Hello folks! Now, it is the time to get into the meat of things. Also, here's a boop for when y'all inevitably wanna grill me over the decisions I made, boop- /cuYSXesV5j
Also, my thanks to joshrosado for your review! Unfortunately Kyū can't hear ya... But hey! Maybe the power-hungry version of him won't go too far. He's still Midoriya Izuku after all.
Right?
Gulp
Once a dream did weave a shade
O'er my angel-guarded bed,
That an emmet lost its way
Where on grass methought I lay.
Troubled, wildered, and forlorn,
Dark, benighted, travel-worn,
Over many a tangle spray,
All heart-broke, I heard her say:
"Oh my children! do they cry,
Do they hear their father sigh?
Now they look abroad to see,
Now return and weep for me."
Pitying, I dropped a tear:
But I saw a glow-worm near,
Who replied, "What wailing wight
Calls the watchman of the night?
"I am set to light the ground,
While the beetle goes his round:
Follow now the beetle's hum;
Little wanderer, hie thee home!"'
Kyū looked at the shining gates of U.A highschool, within which countless great heroes had been forged and also laid the dreams of a young Quirkless boy.
"You can do it Kyū. The Big Guy himself thinks that it's overkill for ya to take the normal exam, and he's such a softie at heart. How's the… digestion going?"
Kyū walked towards the gates with the full weight of his determination in his steps. He was ten minutes early, and he fully intended to utilise that advantage. He had trained hard for this day. He had a Quirk! Sure, half of it was very annoying at the best of times ("Hey! I resent that! I have no best of times! It's either a bad time or a very bad time with Sir Griffon the First, First Nightmare of Midoriya Izuku!") but it was also extremely, extremely versatile.
And there was the other Quirk Kyū had gotten. Earned.
Sometimes it's like Kyū is living a dream and he'd wake up and be Midoriya Izuku again. Sometimes, Kyū could swear that there was something missing from his life. A pillar of his life that utterly disappeared.
Kyū did not dream. He was not all of a person, and he knew that. But the most damning evidence of all, in his own opinion, was that he did not dream.
After all, in a world where his nightmares existed outside of him, how could he have dreams?
And so, doubting his own humanity, Kyū entered his examination hall with a heavy heart.
The written test went fine, despite having many, many questions well beyond the standard difficulty.
Then came the time for the practical. While sitting in the auditorium surrounded by people he didn't recognise, Kyū was very uncharacteristically buzzing with energy.
"Do you think this could be One For All, Fon-Chan?"
"Don't call me that, you crybaby Shakespeare! I'm Griffon! Nothing more, and definitely nothing less! It could be One For All finally kicking in, but it could also be those three cans of gamer-grade energy drinks you guzzled before entering the auditorium."
"You know I don't react to caffeine that way!"
"Have you ever guzzled three of those absurd drinks at the same time before?"
"..."
"Exactly. Now would you kindly shut up and pay attention to what Present Mic is saying? We kinda ignored his intro already, and I'm feeling kinda guilty for that."
"Present Mic? Oh my god I'm in the same room as Present Mic, the Voice Hero and I ignored him for who knows how long! I listen to his radio show every week and got his limited Five Year Anniversary Alarm Clock! He's a great hero specialising in swift villain takedowns with minimal casualties and damage to the environment! He was ranked-"
"Hey, Shadow, you ever pay attention to the crybaby when he's in the zone like this? Yes? How bored are ya in there? It gets hard to extrapolate answers when all I can see is twitches in the shadow, ya know. I mean, does the kid even know that he's totally missing orientation? It's gonna be fun to mess with-"
"What do you mean you feel funny too? You're a Nightmare! You literally cannot feel-"
"You there, with the curly hair in the leather long coat!"
Kyū was snapped out of his internal monologue and looked around to find the guy who snapped him out of it. He expected it to be someone a seat or two away from him or something, but no. It was a tall blue-haired kid on the other side of the auditorium.
