The Bright Hero, Cobalt
Chapter Four
Author's Note: Thank you to my two editors, Penguin Lord0029 and nightwind83. They are hilarious, and you will quote everything they say.
Time Passed, And It's The First Day At U.A.
Izuku grinned, rising from his bed. It was only months of practice and his focus to keep from causing problems for his mom that prevented him from flooding the house with his blue aura. Learning that he'd gotten first place, just a few points ahead of Katsuki, had filled him with immense joy. His happiness was only amplified by his discovery that helping Ochako had added a decent chunk to his score, with her also receiving a nice boost to her score when she had 'sacrificed' herself for him. They'd both been informed that they were correct to behave as if there was an actual threat, even though in this case, several pros had been in each of the training centers in case anything went wrong, as they do every year. Ochako had managed to get third with her actions, making both young heroes swell with pride at their high placements.
All Might had come to visit them again later that week, to tell them all about the threat of his greatest foe, All for One, along with what he knew of the origins of One for All, keeping his promise to Inko, Izuku, and Ochako to be transparent with his knowledge of what they were getting into. And speaking of Ochako, Izuku's new friend had made herself a regular at the Midoriya residence, enjoying spending time with the two verdettes, though she made sure to pull her own weight, not liking the idea of the two of them inviting her over for meals and whatnot without her giving back.
The two of them had gained some new tricks with their powers, having trained with Ochako's quirk, and Izuku's more mysterious abilities. They'd tried to incorporate One for All, but Izuku quickly found that it was dangerous to use it at this point, the two of them deciding that he should strengthen his body further before he began throwing smashes around.
Getting back to today, though, the bean sprout of a hero-in-training had gotten through the motions of preparing for the day, and was putting his bright red shoes on, about to leave, when his mom stopped him, a sad smile on her face. Izuku turned to face her. "What's up, Mom?"
The small woman sighed, then pulled gently at Izuku with her quirk, the young man going to her and giving her a hug. "I'll be alright, Mom. Thanks for the hug," he said, a smile on his face as he closed his eyes to better enjoy the feeling of his mom's hug combined with the love and pride she felt towards him.
She chuckled a bit, then gave him a quick kiss on his cheek. "I just want you to know how proud I am of you, and that, even if you somehow don't manage to do well, you'll always be a hero to me. I'm sure Ochako-san and Yagi-san feel the same," she said, tearing up a bit.
Izuku nodded against her shoulder. "I know, Mom. Thanks so much for always being here for me," he replied, tearing up a bit himself.
The two parted ways, Izuku noting that Ochako was going to be getting there a little later than him, so he resolved to get a bird's eye view of the school once he was on the grounds, wanting an opportunity to properly fly around, as he hadn't been able to do that as high as he'd have liked while training with Ochako and All Might. As long as he didn't leave the school grounds, he wouldn't be breaking any quirk-based laws, even though they technically didn't apply to his abilities outside of One for All.
Yeah, he was really looking forward to today.
Later, At U.A.'s Campus
Izuku gazed in awe at the main school building. Sure, he'd seen it twice before now, but it was still hard for him to believe, some disbelieving part of his mind telling him there was no way he was really here.
The people around him walked past, their own joy at being here singing out to him, the few grumpier individuals not irate enough to even try to combat the waves of euphoria washing over the student body. He held out his hand, and grasped, mimicking Katsuki from the day of the entrance exam, and bringing out his own joy in an azure aura, floating up to a respectable height before shooting off like a rocket, simply enjoying the feeling of freedom that overcame him with the ability to fly. He flitted about, changing direction whenever he felt like it, zipping around in the sky above the school without a real care in the world. Then, with a bit of mischief in his eyes, he decided to do something a bit more fun.
Making some mental calculations, the blue blur flew in very specific patterns, leaving behind larger clouds of blue aura in certain places, until he was satisfied with his work. He shot back down to the ground a bit in front of the main building, slowing down as he got closer, before he landed gently in the courtyard. Izuku grinned, pulled out his phone, and aimed it skyward, taking a photo of the bright blue Plus Ultra he'd placed in the sky above, silently grateful that the blue of his aura was different enough from the blue of the sky that his 'writing' was readable. Satisfied with how the picture turned out, he shut his phone down and headed inside, making his way to 1-A.
