Disclaimer: I do not own MHA nor am I earning money from writing this. As a rule of thumb, if you recognize something in this fic, I probably do not own it.

"I might be going insane" – Normal speech

'It isn't normal to have voices in your head' – Thoughts, Writing

True – The voices in your head

"You will never forget this day" – Remembered speech

Chapter 16

Bakugou Katsumi woke up to the incessant beeping of her alarm clock and rolled out of bed, making her way to the shower to relieve the cold that permeated her limbs while she slept. When she fully woke up, halfway through her shower, she realized why she had set her alarm so early on this summer day.

Today was the day of the entrance exams for UA.

Suddenly aware of the time that she was wasting, she hurriedly finished her shower and rushed through the rest of her morning routine before taking the stairs two at a time downwards, headed for breakfast. Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table, nursing a mug of coffee and looking blearily at Katsumi as she worked up a sweat, using minute explosions to propel herself around the kitchen.

She was preparing two breakfasts for herself – one that was healthy and one that could only barely be called a breakfast by anyone else's standards. She was cooking eggs on the stove, scrambled due to her lack of patience, while she was filling a set of four glasses with water. By the time she sat at the table, the difference between her breakfasts was readily apparent.

One was perfectly normal – eggs on toast with a glass of milk. The other was a combination of four glasses of water and as much sugar as she could pack into the lowest volume of food possible. While the first breakfast was to fuel her body, the other was engineered by Izuku to give her quirk the most easily convertible materials for her nitroglycerin sweat.

Scarfing down her breakfasts before her mother even finished half of her cup of coffee, she called out her goodbyes before making her way to the front door. As her mother grumbled "good luck", the doorbell rang. Katsumi's face broke out into a smile. There was only one person that would be at her door this early in the morning.

She threw open the door, ready to greet her boyfriend before she stopped abruptly. Sitting outside her front door to the right was Izuku, and on the left of the door was… Izuku? She was pretty sure that there hadn't been any hallucinogens in her breakfast, and if Izuku had a secret twin brother all along she would have found out before now.

"Izuku?"

Both Izuku's had looked up at the sound of the door opening. Fortunately, only the Izuku on the left responded to his name. "Yes, Kacchan?"

"What is…" Katsumi gestured to the two of them, unsure of how to word her question. Fortunately for her, Izuku caught the intent behind her question.

"This is the surprise that I was talking about, Kacchan. This is how I will be able to keep myself safe at all times. After all, why should I need to be physically present for anything dangerous if I have M4? We've decided that we're going to call him Midoriya in that body, but if you come up with a better name we're all ears. Besides, now I can refer to myself in the plural, which is incredibly fun."

The Izuku to the right of the door, which Katsumi mentally corrected to Midoriya, spoke up. "Of course, this body isn't as durable as we'd like it to be, but what it lacks in sheer toughness it retains in regenerative capability. Observe!"

With that, Midoriya raised his right hand in front of him whereupon it quickly disintegrated and fell to the walkway leading up to Katsumi's house. Katsumi recoiled backward at the sight, taking a moment to remember that her boyfriend's hand was perfectly intact and that he was standing on the other side of her. Once she got over the fact that there was no blood and realized that the inside of Midoriya's wrist was a blend of metallic colors, it was actually quite an interesting process to watch.

Midoriya stepped forward, placing his right foot on the pile of nanobots that used to be his hand. The pile rapidly shrunk, and after a small delay, Midoriya's hand started to regrow at a similar rate, forming a skeletal structure before expanding into a metal copy of Izuku's hand. Spots of color began to reappear and spread, and less than ten seconds after the process had started it was over with no visible difference on Midoriya's body.

"I won't go into exactly how it works right now, seeing as we have an exam to head to, but so far it's as realistic of a copy or myself as we could make with the time we had. He doesn't exactly need to breathe or blink, but we've managed to make him simulate it as closely as possible."

Izuku was clearly excited at the unveiling of his latest creation, but he had a point that the two of them were on a schedule that morning. The three of them walked to the nearest train station, Izuku and Midoriya carrying backpacks over their shoulders while Katsumi was unburdened. The discussion turned to the exams, and while they were in the train station Izuku made a joking comment about taking two exams at once that caused the speculation about what the exams would be on to derail.

"What do you mean, you're taking two exams at once? Aren't you just bringing Midoriya for the Support exam?"

Izuku was willing to acknowledge that Katsumi had a valid point. Still, he had already come up with an idea for how he would react. "If I want to make sure that I'll be accepted into the Support course, I know that I'll have to do better than every other candidate there and then some. You know how most people are. So, one of us will be in the Support exam room, and the other will be showing off our 'support gear'. What better support gear is there, after all, than an undefeatable hero?"

Katsumi gave a slow, grudging nod. "I suppose that's true, but is it really you taking two different exams then? It's not you controlling Midoriya, but M4 from your house."

Not for the first time that day, a slightly mischievous smile spread across Izuku's face. "But you see, Kacchan, we are the same person. We even share the same name! How could we possibly be any different from each other?"

Katsumi groaned, lightly punching Izuku in the shoulder. Perhaps he found it funny, but for her, it was already getting old. The three got off of the train several minutes later, only to be greeted by the veritable swarm of people streaming through the entrance to UA for the entrance exams. The three of them split up, each making their way through the crowd using their unique methods.

Midoriya simply bent his body in ways that a contortionist would shudder at, making his way through the smallest gaps between other people. Katsumi used a less subtle approach, creating small explosions to get other people's attention and scare them out of her way as she took a direct approach to the gate. Izuku, on the other hand, simply walked forwards, taking the steps that would take him where he wanted to be as fast as possible.