Wow. Rude much? Kyū simply lifted his head and asked Shadow to make sure he didn't keep muttering. Rude or no, the boy had a point.
While the kid loudly berated him for his muttering, Kyū looked at the pamphlet that had been distributed from behind the front door for some reason. It detailed everything he needed to know about the practical part of his examination.
Oddly enough, he couldn't hear Griffon at all after that and his hyperactivity was just ramping up and up. He was certain at this point that it was One For All that was responsible for his state and not the caffeine, although it might have just a bit of the blame.
Kyū had discovered several abilities of his own other than the obvious over the previous ten months. One of them was that he was an energy being, like his Nightmares, and thus could theoretically heal from any damage he received, if he had enough energy.
That 'if' had become a non-factor, seeing as he accepted a stockpile Quirk that had been accumulating power since the Dawn of Quirks.
Another neat ability he had was one to perfectly replicate any clothing he wore before, with room for creativity. It came in real helpful for him after that one shopping trip with the cute girl.
On the bus, when Kyū noticed another candidate who looked far too anxious to be comfortable and moved to distract them, only to get interrupted by Rude Boy again, he felt something within him fray and begin to snap.
The Rude Boy said that he was not taking the test seriously. Apparently moving in the general direction of another candidate counted as foul play to the boy. Normally, Kyū would have been bemused and would have just laughed the encounter off.
This day was not 'normal' to him by any means.
For some reason, it was like Kyū's competitiveness had been turned up to thirteen! He decided, right then and there on the bus, that no matter what, he was going to at least beat the blue-haired boy in front of him.
Strangely, not once over the trip did Kyū hear from Griffon. Shadow's presence, however, was more reassuring than ever.
He didn't notice the green sparks jumping off him as he moved, how his mismatched eyes seemed to thrum with power in random intervals, and the smell of ozone that had begun to waft off of him.
His eyes grew unfocused as the bus neared its destination, his mind grew fuzzy, and there was green static buzzing all around him.
"THE PRACTICAL EXAMINATION HAS BEGUN! GO! GO! GO!"
When Kyū launched himself off the ground to head inside the Battle Centre, where he would need to defeat robots in order to pass according to the pamphlet he had received, the static intensified around him, buzzing and increasing in frequency, till even Kyū's sight was hampered.
Kyū felt a well of pure, unadulterated power deep inside him, like a thunderstorm the size of a continent being squashed into a singular unbreakable glass bottle, promising unending destruction if unleashed without thought of consequences.
So Kyū opened the cork of the bottle and reached his hand towards the well of liquid lightning, willing it to help him and Shadow take down as many enemies around him as they could in the time given. Griffon was still strangely silent despite not being called upon to help.
Whatever Kyū had expected when he tapped into the awesome power of the greatest hero in the world, the crystallised essence of eight great generations of heroes before him, what happened next certainly wasn't it.
On the outside, it seemed to other people that the viridian-haired boy was struck and engulfed by a bolt of green lightning.
For the first time in a long time, Kyū felt free! She was going to absolutely destroy this test!
—
Iida Tenya had experienced many things in his fifteen years of life, but not once did he ever have the pleasure of having whatever was happening in front of his eyes happen to him before.
First, in the auditorium where all the examinees were being debriefed, Tenya had, in an act betraying the deal of pressure he was under, loudly berated another examinee for what was probably a manner of stress relief.
Tenya had then proceeded to lecture said examinee while on the bus headed towards their shared arena wherein they will display their skills.
Not one word did the examinee speak in protest of the clearly unfair treatment Tenya had levied on him, although Tenya saw green sparks rise off of him in random intervals.
Tenya did not, however, see the heterochromatic eyes that were narrowed at him with relatively mild anger and a lot of stress.
Tenya did notice it when, as soon as the boy could, he immediately set out from the start point assigned to all students towards the arena, without any call to begin from the teachers.
He also noticed when the boy erupted in an explosion of green light that ping-ponged all over the place and disappeared from his sight before he could really register what was happening.
