bleach1990 - Except a Shrodinger Harem. In short - Uraraka is The Girl for the duration of the story, but it's rather obvious that there are several more girls that are rather thirsty interested in Izuku. Yes, including the two you mentioned. Whether the situation escalates post-story is left to your headcanon :P
TheGreatBubbaJ - Yesn't. Honestly by chapter 45 most students and several members of the faculty (especially All Might and Nedzu) should be legally classified as Agents of Chaos. If not downright Chaos Gremlins. Izuku is, apparently, infectious.
ALSO I HAVE BEGUN TO PUBLISH MY THIRD FANFIC, DEAD ON ARRIVAL. Others have backlog of chapters (or not) when they start publish, I have a backlog of fanfics. Ehhhh. Still, give it a read if possible :P
(***)
"Oh, we've made it in time!" Izuku is clearly reassured by that. "Sorry about being late, I was introducing our new classmates to how things work in our school." It occupied his attention enough for him to almost miss lunch.
Uraraka decides that Izuku, despite his initial problems with it, has really taken the class presidency thing to heart. Maybe even a bit too much? What if he starts wearing glasses and looking spooky-smart like in some anime about a semi-omnipotent school council?
Perish the thought! He is cute and adorable the way he is.
Izuku takes the empty seat near Uraraka. The boy from the Rehab Course sits next to him, while the girl (who clearly pouts a bit at the place next to Izuku being taken, Uraraka notices this!) instead sits next to a slightly uncomfortable Tsuyu.
"Man, you told me that Lunch Rush's cooking is good, but this is beyond good." The Rehab boy (Hitoshi Shinsou, if Uraraka remembers it correctly) says towards Izuku a few seconds later. "Shame that Tenko is hiding somewhere instead of being here."
"Oh, you know him." Izuku shrugs. "He'll hopefully start coming out of the shell at some point. I'm more worried about Bakugou, he has… quite an explosive temper." Hitoshi snorts slightly at this.
"Explosive temper, yeah, that's an almost good one." He adds, while glancing at Izuku over his food. "You can say that he'll be having a blast in this school." Izuku and the girl (Himiko something?) chuckle.
Uraraka exchanges the 'see, I told you so' glances with Tenya and Tsuyu. Inasa seems to have finished his meal and is now busy observing the newcomers with a stare that seems to contain curiosity so intensive that it almost comes out as hostility.
"So, you knew each other earlier?" Uraraka decides to take one for the team. That or, to say it simply, the curiosity is eating her. She doesn't expect the silence, and the Rehab course students turning their faces towards an increasingly red Izuku.
"You didn't tell them about us?!" Himiko reaches a completely new level of pouting previously unheard of. "Zuku, I'm hurt."
"Sorry, it just… kinda didn't come up?" Izuku scratches his cheek. 'I mean, we have known each other for like a week, and…"
"... and you didn't tell them in detail of the most epic thing you've ever done?" Hitoshi says, before reading the answer on his face. Then he adapts a particularly vicious grin. "Alright then, my dear fellow Hero Course students, let me tell you a tale of Izuku Midoriya's most heroic moment…"
More heroic than what he pulled on the Entrance Exam? No way, right?
"Toshi, no." Izuku tries to save himself.
"Toshi, yes." Hitoshi takes no prisoners. "That little green bean of yours that you elected as a class president came upon two runaway kids fleeing from their abusive families and on the verge of dying from unresolved medical issues. So he did what every kid his age would do…"
"... and adopted us!" Himiko announces with a bright smile. That stops a second later as she is suddenly confused about something. "I mean, kinda? I don't really member that part, I was mostly unconscious while Toshi was scavenging for food."
"Well, he just started treating us like a pair of abandoned kittens." Hitoshi continues, ignoring the interjection. "Leaving us food and so on, just to make us trust him so he could unexpectedly adopt us." Izuku is completely red at this point. He can't even eat anything anymore, because he is too busy hiding his face in his hands. "Food and, well, the medications that actually prolonged our remaining lifespan from 'two-to-three months of pain' to 'actually a whole lot'. He was about to succeed with adoption when he came upon a few corrupted heroes busy beating us to death."
