So. I just got a genuine WebNovel invite to become a contracted writer for the platform. For anyone who doesn't know, this is an extremely exploitative offer that's akin to a slave contract (old Korean idol contract where they get shit pay, shit benefits, and shit freedom), so uh, don't ever sign one if you value your time, money, freedom, and life.

Okay, now while I did say this was gonna go out on the 26th, finals and music lessons kept me busy to the point where I couldn't write for an entire week. Sorry about that. Shouldn't happen again, though—I wanna keep up the weekly update streak for at least the next 7 chapters.

But at long last, we're finally starting U.A. It's only gonna get better from here, trust me.

Special thanks to Writermakeshift for beta-reading.


XV. My High School Life (Again), Part I

As he and his friends reached the large, open gate that was U.A. High School's front entrance, Subaru noticed the familiar set of purple balls that made up one Mineta Minoru's hair just ahead of them, which gave him the idea to cup his hands around his mouth and take a deep breath.

"Yo! Mineta!"

The boy in question turned around at the sound of his name, and Subaru noticed how his face visibly lit up in recognition, even stopping to wave at them as they continued walking through the gate.

"Uh, morning, guys," Mineta greeted, as he craned his neck somewhat. "Is Īda with you? He told me he was gonna meet us on the way, but I haven't seen him."

"Nah, he's not, but knowing him, he's probably already sitting at a desk," Katsuki said, which got a snort out of everyone present—it wasn't exactly a secret he was one of those really uptight hardcore students, what with his whole pro hero upbringing and the high-class middle school he came from.

"But still—it's so crazy how we all got into the same class," Uraraka remarked, and Subaru hummed in agreement at her words.

As it turned out, the bulky hologram disc that was his acceptance to U.A. actually did come with a written letter, neatly folded and tucked inside the envelope he very nearly threw away by mistake. It even contained all the usual spiel that came with high school or university acceptance letters with the headmaster's signature, and it even listed which class he was put in.

In 'normal' high schools (or at least the one he originally went to as Natsuki Subaru, during the old days), the way you found out what class you were in was by actually going to the school and taking a look at the large board posted outside and seeing where your name was (if you even got in, that was), but that just wasn't logically feasible when you took into account the sheer amount of people who applied for U.A. and even other hero schools around the country.

But within the thirty-six people who got into U.A.'s hero course out of the hundreds who took the entrance exams, Subaru and his friends (this included Īda, Mineta, and Kirishima) had not only gotten into said course, but also in the same class.

All six of them. Into Class 1-A.

There was a universal saying: 'if it sounds too good, then it probably is.' Was it really a coincidence, or a deliberate action? Subaru definitely didn't know the first thing about how probability worked, but even he knew just how unlikely it was for three students from the same middle school and the people they met in the entrance exams all getting into the same heroics class, even if there weren't a lot of people who got into the hero course in the first place.

So based on this, the only likely conclusion was that someone was directly responsible. But why?

At first, he thought All Might had something to do with it, but when he confronted the man about it, all he had to say was that none of teachers (except for maybe the ones who had homeroom) had any say over exactly where they got placed—their only real job during the entrance exams was keeping track of who got how many points, and whether or not they actually made it into the hero course or general education.

Ultimately, though, did Subaru really care about this? Not really, no—it at least made it easier and more fun, being able to go to hero school with his friends by his side, being there every step of the way. If Nezu had some kind of motive because he knew about One for All or something like that (if the rumors about his intelligence were anything to go by), then who was he to start complaining? If anything, this was for future him to worry about.

With the size of the school's campus, it still took another ten or so minutes before Subaru and everyone made it to the actual 1-A classroom, having had to cross the distance to the four large skyscraper-like buildings that connected to each other via built-in 'bridges', identifying the right building for their year, and then taking the elevator to the top floor where the hero course was located at.

And when they finally found the room that was marked with a large 1 and A on the door, Subaru watched as Uraraka opened the door, and after took a peek into the nearly-full classroom, was met with the sight of one Īda Tenya standing up making his way over to them.

"There you all are!" he exclaimed, stopping just right in front of them. "I was starting to get worried there."

"Good morning to you too, Īda-kun," Uraraka replied, giving him a wave. "We're really in the hero course now, huh? I almost couldn't sleep 'cuz I was so excited for today."

