This chapter wound up mostly dialogue, but it was fun dialogue, so I have no regrets.
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The first thing that happened after the principal's demand was surprised silence.
The second thing that happened was Mr. Aizawa jerking straight up out of his sleeping bag and shouting, "Don't you dare try to poach my students, you rat!"
This caused Izuku to startle hard enough that the remote for the projector flew out of his hands and shattered against a nearby wall. This was nothing to Kaminari's reaction, which was a flash of electricity that shorted out all the lights in the room.
There was silence again.
Tinny music began to play. Cat! I'm a kitty cat! And I dance, dance, da-
Mr. Aizawa answered his phone with a violent motion accompanied by the sound of a tearing plaster cast. "No!" he growled into the receiver. "So what? It isn't as if-" He cut off, as if he'd been interrupted. "Fine. You five. Go talk to Nezu. Bring your lunch. The rest of you, go somewhere that hasn't just had a major electrical accident. Except for you, Kaminari; let's have a discussion about quirk control."
Kaminari's gulp was audible.
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"I can't believe that song is still popular," said Yoichi. "It was ancient when I was born."
"Clearly," said En, "Aizawa is a connoisseur of the classics."
Banjo stared at them. "What are you talking about?
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"I wonder what Principal Nezu is like," said Uraraka, nervously.
"He's an upstanding and impressive citizen, according to my brother!" said Iida, his voice pitched a little closer to the breaking point than usual. "Very-" there was a long pause, "-passionate! Dedicated to his work!"
"As a principal should be!" agreed Monoma, his nervousness much more pronounced. "He does make sure UA is the best!"
"He's nice," said Izuku, "but kind of scary…"
"You've met him?" asked Yaoyorozu.
"Yeah, just before the USJ. I, um, my quirk was really- was really acting up, because, you know." He hunched his shoulders. "Do you think we're in trouble?" He'd been trying to focus on Danger Sense while they walked, but it wasn't giving him a clear signal.
It hadn't been going off when they'd been putting the presentations together, either, come to think of it. But then, would it? He vaguely recalled some spikes of anxiety when taking the written entrance exam, but he also picked up low-level danger from improperly fastened doorknobs and things like that. Maybe getting scolded by the principal wasn't enough of a danger to register to him past the 'background noise.' He had a quirk now, he had to pay more attention to things.
"Wouldn't you be the one to know?" asked Monoma, expression one of genuine curiosity.
"Talking to the principal is a lot different from being ambushed by villains," said Uraraka.
Izuku giggled nervously. "Y-yeah, there's also the whole being based on how- how anxious I'm feeling, and sometimes a person just feels anxious, right?"
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"Ow. Those're sure some pitying looks."
"We had no idea Danger Sense was such a difficult quirk," said Nana.
The vestiges turned their own pitying look on Hikage.
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The doors to Nezu's office opened on their own, before Izuku or any of the others could knock. It was a bit startling, given that they didn't look like automatic doors, but Izuku didn't get why his classmates jumped.
Maybe if he hadn't come earlier, he'd've jumped, too, but he'd had different concerns, then, and… Well. Anyway.
"Come in! Come in!" said Principal Nezu, who was practically vibrating behind his desk. "Am I a rabbit, a chipmunk, or a weasel? One thing's for sure, I'm Principal Nezu! And you five have presented me with a bit of a conundrum."
"S-sorry," said Izuku.
"Oh, heavens! It isn't something to apologize for. As a matter of fact, I am quite pleased with the research you did. Please, sit down, all of you."
They gingerly pulled chairs from where they were lined up against the walls to ring Nezu's desk.
"Excellent, excellent. Now. In normal years, I wouldn't have called you here at all except, perhaps, to congratulate you on work well done - which, mind you, I would like to do anyway. The gathering of intelligence and drawing conclusions from data is an important skill for heroes, particularly investigative heroes, to have. Few students or groups of students have been so accurate. We generally use a degree of randomness when selecting events. This year, however, is different."
"Because of the attacks," said Yaoyorozu.
"Quite so. The issue, you see, is that if you can so accurately guess the events-"
"Then so could someone else," said Izuku before slapping his hands over his mouth. "Sorry," he mumbled, mortified.
Nezu nodded grimly. "It would seem that in our desire to make the festival more secure, we may have outfoxed ourselves."
"You're going to change the events, aren't you?" asked Monoma with a sort of bitter, defeated twist to his words.
