Disclaimer and Content Warning: Thank you to Kohei Horikoshi, to Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and all the artists and people who make these two awesome shows possible! I wrote this fan fiction because I love both series and think that there are some fun opportunities in writing a crossover. This is a fan work and I claim no ownership or financial benefit from this. It's just really fun.

As for content warnings, this story will contain subject matters the likes of which you would see in either of the shows it involves. Primarily this means bad language, violence, and some adult themes.

That said, I hope you enjoy the story.

Prologue: Four Heroes

—DEATH—

Ken wanted to be a hero, since there was nothing else, he could be.

From the first time he had ever heard his sister crying softly at night, through the faded dry wall, he had known. He would do anything to protect her, anyone in her position. Those who wept tears that had nowhere to go. He had lay awake like that once, with no one there to comfort him, to tell him that things would get better. So, when his sister came into the world, when the cycle began to repeat itself, rather than sit by and do nothing like his deadbeat brother, Ken decided to make a change. He was there for his sister, always, to support, to reassure. During bad days at school, nights where their parents had fought, on forgotten birthdays, times when it all seemed hopeless. He was there.

No one believed it, but he had the perfect quirk for his mission as well.

In a world where almost, everyone had some sort of marvellous power, Ken had something that went beyond even the most outlandish ability. Something that matched his resolve, unyielding, burning like a dark fire in his chest. More everlasting than a heartbeat, stronger than any bone, his power kept his drive going, or maybe it was the other way around?

Fuck it. He would die before anyone told him he couldn't be a hero. Literally.

Still, it hurt to leave. If he got into U.A. High - his first choice, and the first choice of all aspiring heroes his age - he wouldn't be in the same school as his sister. His commute would keep him away for hours more than the average academic day. Shit, any school he could get into would do that. He couldn't stay by her side always, that was just something he was going to have to get used to.

Unable to sleep, feeling his face grow searing hot, Ken swivelled to a sitting position. After a moments cold silence, he got up from his futon and looked out of the window. Dried and beaten dirt waited there in the dark, any life scuffed and worn out of the grass decades ago. Behind the small orphanage the forest loomed, twisted branches and spiky leaves looking even more unwelcoming in the scarce moonlight. That bare amount of light gleamed through the glass and fell across his face, a face that so few ever saw. Mind elsewhere, he almost didn't hear the door to his room squeak open a few inches.

"Ken-nii?" The thinnest hair of a whisper came through the opening, his sisters voice.

"Hey, Kãrin." He smiled back, her tentative curious expression softening at his answer. "What's up?"

She looked from side to side, checking that no one else was awake, before leaning back into his room and whispering. "Good luck for tomorrow." Her eyes twinkled in the dark, hopeful, certain. "You're going to be the best hero ever. Better than All Might."

He smiled considerately. His own blue eyes shined back, also hopeful but less sure. "Come on, you don't have to—"

She cut his self-doubt short with a firm shake of the head. "I'm serious. You're a hero, Ken-nii, you're going to be the best. I know it." With a smile that lit up the night, she closed the door and the sound of her footsteps softly padding back to her room could be heard.

With those parting words his resolve strengthened, iron becoming steel. "I am." He hushed to himself, a promise he could never break.

Outside the window the night waited for him, for a version of him that would soon rise to greet it. Korosereta Ken knew he was going to be a hero, because there was nothing else he could be.

—MIGHT—

Izuku wanted to be a hero to bring hope to the hopeless. To stand high and shine out a beaming smile for all to see, to shout loudly and proudly 'I am here.' So that people who were like him, people who were hopeless, beaten down by life, struggling to go on. People who maybe were quirkless… He would reassure them, comfort them, let them know that he was there for them. Like All Might had been there for him.

From before the very first page of his hero notebooks, All Might had been there. The world needed someone like him, a beacon of hope, someone to aspire to be. The posters on his wall, the action figure on his desk, the multiple books worth of notes he had dedicated to just All Might's escapades. It all came back to him. To Izuku Midoriya, the number one pro hero All Might was more than just a man.

Still, it had only taken one moment to change that.

