Before anything, I just want to say this.
Thank you: truth be told I was not expecting this amount of feedback and interest so quickly. I had been judging what to expect based on my Pokemon work recently, when I do side projects to handle things that Reset Bloodlines isn't able to do.
Those projects honestly had more thought and discussion to them, and took more time to write, yet this one has been outshining them.
I guess that's what TV tropes calls a Sleeper Hit.
Anywhere thanks aside, a few comments on the reviews.
Alien counts a fun thing: I had actually done the math based on the O.G and Ben 23 and had been thinking that Izuku should have unlocked a good number of aliens in those 10 months. However practicality won out against spacebattles level overthinking and while more will appear in time, for at least a good chunk of Season 1 content it will just be 10.
Different names were something I had never considered, as I don't particularly like mass renaming of characters. If I don't like Ash nicknaming all his canon Pokemon, I feel the same way here. It's also just easier to keep track of. Of course that means that at the moment aliens whose names involve reference to them being aliens aren't a go, which is a shame as I would have probably had Chamalien in the original 10 without that issue.
I also like Big Chill, however I am aware of how intangibility powers are handled in the MHA universe, and I'm not up for having that power as Izuku's early stuff. Big Chill and Ghostfreak are thus not in the original 10, though I am quite up for them being unlocked later, particularly if I want to do more with Mirio.
Also a general note: I have no good place to say this, but there wasn't a Sludge Villain incident in this story. All Might got him and kept hold of his bottle with no incident. All Might and Izuku met around that time, but in a different circumstance I've hinted at a few times.
Time for chapter 2 then.
…
She heard the buzzing swirl of another one before she could see it.
To most people, hearing such a sound meant screaming and running away. It was danger, an unknown threat that kept appearing in this city.
No one knew who kept sending them or for what purpose, and they came with lasers.
Lasers hurt, no matter how big you were.
They were a danger to her too, but there were a few differences between the average person on the street and herself in these situations.
She was a hero, trained in dealing with a variety of threats and dangers. She was trained to handle danger, to gain attention, and adore thrill.
They also were easy money: she got paid for smashing them and she could get rid of them without raking up the damage costs.
It had taken a few tries to master the technique, but she knew just when to let it rip.
"Gottcha!"
When to grow to her sixty-seven and a half foot status, and slam her hands together in one massive clap.
The satisfying clap of metal crushing between her palms was music to her hears, and as she released her clenched hands to see the broken shards of orange metal that lingered in her cupped palm she could only smile.
"Another clean payday for Mt. Lady. Thank you whatever creep keeps sending these things."
For about 10 months so far, these things had been appearing in Musutafu at random, and no one could figure out why.
It was bad for the insurance companies, but she hardly liked them. It was much more important that these things provided a steady stream of money for the heroes around here.
Inevitably the jerk who kept sending them would face justice, and she would smile when that happened. Just as she smiled at the jerk's continued instance to keep Mt. Office in the black.
Now, to file this drone in for a crisp smelling pay check.
…
As he listened to the principal rattled on and on about how much of an 'honor' it was to have two of Albera Middle School's students going to U.A high school, Katsuki Bakugo wanted to blow the guy up.
Of course it was the first fucking time any student from this dump went to U.A: you never had anyone like him before.
He was strong and smart, the strongest and smartest in a giant fucking sea of stupidity and weakness.
This place's shit was so boring he had to find things to read that actually were worth his damn time. The damn nerd who got lucky was one of the few who was actually capable of reading real shit, and not just the watered down shit they were require to here.
He read the entirety of fucking War and Peace because you sucked at your job dammit!
He felt a bubbling pit of rage as he noted the blushing nerd to his side.
Deku, the quirkless nerd got into U.A just as he did. He did it better, of course he fucking did, but the nerd still got in.
All because he got lucky and got some freakass watch that let him turned into a giant bug and diet Endeavor whenever he wanted.
One in a fucking billion chances, and it was Deku.
Still…he could at least acknowledge something.
It was only because he realized the nerd finally had something go for him in his shitty life that he knew he had to take it to a higher level.
He was already the best, but he now had reason to become even more fucking badass.
Deku would always be shit compared to him, even when the nerd got lucky. When that happened, he just worked harder.
He actually read 1984! He could make himself better whenever he damn wanted.
Hell, if he had found out about what that crappy watch was months ago, he probably could have gotten a hundred points he'd have been so ready. He could have beaten all of the records U.A had.
That was just a bunch of shitty what-ifs though, and there was no changing it. Because some mad scientist lost their crappy superwatch he wasn't the first and only student from this crappy middle school to get to U.A.
He'd kill that bastard for losing track of the thing!