"I'm afraid we must," said Nezu, apologetically. "But that doesn't mean I intend to send you back to your classmates empty handed." He leaned forward, a sliver of sharp tooth exposed between furry lips. "Tell me, how would you solve the sports festival problem?"
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They left with an assignment (a formal, polished report on their analysis of the sports festival and the patterns found in it), an answered question (if a support student gave someone else a piece of gear during the event, it was fair game to use), and slightly wobbly legs.
"That was weird," said Uraraka, "and I'm not sure how I feel about it."
"What do you mean?" asked Iida, whose wobble was more vocal than physical. "This is a tremendous opportunity!"
"Well, yeah," said Uraraka, "but I don't know if I deserve it. I was basically just taking notes on videos. Anyone could have done that."
"But not anyone did," said Monoma. "You did." He sniffed. "Just like any class could make a plan like ours, but clearly few of them ever have."
"Mm," said Uraraka. "I really need to show you my presentation. I think it's more common than we realized. But, like. I know at least Tsu and Jiro are smarter than I am. The only reason I'm getting credit like this is because I live alone so no one can enforce bedtime on me."
"Even if that were true, you still put the effort in. You're hardly getting credit for something you didn't do," said Monoma.
"Yeah," said Izuku, nodding fiercely. "And your suggestions were really good!"
"It's not like he's going to use any of them, though," she said, slumping a little. "We've drawn a complete blank as far as the events go."
"That's not entirely true," said Yaoyorozu. "While we may no longer have any good guesses about the specific events, our conclusions about their general nature still hold true. We will have an elimination event, a teamwork event, and a one-on-one tournament, and they will all be on a relatively open field."
"That's true," said Uraraka, regaining some pep in her step. "We can make plans for the second event teams and stuff."
"Or even the first event," mumbled Izuku. "We really do need to see your analysis of what level of cooperation is generally allowed in the first event, Uraraka. Then, depending on the event, we can organize and practice teams optimized for speed or strike capability… Obviously we want some balance rather than one powerful team…"
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"Well," said Nana, as Izuku continued to mumble, "that's scary. Adorable, but scary."
"Mostly adorable," said Yoichi.
"Not really," said Hikage.
"He sounds like your brother," said En. "Except with morals and a strange desire to win a high school contest."
Yoichi blinked at them. "Right. None of you guys knew Hisashi when he was in high school."
"Oh," said Banjo, "that sounds like a story."
Yoichi nodded. "I don't know all of it, but the aftermath involved a fire truck, an ice cream factory, and the North Carolina National Guard."
"North Carolina as in-?"
"The state, yes."
"I thought North Carolina was a country," said En.
"It is now."
"Did you just imply that All for One caused the balkanization of the United States?"
"They aren't really balkanized, they're still a union," said Yoich. "They still have a federal government. You know that. We were all with Eighth when he visited."
"That didn't answer my question."
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They wobbled into Foundational Heroics, and All Might set them to basic combat drills, AKA how to punch someone without breaking your hand. An important skill for the sports festival and life as a hero in general. They were in pairs, switching between hitting a punching bag and acting as a spotter. After that, they spent an hour practicing clearing corners while infiltrating buildings, and, finally, All Might (somewhat pointedly) handed them personalized training and diet plans and set them loose on the weight training gym.
This left them with one course of action.
"Hagakure," said Ojiro, one of many. "You have to tell us what your workout plan was."
"Your gains are incredible," agreed Sato.
"I want to lift Midoriya like a twig, too," said Kaminari.
"I kind of am a twig."
"No, no, Strawberry," said Hagakure, managing to get past Izuku's guard and ruffle his hair, "you're pretty solid, just short. But it won't be free! You guys have to tell us what Nezu wanted with you."
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"...and that's when we were released to return," Iida said, finishing his summation.
"Man," said Ashido, "that's a bummer. You guys did all that work for nothing."
"Hm," said Tsuyu, "did they? Kero. The basic assumptions should still hold true, so we can still strategize."
"That's what Midoriya said on the way back," said Uraraka, who was taping her fingers.
"Y-yeah," said Izuku, finishing his set and sliding off the bench. "But… there might be a problem." A big one.
"Like what?" asked Uraraka. She took Izuku's spot on the bench, hesitated, and then slid off again to remove some of the weights.
"Kacchan."
"The rude boy from 1-B?" asked Tsuyu.
