it easier during those, especially on training days. I plan on working you to the bone. For today, we’ll finish with something a little less physical."

It was the first time Hitoshi saw Aizawa's wide, sadistic smirk, but he was a little hopeful that it wouldn't be the last.

Hero Training was by far the most exciting thing Izuku had ever done.

Nezu liked to keep him on his toes, one hour they'd be analyzing heros, the next he would be learning about hero law, or computer programming, or having a philosophical conversation about Japan's prison system. He got sent home with stacks of reading to do every day, and it was interesting, and on top of that the little rodent seemed thrilled that he liked reading it. And then he would get sent along to other teachers of UA to learn about the more physical aspects of being a hero.

They tended to be confused about him, but enthusiastic, which was certainly a novelty for him when it came to teachers.

(He couldn't help but wonder if they knew he was quirkless,but certainly, they must? After all his fuss about it Principal Nezu had most certainly changed his file, right?)

His favorites were a toss-up between Cementoss and Snipe. Cementoss was able to make him these amazingly designed parkour courses, which Izuku found out he loved, even if it resulted in bloody knuckles and scrapes and bruises. The huge man was also surprisingly laid-back, telling him after every stumble and fall that he was doing well, that it was fine if he took it easy, for a little bit. Izuku never did, but it was nice to pretend he had the option.

(He was so far behind, after all. If he didn’t give everything he had, how could he hope to catch up?)

Snipe, on the other hand, was incredibly serious and difficult to impress. He also promised Izuku that if he did well, then they would see about getting him into a proper class for getting a gun license which… Was certainly something.

But none of that measured up to when Nezu told him he'd be meeting with Eraserhead at Ground Gamma. He'd headed over with a skip in his step, he knew Shinso was working with the hero today, too, so chances were that they'd get to do whatever was planned today together, and he was looking forward to that.

When he arrived, it was with a gasp of surprise. Eraserhead was slouching on the wall, watching as Shinso sent out a strand of white fabric to knock a loose section of pipe from where it was sitting to the ground.

"Shinso-kun!" He called out, "Is Eraserhead teaching you how to use his capture weapon? That's so amazing!"

The reaction was instantaneous - Shinso evidently hadn't heard him coming because he jumped at Izuku's voice, hand gripping at the capture weapon and pulling it back as he whipped his head around to spot the voice. The capture weapon moved with him, wrapping back on Shinso in a surprisingly graceful movement that left him tangled up and crashing to the floor.

Izuku jogged towards them, one hand covering his mouth to hide his laughter, even as he reached out his other to see if he could help the now red-faced Shinso out of his binds.  Eraserhead watched them for a long moment, long enough for Shinso to pull an arm out of the tangle and right himself, before sighing.

"I take it that you're Midoriya Izuku?"

He jumped to his feet with a start. Oh no, he had been rude. Eraserhead probably already had a bad opinion of him after he had been caught spying --

"Y-yes sir!" his voice was too high and too loud, and Shinso snickered at him as he went into a too deep bow.

"…Right." Whatever expression the older man wore was hidden behind his own capture weapon, "Well in any case we'll be learning about stealth today. And--" he glanced at Shinso, "Situational awareness."

Hitoshi was honestly surprised at how well things were going for him, these days. Home was still quiet, his morning train-rides were still unbearably awkward, and walking the halls of UA even more so. But his classmates seemed to like him, he had friends, he was trying really damn hard to be transferred into the hero course, and thought he was doing a decent job at it. He had a stupid little crush that he couldn't get to go away and he got to each lunch with him on the roof every day.

Though, he planned to make something of a disruption to that. Something had been nagging at him ever since the sports festival -- what the hell was up with Todoroki Shoto?

He hadn't  caught even a glance of the kid since he'd won; it wasn't exactly strange or anything -- Gen-Ed and Heroics were taught in different buildings. And it wasn't as though he owed the hero-kid anything, or vice versa, but… He worried about it all more than he liked to admit.

Had the number two hero really been okay with the fact that his son had lost to some kid who wasn't even in the hero course?

So one day, as everyone was scattering off to go eat lunch as usual he told Midoriya to go ahead without him, that he'd be up on the roof later, and he made his way to the lunch room. Todoroki was easy to spot -- not only because of his dual-toned hair -- but by the way he sat, just a little separate from everyone else at his table. He was near the other 1-A girl who got in on recommendation, who was chatting away with the girl with headphone jacks on her ears, but he wasn’t actually sitting with them, not once joining in the conversation.

Before the sports festival he would have taken one look and assumed arrogant, now… Well, yes, he could still be arrogant, but the scene reminded Hitoshi a bit too much of himself in middle school. Someone who was unwilling to open his mouth for whatever retribution it might bring.

Well, he was assuming things. All he was here to do was offer a chance to talk.

Todoroki saw him long before he got near, tracking his approach with wary eyes, leaning back in his seat just a bit when Hitoshi got to the table.

"I usually eat lunch on the roof of the gen-ed building, if you have questions. Or…Concerns."

Todoroki's eyes searched him up and down, and he gave a barely perceptible nod. The others at the table gave him confused glances, but Hitoshi left before they could question him more. This was as much as he was willing to do, the onus was on Todoroki, now.

He wasn't exactly surprised that Todoroki didn't follow him up to the roof, but he didn't show up the next day, or the day after, and Hitoshi was ready to shrug it all off. Then, one bright afternoon, he was sitting on the concrete listening to Midoriya talk at speed about how he had finally spotted All Might on campus that day, and the door to the roof opened behind him.

His face was as passive as stone, but Todoroki Shoto walked like a wild animal that was ready to bolt at any moment. Midoriya's rant slowed to a stop as he realized they had a visitor.

"Oh. Um, Hi!" said Midoriya. He had shared the bare basics of what had happened with the green-haired boy -- he had overheard the number two hero talking to his son in the hallway, and he hadn't liked the tone. He had gotten Todoroki under his quirk by taunting the fact that he didn't use his fire. He had invited him to talk about all of it, but didn't think he would show. But here he was, squinting at Midoriya like he was trying to recognize him.

"You're… Deku?" asked Todoroki slowly, like he really thought that was Midoriya's name "Bakugo seemed convinced that you were the reason Shinso made it to the finals."

Midoriya flushed a deep embarrassed red, "I-I wouldn't say that."

"I would." Interjected Hitoshi, "And his name is Midoriya." He hesitated for a bare moment as Todoroki nodded. Good, at least he wasn't that level of asshole. "We can go somewhere else if you want this to be private."

"It's…" Todoroki seemed unsure, but his gaze settled on Midoriya and something seemed to solidify in his mind, "It's fine. Do you mind if I sit?"

Hitoshi gestured broadly across the roof, "There's plenty of room."

So Todoroki sat. Or -- kneeled, in a way that couldn't be comfortable after more than thirty seconds -- and folded his hands in his lap, and promptly said, "So, you have some kind of brainwashing quirk?"

Hitoshi had been expecting that question, though he was a little gratified when Midoriya tensed up next to him, ready to jump to his defense.

"Call and response brainwashing, yeah."

Todoroki frowned, just slightly. Not enough to be of note on anyone but him.

"…That's all?"

What , Was he upset that he'd lost to a villainous quirk or something?

"Were you expecting more?"

"If there's no mind-reading to it or anything, then… How did you know? About my father?"

Oh, no. Never mind, that was a pretty valid worry.

"I overheard him lecturing you. before the match. I… Hope you didn't get in too much trouble with him or anything."

Which was true. He hoped what he had started to suspect wasn't right, but if it was…

"He wasn't happy, but he wouldn't have been anyways."

Quiet fell between them, the sounds of UA sounding distant and muffled from up on the roof. Midoriya stared at the entire exchange with wide eyes. Todoroki's eyes flicked to him, and back to Hitoshi, before he said, "During the match, you kept talking about my fire. He's the reason I don't use it."

Todoroki took a deep breath, "What do you know about quirk marriages?"

Izuku had been having a really good day. The club had met early that morning, at the basketball court, though it had been a little awkward as he and Togeike were the only ones really making an effort -- Mushiko was still only able to do light exercise, Agoyamato only wanted to do light exercise, and Shinso had announced the fact that he had been banned from club activities on training days and collapsed onto the bleachers like a very tired ragdoll. And then, while he was finishing stretches, he had been hit in the back by a thrown ball.

What was that!? he had squawked, only to turn and see Shinso next to the ball rack with another one ready in his hands

A fireball spell?  Shinso said with a wide, sarcastic grin. Also, situational awareness training.

He had spent the morning getting pelted by balls, and he had laughed because for the first time in his life that sort of thing was actually, really, all in good fun.

His classes had been interesting, especially the extra one he'd had with Principal Nezu, and more importantly than that he had passed All Might on the way out of his office. Shinso had listened to his rambling, as considerate as ever -- Izuku still found himself surprised, every day, that the taller boy hadn't gotten tired of him yet -- and it had all been nice .

Then Todoroki Shoto showed up and it had gotten decidedly less so.

Izuku didn't know what to say to everything he'd heard, besides, "I was never really a fan of Endeavor, but… Wow."

Beside him, Shinso gave a low whistle, "I always thought the hero rankings were bullshit but if they let someone who does shit like that get to number two, then the whole thing needs to be torn apart for sure."

Izuku knew that Shinso preferred underground heroes to the spotlight ones, but he'd never heard him speak about something like the hero ranking so aggressively. Was it bad that he sort of … Agreed?

Todoroki blinked, like he was surprised by the reaction.

"So you understand why I only use my right side, then."

"Oh no." Said Shinso, "Not at all."

Izuku waved his hands in front of Shinso before the temperature could drop too far, "I-I think he means that, yeah Endeavor is really bad, but quirks don't really work that way? It's… Not his quirk. It's yours."

"…Sort of, yeah." Agreed Shinso, "I do think you're putting too much importance on your quirk in general. It's… Just a tool, right? And your shitty dad gave you a hammer, but sometimes there are nails."

Todoroki blinked between them, looking a little upset, but mostly confused.

One of Shinso's hands went up to scratch at the back of his neck, "If someone's life is in danger they're not going to care how you save them. But it's not a good look on you if you could save them, but didn't."

"I-" Todoroki's face had settled into a hard frown, "But I want to surpass him without using his power."

"Nothing about what I just heard is worth surpassing." Shinso bit back, "Look I -- This might be too much of a personal opinion, but in my head there's a difference between Pros and Heroes. And it sounds to me like Endeavour is a Pro, but not a Hero."

Izuku watched from the side as Shinso ranted, a strange feeling blooming in his chest with each word.