What he did register, however, was the sizable shockwave that emanated from the same place the green light had originated from.
He turned to look towards the proctor, for him to give a penalty to the idiot who started before being granted permission, but he was given a shock instead.
"The little green listener had the right idea! There is no timer when citizens are in danger! GO! GO! GO!"
And so, Tenya rushed towards the Battle Centre disguised as a small, empty city to prove his mettle, only to find his way blocked by a pile of scrap. Scrap that Tenya recognised to be various bots as shown by Present Mic not too long prior. He saw at least seven two-pointers, thirteen three-pointers, and oddly enough, the one one-pointer in the pile before him.
"Oh! Sorry about that!" Tenya looked around for the source of the voice, but the pile of robots before him and the chattering of the other candidates who had just now begun to enter the arena proper made it difficult to pinpoint. All Tenya could say for sure was that the owner of the voice was a girl and that she was very competent.
"I didn't realise that I was putting everything in your way!" The owner of the voice broke into booming laughter at that, like she had made the funniest jokes in the world, that Tenya just couldn't understand, "I'll fix it right away! Also, Rude Boy! Please, get into U.A so I can give ya a proper ass-whooping. It's a sincere request from the very depths of my warm, shadowy, devilishly charming heart. See ya!"
Tenya looked around to find this 'rude boy'. Said boy's behaviour must have been truly deplorable to get such a title from one as astute as the girl before him, who had already accrued a wealth of points barely thirty seconds into the exam.
Tenya was the proud owner of a speed Quirk, specifically, the engines that originated in his calves, and thus had trained his dynamic vision as much as he could under the careful tutorship of his most honourable brother, the Pro Hero, Ingenium.
Even so, all Tenya could see as the girl pushed away the scrap metal in order to help her fellow examinees from the good of her heart and nothing more was just flashes of green lightning.
Getting pointers from another speed Quirk user, especially one as attuned with their own Quirk as she clearly is, would be a true boon! I must make certain to establish contact with the girl when we get into U.A! There is no way one filled with as much spirit as her would fail to be recognised by the prestigious entity that is U.A!
And thus, Tenya Iida ran across his start line of becoming a Hero.
Meanwhile, inside of a green lightning bolt bouncing from robot to robot, was a Kyū that was very, very high on adrenaline and drunk on the boundless well of energy that One For All had provided her with.
Yes. Her.
Apparently One For All can spontaneously mutate the user's body at command. It wasn't like Kyū didn't like being a girl. It felt right in some ways that being a boy never did. Most of all, being a girl had made Kyū extremely flexible and let him perform some moves that she most definitely could not have pulled off back when she was a boy.
Kyū knew instinctively that her present state wasn't permanent. It was… weird, to just know things, but it was something she appreciated a lot.
So, all Kyū focused on was kicking robot butt.
She was very, very good at it, both literally and not. The combat style that All Might had drilled into her had been kick-centred, since her legs were both more developed than her arms and would be less likely to break when subjected to sudden stress.
And the fact that Kyū loved to watch the Pro-Hero Mirko fight. In fact, she was doing her best to emulate both her and All Might at the same time! It was a surprisingly hard endeavour, especially given the fact that they had wildly different fighting styles, that she had never before actually tried out in a scenario with any real-world stakes.
Well, no time like the present, right?
Kyū had figured out that his Quirk was quite frankly, impossible to figure out. It had all the traits of a classic Emitter, but then it pulls off shit like what just happened with her! What kind of Quirk did she have, really?
But after all the things that she did not figure out, Kyū did figure out how to use her Quirk better than just 'release Shadow and Griffon to wreak havoc' and stand by.
Her Quirk also, for some absurd reason, manifested ghostly duplicates of herself that had some measure of autonomy along with the ability to follow somewhat difficult orders.
Before, it had taken Kyū almost everything it had to manifest one Ghost that lasted precisely three minutes.