"When I was thinking about team match ups… Well. Anyone who works with me is going to have to deal with him, too. The thing he cares about most is winning, but if he can steamroll me in the meantime… I'm a liability for any plan we come up with."
"Midoriya, part of the reason we're working together is specifically to knock that guy down a peg," said Tsuyu.
"O-oh," said Izuku. "I guess… Yeah, it is, isn't it? I hadn't really…" What hadn't he really done? Processed it? Thought about it? Realized what it meant?
What did it mean?
"It means that we're friends, silly!" said Uraraka, giving him a hearty slap on the back before settling back down on the bench.
"And that we find Bakugo's attitude to be unacceptable in someone who aspires to be a hero!" added Iida. A murmur of agreement echoed through the gym.
"Midoriya," said Tokoyami, "should Bakugo seek you out on the field of battle, we will show him true darkness."
"He means we'll beat him up if he tries to pick on you!" explained Dark Shadow.
Izuku felt himself tearing up. "You guys…"
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"That's sweet," said Nana, "but it doesn't take care of the tactical issue."
"Shush," said Yoichi. "Let us enjoy the moment."
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Izuku rubbed at his eyes with slightly shaking hands.
"We still need a strategy to deal with him," said Izuku, surprised at how steady his voice was.
"We will need strategies for everything," said Yaoyorozu, the sentence punctuated by strokes on the rowing machine she was using.
"Oi!" shouted Jiro from the racks on the other side of the room. "I don't know about you guys, but I'm not going to remember a dozen different strategies for all sorts of scenarios or whatever! If we don't know the events, we can't make a plan to cover everything."
(A few feet away from her, Todoroki had put on an expression that just screamed 'I'm not listening to this.')
"A conundrum indeed," intoned Tokoyami.
"One of my martial arts instructors used to say that you can't plan for your opponent doing anything - you just have to train yourself to act and react in the ways you can," said Ojiro, helpfully. "Of course, then we had lessons on reading opponents, and that sort of undercut things a little bit…"
"Hey, uh…" Uraraka settled the bar back on the stand with a little oomph. "Maybe we can just… Work out how to work well together? I mean, focus on teamwork first, and then we'll be able to adapt to, um, whatever our 'opponent' throws at us?"
"Ah," said Yaoyorozu. "Very well put."
"Ehe," said Uraraka, scratching the back of her neck. "I try!"
"Did you just call the principal our opponent?" asked Iida, aghast.
"Well, he is, in this case, isn't he?"
Iida was silent for a long moment. "He is," he confirmed. Then he sat up on the leg curl machine he'd been using the whole time and buried his face in his hands. Izuku, not knowing what else to do, patted him on the back.
"Oh, hey," said Kirishima, "did we ever make a decision about, uh… Support and gen ed?"
"Oh! Oh!" said Kaminari, waving his hand with as much energy as remained in his body after an hours-long workout. Which was to say, not much, but still more than Izuku would have thought. "I'll get Better Purple!"
"Was that his name?" asked Kirishima.
"Nah. I don't think he actually said his name. Huh." He stared into the distance. "It could be his name. I mean, we've got some weird names here. My name's basically thunder electricity. Makes you wonder what my parents were thinking."
"Probably the same thing you're thinking when you blow out your brain," said Jiro.
"My feelings are hurt," said Kaminari. "Terribly hurt. Wounded. Perhaps mortally so. Who gave your tongue such fatal barbs?"
"How are you so bad at your literature homework when your vocabulary is like that?"
"Talent."
"Um," said Izuku, raising a timid hand. "I'll talk to Hatsume, since I kind of know her."
"I'll go with you!" volunteered Uraraka. "I want to see what she's like."
"Oh ho," said Hagakure, grasping Uraraka by the shoulders and making her jump. "Scoping out the competition, are we?"
"W-w-what? Haha, no way!"
"Hopefully, she won't be competition until the last event!" said Izuku. "I really think she will join us, if we can pitch it right."
"Yeah, Hagakure," said Tsuyu. "If we're talking about the last event, people in this class are competition, too."
"Actually," said Monoma, if they do a standard tournament-style event for the finals, we'll be competition in the second event, too. When they do tournaments, they only have sixteen people." He paused. "We can all agree on trying to take Kacchan out first, though, right? And 1-B," he added, as an afterthought.
For a moment, Izuku thought their alliance might fall apart. But then there were solemn nods.