"Pros put up this big stink about hero rankings and publicity and flashy quirks, but none of that actually fucking matters. The Hero part is what matters, where you actually go out and help people. And sure, being a Pro can help with being a Hero, but I'd respect a quirkless person who put everything they had into helping someone a hell of a lot more than someone with a flashy quirk who half-assed it."

Izuku swallowed thickly. Shinso wasn't saying that for his benefit. Shinso, who had an incredibly powerful quirk, was saying all that to Todoroki Shoto, who had an arguably more powerful, flashier quirk. Shinso said all that and he didn't even know that he was talking about him.

Izuku suddenly understood the expression falling in love because when the realization hit him it was all at once, like he had slammed into the ground.

You mean so much to me. I would do anything for you. You're my best friend, and I think I love you .

It made him feel weightless and breathless, and he almost missed when Todoroki nodded, slight frown on his face, and got to his feet, saying, "I see. You've given me a lot to think about."

Izuku had a lot to think about, too.

The thing was, the realization that he was in love with his best friend didn't actually change that much, because the feelings weren't actually new. The fact that he had noticed them and had a name for them didn't actually make anything different. He would have done anything for Shinso before, he realized, he just knew why now.

Not that nothing changed, exactly. Izuku tended to think of everyone around him as cute or attractive in one way or another, and Shinso had been no exception to that. It was just that now, when he noticed those little things, they were much harder to brush off. And he was very, very bad at hiding his emotions.

(So what if Shinso got shy when he really smiled, or always tilted his head to one side before making a snarky comment, or rubbed at the back of his neck when he got nervous. It was normal to find those things cute).

There seemed to be no end to the teasing Togeike gave him for it, either. It was something of a blessing and a curse that he got so emotional over everything, because while he got flustered often, it made it easier to brush off his blushing and stuttering on pretty much anything else.

He knew he wouldn't be able to hide it forever, though, and he didn't see his newly realized feelings fading any time soon. So, Izuku simply had to figure out how to say… something . Not even about his feelings just yet -- the idea of a confession was mortifying -- but about his quirk. Or lack therof.

He felt waveringly confident that Shinso wouldn't care if he was quirkless, if he hadn't already figured it out. But he was much less confident that Shinso wouldn't be upset with him for lying about it. It shouldn't be that big of a deal, now that Nezu knew, but every time he tried to make himself broach the subject his mouth went dry.

His only saving grace was that, for some reason, Todoroki had started joining them for lunch. Shinso seemed to find it strange, too, but after the talk they had neither of them seemed to want to ask him to leave. He stayed quiet, most of the time, usually only interjecting with a question about their training for transfer or about whatever quirk Izuku was rambling on about that day.

(Which, Shinso noted to him on the ride home that afternoon, was leagues better than what he had seen before).

He usually didn't start conversations though. When he did it tended to be with a non-sequitur. 

Izuku had been waxing poetic about Slugger, a baseball-themed pro hero that neither Todoroki nor Shinso appeared to have ever heard of, when, in a lull in his rambling, Todoroki said without warning, "I think I'm going to do my work-study with Endeavor."

Shinso instantly scrunched up his face and said, "Ew, no."

Todoroki just frowned "If I… Plan on mastering my fire, he would be the best option."

Izuku let himself smile, just a little, at my fire. They had gotten through to him in some small way. Though, this seemed too much.

"There has to be some other fire-based hero that sent you an offer. Literally any other fire hero." he said with wide eyes.

Shinso just squinted at both of them.

"It's work-studies , not quirk training. If anything, you should go with the hero you want to be most like when you actually go pro."

Todoroki gave them his thoughtful frown.

"Hm."

In the end, he picked, of all heroes, Ryukyu, and neither of them could find reason to complain.

Sometimes the non-sequitur was nothing short of brilliant.

Izuku was going to tell them about his quirklessness that day, really. Honest. And then Todoroki had blinked and squinted at Shinso and asked, "Are you Aizawa-sensei's secret lovechild or something?" and he choked on his rice instead.

If Hitoshi thought his after-school training had been harsh, the work-study with Aizawa was hell on earth. He practiced with the capture weapon until his fingers went numb, talked shit at his teacher until his throat went raw, threw punches until he split a knuckle, at which point Aizawa had demanded they stop and move to other things.

Oh, did he mention that trying to out-stealth a professional underground hero was hard?

(Hopefully Aizawa wouldn't mention to anyone else the exercise where Hitoshi was supposed to seek while he hid, and it took him a full twenty minutes to find his teacher, wrapped up in his bright yellow sleeping bag, napping at the place he had started his search)

He was pretty sure he was making progress, but he felt so exhausted by the end of every day that he couldn't be sure.

He was also… Distracted. Not when it counted, he hoped, but every time he got a little down-time he found his mind wandering back to Midoriya.

He had been acting differently, Hitoshi was pretty sure. Aizawa had been teaching him observational skills, too, and when he retroactively applied that to his friend/crush there was certainly something going on there. Togeike seemed to know what it was, or at least had picked up on the fact that it was happening too. 

It was just… small things. He would catch Midoriya staring at him, or at nothing at all, he would go quiet at weird points in conversation, looking like he would want to say something and then just not doing it . He was pretty sure those weird moments had started the day Todoroki had joined them, but he couldn't pin down why.

At first he wondered if maybe Midoriya was uncomfortable around the hero-course kid. It made sense, he supposed. Todoroki was intimidating without even trying, most of the time, and they had learned some really, really troubling things about him. But then, those moments seemed to happen more often when it was just the two of them -- which was not often this week. Midoriya had still scheduled a few days for the club to meet, but Hitoshi didn't bother going because he knew he would already end the day barely able to stand either way. Which was exactly right; on the few days their schedule lined up for them to ride the train together it was all he could do to keep from falling asleep on Midoriya's equally exhausted shoulder.

If the idea of doing that sent so many butterflies swarming through his chest that it actively prevented him from doing so, that was his business.

But as tired as he was, sometimes he'd blink and catch Midoriya looking at him, and whenever Hitoshi caught him Midoriya would open his mouth, go a little pink in the face, shut it again and smile at him.

And...Ugh. He hadn't had enough friends before now to know what that was supposed to mean. 

Oh, he knew what he wanted it to mean, but he also didn't want to make assumptions. It could be something bad, or it could be Midoriya overthinking about nothing at all. Should he push it? Should he let Midoriya figure it out on his own?

When he caught himself falling asleep standing up, he decided fuck it, I'll figure it out later.

Izuku had been planning on going to the support department at some point anyways, but Nezu's lack of time to personally teach him during the work-study week actually left him assigned to go there for the first half of the day instead of his regular classes.

Power-Loader (Maijima-sensei!) had introduced him as "something of a personal student of Nezu-san's" and he flushed and looked away as an impressed sounding murmur had gone through the class. The lecture was interesting. Maybe a bit beyond his level, since Izuku had never once messed with electronics or tried to engineer anything in his life, but the ideas it gave him led to him opening a second notebook - for the future - to jot things down alongside his notes. And for once, he wasn't the only one - he spotted at least two other students with the same idea and Maijima-sensei didn't seem to mind one bit.

When the morning started to come to a close and the bell for lunch rang he stayed at his desk as the other students filtered out, finishing the last idea he’d had. He supposed, if he was a hero, he'd commission a support company to make things like this for him, but learning how to at least do maintenance couldn't hurt. He was adding a line to his sketch of a wrist-mounted grapple gun when two heavy hands clamped down on his shoulders, making him let out a loud squawk of surprise.

"Hey, ten-million-kun! You're really making it big, catching the principal's attention like that huh?"

He knew who it was from the voice alone, but Hatsume Mei made herself known by leaning down and smooshing her cheek next to his as she leaned in to examine his notebook.

"Uh--" his voice trailed off into a strangled whine as he tried to hide under one of his arms, "It's not that big of a deal!"

"Sure, sure" said Hatsume, ignoring Izuku's protests to run a finger down a line he had written in his notebook.

"This is cool!" she said brightly after a moment, and as if she wasn't putting half her body weight on his back, "Are you thinking of transferring to the support department? Oh, we could make so many babies together!"

"No!" he finally managed to squeak out, jerking out from under her grip and basically sending both of them to the floor. When he looked up at Hatsume she was grinning at him, totally nonplussed, "I uh- I'm trying to get into the hero course, actually."

His voice dropped to a mumble, but Hatsume nodded all the same, reaching out to pull him back to a sitting position.

"So those are for you then? Do you need someone to build them for you? Because I might know a girl!" She pointed a thumb at herself. "Oh what's your quirk? Probably one of those invisible ones, right? Nothing to compensate for means you have so many options--"

"Actually." Izuku almost cursed himself for cutting her off. Now he had to say something, and he knew what he was about to say, but when his brain caught up to his mouth it made his throat seize up. He should tell the truth, and telling Hatsume, telling a stranger did feel easier than someone he was close to. His eyes darted around the room to see that the only other occupant was Maijima-sensei, leaning over his desk and squinting at something. He swallowed and his voice dropped to a near whisper, "I'm quirkless?"

Hatsume went quiet and for one dreadful moment Izuku felt like he was going to explode. Then Hatsume grinned wide and said "No way? That's totally awesome, you're a blank canvas! Have you considered a jet-pack?"

Izuku only cried a little bit.

(There was no Nomu attack in Hosu, a particular group still waiting and watching before they made a move. Without that distraction one Iida Tenya got himself sent home early from his work-study with a harsh reprimand and a requirement to go to therapy. Though, there was still a killer loose, at the end of the day)

And then work-studies were over without incident, at least for them. Sure, Shinso was literally asleep at his desk after having been taken on a late night patrol. Sure, Togeike had come in looking bewildered, and the expression hadn't left her through the whole of homeroom.

(She would explain later that her work study with Present Mic had been intense, that she had learned a lot about radio and also maybe seen someone lose a few fingers).

Izuku felt like his brain was stuffed with so much information that he couldn't use any of it, plus his whole body felt sore. His second half of the day during his work study had been for practical heroics, and he had learned, among other things, that Vlad King was a judo master. Izuku was very much not a judo master and was considering visiting Recovery Girl, because he wanted to wince every time he turned too quickly.

Suffice it to say that none of them were paying particularly close attention during homeroom, until the end when the bell rang and Rei-sensei said, "Midoriya, Shinso, Togeike, stay after for a bit."

A few people in class made noise, but thanks to Togeike most of them knew their plans to transfer by now and could guess what this was about. Izuku wondered if any of them had made the connection to the club yet.

Their teacher waited for a moment after the room emptied, looking at the three exhausted students sprawled over their desks. Then he said, "Well, I'll keep this short. The written exams are next week, as I'm sure you're aware. The day after, you're gonna be riding with 1-A to join in on their practical exam."

