It was a strange time to be a UA student. Everything class 1-A had encountered to this point was unprecedented, from the villain attack at the USJ to the strange conclusion of the sports festival and the Hosu incident during the internships. Midoriya, Todoroki, and Iida had healed, though, and everyone was ready to get back into the swing of classes.
Surely, now that the danger had passed, everything would return to normal.
That particular delusion lasted about five minutes into homeroom.
The students of class 1-A were chatting, letting the yellow caterpillar-like form of Mr. Aizawa get some extra sleep before the day's classes started. Eventually, though, he unzipped his sleeping bag and stood up, looking as poorly-rested as ever.
"Settle down class," he said in his usual dry monotone. "I hope you all had a fulfilling experience at your internships. Today I have to announce a program that's new to UA."
The class started whispering excitedly.
"You might have noticed that there is an extra row of chairs at the back of the classroom today. We've got four new students in our class, starting today. One of them, you already know. Nezu finally approved Hitoshi Shinso to transfer into the hero course," Aizawa continued, "You all saw him in the sports festival, I'm sure you know he'll be an asset to our class. The other three are transfer students from a special hero-training program in America called the Thunderbolts. They weren't equipped correctly to train minors, so they taught their students Japanese and sent them here. You can all come in now."
The door opened and Shinso walked in first. His characteristic spiky purple hair and tired expression made him unmistakable. He bowed at the front of the class.
"I'm very glad to be joining you all in the hero course," he said, "please take care of me."
Then, three other students walked in. The two boys were both tall and had blue eyes, but the similarities ended there. One had long wavy brown hair, an athletic build, and lightly tanned skin. The other looked frail, with blond, almost white hair and a pale complexion. He looked like a strong breeze would knock him over. The only girl in the group was even paler, and had black hair and red eyes. She kind of looked like Yaoyorozu, if she was a little taller, wore her hair down, and had like two blood cells in her whole body.
"Go ahead, introduce yourselves," Aizawa said. "Take as long as you want, I'm going to sleep."
The new students looked at each other surprised, and the class sweatdropped at the teacher's attitude.
"Is that, uh, normal for him?" The frail one asked.
The simultaneous sigh of "yes" from the entire class did little to assuage the worries of the new transfers.
"Well, I guess he does want us to introduce ourselves," the blond continued. "I'm Joshua Stern, my quirk is called Voodoo Doll. I like card tricks and video games."
"I'll go next," said the other boy, "I'm Liam Smith. My quirk is called Fraught Mentalist. I like pre-quirk era music and literature."
"I guess I'm last then," the girl said. "I'm Sasha Jost. My quirk is called Vampire. I like girls."
"Sasha!" Joshua protested as the class recoiled. She giggled as he leaned around Liam and continued to berate her. Liam looked at them, sighed, and looked back at the class.
"Just ignore them. Anyway, we're very grateful for this opportunity, and look forward to working with you all," he said, "I hope we can all become friends. God knows I need someone to hang out with besides these two."
"HEY!" they both shouted. They each went to punch him in the shoulder but he leaned backwards and they hit each other instead. There were some snickers from the class as they all took their seats at the back.
Mr. Aizawa was suddenly back at the podium.
"Yes, yes, welcome everyone," he said. "Now, I know you all just got back from your internships and you're hoping for a break from that strain, but final exams are coming up, so get studying."
The class groaned, and Midoriya started muttering. Mr. Aizawa's eyes turned bloodshot and his hair flipped up behind him.
"I will be … displeased if any of you fail," he warned.
The mood of the class quickly shifted from exasperation to fear at this latest assertion from their homeroom teacher.
"Finally, the last of our announcements for today," Aizawa continued, "is that while you were all away on your internships, U.A. has constructed dormitories for its students and faculty. These new living accommodations are optional, so any of you who wish to move in should talk to your guardians and contact the school before the end of the week."
Questions immediately broke out across the classroom.
"How much do they cost?" Uraraka asked.