"Let's do a cheer!" said Monoma, leaping onto a treadmill. "For the crushing, humiliating defeat of 1-B and the eternal supremacy of class A!"
"That's a little too far, actually," said Yaoyorozu.
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Izuku stopped, his heart in his throat, just a few feet down the hall from the support labs and grabbed Uraraka's wrist.
Perhaps inevitably, the lab doors exploded outward. A girl with a ponytail and a headband with antennas on it jumped up, away from the warped metal, and ran back inside the lab, howling about her reaction while someone else cackled.
The cackle sounded a lot like Hatsume.
"Uh," said Uraraka. "Is that normal?"
"It… seems so? It happened last time, too."
Izuku cautiously peered inside. Danger Sense wasn't going off, but that was no reason to be careless.
Yep. The cackle was definitely Hatsume.
"Uh," said Izuku. "Hatsume?" He'd have to be louder to be heard over the machinery. "Hatsume! Hello!"
"Oh! Hey! Grappling hook!" The girl greeted, waving. "How's it going? My baby holding up okay?"
"It was great," said Izuku, shuffling into the lab. "Really. It saved my life. This is Uraraka, she's in 1-A with me."
"Nice!" Hatsume said. "So, whatcha here for? It better not be that you broke my baby." Suddenly, the crosshairs in Hatsume's eyes looked really menacing. "Just kidding! But you should bring it in for dedicated maintenance if you used it in battle."
"I thought our hero costumes were brought in for maintenance automatically," said Uraraka.
"They are," said Hatsume, "but that's like, spot checking and patching, and it's assigned to random students. If you want to treat my babies right, you need to bring them home to mama. But I guess that's not what you're here for?"
"W-well, my class and I," he gestured at Uraraka, "were wondering if, um, you'd be interested in more exposure for your- your babies. At the sports festival. We sort of have a plan."
"Huh," said Hatsume. Then she dragged him and Uraraka off into a small, padded side room. She tossed a box at him, and an identical one at Uraraka. Protective gear. "Put that on and you can pitch your plan to me while we test a few things." She grinned, wickedly and hefted a… net gun? Izuku hoped it was a net gun. "Progress waits for no one, right?"
Izuku didn't think that was how the saying went.
(The gun, unfortunately, contained glue.)
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Staff meetings, even staff meetings of professional heroes, were infrequently exciting. More often, they were boring. Boring and stressful. Never a good combination. But still better than exciting and stressful. Which was what the meetings since the media break-in had been.
This meeting was not an exception.
"You want us to completely change our plans for the sports festival in under a week?" asked Kan, aghast.
"I don't know why you're so upset," said Power Loader, who had dropped his face onto the table. "You're not the one who has to reformat the arena and add in all this… stuff."
"Challenges, for our students!" said Nezu, far too happily.
"You aren't the one with the biggest job, either, Maijima," pointed out Cementoss. In contrast to his coworker, Cementoss was sitting up straight, looking at the handout Nezu had given them. "This isn't too bad."
"Does Maijima even have to do anything?" asked Yagi. "This look like mostly cement work…"
"The robots and traps."
"Ah, forgive me," said Yagi.
"Hey, hey," said Present Mic. "If I'm going to be on the field, now, who's going to do announcements?"
Nezu chittered. "Isn't it obvious? Shouta had already agreed to assist you in the announcement booth."
"Wait," said Shouta, reaching out of his sleeping bag for his packet that he had only scanned. "Wait. You're leaving me there? Alone?"
He was going to die.
Nemuri grinned at him. "What, you aren't scared, are you?"
"Only of the expectation that I'll have to sensationalize and exaggerate the abilities of children I barely know."
"You realize none of us are buying that act, right?"
"We are keeping the third event the same?" asked Yagi, oblivious to or uncaring of Shouta's distress. He was taking notes on a pad of paper to one side.
Nezu sighed. "Unfortunately, yes."
Recovery Girl made an angry little humph.
"As much as we dislike the issues it causes when students become too enthusiastic, it is the most popular and most requested event. Especially this year, our students need the professional connections internships can bring."
"Alright," said Yagi. "Ah, young Aizawa, I almost forgot. Did you still want to have the students pick aliases before the festival? We should do that soon, yes?" He looked up. "Kayama, are you free to help with that this week?"
"Oh, no," said Nemuri. "Shouta, you aren't after that again, are you?"
"I'm after it every year," said Shouta, still going through his packet to find a way out of announcing. Announcing was a job for loud extroverts who could put a positive and dramatic spin on anyone or anything, no matter how illogical.