They all managed, somehow, to pull themselves to sit up a little straighter, though in Shinso's case that meant all of looking up instead of at the desk. That was it. Their chance to prove, to themselves, and to everyone else that they could be heroes.

"Now there's something else I'd like to tell you, hopefully in the spirit of fostering some friendly competition. Seeing as how there's been no expulsions this year, there's only two spots open in the hero course --" His eyes sharpened, "Not three."

Izuku blinked sleepily at the bus. In his opinion, it was pretty rude of the heroics department to have their exams so early in the morning. Especially since Gen-Ed had their big exams the day before and he was still feeling exhausted from those. He suspected Shinso felt the same based on the way his face kept drifting down into the capture weapon coiled around his neck. He himself had a bandolier of support equipment, procured mostly from Hatsume Mei, digging into his shoulders. Behind them, Togeike rocked on her heels, sipping on an iced coffee that Izuku wished he'd had the foresight to buy for himself. Or maybe not. He felt nervous enough as it was without any coffee.

"Right, you're here." Eraserhead's voice came from behind them. All three of them managed to keep themselves from startling, though his quiet arrival did surprise at least Izuku, who frowned to himself. He thought he'd been getting better than that. The pro hero stepped around them and onto the first step of the bus.

"I'm going to explain why you're here." He blinked slowly, "It's not going to stop any of them from asking you questions."

Izuku couldn't quite make out whatever low monotone Aizawa started lecturing to his class with, so he turned to face Shinso and Togeike instead. He smiled, fully intending to say something encouraging but before he could Togeike laughed.

"You look like you're about to keel over dead!"

She broke out into giggles as Shinso's face slowly stretched into a smirk.

"You look almost as bad as I usually do."

"You don't look bad Shinso-kun!" Izuku asserted. Togeike started to laugh harder as the heat rose to his face. He spoke faster trying to pretend that what he’d just said wasn't a big deal, "I’m just nervous is all. I mean, this is it, right?"

Both of them sobered up at that. Then Aizawa called a low "Come on." and there was no more room for discussion. Izuku froze up for a moment, allowing Shinso to push past him before starting up the stairs himself. He was anxious. This was it, and he didn't have any idea what was coming.

He should have known this though. He'd spied on 1-A, he knew exactly who was in the class. He should have been expecting red eyes to fix on him the moment he stepped onto the bus.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Bakugo had shot up from where he'd been sitting, probably only just stopping himself from lunging over the seats. He saw Shinso tense up in front of him, but all Izuku's mind could scream at him was that he's going to tell everyone you're quirkless before you can.

Another, smaller part of his mind told him if you don't defend yourself now, how can you do something like pass this exam? And before he could stop himself, he was saying, "They haven't failed me yet, Kaachan. I'm still trying."

Bakugo snarled, hands sparking, until they suddenly weren't. Class 1-A's eyes focused not on him, but on their tired looking homeroom teacher, eyes glowing and scarf floating, mouth set in a deep frown.

"Get to your seats."

Bakugo looked like he might argue, but no one else needed any prompting. Shinso shot Bakugo an icy glare, and then Izuku found a warm hand wrapping around his wrist and pulling him towards the back of the bus. Shinso sat them next to each other, far enough from Bakugo that he'd have to turn and strain himself to glower at them. He loosened his grip, but he didn't fully let go, and Izuku was too thankful for the grounding feeling of it to be too embarrassed about it.

As the bus rumbled to life and started driving, a low chatter started between the other students on the bus, though it seemed like everyone was focusing on the three newcomers sitting in the middle of them more than their upcoming exam. Izuku was a little insulated from the curious gazes at least, Shinso flanked him close on one side, glowering out at the hero course kids who stared at them, and Togeike was on his other, leaned back, ankles crossed like none of this bothered her at all. Across from them, Todoroki was staring too, though at least in his case Izuku knew enough to know that it was normal for him.

It was quiet for a few minutes, until a girl leaned her head out to the side, one finger over her mouth.

"You three are the gen-ed students who got to the third round of the sports festival, right? Kero."

"I don't see how-" Shinso started, before Togeike reached across Izuku and slapped him in the shoulder with one hand.

"Yeah, we are. We're trying to transfer into your course." She smiled at them with just a hint of sarcasm. Not a single one of them seemed to get the veiled threat behind her words - don't fail too badly or maybe we get your spot .

"Oh no way!"

"Wow!"

"Dude that's so manly-!"

"Well it makes sense, they did beat most of us…"

Izuku couldn't help but shrink back at the excited chatter, not least because it came with the scent of burning caramel he knew all too well. But there was no explosion, not even any shouting, so Izuku bit his cheek and tried to let himself relax, just a bit.

"Hey, hey." A kid with blonde hair twisted around and leaned over his seat to talk to them. Kaminari Denki, Izuku was pretty sure, "You guys didn't get the secret info about the test then, did you?"

Izuku blinked, beside him, Shinso arched an eyebrow.

"No, we didn't."

Kaminari grinned and looked over to his seat-mate, who was pink and so was definitely Mina Ashido, "You think we should tell them?"

The girl made a big show of considering it, tapping her chin, humming, tilting her head, "I dunno. I mean, we only found out about it because 1-B told us…"

Kaminari leaned back to them and stage whispered, "It's robots! Just like the entrance exam!"

His grin fell slightly at the sour expression all three of them suddenly got. Robots wouldn't worry the kids who had already passed the exam, but for three kids who had failed against them in the past it wasn't the best news.

"Of course it is." Shinso groaned, probably not even aware that his grip on Izuku's wrist had tightened again.

Robots. Had he learned anything in those support classes that would help him take them out this time around? He couldn't remember anything useful.

Izuku sighed. "It makes sense though. They probably want to see how much we've improved since the entrance exam, so they're testing us against the same thing."

"Figures."

When the bus came to a stop and everyone got off to find all of their teachers waiting for them, ready to administer the exam, they were probably the only three that felt relief. Hell, Izuku was almost excited -- All Might was there!

As Principal Nezu finished explaining the exam, he clapped his paws together, "Now, I'm sure you've all noticed that the number of students and teachers here isn't quite even! Most of you will be split up into pairs, but there will be two groups of three. Don't think it gives you an advantage, however!" He pointed up at the weights wrapped around the wrists of the nearest teacher, "The teachers who are against groups of three will have no handicap! That being said, let's see who you're paired against, shall we?"

Togeike nodded towards her teammates with as serious a look as Izuku had ever seen on her when it was announced that she'd be going up against Cementoss. He found himself standing up straighter when Nezu grinned a feral little smile and told him that he would be paired up with Ashido and Kaminari against him, but somehow his anxiety spiked the worst for someone else.

"And lastly, well, two of you will be going up against the symbol of peace, here!" Nezu raised his arms towards All Might as though presenting a prize on a game show, "It only makes sense that It would be the two top scorers from the sports festival, no? Shinso-kun and Bakugo-kun, that would be you!"

Shinso went deathly pale, and Izuku didn't blame him.

Ashido and Kaminari were sweating bullets, sitting ramrod straight in their seats as they rode the bus to their testing grounds. Nezu had pulled a cup of tea from somewhere -- Izuku knew better than to ask, at this point -- and was calmly sipping away. Izuku felt like this could be worse. Nezu wasn't exactly a combat oriented hero, so the weights wouldn't have meant much for him either way. Maybe he was lucky for being paired against his mentor? He probably knew more about Nezu than most other students at the school… But knowing what he knew just made him feel more anxious. The only teacher that would be harder to beat than Nezu would probably be All Might.

Izuku swallowed hard. He hoped Shinso would be okay.

When they arrived at Ground Gamma, Nezu cheerily waved at them before making his way deeper into the field without them, giving them their ten minutes to prepare alone. Both of the hero course students immediately turned towards him, each of them taking one of his hands and staring up at him with huge eyes. He was so shocked, he assumed his were equally large.

"You're the guy who's been learning under Nezu personally, right? The one with the charming quirk?"

"What? No, I heard he had some kind of intelligence quirk… Midoriya, right?"

Izuku gaped. What? How had they gotten that impression? Did he really have that much of a reputation?

…Did he have time to explain to them that he was actually quirkless? Would they fight against him being here if they knew?

He suppressed a sigh and smiled at them.

"Um. Yeah! And you're Ashido and Kaminari?" They both nodded, eager, "My quirk won't be relevant here, but my experience with Nezu probably will be, so let's come up with a plan, okay?"

Thank god, they didn't push it, instead nodding seriously and listening close as he outlined what he knew.

"I guess the real question is what they're trying to test us on, really." He hummed, "Nezu-sensei isn't really a combat specialist, but he's scary smart. The best plan is probably to stay far away and give him as little information as possible. Which means we should try to escape, only he'll be expecting that…"

"So we should try and capture him then!" Mina said brightly. Izuku only frowned.

"I mean, in theory. But he also knows that we might have realized that, and is planning for us to try and capture him…" He bit his lip and tried to keep himself from mumbling. It seemed like Mina and Kaminari were hanging onto his every word for some reason, "Basically, he'll have planned for everything. I don't know if we can exactly outsmart him, but I don't think he'll make the test impossible or anything… Either he wants us to win in the way he thinks we should, or he wants us to figure out a way to somehow surprise him."

"…And how do we do that?" Kaminari sounded somewhere on the border between desperate and hopeful.

All Izuku could do was shrug, "We'll have to figure it out."

The buzzer went off, and with one last look between them, all three took off at a run. It was less than thirty seconds before the first thing went wrong - a pipe came crashing down in front of them, falling just so, hitting a series of other pipes on the way down and sending everything tumbling down until the way forward was blocked off. So they made a sharp left turn, only for a building to the side to crumble, collapsing to the side and making that direction inaccessible, too.

"Ah." Izuku said mostly to himself. "So that's how it is."

And again, for some reason the hero course kids were looking to him for guidance. So he pointed at the mess of pipes in front of them and said, "We should try for a better vantage point!"

As they both nodded seriously and started looking for handholds Izuku found himself wondering if he would ever get used to people trusting his judgement so easily. Then he shook his head and reached for the grappling gun clipped to his bandolier. They hadn't had the time for anything more impressive, it wouldn't be capable of pulling him to the top of the building or anything, but it did give him support as he maneuvered his way to a concrete ledge.

He blinked and looked down at the hero kids he had beaten to the top. He supposed it made sense, neither of them had quirks that made vertical movement any easier. Mina was carving out hand-holds with her acid, but Kaminari looked a little unsteady this high up and Izuku found himself reaching down to help him up.