"Yes, I have to agree with you there—I even had to drink quite a bit of chamomile tea just to be able to sleep, myself."

"Oh! By the way, did you hear about the..."

Subaru started tuning out Uraraka and Īda as they got further in their conversation, and turned his attention towards the collection of desks at the left side of the room, and the assortment of teenagers sitting in them. Almost all of the desks were filled, but he could see a few of them still vacant (if he remembered correctly, his and Mineta's seats were behind that black-haired girl at the very far left side of the room).

And speaking of classmates—for obvious reasons, most, if not all of them were staring at him and his friends because they were the last people to come in, but in the second row of seats, he even noticed a blond-haired boy (hey, it's that Pikachu-looking guy!) whispering to Kirishima Eijirō (he'd recognize that bright-red hair anywhere), who was grinning and giving them an enthusiastic wave from where he was sitting, to which Subaru waved back in return.

"Hey!"

Subaru turned his head towards the sudden noise, and saw a girl with pink skin and hair (she even had horns, too!) move towards where he and the others were standing with her hands on her hips and walking in a kind-of stomping motion. For a second there, he thought she was talking to him, but when she ended up walking right past him, he turned to see her stop right in Katsuki's face.

"Don't you know how rude it is to ignore people?! I've been trying to get your attention for the past couple minutes, now!"

"Uh..." Katsuki stepped back as soon as the girl's face came inches away from his own, and even had his arms raised in a non-threatening gesture. Without moving his head, his eyes briefly connected with Subaru's, where he could probably make out an expression that said 'help me', but all he gave him in response was his own expression that he tried to mean 'the hell do you want me to do?'

He watched as Katsuki turned back to face the girl. "Sorry about that...? I thought you were trying to get someone else's attention. You're from the practical, right?"

The pink-haired girl continued to glare at him for another moment or so, before she ultimately sighed and stepped back. "Whatever. Yeah, I am. You're Bakugō Katsuki, right? I'm Ashido Mina. Nice to meet ya, I guess." She offered her hand out to him, and Subaru watched in amusement as Katsuki tentatively shook it.

"Yeah, nice to meet you, too," he replied, before his face took on a quizzical expression. "Wait, how'd you figure out my name?"

"Well, it's not every day you meet someone who just one-shots the Zero-Pointer and then sit down—"

"Oi."

The sudden interruption of a foreign voice caused Subaru's skin to jump (not that he visibly reacted, or anything), as he and everyone around him turned to see a...disheveled-looking man standing just behind the doorway, who was giving them a look of clear disappointment (if the perpetual tiredness in his eyes was anything to go by), and as he moved closer into the classroom, he yanked his right arm towards himself to reveal something bright and yellow in his hand.

...was that a sleeping bag?

"Ten seconds. It took you all ten seconds to quiet down," the man continued. "That's frankly terrible. Not the worst I've ever seen, but it's still terrible. Next time, I shouldn't have to stand there and wait for so long." He breathed in and opened his mouth like he wanted to continue, but instead ultimately sighed.

"Anyway—" he unzipped the apparent sleeping bag he had been dragging and reached in to pull out a blue t-shirt with the white letters U and A printed along the torso. "—my name's Aizawa Shōta, and starting today, I'm your homeroom teacher. If you look in your desks, you'll find your P.E. uniforms, so go change into those and meet me out on the sports field, stat."

With that, he immediately turned around and left the room, and after several moments of silent disbelief among probably everyone else in the room, they started scrambling and reaching into their desks, and sure enough, many of them were pulling out uniforms of their own, prompting Subaru and the others by the door to start quickly making their way towards their desks.

The conversations on the way to the locker rooms as the entirety of Class 1-A hurried to get there quickly were somewhat muted, and while Subaru overheard how several of his classmates sounded confused or even outright excited at doing something like this, he was only focused on one thought coursing through his mind:

Why would he carry a P.E. uniform around in a sleeping bag, of all places?


Twenty Minutes Later

"But what about the entrance ceremony, or the student orientation? Aren't we going to those?" Uraraka asked.

"Yeah, I don't care about that," Aizawa replied, as he casually started applying eye drops from where he was standing. "Not like they matter, anyway—us U.A. teachers are allowed to teach you however we want, so long as we actually do our job to turn you into heroes. You can find out how to be a student here in your own time, anyway."