Ten months prior to this never-ending night, Midoriya had stood on a roof as his idol told him he could never be a hero. Then a gasp of breath, rattling and sickly, a huff of steam, and the figure of All Might had collapsed, deflated like an old balloon. Revealing what lay beneath the mountain of muscle, unveiling the shadow that was Toshinori Yagi.

Izuku had been hit with two revelations. His hero didn't believe in him… and… All Might was just a man.

In that one moment Midoriya Izuku had felt like the universe was collapsing. Looking back on it now, it didn't even feel real. Now, with Yagi as his sensei, training him to become his successor, with… everything. It was all he could do to hug himself tightly and weep tears of joy, of sadness, of utter amazement.

How had things changed so much? That question would stir up memories within him, of viscous slime crawling over his skin, suffocating him. Of yellow bulging eyes and a watery voice. Memories of the villain who had almost killed him, the criminal who had almost consumed his childhood friend. If Izuku hadn't done something, despite how incapable he was of helping, if he hadn't tried then he wouldn't be here now. He wouldn't know All Might like he did. The price for that life-changing moment was a brush with death, so close and so fearful he shivered anytime it came to him. Like now, on this important night.

Unable to sleep, he quietly scrabbled to his feet and dug through the pile of hero notebooks. Finding the oldest most battered volume among the stacks. Flipping open the dog-eared cover he saw the drawing staring up at him, a sketch he'd made when he was little more than five or six years old.

A wobbly torso, more like a barrel than a body, and two misshapen arms poking out the side in an ill-proportioned attempt at a muscle man pose. Then the legs, too short because he'd run out of space at the foot of the page. Midoriya still thought the smile was dead on though, big, and wide. The hair still looked more like rabbit ears, however.

Then there were the notes. Fresh tears crept into the corners of his eyes as he saw the scribblings, poorly ordered kanji, and then some of All Might's signature moves written in block English lettering. Under his category for powers little Izuku, little Deku, had written 'strong' then in far smaller writing beneath it he'd added 'fast' and 'punching'. Then there was the appalling spelling on the special moves; 'Teksass Sumahsh' and 'Nu Hampshure Sumash. Fingers trembling, the present Izuku held closely onto the pages that little Deku had treasured so dearly. The pages he laughed and agonised over. The pages he was now crying on.

He set the book down, wiping the tears from his eyes with a sleeve. He couldn't start bawling, he'd wake his mother up.

Getting back under the sheets, Midoriya wondered what that small version of him would think. If he saw him now, if he saw the journey he'd been on, the path he had yet to forge. Knowing himself like he did, Midoriya thought he'd probably be so happy he would cry. And that's how he knew he could do it. Because if he was the kind of hero that made his younger self happy, then he could do for others what The Symbol of Peace had done for him. If little Deku could look up to him, then he would be alright.

—CHAOS—

Butters wanted to be a hero, because if he didn't, then he would end up a villain.

It was never his fault, and that wasn't him protesting too much, or being confused. No. It was true. Whenever he tried to do good, he always ended up making things worse. From where he was sitting, he could either lean into that and cause as much chaos as his quirk demanded of him, or he could fight against it with all his might. Overcome his powers that thrived on chaos and mayhem and show the world that he was more than just a confused little boy. He was a hero.

A childhood of having his quirk taken advantage of, with his classmates deliberately causing chaos to trigger his poorly controlled power. Followed by detentions, appointments with quirk counsellors, more detentions when he inevitably failed to learn from his mistakes, when he failed to adequately control his quirk. Even after that the groundings and punishments at home when he got a little too excited when training those very same abilities.

From his teachers to his counsellor, to his parents, to his friends. Everyone thought he was destined to be a walking disaster at best, a mad villain at worst.

But he would show them all the error of their ways… not in a villainous way, even though in his head that thought sounded really kind of evil…. No, he would show them in a nice way, in a 'oh wow I didn't realise' kind of way. The right way, the heroic way.

"Butters?! You better not be brooding in there!"

Letting out a slight 'eep' Butters squirreled himself back under the covers, calling out. "Sorry O-tösan!" His father's quirk, the ability to sense different types of distress in others, would have been incredible, provided it was in the hands of someone naturally empathetic. His father was not that.