"Thanks man!" Kaminari offered. Izuku nodded back, already focused on something else. There was movement ahead of them, a bright yellow crane with an attached wrecking ball slowly rotated to face them. He fumbled for the pair of binoculars on his belt, careful not to press any of the buttons. Hatsume had promised that it had all sorts of fun features and he was afraid of what that meant. He only wanted to use the basic function, anyway. Principal Nezu was sitting inside, tea still steaming, and he had clearly seen them. From here, Izuku could just see the animalistic grin on his face -- not good.

A glance around was enough to give Izuku a gist of his teacher's plan. It really did fit with what he knew of Nezu.

"He… wants to run us through a maze, I think." He chewed on his lip, "So I think it'll be best for us to split up. One of us should go for him while the other two go towards the exit, I think? As much as he's planned out, three people moving separately would be hard to account for… Are either of you particularly good at tracking? Or close combat? He’ll probably run when one of us gets close."

Both Ashido and Kaminari frowned, shook their heads. How hard was this test supposed to be?

"Ok well… I think both of you might be faster than me on the ground, especially with your quirk, Ashido. So you two should make for the exit."

He reached again to the bandolier, considering for a moment before handing Ashido a flashbang and Kaminari a flare. He wished he had chalk or something for them to mark where they'd been, but hadn't thought to include that. He'd have to next time, assuming there was a next time.

"Ok, if he comes for you, or you run into trouble, signal with one of those. And uh… shouting, this place isn't that big, and pretty echo-y. I'm going to head for the wrecking ball and the principal."

And the hero-kids nodded at him seriously, followed him as he clambered down the other side of pipes, waved at him as they each took off in a different direction. Didn't question him once. He was running too, but slowed down considerably as everything he'd just said caught up with him. He hadn't stuttered, had barely hesitated. He'd believed in what he was saying, and in turn the kids with him had believed it, too.

When the hell had he gotten so confident?

Now that he'd realized it, he wanted nothing more than to second guess himself, but they didn't have the time. He moved back into a jog, having to divert course several times, only daring to use the grapple gun once more when he got to the street adjacent to where he'd seen the crane. Nezu was still inside, and from here Izuku could hear him cackling maniacally. It didn’t seem like he'd noticed Izuku yet, actually, though he figured that was just a façade.

(It couldn't be that the machinery was too noisy for Nezu to hear over, could it? That the stink of deisel was enough to mask his smell? That was too much wishful thinking.)

The hook of the grapple caught on the metal that supported the crane. Like before, he couldn't exactly winch himself up, but he wiped off his hands and started climbing. Actually this was yet another good reason to include chalk in his supplies, because the rope was made out of this lightweight material that didn't exactly give the best purchase -- plus thinking about that was much better than focusing on the burn in his arms.

He tried not to gasp for air too loudly when he pulled himself onto the roof, but if he really hadn't been noticed before, he had now, and he looked up to see Principal Nezu standing above him, tea cup oh-so-carefully balanced on the dashboard of the crane. In obvious view.

…Was that on purpose? That seemed like exactly the kind of mind game Nezu would enjoy, making him think that his cup was somehow important to defeating him.

"Ah, Midoriya-kun! You arrived sooner than expected!"

Izuku rolled himself to his feet, into a defensive position facing Nezu.

This was weird. He had been expecting the principal to run away so he could keep causing chaos. He really didn't know how he was supposed to actually fight him. He wasn't really confident in his ability to actually capture the principal, but he might as well try, now that he was here.

He dove forward and Nezu stepped back up into the cab of the crane. What followed was a series of lunges and smooth dodges until the two of them stood facing each other at each open door. Izuku really hoped that Ashido and Kaminari were making good progress because he didn't feel like he was. 

The tea was still there. Izuku looked at it out of the corner of his eye. Was this a good plan? Maybe not, but he didn't have any other.

He reached for it. Nezu smiled, but didn't move to stop him, so at the last moment he jerked his hand away to the stick that controlled the crane and pulled it as far back as it would go. He stumbled only a little bit, but it looked like Nezu lost balance too and instead of falling another step, he used the momentum to push himself forward, arms out, hands finding purchase on fabric and fur. He tumbled forward, rolled back to his feet.

He had Principal Nezu in a headlock.

He had Principal Nezu in a headlock?

In a panic he pulled his teacher tighter to his chest. Really, he couldn't have gotten a hand on him in a worse way, because if he tried to reach a hand around to grab the cuffs Nezu would absolutely slip away from him. Though Nezu was a pro , and Izuku had only been training for a few months so he wasn't going to able to hold on for very long anyways--

Two things happened very quickly. Izuku felt a sharp pain in his arm and his grip weakened enough for Nezu to jump away, rolling to his own feet and jumping up like it was a part of a gymnastics routine. Then a buzzer sounded, loud even from where Izuku was standing. He didn't think they were out of time, so…

"Escape Achieved. " A tinny voice announced in the distance, "Hero team wins!"

It didn't quite register, at first. Izuku looked towards the distance, then to Nezu, who was straightening his vest like nothing strange had happened at all. Then down at his arm. Nezu hadn't pierced skin, but…

"You…bit me?" He couldn't stop his voice from pitching high. He had put the principal of UA in a headlock and then been bitten by him? And it didn't seem like he was about to be expelled for it?

"Of course!" Nezu chirped, not looking the least bit ruffled, "We must use all the tools at our disposal after all."

Togeike gave a strained smile to the two boys across from her. They were very friendly, and beefcakes to boot, but…

"We can just bust on through whatever he puts in front of us."

"Yeah!"

"…I can't exactly help you guys with that, you know." She flipped a blade of kelp between her fingers, "And can't Cementoss go like… forever?"

"We'll make a path for you!" Announced the red-haired one, with a thumbs up and a sharp-toothed grin.

 The one in the yellow suit nodded his approval. "You can help us tie him up when we get close!"

She grimaced, "My kelp really isn't all that good for --"

The buzzer sounded, the boys cheered, and started forward, only to immediately be confronted with a concrete wall. One that they immediately punched through, only to be face with another wall, and then another-

"Guys? I don't think…"

She didn't know if they weren't listening, or if they just didn't hear her, but she found herself trailing far behind to avoid getting hit with any debris and neither boy looked like they planned on stopping. She hesitated, looking around for another option. There were strips of earth next to the road that didn't appear to be made of concrete; when she turned to walk forward on that she caught Cementoss' eye. He smiled, but in an instant her view was blocked by a curving archway of cement.

A look to one side revealed that her teammates were still at it, so deep in a concrete maze that she couldn't see them anymore. Which left her with vanishingly few options. She made a wide arc to the side, forming a few coils of kelp in her hand as she went. She just had to hope her teammates could keep their teacher distracted for long enough for her to do… something?

What was she doing? Did she even have a plan?

Togeike made the mistake of stepping too far out into the open. She prayed for a moment that she hadn't been seen, but Cementoss turned his head and without warning a wave of concrete rose behind her, sending her tumbling down until she was at Cementoss' feet, arms pinned to her sides by concrete. The two hero course kids had been full on knocked-out, so at least she hadn't suffered that, but…

A buzzer sounded.

"All three students have been immobilized. Villains win!"

A big grey hand patted the top of her head.

"It wasn't a bad idea, little lady. Might want to share it next time."

Hitoshi prayed that the reason Bakugo was keeping quiet was to avoid conspiring in front of their enemy, but when the bus pulled to a stop and Bakugo stalked off with tense shoulders he knew he wasn’t going to end up so lucky.

Why him? Why All Might? It wasn't like he wasn't willing to fight for it, but why did they have to make this so hard ?

 All Might saw himself off with a salute and then it was just the two of them, arms crossed, glaring at each other. A minute ticked by, then two, and fuck he was really willing to go into this without any fucking planning ?

Except the moment he opened his mouth to speak, Bakugo's face pulled into a sneer.

"Don't you try any of that mind-freak bullshit on me, you understand? Or I'll whip your ass three ways to Sunday. I'm going to win this by my own damn self. I don't need your help."

Hitoshi did his best to keep himself from sneering back.

"I'm not going to brainwash you. We're supposed to be teammates this time. And I'm not going to let you fuck up my chance at being a hero."

Bakugo's mouth stayed stubbornly shut, and it took everything in Hitoshi to not just let him go off on whatever poorly planned idea of a plan he had. As cathartic as letting Midoriya's bully get punched by his idol might be, he needed to be a little more selfish than that right now.

"Just think for five seconds. Why did they pair us up? Against fucking All Might, no less. They're not trying to figure out how good you are at exploding shit."

"Yeah?" Bakugo snarled, "You think you're so much better than me? That you know what to do? Of course you do, you've been hanging out with fucking Deku -- tch."

Hitoshi was just thankful that Bakugo cut himself off before he lost composure and tried to brainwash him. He did his very best to bite down his anger and frustration -- one of many skills he learned from working with Aizawa for the weeks he had -- though it still probably leaked into his voice.

"If I was so much better than you I probably would have gotten into heroics on my first try, right? This is--" he sighed through his teeth, "--either they're setting us up to fail…" Which it certainly felt like, "…or they're trying to use this to see if we can get over ourselves and work together or some shit."

Hitoshi blinked as he realized it. There was a pretty good chance that they were literally testing his patience.

As much as he had come to hate Bakugo, the guy wasn't one of the top of his class for nothing. If Hitoshi hadn't won the sports festival, hadn't stood up to him in the bathroom that day, maybe he wouldn't have spoken at all, but maybe, hopefully, Bakugo had some small amount of respect for him, and was smart enough to realize that this was the time to acknowledge it.

"So? You got some sort of master plan? All Might knows about your quirk too, he's not gonna go talking back to you. And without that, you're as good as him."

Hitoshi was pretty sure he knew who him was, who Deku was, and he bit his lip hard to stop from biting back at the mal-adjusted asshole in front of him. This is the test. You can't risk it.

"I'm another body, aren't I? He has to come stop me if I run for the exit, we can at least bait him where we want him."

"Tch. Fine. Just don't fuck up too bad."

The horn sounded and Bakugo stalked onto the testing ground without a glance backwards. That was as good as it was gonna get, huh? Maybe this was as good as it could get, against the symbol of peace. Hitoshi followed shortly after.

What followed was nothing short of a mess.

They made it about half-way through the testing field with no sign of All Might. Hitoshi was getting ready to break off and make a proper run for the exit when there was a gust of wind so strong that the street itself started tearing apart. Hitoshi managed to get his capture weapon around the base of a bent lamp post. Wherever Bakugo landed, he got right back up, and launched himself towards All Might with a scream of  "DIE! "

Hitoshi wasn't so sure he would be able to get away from overwhelming power like he'd just been hit with, but he took off at a run anyways, only to be hit with another blast of air-pressure that sent him tumbling face first across the ground. All Might was suddenly right in front of him , and he was in the air, held by the front of his gym uniform as the god damn Symbol of Peace was getting ready to punch the daylight out of him.

