Closing the oven door comes with a clack, one that sounds an awful lot like the same sound that the temperature dial makes when being switched on. Since he'd never taken the time to learn from his mother whether or not there should be a distinction between the two noises, he crosses his fingers and just hopes for the best. It's not like he can call her to ask and learn now that he's trying to surprise her. And besides, it's also not like making muffins will be enough to set the house aflame… Izuku chews the inside of his mouth, not because of any anticipation for what the baked food will taste like when finished, but out of worry. Well, at least he has his Spider-Sense to give him a heads up. Plus he had recent first hand experience handling a fire thanks to Dabi, so…
Izuku steps away from the oven, letting it do its thing. Out of sight, out of mind. It's going to take time for the muffins to bake and it does him no good to just loiter around being anxious about the wait. It can't be any harder than staking out a warehouse for Mysterio. Nor can it be more difficult than coming up with a web formula, much less the support gear to use that webbing. Or so he hopes. Speaking – or, in this case, thinking – of which, he can kill two birds with one stone by also baking a batch of more of that web fluid.
While heading upstairs to his room to do just that, Izuku listens for the kitchen's fire alarm; when content enough that he doesn't hear it because the muffins are fine and not because the smoke detector needs new batteries, he stops straining his ears. He wouldn't even be bothering to bake if not for the reason that he's trying to surprise his mom. Which, is a good enough cause for celebration. Long story short, after making a phone call to U.A about getting a replacement letter for the one that he 'lost', they had told him that it'd be a waste of postage & mailing, and that he'd either be in class or searching for a different school by the time he got the new letter. So, he got his answer outright then and there. As of that moment, he learned that he's going to be a Gen Ed student at U.A. What better way than to tell his mom than with muffins?
It may not be the Hero Course, but it's definitely something to be excited about. It's something he wants to shout and proclaim to the world. Except, who is there besides his mother to tell? Izuku had tried texting and calling Shinso to see if they'd be sharing a class together or not, but he's still blocked and couldn't even leave a voicemail. His not-so-friendly neighborhood childhood fri- bully is off the table too, considering Kacchan would sooner nuke him than congratulate him for it. Izuku makes it to his room, stopping by his bedside end table where a photo of him with his dad rests in a frame; he wishes he could tell his father, but that's not possible either.
Alone, he has nothing better to do than get to work on that web fluid. Izuku opens up his hidden chemistry set within his desk drawer, also shifting aside Hero Journals for 'Ingredient' and Compositional Compound Notebooks. It's a lot of effort moving this stuff around each and every time but it's the cost of keeping a secret. Which is why it comes in handy to keep spare cartridges on him at all times. Izuku digs into his pants pocket to procure the container that he'd been carrying around, prepping to pop it open and refill it.
Izuku pauses. Or, maybe it's more like he freezes. What he sees in his hand is NOT a web cartridge. Sure, what he's holding is the same rectangular shape and size as a web cartridge. However, what he's holding is not metallic or hard. What Izuku has in his hand is soft and wrapped in a thin plastic coating. Common sense battles with his Spider-Sense when he realizes that he accidentally mixed up a yeast packet with the web cartridge.
Which means… What's currently being baked in the oven is a whole lot of web fluid. Izuku spins around on his heel so fast that the carpeting beneath it slides out from under him; while the adhesive ability of his feet can keep him firm with his footing, the rug itself is another thing entirely. Izuku stumbles over himself, having to spring from all fours to get off the floor – and onto the wall – before getting back down to the floor again.
But by the time that he makes it to the kitchen, it's already too late. His Spider-Sense reaches a new high as he feels an all too familiar heat against his face. The oven door bursts open to unleash a horrible mixture of black smoke and gray goop. Warmed webs go everywhere, the gunk splattering all over. Izuku coughs as much as he did while swallowing the smoke from Dabi's flames or inhaling Mysterio's gasses. It's like Screwball returned and set off one of her bombs in the kitchen.
Once the smoke clears enough, confirming that the fire alarms DO apparently require replacement batteries, Izuku looks around to survey the scene of disaster. He winces when he sees what the webs did. His mom is going to kill him if a villain doesn't first. It's like somebody tried cementing the drywall. Not to mention what he himself looks like. It clings to him more than mud. And he JUST took a shower right before this happened too.
