Joe's Note: One of the shortcomings of third person semi-limited narratives is that we see very little outside of what's directly relevant to the main character. Sure, My Hero Academia cuts away from Izuku now and then to show what's going on with other characters but it's always to reinforce the greater narrative of Deku's rise to become the number one hero. Well, with the possible exception of 'Everyone's Internships', which follows some of his more fan-popular classmates through their internships due to demand to know what happened to them. Oh, and the prologue of Training of the Dead. But the Izuku-centric narrative means that our glimpse at the recommendations process is a scant thirty seconds stuffed into the middle of 'What's the Big Idea?'... which means I basically have to make it up as I go along. Although I won't lie: my version is influenced by Erased Potential by theslytherinpaladin. If you haven't read it, give it a look. Great story.
Dedications & Thanks: To Nicholas, Howard, Jade, Alexander, Tibor, Alonsis2, Daniel, Clark, Adrien, erlking, ridillin, Haematite, Charles, Jacky, Edward, Andrew, Roofcrawler, Wil, PbookR, Samuel, Mikey, Beverly, Daniel, Charles, Crygon20, Subtle, Christopher, Stephen, Fablesrogue, Morgan, Joseph, Jason, RileyWestfall, bloodylord, Marc, Ziryo, Chris, George, Koby, William, Devin, JJbelle, David, Gavin, TheTenthAncestor, Lookshy, Mauday, John, Roman, Warren, and Jess for sponsoring me on , and making it easier for me to spend more of my time writing.

Soaring through the air as she approached the sprawling U.A. High School campus, Carol's keen eyesight picked out the courtyard where the recommendation students were supposed to be gathering for the afternoon's 'demonstration'. At this point, anything more would have been a mere formality: nearly fifty students had been winnowed down to a mere five through a written exam, a practical test to make sure that they lived up to their sponsors' hype, and a surprisingly brief interview with Principal Nezu, all of which she'd aced. Now all that remained before the beginning of the school year was to meet and mingle, showing off their respective quirks for their future classmates and instructors. And at the moment, she was running late for that gathering.

To be fair, it wasn't entirely her fault. While the last ten months had been spent improving herself in a number of different ways, almost every day had involved fighting crime to one degree or another. Today was no exception and the petty criminals of Musutafu hadn't been willing to respect the fact that Carol. Had. Something. To. Do. Today. She and All Might had been forced to stop no less than three times to apprehend criminals, including one who looked to be the same giant mutant villain that Yu had Canyon Cannoned during her debut. Out on parole and back to his old ways? Carol didn't really care. All she knew was that she was supposed to be somewhere at the moment and yet... she wasn't.

Carol angled herself downward and shot through the air toward the courtyard until she was within yards of her destination. Backflipping to help herself bleed off some momentum, she squelched the warm, thrumming flow of power that was keeping her aloft and dropped neatly to the ground, hitting the courtyard's pavers in a classic three-point landing. "I am here... regretting my choice of entrance." Slowly rising to her feet, she rubbed at her right knee before looking over as All Might landed with a thump beside her. "I don't care how cool you think that looks, I'm never doing it again. Even as tough as I am, I'm going to feel that one for like, a week."

"When did I ever tell you to do a comic-style superhero landing, Carol? I'm a fan of a big entrance, sure, but I tend to land on two feet for a reason: I can absorb the shock with both legs equally. Then again, my costume also has shock absorbing braces for my legs to help soak up the tremendous force of my landings. We might want to look into that for you." Patting her on the back with one massive hand, All Might straightened up with a smile as he looked around. "And I am here... showing off my protégé!"

Still rubbing at her aching knee, Carol trailed behind All Might as the man strode forward, offering his hand to the nearest hero and mentee pair... which just so happened to be Endeavor and the boy who could only be his son. The blonde's lip curled upward in disgust as the flame-themed hero scoffed at All Might's overture; they were fucking adults in a social setting, she thought, surely he could be polite to his rival for propriety's sake? Evidently not, though, and All Might quickly moved on to the next pair of attendees, leaving Carol and Shoto to size each other up as Endeavor huffed and pulled out his phone, burying himself in work.