Then Bakugo appeared at All Might's side, pulling the pin from his grenade-gauntlets with a lack of care for collateral damage that Hitoshi probably should have been expecting. All Might raised an arm to block, probably on instinct, and, well, he couldn't do much else so Hitoshi snaked out his capture weapon around his wrist and pulled. And it did nothing. With apparently no effort, All Might threw him into a car and used the same fist to slam Bakugo in the ground.

For a long moment all Hitoshi could see were stars. His ears were already ringing from the explosion, and the impact certainly hadn’t helped things. He felt… well he felt pain, but he was also angry as hell. What the fuck was he supposed to do against the god damn number one hero?

When he could finally see again it was to the sight of All Might slamming Bakugo into the concrete. He made to stand, but he felt so wobbly that he probably couldn't make it to the gate even if no one came to stop him. There was really only one thing he hadn't tried.

He hadn't talked yet, figuring there was no way the number one hero would respond to him. There hadn't really been time to try it, anyways. But now, he took a deep breath, put on his most concerned look, and said, "Holy Shit! Is he okay?"

And All Might, the Symbol of fucking Peace, looked up and said, "Not to worry, my boy-"

All Might’s face went blank. Bakugo didn’t move.

Hitoshi clapped a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing. What the fuck? He had brainwashed All Might?

Not only was that incredibly dangerous, but Midoriya would get a kick out of it. He was feeling a little hysterical about this whole situation.

It wasn't easy to hold on, though. A migraine hit him near instantly, and the hero was shaking, clearly straining against his quirk in a way he was pretty sure no one else would be able to.

He said, "Take the handcuffs from Bakugo and put them on yourself."

And oh-so carefully, All Might secured one cuff around his wrist, and then the other, and then snapped awake looking shocked.

"Villain captured! Hero team wins!"

Hitoshi slid back down to the ground. All Might was saying something, but his vision was swimming, and oh wow, did his head hurt. He hoped All Might wouldn't mind having to carry them both to Recovery Girl.

"Cool." He said, not fighting as his vision went dark at the edges. "Cool."

The first thing Hitoshi was aware of was someone talking. He recognized the voice, he was pretty sure. He certainly recognized the tone, who ever it was sternly saying, "There was no need for you to push those boys that far. All for a test!"

He was also pretty sure that he recognized the second voice -- All Might -- though never sounding so cowed, "Ah, well perhaps I got a bit overzealous--"

There was a dull thunk of something hitting something else and the first voice said, "And what were you going to do if Shinso-kun here didn't get you under his quirk, hm? Throw him into another car?"

There was silence, and then an unimpressed sounding "Hm."

…He must have gotten hit harder than he'd thought. He'd used his quirk on the Symbol of Peace, and the hero was the one getting reprimanded?

Well… to a certain extent it made sense, he supposed. If All Might got done in by every kid with a mind control quirk, that could easily oh… destroy Japan . Maybe the free world if they played it smart. He also figured that if he did have a lecture coming, it would happen once he was awake. So, to delay that he kept breathing evenly until he heard the sound of feet shuffling out of the room and a door opening and closing.

Then, knowing he would probably regret it, he squinted open his eyes.

The lights in the room were blessedly dark, and though his headache was still bad, it wasn't a debilitating migraine. He wondered for a moment if Recovery Girl's quirk worked on quirk backlash, and then if maybe they'd somehow managed to give his passed out body painkillers.

His bed was the one against the far wall, but the curtains were pulled back and he could see that one of the others had likely been earlier occupied and vacated. Bakugo, he would assume, would not want to spend any longer in the nurse's office than he would have to. Hitoshi however, was just fine spending as long in here as they would let him. He laid his head back down with a soft groan, only for someone to click their tongue.

"Ah, I thought you should have woken up by now, can you sit up?"

So Recovery Girl hadn't left. She must have been lurking around the corner where he couldn't see her. Hitoshi failed to suppress a groan from escaping as he tried to do what she asked. He was still left dizzy just from sitting up, and the elderly hero tutted and shoved a bottle of water at him before continuing her checkup which involved mostly waving a light in his face and checking his reflexes.

"Well that's as good as it gets for now, I suppose. Class is almost over for the day, so you can stay here until school is over."

Oh wow, he'd been out for a while, then; not that he felt particularly well rested. He didn't seem to have any other injuries, so Recovery Girl's quirk was probably at least partially responsible.

The short old woman turned, presumably to go back to whatever she was doing before, but not before he heard her mumble, "Goodness, if you're in here so much before getting into the hero course, I can only imagine…"

Hitoshi made the poor decision of shooting to his feet when he realized. For a moment, his vision went dark, and he had no doubt that Recovery Girl scowled at him, but the words spilled out of his mouth regardless.

"Does that mean I passed? Am I in the course? Do you know?"

Recovery Girl smiled at him, eyes crinkling closed, before bullying him back onto the bed with her cane.

"I'm not the one who makes those decisions. I'm sure you'll find out tomorrow dearie."

Hitoshi sat back down with a frown, but he couldn't stop his heart from thrumming in his chest. He was worried, sure. It fit with everything that had been put in front of him so far that UA would put some other test in front of him, and would keep doing that until he finally failed. But he'd passed this one.

He also knew himself well enough to know that now that he was awake he wouldn't be falling back asleep any time soon and ended up busying himself with his phone.

Sent:

so does anyone know what's up or…

From Togeike:

I don’t want to talk about it

From Agoyamato:

shes been moping all day

tbh ive been getting mixed signals

From Midoriya:

Yeah, they didn't tell us the verdict yet :(

Both classes get their exam results back tomorrow so hopefully then…?

From Mushiko:

You guys did great from what I heard

If they don't let you in I'll turn the principal's desk to worms!

ヾ ( ＠ ^ ∇ ^ ＠ ) ノ

He then immediately got a another text, from outside the group

From Midoriya:

First of all I hope you're okay!!

Second

Please please please tell me EVERYTHING that happened when you fought All Might

Hitoshi grinned wide, probably looking sappy as hell. He had expected nothing less.

Izuku looked up at the board next to 1-C's classroom with wide eyes. There was a long sheet of paper pinned to it. Exam scores. And while this wasn't the exam he was really worried about, he was still shocked by the result.

"F-first? I-I don't…"

A hand clapped down on his shoulder and he jumped before he realized it was Shinso, no doubt pleased with his ranking of third.

"Midoriya, we've literally been doing study groups three times a week since the semester started. Is it really so surprising?"

Izuku couldn't help but flush a little pink before looking back at the results. It was, but should it be? In middle school he'd always carefully stayed in the top quarter of the class. Good enough to get him somewhere like UA, but not enough to get him called out. Most of the time. But here he hadn't worried about that at all. Not that it had been for lack of fear, exactly. His homeroom teacher seemed just as capable of falsely accusing him for cheating as anyone at Aldera was, but with the whole lying about his quirk thing he didn't really feel like he had anything to lose by trying his best. And thanks to the club he had studied more this year than he had ever before.

Plus not having to worry about being blown up was a nice bonus.

On his other side Mushiko was in tears, because she had ranked number 10 and was so, so happy, because she'd never been in the top half of the class before. In fact, all five of them were there. It was Togeike --still frowning, though she refused to elaborate on what had happened during her exam-- who said, "You know people are going to start asking questions about the club, right? I mean, they already have been, but now they'll probably ask you."

Izuku said "Huh?" and when the other four all turned to stare at him looking some shade of unimpressed sputtered, "I think I've only been asked about the club like, once!"

Shinso snorted and turned away to hide his face in his elbow, which Izuku knew meant he was laughing. Mushiko punched at his leg, though she was smiling.

"You haven't been asked, but we have!"

"People think you're intimidating." Agoyamato said dryly.

"Me? Intimidating?" Izuku squeaked. He had sort of started to realize that he had some kind of a reputation, but nothing like that .

"That's what I keep saying." Togeike groused, "Maybe they'll get over themselves now. Someone will come begging for your secrets and realize that you're harmless."

"Nah, this will only make him scarier." Agoyamato argued back.

Shinso, meanwhile, had only started laughing harder, visibly trembling but managing not to make a sound.

And then someone cleared their throat behind them and all of them straightened up.

"Principal wanted to discuss test scores with some of you." Rei-sensei said from behind them, "I'm sure you can figure out who. The rest of you should get to your seats."

Izuku slowly turned to look at his homeroom teacher, who was smiling in a way that for once didn't seem dangerous.

"Remember that everything that happens today was because of your efforts. Now get the hell out of my class."

Mushiko and Agoyamato followed him into the classroom, the former shooting them a large grin. Meanwhile, Togeike pulled a face like she had just bitten into a lemon,  "Oh rub it in, bastard."

Izuku looked up at Shinso, who didn't appear to be able to control his excitement and anxiety from bleeding into his expression, eyes bright and mouth just barely curled into a smile. It was a look that made Izuku feel absolutely hopelessly fond, and he was really hoping that Shinso would keep it for the rest of the day.

"Well come on then." Said Shinso, tilting his head to the side, smile only growing wider, "Let's go see if we're expelled or not."

The door to Principal Nezu's office was already open when they arrived, and the three of them wound up sitting next to each other in much the same way they'd sat on the bus on the way to the exam, with Izuku sandwiched in the middle. There was tea on the desk, but none of them reached to take it. Instead Izuku found his hand wandering to scratch at the gauze on his arm. The bite wound had mostly healed, but the shock of receiving it certainly hadn't. He shivered a little as the chimera tilted his head and gave them a smile. (Not a real smile, but the one Izuku knew he used to try and make people feel more at ease. It didn’t do much for him right now). He greeted each of them, and then...

"Well I'm sure you're all anxious to hear the results of your exams, so let's get to them! Midoriya-kun, your tactical skills on both a long and short term level are quite well developed, and your leadership allowed you to lead two of the students who are weaker at such things to victory. Your close combat ability is still lacking, but given that it's a skill that we train in the hero course, your transfer has been approved!"

Of all the things for his brain to focus on after that announcement, for some reason it was the feeling of Shinso sitting up a little straighter next to him, while Togeike slumped further into her seat. He was barely able to pay attention as Nezu continued, "Shinso-kun, your attempt at working with a volatile teammate was admirable, though the strategy you ended up using was less than ideal. Of course in the end you did pass the test, so you get your transfer as well! Though as a secret between all of us here, your place in the sports festival was enough to cement that, either way. Just a little bit of Plus Ultra on our part!"

