Steven walks up the hill to school early the next day a pink umbrella held over his head.
"Good morning universe." a voice behind him says and he turns to see Iida sliding to a stop.
"How's your brother?"
"Aside from a few pink scars he says he feels better than he ever has, we can't thank you enough." steven waves his thanks off.
"I'm just glad to be of use," he says with a smile, and Iida nods.
"An admirable way to look at helping others." he nods.
"We need to hurry to class."
"We still have ten minutes." steven counters.
"We should Endeavour to be five minutes early,'' Iida says, rushing ahead. Steven seeing him stop to have a conversation with Midoriya, he reaches the campus after them and walks up to the classroom hanging his bag on the back of his seat as he sits down, the class slowly starting to fill up.
"Hey pink buddy, you ok?" Mina asks, walking up to his desk.
"Pink buddy?" steven asks amused.
"Yea because you can be pink, and I'm always pink get it?" steven hmms reaching for the transformation, his skin turning pink and he decides give Mina a show, he shapeshifts to look just like her his clothes sitting, and she gasps in surprise, the rest of the class looking over to see him grinning at her as he turns back to steven.
"Pink buddies," he says with a nod,
"What was that?!" she asks excitedly.
"Shapeshifting, I don't use it much," he admits. And before anyone can ask the question
"Today's class will be on hero informatics." steven hears his classmates panic.
"Quiet down, you need code names, time to pick your hero identities.'' The class cheers quickly being shushed by Aizawa.
"This has a lot to do with the internship offers you have all received, this isn't guaranteed the heroes are basically investing in your potential and can rescind their offers."
"So we still need to prove ourselves?" Ashido asks.
"Correct, now here is the total for those of you who got offers," he says as the numbers appear on the board.
"All of you will be choosing a hero to intern under for one week even if you received no offers."
"There's such a big gap between them and the rest of us, it's totally unfair!"
"And Shoto got the most even though Bakugou won." Jiro points out
"It's probably because of Bakugos attitude."
"What did you say?!" Bakugo explodes standing and turning on Sero.
"If I scare you, they don't deserve to be called a pro!"
"These hero names will likely be temporary but…"
"Take them seriously or there might be hell to pay!" midnight says walking into the room.
"She's right..A hero name is important and shows everyone what you want to represent,
take all might for example." Midnight passes out whiteboards and markers, the class becoming serious, no one talking as they try to come up with names but steven had known what kind of hero he had wanted to be for as long as he could remember.
"Any volunteers?' Midnight asks.
"Wait, we're presenting these?!"
"I'll go." steven volunteers standing up and walking to the front of the class
placing his whiteboard on the podium for everyone to see.
"I'm steven universe, the crystal gem" he announces proudly.
"You want to use your real name? Are you sure?" midnight asks and steven nods.
"Then that great, I'm sure everyone's dying to know what the crystal gem means"
"It's the name of the people I was raised by." he moves a hand to his chest, knowing his black shirt was under his uniform.
"It's why I wear my star proudly, so everyone will know that I'm a crystal gem too."
"Then it's perfect," she says and steven walks back to his desk, Ayoma going next, the rest of the class following their lead steven cheering them on as they present.
"Remember to choose a place that goes along with the type of hero you want to be" midnight reminds the class as the bell rings.
"Think carefully before you decide, turn in your choices before the weekend," he says, him and Midnight heading for the door.
"We only have two days!?" Sero asks, surprised.
"Yea so you should start now, you're dismissed." and with that, he shuts the door everyone reading over their options
."So has anyone decided who they are going with?" Mina asks the class, staring at her paper.
"Hey Deku, who do you have on your list?" steven glances at Izuku seeing him muttering up a storm
"I'm going with Miriko." steven says, already filling out his form, the entire class turning to him, even Bakugou.
"The number five hero?" Izuku asks excitedly, suddenly in front of his seat.
"She rarely teams up with other heroes, and she's never taken a student for work-study!" he says excitedly,
"I met her before I started here, I must have impressed her."
"The muscular incident, right? I saw it on the news."
'That was you?!" Kaminari asks in shock.
"Oh, I remember that, you threw Miriko right at muscular, it was super manly."
"Thanks, Kirishima." steven says with a smile finishing the paper and putting it into his backpack along with the other papers. Izuku and his group go towards the door and it is thrown open by a tall lanky man with blonde hair with pink highlights, a grin on his face as he sees Izuku.
"Midoriya, a moment of your time?" he asks.
"Of course, you guys go on ahead," he tells Iida and Uraraka.
"We'll save you a seat Deku.'' Ururaka says as Izuku follows after All might, steven glad to see him on his feet.
"Universe," Momo says his name to get his attention.
"Would you be willing to sit with me at lunch? I've been meaning to talk with you."
