The day before the entrance exam, after the incident with Bakugou, was uneventful. That was good, probably. It meant that he didn't have much distracting him as he got ready for the event on the morning of. He started his day off rising with the sun; like always. He had cultivated a routine over the years of his training, which went something like: wake up at sunrise, go for a jog for half an hour, shower, eat breakfast, head to Dagobah Beach, where he cleaned trash for his more unconventional strength training, shower and head to school on weekdays, but stay at the beach for four to six hours if it was a weekend, do some agility training using different, larger pieces of trash as an obstacle course, complete his regular strength training by lifting weights at home, shower again if he's particularly dirty, eat dinner and go to bed. That's how it had been for two years, give or take a month or two. Izuku had been following this routine for so long that he almost couldn't remember his life before it, but he did know that he was thirteen when he began, and he was going to turn sixteen in a few months.
Today, Izuku only had the time and energy to spare for the first part of his routine, the jog. It was UA's entrance exams, after all; he needed all the strength he could get. So, after his jog, he went back home and showered. While he showered, he thought back to what had solidified his resolve to become a Hero. He had always had vague plans to become a Hero, despite his Quirk, but there had been a moment where he had begun to push himself to the limits of humanity to achieve his goals; he had watched a video of All Might. It sounded silly, but it was a video that had been aired when Izuku was four or five; a clip of All Might on a talk show speaking about whether he thought Quirks influenced personalities or whether the reverse was true. He had given an answer that had shaken Izuku to his core, even then, but now, it just made him work even harder.
He sat down at the table just as breakfast was being served. It was just as delicious as every other meal his mother had ever prepared for him. Inko sat across from Izuku, and he could tell that she was trying to find any change in his expression, but he always kept the same face; as wide a smile as he could manage while eating. He was always careful to keep his emotions in check, because the lack of that skill is what had caused his first Quirk flare up, and he refused to let that happen again. He looked at his mother halfway through his meal, and she flushed slightly, caught in whatever act she was committing.
"Izuku, are you okay?" she asked.
"Of course. Why wouldn't I be?" Izuku answered, and he was being honest.
"Well, I just know that today is a big day for you. I'm worried, though, about your other options if you don't make it in," Inko said.
Izuku set his cutlery on the table and sighed, remembering all the late night conversations they had shared about this. They had been through this conversation before. Izuku knew that it was in Inko's nature to worry, especially now that she was the mother of a boy as accident-prone as Izuku was, but he had it all under control.
"Don't worry about it, Mom. I'm gonna get into UA's Hero Course. I have to," Izuku said.
"That determination is great, Izuku, but you can't know that for sure. You didn't put any other school besides UA on your applications, when they recommend you put at least three. I'm just being realistic, Izuku; UA has an absurdly low acceptance rate," Inko said, trying to catch her son's gaze.
Izuku's stare had drifted to the sky outside the window. The word 'realistic' echoed in his mind, sounding strangely like All Might, and he remembered what had happened the day that he met the Symbol of Peace himself and he had told Izuku to not bother with Heroics, since he had a Villain's power. He might have been able to help with cleanup, but that was about as far as his Quirk would take him. All Might himself had told him that. The man that had ignited his passion for Heroics in the first place had said that filth to him. Izuku had rejected that completely, of course, and that encounter had taken a sledgehammer to the pedestal that had once held the man in Izuku's mind, and had forced him to think about it from a neutral perspective, finally abandoning that blind love of All Might that his Mom had felt was dangerous. She never said so, but he knew it. He knew a lot that others didn't want him to know.
"I guess I just have faith that things are gonna work out. There's nothing stronger than hope; you taught me that," Izuku finally answered.
"I guess so," Inko said, smiling fondly at her boy.
Izuku was out of the house ten minutes later. UA required all applicants to be at the school by ten, and it was already almost eight, so with a twenty minute train ride, he'd make it there with about an hour and twenty minutes until the exam began, which was cutting it a little close, if Izuku was being honest. He knew that was just a little joke, but he felt like he had to make a strong first impression on UA, and what better than arriving with a good chunk of spare time and a 'can-do' attitude? Not much. Other than actually being All Might, Izuku wasn't sure he even could do anything wrong before the testing really began. So, he left with a bright smile and a hug for good luck.
The walk to the train station had Izuku fiddling with the straps on his bag every few moments, trying and failing to get any sort of sensation, due to his gloves covering the fingers he immediately went to for that kind of stimulation. It just felt strange to do it with his middle finger, and that was the last thing he needed, so he stopped. Instead, he started reciting everything he knew about UA from his memory, which, when he checked the wikipedia article for anything that he missed as he neared the train station, was spot on. He would have congratulated himself if he hadn't been the one to write it. That wasn't true, but he had noticed some fairly important discrepancies within the article about the school's history, so had changed them. He considered himself to be a writer of that article, but that was irrelevant today.
