Shiketsu rejected him. Izuku wasn't too surprised, not really... he'd hoped. Some unceasingly optimistic part of him was surprised but, really, it was par for the course and nothing to get upset about. Ketsubutsu had made their decisions already, too, and that letter lay on his desk as well. It was about the same size as Shiketsu's rejection, so presumably it, too, was a rejection. He might as well get it over with.
Izuku ripped the envelope open and pulled out the letter. "Dear Mr. Midoriya, we are pleased to inform you that..." A tentative smile spread across his face. He'd been accepted to the hero course at Ketsubutsu. Ketsubutsu might not be on the same level as UA or Shiketsu but it was a well respected academy and Izuku would get a fine education there.
It would be a while still before UA sent out letters. If Izuku didn't make the cut for Shiketsu, he couldn't imagine he would make the cut for UA. He would be a Ketsubutsu student, then. It was enough. It wasn't what he'd hoped for but it was more than he had really expected. Perhaps Ojiro or Shouji might join him there? Chances were Kacchan had made it into one of the better schools... chances were Ojiro and Shouji had, too, but you could never say for sure.
Izuku hopped down the stairs and cheerfully informed his mother, "I got in to Ketsubutsu!" She gave him an enthusiastic hug. "Congratulations! I knew you could do it."
"You had more confidence than me, then," Izuku admitted.
Izuku exchanged texts with Kacchan, Ojiro, and Shouji. Shouji and Kacchan had both been admitted to Shiketsu. Ojiro and Shouji had been admitted to Ketsubutsu. The idea of Kacchan not getting into a school that admitted Izuku was... bizarre. Maybe his old friend hadn't cared enough to try his best on the exam? Maybe it was just bad luck? Izuku would never ask because that would also be asking to be punched... not that Kacchan could land a punch on him anymore.
UA's letter arrived promptly, several days earlier than expected. Izuku had waited for its arrival merely as a formality, quite sure he would be a Ketsubutsu student the next year. As he ripped the envelope open, a metal disk clattered onto his desk. "What are you?" Izuku asked it.
A hologram fluttered into existence in front of him. "Good morning, Midoriya!" chirped a cheerful voice. Principal Nedzu stared at him with beady, bright eyes. What was going on? "Some of the teachers like to ratchet up the tension and perform a dramatic reveal. I am not one of them. You passed the heroics course entrance exam! Congratulations!" Really? "Enclosed in your envelope you will find all the information necessary for you to accept your enrolment and prepare for the new year, or not, of course, if you have other opportunities you wish to pursue." Principal Nedzu sounded ever so slightly sarcastic, as if he, too, could not imagine Izuku doing any such thing.
"I suppose we should go over some highlights of the exam. Here we have you slaying some one pointers in excellent form, here some three pointers are defeated on a roof, and here we find you driving off a large force in order to rescue another applicant from a most unpleasant predicament." Izuku watched himself move like... like... he didn't have words. He had accustomed himself to the reflexes his body now possessed but he had never seen a video of himself using them and it was... spooky... like watching a ninja weasel in an Izuku suit run wild over the testing grounds. "You received thirty-two villain points and twenty-five rescue points for your efforts. We score well those who wade through hordes of laser-wielding automatons in an effort to protect others. Congratulations and welcome. We hope to see you at UA this term!"
The holographic principal vanished and Izuku let out a jittery giggle. He pulled out his phone and texted his three fellow applicants, "UA LET ME IN!!!" A few minutes later, Ojiro confirmed his acceptance, then Kacchan replied with "You know I'm in, too," followed by Shouji's response of, "I have also been accepted to the UA hero course." All of them. All of them were going to go to UA together. Izuku was going to high school, to hero school at the top school in the nation, and he was going to have friends there. It was... it had to be the best day of his life. Nothing this wonderful had ever happened to him before.
Izuku whirled down the stairs yelling a vaguely comprehensible celebratory noise. "I got in mom!" he shouted, throwing himself into her arms. "It's the best day of my life!"
"Grab your things," she smiled, "we're going out to celebrate!" "A-are you sure?" Eating out was expensive.
"Of course I'm sure," she replied. "It's the best day of your life, after all," there was only a hint of trepidation in her words. She had the right to worry about him, after all. His dream career wasn't exactly a safe one and after everything that happened to him this year... she had nearly lost him once. He would have to be careful to never put her through something like that again... He should join a team. Committed hero teams--those who ranked together on the billboard--typically had much lower casualty rates than heroes who worked solo or with long-term sidekicks, but Izuku might be getting ahead of himself. He hadn't even had his first day of school yet and he was already thinking about options that wouldn't materialize until his third year at least.