His mother's quirk, elemental roulette as she called it, gave her the ability to produce random bursts of a random element. It would have been more useful if it was the traditional, classical elements. Instead, she would randomly produce a sudden amount of any one of one-hundred and eighteen periodic table elements. Maybe she could have been a great scientist, or a top ten hero if she had trained that quirk. Instead, the potential danger had outweighed the opportunity and she rarely if ever used it. Still, Butters would rather she not use her quirk, than use it like his father did with his, becoming something akin to an emotional dictator.

The door snapped open, enough to let his father poke his head through. "If you're so determined to be a hero, Butters, then you need to get some sleep."

Nodding from halfway beneath the sheets, he replied. "I know, I-I'm going to sleep now."

"Good." Was the clipped solitary retort. The blonde boy would've expected his father to leave then, but he didn't, instead adding in a somewhat gentler tone. "And Butters?"

"Yes?" With eyes peering out from the darkness, Butters watched his father, waiting for the shoe to drop.

"Your mother and I are proud of you, no matter what happens."

At first Butters felt a swell of warmth and happiness grow in his chest, but then something bitter started to curdle it. Biting his lip and quashing those emotions, lest his father sense them, Butters nodded back. "Thanks, O-tösan."

"Goodnight." Swiftly, the door clicked shut behind him, and Mãgarin Batã was once again alone in his room, if not with his thoughts.

"Goodnight..." He said to the closed door.

No matter what happens.

When he was younger, he may have seen the obvious encouragement in that phrase and been happy with it. With years more experience though he could see some of the cracks in that facade. By 'no matter what', his father did not mean pass or fail, he meant fail, or the more likely result of destruction and doom.

With his quirk, a combination and extent of his parents', Butters was a walking disaster. So why couldn't he be like either of them? Why couldn't he just ignore his quirk, why couldn't he just use it for his own desires.

Because Butters wanted to be a hero. Like All Might. Like his idol, Wash. He wanted to be like anything except his parents. To be honest, to be happy, to be unashamedly himself.

With the entrance exam for Japan's top hero school on the horizon, Butters closed his eyes and pushed away all those ugly feelings. Telling himself one last thing before he slept.

He would show them.

He would show them all.

… but not in an evil way.

—PUNCH—

Itsuka wanted to be a hero, because so many heroes today weren't good enough… Okay, that sounded bad in her head. They were good enough, they were amazing. However, the precepts she had been raised with, that had been passed down to her by her mother and grandfather, were about more than that. Honour and respect, cooperation and kindness, humility, and honesty. So many heroes in the billboard charts lacked those qualities, at least in the quantity that they were needed.

The young martial artist didn't resent anyone who chose to become a hero, it was a career that regardless of how you approached it, required a superhuman level of determination. Still, there were plenty of heroes who coasted by on sponsorships, their media presence, and even beyond that there were successful top ten heroes who lacked some of those qualities her family had instilled in her. She could never begrudge heroes like Endeavour, or Present Mic, if they fell short when it came to kindness or humility. Because at the end of the day they still went out there and did their duty. Even so Kendo Itsuka knew that things could be better, and she wasn't the kind of girl who was afraid to let people know that.

If people didn't like what she had to show them? Well, maybe they would like a giant fist in their face.

There was a gentle but insistent knock on her bedroom door. "Itsuka, you need to get some sleep, you've got a big day tomorrow." The voice of her mother, calm yet stern, drifted through the door.

A guilty look snapping across her face, Itsuka leapt out of the martial arts kata she had been moving through and darted into bed. "Sorry!" She called out.

With a gentle groan the door opened a little, a narrow line of light tracing down the otherwise complete darkness of her room. "Didn't think we could hear you practicing, huh? These old floorboards were going crazy." Her mother's face was centred in the shaft of light, her kind eyes glimmering at her from beneath a dusty auburn fringe.

"I'm just…" Itsuka began, bunching up the sheets around her before letting them drop and sitting up slightly. She had been caught red handed, no need to pretend she hadn't been bouncing around the house like a rubber band for the last few weeks.

"Nervous?" Her mother finished, stepping into the room, and quietly making her way over to her bedside.

Itsuka weighed a sigh before replying. "I want to be ready."

"You know what will really make you ready? A good night's sleep."

Itsuka frowned, the way teenagers do when they're being told something so obvious, they should have known it already. Rather, Itsuka knew it, she just hadn't applied it. "I know." Was the answer she settled for.