Izuku and Midoriya arrived faster than Katsumi, though not by a large margin. Still, the two of them managed to switch positions relative to where they had started because Izuku would be taking the hero exam no matter what. There was no way that he would strive for anything less than the highest goal he could reach, and if it took a minor amount of misdirection he was perfectly willing to face the consequences of his actions later.

When Katsumi eventually caught up with the two of them, Midoriya said his goodbyes as if he was Izuku before heading off to the entrance to the Support course exam while Izuku and Katsumi made their way to the Hero course exam. Izuku attracted quite a few stares when he walked into the room, causing Katsumi to tense up at the attention.

Izuku placed his hand on her shoulder, hardening the nanobots of the second skin he was wearing to simulate the feeling of Midoriya's metallic body. "Worry not, Katsumi. The opinions of the closed-minded mean nothing more than you allow them to."

After a brief reaction to the odd feeling of Izuku's nanobot-covered hand, Katsumi relaxed. "You're even worse than Izuku with the random wisdom, Midoriya. But… thanks, I guess. Good luck with the exam, not that you'll need it."

Izuku smiled differently than he normally did, trying to imitate the most average smile he could think of. "I assure you that Izuku could score just as well as I will, Katsumi. I wish you the best of luck as well."

Katsumi scoffed before turning to head to her seat. Izuku's, conveniently, was directly next to hers. Across the hall, Izuku could see Melissa Shield lying asleep at her desk. She had been working hard ever since she received One for All, struggling with the usage of the quirk far more than Toshiko ever had.

Fortunately for the formerly quirkless girl, Izuku was there to keep her from following Toshiko's guidance before she broke her arm. The two had worked on her control of very small percentages of One for All, reaching a solid three percent throughout her body without injury or fluctuation. Though it was only slightly more than double her base physical ability, having double the speed, strength, and durability she already possessed was nothing to scoff at.

Her growth rate per percent of One for All was three percent higher than Toshiko's, which was almost unnoticeable on the scale that she was currently capable of. By the time she reached ninety percent, however, she would be roughly equal to Toshiko's maximum capacity, with her hundred percent being nearly eleven times stronger than Toshiko's.

Still, with the amount of work he knew she was putting in it was no surprise that she was taking the time to sleep while she could.

Unfortunately for her, the Pro Heroine Present Mic was walking into the room with a massive stack of tests as he watched. Several other examinees noticed this as well, going silent and sitting as studiously as they could manage.

Her neck expanding so slightly that Izuku was likely the only one who noticed, the heroine activated her quirk as she began to proctor the exam.

"Good morning, listeners! I'm sure you all know me as the wonderful Voice Heroine, Present Mic! Can I get a 'Yeeeeeaaah'?"

The room was silent, and Izuku almost felt bad for the heroine. He would be tempted to oblige her request if it wouldn't have drawn all of the attention in the room to himself. Unaffected by the lack of response, Present Mic carried on.

"You will have two hours to complete the exam that I am about to pass out. It contains thirty general knowledge questions, twenty legal questions, and fifty heroism-related questions, in that order. Cheating of any form will be punished with disqualification and a mark on your permanent record. You are free to answer the questions in any order that you wish, but try to answer as many questions as you can. If you have any questions about the content of the exam, you may raise your hand and I will do my best to answer them. Please do not begin the exam until I say 'Start'!"

With the opening speech done, the heroine proceeded to walk down the side of the room, passing out smaller stacks of the exams for the test-takers to take one and pass the rest along. There was a small incident where a test-taker with an invisibility quirk was passed over, leaving the student at the end of her row without a test. The mistake was easily rectified, and after an apology to the invisible student in question, the exam began.

Izuku flipped open the first page, expectations quickly lowering as he read the first question.

'What is the author's intent in the passage to the right in the choices of the colors of various items in the room?

A: To signify the protagonist's mood

B: To provide imagery for the reader

C: To set the tone for the rest of the passage

D: All of the above

E: There is no specific intent behind the author's choices'

As he made his way through the questions, all that Izuku could think was 'I sat through four years of high school just to deal with this again'. The rest of the general knowledge questions were similar, varying in subject area and difficulty. The legal questions were relatively intuitive, likely designed so that the layperson could pass the section without too much trouble.

The heroism-related questions, however, provided slightly more of a challenge.

'What does being a heroine mean to you?

What is the difference between heroines, vigilantes, and villains?

Why do you want to be a heroine?'

Izuku let the ghost of a smile cross his face. For the average examinee, these questions may pose a problem, challenging them to think about their beliefs and motivations in a way that they were not used to. Izuku, however, had been questioning and solidifying his ideals and motivations ever since he discovered that he had the potential to be a hero.

When he passed the purely theoretical questions and reached the practical ones and example scenarios, the questions became something of a game for Izuku. When asked to describe his quirk, he simply wrote 'I am a male human.' The scenarios were solved in entirely mundane ways, such as opening a fire hydrant to flood a street when facing villains with fire or electricity quirks.

When he reached the final question, he broke out into a full smile, unnerving the test-takers sitting nearby. The question involved two crimes occurring simultaneously, asking which one he would choose to respond to. Writing his answer to the final question down on the paper, he closed the booklet and stretched his arms upwards.

Mid-stretch, Present Mic noticed him raising his hand and moved over. Consulting her list of examinees as she moved, she couldn't help but feel that the name was familiar in some way. Putting aside her inability to remember him, she arrived nearby.

"Did you have a question, Examinee 7281?"

Izuku opened his eyes, still mid-stretch. "I suppose I do. I've finished the exam – should I turn it in early or wait for the rest of my fellow test-takers?"

