Just a heads-up: I changed up the summary a bit and made it a bit more streamlined to actually reflect the story better.
This fic is now well on its way to getting through the major MHA story beats. I won't say when exactly the canon divergence will happen, but just know that it's gonna be really good when you finally see it happen.
Special thanks to Writermakeshift for beta-reading.
XVII. My Calm
The Next Day...
Even though being in the hero course now meant they'd spend most of their time learning, you know…heroics, U.A. was still a high school at the end of the day, meaning the students of Class 1-A (and by extension Subaru) were still required to take the actual academic classes. So for the start of their morning routine after homeroom for the next three years, they got a good, healthy dose of English lessons.
And judging by the looks of a few of his classmates' faces, they weren't exactly happy about it.
But in Subaru's opinion, it wasn't all bad—Present Mic at least tried to be enthusiastic about it (way more than his English teacher at Aldera, at least) and even started off by explaining how most heroes collaborated with foreign heroes or got foreign merch sponsors at some point in their careers, so it was actually a whole lot more enjoyable than he expected.
So for the rest of the morning, English class was followed up by Math with Ectoplasm, then Modern Hero Art History with Midnight, and then Modern Literature with Cementoss. And after his class was done, it was time for lunch.
Because U.A. was a pretty damn big school (and that wasn't even counting the fake cities), having to walk down all the stairs of the skyscraper-like buildings or wait to take the elevator meant everyone was given an entire hour to actually get to the cafeteria—a decently-large, rectangular building a few paces away from the central auditorium.
"My mom's been wanting to get a reservation for ages now," Uraraka said, as Subaru and the rest of their friend group started digging into their food after a collectively-muted itadakimasu. "But all the ones in Mie are just so upscale...I still can't believe all the food he makes here is so cheap!"
Subaru hummed in agreement as he ate another spoonful of his katsudon. It really wasn't an exaggeration when he said the overall quality of food in the twenty-second century had skyrocketed—sure, all that fancy fine dining was still as ridiculous as ever, but the addition of Quirks to the mix ended up in some of the craziest and most intense flavors he had ever had in both of his liv
So when you took someone like Lunch Rush—a pro hero whose Quirk somehow turned him into the greatest modern chef of all time—and made him the head chef for the top hero school in the entirety of the Asian continent, a lot of people (Subaru included) expected the meal prices to be insanely high, until he saw for himself how inexpensive all the meal tickets were when he and the others took the entrance exams.
Consistent high-quality food, for just under a thousand yen? Sign him the fuck up.
Speaking of which…
Setting down his chopsticks, he picked up the bottle of mayonnaise he had asked for at the counter, and shook the thing a couple of times, before pointing the nozzle down at his bowl of katsudon and squeezed, covering the entirety of the bowl in the glorious condiment. He picked up his chopsticks again, and leaned forward to take a bite of the fried—
It was at this point that Subaru felt several sets of eyes on him, and he looked up to see the entire rest of the table just staring at him, with everyone's faces ranging from confused to even mildly disgusted.
"...what?"
"Dude..." Mineta started. "Don't you think that's a bit much?"
Subaru raised an eyebrow and nearly scoffed at the sheer heresy of the statement—there was no such thing as too much mayonnaise. And besides, this was nowhere near an unreasonable amount.
"...I think you're overdoing it," Ashido said next, before looking at everyone else. "He's overdoing it, right?"
"You get used to it," Katsuki replied with a shrug, as he immediately went back to eating his own food. The others seated around the table just continued staring at Subaru, before Uraraka soon looked away with a minute shake of her head, before Mineta, Kirishima, and Ashido finally followed suit.
"I would say something about how unhealthy that is," Īda piped up, as he picked up his own spoon. "But considering your placement in the exam and yesterday's test, I'd say it's none of my business." With that, he turned his attention towards his plate of curry rice, leaving Subaru in a state of mild confusion as he looked back down at his katsudon.
Mayonnaise was his favorite condiment, sure, but what he was looking at right now wasn't even a whole lot, right?
...right?
With whatever that was at lunch, Subaru and the others eventually finished their food and went back to the classroom, and after waiting for several more minutes, the bell rang to show it was finally, finally, it was time for the class he and everyone else had been waiting for.
"I am..."
Wait...is that...? Subaru's eyebrows shot up in surprise at the familiar voice, his eyes darting towards the door.
"...coming through the door like a normal person!"