Izuku places a palm upon his head, regretting the move immediately when his hand sticks itself to a clump of baked webbing. Since he already did the gesture though, he completes it with a sigh while sliding his hand free. Some of the slimy substance comes off but he's sure that there's still plenty of it left in his hair. Checking the kitchen clock to see how much time he has to get things done, he figures it's better to start sooner rather than later on getting cleaned up then. Including, but not limited to, himself.
Izuku hops in the shower for a quick scrub down only AFTER mopping up the kitchen, knowing better than to take any chances when it comes to getting his webbing stuck to him again after being washed. In all fairness, the stuff dissolves on its own after some time – but he doubts his mom would be okay with that – plus, he's pretty sure the chemicals leave behind a smell. Izuku raises his arm so that he can do a quick sniff test to test that hypothesis. It's probably a good thing that he used soap.
Izuku plops onto the living room couch, already exhausted despite having no muffins to show for his labor. He doesn't even have any web fluid for his vigilante side gig. Izuku checks the time on his phone; even though he's lost valuable time on cleanup, he still has a shot at grabbing ingredients from the store to replace what he lost before his mom can get home. It's better than sitting around and sulking over screwing up. Summer time sadness can end sooner than summer itself, or so he figures.
Izuku can't even make a quick trip to the grocery store without encountering a villain anymore, apparently. He grumbles under his breath to himself about how stupid anybody would be to rob a small shoppee instead of a bank or somewhere like that. If criminals carried common sense, he wouldn't currently be suiting up as Spider-Man in a janitor's supply closet instead of buying muffin mix. It's seriously cramped and it doesn't help that a broom handle keeps falling against his head. Nor does it help to hear people panicking right outside the closed door, urging him to hurry up while putting on his web patterned booties. Seriously, it would be a nice change of pace if he could put his costume on in a phone booth or somewhere more accommodating, at least.
Once donning his vigilante identity with his mask pulled down over his face to complete the transformation, Spider-Man flings open the closet door and throws himself out into the open. Now he can get a good look at who it is that disrupted his dutiful day. But the lenses on his mask can't even convey just how shocked he is to see the style that these crooks chose to go with.
One has his blue hair tied into a ponytail as elongated as his face, goggles that aren't as nearly as cool as Eraserhead's are the only aquatic themed thing he's got to go along with the end of his long protruding duckbill mouth; for some reason, he's otherwise got a fan attached to his back and teal sneakers that clash with the color of his dark jumpsuit. Then there's a woman, also with her hair tied into a ponytail – maybe their team title is the ponytail pals – and that's as far as he'll go with her visual description considering there isn't much clothing there to describe anyways. Lastly, but not least, is what's basically an evil looking version of Endeavor – okay, a MORE evil looking version of Endeavor.
"Let me guess", Spider-Man assumes a thinking posture as he gauges them all again. "You're Howard The Duck", he singles out the first of the trio to turn towards him before moving onto the duck dude's ponytail pal, "She's Silver Sable", he focuses on the color of her hair instead of her bo– bo– …body. "And YOU'RE Molten Man instead of Dabi!", Spider-Man quickly shifts his gaze from the woman's voluptuous figure to her criminal partner's volcano figure.
The volcano figure steps forward, presumably the leader of the group. "Who the hell is Dabi?", his voice is heated but Spider-Man more-so focuses on the question than the tone of it.
Considering there was no correction to any of the aliases given to them, Spidey takes that as a sign to also step forward. "So you're saying I guessed your names right then?"
The fiery leader thrusts each of his hefty arms forward, flames flying from both extended limbs. At least the flames are orange and not superheated to burn blue this time. Except, the hot stuff thrown towards Spider-Man is a different state of matter entirely; instead of gas, it's liquid. The scalding stuff is orange because it's lava! Spider-Man jumps away, allowing the shelf behind him to melt rather than his spandex.
"We're The Volcano Thieves!", the lava leader announces the title of his trio as if nearly getting boiled wasn't any sort of clue. And Spidey is willing to bet that the 'Volcano' namesake comes from the magma themed man in particular, if things couldn't get any more obvious.