Hearing his voice, the feeling of recognition became stronger, a memory from long ago resurfacing in her mind. The day she had dragged her best friend to a local art exhibition, the first time that she had been caught by surprise by a civilian woman with a quirk. His voice was so similar to the one that had plagued her nightmares for weeks afterwards.

"So, which of the two of you was suicidal enough to use your quirk on my son?"

"You have thirty seconds to convince me not to send one of these through your bicep."

"It would be for the best if the two of you were never to meet me again."

Shaking herself off of memory lane, she focused on the situation at hand. "I'm sorry to say that you will have to wait until the end of the exam period as a matter of procedure. You can use the rest of the time to look over your answers and make sure that they are correct. If you have any other questions, please let me know."

With that, she left as quickly as she could without appearing nervous. She wasn't afraid of him, but she had no desire to come into contact with his mother for the rest of her life if she could help it.

As Izuku settled into a resting position, his hands clasped with his elbows on the desk, head propped up and staring at her unblinking, she couldn't help but reconsider her previous thoughts. Perhaps there was something off about his whole family. The way his gaze seemed to follow her as she moved to answer the questions of other examinees only served to reinforce this feeling.

Fortunately for both Izuku and Present Mic, the end of the exam period came faster than either of them expected. After passing the exams of the people behind him to the person in front of him, he leaned back in his chair. To his right, he hear Katsumi whisper, "Why were you smiling?"

Izuku let his "average" smile appear on his face before replying in a similar tone. "The final question. Why would we have to choose?"

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Katsumi shaking her head. "Of course. I bet Izuku would have enjoyed all of those heroism questions. A shame he couldn't be here to take this test."

Izuku shook his head. "Do you doubt my capabilities? I remember everything I see. He will be able to ask you about them when we meet up after the exam, worry not."

Tuning out Katsumi's groan, he focused on the front of the room, where a projector screen was descending from the ceiling. Less than ten seconds after it finished its descent, the projector at the back of the room lit up, displaying a presentation reading 'UA Hero Course Exam, Practical'.

"Listen up, everyone!" The heroine's voice silenced the chatter that had risen in the room during the period that the tests were being collected and taken away for grading. Unfazed by the persisting lack of a response, the heroine began her speech.

"Congratulations on completing the first half of the Hero Course Exams! Don't feel bad if you didn't manage to finish all of the questions or are having doubts about your answers, because you'll be able to make up for that in the next portion of our exam: The Practical!"

There were certainly a few sighs of relief throughout the room, but they were soon drowned out by the presenter as she moved to the next slide.

"You will be sorted into ten exam areas as determined by the last number of your examinee number! If you are unsure of your examinee number, please let me know before we enter the central hub. The practical exam will be as follows: you will be released into a city overrun with robots, which will be marked differently based on the number of points they are worth. Your task is to acquire as many points as possible in the fifteen-minute period of the exam."

"The robots in each exam area will be worth between one and three points. There is an additional robot in each exam area that is worth zero points, and the destruction of certain objects in the exam, such as public infrastructure, will result in a loss of points. Attempting to injure a fellow participant in the exam will result in disqualification, with the injured party gaining all of the points collected by the rule-breaker. Are there any questions before we move to the central hub?"

One student several seats in front of Izuku raised her hand and was pointed to by Present Mic, a spotlight illuminating her as she asked her question. "You mentioned the existence of a zero-point robot – what is the reason behind including such a pointless foe? Additionally," she stood up and turned to look at Izuku, who was easily visible over the heads of the shorter students around him, "are you sure that you're taking the correct exam? This is the hero course, not general studies or business!"

Izuku shook his head before replying. "I know exactly where I am. It is rather rude to judge someone based on their appearance rather than their character or ability."

The quiet laughter and mocking that had filled the room lessened, only to be drowned out by Present Mic's reply. "An excellent question, Examinee 7111! The zero-point robot is simply that – a robot that is worth zero points. Because of this, there is no point in trying to defeat it. Also, I must agree with Examinee 7281. As a hero, one can never make assumptions too quickly, and I would recommend against it."

If asked, she would deny that this piece of advice had anything to do with her recent reminder of a certain overprotective mother to no end. Several questions regarding examinee numbers later, the test-takers were led through a series of hallways before arriving at a room with eleven doors, labeled alphabetically in a clockwise pattern from A to J. After they had sorted themselves out towards their doors, there was a period of a few minutes for test-takers to prepare themselves.

Like several other students, Izuku opened his backpack and began to pull out his equipment. Metallic spheres were tossed over his shoulder, magnetically snapping into place under M4's control. An additional layer of nanobots flowed into the hollow structure of the second skin he was wearing, turning it from a full-body mask to functional armor. The remaining nanobots assembled themselves into the sword he most commonly used, edge sharpened for the upcoming task of cleaving through metal.

He gave the sword a few practice swings, mentally preparing himself for the practical portion of the exam. Nearby, he could see several people looking at him strangely, which could be for any number of reasons. It could be the remnants of the attention drawn to him by the examinee earlier, the fact that he claimed to have finished the exam significantly before it was over, the fact that he had just pulled a sword a meter and a half long from the comparatively small backpack, or just friendly curiosity.

Before anyone worked up the nerve to approach him instead of just staring, the massive door leading to the exam room slid open far faster than any piece of metal had the right to. In the blink of an eye, he and four other candidates around the room rushed into their respective areas without looking back.

By the time Izuku had arrived at the first intersection, he had already acquired four points, with many more robots focusing on him. As he kept running forwards, cutting down the robots as they approached him, he began to use his quirk to intuit the programming behind his opponents. They were both better equipped and more intelligent the more points they were worth, with the one-pointers reacting aggressively on sight and the two-pointers following him around after receiving damage.

