The Lost Survivor

The event that orphaned Shinsou Hitoshi was the same one that made Midoriya Inko take her place as the One-Eyed King a full decade earlier than planned. Ghouls called it the Dove Fire, though the CCG hadn't existed in any form for more than a century. In this case, pro heroes were similar enough.

Endeavor had been fighting a group of villains on a sunny Sunday in June. One of them had a sealing quirk that they used to block every door and window in an apartment building to use the people inside as hostages. Endeavor kept fighting and set the building on fire.

Ghouls could survive a lot of things that would kill humans. Smoke inhalation wasn't one of them.

Hitoshi only had vague memories of that day. His father punching the window with his kagune until it broke. His mother throwing Hitoshi out onto the balcony. The feeling of smoke stinging his eyes. Best Jeanist had rescued him from the third floor where he was banging his fists against the resealed window.

Five ghouls and eight humans had died that day.

Inko's parents had died visiting another ghoul who'd lived in the building. In the scramble of the unexpected transfer of power from her father to her, Hitoshi had slipped through the cracks.

And that's how a ghoul got adopted by humans.

Two emos and sunshine

Small Might: GOOD LUCK WITH THE EXAM! ＼＼\(۶•̀ᴗ•́)۶/／／

Eraserkid: ...it's 6am Izuku

Eraserkid: y ru awake?

Small Might: I just got back from my run!

Eraserkid: ...

Eraserkid: y ru like this?

Hawks-lite: He is sunshine.

Hawks-lite: Dark Shadow and I also wish you luck in today's quest.

Hawk-lite: Dark Shadow says "U.A. or bust."

Small Might: U.A. OR BUST!

Eraserkid: ...ua or bust

Yamada Hizashi, better known as the pro hero Present Mic, was the most anxious dad ever.

"Do you have water?" Yamada asked as he turned the car into U.A.'s staff parking lot.

"Yes," Hitoshi said.

"Pencils?" Yamada asked.

"Yes," Hitoshi said.

"Your lunch for after the written exam?"

"Yes."

"Did you eat enough at breakfast? I can ask Lunch Rush—"

"Dad!"

Hitoshi's other dad chuckled once. "Relax, Zashi. Hitoshi's more prepared than either of us were."

"Shouta," Yamada whined. "Don't pretend you're not even a little worried."

"If I were worried of course I'd pretend I'm not worried," Aizawa Shouta, less known as the pro hero Eraserhead, said. "It would be illogical to cause Hitoshi more stress."

"Thanks, Papa," Hitoshi said.

Aizawa turned around to look at his son. "Did you have enough to eat at breakfast?"

"Yes, Papa." Hitoshi resisted rolling his eyes. His dads had good reason to worry about him eating enough. He was underweight. He'd been severely underweight and nearly died in the year after they adopted him. He didn't know who he could get meat from and he wasn't able to hunt for himself with two pro heroes watching over him, not that he would have chosen to kill anyone. If Izuku's uncle hadn't found him he would have ended up going on a killing spree out of pure starving desperation.

Yamada parked the car. Hitoshi grabbed his backpack and was the first one out. He'd never been to U.A. before, so he was excited to finally see the school where his dads had trained to be heroes, where he would train to be a hero if the exam went well. Even from the back the building was impressive.

They'd arrived two hours before the exam was set to start so that Aizawa and Yamada could make final preparations. That meant that Hitoshi had two hours to cram, try not to stress out and eat the food that Lunch Rush kept pretending he was asking him to taste test. Did every pro hero at U.A. know about his near-starvation or was it only his dads and the ones who could cook?

At eight thirty, Hitoshi left the table he'd claimed in the corner of the cafeteria and headed to the exam centre. Auntie Nemuri—pro hero Midnight—was running registration for the hero course exam. She smiled and gave him directions, looking like she was holding herself back from ruffling his hair like she usually did.

Hitoshi could smell the nervousness of his fellow examinees. It made his mouth water. He had to remind himself that he'd had meat last night at Izuku's house and Lunch Rush had just fed him enough human food to count as a full meal. He had no reason to get distracted by wanting to eat people who could be his future classmates.

The exam papers were passed out and at exactly nine o'clock Snipe told them to start. The written exam was...not too difficult. A few questions tripped Hitoshi up but he went back to them when he got through the exam once and was able to put down answers that he thought made sense. Overall, he thought he did okay. Well enough to get him into gen ed if the practical exam went absolutely terribly.

"That was hard!" the brunette girl who'd been sitting in front of Hitoshi said as they left the exam hall. "I wonder what the practical exam will be."

It took a moment for Hitoshi to realize that the girl was talking to him. "Probably something dramatic," he said. "This is U.A. after all."

"You're right. Plus Ultra and all that." The girl smiled at him. "I'm Uraraka Ochako, nice to meet you!"

