Midoriya did his best to keep up his charade to his mother when Gojo came to pick him up. As far as she was concerned, he was getting ready to walk on the path of becoming a Hero like he always wanted, so all he had to do was put every imagining of that scenario into effect there. He was able to leave his apartment in peace thanks to that, never letting it slip that he was probably never going to see her again.
The reality of his situation hitting him once more kept him silent through most of the ride to Tokyo, no matter how much Gojo kept prodding him for some kind of reaction. Soon enough, however, they had arrived at a mountain in Tokyo, and after hiking up that mountain for about twenty minutes, they had arrived at a forest filled with a wide assortment of Buddhist temples and gates that, according to Gojo, were the campus grounds.
Much to Midoriya's own surprise, he managed to get all the way there before collapsing from exhaustion.
"Did you mean to do that?" Gojo asked.
"No, no I didn't," Midoriya said through haggard breaths.
"God, what a wimpy vessel you are. Might as well jump off a cliff the next time I take over." Midoriya froze when he suddenly heard Sukuna's voice, despite still being in control of himself. Midoriya shifted his eye a bit to see a mouth protruding from his cheek. Sukuna had been doing that lately, and he didn't like it, so just like always, he slammed a hand over his mouth.
"Man, what a weird body you got there," Gojo said.
"I'm not happy about it, either, but it'll still do for killing you, one day," Sukuna said, his mouth now appearing on the back of Midoriya's hand; he didn't know he could do that, but one hit to his wrist finally made the mouth go away.
"It's so cute that he thinks he could beat me. Don't you think so, Izuku?" Gojo asked. He helped Midoriya back onto his feet and gave him a bottle of water.
"Should I?" Midoriya asked after downing half of the bottle. "Didn't you say that the best sorcerers in the world at the time when jujutsu was at its peak only barely beat him?"
"Yeah, but I'm tougher than all of them. Sukuna'd probably rough me up a little if he were at full power, but I'd still win, 'cause no one's tougher than me."
"Even All Might?" The confidence with which Gojo spoke was nearly enough for Midoriya to take him at his word, but he wouldn't be Izuku Midoriya if he didn't even try and maintain the idea of All Might being the greatest.
"Yeah, but that's not really fair, since I kind of cheat. I'm basically the only sorcerer All Might couldn't wipe the floor with, and if he had even a yoctogram of curse energy, the same would be true for curses." It wasn't the answer he was hoping for, but Midoriya could live with that, and he was in a bit of a good mood as Gojo led him into one of the buildings.
"Satoru! You're late by eight minutes!" That good mood fell apart the second Midoriya saw him and Gojo being yelled at by an older man wearing sunglasses surrounded by a large assortment of plushies; it was less the yelling and more the dichotomy of it all that messed him up. "You're late, but not so late that it's worth getting upset about, and that's what really pisses me off."
"That's definitely a you-problem, man," Gojo said. "Izuku, this is my old buddy, principal Yaga. Should have mentioned this earlier, but you gotta interview with him before you're actually allowed to go to school here."
"Wait, what? I-Is he gonna kill me if I fail, then?" Midoriya asked.
"I guess we'll find out!" Midoriya hated that he smiled as he said that. There wasn't anything he could do about it, though, so he turned to principal Yaga to introduce himself.
"M-My name is Izuku Midoriya! I wanted to be a Hero, but I'll be going here, instead! Nice to meet you!" Midoriya said with a bow.
"Why are you here?" Yaga asked. He didn't even look up at him, his face locked on the stitching of one of the plushies.
Midoriya raised his head and asked, "For an interview?"
"I mean this school, specifically."
"To learn how to be a sorcerer?"
"And then? What do you plan on doing after that?"
"What do I—I'm going to help gather up Sukuna's fingers, obviously! It's dangerous to leave them alone, so I want to help get rid of them!"
"Why aren't you trying to become a doctor?" Yaga's question left him feeling dumbfounded. "Every year, eight million people die from smoking. In terms of pure numbers, that's a far more serious issue than curses, so why aren't you becoming a doctor?"
"Um—"
"About a million and a half people die in car accidents every year, so you could also do a lot by becoming a police officer, or even just a crossing guard, so why not do that?"
"I mean—"
"Hell, global warming is going to kill all of us one day, so being an environmentalist could let you save more lives than anything. There are far more things in the world people are dying from than curses, so why are curses the only thing that's inexcusable to you?"
"I-I don't know! It's not like I have a choice in being involved with all of this! And what about you? It's not like you're doing any of that stuff!"
"That's because I already know what's right for me, but what about you? Hell, you said you wanted to be a Hero, so you're just giving up on that dream, then?" Midoriya could have sworn he saw the doll principal Yaga was holding twitch, but he was more occupied with his words. Granted, he had been saying a lot for Midoriya to mull over, but him talking about Midoriya being a Hero was sitting with him more than anything else.
"Being a doctor or a crossing guard or all of those other things, it's not the same as a Hero. Sure, they all help people, but a Hero is different because I know for a fact that not just anyone can be a Hero. I can't, after all."
"If you're going to blame Sukuna for that—"
"I'm not. Even if he wasn't here, I don't know if I could have become a Hero. I'm weak, I'm uncoordinated, and to top it all off, I'm Quirkless; some of that is on me, but some of it I couldn't do anything about. But even with all of that, I still wanted to be a Hero because I wanted to be someone who could help save people when they're in trouble in a way that most people can't. Destroying Sukuna will do that in its own way, so if doing that is the closest I'll ever get to becoming a Hero, then I'm going to do it. It doesn't matter if the people who die from curses is only a tenth, a hundredth, or even a millionth of the people who die from something else; a true Hero can die happy knowing that they've saved just one life, and so can I."
Midoriya did his best to keep himself from shaking, but he still let out a few slight vibrations. He hoped principal Yaga wouldn't notice, but what little he could garner about the man made that unlikely.
"And I was looking forward to beating the crap out of you, too," principal Yaga said; Midoriya didn't know how to take that. "Satoru, take him to the dorm and go over security rules with him."
"What? So I—"
"You pass. Starting this spring, you're a student at Jujutsu High!" Midoriya thanked principal Yaga with a smile and a cheerful thanks. There was no reason for him to feel so ecstatic about it since all it meant was that he was able to delay his inevitable death a little longer, but he couldn't help himself.
It was one of the only times he had ever managed to stand his ground and not have it blow up in his face.
The first thing Yuji thought about when he got dressed for school was that his uniform looked really good on him. While Yuji ate his breakfast, the biggest thing to come to mind was that his uniform looked really good on him. As he jogged three kilometers to school while listening to songs by 9mm Parabellum Bullet, he kept thinking that his uniform looked really good on him.
Yuji really liked how his uniform looked on him. He had never given much thought to a uniform before, but the clean-cut style and texture of his high school uniform was too good for him to ignore. It really helped make it sink in that he was going to a school as fancy as U.A., and he could get behind all of that.
After spending three minutes jogging three kilometers, Yuji finally arrived at U.A. The school still looked as large and impressive as ever, and even the door to his classroom was incredibly large. It was probably in case they ever got a student whose Quirk made them giant-sized, Yuji thought, and now he was wondering what it would be like if he were a giant. Would he be the kind of giant that lived atop a beanstalk, or the kind that would be brothers with Chris Hemsworth? He didn't want to be the kind that ate people, though, he was certain of that.
Wait, stop, this is stupid and not what I'm supposed to be doing, Yuji thought. I Gotta go in and make a good impression on the people I'm gonna spend the next three years with. Shouldn't be too hard, I'm pretty sure.