He couldn't say anything for sure about the three-pointers, having not encountered one yet, but the one- and two-pointers had a heavy focus on close-range weaponry. Izuku immediately developed a strategy, running through the streets to attract as much attention as possible. The bludgeoning spheres hovering behind him spread out as he ran, sometimes punching through the robots but otherwise hitting them just hard enough to cause them to follow him.

Only five minutes into the exam, he had accumulated a sufficient horde of robots following him to begin the next phase of his strategy – accumulation.

For the next three minutes, he ran through the far side of the testing area, accumulating over two hundred points of robots bulldozing the streets behind him undisturbed by the rest of the test-takers. Then he turned around, set his position firmly, and faced the horde that he had been building with the intent of using nothing but the sword in his hands.

Two minutes of massacre later, Izuku was standing in a circle clear of the fallen robots that littered the street. Placing the sword against his back, he felt M4 apply a magnetic connection against his second-skin armor. Before he could sit down and rest, however, the testing area began to rumble as a massive robot rose from the center of the testing area, the number "zero" clearly visible even from the distance Izuku was at.

'It is a better idea to stay here than to fight the zero-point robot in my testing area.' False.

Pushing away his thoughts of rest, he stood up and ran towards the robot, intent on taking out the robot towering over the landscape.

Midoriya (M4) POV

M4 split part of his attention from where he had been watching over the nanobots comprising Izuku's armor and weaponry as he heard Izuku's name being called in the room where the body 'Midoriya' was waiting. Moving the human-shaped collection of nanobots, he simulated Izuku's normal movements and made his way to the closed examination room.

As he closed the door behind himself, he took the time to look around the room. It was split in half by a transparent barrier that bore quite a few scorch marks from the explosions he had heard from previous examinees. As he made his way to the center of the room, he identified the hero on the other side of the glass – Power Loader, the heroine in charge of the first-year support course. Her voice came from a speaker visible in the corner of the room, sounding as if it had spoken these exact lines hundreds of times already without an end in sight.

"Good afternoon, Examinee 7281. I am the pro heroine Power Loader and I will be observing you and your inventions today. Please display your inventions for analysis."

M4, from his server in Izuku's house, performed the closest action he could to a smile.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, Power Loader, but Midoriya Izuku is currently taking the Hero Course exam. I, however, am his invention and am here to present myself in his stead. I am the fourth-generation artificial intelligence created by Midoriya Izuku, you may refer to me as M4 and the body I inhabit as Midoriya."

Power Loader, who was rubbing her temples as she gave her earlier speech, snapped her eyes open at the words 'fourth-generation artificial intelligence' and leaned forwards to more closely observe the examinee before her. She had seen far too many useless inventions throughout the day, from a bubble machine that froze the soap bubbles as it created them to a dual-bladed chainsaw with the other blade facing the user. This, however, promised to be interesting.

"You call yourself an artificial intelligence? How can you prove such a bold claim?"

Instead of immediately replying, M4 decided to demonstrate physically. He had Midoriya remove his head with his left hand before crushing it, flecks of metallic silver bursting apart before freezing in the air under his magnetic control.

Despite the lack of blood, Power Loader jumped back screaming, falling out of her chair before realizing that the M4 had not actually died as a result of this action. When her scream stopped, there was a full second of silence before M4's voice filled the room.

"I presume that that was evidence enough?"

A minute later, after M4 had reassembled Midoriya's head and Power Loader had extracted a promise from the artificial intelligence to never do that again, she returned to the paper on which she was supposed to be scoring his invention. While the inventor himself wasn't present, the invention of artificial intelligence and a self-repairing body double realistic enough to fool other applicants would certainly earn him a spot at any university he wished.

Quickly scribbling in a perfect score for all of the relevant categories regarding the invention itself and its presentation, she moved to the bottom half of the paper, lined for her to write any additional notes in, ready to fill it as much as possible.

"Ignoring the whole non-human body demonstration, by what standards are you an artificial intelligence?"

The figure in front of her smiled. "I have passed the Turing test, can solve captchas, and in all other ways surpass humans in intelligence and knowledge. For the past decade, I have possessed true sentience as defined by humans and have been capable of original thought. If you would like, I can provide a more digital demonstration of my capability, though you may find that unnerving."

Power Loader, who had more than enough surprises in this session alone, quickly shook her head to dissuade M4 from any more 'unnerving' displays. "No, that's good enough. Can you tell me more about the body you're currently using?"

The smile on Midoriya's face grew inhumanly large without moving as M4 spoke. "This form is comprised of several quadrillion nanobots with the outermost shell given coats of paint to look like human skin and organs. These nanobots are powered by a small-scale fusion reactor contained within the body and are held together using electromagnetic force. I could do my best to explain how the body 'Midoriya' works, but you may have better luck asking my creator himself."

M4 paused, giving Power Loader time to finish writing down her thoughts. "Midoriya is capable of sustaining piercing, slashing, bludgeoning, electrical, and some other energy-based attacks. Certain types of radiation have not been tested due to Midoriya Izuku's inability to acquire highly radioactive materials without arousing the wrong types of attention."

At this point, Power Loader had run out of space on the paper for comments. "Okay M4, that's enough for now. Unless twenty of the examinees out there have somehow created something more impressive than you, I want you and your creator to know that you both are guaranteed admission to the Support Course at UA. You mentioned that Midoriya Izuku was taking the Hero Course exam right now?"

After a delay that fit in the amount of time it took most people to blink, M4 switched his attention to Izuku, who was running through the trail of wreckage caused by his fellow examinees and the zero-pointer to engage the colossal robot.

"Yes, he is," Midoriya stated.