"Trust me, Itsy-bitsy." Her mother grinned knowingly, employing her family nickname, the one she'd been saddled with since she first discovered her quirk could be used to reach the kitchen cabinets, and then had used it to climb every surface in the house. "You're as ready as you can be, you've worked so hard, we're so proud of you."

The words warmed Itsuka's heart, and a little crinkle came to her eyes as she looked at her mother, sat there beside her in the darkness. In her childhood bedroom, like she had for years when Itsuka was small, when there were bad dreams or loud storms. Her eyes twisted more, tears beginning to tickle at the edges. "I'm going to make you so proud, you and ojiisan."

Taking both of her hands in hers, Kendo Misaka's smile became devilish. "You already have, Itsuka. You know what's left though?"

Feeling her expression twist into purely joyful glee, Itsuka followed up with the answer that she had always given. "A whole lot of asses that need kicking?"

Tears slowly fell on Itsuka's burning cheeks, as they remembered the lost member of the Kendo family. Her father, the dojo hero Kendo Daigo; Serious Fist. Who despite his outward stoicism and serious demeanour, always had a quip or joke waiting for any villain he took down. Arriving on the scene once for the cameras to see, he had proclaimed with a sarcastic smile. "I am here!" To the confusion of everyone who turned expecting to see All Might, instead finding a little-known martial arts master standing by. The twinkle in his eye was something that Itsuka had ingrained into her mind, the footage being one of the only remaining tangible memories of her father as a hero. The blend between serious and friendly shone out brighter than any All Might smile, any Endeavour flame, as her father said. "Now all that's left, is to kick a whole lot of ass!"

It was one of Serious Fist's only major media moments, one of the only times the rest of the world recognised him, saw him. Even though she, her father, and the rest of her family didn't care for those moments, Itsuka had to admit it was nice to have one. For the world to know him, before he fell ill, before the long painful road to his death.

Itsuka hardened her expression, but did not harden her heart, as she looked into her mother's eyes. Misaka smiled back, the legacy of Serious Fist was there with them, the shadow of her father on the other side of her bed. She could almost feel it.

"You can do it." Misaka said, the light from the half open door drawing lines down the side of their faces. "Once you get some sleep!" Itsuka was so unprepared for the playful but insistent karate chop, that she fell sideways, laughing all the way.

-ACADEMIA—

Sunshine, bright and beautiful flooded across the campus of U.A. High School. Fully dawning over the horizon, the morning light was undeterred by the clouds and proceeded to coat every exposed surface of the campus. The entire east-facing side of the main building sparkled like a diamond, every one of its windows reflecting the light like a colossal solar panel.

Across the grounds, everywhere from the imposing security gate to the welcoming thoroughfare was made more lovely. The light shone the dark metal gates to a mirror sheen, the tall bulwark of near impenetrable alloy only giving way to the green swathes of grass and foliage it protected. The forested hilltop upon which the academy sat was similarly brought to life, the emerald-green leaves and soft brown boughs only yielding to the sheer energy of the animals that scurried there. The forest moved with them, but the campus itself yet remained mostly lifeless.

Even as the natural world slowly eased into dawn however, a curious, hollow feeling draped itself over the otherwise luscious landscape. It was the uniquely desolate atmosphere of an empty school. UA had been hibernating. Contrary to most other organisms, a school sleeps during the summer. The halls had laid empty, still bright, and clean, being washed by both sunlight and automated janitorial robots, but nonetheless they felt empty.

The battle centres, used for practical hero training, bore their hollowness more openly. Some distance from the main building they loomed, grey and lifeless. Where the school itself was sleeping, these battle centres were never alive. Towering blocks of concrete, blank imitations of apartment buildings and municipal structures. Dust sifted within these husks, pushed around by the morning breeze, but nothing truly lived here. Although, small as they were, those tiny motes of dust were the first stirrings of what was to come.

Soon the school would throw its doors wide, the first staff arriving to unlock it, to rouse the building into a half-awake drowsiness. The teachers, similarly sluggish this early in the morning, would go about setting the tables and chairs, sorting exam papers, printing registration lists. In a secluded room specific staff members would push buttons and make last minute programming adjustments, and then the veritable army of machines that helped this school run would roll out of their underground storage units. All shapes and sizes of machine, each one destined to be nothing more than cannon fodder for the events of the day. Their presence, as massive as it was, still did not wake the school, nor stir the dead grounds of the battle centres. Even as the battalion of imposing automatons took up their places within and around the many dead buildings.

