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'thought'

Finally, the day had arrived.

Izuku had never been in such high spirits for a very long time. A dream that had been so sought after, to be a hero, was that much closer now. Opportunity had called, and Izuku embraced it, erasing what the past had him thought impossible. Things were different now; they had to be. And someday, everything would be worth it. But that was the future, a strange and untamed beast, Izuku had to worry about the present first.

Too bad the present was just as frightening.

Being in front of U.A. again was just as unearthly as the first time around. A warm, springtime breeze welcomed him this time, brushing against him with its pleasant embrace. He had made it, so there was no need to worry. Well, at least not for the school itself. There was, of course, one... particularly unruly worry.

Walking into the U.A halls for the second time ever while adjusting his mildly uncomfortable school uniform, 'Never was too good at ties, but I swear these are impossible!' Izuku could not help but let a tinge of frustration come out. Having to worry about Bakugou was one piece of his past he very strongly wished he could have left behind, but it was common sense to know Bakugou would be accepted, so he had to watch out for the angry blond.

'Just PLEASE have him not be in my class...'

Class 1-A was one of two hero classes. So, a fifty-fifty chance of being in a class with his childhood nightmare... not very good odds. Throw the fact that Izuku most usually was a very unlucky person when dealing with probability, and the result is grade school traumas being newly repurposed for the here and now.

Ridding himself of those pessimistic thoughts, Izuku focused back on the problem at hand, 'Where is class 1-A anyways..?'

Unfortunately for him, of those who had not had trouble finding class 1-A was just the person Izuku was hoping wouldn't be waiting for him there: Katsuki Bakugou.

Bakugou hadn't really thought of Monochrome much lately; sure, his little stunt at the exam really pissed him off but he had found solace soon after.

Despite his demeanor, Bakugou was a very observant person. He had seen, and found really fucking funny, that Monochrome hadn't done shit the whole time he was there outside of destroying the boss robot. The point was, Izuku wouldn't be getting into the hero course. No number of zero-point robots would get him in; that was a fact.

At least, that was what Katsuki Bakugou had thought. While coming into U.A. himself he had thought he'd seen a smear of black and white walking into the school and in a mad dash, broke through the doors to find… a bunch of confused-looking extras gawking at him.

And no Monochrome.

God, could he be any more stupid!? He made himself look like a dumbass with that little outburst. Now everyone probably thought he was just a big, loud fucking dunce. 'Another problem of mine caused by Monochrome and he isn't even fuckin' here!'

Stalking his way to class 1-A, Bakugou tried to reason why he had seen what he did, 'I had to just be seeing things, I got that bastard on my mind for too long now and it's time I fucking drop that shit.' He passed some more extras before getting into class and making way for a seat, 'Hell, it could've just been some other extra's shitty quirk...' Bakugou sat down at a desk, lazily putting both feet up on top of it in an effort to relax, 'He couldn't have made it into the hero course anyways, he fuckin' bombed after all. He'd have to beg just to be in shitty General Studies…'

"Take your feet off of that desk right now!" Bakugou turned his head to the irritating voice to find the fast bastard from the examination, "Huh?" Bakugou asked. The blue-haired boy leaned closer, "It's the first day, and you're already disrespecting this academy by scuffing up school property, you cretin!" Bakugou could honestly not believe it, "You've gotta be kidding me, right? Were you born with a stick up your ass, or was it a gift?" The boy looked like he was about to continue, but his eyes shifted towards the door of the classroom, "It's him."

"Who the hell-?" Bakugou asked, following his gaze before seeing him. Izuku Midoriya had just walked right into the classroom. Eyes wide with a shock that cooled even the inferno that fueled his rage, Bakugou could only gawk as his most hated person scanned the room he had just entered. Their eyes met, and the flames erupted once more. Just as he was about to rise from his seat, Monochrome was cut off by that loud-mouthed blue-haired kid.

Taking advantage as Monochrome stared confused at the bespeckled boy, Bakugou leaned back and attempted to calm down.

'FUCKING HOW!? HOW DID HE PASS!?' Bakugou thought as he "attempted" to calm down. 'He didn't even get one shitty little point, I'm sure of it! He only got the boss robot, AND IT WASN'T EVEN WORTH ANYTHING!'

He stifled himself; he already made himself look stupid once, and he was not going to do it again. No, Bakugou would play the waiting game until he got Monochrome by himself. Then, oh yes, he and the black-and-white bastard will have a little talk about how and why he's in U.A. Bakugou would get the truth.

Even if he had to beat it out of him.

Tenya Ida was proud. A tad bit arrogant, but he had the best of intentions. He only acted because he believed himself to be mostly right. And when he was wrong, it was most usually pretty harmless.