Power Loader nodded, trying not to appear opportunistic. "In the event that he doesn't make it into the Hero Course, please let him know that he would be welcome in the support course at any time. If you'd like, I can advocate for him whichever course he eventually decides on joining."

M4's smile returned to normal human proportions and his mouth began moving again as he rose from his seated position on the floor. "While that shouldn't be necessary, it would be greatly appreciated. We both thank you and wish you a wonderful day."

With that, he turned to leave the room, closing the door behind him. Before she called in the next examinee, she shook her head. The boy was clearly immensely talented and capable, to have built the things that he did. Even with the support gear he was undoubtedly using, for someone quirkless to willingly put themselves into such an ordeal was nothing short of unbelievable.

As she called in the next applicant, who was carrying a bag of frozen blueberries and a box with a funnel sticking out of the top, she sighed. She would almost prefer another explosion. Ten seconds later, she got her wish as a slurry of frozen blueberry painted the screen separating her and the examinee. Telling the applicant to leave the room, she pressed the button to call in a janitor to clean the partition. She should have been more careful with what she wished for.

Izuku POV

While M4 was walking out of the room, Izuku had finally made his way around the robot demolishing its way through the city, ready to face it head-on. Before he could do such a thing, a cry for help sounded from one of the buildings between him and the robot. Changing his course, he made his way over only to discover a girl trapped underneath a collapsed stone column. She didn't look to be in any great pain, but she was unable to free herself judging by her increasingly panicked reaction to the giant robot moving closer to her.

Izuku tried to move the pillar himself, but even with his second skin lifting with him it was simply too much weight. He could have cut it to pieces with his sword before moving a much smaller and lighter burden, but in the state that the girl was in, swinging a sword at her seemed unlikely to help the situation.

"What's your name?"

She seemed to calm down at his question, turning to him with a look of surprise. "I- I'm Uraraka Ochako. What are you doing here? Can't you see the zero-pointer coming!"

Ignoring her questions for a second, Izuku continued in a calming voice. "Are you okay? Are you able to move?"

Ochako shook her head. "I'm fine, but you have to go! I can't move, but it probably won't target me. It will go after you, so you need to run!"

Izuku shook his head. "There's no way of telling if it even knows you are here, and I can't just leave you here. I'll take down the zero-pointer and come back for you, okay?"

Not stopping to listen to her attempt to convince him otherwise, Izuku pulled the magnetic-focus sphere from behind him, flipping the switch on the side from 'Attract' to 'Repel' before throwing it to the ground in front of him and running forwards. Half a second after he passed over it, it activated, boosting him in the air as he flew towards the robot that towered above the buildings.

Stabbing his sword into his arm and calling out "Unrealistically large!", he pulled it out to reveal a blade more than four meters in length at the cost of the majority of his armor. It didn't matter that much, though. He had already confirmed the cuts he would need to make to disable the robot with his quirk, and they almost seemed visible on the zero-pointer's body. A stab to the processing unit, a cut through the power supply, three cuts through the armor to expose those, and a sixth cut through the motherboard just for good measure.

As Izuku spun through the air, following through on his plan, it was a sight to watch for Ochako, who had moved herself to a position where she could see outside despite being trapped. The nameless savior who had appeared before deciding to take on the city-demolishing robot that none of the other applicants even tried to face with a sword was so unrealistic that she wasn't convinced that she wasn't dreaming, despite the pain from her leg and nausea from the overuse of her quirk.

The sight as he neared the titan's chest before rapidly swinging his sword several times was truly similar to the story of David and Goliath, and as the proverbial Goliath stopped making any noise or emitting light and began to fall backward, she couldn't help but wonder who her mysterious savior was. All thoughts of that left her mind as the ground shook with an earth-shattering boom, the pillar moving upwards in recoil for the split second that she needed to pull her leg out before a cloud of concrete dust filled the air and she rushed to cover her mouth and nose with her shirt.

As she waited where she was for the cloud of dust to settle, she noticed a figure with a sword and an odd contraption over their face approaching from the direction that the robot had fallen. Before she could ask any questions, however, the alarm signifying the end of the exam went off.

On their walk back to the central testing room, she learned several things about her fellow applicant. First of all, his name was Midoriya Izuku, and he was much taller than she had thought when she first saw him while trapped under the column. On account of her injured leg, he had offered to carry her back to the entrance of the practical area and she gladly accepted. When he picked her up to carry her on his back, however, she was caught off guard by just how high she was off of the ground.

While he carried her back, he talked about several other things, apologizing for how uncomfortable his armor was and asking her about her quirk. She felt slightly bad talking about her quirk to someone who couldn't have one, but his cheerful attitude dispelled that feeling quickly. Some of the suggestions he gave her about how to use her quirk were certainly interesting, but she was having a hard time focusing on them with the throbbing pain in her leg.

When they reached the central hub, Izuku carried her over to the station that Recovery Girl had set up before carefully letting her down to get treated. Looking around the room, he sighed with relief that Katsumi wasn't there, or he may have had to play up his act as Midoriya again. As they were free to leave, he made his way to the point where he knew Midoriya was waiting for him, picking up his backpack from beside the door and depositing his gear into it as he walked.

His wait with Midoriya before Katsumi arrived was brief, and when the trio reunited there were only a few seconds of confusion as she tried to figure out who was who before they left for the train back home.

On the train, they talked about how their exams went. Midoriya went first, describing Izuku's experience in the Hero Exam as he had observed it from the countless cameras that he had borrowed the proctor's access to. Katsumi was impressed by the strategy that he had used, turning to outright shock at the number of points that he had ended the exam with.