When Yuji opened the door and stepped into class 1-A, the first thing he was confronted with was two kids yelling about how one of them, a white-haired boy with a diagonal scar running down his face and underneath his shirt, wouldn't take his feet off of his desk.
Yeah, this might be a little hard.
"Ah, it's you!" One of the kids, a blue-haired boy with glasses and a rather polite speech pattern, moved away from the diagonally-scarred boy and marched over to Yuji. "Hello, my name is Tenya Iida from Soumei Junior High—"
"Yeah, I just hear you say all of that. Yuji Itadori, by the way," Yuji said.
"Itadori-kun, I'm so glad that you're in this class, for it gives me the chance to properly congratulate you," Iida said.
"For what, exactly?"
"For being able to perceive the true nature of the exam, of course! Its true purpose was to evaluate how well he could perform all aspects of heroism, not just defeating our enemies, and the fact that you were the only one to go after the giant Villain, despite it not having any value, showed that you were the only one to understand that! I'm ashamed of myself for not having the same level of intuition as you!"
"Hey, it's fine, don't beat yourself up over it." Yuji wanted to tell him that he had no idea that there was more to the test than just destroying robots and how he was just as surprised that he got points for saving that rosy-cheeked girl, but the mood didn't seem right for it.
"Oh! You're the pink-haired boy! It's so nice to see you again!" Speak of the devil, said rosy-cheeked just happened to enter the classroom at that moment.
"Hey, nice to see you, too," Yuji said. "Recovery Girl fixed your leg up right, right?"
"Yeah, never better! Glad it's the same with your arm!" He had almost forgotten about that in favor of asking about her condition.
"If you're looking for a place to be buddy-buddy with people, go somewhere else. This class is for people looking to become Heroes." Yuji didn't know who said that, but he discovered the source of the statement when he looked behind the rosy-cheeked girl: some sort of giant worm with a human face slithering in the hallway.
"Um—"
"Move," the worm said. Yuji did just that and the worm slithered into the classroom, stood up at the front of the room, and shed its skin. At that moment, Yuji realized that the worm was actually a scruffy man dressed in all black, save for the scarf-like object around his neck, who had just crawled out of a large sleeping bag. "I'm Shouta Aizawa, your homeroom teacher for the year. Nice to meet you, I guess. Anyway, change into your gym clothes and go outside to the track field."
Aizawa stepped out of the classroom before anyone had a chance to ask him anything about anything.
"Ah, I forgot my lunch," Yuji said. "They give free lunch here, right? Ah, but today's a half-day, so we're not even gonna have lunch. I guess that works out, then."
Yuji and his classmates all got dressed in their gym clothes and met Aizawa outside on the track field where they were soon informed of what they would be doing: a Quirk apprehension test. Some of his classmates were confused by the idea, but Aizawa saying he could do whatever he wanted as a teacher justified it enough for Yuji, though he did wonder what was to be gained by having them just do a lot of basic exercises when a fight would work better.
"Itadori, you got first in the entrance exam, so we'll start with you," Aizawa said, eliciting a snarl from the diagonally-scarred boy, for some reason. "How far could you throw a softball in junior high?"
"A hundred and fifty meters," Yuji said.
"I meant without your Quirk."
"A hundred and fifty meters."
Aizawa glared at Yuji for a moment before he said, "This is your first day, so you don't know any better, but do not be a smartass with me."
"I'm not! That's how far I could do it, honest!" Aizawa sighed and tossed Yuji a softball without a word. His intention was clear as day, so Yuji tossed the ball out into the field with all of his might.
After it hit the ground, Aizawa held up a tablet that displayed a figure of 200.66 meters; as many of his classmates voiced their astonishment, Yuji mused about how much his training with All Might had paid off for him.
"Okay, so you're not a liar. My bad," Aizawa said. He tossed him another ball and said, "Now do it with your Quirk." Yuji nodded and activated One for All. His vision was tinted pink as he threw the ball again, his new throw being like a missile being launched into the sky. It took a few moments for it to land, and according to Aizawa, it flew a kilometer and a half.
"Whoa, are you serious? That's awesome!" shouted a boy with spiky teeth and spiky red hair. Yuji let out a sheepish laugh as more people expressed their amazement. He wasn't trying to get a big head or anything, but it was still a bit of fun to have people flock to him for something he was actually good at.
"By the way, whoever gets last place in this test is expelled. Have fun with that." Yuji did not know how that would be possible.
Midoriya's dorm room was at least twice as big as his old room. As he was unpacking the luggage he had sent to Gojo the day before, a thought came to mind: he had so much room for more All Might merchandise. It could be a waste of both space and money, but if he only had so much time left in the world, then there was no reason to not have at least a little bit of fun with it.
Just as he was starting to get into a good mood with his good groove, Midoriya found a package he didn't know existed that was signed by his mother. Midoriya opened it up to find a green jumpsuit with a mask that had ears and a mouthguard that vaguely resembled All Might. He wasn't sure what it was supposed to be at first, but as he held it up and felt its material, he recognized the stitchwork from years of having his clothes patched up and getting handmade scarves and socks for his birthday and Christmas; it was a Hero costume his mother had made for him with her own two hands.
She even went this far to show that she's on my side, Midoriya thought. Mom, you must have been so happy for me. You must have been so proud that I got a chance to follow my dream, so happy that you got to see me off as I stepped onto the path I wanted, but you don't even know that I, that I— Midoriya's thoughts fell apart into nothingness as he wrapped his arms around the costume, the act bringing him just a little bit closer to his mother, if only in a spiritual sense.
The tender moment was interrupted when Midoriya suddenly saw a face in the reflection of the balcony door and jumped back in shock.
"Apologies. Was I intruding on an emotional moment of some sort?" Midoriya jumped back again, the second jump now putting him close to where he originally was, as he came face-to-face with a girl in a white coat whose gray bangs covered her left eye and whose arms were bent like a ghost or a zombie. The fact that she appeared out of nowhere was one thing, but the fact that she was a girl, something Midoriya had far too little experience dealing with, made it even worse. "Midoriya-kun, was it? I apologize if I was being rude just now, especially since this is our first meeting."
O-Oh my God! Midoriya thought. I can't believe it! I'm doing it! I'm having a conversation with a girl! That was not true.
"Did you make that costume yourself? I must say, I admire the work put into it. There's a definite charm to the design that you don't see in a lot of professional costumes."
"T-T-Thank you! My mom made it, but still, thank you!" Midoriya said, finally committing to his assertion of talking to a girl. "Wait, how did you know my name, um—"
"Reiko Yanagi," Yanagi said. "As for how I was made aware of your name, I know that Izuku Midoriya is the only other incoming freshman student on campus right now aside from myself and Fushiguro-kun, so that must be you, correct?"
"Y-Yeah, I guess that's right. And I'm guessing you're talking about Megumi when you say 'Fushiguro-kun', right? That's good to know. I felt kind of weird calling him by his first name, especially since—" A thought occurred to him that he had to act on. "Um, Yanagi-san, do you know about, well—"
"That you are the vessel for Ryomen Sukuna, the King of Curses? All of us were made aware of it the day that Gojo-san took you in." That made sense. Midoriya understood why they would all know about it, but a part of him wished that that wouldn't be the case. "My apologies, Midoriya-kun. I am certain that eating Sukuna's finger was an exhilarating taste sensation, but everything beyond that is something no one should have to deal with, especially people our age. It is truly unfortunate that you have to deal with this."
"T-Thank you, Yanagi-san," Midoriya said. He went out of his way to not think too hard about Yanagi talking about how Sukuna's finger must have tasted good, but it was the first time anyone made an effort to comfort him on what he was going through, so everything else was nice to think about.
"Now, that being said, there was another reason for why I came to your room. Right now, our seniors are holding a party in the lounge. It is open to all students on campus, so would you like to attend?"