When it came to the colorless kid from the exam, however? He was dead wrong. Tenya had been right there, fighting alongside him, and couldn't help his critical mind but to judge the other boy. He had not ONCE seen him so much as attempt an attack for nearly the ENTIRE duration of the exam! Not on a three-pointer, two-pointer, heck, not even a ONE-POINTER! Anything was better than nothing to Tenya, and inaction, especially in hero work, was detrimental.

Which is why he was so ashamed of himself.

When the zero-point robot arrived, he thought nothing more but to escape it. It was purely an obstacle; why bother? Except, it was the exact duty of a hero to bother. Not for a second had he thought about anyone else there or their safety, only his own. He had merely run away to save himself as a fellow exam taker was in danger.

Like a coward.

But the colorless boy? He had acted, standing up tall against the looming threat, even if it didn't benefit him. In seeing that, Tenya knew he had to make it up somehow, someway. So, when he saw him walk into class 1-A, he immediately jumped into action.

Stopping directly in front of him, Tenya set out to right his wrong. "You, what is your name?!" The boy halted, shoes squeaking on the tile floor. He seemed reluctant but answered, "Izuku Midoriya."

Tenya nodded, "Izuku Midoriya, my name is Tenya Ida and I have to say this to you: I'm sorry." Midoriya looked confused but didn't interrupt. "I apologize because in the examination I misjudged your character. I never said it to you myself, but while viewing your performance I had thought you undeserving of being in the walls of U.A., but after what you did with beating the zero-pointer in an effort to save someone... it forced me to reevaluate myself. You acted more like a hero than I did by a wide margin and I feel foolish for so decidedly writing you off like I did."

Midoriya looked at him with wide eyes and for a moment, Tenya thought that he might've come off too strong and was about to apologize further, but then a small grin formed on the boy's face and he simply replied, "Thank you."

Upon entering class 1-A, Izuku almost immediately was slapped in the face with his worst fear: Bakugou was indeed in the same class as him, and he did not seem happy about it. The flash of surprise Izuku had noticed was instantly engulfed by a scowl of fierce anger. This definitely would spoil quite a bit of his U.A. experience; it was more than likely that Bakugou was truly pissed at him. Any altercation from grade school would most likely look tame compared to what was to come now.

Just as Izuku tensed at the shifting that warned of Bakugou's rising, one of the people Izuku saw at the exam sped out of nowhere into his line of sight. When the boy, now know to Izuku as Tenya Ida, started talking to him... suffice to say, Izuku was a tad bit overwhelmed. The air chopping certainly didn't help either.

Izuku felt a swell of pride inside, however, despite Bakugou burning holes into his skull from across the classroom. He had never really received such praise before. To think he, Izuku Midoriya, had indeed proved to some margin that he belonged in the hero course to at least one other person filled him with a sense of belonging he had been so long yearning for. Even if the compliment was from someone he didn't really know, he appreciated it wholeheartedly.

"Hey, I recognize that messed-up hair!" Izuku had to stop himself from jumping (half-ways successful at this, at least) at the voice right behind him, recognizing it to be the nice girl from the exam as he turned around and saw her. "Man, even now I still can't believe that move you pulled back at the examination! Shooting like a rocket and all up to it, and BOOM, that was crazy!" Izuku could only hope to stop from stammering too much to reply, "W-well thanks. Just trying to do the right thing, right?" The girl nodded, "Yeah, thanks again for that... um" She paused, and Izuku realized his blunder, "Oh! Um, sorry. I'm Izuku Midoriya. And you?" The girl's smile widened, "I'm Ochaco Uraraka, nice to meet you."

"If you're here just to make friends, you might as well go back home now." Recoiling instinctively, Izuku leaned back far enough to just barely get a glimpse at the person talking. On the ground behind Uraraka, laid a scruffy-looking man inside of a sleeping bag. 'Wait, why is he in a sleeping bag?' Before he could ponder further, the man continued his curious behavior by... sipping out of a juice pouch... and upon finishing his drink, began to speak again, "Welcome to U.A's hero course." Standing up off the ground, the strange man uncocooned himself. "It took you eight seconds to be silent, that just won't cut it; any rational student would understand how precious the little amount of time you have is and had shut up quicker."

Izuku hadn't been so put off so quickly after meeting someone before. He seemed knowledgeable and, from the way he talked, he could be a pro hero. But he also looked half-dead from exhaustion, something that couldn't be very helpful on the job. The scruffy beard certainly didn't help him look very energetic. The bluntness, at least, was welcome.