"How large are the rooms?" Yaoyorozu continued.
"Do the boys and girls share a dorm?" Ashido inquired.
"Do we eat lunch rush's cooking?" asked Midoriya.
"What is the policy on tinting of windows?" Tokoyami added cryptically.
A glare from Eraserhead silenced any further questions.
"As I was going to say, all your questions can be directed to Ms. Kayama, but since you are all so eager," he glowered, "the prices slide on the same scale as tuition, the rooms are fifteen meters long and wide by five meters high, boys and girls share a building but are separated into different wings, you provide your own food, and blackout curtains come stock in all the rooms. Is there anything else that simply cannot wait?"
His expression made it clear that no further questions would be tolerated. Kaminari seemed about to ask one anyway but Kirishima and Jiro smacked the back of his head and poked him with a jack, respectively.
Seeing no further questions, Aizawa zipped into his sleeping bag and slumped to the floor. Soon, light snoring could be heard. The class resumed their quiet chatter, sharing both their excitement for the new dorms and their nervousness over the upcoming exams. Everyone was so excited, in fact, that the four new students at the back of the class were nearly forgotten. Uraraka turned around in her seat towards Shinso, though, to commend him on his entry to the class.
"Congrats Shinso!" she said. "You definitely deserve to be here with us, Deku hasn't been able to stop talking about you and your quirk since the sports festival!"
Shinso seemed flustered, coloring at the praise. "That's, uh, very nice of him. And of you. um, who's Deku?"
It was Uraraka's turn to be flustered. She smacked her forehead lightly. "Silly me, sorry. I'm talking about Midoriya, you fought him in the quarterfinals."
"I see, Deku must be a nickname of his," he said, mostly to himself. "Anyway, I meant what I said up front. I'm very excited to be joining you all here."
"We'll be lucky to have ya, I'm sure!" Uraraka cheered. "Anyway, how about those new students?"
Shinso nodded. "I don't really know any more than you do. They were all talking to themselves in English when we were outside earlier, so I couldn't pick up all of it."
They both discreetly turned towards the new transfer students. All three were silently staring back at them. Shinso ducked his head quickly to look at some papers on his desk. Uraraka made an "eep" noise and tried to do the same, forgetting that she was backwards in her chair and falling out of it onto the floor. At this, Iida turned around towards her.
"Uraraka, are you alright?" he asked with his signature arm chopping motion.
"I'm fine, thanks Iida," she said.
At that moment, Present Mic entered the classroom to begin their English lecture for the day, and the awkward moment with the new transfers was quickly forgotten.
By the end of the day's lectures, 1-A was bored and hungry. Kayama-sensei's class emptied almost immediately, save for five specific students. Yaoyorozu turned to speak with the three transfer students, and Todoroki quietly made his way to Midnight's desk.
"I have a question about the new on-campus housing," he said.
"Shoot, kid," she replied flippantly. "If it's whether you can share a room with a girlfriend, the answer's technically no, but I'll let it slide the nights I'm on watch duty."
In his usual unflappable manner, Todoroki was unfazed by her conspiratorial wink. Instead, he asked a question that gave Midnight pause.
"Can a student move into the dorms without parental consent?"
'Shit, Endeavor, what have you been doing to this kid?' she thought. She was brought out of her thoughts as he continued speaking.
"I don't need an answer right away, maybe he'll let me. He probably wouldn't notice the difference anymore," he said bitterly. "Anyway, I need to talk to the transfer students. It's alright if the answer's no, I understand the liberties that guardians are given over their charges better than most, just please let me know as soon as you can."
Midnight left, pondering both Todoroki's request and its implications. The elementalist walked towards the rear of the classroom, where Yaoyorozu was speaking with Liam while Joshua and Sasha argued about something. He caught their conversation as he approached.
"-very interesting, Smith-san," Yaoyorozu said. "are you as well-read in pre-quirk era philosophy?"