"What? A party? Me? I-I don't really do well at parties, mostly because I never get invited to them—" Before Midoriya could keep making excuses, he was suddenly lifted into the air as Yanagi raised one of her hands in his direction.
"It would be most ideal for you to socialize. Fushiguro-kun already refuses to do so, and I do not wish for you to be like him," Yanagi said. She stepped out into the hall and Midoriya floated in the air behind her with every step.
Once again, the idea of choice was ripped out of his hands.
Yanagi finally set Midoriya down atop a large couch some three minutes or so after telekinetically dragging him out of his room. Just as he was beginning the process of getting off the couch and running back to his room, there was a panda in his face, and he instead decided to scream.
"What, is there something on my face?" Midoriya screamed even louder as the panda spoke.
"Takuan, takuan." A white-haired boy with a scarf around his face was speaking utter gibberish as Midoriya kept loudly reacting to the talking panda.
"Oh my God, can you—Maki, just shut him up, already!" A dark-haired man with a fur coat and a pencil-thin mustache addressed a muscular girl with glasses and a ponytail, and said girl proceeded to punch Midoriya in the face.
"You feel like shutting up now?" Maki asked. Midoriya, knowing what was in his best interests, nodded his head. "Good. Reiko, since you're the one who's gonna be spending the most time with him, you're probably gonna need to learn how to do that on command." Yanagi gave a thumbs up, and Midoriya wasn't too happy about that. "So, you're the kid Sukuna's made a vessel out of, eh? Pretty scrawny, all things considered. I bet I could kick your ass with both hands tied behind my back."
"If you're looking to get tied up, I can help with that. Hope you're ready for what comes afterward, though," Sukuna said, his mouth manifesting on Midoriya's face for a moment and his tongue licking his cheek.
"Please don't hit me again," Midoriya said.
"Just this once, and only because it's your first day," Maki said.
"Okay guys, let's cut him a little break now, please?" The one who asked that was a boy in a white jacket with bags under his eyes and a sword tied to his back. Midoriya let out an internal gasp as he thought of something, but he didn't want to get carried away just yet.
"Whatever." Maki huffed and stepped away from Midoriya, but still remained within arm's length, probably in case she felt like hitting him again.
"So that's Maki Zenin," the tired-looking boy said. "You should call her by her first name, don't ask why because she doesn't like you enough to tell you yet, and even though she punched you, she's actually really nice and fun when you get to know her." Maki mumbled something under her breath and turned away from them. "This guy with the scarf is Toge Inumaki. He only speaks in onigiri ingredients, but you can get the gist of what he means if you hang around him long enough." Inumaki said something about salmon, and Midoriya had to assume that was an agreement. "This is Panda." Panda the panda gave a big wave with a big smile. "Over here in the coat is Kinji Hakari-senpai."
Wait, is that it? Is that all you're saying about the panda? Midoriya thought.
"Hakari-senpai's three favorite things in the world are passion, money, and his boyfriend, who's out getting food for the party right now."
"Don't forget that you're all paying me back by the end of the day," Hakari said. Midoriya looked at Hakari and started thinking that he looked oddly familiar, but the thought left his mind when Hakari pointed at Midoriya and said, "That goes for you, too!"
I didn't even know I'd be at a party!
"Just ignore him, I'll take care of it," the tired-looking boy said. "And I'm Yuta Okkotsu. This is definitely an invasion of privacy, but we all know the gist about why you're here and even a little bit of your personal life."
"Did Gojo-san do that?" Midoriya asked.
"I mean, if you have to ask." He wished he didn't have to. "Anyway, just like you, I was living a normal life before a curse upended all of it and dragged me into this life, and I had to go along with it because people would get hurt if I didn't." Okkotsu let out a small laugh before saying, "I also wanted to become a Hero before I got mixed up in all of this. Help out people who needed it, do some good for the world, stuff like that. I don't know if I would have been good at it, or if I even could have done it at all, but it was still a dream I would have liked to follow. I guess this is a long-winded way of me saying that I sort of understand what you're going through, so I know that as bad as it is, it can be better than you think, so please don't lose faith in everything just yet."
Midoriya had the same thought that appeared in his head earlier, and now he was certain of it. He was certain that it was a thought worth having, and because of that, he let a stream of tears shoot out of his eyes.
"W-Whoa! What's wrong?" Okkotsu asked.
"Shit, did Maki mess you up that bad? Well, she is a gorilla in human skin, after all," Hakari said.
"Hey, fuck you," Maki said, the statement coupled with her flipping him off.
"No, it's not that, it's just that Okkotsu-senpai's the only person I've met through all of this who's been both nice and normal!" Midoriya cried as he wiped his tears on his sleeve.
"Hey, that's not nice! Maki can't help being a weirdo!" Panda said. Inumaki said something about salmon, and Maki looked like she was doing the calculations to figure out how to perfectly drop kick the both of them.
"I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be rude, but I don't want to lie, either! I'm just—It's been a really rough week for me, but knowing that I can have someone like Okkotsu-senpai helping me means a lot!" When Midoriya wiped away more tears, he saw Okkotsu fidgeting about and doing his best to not look Midoriya in the eye.
"I'm moving overseas, tomorrow." Okkotsu's statement did a lot to explain all of that.
"W-What?"
"Yeah. I'm going to America, then Africa, and then I'll just kind of be bouncing around the world for a while," Okkotsu said.
"This party is meant to serve as a farewell to Okkotsu-senpai. I suppose it was a miscalculation on my part to not properly relay that to you," Yanagi said. And with that, Midoriya's good mood fell apart, once more.
"I-It's okay! I'm only going to be gone a year at most, and you'll probably still be alive by then! No, wait." It broke apart even more than before. "Um, Maki-san! Maki-san's gonna be here, so you'll be okay! I know she might seem kind of mean, but once you get to know her, she's one of the nicest and most helpful people you'll ever meet! You couldn't be in better hands!"
"Okay, we get it, just shut up!" Maki shouted. Maki's face looked red, and Panda was smirking up until Maki glared at him. "God, where is the food? I want people to be eating so people can stop talking, already!"
As if on a cue, a girl with a gold stripe in her black hair, a face covered in piercings, and a puffy crop top that exposed a good deal of her midsection stepped into the lounge with a pile of pizza and fried chicken in her arms, slamming them down on a coffee table before saying, "Pizza time."
"You're late. I'm not paying for those," Hakari said with a smile.
"Sorry I'm late, but there was this squirrel eating a peanut outside, and it looked super cute with its cheeks puffed out like a balloon and what was I supposed to do, not take a thousand pictures of it?" the pierced girl asked. The more Midoriya looked at her, the more she started to seem rather familiar.
"I hope it wasn't cuter than me."
"You know it wasn't, Kin-chan. Close second, though." The pierced girl skipped over to Hakari and kissed him on the lips. Everyone was groaning and telling them to get a room, and through all of that, Midoriya's eyes widened as a sudden realization hit him.
"Hey, what's that kid staring at?" the pierced girl asked.
"Well, Yuta did say that Kinji had a boyfriend, Kirara, so…" Maki trailed off from that and Kirara looked ready to pop a blood vessel.
"What? You got a problem, kid?" Kirara asked. "What year do you think this is? I'm allowed to be who I am on the inside even if I don't look it on the outside, you know! I swear to God, I am not afraid to cancel you! Twitter, Instagram, Myspace, Spacebattles, Ask Jeeves, you name it, where do you—"
"Sparkling Majesty!" Kirara's ranting came to a halt as everyone looked at Midoriya as if he had sprouted a second head.
"Sparkling what?" Okkotsu asked.
