Midoriya was halfway home from middle school when he realised he had some of Bakugo's sheets folded up in his pocket. The two friends had been comparing notes after school, and he had taken the bunch when he was leaving. He fished his phone out of his other pocket, and dialled Bakugo's number. It rang for a moment, and just as Bakugo picked up Midoriya heard a loud clang come from behind him. He turned, and found himself face-to-face with a giant blob of green slime. "Uh, you know what, I'll call you back" he said in a small voice.

He dropped his phone as the slime rushed towards him. A mouth manifested on its body, and declared "I'm gonna make you my new skinsuit, kid!"

"I wouldn't count on it!", he shot back as he thrust out his hands and activated his quirk. Well, one of them. The slime person was stopped in his tracks by a wall of wind. The blob powered forward and tried to close the gap, and Midoriya turned up the pressure. He was beginning to wonder whether he could keep it up for long enough for his attacker to give up when he heard something else coming from the manhole.

xxx

All Might leapt from the open manhole cover and cast his eyes about for the crook he'd been chasing. Sure enough, the green blob was menacing a young boy further down the street. The kid was holding him at bay with some kind of forcefield – no, that was definitely air pressure – until All Might came in for the finishing blow.

"Well done, young man!", he boomed as he scooped up the villain. "You kept a cool head and made excellent use of your quirk. What is that, some kind of wind manipulation?" Of course, strictly speaking he should have given the kid a warning about public quirk use, but for the sake of resolving the incident cleanly and without hurting anyone he was willing to let it slide.

"It's a little more complicated than that, uh..." All Might chuckled internally as the kid belatedly realised who he was talking to. "All Might! Holy cow! This is the greatest day of my life!" He bowed low and offered a notebook. It looked like school stationery, and the kid's uniform suggested Middle School.

All Might beamed as he took the book and dug out a pen. "Think nothing of it, my boy. Say, who am I making this out to?"

"Midoriya, sir! Midoriya Izuku!"

"Excellent! And would you by any chance be considering your career options?" It was a gamble, but a likely one – young Midoriya had hero-wannabe written all over him.

"Yes, sir! I'm applying for UA, to be a hero just like you! Uh, now I think of it, do you have any advice?"

He scrawled out standard autograph #7 (kid in peril but not hurt) and handed the notebook back to his fan. Now things had calmed down a little, the kid honestly looked like kind of a wimp. "You clearly have a good handle on your quirk, and of course that's important. But it's not everything! Look into a gym membership – you could do with a little extra bulk."

"Right!" said Midoriya. He almost raised one hand as if to salute, but seemed to think better of it and eventually ended up scratching the back of his head awkwardly.

All Might coughed into one hand. "Uh, anyway, I should go get this guy down to the police station. Will you be OK making your own way home?"

"Yes, sir!" replied Midoriya. If nothing else, All Might supposed the kid at least had guts. If he really wanted to be a hero, that would be a major help.

It was only after he had handed the slime villain into the local police that he realised the line about guts would have made a good bit of advice to give the kid. He shrugged. Midoriya seemed like a decent kid, he'd probably get it all figured out.

xxx

Midoriya had been overjoyed when the doctor had explained his quirk, even if he didn't get very many opportunities to practice with it. The young boy had considered naming it Borrow, but in the end decided on Give And Take: The power to take other powers, and use them as his own. Early experimentation had revealed that he could only use the power at about half its original strength, and that he could also transfer the quirks he took to other people – for example, his mother and the doctor both enjoyed playing around with each others' quirks. Those he gave the quirks to were also restricted to weakened versions of the original quirk, but whenever he gave the quirk back to its original holder they were once again able to use it at full capacity.

Throughout his youth, the other kids at school had almost always had the same reaction when they learned about his quirk. At first they thought it was cool; and then whenever it was used on them, or on one of their friends, they quickly changed their tune. His quirk went from being cool to weird, creepy or even – whisper it – villainous.

There had only ever been one exception to this trend: Bakugo Katsuki. Bakugo had immediately focused on the fact that Midoriya could only use the quirks of others at half-strength, and whenever other kids were scared of Midoriya he had merely called them cowards for fearing someone half as strong as them. With their positions as two of the best in the class and their strong quirks, Bakugo and Midoriya had maintained a strong friendship for as long as either boy could remember – albeit a friendship sometimes expressed in unusual terms. Bakugo's fierce nature and Midoriya's relentless optimism combined to form two boys who were sure that they would achieve great things.