"The WHAT?" Tenya says, clearly distraught by the very idea of a hero being corrupted. Or beating kids to death.
"Yeah, runaways, villainous quirks, no one giving a shit and all that." Hitoshi shrugs. How absolutely neutral he is about it actually freezes Uraraka a bit. "We were living in a junkyard, not like anyone would notice that we were gone. And if they did, they would just say that some random villain killed us. But the point is, we're about to die when that little menace pops up with his uncle. And starts giving out the world's most intimidating monologue to them."
"It wasn't THAT intimidating!" Izuku is trying to save himself from attention, but it's futile at this point.
"Zuku, you made three pro heroes take a step back in fear by glaring at them and telling them how you are going to destroy their careers and put them in jail for what they were doing to us." Himiko interjects. "It was the most beautiful and scary thing I ever saw, and stop pretending otherwise." Izuku actually whimpers a bit and seems to shrink in his seat.
Uraraka is enjoying the spectacle. But she also thinks that Izuku should get a bit more confident, this doesn't look very healthy in the long-term.
"And he followed up on it." Hitoshi adds with a chuckle. "His uncle beat them up and arrested them, and then they woke up in front of a police officer and absolutely livid All Might. Flanked by half of the UA faculty. Careers over, and they ended up in jail."
"Then comes the best part." Himiko adds with a chuckle.
"Don't tell them that!" Izuku once again tries to stop them. It's futile.
"Yes, we both know that you are allergic to being praised in public." Hitoshi rolls his eyes a bit. "But this is our heroic backstory, and we are sharing it with people. The point is, I might have mentioned to him once that I wanted to become a hero before I ran away from home."
"And, frankly, telling him any variant of 'I want to be a hero' is like a berserk button or something." Himiko adds and Hitoshi nods, while giving her a knowing (and just slightly tired) look. "Don't do that if it's the government that's stopping you, or Zuku will overthrow it for you."
"I was technically a villain due to using my quirk to steal food and medications for myself and Himiko, so Izuku did the most sane thing after giving up." Hitoshi continues. "He penned a thirty-five page long proposal for an establishment of the Villain Rehabilitation Course at the UA, got almost every single faculty member to sign it, and then had All Might, the Symbol of Peace himself, deliver it to the world's most scary rodent. Because reforming a decades' old Number One Hero School is the way a fourteen year old kid reacts to his friend wanting to be a hero but not being able to, right?"
"Wait, it was YOUR idea?!" Uraraka says towards Izuku and somehow her friend shrinks even more in his seat. She knew that Izuku somehow caught Nedzu's attention, but… reforming the UA? And not to mention actually saving two kids from corrupt heroes, even BEFORE he was admitted to it?
"HOLY SHIT!" Inasa wakes up. "THAT'S AWESOME!" Tenya actually nods in agreement. He is probably happy that whoever was ruining the image of heroics got jailed. Besides, while Uraraka can't say that she reads his mind, she suspects that he is still conflicted over the villain rehabilitation part… but actually more than he was earlier. Since now he is probably considering that at least two of the candidates sound like they deserve a second chance.
"Yeah, he is an absolutely adorable little kitten." Himiko decides to add. "Unless he has to save someone. Then, suddenly, he is a lion." Uraraka remembers watching Izuku risk his life (and limbs) to blow up a Zero-Pointer and save her. And compares him before the exam (the fall and forward roll) and him in school with that image.
"Yes, this is a very accurate description." Uraraka says and somehow, just SOMEHOW Izuku manages to shrink even further.
"Saved you, too?" Himiko asks, with curiosity filling her slightly feline eyes.
"From a fifty meter tall murder-robot during the entrance exam." Uraraka replies. "All I heard was just a small boom when he jumped off the ground, then another, much louder boom when he punched the robot into pieces. And then he almost died, falling from that height with his shattered limbs, but I managed to catch him with my quirk."
