"KATSUKI! GET YOUR BUTT OUT THE DOOR OR YOU'RE GOING TO MISS THE FIRST DAY!"
"I HEARD YOUR THE FIRST TIME OLD HAG! I'M GOIN!"
Damn stupid school uniform with it's tie and tight pants. I let 'em hang down my waist and ditched the stupid tie. Always hated em. Never had to wear one before outside of the old hag dressing me up for some formal event.
One train ride later and I was there. UA High. The giant H-shaped school where I would become the world's greatest hero.
My assigned classroom was 1-A. A huge-ass door opened up into a medium sized classroom, already half full of losers in the same UA uniform. Mostly dudes, a couple girls. My desk was in the last row from the door; I headed over and settled down, getting comfortable.
"DON'T PUT YOUR LEGS ON THE DESK!" A poindexter with glasses and a stick up his butt was standing over me and shouting, gesturing like some kinda maniac. "Isn't that disrespectful towards your classmates?"
"Yeah, right. What school are you from, you two-bit extra?" I asked, rolling my eyes at that uptight weirdo's nerve.
"A private sch- I'm from Somei Junior High. The name's Tenya Iida."
"Somei? Well,a rent you an elite. I'm looking forward to crushing you."
He pulled back, all offended. "What nerve! You want to be a hero?"
I shook my head. What the hell was he on about? Of course I did.
Then he suddenly wasn't looking at me anymore, but rather at the door, like someone important had entered.
Hiding almost behind the door-frame. Like a little mouse.
That. Damn. Nerd.
Glasses went over to start chatting with him, like they already knew each other.
"Midoriya, I must hand it to you. You divined the actual nature of the practical skills exam, didn't you? I was blind to it! And I completely misread you. I hate to admit it, but you were the better candidate."
"Deku…" I muttered to myself. No idea what glasses was going on about. But I wanted to blow his face up. Going on about Deku being some superior candidate, asking me if I even wanted to be a hero? Where did he get off?
"Ah, it's you! The curly haired kid!" said some girl behind Deku. Short girl with a ridiculously round face.
"Glad I found you! You made it, just like Present Mic said! Yay, go you! By the way, that punch was amazing!" she was shouting, pumping her fist in the air. "You pulverized it!" Some real noises, that talk.
Deku was hunched over covering his face and sweating bullets. "No, it's not like that. It was really all thanks to you speaking on my behalf, I…uh…"
Did the damn nerd have no dignity at all? Round Face was asking "How did you know about that?"
I remembered in that moment how he'd stood up to me back at the entrance exam. That pathetic nerd actually put up a fight. There's got to be something else going on here.
Round Face is still gabbing at Deku, who still looks like he's gonna faint. "I wonder if today's the ceremony? Or is it guidance counselor stuff today? Oh, and the teacher, what'll they be like? I'm so anxious, like wow!"
A voice interrupted her from outside the front door. "If you're gonna be hunting for buddies, do it elsewhere."
I looked through her and Deku to see some old dude peering out from inside a sleeping bag.
"This is the hero department," he grumbled out, sucking air through a bag. Then he stepped out of the bag, this shaggy-haired unshaven dude, dressed in black with a huge scarf around his neck.
"Hm, it took you lot 8 seconds to quiet down. Life is short, kids. You're all lacking in common sense."
"So he must be a pro-hero too, huh?" that damn nerd was saying. It took me a second to get what that meant, which made me wanna blow up my desk.
He then went and confirmed it. "I'm your homeroom teacher, Shota Aizawa. Pleasure meeting you." He then held up our gym uniform. "Wear this immediately, and meet up at the PE grounds."
Our homeroom teacher. Curt and to the point. I had to say, I liked his style.
"A quirk apprehension test?!"
The whole class was standing outside in our gym uniforms, watching the old teacher in shock.
Round Face asked "What about the ceremony, and the guidance counseling?"
"If you want to be heroes, you don't have time for that," said Sensei "You all understand the school's reputation for freedom on campus. That freedom goes for us teachers too. The softball pitch, the standing long jump, the 50 meter dash, endurance running, grip strength, sustained sideways jumps, upper body exercise, seated to touch. These are all activities you know from middl school, naturally. Physical tests where you were barred from using your quirks. The country still hasn't gotten around to standardizing those sorts of records, or keeping track of average performance levels. Well, that's negicence on the part of MEXT. Bakugo," he said, suddenly turning to me, "How far could you pitch a softball in middle school?"
"6-7 meters."
"Try using your quirk this time around. As long as you don't exit the circle, anything is fine. Don't hold back."
"Got it," I said, heading into the circle with the softball. Just augment the pitch with some shockwave power, and… "DIE!" I shouted, giving the ball a good burst of momentum. The teacher nodded as his distance measurer beeped.