Right then, as Kyū felt the urgency of the test dawn upon her, and the liquid lightning in her veins intoxicating her, she called forth three Ghosts to aid her in her quest for more Points. Of course, every Ghost was given strict instructions to help anybody who looked to be in actual danger of harm and for rescuing to take priority, no matter what.
Since Kyū first began massacring robots, three minutes have passed. She was still wreathed in lightning, albeit in a severely diminished form. She had lost count of how many points she had accrued after the ninety-point mark, and that was without counting however many points her Ghosts had gotten.
She felt absolutely no strain whatsoever, even after the frankly absurd feats she had accomplished! So when she felt something tug onto her from within her Quirk, Kyū tugged on the feeling…
And felt herself shift to a wholly different area of the Arena, surrounded by Three-Pointers.
"S-Rank Villain detected! Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!"
Very angry Three-Pointers…
In the teacher's viewing area, a concerned Powerloader was trying to recall if he had taken down Dalek Protocols for the duration of the test, and shrugged off his concerns, blissful in his belief that no middle schooler could reach the criteria to let loose the dogs of war, so to speak.
Generally speaking, the Three-Pointers used in the entrance exams hold about a quarter the strength of ones used on the Second Years in their light training sessions. But all that is changed is the restrictions on their programming, along with a very slight tweak to their sensors.
But all robots made by the Support Hero: Powerloader, had a protocol to lift all restrictions, overclock their systems, and basically give themselves a timer before turning into scrap metal.
The result of all of this, with the exact same hardware was extremely varied in experiments, much to the chagrin of a certain overexcited principal, but the bare minimum performance boost provided to the robots by the Protocol was 3x.
Kyū had been surrounded by thirty of them, all loudly informing her of their intent to exterminate her.
So she took a deep breath…
And shouted, "IT'S A TRAP!" at the top of her voice.
"Six minutes remaining, little listeners, better hurry up!"
"You hear that?" Kyū questioned the bots surrounding her, waiting for her first move, "We have two minutes to play, buddies, better make it count!"
She then frowned a bit at the remaining lightning that was coiled around her body and then smiled as an absolutely insane idea came to her mind.
"You know? Two seconds might be a more accurate estimation."
Before the robots could parse through her cryptic statement, Kyū kicked the ground beneath her to make a dust cloud and jump straight upwards, wherein she caught the lightning around her with her hands, and launched her very first Special Move.
Improvised Special Move! LIGHTNING REVERSAL!
Kyū discharged all of the remaining static lightning that had remained coiling around her body upon her sudden transformation, utilising it to deal with all of the robots surrounding her.
The manoeuvre cost her four seconds of time. Something that she noted as a matter to be improved at a later time. But first she had more important things to do.
Like finding the nearest reflective surface to see what she looked like and to see if her clothes survived…
Kyū was wearing totally different clothes from what she had been wearing pre-transformation.
She had said it before, she'll say it again. Her Quirk is bullshit. It defied everything Kyū thought she knew about Quirk Science!
So she looked at her reflection and felt a significant part of herself be distracted by the objectively cute clothes she was wearing, that matched her personality perfectly while also being suited for the rough battlefield. It even looked like a Hero Costume!
All that would be missing from her ideal costume would be a rebreather and a mask…
Just as Kyū felt the thought pop up in her mind, she heard the sizzle of lightning and the smelled ozone as the things she thought about appeared out of nowhere.
Kyū shut away the part of herself having an existential meltdown and threw away the key, instead looking at her reflection as she appreciated her new self.
Her uniform was replaced by a black sleeveless crop top, cut off at the midriff, with forest green accents lining the sides and hem. Armoured pauldrons paired with long, durable feeling gloves to highlight her muscled shoulders, and matched well with the dark rebreather around her neck and black hood, eye spots and long pointed ears resembling a sinister rabbit.
Her lower half was covered by shorts bearing the same colour scheme as her cute top, cut off high on her thigh, held up by a metallic utility belt. Tough looking black graves and boots completed the look, bearing the same green accents as the rest of the outfit.