Sure enough, in walked All Might in his 'powered state', who was sporting a costume that was different than his usual one—a red torso with white circles decorating the shoulders and chest area, yellow arm bracers that had fins that reminded him of Batman, blue leggings with yellow boots, a yellow belt with a silver and red buckle, and a blue cape.
Come to think of it, wasn't that one of the costumes he used to wear?
"Isn't that his silver age costume?" he heard one of the girls in the room ask.
"I'm getting pumped up just by looking at it..."
Even Subaru had to agree there—it was one thing for All Might to pass on One for All to him and train him in getting used to it for almost a year to get into U.A., but now he was going to teach not just him, but his entire class as well.
(Ah, wait, he did mention he was gonna be one of their teachers, didn't he? This was the only class left on their schedule, so if you went through the process of elimination...)
"Good afternoon, everyone," All Might began, forcing Subaru away from his thoughts. "I'm sure you all know who I am by now, but just in case…" He took a deep breath, before he started posing and flexing his muscles. I. Am. ALL MIGHT!" Here, he finished with a pose consisting of one arm flexing its bicep while the other was outstretched.
The pose actually reminded Subaru of that one foreign bodybuilder from the 1980s, but he couldn't for the life of him remember when it became hard to think because of the entire room suddenly erupting in cheers. But even he wasn't about to bring down everyone's excitement (and he genuinely was feeling excited, too), so he joined in with a grin at the man's display.
The cheering continued for another few seconds, before All Might raised his hand, causing everyone to quiet down. "Now—let's get right into it," he said, placing his hands on his hips. "For your first year in the hero course, I will be serving as your teacher in Fundamental Heroic Studies. We'll be spending half of the class over the year going over all of the basics like heroic etiquette, safe Quirk usage, and all of that good stuff, but for today, I'll be introducing you to..."
He turned around and picked up a piece of chalk and started writing on the chalkboard. "Combat...training!" He wrote down the words in large English letters, even underlining them and turning back around in a single motion.
There was now even more excited chatter from Subaru's classmates going around the room, and he even felt his own excitement growing larger as he kept still in his chair.
"But you can't go through training in the hero course without the right attire, now can you?" All Might continued, as he reached under the desk at the front of the classroom and pulled out a remote (Subaru couldn't help but notice how it basically looked like a pebble in the man's hand). "Which is why you're going to be wearing these!" He pointed the remote at the wall on his right, and after a moment, parts of the wall started to move as three hidden compartments slowly came out, quickly showing them to be filled with numbered briefcases.
"What you're seeing here are costumes made by the support division, and were designed based on your Quirk descriptions, as well as any requests you sent in before the start of the school year. I'll leave you all to get changed, but after you do, I'll meet you over at Ground Beta. Sound good, everyone?"
Without another word, All Might nodded and left the room, leaving Subaru and his classmates to start quickly but carefully taking their assigned briefcases and filing out of the room, with the sound of everyone's excited chatter probably carrying throughout the entire building.
"Okay, is that everything?" Subaru murmured, as he stood up and gave himself a quick once-over, and with a glance at the now-empty briefcase, he made his way over to the large mirror by the entrance to the locker room. And as he finally got a look at his reflection, he broke into a smirk at the sight of what he was wearing.
The overall design of his costume was something he came up with by himself, but there was also plenty of inspiration from the time he spent in Lugunica. The dark green jumpsuit he was wearing had a woven-in outer layer made out of some kind of padding (the friction-resistant material he had asked for because Full Cowl would just destroy all his clothes once he got fast enough), and he was fairly sure his shoes were made out of the same thing.
His appearance went as followed: his jumpsuit several thick black lines along the shoulder and torso areas with a zipper in the middle, a red belt that was made of what felt similar to a car's seat belt and a buckle that probably wasn't made of plastic but felt like it, three small belts around each thigh that contained small compartments that connected to the belt, black knee pads, and a set of black, fingerless gloves with rectangular holes right above the wrist area.
But the real highlight of his getup was the collection of thick, black lines on the sides of his torso. From anyone else's point of view, it would just look like meaningless lines to make the costume look cooler, but for Subaru, it was a deconstruction of the second character that made up the word tensei.
It seemed a bit too on-the-nose to be referencing the whole reincarnation thing he had going on, but it still looked cooler than not having the lines (not to mention it was already too late to change it), so it was whatever.
A sharp whistle from behind him forced his attention away from his reflection as he turned to see Kirishima walking up to him, who was now wearing his own costume. "Gotta say, man—you're lookin' pretty slick there!"