Midoriya had always believed (and almost certainly would always believe) that any quirk could be used to help people. For that reason, he had joined several sites and forums for people whose lives were made more difficult by inconvenient or hard-to-control quirks. When he heard about a case near him, and when he was able to convince the individual in question that he was legitimately able to help, Midoriya liked to take quirks from these people and provide them with another, reduced-strength quirk. Through doing this, he found another little oddity of his own quirk – when he used it to take a mutation-type quirk, he or whoever he gave it to would not be physically changed. Rather, it would become an emitter-type. The former mutant would find themselves with a perfectly ordinary body. Thus, Midoriya gained the power to manipulate air pressure from a man who had been a sapient wind-storm. In return, Midoriya gave him the ability to freeze objects with a touch, which he had obtained from a woman who used to be made of snow.

The man went on to become a successful small business owner and the woman started an environmental charity, but that's neither here nor there.

xxx

It was such a lovely day that it seemed a shame to spend it cooped up indoors. Midoriya considered taking a trip to the beach, but the only one nearby was choked with trash. 'Someone ought to do something about that', he thought as he rode the bus to a nearby park. He brought up the city government's website on his phone and left a comment about cleaning up public areas, thought if he were honest he doubted it would do much good.

He'd taken All Might's advice and joined a gym; and he'd started judo lessons besides. He'd also been taking steps to make his diet healthier, though he was struggling to know which foods really were better for him and which were only supposed to be. When he'd mentioned this to his mother, she had sighed good-naturedly and told him "Son, welcome to my life".

The months leading up to the exam passed without any real excitement. Midoriya and Bakugo each worked towards their goal as best they could, in their own ways. The rest of their middle school class seemed to consider it a fait accompli that the two of them would be attending UA, but the boys themselves were unwilling to leave it to chance. Externally, each projected confidence. Internally, each was preparing himself for any possible challenge.

The night before the exam Midoriya was so tense that he struggled to get to sleep. Thus, he was surprised to wake the next morning feeling great. He made his way to UA with plenty of time to spare and took in the scene at the academy gates. The sun was shining, the birds were singing and Midoriya had the feeling that nothing could possibly stand in his way; right up until a stray burst of wind snatched his examinee welcome letter from his hands and sent it on a leisurely jaunt above the path. "Catch that letter!", he cried as he ran after it.

Several other students turned to look, and a few made grabs for it, until eventually a girl with pink cheeks and brown hair jumped up, higher than he would have assumed she could, and snatched it out of the air.

"Here ya go!" she said cheerfully, holding it out to him. Midoriya noticed that she was keeping her pinkie off the sheet, and wondered if that was anything to do with her quirk. Maybe she was being careful not to disintegrate it or something, which was nice of her. Midoriya made a vaguely grateful noise as he took the letter, and the girl went on her merry way.

His good mood persisted though Present Mic's explanation of the practical exam, though he was slightly disheartened to learn that he and Bakugo would be in different testing grounds. He struggled not to giggle as another examinee accosted Present Mic for what seemed to be a misprint on their forms. He supposed he could at least appreciate how earnestly the guy was acting.

Before long, he found himself part of the crowd gathered outside one of the testing grounds. He was surrounded by other students, all of them filled with a mix of hope and terror. It was then that he spotted a familiar figure. 'Say, isn't that the nice girl from earlier? I never did get to thank her.' He made his way over to say hello, only to be stopped short by a massive hand clamping down on his shoulder.

It was the earnest boy from the explanation. "If you're just here to bother the other candidates," he said sternly, "I suggest you leave."

The tension within Midoriya snapped, and then so did he. "Where do you get off making that kind of an accusation, huh? I'm here to do my best, just the same as everyone else! Frankly, you're the one bothering me!"

The other boy reared back as if struck, and then brought his hand down in a stiff chopping motion. "I beg your pardon! All I am doing is calling out a disruptive influence when I see one!"

"Oh you are just so full of-"

[MEANWHILE]

All Might cast his eyes over the crowds of hopefuls gathered outside the various testing areas. One particular examinee caught his attention. "Say, I know that boy! I'd recognise that green mop-top anywhere."

Aizawa rolled his eyes. "What'd you do, get him out of a tree?"

All Might chuckled. "Rescued him from a villain, actually. Well, rescue might be overstating it. He was holding the crook off with his quirk, at least temporarily." He gave the assembled teachers a brief report on his encounter with young Midoriya.

"That's pretty impressive, at his age", said Aizawa in a much more sincere tone of voice.

"Lemme look up his quirk a minute", said one of Ectoplasm's clones. Three more of them were taking notes on the crowds gathered outside different testing grounds. "Ah, here it is. His quirk is called Give and Take. It allows him to – good grief. It allows him to take the quirks of others and use them as his own, albeit at reduced strength. Furthermore, he can give the quirks he takes to others, or back to the original owner."