She told the tale of her exam next, talking about the heroism-related questions on the test with the two before moving into her description of the practical. Using her strategy of maintaining a constant level of explosions to keep herself sweating nitroglycerin from the heat, she had bulldozed her way through every robot in sight, racking up over a hundred and twenty points and taking on the zero-pointer when it showed up.

Lastly, Izuku spoke as M4 fed him information through the earpiece, giving him just enough information about the actual events for him to tell a story of how it would have gone if it was Izuku there and not Midoriya. Unfortunately, he had to leave out details like the head explosion, but the comments about the devices that other applicants brought with them left her breathless from laughing.

When he told her about the guarantee from Power Loader that he would be accepted, she gave him a short hug before saying in the most snobby voice she could, "As expected of my boyfriend."

The two laughed it off, planning to celebrate in a week when they received their official acceptances.

Yamada Hikaru (Present Mic) POV

Unlike the applicants that had been able to leave and go about their days, the various proctors were not so lucky. Hikaru was still sitting in the teacher's lounge as she went over the Hero Course tests, taking turns with the rest of the proctors in the room shooting envious glares at Maijima Hitomu (better known as Power Loader) as she leaned back in her chair, already done choosing which of the applicants she would be accepting into the Support Course.

In front of her was a small stack of papers from the inventions she had approved of while she was writing on a notepad balanced on her knee, looking at one in her lap. The vast majority of them had never left the exam room in the first place, discarded for a lack of utility, required skill, or for simply not working when presented.

Arai Asuka was blazing through the tests for the General Studies course, possessing a minor quirk that slowed down her perception of time and using it to grade papers at nearly triple the speed that Hikaru was capable of.

The business course had taken a different approach to applicants this year, having them give a proposal further in advance and then submit a summary of how their proposal had played out in the real world, using profit and potential as the basis to accept their students.

While they worked, they shared some of the funnier stories about the applicant's responses or inventions, waiting to discuss the truly outstanding ones until the rest of the teachers arrived.

When Shiko eventually made her way into the room and sat down next to Hikaru, a smile bloomed across Hikaru's face. Strangely quietly for a sound-based hero, she slid half of the remaining stack of tests in front of her and placed a pen on top. Shiko, being a pro heroine, immediately noticed this and glared at her friend, only to be met with the same almost-innocent smile. As one of the homeroom teachers for the hero students, after all, she had a responsibility to help with their tests.

Ten minutes later, when Kan Shiori entered the room, both of them removed a third of their stacks before placing them in front of her, in unison giving her the same smile that Hikaru had given Shiko.

Eventually, they had almost made their way through the stacks of tests, when Shiko began to narrate the responses from Izuku's test. At first, she was merely dismissive of them, having read that the examinee was male and therefore quirkless, but the more she read the more intrigued she became. All of the scenarios were solved in a way that didn't require a quirk or specialized equipment, and while she was still dismissive of the applicant himself the train of thought behind those solutions was solid.

There was just one oddity with the final question, however. It was meant to see whether potential hero candidates were influenced by things like gender, age, profession, or other factors when saving people. The applicant, however, had ignored the choices and written 'I would simply be in both places at once', which confused her for a few minutes before she marked down the question.

It was nearing sundown when the rest of the teachers arrived: All Might, Nozomi, Midnight, and a few others all walking into the room at the same time. By the time Nozomi sat down, the rest of the teachers in the room had gone quiet.

"Well, it's that time of year again. We'll skip Business this time, there are still a few people who need to submit their results before any definitive choices can be made there. For General Studies…"

Half an hour of Nozomi entering information into the school's database later, they finally arrived at the Support course. Hitomu quickly ran through the few applicants who had produced useful inventions before moving into those who displayed a high level of technical skill in their creations despite their impracticality. After she had finished with the twentieth student, however, she didn't finish speaking.

"I have one more applicant who I feel is more than qualified to enter the support course, but I was informed that this applicant has also taken the Hero Course Exam, so I will refrain from accepting them into the Support Course until you have passed judgment on the Hero Course applicants."

Nozomi raised an eyebrow at that but otherwise did not comment. It would be simple enough for an applicant to finish the Hero Course Exam and then join the end of the queue for the Support Course, so there was no need to join in on the whispering coming from a few of the teachers. Instead, she simply nodded and spun the elevated chair that she was sitting on to face the trio that had been grading the Hero Course tests.

"Well, Ladies, are there any high scorers?"

Hikaru spoke up, seeing as she was the proctor. "Overall, we had four students out of six hundred score above ninety percent this year. From lowest to highest, the scores were one ninety-three, two ninety-fives, and one ninety-nine. The median score, as usual, was fifty-seven percent. Several individuals answered some of the heroism-related questions so poorly that we believe they require various forms of therapy regardless of their attendance at UA."

"We were waiting to evaluate the results of the practical exam until you arrived, so as soon as Hitomu decides to make the projector work properly, we can get into that."

Fifteen seconds later, the paused image of ten different exams was displayed, with one substantially larger than the other nine and a ranking list of the top forty on the right side of the screen. Upon unpausing, five of the images showed people moving onto them at similar rates of speed. Each of them quickly acquired at least a few points, immediately appearing at the top of the rankings – Midoriya Izuku, Bakugou Katsumi, Todoroki Shoko, Melissa Shield, and Yaoyorozu Momo.

The latter four remained at the top, carrying their early lead while Izuku dropped below the top forty shortly afterward.

While the other heroines were busy watching, Nozomi noted reactions from several of her teachers at the names on the top five. Hikaru flinched, Toshiko's ever-present smile widened, and Hitomu leaned forwards in interest. It was quite an interesting set of reactions, and whether or not they were related was unimportant. Perhaps those five would require her… personal attention.