Todoroki Shoto was... exactly as advertised, Carol decided, nothing more and nothing less. Clocking in at four and a quarter inches taller than her deaged form, he was in good shape without being muscular enough to seem imposing to the average person. The burn scar over the left side of his face ruined any chance he really had of being handsome, instead helping to push him further into what most people would find intimidating. Carol wasn't, though. Intimidated, that was. She'd fought fucking Thanos hand-to-hand to stop him from using the Infinity Gauntlet on her and her friends. It would be a cold day in hell before any teenager made her nervous.

Unless maybe one of her classmates turned out to be a future supermodel or something. Every now and again, a pretty woman managed to fluster even her suave self.

As Shoto continued to stare off into space, refusing to acknowledge her any more than his father had acknowledged All Might, Carol scoffed dismissively and turned to follow her mentor. Who had already made his way past the unsettling-looking Honenuki Juzo and his sponsoring hero to greet a girl with shoulder-length green curls... and what looked like a miniature version of Godzilla from the hammy foreign sci-fi movies that she and Maria had watched together during their down time. Making her way over to the girl, Carol offered her hand. "Carol... err, Danvers Carol. I also go by Captain Marvel. And you've got to be Tokage Setsuna, right?"

Setsuna nodded eagerly, detaching one of her hands and floating it across the intervening space so that she could take the proffered hand and shake it. "I don't have a hero name yet, but I was thinking of maybe calling myself Lizardy. You know, for obvious reasons. But enough about me. You know who I am?"

"Well yeah. You're cute and going to be in my year at U.A. High School. Of course I learned what I could about you." Carol shot the girl a playful wink before closing the distance between them so that she could return Setsuna's hand. "Your quirk is awesome. I mean, I don't think I'd want to split into fifty-something pieces but I can only imagine how many things you can do with it."

Setsuna blushed faintly as she offered a shrug in response to Carol's praise. "If you heard 'fifty-something' pieces then someone's been exaggerating; it's exactly fifty pieces at the moment, no more no less. And it does have its uses. I'm obviously not going to be a front line hero like you and All Might, but I'm hoping to establish myself as a premiere espionage and infiltration hero."

Nodding, Carol brought one hand up and curled it into a fist, bumping it against her chest in a gesture that she'd adopted from All Might over the past months in his care. "Not everyone can make a career out of punching things to death. Someone has to go in and find out where the villains are, or get their hostages out. You'll be great at that. Who knows, maybe someday when I've taken over All Might's agency, I'll be able to hire you to be our intelligence specialist."

"I'll keep that in mind. For now, I'm going to focus on getting through the next three years. I've got a lot of milestones to conquer before I'm a pro hero: six semesters of school, three Sports Festivals, the Provisional Hero Licensing Exam..." Setsuna shook her head, crossing her arms over her chest as she shot a playfully jealous look Carol's way. "Unlike some people, that is. I can't believe you already have your Provisional Hero License. Do you realize how rare that is?"

Carol nodded sheepishly; while she would have stuck out from her peers at U.A. no matter what due to her other worldly origin and position as All Might's heir apparent, she'd actually done a bit of research to find out how badly she would stick out once the school year began. "I'm literally the first person under the age of fifteen to be issued one in the history of the PHL. Almost makes me wish that bureaucracy is as slow here as on Hala; I was only three weeks away from turning fifteen when I got it."

Reaching out, Setsuna patted Carol on the shoulder. "At first I wondered why Honenuki and I were assigned to class 1-B together, but now I know. There's no denying that we have the potential to be great heroes someday, but we just can't compete with powerhouses like you and Todoroki. Yaoyorozu, on the other hand... I'm not so sure about."

"Oh? She's the only one I haven't talked to yet." Carol took a step back and leaned to one side, peering past All Might to where a regal-looking girl with black hair and an amazing rack was standing primly at attention between two people who could only be her parents. "Her quirk is definitely interesting. The ability to create anything she can think of as long as she understands how it's made and it's not organic?"

Setsuna shrugged. "So I'd detach a hand and punch her in the face while she's focusing on creating something that can take me down. Fight's over. I win."

