Title: Tunnel Vision

Genre: action/adventure/friendship

Rating: T

Summary: Azami was literally born ready, thanks to the memories of another life ingrained in her head. Problem is, the starting line is about thirty years in the future. So she's got some time to kill—hopefully the detour won't cause too many ripples…

Overture.

Pounding footsteps echoed through the quiet neighborhood, at just past six in the morning. A lone figure jogged past the rows of squat, two-storied buildings at a brisk pace. Though it was still winter with spring on the way, it was unusually cold that morning, and the runner's breath came in a fine white mist as she made her way down the street. After a turn at the convenience store a few blocks down, she ran up a short flight of public stairs, and finally traded the residential area for the public pathway by the river that wound its way alongside the neighborhood.

Azami Kōjō was out for her morning run, part of the exercise regime she'd set for herself a little over a year ago. While tough going at first, by now she was used to waking up early and forcing herself through the circuit that looped in and around the neighborhood until she made it back home. It wasn't even hard now; at this point she'd only worked up a light sweat. Today, though, she ran with single-minded focus, trying to keep her thoughts to a minimum, until a welcome distraction came in the form of a second runner falling into step besides her, and Azami perked up with a grin.

"Hey! You made it," she said cheerfully, and Hanao Inui only moaned in response.

"I almost didn't," he said, "Last night I thought I'd sleep in but… I couldn't! I was too nervous. I just rolled around all night." Hanao sighed, shoulders slumped in despair. "Maybe this'll help so I'm not all wound up."

There was a short silence as the two continued their run, both falling into thought again; Hanao, scowling as he tried to clear his head of anything but the running, and Azami looking more thoughtful instead.

"I wish U.A. had early placement exams," she said suddenly, and Hanao almost tripped over his own feet.

"What? I don't!" he protested, "Why?"

"Then I could get it over with and forget about the regular schools," said Azami, "I mean, Dad's making me sit four more regular exams this month. It's a pain. But if I got in early then I wouldn't have to sign up for that stuff."

"Um… that's if you even get accepted in the first place," said Hanao, "Early exams are hard enough. I bet U.A. would want you to have a perfect report card to even try. Plus the practical would be different… I dunno, they have hero recommendations for that."

"Eh," Azami said, "You're probably right. Still would be nice."

"Not like I could take something like that anyway! I barely got high enough grades for the general exam," Hanao said, and sighed heavily. "I don't even know how prepared for the practical I am."

"Hey, did you ask your brother?" Azami asked, but Hanao shook his head.

"He wouldn't say," he said gloomily, "Just laughed."

"If he made it, then we probably have a good chance, considering," Azami said, before her expression dropped. "As long as it isn't robots."

"Why are you so hung up on robots!?"

"Why wouldn't I be? My quirk won't affect them." As they spoke, the two crested a small hill. The rising sun struck at just so, and Azami's eyes flashed gold for the briefest of moments before dying away. Hanao just coughed.

"Uh, mine won't really either," he pointed out, tapping the side of his nose— or rather, the side of his dog-like snout where a normal human nose would be.

"Hmm… we'll just have to stick together and help each other out. U.A. or bust and all that."

"I mean, it's not the end of the world. There's always Shiketsu. Or Ketsubutsu? I applied to those, too… Did you get the paperwork in on time?"

Silence. Azami went quiet, keeping her gaze unusually fixed on the ground.

"…Azami? You… did apply for backups, right?" Hanao asked, but the horrified realization was already dawning as Azami chose to increase the pace instead of answer. "Y-you didn't? I told you! I told you to apply! You promised you would! H-Hey, come back!"

In a burst of speed, Azami broke into a flat run with Hanao hot on her heels and howling at her back as he tried to keep up. "Azami! You can't do this to me! You can't pin everything on U.A. and hope for the best! You need backups! Second choices! Plans!"

"We both decided on U.A. didn't we?" Azami yelled over her shoulder, "So we just need to pass the exam on the first try! No big deal!"

"This is the biggest deal! It's the top hero school in the country, what if you don't make it in?"

"I dunno, I'll just go ronin or something until next year!"

"This is high school, you can't do that! Azamiiiii!" And so it went, the casual morning jog turning into a heat sprint as Azami ignored the panicked shouts of her friend entirely all through the rest of their usual route.

Hanao dropped off eventually at his usual turn, glaring daggers at her back as he went, and Azami was alone again as she completed the route. The impromptu run left her breathing heavily as she crossed the gate to the Kōjō household; maybe the extra exertion hadn't been the greatest idea. She hadn't wanted to face Hanao though, not after her silent admittance— so she hadn't applied to any other hero school. That was her choice. And, well… she just couldn't think of the best way to explain how applying to U.A. was the only thing that felt right. That applying to some other hero school felt… wrong. Like a betrayal. Or the strange insistent feeling that if she couldn't get into U.A., then there almost no point to being a hero at all.

And if that wasn't the most un-heroic thing, because she wanted to be a Hero, she really did, it was just… after all these years, there was no fighting the gut reaction that balked at considering any other school than U.A., the best of the best hero academies in Japan… maybe in the world.

It was still quiet as Azami let herself inside, covered in cooling sweat. Apparently the other member of the house wasn't up yet, but then it was only about half past seven now. She went up the stairs as quietly as possible just in case, tip-toeing down the hall to the bathroom for a quick rinse. The shower worked wonders in warming her up, and raising her spirits enough to forcibly step on some of the rising doubt she had— but there was no stopping the anxiousness, sitting in her stomach like a stone.