Subaru returned the other boy's grin with his own. "Thanks. You look pretty good, yourself," he replied, nodding towards what Kirishima was wearing—he was basically shirtless, save for two large, red vertical shoulder pads (most likely to give his Quirk easy access), a dark red half cape that looked almost tattered (a design gimmick, he was guessing), black pants, and dark red boots.
"What's that stand for?" he asked, nodding towards the bright red 'R' adorning his belt.
"Oh, this? It's just for the hero name I wanna use—Red Riot."
Subaru hummed in response as he nodded at Kirishima's words. If you took it at face value, it did seem a bit cheesy to have your hero name referenced on part of your costume, but when you also considered the fact that a lot of other pro heroes did the same thing (plus the whole 'inspired by old comic books' thing), it really wasn't too bad.
"Midoriya-kun. Kirishima-kun."
Some distance away from where Kirishima was standing, Subaru saw Īda walking up to them in his own costume, which consisted of...hold on, was that armor? He was wearing several pieces of armor over what was probably a black jumpsuit, and he was even holding a helmet in his right arm.
"Damn, Īda," Kirishima said, his voice sounding like it radiated awe. "Didn't know a guy like you needed armor."
Īda smiled and shook his head. "All of this is actually to help increase my Quirk's efficiency, I'm afraid—it doesn't provide any real protection against blunt force trauma."
"Oh, so is that how your big bro does it too, then?"
"Yes, that's right," Īda replied, nodding. "Our style of costume is a bit of a tradition that goes back to our grandparents, when they first started Team Idaten."
Kirishima's face then turned thoughtful for a moment, before he just shrugged. "That makes sense, yeah. Still, though, you look really cool in that."
"Thank you. Your costumes look nice, as well. Oh, by the way—everyone else has already left by now, so we need to get going if we don't want to be late."
"Wait, really? Oh yeah, now that you mention it..." Subaru trailed off, as he turned around and looked at the area behind him. He could've sworn his costume didn't take that much time for him to put on, but he did remember catching a glimpse of Mineta walking around in a diaper-looking thing (and wasn't that a question-and-a-half), and given the fact that it was pretty silent, it really was just the three of them left...
...except when he looked to his left, he was met with the sight of Aoyama Yūga, who was repeatedly doing nothing but posing in front of the mirror like he was a character straight out of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (he could've sworn he just saw a couple of the poses there, too).
For a good ten seconds, all Subaru could do was just stare at him perplexed. How...how long has he been doing that?
He turned his head and shared a look with Īda and Kirishima, who were just as confused as him, before the former finally cleared his throat.
"Um...Aoyama-kun."
"Oui?" the boy responded, continuing to pose like he didn't have a class to get to.
"We're...the only ones left in here."
"Truly?" Here, Aoyama finally stopped posing and turned around. "Ah. So it seems. I suppose that's no good." Almost immediately, he raised his arm and snapped his fingers twice, before pointing towards the exit.
"Très bien, let us be on our way then, gentlemen!"
Aoyama turned the corner and left the locker room, and Subaru shared another confused look with the other two boys, before he just shrugged and started walking, as well, making his way to the exit door. And when he placed his hand on the door handle and turned it, a soft gust of wind started to continuously seep through the air between the door and the locker room, as it was fully pushed open to reveal a large, dark tunnel with a bright light in the shape at the end of it.
It was largely silent throughout the tunnel as he walked through it, save for the sounds of the gentle whistling that was the air from outside trying to equalize with the air inside, Aoyama's faint humming several paces in front of him, and the soft footsteps of Īda and Kirishima walking behind him. And as the white half circle that was the end of the tunnel slowly grew larger and larger, the sunlight coming from it grew even more in intensity, causing Subaru to start squinting.
As he made his way through the end of the tunnel and into the open air, he placed the object he had been holding in his hand over his eyes, pulling back the strap over his head, where it rested comfortably amid his wild, green hair.
It was the last piece of equipment he had left—a pair of orange sunglasses connected to an elastic strap he could fasten around his head to keep it secure. There was a time where he entertained the thought of going around in a 'hero-ified' version of his tracksuit, but it never got past the 'intrusive thought' stage, not to mention there wasn't exactly a whole lot he could've done with that.
(Not to mention he didn't want to be known as the guy who ran around in a modified tracksuit. There were already enough of those types of people in the world, thank you very much.)
Just a couple of seconds later, he was able to make out the familiar sight of the brown hair in a low bob cut belonging to Uraraka, but before he could call out her name, she simply just turned around and visibly lit up in recognition when she saw him.