The train ride was shortened by Izuku slipping into his own mind, trying to dissect all of the Quirks on his train carriage before they got off as a sort of exercise to hone his analysis before the written portion of the exam. He warmed up his mind, so to speak, and actually found some interesting Quirks. One person had the head of a mantis, and from the little Izuku could see of the rest of their body, the rest of them was also a mantis. It was clearly a mutant type, but did it only affect the outsides of the person, or were their internal organs modified to that of a mantis?
There was another person whose entire body shifted about as the carriage made turns just a bit too tight. It wasn't just regular shifting of stances that was happening, though, as this person's entire body structure seemed to be changing on the fly to react to the movement around it. Mutant … no, transformation type. It took Izuku a few moments to see it, but the person's body was only shifting with their bigger lurches of the carriage, so it was a mental effort to do it. Maybe it let the person retain perfectly balanced, as their feet had never moved from their position, firmly planted on the ground, but could let the user rearrange their own body on command to allow their weight to shift in a way that, even if they were being thrust around by a shoddily made train, they'd never have to move an inch? That seemed possible, but he wasn't sure.
The ride was relatively calm after that. Izuku was still nervous, sure, but his nerves were the kind that made him want to jump over the moon because he was actually about to take the entrance exam for UA's Hero track. This was a dream come true, and not only for him. He'd been keeping up to date with some forums and websites for the past few years for people whose Quirks seemed evil, or Villainous, but were really good people underneath. He had connected with some of those people, and now his dream wasn't just for him. Now, Izuku was going to become a Hero for them as well, and nothing would stop him.
As Izuku arrived at the gates of UA, he had to stop and marvel at how large and ornate they were. It was like staring at the stairway to heaven, except all he had to do was step over that line and he'd be someplace even better. Suddenly, however, Izuku hesitated. He felt the fabric of the gloves on his fingers, and knew that he'd be judged. Even if he were to be accepted by the Hero track, he'd probably still freak people out with his power. Like his father had been. Izuku, after the day he had killed his father, had wondered why he had been so worried about Izuku's Quirk, as he himself was a Villain. Izuku chalked it up to his father just saying what he had thought was necessary to get him out of the house, since the fear in his eyes when Izuku had used his Quirk couldn't have been faked. He had been so afraid that he was willing to break apart his family. Izuku would never understand how someone could hurt another person just so that they could get what they wanted. He supposed that was the fundamental difference between Heroes and Villains; selfishness versus selflessness.
Sucking in a deep breath, Izuku stepped in, crossing the threshold and officially getting the attention of the man sitting behind a desk. The man had been watching him before, Izuku had known it, but actually taking that step in had caused the man to look over at him with raised eyebrows and a soft, polite smile. Izuku steadied himself, stopping his hands from shaking so much that he thought his gloves were going to come off, and stepped toward the booth the man occupied.
"Welcome to UA! I'm guessing that you're an applicant?" the man asked.
"Right! Izuku Midoriya, here to apply for the Hero Course," Izuku replied.
The man looked at Izuku, like he thought he was lying. Izuku felt a cold shock travel through him. What if UA hadn't received his application? What if they had rejected him because of his Quirk, and he just hadn't seen it? What if Izuku got the dates wrong, and this was the exam for the General or Support Courses? What if the Hero Course exam had already happened? The silence was deafening for Izuku, but as soon as the computer beside the man chimed a happy sounding ding, he smiled and looked back at Izuku.
"Alright. If you'll wait a moment, I'll have an identification badge printed out for you," the man said.
"Of course," Izuku said.
Izuku breathed a sigh of relief. He had been overthinking again. Trying to trace back when he had started to lose his grip, Izuku found it started just after he had gotten into a brief scuffle in the hall with Bakugou. Izuku sighed, knowing what it was, now. He had another attack, and now he was uneasy going into the exam. That was no good. He absently flexed his bicep, just for the grounding sensation, as he recalled what had happened in the fight.
He had taken one look at Bakugou, with that same disappointed look in his eyes, and all of the things that he had worked so hard to put away had surged back to him, overwhelming him in the sheer enormity of Izuku's mixed feelings of them. On one hand, he knew that it wasn't really his fault that those people, those kids had died. On the other hand, however, it had been his fingers that had clung to Nikko's body as it fell apart. He remembered the sensation of clawing into the ground as it disintegrated at his touch. He knew what death smelled like, and he would never forget. Bakugou knew that. He had hung it over his head for a decade, putting him down and undoing all of the progress he made with Kyokan, his therapist, a few times before he had started to stay away from Bakugou altogether. It was nice, but they would have to run into each other eventually, especially if neither of them refused to back down from Heroics, which Izuku knew that neither would.
Snapping out of his haze, Izuku took his newly printed identification badge. He marvelled at it for a moment, looking at his name printed next to UA's emblem. Izuku was still half-expecting to wake up in his room, the sun rising outside, but it never happened, so he just had to accept that this was reality. Izuku clipped the badge onto his blazer and winced as he felt the piece of clothing stretch just a bit too much to be comfortable. He'd need to talk to his mother about getting a new one. Izuku realized that by the time they'd get around to it, he'd be in high school anyway, with a new uniform. That was when it hit that he really was just a month away from his life changing forever, and quite possibly for the worse. If he didn't get into UA, then he'd be what he was in middle school; an outcast. A freak. A Villain. What would the adult world be like for someone like him? Was this how Villains felt? Was the fear he saw in the childrens' eyes before they crumbled away how civilians in need of saving felt? Maybe he should read some books on how to comfort and battle not just people, but minds and ideologies.