Once the idiot was done babbling about his pride and their accomplishments Deku would probably sneak off to work on the thing like he always did, and as much as he wanted to kill the nerd for messing up his rise by daring to find that watch he had other things to do.
He still have practice to beat Deku at any of his 10 shitty new games!
…
His dreams had come true, and the days moved like molasses as the starting date for U.A's school year approached. Izuku couldn't wait for that day.
So much so that when the day came, he found himself awake much earlier than he would prefer. The sun wasn't even out yet, and he couldn't go back to sleep.
It had been as he been he wondered if he should look something up online, either for fun, notetaking, or fun notetaking, that a familiar clunking of gears was heard from the kitchen that he had a concrete idea of what to do.
At several intermediate points in recent months the fridge had been making grinding sounds at random. It was unsettling, obnoxious, and occurred at inopportune times.
It would be something that would cost money to fix, and inconvenience on top of it. Such reasons were why it hadn't been fixed yet.
There were other uses for money, bad times to fix it, and sometimes it was absent for long enough that you'd think it was gone.
Yet he had nothing more serious to do now, and he had a way to fix it.
9 and a half minutes later, just around the time he heard his mom come into the kitchen, the problem would be solved.
His mom shouted in surprise when he hoped out from within the refrigerator, landing on the counter and giving her a thumbs up.
"There, that should do it."
She stared at him in surprise, having to bend down to look at him.
While normally she was a bit shorter than he was, when he was in his current form he was only about twelve and seven/tenths of a centimeter tall.
He was also a frog, but that went without saying. That was what he looked like when he took this form.
"It was an easy fix actually, at least when I'm like this. The gears were getting iced up, but a few moderate improvements to the design have fixed that and will ensure it will never happen again. The warranty was shot, but I am pretty sure it is too late for that anyway. I also reinforced the shelves, streamlined the ice cube process, and improved the water filter for extra efficiency"
A beeping began to come from his back, and he grimaced.
"I'd explain exactly how, but I will be somewhat confused at what I just did in thee, two…"
He hopped off the counter and in a red flash of light he was no longer in the form of his fifth hero form, but plain old Izuku once again.
GREY MATTER
IZUKU MIDORIYA'S TRANFORMATION INTO A TINY FROG! BUT DON'T COUNT HIM OUT FOR BEING SWALLOWABLE, THIS LITTLE FROGGY IS SUPER SMART! FOR 10 MINUTES IZUKU MIDORIYA GETS TO BE NEARLY AS INTELLIGENT AS THE PRINCIPAL, MAYBE EVEN SMARTER! ….please don't ask me whose smarter, I'd have to think on it and I don't want to possibly lose my job or find my equipment covered by beetles please…..
"And yeah, I actually couldn't tell you how I knew what to do, but I do actually know how to fix a refrigerator without sort of breaking the law next time."
That was what sons of mothers without the father around were supposed to do right, fix the appliances?
He didn't feel particularly manly for doing it though, which could be because he was a frog just a moment ago.
It wasn't technically even illegal to use you quirk in the house. As long as no one outside the family could see or tell you were using the quirk, you could use it for whatever you wanted.
Companies didn't like people altering their products after being purchased sure, but that was a thing before quirks and it would probably always be a thing.
His mom's eyes were a little watery as she looked at him, and seemed to water more by the second. It wasn't about him angering the corporate lawyers though, far from it.
"Well be careful about the law thing. You dream is here, and the fridge is no reason to…to…"
And she was hugging him now, crying into his night shirt and covering 'Pajama' with a large wet area.
"My baby….my amazing baby."
He returned the teary hug, sniffling a little too.
It was a big day, wasn't it? He couldn't sleep for a reason after all.
His dream was coming true, and all it took was a watch that let him turn into a frog.
His mom stopped sniffling for a moment, and her body seemed to deflate a bit in his arms. She seemed uneasy now, added to all of her other emotions.
He knew why of course: she was still worried about the watch on his arms. Who made it, why was it made, where did it come from, what it could, and probably something that used when as the start of the question to complete the set.
He'd like to know too, but the questions seemed to worry her more than they worried himself.
…
Rain was in the forecast, so his inability to fall asleep had a benefit.
He left for U.A earlier than he generally would have, and when he found himself in the classroom he was completely alone.
No teacher, no students, just himself and his notebooks.
Not just the new ones he now had for notes (English, Art, History, Hero Laws and Civics), but also the 10 notebooks that he had been given by All Might himself.
Even when he wasn't adding more to them, he liked to go over his notes. Sometimes he caught spelling mistakes. Sometimes he had new observations to add.
Sometimes he caught sight of Mt. Lady and realized his note page on her had details wrong about her costume, and he had to edit them. The notes were less effective if he didn't draw her horns just right!