"I'm—"

"Toshi!" Izuku collided with Hitoshi and would have knocked him over if he hadn't thrown an arm around his shoulders. "Come eat lunch with me, Fumi and Dark Shadow. Oh! I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were talking to someone. I'm Midoriya Izuku. Hey! You're the girl who saved me before the exam!"

"What?" Hitoshi asked.

Uraraka blushed. "Midoriya-san tripped and I caught him with my quirk."

"It's a gravity negation quirk, Toshi. It's really cool." Izuku turned back to Uraraka. "You never told me your name."

"Uraraka Ochako," Uraraka said.

Izuku smiled. "Thank you for helping me, Uraraka-san. Do you want to eat lunch with us? Oh, but you might be waiting for your friends."

"I'd like to eat lunch with you," Uraraka said. "No one else from my school is applying to U.A. so I don't know anyone here."

"If we're going to have lunch we'd better get moving," Hitoshi said. "We've only got half an hour."

Izuku and Uraraka chatted the entire way to the spot outside that Tokoyami had saved for them. Izuku introduced Uraraka to Tokoyami and Dark Shadow with a bright smile that Uraraka matched.

"Oh gods, there's two of them," Hitoshi said.

Tokoyami looked from Izuku to Uraraka. "Indeed."

Luckily they didn't have much time to talk or else Izuku would absolutely have questioned Uraraka about every detail of her quirk. Instead, they ate their food and speculated about what the practical exam might be. It was small talk. None of them had any solid idea of what the practical would involve. Everyone who took the U.A. heroics entrance exam had to sign a document swearing them to secrecy.

"We've got to stay calm and use our heads," Izuku said. He had the terrifying look of determination on his face that usually came before he beat Hitoshi into the ground during sparring practice.

Well, Izuku was definitely going to pass.

Hitoshi was definitely going to fail.

Robots, they had to fight robots. His quirk was useless against robots and he couldn't use his full strength without drawing suspicion. Brainwashing someone into fighting robots for him would muddy the waters and it probably wouldn't count if he ended up passing that way.

At least he had friends with him to cushion the blow. Tokoyami and Dark Shadow hadn't gone to the same school as him and they were lucky enough to be assigned to the same test site. Dark Shadow was patting his head while they waited for the test to start.

"KEEP CALM AND USE YOUR HEAD," the quirk said. They attempted to keep their voice down but were still much louder than the dead silence around them. There were a few glares from other students.

"Thanks, Dark Shadow," Hitoshi said.

Dark Shadow gave him a hug before returning to Tokoyami's side.

The gate in front of them opened with a rumble, revealing the sprawling fake city on the other side. Hitoshi wasn't the only one to tense.

Snipe yawned. "Giddy-up."

No one moved.

"That means go, kids," Snipe said. "Ain't no countdowns in real life."

The crowd of students surged forward. Several quickly pulled ahead—speed or strength quirks, probably—but Hitoshi remained comfortably in the middle of the pack until they peeled off into smaller groups to look for robots. Tokoyami gave him a nod as they chose to turn onto different streets. They wouldn't be in direct competition with each other that way.

There were five one-point robots and four students on the street Hitoshi picked. One of the more memorable students that Hitoshi noticed through the absolutely not calm he was feeling had a white speech bubble for a head.

"ZAP," the speech bubble kid said. The bright yellow word in their speech bubble shot a bolt of electricity at a nearby robot and shorted it out almost instantly.

"Cool, cool," Hitoshi muttered. He was screwed.

Another student firing explosions from his hands blew up two robots, sending shrapnel flying. Hitoshi pulled a boy who was distracted fighting his own robot out of the way of a very large, sharp-looking shard of metal. Both of them then ducked and roll when the robot tried to squash them flat.

"Ohfuck," the other boy said. His hair grew longer and wrapped around the robot. He succeeded in holding it still and nothing else.

Impulsively, Hitoshi grabbed the shard of metal that had nearly impaled hair-growing boy. There were some tangled wires on one side that he could hook his arm through and hold with one hand. The metal settled over his arm like a shield, extending from shoulder to wrist and tapering into a sharp point. It was a lot like his kagune.

Hitoshi grinned. He could work with this.

Shouta tore his eyes away from the screen where his son was destroying a three-point robot with a makeshift shield made of part of another robot. He wasn't even allowed to evaluate Hitoshi to avoid accusations of favouritism. There was no logical reason to keep watching his progress.

"He's doing well," Hizashi said.

"Watch the other kids, Mic," Shouta said.

Hizashi waved off his reminder. "I can multitask. What's little Tenya doing?"

What Iida Tenya was doing was baiting several robots into attacking him and then taking them all down with one Engine-boosted sweep of his leg. Tensei would have been proud.

"It's about time to release the zero-point robots," Nezu announced with his usual sadistic glee.

Shouta turned to get a wider view of all the screens showing the testing sites. Time to get a better idea of exactly how many problem children he was going to have this year.

If his son's purple hair kept catching his eye, it was no one's business but his own.