pinwheel eyes

by vamer

ok

Preface

Pinwheel Eyes
Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at /works/35742463.

Rating:
Not Rated
Archive Warning:
Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Fandom:
僕のヒーローアカデミア Boku no Hero Academia My Hero Academia
Relationship:
Midoriya Izuku & Nishiya Shinji Kamui Woods, Midoriya Izuku & Original Character(s)
Character:
Midoriya Izuku, Nishiya Shinji Kamui Woods, Yagi Toshinori All Might, Bakugou Katsuki, Midoriya Inko
Additional Tags:
Midoriya Izuku Has a Quirk, Morally Ambiguous Midoriya Izuku, Midoriya Izuku Does Not Have One for All Quirk, Powerful Midoriya Izuku, BAMF Midoriya Izuku, Strategy & Tactics
Language:
English
Collections:
Personal_Preferences,
Collection of The Best Fics I've Read,
Banco Fic,
my heart is here
Stats:
Published: 2021-12-16 Updated: 2023-04-21 Words: 63,038 Chapters: 9/?
Pinwheel Eyes

by Hrothgar_Lee

Summary

All Izuku ever wanted was to be a hero and help people. When his fourth birthday came, he got a quirk that could accomplish his dreams perfectly... too perfectly. Fourteen and still aiming for hero school, Izuku was burnt out, bored, and uninspired. Things just didn't challenge him anymore. With a quirk that might as well accomplish everything for him, Izuku entered hero school desperately hoping that SOMETHING could manage to give him the challenge he needed.

Notes

If you would like to support my work in any capacity, check out my original story, "Asteria: the New Ring," here: /works/35498428

It would be greatly appreciated.

the Boy With the Pinwheel Eyes

Chapter Summary

Izuku and Bakugo have a little confrontation a week before the school has its career counseling day.

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

"Okay, I believe that is our time coming to an end," a middle-aged teacher with short hair and horn-rimmed glasses said with a look at the clock. "Remember that we have a quiz on Monday, your homework is due on Wednesday, and we have career counseling on Friday. Have a nice weekend."

Noise exploded around the middle school classroom as the third years began conversing about their weekend plans and where they wanted to go after they got out of Aldera. Bakugo wasn't impressed by all of the kids still holding onto the pipedream of attending Yuuei, but he remained silent through the absurd ramblings of his second-rate classmates. Instead of berating them, he stared over at the only person who actually stood a chance of getting in with a furious fire burning behind his red eyes.

The useless nerd was listlessly staring out of the window from his desk, which bordered the edge of the room. Just thinking about the fact that the lazy ass stood a chance at getting past the U.A. examinations made his blood boil. Sparks revolved around his dominant hand as his mind urged him into a confrontation.

The green-haired prick, seemingly just now noticing that class was over, looked at him with his weird-ass eyes and smirked widely once he saw the obvious desire for conflict raging within him. The center of his eyes were tiny, black pupils, and that was where the normalcy ended. His irises were bright, shining silver, and placed upon that solid background was a multitude of straight, radially arranged, black lines that made his eyes look like an abstractly drawn pinwheel. Those headache-inducing eyes seemed to bore into Katsuki's very soul, and he averted his gaze on instinct.

He knew what that fucker could do with them.

As it just so happened, averting his eyes gave Katsuki a particularly good view of some familiar little booklets that he hadn't noticed in the slightest before. Knowing what they were, Katsuki was close to blowing a fuse. The fucking Deku might as well be flaunting them. He could tell by the smirk on the bastard's face that Deku knew exactly what was pissing him off.

Katsuki was tempted to throw down right then and there, but he was smarter than that. Starting shit in the classroom was bound to mar his flawless record. No, he would get his chance. Deku wasn't going to be able to leave without going past him, and that was enough of an assurance for him to confidently remove himself from the room and head toward the front door.

Walking through the hallways of Aldera Middle, Katsuki fought to control his temper, choosing to look around at the garbage school he'd been attending for three years instead. There was a certain amount of ick that clung to every surface of the school in such a way that the entire place looked tainted and worn down. Then again, that was his opinion on pretty much everything in his hometown.

He was surrounded by the uninspiring and dull. The town was boring, the people were unexceptional, and the general air of disgusting mundanity permeated the very essence of everything here… everything except for himself. Through all of the muck and grime, Aldera Middle managed to have a single spark of something more, and it was him. Aldera was lucky that their spark happened to be Bakugo Katsuki because he was a spark that would turn into a fire bigger than anyone before or after him could ever hope to match.

From down the hall, he saw the two hangers-on who usually clung to his coattails, but he didn't feel like expending the effort of flicking them off. He would literally lose more momentum by wasting his time dealing with them than by simply dragging them along. That was how good he was. They would fall away from his slipstream eventually.

"Hey, Bakugo, what took ya' so long?"

Bakugo shrugged and walked past them without a second glance. "Nothing, just getting ready to swat a fly."

The two chuckled behind him. They already knew what he meant. Leading them out of the front door to wait by the fountain, Katsuki inwardly lamented about the fact that Aldera couldn't even properly create extras. He had to admit that it could've been worse though. All of the students in Aldera were trash, but they at least had the fucking brains to step out of his path and follow in his wake, all of them except for that one piece of garbage that always ended up placing itself right beneath his feet.

Waiting for Deku turned out to be pretty fucking boring, so he ended up staring into the fountain to occupy his time. The water was actually flawless today, and he didn't notice at all until now. The way it reflected the sun gave it a surprisingly excellent sheen, and it was so very clear and smooth. In fact, the fountain looked a little too clear. He spent a bit of time around the fountain during various times of the day, and he always noted that the fountain was usually pretty foamy.

odd...

His thoughts were cut off by the nasally voice of extra number one. "Bakugo, get a load of this. The little shit is carrying his freaky fucking notes like he's holding a baby."

Looking over at the green-haired fuck, he noticed that the extra was right. He couldn't help but smile dangerously. Deku was cradling his little booklets to his chest, covering them with his own body.

Good.

Deku knew that his better was looking for some conflict, and he was feeling protective over his most prized possessions. Springing from the edge of the fountain, Katsuki started approaching his useless, lazy classmate, making absolutely sure to avoid any eye contact. He got away with it before, but the bastard was expecting a fight now, and letting Deku use his fucking quirk was out of the question.

"Whatcha got there, Deku?"

Katsuki watched the weakling come to a halt and stare at him, obviously hoping to catch his eyes. Well, too fucking bad for him that his quirk was so useless until he met the activation requirement.

"Oh, you know, this and that, Kachaan."

Katsuki scowled at the nickname and the completely nonchalant attitude of the most annoying thorn to ever lodge itself in his side. That was what pissed him off more than anything. No matter how outclassed he was, Deku seemed to be physically incapable of caring. He was so indolent and self-assured that he just couldn't bring himself to put in the effort for anything. He wasn't even able to work himself up enough to feel fear in the face of what Katsuki was about to do to him.

With his anger thoroughly stoked, he let off tiny explosions from his hand and propelled himself at his enemy with speeds that surprised even himself. He knew that Deku's eyes were working right now, analyzing, breaking down, and picking apart every minuscule twitch of his muscles. It didn't matter though; he was too fast.

Deku might've been able to see him, but that didn't mean he was able to react. For all of his abilities, he was still lesser. Katsuki cackled gleefully as he snatched a notebook or two from Deku's arms. Opening them, he saw what he'd expected, and it made him even angrier. Right in front of him was a psychological profile on him and all of the other trash that attended classes with him.

Opening his page, he could basically hear the hammering of Deku's heart. That only made him smile more.

Was Deku actually feeling something?

When he saw what was on his page, Katsuki immediately understood the rare emotions coming from the useless bitch. On his page was a complete, updated breakdown of his own psyche and mental habits. It was not at all flattering.

Impulsive, Detail-oriented, reckless, aggressive, physical, tactile in nature, analytical unless provoked, feels pleasure when in control, enjoys the praise of his peers.

Katsuki blew the book to ashes in a second. Deku was attempting to dissect his mind, and he knew why. It was the bastard's main ability. Deku was trying to work out the best way to trap him, deceive him. The motherfucker was trying to learn what made him tick, what would make him an easier target, how to make him feel safe or in control, how to make him believe it was real.

He was so very furious that he grabbed Izuku by his collar and slammed him against the school doors with the force of a thousand men. The vibrations that emanated from the metal and into Deku's body made his hands tingle in the most satisfying way. He glared into the terrified eyes of a now completely flustered Deku, and it felt amazing to have the little fuck shaking with fear before him. His classmates laughed and jeered behind him, and that bolstered his ego in the most tantalizing way.

Katsuki drew his dominant hand back and slammed it into Deku's stomach before pulling it back again and smashing it into his face. He laughed with satisfaction from the way Deku's head snapped back and smacked against the metal door. This was what it meant to be powerful. Deku should've learned that his pitiful ability meant so little earlier on if he didn't want to get shown so brutally today.

Deku looked up at him with those damn pinwheel eyes and smiled wide with a bleeding, broken jaw. It looked very gory, and he felt like he actually might've gone too far this time. A broken jaw would be very difficult to explain away. He didn't want his record ruined.

"Oh, poor, ignorant, naive Bakugo, do you really not see?" Deku taunted with his thoroughly damaged jaw.

Katsuki glared at the boy without meeting his eyes. Deku wasn't fond of pain. The bastard couldn't handle it. There was no possible way that he was talking with a broken jaw, and he would not be smiling if it actually was broken.

Was this really...? But when? When did it happen? When could it have happened?

Katsuki's eyes shot wide, and he was thrown for a loop and a half when he found himself abruptly thrown back into his final class, staring into Deku's pinwheel eyes as the recently released students threw their backpacks over their shoulders and began filtering out of the room. The black, radial lines in his two irises were spinning madly around his pupils in opposite directions, and a deadly, enraging smirk was plastered on his face.

No.

Katsuki immediately jerked his head to look at the clock.

3:15… class just ended.

This was when Deku got him? in the briefest moment of eye contact? Did Deku know all the way back then that things were going to escalate? He'd spent half a fucking hour in there. How was he fooled? What the hell did Deku do to him? The boy's spinning eyes implored him to see, urged him to analyze and dig deeper, begged him to see the truth.

The notes…

Impulsive, reckless, and aggressive.

He glanced at the table and realized that the fucking notes weren't actually there. Deku placed them there in his mind because he knew that it would piss him off. He played off of his anger of being analyzed to draw his ire and distract him from his mistake of making eye contact.

Detail oriented.

Deku knew that he noticed little things, that his brain instinctually latched onto stuff that others might not notice, so he made sure to appease his habitual collection of useless data by giving him little things to observe. The mucky coating on the school surfaces that he knew so well and the way his sycophants talked with him and each other so accurately. They placed him in his environment and sold the scene to him.

Analytical unless provoked.

The fountain… It was a mistake. Deku didn't design it properly. Bakugo noticed that something was off. He began to ponder the differences between reality and the illusion, so Deku chose that time to present the object of his fury. Deku's arrival at the scene ripped him away from the fountain and turned on his desire for action.

The explosions were a mistake too. Katsuki knew that he was a smidge faster than normal. He used his quirk so much that he was intimately aware of his limits. That was why his breakdown just happened to be on the first page of the first book he'd snatched out of the many in Deku's arms. The analysis was scathing and purposefully antagonistic to distract him from the fact that he should have been slower.

Physical, tactile in nature.

The way the vibrations of the shaking door pulsed up his fingers and through his wrists felt so real. The satisfying thumps that came from his strikes gave such a realistic jolt to his arms. Deku abused his inclination toward his sense of touch in order to make his actions have that extra bit of weight and impact that he loved so much.

Receives pleasure from control and enjoys the praise of his peers.

He remembered so vividly how much he'd loved the fear he'd finally provoked from the normally apathetic boy. The way Deku made himself shiver and cower triggered his yearning for control, and the way his followers egged him on and cheered pushed him even further and made him cross a line he shouldn't have.

Deku… Deku just played him for everything he was worth. Thirty minutes, he spent living a lie because the bastard read him like a book. He hated it; he hated the way it made him feel; he hated the entire fucking school!

Deku's irises finally stopped spinning, and Katsuki exploded. He jumped out of his desk and marched up to the green-haired prick with nothing but complete confidence and righteous anger coursing through his veins. Deku might've gotten him just now, but as long as he didn't meet the fucker's eyes, he could grind the bitch to dust. He grabbed Deku's collar and, just like in the illusion that pissed him off so much, slammed the bastard into the wall. Instead of fear, though, all he saw was an infuriating smirk of satisfaction.

"Bakugo Katsuki, what the devil do you think you're doing!?"

Katsuki's eyes shot wide… He was still in class, not outside in the courtyard. The teacher was still here. No time had actually passed from the moment he'd made eye contact with Deku.

"Analytical until provoked, Kachaan," Deku whispered with an arrogant sneer. "And right in front of a teacher too… how scandalous."

The teacher's adult hands wrapped around Katsuki's arms and pried them away from his perceived victim.

"Bakugo! Get your hands off of your classmate! I don't know what has gotten into you, but this is unacceptable! Detention for two days, and you best believe that your parents will be hearing about this."

… His record…

Katsuki looked at Deku with eyes promising pain and agony, but the teacher was having none of it. Katsuki was a prodigy around school, but Izuku Midoriya was a prodigy too, and the teachers tended to prefer Izuku's minimum effort attitude to Katsuki's blatantly antagonistic superiority complex. Both of them were flawed and aggravating to teach, but while it was not by much, unmotivated and lazy students were still easier to handle than whatever the hell Katsuki Bakugo was.

"Thank you, Mr. Otsuka," Deku said sheepishly while rubbing the back of his hair in a fraudulently anxious manner. The bitch was many things but anxious was not one of them. "I thought I was a goner for a second there."

With that, Izuku walked out of the classroom to leave Bakugo to his punishment. There weren't many things that could excite him anymore, but poking and prodding Bakugo was something that never failed to bring him joy.

As he left the school, Bakugo's flunkies gave him simultaneous glares. He couldn't have been less worried. They were next to useless even when Bakugo was there. He honestly didn't know how his old friend put up with them. There was no way their praise and admiration were actually worth the trouble of babysitting the idiots.

Walking home, as always, was an arduous affair. It was fun about ten years ago, but it had long since lost its luster. His eyes saw everything, not in the sense that he could see behind him or in a normal person's blind spots, but in the sense that his eyes just noticed things; and for someone with a brain like his, that led to him discerning even more from the information he gathered.

He, for example, could see from across the street and half a block away that a middle-aged man was standing in front of a crosswalk with subtly tensing and relaxing muscles in his legs. It was a hallmark of indecision. The man was trying to find a good time to jog across the road despite the red light standing in his way, but he was having trouble committing when he saw an opening. There was a man next to him as well, and his slightly squinted and averted eyes alerted Izuku to the likely possibility that he'd noticed the other man too and was attempting to hide his annoyance. That wasn't to mention the driver a bit further away who kept checking her rearview mirror while sitting in a turning lane at a red light. She didn't want to turn there, and she was probably attempting to see if there was an opportunity to go back in the straight lane without causing a scene. Judging by the impatient face of the man sitting in the straight lane next to her, that merge was not going to happen.

Then, of course, there was every single person on the entire street who was doing something or other, and he saw and analyzed every one of them almost unconsciously at the exact same time. It was excruciating, and he couldn't turn it off. Every time he saw anyone doing anything, his eyes gave him information against his will, and his naturally analytical mind dissected it with the same intensity as the first time it happened.

As usual, his strange eyes drew the glances of pretty much everyone within his vicinity. Even in a world full of quirks, his bizarrely designed eyes were completely one of a kind. He pulled the hood of his green jacket over his head and attempted to keep his eyes on the ground to make the walk as painless as possible. He'd truly thought that quirks would be a hell of a lot more fun before he actually got one.

Opening his door and walking into the dim apartment only lit by the open window near the living room couch, he took a deep breath and removed his jacket. Before he could even turn on the light, his eyes told him that his mother's work shoes were missing. She was still gone. He didn't worry about it any further. She was usually pretty late.

He entered the kitchen, rolled up the sleeves of his school uniform, and washed his hands in the sink. Pulling his phone from his pocket, he set it on the counter next to his stove and idly cracked his fingers. One of the first things he did when he got his quirk and realized just what it could do was approach a professional kitchen and watch the chefs cook food. His mother always used to cook dinner for them, but she worked so much, and he'd wanted to take some of the load off of her.

As soon as he was tall enough to reach the stove, he'd taken over the kitchen. He had a bank of such an ungodly amount of dishes that he could cook an immaculate seven-course meal like it was nothing. Tonight, though, he needed something different, something challenging. That was why he looked up a random Italian dish a few days ago in order to get all of the ingredients he needed.

Looking up a video of someone cooking the meal, he got all of his ingredients out and started cooking along with it. Professional videos were alright, but he learned quickly that the way they cut their videos made him have to work a lot harder to utilize his quirk properly. What he really needed was a video that clearly showed the performer doing something with as few cuts as possible. In other words, amateur videos were his shit, and it wasn't actually that hard to find where he needed to go to watch competent people cook without all of the cuts and lengthy explanations. He didn't need the words anyway; all he had to do was see them do it.

He zoned out slightly as his eyes locked onto the chef in the video. They were picking up every subtle detail of his performance and stuffing it away within the vault of skills that was his brain. His body mindlessly followed along with whatever his eyes saw, and the sheer quality of his perception made sure that there wasn't a single difference between his movements and the chef's. There were, of course, subtle differences between their situations, such as where their ingredients were located, but Izuku still had a working brain, so it was merely a matter of accounting for the differences before applying the skills that his eyes were apprehending as they came.

Izuku spent so much time as a child watching videos of people doing amazing things and doing them himself. The only limitations to his amazing collection were what he was physically capable of doing and whether or not someone recorded themselves doing it. For someone who could do so many awesome things if he wanted, it would be hard to find something that he wasn't fit enough to do. He could walk onto a beam in the Olympics and score a ten like it was easy if they wouldn't disqualify him for his passive quirk in a second once they discovered it. He learned to ride a bike in about five seconds. Who fucking knew how many black belts he could have right now if he wanted? He could write with handwriting completely indistinguishable from multiple people, and calligraphy might as well have been a joke to him. It was so fun when he'd first started out, but ten years later, it all felt so very empty.

He wasn't really sure how long he'd spent in front of the stove, but by the time the video finished, his food was plated, and whatever the hell he'd just cooked was looking just as good as the one he'd seen in the video.

He wasn't even sure what it was called; the video wasn't in his language. It was some kind of creamy rice dish, but his lack of knowledge was inconsequential. Whatever he did was a picture-perfect representation of the actions performed by someone who did know everything he needed. That was really all he needed.

Izuku took his plate and scooped up a bit of the creamy rice. He put it in his mouth, chewed it, swallowed it, and let out a small sigh.

It was perfect… just like always.

Chapter End Notes

Hello! This is yet another story I have worked on a little. I have about four chapters written right now. Izuku is a character heavily built by his life pre-quirk. It is a lot like Captain America, really. Izuku never had power, and that made his work ethic impeccable. He respected the power that came with a quirk and translated his drive from being useless into his training even after he gained the power he wanted so desperately. He thrived on the underdog position and sped through the ranks of his class like a bullet due to his "I need to work harder than everyone else attitude."

In this story, Izuku was given absolutely everything he needed to succeed by default. He doesn't know the definition of an underdog, let alone how it feels to struggle. He was always talented, always capable, and that changes a person. All he has is his initial drive to help people and a quirk that makes everything so dull that he rarely has to earn anything in his life. With all of these changes, I think it'll be fun to see how he goes through a world filled to the brim with determination and drive when he has so little.

If you like my writing, you can support me by going here: /works/35498428/chapters/88488625

Enjoy the story, guys. An update will be coming soon enough.

How to Fight a Liquid

Chapter Summary

Izuku Midoriya has a disappointing talk with his career counselor and an even worse confrontation with a villain. After speaking to a local hero, though, Izuku gets just a bit of hope that the hero path might just be the right one for him.

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

Izuku sat at his usual desk and spent his time staring out of the window. It was easy to lose himself in things with eyes like his. He could pay attention today, but there was no point. Intellect, of course, was a skill that he actually could not copy. That immediately garnered his respect, but there were clever ways around it in certain subjects. He was far too analytical to not find them out, and once he knew the way to do it, his eyes just started picking up on it passively.

Math was the subject being taught currently, and it used to be his favorite class. Now, it was a mockery of what it used to be. It was true that he could not copy the intuition that came with truly mastering math, but the subject was all about methodology. Every problem had a process, and when his teacher demonstrated the process on the chalkboard, his eyes consumed it. Even if he didn't have a strong brain in his head, he would still have every single problem he saw memorized and analyzed on a permanent basis. One might think that this would be rather useless. Numbers could change, and situations could be different.

If that was the nature of his quirk, then that would be true, but his eyes didn't just allow him to do whatever he saw. They dissected the process. His ability to perform what he saw was nothing more than a side effect that came from how deeply he understood the process displayed to him. A great example to create an analogy with would be fighting. He'd watched a boxing match when he was in first grade. He was captivated by the way one of the boxers would gracefully bat aside the straight punches from his opponent.

His eyes had naturally analyzed the process, but that didn't mean he could only parry a jab that was performed in exactly the same way it was shown on the television. His quirk gave him a complete layout of everything he saw. It analyzed the way the parry was performed, how it affected the jab, when and where it was utilized. With everything so clearly displayed before him and the knowledge of the move embedded within his mind as if he'd performed it himself, it was so very easy to take that methodology and modify it as needed to match the situation.

He could tweak the knowledge gained by his eyes for his own purposes. What that really meant was that observing a specific process allowed him to apply it independently of its situational use. Once he saw the boxer parry a jab, he could just as easily apply that parry to any jab he saw. So long as the information he analyzed could be soundly applied to the situation, it could be used.

Of course, tweaking someone else's formula to fit his needs still meant that he ended up with a result based around the model, so his parrying would be distinctly and unmistakably emulated from the boxer he'd watched, but that was almost inconsequential when it was compared to the possibilities. Math, as it so happened, was exactly the same.

His eyes downloaded the process and everything involved with its usage, and all he had to independently do was take the process and apply it to a specific situation. It was easy, especially for someone like him. That was exactly why he was spending his time recording the specific flight pattern of some random bird flying in the courtyard outside instead of paying attention to his teacher. Whether he saw the process now or later would not matter. He would just watch someone do it online the day before his test. That would be sufficient.

"Now, we're going to bring in Mrs. Noguchi to speak about your career counseling before we will give each of you a chance to discuss your career options with her on an individual level."

That made Izuku pay attention, and he watched as their new guidance counselor strode into the room with a confident gait and a kind, open smile on her face. His eyes thought she looked particularly headstrong and unafraid of conflict by the way she held herself and her strong posture.

"Hello," she said with a pleasant but firm voice. "I know most of you were probably expecting Mr. Tanaka, but he has gone on extended leave due to one of the younger students having a quirk accident. I will be filling in for the foreseeable future, so I will be the one doing your career counseling. There isn't a ton to say on the subject on a broad level, but one thing I will say to all of you is that your goals should be reasonable, attainable, and manageable.

"I know what everyone here wants to be, but the fact of the matter is that most of you will need to have a very solid backup plan if you're planning on going into heroics. This is the same for people who want to try for any celebrity-like occupation. If all of you come into my office with heroics as your only plan, almost all of you will be getting into whatever high school is still accepting and completing the rest of your secondary education with no direction. That is all."

Bakugo didn't look like he could be smiling any wider. He was thrilled that there was finally someone in his trash school that knew the difference between aspirations and legitimate goals. The way the blond looked at the rest of his hopeless classmates made more than a few of them very angry.

Izuku was much more reserved, but he privately respected her for her candor and directness. There were many of his classmates who stood no chance of becoming a hero, and even if they didn't see it now, that woman was helping them immensely by forcing them to consider other options before rushing off to U.A. only to not get accepted and end up floating for the rest of highschool without any discernible goals.

---

A can skittered across the concrete of a back alley in Musutafu after a bored, resigned Izuku kicked it while walking a rather roundabout way home. He'd just gotten out of his career counseling session with Mrs. Noguchi.

"Midoriya… I just don't think you have the temperament to push through the kinds of classes given to hero students."

It… didn't go well. Izuku wasn't angry, and he wasn't really surprised either. Honestly, lately, anger would've been preferred to, well, whatever this was.

The temporary counselor got a collection of reports from the various teachers, and while they generally had nothing but praise for him, Mrs. Noguchi had a problem. She'd told him that hero schools were absolutely brutal with how vigorous their pace was. She'd said that hero students required a special kind of drive if they wanted to make it all the way to the world of pros. Apparently, what she saw from his records didn't match up.

"Hero courses aren't for students who just coast by. There will come a time during your schooling when you will be challenged, and I don't know if I see the work ethic or the determination necessary to keep up with it."

Izuku almost wanted to chuckle, but fucking around with Bakugo's head was really the only thing that could manage that anymore.

Drive? Motivation? Temperament?

She didn't know the meaning of lacking motivation. Her quirk gave her the ability to see sound. There was literally no world where she could even begin to comprehend what it was like to just get things after seeing it a single time. He didn't blame her for the words she spoke, but she was incapable of actually empathizing with his situation.

It was so hard to get excited about things when there was no skill curve. He watched someone do whatever he wanted to do, and then he could do it without a problem. There was no mastery, no progression. He started at the bottom, and then he was at the top. He honestly couldn't remember the last time he had to strive for anything. He felt empty, and his skills felt meaningless and bland. Discovery just wasn't the same anymore.

But the hero course… the hero course had to have something, right? If there was any profession in the world that guaranteed consistently new experiences, it had to be heroics. He would be facing off against the best quirks the world had to offer. Surely, if there was any hope at all to reignite a flame that had long since burned out within him, it would be found in the hero course. He honestly wasn't sure if it would be any different there, but he had to know.

This couldn't be it, right? The world had to have more to offer.

Mrs. Noguchi said that she wasn't sure if the hero course was the right place for him. What she didn't understand was that the hero course was the only place for him. He was drowning in a sea of monotony and fraudulent challenges. He didn't want to get into the hero course; he needed to get into the hero course.

A manhole rattled almost imperceptibly just in front of him. Izuku was so distracted with his own thoughts that his mind would have missed it, but his eyes, as always, were unfoolable. They snapped to the movement immediately, and he halted in his travel without hesitation.

He refused to walk toward the manhole, but his instincts screamed that it would be just as bad to turn his back to it and run. Instead, he took the rattlesnake tactic and began walking slowly backward while keeping his eyes firmly on the source of his suspicion.

He felt vindicated when the manhole burst open to make way for a thick, green tentacle of slime which darted toward his midsection with reckless abandon. Understandably, someone who could do so much cool stuff that required some serious fitness would not be an athletic slouch. He could hang in there with the best of them if he had to. That being said, holding a degree of athleticism within the top percentile of kids his age and being able to dodge a surprise attack by ultra-lightweight slime were two very different things. Luckily, he had what could only be the maximum amount of possible time to react thanks to his perception.

The very moment that the slime emerged from the hole, his eyes already picked apart the entire situation. As it flew toward him with deadly intent, he could see its trajectory without a hint of doubt in his mind. He knew where it was going to go. There was a reason he wasn't allowed on the school baseball team. His absolutely brilliant eyes let him just barely slip around it before it smacked against his torso. The tentacle slowly began to retract back into the manhole, and a gigantic blob of slime slipped out of the underground passage in its wake.

---

Shinya pulled the entirety of his mass out of the manhole and whipped around to face his last hope. He could not have been happier with his situation. He was so close to catching the little brat and making his escape. When he reached the top of the manhole, he couldn't believe his luck that such a convenient victim was about to walk right over him. In his excitement, though, he forgot himself and alerted the very perceptive child to his position.

It was impressive that the boy managed to avoid his first strike even with a bit of forewarning. He did not have a normal body once he transformed. Muscles, ligaments, and bones disappeared from his form. He had complete mental control over his entire mass, and the speed of his body was truly terrifying. Shinya honestly didn't think that there was an untrained civilian out there who could deal with his abilities.

The kid, though, was an oddity. He had a lot of experience when it came to civilians. The entire lot of them were easy targets. They were all so obsessed with heroes that none of them cared to learn about protecting themselves. He was expecting the boy to be afraid, horrified, maybe even completely incapacitated. His newest victim was different from the rest of them. He looked bored, like he would rather be anywhere but in front of him not because he was facing down a villain but because that villain wasn't interesting enough. What the hell kind of kid had that reaction when faced with a life threatening situation?

That was when he pondered the possible quirks that would give such a young, inexperienced civilian such an astounding amount of confidence. Examining his target while expanding his mass around the alley in an attempt to restrict the boy's movement, his eyes fell upon the alien, disturbing eyes of his green-haired victim. He squinted his eyes slightly, trying to discern just what the mutation added to his quirk.

Shinya's entire body came to a voluntary stop. He couldn't move an inch, not when there was such an enrapturing view standing right in front of him. The black bars in the boy's pinwheel eyes started smoothly rotating in a way that made his brain pulse and the world twist around him. Shinya could barely think as the edges of his vision went black, and he dry heaved when sickening nausea made his gut twist and churn.

The green monster ripped his gaze from the boy's spinning eyes, but it didn't help. He sprinted clumsily to the alley-side wall of a building and used its dirt-coated bricks for support. His slimy mass roiled and rippled with the earth-shattering wrongness coursing through his body. He whipped his head around to glare at where he thought the boy was standing, but he couldn't see past the swirling spirals of neon colors overtaking his vision. He couldn't see, he couldn't think, he couldn't get his bearings, and he didn't know how to make it stop.

What the hell was that kid's quirk!?

Deciding that the sanity-wrecking nausea wasn't going to dissipate on its own, Shinya lashed out with everything he had in the hopes of somehow demolishing the kid and stopping his demon quirk. When he went to swing a piece of his slime that his brain associated with his dominant "arm", he almost passed out.

He couldn't feel his body.

His mind wasn't telling him where he was. He couldn't feel the wall that he thought he was touching. He felt like he should be using his arm right now, but he couldn't feel the movement. It was like his entire nervous system failed in an instant. He was paralyzed, trapped.

It wasn't like he could tell at the moment, but Shinya was panicking so badly that his body inadvertently lost its liquid form and reverted back to that of a normal man. Izuku personally thought that he recognized the man from a few news channels that he saw in passing. He was a fairly dangerous bank robber. He would enter a bank, take what he could, and escape in a possessed body. The first few times he performed a heist, the police weren't even aware that he was inhabiting the drowned corpse of a random civilian. It was unfortunate for the villain that he happened to jump the one guy who was basically impossible to ambush. There were precious few quirks that could stop something like that if it managed to encase them, and Izuku was sure that his own quirk did not fall within that list. If he had gone a few steps further, he would be dead right now, and the villain would be lost with his body as its hiding spot.

Nevertheless, the villain did run into him, and the poor fool was done the moment he met his eyes. His quirk was so very simple, yet even more deadly for that exact reason. His eyes gave him the power of perception, and his perception was so potent that meeting the eyes of another allowed him to overpower the perception of others. His doctor likened it to painting a picture over their senses, but anyone who actually experienced the reach of his quirk would be quick to say that it was more like Izuku was able to draw them into his own little world. He could make them see what he wanted, feel what he wanted, live the stories he contrived.

His own power of perception was beyond that of any human he had ever seen or heard of before, especially when it came to visual stimuli. His extremely analytical brain only allowed him to take it further. With the way he understood the things he saw, he could twist and warp the personal experience of anyone he met eyes with in ways that they couldn't possibly imagine. It was like he could toss them into a lucid dream of his own design. Anything that Izuku could accurately project could be experienced by anyone who looked into his eyes. There was only one, tiny limit.

They had to believe it.

And right there was the entire game that came with his quirk. He could make someone feel like they just met god himself, but the exact second they thought that their experience was anything less than reality, it was all too easy to eject themselves from his vision. He could not manipulate the perception of people who were skeptical of the reality he projected onto them. For people who were naturally skeptical, analytical, or knew of his quirk, it made quite the challenge.

Just like with Bakugo last week, when people could possibly become suspicious of the reality they lived in, he had to walk a careful line between manipulating their perception enough to be useful while presenting it in a way that they would accept. That was why it was so easy with Bakugo. He knew his childhood friend inside and out. He knew how to make him tick, so it was child's play to present him with something he would believe.

For someone who was already in a rush and didn't know his quirk, though, he could get creative. He didn't need to paint an entirely new reality for everyone he saw. He could warp what they perceived, play off of their own perceptions and tweak things to his desire. He, for example, could take that slime villain's sense of sight and restrict it, blur it, or even, perhaps, turn it into the world's most violent trip. As long as his unfortunate attacker believed that he was legitimately perceiving the trip, he could send him to the depths of hell and back.

The green villain was currently thrashing on the ground next to a building wall, and Izuku sighed with disappointment. This was his first villain encounter… There was no spark.

Walking over to the opposite side of the alley from the incoherently flailing villain, Izuku slid to the ground and crossed his arms over his propped knees. Admittedly, Izuku didn't really know how to feel. The timing of his new acquaintance's arrival was so perfect that he almost suspected cosmic interference. His counselor's words affected him just about as much as everything else did these days, but, for a moment, he hoped that this villain would allow him to prove her wrong. He wanted to prove to her that he was capable of feeling the urge to improve that dominated his early childhood; he wanted to prove to himself that hero work still had the potential to give him life.

How utterly disappointing the interaction turned out to be.

Even with a villain threatening his very existence, he was incapable of feeling anything but apathy. Was the villain just not strong enough? Did the threat not hold enough legitimacy to give him that push? He spent so many years hoping that fighting villains was the thing that would bring him back, but his first interaction with one left him feeling hollow.

He cared little for the words of others, especially when it came to people at his middle school. If Bakugo and himself had any similarities, it would be their admittedly negative view of their current peers and learning environment. It just wasn't enough for him, and his counselor didn't understand him well enough to give advice worth internalizing. This experience, though, shook him a bit.

Did he actually just lack the ability to care?

Doubts and deprecatory thoughts swarmed around his mind. Maybe there was actually something wrong with him on a fundamental level. Maybe that fire he used to have within him simply wasn't lightable once it burned itself to death. Maybe there was no such thing as a "spark". Was his counselor right about him? Was even the presence of a life or death situation not enough to motivate him anymore?

It was a disturbing thought to have. Despite his boredom, he could not leave the villain alone in good conscience. At least he could take solace in the thought that he was saving others. He was sure that many people would say that was the only thing that mattered. He sat in the alleyway for quite a while. Izuku eventually decided to message his mom and tell her that she should order takeout for tonight because he was busy with after-school activities for the day.

The hero who eventually showed up on the scene was an upstart hero from U.A. that just got out of the realm of sidekicks and into the world of standalone heroes. Izuku saw him earlier that day on his way to school, so it wasn't surprising that the man was still on shift. Heroes tended to work long hours. He was thankful for a fast hero to be the one on the case. Izuku was getting tired of waiting around, and he wanted to go home to check on his mother. She would be home by now.

"Have you seen a green, liquid humanoid running by recently, young man?"

Izuku looked up from the ground to meet Kamui Wood's stare with his still whirling eyes.

"You're in the alley with him," Izuku answered while pointing at the cowering, near comatose man across from him.

Kamui Woods looked shocked for a few seconds, seemingly just now noticing the babbling man, but quickly decided that he could not doubt the green-haired boy any more than he did at this exact moment.

"My target is a C-ranked villain. It is doubtful that a young civilian could successfully detain him."

Izuku gave a shrug and stood up against the wall. He might've felt obligated to stay with the villain lest the criminal decide to wreak more havoc in his absence, but the story was very different when there was a professional hero there to take the reins.

"Well, I did, and I stayed to make sure noone got hurt," Izuku said while turning to walk away. "But it isn't my job to stay with the idiot now that you're here."

He was stopped by a firm hand grasping his right shoulder.

"In fact, young man, this villain is known for possessing his victims and escaping in their bodies… You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

Izuku rolled his eyes and gave a sigh. Of course,for all of his analysis, he didn't consider the one tiny fact that the hero who found them might be suspicious. That was a huge oversight on his part. He was so focussed on controlling the villain's senses that he didn't consider how others might perceive the situation.

