Hostage situation

Times skip, 30 minutes; Bakugou's POV

"That was rough," Pointy teeth said as we were taking a shortcut down an alleyway. "Weren't you and Midoriya good friends back when you were kids?"

"God man, I wasn't even thinking about him. What about Never?" Skinny fingers said. All three of us stop, "Yeah, I always knew that kid was weird, but that? That was downright creepy."

"Yeah, but something I would like to know is why Bakugou didn't go for him when he had the chance?" He teased me. I had enough of listening to them.

"I don't know what Furry Tail did. I don't even care." I growled, "All I know is if he gets in my way again, I'll make him sorry." As if to accentuate my point, I kicked a seemingly empty coke bottle into the wall.

Pointy teeth chuckled, "Hey I got an idea, we should go to the arcade. Get your mind off it ya know?"

I opened my mouth to decline like I always do. But I hesitate, even though I would spend the rest of my life denying it, a voice that sounds suspiciously like Furry tail tells me to stop, and think. I don't know why or how, but I do. "...Fine."

But the other says something that makes me regret listening to that voice. "Or we can sneak into the bar at the station. Pickup some ladies?" He purred disgustingly suggestively. "Now that's a good idea." It made my fucking blood boil.

"You Idiots!" I yelled. "If we get caught there's no way U.A would let me in!" Their expressions turned into those of terror. "H-hey, what's that?" Their voices shook.

I turned to look. At the end of the Alley, I saw the stuff of nightmares. Some green sludge is advancing and growing in size. As if it has a mind of its own. "Perfect." It gurgled.

The gross thing morphed into big bulging eyes which glared down at me with hunger. There were blindingly white teeth curled up in a sadistic grin. "I like a skin suit with some fire!" I felt my eyes widen, then, there was nothing but black.

POV Change; Deku's POV

'Kamui Woods. Best at holding back damage. So cool!'

"What a joke. I just got my dreams crushed by my lifelong idol and here I am walking aimlessly staring at my book. How pathetic am I?"

I flip through the pages of my hero journal, a place where I write everything I know about all the heroes I know of. Trying to find something that works so I could be a hero one day.

I am mocked by the voices of everyone who said I can't be a hero.

'He'll never be a hero.' Cronie 1.

'Better find out now than later, I guess.' Cronie 2.

'Make sure your Dreams are attainable.' All Might.

'If you believe you can't, then you can't.' Jake.

Before I had my doubts, but just 5 minutes before, I had a wake-up call. My head was slammed over with a frying pan, my heart was ripped out, torn apart, stomped on, haphazardly taped back together, and shoved back in all in 5 seconds.

"Even All Might said it. A hero needs a Quirk." I closed the book, and tears of grief flooded my eyes, finally getting over my shock.

"Don't cry, damn it. Deep down you knew this- all along." The world started to blur into nothingness, and as far as I knew, I was walking through a dark tunnel, with no end in sight.

"You were just avoiding reality. That's why you were so desperately trying to prove yourself wrong." Before I could spiral even further, a rumbling crash shocked me back to my senses. I stopped crying.

I looked across the street, to see a large wall of smoke coming from behind a big pink sign. "That's strange. Is the fight from earlier still going on?" But then I remembered.

"Why am I here?" My inner voice somehow sounds dejected too. "Did I subconsciously walk this way to check it out?"

The light turned green. The go signal. "I shouldn't even stop. All my notes are useless." But I try to look over the wall of people already gathered here anyway.

I finally caught a glimpse. It was a grotesque sludge monster surrounded by fire. But why does it look so familiar?

I gasp.

"It's the guy who attacked me!"

"But that's impossible… All Might captured him!"

Flashback

There All might be, in all his glory. Raising the conquered villain inside the bottle.

There he was again but in his weak form. When he told me I couldn't be a hero. But there was no bottle.

Backflash

"But the bottle… If he dropped it…"

The walls rapidly close in as my eyes widen in horror. "That means… it's my fault…"

I had my hands clamped over my mouth to muffle the sobs that wracked my body. "Someone… A real hero will come soon."

The monster gave an animalistic growl, suffocating the poor blonde struggling to survive. My eyes were the size of pinpricks.

The teen was struggling for dear life, eyebrows that were once taught with determination and fire were now loosening with desperation and fear. His face was sweating and there didn't seem to be a lot of fight left in him.

He was grunting with effort, heaving a silent scream, but there was nothing he could do. His eyes shot open.

And I shot off.

My notebook was left forgotten, and everyone, even the heroes on the scene, was left in my dust. I almost tripped over my feet at the first few steps, but miraculously I didn't.