It only took a few minutes, and a single request for directions, to find the room he sought out. The door was quite large, reminding Izuku that some heroes were bigger than others, what with gigantification quirks and whatnot. He opened the door to find several of his classmates had already arrived, with two familiar heroes-in-training bickering back and forth.
"Take your feet off the desk! It's incredibly disrespectful to this fine establishment, along with our upperclassmen who once made use of it!" Tenya Iida shouted, his arms swinging robotically as he made his case known.
"HUUUHHH?! It's just a desk, Four-eyes! It doesn't have feelings, and as for our upperclassmen, I hope they aren't fucking weak enough that the abuse of a DESK, of all things, would be enough to bother them!" Katsuki Bakugo retorted, bringing up a palm as if he were about to light it up, but refraining from actually activating his quirk, before the two of them seemed to realize Izuku was at the door, and they forgot their argument momentarily, grins appearing on their faces, a friendly one on Tenya's, and a manic one on Katsuki's.
Izuku just chuckled. "I see you've met each other. Iida-san, I'm sorry about Kacchan. He's rough around the edges, but he's a nice person when you've gotten past all the layers of anger and nitroglycerin sweat. And Kacchan, please try not to get too upset with Iida-san. He's a nice person, too, just a bit uptight," the greenette explained, mentioning their names just in case they hadn't actually gotten around to introducing themselves yet.
Katsuki groaned in a show of irritation, but made a point to remove his feet from atop his desk. His mood turned around once more, and he exclaimed, "Great job turning that bot into swiss cheese! I bet they still haven't disposed of all the pieces yet!"
Tenya nodded in agreement. "Yes, that was impressive. That blue aura of yours was incredibly uplifting as well! I'm sure you'll be great for morale in the hero industry, even without the massive power you put into your attack!" he added, recalling the joy he felt upon coming into contact with the aura in question.
A red-haired student approached, a grin on his face as well. "Wait, that blue badass was you? That was really manly of you, showing that thing who's boss! My name's Kirishima Eijiro! Nice to meet you!" he said, then made a fist with his right hand, said fist turning into some sort of rock-like substance in an instant. "My quirk, Hardening, isn't as flashy as whatever you've got, but it gets the job done."
Izuku nodded, already jotting down notes in a notebook he telekinetically pulled from his backpack. "Incredible! Depending on how hard you can make yourself, and how much of your body can be hard at once, there are a lot of practical applications for your quirk! I can already see how you got in. Those robots must have come apart like paper when you hit them!" he exclaimed, then decided to reciprocate, even if it wasn't the whole truth. "My quirk is Mind and Body. I've got esper-like abilities, and my body can become really strong in a pinch. I'm a lot better with the Mind portion, though. Last time I tried to use Body, I ruined my legs running to help somebody in the entrance exam…"
Izuku would have continued, if not for something he noticed out of the corner of his eye. A pink-skinned girl, and a large boy with the face of a golem and a shy smile, were signing to one another. It seemed like he'd teleported, how quickly Izuku made his way to them.
'You two know sign?' Izuku signed, a hopeful smile on his face, wanting more people to practice with. The pink-skinned girl grinned with a giggle, and the small golem waved nervously, a smile on his face as well, introducing themselves in sign.
'I'm Ashido Mina! I only learned to sign a few years ago, but it's really come in handy! This guy here, though, he's known how to sign for almost as long as he's known how to talk!' the happy horned girl said, gesturing to the other boy to say hello as well.
The boy grinned shyly. 'I'm Koda Koji. Nice to meet you. I hope we can be friends!' he said with a blush.
Izuku nodded, introducing himself as well. 'I'm Midoriya Izuku! I started learning sign when I was around six, maybe seven. I don't recall at the moment. I'm really glad I'm not the only one in the class who's learned sign!' he said with a grin, blue aura surrounding him like the corona of a star.
Without any of them noticing, Katsuki had made his way over. "Izuku, are you signing? When did you learn to do that?" he asked, startling Izuku momentarily, he turned to face his friend.
"Well, your quirk is Explosion, and I wasn't sure whether or not it would affect your hearing, what with your hands being as close to your head as they are, so I started learning as soon as I got the idea in my head that you might have hearing issues someday," the greenette replied shyly, both vocally and in sign.