"Really?", but the vigilante can't help but glance at Volcano's partners in crime again, "Did your friends not get the memo about your gimmick then?"
The woman criminal takes offense first and charges in with what looks like a ninjato club. Being slightly more scared of her less-than-clothed body making contact with his than the weapon that she's wielding, Spider-Man quickly reacts by restricting her rush with webbing. The lack-of-lava lady goes down.
"I mean, one of you is modeled after a duck" Spider-Man moves on to the second grunt of the small group. Unfortunately, this fodder puts up more of a fight than the first. Unexpectedly, duck dude uses his elongated fingers and winding wrists to create some sort of wind funnel. "Ducks are water type Pokemon! Not fire!", Spider-Man has to spin a web to keep himself from being blown away so he adds, "They aren't air types either!", to his quippage.
Spider-Man spots an abandoned shopping cart behind Gust Boy. When he spins his next web, it's to snag the buggy. It's a good thing ducks don't have any sort of sense to detect danger behind them, since Spider-Man's move with the cart is to pull it towards the villain. It crashes into the criminal's back and knocks him down.
Seeing his allies get taken out, Volcano takes it upon himself to intervene. "Enough of this!", the raging villain secretes a spray of lava. Spider-Man evades it, of course, but the projectile stream of magma follows; the vigilante has to continue running along the wall to avoid getting doused by the superheated liquid chasing him.
"If I had a nickel for every fire quirked villain I fought this week", Spider-Man takes cover within the frozen food section – whatever hope he'd been holding out that the cold might somehow help counteract the lava doesn't last – and he has to flee to the next aisle, "I would have two nickels!" His next course of action is taking to the ceiling where the sprinkler system is; just a little bit of water won't put out the lava either but it's worth a shot at trying to do SOMETHING he figures. "Which isn't a lot.. But it's strange that it happened twice", he keeps talking to distract his internal panic when realizing all of these half assed solutions aren't actually helping him.
But sometimes the best and most obvious solutions are right in front of us. Spider-Man stops when he notices that the villain's muscles have diminished somewhat. Smoke wafts from the man's build, the guy's gains gradually deteriorating as he uses his quirk. Volcano can't keep this up for much longer or he's going to burn himself out.
Spider-Man swings around the store, doing a broad loop to make sure Volcano has to lay lava on extra thick to keep up the chase. When he touches down on the opposite side of the place, where Volcano's range doesn't reach, he takes a moment to pull out his Quirk Analysis Notebook and begins writing his theory down. What he believes is going on is that Volcano's quirk burns through fat cells in order to be used. Like most quirks, any extensive over usage will bring the villain to his limit and eventually the man will deflate to a lesser than formidable foe.
It's been awhile since Izuku was last able to leave behind detailed notes for the police, so he really relishes in being able to do so again now. He gets so caught up in the passion of his hobby that he winds up going on autopilot with his Spider-Sense to dodge Volcano's lava while focusing on his writing. It's not until a corner of the notebook gets slightly singed that he snaps out of it. "Oh! I'm sorry! Did you want your receipt?", Spider-Man rips out the quirk analysis so that he can leave it for the police but jokingly waves it in front of himself so that it goes along with his quip.
Panting with effort as he tries to catch his breath, Volcano is starting to look a lot more like a hill now. The villain's footfalls aren't as heavy anymore, each step forward with his feet missing their former weight. But the criminal doesn't seem to notice. He's much too prideful in his thinking to realize what's happened to himself, because all that he can see is what's in front of him; Spider-Man is cornered at a deadend of the store. "Nowhere to run now, webslinger!"
Volcano finally notices the backlash caused by his quirk when he sees how thin his arms have become, no more lava pooling out when they're raised. "Okay, then I'll stick around!" Spider-Man continues to quip from his spot on the wall, self satisfaction in his voice. And there's a little satisfaction in the finishing blow that renders Volcano unconscious too.
Izuku pops a few new web cartridges into the shooters on his wrists, careful not to confuse them for the baking mix that he picks up from the floor. Then considering all of his chores done for the day, he leaves money behind to pay for what he takes, along with his notes for the cops. And lastly, but certainly not least, he writes out one last thing to leave behind.
As he swings out of the store, he calls out behind himself exactly what it is that he scribbled across Volcano's forehead. "Courtesy of your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man!"