A statement that would probably sound worse if he was talking about other parts of her costume that weren't her horns, but that wasn't relevant when no one got to see these notes but himself!
Fittingly it was the notebook on the first form he took that he had out first, and he began to look over the notes he had down.
Heatblast.
He was surprised how quickly he had come up with their names, and how good they sounded. Heatblast was the name of a hero, and that was the same of them all.
Pyrokinesis, from the ability to breathe fire as he always had wished to fire balls to basically being able to use Fire Punch.
Heatblast was taller than he was normally: being about six foot six inches.
He tapped on the number he had written down on the first page, thinking to himself for a moment if he had really gotten an accurate number on that one. His gaze was drawn instead to a missing punctuation that he moved to repair, and upon plugging up the non-stop he turned the page.
It was all about trying to use the flames in similar ways to Kaachan's explosion quirk. It recounted the various attempts, both the many failures and the triumphant successes while doing so.
A page that led to his inadvertent discovery that he could use the pyrokinetic abilities of the form to fly: his only flying form at that.
It had originally been more akin to the limited flight that the number two hero Endeavor was capable of, but he had actually recently figured out a more controlled and effective method he could do as Heatblast.
As he hadn't noticed any things to correct on the Katsuki experiment page, he found himself idly skipping a few pages through the journal to the one specifically about notes he had taken based on Endeavor.
What could he do as Heatblast that the Flame Hero could also do? That had been what had driven this page's questions, and with how much Endeavor had out on him he actually had a few pages on it.
Could he run on walls with melted foot paths? Yes, yes he could.
Could he make fiery facial hair like Endeavor could for the heck of it? No, no he could not. All that did was make him sneeze.
Page one on Endeavor had a doodle of Heatblast using one of Endeavor's super moves. It was the Flashfire Fist: Jet Burn, and he had actually forgotten that he had drawn it being used on the villain he had seen Death Arms, Kamui Woods, and Mt. Lady fight all those months ago.
Around the image, which he was currently editing on because he got the arm details of Death Arms wrong, he had asked the questions on his ability to replicate the technique. The answers he had put down were that he could, but it just didn't feel quite like the ones Endeavor did.
Not as intense, not as focused. It was something to work on, if he wanted to be a copycat. It was a good exercise for figuring out how to manipulate fire though.
Page two was on the Flashfire Fist: Hell Spider. He could also replicate it, but he was still trying to get the flame beams as narrow as Endeavor got them. He could use a lot more work in fiery finesse.
He paused as he looked at the image he had drawn to visualize Heatblast using the technique. The doodle wasn't of any villain he recognized.
It wasn't Toxic Chainsaw, a member of the Creature Rejection League, or the villain who had killed Water Hose a few years ago.
The doodle he had drawn was that of a larger fellow with wings like a prehistoric pterodactyl. It wasn't someone he immediately recognized, even if he did feel familiar.
"Tsuk….Tasum…Torik….Tsubasa…Tsubasa!?"
He exclaimed the name aloud as he put together who he had drawn.
It was an older version of an old friend of his turned bully, the grandson of the Doctor whose words haunted him for a decade. A boy who had moved away years ago, yet whose picture he had drawn being attacked by Heatblast like he was a dangerous villain.
He wasn't: he was just someone who beat up other children, who taunted him for his lack of power and also beat him up.
They had shared things once, then it became known he was quirkless.
He stared at the doodle for a good minute, an uneasy feeling residing over him.
Again, why had he drawn him of all people? He drew plenty of villains from the news as demonstrations in his 10 notebooks, why would he bother to draw Tsubasa's possible older self?
He was just a bully.
He moved to erase the image of Tsubasa and replace him with something that worried him less. Though as he touched the eraser to the tip of Tsubasa's wing, he found himself unable to move the eraser.
Was it because he missed Tsubasa, or because whatever mood had made him draw Tsubasa was still a part of him, and felt like the drawing fit.
The eraser sat unmoving for a minute as he wondered which it was.
…
Students began to come in as he managed to turn the page and ignore the question of Tsubasa for a moment, going over several more pages and entries.
All the pages he saw with drawn targets were based on villains, though he did only look at Four Arms and Grey Matter's notebooks before socialization had taken precedence over editing.
He didn't remember every doodle he made after all, and it was possible there were other concerning doodles in there.
"Man, I wouldn't have thought you were what a third place guy would look like? I mean, I couldn't have ever expected that I'd somehow be the number two guy on the practical exam either, so what do I know. Eijirou Kirishima."
"Izuku Midoriya."
He shook hands with a rather enthusiastic spiky red head, who grinned with pointy teeth his way.
"Let me know if you ever want to hit the gym man."