I didn't think, I couldn't think. Not when Kacchan was holding on by a thread. I could vaguely hear Death Arms screaming that I'm an idiot for running. But I just couldn't stop.

"What am I doing? Why am I running? Why can't I stop!?"

"What do I do? What would a hero do right now!?" Just then, the information that I spent hours poring over just made itself known to me. "Page 25! Right!"

As I ran I used my momentum to hurl my open backpack into the monster's face. "Take this!" I screamed. The backpack itself was launched into the sludge villain's body, and the contents inside clearly surprised it. One thing, in particular, a metal container landed smack-dab into the middle of its eye.

The thing groaned and was surprised enough to loosen its hold on Kacchan, letting him take several greedy gulps of air.

Seeing that as my window, I ran even faster. "KACCHAN!" I got right next to where he was supposed to be and started clawing uselessly at the sludge. "What!? What are you doing here!?" He shouted.

"I dunno! My legs… they just started… moving!" I grunted as I desperately used whatever strength I had to claw at the sludge that was already wrapping itself around him again, to do something, anything to get him out of there.

Later, I would realize that I don't know why I did what I did.

"I couldn't just stand there and watch you die!"

Then, the rest was history.

Progress

"So you see, with the appearance of Quirks, the Building Standards Act, had to be completely…" The teacher, who was now wearing an absolutely ridiculous hairstyle, his voice drowned out. He was shamelessly reading out from his book, not even bothering to cover it up.

I was completely exhausted. "So tired. But I gotta focus." I looked down at my fresh page titled, "Proposed Independent Training Menu."

"It'd be better if I could finish a week before the exam." I pick up my pencil and begin to write. I slip into the zone. That same zone where everyone goes when they don't care about whatever happens around them, they are completely focused on the task at hand.

"That means I only have two-hundred ninety-four days left." My tired eyes glare down at the paper as my hand glides across it.

"If I take recovery periods into account, assuming I'll be resting two days after each hard workout, then…" I raise my hand and place it under my chin, my pointer finger tapping my lip. The subconscious gesture I always use when I'm deep in thought.

"That gives me about ninety-eight days of actual training, even at my most efficient. I can get in around five hours every morning and night, so that's four hundred ninety hours." I don't know how I didn't notice, but I have started muttering my entire thought process, and now everyone is staring.

"Also, I'll need to make sure I'm hitting every muscle group which means I need to pay attention to the ty-" Someone tapped on my shoulder, I yelped and slapped my hand over my mouth. My head whipped around to see it was Jake.

"Hey, uh- you're muttering really loudly, and everyone can hear you. I think you need to work on your surroundings. You actually talk like my sister when she tells us a story." He joked. It took a moment to process these words. When I did I looked around the room, realizing that everyone was, indeed, staring. I could feel my face getting warm, it was so embarrassing.

But, in the second sentence, he's right, I should ask All Might to train for spacial awareness. I shouldn't tell the entire class where I train, what if they find out I train with All Might? I shake my head and force myself to listen before I start rambling again.

"Wait. He has a sister?"

"Hey, Midorya. I know you had a run-in with a villain, but pull yourself together kid." Some of the students buried their faces into their hands to stifle their snickers. Others laughed loudly, not even trying to stop. "If you really want to get into U.A, you might actually have to know something."

"Oh right. I gotta study too." I was too busy mulling over that concept that I didn't see Jake narrow his eyes.

Time skip 7 months, Izuku's POV

It has been a grueling seven months of work. Hard, non-stop, backbreaking work. I guess the only reason I didn't give up prematurely, is that I would get All Might's awesome power, and that saying. 'Good things never come easy. You know you have something good when it was hard to get.'

It was well in the middle of Fall, the leaves turning everywhere from fiery red and golden yellow. The falling leaves were as graceful as a feather.

All Might was in his 'small form', the form he takes when he has to rest his power. He wore a long yellow overcoat and a pink dress shirt underneath. He was riding nonchalantly on a segway, me running behind him.

I was carrying a small but heavy metal safe over my shoulder. I was wearing a light-blue sweatshirt with a white steak on it with matching pants.

My breathing became erratic, and everything seemed to go out of focus. My chest contracted and I couldn't seem to get enough air, the sweatshirt contributed. My muscles screamed at me, 'let us rest!' I pressed on, big mistake.

I plummeted to the ground on my face with a mighty thud. (No pun intended.) I was panting, trying to take as many greedy gulps of air that I can. I could hear the segway stop a few meters ahead of me.

He let out a sigh in exasperation. "Hey, hey kid look alive now. You've only got three months left! What? Are you gonna give up after all this work?"