She looked frankly adorable, in her own highly unbiased opinion.
As she smiled at her own appearance, Kyū looked up and saw the reflection of her own eyes. It was that which threw her off most of all, tiny panic attack at matter creation abilities aside.
Her eyes were a deep pinkish lilac and her hair was dark green, just like it had been before her Quirk had manifested. It was somehow fitting. She just couldn't see herself any other way.
As Kyū finished admiring her newfound feminine form, she heard the announcement for the four minute mark to the end of the exam having passed.
So, she got up from her resting spot and sent more Ghosts about to farm points to herself, with instructions to just tell her to teleport to their location when they are outclassed.
She did not receive any call to teleport as she waited. It was like she was being avoided by the Three-Pointers for some reason. Weird.
—
Yagi Toshinori, the Number One Hero of Japan and arguably the whole world, the Symbol of Peace, bane of evildoers and Villains everywhere, was afraid.
He was afraid because the principal of the school he will join as a member of its esteemed teaching staff was laughing diabolically while looking at a screen depicting his chosen successor utterly demolish the Entrance Exam.
Toshinori did not like the glint in the principal's beady eyes. At all. The last time he had seen that glint was three seconds before his liver had its first meeting with Gran Torino's feet.
It was a memory that had haunted his dreams for the decades to come.
"Why didn't that kid get a recommendation from a well-respected Pro? Why is she going through this farce of an Entrance Exam? What is her Quirk and how exactly did it lead to all of… this happening?"
It was right then that Toshinori's lightning-clad successor chose to manifest onto reality three Ghosts. One For All had taken especially well with Kyū, Toshinori could tell.
Nezu simply cackled louder as the candidate in question hit the requirements for the Dalek Protocols to be an eligible option. He discreetly activated it on the thirty three robots surrounding one of the 'Ghosts'.
Only for the Ghost in question to fizzle in a burst of green sparks and for Kyū him, er, herself to appear within their midst and making the instantaneous decision that the best option for survival was to monologue.
"All Might. Sincerely. From the bottom of my heart, I got this request for you. Please teach kids self preservation when- never mind, I'll ask Nemuri instead, she's the most level-headed one of us all and not actively bringing forward the day of her death."
"Aw, Shouta, I didn't know you cared."
"..."
Then, Kyū jumped up into the air, apparently deciding that the best course for survival would be to run away. Toshinori sighed gratefully from the bottom of his heart. He knew what he would have done in that situation and was thankful that his so- successor had more brains than he ever-
Improvised Special Move: LIGHTNING REVERSAL!
"So…"
"That happened."
"Nezu-Kouchou, my sincerest apologies, but I seem to be needed elsewhere, please let me excuse myself from my grave to receive this urgent message."
"Accepted! The footage will be sent to your personal account later to be reviewed by you later!" Toshinori bulked up and ran out faster than the livid Pro Hero behind all the others could properly open his eyes and glare at his general direction.
"Honestly, that man… Why couldn't he just tell us he had a daughter attending this year? We wouldn't have judged! Too much, anyway. She does look like an absolute snack, doesn't she?"
"Nemuri, she's fifteen!"
"But, Shooouta!"
"No. Just. No."
"Can I take her in at least? I sense so much potential in there…"
Toshinori sweat dropped at the hijinks the teachers around him were getting up to as the exam progressed. His successor really had his- her- their work cut out for them.
He wrote a note to himself to ask the kid about their preferred pronouns and gender at a later time.
And then the two minute mark approached. Traditionally, it was at this point in time that U.A threw the examinees to the jackals and truly went beyond, so to speak.
"This year's batch of examinees are all quite talented," the very frightening principal of U.A and arguably the smartest creature in the world began, cutting through all the conversations in the room and causing everybody to look at him and his frightening smile, "some of them have combat instincts distilled into them from sheer talent."
The big screen finally diverted away from young Kyū, much to Toshinori's relief, and switched to show a blonde young man screaming over a scrap pile.
"Others overcome their disadvantages by utilising superior logical reasoning and quick thinking."