He could only grin awkwardly back at him.
"Gym?"
"Yes. Expanding one's physical ability within oneself and as shown outward is something that many of us will have to endeavor towards, both those with quirks that require direct engagement, and those of us whose abilities come from a different area of expertise. I will also be considering such measures, though I do have concerns about the limited quantity of time I may possess."
The deep words explaining the idea came from a student with a head like a crow sitting on a desk, which made the friendly redhead point his way.
"Yeah, exactly what I was going to say. Just, less smart sounding."
"There are plenty of ways of working on muscle tone than just lifting weights or punching a bag if you want something else. Anything can work if you put your mind to it."
That was the words offered by a student with a large tail, who shrugged as he finished.
"I mean, if I didn't know martial arts, I probably wouldn't have gotten in here. A tail's kind of lame after all."
Izuku stared at the tailed student in amazement.
"You got in with martial arts? Like, kung fu!?"
That was cool! Not to mention it was something that required a lot of work and talent to make happen.
He just got lucky and worked hard for 10 months, this guy must have been working hard forever to get in.
"A variety of them actually, but thanks. No one's ever called me cool before, and given what I've seen here I am pretty sure I am not going to be cool ever again."
"Man, getting in with martial arts. Got to hand it to you, that must have taken dedication. Me, I didn't decide to try for U.A until I was in Junior High. You must have made that call so much earlier…um what's your name?"
"Mashirao Ojiro."
The two quickly began to talk about things that made his muscles scream just considering them, and his gaze began to linger around the class.
It was a class of forty in total, and so far he saw eighteen students in the room so far.
There was no sign of Kacchan yet, or that cute girl from the entrance exams.
Mention of whom to his mother had given her an odd look in his eyes that made him rather uncomfortable. The grin that had been on her face hadn't left for the rest of the day, and it was far too happy looking.
Nor that rather uptight guy whose hands moved oddly. Kacchan had definitely gotten in; he hoped that the girl got in too.
He could do without the robot guy though.
The door was abruptly opened with a heaving kick, and the nineteenth student entered the room with a scowl from his head of wet hair.
Kacchan was here, and his gaze quickly narrowed in on a seat.
"Out of the damn chair runt, that's my seat!"
A purple headed short kid scampered out of the seat immediately, and he moved to take said seat.
"Rude much."
A blond student with black electric marks in his hair quipped the observation, and Bakugo stopped mid stomp to glare at him.
"Eighty-seven points."
Said blond gulped at the total as if it were a threat, and said nothing until the top scoring student took his seat. Then the murmuring started.
"That's like what, the top point total in the class right?"
"How do you get all of those points? I barely got enough to get in, and I couldn't sleep for days with worry until I got the results."
"How many of those were rescue points, ribbit?"
Kacchan noticed him in the back, his eyes lingering on him for a moment before looking around the classroom.
He dismissed everyone his eyes landed on until they landed on a student with red and white hair who hadn't talked since he got in.
He could see Kacchan's lips curl into a silent smirk. The other student stared back, and Izuku could almost see that lightning effect you'd see in cartoons when a rivalry was forming in a glare.
The door swung open once more, and in the split microsecond that it took to see who was coming in Izuku hoped to all hope that it wasn't jerky robot guy but the nice girl…
"Oh hey, you made it too! Not that I had any doubts, unlike myself of course."
With the last part said a bit under her breath it was in fact the nice girl, who waved at him.
For some reason he felt the familiar of someone glaring at him, though it didn't feel like it was from Kacchan. When that happened the glare felt burning.
This one didn't, he had no idea who might be glaring at him for just knowing a girl.
The feeling of a glare intensified as the girl walked over to him, a nervous smile on her face.
"…Ah poo, I was hoping to see that really tall and strong fellow around. The one with a bunch of arms. Did he not get in?"
The slight accented complaint was not the glarer's, as far as he could feel.
"Wow, that nurse's healing quirk really does work."
He noted the girl's lack of injuries, even after seeing the healing itself, in astonishment.
"Yeah, that healing quirk of that old lady was amazing, even if I felt exhausted afterwards. I'd probably have felt better if I had completed the entire exam. Still I wish it didn't feel like she was just kissing a booboo away, it was honestly a bit embarrassing."
"If you'd rather not be embarrassed, she could always just not do it next time. Of course if you are worried about embarrassing yourself, you can leave this program right now. Heroism is not a career for those who are so easily mortified."
So said the grumpy caterpillar in the sleeping bag, whose words shocked the entire class into a moment of silence, before many exclamations of shock ensued.
…
When the class calmed down the grumpy caterpillar came out of his cocoon, revealing a scruffy butterfly of a man named Shota Aizawa, who was in fact their sensei.