"I'm afraid not. Even in my study of classical works, it was always the historical, and fictional works which captured my attention. I'm much more familiar with the writings of Caesar and Homer than Plato and Diogenes," he admitted. "And please, call me Liam. No one refers to each other by their last names in America, and it's proving to be a hard habit to shake."
"Enough with the small talk and false niceties," Todoroki said as he approached. Yaoyorozu turned to him, shocked.
"What are you-," she began to ask before he held up his hand as he walked past her and looked directly into the eyes of the brown-haired boy.
"I'm aware of what the Thunderbolts program in America really is," he said with a cold glare at the new transfer students. "Frankly, Yaoyorozu-san, I'm surprised you're not familiar. These aren't hero students, they're ex-convicts. The Thunderbolts program takes imprisoned villains convicted of quirk-related crimes and gives them the option to turn hero in exchange for amnesty."
Yaoyorozu gasped as he continued his tirade.
"I don't plan on sharing this information with the others, but let me offer you a warning. I am watching you. If you step even a toe out of line, you will be an ice sculpture in an instant, am I clear?"
"Hey, you don't know a thing about us!" Jost exclaimed. "How dare you say that!"
She seemed about to go on, but Smith held up his hand.
"If you want to judge us, then fine," he said. "but know this. We stepped off of a 16 hour flight in handcuffs directly into a soundproofed cell so that our homeroom teacher could interrogate us with a lie-detecting police officer and the smartest rat in the world backing him up. Even after all that, or more likely because of it, he believed that we are all here out of a genuine desire to do the right thing."
Todoroki started at this. He should have known that they would already have been interrogated. That Detective Tsukauchi and Principal Nezu were involved leant credence to his claims. It seemed his rant had inspired one in kind from Smith though, as the taller boy just kept talking.
"I'm especially surprised to hear this come from you, though," he said, leaning down to eye level with Todoroki, "I know you to be intimately familiar with the fact that not all heroes deserve to be called such. I would think you could reason that the contrapositive is also true in the case of villains."
Todoroki was rooted to the spot. "How?" he asked quietly. His breathing became erratic puffs of steam and ice slowly started to form on his fingers. "How do you know?"
"I couldn't help but know," Liam answered. "You were thinking so loud."
Todoroki roared and froze him into a block of ice. Aizawa burst into the room as Yaoyorozu and the other two transfer students fell away, looking at Todoroki in fear.
"What happened here?" Aizawa demanded. Todoroki looked from the transfer students in a surrendering position with their hands above their heads to Yaoyorozu shivering on the ground and looking up at him with tears in her eyes. It was too much for him to handle, and he dashed from the classroom.
"I'm gonna have to cancel classes for the rest of the day, aren't I?" Aizawa asked rhetorically. "I told Nezu that I didn't need any more problem children but noooo, they couldn't possibly go to Vlad King's class."
"Look, sensei, I'm sorry to have caused you the trouble," Smith said. "But could someone please get me out of here?"
A/N: Chapter one done! I know there's a lot of stuff like this already on the site, so thanks for reading!. This story is going to be a bit OC-centric, and some canon characters may act a bit differently, but I noticed that that doesn't seem to be as frowned upon here as in a lot of other fandoms on this site. Anyway, I'm using this mostly as an excuse to write abilities that I think are cool without needing to justify them within a larger magic system like I would in my own novel writing.
Then, some clerical things: First of all: I don't own MHA. Does anyone know if the disclaimers that I don't own MHA are strictly necessary? I feel like it would be implicit that they are not given the title of this site and my understanding of fair use legislation in the US but I guess you can never be too careful. Also, my original characters are my own ideas, but I would be flattered by anyone else liking them enough to use them so if you do just let me know because I would want to read your story. Finally, how do we feel about the length of this chapter? The actual content is 2168 words. In stories I like to read I would probably consider that pretty light, but I've noticed that anime fandoms tend to write shorter chapters than the book fandoms I have read the most from so idk.
Thanks again for reading!
~Fourm