"That's why I thought you looked familiar! You're Kirara Hoshi, AKA the Dashingly Debonair Hero, Sparkling Majesty! You're just an intern for the Kurama Tengu Hero, Soujoubou, but you've managed to arrest over thirty Villains, and you were a major player in the Evil Christmas incident last year, too!"
"That's why you were staring at Kirara?" Maki asked.
"Of course! He's amazing!" Maki let out an "Eh", but that wasn't enough to mess with Midoriya's newfound excitement over meeting a real Hero in the flesh.
"Aw, I've got a fan! Yay!" Not even the awkwardness he felt when Hoshi hugged him and pressed his bare stomach against his head was enough to take him out of his good mood. "To think I even thought about hating an adorable little thing like you! Say, Kin-chan, which sounds better to you? 'Icchan' or 'Midoricchi'? Never mind, I thought of Icchan first, so Icchan, it is!"
"And Kin-chan, I mean Hakari-senpai!" Midoriya said as he squirmed out of Hoshi's grip. "You're another intern for Soujoubou! The Balance Hero, Anubisman! You also did a lot on Evil Christmas, and you're the one who beat Moonfish and stopped him from cannibalizing that school bus full of orphans last summer! I must have watched the recording of that over a hundred times!"'
"Yeah, I am pretty great, aren't I? Thanks for reminding us of what we already know!" Hakari laughed as he slapped Midoriya on the back so hard that he almost fell over.
"Great. Now we have three people who actually give a crap about Hero stuff," Maki said while rolling her eyes.
"And there should be a hell of a lot more, but we're a good enough start!" Hakari said. "Okay, let's get this party started, already! Inumaki, get the stuff out. Midoriya, don't go too hard on the KFC, it's mostly here as a Gojo deterrent." Before Midoriya could ask what that meant, he watched a giant scroll appear behind Inumaki that spat out paper plates and bottles of imported soda out onto the table.
"Inumaki-senpai, is that your curse technique? I guess they don't all look as creepy as I thought they did," Midoriya said.
"Fish flakes," Inumaki said. He shook his head, so Midoriya assumed that it wasn't his curse technique.
"Wait, but if it's not that, then—"
"It's his Quirk," Okkotsu interjected.
"H-His Quirk? He has a Quirk? Sorcerers can have Quirks? I had just assumed that it was one or the other, either you have a Quirk or you have curse energy, but this changes everything I was thinking about curse energy. From what I understand, curse energy is mostly internal, so if it's a part of you, that means it can probably be integrated with a person's Quirk. Imbuing a Quirk with curse energy is probably easy enough, but could you use curse energy to strengthen a Quirk in a manner similar to the Trigger drug? What about fusing your Quirk with your curse technique? Is that possible? Oh, wait! Gojo-san said he's a Hero, so how many Heroes are actually sorcerers just passing their curse techniques off as Quirks?"
"Your loquaciousness is quite astounding, Midoriya-kun," Yanagi said. The second Midoriya was snapped back to reality, his face went red and he felt like dying again.
"Sorry! I just—I get really excited about Quirks." Hakari laughed at that, for whatever reason. "So Panda-senpai, are you a human with a panda Quirk, or are you a panda with a Quirk that gives you human intelligence?"
"I'd like to think I'm more than just the sum of my parts, thank you very much," Panda said with a huff. That was important, yes, but Midoriya still wanted to know what those parts were and the implications of them.
"Okay, enough of all of this. Let's get this party started!" Hoshi said. Hoshi pointed his finger at the ceiling like a gun and fired a pink orb of light from it. The orb stuck itself to the ceiling and started flashing lights around the lounge like they were at a disco. In spite of the atmosphere he had tried to set up, no one was dancing around except for Panda and Hoshi, but Midoriya could feel a definite lightness in the atmosphere, and he even had a bit of a laugh when he saw Yanagi stack three slices of pizza on top of each other and shove them into her mouth.
Later that day, Hoshi and Hakari gave Midoriya autographed photos of them as Sparkling Majesty and Anubisman; it was odd that Hakari's looked like a mugshot, but he was happy to have an autographed picture of a Hero, either way.
At the very least, it was good to know that there were some decent people he could be around.
Overall, Yuji's first day of school was off to a rather boring start. Aizawa suddenly throwing them into a do-or-die exam added a bit of exciting, albeit unwanted, tension, but it was hard to get invested in it when it was just exercises that he barely even needed his Quirk for.
Soon enough, the test came to an end, and Yuji took first place, much to his lack of surprise and a lot of people's amazement.
"Wow, first place! Congratulations, Itadori-kun!" said the rosy-cheeked girl, whose name Yuji now knew to be Ochaco Uraraka.
"Yes, you've done a splendid job, Itadori-kun. Congratulations," Iida said.
"Dude, that was awesome!" Before Yuji could offer a sheepish "Thanks," the guy with the spiky red hair said that while pumping his fist in the air next to Yuji; Yuji remembered his name was Eijiro Kirishima. "You blew through that whole test like it was nothing, and you barely even needed your Quirk! Talk about manly!"
"Yeah, how'd you get so tough, anyway?" All of a sudden, there was a pink-skinned, pink-haired girl with black sclera and antennae in front of him; Mina Ashido, if he was remembering right.
"Me? Um, I don't really do much," Yuji said. "I did work out, like, all day yesterday, though. I also do a lot of push-ups and sit-ups, and I drink plenty of juice, and I also do a lot of crunches and pull-ups and drink plenty of milk."
"Seriously? That can't be it. How could that be all you do when you're casually breaking Olympic records left and right?" Uraraka asked.
"Beats me. I don't get it now any more than I did in junior high, but I'm not complaining." As Yuji thought about how little he had pondered his natural strength over the years, he watched Kirishima gain an excited look on his face and Ashido gain a surprised look on hers.
"Holy crap, I just got it!" Kirishima said. "I thought your name sounded familiar, and all that stuff about junior high and drinking juice—You're the Tiger of Manda Junior High! The toughest guy in the whole damn region who always has crazy excuses for why he's so strong!" Yuji didn't see how they were crazy when they were the truth.
"Egads! You're that Yuji Itadori?" Iida asked. "Well, you're a changed person now, but such a notorious delinquent being our classmate is still quite the shock."
"Hey, I wasn't a delinquent!" Yuji said.
"You sure about that? I heard you once beat up thirty guys in ten minutes and threw one of them so hard he went right through a tree!" Ashido said. Uraraka and Iida looked aghast at all of that, and off in the short distance, Yuji could see the diagonally-scarred boy, Katsuki Bakugou, scowling at every word.
"They started it, so enough with the slander!"
"Hey, I didn't mean it like that. I think it's cool when a guy knows how to be tough and isn't afraid to show it." Kirishima nodded his head with great fervor.
"Look, it's not like I'm super happy about all of that," Yuji said. "Sometimes I'd get into a fight with someone when someone was getting bullied, and then they'd call in their boys or their girls for help getting back at me, and it's not like I could just take that lying down, especially when they had Quirks and I didn't." Yuji stared at everyone for a second before quickly adding, "By comparison, I mean. Because they all had flashy stuff, and all I had was Tandava. Yeah, that's it."
"Well, Itadori-kun, even if you didn't like it, I'm happy that you were just trying to help people. I guess you were acting like a Hero even before you got into U.A.!" Uraraka said.
"Yeah, I guess. Speaking of U.A. and being in it, though…" Yuji turned his head to look at Minoru Mineta, an incredibly short boy with purple balls for hair. He was currently curled up in a ball bawling his eyes out because he ended up in last place, meaning that he would end up getting expelled.