The screen switched once more, to show various candidates utilising their brains to take down opponents who should have been too much for them.
"There are still others who utilise their natural advantages to the fullest to blow past their competition."
The screen switched again, this time showing a blue-haired young man with engines attached to his calves running through his Battle Centre searching for enemies.
"It is the rarest few, however, who are all of the above, and more! It is to these few that society grants the honorific of 'super'. These are the ones who will shoulder the most burden in the times to come."
The screen switched, showing Toshinori and his soon-to-be fellow teachers his successor in her female form, simply sitting at the edge of a rooftop, seemingly waiting for something as she held small stones in her hand.
Stones that seemed to mysteriously disappear every so often, shortly before one robot a fair distance away shuts down due to one or more essential systems showing critical errors.
Toshinori was in awe of his successor. He always knew the kid he chose and trained was far brainier than he could ever be, but this was ridiculous!
So, he began to speak, "Even so, it is important for us, as heroes, to note that it is only under great pressure can they show their true nature. It matters not if you have the biggest stick in the world if it is used only for personal benefit."
On screen, a giant robot, larger than a fifteen story building, rose up from the ground.
—
Kyū paused in her game of 'Duck, Duck, Robot!' featuring herself, some pebbles she picked up from destroying some concrete, and several robots.
There was a very simple reason as to why. When the timer hit three minutes to the end of the exam, a new type of robot rose up from the ground.
Kyū looked up to judge her new opponent.
And up. And up. And up. The thing was ginormous.
"I never thought I'd say this but wow, U.A is truly ridiculous. Plus Ultra to the bones, huh."
Kyū had no business with the big robot, so she casually fell off the building she was on, landing on her two feet like she was a cat and started walking away, brushing off some of the dust sticking to her clothes.
Just as she began walking in a random direction away from the battle, she heard the echoes of a scream.
From right around where the Zero-Pointer was rampaging, throwing around its firepower like it was candy and the day was Halloween.
Instantly, Kyū changed directions. It could all be for nothing of course, some candidate could just be overreacting to the Plus Ultra nature of the exam, or some- nope.
Kyū spotted the girl stuck under rubble at about the same time the Zero-Pointer did. She had a perfect view of the robot stopping and changing directions to aim its various payloads at the poor girl.
There won't even be ashes left over if all of that hits her! I'm too far to help, but I have to do something!
So, Kyū, for the very first time, tapped into One For All consciously. It was like going out into the harshest of thunderstorms with absolutely nothing for protection.
The waves of undulating power hit Kyū hard, leaving her breathless and nearly without the ability to think. The pressure that One For All exerted unto her was humongous and was completely without equal.
Thus far, all she had done was tap into the tiniest portion of the lightning that now thrummed in her veins to supercharge her own Quirk subconsciously. One For All was a Quirk, and it wanted to be used.
But most of all, it needed to protect those who cannot protect themselves.
Just like Kyū. It was like the Quirk was made for her.
So, guided by the will of One For All within her, Kyū let out the lightning within her veins, let it cloak her body in a cowl of green lightning. The storm within Kyū was ever growing more powerful, one green bolt of lightning at a time.
ONE FOR ALL: FULL COWLING- 15% POWER!
Kyū jumped up with all the strength that her legs could provide, but it wasn't enough for what she planned to do. Feeling the muscles in her legs tearing and the bones of her whole body creaking, Kyū called forth her own Quirk and summoned a Ghost.
A Ghost she threw towards the Zero-Pointer with full power.
The Ghost reached the giant robot within a second, and it was at about halfway from the top of the robot in height when Kyū took its place, clinging onto the side of the robot like a demented Spider-Man cosplayer in green.
'I'll need everything I can get for this.' She thought, wincing at the pain shooting up her right leg. She had one shot, she knew, and she intended to use it. She glanced in the direction of the girl stuck under the rubble, and found her looking at her with a dumbfounded expression on her face.