"The villain attempted to do just that to me after I got let out of school; he failed. The manhole over there is busted up from his exit."

Kamui Woods quickly glanced at the manhole but didn't release his grip. The hero must be confident with close range encounters to be holding him so closely, especially considering that his target was extremely difficult to control in melee range situations.

"And how do I know that you didn't leave the manhole yourself, possess the boy, and take down the bystander in his body?"

Izuku was getting more bored with the conversation by the second.

"His quirk was a transformation type. Do you think he is capable of doing that to someone?" Izuku asked the hero, indicating the obviously traumatized and deeply afraid man.

"That villain is capable of using the quirk of any body he inhabits."

Oh.

Well, shit, he didn't see that one coming. That information either wasn't released to the public or was just recently discovered because Izuku had no clue that the stakes were so high. A villain with his quirk would be a very scary villain indeed. It also meant that Izuku was unfortunately incapable of proving that he wasn't the villain. Of course, there was no fear of actually getting arrested and charged because theycouldn't prove that he was the villain either, but it was going to be a massive inconvenience.

"So what are we going to do?" Izuku asked.

Kamui Woods looked the boy up and down.

"I have probable cause to take you both in. I need you both to follow me. If you are not the villain, then you will be released post haste. I give you my word."

Izuku momentarily considered giving Kamui a different reality, but he decided against it. He could probably maintain the illusion for the villain while simultaneously fooling Kamui. Izuku had to personally construct every detail that he wanted to change for everyone involved in real time. The villain, though, was experiencing a reality that was easy to construct. It required no finesse or particular effort to haphazardly twist someone's senses. If the villain was smart enough to require something like what he did to Bakugo, he would be required to put a lot of effort into crafting the environment realistically. It wouldn't be a massive problem to give Kamui something with a bit more substance while keeping slimy over there on the trip of a lifetime.

He would've too if he was thinking enough to cleverly position himself. As it stood, Kamui already knew what he looked like, and Izuku would be forced to let the hero go eventually. God damn it, this was what he got for complying with his conscience.

With a nod, Izuku turned around and let the hero clamp some cuffs on him and waited for Kamui to figure out how they were going to do this. It wasn't like heroes had some kind of police van to transport villains in.

"You're going to have to carry him yourself. He will not be in a condition to do anything for a while."

Kamui nodded and encased the man in a sphere of wood that attached itself to his hand like some oversized flail. With that, they began their walk across town to their district's police station.

"What did you do to him?" Kamui asked.

Izuku shrugged, looking decidedly unconcerned by his victim's near-catatonic state.

"I made him experience what I wanted him to. This was how he reacted."

"And what did you show him?" The hero asked with suspiciously squinted eyes.

"I'm not sure how to explain it to you. If you would like, you could always ask him once he comes around. I'll let him out of it when we get to the station."

Kamui seemed somewhat satiated by Izuku's answer, and today was already a fucking bust anyhow. At this point, he was just glad that he didn't have to bear this entire walk alone even if his conversation was with a quirk suppressed villain. Besides, if the kid was actually innocent, he would feel much better if he treated the boy amicably instead of dragging him along like some kind of animal. He might have had probable cause to take them both, but that didn't mean he wanted to make a possible civilian miserable the entire time.

"How did you do it?" he decided to ask.

"He looked into my eyes, sir. Once he did that, I could show him anything I wanted until he realized that I was hoodwinking him."

Kamui looked extremely off-put by that explanation.

"So you could've done that to me when I met your eyes in the alley."

"Maybe," Izuku admitted. "I don't think so though. You didn't know my quirk, but you are a trained hero. I feel like you would've gotten suspicious about me keeping you in such a severe state of disorientation for so long off of nothing but brief eye contact. I probably would've made you see exactly what we ended up doing right now to make you feel comfortable and in control. People are less likely to deny a reality that they find agreeable."

That was… very scary to think about. The boy had a very powerful quirk if his words were to be believed, and he came up with a very solid plan for using it. If he could actually pull off the execution, Kamui would not have expected a thing.

Actually…

"Am I in one of your illusions right now?" He asked mostly out of curiosity.

Even if he was, panicking would do nothing. Izuku looked at him with something akin to approval or respect.

"See?" Izuku said with a small smirk. "You think more than the villain in your ball. I couldn't have tricked you into believing the same thing that I showed to him. I already told you that doubting my reality frees you of it. You tell me, sir… are you in one of my illusions?"

Oh, fuck, that was a dizzying thing to think about. He took back what he said; he completely believed in the kid's ability to handle the slime villain. The very possibility of being in a world that was not part of reality was dangerous because it made him question himself.

Was he in an illusion? He didn't think so, but was that not the point of the illusion in the first place? Why would the kid inform him of the possibility at all if he already fell for the child's trap? Now that he thought about it, that could actually be a further ploy to keep him from questioning the illusion too much and hide the doubts that might crop up when he made it to the police station where he had more knowledge of how things ran than the boy did.

His mind whirled around and around, fighting itself at every turn in an attempt to discern the truthfulness of his reality. In the end, there was nothing that he could do, no way to discern if what he was seeing and feeling was real without further evidence or testing. Everything looked suspicious now that he knew about the possibility of being fooled, but all of his experiences screamed to him that it was the truth. He was simultaneously skeptical of his reality while being forced to believe in it at the same time.

"That is a very dangerous quirk, young man."

Izuku nodded. It was a very powerful ability in the right situations.

"Assuming that you pay attention to the officers in the station, you will know soon enough. I cannot glean knowledge from you that you do not physically give me. I will not know anything about the names of the officers or what they look like. You will quickly find nothing but strangers in the office if I am tricking you."

Kamui nodded grimly.

"At which point, you will already be gone."

"Yes," Izuku answered. "But at least you will know that you are free instead of constantly questioning yourself. You do not have to worry. If the villain was using my quirk right now, he would not have the experience to hold you under something so complex and realistic."

It was true. A lot of his illusions were built off of the things he saw and analyzed with his eyes. It was their extreme level of perception that let him recreate it so realistically. The villain might've been able to use his quirk, but he would not have had the time to build the bank of information Izuku had on the world around him.

Kamui hummed, now fairly impressed with the boy. It was odd to find someone so young who had such intense knowledge of their own quirk. He wouldn't have made it as a hero if he wasn't somewhat interested in powerful quirks, and this one was very intriguing.

"If I was in a dream, would I be walking down this street right now or standing in the alley staring at you or the empty air?"

Kamui's interest in his quirk was not new. Many people were curious about what cool stuff came with his weird eyes. Most, though, were very afraid of it. That was understandable. He had a lot of power in his eyes. Still, it was odd to find someone so casually and honestly intrigued by the specifics of his ability.

"My quirk only overrides your perception. Your body would move in the previous reality similar to how you move in the one I show you. I can dilate the experience if I want to, but it is an all-or-nothing deal. Either the vision is equivalent in time, or the entire experience lasts a second. If you were in my reality, your vision would either end with you still staring at me or wherever the hell your body ended up after following the steps you did in your dream."

"Really?" Kamui asked, clearly captivated by his explanation. "And would you have to control everything?"

Izuku smiled slightly. He took it back. It was worth it to take this walk with the upstart hero. Izuku was expecting a boring walk that would only make him later in his return. As it turned out, the hero taking him into the station was actually managing to create some decent conversation, and the exuberance Kamui Woods displayed toward his quirk was turning out to be somewhat contagious. It was a new experience for Izuku, and those were always held in high value for him.

"I can show you whatever I want, and I can not show you whatever I don't want to as well. If you looked me in the eyes, I could allow your senses to perceive everything except for the one thing I want to keep away or absolutely nothing except for what I create."

Kamui seemed to understand the importance of what he just said. Izuku could make an illusion where the victim's brain saw everything as it was except for the smallest of details. He could erase himself from their perception, or he could change the smallest of things while keeping the rest of their reality intact. It was a useful trick too. It was much harder for them to realize his trickery if they were actually experiencing everything realistically except for the minor changes he implanted or extracted from their senses.

"So you were lying?" Kamui asked. "I could walk into the station and see all of the people I knew. You could pull back your influence and let me see the real officers if I was actually walking along with the illusion to the police station."

Izuku was legitimately impressed by the level of intuition getting put into beating the hypothetical use of his quirk. Maybe his encounter with the villain wasn't enough because he merely didn't face the right. He might've judged things too soon. Kamui Woods understood the game. He would be a challenge to manipulate. Izuku was far from truly believing that his apathy might be solved for good by getting into U.A., but his encounter with the slime villain was slowly being redeemed by none other than Kamui Woods. This walk was very worth it.

"I could,but that is the game. I experience everything with you in real-time unless I dilate the illusion from the beginning. If I dilate it, I am forced to create everything you see because your true reality is staring back at me in the alley. If I am letting you go in real time, though, then the things I let you actually see are playing along as they come, and your fellow officers would not be able to see me because I would not exist in their world. They might have revealed to you my absence before I could revoke your ability to perceive them, and that would make you doubt. It is all about making you believe in my reality for as long as possible. I feel like I could hold you longer by making up the officers than by allowing you to talk to them freely, so that is what I would show you."

Kamui was floored, disturbed, enthralled, and excited at the very idea of such a situation at the same time. The boy's quirk turned every confrontation with him into a game that was so very different from that of anyone else in the entire world. It was a match between a gamemaster and a player where the player's goal had to use their own knowledge and experience to poke holes in whatever scenario the gamemaster contrived. From the moment anyone met the boy's eyes, they had to find some way of finding differences between the reality they knew and the one possibly presented to them while the gamemaster tried their best to display something that the player could believe.

"You have made my trip to the station very interesting, young man. I do very much hope that you are not a villain in disguise."

Izuku nodded, no longer annoyed at all about the impromptu trip that he was forced to make with Kamui Woods. There was not much more for them to say about his quirk, so it was convenient for them that the police station was around the corner. He was escorted into the front door, and the officers leapt to attention upon seeing the hero walk in with a kid in handcuffs.

"What do we have, Kamui?" one of the officers asked.

Said hero looked visibly relieved that he could recognize each and every one of the officers in the room, so the option of being in a time-dilated illusion was off of the table. The only way he could be under the kid's quirk was if the boy was controlling his senses in real-time. While he was pretty certain that the child was being truthful with him, he still felt the need to prove it to himself for the sake of being thorough.

"First," Kamui said, approaching the officer he knew the best in the room. "Can you see this boy?"

Izuku smirked to himself while the officer looked incredulously between the two. He decided that he really liked Kamui Woods. The hero was looking intently between all of the officers in the room, and Izuku suspected that he knew why. Kamui was making sure that Izuku wasn't taking control of the scene now that Izuku would've had the chance to see all of the officers in the room and replicate them himself.

It was smart. If Izuku had seen them with his own eyes, he could've replicated them perfectly in an instant. There wouldn't have been a single stutter in the illusion. He could've overlaid them with his own version without alerting even the most perceptive of heroes. While in an illusion, though, he experienced his created reality through the eyes of his victim. He never met any of these officers himself, so he would have had to create them based on the perception of his victim's eyes, and that meant his recreation would probably be imperfect. So long as Kamui paid close attention to the officers in the room and refused to be distracted by anything, it would be pretty much impossible for Izuku to replace the officer and make a lie in the case that the real officer couldn't actually see him.

"U-Ummm… Yes, sir? Is everything okay?"

Kamui smiled before looking smugly back at the boy. Izuku couldn't help but smile back. Even though there was no illusion, it was refreshing to see someone actually think through his quirk and find a way to beat it. Compared to his classmates and Bakugo, Kamui was a godsend. A challenge was what he wanted, what he needed. He was grateful that the hero escorting him here was willing to play along with the situation just to give him that.

"Good, could we get Tsukauchi in here, please? We have a bit of a complicated situation. He is still on duty, right?"

"Yes, sir," the officer responded with much more confidence in his voice.

With that, the station called for Tsukauchi to come out front, and a tall man with a calm but serious countenance came out to meet them.

"How can I help you, Kamui?"

"This boy claims to have subdued the sludge villain in self defense… I want you to make sure that we aren't being played."

Tsukauchi understood immediately and turned his gaze to the boy. Izuku wasn't exactly sure what was about to happen, but the possibilities intrigued him enough to stay put and await whatever was coming.

"Are you the sludge villain?"

"No," Izuku answered without hesitation.

"Did you manage to defeat the sludge villain in an act of self defense?"

"Yes."

Tsuckauchi looked very surprised; Izuku could've figured that out even if he was half blind and quirkless. He wasn't sure what the big deal was, really. Some kids just had strong quirks. Izuku didn't think that it was too odd for someone like him to get the better of a cocky villain rated a bit above the capabilities of an average quirked citizen.

"His answers were true both times."

Kamui took off Izuku's cuffs post haste and made sure to keep eye contact with him despite knowing his quirk as an act of trust that Izuku appreciated more than the hero knew. Once he was freed, he took a seat in a chair against the wall. Kamui retracted the wooden sphere back into his body and gave a look to the child still incapacitating the villain.

"I will release him when you're ready. He will return as soon as I let go, but there is no telling how the illusion affected him mentally."

"Do it," Kamui said with a nod of understanding.

Izuku cut his hold over the villain's perception, and the man's fidgeting body slumped against the station floor a second later. The consistent exposure to distorted senses and intense nausea would have undoubtedly made for a brutal experience. The officers called their station medic out to take a look at the unresponsive man.

Doctors didn't used to be an ever-present position in law enforcement. Most of them used to be on call, but with the addition of quirks came the need for a consistent medical presence. Confrontations were much more likely to be violent in nature, and violent encounters were more likely to result in serious injuries. When there were civilians walking around with the ability to toss cars like toys, doctors became necessary on a permanent basis.

"He is still conscious," the doctor told the rest of the people in the room. "He is just showing signs of disorientation and psychological shock. I can care for him here until he recovers. We can question him then."

Some of the officers started moving the suspected criminal to their medic's office for care and containment. Kamui Woods, though, decided to spend his attention on the boy he brought here in cuffs.

"I apologize for making you go through that," the hero said while kneeling down to the child's level.

Izuku shrugged. If he was told that a bit ago, he would have felt that those words were said for a good reason, but the apology was no longer necessary. He had a good time, and that was a rarity these days.

"You did what you had to do. I'm okay."

"Still," the wood hero insisted. "I wish that I didn't have to lead you in like some kind of criminal. I'll escort you home. You don't need to be here anymore."

Izuku cringed a little. He really didn't want the hero to do that.

"Do you have to?" he asked the hero.

"Yes," Kamui said with conviction. "You were already attacked by a villain today. I would be neglecting my duties to let you walk home alone after that."

Izuku groaned under his breath. Of course, he would have to be escorted home. Staying with a dangerous villain to keep less capable people safe was one thing but walking home without professional protection? Unthinkable.

"My mother is going to be home by now."

Kamui squinted his wooden eyelids."She deserves to know that her son faced off with a villain today."

" I can handle a villain; my mother couldn't handle the thought of me walking home a few blocks off route."

"And were you off route by a few blocks?"

Izuku had the decency to look away from the hero and toward the tile floor. He was more than a few blocks off route. In his defense, that stupid career counselor made him want to wander. If anything, Izuku thought it should be on her head.

"I will be taking you home and explaining the situation to your mother. I may be willing to keep your meandering to myself if you promise me that this is the last time it will happen."

"Yes, sir," was Izuku's less than honest response.

Standing up and patting the kid's back, he led the boy out of the precinct and to the boy's address. Apparently, the kid lived in an apartment complex nearby. That was convenient for the hero because his car was across town at his agency. It was much quicker to walk the boy straight home, and he most definitely did not want to be delivering the green-haired child to his mother after dark.

The two walked in silence for a long time as the sun continued to set above them. Kamui, the new and cool hero that he was, stopped a few times to sign autographs and briefly converse with the various people that passed him by on the streets. All of the citizens they encountered inevitably ended up eyeing him oddly. Izuku was far too used to it for the staring eyes to bother him like it used to. It wasn't until they were about halfway to his apartment that Izuku decided to stop.

"Izuku Midoriya."

"Hmm?" was Kamui's brief, confused response.

"My name, it's Izuku Midoriya. You've been calling me 'young man' since you approached me in the alley."

Kamui scratched the back of his wooden helmet as he smiled sheepishly behind his mask.

"I apologize, Midoriya… It has become a habit over the years. I can't always stop to learn the names of the people I come across in the field."

"It's whatever," Izuku said idly. "Now you know."

Kamui was finding himself further surprised by Izuku Midoriya since they met in the alley. His decidedly unworried and laid back attitude was something of an anomaly among the types of citizens Kamui met in his line of work. Emergencies and catastrophes were inherently intertwined with panic and fear, yet Midoriya was seemingly unaffected by the villain attack, annoyedly compliant with his temporary arrest, and worked with the police and himself with lackadaisical efficiency. It impressed the hero just as much as it confounded him.

"What do you want to do after school, Midoriya?"

The boy looked at Kamui, sizing him up and determining what he should use as his answer. Eventually, Izuku decided on telling the truth.

"I want to be a hero."

Kamui wasn't necessarily surprised by the response. A ton of people wanted to be a hero. It was much rarer to hear that response from someone that Kamui felt had a legitimate chance at it. It was even rarer still to hear someone with such a large amount of potential speak about their ambitions with such a small amount of enthusiasm.

"You seem almost morose about your desires," Kamui decided to observe.

Izuku once again considered what he should say. In the end, he once again decided that Kamui Woods gained enough of his respect for him to be upfront.

"My quirk does more than just let me make illusions. It analyses everything I see. It acquires so much with such amazing precision that I can memorize any pattern I see and copy anything physical that I observe. It… It got old really quick," Izuku looked at Kamui with as much shame as he felt as he continued. "Everything was just so easy, and I got bored. I want to be a hero because I'm hoping that it might give me something new. My teachers think that I lack the drive to make it."

Kamui felt like he finally reached a point where nothing more during their current encounter could surprise him anymore. He understood the boy's predicament more than Midoriya might expect. Kamui's quirk was a very powerful one with a variety of uses. He grew up in a poor part of the city in a school with people who were never really going to go anywhere. He was a naturally smart kid, and his quirk was so much better than his peers that it always seemed to be too easy. It wasn't until U.A. came that he realized how much bigger the pond could get and how much scarier the fish could be.

"It is true that hero work requires a certain kind of work ethic," Kamui admitted. "But answer me this, Midoriya: why did you stay with that villain for so long if you were so bored?"

Izuku looked at the hero weirdly but answered anyway.

"I couldn't just leave him. If I let him run loose again, he might've hurt someone who couldn't deal with him like I did."

Kamui snapped his fingers with a smirk.

"And there it is! You might be lazy and lacking in enthusiasm, but you still did the heroic thing despite the other options available to you. It is not uncommon to meet a hero who doesn't have that 'plus ultra' spark in them. The difference between them and the ones who didn't make it was their determination to do what was right despite their feelings. I promise you, Midoriya, if you continue to act like you did today, you will make a fine hero. Besides, if the problem with your apathy is the lack of a challenge, then I promise you that you'll find it in heroics. You could watch All Might every day and never be able to replicate the way he moves. You will find your goalposts as you progress. Do not lose hope."

That… That might've been the most inspiring thing he had ever heard from anyone in his entire life. An honest to god hero looked at one of his accomplishments and told him that he could make it not because of his "amazing" quirk but because of the way he acted. His favorite hero had always been All Might without even a single ounce of doubt. Now, though, he felt like it might not be such a definitive matter.

He was honestly speechless, so he decided to simply stay quiet and hope that the expression on his face told the hero how much those words meant to him. It wasn't long before the two of them made it to his apartment. They climbed a couple flights of stairs until they reached his floor.

thump* *thump* *thump*

Izuku tried his best not to wince as he listened to his mother scurry to the front door.

"I tell you every time, Izuku; you don't have to knock when you're coming into your own ho-" she came to a screeching halt as she stared at the tall, lanky hero standing behind her son. "Hello, is there a problem, sir?"

Anxiety was rolling off of his mother in waves. She had always been the worrying sort. Izuku swore that his mother was so prone to anxiety that she could worry about being late to an appointment when she left three hours early and only had a twenty-minute drive. In an attempt to make her feel better, he gave her an unworried smile. When her shoulders slackened, he knew that it was a success.

"Of a sort, ma'am. Your son had a violent encounter with a small-time villain. He came out on top with no injuries, and I took it upon myself to escort him to the precinct for a checkup and brought him back home."

His mother looked absolutely stricken. Her face was a ghastly shade of white, and tears were accumulating in her eyes. She was probably a second away from a breakdown.

"Ho… How did this happen!?"

"A recently active bank robber escaped after a heist. I was trailing him at the time that he met your son. Rest assured, Mr. Midoriya handled the situation perfectly. I couldn't have performed better myself."

Instead of reassuring her like the hero hoped, his words only seemed to upset her more.

"My… My baby boy fought a villain?"

There was a tension filled pause as both of the males held back simultaneous cringes.

"Yes," Kamui begrudgingly said. "I cannot express how much I wish that I could've gotten there faster, but I was not able to catch the villain quickly enough to save young Midoriya from encountering him."

Izuku's eyes fed him so much information that he wished he didn't know as her face minutely flashed through different emotions.

Pain, fear, anger, sadness.

"Come in, Izuku. Your escort and I need to speak in private for a few minutes."

Izuku obeyed his mother's command and waited in the kitchen while the two of them talked. He wasn't sure what kind of tone their conversation had. His mom wasn't usually the type to get angry, but he had also never fought a villain before. About fifteen minutes later, Inko Midoriya approached him in the kitchen.

"Kamui Woods wants to speak with you for a moment."

She didn't look happy at all.

"Alright," Izuku said back.

He opened the front door and exited his apartment to see the hero standing by the railing of their third-floor home and looking out onto the streets.

"I'm sorry about my mom."

Kamui looked over to Midoriya. He was slightly surprised that the boy's mother allowed him back outside. He wasn't about to turn a small blessing away though.

"It's okay, kid. She's a mom. Getting passionate about her child's safety is in the job description."

Letting it go, Izuku joined Kamui at the third floor railing. It was difficult for Izuku's eyes to give him information about the hero when he had a mask covering his face. He felt like the man was feeling contemplative and guilty, but he couldn't be sure without seeing his expressions.

"It really was my fault anyway," he admitted with a sigh. "I have a lot of experience in the field, but it all came from work as an intern or a sidekick. It's a lot different when I'm the one calling all of the shots. I was expecting him to escape in the body of someone else, so I got impatient and stormed in. I stopped him from killing a hostage, but I was so sloppy that he escaped into the sewers and found you. If I was better, you might have never had to deal with him. I'm lucky that he found you instead of someone less prepared."

Izuku could understand the sentiment, but he honestly didn't care at all about what happened. The villain didn't touch him, and he left with more than he had before. That was why he decided to shrug and let it pass without commenting. Mistakes happened; not even All Might was perfect. The hero chuckled at his casual dismissal of what could have been a lethal experience.

"Of course," Kamui said with a smile and a shake of his head. "Seriously, though, if you need anything from me, don't hesitate to ask. You saved my ass back there by catching the villain before he could hurt anyone else."

Izuku was about to turn him down, but his eyes lit up like stars when a possibility occurred to him. Kamui Woods said that he believed in Izuku's potential, right? It wouldn't be too much to request. He already showed his worth by defeating a villain single-handedly, did he not?

"Actually," Izuku said with pleading eyes. "There is something that I really want."

The door to Mrs. Noguchi's office creaked open before snapping shut seconds later. The woman inhaled a deep breath and let it go with an exaggerated huff. She wasn't sure how much longer she would have to fill this post, but it was already starting to wear on her. Career counseling was always such a pain. Hero worship was so unbelievably widespread and intense among Japan's population that literally every kid wanted to be a hero of some kind. It truly pained her to be the one who had to crush all of their dreams, but encouraging delusions would only end up hurting her students in the end. It was such a rare and difficult profession that the dream might as well be hopeless. Only the best got anywhere in heroics, and scarce few in places like this were up to snuff.

She walked over to her desk and fell into her cushiony roller chair. It was going to be another long day. She only managed to meet with about a quarter of the third years the day before. Leaning forward to look at the papers on her desk, though, something caught her eye. On top of her messy collection of paperwork and files was today's newspaper, and on that paper was something that nearly blew her mind.

Sludge Villain Defeated by Middle School Student

Yesterday, the Sludge Villain struck again at Aldera Credit Union and escaped from heroes on the scene only to meet a middle schooler named Izuku Midoriya. What happened during the ensuing confrontation is unknown, but the Aldera Police Force reported that the villain was subdued, and Izuku Midoriya remained uninjured. When Kamui Woods, rising pro hero, arrived at the scene, the villain was already beaten. Containing and transporting the villain to the district police station, Kamui Woods officially ended the looming threat of the Sludge Villain before escorting Izuku Midoriya home to reunite with his mother. The question now is whether or not the next new hero is in the making. With the apparent ease of the Sludge Villain's capture, Musutafu News finds the possibility likely and exciting. Whether or not our young warrior decides to continue with the villain conquering business, we think it is clear that he deserves our sincerest thanks for a job well done. The streets are much safer with the Sludge Villain behind bars.

Noguchi collapsed against the back of her chair. There wasn't much else she could do with such an astronomical amount of shock coursing through her body.

Izuku Midoriya defeated a villain on his own !?

Lifting the paper off of the desk and pulling it into her lap, she was once again startled by yet another world-shaking paper falling from the confines of the Musutafu News. She picked it up and stared at it with glazed eyes and an open mouth. There was no way. The paper… It was a copy of a recommendation to U.A. from none other than Kamui Woods.

That was why this was here! Izuku Midoriya must've somehow gotten into her office before she arrived. She remembered their talk from yesterday when she levelled with him about her opinions on his dream to become a hero, and she stood by what she told him. The boy lacked work ethic and had not a hope in the world of coping with the coursework that came with becoming a hero. Somehow, though, the boy managed to clap back. Somehow,he managed to defeat a villain and get a contradictory opinion from an actual hero who was willing to back up his words by staking his own fragile reputation on the boy's success. With such a firm declaration of faith in her hands, there wasn't much she could say. They would just have to wait and see who chose correctly.

Chapter End Notes

Hello, hello, this is my second chapter for this story. I am sure some of you are probably sad that All Might wasn't the one to arrive on the scene. The reason is that this story is literally the exact opposite of MHA. Izuku met All Might because both the hero and his quirk were centralized around hard work and consistent improvement. Meeting All Might would do less than nothing for Izuku because he needs the exact opposite. Izuku already had the drive and the passion before he got his quirk, and All Might gave him the power to use that passion. Izuku has power right now, and he needs to find the drive to use it to its fullest. That is why his relationship with Kamui is taking the place of his previous relationship with All Might.

If you guys enjoy my writing, check out this: /works/35498428/chapters/88488625

Just a Game of Tag

Chapter Summary

A year after meeting Kamui, Izuku is about to take his entrance exam for recommended students. His only goal: don't get tagged.

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

Holy hell, U.A. had a huge campus. He obviously knew they had to own a bunch of land, but this was the kind of thing that could only be properly comprehended by seeing it in person. He was currently standing in a long line at the front gate. Everyone that passed the preliminary paper exam to the standards of the hero or support course was told to come today for their practicals.

Izuku was given a temporary ID to scan at the front gate by his sponsor, Kamui Woods. If the ID was recognized by the gate scanner, the student was allowed through, and the next applicant could approach the door. Once he got inside the gate, he was immediately scanned and examined by a few guys. The reason for that was simple: they wanted to make sure the applicants didn't enter with extra shit.

It was U.A., and that came with a certain level of expectation and security. No applicants were allowed to bring their own gear. If they wanted anything from weapons to support equipment during the practical exam, they had to request it from the school on their application account beforehand. The requested equipment was approved on a case-by-case basis. If anyone was caught bringing extra tools with them insideof U.A.'s campus, they could get kicked out at best or even arrested if there were any criminal motives behind the smuggling.

All around him were U.A. hopefuls, but only a portion of them would be taking the recommended test with him. He was eternally grateful for the wooden hero for all of his assistance when it came to following his dream. That recommendation was going to save his ass. It wasn't as if it was a free pass for him, but it was giving him a chance that the normal exam would not provide.

U.A. was the best, and that came with a shit ton of applicants from all over the world. The sheer mass of applications meant that they had to have separate entrance exams based on country to keep the numbers manageable for each test. With so many applicants, the general admission had much to be desired. They had to test thousands of people today alone, and they were forced to give a generic test to the masses in order to find the people most likely to produce results. That, however, meant the tests were really bad for people like Izuku who had to work around specific niches to fully utilize his powers. A generaltest was hardly going to give him the opportunity to show his versatility with his illusions.

That was where the recommendation system came into play. Any licensed hero with their own agency could recommend one student every year, and the students who were deemed worthy by an actual hero would have a separate test meant to cater more toward the circumstances that would allow them to shine. Izuku was planning to approach an agency eventually to get a recommendation, but Kamui practically leapt at the opportunity to recommend someone who already proved themselves against a villain.

There were ups and downs to his current situation though. He was far from passing his entrance exam. While it gave Izuku a much better chance to utilize his own quirk, he was also going against applicants who were personally vouched for by an actual hero. There were less of them, certainly, but heroes were staking their reputation on the ability of their recommended students, so all of them were bound to be much more skilled than the garbage that applied through the usual method.

Izuku walked away from security as his eyes went wild. There were so many people around him, and his eyes were searching vigorously for the ones most likely to be competing against him directly. He was approaching the staircase leading to U.A.'s main hall when his eyes involuntarily latched onto an individual who stood out among the rest of the applicants for all of the wrong reasons.

Through all of his analysis, his eyes found a pattern in the students: all of them were pretty much unanimously confident. This was U.A. high school; the people who applied here were either very capable or extremely arrogant. Such people were not well known for their anxious habits. This school had some of the most rigorous and dangerous exams known to hero schools. They didn't fuck around, so their applicants didn't fuck around either.

That was exactly why the sight of an obviously uncomfortable, completely flustered boy surprised even his eyes. He could tell that the kid was buff as hell no matter how much he tried to compress himself to take up as little space as possible, but the kid's horrid posture and consistently lowered eyes made him look insignificant and weak despite his impressive build. That was when his eyes noticed a raised section of the sidewalk. The kid was going to ram his toe right into it.

Should he really do this right now? Was it really worth his effort to save some random kid from embarrassment?

He was already moving about six seconds before the nervous wreck of an applicant smashed his foot into the sidewalk. With his head start, he just barely managed to snatch the kid by the back of his jacket before he face-planted.

Damn, he was fucking heavy.

Izuku planted his feet against the concrete and yanked the kid back into a workable position. He then used his other hand to stabilize the stumbling boy and gave him a pat on the back.

"Thanks," the boy said, sheepishly staring at the ground and blushing at his ridiculous display.

Izuku took a single second to get a good look at the kid. The boy's hair was black and straight but terribly messy and untamed. On his face were round glasses, and he had about the clearest blue eyes Izuku had ever seen.

Izuku's eyes, though, were confused. They were getting two very different readings at the exact same time. The boy's body language suggested someone meek and powerless, but the kid's build and ever wandering, carefully observing eyes spoke of someone who could be potentially dangerous. Either way, Izuku doubted that he would be facing off against the bespectacled applicant, so he decided to wrangle his brain into submission . It might have been presumptuous of him, but he couldn't see anyone recommending a kid who didn't even believe in himself.

"Keep your chin up, and stop with the incessant fidgeting," Izuku decided to say as he began walking away. "If you applied for U.A. without some kind of skill, then you're too stupid to have passed the written exam in the first place. Being nervous will only hurt you at this point."

Izuku didn't look back to see if his words had an effect. He let out a sigh as he began heading to the briefing room for recommendation applicants. He was on campus for five minutes, and he was already done with the day.

---

The room was deadly quiet except for the gentle fiddling of the fifty or so applicants around him. A couple hundred students were recommended by Asian heroes to participate in the U.A. selection process. The fifty or so applicants with him right now were the ones who chose to enter the arena in the center of the compact zone.

The game was simple: hide and seek tag. What seemed like a child's game at first glance turned into serious competition when all limitations short of death were taken off of the table. The selection was randomized according to some guy named Aizawa. A quarter of them were assigned to be chasers while the rest were made into runners. The runners were given touch sensors which were stuck to their torsos with straps that crossed over their chests. There was one spherical button on the front and one on the back. If the chasers even brushed the button, the runner's color would change from black to red, and they would be effectively transferred to the team of chasers.

The selection process was based on how well they utilized their abilities and handled themselves during the match. They had an entire hour to show their stuff. The game ended after everyone was tagged or the time limit ran out. The individual homeroom teachers of the first-year classes would analyze their performance and assign passing or failing grades based on who they felt performed on a level worthy of a space in their class.

Izuku was a runner, and he was very glad about his assignment. He could show his abilities much better as a runner than a chaser. He, along with all of the other runners, was given three spots to choose from. Whichever they chose would have their approved gear waiting for them, and they would all start the game there. The chasers would then emerge from the same spots fifteen minutes later. Izuku was given the choice between starting on the streets in the very middle of the compact cityscape, starting on the roof of the tallest building in the city surrounded by veritable skyscrapers, or starting from an entrance gate on the outskirts of the city where things were more open and barren.

It was obvious what they were doing. U.A. wanted him to pick the spot where he felt that he would do the best, so he did exactly that. By process of elimination, there was no other logical place for him to go.

Starting on the skyscraper would be a death trap. The kids there would have extreme top to bottom maneuverability options, and the environment was designed to give them a lot of space while simultaneously allowing for some close-quarters action within the buildings themselves. People would probably be flying around the outside of skyscrapers and quickly transitioning from fast, aerial movement to aggressive, in-your-face offense, and Izuku would most likely be trapped in the initial building for the entire match.

The open area might suit him fairly well, but he would eventually succumb to the pressure. That area was going to be flooded with the ranged heavy hitters. They would have all of the space they wanted to get away from the tricky buildings and let loose. Izuku was fast and agile, so he would be able to compete there, but he didn't have that AOE shit the rest of those students were guaranteed to have. He would eventually get pounded until he couldn't keep up.

The compact zone, though, was perfect for him. Tight corners and cluttered spaces gave him plenty of things to maneuver around and use to his advantage. All of those closed-off areas would allow him to limit the number of opponents he had to deal with at one time. It was practically designed for his quirk.

Waiting for him in the middle of a humongous, circular platform was a metal box with his name on it. Walking over to the chest, he brought out his ID and pressed it against the scanner on the face of the box. It popped open with a hiss that sent satisfying shivers down his back. He smiled like a lunatic when he saw what was in it.

The bottom of the chest was cushioned with black, spiky foam. Sitting on top of that foam was some of the most stellar weaponry he could've asked for. In the very center of the case was an average-sized sword that was a bit less than half the size of his 5"5' body. Around that sword were two throwing daggers and two sword-breakers with sharpened studs. All of them were very much lethal.

Of course, the general, untrained applicants were not given the same caliber of weaponry as the recommendation applicants were, but that was kind of the point. Everyone here was hero-recommended. If they were using weapons here, they were expected to be good with them already. The only nerf given to the recommendation students would be the guns. They shot quirk-reinforced tranquilizer darts that went only slightly subsonic. Izuku had a single handheld tranq gun which he would keep in a holster on his side next to his throwing daggers.

Guns were a bit niche in hero society, though they were still used to great effect in the police force. Heroes were all people who had excessively useful quirks, and many of them were vastly superior to guns if used correctly. In many cases, those quirks also necessitated special attention that couldn't be properly provided while using a gun. All Might, for example, was faster than a bullet on his own two feet and could do much more damage with a fist than a bullet, Izuku could win a fight at the speed of light considering eye contact was all that was required, and Endeavor was capable of completely incinerating lead with fire he could swath an entire street with.

Still, firearms held a role in combat when it came to requiring a certain amount of range, a certain degree of speed, or when a person's quirk made them insanely good with a gun. Needless to say, Izuku's quirk gave him the ability to use one with a high level of proficiency. Still, his illusory ability was made kind of useless when he was constantly staring down the sights of a lethal weapon, and he was a much better fighter when his eyes were allowed to roam. That was why he kept the possibility of using one in his belt just in case a situation came up where it would be particularly helpful.

