It took months to get it perfectly right, but eventually Izuku and Tanaka were running back and forth on the beach, hauling trash up to the dumpster.
The trick was to run at a very consistent pace that was almost like a military march. They had three tempos that they practiced. A jog that was meant more for conserving energy and endurance than speed but still would have been hard to achieve without Tanaka, this was used the most often while moving trash. A run that was incredibly fast and used their combined strength to let them fly down the beach. And finally, a sprint that was still a work in progress because it made his legs feel like they were breaking and the speed was difficult to control.
But this was how every shared action was, it had to be planned out and practised to a nauseating degree. If they tried to throw a punch that aimed for different parts of a target then it would be weaker and would generally land between the two intended spots.
It was incredibly frustrating how slow it made their progress, but that was the trade off. They needed perfect teamwork to do anything, but when it was successful they had an enormous amount of power at their hands.
As they made their way down to the beach for what felt like the hundredth time they came upon a new sight. Someone else was there today.
"Why in the fuck is someone at trash beach? That's our goddamn beach."
"How would I know? Plus, it's technically a public beach."
"Nah, it's our beach now. I'm sure we've claimed it as our territory at this point."
"You mean like a gang territory? No. Just because we've been cleaning it doesn't mean it's ours. Ugh, I'm just going to go say hi."
"What? That's a terrible idea, what if he's a villain lying in wait to kill us? Actually, if he's a villain I'm gonna become his best friend just to bug you."
Izuku ignored his slightly paranoid and very annoying companion and walked up to the very thin and sickly looking man.
He simply smiled, waved, and said a quick hello before walking past him to get started on their trash hauling for the day.
"Excuse me, young man. You wouldn't happen to be Midoriya, would you?"
Izuku slowly turned around and nodded. He had to keep his mouth shut as Tanaka clearly wanted to get out.
"This dude was waiting for us and is about to kill us! Let me out you coward! I will not go out without a fight!"
The thin man laughed. "Sorry if that came out a bit creepy. I just remembered how beautiful this beach was when I was younger and wanted to know who had been cleaning it, so I asked a few locals if they knew who had been working at it."
Oh, that's a relief. It also helped to calm Tanaka's instincts that came from living on the streets and surviving by assuming everyone was trying to harm him.
"I suppose I didn't have much more of a reason than wanting to say thank you in person. You've got a real heroic spirit to take on a project like this for no reward."
Izuku smiled and nodded. "Thank you… um."
"Oh, how rude of me. My name is Yagi, Yagi Toshinori."
"Nice to meet you sir. I'll be on my way then, the trash won't move itself, this would be much easier though if it did."
He got a loud laugh in return that resulted in coughing up blood.
Izuku rushed over to him. "Are you ok? What's wrong?"
"No worries young man. Just an old injury acting up." He lifted his shirt to show a nasty scar across the left side of his stomach.
"How did you even get a wound like that? Oh god, I'm so sorry, that was so rude of me to ask."
"It's alright young Midoriya. I, uh, I was a hero once and got this on the job."
Izuku could see that the man had grown uncomfortable at the mention of his past, so the young man dropped it.
"Um, I'm going to get back to it, but if you want to just hang out here I don't mind the company."
Tanaka did not feel the same and lamented at having the suspicious man around them.
"Ah, I would appreciate that. I may have to leave soon though." He held up his phone that started buzzing from receiving messages. "No rest for the wicked it would seem."
After he left Izuku sighed.
"That guy was kinda weird but seemed nice."
"I'm still suspicious, it's pretty creepy to sit around waiting to ambush children."
They began to see Yagi around the beach more often as he would simply make conversation as they worked through the mountain of trash. He even showed up with his pickup truck a few times to help haul away anything that didn't fit in the dumpster.
He'd made quite a bit of progress on the beach and felt pretty confident in his ability to enhance his speed with Tanaka's help. Building up muscle definitely helped with being able to handle their faster speeds without losing control.
But now it was time to shift to actually learning to fight without simply letting Tanaka extend outside his body and handle it himself.
He was practicing how to throw a punch when he heard a voice from the steps leading up to the road.
"Young Midoriya, while I'm glad you're putting in the effort to train, your form is absolutely terrible. If you wouldn't mind, I could help give you some pointers."
Izuku was incredibly thankful for the help, even though Tanaka grumbled about not needing the skinny man's assistance. He couldn't deny that his sludge friend was powerful, probably even stronger than most average heroes, but he wasn't exactly skilled at how to use a more standard human body.
Hours later Izuku was exhausted but felt like he'd made some real progress on knowing how to actually fight. Plus, now that he had a basic idea of what he was supposed to do he could start thinking of ways to integrate Tanaka into it.
Time continued to pass as things fell into routine. Izuku didn't exactly make friends at school, but he was at least neutral or friendly with just about everyone, and that felt like a massive improvement. Another massive accomplishment over the past months was the now clean beach he stood in front of.
And today would be the day he made one more big change in his life. The UA entrance exam. He had trained and studied as much as he could, and looking at the result of his months of hard work made him feel a bit more confident they could actually do it.
