Chapter 1
"Why is everyone so quiet?" Iida thought. "This isn't like them at all. Usually I have to raise my voice to get their attention." Iida stood at the front of classroom 1A and gazed out upon his classmates with a critical eye. "Am I just imagining things?" He focused his gaze on his friend Deku in hopes to catch his eye. Deku felt Iida's piercing gaze and gripped his hands tightly together to prevent himself from squirming under the harsh, lazer like, eyes of the class representative. "I knew it. Something is definitely wrong here." He looked up and down the rows of desks an noticed each member of the class, save Bakugo, was attempting to quietly look away from him.
Suddenly the classroom door slid open and slammed shut as Mina Ashido sprinted to her seat.
"Mina!" Iida barked. "You are a full two minutes late!"
"Geez Iida, calm down. After last night's training I was completely exhausted and totally forgot to set my alarm. At least I made it here before Mr. Aizawa."
"And that's where you're wrong Ashido," Aizawa said, rising up from behind his desk, completely cocooned in his yellow sleeping bag. "I'll have no excuses in my classroom. If you're not here on time you better have a note from Recovery Girl saying something was broken." Tenya noticed a collective reddening of faces spread through the class. "Make sure you're not late again, oh, and stay after class to clean up."
"Yes sir! Sorry sir," Mina said glumly.
"And you, class rep,"
"Yes Mr. Aizawa?"
"What's the hold up? Why are you taking so long with the morning introductions."
"My apologies sir!" Tenya shouted as he chopped the air with his left hand. "I was waiting for Mina to get to her seat."
"Don't. The world of pro heroes is faced paced and every second wasted could mean the difference of life and death. You start when you're supposed to and don't worry about those who take their sweet time."
"Of course sir! Allow me to begin then with no further interruptions!" He turned to face the class and began his address. "Classmates, I hope you all had a restful weekend in the new dorms and are ready to continue another hard week of studies and training. I trust we will all go beyond plus ultra at this premier academy and devote every fiber of ourselves to becoming even better!" The class said nothing, seemingly absorbed in their own separate thoughts, and kept their eyes away from Tenya's.
"Alright, thank you Iida. Take your seat," Aizawa said and carefully shuffled to his chair. "I heard you're all moved into your rooms and I expect you're all rested enough for some harsh training this week. Stay focused in your other classes and be ready this afternoon. Oh, and congratulations to Sato for winning the first room decoration competition. Don't let Midnight know you can bake sweets or she'll never leave you alone."
"Oh, uh, thank you sir."
"Alright, that's basically all there is for morning announcements. You're dismissed."
The morning passed for Iida in oppressive silence. Any time he heard his classmates whisper around him they would abruptly silence themselves when they noticed he was listening in. At lunch he tried to strike up conversation with Deku and Uraraka but he did most of the talking. Even his closest friends were behaving weirdly towards him and he noticed that the students next to him were talking in hushed tones and were turned away from him. "So, Midoriya, I knew that you held All Might in high regard, but I must admit that I was surprised to see how full your room was of his merchandise and memorabilia." Tenya then thought to himself; "If this doesn't get him talking I can't imagine anything will. That way I'll know something is really wrong."
"Oh, right. Yeah," Deku frowned and suddenly took a great interest in his bowl of rice.
"It's just as I feared. If he doesn't even want to talk about his Idol around me then he must be preoccupied with something dreadful. I must get to the bottom of this issue, but how can I if no one is willing to talk to me." Iida placed his fist on his chin and thought deeply about his possibilities. "To unravel this mystery I'm going to need to perform reconnaissance, but doing so would prove most difficult with me being the object of the current scandal. That means I would need and outside party to infiltrate and observe for me, however the entire class is involved and there's no chance of Mr. Aizawa being able to observe for me. Damnit! What am I supposed to do? There's no one I can ask," suddenly Iida's eyes lit up as a plan was suddenly brought to life. "Of course! Why didn't I realize sooner?!"
"Uh, Iida, you okay?" Uraraka asked. "You sorta just shouted for no reason."
"Oh, its nothing to worry about, I assure you! Something just came to light that I hope can resolve an issue I am having." Deku and Uraraka looked at him intensely.
"An issue? What is it Tenya?" Deku asked worriedly.
"Is there something wrong with your legs?" Uraraka asked, then immediately covered her mouth.
"My legs? Goodness no, why are you asking about that?"
"Nothing! No reason, just worried about you is all! Deku can you help me take my tray to the washroom? I sprained my wrist. Thank you so much!"
"Of course! I'll be right with you!" Tenya watched as his friends hurriedly picked up their trays and ran away from the table.
"Now Ochako is making up lies to my face, and they're concerned about my legs for some reason. This truly is a bizarre event. Luckily tonight my plan will spring into action."
Iida finished his lunch by himself and prepared his mind for the afternoon's hero classes.
"I want this place spotless Ashido. Work hard and make sure you're on time tomorrow." Aizawa said as he rolled up his sleeping bag and tucked it under his arm. "I said be on time tomorrow."
"I heard you."
"I heard you, who?"
"I heard you, sir."
"That's better," Aizawa said and left the room.
"Man, this is totally unfair. I was only a few minutes late." Mina swept the floor furiously and made her way through the classroom. "This place is always so clean anyway, the only one with a messy desk is Sato because he leaves his empty sugar packets everywhere, make him clean instead." She picked up the packets and balled them up angrily and tossed the ball at the waste basket by the door. Just as the ball began going off course the door opened and Iida walked right into the flying trash. "Oh! Shoot, sorry Iida. I was aiming for the basket."