Subaru's eyebrows shot up in surprise at the man's response. Okay, to be honest, he didn't really know what he was expecting when they were all told to get changed as soon as possible and meet him out here, but now that he thought about it, it did kind of make sense—pro hero high schools were basically child soldier training camps, but with how specialized Quirks were, you couldn't exactly treat it like it was a performing arts school.

(God, his twenty-first century morals really have gone out the window, haven't they?)

"And this isn't like those physical aptitude tests you had in middle school," Aizawa continued, as he walked over to a small red wagon nearby and picked up a ball, before turning to face the crowd. "Bakugō." He nodded and tossed the ball over to Katsuki, who easily caught it. "You got first place in the exam, so you're going up first. You've obviously thrown a softball before, but this time, I want you to try doing it with your Quirk."

Subaru caught a glimpse of the incredulous look on Katsuki's face as he walked over to the spot Aizawa directed him to. "Wait, for real? I can do that?"

"Do whatever you want, so long as you don't leave that circle," Aizawa replied, nodding. "All you need to do on your part is make sure not to hold back."

"Well, if you say so." Several seconds passed as Katsuki proceeded to stretch his arms and torso, before he drew his arm back and finally hurled the ball with a literal explosive force.

BOOM!

The resulting explosion from Katsuki using his Quirk ended up causing several of Subaru's classmates to audibly yelp in alarm (Mineta being one of them), but as the ball very quickly disappeared from view, a tentative silence spread throughout the class as he also kept his eyes on Aizawa, who was currently looking down at the phone in his hand. Eventually, a faint beep broke the silence, and he turned his gaze towards the crowd.

"705.2 meters."

Several gasps rang throughout the area as more and more people started whispering to each other in excitement.

"To think we can go all out like this...U.A.'s even better than I thought!"

"Oh wow, this looks like so much fun!"

"Yeah, I don't think my Quirk's gonna work for this one..."

Even if this really was just a run-of-the-mill physical fitness assessment, the fact that they were doing this with their Quirks was enough to get even Subaru a bit excited. Was it because he could probably let loose a little when he thought it'd be an extremely formal and boring first day of school? Or was it because he wanted to show off in front of everyone? Come to think of it, hadn't he heard the name Aizawa—

"What did you say?"

Right as he heard the man in question hiss those words out, Subaru's eyes immediately darted to where the teacher was suddenly standing in front of Ashido, somehow having disappeared and reappeared in front of Ashido (how did he move that fast?). He could even visibly see the moment the air around everyone (but especially from Aizawa) immediately became overcome with an extreme amount of tension as Aizawa stared Ashido down, his face and body unmoving.

"I want you to repeat what you just said," the man continued.

Ashido was now starting to visibly squirm under his glare. "It—it looks fun, sensei?"

Subaru almost winced from hearing that—that was...really not what the guy looked like he wanted to hear from her, especially with the look on his face.

Aizawa continued to stare Ashido down for several more moments. until he finally looked away, turning away from her and out towards everyone else in the crowd. "Listen up, everyone! You may all be new to this, but make no mistake, I won't tolerate any slacking off in this class, so if you think you have the time to be having fun instead of training to become a pro hero, then..."

"...whoever scores last by the end of today is expelled."

...

Subaru blinked at the sudden declaration. Wait, was he allowed to do that? Surely not.

"But...but you can't do that!" Uraraka cried in protest. "There's no way you're allowed to do that, and it's only the first day!" Several other students even chimed in their agreements, and he could overhear some others wondering if the headmaster would allow this to happen.

"And who are you to tell me what I can and can't do?" Aizawa immediately retorted, rounding on her. "Are you telling me I don't know how to do my job? Do you know what happens once you stop caring about doing everything you can out in the field? How many deaths are you willing to have on your conscience because of your selfish negligence?"

As he uttered each sentence, Aizawa moved forward and invaded more of Uraraka's personal space, until his face was less than a few feet away from hers. Subaru watched as she stayed unmoving and even tried to match the man's glare with her own, but as he noticed the very slight signs of fear beginning to seep into her eyes, he felt a sudden burst of anger fill his being as his eyes went back to Aizawa, even having the urge to step in and intervene.

But almost as quickly as the feelings came, the man ultimately turned away and stepped back, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, before he opened them and continued speaking.