Beside him, Shinso let out a soft, "Oh."

Izuku could feel the slightest tremble in Shinso's shoulders and reached out blindly -- oh, he was crying already -- to grab at what turned out to be his elbow.

"As for you Togeike-kun, you came up with the beginnings of a good strategy, but at that point had already lost communication with your teammates, and couldn't quite manage to maneuver without being seen…"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. There's only two transfer slots, I failed the test." She waved one hand at the principal, "But this wasn't a one time thing, right? As long as a teacher sponsors me I can keep trying to get in?"

Izuku wiped at his eyes with his other hand to see what expression the principal wore and found it was the sort of smile that he reserved for when someone had solved a puzzle of his.

"That is the case, yes!"

"Then-" She poked a finger into Izuku’s shoulder, "You guys better watch your spots. I think the whole thing with Present Mic wasn't very thought out, I'm going to talk to Midnight as soon as I get out of here."

"Oh, don't let me hold you up Togeike-kun. I'm sure she'll appreciate your spirit!"

She stood up and bowed stiffly, taking it for the dismissal that it was.

"So!” The principal turned back to them “After the summer break you will officially transfer into the hero course. There are still some discussions to be had over which of who will be in 1-A versus 1-B -"

That sent Izuku's high not crashing down, but flying significantly lower. Right, of course. Him and Shinso had made it into the hero course, but they would actually be in separate classes. And one of those classes--

"1-B!" He said instantly. Then he flushed pink and pulled his hands into his lap, "S-sorry I didn't mean to interrupt, I just think it would make the most sense for me to go to 1-B?"

He was glad he'd spent enough time with the principal to know that the way his nose twitched was in curiosity and not annoyance. And so he continued, "I-it's just uhm. Shinso-kun trained a lot under Eraserhead specifically, so it would make more sense for him to go to 1-A? And...and 1-B tends to focus a lot more on teamwork, which I feel like would benefit me more than the individualist training they do in 1-A?" And I don't think anyone in 1-B wants to kill me on sight.

His voice raised in pitch as he spoke, so much so that the Principal's ears flicked. But he didn't scold Izuku, only nodded and said, "I'll bring your arguments up at the meeting. There is one more thing, however!"

From somewhere underneath his desk, Principal Nezu pulled out two rather hefty stacks of paper, both of them making audible thumps as he dropped them on the desk.

"Over the summer, the hero course goes on a quirk training camp of sorts. We can't legally bring you along until you've officially transferred, and unfortunately that's not until the next semester begins." Izuku blinked. That was… Disappointing, but it wasn't as though he'd be doing much at a quirk training camp, anyways. "But not to worry! Since you have so much work to catch up on, this summer would be a wonderful time to do it! That includes physically, of course, and I've given you guidelines for that as well. I trust you two can handle this sort of self-guided training?"

Izuku tentatively reached out and pulled the book's worth of paper into his lap. He had done a lot of ridiculous things to get this far. Summer homework didn't seem like it would be bad at all.

"Yes sir. I’m sure we can handle it."

Then the not-quite-a-rat dismissed him from his office with a cheery wave and a wish of good luck. If Izuku felt like he walked out of there on a cloud, Shinso was probably even higher than him. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen him smile so wide for so long, and his eyes looked suspiciously glassy.

And, well, there was one main lingering anxiety that he hadn’t addressed. If he was in the hero course, the truth about him would get out, and if it got out, it would get to Shinso. So he wanted the boy to hear it from him before anyone else, and his courage was at all all time high--

All he got out was "Shinso- '' before being cut off abruptly by his face being squished into something warm. It took him a moment to realize that Shinso had hugged him. Not tightly, but that kind of physical affection from him was a first and Izuku felt his heart skip a beat. Suddenly the feeling of having achieved his dream was tempered a bit. Getting into the hero course had been everything he had wanted, but was it too selfish for him to want more of this, too?

Maybe he would say something later.

Sent:

So I don't know if anyone but me and Shinso are going to be training over summer break

But I just saw this flyer for a community outreach thing?

There's this beach near where I live that's covered with trash and they want volunteers to help clean it

It seems like it would be good for extra training! :)

From Agoyamato:

I'd rather not spend summer break surrounded with garbage thanks???

From Mushiko:

I might be able to come hang out!! But I still have to be really careful with how far I push things

From Shinso:

sigh

as for me this seems like exactly the kind of plus ultra bullshit UA loves

so

sure

From Togeike:

I can show up for like a day or two, but I always spend most of my break with my grandparents

ALSO

What's the club status??

Since you assholes are officially hero course now you don’t need it, right?

Sent:

Well I mean I guess not…

But the point wasn’t just for one of us to transfer, it was for all of us!

And the principal didn’t mention it so I think it’s fine…

From Togeike:

You’re seriously gonna help us steal your spot? 

From Shinso:

does that really surprise you at this point

Sent:

As far as I’m concerned, the club stays until everyone who wants to be a hero is one!

In Hitoshi's opinion, the whole Dagobah beach thing may have been a mistake.

The first day they were joined by a small group of other volunteers, Togeike included, as they hauled bag after bag of garbage to the dumpster. The second day the number had gone down by more than half, though Mushiko visited for a few hours and shouted encouragement at them from her spot sitting on the retaining wall. By the end of the first week the numbers had dwindled down to just him and Midoriya, alone, hauling junk for hours.

He was constantly aching from the routine the principal had put in front of him, and more than that, he was constantly on edge about embarrassing himself in front of his…Well, his crush.

See, he had come up with sort of a plan, once their transfer had been confirmed. Since they were going to be in separate classes, he would confess just before the end of summer break, and if it all went horribly wrong then they wouldn't have to see each other afterwards. That in mind, being around Midoriya made him too nervous to really focus, sometimes. Not that moving trash was particularly challenging, mentally speaking, but he caught himself getting distracted unfortunately often.

Plus, it was fucking hot outside. It was summer break, of course it was hot, but Hitoshi regularly found himself sweating through his t-shirts in less than an hour, and Midoriya didn't seem to be faring any better. The green haired boy had started bringing along a cooler of water and wearing tank-tops and that really only managed to make things worse . Because, well, they'd been training since the start of the school year pretty rigorously, and when Midoriya would wipe at his sweat with his clothes it revealed just how much muscle he had put on. Hitoshi had bulked up too, he knew, but not like that. It was unfair in more ways than one, and he was pretty confident that the only reason Midoriya hadn't called him out for staring was because he was too polite. And he knew Midoriya knew because half the time he'd look up to find the boy looking at him, and then he would just smile and get back to work like nothing was weird.

This is fine, he told himself as he watched Midoriya drag an entire refrigerator across the sand, like it wasn't that big of a deal. I can handle this for just a little while longer.

With only two of them they didn't make incredible progress, but before the end of the next week they'd made enough of a dent in the garbage that they could see the sand again, and could technically go dip their toes in the water if they were so inclined. Neither of them were, but it was possible.

It was tedious, and tiring, and that seemed to be just the sort of environment that caused Izuku to get lost in thought and mumble to himself. And, more than anything, his thoughts circled back to how do I tell him. Not just the confession of feelings thing, which he wasn't sure he'd ever get the courage to do, but about him. His quirklessness. He'd only directly lied to two people about it, and Shinso was one of them, and he’d been spending the late afternoons pretty much alone with Shinso for days.

That… caused it's own distracting problems, because Shinso was so tall, and so pretty, but more importantly Shinso was his friend and deserved to hear the truth from him. He just couldn't figure out how to bring it up.

On top of it all he kept catching Shinso looking at him, and he couldn't figure out why. And every time they made eye-contact he would go a little pink and look away, which meant he was probably thinking about something he was too embarrassed to bring up, and really, there was only one thing Izuku had made a big enough deal about that Shinso would hesitate to ask about.

He couldn't just blurt it out, though. And thinking about it made his mind wander, from his quirklessness, to Shinso's quirk, to the training camp that he really didn't need, but that Shinso should have been on. And so, instead of starting the conversation like a normal person, he sidled up next to Shinso and said "You should brainwash me!"

Shinso clearly hadn't been paying attention to him because he jumped so badly that he nearly dropped the trashed microwave he was carrying on his toes, only narrowly avoiding that fate because he jumped back a few inches, too.

"I- what?"

"Since you didn't get to go to the quirk training camp! You should train yours on me! You can just command me to clean trash like I have been. You train your quirk and I just do what I've been doing anyway!"

Shinso just stared at him like he'd grown another head and Izuku found himself nervously bouncing on the balls of his feet. Was this really such a weird idea?

"I… don't know." Shinso said uncertainty after a long moment, "I don't know if it's exactly safe?"

"Why wouldn't it be? If you don't make me do anything weird…"

Shinso cut him off with a quick shake of the head. "Not like that. It's more like… When we trained it before, it was on campus. With permission. And cameras around. Plus if I push you too hard you won't have a way to tell me something's wrong or that you need a break."

And, well, it was a valid worry for Shinso to have with anyone else, but…"I trust you Shinso-kun! You can just give me one command at a time! Maybe to build endurance with how many times you can do it in a row or something."

Izuku fixed him with a smile and Shinso did that cute little thing he did when he was embarrassed where one of his hands rubbed at the back of his neck, and he smiled (how had he not noticed that Shinso had one dimple before now?) and said, "I mean… If you're sure."

Then Shinso paused and frowned, just a little, and said, "What about you, though? I mean, if they're willing to transfer you, you've told them about your quirk, right? Are they… Gonna make you train it?"

All the light and happy feelings Izuku had been feeling were instantly washed out with a wave of anxiety. Because. Well. That was the perfect in to the conversation where he'd been trying to have for a while now. He didn't feel ready at all, heart suddenly beating hard in his chest. Shinso's hands moved to hover around him awkwardly, eyebrows pinched.

"Um. Yeah they know." Unfortunately his voice already sounded raspy with unshed tears, and that only seemed to make Shinso worry more , "Actually I've been meaning to talk to you about it too."

Well there was no taking it back now. He bit his lip and cast a glance around them. The beach was empty, but he decided that he would rather not be standing for this conversation and sat on top of the microwave that had landed in the sand rather hard, no doubt denting the top of it. Shinso was taken aback for a moment but squatted down next to him, face written with so much concern that Izuku couldn't bear to look at him.

"Shinso-kun, if I tell you something can you promise me that it never, ever leaves this beach?" He asked while staring at the ripped out remains of an old couch.

"Yeah." Shinso said softly, "Of course."

Izuku swallowed hard.