"Oh, yea sure." steven says, standing up and following her towards the cafeteria.
"I wanted to thank you for the strange metal you showed me, I've been able to use it to produce stronger weapons while using fewer lipids."
"That's great, I'm glad I was able to be of use," he tells her with a smile as they get into line.
"I've been wondering though, I've not been able to find mention of the metal anywhere while researching where did you learn of it?"
"Well… It's mostly used in space missions, you know going to other planets and establishing colonies?"
"Oh, I wasn't aware any country had reactivated their space program," momo says, remembering the equations that she had seen on stevens phone.
"It's not really well know, I have a few blueprints saved that might be of use to you. Are you interested?"
"If it's anything like the metal I wouldn't dare say no."
"What metal?" the third voice asks and steven can feel a hand reach for his shirt.
"Hey Mei." he greets, catching her wrist.
"Hello Steven." she returns trying to pull her hand away.
"Oh, hello you're that inventor from the sports festival," Momo says recognizing her.
"Oh I remember you, you're the 3d printer girl," Mei says
"An apt… if unflattering description of my quirk."
"So, what metal?" she asks again and momo produces a cube of pink metal from her palm holding it out for her to take, Mei grabs it quickly humming.
"Neat, Steven you're dropping by the lab today, yes?" she asks her eyes zooming in on the metal. Steven reaches the front of the line ordering his lunch followed by momo and mei.'
"I'll be there," he tells Mei who nods, picking up her trey.
"Great, I'm sure you'll be great at making babies with me." and with that, she's gone leaving a confused steven and a blushing momo to their meal.
"My, how forward." Momo finally says as the two of them move towards empty seats.
After the final bell steven says his goodbyes, turns over his filled-out work-study forms, and leaves the classroom heading towards the workshops for the support course, the door exploding out as he reaches it, steven quickly forming his prism shield, the metal bending around it.
"You could have killed somebody!" Powerloader yells at mei.
"It's fine, heroes have to risk their lives every day.'' She waves him off walking out to find steven setting the door against the wall.
"They're student's mei! They shouldn't have to be afraid of a bomb going off."
"I needed to test that pink metal, I've never seen anything like it!" she says excitedly and powerloader puts a hand to his face, we're all interested mei, let some of your classmates take a look at it before you nuke it"
"Fine, they can take their turns. I have something more interesting to experiment on… with." she corrects herself and steven feels like he's made a mistake as he's dragged into the room by mei.
"I built something after the sports festival. I got some readings from hacking the school's scanners but this should give me more precise information on your quirk."
"And this is safe?" he asks, looking over his shoulder at Powerloader.
"It may be the safest thing she's ever built, I'll be supervising the entire time so if things start to look wrong well pull you out," he says as she shoves him into the machine closing the glass door.
"Ok, we're going to start," she says and steven can feel the hum of the machinery and the energy passing through him.
"It looks like the gem in your navel is giving off a massive amount of energy." powerloader tells steven as he starts to get the first readings humming.,
"Everything ok on your end?" steven asks after their silence.
"I don't understand half of what I'm seeing, there's more going on inside your body than most with mutant quirks.
"Can you do your pink transformation, the first one where you don't grow?" mei asks and steven hmms, transforming, the screens showing a lot of information.
"You're giving off more power than our scanners can pick up, this has to be where our tests end, kid," Powerloader says shutting down the machine. Waiting a few moments before opening the glass door.
"It'll take weeks to go over what we've gotten from this, far longer till we understand it."
"Now you're going to tell me who invented that metal!" Mei demands and steven thinks about it.
"Momo's the only one who makes it currently, The original creator doesn't make it here."
"Can you tell me where to find the chemical makeup? I'd love to have a new metal to play with." Steven nods, pulling his phone out and scrolling to the photo zooming in on the formula showing it to Mei and Powerloader, the latter of which quickly copying it down as Mei lunges for his phone, steven bubbling it and floating it to the roof.
"Mei, don't try to steal phones!" Powerloader chides.
"But I saw the other stuff on that board! If only for a second, Faster than light space travel! Energy cannons! Stuff I can't even imagine." Steven summons the bubble down sending his phone away, if homeworld tech was going to get out he would be the one to share it.
"All of the blueprints belong to my family, I shared the metal with you because I thought it would be useful. Please don't abuse that."
"She won't," Powerloader promises Giving Mei a look.
"I think it's time for me to go, have a nice day." steven tells the two of them leaving the room and heading towards Nezu's office the door opening for him.
"What brings you into my office today Universe?"
"If someone was to have access to the kinds of technology required to travel to terraform and colonize other planets and they wanted to keep others from getting their hands on them without him knowing how would they go about that?" The smile on Nedzus face tells steven that maybe Nezu wasn't the safest option to bring this to.