"You're right. This is only the first day, and it's unreasonable for me to put this burden on all of you. but guess what? This is what you signed up for. The school motto is 'go beyond, plus ultra', and last I checked, you're all in this school now. So I intend to deliver all of that and more as your teacher. It's not only my job to guide you through everything U.A. throws at you, but also to make sure you understand everything that comes with the job."

He sighed and rubbed his eyes for a moment. "Every single day, there are more children born than there are people who die. And every day, there are more villains who sprout up and decide to wreak havoc than there are heroes to stop them. All Might's done a lot to mitigate that, but he's still just one guy. At the end of the day, it falls to everyone who has the ability to make a difference. Just a single moment of hesitation can lead to not just the villain getting away, but also any civilians you're trying to rescue in large accidents or natural disasters succumbing to the environment or their injuries."

Aizawa turned back around and walked to the wagon, leaning down to pick up another ball. "By the end of today, whether I decide to expel you or not, I want you to really think about whether or not you really want to be in the hero course. Oh, and Ashido? You're up next."

He tossed the ball over to the aforementioned girl, whose hands fumbled with it as she tried not to drop it after catching it unceremoniously, before she, too, walked over to the pitching area.


"And now Midoriya."

With a nod, Subaru stepped forward and effortlessly caught the softball thrown to him with one hand, before making his way to the pitching area—a white circle drawn out on the dirt ground, with two lines marked with several notches protruding from the front, most likely to measure distance by the half-meter. As he stepped into the circle, he started weighing the ball in his hands, repeatedly tossing it up slightly and catching it while thinking of how to go about this.

Even if his current limit with One for All: Full Cowl went up from twenty to somewhere around twenty-three to twenty-five percent, it still didn't mean his score would get anywhere near Katsuki's, and that wasn't even mentioning Uraraka's own score of infinity.

Well, he could try to use the full one hundred percent, but the intrusive thought was just that—intrusive. He'd never actually try to use OFA at its full power here (what with the extremely high risk of breaking a bone, or something like that), but the

There was certainly a fair amount of pressure on him to perform and 'make his mark' on the class, so to speak. But any and all worries he had about this 'Quirk aptitude test' were purely competitive, because he also had to be real here—there was quite literally zero chance he'd end up getting last place.

When his competition included a guy who could talk to animals, another guy who shot lasers from his midriff, and a girl whose only ability was being invisible, he was mainly worried about one of them placing last, and he kind of felt bad about that when his power had been handed to him on a silver platter.

"Any day now, Midoriya," Aizawa suddenly said, his voice breaking Subaru away from his musing.

"Ah, sorry, sensei," he replied, as he finally moved his leg and back and dropped into a throwing, and then drawing his right arm back. With just a thought, he was immediately enveloped in the green electricity of Full Cowl, and when the low heat of the Quirk spreading throughout his body reached its peak, he threw his arm forward with a scream of three letters.

"E...M...S...!"

Emilia-tan maji seiryoku. EMS. The feelings for his first love had never gone away, and never will, if he had anything to say about it. Emilia had been a constant source of strength for him in the other world, and always would be, even if he knew deep in his heart that he would probably never see her again.

With a resounding woosh! that spread throughout the field, the softball went sailing through the air, and while it wasn't nearly as impressive as Katsuki's example, Subaru knew that this was everything he could put in at this moment, and that he definitely still had a long way to go. Turning to Aizawa, he watched as the man stared down at his phone, and after several moments, eventually turned it around and showed him the results.

564.24 m

"Good job," he said, giving Subaru a small nod, before turning to the rest of the class, and he could see his friends giving him smiles and thumbs-ups, but also several others staring at him intently.

"That's everyone done for the softball throw, so now we'll be going to the running track to measure your time for the fifty-meter dash. Follow me."


Emilia-tan maji seiryoku (エミリアたんマジ勢力) - Emilia-tan is seriously my strength. Because constantly using SMASH! is OOC for Subaru!Izuku.

By the way, there's an obscure anime reference somewhere in this chapter, so a cookie to whoever can figure out what it is.

Writing these ensemble scenes gets harder the more people get added in, let me tell you. It's a hassle trying to have a group conversation take place when I have to give certain people lines just so they aren't 'dead space' in the scene.