The reason for the rest of his weaponry was much simpler to explain: he had an amazing fighter to emulate. No one could hide from the internet no matter how careful they were, and that counted for villains and vigilantes too. A particularly brutal one with the moniker "Stendhal'' caught his eye from a young age. Once he found enough videos with clear footage, he immediately began using his eyes to emulate the man's style. With speed, flexibility, and agility like that, the vigilante was insanely deadly. By watching the man fight, Izuku became deadly as well.

Sheathing his sword behind his back and shoving his smaller blades into his belt holsters, Izuku went over to sit against the curved wall surrounding the platform. The rest of the students were finishing up with their gear for a few more minutes after he took a seat. Just like him, most of the people here seemed to stay away from guns. All of the quirks that were going to be used in the compact part of the city were probably going to be the types most likely to counter stuff like bullets pretty well. Izuku was sure that they would see more use in the barren and skyscraper zones than where he decided to enter.

One by one, the applicants finished with their gear and took their positions around the room. Once the last one was ready, the platform started to climb up the cylindrical room. Quite a distance above him, Izuku saw the roof open up into a gigantic city.

U.A. didn't play around. All of the applicants were going to enter through an elevator that brought them directly into the center of the city from below the street. The higher the elevator brought him, the more city he could see. It was absolutely gigantic.

Izuku was surprised by just how realistic the city looked. Obviously, he expected something special when it came to U.A., but this was on another level. The city looked like people could live here as an independent society if they wanted to.

As the platform approached street level, Izuku was not disappointed by his choice. The buildings were large, but they weren't anywhere near the enormity of the skyscrapers standing ominously in the distance. The buildings here were close together and created tight streets and cluttered alleyways. The spot they were rising into was probably the only uncramped space in the entire zone.

The platform came to a stop with a click, and everyone stepped onto the blacktop.

"You have fifteen minutes to situate yourselves. Your time starts now."

People started to rush away en masse as soon as the voice disappeared with a static-filled crack. Izuku, though, decided to stay put for a minute and take stock of his environment. It wasn't like he didn't understand the urge to distance himself from the competition and find himself a spot where he felt safe and secure from the hunters that were to come, but he also understood that time was not on his side at all.

They already spoke of how their little game was being graded. They wanted to see how their applicants worked, fought, and planned. It wasn't necessarily about surviving the whole time or finding a boatload of people; the game was only a means for discovering a person's potential. Running away and hiding was a valid strategy, but with every tick of the clock, a seeker was going to tag a runner. Over time, his team was going to dwindle and the enemy's forces would only grow stronger. No, the start was when he had the advantage, when the enemy team had the least amount of allies. If he wanted to show off his skills, the best time to do it would be when he could control the confrontations and deal with the limited number of enemies one at a time. By the end of the game, he was going to be far too outnumbered to truly show his potential, and that was where all of the cowards were going to end up eventually.

"Hey there, I see someone else isn't in the mood to rush."

Izuku casually glanced to his left and saw that he wasn't actually the last person there. One other person realized the potential of not just running away when they had the advantage. The boy looked odd. The mutations to his head made his face look vaguely like a skull. It was whatever; people generally looked odd in his generation, and the unstoppable progression of quirks would only make people look weirder as time went on.

"No," Izuku told the boy. "I am not."

Skull-face hummed with interest as the platform started sinking into the ground. Once a few metal flaps extended across the opening to cover the massive pit, the boy knelt and pressed his fingers against the concrete road. Izuku was confused about what was going on at first, but his eyes told him everything he needed to know when his new acquaintance tapped the ground and made a section of solid concrete jiggle like he was patting a mass of jello.

"You turned it into a liquid," Izuku said with respect lacing his voice.

"Yeah," the boy responded. "Anything solid that I touch softens to the consistency I want until it eventually turns back or I touch it again. It'll hold its form until something puts pressure on it, but anyone that takes a step on this is gonna find themselves about waist deep before they can take a second one."

That was when Izuku saw the absolute genius that was a softening quirk like that in the compact zone. The guy's quirk would probably work the best offensively speaking in the barren zone, but he wasn't choosing the spot where his quirk would work the best. He was choosing the spot where his competition would deal with his quirk the worst.

The barren zone was going to be filled with mid to long range fighters who were most likely capable of avoiding his softened ground while striking from afar. Here, all of his opponents would be the applicants who needed to get close. They would be forced to come to him, and that meant running straight toward his traps.

"My name is Juzo Honenuki, but for the sake of keeping it simple, just call me Juzo."

"Izuku Midoriya. Call me whatever feels right."

The newly revealed Juzo smiled at the offer and stuck his hand out for Izuku to shake. Once their hands made contact, Juzo started talking business.

"I'm hoping that you have a plan because I was going to wing it after doing this."

Well, to be fair, what he did already was pretty damn solid. There was a large moat surrounding the entrance platform that looked completely normal. It was literally guaranteed to catch someone, and it was also going to keep the chasers in one spot for longer than Izuku originally expected. At first, he was under the impression that he would only get a few moments to observe all of his enemies together. Now, he had something a bit more substantial.

His eyes already found the spot that he wanted to set up in the moment he got a chance to examine his surroundings. It was a building a few streets down that was taller than the rest of the buildings by a decent margin. The distance would be enough to keep his opponents from seeing him, and he would get a clear view of the starting area in all of its glory.

"If anyone looks into my eyes, I can make them see whatever I want until they realize it is fake. In order to make realistic illusions, I need to see who they are familiar with and how they interact with their team. That tall building over there will suffice."

Juzo whistled appreciatively.

"Well, that's a fuckin' quirk if I've ever seen one. Alright, we'll go with what you want. This moat will stay soft for a half-hour no matter where I am, so we don't have to stick around."

Izuku gave a nod, and the two started walking towards the tallest building in their area. It was something of a risk to set up in the most conspicuous location possible, but Izuku didn't care that it stood out. He could deal with whoever came for him. It was much more important for him to get a good analysis of his opponents before they started approaching him.

Izuku found himself unconsciously memorizing the areas around him. Unlike a normal city, this place didn't seem to have any distinguishable pattern to it, and it bothered him that he couldn't find those familiar connections that would usually ground him in his surroundings. About 4 minutes later, they finally came to the building. As it turned out, it was designed to be some kind of knockoff grocery store, and the level of realism Izuku attributed to the city skyrocketed when the electric sliding door actually worked.

The two walked inside and started to take a look around. They had about 8 minutes before the chasers were going to arrive, so they had seven until Izuku wanted to secure himself a spot on the roof to observe. The store was completely stocked except for when it came to the food isles, and while the lights worked, Izuku's first order of business was to find the main power switch and make sure that those lights were permanently disabled.

"What is your quirk's limit?" Izuku asked.

"My limit is a net cap. I can soften anything I want until I reach my max. Once I do, I can't soften anything else until I get a chance to recover."

With that in mind, Izuku was more than happy to walk around the building with his temporary partner and watch him place his softening traps around the various sections of the store. The food section was on the right side of the store, and that place was almost completely empty. To compensate for that, Juzo made sure to place plenty of tiny pitfalls throughout the different isles. The miscellaneous and household decor section on the left of the store was much more filled out. Still, he placed a few around the area to keep the chasers from getting too bold with the extra space.

The middle of the store, though, was the clothing section. That was the most cluttered part of the entire building. The racks of clothes were placed tightly together, and the different rows of shelves were perfect for walling off vision. Juzo didn't place a single trap in there. This was going to be their playground. With traps everywhere else, the chasers were bound to be skeptical when it came to sprinting through such a tight area where they would inevitably get trapped and stuck if they happened to step on a trap. Izuku planned to use that hesitation to his advantage. His eyes memorized every little location from its circumference to its distance from the other traps, and there was no doubt in his mind that he could play around those traps with impunity if he wanted to. Anyone that entered their building without some seriously thought-out plans would be walking into a death trap.

They were just about to go up on the roof when Juzo displayed his genius once again. He touched the wall at the very back of the building and softened a human-sized section of it. Just like Juzo said, the wall held its shape perfectly. No one would know that there was an easy escape route waiting for them until it was too late. Once his partner's strategy was revealed to him, Izuku immediately expanded it and sent Juzo to create similar pathways into the neighboring buildings. Once there was about two minutes left, Izuku felt like he was the king of a veritable fortress, and all around them was a maze of secret passages that only they could properly use. It was honestly a bit of a power trip for the young man. It always felt good to use a quirk creatively to create clever advantages.

… That was part of the reason why Izuku only really had fun with his quirk anymore when he was messing around with his illusions.

"We don't have long, Izuku. If you want to catch their entrance, we should head to the top of the building."

Izuku gave a small nod, and the two of them found a ladder that brought them to the top of the store. A loud buzzer echoed across the entire battlefield to signal the arrival of the chasers just as Izuku leaned comfortably against the roof's railing.

"Can you really see from here?" Juzo asked with wonder in his voice.

"Yes," Izuku said in his usual careless tone. "I can't see everything that goes on at such a distance, but I can see more than clear enough to gain the information I want."

"That's sick. You'll have to relay what you see to me because I can barely see shit from this far."

Izuku gave a nod and started to focus. Even with Juzo's trap, he wouldn't have a very long time, and he needed to get as much as possible on as many enemies as possible in the short amount of time he had. When the metal flaps that covered the elevator shaft opened, he was already deadly focussed on the entrance area. He could only hope that he gleaned something interesting from the time they wasted to go onto the roof instead of further preparing their building.

The elevator clicked to a stop for the chasers, and he was surprised to find about fifteen people at the compact zone. There were around three hundred applicants in all, so there had to be at least seventy-five chasers. It seemed like both the chasers and the runners were lacking in the "close range" department. That was more than fine with Izuku. His plan was to single them out either way, so he was satisfied to see that he wouldn't need to worry about them having a large amount of starting numbers. If he had any luck at all, his fellow runners wouldn't get caught too fast while he dealt with the ones coming for his corner of the compact zone.

"They're here," Izuku said succinctly, but it seemed like Juzo was already aware of that. It was his second observation that really shocked his partner. "Holy fuck… Is that a Todoroki!?"

"What the hell are you talking about? Are you high!?"

Izuku cringed as his eyes travelled all over the red-and-white-haired boy standing stoically in the center of the circle. There was no mistaking it. Izuku never forgot something that he saw with his mutated eyes, and those were Endeavor's fucking irises through and through.

"I wish I was. I don't know what he's doing here though. I would've thought that someone with a quirk like Endeavor's would be born and raised to dominate the barren zone. This seems like the worst spot for someone like him. What good is all of that range and firepower when all of the runners can ambush him in a tight corner?"

"I don't know," Juzo said with a hum. "But if he's here, I am sure he has a plan. We need to be very careful of him."

The second applicant that caught his eye was a bug-looking motherfucker that was running his fingers idly over a mass of metallic lumps just barely pushing through his skin. That… was more than a little off-putting. Nevertheless, his eyes found data, and they analyzed it without a second thought.

"There's a bug mutant down there, and he has razor blades sticking out of his body. They aren't very long, but I'm not sure if they can grow any bigger or if their positions are set."

"That's a good quirk for us. If he comes our way, he won't have many options that don't involve trapping himself."

That was when his eyes finally landed on someone whom he should've been analyzing from the beginning. It was a male applicant that looked like a humanoid bloodhound. That was going to be a huge problem for him especially. He and Juzo spent the most time at the starting area, so anyone that dealt with a smell-based quirk would be most likely to latch onto them, and Izuku didn't do well with tricking people who had extreme senses for the same reason that he was so good at creating realistic illusions based on sight.

He didn't know how to represent senses he couldn't experience.

That bloodhound bastard probably had a crazy nose that worked entirely different from his own. How the hell was he supposed to accurately simulate the smells that a dog would experience when he had a human nose? The mutt would realize that something was off immediately. If that guy came after them, Izuku might be in some serious trouble.

"There's a god damn dog in our area."

"Shit, does he look like he caught onto anything?"

Izuku shrugged but kept his eyes completely locked on the bloodhound.

"He's talking to two other applicants right now. I don't think he's focused on finding anyone just yet, but I bet he will when he starts sniffing."

Izuku quickly let his eyes fly over the other applicants. It was looking like a pretty basic game so far. There were exactly fifteen applicants. Among those fifteen were two groups of three, two groups of two, and five loners. He got enough preliminary information to find out who was doing what with whom, and that was good enough to make some basic illusions on the fly. What he really needed to worry about was that fucking dog. Todoroki might be a problem, but the bloodhound was his natural counter.

That was why he was pleasantly surprised to find that it was one of the mutt's groupies that decided to walk off of the platform first. He was expecting a solo chaser to take the initial dive for obvious reasons, but the bloodhound chose a particularly aggressive partner, and that was the most unlucky decision he could've possibly made. The chick looked deadly. She didn't have hair in the common definition of the word. Instead of thin strands that grew from hair follicles, she had numerous clumps of metallic whips that ended with the barbed tip of a spear. She seemed to have independent control over each whip judging from the way they writhed around her in unpredictable and seemingly senseless directions. If she got in close, she was going to be a terrifying opponent. Unfortunately for her, she was too aggressive for her own good.

Her left foot was the one that happened to step off of the platform first, and the pavement gave way the second the soul of her shoe made contact. Her foot fell through the concrete like she was stepping in a pool of melted caramel, and as her foot quickly sunk into the softened road, her weight went forward, and she fell over her foot in the worst position possible. She ended up face planting into the moat of quicksand, and her flailing didn't help matters at all. She managed to flip around to get her face above the liquid road, but her panicked motions only made her sink faster.

The other fourteen applicants stared in confusion and shock at the spear-haired girl as she continued to fall further and further into the moat. Her teammates were at a loss, and the lack of action on the part of her allies was starting to make her panic worse. Izuku couldn't help but smirk when, in her senseless flopping, she managed to do the worst thing possible and look straight at Izuku.

Now, to be fair to her, she probably couldn't see him at all from this distance, but her knowledge of their eye contact mattered not. The second she allowed him to make the connection with her pupils, he gained control. Izuku almost felt bad for the unlucky girl. She was about to cause a whole world of trouble for her team. For him, though, the world was his oyster, and the dog was going to bite it.

With his mind now split between his own world and his victim's, he watched the scene play out from two separate perspectives. The girl's two direct partners were staring at her with wide eyes, and the rest of her allies were watching warily as well. All of them, that was, except for the Todoroki boy and Razor Blade. His split-haired opponent was kneeling down and curiously poking at the softened material. The bug boy, though, wasted no time with gaining a running start and leaping over the moat. One applicant officially entered the battlefield.

The rest of the applicants really didn't matter to Izuku. He could deal with the bug, and the other chasers were minimally important compared with the mutt. He had to make sure that the bloodhound didn't get the chance to track him down. It was so very fortunate for him that the dog was standing still due to his surprise. Like he said earlier that year with Kamui Woods, if he could see something with his own eyes, he could probably replace the real version of them with an illusion seamlessly. When they were standing still, that became even easier.

Using the information he gained from his eyes, Izuku painted over the staring dog with a careful, deft hand. He replicated the widened eyes and the slightly opened mouth. He made sure to delicately construct the smooth hair that covered his entire body and added the generic, blue tracksuit all of the applicants wore. At the very same time, he removed the real bloodhound from the girl's reality, and she would only be getting her beloved partner back when she realized that she was being played.

Due to his own view of the scene, he saw the dog turn his back to the sinking girl to deliberate with his other teammate. At the very same time, he overlaid the girl with his own version of her, and he kept the two of them staring at her with those same wide eyes. While the two were actually coming up with a rescue plan for their third member, she saw them still dumbly staring like before.

It was almost too easy.

He made his version of the bloodhound extend his hand before putting a healthily frightened but comfortingly determined look on the boy's animalistic face. He didn't know what the dog sounded like, but he could generally approximate based on what the guy looked like, and the girl was far too panicked to analyze the voice she heard even if he was horribly off.

"Use your hair to grab my hand. I'll plant my feet. Just pull yourself up!"

Seeing her lifeline, the girl eagerly extended a few of her spear-like locks of hair… and unknowingly jammed the barbs straight into her partner's turned back. Tragically believing that the bloodhound was bracing himself for her pull, she tried to tug herself from the thick liquid swallowing her whole. The bloodhound, though, was completely unprepared for the hooks that jabbed him in the back, and he was most definitely not properly situated to handle the force of the girl trying to heave herself out of the moat.

The barbs that were stuck deep in his skin yanked him off of his feet and dragged his screaming, clawing form into the moat with her. Izuku couldn't stop himself from laughing. This was the only enjoyment that he could get from his quirk anymore. This was the kind of shit that took skill and finesse. The girl's fruitless struggling finally submerged her completely, and the poor bloodhound was squealing and pleading for help as the girl literally pulled him under behind her.

Once the two were completely submerged, he let the illusion go and wondered just what she was thinking now that she was released. He looked over to his partner and smiled devilishly.

"The bloodhound's partner fell into the pit. She looked into my eyes, and I made her pull him in too. Their tracker is dealt with."

Juzo looked heavily impressed.

"Good shit, man. Did any of them make it out of the area yet?"

Izuku looked back and nodded as he did, "The razor blade guy has been out for a bit, and the rest of them are currently finding their way over. They seem to have all abandoned their submerged teammates. Are they going to drown in there?"

As much as Izuku understood how serious this application was, he didn't particularly enjoy the thought of murdering two helpless kids.

"Well, my quirk doesn't actually turn solids into liquids, it just softens them into a liquid-like consistency, so they shouldn't necessarily drown. That doesn't mean oxygen permeates the entire construct, though, so they could easily suffocate if no one gets them out pretty soon."

That was when Izuku saw a few tendrils of concrete emerge from the road, reach into the softened pavement, and pull the applicants out. He nodded his head, satisfied.

"Cementoss is paying attention to them. He got them out."

"Good," said Juzo.

That was when a flicker of movement somewhere over Juzo's head caught Izuku's attention. It was moving fast and coming straight at his partner's back. Izuku jumped up and pushed his teammate to the side. Scarce few people could properly react to a high speed tranq round shot from a proper rifle, but Izuku didn't have to react; he was able to cheat. He saw the round from quite a distance away, and his eyes analyzed its flight pattern and gave him a picture-perfect understanding of its trajectory from where it was to exactly where it would make contact.

Drawing his sword in a flash, he mimicked the style that he replicated from Stendhal and swiped his blade straight through the dart the very second it came into range. While his eyes made it look like an eternity, the actual action was almost quicker than a blink. The sliced dart clattered onto the floor in two pieces. Izuku squinted his eyes in the direction of the shot, but he couldn't see anything from so far away. He was staring in the direction of the skyscraper territory, and he scoffed while throwing up a middle finger.

He was expecting flying quirks and the like from that direction. In his infinite wisdom, Izuku didn't consider that such an area would be perfect for quirks that made sharpshooting almost too simple.

"What the hell was that!?" Juzo exclaimed.

"The tranq rifles here don't have that kind of range. An actual sniper rifle would have a massive amount of trouble reaching us from so far away. I'm guessing that there is someone over there with a quirk that lets them affect the movement of their projectiles. We should get inside before they get cocky again. They must've been watching us since the start of the match for a good enough shot."

Izuku kept staring in the direction of the towers as Juzo opened the metal hatch that led back to the inside of the building. The sharpshooter, though, apparently decided that it wasn't worth blowing a second round on a potshot when his target was alert, so Izuku sheathed the sword that Stendhal unknowingly taught him to use and followed his partner down into the store below.

---

As it turned out, the conspicuously tall building they occupied was actually a pretty decent spot to bide their time. Izuku thought that its unusual height would attract attention, but people actually seemed to discount it as a good spot to check because of how obvious it was. Izuku wasn't sure exactly how long they had been waiting behind a rack of clothes for someone to enter their building, but he felt like it had to be at least ten entire minutes before someone came around.

Once the door finally fell open, Izuku saw that he was absolutely right to pay attention to the razor blade bug because it was him who managed to waltz into their building. Looking a bit to his right, he saw that Juzo was paying attention as well. They were both waiting for the same exact thing.

The bug noiselessly, carefully stepped into the building. He seemed somewhat suspicious about the lights being out, but it didn't matter how suspicious he was. It would only take one misstep and… There!

Razor blade's foot stepped on the strip of floor that Juzo softened at the entrance of the store. Izuku sighed as the bug boy started falling face-first into the softened floor. The boy's quirk interested him, and he was hoping to get at least something from the confrontation. It seemed, however, like this would be another flawless victory.

The bug's metal mandibles clicked excitedly as the boy fell forward. A look of concentration contorted his face, and five thick razor blades flew out of the skin on his back and extended into the floor beneath him. The blades dug into the concrete ground, creating a shower of sliced debris. Everyone in the room held their breaths as the bug was held up at a slightly acute angle by the blades that sprouted from his back. A mad grin worked its way onto the bug's face as he slowly pulled his blades back into his skin, hoisting himself into a comfortable position before yanking the blades from the ground and retracting them for real.

Now, that was more like it.

The bug's eyes flicked around the room in an attempt to find whoever was hiding in here.

"Someone has a little hideaway, don't they?" Razor Blade said with a taunting tone. "Unfortunately for you, my eyes are really good at seeing movement; and you're bad at sitting still, aren't you, buddy?"

Izuku's eyes shot wide as he immediately looked toward his fidgeting partner. Juzo was obviously panicking just a bit, apparently rather bothered by the ease with which the bug avoided his trap. His teammate's strategy was completely dependent on the people in this zone being incapable of avoiding his quirk, but this bug was smart enough with his power to avoid the traps on reaction alone. Izuku supposed that he would be bothered by the threat as well... if he wasn't yearningfor a decent fight.

The praying mantis started sprinting toward Juzo with a surprising amount of speed. Izuku's partner panicked and touched the ground below him. An entire section of the floor from directly in front of him to the electronic door softened in the form of a pulse that traveled from Juzo's hand to the front of the store. Apparently, razor blade was expecting that because he started laughing condescendingly as he leapt over the approaching wave of softened ground and flew an insane distance toward his target.

Izuku was on the move the very second his eyes predicted the jump, and his urgency only increased when five blades sprouted on different parts of his opponent's body. Like a demented Beyblade, the praying mantis sliced the clothing rack separating him from his prey into tiny, shredded pieces and descended upon a helpless Juzo like a predator getting ready to have a meal.

Izuku just barely planted his foot and shoved Juzo out of the way before he was cut to ribbons and eliminated. The bug was close to reaching him with his pounce, and a blade attached to the boy's forearm was getting ready to cut him in half instead. Drawing his sword with his right hand and one of his two throwing knives with his left, his eyes flew across his bladed opponent in a crazy search for some kind of open spot, and he found it on the bug's right shoulder. Izuku tossed the blade at his enemy with perfect precision and watched intently as the bug was forced to turn his previously attacking forearm in order to block the attack.

Twisting with his momentum, the bug threw his left foot out, retracted a blade from the back of his opposite leg's calf, and sprouted another from the very top of his unbladed foot. An attack that was going to be completely out of range and useless became on target and lethal in a second. As it was the first time seeing the boy do something like that, Izuku wasn't properly able to predict the lightning-fast strike. It was only due to Stendhal that he had the muscle memory required to raise his blade in a hanging guard and take the blow at an angle. Izuku was even further surprised that the bug had more than enough strength in his leg to lift Izuku's admittedly poorly positioned feet off of the ground and send him careening toward the food section of the store.

What was this?

That bug… That beautiful bug did something new. Izuku, with all of his knowledge of so many different strategies and battles, didn't predict the move that Razor Blade just threw at him. He had to react; he had to use the skills he learned creatively . That right there wasn't just a copy and paste project. It was actually kind of fun. Could the boy provide more? Could this be what he needed?

He was flying across the room in an uncontrolled, spinning ball of flailing limbs and a horrible sense of disorientation. This was the first time that Izuku had personally been sent flying in such a way before, but his eyes remembered the hundreds of videos he watched of Miruko controlling herself in the air, and he basically had Stendhal's particular brand of maddeningly fast movement ingrained within his mind. Letting his body take control, he started contorting during his wild rotation, and he slowly but surely righted himself until his torso was facing the ground.

He was just in time to stop himself from getting some horrible road rash. He did have some gloves, and they were made out of some tough leather, so he felt comfortable with digging his left palm into the concrete floor along with the soles of his shoes to stop his momentum in a picture-perfect form of Miruko's landing pose. There was a pit of Juzo's softened ground right behind him; his eyes remembered its location perfectly. He wasn't going to be able to stop his momentum in time to keep himself from falling in. A smile that matched that of Mr. Razor Blade grew on his face as he was forced to improvise once again.

Sheathing his sword to free his right hand, he leaned his weight onto his feet and off of his planted left hand. Continuing to slow his momentum by sliding back on his forefeet, he dug them even further into the ground; and when the balls of his feet were just inches away from Juzo's trap, Izuku threw his weight backward and pushed with his legs to send himself into a whiplike backflip over the softened ground.

Razor Blade was gunning for his ally now that he was halfway across the store, and while Izuku was really good with his knives, even he couldn't throw them fast enough to stop his partner from getting tagged. This was the moment he prepared his contingency for; This was that niche he was talking about.

Drawing his tranq gun, he let the hundreds of videos he watched of professional handgun marksmen flood over his muscles.

*Click* *Click* *Click*

Three shots of his twelve-round clip flew from his guns at three different targets. Razor Blade was pretty far away, but he was apparently smart enough to account for the possibility of Izuku recovering. Spinning on the spot, Razor Blade's eyes immediately started tracking the only movement in front of him. In that aspect, at least, Razor Blade had an ability that was a pseudo-match for Izuku's eyes. The eyes of the praying mantis were very special. They had the ability to see three-dimensionally like a human, but their eyes were built to catch movement much better than a human's. They did not have the predictive power of Izuku's eyes, but they were able to keep up with high-speed movement at a similar level. As it turned out, more than just the vision of a praying mantis was given to his opponent via his insectoid mutation.

The speed at which he smacked the three darts out of the air was startling. The praying mantis was known for its astounding strike speed, and Izuku had a feeling that his opponent was going to be known for it as well. Izuku was fully aware that even with Stendhal's skills, he was outmatched by the speed of a tranq round without the power of his eyes. Razor Blade was apparently able to keep up with them out of sheer reflex and speed. His opponent did not need predictive powers because his physical prowess was simply that good.

Juzo, god bless him, turned the ground underneath Razor Blade into quicksand the moment that he had the opportunity. The bug was quick enough to jump out of the way before it caught him, but it forced their opponent to move closer to Izuku and further away from his support. Softening wasn't useful because it was good for combat but because of how much of a strategic advantage it gave Izuku. Once Juzo was able to disappear deeper into the store and Razor Blade was blitzing him at full speed, Izuku was able to completely concentrate on the fight instead of being forced to improvise around his less combat-capable partner.

Izuku shoved his tranq back into his holster and yanked his sword from its sheath. Razor Blade was too quick for him to use projectiles irresponsibly. His ever-aggressive opponent was smart enough to realize that there was something suspicious about Izuku standing so resolutely still while his enemy was approaching so quickly and decided to take a leap over the possibly dangerous ground. Izuku was expecting his enemy to continue with his "rushdown" style of fighting, so he was once again surprised when Razor Blade decided to jump into a high arc instead of the more flat and speedy lunge he saw before.

Izuku watched the bug point his palm at him and noticed the blade emerge from his skin just in time to dodge forward and underneath the blade that would've impaled him right through the shoulder. Now, Razor Blade was fucked. He was in a high arc and threw his attack prematurely. He might as well have been target practice for Izuku, and he was a very good shot.

*CRACK*

Izuku's head rotated to look at the loud, jarring sound behind him to see that the blade pierced deeply into the concrete… Deep enough, actually, that it probably had a really firm hold on it. His eyes widened even as adrenaline filled his veins. He was in the middle of an aisle. There was a large shelf to his left and another to his right. Razor Blade was limiting his movement and coming at him with the maximum amount of speed he could create.

YES! Was this an actual opponent!?

Razor Blade retracted his long, thin blade and pulled himself to the ground with enough speed that the edges of his body blurred. Yanking the blade from the ground, he retracted it completely to give him the maximum amount of options. Five blades; Izuku's eyes were sure that he could only make five blades at a time. Never had the amount exceeded that, not even during his initial blitz where having the most weapons would provide the greatest impact.

Izuku's eyes moved like water as he tracked the location of the bug's lethal weapons. Left shoulder blade, forearms, right shin, left thigh; he simultaneously kept track of all five even as the bug turned into a spinning ball of death. Izuku hopped back not a second too soon to avoid Razor Blade's whirlwind of death, but the boy came to a skidding stop and dashed right back to combat range.

Dealing with the bug was like solving an extremely complex and constantly changing puzzle. There were five contact points that could come from any part of his body at any time. Izuku had to keep track of all five in the middle of high-intensity combat, and Razor Blade had an extremely awkward, off-beat rhythm to his fighting style that bothered Izuku's pattern-based eyes. His opponent would switch between a fluid string of attacks that relied on the continuous application of his five blades and lightning-fast strikes that were obviously driven by his mutation at seemingly random intervals.

As the fight wore on, though, the same thing that happened every time he found something fun happened once again: his eyes figured it out. As creative and unpredictable as the bug's style was, he still had his tells. At first, the fight was deliciously new, but his opponent became readable far too soon.

Razor Blade just came out of a deadly spin of blades, and two of his five weapons retracted from his lower body. As much as Izuku wished they hadn't, his eyes knew the tell. Four times now, the bug would come out of a flurry of aggressive attacks, pull the blades from his lower body, and sprout them from his arms to attack with one of his whip-like strikes taken from the praying mantis.

Just like clockwork, blades shot from the bug's arms, and he lunged at Izuku with the intent of slicing him up beyond the point of natural recovery. His opponent's arms were crossed over his chest. An idiot could tell that the boy was planning on throwing his arms to the side to make an X-shaped attack with his blades. Unfortunately, it was so obviously readable that its speed was really the only reason it worked. Since Izuku knew it was coming in advance this time, that speed mattered very little.

Izuku crossed his sword over his body, held it down by his opposite leg, and faced the blade toward his opponent. With five blades going against his one, there was no real chance of him hitting the bug with his sword directly. What he needed to do was deflect both blades at the same time. If he could open up the bug's arms and get a chance to attack right in the center, that was his chance at claiming victory.

His sword was hand-and-a-half for a reason. He liked to keep his second hand free, but the extra leverage was just what he needed sometimes. With both hands on his sword handle, he swung the sword to the sky and intersected the X-attack right in the center. He had so much more leverage than his opponent that Izuku was able to send both of the bug's hands straight into the air.

Just like that, Razor Blade's torso was wide open. Izuku approached like a wolf that just caught its prey, and that was when the most predictable thing Izuku had ever seen in his life happened. A blade was retracted from the bug's arm and sprouted straight from his throat. It was a panic response to being totally vulnerable, and Izuku read it like a book.

Izuku tossed himself backward and threw his hands over his head. The bug's throat blade would've impaled him straight through the head if he hadn't acted so quickly. It wouldn't have been the first time someone died in these exams.

Izuku watched the blade extend right above his eyes as his body flew horizontally to the ground. He was literally just below the point where he would've been dead. Bending his back into a downward-opening parabola, he found the ground with his hands. It was a bit complicated to do the move with a sword in one hand, but watching a video of it was more than enough to figure it out.

Going with his momentum, Izuku pulled his legs above his head and hit the flat bottom of the throat blade with the very tip of his shoe. Continuing the back handspring, he followed through with the strike, and the blade, attached to the bug's throat as it was, could do nothing but rise with the force. Izuku's opponent was lifted from the ground and sent falling backward as his weapon shot into the sky.

Izuku was absolutely certain that his opponent must be in some serious pain. Who knew how those blades were lodged into his body, and Izuku just hit one that was connected to possibly the weakest point of the entire human anatomy. Once he completed the back handspring, Izuku approached his opponent and noticed that all of the blades had already retracted. It must have been an involuntary response to passing out. It would be dangerous to have blades flying everywhere while the user wasn't conscious.

Izuku sighed to himself. That was possibly the most exhilarating fight he'd ever participated in, but it ultimately ended just as anti-climatically as the others. Was it too much to ask for a fight that he didn't win with his eyes?

Behind him, Juzo approached with wide eyes and an open mouth.

"Dude…" he said, half in awe. "What the hell was that!? You were amazing!!!"

"Yeah," Izuku responded with a shrug. "It was unfortunate that he figured out your quirk so quickly. We should throw him somewhere to make sure he stays out of the game for good. Do you think the cement will save and eliminate him if we toss him in your pit again?"

Juzo looked slightly uncomfortable and scratched the back of his head.

"Maybe?" it sounded more like a question than an answer. "It doesn't feel right to just throw them to their death, does it? The traps were one thing, but just purposefully jamming them into one after we already won?"

Izuku seemed much less bothered. He glanced back at the unconscious bug and considered their options.

"I don't see any other way to contain him. He can sprout blades from his body. Rope won't hold him, but your pool could. I don't know if knocking him out is enough to eliminate him."

The two stared at each other and tried to figure out a solution. Then…

The entire building turned to ice.

Izuku's eyes caught it as it was traveling over the roof, and he managed to jump just in time to not get his feet sealed to the floor. Juzo, though, was unfortunately not quick enough to avoid the ice, and Izuku didn't have enough time to warn him. Juzo's feet were frozen to the ground, and the ice was quickly growing up his legs. Holy shit, it was trying to completely incase him in ice.

Izuku landed on the ground with a wide stance to keep from sliding before he stood up and approached his partner.

"Turn it soft before it gets any higher. Do it now!"

Juzo quickly touched the growing ice and made it soft before it could reach past his thighs. Now in a "liquid" state, the ice slid from his body and puddled on the ground. Izuku's partner gave a quick sigh and shivered from the cold.

"This is bad," Izuku whispered quietly. "The ice just coated over all of your traps. The room just flipped out of our favor. Can you turn all of this ice soft?"

Juzo clicked his tongue and looked around.

"Maybe, but this is a lot of ice. If it encased the whole floor, I might be getting near my max by changing all of it back. It's a few inches deep."

"Yeah," Izuku confirmed. "Just look at our unconscious friend over there."

The bug was totally covered in solid ice, and it was only due to the concrete intervening that the bug wasn't currently at risk of frostbite. Izuku was coming up with a plan, but everything came to a halt when the dual-haired boy walked into the food section of the store and turned to face them from so far away. Knowing that things just got real, Izuku tapped his partner and began to whisper their new plan.

"We need to get to the back of the store where your exit is. I'll try to distract him, and you go get rid of the ice covering your softened wall. We don't have too much time until your traps expire, so we need to leave now. I'm going to lead him to the clothes section. You go straight to the back."

Juzo began to retreat immediately while Izuku stepped forward to face the threat.

"That's a lot of fuckin ice, man!" Izuku shouted from across the food section of the store. "You sure that you'll be able to catch anyone else after you're through with us!?"

The Todoroki boy didn't respond. Instead, he approached Izuku with a calm sort of speed that shouted of his confidence. Todoroki was certain that he held the advantage here. While that was definitely true for now, such flippant arrogance was always a weakness. Deciding to show Todoroki that casual approaches could be punished, Izuku whipped out his tranq gun and fired two more darts from it. With five expended, he had six more left.

Izuku examined how Todoroki would respond. That was, of course, his win condition even if he hated it to the very core of his being. Todoroki's right foot advanced to the front and secured itself against the ground. From that foot, a thick wall of ice shot into the air and covered him completely. The darts harmlessly lodged themselves into the wall, but Izuku got what he needed.

Why was it the right foot specifically? His eyes knew that the boy's right side was marked with white hair. Was that, perhaps, the tell of his quirk? Once was nothing more than unusable data, but it was an interesting start.

Izuku was interrupted when the wall exploded outward in a line of jagged ice that threatened to impale him if he didn't move. The damn ice made it tricky to find any traction, but he had enough time to slide out of the way and start trying to clumsily skate down one of the isles. That was when a wave of ice started plowing through every single aisle between Izuku and Todoroki with reckless abandon.

One aisle, two aisle, three collapsed in a second as a column of ice large enough to brush the ceiling approached him. It was only thanks to the many parkour videos he loved to watch in his early childhood that he was able to hop up onto the shelf beside him and hoist himself onto the unfrozen top of the food display. With traction now available to him, Izuku ran across the top of the food shelf and escaped the easily lethal attack by a hair.