"Courtesy of your favorite son!", Izuku presents to his mother a tray of freshly baked muffins.
Having just walked in through the door, Inko is more than surprised. "Oh my!", she covers her widemouthed expression with one hand while removing her purse from her shoulder with the other. "It's a good thing that you're my only son or there would be quite some competition", the woman laughs at her child's antics before helping him with the hot tray so that he doesn't accidentally burn himself, "What's the occasion?"
"Well, there's no sugarcoating it – literally, we're all out of sugar and I forgot to get more at the store – so I'll just come right out and tell you", Izuku pats his hands on his pants to cool them off before bringing them together with a resounding clap, "I got into U.A's Gen Ed Course!"
Izuku doesn't recall getting balloons for the surprise celebration but what he hears is certainly a pop. It takes his mom's startled scream and the tray that she's holding falling to the floor for him to figure out that what bursted wasn't a balloon afterall. Feeling something soft and creamy on his face, he worries momentarily that he somehow wound up mixing up his web formula with the batter again. But then he sees that it was just the regular muffins which erupted.
"I hope that there aren't any baking lessons involved..", Izuku draws back when he sees that he's made another mess in the kitchen regardless of what it is that's been splattered everywhere.
But fortunately for him, his mother doesn't care about the mess, or not at this moment she doesn't. She's much too shell shocked by his revelation to care about that. "Oh, Izuku!" Inko wraps her son in a hug, holding him close. Tears stream out through her closed eyelids and she has to wipe them away with the sleeve of her shirt. "I hope that they do", her retort makes both herself and Izuku laugh.
Pulling away from the hug, but only marginally, there's something that Izuku needs to ask. He stops laughing and says it seriously. "Mom.. You're not upset?"
Inko shakes her head, smiling at her son despite seeing him through watery eyes. "How could I be upset? Izuku, I'm so proud of you!"
Izuku smiles back, recompleting the hug so that they can hold one another tighter. "I just wasn't sure since.. Well, so long as you're okay with it…" He's had talks with his mom about applying for schools more geared towards a field of study that isn't playing second fiddle to heroes, so there's relief in knowing that she won't hold U.A against him.
Inko courses her fingers through her son's fluffy hair. It's something she'd done for him as a baby to help sooth him. "What was it that your father used to say?", she asks him this question as if there weren't a lot of things that Hisashi Midoriya would say but it must be rhetorical since she answers it herself, "Life is like climbing Mt. Fuji. Just be careful that you don't climb too high in case it erupts."
Izuku hums, understanding the meaning of that analogy; like everything else his father told him, it all has to do with being responsible enough to make the right decisions. Right here, right now… He feels as though he's making the right decision. "After today, I really do feel like I climbed Mt. Fuji…", and he can only hope that he also makes the right choices as Spider-Man as much as he does as Izuku Midoriya when starting school.
AUTHOR NOTES
And there you have it that Izuku is officially going to U.A through the General Educations department! (If that weren't obvious enough already..) I also wanted to utilize these game villains as some D lister small fry, so if you do or don't recognize them then it doesn't matter much more than if they were OCs but it's more-so a cheeky cameo than glorified cameo in such a case.
Speaking of character cameos, thank you Pikapowerz for commenting again with a question regarding if someone like Deadpool will show up; while I hadn't considered crossing over Marvel characters into this verse over simply blending them with MHA characters, Deadpool is certainly one that now that I think about it could make an exception considering his fourth wall breaking abilities. I'd like to get some thoughts from more readers before making such a decision but it's not off the table. I had also thought about how I could blend Deadpool with a MHA character and alternatively came up with an idea that I think would surprise you and everyone else. So, I guess what I'm saying is that it's 50/50 of happening!
And thank you Breaniver for helping provide some more clarification regarding Miles' additional spider powers; pertaining to Miles specifically as a person to have a symbolic reason is really cool and I'm willing to love & accept that, but I'd say for the sake of this story in such a case that it's all the more reason why Izuku shouldn't have those powers then since such a meaning wouldn't have the same significance.
That being said, next time I'll return with a longer chapter so I hope you all stick around for it!
-Courtesy of your friendly neighborhood author!