As he began talking about how they were wasting time Izuku stared at him for a moment.
He had heard that all of the teachers at U.A were professional heroes. Some retired, some still active like All Might or Present Mic. That meant he should know who this guy was.
"Sadly we can't erase this rain. I'd rather not waste our time listening to the droning talk of a mouse explaining that you are expected to be reasonable human beings, but I also don't want to spend all day in the rain. So I have to go at this in a far less efficient manner than I'd prefer, but I will be sure to get my point across."
He had pulled out a remote and pressed a button, which led a television monitor to descend from the ceiling. He only sort of heard what he was saying, as he was dwelling on the words he used.
One in particular wouldn't leave his mind, and with a bit of gear grinding he figured out why.
"Oh I know who you are! You are the Erasure Hero, Eraserhead!"
At several confused mumbles from the class, and a couple who recognized the name, said hero looked at him in a bored way.
"Yeah, that's my name."
"You were offered a reward for your work at the Hero Ranking announcements two years ago after you took down that weapon smuggling operations with those foreign knight villains single handily, but you stood them up and went to the International Heroes for Cats presentation in Taipei instead as a keynote speaker! You were one of the heroes with a trading card in the New Orleans evacuation fundraiser series, a common if I recall…."
"If you mention my age, my weight, my blood type, or try to get me to sign one of those damn trading cards, I will expel you."
His curt response cut off his words and rendered him silent.
"…Oh yeah, my brother collected a few of those. I think he used them for his bike, ribbit."
The screen was now fully down, and Aizawa stared at them all.
"Normally I would test you all with a quirk test, but as I am sure you are all aware it is raining. So instead I will be going over each of your performances in the entrance exam's practical exam, and explaining to you your various mistakes."
The class gave a near-collective gulp, as he pointed the remote at the lightning haired kid.
"This will be in random order, and it will only go over your practical results. Educational levels are not as crucial here as in other schools, but I will expect that you all should take into consideration that underachieving in your written exams will not be condoned."
"Why are you pointing at me!?"
He ignored the electric headed student as he turned the monitor on with a button click, which began to play the actions back on a student with dark hair and a pair of long earlobes that resembled headphone plugs.
He wasn't entirely sure about what gender the student was, but he caught sight of a girl in his class flinch in recognition.
At once he felt himself uncapping his pen.
"Kyoka Jiro. 18 Villain points, 10 Rescue points. I'm sure you've already had this pointed out, but you were pulled up into passing by your test scores on the written portion, had those not been counted you would have failed. Can you tell me why?"
The girl flinched again, and he noticed the familiar feeling of all eye being on a person, though he noted that it looked different.
Not just for being on someone else and not himself, but also because the gazes didn't seem as harsh as the ones he always felt.
He was certainly not glaring or judging her, just writing down what he was seeing her do on the screen.
Classmate entry one: Kyoko Jiro.
Quirk _
Can use her headphones to hear things coming in the ground, which must be how she got the rescue points. Meanwhile she seemed to be able to user to vibrate something into damaging itself when plugging them in.
How did that work?
"...Look, I know my quirk isn't the most effective. I figured out something that would make it more offensive, you can see it in my hero costume design."
The girl grumbled this defensively, and he could see several students look her way with even more sympathy. The same could not be said for their teacher.
Which was odd, as he made such heavy use of equipment with his quirk. Was he missing a detail that rendered this point un-hypocritical, or at least less so?
"Oh I've seen your costume. You actually did come up with something clever. However there is a larger overall problem that lessened your performance. Can you tell me what it is?"
The video was showing what Izuku thought might be the answer to that one: the video Jiro had just destroyed a three pointer at the four minute marker and in the aftermath of it she was breathing heavily and was holding herself up against a wall.
He could relate when he wasn't one of his forms.
"The girl has the stamina of a nerd."
Kacchan spoke this point aloud, and his years of being called the same and worse left him with a surge of empathy for Jiro.
"I'd have phrased it as 'lacking physical conditioning expected of a hero', but yes in spirit he is correct. Your physical conditioning is your greatest failing, and if you are not able to overcome it you will not be allowed to stay in this school. Of course your major weaknesses are hardly your only problem, allow me to direct your attention to the upcoming poor judgement you made at the six minute mark."
…
Thankfully for Jiro, her clip ended and attention shifted to other students.
The first being the student who Kacchan had spooked, a Denki Kaminari.
37 Villain Points, 5 Rescue Points.
"Oh sweet, I remember doing that! I didn't even think I'd get points for it."
He was taking the video better than Jiro had, even at the comment that unlike her, quite a bit of his practical points were used to shore up his exam results.