"By the way, I was lying about expelling someone." Aizawa's sudden declaration summoned a silence that washed over everyone. "It was a logical ruse to draw out your maximum potential. Surprised, aren't you?" The silence was broken with nearly everyone screaming in shock in various ways. Mineta, specifically, was crying tears of joy as he celebrated his continuing education.
"Oh, so he was lying. That makes sense. It's not like most of this stuff could even work with most of our Quirks, anyway." Yuji was one of the people who didn't react that way.
"Yes, exactly. Good to know that I wasn't the only one who could see that." Another person who didn't react that way was Momo Yaoyorozu, a smart-looking girl in a ponytail whose smile told Yuji that she probably thought he was smarter than he actually was. Yuji noted that if her butt was a little bigger, then she'd be his ideal woman, at least on a surface level, but he did his best not to make it obvious.
Mineta giving him a thumbs up in the distance made him question his success, but Yaoyorozu wasn't saying anything, so he wanted to believe he was in the clear.
With the first day being a half-day, school was more or less done after the test finished and Aizawa went over the school curriculum with everyone. Yuji made plans to hang out in town with Uraraka and Iida, and somehow Kirishima had wormed his way into all of that. The more the merrier, Yuji supposed, but before all of that, he had to go to the bathroom.
Yuji whistled a jaunty tune as he absentmindedly stepped into the first-floor bathroom, but his mouth went silent upon the sight of three kids slowly lowering a boy's face into a urinal.
"I'm not sure whether or not I want this to just be a school tradition," Yuji said. The three kids pulled the boy away from the urinal and lifted his head up. Dark hair that looked like it was made of tentacles was covering his left eye, and while Yuji didn't get a good look at it, he could have sworn he saw a burn mark on his forehead.
"Oh, please, don't mind us," said a tall boy with thin eyebrows and a smarmy look on his face. "We're just having a little fun with our pal Yoshino here. Nothing for you to get worked up over."
"He doesn't look like he's having fun, though."
"That's just because he's a little shy, but he's having a blast! Aren't you, Yoshino?" Yoshino's lip quivered before he nodded his head. "See? We're all friends here, just ribbing and screwing with each other a little. Guy stuff, you know?"
"I know about that, but this looks more like bullying." The smarmy boy stopped smiling as he threw Yoshino against a wall and stepped in front of Yuji.
"You know, this really doesn't concern you, Mr. Wannabe Hero." Yuji looked at their uniforms and saw that they were all in General Studies. "I bet it's super easy and barely an inconvenience for someone on your path to just assume that there's a problem for you to solve, but that's just not how life works, you know?"
"Yeah, I know. Don't put words in my—"
"Sometimes things just aren't worth your time, and they sure as hell aren't worth forcing your pretty little, out-of-touch ideals on, so it's probably in your best interest to butt out and mind your own business."
"Yeah, maybe. I do have to use the bathroom, though."
"Can't you take a hint? You need to leave before things get way too complicated." What appeared to be bits of string started poking out of the smarmy boy's shoulder.
"Let me just wash my hands first. They're covered in shit, see?" Yuji held his hands up in front of the smarmy boy.
"Huh? They look clean to—" The smarmy boy was cut off by Yuji punching him in the face and sending him crashing into the floor.
"Well, now they're covered in shit." And blood, as it turned out. Now he actually did have to wash his hands.
""Ito!"" the other two bullies shouted. Ito picked himself up and glared at Yuji as blood dripped down a broken nose.
"Well, isn't that just like a Hero? You can't take 'No' for an answer, and when that's all you're given, you just try and brute force your way into being right," Ito said.
"What? That's not what's going on, you're just an asshole," Yuji said.
"This isn't over, Mr. Wannabe Hero." Ito, completely ignoring what Yuji was saying, stomped past Yuji with the other bullies in tow.
"I mean, you're leaving, so it feels like—" The bathroom door quickly opened and just as quickly shut. "Okay, then."
"Why did you do that?" Yuji spun his head around to look at Yoshino, whose face was a mixture of sadness and anger. "This wasn't your problem. You had no right butting in."
"That's what people keep saying, but I couldn't just leave you alone while they were picking on you," Yuji said.
"Yeah, and you did a great job of painting an even bigger target on my back," Yoshino said. Before Yuji could ask what he meant, Yoshino said, "Ito and the rest of them are gonna want to get back at you, but they know they're too pathetic to take you on, so who do you think they're going to use as a punching bag in your stead? Huh? Who?" Yuji had not thought of that, and he didn't know what to think of it.
"Look, Yoshino, I don't know what sort of history you have with those guys, but you don't need to take this. We can go talk to a teacher together and—" Yuji reached out to put a hand on Yoshino's shoulder, but he batted it away without hesitation.
"I don't need your help! I might hate Ito, but he's right about all you Hero types forcing your crappy ideals onto people who don't ask for them. Don't go acting like you can help anyone just because of the class you're in and just leave me alone!"
Yoshino knocked Yuji aside with his shoulder as he marched out of the bathroom. Left alone, Yuji went through everything that just happened again in his head. He didn't want to believe that he was being intrusive; he didn't want to believe that he was out of line. Someone was in trouble, and he did what he could to help him. That was the kind of person All Might and his grandfather wanted him to be, but when he put it into action, the world was acting like he was in the wrong.
No, it's not that simple, Yuji thought. I don't think those guys are right, but maybe they weren't completely wrong? I guess the fact that I'm feeling so confused about it means that there's definitely a lot to think about. Or maybe it's just because I'm kinda stupid. Yuji didn't know which it was, but whatever was going on, he'd figure out the right answer in his own time. For now, though, he had some friends to meet up with.
Right after he, at long last, used the bathroom.
On Midoriya's second day at Jujutsu High, he got up early with the other students—Fushiguro being the only absentee—to see Okkotsu off on his travels. Okkutsu got into principal Yaga's car after talking with Maki for a bit, and as curious as they were about that, no one dared ask her about it, so they focused on saying goodbye to Okkutsu. Midoriya was still a little upset about losing the only other person who seemed remotely normal, but everyone else appeared tolerable enough for him to not lose his mind being around them.
The second that principal Yaga's car was out of sight, Gojo hoisted him over his shoulder and ran off into a random building, eventually dropping him in a dark basement with a couch and a TV in the back.
"Please put me down, Gojo-san," Midoriya said. Gojo placed him down on his feet and dusted off dirt that wasn't there.
"Tell me, Izuku, you want to live to eat all of Sukuna's fingers, right?" Gojo asked. Naturally, Midoriya nodded his head. "Well, that's not going to work if we just leave things as they are. Since you're Sukuna's vessel, you'll be able to feel out the location of his other fingers, which means that you have to go on missions with Megumi, Reiko, and Student #4, once she gets here. The problem with that, though, is that you're a total chicken-wuss who would probably die just from a curse sneezing on you."
Thanks for the vote of confidence. You're not wrong, but still, Midoriya thought.
"That's why until the school year officially starts in April, which is when we absolutely can't keep you out of the field anymore, I'm gonna work your butt off to make you into at least a passable sorcerer!" Gojo paused with a goofy look on his face, then he said, "This is where you applaud me."
"But that's what you were already supposed to do, wasn't it?" Midoriya asked.
"Take a look at those cans of pop over there." Gojo ignored his question and turned his attention to two cans of soda on a nearby table. Midoriya watched them, and he saw one can receive a dent as it went flying and another become twisted up like a pretzel. "This, Izuku, is the difference between curse energy and curse technique."
"Do you mean that curse energy can be used as a weapon by itself, but by refining it into a specific curse technique, you can get better results?"
"Got it in one! And saved me a lot of time on going over analogies, too."
"So this training is going to help me get an understanding of curse energy, right?"
"Right!"