Eight minutes into the recording, however, a different area moved to fill the screen. Thirty seconds afterwards, the name 'Midoriya Izuku' returned to the top forty, accompanied by the same set of reactions. Again, this was not missed by Nozomi as she split her attention between the screen and her employees.

Midoriya's return to the top forty was not unrealistic – the points required to do so didn't even reach thirty at this point in the exam. What was unrealistic was the rate at which the points kept climbing, quickly rising to fifth place and pausing there before breaching the gap between fourth place and the rest of the applicants.

The points only kept climbing, and by the time they stopped near the ten-minute mark, Midoriya Izuku held the first place with a solid two hundred and thirty-five points, nearly triple Bakugou Katsumi's score of eighty-seven points in second place. The room was dead-silent at this point despite the shaking image on the screens betraying the arrival of the zero-pointers. Toshiko's smile could almost be described as proud, and Hitomu's was… regretful? Jealous?

On the projection, the largest image shifted between the five areas containing the top five students as they took on the zero-pointers.

Todoroki Shoko froze the robot in place before it could destroy a single building, spending a solid minute making sure that it would not be moving without external assistance.

Bakugou Katsumi tore her way through its head and chest, wreathed in explosions as the metal gave way before her.

Yaoyorozu Momo moved underneath the robot, producing a block of some material that must have held an extremely powerful electrical charge seeing as a bolt of lightning fell from the clouds, disabling the robot in nature's attempt to equalize the charges.

Melissa Shield leaped onto the robot, punching her way into its head before doing something to the electronics in there, leaving the robot perfectly still but still functional. If Power Loader had to guess, the girl had disconnected the targeting chip from the main logic board, but only doing so in one direction so that the robot would be unable to receive the results of its requests for targets.

On Midoriya Izuku's field, however, the zero-pointer was unchallenged for several minutes until he arrived on the scene, stopping in a nearby building for a minute before taking down the robot in a frankly puzzling way. He threw some kind of impulse grenade, stabbed himself and made his sword grow larger, and then slashed at a specific point on the robot several times before it fell backward, creating a massive cloud of dust and causing all of the cameras to shake.

The extra minute of footage after the exam ended showed him carrying a girl out of the dust cloud, a mask disappearing from the lower half of his face as he re-entered their field of view. As soon as no more movement was detected in the testing sites and the cloud of dust had cleared, the recording ended.

At the end of the video, the top forty spots expanded to fill the screen. As Shiko and Shiori took down the top and bottom half of the names respectively, Nozomi rewound the footage to the eight-minute mark and switched through the cameras in the top scorer's arena to see for herself exactly what had happened.

The camera that she finally stopped on was situated directly behind him as he stood, sword drawn, facing a horde of robots that filled the street before him for nearly two blocks, numbering at least a hundred and fifty. Unpausing, she and the unoccupied teachers watched as he carved his way through the swarm of robots with a sword that looked like it would snap before even damaging one of them.

Halfheartedly, the rest of the teachers passed around the remote control to focus on particular students. When Shiko and Shiori had finished, Nozomi took the remote back and placed it on the table before her, drawing everyone's attention before speaking.

"I'm going to address the elephant in the room first. For the first time ever, UA has a male applicant to the Hero Course that has passed the exam. He is, by all rights, qualified to be a student at our school. There are several problems that this causes, however. We currently have no accommodations in our Hero facilities for male students, the nearest male bathroom to the 1-A classroom is in one of the General Studies buildings and those are perhaps the most minor concerns."

"On-campus accommodations will need adjustment, but I'm sure that with the help of heroines like Cementoss, those will be solved relatively easily. The more pressing problem lies in his identity. There is simply no way to conceal it for his safety as we do for our other students. Furthermore, he will likely be injured much more easily than his peers during normal activities."

At this, Hitomu cleared her throat. "Not to interrupt, but if these problems become too pressing, Midoriya Izuku was the applicant that I was considering accepting into the Support Course in the event that he did not make it into the Hero Course."

Jumping on that idea, Nozomi began to consider it. There had been male students in the Support Course before, and their identities required much less protection than those of the Hero students. After several minutes, she nodded decisively.

"It's a shame that it's come to this, but it will be safer for him to go to the Support course despite his efforts in the Hero Exam. While he may wish otherwise, it falls to us to make decisions for the greater well-being of our students, and-"

Whatever she was about to say was cut off by the screen abruptly changing and the rest of the lights in the room turning off, none of the teachers having left their seats or touched the remote.

The screen that had been previously displaying the names of the top forty contestants had been replaced with a calming blue background with a geometric image of a person's head facing away from them. Over the next few seconds, the figure began to turn around, the screen shaking more and more intensely as it came closer to facing them directly. Every device capable of producing noise in the room, from the overhead speakers to the radio sitting on a table in the corner, began to play staticky noises as the figure on the screen noticeably glitched.

Its eye sockets were glowing orange, a stark contrast to the blues of the rest of the screen. When the head had reached the point that it was looking at Toshiko, the lips curved slightly upwards before the screen abruptly returned to normal, the lights coming back on as if nothing had ever happened. It had only been five seconds, and yet the teachers were all unnerved.

At once more and less surprised than her colleagues, Toshiko contemplated what had just happened. Right as Nozomi had been about to assign Izuku to the Support Course, one of the avatars that he had seen M4 use appeared on the screen, giving off a threatening appearance.

As far as she understood the artificial intelligence and its creator, there was no way that Izuku would have ordered M4 to ensure his position in the Hero Course through such means. M4, however, was perfectly capable of acting on his own and saw Izuku as some strange combination of a father, an older brother, and his creator. It was entirely possible that M4 had taken the initiative to prevent what he saw as an unfavorable outcome.