A day before the start of term, Izuku dreamed about snow globes again. Well, again might be a misnomer. The day of the UA entrance exam he had barely dreamed about snow globes; they had been an after thought, there at the conclusion, but somehow important. This time Izuku dreamed about staring at shelf after shelf of snow globes and somehow... looking at all of them made him so furious he couldn't think straight. His fingers curled into fists and he grit his teeth. It was one of his lucid dreams; he knew it was unreal even as he experienced it first hand.
Izuku woke with a start. "Why snow globes?" he asked his empty room. Of all the things... this had to be important somehow, right? But what could it possibly mean?
It was eight o'clock in the morning the day before the start of term and Izuku, rather than preparing for the school year, was googling "snow globe collections." That didn't get him anywhere. He didn't even know what he would be searching for, but it definitely wasn't this. Apparently some antique globes went for incredibly steep prices. Who would pay for something that old and ugly? It was a weird, weird world.
On a whim the greenette googled "snow globe crimes." That mostly turned up "wicked deals" on snow globes and similar advertisements. His browser history was going to be a sight to behold after this. On the middle of the second page of results, however, something caught his eye.
"The search is still on for Hirano Niko, retired, formerly of the Hero Public Safety Commission. Police suspect foul play and report that his well-known and well-loved snow globe collection was completely destroyed, not a single item intact. A spokesperson for the police said, "this seems to rule out an attempted theft by a rival collector, but we are investigating all possibilities at this point. We, as yet, have no evidence leading us to believe that Hirano Niko himself has come to harm, and as such continue with the search for a missing person.""
That article was from three weeks after Izuku's disappearance. Hirano himself had vanished... they didn't know exactly when given that he was retired and lived alone. He had disappeared somewhere between two days before Izuku resurfaced and one day after Izuku resurfaced.
Should he--was this really anything to worry about? Anything to think about? It was definitely a bizarre coincidence, but that was likely all it was, right? Just because an avid snow globe collector disappeared during Izuku's lost time and now Izuku was dreaming about snow globes, that didn't mean the student had met Hirano or had anything to do with that disappearance. Still, though... this was pretty disturbing.
"So if I did have something to do with it, if I was the tool," he grimaced, "that made Hirano disappear, why? He was an old, retired man who maybe used to do something for the HPSC. Could it have been a villain with a grudge against him? Would there be any reason for someone to have a grudge against Hirano at all? What job did he do at the HPSC?"
It was impossible to find information on Hirano Niko's employment history beyond "worked for the HPSC" and "manager." Manager of what? Was he some kind of spy handler? Given how little information about the man was forthcoming, it seemed... not likely but possible that he had some
sort of secret job no one could talk about, in which case there were all sorts of reasons a villain might want him dead. It was also possible, of course, that Hirano Niko's job had been so utterly boring that no explanation of the work was forthcoming beyond "manager" in the same way some jobs could only be described as "paper-pusher."
There wasn't enough information to make anything beyond a wild guess. Izuku sighed. "An HPSC employee, snow globes, US protests... Are they even related? What is this all about?"
Shouji and Ojiro were already waiting at the UA gates when Kacchan and Izuku arrived. "Train was a bit late," the explosive student grumbled.
The four of them set off to find class 1-A together. "You're vibrating again, Izuku."
"Well, in his defense, so is Shouji," Ojiro pointed out.
"It's exciting," the taller boy defended.
"Yes, but you don't need to be so damn jittery about it," Katsuki muttered. A door labeled 1-A appeared to their right. "Why is this door so damn high?"
"Presumably there are students taller than me sometimes," Shouji provided as the four of them stepped into the room and sought out their seats.
Izuku recognized a number of their classmates from the entrance exam. The student with engines on his legs glared menacingly at Kacchan's sorry excuse for a tie (Katsuki liked to act as if his rebellious nature chaffed at the idea of wearing one properly, but the truth was the blonde couldn't get the knot right to save his life).
A low murmur of conversation picked up as the twenty seats slowly filled in and students awaited the arrival of their teacher. Izuku found himself chatting idly with a young man with a bird's head, Tokoyami Fumikage apparently. "I think we must have been in different testing arenas," Izuku said, "I think I would have remembered you."
"My shadow is quite memorable," Tokoyami agreed, the familiar in question creeping over his shoulders and giving Izuku an appraising once-over.
"Nice to meet you both." Izuku looked up to find a yellow sleeping bag slithering into the room. Tokoyami jolted when he noticed, as did several others. A young man with red hair actually yelped in surprise. Izuku... found himself utterly untroubled... for some reason.