"And once that happens, I'll be able to use my own curse technique, right?"
"Wrong!" The little bit of excitement Midoriya was feeling vanished into thin air. "You could do things like control shikigami and make barriers, but a curse technique is ingrained into a sorcerer at birth, so you usually can't get one later in life."
"Oh. Yeah, that makes sense." Midoriya lowered his head in shame. Shame that he let himself think he would get anything truly unique out of this experience.
"Hey, hold on there, I said 'usually'." Midoriya perked his head up. "With Sukuna inside of you, your body's going to evolve into that of a sorcerer, and I have no doubt that a curse technique of your own will come with that."
"R-Really?"
"Would I lie to you?" No, Midoriya thought; Gojo was an annoying manchild, but he wasn't a liar. "Well, first things first is getting you to understand curse energy, so we're starting there. What do you think needs to go into curse energy?"
"Um, if I'm remembering right, you said that curse energy stems from negative emotions, but I don't think you need to be constantly negative to use curse energy; you're living proof of that." Gojo gave him dual finger guns. "No, being overly negative will probably just make you burn out, so what you need to do is use a small amount of negativity as a catalyst for drawing out large amounts of curse energy. So the key to using curse energy is having good control of your emotions, maybe?"
"Exactamundo!" Gojo said that in English, for whatever reason. "I am so glad that you're getting all of this on your own and making my job all that easier." Midoriya rolled his eyes, and Gojo said, "As for what we'll do to make that work, there are a lot of different things we can do, but we're gonna do a personal favorite of mine: movie appreciation!" Midoriya cocked his head.
"I'm gonna be watching movies? What, stuff like All Might: The Movie; The Flame Hero Rises; Hawks: Home Alone; O'Clock and the Legend of the Six Perfections; Beasts of Prey (and the Spectacular Retribution of One Rumi Usagiyama); or maybe—"
"Wow, I know, like, at least five subreddits you'd be laughed off of with that list." Gojo's interjection made Midoriya shut up out of embarrassment. "We can add some of those to the list if you want, but the two of you are gonna be watching a lot of different stuff, including some utter crap; the bigger the variety, the more emotions you get to experience, and the more situations you're prepared for."
"The two of us? Who else is watching movies?"
"This guy." The guy in question was a stuffed bear Gojo picked up from under the couch and handed Midoriya. It had boxing gloves around its paws, and it appeared to be both alive and sleeping.
"What's this thing?" Midoriya asked.
"A cursed corpse," Gojo said. Midoriya made it visibly clear that he didn't want to touch it anymore. "Don't worry, they're not made from actual corpses. Not that one, anyway. Moving on, that's one of Yaga's creations named Tsukamoto; it's the same kind of thing he was gonna have beat you up yesterday."
"I had a feeling that doll was alive! So, how is this supposed to—" Before he could finish talking, Tsukamoto woke up and punched him in the face; he felt like crying, but he tried his hardest to keep it in.
"Tsukamoto will stay asleep so long as he senses a constant flow of curse energy, but if there's no power, then he'll attack you like he did now," Gojo said as Tsukamoto danced around the ground like a real boxer. "A sorcerer needs to be able to use curse energy with whatever emotion they're feeling, and watching tons of different movies will help with that because they'll make you go through tons of different feelings. As such, your homework right now is to watch one full movie without letting Tsukamoto punch you."
"What? How am I supposed to do that when I don't even—Wait." Midoriya picked Tsukamoto back up, and it wrestled around in his arms for a second before falling asleep again.
"Figured it out, eh? You might not be a proper sorcerer right now, but even you can naturally emit a tiny amount of curse energy. Don't get comfortable with that, though, because it's programmed to gradually increase the amount of curse energy it needs to stay asleep. You gotta stay focused and keep increasing your output, okay?"
"How am I supposed to do that? I don't even know what it feels like to use curse energy!"
"You're gonna have to figure that out on your own, Izuku. Everyone processes curse energy differently, so me telling you what I feel won't help you any. You just gotta get into a groove with some Scorsese or W.S. Anderson until you start feeling something that makes you think, 'Oh, that's curse energy'."
"That sounds a lot easier said than—" Midoriya was cut off by a plush fist to the jaw.
Midoriya spent the next six hours on Gojo's training, which was really just six hours of getting punched in the face by a stuffed animal. Try as he might, he couldn't get a handle on whatever it was he was supposed to be feeling, and he could never make it more than a minute without Tsukamoto punching him. The only remotely good thing about it all was that Gojo didn't make start the movies over whenever he got punched, but the constant acts of physical violence made it hard to enjoy them, either way.
"You are not very good at this," Gojo said as the latest movie climaxed in tandem with Midoriya getting punched in the face again.
"I'm only as good as the teachings I've been given," Midoriya said, rubbing yet another bruise on his cheek.
"So you should be great now, yet here we are." Midoriya was punched once again before he could offer a retort. They watched the rest of the movie in silence, save for all the times Tsukamoto would punch Midoriya, and Midoriya let out a groan as he got up to grab a new DVD. Midoriya had just finished a cheesy rom-com, so as much as he didn't like the idea, switching over to a horror movie seemed the most appropriate.
As he reached for a copy of Number 6 Kills, he heard the door swing open and hit the wall with a thud. Midoriya turned around just in time to watch a sweatpants-clad Maki grab a handful of his hair and start dragging him across the floor.
"Ow, ow, ow, hey! M-Maki-senpai, what are you—"
"Shut up," Maki said, and Midoriya did just that.
"Oh, is it four already? My, how the time flies," Gojo said. "Make sure to bring him back in one piece. Or if not, just make the pile as neat as possible."
"Come on—Ow! Ow! Seriously, what's going—"
"I didn't say you could talk!" Maki said.
Midoriya shut up once more, and he stayed quiet as Maki kept dragging him, as he was fairly certain Maki would kill him if he spoke again. A few minutes later, Maki had dragged him to a track field and tossed him down on the grass, leaving him feeling as confused as he could get.
"Take off your shirt." He stood corrected.
"W-W-W-What?" Midoriya felt as if his face was on fire. "M-M-Maki-senpai, I don't—That's not something I came here for, and—Maybe I was misreading things, b-b-but I thought you and O-O-Okkotsu-senpai—"
"I'm gonna forgive you for talking so long as you stop it with all the stupid crap and do what I said. Right. Now." Midoriya, not wishing to push his luck any further, stood up and took off his shirt. Maki looked like she was going to vomit before she said, "My God, I knew I had my work cut out for me, but I didn't think it was this bad. How can you look at that pile of twigs you call a body every morning and resist the urge to pound your skull in out of shame? Or are you too wimpy to even do that?"
"Is there a point to this, maybe?"
"The point—Man, I wish I had my naginata for that part—is that I'm gonna take this sack of crap you call yourself and do what I can to mold it into something worth a damn."
"R-Really? I mean, sure, I probably have been neglecting my exercise too much, but I'm here to be a sorcerer, so shouldn't I focus on learning how to use curse energy?"
Without a word, Maki threw out a kick that was mere millimeters away from hitting him, but he did feel the sole of her boot graze his cheek.
"Tell me, Izuku, do you think you could have dodged that if I wanted to hit you?" Midoriya shook his head as Maki put her leg down. "Do you think that curses, which can be stronger than humans just from doing nothing, would be any easier to dodge?" Midoriya shook his head. "Good, so you're not a complete idiot. Unless you're like Gojo, you can't just rely on your powers to save your ass, so if you wanna live, you gotta know how to use your body. Are we clear?"
"Um—"
"Are. We. Clear?"
"Yes, senpai!" Midoriya said with a salute.
"No no, none of that. If you want to make me happy, then give me twenty laps."