"Wanna flush it all down the toilet and take it easy?" Hearing that made my pride deflate slightly. I tried to get my wobbly limbs to cooperate, to try and preserve it, but they wouldn't. My muscles were completely lax, they could barely move.

I heard his nearly inaudible gasp. "The 'Aim To Pass: American Dream Plan' was created with your body in mind. It was finetuned to ensure your progress was swift but manageable. Which means…" He knows.

"You haven't been sticking to it. You're overdoing things; that's gonna have the opposite effect of what we want!"

"I have to work harder." I shakily replied. "Or I won't stand a chance against the other applicants… I don't just want into U.A, I want to excel." I wheezed.

"I want… to be like you." My nails dug into the dirt, my muscles twitched with effort when I pushed myself up. How long did I work that such a simple task seems impossible?

"I want… to be the greatest hero in the world. So I'll keep on trying… until I've got what it takes to do that!" I couldn't see his face through the tears clouding my eyes. But I could just make out his eyes widening.

He was about to say something more, but the sound of some feet pounding into the road interrupted him. "Hey!" A voice said, it must be the voice connected to the feet.

The feet grew closer, in faster succession. "What are you doing? Why is he crying?" I looked behind All Might, who was looking back as well.

There were three teens, one I immediately recognized as Jake. His deep, concerned, vibrant eyes and handsome face that made countless girls giggle madly, combined with his signature bandana aren't something you'd miss.

One was a girl, she had intelligent brown eyes and long flowing dark brown hair which she wore in pigtails. She had medium skin, orange beads in her hair, and the same rosy cheeks and dimples that were on Jake's face, around his age too. Her lips seemed to form a small frown, but I didn't focus on that.

Being in the presence of a girl like her made my face flush dramatically. "She's so cute… This is so embarrassing, I'm a sniveling mess on the ground with a pretty girl looking at me." There was a lace around her neck, supporting a small yellow pouch on her chest. I made sure not to look down any further.

The last teen was easily the shortest of the three. He was a chubby boy, with blue eyes and honey-blond hair. He had those same rosy cheeks and dimples that were on the rest.

I noticed all of this in less than five seconds.

"Midoriya! What happened?" Jake yelled, concerned. He fell onto his knees next to me, effortlessly turning on my back. "Izzy, could you and Cubby take care of him for now? Please?"

A voice that was equally concerned replied, "Of course, Jake." It was the girl, Izzy?

At this point I blacked out, I couldn't remember what happened after this. But All Might told me I was still conscious, if only barely.

All Might's POV

This boy seemed to calm down, but only marginally. I have never seen a boy like this, he looked around Midoriya's age. With handsome features, a slender figure, and lean muscles. I took my surprised eyes from this peculiar boy and glance back at Midoriya's supine form.

He couldn't even raise his hand to wipe his face, he was that tired. I could see the girl poke a finger poking him in the arm, and the muscle twitches in protest. He let out an involuntary gasp.

Jake seemed to hear it because he tensed up and stood tall in front of me. "Who are you? What did you do with Midoriya? Why is he lying on the ground while you're doing nothing!?" He didn't yell. He just interrogated me in a chastising manner.

Amazingly, I was a little cowed by him. The fur on his head and tail stood on end, his ears and tail following its example.

His vibrant blue eyes were unnaturally protective and wild, even for a teen, he took up a threatening stance and a growl flew from the back of his throat.

"My name is Toshinori Yagi. I am training him. He was just about to get up. Isn't that right?" It took a few seconds for Midoriya to answer.

"Yeah…" He rasped. You could practically see the dark cloud looming over his head.

He looked like he wanted to retort, but the words dies on his tongue when the girl rested a firm but steadying hand on his shoulder. "Jake. Midoriya, if that's who he is, is okay, he just seems to be exhausted. All he needs is rest and he will be good as new."

The boy still regarded me suspiciously, which I suppose is fair. I'm someone he doesn't know, and his friend was slumped over at my feet, exhausted.

His eyes kept contact with mine, searching through my soul, like he was trying to see if I was worthy. Of what, I didn't know. But he seemed to find it, for his eyes closed and he let out a breath of air. All the tension left him.

"Okay. I believe you. But I'd like to bring Midoriya home so he could rest up and get there safely." He said pointedly.

He turned his back on me and walked over to Midoriya's lax body. He knelt by him and effortlessly lifted him up. He put an arm in under his shoulders, his other under his knees. It would have been a bridal carry if the boy didn't throw him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

He looked back and made eye contact with me. "Hey, your name is Toshinori Yagi right?"

"Yes, but please, call me Yagi."

A bright smile overtakes his face. "Well then Yagi, I think we're gonna be great friends."

At this, I knew, without a doubt, that this boy is a hero.