Izuku was on the train going to school. Thankfully given the two days off of school to recharge after the festival, he was feeling a sense of elation.
"Hey, it's you!" a random person called out to the teen. "Congratulations on winning the sports festival!" his words caused many others to turn their attention towards him, then everyone was starting to talk at once. He couldn't hear anything over so many voices talking over each other to him, so he just put his head down to nod. He knew that winning the festival would grant some notoriety, but the sheer amount of recognition was overwhelming. Grateful that the train's stop was his, the green haired teen quickly bolted from the train car and into the rain. After Izuku calmed down enough to slow down, he realized that there was another set of splashing feet. Turning around, Tenya was running up from behind in a poncho and rain boots.
"What are you doing walking leisurely Midoriya? We'll be late!" kicked into gear by his friend's words, Izuku started running by his side.
"We're five minutes early though.." the green haired teen commented before he heard his friend's reasoning.
"The baseline for students worthy of UA is to start the day ten minutes early!" laughing at the ridiculous logic, the two were sprinting for UA's entrance. Arriving at the entrance, the heroes-in-training set their rain gear in the designated lockers.
"Hey, Iida?" Izuku decided to bring his concerns to his friend.
"Hmm?" the engine quirk user turned to his companion as they walked to homeroom.
"How's he doing? Your brother, I mean." the atmosphere turned heavy for a brief moment. When the silence was growing long, Tenya had gathered his emotions.
"He's lost feeling in his legs, and the doctor says he won't be able to fully use them even after surgery; he can't be a hero anymore." the heavy feeling tried to turn oppressive, but the martial artist wouldn't allow it.
"Bullshit." Tenya was shocked at his friend's foul words. "Before my quirk came in I was planning on being a quirkless hero, so what's stopping him from being a disabled one?" Izuku's words struck a chord with Tenya. He remembered that his classmate's quirk didn't manifest until nine months before the exam, but he decided to be a hero when he was in primary school; it was the reason he turned to martial arts in the first place. It would be a long road, but his brother could still be a hero. His steps became a small bit lighter after he processed the words he was given.
"Thank you, Midoriya." his smile lightened the mood, and Izuku brightened it further with a million watt smile and mild chi projection. When the duo walked into the classroom, everyone else could feel the fluffiness the two had brought in the room.
"What happened to you two?" Mina teased. Forgetting to keep his chi going, Izuku was getting timid at his classes gaze. Shrinking into his seat, Tenya answered for him.
"Midoriya was trying to cheer me up from a family problem." they were saved more questions when Aizawa stepped into the room with a half hearted "good morning class". Everyone had found their seats almost instantly, not willing to incur the teacher's ire.
"Today, we'll be formulating your hero names." the class had gone into an uproar and Aizawa continued after they calmed down. The homeroom hero told them about the nominations. The nominations were usually balanced, but due to outside reasoning, many had nominated Izuku, Shouto, and Katsuki easily over ten times as much as anyone else. There were a few who didn't even get a nomination, which made it harder to get "work experience" as their teacher called it. When the subject went back to hero names, Anima walked into the door.
"The hero names you pick now can stick with you pretty much forever, so choose carefully." he calmly stated.
"As I have been told I have no naming sense, Anima is going to evaluate them for you." Aizawa lazily said as he picked up his sleeping bag to sleep in the corner.
"I still don't know why you chose me over Midnight. My hero name literally means 'wolf' in Gaelic." Anima sighed before continuing.
"Anyway, even if I'm okay with the name, the public may not like it as much; there have been cases where the populace had renamed a hero based on their actions, so take that into account. You have fifteen minutes until I start calling people."
After the fifteen minutes, Yuga was the first to show his name.
"I can not stop twinkling!" the class should have been surprised, but they really weren't. Anima shook his head as he shot the idea down.
"Hero names are short and to the point, not an entire sentence. I'll call you again when I go around." next up was Mina, but her first idea didn't work either.
"'Alien Queen' is copyrighted, so it won't fly." she returned to her seat in a sour mood, but the teacher's next words picked her up.