"Only the hero course students need hero names," said Nemuri. "For everyone else, they'd only use the names three times, maximum. We'd have to get hundreds of names that are only going to be used practically three times. Come on, All Might, tell him. It isn't worth it."
"I tend to side with young Aizawa on this, actually," said Yagi. "I don't see any reason to make it easier for villains to target our students, whether or not they're in the hero class. In fact, in some ways, students who aren't in the hero course are more at risk than those who are, because they don't receive combat training beyond a little bit of self defense." He tilted his head. "Despite the best efforts of heroes everywhere, quirk trafficking is still a major problem."
"You have to admit, though," said Kan, "Six hundred and sixty hero names - if the business courses decide to compete - is a lot to deal with. What if there are duplicate names?"
Yagi stared, face painted with a total lack of comprehension. "Well," he said, "if you think it would be that much of a problem, we could always use class seat numbers."
"Sorry, what?" asked Nemuri.
"Class numbers. Like, say, young Midoriya for instance. He is seat number 17 of class A, so he could be identified as student A-17." Yagi shrugged. "Something similar is done at conventions, sometimes, to call up particular attendees."
How was it that Yagi could say something so logical in such an annoying way?
"What about recognizability?" asked Kan. "We are trying to build up our students' brands, too. They can do that with their real name, but a number? Not so much."
Shouta sighed. "Then give the hero course students a chance to pick their names beforehand, and give everyone else the default."
"Oof," said Hizashi. "That'd cause a bit of resentment. Maybe give everyone a chance to pick names, and anyone who can't come up with one, or who makes a duplicate name, gets the default."
"There's also always quirk names," said Yagi, now rolling his pen between his palms. "But I find forcing that on people to be… distasteful, at best. And it has many of the same issues as broadcasting student names."
Shouta remembered what Yagi had mentioned about All for One and quirk names and suppressed a shiver. Yeah. He could see why he found it distasteful.
"All excellent points!" said Nezu. "However, how we implement this is, at least partially, up to Nemuri."
Nemuri took off her glasses and made a show of cleaning them. "I can talk to the first year heroics and general education courses, if you can make room for me to speak to them in your classes, but the other classes…" She shrugged. "I'm just not going to have the time to get them done. Assuming we'll need at least a couple days before the festival to get all the names plugged into the system?"
"That is correct," said Nezu. "It sounds like we have our answer, then."
Shouta would like to argue that they hadn't really agreed on anything, but whatever. It was always going to be up to Nezu in the end.
"The first year heroics and gen ed courses will pick their hero names with Nemuri's help. For the other classes, whether or not they have dedicated time to pick a name will be decided by their homeroom teacher, and…" Nezu paused dramatically. "An email to that effect has just been sent to all the students."
"You don't have a computer with you," said Yagi.
As if that would stop Nezu.
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"Right, so," said Mr. Aizawa as soon as homeroom started. "We're doing something different today. A special class."
The tension in the classroom congealed immediately.
"You'll be coming up with your hero aliases."
The congealed atmosphere transmuted into shrapnel as the class exploded. Despite the extensive bandaging, Mr. Aizawa's hair still went up. Some of the bandages started to float too. That was interesting, maybe he had a split quirk of some kind? A gravity nullifier?
"Midoriya, pay attention," said Mr. Aizawa. "The aliases you pick today are only temporary, but you should still put in the effort to pick something appropriate-"
"OR ELSE YOU'LL KNOW TRUE HELL!" Ms. Kayama, Midnight, shouted, throwing open the door. "Like this guy, who's been stuck with what he let a friend fill in on his application for years."
"Do none of you people know how to enter a room without making it into a production?"
"Come on, we've got to give the kids a show. Let 'em live a little."
Mr. Aizawa rolled his eyes. "Kayama will be leading a workshop with you today. Hopefully, you'll have a name picked out by the end of the period, but if not, you have until the end of this week to submit a name, otherwise, you'll go into the sports festival with a default alias." He blinked slowly. "Of course, you'd know this if you checked your email before school this morning."
Ms. Kayama rolled her eyes. "And with those encouraging words from your teacher, I'll start with some guidelines…"
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"I bet you wish you had a class like this when you picked your hero name."
"What's wrong with my hero name?" asked En.
"I wasn't talking about yours."
"What's wrong with my name?" asked Nana, crossing her arms and looming ominously over Banjo.