"Before anything else, one must know what they're capable of," he said, holding it up for everyone to see my score: 705.2 Meters. Nice. "This is a rational metric that will form the basis of your 'hero foundation'.
"Awesome!" cheered a girl with pink skin and raccoon eyes, clapping her hands together. "That looks so fun!"
Sensei looked over at her with a frown. "It looks like fun, you say? So you were planning to spend your three years here having a good old time? What happened to becoming heroes? All right, then. In that case, the student who ranks last in total points will be judged hopeless and instantly expelled. Our freedom means we dispense with students as we please. "Welcome to the Hero Department."
Round face was protesting again. "This is our first day! Even if it wasn't, that's just unfair!"
"Natural disasters, massive accidents, ego-mad villains…all kinds of calamities can happen when we least expect them. The world is full of unfairness. It's our jobs as heroes to reverse it all, and restore reason. If you were counting on a friendly chat at the local McDonald's after school, that's too bad. From now on, for the next three years, all you can expect from life at UA is one hardship after the next. This is 'plus ultra'. I expect you to overcome these trials and climb to the top. Now then, that was the demonstration. Time to step up to the plate."
I found myself grinning like crazy. From the sounds of it, this would prove to those idiots that I was the one who deserved to be here, and without a quirk, it was pretty clear Deku would come in last place and get expelled. Finally, this was starting to feel more like the UA I'd expected.
I could still throw that ball farther, though.
First up, the 5 meter Dash. I went at the same time as Deku and blasted my way through with blast speed turbo, making it in at 4.13 seconds. Just as i thought, if I use both hands, it disperse the power. Looking back, then, What about Deku? There he was, paying and out of breath, at 7.02 seconds. Absolutely pathetic score. No better than ever.
And so it kept going. Every challenge, I did great, surpassing what was needed, and Deku screwed up. Deku got nothing. Deku did nothing. Every single time he flopped, and looked terrified, like he knew full well he wasn't supposed to be here. And yet against all odds he was. Not for long, though, from the looks of it.
Finally, the ball toss. Glasses was asking, "Midoriya's not doing too well, is he?"
"Of course not!" I told him, "he's a quirkless loser!"
"Quirkless?" said glasses, looking at me like I'd lost my mind. "Didn't you hear what he did at the entrance exam?"
"Huh?" I asked. What was he talking about? Round Face had said something like that too, like Deku'd punched something. But here he was now, throwing the ball barely 46 meters, screwing up as usual…and they looked surprised? Sensei was talking to him, looked like he was laying into him. And Glasses and Round Face were still standing there looking confused as hell. The teacher let Deku go to finish the second turn.
"What was that, some kind of pep talk?" Glasses was askin'. "He's gonna get expelled for sure," I said, watching Deku just standing there like he had no idea what to do. He wound up for the pitch again, and suddenly there was that look on his face again…that expression like suddenly nothing was gonna stop him.
The ball burst out of his hand and blasted into the air with a resounding bang, blowing all of us away like a wind-based explosion, and blasted off into nowhere faster and further than even my own had gone.
…!
Next to me, the extras were all cheering and shouting like this made some kinda sense. Like this wasn't some kinda aberration. what the fuck. Quirks manifest at age 4, at the latest. It's impossible. And yet…He said he 'won it?" I remembered his face, what he'd said, all he'd done. How he was acting like he'd somehow earned his place, like a prize in a raffle?
"What is this, Deku!?" I charged ahead, ready to fight him head to head to get the answer. "Explain, now, you bastard!"
Suddenly, a firm wire was wrapped around my head, my body, pulling me back and making it impossible for me to move, while my quirk suddenly stopped working at all.
"Shit, this cloth, I can't…" The teacher was standing over me, restraining me like some kinda animal on a leash. The wires were his damn scarf.
"It's a capture weapon, a steel wire alloy woven with carbon nano fibers. Don't make me use my quirk so much. It gives me serious dry-eye." Oh, yeah, the teacher. A pro hero named Eraserhead, or Shota Aizawa. Able to erase people's quirks by looking at 'em.
Teach let me go, looked bored. "We're wasting time. Prepare for the next trial.
Deku headed over to Round Face, who was looking all worried about him. I watched him. Thinking back, trying to understand. Up until just now, you were just another pebble on the road.
The two of us, as kids, headed through the woods together to go catch bugs. "I'm jealous, your quirk is so cool, Kacchan! I hope mine comes in soon too!"
"I told you," I said to him, "No matter what kinda quirk you get, Deku, it'll never measure up to mine."
Later on, the teacher told us he wasn't really kicking anyone out. Deku came in last, like I'd thought. But what did that matter? He wasn't going anywhere. He was still here. Still here and here to stay.
He shoulda been nothing more than a pebble in my path…