"T-Twenty? Shouldn't I be starting off small so—" Maki's glare told him that he had lost his right to speak again, and he got started on his arduous journey to complete twenty laps.
Three-and-a-half laps in, Midoriya took a break to step to the side and vomit. Never before in his life had he regretted being a bookworm as much as he did then. If he had spent even a little bit of time on physical fitness over the years, then he wouldn't be dying from exhaustion, yet here he was, doing just that. It made him wonder what his plan for becoming a Hero even was with how utterly lacking his body was in basically every field that mattered.
"I've seen you vomit a lot. Are you sick, or are you just that out of shape?" Midoriya turned around to see Fushiguro standing behind him with a couple of bottles of water.
"Oh my God, thank you!" Midoriya said as he pulled the bottles out of Fushiguro's hands and downed one in a single sitting. "I thought for sure I was gonna die, and now I'm only slightly sure about that."
"Good to know you're self-confident, at least," Fushiguro said.
"If nothing else, I have that." Midoriya drank half of the second bottle and said, "Hey, um, Fushiguro-kun, about what happened when we first met—"
"Save it," Fushiguro interjected. "That wasn't you fighting, that was Sukuna. I'm not going to hold a grudge against you for something a curse did. You haven't been thinking about that all this time, have you?"
"Um…" That said enough, as it was. "It's just that we haven't seen each other since then, and you weren't at Okkotsu-senpai's party or outside to see him off."
"I wasn't avoiding you, I'm just not good in large groups. That's hard enough as it is for me, and it would make this kind of talk even harder." Fushiguro scratched his cheek for a second and said, "The point is, we're working together, so we shouldn't think there's bad blood between us."
Midoriya wanted to cry at the revelation of having another normal person to go to school with, but he was fairly certain his sweat and vomit had robbed him of the water his body needed for that, so all he did was offer an agreement and a thanks.
The momentary good mood that had settled between the two of them was interrupted by a naginata flying through the air and lodging itself into a tree between the two of them.
"I found my weapon, and you need to find your way back to the field." Naturally, it was Maki who sauntered into view and retrieved the weapon that nearly killed Midoriya.
"Hey, I get that he needs a lot of help, but you can at least try to go easy on him, can't you?" Fushiguro asked. Maki glared at him, and Fushiguro turned away with a look that made it clear he should have known better.
"That's what I thought," Maki said. "It's not like he has a Quirk to help pick up the slack, you know. Of course, even if he did, I'd still be pushing him like this, so—"
"Wait, what?" Midoriya interjected. "Y-You know that I'm Quirkless? How do you—Oh, right. Gojo-san. He probably told you all when he was telling you all about me." Midoriya knew that they all would have had to learn he was Quirkless at some point, but he wished that he had gotten the chance to make it happen on his own terms.
"Did you know that I don't have any curse energy?" Maki's sudden and strange question took Midoriya out of his head. "I'm not a normal human or anything like that. I was born to a family of sorcerers, one of the Big Three of Japan, but I had the tremendous fortune of being born with a Heavenly Restriction. It gave me superhuman strength, but in exchange for that, I don't have one yoctogram of curse energy inside of me. I couldn't see curses if it weren't for these glasses, and I couldn't hurt them if I didn't have cursed tools imbued with curse energy.
"I know you don't know anything about jujutsu society, but people like me are not looked at in a good light. At all. Being a woman was already going to make things hard, but thanks to this, everyone in my family's looked at me like I was garbage from the minute I was born, I'm stuck at the lowest rank possible for a sorcerer because God forbid the girl without curse energy be allowed to make something of herself, and I can't begin to tell you how many times one of my cousins tried to kill me like it was the most normal thing in the world while everyone else, including my shitty excuse for an old man, just sat back and watched."
Midoriya wasn't prepared for that. He wasn't prepared for Maki's life story, he wasn't prepared for the similarities with his own life, and he wasn't prepared for how bad her version of events would be.
"Hey, senpai," Fushiguro said, "I know I wasn't—If it were up to me, I'd—"
"I appreciate the sentiment, Megumi, but we're talking about Izuku, right now," Maki said. "Izuku, you've gone through a lot of crap for being Quirkless, right? Especially since you wanted to be a Hero?"
"Y-Yeah, but none of it was as bad as what you went through," Midoriya said.
"Oh, I know that, but you still know what it's like to be an outcast for something you have no control over." That was true. "You wanna know why I'm trying to be a sorcerer in spite of all of that? So that one day, I can go back home and tell my family to go fuck themselves with the biggest ass smile on my face. Isn't that why you wanted to be a Hero? To tell everyone who said you couldn't to fuck off?"
"N-No?" It suddenly felt as if the air became unnaturally quiet.
"Not even a little?" Midoriya shook his head. "Oh. Well, even if your dreams do suck, the point is that I know what you're going through. That's why Yuta told me to help you, and that's why I'm not letting up for a second until I'm convinced you can fight for what you believe in."
Maki's forcefulness was striking a chord with Midoriya, somehow. A lot of what she was saying was still riddled with insults and vulgarity, but underneath it all, he could still get a sense of genuine support from her, support he had never gotten from anyone his own age, not even Bakugou.
"Okkotsu-senpai was right; you are a nice person, deep down!" Midoriya said.
"Of course, I am!" Then, with a wide smile, Maki said, "Now give me the rest of those laps before I shove your legs down your throat and make you finish by rolling around in a ball." Midoriya didn't know how she would do that, but he wasn't interested in giving her the chance to try. "Megumi, since you're here, keep him company."
"What? Why do I have to—" Maki punched a tree with enough strength to crack the bark, and with that, both Midoriya and Fushiguro made their way to the track to do an inordinate amount of running.
By the end of it all, the two of them were a pile of floppy limbs without a single trace of energy between them, something Maki found hilarious.
The next day of Midoriya's training wasn't going any better than his first. He was back to watching movies with Gojo, which really meant he was back to getting punched in the face over and over again by Tsukamoto. The constant physical abuse from a living stuffed animal was making it incredibly hard for him to enjoy All Might 4: The Journey for Love, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Nothing except use curse energy, of course, but if that were something he could do, then he wouldn't be in his current situation. No matter how hard he tried, though, he just couldn't get anything to happen. The steps were supposed to be using a small amount of negativity to get it started and using any other emotion to keep it going, but all he ever got for his troubles were plush fists to the face.
Then it hit him like a ton of bricks: he was doing it wrong. When he thought about using any other emotion to keep the flow of curse energy going, he was thinking of it as something completely separate from the negativity, but what if that wasn't how it worked? What if the other emotion he was feeling needed to be something that could be born from the negativity used to get things going? Sorcerers weren't overtly negative people, yet they needed negativity to fight, so there had to be a link between their negativity and the emotions they actively showed.
Midoriya thought about Okkotsu, who was not only a sorcerer for similar reasons, but also had dreams of being a Hero; Midoriya thought about Maki, who had lived a much harder life than him, but was still another person who was ostracized for being born a certain way. They both had things to be negative about, but they didn't act negatively. They had goals and ideals Midoriya couldn't help but admire, and they were born from the hardships they went through before coming to Jujutsu High.
I'm like that, too, aren't I? Midoriya thought. I've got the King of Curses inside of me, so—No, even before that, I've had a lot to deal with. Kacchan and everyone bullying me for being Quirkless, no one believing that I could be a Hero, I've put up with so much for ten years that it's amazing I didn't just give up on it all! Why didn't I, though?
Amid his thoughts, Midoriya turned his attention back to the movie. It had just gotten to the scene where All Might defeated Petroleum Man and was making an impassioned speech about the importance of alternative energy sources. Absolutely nothing about the scene was written well, as was the case with the rest of the movie, but Midoriya could still feel Jon Hamm doing everything he could to make himself come off as inspiring and a harbinger of hope.