"I wasn't talking about you, either! I was talking about him!"
Yoichi looked away from Izuku's class and blinked. "What hero name?"
"What do you mean what- ohhh." Banjo turned his attention to Third. "That explains so much."
Yoichi squinted suspiciously at Third. "What kind of monstrosity did you saddle me with?"
Third, who had begun to exude copious amounts of imaginary sweat, broke. "At least it's a better hero name than Banjo!"
"Hold up, do you think Banjo is my hero name? Did you pay any attention during my life at all?"
"It isn't much of a given name, either!"
"It's my family name, you Karate Kid ripoff!"
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Some of Izuku's classmates picked their hero names quickly and easily. Clearly, they'd already put a lot of thought into them. Others, well…
Some of them had put too much thought into it.
"No," said Ms. Kayama. "You can't have an entire English sentence as your hero name."
"But Mademoiselle Kayama, it is a sentence that describes me perfectly!" protested Aoyama with a spin.
"Maybe trim it down to 'Can't Stop Twinkling?'"
"That's still really long though," said Monoma, not looking up from where he was doodling clocks on his paper. "No one is going to shout that in battle."
"Good point," said Midnight. "But if you're giving out criticisms, you should also propose solutions."
"Uh," said Monoma.
"Oh, oh!" said Kaminari. "How about Twinkling! That would work, right?"
"Hmmmmm," said Aoyama, still standing straight up in front of the classroom with his heels pressed together. Then he waved his board over his head. "I will accept it."
"Great," said Ms. Kayama. "Make sure you fill out and submit the proper paperwork."
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"Okay," said Ms. Kayama with a heavy sigh, "new ground rule. Don't name yourself after terrifying movie monsters. You're going to be heroes, not villains."
"Aw, man," said Ashido. She returned to her seat with slumped shoulders. "This sucks. Do you know how hard it is to find anything non-villainous with acid powers? It just doesn't exist!"
"You could reference your appearance instead of your power."
Izuku winced. He wasn't what he'd call an expert on discrimination, but there was some overlap between quirkless discrimination and heteromorphic discrimination. If Ashido didn't bring up her appearance in the first place…
"I know! That's what the alien part was for!" She slid down in her seat. "Alien Queen is totally a cool name…"
Or maybe Izuku was reading too far into it. It happened.
"If you want to retain the movie reference," said Iida, "you could pick the name of the heroine instead of the villain. Ripley also gained acidic blood in later installments of the franchise."
Ashido pulled herself up. "You like the Aliens movies?"
"Is it that surprising? My brother and I enjoy watching vintage horror movies. It is quite educational!"
"I'm not sure how much of an education you can get from them if you hide in the bathroom all the time, kiddo," said Ms. Kayama.
"That-" sputtered Iida. "That was only the once! I was eight!"
"That's not how Tensei tells it."
Iida had changed a very interesting color. "This is highly unprofessional! I must object!"
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"It's not bad," said Midnight, appraising. "But are you sure?"
Hagakure shrugged. "I mean, I was going to go with 'Invisible Girl' originally, but then it hit me, I'm not going to be a girl forever. It might feel weird to be called a girl when I'm like l, thirty, you know? Plus, this is funny."
"Still, Invisible Gorilla is… quite an image."
It sure was. Izuku almost wished he could turn one of Kacchan's insults around like that, but… the idea made him faintly ill. As long as Kacchan was Kacchan, he'd never completely stop being useless Deku, he had accepted that. But having everyone else know about it?
No thank you.
"I'm sure!" said Hagakure. "Anyway, I can always beat up anyone who makes fun of me."
"That would be illegal, in most cases."
"Could! Not will!"
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Monoma presented his name with a flourish. "I shall be the undefeatable Phantom Thief!"
Ms. Kayama steepled her hands in front of her lips. "Just to remind everyone, you are in training to be heroes. So, no monsters, villains, or criminals in your names."
"A Phantom Thief isn't a criminal! They are an archetype of a hero that fights for justice!"
"I want you to think carefully about what you just said and come back to me on that." She paused. "With a new name."
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"Todoroki, how about you? You've been awfully quiet."
"I'm not picking a name. I'll go with the default."
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Despite his best efforts, Izuku couldn't hide from his own troubles picking a name forever.
"I think I need help," he mumbled, half scrunching up a piece of paper from his notebook. "All of my ideas are terrible."