"If it's really hard to come up with a name, look at different languages or mythology. You'd be surprised how many heroes find inspiration there." many students brought out their phones. Tsuyu just presented at her seat.
"I've known since primary school." she informed as she showed the name 'Froppy'. She was given the okay by the teacher, so it went to the next person.
"Here's mine! Red Riot!" Kirishima proudly shouted.
"I take it that's an homage to Crimson Riot?" the werewolf smiled when his student nodded.
"It's kinda retro, but he's what I'm aiming for when I think of a hero." Anima gave a small chuckle at the hardening teen.
"Retro's fine," he assured. "My costume is designed after the Italian Carabinieri uniform, and they were formed in 1726. I will warn you though; with a name like that, people will compare you to him." Kirishima grinned at the challenge. More names were presented with varying degrees of success.
"I had this name since middle school, sorry." Koji apologized about his hero name 'Anima'.
"It's fine. I take it you took the latin name for animal?" Anima received a nod.
"I may change it now that I've met you, but I don't know what." the shy student admitted.
"Bestia is a Latin synonym for anima; do you want to go for that?" Koji smiled before writing it down. Katsuki was up next, and his name was shot down nearly instantly.
"One, 'explodo-kills' isn't something people look up to, but fear. Two, like with Aoyama-san, it's too long. I'll come back to you." the explosive teen gritted his teeth, but took the criticism. Ochaco showed her whiteboard and received a thumbs up from the teacher.
"Iida-san, do you want to go up next?" Anima questioned before the engine quirk user nodded.
"Unlike others, my name was unfortunately last minute." he stated while showing them; he wrote down 'Ingenerate'.
"It fits you well. I take it the naming sense is similar to Ingenium?" Tenya nodded as Anima nodded before turning his head towards Izuku. The inheritor of One For All was the only one who hadn't gone yet. He lifted the board to show what he came up with.
"Isn't that what Bakugo calls you as an insult?" Mashirao asked. The name on the board was 'Deku'.
"Yeah, but since Uraraka-san changed the meaning for me. If I make it my hero name, no one can use it against me." his words caused the class to clap for him. Even Anima joined in for a few seconds.
"Alright, for those of you I asked to reconsider your name, please come up with what you made." Yuga came to the front again and showed his rewrite.
"I'll take it." the werewolf allowed the name 'Captain Sparkles' from the blonde. Mina had changed hers to 'Pinky', which was fine by him, though he noted her name was bound to be changed by the public. she was fine with that.
"Better," Anima told Katsuki after the third attempt. His board read 'Nitro', which while unimaginative, worked for him well.
"Alright!" Anima clapped his hands together. "Now that everyone has a hero name, I'm giving you all back to Aizawa-san for the rundown of your field training." as the werewolf said those words, the homeroom teacher came out of his sleeping bag.
When class had ended, Anima called Shouto to the side while sending Tenya out to fetch some paperwork. When Izuku opened the door for his friend, a nervous-looking All Might was there. After the large hero had taken his inheritor, for reasons Anima didn't know, it was only him and the scarred teen.
"What do you want to talk about?" Shouto asked politely. He liked the teacher, but they didn't know each other enough for him to expect this.
"Izuku told me some things about your home situation." the martial artist let the words sink in before continuing. "I'm just going to ask you outright; do you want to move out of the Todoroki house?" the dual-quirk user had noticed that the teacher didn't call his old man by his hero name or any parental terms. It was an unneeded gesture, but a thoughtful one.
"Where would I go? I don't have the resources to rent an apartment for…" his words dwindled as Anima gave a dry look as if to say 'are you dumb?' to him.
"I own a rather sizable property, and if it's to help a student of mine, I'm more than willing to let you stay in the guest room until something more permanent is worked out." Shouto was surprised. Not for the fact that anima owned a large house (though with the price of land in Japan, it was impressive), but because he saw no goal in this other than helping.
"My old man would raise hell." he reasoned.