The video currently showed him shoving a three pointer as it moved to strike an applicant, his body sparking as he did so. The robot got electrified on contact, shorting out and sparing the applicant from a severe injury.
Kaminari it seemed had an electric quirk of some sort. Hopefully he'd get more details about it than on Jiro's.
The most insight he had gotten was managing to recognize that the clothing she wore to the exam was a rock band T-shirt, suggesting she liked that sort of music, and that she probably would be distressed by concentrated country music.
That was how he understood music fans anyway: that country and rock fans were natural enemies. He could be wrong about that.
"Yes, it was an acceptable maneuver you performed. However I would like to address your attention to a separate incident further along, one that shows your shortcomings quite clearly."
Kaminari seemed a bit confused about that.
"Not sure what you could be referring to there, I actually don't remember much after…"
Kaminari seemed to stop as he was talking, as if realizing what was about to be referred to. He didn't look all that enthused about what he was being reminded of.
Neither did Aizawa, who looked quite unamused as they arrived at that point in the video.
A point where Kaminari was surrounded by quite a few giant robots, and freaking out in the video.
He counted them up, and noted that they were in total worth about twenty-six points all together.
"Oh crap oh crap oh crap! Indiscriminate Discharge 1,300,000 Volts!"
At the shout Kaminari let loose a massive burst of electricity that briefly blinded the camera. When the camera was able to visualize again Kaminari's recorded self was standing over an entire open circle of friend robots and scorched buildings.
He was also…not acting frightened anymore.
The recording's version of Kaminari had a dumb look on his face, and was giggling to himself for no reason while giving a thumbs up to the camera.
Kaminari's head was now against the desk in utter embarrassment as Aizawa stared at him with disapproval.
"That panicked induce of a reckless last resort maneuver might have passed you, but it also rendered you a useless pile of giggling flesh for an entire hour. Tell me, what would you have done if you needed more points, or if you had teammates around you?"
Kaminari muttered something into his desk about him being quite sure he was alone at the time.
"I didn't see you looking: did you only rely on your hearing? That was utterly irresponsible, and if I had been the one determining who got in you would not have be one of them. Heroes do not need to save their own from pointless last resort maneuvers. I'd hope you take that lesson to heart, unless you're prepared to leave this course."
"Forgive me sir, I'd like to question sir Kaminari on something."
The formally asked question came from one of the classmates he hadn't seen a ton of yet: a large young man with dark fur covering much of his body and glasses.
Aizawa nodded, and Kaminari lifted his head up a bit from his desk.
"What?"
"You called your technique a one million three hundred thousand volt charge did you not? At our elevation, such a charge released at once would only have a discharge distance of about thirty centimeters. Your technique there went much further. You may be using a lot more electricity than you realize."
Huh, that was an interesting point. He made sure to take a note of that in the move's entry page. Was it called that to sound cool, trading accuracy for name efficiency?
No that didn't make any sense. Something like 'five million volts' sounded cooler to him than a smaller number.
He wasn't a cool kid, but he liked to think he got heroic coolness.
"Huh, maybe I am? I know it was that amount of electricity at some point…"
"Well, while you figure out just how many watts you are throwing out at a time, let's continue shall we. Minoru Mineta. 23 Villain Points, 9 Rescue Points."
The short kid that Kacchan had gotten out of his seat flinched in utter terror.
"Please have mercy on me!"
"No."
…
The talk of each students performance went on from there, and the 32 pointed Mineta was told a combination of Jiro and Kaminari's issues as he earned his points by immobilizing robots and saving people with sticky balls.
He needed to get better stamina, and he needed to not panic as much.
Honestly it seemed a bit less harsh than Jiro and Kaminari's talking to. Perhaps it was because he got the point total that didn't require test scores to save him, or needing more points to salvage his test scores. Still, Mineta seemed to take it just as badly as the first two.
The next couple of students who were covered got a lot less issue aimed at them. Oh, Aizawa-sensei had comments on the performance of the fifty points gotten by Mina Ashido the pink girl, or the fifty-seven points of the crow-headed Fumikage Tokoyami, but they didn't seem to sting them as much.
If he had to made a few guesses for his notes on it, which he did, it seemed like Ashido took a lot of the issues that Aizawa said as just him being a grumpy person who didn't like anything but the super serious.
It was a pretty accurate statement: it was on his trading card after all.
Meanwhile Tokoyami seemed to just shrug it off as if he knew they were aspects he had to work on and it was nothing new to him.
Then Aizawa-sensei started talking about Kacchan.
"Eighty-seven points, well-practiced combat skills that can only be improved. When it comes to your performance against the robots, I can offer up little criticism for a student just entering U.A."