"I am Shota Aizawa, I will be your homeroom teacher..." His eyes quickly scanned across the room before he reached into the sleeping back and pulled out an assortment of bodysuits, "Here's your P.E. uniforms, put them on and meet me outside."

Ah, so at least he's got a name to work with...

Wait,

HE was their teacher!?

Shota Aizawa was tired.

He was always tired, but more so today. It wasn't unforeseen and unexplainable; he knew it would be coming, and he knew why. The exams had an interesting batch of kids this year; unfortunately, that usually carried some issues.

He was already sure that there were many headaches to come, especially in the forehead region. He could already see a couple of them coming right now. This is why Shota decided to take his new batch of students to the P.E. grounds; it was a good place for feeling out what needed to be worked on. That, and scaring them with the lie that the lowest-scoring student would be expelled brought him considerable satisfaction.

Oh, how glad he was that it always worked.

Watching them all perform through various obstacles; Shota was able to get a good read on some of his students.

Katsuki Bakugou. Naturally talented, inflated ego. Obviously, he could be a great hero if fine-tuned, and his quirk was very versatile but God, you could practically feel the smugness radiating off of him. Not a very good trait for a hero, definitely something to work on.

Tenya Ida. His family's reputation spoke for itself, him being everything one would expect: fast, strong, smart, and confident. Too confident almost. Pride wasn't bad as long as it was put to the side to focus on the work. Got to keep that in check.

Ochako Uraraka. Fantastic quirk, the ability to manipulate an object or person's gravity at a single touch was a hard counter to many other quirks if the user was skilled enough. Regardless, she did have limits. He had seen her puke rainbows at the exam from overusing her quirk, and while it was almost funny, there had to be something done so that she wouldn't cause a technicolor mess all over everything so quick.

Izuku Midoriya...

'Oh, there's one of the headaches.'

Now Midoriya seemed to be a completely different situation altogether. In the examination, the black-and-white boy had incapable of action. No robots were destroyed by him for a majority of the exam's duration. Not a one-pointer, two-pointer, or three-pointer. Honestly, at the moment, Shota thought that the kid couldn't even take a half-point robot on if it existed. But then, the rescue point part of the examination was launched. Despite not having to, the boy had destroyed the strongest robot of them all to protect someone else. He could have just run like the others or use that time to make up points while others were distracted. But he didn't, he was the only one to act.

So, Shota had on his hands a walking contradiction; the same boy who had literally launched himself into danger at mind-boggling speeds with his quirk seemed to be having trouble with a simple quirk apprehension test. In fact, the boy was noticeably distracted by something, at some points just staring off into space. Just what he was looking at and why was lost on him. This, added with his all-around below-average performance thus far, was frustrating him.

For a moment, he had considered making the expulsion lie true but quickly thought against it. He'd probably get in trouble for that one anyways. But when he called the boy up for the ball toss, he pulled the same crap. He grabbed the ball, Shota could see him preparing his quirk, and then? He froze, again. So with nothing but frustration and steadily rising anger, he opted to give his student a "gentle" push in the right direction.

He had been trying. In fact, once Aizawa had explained what they were doing, he wasn't even all that nervous about it anymore. Just pass each test by using his quirk in creative ways, easy enough. Hell, he'd been experimenting enough with his quirk at this point to figure out how many ways he could use it. He could shrink, enlarge, twist, and flatten just about anything if given the chance. By all logic, he should have performed pretty well.

But then the shadows returned.

Of course they hadn't left for good, Izuku had known better in his mind, but his heart refused and had held out the hope. Except, things were different this time around. Instead of appearing wherever they feel like, they seemed to stray just barely enough around things to be seen. That, and they were being unusually silent. No talk, no whispers, no anything.

It had thrown his concentration off completely, practically neutering his quirk effect. In all of the tests, Izuku performed badly due to his quirk malfunctioning. He had to focus, but how could he with all those dead, glowing eyes staring right through him? At that point, Izuku had been acutely aware that more and more shadows had been appearing around the field. Now there had to be at least two dozen of them and it was starting to freak him out. What were they all doing, why were they all there? Then, he saw something. From out of the trees, stepped out a massive shadow. In width, it was only so much bigger, but its height? It towered over the others. The peculiar thing about it was that it didn't have glowing white eyes like the others. In fact, it had no eyes.

It had thrown his concentration off completely, practically neutering his quirk effect. In all of the tests, Izuku performed badly due to his quirk malfunctioning. He had to focus, but how could he with all those dead, glowing eyes staring right through him? Izuku had been acutely aware that more and more shadows had been appearing around the field. Before he could ponder them further, he saw something. From out of the trees, stepped out a massive shadow. In width, it was only so much bigger, but its height? It towered over the others. The peculiar thing about it was its lack of glowing white eyes that adorned all the others. In fact, it had no eyes.