Katsuki turned away abruptly, not trusting himself to be able to hide the tear coming out of his eye. Eijiro looked at the ash-blond in concern. "Are you crying, dude? You okay?" the hardest of walls asked.
"I'm not crying! Just got some stupid fucking dust in my eye!" Katsuki replied, sparking his quirk up a bit to try to be intimidating.
A bluenette in the back of the room with really long earlobes moved her hands to where Izuku could see, and signed with a grin, 'He's totally crying. You made his day, dude.'
Izuku nodded with a thumbs up, then got up to get the door for Ochako, who had just made it to the hallway, and would make it to the door just as he opened it. Ochako walked in, completely unsurprised by Izuku opening the door for her, and the two of them walked over to Katsuki and Tenya, not realizing the weirdness of what just happened.
A blond boy with a streak of black through his hair commented, "Did he just predict that she would be there, and get the door for her?"
A girl with strangely shaped eyes and large hands and feet added, "It looked like she was expecting it just as much, kero."
Tenya and Katsuki blinked, looking between the two in a bit of surprise. "Did...something happen between the exam and today between you two?" Tenya asked, breaking the silence first.
Izuku abruptly turned bright red in embarrassment, and Ochako patted his back, deciding to tell them for him. "From what we can tell, when we saved each other in the exam, we made some kind of psychic bond. It takes a bit of effort to keep from reading each other's thoughts, and feelings just flow between our heads freely, since we can't keep those to ourselves just yet. We're able to access each other's senses, but we've both decided not to do that without the other's consent for obvious reasons. Also, we've kinda seen each other's memories in their entirety…"
The greenette spoke up a bit, not looking up from the floor. "It's honestly a bit concerning. I'm just lucky it happened with somebody nice like Uraraka-san. If it had happened with a villain, or some random person in the street, it would have been really bad," he explained, adding his own thoughts.
Ochako nodded. "And I'm lucky he's not a pervert or something. His mom did a really good job raising him, that's for sure," she added, her permanent blush turning brighter momentarily.
A yellow caterpillar at the head of the room coughed loudly. Everybody who had been standing made their way to the nearest seat. The caterpillar unzipped itself to reveal an insomniac in a sleeping bag. "You are all morons. I was standing here for five whole seconds before revealing myself to you, then you took six seconds to seat yourselves. Your situational awareness and reaction time were crap," the man said, and as a classmate who had been sleeping woke up, Izuku's veins felt like they were filled with ice at the horrifying feelings and thoughts coming off of this person. Everybody in the room felt a bit colder from it, and Ochako felt like her feet had been dipped in a cold pool.
The man sighed. "My name is Aizawa Shota, and I'm your homeroom teacher. Call me Aizawa-sensei. And as that aura of sad bullcrap just reminded me, Midoriya, you've got legal stuff you've gotta tell your classmates," he explained, and Izuku could sense the man's tiredness with everything.
The green-eyed boy walked nervously to the front of the class, rehearsing what he had to say in his head as he went. He looked at the class before him, and told them, "I'm legally obligated to tell you that my quirk involves passive mind reading. I don't have full control over it, and I apologize in advance if I 'hear' anything I'm not meant to. I will keep it to myself if I do, and if it's something you want to talk about, but are having difficulty vocalizing it, you can ask me to try to help by thinking it loudly at me. I'll find a teacher of your choosing and set up a meeting to discuss whatever issue it is."
Shota sighed, and put a hand on Izuku's shoulder. "You did alright. Don't sit down yet, we're all going out to the field," he said, then pulled a bunch of clear packages with gym uniforms in them out of the depths of his sleeping bag, and announced, "Everybody put these on. We're doing some tests."
Out Behind The Main U.A. Building
Each of the students had gathered in the field, waiting for Aizawa's instructions. Some of them wondered aloud about orientation and other things, but their teacher threw those ideas out the window pretty quickly.
"We're gonna be doing standardized fitness tests, with one big exception. Bakugo Katsuki, you scored highest in the practical exam for villain points. How far could you toss a softball in middle school?" the shady-looking teacher asked blandly.
Katsuki arched an eyebrow and responded, "Thirty meters. Why?"