"So, if we fail the hero exam are we gonna become a cool ass vigilante?"
"No, because we aren't going to fail. Nope, not even going to think about it as an option."
"Hell yeah, now that's the kind of denial I can get behind."
"Shut up Tanaka, you are the worst. Let's just get going, the last thing we want is to be late."
"Yeah, yeah. Let's go kick some ass in a heroic way."
They made their way to the testing site, passing Bakugou on the way. He maintained his policy of aggressively ignoring Izuku, which he was completely fine with.
On his way up the steps to the school he managed to trip, nearly falling face first into the concrete. Luckily Tanaka had faster reflexes than his and was in the middle of moving their leg to catch them when they started floating.
He looked behind them to see there was a girl with brown hair who smiled at them.
"Sorry for using my quirk on you, but it seemed like bad luck to fall before the exam."
Izuku really intended to respond, but floating above the ground face down was very disconcerting.
She took a second to move him upright before putting her hands together, releasing her ability and letting them fall back to the ground.
"Well, it was nice to meet you! Good luck on the exam!"
Tanaka grumbled as she left. "Let it be known I would have been fine without her help."
Izuku mumbled under his breath in response, "Sure you would. But either way we need to get going."
They made their way to the written portion of the exam, which was pretty uneventful. He felt like he understood pretty much all of it and was well prepared. The only real struggle was ignoring Tanaka and his humming that came from pure boredom.
But once that was over they all left the testing room to this massive auditorium.
The presenter was the hero Present Mic, the voice hero.
"HEYYYY EVERYONE!" The man's quirked voice rolled across the audience without any need for a microphone.
The loud hero attempted to hype up the nervous crowd of applicants. "EVERYBODY SAY HEYY!"
He was unfortunately met with silence as no one wanted to be the one person who responded.
Tanaka laughed "Is this guy really a hero? What's he gonna do, talk aggressively at villains?"
Izuku muttered under his breath so only Tanaka could hear him. "Actually, his voice can be strong enough to collapse buildings."
He went on to explain how the exam would work, they would need to destroy robots to get points. There would be three different types, the more points one is worth the stronger they are.
"This is fuckin' perfect for us kid, we're not great at power regulating yet, but since these are robots we won't need to worry about killing someone."
"Yeah, that makes sense. We should make a plan of attack now so we don't have to make as many decisions in the moment."
"Hell yeah. Let's just stick with two jabs and a swing for the default since we practiced that the most."
Izuku nodded slightly to himself. "Yeah, that should be fine for the robots they've described."
While they undoubtedly had the power needed, they still had the issue where every move needed to be choreographed and practiced for hours to have any sort of success.
His mind came to a halt when he heard a loud voice behind him speak up, asking a question about the fourth robot mentioned in the pamphlets they were given.
"Don't worry about those! They are worth zero points and don't give you anything for fighting them, they are meant to be an obstacle that you avoid!"
"Thank you!" Then the bespectacled boy who had asked the question turned to him. "And you! You've been mumbling this entire time. If you aren't going to take this seriously then you should just leave."
"Wow that guy is an asshole."
Izuku chose not to respond to Tanaka this time as he didn't want to draw any more attention to himself.
At the end of the presentation he made his way down to the testing area, which was essentially a fake city.
He pulled out a gift that Yagi had given him while waiting for the test to start. It was a pair of fingerless gloves with reinforced knuckles. When the older man helped to train Izuku it quickly became clear that Izuku could now punch a lot harder than his bones could handle. Izuku may or may not have cried at how thoughtful the gift was.
He was definitely even more thankful now, if it was even possible, because metal robots were much harder than his knuckles and he didn't feel like shattering his hands over and over. He was also lucky that it wasn't substantial enough gear to be against the rules though.
After getting the gloves in place he was slightly lost in thought as he did some light stretches. The last thing he needed was to get a cramp mid test.
"AND START!"
While Izuku didn't have the reaction time or awareness to start moving the moment he heard the unexpected starting sign, Tanaka most certainly did. This led to them doing an odd puppet-like shamble out of the gates and into the fake city until Izuku got his wits about him and got into their set rythme.
The rest of the testers weren't far behind them, but they had a slight head start and their combined job would be faster than a lot of the competition. Clearly not all of the competition though, as the rude boy from earlier sprinted past him with what seemed like engines in his legs.
"I know there are some closer, but I think it will be worth it to ignore these first ones in order to get some distance from the main group. Otherwise we'll have to fight for points more."
He felt the odd sensation of Tanaka nodding with his head and they kept up their pace for a little bit longer.
They got fairly far into the city where no one else was and found a robot worth one point that was fairly humanoid shaped.
"Ok, you know the plan, right jab, left jab, one step closer as it gets pushed back, then a powerful right hook to its head."
"You got it my flesh copilot."
He tapped his foot as the robot came barrelling toward him in order to set their tempo, otherwise things were out of synch and would get messy fast.
Once it got within range he called out "Now" and released their painstakingly rehearsed move that they had done thousands of times at the beach.