"Shit!" bit out Toshinori. "Is the effect permanent?"

"It, uh, appears that it is. Apparently he's had one of his quirks for almost six years now, and he reports no change in its effectiveness."

"How many does he have?" asked Midnight

"Two, at the moment. Telepathy and the ability to manipulate air pressure."

Toshinori shuddered. "He told me his quirk was complicated. I never even dreamed it might be something so sinister!" He realised that he would have to handle young Midoriya with extreme care, lest the boy grow into a new All For One. The other teachers had warned him that he might encounter students that could make potential villains, but he would never have expected the potential danger to be so severe.

"Sinister?", asked Midnight, "What do you mean?"

"W-well, uh, I'm sure you've all read the horror stories about the first days of quirks. The mythical crime lord who was supposed to take people's quirks for his own, and distribute them to his minions."

"The great All Might, a conspiracy theorist", mused Aizawa, "Well now I've seen it all."

All Might's face fell further. "Aaand, now he's bickering with the Iida boy. That's a shame, he seemed a nice young man when we first met."

"Exam jitters affect us all", commented Thirteen sagely. "Though I must say, those two are really going at it."

xxx

The practical exam had been going well for Midoriya, provided one ignored the argument he'd gotten into with that tall, overly-serious jackass. In fact, it had been going swimmingly. He was scoring somewhere in the high 30s or low 40s, making use of Pressure Drop to dart around the arena and smash robots' heads in. His fellow examinees were a colourful bunch, as well – he'd ended up hanging with a flamboyant Frenchman for a while, as he took out the nearby robots and his companion blasted the distant ones with some kind of laser. They'd gone their separate ways with a cheery nod and Midoriya was halfway through a mob of two-pointers when the zero-point stage hazard made its presence known to them.

That, and the crowd of students fleeing from it in terror, would have been distracting enough if he hadn't seen some poor girl trapped under rubble directly in the giant robot's path. The second he realised the trouble the girl was in, he was sprinting towards her. He skidded to a halt and hooked his fingers under the slab of rubble, letting jets of air lift it off her. As she shimmied out from under it she turned and gave the slab a good hard slap, and it grew noticeably lighter.

"Thanks", said Midoriya as he sent the offending item hurtling towards the robot's face. It crashed against the robot, making it flinch back and showering the two of them in dust.

"Yeah!" cheered the girl, "Take that, you big jerk!" Midoriya was feeling pretty good about the situation until she shoved him to the ground. At first he thought she was getting back in business, but then she jumped up and smacked another piece of falling debris. The chunk of concrete hung in midair until she touched her hands together and let it down. Midoriya's eyes widened as he looked at the size of it and imagined what might have happened had it hit him. As he got up and faced her once more, he realised she was the nice girl from earlier. She held up a hand, and as he high-fived her the end of the exam was announced.

He let out a sigh of relief. "I'm, uh, Midoriya. I never got to thank you earlier."

"After that? No need! I'm Uraraka." If Midoriya thought that was the most beautiful name he had ever heard, well, that was his business. "I hope we both get in, Midoriya. We make a great team!"

"Y-yeah, I'd like that." The pair joined the stream of hopefuls making their way back to the starting line. The French boy was there, looking somewhat the worse for wear; and he was next to the jackass with the glasses. Midoriya briefly considered making a snide comment, but he found he just didn't have it in him after that test – and besides, maybe he had just been reacting badly to pre-exam nerves. The jackass nodded to him, deeply enough that it could almost have been a bow. Recognising a peace sign when he saw one, Midoriya nodded back and smiled encouragingly.

He waved goodbye to Uraraka as they headed off to their respective changing rooms, and fell in next to a guy with skin made of rock. "What were you doing out there?", asked rock boy, "It looked like you were punching, but you never actually hit them."

"Air pressure", he replied as they reached the changing room, "I can do it without moving, but aiming makes it a lot easier."

That garnered him an enthusiastic thumbs up. "Cool! Hey, there was another guy I ran into earlier who could make air solid."

Midoriya dearly wished he had a notebook handy "Aw, no way!" he complained as he pulled his tracksuit top over his head, "Wish I'd met him, I love comparing quirks and stuff."

The other guy shrugged and started yanking his boots off. "Well, maybe we'll all end up in the same class and you can ask him then."

"Yeah, here's hoping." He stuck out a hand. "Good luck."

The other boy shook it with a firm grip and smiled, revealing some unnervingly sharp teeth. "You too, man"

Midoriya beamed back at him and felt nothing but confident optimism. He knew that he had just taken his first steps on the long road to becoming a hero.