"Awww…" Himiko is actually kinda saddened by her tale. "I'm yet to pay him back for saving my life. But, regardless of that…" She puts forward her fist and Uraraka decides to fist-bump it over the table.
"Ehhh, looks like you're pretty cool people." Hitoshi decides to add. He looks over at them a bit strangely. "I kinda figured you'd be treating us like, well, villains, but it doesn't feel that bad."
"Principal Nedzu says that you can be rehabilitated and have attenuating circumstances, so I'm giving you a chance." Tenya decides to say. Though he still feels rather conflicted about it. "He is the principal of my school, so I'm willing to believe in his words. At least until he gives me a reason not to."
"I'm a bit more sceptical about it, ribbit." Tsuyu, as stated, is blunt. "I don't have anything against you personally, but in a few hours I moved from being a complex mutant hero trainee to a complex mutant hero trainee who will have to deal with the stigma of being trained alongside villains. So while I'm hoping that you succeed, I'm not blind to how you… complicated my situation. Ribbit."
"Well, it could be worse." Himiko replies immediately. If she is hurt by Tsuyu's words, she isn't showing it. "I'm a complex mutant villain who is trying to become a hero, despite having to regularly drink human blood and having a blood-related villainous quirk. Try to beat that."
Uraraka is actually taken aback by this. Tsuyu was taken aback by this even more.
"You're a complex mutant-ribbit?" The frog-girl blinks a few times. Uraraka didn't expect that either.
She knows that complex mutants are a thing. They are technically classified as a subclass of quirks, but no one is really sure if they really are one. Good examples were Tsuyu, Hound Dog, Gang Orca and Miruko. Unlike non-complex mutants (like Tenya), they have an entire assortment of traits and were, de facto, closer to being a subspecies of humans.
Also they were always inherited by their children. So if Miruko had children, they would all be rabbit-people. That alone left behind a stigma, but then there was also the part when those quirks were sometimes… problematic. Tsuyu, for example, had poisonous mucus. Hound Dog, apparently, began to growl uncontrollably when angry. And some could go downright animalistic in behaviour.
The biggest part, frankly, was that having catgirls in anime and thinking they were cute didn't mean that having them in real life would provoke identical reactions. Tsuyu was actually looking quite odd (something Uraraka was slowly getting used to). And Himiko's vaguely feline eyes were downright unnerving.
The uncanny valley was a problem. Unless you were really lucky to hit the point either human enough (like Miruko) or way too inhuman (like Gang Orca) for it to hit you in the face. Tsuyu was way too close to being in the middle of it for her life to be comfortable.
The fact that sometimes they got a thematically-matching emitter or transformative quirk wasn't much of a help.
Himiko opened her mouth and pointed towards her rather pronounced fangs.
"I'm apparently a vampire mutant." She says. "I'm faster and stronger than I look, but I'm entirely dependent on drinking blood regularly. Also sunlight makes me burn through my blood supply, and if I run out of it, I start to get horrible sunburns. Oh, and I can smell blood from a long distance and I can tell you a lot about the person who lost it." Himiko pauses for a second and sighs painfully. "Also my quirk is blood-related and it's mostly about impersonating others, so I'm like one or two points away from scoring a victimhood bingo."
She is clearly dejected. She returns to being cheerful after Tsuyu silently raises her hand and they do a fistbump.
Awww.
They are about to continue their outing when suddenly the siren blares.
"SECURITY BREACH, LEVEL THREE!" The booming voice adds. "STUDENTS, PLEASE PROMPTLY EVACUATE!"
Panic erupts everywhere around them. Tenya shouts towards some older class students about what's level three, only to hear a shout back that someone has infiltrated the school and that this never happened before.
People react too quickly to the emergency. Worst of all, way too many students were in the cafeteria at the same time, so their rush towards the same exit blocked the corridor completely. Everyone's pushing, and people are going to get crushed by this.
They are near the end of it, so they aren't in direct danger (unless the infiltrator goes after them), and Lunch Rush is nowhere to be seen, but…
"It's just the press!" Tenya shouts. He is the closest of the mall to the window. "Calm down, everyone!" No one is hearing him.