Hagakure twisted in her seat. "They can't be that bad." She snagged the paper off his desk and straightened it out. Izuku cringed. "Midori," she said. "This is just All Might Junior and Small Might crossed out over and over again."
Izuku looked away, blushing and trying to escape from the weight of Hagakure's incredulity and disappointment. Unfortunately, two seats behind Izuku, past the seat that would have belonged to the expelled student, Monoma looked up from his own frantic writing.
("Strawberry," said someone, just loud enough for Izuku to hear it.)
"Are you serious?" he asked. "Midoriya, please tell me you aren't serious."
"I- I did say I n-needed help," said Izuku, wilting.
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"Admittedly," said En, "that is pretty embarrassing."
"You're so insensitive!" Yoichi shouted at Third, pelting him with random small objects. "Did it ever occur to you that I wouldn't want to be remembered as that?"
"I thought you were dead!"
"I was dead! That doesn't make it better!"
"Somehow not as embarrassing as this, though."
"Eyup," said Banjo.
.
"Okay," said Midnight, "let's ask the class. Any ideas for Midoriya?"
Uraraka stood up, almost knocking her desk over. She caught it with one hand and it began to float. "Strawberry!" she said. "Strawberry. I think that's a good name. For a hero." She put the desk back down, her own blush making her as pink as the ovals on her cheeks. "Because strawberries are sweet."
"Marimo!" said Ashido. "They float, and they're green."
"What about Rabbit? Kero. Because of the ears on your costume, and because you can 'jump' high."
"Those are more of an homage to All Might, though," said Izuku, flustered.
"I think you'd be the fourth green animal themed hero this year," said Ms. Kayama. "You could make a team."
"Fourth?"
"Yep, there are a few students in 1-B who jumped the gun and sent in their paperwork last night. Lizardy and Jack Mantis." She tapped her chin with one finger. "And Long Weizi, if dragons count as animals."
Huh. Izuku wondered if there might be some correlation between animal type quirks and color-
Wait. Izuku didn't have an animal type quirk. He just had green hair.
"I have a beautiful name for you," said Aoyama, prancing across the room. He pointed commandingly at Izuku. "The Green Rabbit of Wonderland!"
"Another incredibly long name," said Monoma.
"It gets shortened to Rabbit again," observed Kaminari.
"Just 'Midori' would be a cool name," said Kirishima.
"I like it," said Hagakure, "it's cute and it fits with your costume! Or Green Rabbit!"
"It could also be shortened to Wonder," said Todoroki.
What an unexpected contribution!
"Oh! Because he's wonderful?" asked Iida, entirely straight-faced.
Todoroki stared at him. Then turned his gaze on Izuku, who was trying to avoid spontaneous combustion. "No," he said finally, and looked away again.
Also, had he just been staring into space like that since he filled out his paperwork? Not even reading or drawing or anything?
Todoroki was a bit strange, wasn't he?
Something tugged on Izuku's pant leg and he just managed to suppress the jump that would have sent him flying across the classroom when he saw Dark Shadow under his desk.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi," Izuku repeated, faintly.
"Fumi wanted me to give you this," she said, passing him a folded square of paper before retreating to the space under Tokoyami's desk.
Izuku, shaking, unfolded the note.
Midoriya, my companion in darkness, it began in miniscule letters, I would like to offer my thoughts regarding your choice of pseudonym. Firstly, let us consider your ability to detect ill omens, a power much maligned even in ancient myth, with those who would give warnings either ignored or blamed for misfortune-
The (actually quite insightful and interesting) note was deceptively long, and Izuku scanned through it to the end.
-therefore, taking both parts of your quirk and your position in the class, I would recommend the names Augur, Augury, or Auspex, all terms which refer to the art of prophecy via the observation of the flights of birds.
Izuku looked up from the note and gave Tokoyami a shaky thumbs up. Tokoyami returned the gesture with a grave nod.
"Anything appeal to you, Midoriya?" asked Ms. Kayama, kindly.
"Y-yeah!" said Izuku. "They're all wonderful! It's just, I mean, it's so hard to choose."
"Well," said Ms. Kayama, "you aren't the only one with that problem. Remember, you have until the end of the week to fill out the paperwork and get it turned in. If you miss the date, you'll have to use the default name."
Honestly, A-17 didn't sound all that bad.
.
The school day went normally after that. As normally as any day at UA could be, anyway. They zoomed through their normal classes, got another day of sparring and conditioning in heroics, and then it was the end of the day.