Aizawa rolled his eyes, and tossed a softball to Katsuki, which he caught with ease. "Do it again, but with your quirk this time."
With the look on Katsuki's face, one would think he'd just been told he'd won the lottery. He made his way to the circle Aizawa directed him to, and pulled his arm back, ready to let the ball and some pent up feelings rip.
"FUCK OOOOFFFFFFFF!" he roared as he blasted the softball off into the distance like it was Team Rocket and he was a Pikachu.
A moment later, a device on Aizawa's belt beeped, and he picked it up and read off the numbers. "Seven hundred and five meters. Not a bad score," he reported, turning the device towards the class to show them all.
Mina, upon realizing what was going on, gave out a cheer. "We can use our quirks! This is the best!" she exclaimed.
The rest of the class started getting excited, anticipating better scores than they've ever gotten before, several of them laughing to themselves, before their teacher cleared his throat and threw that joy out the window like an angry child with a toy they didn't want but got anyway.
"You think this is fun? A game? Fine, then. Whoever comes in last will be deemed as having zero potential, and will be expelled on the spot," he announced, irritation obvious in his voice.
Ochako was very upset with this, as Izuku could tell with ease. "That's not fair! We all just got here!" she shouted indignantly, hands clenching in fists at her sides.
The sleepy teacher countered with cold logic. "Life isn't fair. You think natural disasters, villains, or even just normal criminals will wait for you to be ready? You're training to be heroes. It's supposed to be your job to take that unfairness and fix it. Now, each of you get started."
The mood dropped for half an instant, before it felt like it lifted from almost everybody, Izuku doing his damndest to keep it within himself to protect his classmates. Ochako made her way over to him and placed her hand on his shoulder, pinky up for obvious reasons. "He's kidding, right, Izuku?" she asked nervously.
Keeping his voice low, Izuku responded. "I sensed several feelings going through his mind when he said that. Deceit wasn't one of them. He fully intends to send the weakest of us away," he answered, a frightened look in his eyes. He wasn't afraid for himself, Ochako, or Katsuki, but he simply had no way to know how anybody else would do, and at this point, he didn't want any of his classmates to disappear. He wants to make more friends, damnit!
The tests went as one would expect, with some students scoring better in some areas than others. Tenya scored incredibly well in the fifty meter dash, and Ochako dominated nearly anything that allowed her to take advantage of her newly learned abilities. Learning that Zero Gravity wasn't what she'd believed it to be all these years had allowed her to learn new ways to use her quirk very quickly. She was trying to come up with a new name for it, and thus far, Force Manipulation was winning out. The ability to fall down the fifty-meter dash line gave her an easy second place.
Then there were some results that came out of nowhere. A boy with dwarfism and purple orbs for hair came in first for the repeated side steps by far, and a giant of a man with six arms got an absolutely stunning score for the grip strength test, being able to use three hands on the device instead of one. A tall girl with a very fluffy ponytail pulled an electric scooter from somewhere when nobody was looking, and tied with Izuku for first in the distance running, since it would be counterproductive to keep going when they were the only two left for a while and neither were running out of steam. Being able to just float over the course without stomach issues certainly helped here.
Finally, it was time for the class to do the final test, the ball throw. Katsuki had already gone, so he was exempted from going again. Ochako made Izuku well with joy upon getting infinity as a score, throwing the ball with her quirk and sending it into orbit. The girl with the ponytail made a cannon emerge from her stomach, and fired the ball out, getting a score of over a kilometer! Almost everybody had nice scores, except for the boy with purple orb hair, who was looking like he'd be going home. Izuku had to distract himself hard to prevent his green aura from surrounding the boy. It probably wouldn't help him, sadly.
Soon enough, it was the greenette's turn. He turned to Aizawa, and asked a question. "So, I can't leave the circle, but can I move the ball from the circle prior to my throw?"
Aizawa nodded. "Yeah, you can move the ball outside of the circle outside of the actual pitch. You are the only thing that can't leave it," he answered.
Izuku looked down at the ball in his hand, and decided to ask one more question. "Do you think you could not expel whoever comes in last?" he asked nervously.
Aizawa rolled his eyes. "Just throw the ball. I don't have all day," he responded irritably. All Izuku felt upon his response was an increase in the man's conviction to do what he had already decided. The greenette frowned, gazing down at the ball again, then thought of what he wanted to protect.