"Uraraka, use your quirk on Iida and Yoarashi!" Izuku (no longer shrunk) suddenly orders, while pointing towards the overcrowded door. She is startled for like a second. She sees something like a faint understanding on Tenya's face, like he had the same idea but it came a second too late. "Iida…"
"I get it!" Tenya shouts back and grabs a slightly surprised Inasa. Then he exposes his calves. "Yoarashi, the target is the wall above the exit sign!" Uraraka still feels out of place, since she has no idea what it is about, but Inasa's face clearly lights with understanding.
Tenya propels them over the crowd. Uraraka feels gusts of wind as Inasa is clearly helping him stabilize the flight in order to not hit anyone. They both land right where they intended to. And Uraraka finally understands the plan when she sees Inasa inhaling deeply.
"CALM DOWN!" He shouts (this time it's certainly his equivalent of a shout) and Uraraka is left briefly wondering if he isn't Present Mic's relative. Because wow, that's an impressive volume. Enough to be instantly audible by everyone, despite the deafening noise of the corridor. "IT'S JUST THE PRESS, LOOK THROUGH THE WINDOW!"
Ten minutes later, they discovered that they managed to stop the panic before anyone was seriously hurt. But a few students still ended up having to visit Recovery Girl.
(***)
"This is odd." Power Loader announces during the brief faculty meeting following the incident. It's mostly an informal one. They are just sitting in the teacher's lounge, with Nedzu suspiciously absent (because it's the time for his private lesson with Midoriya, and he wouldn't miss those, plus he will just watch the recording of the meeting through a camera).
"What is?" Eraserhead wants to go home. The press is, as always, bad business. And that was BEFORE it figured out about the Rehab Course, because this is a mess for another day. It's going to have a field day when it discovers that Nedzu allowed villains to study alongside the future heroes.
"Well, I investigated the incident from the technical side." Majima replies. "We know that the press infiltrated the school grounds. But I have no idea how they did that."
"What?" It was Vlad King who decided to voice their surprise. "We have a security system second to the Tartarus Prison, and we don't know that?" In Eraserhead's opinion, even the National Diet had security less stringent than the UA. Shiketsu High was probably in fourth place.
"That's the point, Vlad." Power Loader replies, while scratching his head slightly. "The security system surrounding one of the school gates vanished for close to a minute. There is no feed, and no data. As if someone either jammed it perfectly, or… dunno, dismantled it instantly only to rebuild it after the press stormed in? The gate is back in its place, and nothing changed with it. It's odd."
"So, a villain did that." Eraserhead says with a painful sigh. "Someone either powerful or suicidal enough to threaten Nedzu's stronghold." He can only hope that there will be no follow-up to that. It could as well be some random kid or a man-child with a deathwish who did this for kicks.
(***)
Two days after the cafeteria incident (during which Uraraka was, once again, impressed by how quickly Izuku and, to a slightly lesser degree, Tenya reacted), they received an announcement that the newest Foundational Heroics class would be rather different.
Those two days were pretty awkward, if Uraraka was to be honest. The Rehab Course was mostly to blame.
Bakugou Katsuki was giving everyone death glares (especially Izuku) and to say that he had an abrasive personality would be an understatement. He didn't speak out a lot, but he was clearly bottling down a lot of anger. And the few times he did speak, he was borderline aggressive.
Tenko Shimura was almost absent. As in, he was there in the lessons, but he felt clearly disinterested. He spoke almost never, when he did it was ninety percent gamer slang, and he vanished right after the class ended. Someone actually decided to raise that point with Izuku (with Tenya as an intermediary), but Izuku said that the school gave the rehab course students localizers and they knew where he was. He just preferred to stick to himself.
Hitoshi and Himiko in the meantime were a source of somewhat more conflicted emotions. They were hanging around Izuku's group (so with Uraraka, Inasa, Tenya and Tsuyu), and while kinda odd, they seemed to be ok. The rest of the class was slowly opening up to them over it (although the obvious familiarity of those two with Izuku gave the latter some odd stares), but it was going to take waaay more time to get anywhere.