It worked perfectly, each punch dented the main body slightly, the force of the blows causing it to waiver. This opened up the opportunity for them to get in closer and unleash a devastating punch to what would be its chin, sending the metal head flying.
They got lucky and the sound brought additional robots to them, and so the pattern continued. While the strategy mostly worked, there were some clear issues. Their very rigid fighting style did not respond well to surprises. This led to receiving more than a couple hits from being flanked or a robot moving between the set rythme they had, catching them mid punch a few times.
Most of the time was up, and the small area he had stayed in was covered in broken robots with no more coming.
"Well, let's start heading back towards the main area, see if we find any stragglers. I'm having fun smashin' all these hunks of metal to bits."
Izuku nodded, he was having slightly less fun than Tanaka since his body definitely hurt from punching so much metal, even if the gloves helped a lot.
On the way back there was a massive rumbling and he felt the ground shake from something massive.
He turned around and saw a towering robot that was the same shape as the robot worth zero points in the pamphlet. He now understood why the picture of it said 'not to scale'. The over 50 foot behemoth moved through a building and sent rubble showering down on the street.
Everyone was running from the monstrous robot and he was inclined to do the same until he heard someone scream for help.
He looked around for the source of the sound and found a girl under a large slab of concrete. In fact, it was the girl from this morning who helped him when he was about to fall.
Even with Tanaka, he wasn't sure if he was strong enough to lift the rock, so he would simply distract the mechanical terror until time ran out.
He took one step towards it when his body froze, "No way in hell am I letting you charge towards that thing you suicidal meat sack. You wanna be a hero about this, fine, but you can't just run into danger without thinking or talking to me."
Izuku finally stopped straining against Tanaka, staring up at the approaching robot. "Then what do you suggest?"
"We grab the girl and get the fuck out of here. Get us over to her, I can get her out."
He did as he was asked and felt the familiar, but still unpleasant, sensation of Tanaka coming up out of his throat. The slime spilled onto the sidewalk and slipped in between the cracks until it pooled around the girl under the concrete.
"Hey hey hey! What is this gooey stuff?!"
He could understand her panic and was hopeful Tanaka wouldn't hurt her but wasn't in a position to say or do anything. Then, Tanaka started to expand, filling up any empty space and eventually lifting up the slab, letting it simply slide off of him and out of the way.
He pulled himself back into their body, causing them to cough up some concrete dust before picking up the girl with some urgency, as the thing was nearly on them.
He simply muttered one word and hoped it would turn out alright. "Sprint."
At that the two of them set into a breakneck speed that caused his body to ache and struggle to maintain the high tempo. Luckily after a few seconds the time was called and the robot came to a stop, letting them slow down and place the girl on the ground.
He collapsed next to her, not feeling too good himself.
"Well I think that went well. We didn't die and honestly only having two probably broken bones feels like an accomplishment for you."
Izuku only groaned in response, knowing he'd look crazy if he said anything back outloud with no context.
After a minute or so a nice old lady came over to see how they were doing. He recognized her as the hero Recovery Girl, who could heal nearly any would at the cost of the person's stamina.
"What seems to be the problem, dearies?"
"Oh, um, well Her ankle was hurt after being crushed under concrete, and I think both my legs are at least a little broken."
"Oh goodness, you kids get more reckless every year."
She bent down and gave him a kiss on the cheek, which was the activation for her quirk. Every ache in his body went away, but he was tired enough that his eyes closed before he could even get to the infirmary.
After waking up, Izuku felt sluggish as he dragged himself home. He didn't know how many points he got or how many they even needed to get in. He could only hope everyone else sucked so he was in the necessary top forty to get in.
He didn't actually feel that way, he wouldn't wish failure on people, but he'd be ok if maybe everyone else's best effort was just slightly worse than his.
Then he began to doubt himself and question if maybe he lost points for getting injured, or for fighting the robot they were told to avoid.
"Oh my god, I love a good mumble fest as much as the next guy, but you really need to get a handle on that. We'll be fine. I kicked ass, you were alright I guess. And with that together how could they not want us."
"Wow, thanks for the vote of confidence."
"You're welcome. But seriously, I know that I personally can take on multiple heroes at once and I'm stronger now with your help than on my own, so there's no way we didn't pass the entrance exam. Hell, I bet we could have passed the license exam at this point."
"Wait, you really think I make you stronger?"
"What? Of course you do. Sure I can throw around a bit of strength, but since all of me is made of goo, it doesn't really matter how hard it hits. I'm all defense and my only real attack is just huggin' a bitch til they drown."
"Oh yeah, I guess that makes sense. Well I think you make me stronger too."
"Fuck yeah I do! That wasn't even a question, unless you were secretly tearing robots apart before I showed up."
Izuku felt a little lighter than when he had left the exam and smiled softly as he went home and anxiously awaited the results.
Hope you all liked this chapter. Just so you all know, I'll probably be updating this less often in the future since I graduated my master's program and got a job. So even if you don't see updates as often, that doesn't mean I abandoned the story, I plan to see this one through to the end, whatever that ends up being.