"There is nothing he can do to me, legal or otherwise. The only thing I asked you was if you want to do this. Let me handle the headache." Anima was having none of it. He had centuries worth of income gathering and stocks; he was the one percent of the one percent. As for resorting to physical altercations… nothing the number 2 "hero" could do was going to be new to the werewolf. Shouto looked down.
"I can't, not while I'm going to his hero office." It wasn't the tone of someone who created glaciers in mere moments; this was the cracking voice of a kid who didn't think someone gave a damn about him and was finding out he was wrong. Anima carefully hugged his silently crying student.
"You don't have to do it all at once. My doors will always be opened for you or your family if you want to take me up on the offer." he was tracing circles on Shouto's back. When the tears dried up, they planned on moving the teen immediately after the field training period.
"Midoriya must've gotten it from you," he said before leaving. "Helping just to help, I mean." he heard Anima laughing.
"He didn't, he was doing that even before we met. It's why I decided to teach him; the will to help, even to your own detriment, is what's known as 'the hero's will'. It's what symbols of peace are made from." the door closed behind the teen just as he heard the last sentence.
Izuku was at the station saying his goodbyes to his classmates when he got on the train towards the area Gran Torino was residing. His mind was wandering to the retired hero. Who was he? what was he like? What can I learn from him? More questions came into his mind before he decided to answer them. He pulled his phone out to look up some of his heroic exploits. The vast majority of his videos showed that he was a movement based fighting hero, rather than a rescue hero. The green haired teen went into analysis as soon as he saw the small hero double jump. Over the next few videos, he figured that Torino's quirk was a gas emission quirk, which made it easy for the lithe man to move in a three-dimensional space.
He got off the train on his stop and walked to the address he was given. When he saw the decrepit building, he had to remind himself that Gran Torino was in his late sixties to early seventies; of course he didn't have a hero agency. He knocked on the door to the retired hero's apartment, only to not get an answer. He opened the door gingerly.
"H-hello? My name is Midoriya Izuku. You nominated me from UA…" his voice fell as he saw a person lying face-down in something red. Forgetting formalities, he rushed to the man's side with his first aid kit.
"Sir, Are you okay!?" he went to check for a pulse, only for the small man to bolt up.
"I'm Alive!" he shouted, making the teen jump. It was then Izuku saw his face. Though his age showed, he was definitely Gran Torino.
The retired hero saw the kid coming from the window, and got ready; if this was Toshinori's kid, he wanted to screw with him. He got the ketchup and spilled it on the floor before planting himself on the floor. When he heard the kid open the door, he almost twitched. He heard a small scuffling sound as the kid dashed forward.
"Sir, are you okay!?" the kid's voice was worried, but he didn't panic. Gran Torino bolted up to scare him and give him a quick appraising look. He saw the semi-transparent box with a red cross in the kid's hand with his bag off to the side. 'His first reaction was to help someone he didn't know' Gran gave Izuku mental points for good habits. The retired hero kept playing the senile role, even going as far as calling the kid Toshinori, until Izuku spoke his mind.
"You're acting, aren't you?" he rhetorically asks. Caught off guard, Gran looked at the kid.
"Wad'ya mean?" the elderly man acted upset, thinking that the green haired teen was trying to use reverse psychology.
"Your eyes, they're too sharp for insanity." Seeing Izuku spoke with such surety, Gran froze. 'Kid's sharper than he looks' he noted. He looked him in the eye and saw confidence, but not arrogance. He decided to try again with his question.
"You never did answer me; who are you?" he saw the thought click, and heard the answer.
"Oh, I'm Deku, a martial artist who wants to be a hero." Izuku's voice carried a certain weight behind them, making the old man smile.
"Then put on the costume, youngun!" if this is what Toshinori's protege was made of, then it'll be fast teaching him the ropes.
Like usual, the last stretch was the hardest to write. Tenya's hero name 'Ingenerate' literally means to make or generate, but I think it works for him. I got the name from the word of the day on my dictionary app. I'm making my first shoutout to ShiningStar32; I'm glad that I made the Italian readable! Questions, comments, criticisms? Let me know; I love hearing about new ways to improve. Till next time!