Then she heard that today they were going to have rescue training. Uraraka was absolutely, absolutely overjoyed. She was going to love this day, wasn't she? Too bad that All Might wasn't going to be there (until the second half of the lesson, that is), for some reason.
(***)
"Hey, Midoriya." Tsuyu decides to speak on the way to their rescue training site. "I always speak what's on my mind. And right now it's the part where your quirk reminds me of All Might's."
"Eh?" Izuku, who sits right next to her, is absolutely startled by those words. "Ehhh? I mean, errr, I'm kinda honoured by the comparison, but..."
"Wait up, Asui." It's Kirishima, the MANLY kid with spiky hair. "All Might doesn't have those electric discharges when he moves. And doesn't hurt him so much. So it's just a similar enhancer quirk. Frankly, I'm kinda jealous of those."
"Eh? You are?" Izuku is simultaneously startled and enthusiastic. Uraraka doesn't have to waste time figuring out why the latter half is there. After all, the Q-word is in the air. The former is probably because being jealous of someone implies a form of praise, and Izuku clearly has problems dealing with those.
"Well, they are versatile." Kirishima replies. "You can do a lot of things in a flashy way with your quirk. My 'Hardening' just makes me harder, so I can survive getting hit but I can't exactly lift super heavy things or punch someone out super strongly!"
"Don't worry." Uraraka can hear Hitoshi whisper. He does so theatrically. So everyone in the bus can hear it. "Girls will love your quirk."
Uraraka almost chokes at that quip. She isn't the only one. Kirishima is practically red (more than he was a second ago) and Mina looks like she is about to fall off her seat in laughter. Momo looks rather disgusted with the joke (Uraraka hears something like a faint 'how vulgar' coming from her), but in an oddly restrained manner. It's as if she found it funny too but decided to maintain her high class air.
"TALKING ABOUT QUIRKS." Inasa says from his seat. "I AM YET TO FIND OUT WHAT QUIRKS OUR NEW CLASSMATES HAVE. AND I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO FINDING OUT."
"He has a point." Momo adds. "We are going to have joint training in a little while. We can't exactly be held in the dark. Class-president?"
Izuku is called out. He clearly doesn't enjoy being called out.
"Well, I think it's their decision to share it?" He ends up saying. "I know that at least some of them aren't exactly comfortable with their quirks yet, and might be afraid of the backlash so they prefer to get you to know them beforehand and…" Hitoshi sighs.
"It'll be fine. They'll have to know sooner or later." He interjects, and Izuku looks at him strangely for a second or two. Then he nods. "My quirk is called Brainwash. I can issue an order to anyone who verbally responds to my words, and it will be followed to the letter in a trance-like state. But I can't issue self-destructive orders, I can't tell you to do something that requires higher brain functions—so I can't alter your emotions and thoughts to, for example, make you like me, and I can't tell you to tell me your secrets. Plus you will know if I used my quirk on you."
It's kinda spooky, Uraraka decides. Although the list of exclusions and limitations does alleviate her worries, at least mostly. Inasa could probably force you to do something by using precise gusts of winds to control your movements if he was close enough. Then (while the class is mulling it over still) she gets an idea. At least partially due to her memories of the mess in the cafeteria corridor.
"Ehhhh, that's a pretty useful quirk for rescue heroics, I think?" Hitoshi stares at her in a way that makes her slightly uncomfortable. The class seems to do the same thing. She is startled by that a bit. "I mean, people are often panicked when in danger and can be hard to handle. I actually know a lifeguard that almost drowned because a man he was trying to pull from water clung to him too strongly. With your quirk, you could just have people follow your orders while bringing them away from danger."
"After a whole life of being told that I'm a villain in the making, hearing that I can be a hero is… great, really." Hitoshi says after a second or two of silence. "You're the second person to react to my description of Brainwash by mentioning its application in heroics after Izuku, though he mentioned dealing with hostage situations. I can't overstate how unbelievably grateful I am right now."