And it was slowly stalking towards him.

The edges of his vision were growing darker, so much so that everything else he could see was getting blurry. His body felt frozen; no matter how much he just wanted to turn away and run, he couldn't. He had felt the same feeling with the zero-point robot, except... this was much more malicious. Darkness was radiating from this particular shadow, and he watched in horror as the other smaller shadows walked into the bigger one and were absorbed. It was just about to get to the fence, when-

SNAP

The shadows disappeared.

Blinking rapidly for a moment to be exactly sure, and it was true. The shadows were all gone. For a second, Izuku was relieved. Until he turned to see Aizawa's piercing glare. He had also just become aware that the man's scarf had surrounded him and was wrapped around his body.

For just a beat, he saw surprise bled across the man's face as he drew closer, but it left as quickly as it came. "You do realize that this much hesitation can be dangerous in hero work, Midoiya?" Aizawa said, eyes flaring with his hair and scarf floating around him. With his large scarf unwrapped, Midoriya noticed a pair of goggles that had been hidden around his neck. It hit him like a brick wall, class 1-A's homeroom teacher was Eraserhead, the underground hero whose quirk could temporarily nullify "erase" a person's quirk. "If a hero hesitates for a second, for even the shortest of moments, it could jeopardize everything. Countless lives are put in danger if you can't rise to the occasion, and that is not behavior fitting of a hero." Izuku felt the bands around him loosen. "I'll give you another chance, but do take into account that you in particular are treading on expulsion. So either stop wasting my time, or go pack your bags."

The best reply Izuku could muster was a timid nod before focused back on his task. Grabbing the small ball, he felt his quirk take hold of it. Carefully, he began to plan what he would actually do with it. 'I suppose I could just stretch it out, but then again that takes a lot of focus and time.' Shifting his eyes sideways, he got a glimpse of Aizawa's unwavering scrutinization and had to suppress a shudder. 'Yeah, probably not too impressive either, I need to prove myself capable with this one... maybe levitation would work? The ball is definitely light enough.' Thinking back to his mother's horrified scream as a flying All Might action figure came flying at her, he kept in mind to properly aim it so that the ball wouldn't go careening at an innocent person's face. 'I haven't really practiced it too much because of that fiasco, but I think I can avoid a similar situation.'

Gently letting out a breath, Izuku grasped the ball tightly with both hands and then, let go. An immediate sensation of warmth filled his hands as the ball began to hover right outside his grasp. He could hear some mutterings from behind him where the other students were, but he forced his mind to drown them out. Out of all the abilities his quirk had, this one was admittedly one of its lesser ones. He could only levitate very small objects and his control of them once letting go wasn't even half that of objects he kept a grasp on.

That being said, the acceleration had a lot more potential.

Case in point, Izuku willed it to slowly start climbing upwards, and soon it had started picking up speed and was now rapidly shooting through the air to the sky until it couldn't be seen. Eventually, Izuku felt his quirk release the ball.

...

A beat.

...

Another.

...

Yet another.

...

"Seven hundred and five point three meters."

Izuku turned, first clenched to bury the pain in his arms, and looked Aizawa dead in the eyes. "No need to pack my bags then, right?"

This chapter took a much longer time for me for a couple of reasons: First, just general personal stuff needing to be done going up. Two, this chapter took a lot of fiddling, I rewrote a lot of sections until I could get to a point I was really happy with. In particular, the actual apprehension test was difficult (Just crossing my fingers that I proofread this well enough).

Guest Reviewer: Well, this one is a tad awkward to approach seeing that the problem addressed here is of an old version of 'Examination' that wasn't supposed to be uploaded in the first place. All I can really say is that I wasn't satisfied with the angstiness Izuku was having either, so I had changed it in the final draft of that chapter (again, the one that was supposed to be uploaded in the first place anyways). Also, the height was a mistake on my part, Izuku's height is the same as it is in canon.

Sven10: I'm glad to hear you're enjoying the story! And yes, I will lighten up a tad on the angst since nobody, I included, wants too much of that in a story. I just wanted to establish that it is there for Izuku but there will be more variety soon.

MagicBanana223: Izuku is not getting One for All in this story, I feel like it would be an unnecessary buff to an already decently strong quirk. And Izuku and Reiko will probably not meet for a while longer, I'd like to wait to at least the Sports Festival to pull the trigger on that plotline.

Notasavior: Thank you very much, I do hope that it isn't too obvious yet, though that, I can say, won't be the only thing I have in store for Izuku.

TheHuntBegins18: Thank you very much, I hope you enjoyed this chapter as well.