"Oh hey!" she said, as she walked up to Subaru. "That's a nice costume ya got there."
Uh...
"...thank you," he managed to let out, feeling himself start to blank out. It was a small mercy that Uraraka turned her attention towards Īda and Kirishima coming up behind him, leaving him to quietly (and hopefully secretly) start freaking out, because it was at this moment that his brain finally processed what she was wearing.
(He didn't...he never thought she'd...she was his friend...why was he...)
"...really should've written down what I wanted it to be like..." Uraraka trailed off, her voice finally making itself known to Subaru as he came back to awareness as quickly as he left it. "Hm? You okay there, Midoriya-kun?" she then asked, turning her gaze to him with her head tilted.
Subaru blinked. "Huh? Yeah, uh, I'm fine. Just, uh, just getting used to these shades. Everything looks orange and all that." He swallowed. Don't you dare look down, Subaru. "Did, uh, did you really not write anything down?"
"I only really drew all of the solid stuff since I wanted something to help reduce the nausea I'd get," Uraraka explained, lifting her wrist and pointing to it. "But I didn't think they'd turn the bodysuit skintight." She then let out an awkward chuckle as she pinched at the fabric around her arm. "This is kinda embarrassing..."
Subaru inhaled deeply through his nose, and pointed towards the group of the other 1-A students behind her. "I'm...gonna go look for Katsuki and the others, and uh...yeah. Without another word, he moved to walk away, using all of his willpower not to let his thoughts stray, even making sure to flex his arms and thighs to make sure the blood wasn't going to the worst place possible.
Oh yeah, he was definitely trying not to stare just now, Ochako thought, as she watched Midoriya-kun walk away.
If she couldn't already tell based on his reaction as soon as she turned around, then it was in the way he did absolutely everything he could to maintain eye contact with her. And honestly, she couldn't even blame him if his eyes did end up straying—she knew her costume was going to get that kind of reaction when she put it on, but seeing Midoriya Izuku try not to was honestly kind of cute, in a way.
(In all honesty, it made her want to pat his head and go 'how cute...' like in a lot of the rom-com manga she used to read.)
But she really wasn't lying when she said it was embarrassing—getting stared at was something her mom and Shōko-chan kept warning her about, going on and on about how she was becoming a woman and all that jazz...
She remembered how uncomfortable it was to get stared at during the swim lessons in middle school, as well overhearing her name come up more times than she wanted to admit when boys would go on about 'which girl was the cutest' or 'which girl had the biggest chest'.
At least it got better once she transferred, since a lot of the attention went towards Midoriya-kun and his reputation for turning down each and every girl who went up to him after school, but even then there were the rumors about the two of them dating as soon as they started hanging out and studying together with Bakugō-kun.
Eh. It could've been worse. The costume wasn't that bad, all things considered.
Yes, what she was wearing was so form-fitting she felt almost naked walking around like this, but she'd be lying if she said the colors and the design didn't look pretty cute on her, and if someone like Yaoyorozu Momo could walk around wearing a leotard with her chest exposed like that, then what did Ochako have to worry about? And technically, Hagakure Tōru was completely in the nude, if you didn't count her whole 'being invisible' thing...
But then what was this irritation she was feeling right now? Was it because of how Midoriya-kun was trying to be considerate? Or was it because he was trying too hard in his reaction?
("...you could be the one Midoriya finally falls for...")
Ochako felt her breath hitch as she suddenly remembered those words from a year ago. Did...did that mean he—
"Well, well, well!" the voice of All Might-sensei suddenly boomed, bringing Ochako out of her thoughts. "Hero Course students you may be, but from where I'm standing, you all look like the real deal! Now, then—" the man clasped his hands together, before he leaned in with that ever-present grin of his. "Who's ready for some combat training?"
Tensei (転生) - Reincarnation/rebirth. Serves as a double entendre in that it obviously references Subaru's actual reincarnation, but also how he's stepping into a new part of his life. But the other characters don't need to know that.
Subaru!Izuku when he sees Ochako's costume: We must stay focused, my brothers.
With summer classes, weekly piano lessons, working a 9-5, and trying out for an amateur OW2 eSports team, it's getting increasingly harder to find the time to write (my writing binges are dependent on me actually wanting to write), I might have to stop posting almost-weekly and stick to a concrete two-week schedule for each chapter, but for now, I'll do everything I can to get the next 7-8 chapters out before August.