This was very bad. The Todoroki kid was like a fucking bulldozer. Unlike Razor Blade, who gave him the opportunity of single combat, Todoroki could take him down with swaths of ice from afar without ever getting close. Izuku simultaneously hoped that Juzo would find the exit quickly and that he missed it entirely. This must be the fight that he was waiting for.

Another wave of ice approached him, but Todoroki was riding on the top of this one. Izuku wasn't sure exactly how agile Todoroki could be on top of his quirk like that, but what he did know was that he had to find out. Taking a throwing knife, something with a little bit more weight to it than a dart, Izuku tossed it at Todoroki even while he continued to run. As always, his eyes refused to let him aim incorrectly. They might as well have thrown the blade for him with how accurately they directed his hand to release it at just the right spot and just the right angle to intercept Todoroki's trajectory.

Seeing that the knife was coming at him, a particularly large hunk of ice launched him over the knife and into the air. Izuku had to admit that this was the most efficient way to dodge it while keeping momentum. Todoroki allowed himself to keep his stride and dodged the knife in the same move. Against anyone else, it might've worked.

Izuku's eyes tracked the soaring boy through the air. He yanked his tranq gun from its holster and shot three darts where he knew they would connect. All three were shot dead center, and Todoroki was going to be out if he didn't do something about them. It wasn't meant to be a finisher; it was meant to be an experiment. Could Todoroki create ice wherever he wanted, or did he need to be in contact with another surface?

---

Todoroki scoffed to express his annoyance. Whoever that kid was, he was already an aggravating opponent. The boy had shot multiple projectiles at him since they'd crossed paths, and he was smack dab on target every single time. It was actually sort of oppressive to know that he could be hit anytime and anywhere. Even flying so fast through the air, three darts were about to come into contact with his chest. That kind of shit took skill.

Fine.

A misty breath filled with condensed water leaked from his mouth. Flexing his right side, he froze the air around his skin and guided it to wrap around his body in a protective shell. A second skin of ice crept from the tips of his fingers and the toes of his feet until it completely encased his body. The three darts pounded into his armor, but they didn't touch his skin.

With all of his momentum and mass from the ice armor, Todoroki smashed through the shelves just a few yards away from his target. Landing on the ice-covered ground, he forced the ice encasing his feet to shoot into the ground and bring him to a near-instantaneous standstill. With just enough space left in his armor to see, he noticed that his target seemed to be analyzing him even as he ran.

Whatever.

It wasn't as if discovering his weaknesses would help the boy. Todoroki was simply better, stronger, so he was rather unconcerned about being picked apart by an opponent who couldn't beat him. Flinging his right arm to point at the running boy, he let loose a column of ice that would hopefully end up trapping his elusive target.

The ice spread in a spiky conglomerate toward the boy. They were inches away when the boy crouched in his run and sprung into an aerial cartwheel to travel between the shelf he was standing on and the one to his right. The boy's athleticism was vaguely impressive, but Todoroki's tentative approval of his enemy's skill turned to shock when the boy twisted during his aerial to toss a knife at his face before finishing the spin and the cartwheel to land on the other shelf and continue his run.

The knife, unlike the darts, might actually penetrate his ice and hurt him, so Torodoroki was forced to let loose yet another column of ice to continue his offense and protect himself from the deadly projectile. His body was freezing, so he reluctantly flared his left side, melting his armor and warming his numb limbs while attempting to bury his disgust.

Once his body temperature was regulated, he looked to try and find his target only to see him disappearing into the clothes section of the store. He generated ice from the bottom of his feet and took off toward the boy like he was surfing on a wave of ice.

Todoroki was getting more aggravated by the second. His target was weaving nimbly between the circular racks of clothing like it was his own personal jungle gym. It was perfectly easy for him to plow through the racks like they were nothing, but his own ease of movement was not a solution for the extremely efficient evasion tactics of his target.

Finally, the little snake stumbled on the ice while choosing between turning left or right after passing between a pair of clothes racks. As soon as the boy was anything less than perfectly prepared, Todoroki made his move. Throwing his hand to the right, a cascade of ice almost half as tall as the building itself grew across the ground and encircled the boy's position completely before traveling back to his left side and completing the circle with him standing at the only exit.

With his target trapped in an arena of ice, Todoroki flared his left side, took a deep breath, and got ready to end the chase. The boy could run, sure, but things were over now. Approaching the boy who was now backing against the wall of ice he created, Todoroki stretched his hand out to freeze him solid and tap the sensor on his opponent's chest.

The green-haired boy suddenly rose his head from the ground with the biggest shit-eating grin Todoroki had ever seen…

And he looked into the spinning irises of two pinwheel eyes.

Even as Todoroki's quirk activated, a chuckling boy disintegrated into a thick cloud of dust and swarmed him with its mass. He couldn't see, but he could feel the way the particles brushed across his skin and pelted his face.

*BAM!*

Still disoriented, Todoroki could do nothing but take the impact straight to his face. He staggered backward and attempted to regain his balance.

*SMACK!*

This one went right into the center of his gut. His breath was forced from his body, and he struggled to get his lungs working. That struggle was lost when a second impact in the same spot sent him to the floor in agony. The pain in his midsection turned his annoyance to anger, and his hand brushed against the ground as ice sprouted from his skin en masse. That was the final straw. He wanted to make that fucking kid bleed.

---

Izuku turned to look at the spire of ice that just broke through the roof of the building they used to be using as their hideout. He released the Todoroki boy from his illusion to focus more on what was going on around them. The half-cryomancer half-furnace boy was exceedingly strong. In fact, if Izuku didn't have his illusory abilities, it actually might've been an interesting match. What Todoroki lacked was patience.

Izuku never once displayed any possible quirk besides his athleticism, which he actually came upon naturally, and his supreme aim, which he admittedly didn't. Todoroki, then, without knowledge of his enemy's abilities, approached the situation as if he had the obvious advantage and gave no effort toward discovering Izuku's win conditions. With arrogance like that, Todoroki had lost before the fight even started.

Juzo was struggling to keep up with Izuku's pace, but it was only a little further until they reached the building across the street. It was much smaller and completely untrapped, but it provided a quick escape from the superstore that they desperately needed. The city clicked with the sound of static before a projected voice told everyone that thirty minutes remained. With half of the time gone, things were going to get much more interesting.

Rushing into an alleyway near the supermart, Juzo led them to the place where he created their secret entrance into a small clothing store. Hearing a whistle in the air, Izuku looked into the sky and saw what looked to be a human male flying high over the compact zone. He allowed his partner to yank him into the building through his entrance, but he knew that it was too late.

The flying man saw them.

It was as Izuku both feared and hoped; people from other zones were broadening their horizons and heading into different zones to find more runners. They didn't have much time. A flying man was going to arrive at their location any second now.

"Flying guy saw us. Quick! In the middle of the clothing rack."

Juzo obeyed immediately, and the two of them squeezed between the tightly packed clothes in order to conceal themselves in the center of the circularly arranged display of apparel. Izuku placed his hands between two shirts and pushed them apart just in time to see their hunter land at the front of the shop. The boy took a step inside of the clothing store and raised his hands to hover by his sides.

As they rose, a whirlwind grew with them.

It was as if a self-contained tornado whirled through their room. Juzo, reminding him once again why this partnership was not one-sided, softened the ground beneath the clothing rack and turned it back to a solid just as the rack's peg legs sunk into it. With its legs embedded into the ground, the rack refused to move and kept them hidden.

Unfortunately, once the whole room was in ruin, their rack was the only one left undisturbed. The boy squinted suspiciously at the standing rack and approached it with his hand outstretched. Izuku searched for even a smidge of eye contact, and he got what he needed just a second before fly-boy decided to blow the clothing rack out of solid concrete with his wind.

As the two were sent sprawling onto the ground, Izuku's smile couldn't have been wider. So far, he had only been able to run slight interference due to the structured nature of the beginning stages of the game. Now that people from other zones were running around who had no clue who was what or even which people were in the area…

Well, it was time.

Fly-boy approached the two prone runners, and Juzo got ready to turn the entire building to liquid. He was stopped by Izuku's strong hand clutching against the chest of his shirt. Deciding to place his trust in his partner, Juzo stopped what he was doing and waited to see what Izuku's plan was. He watched their opponent stop right in front of them and stare into their very souls before making a face and marching away.

"Did you really get him that fast!?" Juzo breathlessly exclaimed.

"Yeah," Izuku responded simply, factually. "He wasn't expecting my quirk, so he wasn't being careful with his eyes. He looked into them right before he blew us away."

"What are you going to do with him?" Juzo curiously inquired.

"I'm just gonna play the game, Juzo."

The softening quirk-user couldn't have been happier with his choice of partner. The two of them were absolutely demolishing this exercise together. They were most certainly performing better than the vast majority of applicants. All they had to do now was impress the judges enough to be among the scarce few who would be getting a spot.

"You have fun with that," he told a focussing Izuku. "I'm going to trap up this place and make an extra exit on the right side of the building in case we need to dip in a flash."

"Go for it."

---

The flying guy, Inasa, was most certainly a standout applicant. His quirk - wasn't it Whirlwind or something? - was simply amazing in every way. The boy was capable of complete, unhindered, freeform flight from such a young age, and his control over the air around him was both deadly, powerful, and precise at the same time. He was a shoo-in for the hero course already. Whichever hero managed to scoop him up as a recommendation was having a very good day right now; Aizawa was sure about that. Ten recommended applicants were tagged in the first twenty minutes by Inasa alone. He crushed through the competition with ease for the entire time.

Until he looked into two pinwheel eyes.

To say that the green-haired boy wasn't a star applicant would be a huge understatement. Honestly, the entirety of U.A. and the Hero Commission combined thought that Kamui Woods was making a bit of a fool of himself. Heroes generally didn't recommend applicants until they established a big enough reputation as a hero. Doing such a thing so early in his career with the first competent child he managed to come across made him seem arrogant and impatient. It was just a bad look for an inexperienced hero to choose an apprentice and finagle the kid into a recommendation exam. He was essentially vouching for a student with currency he didn'thave yet.

Aizawa didn't even know the kid's name, and if that boy flopped, Kamui would be the one paying the price. There was a reason not many kids got to take this path. Heroes literally staked their name on the students they saw as possessing the skills necessary to make it in their profession.

Considering nobody even knew the kid's quirk when he entered the compact zone, the chances of Kamui having his upstart name ruined was likely. When Kamui's recommendation managed to defeat one of the commission's favorites in a straight fight, though, everyone was forced to reevaluate their opinions. Kamui wasn't just gambling his reputation. The wooden hero managed to actually find someone with legitimate, competitive skills.

Mentoring a U.A. student was beyond prestigious as a hero. It just looked good for someone to have an apprentice who was apparently skilled enough to make it into the best hero school on the planet. Not only did it reflect on the hero's skills as a mentor, but it also allowed them to directly measure themselves up against other heroes via the competitions between their apprentices. Essentially speaking, that green-haired boy defeating Togaru could be equivalently translated to Kamui Woods being better than Gunhead.

That was when the green-haired boy managed to get the better of Endeavor's recommendation. If Kamui's apprentice kept performing at this level, Kamui Woods had the capability of slingshotting his reputation literal leagues above where it should be at his current level. Just where the hell did Kamui Woods manage to find this kid?

"Get me the file on the green-haired one, and I want the file on his partner too."

Aizawa was completely perplexed by the quirk of Kamui's apprentice. He could tell that it was definitely based on eye contact, but he had not a single clue what it actually did. When he got the folder and opened it, everything made so much sense.

On the surface, the quirk didn't seem all that powerful: Illusionary abilities upon eye contact, photographic memory, and the ability to mimic the physical actions of others. It was useful, but compared to Todoroki's quirk or Inasa's, it seemed horribly lackluster. When used creatively, though, it had the ability to make fights extremely lopsided in his favor.

Exactly like his own quirk.

As he watched Inasa begin a fight with Todoroki while under the influence of the green-haired boy's quirk, he dedicated the name of Kamui's apprentice to memory. It was well played by the recent U.A. graduate. The wooden hero was going to be very famous when the new list of U.A. students came out.

"I want Kamui's recommendation in my class," he told the room as a whole.

While the boy's file was passed around the room, everyone agreed with him one by one. Their quirks were simply compatible. Both were eye-based, and both of them had to maneuver around very specific limitations in order to find that niche spot where nobody could compete with them. What he said next incited a bit more conflict.

"I want Juzo Honenuki in my class as well."

Kan immediately intervened. Aizawa knew that the blood manipulator would want that boy in his class. Fortunately for him, Honenuki partnering with Midoriya gave him a very compelling reason to fight for the boy as well.

"Honenuki's quirk is very similar to mine though. It's all about manipulating the softness of different materials to capture his opponents in them. I think my experience with a blood quirk would serve him better."

"Your quirks are similar," Aizawa granted the homeroom teacher of this year's 1-B. "But he is obviously more inclined to use it in a way that I can improve upon. Your quirk is offensive and aggressive. You capture your opponents, but you don't maneuver them into traps. Honenuki's quirk is more passive and defensive. His advantage comes with his ability to strategically place his traps more than anything else. That is something I can teach him better than anyone here."

Aizawa smirked as the rest of the staff nodded their agreement. Kan was most definitely unhappy about the result of their disagreement, but what he said was the truth. Aizawa's quirk and combat style were all about traps. His win condition was getting his opponents into a tight spot where they couldn't avoid his erasure quirk. Once he got them into a position where they couldn't escape his line of sight, he won.

Kan's style was heavily based on constant, consistent pressure; Aizawa's style was mostly technical. Honenuki's style more matched his own even if his quirk could plausibly be used in a similar manner to Kan's. Of course, students could change classes throughout their time in U.A. if the staff thought they needed a different perspective, but Aizawa absolutely refused to let himself lose the students who had potential.

Already having chosen the four he thought had the ability to make it, Aizawa moved to the other side of the room, pulled out his sleeping bag, and dozed off against the wall. The rest of the applicants already had his answer. If Kan wanted any of the other hopeless fools out there, he could have them. If Aizawa thought they had what it took, he would've already tried to claim them.

The recommended students were different than the general populace. They tried out directly for the teachers instead of for a panel of judges. The individual teachers chose who they wanted in their class, and the rest of the staff were merely there to help sort through the masses and find the people that might fit the bill. Aizawa preferred things that way. He didn't have to waste his time looking at performances he didn't care for, and he didn't have to take on students he didn't want. The decision was up to him, and everyone else just had to accept what he thought.

---

Fly-boy turned out to be the perfect protector. Only two more already-tagged runners managed to slip past the determined airbender. It was such a simple illusion that Izuku was even capable of fighting both of the two stragglers while keeping it up at the same time. All he had to do was let the scarily powerful airbender see everything as it was with one little tweak…

Everyone he saw had unlit markers strapped to their chest.

A more patient individual may have been able to discern how odd it was that all of his encounters happened to be with enemies, but fly-boy was so enigmatic and unobservant that he didn't stop to think even a single time. The look on Todoroki's face when some random guy intercepted and attacked him despite their similar team was absolutely priceless.

The buzzer rang to find the partners untagged. One of them couldn't have been smiling any wider; the other couldn't be smiling any less. The two of them sat against the wall, and Izuku allowed his eyes to unfocus as he stared at the scuffed, scratched ground.

Kamui told him that he would find peers worthy of competition here.

All he found were fools.

He had a decent fight against the bug, but he could've ended it exactly 18 times - his eyes forced him to keep count of every one of them - before the actual end if he hadn't purposefully ignored the consistent eye contact with the hopes of finding excitement and joy in the unique fighting style of the praying mantis. Todoroki was powerful, but he was so powerful that it made him clumsy and predictable. It wasn't even all that difficult to deal with the guy before he trapped the heterochromatic applicant in his illusion. Possibly the most challenging matchup he could've found today was completely ruined because the idiot refused to simply use his power. Instead of blasting the whole building down, fly-boy decided to go inside and play silly games. That was by far the most disappointing occurrence of the day.

It wasn't that his opponents weren't skilled; it was that his opponents were all arrogant! How was he supposed to find a challenger among people who all thought they were the best when he was clearly better!? They all approached him so blatantly and stupidly when his quirk was simply stronger. So far, the competition he encountered at U.A. was lackluster and disappointing.

Well, at least he met a partner whom he actually didn't mind working with. The guy could use some serious upgrades when it came to combat, but he was competent with his quirk, and that made him a far sight better than the rest of the common ilk.

"Thank you all for your participation," said a loud voice through speakers placed throughout the city. "Those of you who made an impact on the first-year teachers will receive their acceptance letters within the next five to seven days. Please, follow the concrete arrows on the roads to the nearest exit and go to Recovery Girl for any injuries you sustained over the course of the exercise."

After standing up from the wall and holding his hand out for Juzo, the two walked over to the exit and said their goodbyes. Juzo was smacked around just a bit while Izuku worked to get the bug guy off of him, so the softening quirk-user had to visit the nurse. Izuku, though, sustained no real injuries through his multiple fights. All he needed to do now was take a nap and report to his sponsor.

---

It was late in Musutafu, and the stars were shining brightly in the sky. Izuku stood before the entrance of a small, humble, but respectable hero agency. A gentle light emanated through the glass door, and Izuku allowed a very tiny smile to grow on his face. There weren't many places that he really enjoyed being for an extended period of time, but this was certainly one of them.

Opening the door, he walked up to the front desk and greeted yet another person who managed to endear themselves to him over the year he spent in contact with Kamui.

"Hello, Haruka, is Kamui here?"

Looking up from her paperwork, Haruka saw who it was, and a radiant grin graced her complexion. Izuku - by the way - meant "radiant" in a literal context. The young woman in her very early twenties had a quirk that reflected her emotions outward. When she was happy, other people got happy; when she was sad, other people felt sad… and, most importantly, when she felt calm and tranquil, everyone around her was influenced to feel the same.

As Kamui's sidekick and dedicated field medic, that kind of quirk was absolutely game-changing. She wasn't a combat hero or a rescue hero. She was quite literally known as a passive form of crowd control. When she was around, panicking civilians didn't exist. Injured people could be made calm through the second-hand experience of her own tranquility.

When heroes had to respond to a disaster, most people would think that the biggest problem would be the disaster itself or the villains wreaking havoc. What no one ever seemed to consider was that the biggest problem was often themselves. Kamui could hold up an entire building with his wooden supports, but he couldn't drag a panicking civilian from its confines with even a fraction of ease. So long as Haruka was on the field, though, everyone else could focus on merely doing their jobs because she controlled the civilian reactions.

Honestly, she was probably the one who taught Izuku the most out of her and Kamui. It was all good and fun to spar with a real hero, but Haruka's expertise with emotional manipulation turned out to be a great teacher for his own abilities. He would've probably been more annoyed with the occasional sessions, but her emotions radiated to those around her.

The excitement he felt from her quirk was more real than anything he'd felt since he got his damned quirk.

He wasn't sure if that should make him feel appreciative or depressed. Either way, that kind of feeling all but erased the usual sort of annoyance that generally came with casual conversations. He could actually get along with Haruka if only because her quirk literally made it impossible for him to feel annoyance in the presence of her usually bubbly personality.

"Yeah, he's upstairs doing paperwork as well. We had a rough encounter with a reported domestic disturbance when quirks started getting involved. There was quite a bit of property damage, and we had to intervene quite forcefully."

Izuku found himself holding back a cringe when he was faced with the desire to plunge into a slight melancholy. Haruka was never particularly fond of violence, especially when the fighting was between civilians instead of villains. While her quirk made it easy for him to share in her feelings, he refused to be pulled along with it in this case. Knowing that his mind was being passively influenced by her quirk made it easier for him to convince himself that his experience wasn't genuine. With quite a bit of effort and fighting his own emotions, he was able to drag himself from her mood and give her a small nod.

"I'm sorry you had to deal with that. I'm going to go up and see him for a few minutes before going home."

"Oh yeah!" she exclaimed as he started walking toward the elevator. "How did your entrance exam go?"

He reached into the air with his hand and stuck a thumb up. He smiled when his feet reached the inside of the elevator due to the happiness radiating from Haruka. Even if he was disappointed with today, Haruka was still there to give him the elation he should've felt at his own success. Just for the moment, he would allow himself to not question the feelings. Perhaps it was slightly unhealthy to live vicariously through someone else's quirk, but it was hard for him to feel that way when it felt so much better than what he was usually stuck with.

Getting out of the elevator and walking down the hall, he came to Kamui Wood's door and pushed it open. The hero was sitting at his desk and doing the same paperwork as his sidekick. He looked up at the disturbance and put his papers aside immediately.

It was Kamui who managed to convince him that it was okay to pursue heroics with the unorthodox motives he possessed. It was that support for his momentumless dreams, much more so than the personal training, that made Izuku care so much about the agency and the earnest hero operating it. His eyes could see that hope and drive within the eye-slots of Kamui's helmet, and Izuku knew that the man desperately wanted him to succeed in everything and anything he wanted to do.

It was that knowledge of Kamui's genuine desire to see him rise to the platform he wanted to reach that eventually made Izuku forget about the emotions inflicted upon him by Haruka and focus on finding them for himself .

"It went very well," Izuku told the man after a few moments of silence.

Kamui stared at Izuku's pinwheel eyes, and the man's apprentice stared right back. Then, Kamui stood up from behind his desk, walked around it, and gave the child a huge pat on the back.

"I expected nothing else from someone like you, Izuku," he said, gesturing at two chairs that sat against the wall of his office. "Come and sit with me. I want you to tell me all about it."

Izuku gave a small nod, and the two of them took a seat next to each other while Izuku regaled his teacher about a partner who could turn concrete into liquid, a bug who sprouted blades from his skin, a powerful but brash young man who could spout flames and ice from his body, and a flying boy who was made to protect him throughout the final stages of the competition.

Throughout the entire tale, Kamui looked at the boy with a fond expression as he watched a dying ember spark and fizzle while it floated through the air, and even though it was so weak and small, he could see so much more potential within it than his apprentice would ever be able to with those fantastical eyes of his. For an entire year, he witnessed it struggle and blink with the last of its life, but Kamui knew just how much fire it could spark if it could just find the right spot to settle.

With so much possibility floating right in front of him, Kamui didn't want to… No… he refused to let it simply die out before it hit the ground. He didn't care if he had to drag the kid kicking and screaming into the world of heroics; Izuku was going to find his path if the hero had anything to say about it. He just hoped that his amazing apprentice could somehow keep that ember burning until he found the right patch of tinder to place it in.

Chapter End Notes

There were a lot of changes to this section of the story, and I hope that you all liked how I made the entrance exam. The reason I changed it so much was because I wanted U.A. applications to make more sense. The sport's festival acting as the saving grace for near-misses is fine, but it just didn't make sense to me for students to be accepted or declined based on the physical nature of their quirks.

So I overhauled the process. Heroes could sponsor people in a much higher amount, and that gives students with more niche quirks or really strong quirks in general to have a separate application process that would appeal to them more than destroying a few robots.

As you noticed, illusions weren't a big part of this fight. That was because I wanted to show that Izuku isn't just dangerous because of his illusions, but that he is possibly even more dangerous with his copying eyes. All of his fights before now were basically won by default because his enemies didn't know to avoid eye contact, but this, I hope, shows just how serious Izuku is when he says that his ability to copy other people's actions makes him perfect. I'm hoping that his fight scenes here really show for the first time exactly how busted Izuku is and why he is having trouble really getting into the game with such unfair and unearned skills.

Also, I placed Jack Mantis in the recommendation exams when he wasn't in the anime. That is because I thought his quirk and character had the potential to make an interesting dynamic and conflict for Izuku's character, and his quirk seems powerful and strange enough to warrant a recommendation by a similarly quirked hero.

Also, Juzo acted as Izuku's partner in this exercise, and I'm pretty sure I changed his quirk quite a bit. The reason I decided to use him was because of how well I thought their styles would match together, and I didn't want to make Izuku the lone wolf type who turns down obvious advantages for the sake of going at it alone. I wanted to show that he was capable of forming an alliance and working well with a team despite his power and general apathy toward others. He is an unmotivated student who has a problem caring about things that most people care about, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's particularly averse to company if the person suits his interests or manages to make themselves useful.

First Day Exams

Chapter Summary

Izuku has his first day of school, and the teacher wastes no time getting down to business.

Chapter Notes

If you guys would like to read a chapter ahead, you can find it right here:

https/sites./view/hrothgarlee/home

This is, in a way, a beta site to see chapters before I post them. Things go up there as they come, while this is set up to come in a way that always has another chapter ready to go when I want to post them for good. The things you read there will be preliminary material that is subject to possibly massive change come time to post it into the actual story, so keep in mind the purpose of the stuff you read. It is there for you to get a look into my plans for the story and get some new material before it is officially posted.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Izuku's head was down in a classroom that was completely empty. The reason for his total isolation was due to the means by which he arrived at the school. Unlike Aldera, U.A. was the epicenter of the entire city. That meant he had to take the fucking train.

Walking along a crowded street was one thing, but getting stuck in a train station with a city's worth of people was going to give him a migraine before he even got to school. Therefore, he woke up very early, rode with his mother to her job, and walked to the school from there. In other words, he was just about an hour early. He never thought he'd see the day when he was early to school, let alone the first one there, but here he was.

Finally, though, other students started filtering into the class. This was the time of the day when he would try his best to keep his goddamn eyes to himself, but they started collecting information on their own anyway.

There was a kid who definitely fought in the barren zone under the banner of Idaten and the recommendation of his brother, Ingenium. Bakugo, of course, entered his classroom and gave Izuku a harsh glare before going over to his chair and acquainting his feet to the top of his desk. There was some weird-ass chick with earlobes half the length of Tokyo, and Juzo even walked in and pumped his fist with a laugh upon seeing his partner before claiming the seat directly next to him. All of these were either totally expected or rather lackluster entrances.

That was, at least, until Todoroki walked into the class.

Izuku knew who it was the second he saw the first strand of Todoroki's uniquely colored hair, and a wide, predatorial smile grew on his face. Juzo, of course, saw the grin and took a look at the door. He too grew a smirk when he saw the stoic face of Todoroki turn into a distinct look of rage. Apparently, ice-boy wasn't fond of getting beaten. Izuku looked away after just a few seconds once he found nothing more than arrogant anger within the face of his one-time opponent. Juzo, however, couldn't resist lifting his hand up to his head and wiggling his fingers cheekily to soundlessly greet his newest classmate.

On and on, the students came until Izuku was blessedly freed from his analysis by the arrival of their supposed teacher. He walked into the room with a slow, tired gait and a rolled-up sleeping bag hanging from his right shoulder by a string. Izuku knew who it was immediately, and he found out due to the strand of cloth wrapped around the man's neck.

It was a scarf, but it was so much more at the exact same time. This was the hero scarcely known as Eraserhead. His quirk was fuzzy outside of the fact that it erased something, but his weapon was iconic among the small number of people who actually knew about him. There were a few videos on him, even fewer than Stendhal. Still, with the amount out there, Izuku should've had enough to at least recreate a rough mimicry of the man's absolutely genius fighting style, and he struggled to do just that for years.

The problem he encountered, though, was that he couldn't figure out how the motherfucker did it. Izuku's eyes were absolutely infallible when it came to predictive and analytical data. He watched video after video, each of increasing quality, and he knew all of the man's movements down to the letter.

His eyes, though, found one fatal flaw in the style: it shouldn't fucking work. It wasn't that Izuku's eyes couldn't discern what Eraserhead was doing; it was that Eraserhead was doing something that shouldn't make his weapon move in the ways it did. The wraps seemed to levitate in odd positions that shouldn't be possible, and they ignored basic physics in almost every attack.

As an example: one of Eraserhead's starting moves in a fight was to fling his weapon at his enemy head-on. It would then skim past their body and snap around them like a snake. It shouldn't be able to do that with the forces acting upon it. There had to be some sort of trick or quirk involved, and Izuku's eyes weren't able to figure out what the trick was from the videos he'd watched. If it somehow wasn't a quirk, then it had to be some damn impressive trick to fool someone like him. At the very least, he would be able to solve that thorn in his side while here in person, even if the day turned out to be useless.

All he had to do was get the guy to use his wraps.

"My name is Aizawa Shota. You can call me Aizawa, Sensei, or a combination of the two; I don't care which," the man told his completely attentive class. "As of this moment, you have been deemed worthy of a preliminary position in our hero course. We'll see which of you will be getting your full position after our sport's festival.

"Having said that, we will start today with a quirk assessment test. Follow me, and you will find your fitted gym clothing once we get to the location of your individual tests"

A group of fidgeting students warily stood up from their desks and began following an already leaving Eraserhead. Izuku was personally confused as to why they were all so nervous. It was a fact of U.A. that positions in the hero course were tentative. After the first sports festival, students could generally be assured that they were capable of keeping up and probably wouldn't be replaced. Until then, it all depended on whether they could endure the storm. If they were already nervous, then they were failing before they'd even started.

With Juzo beside him, Izuku followed along with the class, and the man led them down staircase after staircase until they reached the ground floor and went below the building. U.A. was full of surprises, weren't they.

*Tap.* *Tap.*

Izuku lackadaisically turned his head and looked at whoever patted the back of his green hoodie. When his eyes fell upon the same kid with curly, black hair whom he'd saved from having that fall at the beginning of the entrance exams, he couldn't help but be shocked.

He'd actually managed to pass.

Never, in a thousand years, would he expect someone who lacked such a critical amount of confidence to somehow make it into this school. Whatever skills that kid had, they must've been absolutely radical to warrant his placement when he obviously lacked the mental dexterity required to consistently handle a job like hero work.

"H-Hi," the kid said. "I don't know if yo-"

"I remember you," Izuku cut him off with bored, lidded eyes. "Congratulations on passing."

Thinking the conversation was over, he turned his head back around only to have his attention yanked back by the shy boy who seemed contradictorily determined to say something to him.

"Thank you," the kid told him.

"I just stopped you from falling. It was mostly reflex," Izuku responded.

The boy once again stopped him from exiting the conversation, "N-Not for that! Th-Thank you for what you s-said after th-that. I-It really helped."

Izuku's eyes widened just a fraction before falling back down. So the kid was trying to thank him for his words of "encouragement". Personally, Izuku had said what he did mostly for the purpose of assuaging his own annoyance over the boy's meager personality. Even If it'd actually managed to help him, though, the thanks was still unwarranted in his eyes.

"Again, it wasn't a problem. If it happened to get you in, then that's good for you."

The black-haired boy gave a short, hesitant nod and faded into the background. Juzo snorted beside him as soon as the kid left.

"Damn, you sure are cold, aren't you?"

Cold? Was he cold?

He didn't feel as though he were cold. All he did was tell the kid that he didn't need thanks. Was that cold to normal people? Oh well, he was far past the point of trying to figure out how others wanted him to talk.

"I said what I thought was appropriate," Izuku responded with a shrug.

Juzo just chuckled and walked along with him. They were finally in the basement, quite a distance underground. As they exited the staircase and walked into the main room, they were greeted by an absolutely gigantic space filled to the brim with offshoots and sectioned rooms all meant for training. The ceiling was more than thirty feet high, and all of it was completely made of concrete. Aizawa turned around once everyone was firmly on the basement floor, and he began to talk about what was going to happen.

"This is where we will be conducting your assessment test. This room was designed to be completely manipulatable by Cementoss in every way. He will not be here today, so we will be making use of the pre-arranged facilities," he said before motioning them to follow. As they all looked at the various rooms around them, Aizawa pointed out the ones they would be using. "The test or tests will be different for every person. Each of you will be utilizing a training room that will best allow me to gauge your abilities both as humans and as quirked individuals. My advice to you is to make sure that you utilize your abilities intelligently to solve your task in your own way. Show me your range; show me that you can push your quirk beyond the obvious and impress me with your ingenuity because, if you fail… you will not be joining us tomorrow."

Vocal protest was given by about a quarter of the group. Of those people, Izuku predicted that exactly zero of them would be showing up in the next class. It didn't even have anything to do with their skill, but with their naivety and self-entitlement. If they weren't prepared to put their spot on the line to show their stuff, then they weren't ready for this class.

Izuku didn't give anything but a nod, and when Aizawa started handing out papers, Izuku took his without a word. It was a map with a red circle on one of the rooms. They were meant to give each of them basic information about whatever their exercise would be.

There wasn't enough time for all of them to do more than one test because Aizawa had to personally observe every one of them, so they were tasked with staying at their station until he arrived to conduct their test. Izuku didn't look down at his paper. It would hopefully be more challenging if he went into it without much foreknowledge or planning. He would read it right before he entered his room, and that would be enough.

This was nothing but general training. Students would, Izuku assumed, be using these exact rooms on a regular basis to train their skills and find their benchmarks. The chance of excitement being found here was almost completely nonexistent. Still, this was his best chance to get it, so he decided to endure it until he managed to find something fun to do here.

Juzo, as it turned out, had to go somewhere completely on the other side of the room, so he was stuck without company. It wasn't really surprising considering how astronomically different their quirks were, and it wasn't even a huge bother for him either. He was used to flying solo. Still, it did kind of suck that they both managed to get in only to be immediately split up by their teacher. No matter what he might've thought about how disappointing the entrance exam was, he couldn't deny that they made a decent team.

As he stopped at the entrance to his room, he realized that, of course, he would be forced to stand in the company of that kid he was apparently mean to. Just his luck that Juzo would get sent away while the one he'd offended would get stuck directly next to him.

Even worse, the motherfucker was fidgeting and shaking like a leaf. As he'd said a million times, his quirk hyper focused on data. If there was something to analyze, he was breaking it down. If everything stayed normal and undisturbed, his eyes would take in everything around him and leave him in peace until the next interesting thing came into his line of sight. If something was constantly moving, however, his eyes continuously tracked the movement just like it did with everything else. It was one reason why he had so few friends as a young child. If a person couldn't sit still, his ever-searching eyes couldn't either.

"Can you stop with the fidgeting, please!?" Izuku exclaimed as politely as he could through the aching in his brain. "I can't concentrate on anything but your fucking twitches."

The boy went absolutely still.

"S-S-S-Sorry!" the kid stuttered out with forcefully shut eyes and anxiously shaking hands.

He saw the boy's expression for what it was. Even if the kid was good at hiding his emotions, his eyes would've still been able to figure out the underlying cause with enough time. The question was why the kid was genuinely afraid of his relatively tame bout of vitriol.

Great! Now, he felt like a jackass. At least his eyes were finally calming down once the boy's movement came to a halt.

"Why're you so damn nervous anyhow? Didn't we already cover this? You made it into the school over everyone else who applied. If you were truly so hopeless, they wouldn't have let you in."

"I… I sort of got in on a fluke," the kid said with a sigh. "You saw those giant robots, right?"

"I took the recommendation exam, sorry."

"Oh!" the kid said, lighting up immediately. "You got recommended!? Who put you up!?"

Izuku's face softened slightly, "Kamui Woods."

"I know him!" the kid exclaimed. "He's a relatively new hero, right?"

"Yeah, he started mentoring me about a year before the exam."

Sobering up after being reminded of the exam, the kid directed his eyes to stare at his feet and wrung his hands in front of his midsection. "W-Well, the normal exam was about destroying robots. We had to hunt around for them and destroy the ones we came across. There were one-pointers, two-pointers, and three-pointers. I… didn't get any points, but then the last type of robot, a zero-pointer about as tall as a skyscraper, showed up at the end of the exam and almost stepped on a girl."

He waited a few moments before getting impatient.

"And?" he prodded the boy.

"I… took it down."

took down a skyscraper!? THAT kid took down a skyscraper.

"Bullshit," Izuku said.

"I promise!" was the kid's response as he reached into the air with open palms. "Honestly, I didn't think it would work either. My quirk is really volatile. Either it doesn't work at all or it destroys a building along with my body. If Recover Girl wasn't there, I'd be in a full-body cast right now."

Izuku snorted at the claim, "Why not just use less of it?"

"Use less!?" the kid asked with a sardonic tone previously kept under layers and layers of insecurity. "I have an ocean of energy sloshing around in my body. Do you have any idea how hard it is to take only a drop from something like that!?"

… Actually, he knew exactly what that was like. He felt no particular desire to impart his woes onto some random, nameless kid who probably wouldn't be here long, but he was bored, and this was something to do. If it ended up helping like his previous words did, then good for him.