"Don't worry about it Mina. I'm actually glad you're still here," Iida picked up the paper ball and placed it in the waste paper basket. "I was hoping I could ask a favor of you."
"Uh, sure. Whats up?"
"Well, you see I've found myself right in the middle of some sort of mysterious scandal."
"Really? What did you do?"
"Nothing that I'm aware of. I noticed this morning that everyone in class was exhibiting atypical behavior, no one was paying attention to my announcements, and even Midoriya and Ochako aren't talking to me. Yesterday everything was fine so something must have happened this morning. You were the only late to class, so I must ask you to go undercover and find out just what is going on with everyone."
"Jeez Iida, you're making it sound like there's some sort of conspiracy against you. Honestly, you've got me curious, so I'll ask around tonight and see what's going on."
"Thank you very much Mina!" Iida bowed deeply "I won't forget this courtesy you're performing for me."
"Yeah, no problem Iida, I'll be really discrete so no one knows you asked me to do this."
"I appreciate it, and good work with the cleaning the classroom up. It's practically spotless."
"Oh, it was nothing. Just doing my job!" Teny stood and left the room, confident that tomorrow would bring the resolution to his issue.
Chapter 2
Iida sat at his seat 30 minutes before class began and watched as his schoolmates slowly trickled into the room. With every passing minute his heart beat increased painfully in his chest until he thought it would explode as he waited for Mina to show up. Everyone was skirting wide from his desk and collected in the furthest possible corner of room and conversed in harsh whispers. Finally, with a minute to spare, Mina Ashido walked into class. Iida stood up and walked briskly over to her. "Mina, whats wrong? Did you ask? What did they say? Please, you have to tell me before class starts!"
"Oh, it's really nothing Iida. Don't worry about it." Mina in the same distracted tone that had possessed everyone else. She left him standing there, mouth agape and heart crumbling as she joined the mob huddled in the corner.
"Alright, good morning everyone. Glad to see you're all here on time," Aizawa grumbled. He walked into the room and sat down behind his desk. "We've got a long day ahead of us so let's get to it. Class rep, you can begin the morning announcements."
"Yes...sir." Iida slowly made his way to the front of the class and put his hands behind his back. He stood tall but could hardly keep the sadness out of his voice. "Good morning class. Uh, it's good to see you're all...here. Enjoying eachothers company and getting along with one another." He took a deep breath and tried to steady himself, but this sort of isolation was too much for him. "It has recently come to my attention that some you all have something on your minds. There is one thought that has completely taken you all over and your coldness towards me..." He lifted his glasses and massaged his eyes in an attempt to hide the first forming tears of frustration. "I know that the two are connected somehow and I have absolutely no idea what I could have done to prompt such behavior. Please, I know this is unbecoming of your class representative and more so of an aspiring hero, I need to know what is wrong. Can anyone please tell me?"
"Hey, hey, Iida, it's not like that at all man," Kirishima said.
"Yeah, you didn't do anything wrong at all," Kaminari agreed. "I mean, yeah we're talking about you but it really isn't anything major."
"So you admit that you've been talking about me behind my back and you all have some sort of issue with me but you're going to sit there and lie to me about it being an issue?"
"No that's not what we meant man," Sero said. "It's just, you know..."
"No, I very clearly do not know." Iida shouted. "Please, just tell me what's going on." The class fell silent and Tenya's classmates looked at one another nervously, hoping someone else would speak up. Truly awful silence choked at the students for what felt like years when finally Midoriya stood up.
"Iida, I'm so sorry about this It started out with me and sorta snowballed out of control. We didn't want to make you so upset by staying silent, but we didn't think we could ask you directly either. During the move in Tsu mentioned that she saw the moving truck break down after the workers unloaded everyone's belongings into the common area. That sorta got me thinking, about you actually. At first it was just harmless wondering but as I got my room set up it kept popping up in my mind. I couldn't let it go so I started asking people what I was thinking and trying to get their advice on things but I guess I ended up spreading that distraction around. I didn't think I could ask you what I was thinking because it, I don't know, felt like a personal question I didn't want to weird you out with. Plus on top of that I thought that at the end of the day it really didn't matter. It was just a dumb question that really didn't mean anything. I had no idea it would get this bad."
"The move in? That was almost four days ago, how did I not notice the change in behavior? But more importantly, what is the issue? Please Midoriya tell me!"
"Okay, Tenya Iida the question on everyone's mind, the one I asked that slowly caused your fellow classmates to shut themselves away from you is this; if something really bad happens to your calves, like they get hit hard with a blunt object and your engines take damage, would you need to go to a mechanic or would Recovery Girl be able to fix things up with her quirk?"
Iida felt all the stress that was building up over the past two days shoot out of him. He felt amazing, in fact he felt lighter than air. "Ah, I see, thats what you guys were wondering. I see. I see." Iida placed his fist on his chin and nodded all while saying "I see," to himself over and over again as he left the class room.
"Uh, Iida, where are you going?" Iida smiled and gave Midoriya a thumbs up.
"I feel incredibly faint so I'm going to the Nurse's to lay down for a minute." With that Iida, for the first time in his life, left his classroom and spent the rest of the day lying down in the school nurse's office staring at the ceiling and smiling to himself. The only thought that entered his mind near the end of the day was; "Could her quirk actually fix my engines?"