For Izuku, this meant quirk counseling.
But he had a few minutes, so he went to the bathroom and checked a book on quirk analysis out of the library (he'd been trying to find this edition forever!). On the way back, he checked his phone, and apparently Kaminari had informed the group chat that 'better purple' had agreed to come to the 'Saturday sports festival cram session,' which, perhaps inevitably, led to an argument about whether or not they could even have a cram session for a sports festival, or if it would better to just refer to it as training.
He wondered if a constant state of bemusement was just something that came with having friends, or if strange arguments were part of some intricate ritual he had no foreknowledge of. It could also be both, he supposed.
"Good," said Mr. Aizawa, "you're here. Find a spot to sit in. I have some worksheets for you on my desk."
Izuku picked up the worksheets and read the first one. "How does using my quirk make me feel?"
"Yeah," said Mr. Aizawa. "It sounds silly, but we've got to start somewhere. And these are the basics." He sighed. "We will be getting into the whole 'supposed to be superstrength' thing eventually, but for now… No matter how weird of a quirk it is, it's still a quirk."
"R-right," said Izuku, planting himself in the nearest seat and whipping out a new pen. "I'll fill these in right away!"
"You're not going to finish them all in one si- Slow down, Midoriya, you- Are you sure you don't have a speed quirk?"
Izuku paused, baffled by the question. "Yes? Unless one of the early users had a speed quirk…"
.
"I wish," said Yoichi, "that would have been so cool. And so much better than some of the users we did get." The last was directed at Third. "I bet a speed quirk user would have lied to his successors about his friend's name, death, and personality."
"I was trying to make you look cool! Let it go already!"
.
As nice of a distraction as quirk counseling was, it didn't solve the two very large problems looming over him. The sports festival and his hero name.
(He sighed heavily and let his entire weight hang from the subway overhead handgrip. Maybe he could figure out how to do pull ups of some kind from this?)
Arguably, the sports festival was the bigger problem, but no matter how nervous he was about it, how stressed he was about failing and dragging down his friends, they did have a plan to deal with it. He was already doing everything he could.
On the other hand, his hero name was all on him, and despite his classmate's suggestions, he felt like he was caught in a whirlpool, about to be sucked under. A bad choice here could torpedo his future. It could expose him to vicious mockery. He knew what he was talking about! He'd seen Native get ripped apart for appropriation, and X-Less… Yeah. The internet was a scary place.
He hopped off the subway and started the jog home.
Even vigilantes from the Dawn of Quirks weren't immune! The same forums that whispered about the quirk boogeyman in reverent tones always made time to poke fun at the apocryphal vigilante who went by Dumas. Yes, his namesake was a brilliant author, yes, it was pronounced du-mah, but that didn't stop people from writing it as, well.
Dumb ass.
Come to think of it, wasn't Alexandre Dumas the one who wrote the Three Musketeers? That was where the saying 'one for all and all for one' came from, wasn't it?
Huh.
Could it be that…?
Nah. No way.
But back to the name. Izuku could ask his mother what she thought, but as a mom she was obligated to say that she'd like anything he chose unless it was really bad, so that would have limited utility. There weren't really other people he could ask, except…
"Mom," he called into the apartment, "I'm home!"
"Oh, good," she said, emerging from her office. "How was your day at school?"
"It was good! We're supposed to pick our hero names this week and, well, I'm a little stuck."
His mother made a sympathetic noise. "Do you have any options?"
"Yeah. My classmates helped me come up with some. It's just… hard to pick one."
"Mhm," said his mother. "I can understand that, but don't let worries about offending someone keep you from picking what you want."
Oh, no. Izuku hadn't even considered that aspect. He swallowed.
"Actually," he said, "I was wondering, do you think I could call Dad tonight even though it isn't a scheduled day?"
"Of course," said Inko. "Your father always wants to talk to you, you know that. But remember, the time difference means that he might not be awake to answer the phone. I'll go find the number he gave us for the hotel he's in now."
"Right," said Izuku with a small nod. Then he grimaced and tried to clean his ear out with his pinky. Growing up with Kacchan meant that he sometimes had a little bit of tinnitus, and he was used to it, even if it was annoying.
It was funny, though. Today it sounded almost like a bunch of people screaming in horror in the back of his head.
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If any of you want to weigh in on Midoriya's hero name, please feel free to do so!