His mom came to mind immediately, then Ochako seconds after. Katsuki didn't take long to pop in his mind, with All Might following shortly after. Tenya, Koji, Mina, and all of Class 1-A, several of whom he hadn't been introduced to yet, filled his heart. Even Aizawa was there, having not truly done anything horrible yet.
Izuku's green aura began billowing off of him in waves, making his class feel a bit safer for some reason, despite not being in danger in the first place. He held his hand out, palm up, and the ball rose slowly, then started to go back, in the opposite direction of where it was meant to be thrown. It moved back quite a ways, making a few classmates wonder what he was doing.
"Isn't it obvious, you dumbasses? He's winding up for the pitch," Katsuki answered, growling at the fact that Izuku was glowing green and not blue. His score would be affected by this.
Seconds after that, the ball stopped moving back, and was shot forward, launching into the sky at speed. Aizawa's device beeped shortly after, and he announced, "Seven hundred and three meters."
It took all of Katsuki Bakugou's restraint not to rip the device from his teacher's hands and blow it to bits. Izuku could have done so much better, if he weren't so afraid. He wanted so badly to erupt, to scream his fury at the man for his mind games, but Izuku was actively trying to calm him down, trying to placate him via telepathy, and he knew his explosion wouldn't help him.
The final few students threw for the test, and the scores were tallied up. The small boy with the grape hair was giving off feelings of despair, and before Aizawa could even say anything, Izuku put himself between the two, a wall of green aura forming between Izuku and the other boy. Anybody looking at Izuku could tell he was absolutely peeved. Shota Aizawa sighed, and activated his quirk, not wanting to deal with whatever crap the kid was doing. He nearly gasped in surprise when nothing changed, meaning that either this quirk that was clearly an emitter type was actually a mutation type, or…
"That's not actually a quirk, is it? I guess it's a good thing he ended up here, then. He'll need the help," Shota thought to himself, then sighed and explained, "Nobody's going home. It was a logical ruse, kid. You don't need to protect Mineta from me, all right?"
The relief Izuku felt was palpable. It was kind of obvious to everybody that he had little control over his power, since instances like this happened. The boy behind him patted his shoulder, and walked away with a thank you as Izuku sat there, having dropped when the tension did.
Then Katsuki decided to do Katsuki things. "Hey, Teach. Give Izuku a second shot at the ball throw," he said, trying his damndest not to scream at his new teacher.
Shota Aizawa groaned. "If you can sufficiently explain why I should do that, maybe I will," he said, humoring the punk.
The ash-blond grinned. "If you want accurate scoring, then Izuku needs to be in a good mood. You upset him with your fucking mind games, so he had to rely on his green aura. If he's happy, he goes blue, and that shit's fucking insane," he replied, his eyes burning with passion as he spoke.
Shota sighed, and fished an extra ball from his bag, tossing it to Izuku. "You'd better hope your power output is different enough for this to matter, kid," he said grumpily, a bit of a smirk on his face as he pulled the measuring device back off his belt.
Izuku walked over to the circle, but didn't turn to face where he'd be tossing the ball. He looked instead to his class, thoughts of friendships that already were, and friendships yet to be alight in his heart. His blue aura flared out like a fire, filling the class with joy as well, and making them very aware of the fact that they were the ones giving him such elation. Pretty much everybody decided that day that they didn't want to make this cinnamon roll sad, ever.
Without turning away from his classmates, the ball was suddenly just gone. A loud noise, like a cross between a twang and a gunshot, erupted from where he was, and a streak of blue was suddenly stretching out from his position to where the ball had gone. Seconds later, everybody's awe was interrupted by a low whistle from their teacher.
"I was not expecting to have TWO students score an infinity today," he said with a grin, holding the device up for the class to see, the infinity symbol having appeared upon it a second time today. Pretty much everybody cheered at this, happy that this sweet boy was able to get such an amazing score. "Get back to class, everybody. The rest of the class is a free period. I'm in a good mood, so as long as you aren't too loud, I'm gonna just let you socialize a bit."
The kids did just that, letting themselves just be kids for a while, with naught but one exception, a boy who needed saving, despite being as surrounded by heroes as he was.