The yellow sleeping bag revealed itself to be the underground hero Aizawa. Huh. What were the odds of that? Well, probably fairly good. Izuku knew the man taught at UA and there were only so many teachers here. Was Izuku mumbling? No. He was not mumbling. No one was glaring at him. He was just overthinking things, not overspeaking things.
"Now then," said their teacher without preamble, "orientation is a waste of time. You came her to
learn to be heroes and we don't have a single day to waste. Get your gym uniforms on and meet me on the training ground," he gestured out the windows to specify their general location. "Go." That tone brokered no argument. Izuku had wondered what the underground hero would be like as a teacher. He had presumed "strict" and he was correct.
Izuku scrambled to his feet and followed the rest of the boys out of the classroom. Fortunately, it seemed someone at the head of the herd knew where the changing rooms were.
Uniforms were donned in a flurry of fabric, no one wishing to be the last to arrive. Class 1-A approached the indicated training field in one large clump (minus a few stragglers). Aizawa waited for them stoically.
"Today we're going to do a quirk assessment test," he said, indicating some trials set up behind him on the track. "Uraraka?"
"Yes, Mr. Aizawa?" answered a brown haired girl who lingered nervously at the back of the class, as if not quite sure if she had the right to be there at all.
"How far could you throw a softball in middle school?"
"Uh... I don't remember... about to that white line on the track I think?"
"This time use your quirk," the teacher tossed her the ball. Uraraka threw the sphere into the air and it kept going... and going... and going... and disappeared from UA's campus. That was incredible. She had just... negated gravity? That was a terrifying quirk.
"You may have been training your bodies in physical education classes," Shouta continued, "but without working in your quirks that doesn't mean much. Today, we'll see where you are and where you need to be."
"Oh, man, this is going to be so fun!" someone said.
Aizawa's head whipped around. "Fun? I would hope aspiring heroes would take this more seriously. In that case, the student with the lowest score will be expelled. Show me you belong here," Aizawa said, voice ice cold. A hush fell over the class. Really? It... it didn't make sense to throw someone out on the first day based on a single test, but the hero sure sounded like he meant to carry out his threat. "Show me you belong here..." so maybe he would only throw someone out if that someone didn't seem to be trying? Aizawa knew Izuku was quirkless and hadn't seemed to care before, so why was it called a quirk assessment test? What did that actually mean for someone like Izuku? Aizawa had encouraged Izuku to apply in the first place. What would be the point of doing something like this that seemed designed to toss him out immediately? Stop. This was no time to psychoanalyze his teacher!
"First is the standing long jump," Aizawa said.
Izuku was somewhere near the thirtieth percentile for the jump. He was one of the better distance runners, thirtieth percentile on the sprint. It became immediately apparent that Izuku, Hagakure, Jirou, Kaminari, Kirishima, and Aoyoama, whose quirks either didn't exist or weren't very helpful for most trials, were waging a private little war to see which of them would take last place. The others had quirks very well suited to at least one of the challenges and were in no danger.
In the end, Kaminari took last. Hagakure took nineteenth and Izuku eighteenth.
Expelling someone like this really didn't seem fair, but there was nothing Izuku could do about it. He ducked his head but didn't look away from the scene unfolding. Kaminari held his head high,
stoically meeting their teacher's gaze. It was impressive. Izuku wouldn't have been able to do that. The greenette would have been crying in despair and anger.
Aizawa met Kaminari's stare, seemed to find something he liked, gave an almost imperceptible nod of his head and said, "it was a logical ruse. No one is being expelled. I just wanted to make sure you took this exam seriously so I know what I'm working with. Take note, though, that I have no tolerance whatsoever for those who squander their potential. If you don't take this course seriously, you will not stay in my class. Alright. Back to school."
"Yes, Mr. Aizawa," the students chorused, the lot of them trundling back towards their classroom. "That was badass, pikachu," Kacchan said to Kaminari.
"W-what?" the lightning-summoner said, perhaps reacting to the compliment or perhaps to the abrupt nicknaming.
"It wasn't a damn ruse," Kacchan continued. Apparently he had come to the same supposition as Izuku. "If you'd begged or made excuses he would have thrown you out."
"You convinced him you belong here with your powerful stare," Uraraka said, clearly impressed herself.
It was something of a trying first day, but a promising one, and over before Izuku knew it. "Bakugou," Aizawa called as the bell sounded to release them. "I need to speak with you for a few minutes."
Kacchan and Izuku exchanged a bewildered glance. "I'll wait for you by the gates, alright?" Izuku said.
Katsuki nodded. "See you in a minute, Izuku." What was that about?