So, Kyū did the idiotic thing and smiled and waved at the girl.
Then, she gathered up her power to end the threat in a way that minimised casualties.
She called forth her cowl of lightning once more and jumped up, until she was above the robot. She then concentrated all of her power into her right fist before changing her mind. She thought of a particular move used by a particular Hero and felt her grin turn ever so slightly feral.
She changed stances, from one resembling All Might's to one more akin to a kickboxer's and raised her unbroken leg high.
BORROWED SPECIAL MOVE! LUNA…
At the control centre, all of the teachers blanched at what they were witnessing. A green-haired middle aged woman felt a chill running up her spine, like her baby had been hurt again, and a rabbit woman sneezed, feeling a disturbance in the Force.
FALL!
Kyū slammed her leg downwards, creating a slash of wind containing more power than should have been possible in her tiny body at the Zero Pointer
She felt herself falling downwards, headfirst towards the ground as the Zero Pointer was split cleanly in half as a result of her Luna Fall. She giggled at that inane thought as the last of the lightning flickered through her body.
She fell, knowing that there was absolutely nothing she could do to stop it, but also knowing that it wouldn't hurt her. Much.
And then the girl she sacrificed two legs for slapped her in the face, halting her midair.
That's such a cool Quirk! I wonder if I can ask her about it later when I… wake… up.
—
"It doesn't matter if a person has only his hands, feet and the clothes on his back. As long as they have a heroic heart and spirit, they have what is most important of all!"
As the image of Kyū falling flickered through the screen, Toshinori was tempted to buff himself up and speak with gusto, but his secret was still that, a secret. To all present there but one, he was merely Toshinori Yagi, close friend and personal secretary of All Might.
"As All Might would say, there is nothing more noble and heroic than the spirit of self-sacrifice. It is with this spirit alone can a hero surpass previously fixed limits and go beyond!"
All of the other teachers, bar one in a yellow sleeping bag for some reason, shouted out in perfect unison, "PLUS ULTRA!"
Toshinori thought it odd that even the teachers who graduated from Shiketsu shouted U.A's motto with such zeal, but thought nothing of it.
He was busy gushing over his successor and fretting over their new abilities, after all.
—
After the U.A Entrance Exams, Tooru was feeling herself go to pieces. All she did in the whole exam was run around like an invisible headless chicken in the nude hitting the shut-off switches of as many robots as she could and pulling away candidates whenever possible.
She knew that her physique was… unexceptional. Kyū had told that straight to her face when she asked. The boy was many things, but a liar was not one of them.
So, in need of reassurance, she asked him to accompany her to the mall on the next day for some stress-shopping. The boy, being the angel on Earth that he clearly was, agreed as soon as he saw the text, but also told her to not be too surprised for some reason.
Tooru went to sleep thinking about her evasive friend with the smile that could brighten the darkest of rooms and whose eyes could see through her invisibility.
Who called her cute straight to her face.
When her mother came to her room hearing a high-pitched squeal worrying that it was a rat, Tooru denied anything having happened.
When Tooru fell asleep, the results of the Entrance Exam were just about the last thing on her mind. All she could think about were mismatched blue-and-green eyes, a brilliant smile, and a promise to go to the mall.
Elsewhere
"Shigaraki Tomura. Get ready. Your story has finally begun."
"The prologue was such a drag, Master. Who's the noob?"
"He… Call him Nelo Angelo. He'll serve you to the best of his capabilities. Won't you, Angelo?"
"Yes, my Master."
"Oh. A Knight, huh. I didn't know that knights could multiclass enough to be on my level. If Master sent you, I guess that's enough. What's your handle?"
"I am Nelo Angelo, Master Tomura. I am designated E.N.D by the Doctor, if that is what you asked."
"Oh? What does that stand for?"
"It is-"
Ahoy there! Sorry mateys! That's a secret tool that'll come in handy later! Thanks for reading! Um... Hope you liked the impromptu DMC crazy I introduced? Anyway, boop- /cuYSXesV5j