"When I first got my quirk, I had to wear a headband around my eyes all day because they took in too much information. Every time I looked at something, I would be forced to break it down until it physically hurt me to keep my eyes open. Learning to take a drop out of an ocean wasn't a matter of convenience for me; it was a necessity. You see, I can't turn them off." Izuku told the boy as he pointed at both of his pinwheel eyes.

"... How did you manage it?" the kid asked in a low, soft, almost apologetic voice.

"By limiting my exposure," was Izuku's answer. "My eyes took in everything they saw, so I had to learn to focus on one thing at a time. If I could direct my eyes at one thing, I could keep them open without having a meltdown. Eventually, that one object turned into two and three until I got to where I am now. Even still, little things like fidgeting," he said while gesturing at the boy. "Bother me, but it's infinitely better than it used to be."

The kid went silent upon hearing Izuku's explanation, and he could tell that his words were causing the boy to think about how they might apply to his own quirk. Whatever he was trying to discern, Izuku decided to let him go through it alone. With a sigh, he looked down at his sheet and saw what the test was going to be. The answer was somewhat intriguing.

Dodgeball with a twist.

Apparently, he was going to be entering a medium-sized, cubic room. The room was going to have a blue circle drawn in the middle of it about six meters in diameter. Around the room, panels would open up in the walls to allow a highish-powered tennis ball launcher to emerge from within the walls where it would then stick to the walls via a strong magnet on the back of the gun. That meant each gun would have free reign over the entire surface. The balls would be traveling anywhere from 30 to 90 miles an hour depending on how hard the machine wanted to shoot. They would be tracking him by cameras positioned around the room, which would triangulate his position. More guns would appear as time went on, and his task was to survive as long as he could without getting touched. To make things easier for him, he would be able to choose a "mock sword" of his choice, a fancy way of saying a stick sized to his desire. While he couldn't touch the balls, his "sword" could.

Considering he could parry a dart from a professionally designed and combat-ready tranq rifle, he wasn't worried about the exercise. In fact, compared to the entrance exam, this was very tame.

The regular applicants were to blame.

That was right. Most of the students in this class were untrained civilians with little more than the potential to be strong. If Aizawa was trying to give all of them a test to weed out the ones who couldn't cut it, then the tests would have to be mundane. If he threw regular civilians with strong quirks into a test designed for hero apprentices, half of them would be beaten, battered, and possibly dead by the end of the test. If that was doubtful to anyone, cue the bug swinging around sword-sized razor blades during the entrance exam. Almost everyone from the normal exams would've been cut to bits in seconds. They had to tone it down for the normal applicants until they caught up.

… How very disappointing.

"Are you ready, kid?"

Izuku immediately turned around to gaze into the eyes of one Aizawa Shota. For a single instant, he was tempted to put him into an illusion and see how far he could push his "test" before the hero figured out he was being fooled. That seemed way more fun and challenging than whatever the hell this was, and he wanted to see how analytical his teacher was.

Would he figure it out faster than the rest of them?

He threw away the idea a second later. Izuku refused to use his illusions to cheat his way through anything no matter how fun he thought it might've been. If his "sensei" wanted to watch him smack a few tennis balls around, then he would do that and hope something better came in the future.

Using his powers like that would've led to a dark path. He could've turned to nefarious schemes and gotten his beloved challenge by forcing strong heroes to fight through his illusions. If he did that, he would've been betraying everything his younger self strove to be. If only for his own pride, he wouldn't allow his quirk to change who he used to want to be.

With that said, he nodded his head, and Aizawa scanned his school I.D. to open the training room door. Izuku was treated to the sight of a brightly lit room, and he walked through the entrance to stand on a somewhat springy but not exactly squishy floor. It would break a potential fall moderately without hindering his ability to move.

The walls were smooth and made of shiny, reflective metal. In the middle of the room was the blue circle that would act as his boundary for the duration of the exercise. As advertised, there were eight cameras, each positioned in a corner of the cubic room. Even as he walked through the room, they were tracking him with perfect precision and getting used to his movement. Little did they know that he was tracking them too.

Walking into the center of the room, a speaker clicked to life, which allowed Aizawa to speak with him.

"Are you ready?"

Izuku merely nodded, and a slot in the wall opened to allow a rack of wooden instruments to emerge. He approached the rack and decided that he would need to take back his words. These were absolutely not differently sized sticks. They were, in fact, wooden replicas of pretty much any weapon he could want.

Of course, with his quirk, he worked with and intimately understood a multitude of them. He obviously had his favorites, and he saw the exact sword he used for the entrance exam hanging on the rack to his left. If this was for a usual fight, he would've chosen it too.

As it was, this exercise was about parrying projectiles and dodging. He could've parried using the sword with relative ease, but the most logical option was, ironically, a cylindrical stick. He chose one similarly sized to his katana and left the rack. He would've chosen a shield as well, but he wanted to have at least a chance of being challenged.

Again back in the center of the training room, he gave another nod, and a piece of the wall next to the door opened to reveal an observation window for Aizawa to look through. The man counted down from three, and, as the third number faded from the room, a single launcher emerged from the wall and stared him in the face.

Izuku looked deep into the launcher's barrel and wriggled his fingers around the bottom of his stick.

*chink!*

The launcher's internal mechanism loaded a ball.

*Thunk!*

A vibrantly green ball shot from its barrel, and it flew toward Izuku at about 60 mph. It was almost insulting that Aizawa thought this would be enough. The man watched him parry a dart, and this was the next challenge given to him? There was only one solution Izuku could see.

Make the man see his mistake.

Loading his stick like a bat, Izuku took a swing at the basically crawling ball and smashed it directly into the camera at the top left of the room. He smirked to himself and for his sensei as the tennis ball knocked the camera off-center.

The camera took a few seconds to rearrange itself and point back at him. If Izuku wasn't convinced of its lack of autonomy, he would've thought it looked mildly annoyed. The gun seemed to be squinting at him in consternation, and silence reigned for about five seconds until the gun calibrated.

"Level Four," the room said in a feminine voice.

One clunk from every side of the room notified Izuku of the fact that each wall was arming itself with a gun in response to his actions with the first shot. Slowly rotating in a circle to analyze each of the guns, his eyes perfectly recorded the current position and velocity of each of them until a thunk to his left drew his attention. The ball was still going very slow, and he almost sighed as it approached him.

Winding up his stick, he was about to swing when a noise from behind him and another to his left signified the simultaneous firing of two machines. Realizing that his loaded swing would only get him hit by the ball coming from behind him, he brought his stick back to a more centered guard. The first ball was approaching rather slowly for his eyes, and he had already seen its trajectory, so he felt safe averting his gaze to the left ball and even turning his head slightly to see the ball coming from his right.

So that was its game.

The first ball's speed was just slow enough for it to hit him at the exact time that the next two shots would make contact. The machine wanted to see if he would adapt to the situation and intelligently deal with the attack instead of remaining focussed on the first ball only to get overwhelmed by the other two. Fortunately for him, he wasn't an idiot.

Not even he could position his stick to intercept three shots at the same time, but he had space to move, and the response was actually rather simple. If all three balls were shot at his current position, then all he had to do was move in a way that avoided all three trajectories. Stepping forward and to the left would do the trick, so he picked up his left foot and began his repositioning when a fourth ball was shot by the only gun that hadn't fired.

He couldn't help but smirk. As it turned out, the machine wasn't thinking as two-dimensionally as he believed. It wasn't just seeing if he would attempt to block the first shot; it was also waiting for him to make a dodge, and it shot the second it saw him move his leg. It wanted to intercept him during his maneuver in the hopes of catching him with his guard down.

The first ball was dangerously close to his back, so he was forced to continue with his move even though the machine expected it. Taking his step to the front-left, he avoided all three shots and used a hanging guard to deflect the fourth. With all four balls cleared, he looked toward one of the cameras and shot the machine a smile. He awaited the announcement of another level, but it apparently decided that he hadn't quite proven his proficiency to it yet.

Fine, if that was what it wanted.

The machines started in vigor a few seconds later, and it switched its strategy massively. Instead of attempting to overwhelm him with simultaneous shots, it realized that his ability to track their trajectories made it too easy for him to dodge attacks timed similarly. With that knowledge, the machine decided to see if it could overwhelm him by individual shots aimed to intercept him no matter how he dodged. It wanted to test his endurance.

Currently, he was backpedaling, and there were five balls in play, the gun to his right having shot at him twice. One of its shots was leading him to hopefully discourage the continuance of his backward movement, and the second was placed in front of him just in case he took a step forward. The gun to his front was aiming low to catch his feet while the one behind him was shooting high. With the one on the left aiming for his shoulder, Izuku came to the ingenious conclusion that the machine was attempting to hold him down.

Still, four guns wouldn't be enough. Three shots were aiming at his current position, so a step forward and to the right dodged the three most deadly-

*chink!* *chink!*

With slightly widened eyes, Izuku saw a fifth and heard a sixth gun click into place on the wall in front and behind him respectively. The machine just leveled him up twice the very second his right foot lifted from the ground. It was too late to stop now. The balls were coming too fast already. Three separate thunks signified the rapid firing of three balls from the newly arrived fifth gun while the one behind him let off a fourth.

He was already on path to dodge the first three balls, but he now had five to contend with, and they were far too fast for him to properly dodge all of them.

Okay then.

The first thing he had to do was swat the ball coming from his right that was meant to intercept his forward dodge. Once he did that, though, the other four were going to be a massive problem. The one from behind was aimed low, and the other three were just high enough that he couldn't jump them without getting nicked. That was when a cheeky idea came to him, and it solved his problem perfectly.

Holding his stick up to block the ball coming from his right, Izuku finnageled with its angling until his eyes felt comfortable, and, when the first ball made contact, it deflected off of the stick and managed to just intercept the trajectory of the right-most shot from the gun at his front.

He sighed to himself.

With the deflected ball taking care of the shot that would've fucked up a dodge to the right, Izuku continued with the momentum from his previous right step to move just a bit further before turning his side to the front two shots and leaning backward while smacking away the last ball that would've hit his left ankle.

He watched as the shot closest to his face careened past him in slow motion. As the air from its movement brushed against his skin, his eyes analyzed every minute detail of the ball. It had a decent amount of forward spin with just a touch of spin to the left. That was why its trajectory line showed the ball's path as a downward-opening parabola with a slight angle to the left. He could see everything, and that was why a challenge like this would never be a challenge.

Then…

He saw nothing at all.

As if lightning had struck right before his eyes, the ball zipped past his face at what seemed to be the speed of light before smacking against the wall exactly where his eyes used to tell him it would make contact. The speed of the ball made him flinch, and he stumbled backward away from it in what he would've previously seen as a childish instinct driven by fear.

What the fuck was this?

*Thunk!*

The cannon to his right shot a ball at him, and he couldn't see its trajectory. The ball flew at him in an instant, and he thought it looked like it would hit him on the ankle. He swung his stick and just barely managed to hit it away with all of the skills he had at his disposal. A thunk from behind him signified another shot, and a glance behind him gave the impression of a rather high angle.

Two more shots from his front demanded his attention, however, and when he looked forward again… he had no fucking clue where the ball behind him was going.

Ducking to his left, the ball behind him went wide, and a horizontal swing of his stick sent the left-most shot of the front cannon careening into the wall. Shot after shot came from the cannons, and each one made a demon-esque grin grow on his face.

A challenge!!!

He felt invigorated and nervous at the same time. Shots were coming from every direction, and he was constantly forced to turn and spin to keep tabs on the newest threats. He had to predict where they would go and act accordingly. Every dodge was a hair's breadth away from losing him the match, and every jarring block induced a spike of adrenaline within him.

Adrenaline…

The body's response to panic.

When was the last time he had needed such a thing? When was the last time he wasn't perfectly prepared? As a ball shot past his head faster than he could comprehend with his oh so human eyes, he began to laugh, and it was the most genuine emotion he had ever shown in his life .

For the first time since he turned four, he felt that childish glee and desire to succeed he yearned for so badly.

This was him… he was doing this challenge. His eyes weren't doing it for him; his mind hadn't already mapped out the perfect response. All he had were his reflexes and the things he could do in virtue of the skills he had seen others perform, and he needed every ounce of skill he possessed. Stendhal's style kept him alive, but it was Izuku Midoriya doing the work.

A shot from his left and his right each were angled toward his feet. He had no idea whether they were going to go in front of or behind his current position. He was going to have to dodge them completely if he didn't want to risk getting hit.

That was when the front gun shot right at his chest.

He was originally going to jump to dodge them, but that idea was shot. He already had to block another ball from the right even if he jumped, and the one in the front would hit him if he didn't block it too.

Near hysterical elation shot through his brain as he leaned backward and arched his back to put his hands on the ground.

*Thunk!*

Oh, fuck.

The gun behind him just took its shot; he saw it because he was looking backward in order to determine where he would end his back handspring. Unlike his eyes, the machine had predictive powers. It shot in such a way that it would probably hit him right in the chest while he was swinging his legs over his head. He had never been pressured like this.

Kamui Woods couldn't give him a rush like this.

With no other option, Izuku placed the tip of his left shoe against the heel of his right shoe as he leaned into his back handspring, and, as he pushed with his left leg in order to generate the energy necessary to throw his legs over his body, the heel of his right shoe was peeled from his foot.

The ball shot at his front passed over his body even as his feet left the floor in order to allow the shots from his right and left to bounce off of the ground and fly into opposite walls. As his feet were lifted above his head, he watched the ball behind him approach, and he used everything within him to aim as he kicked the shoe off of his right foot.

For a glorious split-second, Izuku watched his shoe fly at the ground in front of his face, and he had not an ounce of knowledge about whether it would work. He had never watched someone do this before, he couldn't see the ball's trajectory, and his eyes didn't give him the godlike aim he usually had.

It was just Izuku.

Just him, and no one else. Not even Stendhal worked as the base for his current action.

His smile threatened to split his face in two as his shoe tapped against the ball, and his legs came back to the ground as the ball sent his shoe flying to the left of him even as it was sent into the right wall itself. His upper body rose with his momentum, and he was standing once again.

That was when a flicker of green to his left notified him of a flying ball that was moments away from hitting him in the cheek. He hadn't noticed it during his acrobatics, and he hadn't thought to check because his eyes never missed anything. That was, at least, while they actually worked.

It was too late.

The ball was too close. He couldn't see it due to its speed; he didn't have enough time. It was going to hit him, and he wasn't going to make it. His smile was becoming painful due to its intensity. This loss felt better than any victory he had achieved since gaining his quirk.

It was possible that his loss here could send him home, but he didn't give a single shit. This 15 second experience made everything worth it. It was such a small amount of time, but it exceeded his every expectation. He could would go home and live his boring, stupid, perfect life happily.

… but then…

Reality came back.

The world slowed down around him, and his pinwheel eyes started spinning again. Six balls he hadn't noticed before became glaringly obvious, and a frustrated tear threatened to spill from his omniscient eyes.

No, not like this… please, not like this.

The ball to his left was so close. Victory was practically 99.8% out of reach, but his eyes saw a way, the only way. He wanted to scream at the injustice as his head almost involuntarily twisted to the side and his upper body bent backward just a smidge. The ball brushed against the peach fuzz along his cheek, but it missed.

His stick swung through the air with violent, surgical precision. His eyes refused to let him lose. He angled his stick to intercept two balls at exactly the same time before lifting his left leg to dodge the third and flipping over the fourth. Two more were coming from his left and right, and his stick flashed with inhuman efficiency to smash both of them into the ground.

This wasn't real training, just a test, so the game wouldn't continue forever. He had more than completed the trial, and his teacher had gotten what he needed, so the machines whirled to a stop before retreating into the wall. Tennis balls were laying around him en masse, and his stick clattered to the floor as blood seeped into his mouth due to the force with which he bit his cheek.

A vicious scowl was on his face as the lights in the room dimmed, and he almost considered quitting the school right then and there when the door to the training room opened to reveal his homeroom teacher standing there with an impressed gleam in his eyes. The man hid it well, but Izuku saw everything.

He was going to lose. Izuku Midoriya was alone in that room for fifteen seconds, and he was about to be found lacking, but his eyes… his damn, fucking eyes…

They came back and won it for him. He didn't earn that win; he didn't deserve it. His quirk, though, didn't give a damn.

And when did it ever?

His anger faded in an instant before Aizawa could pick up on his distress, and cold indifference washed over his mind as his eyes confirmed that the man hadn't noticed a thing. His sensei moved to the side and allowed him to exit the room. Looking to his left, he saw the nervous boy with black hair staring at him curiously.

Izuku scoffed before walking over to the wall of his training room and sliding onto his ass against it.

The kid was wondering how he did?

Fool.

He did perfect… just like always.

Chapter End Notes

As I do with the end notes, I'm going to talk a bit about my thought process for the things I wrote and my strategy for telling the story I want to tell.

The biggest thing I did was rework the entire quirk assessment test because I think the original one is stupid. Since I changed the entrance examination to allow in students who might've had useful abilities that don't align with direct combat, it would've been a bad call to make them all flop on the first day by giving them similarly biased examinations like what happened in the anime.

The second thing I really wanted to do was show that Izuku honestly does want to lose. It isn't like Bakugo who wants a serious fight so that he can win and prove himself better. Izuku is more than happy to face defeat. That was why I set up his test to end the way it did, and I hope it gives you a good and interesting look into the goals and hopes of this character.

As you can all see, I have set up an original character to take up the position of Izuku's normal self. That is because I couldn't imagine All Might giving it to anyone else. In my mind, Izuku was not a lucky find but an inevitability. All Might refused to truly give his power away to someone mediocre, and I refuse to believe that Izuku is the only person out there with an attitude like his in a world with people who worship and idolize heroes as much as MHA citizens do.

I Didn't Sign up for Friends

Chapter Summary

Aizawa implements an interesting method of challenging his students...

Izuku just hopes it actually proves challenging.

Chapter Notes

If you want to read the challenge Izuku faces in the next chapter NOW, go here:

https/sites./view/hrothgarlee/home

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Izuku stood in the middle of a crowded supermarket and pulled his hood further over his head to cover his peripherals similarly to the blinders on a horse. It was his least favorite part of the week, but it was also the part of his week that his mother needed him for the most. He had to buy the groceries he would be using to cook for himself and his mom.

Unfortunately, people were moving all around him and grating on his very soul with every action they took. Normally, he would've been properly incensed by the presence of humans he cared nothing for. Today, things were worse.

Not only did he have to worry about the people around him he didn't give a shit about, he also had to worry about the fucks who decided to follow him around like a bunch of leaches. A day after the horrible experience that was his first test as a hero student, Izuku and the rest of his classmates were given "teammates" who would be working with him for the next month or so as they went through their various exercises. He was paired with Juzo and, as if the Gods themselves conspired against him, the black-haired kid whose name was now revealed to be Akio Harada.

Some might've thought that Izuku's problem with the boy was his incompetence or some belief that the boy was below him. Of course, the boy was below him, but most people were. No, his problem stemmed completely from the way Harada carried himself. Juzo was below him as well despite the utility of his quirk, but he got along with the boy because Juzo was confident in his abilities, intelligent, deductive, and able to hold himself upright under pressure. Izuku was going to have to carry anyone on his team at this point in their training, and he would probably be doing that for the entirety of his career if things didn't change soon, but he could stand that so long as the people he carried were people he could actually work with.

A stuttering mess with zero backbone and a lower than ground-level view of his own worth was not a teammate for him. How was he possibly meant to deal with such a thing? Izuku didn't know the definition of doubting himself. He was born perfect. Even when he was going to fall short, even when he was on the brink of failure, it simply wasn't possible to lose…

Not for him.

To make things worse, the children in his class seemed to think that these assigned groups meant that they were supposed to be friends. That was why Juzo and Harada were currently walking alongside him while he did family errands, acting as though they were merely on some kind of "exciting", friendly outing.

Was this what Bakugo used to feel like, surrounded by people he didn't need and, quite frankly, didn't want? If so, the boy's various complexes and personality deficiencies made so much more sense. He had been out for less than an hour with these two idiots, and he could already feel his mental fortitude slipping away.

Juzo whistled as Izuku pulled a package of meat from the fridge and put it in the cart. "Filet minion? Are you sure you should be messing around with that? Didn't you say you cook all of this stuff yourself?"

"Yes," Izuku responded sharply, trying very hard to not pinch the bridge of his nose. "I've told you already that I can perfectly do anything I've seen done before. I can cook anything I want. I would've gone with wagyu, but we don't have enough money for that. A special dinner with filet will be more than good enough."

"A-About that!" Harada perked up. "Do you know how Eraserhead uses his tape? None of the forums can figure it out."

Izuku scowled just a little at the question, admittedly dying to know that very thing, and shook his head. "No, I don't. He has to have some kind of secret that I can't see on video. I plan to make him use them eventually, and I'll find out when I see it in person."

"Speaking of Eraserhead," Juzo jumped in. "Do you guys have any idea what the first test is going to be?"

"N-No," was Harada's eloquent response.

"There aren't many options that make sense," Izuku said, having a bit more of an opinion than their third member. "Hardly anyone remaining in our class knows how to safely fight without their quirks. Once those are added, even more of them are hopeless. Considering how incompetent most of our class is, there can't be many things that are properly testable."

Juzo clicked his tongue and followed along as Izuku went from one aisle to the next. "What if they mix up the classes? You don't think there'll be enough competent fighters in A and B to make a combat exercise."

No," Izuku said with utter certainty. "It isn't about whether or not they can come up with enough competent fighters; it's about whether or not everyone can safely use their quirks. If they do a combat exercise without teaching control and critical thinking, some of the kids with more powerful quirks are going to end up getting someone killed."

That, of course, was always a possibility. When people training to use extremely volatile or deadly quirks were shoved into the same room or, perhaps, even made to fight each other, death was a possibility. That risk, however, meant the teachers had to be even more responsible. If a death occurred when it could've been prevented, U.A. would have hell to pay.

Harada hesitantly froze, apparently nervous to ask his question until Izuku's deadpan glare pushed the kid into motion. "So you know how to fight?"

Juzo snorted at the question. "Does he know how to fight!? I don't think this guy knows how to lose a fight."

That was very true.

It only took Harada a moment to connect the information he had to the things he assumed, and he slowly nodded with respect gleaming in his eyes. That was the single redeeming quality of Harada's. The boy was amazing at analyzing things. If the subject of analysis wasn't something Izuku could visually interact with, then Harada was even better than him.

"Y-you have a very good quirk," Harada decided to say.

Yes, he did, and he hated it to his very core.

Either way, he was done with his shopping, and it was time to depart. Once he gave the Yen to the cashier, he split from his "friends" and went home to prepare dinner for the night. Whatever connection those two thought they had with each other, there was no way in hell Izuku was going to show them where he lived. He'd never be rid of them.

---

"Hello, class, and welcome to your third day," Aizawa told them. "Yesterday, you were given two teammates. These teams were balanced based on each of your perceived skills to create teams capable of competing with one another. However, these teams are not subject to change. They will be your team, for better or worse, until the month is over, even if some of them manage to pull ahead of the rest.

"If a teammate is too injured to compete in an exercise, you will have to compete without them. If you are pitted against a team that manages to grow beyond your own, you will have to deal with it. Am I understood?"

Everyone in the class nodded, but one student raised their hand. It was a blond kid who was rather tall and lean. He could tell from the moment the boy opened his mouth that the question was going to be a stupid one.

"What if our individual skill performs beyond our team or even the members of the other team, but we lose anyway?"

Aizawa didn't look impressed, but he was a teacher, so he answered anyway. "If All Might responds to a backup request and has to fight with an unranked hero, what do you think he has to do?"

The answer was obvious: he grit his teeth and carried the fucker across the finish line on his god damn back. That answer, though, while perfectly true, was unsatisfying to the arrogant mind. That was why he wasn't surprised to find the blond vastly unhappy with the answer he got.

"So I have to be as strong as All Might to be judged by my own skill?"

Aizawa smirked at the kid. "Perhaps not, but if you're truly strong enough to compete without your team, then their presence shouldn't be a problem. If you aren't good enough to win without your team, then you obviously need them. Either way, your teammates will be there, and, if you can't handle that, then this isn't the profession for you. Accept it and work to succeed with your team, or leave the classroom right now and stop wasting my time."

Izuku almost had to laugh. The respect he just gained for his teacher was massive in size. He was honestly surprised that Bakugo wasn't the first to get put down for having that attitude. Apparently, arrogance was a common theme with hero students.

Aizawa, having dealt with the troublesome child, addressed the class once again. "Now, your first challenge begins. There are certain students in this class whom we have deemed worthy of a spot here despite being well behind the abilities of the more trained students. Unfortunately, they lack the knowledge and experience to safely use their quirks in combat or stressful scenarios.

"We have been watching all of you, and we have determined the ones capable of using their abilities properly. The ones who have not shown me that they can use their quirks efficiently or who don't know how to properly fight will be training with a Hero that specializes in combat and quirk control. Those of you who are worthy will be competing for your teams in a competition. If you don't impress us, your team will not be here tomorrow."

Izuku felt the walls closing in around him and smirked at the pressure Aizawa was attempting to put on them.

"Welcome to your first real day of U.A. High," the man finished with an annoyingly wide smile while dismissing them to their next class.

The entire class was either celebrating or loudly complaining among one another. Izuku was simply contemplating how this was going to play out. When Juzo pulled up next to him, he asked the question he needed to know.

"Do you know how to fight?"

Juzo smirked. "Yes, I can fight. I'm not as good as you, but I wouldn't have been recommended if I didn't have any skill beyond my quirk. My test on day one had a bit of combat in it, so I should be cleared."

With a small nod, he looked over to Harada and saw how hard the kid was taking it. He had to sigh just a little. The boy's admission to U.A. was a fluke, indeed. Harada had almost no skill with his quirk whatsoever, and he apparently had no physical combat experience either.

Izuku underestimated U.A. the day before.

He assumed that the first day exams were indicative of a pattern. He thought that things would continue to match the lowest level students until they eventually caught up. Apparently, U.A. wasn't keen on stunting the advanced student's progression. Instead, the first day was about eliminating the truly hopeless students. After that, the students with the least skill were put on intensive training while the students with the most skill were forced to push their limits by competing without a full team until the new guys caught up.

Harada was going to have independent training to catch up fast, and Izuku had to work with Juzo to hold his team up in the mean time against the middling teams, who had all of their members, and the more volatile teams composed of powerful members but without a full occupancy level. It was an ingenious method to make everyone progress at the fastest rate possible. Fortunately for him, that handicap was the best way for him to find a possible challenge.

... If one truly existed in this school.

"Wow," Juzo said teasingly to Izuku. "I didn't know you were capable of being wrong."

Izuku took it in stride because he was just as surprised as Juzo that he managed to miscalculate so heavily.

"I-I'm sorry t-that I-I'm h-holding you guys b-back."

Jesus Christ, that stuttering was going to kill him. Izuku always used to be so focused on how annoying visual stimulation was that he never had the capacity to focus on the annoying things that might've assaulted his other senses at any given time. Now, though, he had yet another thing to add to the list of shit that bothered him. He supposed Harada deserved a reward or something of the like. The kid was such a fucking wreck that he managed to give Izuku a new pet peeve that wasn't based around his eyes.

"Stop pitying yourself and just catch up quickly," Izuku said to the boy, admirably holding onto whatever few threads of patience remained after so many years of having it tested by various third parties. "The teams were balanced, remember? You were put on our team because our skill makes up for your lack of it. If you weren't on our team, we'd still have to deal with a green student. We'll manage until you make it here, so just focus on getting out of training.

"The biggest power spikes for teams will come when the training students make it into competitions. Then, the most skilled teams will get their thirds or maybe even seconds. When that happens, they will quickly start to steamroll the three-man teams that are only average. We're all equal now; the deciding factor will be whether you can get out of training before the other high-level teams get their own teammates back. If you can, our team will be unstoppable until the rest of the new students catch up."

He saw the way Harada's eyes began to burn with a determination that Izuku no longer possessed. He had to keep himself from smirking lest his manipulation get caught. He figured out how Harada worked, and that have him an advantage. It was easy to see from the way he acted that Harada was dangerously obsessed with helping others and improving himself.

By twisting the situation from Harada being a dead weight, which he technically was, into being a possible boon, the entire situation was flipped on his head. Instead of him depending on them to carry his ass while he trained, it was them depending on him to arrive as the cavalry for their team. With that goal in sight, all Harada had to do was smash his stupidly determined head into the metaphorical wall that was combat and quirk training.

The team was counting on him, so there was no other choice but to step up.

Izuku was almost envious of the sheer determination oozing from their least experienced teammate. If only things were as easy for himas they were for Harada. Oh well, at least he didn't have a stuttering problem.

"I won't let you guys down," Harada said with an almost comical level of dramaticism, but Izuku didn't doubt his words in the slightest.

Yes, Izuku knew he was a genius. Sometimes, though, he even managed to shock himself with his astounding intellect. Juzo seemed to catch on to Izuku's thoughts and was silently holding in his laughter at his current partner's attitude.

He could already tell it was going to be a longfucking month.

Chapter End Notes

Hello, and this is a short chapter meant to set up a bit of a trio dynamic and introduce something that will be an ongoing aspect of this series for a little bit!

My decision to make things team based was two-fold. The first problem I really wanted to fix was that an elitist society like the one in MHA was oddly accepting of mediocrity in the hero course. What I mean by that is the likes of Todoroki were allowed to stagnate while hopeless messes like Izuku learned to fight without breaking his entire body in the process. Also, hardly anybody is actually trained to FIGHT before they start throwing around lethal abilities, which always annoyed me.

By setting up teams like this, it supports that elitist mindset. The people with good quirks but no training are boosted by the most efficient training possible while the most veteran students are challenged by being forced into awkward positions due to the fact that they are missing one or even both of the teammates everyone else will have (not sure if anyone is actually going to be a one man team yet).

The second reason is because this allows me to very easily separate myself from the monotonous loop of recycled shit that goes into fanfics and even the original anime. So many episodes were dedicated to those stupid fights between class 1A and 1B, and so very few of them actually showed me anything I actually CARED about.

By doing this, I can let the badass students be badass without them steamrolling the competition like Todoroki did in his first training exercise (at least once the other teams start wising up). At the same time, it gives me a chance to start making the competitions actually interesting because the teams lasting for so long and the requirement to compete no matter the status of the team at the time means wins, losses, and even pyrrhic victories will have lasting affects on the teams and possibly result in their elimination from the school as a whole.

This is my Hill, Even if I Don't Want it

Chapter Summary

The first challenge has finally arrived, and Izuku makes a wonderful though somewhat saddening discovery.

Chapter Notes

Go here if you would like to read the next chapter right now.

https/sites./view/hrothgarlee/home

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Izuku couldn't fucking believe it. He was standing in a room with half or less of his entire class as they waited for their homeroom teacher to announce their upcoming training exercise. The students who weren't there were currently learning combat with All Might!

Now, he'd said the phrase many times before, but never in his life had he ever asked "what the fuck" with more meaning than he did at that moment. If he would've known All Might was teaching the inadequate fighters, he would've performed much worse than he did just for the chance of fighting him.

The man training the lesser students was said to be the pinnacle of hero society, the strongest of the strong. Izuku, with the knowledge that the number 1 was in the building and training hero hopefuls, was stuck fighting whatever passed for competition in this fucking school. To put it simply, the entire situation smelt of bullshit.

Sighing to himself and settling in next to his only teammate for the exercise, he tried to ignore his disappointment and focus on Aizawa.

He failed.

The man was saying something or other about a challenge that would require a show of teamwork or whatever other heroic traits they were searching for in their students. The disaster of his first trial and his subsequent existential breakdown had ruined his hope for anything good until the extras were dealt with.

Once his teacher was finished, he leaned over to Juzo. "So what the hell are we doing?"

"You weren't listening?" Juzo asked, receiving a glare that answered his question without the need for words. "Okay then!" he surmised, exasperated. "Three teams are competing against each other in a game of "King of the Hill".

"And what is that?" Izuku asked with a similar lack of vigor.

"We're going to be placed in an area where a smallish circle will be drawn in the ground. The environment inside and around it isn't guaranteed, and our job is to claim and hold the area exclusively for a total of two minutes."

"I'm guessing the time only counts up if we're in the circle alone?" he asked.

After nodding, Juzo gave a warning. "Aizawa said that we better impress him because failing to do so will result in him dropping us from the hero course."

Izuku sighed as the two of them stood up with the rest of their classmates. At least a team or so would be going home today. With him in the field, there was a very good chance that one or both teams would end up underperforming. That gave him a bit of a lift, but he was far from hoping for anything exciting after the train wreck things had been so far.

"Come on, then," he told Juzo.

"Hell yeah!" his much more eccentric teammate exclaimed. "We've got some ass to kick!"

Izuku followed Juzo in a much more subdued manner, zoning out and allowing the boy to lead the two of them wherever they were supposed to go. Some time into their walk, his eyes noticed their numbers almost double, supposedly due to the introduction of students from class 1B. The individual teams between the students were mixed between 1A and 1B in some cases, so the exercises were equally mixed between the two.

That was unfortunate for Izuku because there were even more people for his eyes to break apart as a result. The students from 1B were peculiar too, much more so than in class 1A. One person was pink with horns and eyes that looked only slightly less off-putting than his own, and another had a fucking speech bubble for a head. Izuku liked new things because of how intimately he understood stuff he'd seen before, but his eyes were just as insatiable as himself. The newer the sight, the more they analyzed.

If he didn't want that to happen, then new sights were very annoying. Unwilling to physically create a barrier between himself and the other students but unable to stop his eyes from doing their thing, he reluctantly picked them apart despite his annoyance. He should've expected someone to catch onto his prying eyes, considering he was in a room full of U.A. hero students, but he hadn't been caught by his class, so his expectations were lowered for the other one by default.

That was why he was slightly surprised to find that it was the pink one who looked over and caught him "red handed", so to say. With her face suddenly in full view, his eyes picked her apart with further intensity, and that only succeeded in turning her vaguely annoyed expression into something that appeared to be seriously irked. Something about the way she was overtly glaring at him grated on his nerves.

She thought she was annoyed?

He was absolutely certain that he wanted to look away more than she wanted him to, yet she was acting as if he was the perpetrator or something. He gave her the best deadpan glare he could manage in the hopes of somehow imparting upon her just how seriously unimpressed he was by her attitude. When that didn't make it any better, his annoyance got the better of him, and he decided to do something he only really did with Bakugo.

His irises spun in opposite directions while their glares continued to meet between them, and he seized control of her senses without hesitation. Then, to show her his frustration, he succinctly and briefly snatched her sense of balance away from her.

Izuku watched as the previously graceful gait of the pink girl turned into a haphazard stumble. It was as if she'd suddenly lost the ability to properly place her feet beneath her, which she technically did. He couldn't help but chuckle, feeling that sense of dull, minute satisfaction he tended to get when he messed with his childhood friend. She heard his subtle laugh and shot an even fiercer glare at him once she regained her footing.

It was almost llike she thought he did something, which he did, but her evidence against him was circumstantial at best, so he thought that made her the unreasonable party here. Still somewhat amused by once again being given the chance to fall back on old habits, he merely smirked at her before looking away. He didn't care if she was annoyed, angry, or bothered. It was him who was stuck with his stupid quirk. If he had to grin and bear it, then she could survive a single moment of the agony it was to live with his ability.

Juzo was looking at him oddly, not understanding his current mood. Izuku didn't feel like explaining it, so he just shrugged and continued walking. They split from the rest of the class at some point, following the directions of their teacher to the place they were meant to be. Much like the first day exams, Aizawa wanted to be present for their first training exercise to make sure that nothing went wrong.

That meant he had to kill some time until their teacher got to their testing site. He spent it, of course, breaking down every detail of the space he was in and the people competing against them. They were outside, and it was hot as hell too. Their "hill" was more literal in this case than metaphorical. The space was completely open, and the point they had to occupy was at the top of a hill. The hill was small, and it was almost certainly designed for the express purpose of facilitating this game.

It was slightly steep, and it took a bit of climbing to get to the top of it. The people at the top would have a distinct height advantage, and the people climbing would be forced to fight an uphill battle to get to the top of the hill, where it plateaued a bit to create a more sensible and equal ground for fighting. The reason he didn't like the zone was for the same reason he didn't want to fight in the barren zone during the entrance exam: ranged quirks were broken here.