No, the school would not awaken yet. It still felt empty. To the teacher with bloodshot eyes and long black hair, more than half asleep himself, the day had not even thought about beginning yet. To the mammalian amalgamation who acted as the principal of the school, the headmaster, the one in charge, even to him the day had not yet begun. To the lone chef, working miraculously on a heap of meals for those children who would soon… No, we shouldn't mention the children yet. We wouldn't want to wake the school up too early.

Instead, we'll observe the teachers, milling around, busying themselves with preparations. Preparations that had been worked on all summer or agonised over the previous night. The two new teachers were still making introductions and being debriefed. They had met and talked about this day before of course, the interviews for the position, the planning of a syllabus, all important work that should not go unmentioned. It was a lot of work after all. Even for the number one pro-hero in Japan. Even for the American immigrant and his sentient puppet.

Yes, even they put work in. Though it may not seem like it once our story begins.

Speaking of which, the first examinee arrives. The first of many children who will walk through these halls today, the first to wake up the school. To bring life into its halls. With them, the lonely, tired, hollow feeling that had pervaded the grounds began to lift.

The day of the UA entrance exam had dawned.

-AUTHOR'S NOTE—

A new story! With some familiar concepts for those who've read my other running story 'Try to Remember'. That being South Park superheroes in a typical superhero universe. While that story focuses on a more singular perspective and tracks events quite linearly, this story is going to be a bit different. Involving an ensemble cast of four main protagonists, and additional points of view from a lot of characters. The way I've been writing this has been very smooth for me, which is a nice surprise, it usually takes me ages to get half as many words written. I think it's because – as you will see in the coming chapters – I've written this from several different perspectives and arranged it in a not necessarily linear fashion. It's nothing crazy, but it's allowed me to write this far more like a puzzle. I can put certain pieces together until I've assembled a full picture. Whereas in my other story I write from start to finish and it's harder to find ways to get a fresh look on something that's blocking me. Its' a bit of an experiment, so who knows, maybe a few chapters in I'll drop it.

I don't have an amazing history of frequently updating, but don't feel too down about that, since I've already gotten 12k words written for this story (beyond that which you've read here already), so I will be releasing maybe 2 chapters over the next few days. I'm not sure though, it might read better as one long chapter, so who knows. Maybe you could let me know in a review? I realise there isn't much to go on yet, but still, any review is appreciated. After that I'll return to a chapter of Try to Remember, and then flip back to this, and hopefully that'll work out!

One or two other things about the nature and style of this story. I'm trying to really merge the South Park stuff into the MHA universe, this means I've often reimagined the South Park cast as Japanese high schoolers in this superhero society. Rest assured, nothing about their character or demeanour will change that much, other than what would naturally happen after doing what I've done for this story (aged up the kids, given them real superpowers, imagine them in a different culture, etc). I've also put some distance between the characters, by which I mean some of them haven't gone to the same middle school, not all of them will be from the same town. I did this just to give the story some more believability I guess? It would feel to jarring I think for half the UA student intake to be from the same town, same middle school. That said, they should still recognisably be the characters from South Park. That's the intention at least, and I plan to stick to it. As may be obvious however, I'm not Japanese, and don't have an in-depth understanding of the language or culture. There will be mistakes, I hope you can bear with those as I try to iron them out as best I can. That's the other experiment part of this story though, I want it to feel like it fits into the setting of MHA, and part of that is it being Japanese. I've really tried with the names and all! By really try I mean did more research than just going to google translate. Same goes for honorifics and cultural idiosyncrasies. With some googling it'll probably be easy to see where I've gotten some of the names from (Magarin Bata for example is just Margarine Butter). But old Kohei Horikoshi does some obvious stuff with names as well, so I'm happy to be in an MHA tradition there.

Last thing is just to say thank you for reading, sorry about the long author's note, I just felt the need to explain myself. Don't know why. Anyway, let me know your thoughts in a review and see you next time!

- Faff.