Opening and closing her mouth soundlessly, Carol struggled to come up with a response to that. Because Setsuna had a good point: Creation was a strong quirk but not necessarily a front-line hero quirk. And if her and Shoto were anything to go by, that's what class 1-A was aiming to be: front line heroes in the fight against evil. "Well, to be able to use her quirk, she's got to be a bona fide genius. Maybe she's applied that to learning self-defense techniques or something? So she would dodge your punch, close the distance, punch you back, and then create something that would take you down?"

"...maybe. Because you're probably right about her having to be a genius with a quirk like that. Huh." Setsuna raised both hands in surrender, shaking her head slowly. "I take it back. You can have her in class 1-A. I'm not sure I want to compete against someone like that for my class ranking."

Carol winced at that; she'd never thought about that before now, but she was actually going to have to worry about her grades and how she stacked up against others once she got to school. Fantastic. At least she'd have an unfair advantage when it came to her Math and English classes? "Well, all this talk about her has got me curious about her. I'm gonna go say hi. Wanna come with me?"

After looking back and forth between Carol and her sponsor several times, Setsuna ultimately shook her head. "Nah, I've got plenty of time to talk with her once school starts in April. While today is obviously my day to shine, it's also our day: this is the first time that Gojiro has recommended a student who was accepted into U.A. High. So I'm going to stay with him. Just sorta soak things in."

"Fair enough. It was nice meeting you. See you next month." With one last wave, Carol was moving on, making her way over to where Momo was standing. Or should she think of her as Yaoyorozu in her head? She'd gotten lucky with Mina, Himiko, and more recently Tsuyu being extremely friendly and open to her using their first names. She probably shouldn't take that for granted and even start thinking of her classmates by their first names until she was given explicit permission to. So not Momo. Yaoyorozu. Thinking of them appropriately would be a good way to cut down on the number of verbal missteps she made. And for that matter, Tokage, because Setsuna had never told her to call her Setsuna. Coming to a stop in front of the girl in question, Carol looked her up and down slowly before deciding to skip the niceties and cut straight to the chase. "What counts as 'understanding' when it comes to your quirk?" Raising her left arm, she let her fingers dance over her gauntlet, generating a Bohr model of a very particular atom over her palm. "Like... could you make this element for me just from knowing what its atomic structure is?"

Yaoyorozu blinked owlishly at the question, gesturing first to herself and then to Carol. "Hello, my name is Yaoyorozu Momo and you are Danvers Carol. Let's pretend for etiquette's sake that you actually obeyed such niceties before launching into such a line of questioning, shall we?" Carol rolled her eyes, gesturing for Yaoyorozu to continue. "To answer your question? In theory, yes. Although I've never seen an element quite like this before. Is it something extraterrestrial? From your homeworld?" After a moment's hesitation, Carol nodded slowly; yes, she decided, they'd go with that for the moment. Although that did leave her wondering if Wakanda and its vibranium was still hidden in this world or just plain didn't exist. "I see. Well, I see no harm in trying."

Watching with rapt attention as Yaoyorozu held out her right hand, Carol sucked in a breath as multicolored motes of light danced over the girl's skin and then a glowing blue rock emerged from her palm. "I... holy shit. What sort of drawbacks does your quirk have beyond you needing to know how to make something? You can't just make things endlessly, can you?"

"I... nobody's ever asked me that before. Or at least nobody my own age. They never think any further than the fact that it works." Blushing at the faintly worshipful look on Carol's face, Yaoyorozu rolled the piece of silvery metal around in her hand for a few seconds before offering it to Carol. "To answer your question, though? Lipids. I convert lipids to power my quirk. So I need to eat to fuel my quirk, or risk developing anemia."

Carol let out a low whistle as she took the piece of raw vibranium from Yaoyorozu, scanning it quickly with her suit to verify that it was what it appeared to be. It was. Given that she lacked the tools and metalworking knowledge of Wakanda, she'd need to have Yaoyorozu produce it into the exact shape and size that she required using her quirk, but Carol doubted that would be an insurmountable obstacle for someone who could pull an entire scooter out of her body during the practical exam. "So what you're telling me is that as long as I provide you with lots of food, you can keep producing what's literally one of the most valuable substances in the entire universe? In that case... Yaoyorozu Momo, are you free for dinner tomorrow night?"

"I... you're very forward, aren't you?"

"That's not a no, right?"