That was what Midoriya had wanted. He wanted to be someone who could give people hope. He wanted to be someone who could make people feel safe with his presence alone. He was able to put up with everything life threw at him because he refused to give up on that dream, because he refused to believe that the choice was taken out of his hands from birth. That was all there was to it. That was what sprung up from his spark of negativity.
The thought washed over Midoriya like early sunlight in the city. There was nothing but traffic around him, but it wasn't as bad as it would be in the afternoon, so there was a sense of tranquility to all of the hustle and bustle. It was easy for him to keep calm, and it was easy for him to watch everyone go about their business and wish them each a pleasant day.
"Oh, that's curse energy." The words slipped out of Midoriya's mouth as if it were the most natural thing in the world. By the time he even noticed he was saying something, he saw Tsukamoto retracting a fist mere millimeters away from his face and going back to sleep.
"Hey, you did it," Gojo said.
"Yeah. Yeah, I did, didn't I? All this is doing is helping me not die as fast as I could, but it's still the first time I was able to succeed at, well, anything. Turns out that feels really good." Midoriya laughed and said, "I never knew how good it could feel to succeed at something!"
In the middle of his reverie, Tsukamoto punched him in the face once more.
Yuta Okkotsu never had a lot of opportunities to travel in his life. His family didn't make a habit of leaving town very often, and by the time he was in junior high, he had more or less cut off ties with them, so that made traveling even harder. As such, never did he imagine that his first time traveling would be an all-expenses-paid trip around the world with California as the first stop.
"I'm pretty sure they gave me the wrong meal on that flight." Nor did Yuta imagine that he would be going on his travels with someone who, just two months ago, was working to destroy Japan as one of the main conspirators of Evil Christmas; as a sorcerer, he was supposed to call it the "Night Parade of One Hundred Demons", but Evil Christmas sounded more interesting. More to the point, it was weird that Miguel was his traveling partner, and it was even weirder for him to be so casual as they dragged their luggage out of the airport.
"You ordered the chicken, didn't you? They definitely gave you chicken," Yuta said.
"Yeah, but I asked for no salt, and I'm pretty sure that I tasted salt," Miguel said.
"Then you should have said something when we were on the plane. What good does it do to complain about it now?"
"None, but I didn't think about it until now, so now's when I'm bringing it up."
"If it took you this long to think about it—"
"The mere fact that I thought about it at all means that there's merit to it!" Miguel said. "Yuta, take a note for future reference: the next time we're taking a plane, we're not using this airline, got it?"
"Yeah, I'm not doing that," Yuta said. Miguel looked at him as if he were an idiot, which was especially impressive on account of him wearing sunglasses. Yuta did his best to ignore that; they were supposed to be meeting up with someone who would guide them through America, and Yuta wanted to be in as good a mood as possible for that. As such, he kept his thoughts focused less on Miguel and more on leaving the airport, a surprisingly daunting task when there was suddenly a massive crowd of people around the exit.
Eventually, Yuta and Miguel made their way through the crowd and all of their random cries of excitement. That allowed them to see what had drawn everyone in, and the sight made Yuta's jaw drop. Ever since he started going to Jujutsu High, he hadn't been keeping up with Heroes as much as he had liked, but he still knew the biggest names around the world. Right in front of them, with her hair that was trying to surpass All Might's in pointiness and her imposing, Amazonian form wrapped in a costume that looked like an American flag vomited all over her, was a Hero almost as impossible to ignore as All Might.
Right in front of them was Star and Stripe, the Number One Hero in America.
"Oh, there's my new brothers!" Yuta was sure he was having a jet lag-induced stroke, because that was the only explanation for how and why Star and Stripe would be looking and waving at him and Miguel.
"Nope, she's talking to us, and yeah, it is pretty insane," Miguel whispered in his ear.
"What?" The crowd was turning at them in awe as Star and Stripe ran in their direction. "What?" The crowd erupted with cheer as Star and Stripe threw her arms around him and Miguel. "What?"
"Yes, let me introduce you all to my new sidekicks, Ryuga and Miguel! They're a bit wet behind the ears, but I'll have them kicking ass the American way, in no time!" The crowd alternated between chanting their names and chanting "USA!" over and over again.
"What?"
"English, man! Do you speak it?" Star and Stripe whispered. Yuta wasn't sure if he could at the moment, so he just nodded his head. "Come on, didn't Mister Unfinity say we'd be teaming up while you were in the States?"
"You mean Gojo, right?" Miguel asked. "He said it was gonna be a Hero, but he sure as hell didn't say it'd be a big shot like you? Also, he seriously couldn't come up with a good name for me? And y'all wonder why I wanted to kill him?" Yuta was too busy being intimidated by Star and Stripe to react to anything Miguel was saying.
"Don't know about that, but I'm definitely gonna bop him one, next time I see him." Yuta didn't know how that would be possible, but before he could ask her about it, he saw her muttering things with a finger against her ear; looking closely, Yuta saw that there was a tiny transceiver device in her ear. "Bad news, everyone! It looks like a gang of rowdy Villains just stole a truck that was carrying the prize money some rambunctious teens won in a dance competition to save their local community center."
"That's a thing that happens?" Miguel asked.
"Worry not, though, because your favorite Hero is on the case! You can watch me save the day like always, and better yet, you get to see my new brothers in action!" The crowd roared with excitement as Yuta felt his stomach doing backflips.
"A-Are we really the right people for this?" Yuta asked.
"Of course! You're you, aren't you?" It was simple, yet oddly profound, and it did a lot to calm his nerves, surprisingly. "Gotta get a move on, so…" Star and Stripe put a hand on Yuta's shoulder and said, "Yuta Okkotsu will be able to track Cathleen Bate's movements." There was a red, white, and blue aura around Star and Stripe that wasn't around anyone else. "Try to keep up with me now; if you're gonna be my brothers, then I wanna see how you smash!"
Star and Stripe threw out a salute and jumped over thirty feet away from them. As the crowd cheered her off, Yuta thought about how he had been told that sorcerers needed to be a little crazy to do their jobs. In a minute and twenty-six seconds, Yuta had been reminded that Heroes could be plenty crazy in their own right. He would have had to go mad no matter what career path he managed to secure, so maybe he was more prepared than he thought.
"You know, I don't know why, but I think this might be kinda fun," Miguel said.
"Yeah. Me, too," Yuta said. Yuta quickly pulled his sword out of his luggage and activated his Quirk, his bones bursting out of his flesh and morphing into a skeletal armor around his body. With a single command, he and Miguel were off after Star and Stripe, the crowd cheering for their good fortune and Yuta filled with thoughts of success with his future endeavors.
Yuta and Miguel forgot to bring their bags with them and they were subsequently stolen.
Name: Toge Inumaki
Quirk: Scroll
Ability: Inumaki can summon large scrolls from thin air. The scrolls can be used as weapons to hurt or entangle people, and they can also be used to store objects, even non-physical matter. Living beings cannot be stored inside scrolls.
Name: Kirara Hoshi
Quirk: Twinkling Star
Ability: Hoshi has full light manipulation, including being able to turn himself into light. Anything that would affect regular light can also affect Hoshi when he turns himself into light.
Name: Yuta Okkotsu
Quirk: Crossbones
Ability: Yuta can manipulate his bones into weapons. When a bone is destroyed, it returns to its place in his body, but is damaged to a certain degree depending on how much it was damaged when used as a weapon. Yuta can control bones other than his own, but he has to physically touch someone or something to do it, and the bones created from anyone other than himself are less powerful than his own bones.