"The truth is that I don't have a quirk. At all." And then he froze, throat so tight he couldn't say more if he tried. If Shinso was going to hate him it would happen right now--

"Huh." Came the low voice from next to him after, "Well that's good, then."

Izuku opened his mouth. Closed it. Forced himself to turn and look at Shinso, who looked like he was thinking very hard. He'd heard a lot about his quirklessness, but never that it was good.

"What. Do you mean?" His voice shook, but at least he was able to choke it out.

Shinso offered him another small shrug, "Just that uh. Well the way you sat down to talk about this, the way you were so scared of it before… I was kind of afraid you were about to tell me that you'd killed someone with it or something."

"But I lied to you! I- I - Aren't you mad at me?"

Shinso tilted his head to one side, "Were you lying to everyone, or just me?"

Izuku licked his lips, his heart was pounding in his chest but Shinso hadn't left yet. He had a chance to explain himself, "No. No, when I got into UA they asked me about my quirk a-and I … I told them the same thing I told you. I w-was scared that since they were asking they cared about it, you know? I just... Tried not to talk about it that much. The only people who I ever directly lied to were Present Mic and... You."

His voice broke on the last word, and he hunched into himself waiting for Shinso to decide he wasn't worth it anymore.

He saw Shinso nod out of the corner of his eye, and then they both went quiet, the only sound was the faint lapping of waves on the rest of the garbage they had yet to clean.

Izuku felt like he was balanced on a delicate edge, and was terrified of doing something that would push him off the wrong side.

"Well…"Shinso said finally, and the half shrug and a lopsided grin that came with it made Izuku feel so light-headed with relief that he was glad he'd decided to sit down, "It wasn't cool, but I get it. I've thought about lying about my quirk before too so… I think I'll get over it."

"Thank you." he choked out weakly as he reached up to wipe at the tears threatening to spill down his cheeks, "I'm sorry. Thank you."

And maybe that should have been it, but that conversation had left Izuku feeling so exhausted that he didn't feel like he even had the energy to stand up, much less continue hauling trash. Shinso didn't make a move to stand up either, so they sat together for a long minute as Izuku tried and failed to pull himself together.

( He knew he'd felt this way about Shinso for a reason, he'd trusted that Shinso wouldn't abandon him, and he hadn't. Not physically at least, but…)

"Shinso-kun. Do you think a quirkless person can be a hero?" He asked, voice a little warbled. He'd asked, before, if Shinso thought someone could become a hero without using a quirk, but that was different --

He blinked as Shinso lightly tapped the back of their hands together.

"I already told you, didn't I? If anyone could do it, it would be you."

Izuku finally dared to look at him and almost burst into tears all over again, because Shinso looked like he genuinely meant it.

"Midoriya-" Shinso started again, only to be cut off by Izuku shaking his head.

"Izuku" he said a little breathlessly, "If you find out about me being quirkless and you're not going to. Beat me up or leave me or whatever then call me Izuku. Please."

"If that's the metric then you should have been calling me Hitoshi for months'' Shinso shot back with a tired smile, and Izuku's heart swelled, "Okay, Izuku… Izuku, I think you're the most heroic person I know. And that's counting the pro heroes who teach us." Shinso -- Hitoshi -- held up a hand to cut off Izuku's protests. "I mean it. Every time you've seen someone who's needed help, whether it was that lady in the gym or… hell even me, even the club who should have been your competition, you just. Go. You help them, and it's like you don’t even have to think about it. So. yeah, maybe you don’t have a license yet or whatever, but when it comes to attitude, as far as I'm concerned you already are a hero."

When Izuku lurched forward for a hug, Hitoshi was at least prepared enough to keep both of them from falling into a pile of trash, and there was nothing he could do to stop himself from sobbing.

Embarrassingly, they stayed sitting in the sand for so long that Hitoshi wound up missing the last train home. And sure, they were close enough for him to walk, if he really had to, but it was dark, and it would involve going through some bad parts of town. And on top of it all Hitoshi had exactly no willpower to say no to anything Izuku (And wasn't that something? Hadn't this whole day been something?) asked for, which was how he wound up awkwardly standing in the entrance of Izuku's apartment as the boy asked permission from his mom for him to stay the night.

Hitoshi had sent a text to his own mother " Hey, I'm gonna sleep over at a friend's tonight. Midoriya Izuku " and had steadfastly been ignoring the three dots indicating a response they appeared and disappeared over and over.

Inko Midoriya was a small, round woman who looked so much like her son it was a little frightening. Apparently Izuku had learned all of his smiling and good grace from her, because she seemed so excited that a stranger was in their home.

"I made enough curry so that we could have leftovers tomorrow, so we actually have more than enough if you'd like to join us for dinner, Shinso-kun."

"Um." He started talking, planning to decline, but with both Midoriyas looking at him with those huge green eyes he didn't stand a chance, "If it's not too much trouble, that would be great?"

He almost winced from the brightness of both of the smiles directed at him.

As it turned out, dinner in the Midoriya household was not a quiet affair like he was used to. Inko asked them about school, about if they were excited by their transfer into the hero course. And, just like Izuku, she had no hesitation in responding to him, which kept throwing him for loop after loop. He wondered if maybe she just didn't know about his quirk, until she complimented his performance at the sports festival. He thanked her, but stumbled over his words in the process. He looked steadfastly down at his curry, not missing Izuku exchanging a glance with his mom. He was making things weird, he was pretty sure -- no he knew -- but he didn't really know what to do about it. He knew he was acting nervous, and could see that the longer he sat there, failing to join their conversation, the more nervous Izuku was getting, too.

Yeah, acting jumpy and weird not even a full two hours after your best friend told you what was probably his biggest secret wasn't doing anyone any favors. (And truth be told he really didn’t care about the quirkless thing. He’d already suspected something was weird, it was obvious now that he'd thought about it). Luckily Inko swooped into the rescue with another one of her smiles as she reached out to take the plates.

"I'll do the washing up, dears. You two should do fun sleepover things!"

Shinso couldn't stop his cheeks from going pink if he tried. Because oh yeah, that was what they were doing, wasn't it? He was in his crush's house, eating dinner with his mom, getting ready to sleep over and he wasn't even able to hold it together for long enough to have a conversation.

"Oh! Um… we should shower first, since we were cleaning Dagobah all day. I'll see if I can find something that fits you!" Izuku shot up from his seat and scurried away at a frankly incredible speed. Inko stifled a laugh as she watched him go, then reached out to pat one of Hitoshi's hands.

"I'm glad you're his friend Shinso-kun. You make him very happy."

"I-Thanks?" He couldn't be blamed for not knowing what to say to that, could he?

Izuku eventually appeared with a pair of sweatpants that were absolutely going to be too short and an All-Might T-shirt that somehow was going to be too large --  ( A limited edition , he would later explain, and the only one in stock by the time he was able to get to it was a 3XL )

So he showered first, and was pointed down the hallway to a room with an All-Might nameplate on the door. To be honest he was thankful that his first encounter with the room had been alone because he wasn't sure his shocked reaction wouldn't have hurt Izuku's feelings. He knew the guy liked All Might, but holy shit. He lowered himself to the futon and spent the better part of ten minutes trying to come to terms with the room. He wasn't even aware that All Might even had this much merchandise.

Weirdly enough the absurdity of it lifted his mood a little bit, and by the time Izuku showed up in his own All Might themed pajamas he was relaxed enough to throw out a lazy smile and a "So… All Might, huh?"

Izuku sputtered, just like Hitoshi thought he would, and he pulled his hands up to his chest and said, "I think he's the best. You know this!"

"Yeah, I do." As soon as the words left his mouth Hitoshi forced himself to find a piece of door to stare at as he wished for the days before he had realized his crush. That didn't sound sarcastic like he'd wanted it to. Was that coming on too strong? Or was it a normal thing to say? Probably the former, because Izuku was nervously fidgeting with his hands.

"Shin- uh - Hitoshi-kun did I do something to upset you?"

"…No?" If anything, he was going to ask Izuku the same question. It seemed that his answer wasn't enough for the boy because Izuku's eyes fell to his feet.

"it's just… Today at dinner you seemed really nervous. If it was something I did--"

"No, it's not you, it's--" What should he say? He had known Izuku had noticed and was just sort of hoping that he'd drop it. But of course he'd worry that it was about him , and why wouldn't he after today? Then as if on cue, his phone buzzed. He hesitated for just a moment, looking at Izuku who was peeking at him through his bangs before checking it.

From Mom:

Okay, have fun!

He sighed. "…I'm still just not really used to people wanting to talk to me so much, is all."

And still that wasn't enough, Izuku continued to frown, eyes darting between Hitoshi and the phone still in his hand.

"Was it… Were you okay with my mom?" And ouch, way to hit the nail on the head.

"She's fine. Really nice." And because apparently this was a day for spilling secrets, his traitorous tongue continued, "Nothing like mine."

Izuku was suddenly sitting across from him in an instant, eyes alight with concern, hands balled into fists.

"Are you alright at home Hitoshi-kun? I know you didn't want to talk about it but I haven't been able to stop thinking about how the atmosphere in your house was since I was there--"

"…You were there under some pretty unique circumstances." God damn it. Now he had to say something because he was right in his assessment of Izuku, and now that he'd sniffed trouble he wouldn't let it go until it was solved. This was…Fine. It was fine, talking about your life was kind of a sleepover activity wasn't it? And if he was going to talk to anyone in the world about this, it would be the boy right in front of him.

"My mom is -" Hitoshi hesitated, trying to find the right word, "Okay. She's fine, supportive of all the hero stuff. We just don't know how to talk to each other."

"Don't know, or…?"

"When my quirk first came in I mind controlled her on accident all the time. I had to go to quirk counseling for two years before I started to really get a handle on it." The words came spilling out far harsher sounding than Hitoshi thought they would, but that was probably a result of never having told anyone before, "By then she was already worried about replying to me. It's not like she won't, she just…"

"Doesn't trust you." Izuku sounded like he was on the verge of tears, and for the second time that day surged forward and pulled Hitioshi into a hug, "That's not fair, 'Toshi. You're gonna be a hero too."

His brain went to war with itself between him finally admitting to himself that no, it's not fair and the fact that Izuku had just used some kind of cutesy nickname that made him want to wither up with sappy emotions on the spot. In the end he mumbled, "I'll talk about it with her. I never have."

Izuku pulled back and fixed him with a teary smile and said, "Let me know how it goes!"

They still did end up doing something approximating 'sleepover things' though, as tired as they both were it mostly amounted to Izuku showing off some of his favorite hero debuts on his phone and then listing off a bunch of trivia of things that they'd changed in their costumes since then. They were both lying on the futon, Izuku talking about Kamui Woods a little listlessly and punctuating his observations with yawns when Hitoshi had the thought. It was something like well, you've already had two big conversations today. Might as well get the last thing on your mind out there too.