Feeling her phone vibrate in her pocket, she pulled it out to see a message from M4.

'Who are we to go against fate?'

Pushing the phone back into her pocket, she reconsidered what she had been previously thinking in a new light. Perhaps Izuku had confirmed that he would make it into the Hero Course using his quirk, causing M4 to intervene when he saw that things weren't going the way they were predicted.

This raised an odd question about the prediction – was it made accurately in the first place? If M4 had done nothing, then Izuku would be in the Support Course and the prediction would have been wrong. Of course, the prediction could have been banking on M4 knowing about it and interfering to make the prediction come true.

Likely, even if the prediction had not occurred M4 would have reacted to Izuku's potential placement outside of the hero course. Now, however, M4 had chosen to interfere despite his ability to do nothing, and she was also capable of affecting the outcome.

Quickly weighing the options before her in her mind, she spoke up. "Perhaps it would be for the best to send an acceptance letter for both courses with the information about the risks of the Hero Course compared to the Support Course. As a legal adult, he is capable of making his own decisions, but we can provide him with the information necessary to make an informed decision about his future. We can accept an extra student into the Hero Course for the time being – after all, we all know Shiko's track record."

Nozomi thought through Toshiko's response, considering her stance on the matter. He would likely compare his score with that of other prospective students and find out about their actions in the long run, so it was better to not alienate a student from the administration in such a way. She could already think of the scripts she would give each teacher when it came time to record their introductory letters.

It was obvious to her that Toshiko was trying to guide the outcome of the situation in some way, the sum of a series of actions revealing that she either knew this Midoriya Izuku or the origin of their interruption. Regardless, the boy had performed well on both exams if Hitomu's word was to be trusted, and something about the whole situation triggered her curiosity.

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but of all the species she had been labeled a cat was not one of them. She would eagerly see where this went, for better or worse. After all, she had one of the strongest intelligence quirks in history, elevating her from an animal to the principal of the nation's most prestigious school, only growing stronger as time passed. Who could possibly outplay her, the mistress of the game that would soon play out in her school?

Izuku, who was currently celebrating his score with Katsumi, Inko, and Mitsuki, felt a sudden urge to sneeze, quickly suppressing it. He didn't believe in superstitions, but a quick statement revealed that somebody was thinking about him at the time. Chalking it up as merely a coincidence, he returned to the celebration unworried.

M4, despite not having a nose or body to sneeze with, suddenly blinked, all of his processes pausing for a millisecond before continuing as normal. After checking himself and being unable to find anything in his logs that would cause such a disruption, he resolved to ask Izuku about it later.

For Izuku, the day ended peacefully, taking a shower and sending Toshiko the list of tomorrow's crimes before going to bed early. He was looking forwards to receiving his letter from UA, one that he had confirmed over five years ago would be an acceptance from the Hero Course.

Indeed, all was well for Midoriya Izuku.

Author's Note: So, there are definitely a few changes from canon here that I wish to address. There are no "recommended students" at this UA, hence the presence of Todoroki Shoko and Yaoyorozu Momo in the normal exam.

The Support Course exam that I have written here has no basis in canon, and UA functions more as a college or university than a high school as it does in canon, preparing both the next generation of heroines and future leaders in other fields. Selection for hero-focused courses is still as small as in canon to avoid the expansion of events like the Sports Festival to hundreds or thousands of students. With a staff of pro heroines, after all, you can only afford to teach so many students. General Studies and the Business Course are much larger than in canon, however.

As for the second breakfast that Katsumi ate, this also has no basis in canon (as far as I know) and instead has a basis in chemistry/biology. Water is required to sweat, and as her quirk is derived from her mother's Glycerin (C3H8O3) quirk, sugars (glucose(C6H12O6) and sucrose (C12H22O11) among others) serve as an excellent fuel to form Nitroglycerin (C3H5N3O9) in addition to the nitrogen that makes up 71 percent of the air we breathe.

As justification for the One for All power-scaling:

(1 + 3*(number of bearers))% increase per percent of One for All used, effectively a multiplier of 1.01 + 0.03*(number of bearers).

For Toshiko, the eighth bearer, she receives a 25% increase per percent, capping out at 1.25^100, roughly equal to 4.91 billion times her base strength.

Melissa, the ninth bearer, receives a 28% increase per percent, capping out at 1.28^100, roughly equal to 52.6 billion times her base strength.

52.6/4.91 = 10.715x increase.

The inspiration for M4's interruption comes from the first ending of the game Cell to Singularity, which can be seen at you /- WQndjtvBDI ?t=40 (with the spaces removed, minor volume warning).

As for the protection of their identities, it's something that is skirted around in canon with heroes on both ends of the spectrum. You have heroes like Ingenium who are relatively open with their true names and heroes like All Might, who protect their identities. You have events like the Sports Festival, broadcasting their participants' names and faces worldwide, which are completely at odds with people who would like to separate their hero and civilian lives.

Perhaps as a result of having read Worm recently, I'm leaning toward the side of protecting their identities. Among colleagues, however, heroines will share their names with each other, linking them together through shared trust.

Unfortunately, my beta reader for this fic has become much busier recently and is unable to continue beta reading future chapters. If any of you are willing and able to help me with some of the characterizations of the characters, the flow of the story, and otherwise proofreading, please contact me. I can be reached through direct messages on FFN or by leaving a review or comment on either FFN or AO3. Similar to the arrangement I had with my previous beta reader, I am willing to act as a beta reader for one of your works in exchange.

Again, many thanks to my beta reader so far, ILoveMyths2003.

Please leave a comment or review if you have any questions or if there's anything you'd like me to know.