If he and Juzo claimed the hill, any ranged fighters would have a field day shooting them off of it. Izuku almost rolled his eyes at the obvious desire to hold him back. The ultimately futile attempt to disrupt his team was going to be annoying, but the result wouldn't change.

The people around him were also part of his analysis. All of them seemed to be very confident. In fact, many of them were actively flexing their quirks and warming up.

That was a huge mistake.

One team was a group of two, and their theme was obvious. One of them looked like a straight up animal in human form. His hair was shaggy, and it covered almost the entirety of his body. The second member was turning his arms from something human into something distinctly reptilian. He understood why they were supposedly powerful enough to make a two-man team. They both had bestial quirks, so their natural instincts and combative prowess were going to absolutely steamroll people who merely possessed a modicum of skill.

The second team was composed of three members, and their theme was less developed. One of them had two large horns sprouting from their head, a guy with silver hair, and some dude with a gigantic, monstrously muscular tail. The silver-haired student was exuberantly warming up by jogging in place and stretching. While he was doing that, Izuku caught glimpses of different parts of his body taking on a metallic sheen. He had some kind of skin-hardening quirk.

The only unknown was the horned girl, and that made things easy for him. Figuring out their abilities was his first step to victory. They were foolish to show their hands so soon.

Aizawa showed up eventually, and it was just in time because Izuku was almost ready to take a nap against the grass. When the man stopped in front of the three teams, he gave them the rundown.

"I've told the six groups I watched before you that the winning team here will get an advantage by having the ability to watch a single match of the other winning teams. You will get information on the length of the match and the individual stats of the other teams before you make your decision. This is a big advantage, so I would suggest you take winning this one seriously."

The man was looking specifically at him during that statement, and Izuku was personally offended. Did Eraserhead think he was the one not trying hard enough? Izuku thought that it was his teacher doing the slacking. It wasn't his fault that he won his challenges so easily. Why should he try if he didn't have to?

Was that how Aizawa wanted it?

Did his "sensei" want to see what it looked like if he tried? Did the man want to witness what happened if his hand was truly forced against his classmates? Aizawa didn't want him to hold back, but he simultaneously refused to give him a real challenge. The entrance exam and the quirk test were fucking jokes. He wasn't trying because he wasn't being pushed.

Well, fuck him.

If his teacher wanted him to try harder, then it was up to him to find a challenge that required his full range of skills. He didn't come here to appease his teacher; he came here to find someone capable of challenging his skills with their own. If Aizawa didn't give him that, then Izuku wasn't about to give him anything either.

The three teams were made to spread out in a triangle around the hill, and Aizawa gave them the go ahead soon after. Immediately, the animal team conformed to their aggressive stereotype and rushed toward the middle with no thoughts about anything but achieving their goal. They were so tunneled in on the objective that they forgot a little-known aspect of victory called strategy.

They had two minutes to spend in exclusive control of the hill. The team who got there first wasn't the one who claimed the win; that reward belonged to the team who could hold it. Izuku let them have their circle and instead made a b-line toward the three-man team. That last unknown was there, and he wanted to force her into using her quirk. Luckily, he didn't have to try very hard.

It only took a few seconds for his blitz to be noticed, and the girl revealed her quirk without hesitation. She angled her horns down to point them at him, and they shot from her head at an impressive speed. His eyes tracked their approach even as they noted the growth of another two on her head.

So she could regenerate her horns too.

His eyes subconsciously kept tabs on them in case they did something else, but his primary focus was on the approaching projectiles. The girl wasn't experienced with combat; that was obvious. She was probably one of the competent individuals from the normal entrance exam who wasn't comfortable with the idea of possibly lethally harming someone else because her horns were aimed wide for his shoulders instead of at his center like they should've been.

The girl wanted to pin him, not put him out of commission, and that was why her shot failed so badly. The distance between her horns allowed him to twist during his run and slip between them without losing even a modicum of speed. He could see the shock and anxiety in her eyes as he wove between her attempt to keep him away, and he was closing on her quickly.

She was ranged, so she had to go first.

The metal man was too slow and dull to stop him in time, but the tailed guy was pretty snappy. The second he saw his teammate fail to stop him, he stepped in front of her to defend his ranged support. That was intelligent of him.

Izuku wanted to put him under an illusion and make it seem like he was circling to the left with his illusionary body only to actually go to the right and take out the horned girl while he was completely unaware. The boy, though, revealed his martial arts training by not staring directly into his eyes. Instead, the tailed boy was almost zoning out on his upper body and attempting to read his next move based on that instead of trying to discern his thoughts through his eyes like many beginners tended to do.

He was going to have to go through the boy, then.

"Behind!" Izuku heard Juzo shout at him.

He glanced behind him and saw the two horns turning around to hit him in the back. The girl didn't just shoot her horns; she had telekinetic control over them as well. That made for a much more useful quirk, and it was yet another reason to take her out first.

His eyes needed less than a half-second to completely read their trajectory. They were going right for the center of his back this time. She wasn't holding back after her first mistake because she was panicked. Izuku was stuck between an attack from behind and a fighter at his front. It was a pincer attack, which was technically bad for him, but he could see the confidence in his opponent's eyes, and that was something he could use.

He didn't avert his gaze from the combatant in front of him, but the information he'd recieved from just a glimpse of the horns was practically screaming the timing and direction of the attack as they approached. They were mere moments from shooting through his midsection when he fell forward and dropped onto his hands in the position of a pushup, and he stared at his opponent's face as he fell.

The boy's eyes widened as Izuku dropped, and his fall was tracked with an impressive level of skill. That meant, however, that his eyes trailed further up Izuku's midsection until, eventually, the only thing left to do was look into his pinwheel eyes. They began to wildly spin as eye-contact was made between them…

And his vision went black.

Izuku smiled widely as he witnessed the surprise explode on his opponent's face, and the moment was made even sweeter when that surprise turned into fear. The boy knew the horns were approaching, but he couldn't see them. Since he wasn't aware that what he was seeing was fake, the option to break out of his trickery wasn't available to him.

The boy tried to dive to the side, desperately hoping to avoid the attack in its entirety, but he was far too late. The horns drove into his body with enough force to pierce skin, stab through muscle, and clack against bone. He was bodily thrown backward, right into his teammate, due to the sheer stopping power of the girl's quirk . The collision forced both tail-man and the girl to tumble onto the ground.

The boy's wounds didn't look pretty.

Izuku sprung to his feet from his dropped position and immediately drew his sword, swinging it at the blindly approaching iron man. The boy was already fully transformed, so Izuku's sword clanged off of the boy's metallic armor, but the impact force of his strike was still enough to shake the only standing member of team 3. His eyes noticed the tendrils of concrete approaching from the nearest building to wrap around the tail-man's body, dragging him off the field to get healed by Recover Girl, who was standing at attention by Aizawa. The boy would probably be sore for days, but he'd be fine.

Izuku had time to see and predict all of that, and the metal guy was still yet to throw his punch. As if his brain was made of as much iron as his body, the boy was screaming wildly while he pulled his arm way behind him in order to wind up for a massive haymaker.

Ummm? Wasn't he supposed to be combat ready?

Just what kind of piss-poor standards were the teachers going by if that shit was considered "proficiency" in combat. He reversed his hold on his blade and wove under the swinging fist, putting his useless sword away at the same time. While he was weaving under the haymaker and sheathing his sword, he glanced at his approaching partner and easily met eyes with the boy.

His eyes spun as he took control of his teammate's senses.

Juzo watched as Izuku finished his dodge and placed his foot behind the ankle of their metal opponent. He once again found himself immensely impressed by the ability of his teammate as he witnessed Izuku place the palm of his hand against Metalhead's face and push him over his foot, efficiently sweeping the boy's feet from under him.

Then, the strangest thing happened.

When the back of the boy's head should've been smashed against the field, the ground rippled instead and swallowed the boy's head whole… almost as if he had used his quirk on it before contact was made.

But he didn't… he wasn't even trying to.

That was when he was introduced to the jarring sensation of his entire world glitching back to the way it was just a few seconds ago. Struck by a nauseating sense of deja vu, he watched as Izuku dodged the haphazard punch and placed his foot behind the ankle of the metal boy. Juzo had never been more confused, and it was starting to make his brain hurt. He could almost physically feel his thoughts click when Izuku placed his palm against the boy's face and began to push him over his foot.

No…

Juzo almost laughed when he realized what'd happened, and his lips contorted into a demon-esque grin as he slid to a stop and jammed the palms of his hands into the ground at the same time. A small line of dirt turned soft from the effects of his quirk, stretching and traveling across the clearing as Metalman's head descended toward its point of impact. He already knew where he needed to soften the ground; he'd already seen where it would land. When it made contact, he'd already turned the ground to liquid, and it swallowed the boy's head whole

A chill went up his spine as he turned it solid with a thought. This was fucking crazy. Was something like that even human? He'd felt the kind of power and confidence he possessed with Izuku on his team during the entrance exam, and he felt it even stronger now. It just wasn't fair for the other people; it was too easy.

They were unstoppable.

The metal boy was thrashing against the ground while his arms clawed at the dirt now cleanly sealed around his entire head. The problem was that Izuku managed to jam his head so far into the liquid dirt that his neck was bent at something close to a right angle. His back was forced to arch to accommodate the extremely painful position of his head and neck, and it was impossible for him to gather leverage to yank himself out when he was already stretched to its limits. He was currently attempting to put himself into a bridge and push his head from the dirt, but that was hard to do when Izuku kicked him in the ribs with the steel toe of his right boot until the guy's skin lost its durability along with his ability to lift himself up.

It was brutal, but how else was he meant to deal with a metal man?

With that guy taken care of, Izuku stood up and gave a deadpan stare to the horned girl. She was in the midst of panicking, having just stabbed her teammate right through the torso twice before watching her other teammate get literally beaten into submission . She glared back at him angrily, but she didn't get up from the ground.

He didn't know why she was upset with him, not really . It was Aizawa's fault for pitting them against a team they couldn't handle. The hero said they were supposed to be equals.

What a joke!

Mercy wasn't to be expected here. The only people to blame were themselves for being weak and their teacher for not noticing the disparity sooner.

"Are you done?" he asked the girl, mostly out of courtesy but also just to piss her off a little more.

Her two sprouted horns shot at him as she let out an angry scream, but the bottom of a boot was shoved into her face before they could do much more than float menacingly toward him. Once she was properly incapacitated, the horns fell lifelessly to the grass. Only once she was down did Izuku look at his partner.

"Good job," he told his skeletal companion.

"Thanks," Juzo said back, still stunned by the fuckery he'd just participated in.

With those words exchanged, they looked at the hill together and saw the animal squad staring at the wreckage of the third group. Izuku enjoyed their expressions. He enjoyed their position on his hill much less.

"Juzo?" he questioned.

"Yeah?" Juzo asked back.

…

"Get them out of my fucking circle."

Juzo chuckled as he slowly descended to a knee. He placed his palms against the dirt, and he took a few moments to gather himself. This was going to be a good portion of his limit. It was going to take quite a bit to truly inhibit the movement of two beasts. All he could do was follow Izuku's directions and trust in his teammate to deal with the rest.

The funny thing was that he did trust Izuku to handle the rest, so he put his all into turning that hill to nothing.

He watched as the raised land began to melt, and he cockily smiled at them when their feet began to sink into the quickly malforming ground. The thing about this exercise was that the circle was easily definable, and it was awfully hard to occupy a space that couldn't be stood on. The two of them were switching feet, attempting to peel themselves from the clingy surface of the circle floor but only truly succeeding in allowing their other foot to sink further during their efforts.

Izuku pulled a knife from its holster and tossed it at the hairy one hard. The other team probably had about a minute or so in the circle, maybe a little less, so it wasn't an emergency yet. Like he'd said, range was broken when the defenders were in the open.

His knife flew at the beast, and Izuku smirked as the lizard stumbled across the quickly liquifying ground to intercept his shot. To the guy's credit, he got there on time and turned his arm into scales quickly enough for the knife to clank against his armor and fall to the muddy hill, getting swallowed moments later. It was interesting to watch the dynamic between them. The hairy one was much bigger, but the scaly one was much more durable. That resulted in an odd paradigm shift where it was actually the much smaller one who played the role of tank.

It looked to be about over for the other team when the hairy one decided to do something drastic. Izuku was shocked to see the boy transform from an already large, bestial humanoid into something that was truly monstrous. He absolutely towered over his partner, and he was large enough to occupy quite a substantial area of the circle all by himself.

What a fucking day.

It wasn't often that his eyes actually managed to lead him astray. He saw everything perfectly, so he tended to trust what he saw. His eyes cataloged the beastly student, and he filed it away as solved. It never even occurred to him to think that he might have a transformation quirk on top of his already pretty extensive animalistic mutations. If the beast had approached them first, that surprise might've done him in. As it was, unfortunately, they'd already lost.

The beast grabbed his partner and pulled him from the quicksand. He then reared his arm back and chucked the lizard at Izuku's team like a fucking baseball. Unfortunately for them, Izuku's eyes already calculated the exact trajectory of the lizard boy's flight before the beast even finished throwing him. Unlike Razorblade, his entrance exam opponent who turned his leap into a lightning fast descent by using his blades as a makeshift grappling hook, forcing even Izuku onto defense due to the skill with which he concealed his movements, these guys took a painfully predictable approach.

Needless to say, predictable approaches were not recommended when facing him.

Knowing that he had range on his side and seeing where their attacker would land, Izuku pulled out his sword and raised it above his head. The lizard was already in the air, and he couldn't change directions like Razorblade, so he was stuck flying toward an armed and ready opponent. Claws sprouted from the lizard's hands, and he stretched forward to maximize his reach.

It wasn't enough.

Izuku brought the sword straight down with two hands on his hand-and-a-half handle, one of the most powerful strikes he could create. The lizard's arms didn't even make it close to his vulnerable flesh before Izuku brought his blade vertically across the guy's face. It was such a brutal impact that it drove the lizard's head into the ground.

The transformed boy showed astounding strength and resilience by stopping his momentum with his hands and glaring up at Izuku from his crouched position despite the bloody gash that traveled all the way down his scaled face. If the boy didn't have the quirk he did, he would've died from that foolish leap. With astounding speed, the boy sprung up and swung a claw at him, but it was far too straightforward to catch Izuku. He was gone in an instant. the boy's offending claws would only slice air with a technique so dull.

Izuku knew what was going on, and it wasn't good for his opponent.

The one positive thing he had to say about the team still standing was that their bestial quirks gave them really good instincts and a natural affinity for violence. The downside to that was when their instincts overcame their human side's natural affinity for rationality and intelligent planning. He'd just severely injured his reptilian opponent, and a human probably would've realized that this was just practice and stopped to get their wound healed.

The boy's transformation, however, was taking over in his agonized state, and it was choosing to fight instead of flee. The swings were wild, and his form was atrocious. To make things worse, his erratic movements were disturbing his injury further by the second. Not wanting to hurt the boy's head more than he already did, he looked at Aizawa to see what the man wanted him to do.

He was excited to find the man's eyes glowing red, and the way his scarf began to float gave Izuku chills.

HE TOOK IT BACK!

This was where he wanted to be. Fuck All Might; Eraserhead was about to give his eyes insight into the way his combat style worked. What he was about to learn was one of the things he'd sought for years. The man clutched his scarf, and Izuku was practically vibrating as he watched it rear back.

That was when he realized, though, that he wasn't seeing anything. He was visually aware of the fact that the man's scarf extended across the clearing in a flash, and he was also able to watch it wrap almost supernaturally around the lizard student's body, but he wasn't collecting anything. He couldn't see the scarf's trajectory, and he couldn't discern what the man was doing to make it work the way it did. Izuku was just as clueless as everybody else.

That was when it hit him.

His previous experience in the first exam naturally combined with the one he'd just gone through, and he officially had proof that Eraserhead's quirk erased the quirks of others . He didn't have the amazing analytical abilities of his eyes at the moment, but he was still capable of his usual brand of critical thinking. He saw the way his opponent was no longer scaled, and that led to him seeing the shining red of his teacher's eyes.

That was how he did it.

The man erased quirks by looking at them while activating his powers. For the first time in Izuku's life, he'd watched someone complete an action and didn't collect muscle memory from watching them. Aizawa's scarf fell back against his shoulders, and Izuku knew nothing. The man's quirk was a natural counter to his own.

His heart was about to have palpitations. He wanted to fight the man, needed to fight the man. He could hardly imagine it, a spar against someone he couldn't see. Even the invisible girl in his class couldn't hide from him. Her body wasn't totally invisible; it just refracted the light around her like some kind of supercharged active camouflage. His eyes had to work, but they eventually discerned where the outline of her body was, especially if she was wearing those stupid gloves she always carried around.

Actually, it was very annoying whenever she was around because the knowledge that she was there almost forced his eyes to relentlessly search for the tiny disturbances in the air until they found her.

Aizawa, though, just became his most anticipated fight behind All Might. In fact, he was almost unable to stop himself from rushing the man right that second when a monstrous roar notified him of the fact that the erasure hero wasn't his opponent at the moment. The beast managed to force itself out of the circle and was rushing him with nothing but animalistic rage behind his eyes. Watching the person he considered to be a partner and possibly even a companion get slashed with a blade probably pissed him off almost as much as it did the lizard.

All of the sudden, though, Izuku wasn't quite willing to play around in the sand box with the other kids. He'd just seen what was his first-class ticket to a genuine challenge, and the beast he was being forced to fight instead now seemed deliberately insulting. His final enemy was upon them in a flash, and the thing wrapped its massive hand around Izuku's arm in what could only be considered a bone-crushing grip.

Izuku's prediction about the mental state of the transformed student was confirmed when his arm was grabbed in such a way. He was about to get tossed like a ragdoll, and the beast knew it just as much as Izuku. The thing's white eyes glared down at him menacingly.

Izuku couldn't have been more bored.

His eyes spun. The animal was so deep in a rage that there probably weren't a lot of illusions that it would care about. The one thing animals always responded to, though, was pain. Perhaps it was malicious of him to resort to that, but he was done with this excuse of an exercise. If Aizawa wanted his students to remain unharmed, then he should've pitted them against more equivalent opponents. It was almost embarrassing that he was placed in a two-man squad like the other team he'd just crushed under his heel.

Aizawa would have to do better if he wanted his students to have a fair fight. Maybe, in fact, this very action would convince him of that. With that in mind, he gained dominion over the senses of the monster, and he introduced him to the most creative and unbearable pains he could think to inflict upon him.

Of course, he hadn't experienced most of them before, but they didn't have to be realistic if the victim wasn't mentally capable of uncovering the sensations for the farce they were. To a clueless animal, such a realization was beyond its abilities. It could do nothing more than sit there and experience the most ungodly forms of agony the human mind could conjure, and it crumpled where it stood.

Izuku looked dispassionately upon the whimpering, yelping mess of a monster as its hand lost the ability to keep a grip on his arm. It was curling in on itself, desperately searching for the source while simultaneously finding itself incapable of working its body under the sheer intensity of the pain assaulting every nerve it possessed. Izuku kneeled down to level with the completely lost student, and he reached his hand out to gently caress the side of the beast's face.

"This pain will stop if you let go of the transformation," he told the beast, fully knowledgeable of the fact that it couldn't comprehend his words. "I'll make it stop if you change back."

It looked at him with crazed eyes, and he let it see the way his irises spun. It didn't matter what it saw. All that mattered was that it conceded. Letting it go wasn't an option when it was so single mindedly determined to kill him. The only course of action left was to force it back. If that had to be by inflicting pain on it until it retreated back into its host, then that was what he would do.

Glancing over at Eraserhead, though, a smirk grew on his face. The other option was for Eraserhead to prove him right and shut the exercise down himself. The center of his pinwheel eyes bored into the erasure hero, and they silently asked the man if he was going to let this continue.

Come on, just a single use of his quirk was enough to end it all.

Izuku looked back at the beast, and his eyes picked apart every strand of hair on its head. He could count them all, did count them all. It was agony of the kind that he couldn't properly explain with words, a kind that he wasn't even capable of sharing through his quirk, and he almost sighed with relief when his eyes finally stopped.

It wasn't the same as it was in the training room or a few moments ago when he had no idea it was coming. In those moments, it was too unexpected and mixed within a stressful situation for him to properly experience the relief. The beast slowly morphed back into the boy it used to be, and Izuku still remembered the exact amount of hairs the monster had on its scalp. He could perfectly place every strand in the position they used to sit, but he didn't see the change. His eyes didn't record it, didn't break it apart. He couldn't count the strands on the boy's head, couldn't replicate his face or his exhausted expression, not without further study.

His eyes wandered to the side of the boy's face, not because they were relentlessly searching for information, but because he wanted to look there. On the boy's cheek was a very small blemish. It was natural, almost certainly, and he discovered it. His eyes didn't just smash it into the information dump that was his brain; he sought out something new and found it.

How funny it was that the knowledge of a natural blemish on a random kid's face was more valuable to him than any of the vast expanses of knowledge he'd collected over the years.

It was so simple, so miniscule, but it glowed like a golden beam stuffed within a heap of trash and worthless paraphernalia. His eyes naturally found their way to the sky, and what he saw was freedom from his insipid ability. He loved it, craved it. A strand of tape flew around the boy to take him away, and Izuku didn't have to look . His eyes didn't care that something happened. He was allowed to gaze at the gentle clouds above and ignore the things he didn't care to know.

Then, of course, reality returned.

No peace was permanent; no joy lasted forever. Still, it was with a melancholic sort of happiness that his eyes memorized the exact shape, position, velocity, and acceleration of every cloud in the sky above him. For a measly few seconds, he knew what it felt like to be human again and got the chance to bask in the feeling of fallibility. The sky was so beautiful when he didn't know what he'd find in the depths of the clouds above him.

He'd forgotten what that felt like… but he wouldn't forget again.

Glancing at his partner, Izuku nodded toward the circle. Juzo turned it back to a solid by touching the pool, and the two of them sat silently on the hill for two minutes. It was the most anticlimactic way to win, but every win was anticlimactic to Izuku. Actually, he was very satisfied with the way their challenge went.

It didn't quite make up for the first day, and he still didn't get the challenge he wanted, but what he did get was an experience he thought he'd never have again. It wasn't the same as finding a true challenge with his quirk, but the alien moment was something he'd cherish for an eternity. Yes, he won, and that was a damn shame…

But it was the best victory he'd received in a long time.

Chapter End Notes

Hello! This is the next chapter, and, as always, I've got my personal thoughts and strategies right here for those of you who are curious.

Firstly, I have to talk about Izuku's reaction to Aizawa and his quirk. I view Izuku's quirk as a three part ability, and the reason why I have Aizawa's quirk as being capable of erasing two of them is as follows. I see the first aspect of Izuku's quirk to be the truly mutative aspect of his ability: the physical capability for his brain and body to actually hold all of the information he collects on a daily basis and connect it to his own muscle memory. The second aspect is his extremely analytical eyes. I don't view this as part of a mutation but as a magical ability granted to him via a quirk. Yes, it is passive, but it is also an ability that I couldn't see being granted by simply having a good pair of eyes. What he sees is clearly a physical impossibility from the time dilation in stressful scenarios to his ability to pick up and simultaneously track every movement he sees no matter how convoluted or crowded his vision is. The last is his illusionary abilities. The last two of those things, as they are granted by a quirk, not his physiology, are erasable. The information he already garnered and his muscle memory, however, remain despite Eraserhead's quirk.

Also, his reaction to Eraserhead was particularly important. I made sure that Izuku was happy to have the experience but not necessarily changed or blown away by it. Yes, it is an amazing experience for him to have, but the distinction I wanted to get across here is that Izuku doesn't want to make his quirk go away; he wants to find someone who can challenge him at his best. He hates it when his quirk lets him win, but he still USES it despite the fact that he hates it directly because he doesn't find handicapping himself to be a satisfying way to achieve victory. With that in mind, Eraserhead's quirk isn't a solution to his problem so much as it is a revelation of everything he missed out on due to having his quirk. He wants to fight Aizawa, of course, but he wants to fight All Might MORE because that man is capable of challenging him at his best while Aizawa is only really interesting because he can temporarily place Izuku in a position where he is lesser than he is with his quirk.

This brings us to the competition itself and the brutality of the competition. I am very much taking the realistic approach to quirk usage here, and I tried to make the teachers far more responsible than they are in the original. When I mix those two together, it becomes a situation where the teachers do try to limit the damage but severe harm is simply an expected part of hero training. Of course, it would be. It's only because MHA is an anime that it gets away with an explosion the size of a fucking missile only putting soot on the person it hit. Swords will kill if they hit a bad spot, horns will stab through a person if they make contact with enough force, and the students, teachers, and general populace are well aware of how deadly quirks are. That's the entire point for heroes existing in the first place.

Lastly, Izuku's brutality, in particular, is the thing I wanted to talk about. He is an extremely violent person in combat, and he has NEVER shown any real remorse for harming a person either psychologically or physically. In my mind, that is because Izuku's focus on a challenge has consumed his character to the point that it leaks into every aspect of his life from school, to friends, and how he views losing and the pain that results from it. Izuku views the challenge to be the most important part of a victory, and it is because of this that he has a very skewed view of what is acceptable to achieve a win. He wants to lose by any means necessary, so his own philosophy is built around that very view. To him, beating Tetsutetsu like that wasn't morally questionable at all because that was the most efficient way to victory. Yes, he won't intentionally harm someone if he feels he has already won, but he has absolutely zero qualms about even lethally injuring someone like the reptile guy if it is the most likely route to victory because, of course, he WISHES someone was capable and willing to bring him down, and, with his skill level, that would almost require the use of such brutality and supposed maliciousness.

Yeah, Reporters Did That

Chapter Summary

Izuku has a plan to possibly spring his team into a position that will force Aizawa to give him the challenge he wants. If only he wasn't interrupted by the strangest attack he could've possibly expected.

Chapter Notes

I've got the next chapter posted on my own website. It covers the first part of the League's attack, so make sure to check it out if you want to read it before I post it here.

https/sites./view/hrothgarlee/home

--

I've also got a youtube channel where I talk about storytelling and the art of writing in whatever way I find most interesting at the time. If you'd like to ride along for it, then head of there.

https//channel/UC4AVbYQb8O3OGTiyQUjb-sA

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Izuku was immediately aware that things had changed the next day of class. There were certain people who were staring at him when they thought he couldn't see them, and they would shy away when he decided to visually confront them. The pattern was only made more obvious by the way that this reaction was contained to certain groups, all of which were winners of their individual matches. Izuku remembered every face he saw when selecting the match he wanted to watch, and he knew exactly who was in each group.

The match he ended up watching was vaguely interesting. The team he watched dominated the match almost as blatantly as Izuku's did. He wondered why it was that Aizawa matched him against such hopeless opponents when a much better matchup was obviously placed in an arena with people who couldn't keep up with them.

That was when he realized that this was the exact purpose of the second exercise. The strategy actually impressed him. He was put up against weaker teams on purpose because Aizawa wanted to guarantee a succinct win for the teams he knew to be better. Actually equalizing something like quirked students was an impossibility, not by simply mixing around the groups. In order to actually equalize things, he gave the winners of each match a chance to learn the quirks and fighting styles of a single other winning team.

They would all, of course, select the winners they thought would cause the most problems. Izuku's group won the quickest, so that meant almost all of them analyzed his match and saw the monstrosity that was his team. Izuku, however, only got to see a single match, so his information was limited on most of his enemies.

He sat tall under their stares. He knew why they were watching him and muttering to each other under their breaths. They wanted to figure him out and knock him from his pedestal. People from different teams saw him as such an extreme threat that they were collaborating among themselves to dissect him and his partner.

He was practically giddy.

This was what he wanted. If he was to get a challenge from these fools, it was going to be a combined effort from the entirety of the class. They all wanted him to fall at all costs, and they needed that mindset if they were to take him down. Aizawa set him in about the only situation that could possibly defeat him, and Izuku couldn't have been more on board. He sent a very blatant smirk toward his teacher, hoping for everything he was worth that he managed to impart upon the man just how much Izuku understood about his little plan.

It was good, but he wanted better .

The man saw his expression, and Izuku was confident his point made it through the passive, never-ending nonchalance of Eraserhead. Knowledge wasn't enough to beat him. It was a valiant effort, but he wanted Eraserhead to do better; he wanted the odds to be stacked against him more. The man seemed unimpressed with his attitude, but Izuku cared little. He would prove it to the man if he didn't believe it.

The question was how…

How was he to make the man see the need to truly stack the deck against him? Surely, he would love it if someone could fairly challenge him, but he was willing to accept a bit of artificial difficulty. Looking just a few desks over, he saw the nervous expression of his endlessly anxious third man. Of course, Harada managed to discern what was going on too. The boy was an analytical marvel, if nothing else.

That was when it hit him! If he wanted Aizawa to stack the game against him, then Izuku just had to show him that his team was truly unstoppable unless he escalated the fuckery surrounding his team designs. His words to Harada were turning out to be more true than he thought. The boy was his solution to a greater challenge. If he managed to push back hard enough and break Eraserhead's system through sheer force of will, then his teacher would have no choice but to do something drastic.

Drastic, in Izuku's opinion, was exactly what was needed in this situation.

---

Izuku stood at the door of the cafeteria during lunch time, and he already wanted to die. Fuck the challenge; this shit wasn't worth it at all. He could show Aizawa how things needed to work on his own. He didn't need Harada, not badly enough to justify this.

He had stringently avoided the cafeteria for a very good reason, the same reason, in fact, that he rode with his mother to her work everyday instead of taking the subway. He packed his own lunch just to avoid the chaos of a high school lunchroom. He tried to do the same in middle school, but the teachers started to get in his way and chaperone him once they caught on to his attempt at hoodwinking them. Here, though, the teachers tended to treat the hero students with much more respect.

They were being constantly tossed into possibly lethal matches between themselves, so acting as if they were just a bunch of children made little sense. They were fine with giving him his freedom during lunch time, and he used that to avoid as many people as possible. That time was being sacrificed at this very moment for the purpose of furthering his goal, so he couldn't leave just yet.

His eyes swam across the room, giving him a migraine the whole way, until they landed upon the black-haired boy he wanted to see. Steeling himself, he walked across the room as his eyes collected the erratic movements of every single highschooler U.A. could shove into this tiny-ass room. As he approached the table, Harada's friends seemed to notice him and immediately went on guard.

He was curious as to why until he saw the face of the guy recommended by Idaten. That boy was the winner of a match, and he obviously watched Izuku's with his reward. Apparently, Ida decided to share his info with his friends despite the fact that they didn't win. A girl sitting next to Harada was eyeing him warily, Ida even moreso. The boy he was looking for, however, didn't notice him at all, instead focusing on whatever it was he happened to be rambling about at the moment.

Izuku spent the time Harada took to notice him staring with boredly squinted eyes at the two students who were so obviously not keen on his presence. Eventually, he lost his patience and gave a small push to the boy's shoulder, jostling him from his rant. Harada turned around and looked up at him, his eyes widening in surprise when he saw who it was.

"Up," he told the boy. "We need to have a discussion."

Harada looked hesitant, but Izuku could already tell that he was going to acquiesce to his demand. Right when he was about to stand up from his seat, the girl spoke up.

"You don't have to go," she said to Harada. "Not if you don't want to."

Izuku decided to bless her with another one of his deadpan stares while Harada assured her that it was fine. Seriously, the anxious, skilless bastard was his partner, not that she could've known that unless Harada told her. Only the winning teams got to see the official rosters, and the students in training weren't included on the list they got. Only the trainees and their teams were aware of which team they were on.

Izuku was well aware that an analytical onlooker was capable of figuring out Harada's team if they were to see their interaction, but Izuku wasn't concerned in the slightest. His plan didn't depend on their knowledge or lack thereof. This was going to work because Izuku was going to make it work, and there was nothing more to say beyond that.

Let them watch. His victory was inevitable.

"W-w-what did you w-want to t-talk about?" Harada asked him.

"Okay," Izuku said with a roll of his eyes. "Is the stuttering a condition?"

"N-no," Harada said, blushing just a little.

Izuku suspected as much. The kid hardly stuttered a bit once he got going.

"Then get a handle on it," he said without mercy. "The first rule of every confrontation is that confidence is key. If you don't believe you're capable, then nobody else will either."

"B-but," Harada said in an attempt to explain. "I-I've never b-been good at t-talking to p-people."

Izuku stopped in front of the entrance door and gave the kid a hard stare. "I'm not asking you to be good at talking to people; I'm asking you to carry yourself with the confidence you need to actually succeed in this field."

Harada went quiet at that and instead merely followed along as Izuku pushed open the doors and descended the staircase that led to the courtyard. They walked for a while, only stopping when they came to a secluded corner near the edge of the wall surrounding U.A.'s campus. Once they arrived, Izuku pulled his backpack from his shoulders and tossed it to the side.

"Backpack off," he told Harada, and the boy hesitantly did it. "Show me your stance."

"W-what?" the boy asked him.

"Stop with the stuttering!" he loudly exclaimed.

"What do you want from me!?" the boy demanded back, finally deciding to show an ounce of spine.

Izuku gave a tiny smirk as he watched Harada realize exactly what he just did, and he only continued to speak once the tension in their conversation was allowed to simmer down. When things were more casual again, he revealed his master plan.

" I," Izuku said with a smile. "Am going to teach you how to fight."

The boy raised one of his eyebrows at Izuku's claim, and he seemed to hesitate for a moment before bringing up his objection. "But All Might is already teaching me how to fight."

"Yes," Izuku told him. "I'm aware, but I think I can do better."

"You think you can do better than All Might?" Harada sarcastically questioned with a scoff.

Harada, ironically enough, decided that this was the proper time to give him cheek. Unfortunately, it was the one time that Izuku wanted the kid to just sit down and fucking listen. He would've been almost pleased if he wasn't already an inch away from throwing this entire scheme into the trash like a crumpled up piece of paper. As brilliant as his plan was, the trouble he was going to have to endure to see it to completion was not going to be fun.

"Get in your stance, then, and show me what you've learned so far," he said, getting impatient when the boy was still not doing what he was told. "I said get in your stance! If you're learning from the best, then fight me and prove it!"

Harada raised his hands immediately, widening his stance and approaching. Izuku saw everything in that stance, every hole and every incompetency. He could see the way Harada leaned back despite his determination and subconsciously titled his body away from the danger he knew was waiting for him, obviously uncomfortable with direct confrontation. The boy's stance was decently spaced, but his feet weren't staggered enough to create a proper base. His backward tilt created another glaring problem in a different area as well: his guard. The boy's hands were decently spaced, but they looked awkward, uncomfortable, and out of place.

If the boy was leaning into the stance instead of away, the position of his hands would've been passable, but they were having trouble finding their natural place due to how he was positioning his torso. When the boy approached and threw his first punch, it was with his dominant hand. His feet were slightly staggered in the proper direction, so his dominant hand had the least range, but they weren't staggered enough for him to generate the power and torque necessary for that slower, shorter-range punch to be worth it.

Izuku had no reason to raise his guard. The punch wasn't even in range to hit him because the boy hadn't properly set up his approach due to his timidness. It stopped short, as he knew it would, and Izuku took the chance to snatch his slow cross out of the air. He pulled himself deep inside of Harada's guard and threw his shoulder right into the boy's chest.

If his feet were properly staggered or his range was properly kept, Izuku's move would've been a death sentence for him. As it stood, Harada was sent sprawling onto his ass with no method of recourse.

"See?" he told the boy. "Your stance is a mess. It shouldn't take more than a day to teach you how to stand and move. Your skill doesn't come with knowing the moves and the positions; it comes from learning when and where to apply the things you know. Anyone can learn to take a stance and mimic a pattern."

The boy got up, now understanding that Izuku might've had a point. "So what was I doing all yesterday?"

"You," Izuku said quite confidently. "Were acting as a guinea pig for a man with so much power that teaching others how to do what he does is almost impossible."

"Really?" Harada asked, seemingly personally offended by the insinuation that All Might wasn't a deity capable of doing anything he put his mind to.

"Yes, really," Izuku said with a disappointed glare. "All Might has some skill, but I've honestly never seen a hero more reliant on his quirk than All Might. He kind of boxes, but only in the loosest of definitions. His quirk is so powerful that most people can't even see him move, and he's so strong that only the deadliest of opponents can hope to guard him. He's undoubtedly the most dangerous fighter in Japan, but he isn't dangerous because he's the best martial artist; he's dangerous because he has a really good quirk and got really good at using it. Those skills, while maybe useful for teaching quirk control, aren't things that will make other people good at fighting."