He was sure he was probably among the few who noticed it, but Kacchan actually changed a bit mid observation. His body language went from 'yeah, that's right, I am the top dog, the breakout star, and you are just my extras!' to 'wait, you are leaving out something you shit-head'.
"However, there is one glaring point of note in your performance. Those eighty-seven points were entirely villain points."
Kacchan's body language was that of annoyed confusion.
"Yeah, and what of it? I didn't see anyone getting stabbed at by those shitty robots. I blew them all up before they knew what hit them."
He actually had transferred his notes on Kacchan to his current notebook (classmates), and he scribbled a new point down at that comment.
Tunnel Vision (?).
"There is more to being a hero than destroying robots. I can tell you that even the dumbest villains are more clever than them. You'd do well to remember that. A hero with only one trick to their name won't get anywhere."
"Anyway, next is Koji Koda…."
…
"….Now that I'm done explaining your multitude of errors…."
A statement that seemed to entirely skip over the blond student, who was oddly sparkling for some reason.
"…It is time to ensure you all that I am in fact fair in some ways. We do have two students in on recommendation, and I can still comment on their performance. I'll start with Momo Yaoyorou."
A girl with black hair who looked rather tall even sitting flinched, but she quickly gathered her nerves.
"Yes, it is entirely fair to go over all of our performances. Quite fair in fact."
The sound of a pen or pencil being put down made him think she might have been taking notes like he was. She might have sounded as startled as she had been from being interrupted from the process.
Again much like himself.
"It is has been educational to see the strengths and weaknesses of various others, and it would be equally effective to see my own lay bare."
The grin that Aizawa gave her over it made him worried for the girl.
The video that began to play was that of a different sort of test than they had, but he could see the similarities. Get to the end of a course, avoid dangers, that sort of thing.
He briefly blushed as he saw how Yaoyorozu's quirk worked, but it was amazing. She could make things out of her body!
If he had a quirk like that, he'd never run out of notebooks or have to worry about missing pens.
(Could he make new All Might action figures with such a quirk, or would that be counterfeiting? They wouldn't like the Act Might figures people smuggled in from Bulgaria.)
"Excellent use of your quirk for a variety of scenarios and terrains. Like any student entering this school via recommendations, you are impressive. That doesn't mean you are without areas of improvement."
Yaoyorozu had been smiling as she watched her performance, though he had noticed a different with Kacchan's own reactions to his performance. Unlike him, she seemed to take minor errors badly.
The reaction he saw when she made a less than optimal choice (but still quite good) in making something reminded him more of himself than Kacchan's reaction to such a choice.
At Aizawa-sensei's comment she lost her smile, and she was now looking nervous.
"Yes I can see my choices were not the most…oh no."
The last part was said quietly, almost a whisper, as the recommendation exam through an unexpected hurdle at her. A spring floor, like from an old cartoon from before quirks.
As the spring sent her flying, Yaoyorozu flailed in shock for a good many moments, before she managed to remember to make something to put her back on track.
It wasn't a jetpack sadly, which would be really cool but he wasn't sure if there was something that kept her from making one. Still a grappling hook was neat.
Just not jetpack neat.
Yaoyorozu now had her head against her desk in a depression he was quite familiar with, if not from the outside like this.
"Cheer up, you still did great. You just didn't react quickly to a spring trap. I mean, who does?"
The statement of encouragement came from a student who hadn't been looked over yet: a girl with orange hair in a sort of tomboyish ponytail. Yaoyorozu looked up for her embarrassment and towards said girl, who was giving her a thumbs up.
"Not much you really can do to fix that but practice I say. Already was thinking of offering to offer some gym help for a couple of the others, you can come with us after class."
A smile came to replace a sizeable amount of Yaoyorozu's embarrassment at the request.
"I'd really like that actually. Thank you…"
"Kendo. Itsuka Kendo."
"Glad you are so willing to help others there, as you're next actually. You can work on your own issues too."
Kendo's smile turned into a pained one at their sensei's words.
…
It was after Ojiro that attention was turned his way.
"Izuku Midoriya: 26 Villain Points, 42 Rescue Points."
Fresh gazes of surprise came his way, a multitude of students looking at him in surprise for such a number.
Kacchan was less surprise and more annoyance, but the overall feel was still there.
He, a scrawny nerd, doing that well on a test against attacking robots was a bit surprising, even to himself. Especially without context.
"Now, I'm sure you can tell me that your delayed reaction time at the start is a major area I expect you to improve on. Such delays in real life will cost lives."
Indeed he was seeing himself in his initial input lag of a few seconds from the gate into the testing area.
"…So how exactly did the little guy….Oh shit!"
A student whose name was Hanta Sero and had tape shooting elbows (a lot like the old Spiderman, should be careful about his marriage in case demons exist) exclaimed his surprise as he saw his transformation into Four Arms. .