"Hey Izuku." He said, before his rational brain could catch up to his sleepy one.

"Hmm?"

"There's a summer festival that's happening in Shizuoka right before the break is over. Do you wanna go with me?"

"I...Yeah! That sounds really fun."

Hitoshi smiled to himself before realizing that the anxiety of laying next to his crush really hadn't gone away.

Ah. Maybe he should have specified it was a date.

Izuku was really hoping he wasn't misreading signals here. 

Ever since they had met, he and Hitoshi hadn't really had the time to do normal friend things outside of school. They'd been too busy or too tired to really try. And summer hadn't exactly given them the time either, between their self-led training and Dagobah Beach -- which they hadn't finished cleaning yet, but which was already looking much nicer (Izuku planned on continuing even once the school year started again). But now Hitoshi had invited him out to a festival, of all things. Hitoshi had invited him . Hitoshi, who had to be one of the least social people Izuku knew, had willingly, without warning, invited him to a festival. That meant… Something, right? Going to a festival together was more than just a friends thing… Right? Maybe he was just projecting what he wanted this to be onto the situation, it's not like he'd ever had a friend take him somewhere before.

Hitoshi had shown up dressed rather nicely, too - black jeans, boots and a comfortable looking purple button-down with the sleeves rolled up. He also looked like he was already starting to regret his choice of outfit, since his hairstyle was already starting to droop from sweat. Izuku was torn between wishing he'd dressed a little nicer (should he have? Hitoshi did, but maybe that was just how he dressed when he wasn't at school or working out?) and being perfectly happy with his choice of shorts. They met at the train-station, though the festival was sprawled out through a few streets and it took them less than a minute of walking to reach the edge of it all, first coming up on the row of stands selling food.

"I… didn't exactly come up with a plan for what we should do once we were here." Hitoshi admitted, hand going to the back of his neck, "If you have any ideas."

"Well I do like takoyaki. And you look like you could use some shaved ice…"

"Ah, yeah…"

So they got food. Izuku had to keep swatting away a large hand from filching one of his takoyaki balls, until they finally settled on trading a spoonful of flavored ice for one and ok, yeah , that could be a thing friends do but… Hitoshi just popped the spoon in his mouth and snatched the ball of fried octopus with a cheeky grin and… maybe it wasn't? That was a lot, right ?

What finally cemented it for him were the festival games -- Izuku found he had a slight edge over Hitoshi in the ring toss and shooting games, considering he was the one of them who'd had actual firearms training, but was horrible at the ones involving the paper scoops. He scowled as he broke his third scoop without managing to snag a single capsule, meanwhile Hitoshi had a bowl full of them. He snapped up to look as Hitoshi downright cackled at something he had pulled out of one of the capsules. That something was the most horrible looking boot-leg All Might figure Izuku had ever seen. Every single color was wrong, the limbs all sort of melted into each other and the face was painted on nearly sideways.

"Here." Hitoshi handed it to him, "It's no giant stuffed bear, but I feel like you might like him more anyways."

"Thank you." Izuku said as seriously as he could muster, "I'll defend him with my life."

Then what Hitoshi had said caught up with him and, well, it wasn't like he watched a lot of rom-coms or anything, but the whole winning a giant stuffed bear thing was definitely…

"Hitoshi-kun." He said before he could stop himself, hope and fear bubbling in his chest, "Is this a date?"

Hitoshi suddenly sat up straight from where he was hunching over the pool of capsules, breaking his own scoop in the process.

"Uh." Hitoshi said, facing going pink. Izuku hoped that was a good sign, and he smiled encouragingly. While he tended to ramble when he got nervous, Hitoshi would go quiet. But if given time usually he would come around.

"I. Planned on telling you during the fireworks?" Hitoshi looked resolutely at his own hands. "But yes. If uh. You want it to be."

As much as he had been wondering and wanting for that to be the case, the confirmation had Izuku's heart beating in his throat and he wound up going back to old habits and hiding his face in his hands as he made an unintelligible whine. Just because he wanted it to be a date didn't mean the confirmation was any less surprising.

"It- It doesn't have to be, if you don't want to…"

"No!" That was enough to jolt Izuku out of his embarrassment, and he reached out to grab at one of Hitoshi's hands. The taller boy looked up at him in alarm. "I mean no, I do want this to be a date? I'm uh. I'm glad it is?"

"Oh." Hitoshi's own cheeks were pink too, which Izuku thought was cute. He wondered for a moment if he was allowed to say so, now.

Then the worker of the booth cleared their throat and both of them shot to their feet, hands still clasped together. They stood there for a moment longer, until Hitoshi gently tugged on his hand and pulled him back into the crowd. And then they wandered, looking at stalls, hand in hand the whole time. The longer they stayed linked, the more relaxed the line in Hitoshi's shoulders became, and the wider Izuku's smile got -- until it started to hurt, but he couldn't stop it if he wanted to.

Eventually they made their way to a pavilion with a fountain, the centerpiece that the rest of the festival branched out from. It was a nice area, dimly lit by the strings of lanterns overhead, and fairly quiet especially this late in the evening. The two of them meandered over to the edge of the fountain and, with a little tug from Hitoshi both of them sat down.

"So-"

"I-"

Izuku bit his lip and suppressed another grin as he nodded his head for Hitoshi to go ahead. Somehow, after everything they'd gone through together, this may have been the most nervous Izuku had ever seen him. (The All Might fight would rival it, if most of what he'd seen hadn't been shock and fear).

"Right. So." Hitoshi cleared his throat,  "I don't know how necessarily a confession really is at this point but uh. You're the best friend I've ever had, but I think I like you even more than that? You're kinda of uh- amazing? I - ugh. Fuck." Hitoshi's face only grew more red the longer he spoke, "I had this whole speech planned out in my head and now I can't remember any of it."

"Well I didn't have a speech planned at all, but I feel the same." Izuku was almost surprised at how easy the words came, but maybe he shouldn't have been. All he was doing was telling the truth about how he'd felt for a while, now, "I like you, too. You're really driven and earnest and -- and I trust you, more than anyone."

They were jolted from their moment by the pop of the first firework going off, but when Izuku looked back at Hitoshi he was smiling. He was sure that this was probably incredibly cliche but people had dates (dates -!) like this for a reason, didn't they?  He leaned forward, just barely and when he saw Hitoshi blink and start to lean forward he let his eyes flutter closed and - oh .

He'd never been kissed before, hadn't even really thought about the possibility, really, but he couldn’t say he was at all disappointed. He was sure that it was clumsy and messy and unpracticed, but he didn't care, because the feeling it sent running down his spine felt a lot like the fireworks going off above them.  And after a long moment, after they pulled away from each other, Izuku looked up at Hitoshi -- fellow hero course member, Hitoshi Shinso, and thought.

Holy shit.

We made it .

A year ago if someone had told Izuku he'd made it into the heroics department of UA he would have been shocked but ecstatic. If that person had gone on to explain how chasing that dream had lead to the circumstance he was in now, he would have been more than a little confused.

That is to say, from an outside perspective, a short quirkless kid ducking into Pricincpal Nezu's office carrying a robe and wizard hat that he'd asked his mom to help him make was going to look weird no matter the explanation. Probably doubly so when the situation he had walked into was his tall, fellow hero course member boyfriend lecturing a tiny girl as she painted lettering onto a poster board.

"No, no. You're making it look too good," said Hitoshi to a paint splattered Mushiko, "It needs to look way shittier."

The small girl stuck her tongue out at him and continued carefully brushing colorful bubble letters onto the sign. It read THE UA LARPING CLUB, and Mushiko was carefully adding stars in puffy glitter paint.

(She was off crutches now, and on a very specific training plan that she had worked with Recovery Girl to set up. She had announced that she would catch up to them through persistence alone and Izuku believed it).

They had been having this argument ever since the Principal had insisted they have a booth at the school festival -- it turned out that despite the pretense of their club being fake, if they wanted to keep using it they had to make an effort to look like a real thing. Izuku wanted to make it clear to everyone that it was something they could join if they wanted to become a hero -- Togeike had shot back that she didn't need any more competition and that they should make the club look awful and un-joinable. Hitoshi had argued that people were already suspicious anyways, and would be no matter what they did and somehow they had settled on a weird middle ground where their table was so comically bad that anyone who was genuinely curious would be able to guess that something weird was up.

…Izuku was just glad that transferring had gotten him out of helping 1-C make their haunted house. He wasn't sure he would have been able to handle his Vice-Representative duties on top of whatever this was.

When Hitoshi noticed him, his face went from amused to a smile that, even months later made Izuku's heart do a cartwheel. He'd been having way too much fun with this.

"You've got the costume?"

"Yes, I have your wizard robe." He'd helped his mom sew the moons and stars onto it, and his fingers still stung from where he'd pricked himself with the needle.

"Our wizard robe." Hitoshi said a little too gleefully, "You have to wear it when its your shift."

"I never agreed to that." Izuku mumbled, face going red as his boyfriend laughed and ruffled his hand through his hair. He knew he would end up wearing it anyways.

Beside them, curled on the corner of the couch with a laptop, Togeike made a retching noise.

"You're so gross. And I'm not wearing it either."

"You're at least wearing the hat." Hitoshi countered, "Or I'm going to ask Midnight if I can help you train."

"No!" She gasped. Then with a grimace as she realized Hitoshi was being serious, "Not the hat. Just the robe."

Hitoshi shrugged, finding the answer acceptable, while Izuku took a moment to peek over her shoulder to check the flyer that she had been designing. It was… something. Featuring over the top wizard art next to a watermarked image of a Halloween vampire costume.

Come to the UA LARPing club! It said. We have beanbags(thrown). Wacky Events. Highest Vampire Matron Esmerelda. There was no mention of meeting times or places.

"Ah-" said Izuku, "You should--"

"I will not be taking any criticism or doing any research." Togieike said as she queued the printer to make 80 copies for the flyer, seemingly uncaring of the fact that she was using the principal's color ink, "Will you please get those?" She called over her shoulder to Agoyamato. He had, in fact, decided to stick around, though he was absent from club meetings or often than not, citing the fact that he was either busy or can't be assed to wake up that early in the morning. Togeike had been prodding Izuku to figure out who from 1-B he was dating, but the best he'd been able to come up with was a girl, probably.

Hitoshi laughed when Agoyamato held up the flyer for them all to see - bright and unashamed.

"You think people are going to be able to figure us out through that?" He asked

Izuku smiled "I hope so."