The boy still seemed offended on All Might's behalf, but he was at least considering Izuku's proposition. "What do you suggest?"

"I already told you. Show me your stance."

Harada did so, and Izuku saw the same things he saw last time. He made a slow circle around the boy, noting everything that needed to change, and he moved back to stand directly in front of the boy. He got just close enough to be in the boy's personal space and stared into Harada's eyes with his own.

"Why are you leaning back?" he asked.

"Leaning back?"

"Yes," Izuku stressed with squinted eyes. "You're tilting your upper-half away from me. Are you scared, Harada? Are you afraid of taking a hit?"

"U-u-um,"

Izuku cut the boy off by pushing him backward. Harada stumbled to catch his balance, and Izuku received an angry glare for his efforts. He'd seen Harada's strength, but it never showed unless the boy somehow managed to have his patience seriously tested. The boy tilted himself forward into his stance, and Izuku gave a smirk in response.

"You don't have the luxury of being nervous in a fight. You're not training to have friendly matches. When you take that stance for real, it will be against a person trying to beat the hell out of you or worse," Izuku said, continuing even though Harada looked about ready to interrupt him with something snarky. "Taking a hit sucks, but you only have to take one if you fuck up your defence. You have a much better chance of slipping, dodging, blocking, or parrying a hit if you lean into your stance. You're off balance if you put your torso behind your base."

Izuku began to approach the boy again, and he was pleased to notice that Harada did not look like he was about to let himself get pushed again. "Your feet are too close to being parallel. Bring your right foot back more. If you have a staggered stance, it'll be harder to knock you on your ass like I did before."

He watched the boy follow his instructions, but his eyebrow twitched when he saw Harada's back foot pointing directly at him. "Point your back foot at an angle, not directly at me. You aren't running a race; you're trying to fight me."

As his back foot took a 45 degree angle, Izuku saw the stance coming together. It was already leagues better, but there were still holes. All Might seriously failed this kid if Harada's stance was any indication of the number one's teaching ability.

"Your elbows are flared. Bring them in and coil them up against your body. If they stay out like that, it takes away from your straight punching power and leaves your ribs an easy target."

Harada nodded and pulled them in, closing up one of the biggest holes in his stance and making him look much more dynamic and protected. It was at least competent, and that was a big improvement. There were only a few more things that really needed to change.

"Your fists are a bit low; raise them a little. I find it comfortable to extend my thumbs and press them against my cheeks when I'm getting into position. If they're too low, you'll either have to raise them to punch straight, or you'll be hitting at an angle. You produce the most power if your arm is in line with your body."

Izuku was proud of the progress he'd made in just a few minutes. The kid was probably still worthless, but he looked like a fighter. That stocky, obviously muscular frame only improved the look. All he had to do now was give Harada the skills necessary to turn that look into reality.

"You look too tense. Your fists are so tight they're turning white. Fighting while stiff is going to make you slower and clunky. Keep them loose and shake them out. Your defense is going to rely a lot on parrying, and you can't do that with a relentlessly closed hand unless you want your fingers to get smacked," He watched Harada relax and sighed as his eyes were finally satisfied. " That is a standard boxing stance. It's the closest legitimate stance to what you were doing before. Does that style fit what you actually want?"

"I, uh, wanted to use my hands, yeah," Harada told him.

"Any particular reason?" Izuku asked.

"Well, All Might…" he started, trailing off when Izuku gave him a deadpan glare. "I thought it would be the best for my quirk."

"It depends on what you want. Your hands are more versatile, and you can also use them for grappling, which your quirk would work well for. Kicks, in comparison, are more volatile. They have a lot of power, and they can easily slip into a fight unnoticed, but they have shit speed compared to your hands. Considering you could demolish a skyscraper with one punch, the advantages of a kick are probably voided against most opponents because one touch is all you need to win.

"However, kicks are much more powerful than a punch. If a good punch can take down a skyscraper, who knows what a good kick could do. If you fought someone with comparable strength to All Might, those kicks might be exactly what you need to win."

"Win against All Might!?" Harada exclaimed disbelievingly.

"Okay, you need to get a handle on that too. Yes, win against All Might! You think he has a perfect record? Nobody has a perfect record."

… Almost nobody. Hopefully, that was going to change soon.

"If boxing is what you want, then use your hands. Now, approach me."

The boy took a step with his back leg, and Izuku took a deep breath and spent about three-quarters of his energy for the day valiantly trying to not throw in the towel. "Not like that! Did All Might really teach you nothing!?"

The boy shrugged, both embarrassed and offended at the same time, and Izuku let out a sigh. He thought that All Might might've just not been the best at teaching and simply didn't explain the stances well enough for Harada to take one, but his inefficiency went much deeper than that, apparently.

"Okay, rule number one for moving in your stance: crossing your feet creates openings. If I hit you when you are crossing your feet and losing your base, you are going to fumble. You might even fall if I get in a really solid hit, and falling in a fight is bad news, especially if they have a lethal quirk. When you move forward while in your combat stance, you push with your back foot and step with your front. It is the same if you want to move left, since you lead with your left, and it's the opposite for moving right and backward. Whatever you do while you move, keep your base if you need to be in your stance.

"What about if I need to turn?" Harada asked.

Finally, a brain cell was working!

"They are called pivots. A bit of crossing is going to be necessary to turn, but you need to minimize it as much as possible. If you want to face to your right, you turn your front foot to face where you want to turn, and you pull with your back foot until you are in stance. To pivot the other way, move your back foot first and turn your lead foot to return to stance," Izuku said, getting a nod from the boy. "Do you know how to throw a punch?"

Harada looked as though he thought he did, but it was best to make sure after what he just saw with the boy's stance and movement. He approached the boy further and stepped over to stand by his side. He then assumed his boxing stance and explained how to hit.

"Your technique should always be a balance between power and subtlety. You want to hit hard enough to make it hurt but hit suddenly enough that your opponent can't easily read it. If you lean too hard toward one side, you won't be fighting with your maximum efficiency. That's why your straight punches should always be a line, A to B. If you wind up a punch, it will have more power, but it will be too telegraphed to hit someone like me."

"How do I make it hurt, then?" Harada asked.

"You generate power through torque," Izuku explained. "It's all about moving with your whole body at the same time to generate the twist necessary for the hardest punch possible. Your first punch was with your back hand. That will be one of your strongest hits. Watch how I do it."

He used the muscle memory he gained through his eyes to demonstrate the boxing fighting style. That was not his general stance, but he knew it as well as he knew everything he watched.

Perfectly.

His back foot twisted against the ground as though he were crushing a cigarette against the dirt, and he pushed with that twist to move his entire body into the punch, extending his arm and finishing the cross before returning to his base. He then demonstrated a jab, leaning onto his front foot just a bit and turning his torso to better line up with his off-hand.

"Did you see how I turned? All of that is pushing more force into my hand without the need to draw it back into a haymaker. It's harder to read, and it hits with a decent bit of force. You try."

Harada did, and Izuku's eyes analyzed his form as he slowly moved through the process of throwing a cross. As the boy went through with it, Izuku gave his critique.

"Twisting your foot against the ground isn't just a way to reposition your body. It's the initial buildup of power that you will transfer all the way through your body and into your fist. Really drive yourself against the ground and use it to leverage your hit. Don't forget the pullback either. Don't leave your punch to float; draw it back to your original position, or you're going to get hit by a counter," Izuku said, pausing for a second before throwing in one last piece of advice. "Twist your first more too. If you punch straight and make contact with all of your knuckles, breaking a bone in your hand is more likely. Twisting your fist further will let you naturally make contact with your first two knuckles. Always try to keep your hits to those two. I promise, you'll regret it eventually if you don't."

Izuku could see the progress before his eyes, and he had to keep a devilish smile from growing on his face as he continued to cultivate his weakest teammate. If he could keep this up, Harada would join them soon enough. All that had to be wrangled was control over his quirk, and his team was going to start bulldozing the rest with even more efficiency. That was when someone decided to ruin his attempt to train his teammate by turning the wall to dust.

It was a weird thing to witness, a concrete wall crumbling as though underneath the effects of an extremely fast timelapse. Izuku was already fucking bored. What kind of attack was this? Were they seriously going to frontally assault U.A.?

Where was the creativity!?

Nobody with a plan so dull was going to get one over on Nezu. He looked over to Harada and saw him taking the stance he was just taught, facing the wall with the intent to jump into the fight should there be one. Izuku rolled his eyes and nudged the kid with his arm.

"Put that away," he said in a low voice. "I didn't teach you the ranges of combat yet, but don't waste your energy by bunkering down when there isn't a chance that they can hit you. Your stance affords quick and efficient movement in short range, but it lowers your ability to cover ground quickly in general. If you're getting hit at this range, it'll probably be from a ranged quirk or, God forbid, a gun. You'll be better served staying loose and comfortable, ready to run or dodge, than you would be preparing for hand to hand. It also shows your hand too fast. If there is an enemy, they're going to have you figured out in a second when your first move is to take a boxing stance."

Harada, apparently trusting him more after learning so much from him, got out of his stance and attempted to stand as comfortably as Izuku was. When the wall finally fell, it was to show a gigantic group of reporters criminally trespassing on U.A. property. They poured in like roaches, pointing around their cameras and talking in loud, exaggerated voices. Idiots who were most definitely going to be facing legal trouble in the near future aside, Izuku saw no sign of the person who actually broke the wall.

Well, at least they weren't that stupid.

Still, it was pretty obvious what was going on. There were only a few reasons to destroy U.A.'s outer wall. The two most prominent in Izuku's mind was to either conduct an attack or create a distraction. As an attack wasn't forthcoming, it stood to reason that they were attempting to draw attention away from their actual goal.

The question was what their real goal was…

As expected, heroes were on the scene literally seconds after the wall fell down, and the reporters who foolishly decided to enter through a smashed wall found themselves in a massive pile of shit. Aizawa was in front of them while the reporters were being rather harshly corralled by the other heroes on campus. Unlike what Izuku came to expect from the man, he was not looking apathetic in the least. His eyes were alert and serious, and his posture was one that suggested he was ready to respond to whatever threat there might've been.

"What are you two doing out here?" the hero asked them.

"Oh," Izuku said with a casual wave of his hand. "This and that."

He smirked at the hero as the man made it very obvious how little he was in the mood for joking. Harada, always the wet noodle, nervously drew the hero's attention.

"M-Midoriya was t-t-teaching me h-how to f-fight," he said, flinching when Izuku looked over to glare at him for both ruining his fun and bringing back that incessant stutter.

"You were teaching him to fight?" Aizawa asked Izuku, eyes filled to the brim with skepticism.

Izuku's only response was to give him a nonchalant shrug.

Of course, it was only because of his homeroom teacher that he was there in the first place. He wouldn't have even considered this training session if he didn't want to force Aizawa's hand even further. Izuku had no desire to waste his time helping his inexperienced teammate, but that was what he was stuck doing if he wanted his challenge. That was why he decided to give his nonchalant response, neither confirming nor denying his involvement. Aizawa already looked annoyed.

Good, Izuku felt the same.

At least they were sharing the experience together now.

"Did you two see what happened to the wall?"

"It looked like it disintegrated," Izuku said. "But whoever did it was already gone by the time the wall fell. He just had to walk into the crowd."

Aizawa nodded, looking as though he was coming to the same conclusion as Izuku. Still, he turned around to go help with the reporters, apparently trusting the security of the rest of their campus to the other heroes and Nezu. As he retreated, he shot a command over his back.

"You know where the students are supposed to evacuate to in the case of an emergency. Go there; I will come to collect your class when we are done here."

With that, the two turned away and started walking back to the building. Izuku couldn't help but be a little disappointed. He wasn't expecting anything truly impressive when the wall started to crumble, but he still wished there was something. He couldn't help but feel as though he was jipped out of an interesting encounter. With all of the bullshit going on with his experiences so far, from underwhelming competitions to soul-crushing victories, he felt as though the universe owed him some kind of recompense.

Well, if it did… it looked like he wasn't getting it today.

Chapter End Notes

It has been a-fucking-while since I've posted anything on this story. The reason why is simple: someone who read ahead on my website said that he felt as though something was missing from the chapter I originally had written. Now, I'm not one to change things because of a little criticism, but, upon reading the chapter through a different lens, I fully agreed that it was lacking. I trashed it and recreated it into what you just saw. Unfortunately, that only further delayed the long process of writing the League's encounter with Izuku and his classmates in a way that I actually liked.

Now that it is here, I have a feeling that I'll be able to keep writing at my previous pace. It was simply exhausting to keep on redesigning the upcoming fight into something I felt both matched the tone and theme of the story I'm writing here.

As far as THIS chapter goes, let's talk about it.

The first thing I did was reveal Aizawa's grand scheme, and it's actually a pretty clever one. Izuku's quirk is mysterious, and his firm command over his team makes them far more coordinated and dangerous than the average students in 1-A. The solution he came up with was giving everyone the chance to review a match if they won their own. Naturally, they went with Izuku's because of how god damn fast he won. Now, this doesn't mean everyone is going to figure out his quirk or anything, but it is the start of Aizawa attempting to even the playing field and further push the more advanced teams even higher by properly challenging them.

The second thing I did was, of course, have Izuku begin his task of training Harada. I made sure to inject as much of Izuku's colorful personality and obvious ego into the entire thing, but I thought it simply made too much sense for him to look at the situation, see the strategy, and reluctantly follow along in order to further his own ends. I really wanted to hit home how annoying he finds the Harada as of right now. Izuku is everything Harada isn't, both the good and the bad. Of course, someone so confident and self-centered would find the nervousness and staunch selflessness of a person like Harada to be dreadfully meek. Even still, he's so selfishly inclined to get a challenge that he paradoxically helps someone in need despite the fact that he REALLY doesn't want to be there and would rather be doing anything else. Ironic, yes, but oddly perfect for his character in my opinion.

This also helped toward defining Izuku's relationship with Harada and, perhaps, showing how he is already affecting the person that basically took his original spot from him in the original story. Harada's hero worship of All Might was on full display just as much as Izuku's logical if arrogant proclamations of All Might's incompetence in an area where, admittedly, he is very lacking. With this extra training and interactions, I could see it very easily leading to a Harada that is both different from the Izuku of the original story AND the alternate one I put in mine.

I'm Falling, and I Couldn't Be Happier

Chapter Notes

I've got the rest of this fight posted on my website. You guys can read it here along with all of my other stories, including my original one, by going here:

https/sites./view/hrothgarlee/home

--

I've also got a youtube channel where I talk about storytelling in whatever way I find most interesting at the time. If you'd like to ride along for it, then head over there.

https//channel/UC4AVbYQb8O3OGTiyQUjb-sA

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Izuku was sitting in the dreaded middle seat of the bus that was taking them back to campus after a fucking boring field trip. Apparently, it was the duty of all heroes to not only protect civilians, but to save them too. That meant he had to spend an entire day participating in rescue scenarios. He basically did a whole bunch of shit that fell under the purview of other professions just because he was going to be a hero.

Well, forgive him if he wasn't jumping for joy.

Every day thus far had been a disappointment, some being worse than others. Today was, in many ways, just another shit show to add to his list. The only light at the end of the tunnel was his training sessions with Harada. It'd been about a week, and the boy was already noticeably better than he was before. These kinds of things took time, yes, but Izuku was of the opinion that the jump between being incompetent and being a novice was one of the most noticeable gaps in the metaphorical ladder of skill. Over time, he'd get better, smoother, and faster, but none of those improvements alone quite equated to no longer being absolutely useless.

Soon enough, he could feel it, Harada would be getting into the competition. The kid wasn't that far behind some of the dumbasses he'd fought in that first challenge. Until then, he decided to hunker down and try to weather the storm of mediocrity defined in an educational setting. His old school was undeniably worse than U.A., but this school was by far the most disappointing of the two. He had such high hopes only to end up with this.

Hopefully, Aizawa would be able to change his mind on that soon enough.

Looking over his two conversing teammates, he saw Engine-Legs himself glaring at him from across the bus. This, much more than the day he'd gone through, brought a smirk to his face and joy to his heart. Ingenium's brother, God fucking save him, was voted class president a bit ago. Now, he didn't give a single shit about who was the "leader" of his class so long as at least a few of them could manage to actually entertain him, but this opinion changed fast once the dickhead actually started doing the job he was assigned.

Izuku was fairly certain that everyone was on the same page about this kind of thing. The president was assigned the position, and everyone went on with their lives. That was how things were supposed to be. He was proven wrong when Motor-Boy stepped up to the bus today and pulled out a fucking sheet of paper to start assigning seats.

Izuku wanted to make it clear that he had no desire to sit next to anyone if he was being completely honest. Whatever idiot he had to endure for the ride there was inconsequential to him. Once his President turned into a tyrant, however, he got the only two people he could force to listen to him and dragged them onto the bus with him, taking the first seat he saw that wasn't the one given to him by his obviously power-hungry classmate.

Just to shove the point home further, he decided to take someone else's seat on the way back in case the Ingenium wannabe decided to try and plan a new seating chart around where he'd chosen to sit on the first trip. Judging by the look he was currently receiving, Izuku rather giddily thought he might've hit the nail on the head. He was sure Japan would be pleased with his efforts of resistance against the oppressive regime that seemed to be brewing right at the heart of his beloved country's most esteemed school.

When the bus blessedly pulled into its spot, he got up as soon as it was possible and exited the vehicle. It had unequivocally been one of the worst rides of his life. If he ever wondered why he hated public transportation so much, this served as the perfect response to that stupid question. His class was summarily dismissed, and he started to walk away only to notice that both Harada and Juzo were following behind him.

Sighing at their persistence, he decided that the only way to win this game was to simply not play at all. With that in mind, he pulled his hood over his head and began walking down the street. He had no idea where he was going. All he really knew was that there wasn't a chance in hell that he was showing those two idiots where he lived. If they ever learned that, his afterschool days of relative peace were certainly over.

That was why he decided to go get food and hopefully wait until the rest of his "companions" got bored enough with bothering him to leave. His location of choice turned out to be a small pizza shop that was close enough to U.A. to still be in the city while being far enough away from the student population to not be unreasonably crowded.

With a pizza box in hand and a resigned sigh, he took a seat in the center of the store. His two friends sat at the same table. His only consolation was the fact that he got the seat facing the door.

Small victories.

Time ticked on as he sat back in his chair and watched his two teammates do their homework. One of them was working on a math assignment that wasn't due for a week. The other, predictably, was working on a paper due tomorrow. Izuku personally had no desire to do anything at the moment. He'd already finished the things he needed to do for tomorrow, and he wasn't inclined to start anything due too much later when he had so much time. Blissful mediocrity, doing just enough to get by without expending anything truly substantial, was something of a motto for him. Actually trying, well, he'd get to that when it was actually required.

The sun eventually began to properly set when Izuku was beginning to think that, horrifyingly enough, Juzo and Harada seemed to have no intentions of leaving anytime soon. He was going to be stuck here all night with these asshats, and he knew it. He was just about to put his head down next to the empty pizza pan in dejection when the building trembled beneath his feet.

The vibrations made him instantly sit up in his chair. His curiously squinted eyes stared at the front of the store as many of the people in the shop dove under the tables. It didn't feel exactly like an earthquake to Izuku, not that he had much experience. No, this felt like something else. He was just about to get up from his seat when the most peculiar thing he'd ever seen flickered into existence right in front of the entrance to the pizzeria.

It was a speck of purple, and his eyes, for the first time in forever, had not even a category to put it in. This wasn't just something he'd never seen before; he literally had no point of reference to even tentatively define the type of object it was. His stare was so intense that his eyes almost hurt, but it still gave him nothing.

It looked almost like fabric, in a way, as if it was a torn piece of cloth fluttering in a breeze that managed to catch it. At the same time, it seemed ethereal and completely unaffected by the gentle circulation of air in the room or even gravity itself. Izuku felt like he could stare at it forever and not understand it for a second. It was so fucking fascinating to him that he couldn't help but lose himself in the tiny yet so very massive anomaly.

So entranced was he that he almost didn't react in time when the piece of otherworldly fabric expanded into a swirling, captivating circle of purple and black. Faster than he could blink, a mass of fog sprung from the unidentifiable object and began to rush across the room. He was so confused and genuinely shocked that he could only barely comprehend the fact that the setting sun's light was glinting off of a long, curved blade hidden within the mist.

And it was coming straight at him.

The mist cleared the table between Izuku and the door without losing even a modicum of speed. He was very lucky that his legs involuntarily shot up to the edge of the table and pushed. He fell back in his chair, even as the sword attempted to slice his neck wide open, and he rolled backward as he smacked against the ground, hopping to his feet and ignoring the pain in his back.

The conglomerate of mist slowly spilled over the table he'd been using, dripping onto the floor and crawling across the tile as it ominously loomed over the entire diner. Whoever was behind the mist, he couldn't see even a glimpse of them through the visual barrier, and that understandably put him on edge. Even still, he was immediately aware of when the mist lunged at him, both interestingly and thankfully not going after his less capable classmates.

His first instinct was to go for his blade. His few trials at U.A. thus far had unfortunately lulled him into the bad habit of expecting to be armed before a fight. Izuku held back a scowl at the fact that he was completely weaponless against whoever this bitch was. Not letting it affect him overly much, he allowed his eyes to follow the incoming blade as he reached behind him with his nondominant hand for an item that'd been placed on the table just a few minutes ago. He subconsciously thanked the fact that his eyes had been paying attention to the servers before the attack, but this was still going to hurt like a motherfucker.

He cringed as his left hand wrapped around the very hot pizza pan, but this was the only option he could see at the moment. He yanked it off the table behind him and swung it hard at the approaching blade that wanted to cut him from his right shoulder all the way down to his hip. The hard, heavy pan clashed with the sword and knocked it back. That was about the only advantage to using a scalding hot, greasy, deep-dish pizza pan as a weapon, but it served its single purpose surprisingly well. No longer wanting to hold the thing that was burning his hand, he tossed it right into the center of the mist and found himself smirking through the pain when he heard a distinctly feminine yelp come from the center of it.

So there was a solid body in there…

Reaching behind him with his unburnt hand, he whipped a metal chair from under the table and brought it to a sloppy, stuttering halt in front of him before unceremoniously shoving it into the mist with his foot. Apparently no longer distracted by having a scalding hot pan thrown at them, whoever was hidden in the mist jumped above the approaching chair, and they managed to reach a height that Izuku personally thought impossible for an unaltered human.

In fact, they jumped just high enough for Izuku to make a mad dash for the door, sliding under both her and the table his friends sat at without a second thought. Finally getting over their shock, Harada and Juzo were right on his tail. They were about to make it out when a fleck of purple just at the edge of his peripheral made his eyes shoot wide.

It popped open in an instant, and Izuku leapt over the table to his side as a truly humongous man charged through what he was now pretty sure had to have been a portal. The new arrival seemed confused by the situation but quickly honed in on his target as the boy rolled onto his feet. He charged with reckless abandon at the young teenager, bursting through the table his target hopped over and wrapping his gigantic hand around the boy's midsection as if grabbing a large doll.

Izuku stared at the man, freely allowing his eyes to dissect everything as he was manhandled by someone who had to have been at least twice his size. The man was a mutant; there wasn't a single doubt. His entire body was covered with a startling amount of large muscles. He looked maybe bigger than All Might, and that was worth bragging rights in Izuku's opinion.

More important than the muscles was the crimson red hue of his skin. It made him look almost like a demon, and that theme was continued with the diamond slits that acted as his pupils. The man's irises were a deep yellow, and his teeth looked more like shark's than anything human or even canine in nature. The only thing that could've made it better was if he had a tail because it would be both badass and much more interesting to fight than a very large person.

Perhaps he should've been worried, and maybe he would've been if this wasn't so much better than what he'd just gotten at school. Honestly, he felt just a bit underwhelmed because, for everything that Izuku observed about the man, the most crucial part of his investigation was that those two diamond eyes were staring right into his own.

His irises swirled with deadly intent, and he smiled in a way more reminiscent of a snarl or a seer than anything truly filled with joy when the mutant started screaming and dropped him as if he were made of hot coals. That was an accurate statement considering he'd basically turned himself into the world's most overcooked hot potato in the man's mind. He hoped his large opponent appreciated it because he endured a lot of pain and even more punishment from his mother when he decided to hover his hand over a candle flame in order to truly and fully comprehend the feeling of getting burned.

Let nobody say he wasn't dedicated to his craft.

The man's screaming only got more desperate as Izuku ramped up the pain, pushing it further up the fucker's arm every few seconds or so. He was almost starting to feel bad when it got to the point that the mutant was starting to smash things in his fruitless thrashing. He actually considered just putting the guy out of his misery for a second. It was a little pathetic, watching someone so physically intimidating writhe around on the floor like a pathetic worm.

"Would you please use your head?" came the firm voice of someone behind him that he knew shouldn't have been there. "You know none of these kids have a quirk like that."

Izuku turned around to see a rather tall, somewhat slim teenager standing on the other side of the shop with a humanoid forged of the same material as those portals that'd been transporting his enemies one after another. The teen had a mask that looked like a hand grasping his face, and his eyes peered dispassionately through the cracks between a few of his mask's fingers.

Izuku then glanced at his first attacker, who seemed to have been perfectly fine with sitting where he'd left it while their ally was falling apart. He'd initially thought that it was coincidence, the fact that the one trying to kill him with a sword just happened to have such a convenient ability. After hearing those words, he had a suspicion that there was more to it. This was confirmed when the mutant's screams suddenly turned into little more than heavy breaths and pained groans.

His control was broken…

He squinted his eyes and looked at the one who helped his victim out of the illusion, and he noticed that, while the teenager was looking back, there was no eye contact made. These guys knew his quirk and presumably the ones belonging to his two partners. This situation was getting dicey very quickly. He couldn't help the smirk that grew on his face.

This… this was everything he'd been hoping for.

"And how did someone like you find out about my quirk?" Izuku asked the teenager casually, as if this was little more than a pleasant conversation between acquaintances.

The teenager shrugged. "Your school's security is lax, and I have portals."

Izuku chuckled at the teen's cheekiness as he confidently leaned up against the table he had to his back, not once losing track of a single opponent's position thanks to his eyes. He was with two students who were rather shit at combat, he had no weapons, and there were four enemies to deal with. One had a soft counter to his quirk, the other had fucking portals, the third was a god damn giant, and the fourth was an unknown. He wasn't sure which one posed the biggest threat to him, and this entire situation was starting to make him vibrate with glee. His hand very subtly wrapped around a metal fork that was left at one of the tables by guests who were either cowering in the corner or running chaotically in the streets outside.

Well, he supposed he wasn't completely unarmed.

The demon was still attempting to collect himself while he laid against the floor. In the absence of knowing who posed the biggest threat, the obvious move was to go for the most vulnerable. Luckily, the possession of that quality wasn't unknown.

"Is that right?" Izuku asked without a care in the world, carefully tapping Harada's arm while significantly glancing at one of the chairs under the table he rested upon and the two he was conversing with. "You hear that, Purple!? I guess your quirk belongs to Hand Job now. Either you're the biggest pushover I've ever seen, or you actually enjoy being a freak's little bitch."

Izuku didn't necessarily want to get a rise out of the portal guy, but it did put a mild damper on his fun when the yellow eyes of the portal monster didn't even squint at the jab. Instead, the humanoid mass of purple and black differed to the teenager. It was him, it seemed, that had the first and last say on things here.

"Oh, you've got a mouth on you, brat," the teenager said, laughing all the way. "But I think it's time to put your sarcasm to the side and come quietly. You stand no chance here. Resisting will only make it wor-"

He was cut off by a metal chair flying across the room at his face. It was fast, very fast, and it was tossed by the most unassuming member of their group. The timid-looking boy with the black hair apparently had quite an arm on him, even without his self-destructive and mostly harmless quirk. He'd incorrectly assumed that his target's third teammate was going to be worse than useless at this point. In fact, he was actually shocked that the little bastard hadn't already broken his bones in a desperate attack that Kurogiri was going to deal with when it came.

Someone taught the kid restraint, and that begged the question of what else he'd learned.

Not really caring about the chair in the slightest, he began to approach the trio as Kurogiri opened a portal between them and the chair. It flew in at startling speeds, and it came out of a portal that subsequently opened right above the childrens' heads. It was more of a test than anything. He thought that the third child was going to be easy pickings, but the second was possibly dangerous. Anyone that had substantial training with a reputable hero wasn't to be underestimated.

He was proven right when the boy immediately noticed the portal and lifted a single hand to deal with it. He was curious how the boy planned to handle it, and he wasn't disappointed when the chair was turned to liquid immediately upon impact with the boy's hand. As the liquid splashed onto the ground around the boy's feet and slid across his clothes like water over plastic, Shigaraki noticed that their actual target was halfway through a sprint toward the muscle for their mission.

It was a good idea, he supposed, especially when the situation was so dire. Unfortunately, Shigaraki had no intention of letting the boy take out someone on his payroll so easily. He didn't even need to tell Kurogiri to interfere before the boy found himself running into a portal too large to dodge at his speed. When the kid was spat out across the room where his second hired hand could attempt to contain him, he decided that the two pieces of collateral had overstayed their welcome by a good half-minute.

Luckily, he could fix that.

"Juzo!" his target exclaimed from across the room as he barely managed to escape having his left leg chopped off.

Shigaraki was tempted to simply begin his plan of blitzing the two students and turning them to dust, but he forced himself to stop when he saw the deadly smirk on the skeleton boy's face. His Sensei didn't spend so long teaching him to use his brain only for him to stop at the most crucial spot. The boy raised his hands over his head, and Shigaraki shot through a good five or six things that the proclaimed "Juzo" might've been commanded to do. The one thing he knew for sure, however, was that he was going to need to touch the floor if he wanted to do anything truly damaging to his plan.

"Kurogiri," was Shigaraki's calmly given response to Izuku Midoriya's own command.

Understanding immediately, a purple portal was opened right beneath the boy's hands. When he pushed them toward the floor, most likely hoping to turn most or all of the building to liquid, they were instead pushed through Kurogiri's portal and left to wave around in the very center of the room where touching something was impossible.

Chuckling to himself, he took off toward the two, and his amusement didn't end when he saw the panicked skeleton attempt to yank his hands from the portal only to realize that he wasn't going to get there in time. Not wanting to tunnel his vision too much on his victims when an active opponent was still on the scene, he spared a mere moment to glance at the boy he needed to capture. He was told not to underestimate the kid, and, while he hadn't seen too much yet, he wasn't going to ignore advice given to him by someone like Sensei.

What he saw disturbed him.

He knew the kind of face he wanted to see. There were many variations, and he'd seen almost all of them personally. He thought that maybe he'd see the terror of a student suddenly being confronted with the fact that all of them were doomed. There was a possibility that he'd see the hopeless dejection of a skilled but arrogant child that knew he was about to lose to someone better. Maybe, he'd even get to see the remorse and horror of someone about to lose a friend.

He didn't expect glee.

It was a smile that he'd rarely seen on a person before. It wasn't the kind he saw on the naive or kind, and it wasn't one of amusement or contentment either. Despite this, he knew it intimately well… because it was one he'd often worn himself. It was the perverse, twisted grin of someone who knew they were getting something they desperately wanted despite being intimately aware of just how disgusting it was that they desired it. For him, it was when he stood above an opponent that'd just realized they'd been outplayed, bested, and that there was nothing they could do about it.

This boy, apparently, was feeling the same thing now.

That was monumentally bad. Just what was it he wanted? Was it the death of his friends? If that was the case, then his target had been extremely misjudged by both himself and his teacher.

"HARADA!" Izuku Midoriya shouted.

Before Shigaraki could blink at the unexpected command, a blast of violent air was demolishing everything between himself and the two students as it hurried on its way to tear him to shreds as well. A purple portal as tall as the building opening right in front of his face was the only thing that kept him from dying, and he knew it. That was, of course, the plan for the boy. He simply wasn't expecting the brat to be so conservative with its usage and beholden to his target's strategic demands.

A portal was undoubtedly opened above the building to send the pressurized air into the sky where it would harmlessly die. That was all according to plan. Unfortunately, Kurogiri couldn't deal with the second one sent straight at the floor when he had such a large set of portals already open. He, along with everyone else in the building, attempted to brace himself.

It did nothing.

The blast of air obliterated the floor, crushed the walls, sent the roof careening into the air, and sent everyone else flying too. It was an impossibility to remain aware of exactly where he was when he was sent painfully tumbling across the ground. His roll was blessedly stopped by a rough impact with what he assumed to be another building, but he wasn't about to complain. Well, that wasn't necessarily true, but he was far too focused on the fuckery of his current target and his shockingly obedient friends than he was with whatever the hell got in the way of his haphazard tumbling.

Izuku was in much the same boat physically speaking. He was thankfully in a position across the store from Harada, which meant he was sent into the building directly next to the pizza shop instead of all the way across the street from it, but that didn't make things less disorienting for him. As he was standing up, however, he still found a smile plastered onto his face. This was the first time he could remember actually being cornered.

He'd been on his backfoot, at a disadvantage, and in positions where he was closer to losing than he was when he'd called for Harada. Never, though, had he found himself left with so few options. Even when he was close to losing, there was always that subtle knowledge in the back of his head that told him he still had more to give. To think that someone so exhilaratingly good literally just appeared out of midair.

With a tiny groan, he started to stand up, using the building behind him for support. Well, technically, he stood up about halfway before he was bodily lifted through the rest of it and then five more feet or so for good measure. His breath was driven from his lungs as he was pulled forward and then slammed against the rough surface of the building sitting at his back. Despite his lack of oxygen, his open eyes were working perfectly fine. He was grinning through the pain without a problem as he gazed at the gigantic mutant holding him up by his hoodie. This time, the thug wasn't looking him in the eyes. Well, it seemed like the guy could learn, even if he apparently didn't get the initial memo along with everyone else that'd been fighting him today.

"You thought you could burn my fuckin' arms, huh?" the mutant asked in a deep, rumbling voice.

"Well," Izuku squeaked out through his almost empty lungs. "Technically, I didn't burn you."

He was rewarded for that comment by getting once again slammed against the building. This time, it was almost hard enough to crack the concrete. He was only slightly dizzy as he smiled like a loon at the other man. Still, the thug refused to look at him properly. Izuku wheezingly chuckled at that, and he clenched his right hand around the only thing he had left to fall back on.

Well, creativity and resourcefulness were always what he'd thought of as his strong suits… Nobody would be arguing after this.

"What's the matter?" he asked the man attempting to kill him by using his body as a battering ram against a skyscraper. "Looking at your feet is a sign that you're lacking in self confidence. It's hard to be intimidated by someone so shy."

Infuriated by the boy's humor, arrogantly secure in his own power over the situation, and incensed by his perceived injuries under the influence of an illusion, the mutant got in really close. His face came in so far that the air from his low, raspy whisper brushed uncomfortably against Izuku's skin.

"We'll see how long you're laughing soon enough, boy ," he growled, still refusing to look at the kid's face.

It was due to this intelligent refusal to look up that the mutant missed the flash of metal that belonged to the eating utensil Izuku had palmed from the pizzeria table before Harada literally decommissioned the existence of their current location. If he was looking closer and paying more attention, he might've caught the wide grin on the boy's face. To be fair, he didn't have a lot of reasons to be worried. There wasn't anything immediately lethal that the boy could've taken from a pizzeria of all places…

Izuku felt a savage, unhinged sort of elation shoot through his chest as he reared his arm back and drove the three spikes of the fork he'd appropriated into the center of the mutant's right fucking eye. His heart was pounding in his chest, and this sharp sort of painful chill settled in his very core as a strange, foreign anxiety and blessed desperation culminated along with the horrific sight of what he'd just done to another human being. His eyes memorized every bit of the scene, from the blood gushing against his skin to the torn, shredded flesh of the eye he'd just demolished.

The mutant tried to drop him out of reflex, probably because he desperately wanted to wrap his hands around his injured eye. Izuku, however, refused to release his hold. As soon as he felt the man slacken his grip in the slightest, Izuku wrapped his other arm around the mutant's head, clutching the man to his chest and clinging to the mutant's torso with his legs as he continued to mercilessly force the fork in as deep as it could go. This, of course, meant that the mutant's hands found their way to him instead of his eye.