A flash of color caught her eye as she toweled off. It came from the bathroom mirror, fogged over with steam. Azami regarded the warped reflection of herself in silence. Then with one hand she wiped a patch of glass clean, and stared at image that appeared. As always, the fierce gold of her eyes stared back— the only physical manifestation of her Quirk, visible to anyone who looked for it. With a slow blink, she regarded them with careful consideration, and flexed. The activation of her quirk was subtle— but still strange to see as the irises themselves gathered, shrinking in circumference as a raised, ridged circle appeared around unchanged pupils. Nothing happened outwardly— there was nothing for her quirk to affect and with an equally subtle release, the ridges subsided, expanding her irises back to their usual size and flatness.

Then Azami took in the rest of the face that her eyes were set in. A face that was a little too round to be called heart shaped, with full cheeks that more than gave away her youth. A delicate nose, the faintest dusting of freckles, the wavy hair falling over her ears that she'd cut short herself last month as a part of her preparation, that stubbornly stuck up even when wet from the shower. The red hair that had reminded her dad of a thistle on the day she was born, he'd told her, when she'd asked why she was named the way she was.

The more she stared, the more the reflection seemed to slip away from her. For a long minute Azami did not comprehend the person staring back, and phantom images superimposed themselves over features that were familiar one moment and foreign the next. For a long moment she saw someone else that— was not her. Azami drew a deep breath; she hadn't felt like this for a while, too caught up with the present, but every now and then she caught herself slipping just like this moment. All it took was a little reminder.

"I am me," she told herself, told the person in the mirror firmly, "I'm Azami Kōjō. I am myself."

And I am not you.

The phantom features faded away. Azami was herself again— the reflection in the mirror familiar as always. As the patch of mirror clouded over, she backed away and left for the comfort of her bedroom and fresh set of clothes.

There was one last thing to do. Once dressed in her choice of clothes for the coming day— comfortable sports clothes, not too baggy but easy to run and jump and generally move around in— Azami fished out a notebook from her dresser. A very particular notebook that she'd hidden carefully; not that her dad was in the habit of invading her privacy and nosing around in her things, but to be on the safe side she'd buried it in the one place she knew he'd never, even dare touch— safely in the underwear drawer. She didn't exactly want him reading what was inside, filled with her scribbles of things she'd written down in order to study, analyze.

Now flipped through the pages, watching rows of characters in her messy handwriting fly by until she stopped at one page marked with a red bookmark.

Deku enters the U.A. campus, it read. Followed by more passages, listed in bullet points step-by-step.

Deku is saved by Ochako.

U.A. exam begins.

Test format is search-and-destroy targets (robots)

Each robot is worth different points.

Practical exam can be passed through a combination of—

And so it went. On and on, different passages flashed up at her as she read, skimming over each page— Practical exam passed. Deku begins classes. Hero training— Class trip to U.S.J— Sports Festival— Hero Killer—

She shut the book. Within it was a detailed plan, step by step, of everything she could remember on the subject. It wasn't the only notebook— the drawer contained even more, filled more of the same lists, but also profiles, theories, guesses and musings, anything at all she thought to write down for future perusal, because the thoughts—memories?— would come and go, sometimes prompted by the most random, mundane thing, and Azami couldn't bring herself to ignore them, driven by the same gut instinct that drove her to apply U.A. out of all the hero schools out there, because it was U.A. where everything would happen. It was U.A. that was the focus of everything, everything important and she had to remember everything that came to her before it was lost again—

…She didn't need to be dwelling on this again. Setting the first notebook on her desk, Azami dug the rest of the notebooks from their hiding place. Then she swept them all together into a box she'd saved for this exact purpose, until they all lay jumbled together. Then she shut the box, and proceeded to tape the living daylights out of it. Not an inch of cardboard went unexposed, until the entire thing was covered in a thick layer of packing tape and duct tape together; if she wanted to open it, she'd need a box cutter just to rip through the protective layer and ruin her hard work. With that finished, Azami took a thick marker and wrote in large letters across the top: DO NOT OPEN UNTIL: FIFTEEN YEARS TO THIS DATE. Then she wrote the date in question.

There. Admiring her handy work, Azami then took the box and shoved the entire thing under her bed where it would hopefully collect dust and remain undisturbed for however long it took. Sure, maybe she'd need it sooner than the open-by date. Maybe something would happen and she'd need some crucial piece of information hidden within the mound of notebooks now sealed away. But until then, Azami had decided that she didn't need the weight of her knowledge pressing down on her, adding to the awful mix of nerves and uncertainty already swirling around in her at the thought of what was to come.

Right now she needed her full focus on what lay immediately in front of her— and not the distraction of something that wasn't even going to happen for another fifteen years in the future.

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Hello and welcome to my foray into bnha! Here I am with my next for-fun project, hhhahahaha what am I doing guess I'll see where this goes. As you can tell, this is something that'll be super speculative with a lot of new faces in and out, but don't worry, there'll be some familiar ones that'll show up along the way and play big parts.

Plus I wanted to play with something third person for once. Probably you could call Azami an SI/OC, but not quite a straight reincarnation fic.

Hope you enjoy the adventure, and thanks for coming by!