"Wow…that is what you can do!? That is awesome!"
Kirishima was not the only one to have a similar reaction to his transformation, he just happened to be loudest.
"It's not that impressive…"
"Most people would call stomping a giant robot and breaking it impressive."
He had to agree with Jiro despite his own embarrassment. He had a quarter of a page about Mt. Lady stomping techniques after all.
"Impressive potential or not, I'm sure I don't need to point out various points of wasted movement and inefficient tactics. You achieved plenty in the test Midoriya, but you have room to improve."
"Well of course I do, I mean I've only been able to do that for about 10 months by that point so I had a lot of things I was still rusty on and if I must be honest there are still a lot of things I need to figure out to do. For one thing I've been trying to replicate the effect that one of All Might's Texas Smashes has to disrupt air in a powerful attack. I can't do ranged attacks when I am Four Arms so I would really benefit from being able to replicate…"
A crackle from Kacchan's seat made him stop talking, and he noticed that everyone was staring at him with strange expressions on their faces, except Kacchan.
But including Aizawa-sensei.
"You talk too much; you really should work on it. It's kind of disturbing to be perfectly honest."
So said the guy who lurked around in a sleeping bag until he felt like talking, making everybody freak out.
"Get used to it; the nerd does it all of the time."
"Wait, you said that you only been able to do that for 10 months?"
He gulped at a frog-like girl's catch of his word choice.
"Oh, isn't it obvious?"
His attention rested on the accented boy with a strange sparkle around him. Was he a transfer student from the Pacific Coast of North America?
"No, not really. I'm kind of confused by it still."
The boy tutted at Ashido's words.
"It is quite obvious that our friend only recently managed to get his quirk manageable with a support item of some sort. Look at the watch he had on his arm, it has matching markings of his clothes, and he struck the watch to transform into his muscular form. It must be stabilizer to fully contain his power and make it something he can rely on."
"That's not it…."
"The specifics of it don't matter, what matters is the multitude of mistakes you made in this rescue of one of your fellow applicants from a reckless and bone headed act that surpasses anything anyone in this room did."
Aizawa-sensei interrupted him before he could fully clarify.
"You don't have to do that sir, I was perfectly fine and I'd have been in worse shape if he didn't."
"Actually I do, I am teaching a class on rescue this semester with you all and I'm going to use this to go over what not to do. Now pay attention and be ready to tell me what Midoriya did wrong."
…
He waited until all of his students walked out, all the wiser and a bit more self-reflective as they went off, several to the gym facilities…
His eye twitched as he realized those had slipped his mind. He probably could have done the quirk test there.
Well, too late to really be annoyed at that. Only time to be mildly annoyed at himself.
He tapped another button, and the monitor began displaying data.
Twenty sets to be specific, one for each student at a desk.
He might not have been able to test their potential of their physical abilities and quirks, but he was able to test them in another way.
Note taking, attention to key points in his overviews, attention to their fellow students powers, and a few dozen other metrics recorded by computer algorithms.
Their first grades, and with them observations to himself.
"Midoriya needs to learn not to mumble aloud but good technique, Tokoyami has several deficiencies in his note taking to improve on if he wants to avoid struggling academically, Mineta is sitting on untapped potential, Kaminari is already failing…"
This year would be interesting even without the loud annoyance that was All Might and Midoriya's dangerous watch.
END CHAPTER!
Bakugo is a hard character to get right, and I hope I can manage to keep him sounding about right. Regardless I will strive to improving my take on him as necessary. In difficulty in getting right he might actually overtake Luna Lovegood.
And yes, Tenya isn't in 1A. Honestly if I was going to swap students around I had to put some in 1B, and my thinking was that Tenya would have characterization issues due to Chapter 1. He'd either not pick up that Izuku was Four Arms, and thus come off as worse than he usually does, or he'd act the same regardless and be poor writing. So to avoid that, he's in 1B. Two other 1A students are there if you are curious, meaning that in total I moved three 1-B students over to 1A.
Mineta is still in 1A, as I have ideas for him (and if I have to kill someone, he's the obvious choice. Joking…maybe…possibly…..)
Also yes, someone did point it out to me that they could probably have just done the exams in the gym, points to Bloodbottler on spacebattles for doing so, as I had not really thought of that, and as a result story Aizawa's little brain fart. However I honestly have issues with how the test went in canon and a fan take on it in my experience seems to either exist to throw in problems and issues aimed at Izuku in some vaguely altered form (your powers are crutch, you aren't showing us them enough, etc), or to remove Mineta.
Anyway, see you next time. Will be longer because I need to get back to my main fic's rewriting.