Being thrown off wasn't an option for him if he wanted to take his strongest opponent out of the equation, so he torqued his improvised weapon up, driving the man's head backward and leveraging his weight as much to the top of his victim as possible. The mutant quickly fell over his feet, incapable of fighting against the force being applied to him while in so much agonizing pain. The mutant's back smacked harshly against the ground with Izuku now bearing down on top of him.

Still, the grotesque struggle continued. It looked as if the mutant was going to be able to bodily throw him off now that he had some leverage. That was why Izuku, working on vicious instinct alone, yanked the fork back to its original, perpendicularly aligned position, balled up his fist, and violently hammered the thing in with everything he had.

The man went suddenly still…

The sight was visceral, repulsive, especially to one with eyes as hungry as his. He couldn't get the images out of his fucking head, not even when he clumsily crawled off of the giant and emptied his guts on the ground. Every sordid detail of the things he'd just done were branded into his brain, and he knew he'd never wash them away.

A slightly hysterical laugh leapt from his mouth.

At the same time… He'd never felt anything like his, bar none. This wasn't something he'd simply forgotten about over his time with a quirk or a feeling that he'd just reclaimed; this was entirely new. This primal, almost animalistic feeling ripping through his chest was something he'd never even imagined before. There were no limits for those few seconds he'd just lived through. There wasn't a barrier in sight, nothing holding him back, and no feeling of dreadful mundanity to be found.

It felt horrible, but he felt so very good .

A slow, rhythmic clapping sound from his left made Izuku look up, and he saw that the teenager who was leading the attack managed to regain his senses in time to catch the show. His eyes, however, did their thing as always, and he stumbled over to the curved sword that sat against the ground. Next to it was an unconscious female. She was a mutant, much like the guy he just killed, but she was much more animalistic than demonic.

Two wings with white feathers sprouted from her back, explaining how she'd managed to jump so high over the chair he'd shoved at her earlier. Her legs, following the trend, were avian instead of human, presumably up to her hip but undoubtedly up to at least her mid-thigh given the fact that her rather revealing choice of clothes hid none of her mutated features below that point. Ignoring the information, even as his eyes forced him to acknowledge them, he stood back up with the sword on hand.

Almost incomprehensible through the whirlwind of euphoria and sickness, he whipped around to face the teenager. His eyes told him that the young man was very intrigued, and his stance suggested someone who felt confident and firmly in control. He ignored that information too as he lunged with his sword in hand. He didn't care for heavily curved blades either, much preferring the feel of his sleek, snappy katana, but none of that mattered now, not when he was riding on the tidal wave of conflicting emotions welling within him.

The teen wasn't expecting him to attack so soon, especially considering how talkative Izuku was at the beginning of the fight. That was made obvious by the way the villain's eyes widened behind his mask as his clapping came to a very sudden halt. Taking advantage of the curved blade, he made for a smooth, clean cut across the villain's midsection. He was close to cutting the guy open when his eyes saw a speck of purple fabric pop into existence between his sword and his target.

A delirious smile exploded on his face.

His slightly wider, flowy stance that he was using for the sword immediately snapped into the more compact stance he normally preferred as his blade froze in the air. His shoes scraped against the concrete as he twisted the opposite direction and shot his back foot right into the teen's gut. He drew it back immediately, not waiting to revel in the way his impact caused the boy to bend over from the pain. Ignoring the blade in his possession, Izuku looked right into the yellow eyes of the mist-man as he used his free hand to tug the teen's head up by the back of his shaggy hair before smashing the hilt of his weapon right into the villain's face, knocking his head back and sending him to fall against the ground.

Izuku sneered at the portal fucker as the teen rolled onto his stomach, his forhead pressed against the ground between two arms that were cradling his vibrating head. It was obvious that the one with the portal quirk was there explicitly to protect his younger boss, and damn it if he wasn't annoying to deal with.

The teen's bodyguard messed with his quirk because of how instantaneously he could create his gateways. His eyes worked best with things in motion. He could predict velocity and acceleration like it was nothing. Bullets, punches, dynamic movement, that was his shit. When a purple dot just opened in the air where it pleased, there was nothing to predict, so he only had the advantage of knowing exactly when it was going to form.

There was only one flaw he'd found within the portals, and the fact that he managed to get a hit on Hand-Face proved it. The villain had trouble making portals in tight places. It wasn't a problem to portal a chair when he could see it coming or even deal with something like Harada's initial shockwave, Juzo's hands, or his sword. Once he got in close, however, he could get to work. His hits were too fast for the villain to stop them on reaction, so it instead became a game of prediction.

Those kinds of games were hard to play against someone like him.

"FUCK!" the blue-haired villain yelled as he slammed a fist ineffectively against the concrete.

Izuku couldn't help but laugh at the tantrum being thrown in front of him. Even when the teen sprung to his feet and attempted to rush him in a furious explosion of movement, he felt that strange, wrong sort of giddiness rising in his chest. It didn't really hit him until he'd slaughtered that mutant bastard, the difference between how he normally fought and the reality he now found himself in. He couldn't tell even a few minutes before that there used to be a wall subtly but strongly standing at the height of his potential.

It was the barrier that stood between what he knew he could do and what he was intent on using in any given situation. He wasn't aware how terrific it would feel to have that wall crumble because here, in this moment, it no longer existed. It felt like he could truly stretch his limbs for the first time, and that lack of restriction was not only new but blissfully freeing. Every move the teen in front of him made was one that was explicitly meant to end him, and there was nothing stopping him from doing the same if the opportunity arose.

He'd been exploring the edges of his capabilities for his entire adolescence only to realize here that the boundaries he'd thought he understood were not even close to the edge of where he could travel. It was simultaneously terrifying and exciting for him to suddenly have so much more. Even through his musing, he found himself untouchable. The teen was fast, but he was unrefined and sloppy. It was obvious that his talents revolved around planning and strategy, not direct combat.

It was strange for him to not be disappointed by the lack of a challenge.

The next time the teen overextended a hand, he swept the boy's legs from under him and immediately focused his eyes on the hovering man of mist. As much as he'd enjoy finding out if he could cut an arm off with one swing, there was someone far more interesting who could help him test his new limits. He smiled at the impassive face of purple and yellow, immediately taking off toward him. The teenage leader of the four villains, recently made three, was forgotten completely.

Mist man seemed impassive toward his quick approach, but that didn't deter him in the slightest. He knew the teleporter was skilled enough with his quirk to try and stop him, and there was no way the villain was going to let him in close range. This suspicion was proven correct when the speck of purple formed directly in front of his path. His first instinct was to try jumping over it to keep his momentum going, but he forced himself to remain calm and hop in a perpendicular direction from his target in order to get around the portal, loading his feet against the ground before taking off again.

Vertically jumping wasn't a good idea here, not when the villain seemed to be capable of placing his portals pretty much anywhere he wanted. Izuku couldn't dodge them if he was in the air. It was harder to make progress when he had to keep stopping, yes, but running through a portal just because he was impatient didn't bode well for his health.

When he was solely focussing on avoiding the mist man's portals while making forward progress, it turned out to not be too difficult. He was steadily getting closer, making more headway every second, until a portal opened up to reveal the teenager he didn't want to fight right now lunging for him with everything he had. He found himself forced to hop backward in order to avoid the reaching hand. Unfortunately, he jumped straight into a portal.

He was right; the teen's strength was most definitely strategy.

As he slipped through the purple mist for the second time that day, he was shocked to find himself precariously high in the air and falling at decidedly unhealthy speeds. He respected their ingenuity. The two of them, when they were working together, were actually rather entertaining. Today was full of surprises.

Looking around for a moment, he wondered exactly how he was going to get out of this. He could've sworn that he'd thought of this eventuality and had something planned ou-

Shit, Juzo!

It took his eyes but a moment to find them. His two classmates were still attempting to recover from across the street, both of them having been the closest to Harada's blast. Two of Harada's fingers were, as expected, completely and utterly broken. Juzo, at least, was still in tip-top shape. The only problem was that the boy wasn't paying attention right now. Deciding that it was okay to lose a bit of a tactical advantage if the exchange was actually notifying his only option that didn't involve multiple broken bones to the situation he was in.

"JUZO!" Izuku shouted at the top of his lungs as he continued to fall.

He wasn't disappointed when the two students looked up at him and were only stunned for a moment before immediately jumping into action. A glance toward the two villains showed him that they'd momentarily forgotten about his teammates too. He was slightly worried about what mist-man was going to do because he knew that the teleporter had a knack for interrupting attacks through simple observation.

He was saved from further analysis when Harada raised his arm and braced himself while preparing to flick an unbroken finger. Now that he thought about it, there were quite a few people here who had a firmer grasp on tactics than actual combat. Harada was already catching onto things, and he was doing it at the same time as himself without the ability to see everything so clearly with his eyes.

The portal guy had his limits. Now, it was a choice between teleporting himself , intercepting Harada's attack, or interrupting Juzo's attempt to save him. Of course, the villain chose the only option that left him unmolested by the hurricane of pressurized air threatening to toss him into a skyscraper like little more than a ragdoll.

Izuku's smile widened as he found himself falling toward what was now a pool of softened concrete. Mist-man made his choice to stop Harada's attack, but there was a rather sneaky final option that the villain hadn't foreseen when he'd chosen to block Harada's quirk. Seeing his moment, he twisted himself in the air and loosed his sword before painfully splashing into the liquid pool below.

It zipped across the space between them and, while Kurogiri was preoccupied with Harada's attack, nailed the mist man right on the only solid spot that Izuku could identify: his metal chassis. The blade sadly didn't punch through the piece of armor, especially considering it wasn't built to stab things anywhere near as much as his katana. It did, however, knock the mist man onto his side, taking down the villain's portal at the same time. Harada's flick, unlike the portal intercepting it, wasn't quite finished.

The remaining burst of wind was allowed to sweep the two villains into the air, sending them crashing against whatever building managed to stop their flight. In the meantime, Izuku hauled himself out of Juzo's pool while he examined the fruits of his labor. Juzo and Harada immediately approached him, the latter of the two clutching the hand that had more than half of its appendages smashed to bits.

"Are you okay to keep going?" Izuku asked his hurting teammate.

The boy nodded, and Izuku smirked in return. The kid was a massive pushover most of the time, but Izuku was rather proud to say that his temporary protégé stepped the fuck up when things got serious. That, at the very least, he could say Harada had in spades.

Once he was assured that his teammates weren't about to keel over and die on him, he turned to face the general direction of his wayward opponents. The dust was still settling, so he assumed that the two villains were either still recovering or simply waiting until things cleared up before approaching again. Harada still had seven fingers to go, so he thought that it wasn't a great move to try a blitz until things cleared up enough for mist-man to properly intercept a pressurized attack.

"Where are the other two?" Juzo asked, and Izuku was suddenly reminded of the fact that they weren't aware enough to have seen what he'd done earlier.

"Well, the one with the sword passed out," he started, gesturing over to her. This, of course, led to everyone seeing the gigantic mutant that was dead on the ground just a bit behind her. "The big one… well… I took care of it."

" Shit, man," Juzo whispered. "Are you okay?"

Izuku didn't dignify that question with a response, mostly because he had no fucking clue. Processing this entire pile of shit was for later. Indulging in the hazy mess of emotions and using it to push him further in the fight held precedence at the moment. If he let himself critically think about the morality of feeling good about killing, then he wasn't sure exactly what was going to happen.

"You know," came a voice through the veil of dust and debris. "You little brats are really starting to piss me off."

"I'd like to remind you that it was you who picked this fight," Izuku mockingly drawled. "So It's kind of stupid to blame us for your messed up face."

" I couldn't care less about your scrawny ass, let alone picking a fight with you," the teen shot back. "But nothing comes for free, does it? We'll see whether or not you keep that tongue after Sensei is done with you."

"Oh, ominous, " Izuku said with a faux shiver in his voice. "But you two were just managing to make things interesting when it was two against one. Now, you've got Juzo and Air-Cannon here to worry about, and your portal guy isn't very good at stopping the latter."

The teen was strangely quiet for a few seconds before he started laughing. It was not a flattering sound. He thought it was about half psychotic, but it seemed to have grown from a place of genuine amusement, not some kind of crazed fit. Honestly, Izuku could somewhat relate. The thought of dealing with his teammates sometimes made him want to break down too. His astounding mental fortitude was the only reason he wasn't currently in the same boat.

"You're right, as much as it pains me to say it. We would've had you, but your black-haired friend has more control than we expected."

"Honesty is a virtue, Handsy," Izuku told him in a sardonically complementary tone. "So what makes you still think you can take us?"

He was answered by a frightening rumble that shook the very street beneath the soles of his shoes. It was the same one he'd felt before the attack, but it was much more intense, closer too. He already knew it wasn't an earthquake, but he didn't expect to ever be wishing that it was.

His eyes saw it first from about a block or so down the street. He wasn't even really sure what it was for a good few seconds. All he knew was that his eyes were seeing a multitude of minute cracks inexplicably forming across the surface of a skyscraper. The cause was completely invisible, even to his own eyes. That was, at least, until chunks of the building suddenly exploded outward as the massive form of All Might shot through it like a human missile. The skyscraper looked insanely close to collapsing right then and there. In fact, Izuku was absolutely certain it wasn't going to remain standing until an inordinate amount of concrete rose from the ground like a sentient tsunami, completely encasing a good half of the skyscraper in about ten seconds.

It was an impressive display of power and control, but it did precious little considering that the flying pieces of debris and All Might himself did just about the same amount of damage twice over again on the street below and the surrounding buildings. Well, at least Izuku now understood why there was no response from heroes or police in the vicinity of their fight. Almost all of them had to have either been attempting to contain the damage of All Might's fight or directly aiding in the combat. Compared to that, a little skirmish that only truly destroyed a single pizzeria was hardly a blip on the radar.

All Might, after busting up a skyscraper, was driven into the road as he slid across the street. Cars were sent flying into buildings due to nothing more than the force of his impact. A line was ripped through the pavement as he shot between Izuku's group and the two villains, conveniently and annoyingly interrupting their ability to reach each other. It was only a few seconds later that an even bigger person came soaring through the air, flying over the building All Might was sent through and denting what remained of the road around his landing spot when he came to a much more graceful stop than the man he'd presumably smacked over here.

No, wait, he took it back…

There was no fucking way that was a man. Transformation quirks were capable of creating some truly monstrous things, but he didn't think for a second that this was one of them. For one, its brain was completely exposed. Its hulking frame was truly impressive, but that was secondary compared to the fact that its face was split by what seemed to be an equal mix between a mouth and a beak. With Izuku's eyes, it was that he found himself focusing on more than anything. It was so strange, so other, that it hurt his head to even look at it.

His eyes almost frantically took the entire beast in, intently searching for even a sign of movement. The alarm bells in his head were set off by the fact that he saw literally none . It went further than standing completely still; the thing wasn't even breathing. It could've been a fucking statue if he hadn't seen it fly over a skyscraper and land on the street right in front of him.

"Yeah, I think we're done here," Shigaraki said mostly to himself. "Nomu… Kill him."

It was only when that final syllable left the teen's mouth that the thing called "Nomu" gave even a single twitch. Once it started to move, however, it was done in an explosion. It wasn't ergonomic; it wasn't even natural in the slightest. There was no loading of muscles or instinctual positioning of its body for maximum efficiency; it simply moved.

He saw it come in slow motion. It was, perhaps, the most dilated his perception of time had ever become. He could see every minute detail as the monster charged, not a single movement was missed. It was as if the thing was moving at an inch a second.

Izuku was excited.

This was what he was waiting for, the challenge that he needed to truly test him. It was extremely fast, but he could still see it. The monster was coming straight at him, and he suspected his eyes already had the thing made. If it was as mechanical as Izuku thought, this was going to be the easiest humanoid thing he'd ever attempted to dissect. It was almost perfect until he started to move himself only to stumble upon a terrifying realization.

He wasn't moving…

Izuku could see the monster, had its path mapped, and knew exactly what he needed to do. The problem was that he felt as though he was attempting to move in the midst of sleep paralysis. As that thing inched toward him, Izuku was completely and utterly incapable of moving even a centimeter. His dilation allowed him the ability to perceive its movements, but it was also so dilated that, in this scale, he was simply too slow to make any noticeable changes in his position.

For the first time in his entire life, Izuku saw something that he couldn't react to. It was simultaneously elating and horrifying, to watch his death come while knowing for a near certainty that there was no getting out of this. Unlike with Aizawa's little test, he wasn't without his quirk. This was him at his full potential, and he'd just found out that he wasn't good enough.

Was this how it ended?

Dying now, only just discovering how much more there was for him to explore and finally finding an opponent that was both willing to fight him and completely capable of winning, seemed almost as cruel as fate could've possibly been. Even still, it was a bittersweet moment for him. Yes, his end was slowly approaching at a speed that was almost incomprehensible, but this was something beyond what he'd ever hoped for. This moment, finding these feelings and experiencing this immensity of power and prowess, accomplished something he'd been striving toward for years, even when he was sure that he'd never actually get there.

Despite the amount of time that passed between the blink of an eye for him, the beast was upon him far too soon. Yes, it was cruel, but he accepted it with wide open arms. He just hoped that, as he died, that fucker with the blue hair knew that he'd won that fight until the big fucking bird-man came to the rescue. Throughout that entire time, only the very beginning of a smile was able to form on his previously shocked face. Death was standing next to him on the street, holding out its hand expectantly.

… It wasn't until a few moments later that Izuku realized Death wasn't waiting for him.

Just as it was coming close to murdering him where he stood, the beast blew past him and raised its fist. If it was even possible, time slowed even further. His eyes were the only things fast enough to follow along. He couldn't even twist his head to see it properly.

An eternity seemed to pass in a flash as he watched the monster's fist approach his teammate, and the fledgling image of his coming smile was stuck on his face, even as his mind went from a melancholic sort of elation to horror and desperation. This wasn't how it was supposed to end. He was the one that should've been the target. He was the threat.

But the consequences weren't choosing him.

Like a bolt from Zeus himself, the Nomu made contact. If his first kill was sickeningly lodged in his mind, this was like watching hell itself come to earth to infect just this one little spot. He watched his friend's head cave under the fist, saw the bones shatter as if his skull was a water balloon instead of a solid structure. His eyes obsessed over the way its knuckles went through the boy's face, turning his entire head to mush as blood and gore sprayed in every direction. The shockwave alone tore through the rest of the body before heading toward both himself and his remaining teammate, and, as he found himself careening away from the monster,

… Juzo's torso was left as little more than a bloody spatter on the blacktop.

Chapter End Notes

We've got a lot to talk about.

First, we've got Izuku being an ass at the beginning and begrudgingly hanging out with his friends. Everyone was probably expecting me to have the fight at the USJ because, honestly, EVERYONE does it. The amount of times that I've seen a fanfiction change the setting of the fight is astronomically low, and for the writer to actually change the time of the fight and make it something new and original is even rarer. That's why I wanted to let the scene sit for a second, with everyone knowing that we're suddenly in completely new territory, until the fight starts abruptly and right in the middle of a bunch of civilians.

The second thing is, of course, the fight itself and the motivation behind it. I wanted to make things a little bit more interesting by having some different motives in play besides "I want to kill All Might, and my super cool, OP Sensei gave me a monster I don't deserve to do it with." In this version, I have All For One actually insert some of his own motivation to the fight. Instead of just giving his apprentice the fucking All Might killer for free, he attaches some strings. Shigaraki does get the Nomu, but I'm pretty sure everyone can tell from what I had Shigaraki vaguely reveal that the price tag was Izuku. The answer to why should be obvious: his quirk is fucking insane. Of course, All For One would want it.

That one change basically led to all of these differences because instead of Shigaraki wanting to use the students to kill All Might, Shigaraki is using the killing of All Might as a distraction to get to Izuku. This has many advantages for the story. First and foremost, it makes the fight much more intense and personal than the original. My main gripe with the USJ fight was that there was basically nothing intense in most of the fights. The minions were fodder, and everybody just whipped ass for no reason except for the people that were directly fighting against Kurogiri and Shigaraki. Their fights might as well have not happened, so that's the exact route I took. I eliminated the useless fights against useless villains, and had the main-fucking-characters have a straight up, intense brawl with some serious, heavy-hitters.

Third, Izuku and his emotions play a huge role in this fight. I wanted to have him start off elated that he's finally getting a real fight after so long. I really wanted to ramp it up, with Izuku getting more reckless and taking more risks as the fight goes on because of his desire to get that challenge, that high. That comes to a crescendo when he actually fucking kills the mutant villain. I wanted to show that sharp sort of feeling that came with him being so brutal and violent as he experiences ending someone's life, but I wanted to have that mix with his extremely unhealthy desire for a challenge and new experiences, and, of course, I wanted to top it off by having Izuku legitimately struggle with the fact that he, in some ways, enjoyed killing someone because of the way it gave him something he craved so badly.

Finally, we come to the elephant in the room. Juzo is killed at the end of the chapter.

Throughout this story, I wanted Izuku's little song and dance to pull Juzo in more and more, dragging him along behind our main character until it ends with him paying the price when Izuku's dangerous world-view inevitably makes everything collapse. It's so painfully perfect that Izuku believes himself to be infallible, constantly searching for something or someone that can beat him, only for someone else to get killed when he's finally proven wrong. I noticed in the comments that, ironically, some people shared in the sort of invulnerable arrogance that Izuku has. Some wanted Izuku to get his ass beat by the Nomu, to finally have his shit thrown right in his face, and that's understandable, but it's also so very similar to his mindset, treating a real fight like a game with no consequences.

It's not even really the audience's fault but the writer's. Fights are often treated like nothing more than learning experiences, where the result is just them failing at worst and growing from it. That's why I tried to set up the scene as cliche as possible, with the world slowing down as death approaches, and I really do hope all of you thought that All Might was, of course, going to save the day at the last second because that's what ALWAYS happens... but it didn't this time because my characters aren't invulnerable, and I think it's important for a story to establish that, especially in a story that revolves around a character struggling with these very concepts.

Unquenchable

Chapter Summary

Izuku's fight comes to its conclusion.

Chapter Notes

I've been working hard, guys!

On top of the two new stories I've posted, I'm also working on two new original stories that I'm hoping to eventually get to a publishable state as I work on them alongside the stories I've got going on right now. The first of which some of you may know from my early days here when it got deleted from AO3 because I dared to advertise my own intellectual property. Whatever, I'm passed it now, and the story has been revamped and is on its way, slowly but surely.

Both of them can be found on my website though the second original story will take a day or two to go up while I create the page for it and correctly orient it, and the next chapter of this story can be found there as well. You just have to go right here:

https/sites./view/hrothgarlee/home

See the end of the chapter for more notes

His mind was surprisingly blank as he tumbled his way through the air. His eyes were working like they always did, but its observations were skimming his brain like water washing over a windshield. It was impossible to concentrate with the remains of Juzo's body stuck in the crevices of his mind. It was sickening, so impossibly wrong that he couldn't condense it in a way that made sense.

Even still, he kept tabs on the monster that sent him flying. His eyes weren't much hindered by the fact that he was currently flipping head over heel like a ragdoll; they patched things together no matter how inconsistent his line of sight was. It paused after the follow-through, its body soaked in Juzo's gore as its head twitched to stare at his soaring body.

Its feet tore the ground to shreds as it violently twisted and shot at him with every ounce of speed it had. Despite himself, a thrilling spike of adrenaline hit him the moment it took off. His stomach lurched, and he wasn't sure if he hated the monster or himself more for making him enjoy this after what it did. The thing blitzed him despite the fact that he was currently about ten feet in the air, and he felt that absolutely blissful constriction of his chest that came with having his back against the wall.

He could only be thankful that he was already flying away from the "Nomu", so he wasn't quite as helpless as he was before. It was far faster than him, but his body, flying at the speed it was, at least meant he wasn't frozen. It was going to reach him soon, but his eyes were telling him that he was going to hit a building just before it got to him.

It's hand was outstretched and open, as if it wanted to catch him instead of flatten him. The blue-haired fuck apparently wasn't lying about his master wanting him for something. Gritting his teeth, he spread his arms and worked to fight against his wild spinout. It wasn't possible to get himself facing a consistent direction, but it was possible to manage the spinning just enough to get his feet to make contact against the wall of the skyscraper first.

Folding into the momentum, he allowed himself to fall against the wall, rolling along his back and popping himself off to the side as he felt the outside of the Nomu's fingers brush across the fabric of his pants before his new velocity pulled his legs away. He was falling to the street fast, too fast for him to safely land without somehow dispersing the force. He wanted to maybe pull it into a back handspring to build some distance, but his eyes were telling him how hopeless it was.

A million ways of diverting his land flashed through his brain, and every single one of them ended with inevitable defeat. The very thought of it made a thrilling shiver run up his body, and it mixed in a truly disgusting way with Juzo's murder, which was still floating around in the back of his head. He wanted to laugh, scream, and puke at the exact same time, but all he could do was use the ground as a springboard and give himself the maximum amount of time possible.

Unlike the last time Nomu tried to blitz him, Izuku was certain the hand was coming for him this time. His brain wasn't accepting it like it did before though, not now, not when Juzo paid the consequences for his loss. It couldn't end like this, but he knew it was going to.

… until it didn't

Like a bolt of green lightning straight out of hell, the form of Izuku's third and temporarily forgotten partner blasted straight over his head. With unbridled fury and ungodly determination twisting Harada's face into something that was both terrifyingly ugly and majestically demented, the kid soared past the monster's shoulder, his hand extended behind him so he could stick it in the thing's mouth.

The Nomu's jagged teeth sliced into Harada's fingers as he clutched its upper jaw in a death grip. Stretching its beak wide open, the kid dragged it into the air behind him, violently twisting his body to lob it like a discus. The monster broke the sound barrier when it took flight, releasing a nasty snap that painfully reverberated around Izuku's skull.

It flew far above the streets, clearing the skyscrapers completely as it disappeared into the sky. Izuku could scarcely fucking believe it. The speed and force of Harada's attack was beyond anything he'd seen before, and that included both videos of All Might and the Nomu's first attack. Fuck shattering a skyscraper; that kind of power was record breaking.

That was, of course, when Harada collapsed into a limp heap of shredded flesh and ground bone. Strength like that didn't come for free, and Harada had yet to pay the price in sweat and tears, so he paid with his skeletal structure instead. Still, for a second there, Harada was actually impressive, and that was worth something.

Izuku was about to say something that was probably - maybe - vaguely complimentary when a purple portal expanded right above Harada's prone form. He was moving before it'd even grown to full size, and he watched the blue-haired fuck that had control of the Nomu dropping from it, intent on killing the kid who had manhandled his only hope of victory. Izuku pulled himself out of a dead sprint, skidding across the blacktop on a single foot as he loaded his knee against his torso.

Throwing it out with just about everything he had, he jammed the sole of his shoe into the side of Handy-man's rib cage. The satisfying impact did little to calm his chaotic mind. He hadn't even made a conscious decision to attack. His body, well…

it'd just kind of moved on its own.

Handsy was sent tumbling across the road a few times before he came to a stop, and Izuku could practically feel the poisonous fury emanating from his opponent through the moan of pain he let loose. Izuku chanced a look at the only teammate he had left, one that'd just undoubtedly saved him from a very shitty fate, and saw that Harada was down for the count, just barely conscious. If Izuku didn't perform now, Harada would surely die.

The villain slowly struggled to his feet, his hands clutching the spot Izuku had introduced to his foot. By the way he was standing, Izuku's eyes were certain that something was broken, possibly multiple somethings. All he could bring himself to feel about it, though, was a raw, simmering rage that refused to settle.

"I'm going to break you," Izuku promised, giving a truly malevolent scowl to the one that'd pulled the metaphorical trigger on his dead teammate.

"That doesn't sound very heroic, kid," the teen spat in response. "All of you arrogant pieces of shit are exactly the same."

Not caring much for the bastard's opinion, he ran forward, coming just close enough to throw a kick at the teen's head. The fuck took a step backward, retreating from his attack, but his ribs weren't allowing him to move with much vigor. Once both of his feet were on the ground, he approached with lightning fast jabs, forcing the bastard to move his hands away from his ribs to block lest he get pummeled. It was when the guy finally moved both of his hands away and pushed his jab to the side that Izuku pulled it around and threw a hook right into the fuck's broken ribcage.

He watched Handsy almost collapse as a yelp leapt from his mouth without consent, and he took that time to land a solid cross right to the nose. He was about to go in for more when a blast of air somewhere across the city was followed by the gigantic bird monster suddenly blurring into existence by his side, courtesy of the fact that he hadn't been looking in that direction before it arrived. The damn thing had apparently managed to land, and it was now coming right back for him. His panicked curse was about to get interrupted by the monster's hand claiming him when the arrival of the number-fucking-one allowed him to finish it.

A wide, dangerous grin grew on his face.

"It's about damn time, All Might," he ground out as he continued to glare at the teen, who was making a very ugly face at the new arrival.

The Nomu and All Might struggled against one another in a grapple so fierce that the road they were standing on couldn't take the stress. It attempted to slip past the man with an arm and snatch him with a move so quick he could only hope to watch it, but all that managed to do was gain it a vicious punch in the face from the world's strongest hero. The two looked to be an even match, which was a truly terrifying thought, but that meant amazing things for him now.

"Young man, you must leave now!" All Might attempted to command him.

"Just don't let that thing touch me, old man!" he shouted over the sound of their fighting. "I've got this."

Not deeming their conversation worthwhile anymore, Izuku went back to his onslaught. As he continued to wear down his opponent, the two freaks of nature blurred around them, creating impacts that threatened to send him flying if All Might wasn't making sure to keep the blasts at just the right angle to merely buffet them with the wind. Their speed was actually messing with his eyes a lot. All Might's fight was obviously the most threatening one, and his eyes wanted to latch onto it without reprieve, but his fight was operating at a level that was actually human, meaning he was constantly switching from insanely acute dilation to normal speeds on a consistent basis.

Despite that annoyance, he was picking the fucker apart with sadistic meticulousness, drawing out the fight just to increase the pain he could dish out. To make matters worse for his new victim, All Might's fight was making it literally impossible for the bodyguard to make his portals. The villain's leader was stuck in the middle of a blinding whirlwind with nothing but a merciless Izuku facing him in the center of it. Isolated from help and injured, Izuku beat him to a level that bordered the line of torture, and it still wasn't enough.

Having reduced the villain to a limping, bleeding mess, Izuku stepped in close and threw out his elbow, lashing the teen across his cheek and sending him stumbling back. He chuckled at the way his opponent almost fell onto his ass, just barely keeping his balance, and he moved in to end it with a brutal hook when the villain shockingly found the awareness to cradle the side of his head and take the hit on his bicep. Before he could pull it back, a crazed, bloody smile met him as the villain snatched his forearm out of the air, gripping his skin so tightly that it stung.

With one hand currently trapped, he went in with his other, attempting to beat his injured opponent off of him before he found himself in a grapple with someone bigger than him. His brilliant tactic unfortunately resulted in the teen grabbing his other arm, and the two of them were now staring at one another, the more injured of the two with a grin so wide that it was almost splitting his face in two.

Izuku was about to go in with a knee when his eyes realized something very alarming. The stinging, as it turned out, was not from the teen's grip strength. His skin was cracking underneath the villain's hands, slowly decaying before his very eyes. He instinctively tried to yank them away, but he was locked in by a surprising amount of strength.

A half-delirious, completely demented chuckle met his ears as thick, viscous blood dripped from the villain's lips. With his arms disintegrating more by the second, Izuku gave the teen a disgustingly animalistic grin that matched the villain's tit for tat. There was no way he was pulling himself out of this one, so there was only one option left.

"You want to hold onto me!?" Izuku growled as the muscles in his arms crumbled. "Fine!"

Pulling his head back, he bashed it right into the teen's face. He felt the villain's nose break under his forehead, but the grip didn't lessen, so he pulled it back again. Four times, he smashed their skulls together, each one taking a bit of strength away from his enemy until the guy fell to his knees from the vertigo, still just barely hanging on. With his arms in tatters, Izuku finally managed to pull himself free as he stumbled to the side from the exhaustion wracking his body.

"NOMU!" the teen screamed with his back arched and his head tilted to the sky, too weak to even hold it up.

Raising his foot above his head, Izuku brought it down like an ax, slamming his heel into the villain's face. Just like that, the guy collapsed, and his fight was over. The boy's desperate call, however, resulted in the Nomu opening its abomination of a beak and sinking its teeth into All Might's shoulder, forcing the man to release the grapple they were in. Far faster than a bullet, the Nomu flickered across the street, wrapping its hands around its master and dropping him right into mist-man's lap.

Not a fucking chance!

Izuku tried to get there before the bodyguard could make a portal, but he didn't think he could make it. Its single-minded effort to save its master, though, was the only thing All Might needed. The hero flashed down the street, blowing sections of buildings to bits from the sheer force of his sprint. He was smart with his target too, attempting to blow away the leader and his bodyguard in the hopes of either disabling the monster or killing it once its master was dead, but the Nomu was just fast enough to intercept him, and Izuku could see the infuriated scowl that replaced All Might's ever-present smile for an almost imperceptible space of time before he was forced to switch targets.

Knowing that there was nothing left to do but take the sacrifice as it was given, All Might flattened his hand and pierced through the monster's skull like his fingers were a spear. The thing wasn't even capable of screaming before the number one's arm shot through the other side, brain matter clinging to the space beneath his nails. The portal was already long gone by the time he pulled his hand free, and the beast dropped limply to the street as All Might's bloodstained arm fell to his side.

In an instant, the man turned around, getting ready to rush to his aid, but Izuku's vision was already going hazy. With his fluttering eyelids finally losing the strength to stay open, Izuku fell too, his consciousness just as gone as the villains.

Chapter End Notes

There isn't a ton to talk about as far as analysis goes in this chapter. All of that good shit will come in the next, when Izuku deals with the aftermath of everything.

The one thing I will mention is that I really wanted to give Harada his chance to shine in this fight. He's been a surprisingly efficient ally thus far, mostly because his power is simply so strong that Kurogiri had to constantly deal with it instead of everyone else, but this is more direct. I wanted Harada to actively save Izuku by doing something that he couldn't have done himself, and, as you can see in the chapter, it actually managed to gain him a little bit of respect. He is no longer the useless teammate that Izuku is dragging behind him in the hopes of Aizawa giving him a proper challenge. Now, he has use.

Of course, we also have Izuku's immediate reaction to Juzo dying, the unquenchable desire to fucking demolish the one he views as responsible. It seemed like the only way Izuku could really go, considering his character. Emotions have never been his strong suit, so straight up vengeance seemed to me to be his most probable reaction to something bad happening to him or those around him that he views in a favorable light.

I wanted to show his emotions more through his drastic shift of fighting style instead of through a lot of narration. He's usually efficient and calculated, completely calm, but this was erratic and chaotic. He still has that efficiency, but he's blatantly uncaring about his own safety and is completely focused on bashing the person in front of him no matter what happens to himself, which resulted in severe injuries on his part.

Not to mention the twisting of what All Might originally recognized Izuku for but without a vast majority of the motivations behind the action than All Might would've liked.

All Might would be another change, and it was in how he dealt with the attack. He didn't shy away from trying to kill All for One, but he was going straight for the throat against an unknown villain here. He's still the symbol of piece and everything, but it really annoyed me that All Might's solution to the Nomu was just to play into its hands so hard that its hands broke. He couldn't find ANYTHING better than doing the one thing that its quirk countered? What I showed here was basically just the first thing that popped into my head as something that All Might could reasonably think of that would solve the problem at hand: using his hand as something other than a blunt force weapon to help him damage the Nomu with more efficiency, also targeting its open head instead of punching its extremely solid body a hundred times in a row.

Finally, to add salt to the wound of Juzo's death, TWO last minute saves come one after the other to keep Izuku safe in the form of his weaker teammate and the very man who wasn't there to save Juzo in the first place. Not only did he live from his own mistake and arrogance, but the world has seemingly conspired to keep him alive through the entire fight despite the fact that he was the one leading them straight into hell. Ah, to get all of the luck after his friend received nothing but a merciless death.

P.S. to the one who notified me that my other story's chapter was posted on this story, many thanks, my friend.

Afterword

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