"And I also told you to change the quirk name." Izuku mumbles from his seat. "Brainwash sounds like you can brainwash people to do your bidding. Name it Mental Order or Hypnosis or something like that, and you'll stop having to deal with the wrong associations." Hitoshi glares at him.
"I can understand people reacting with fear to mind controlling quirks." Tenya decides to comment on what they heard finally. Hitoshi freezes a bit. "Though I don't exactly understand them reacting that way after hearing of the limitations that you mentioned. What's the difference between you telling someone to move somewhere, and someone with a strength quirk just dragging the person in question there?"
"Well, don't ask me." Hitoshi sighs, visibly relieved. "Ask my foster parents. They seem to know that well enough, considering their brilliant idea to make me wear a muzzle at home. And their recurrent threats about cutting out my tongue."
"That's… horrible!" Momo is the first one to regain the ability to speak.
"Could be worse!" Himiko interjects with a slightly weird smile. "My father tried to tear my fangs off for being 'a freak mutant'! Without them I'd kinda die of starvation, so I guess it counts as him trying to kill me."
This time the silence is painfully long. How do you exactly react to an announcement like that? Especially done while smiling.
"But it's alright, because I have new parents right now, and they are nice." Himiko seems to have taken notice of the awkwardness. Or perhaps it was something that Izuku gestured at her to do. "I even have friends now! And my quirk is called Blood Transformation. It lets me impersonate anyone whose blood I drank, with duration depending on how much blood I took. I can copy their looks, their clothes, their voice, sometimes even their quirks! Like Toshi, I can't exactly expect to be popular with it, so I plan to go for the underground heroics."
"Well, I can certainly see it being useful in infiltrations." Surprisingly enough, it's Hagakure. The invisible girl. She kept a low profile and, well, is invisible so they didn't notice her being close-by. "What defines whether you can or not copy a quirk?"
"Actually, I dunno." Himiko seems startled by the question. "I think I need to understand how the quirk works beforehand. And some just don't work. Mutant ones work always, transformative ones almost always, emitters… vary. Especially mental quirks tend to not work. And without some experience in the matter, I can't use them to the same degree as the original users, so, like, don't expect me to perform someone's super move right off the bat."
"AND THE REST OF YOU?" Inasa decides that they learned enough about Himiko.
Bakugou snarls from his seat.
"Explosion." He replies. That's all they get from him.
"Hey, sunshine." Hitoshi decides to intervene. "He asked about your quirk, not your personality."
"What did you just say to me, you bas…" Bakugou looks like he is about to leap off his seat, but suddenly he freezes. And just sits there, staring blankly in space.
"Remain seated and quiet until we arrive." Hitoshi says, and something in his voice makes him sound… differently. Uraraka (and not just Uraraka) realizes that he just used his quirk on Bakugou.
Izuku clears his throat.
"Toshi, using your quirk is a no-no. Even on him." Their class-president says. "I get it that he was about to call you names, but still."
"Well, then wake him up." Hitoshi shrugs. "Just a light bump and… done."
"Ehh, I'll let him stay like that, it's just one or two minutes." Izuku decides. "He needs to calm down a bit. His quirk is called Explosion, and it makes him sweat nitroglycerine. Unfortunately, as Hitoshi pointed out, he has a bit of an… explosive temper. Also… Tenko?"
Tenko shakes his head and returns to playing on his phone.
"Well, that concludes the introductions." Izuku says.
(***)
Small reminder of what complex mutants are in my AUs. Because honestly, noone is going to persuade me that Miruko, Gang Orca and Tsuyu have the same type of quirks as Tenya.
Also making Tsuyu, Uraraka and Himiko into besties is my preferred way of kicking canon in the face, ngl.
Also, we all know what's coming next. The real question is how much the events will differ from canon now that Tenko isn't Tomura, League of Villains doesn't exist and All for One is kinda dead. Then again, you already have some clues in this chapter.