"You'll be late if you stare off into space any longer," the man inside the booth said, chuckling at Izuku's vague confusion.
"Oh! Right! The exam! Uh, thank you!" Izuku fired off, barely taking a moment before shooting off like a rocket toward the entrance of the main building.
Izuku heard laughing behind him, but paid it no mind as he raced toward Lecture Hall C, where the signs posted up around the halls instructed applicants to head. He eventually made it to the lecture hall, and stepped inside to a cacophony of noise. It made his head hurt, and he waited for a few seconds before searching for a seat. Looking around, no seats were available except for two on either side of a small boy with purple spheres on his head. Izuku immediately wondered if that was a Quirk, or just a really funky hat, but put it aside as he took one of the seats beside him.
The boy looked at him with a sense of unease. Izuku wondered if Bakugou had already been around, and told people about him, but stopped thinking about him entirely. It would do nothing but harm to his mindset going into this exam, which was already kind of unpredictable in the first place; no need to pile on unnecessary things to make him worse.
"Hey. Which school are you coming from?" Izuku said, holding out his hand to the smaller boy.
The boy did nothing, just staring at his hand, with nothing about his face to clue Izuku in on what he was thinking. They just sat like that, for at least half a minute, before the other boy scrunched up his nose and looked away.
"Don't you want to sit with a normal person?" he asked, spitting out the word 'normal' like it was a slur.
"Um, no? What even is normal? There are Quirks that make some people able to shoot lightning out of their fingers, and others who can fire off explosions at will. None of that was normal just a few hundred years ago, so why aren't you normal?" Izuku asked.
"You … the others didn't tell you?" the boy asked, looking around nervously.
"No? What, does your Quirk subconsciously affect people within a certain radius? That would explain why people won't sit too close, but I'm not really feeling anything, so it probably isn't that," Izuku said, beginning to ramble.
"Nothing. I'm Mineta, from Saitama Junior High," the boy, apparently named Mineta, said, before finally taking Izuku's hand.
"Midoriya, Aldera Middle School," Izuku replied.
"That shithole? I thought that got shut down," Mineta exclaimed.
"Almost. They managed to collect enough money to save the school, but our cafeteria has been overpriced ever since. They charged me fifteen bucks for an apple once," Izuku said, chuckling at the memory. A nice one.
"No way!" Mineta laughed.
"Yeah. So, what's Saitama like?" Izuku asked.
"Oh, it's not bad. I think I prefer this type of thing more, though. There's so much that UA has to offer that Saitama doesn't," Mineta said with a far off look in his eye.
"Like what?" Izuku asked.
"Like … the top Hero track in the country, obviously!" Mineta said.
"Oh, right," Izuku laughed.
Suddenly, the lights dimmed. The different conversations occurring throughout the auditorium died down, and all the applicants looked at the stage, waiting for something to happen. If Izuku had to guess, there were about a thousand people there, but with UA's statistics, that surely wasn't the entirety of the applicants. There must have been multiple auditoriums, each with their own batch of Hero-hopefuls being spoken to by some other person.
Speaking of their speaker, the man himself walked out onto the stage, and Izuku immediately recognized him as Present Mic, the Voice Hero. He had to stop himself from muttering as he thought about how he'd been listening to Present Mic's radio show since he could remember, probably even before that. Maybe he could get an autograph before he left.
"HEY HEY, APPLICANTS! ARE YOU READY TO ROCK?!" Present Mic yelled, pointing to the crowd for a response.
"YEAH!" Izuku yelled, being unable to fend off Mic's contagious energy.
"YEAH! Thanks, kid! At least somebody knows how to party here. Anyway, since I'm sure you're all pretty nervous to get this thing going, let's do just that! This is how the exam is gonna go down; you'll all be sectioned off in groups of a hundred and fifty or so, and the name of the game is ROBOTS!" Mic said.
An image of three different silhouettes, presumably the robots Mic was talking about. Izuku was proven correct when the left-most silhouette, the smallest, was filled in with the robot's true appearance. Mic went on to explain what the robot did and what the goal really was for the exam, since 'robots' didn't really explain much.
"Throughout the exam, you'll be tasked with destroying robots, which come in three different variations. This one is the 1-Pointer, named as such for reasons that should be obvious. When you kill it, you'll be awarded one point."
The next robot's silhouette lightened, and it showed a beast that was slightly less armored than the 1-Pointer, but had a tail with a sharp pincer. It looked like the robots were given specialties as they escalated in difficulty, as the 1-Pointer had been a kind of neutral bot, and this one was clearly optimized for speed. That must have meant that the next one would be optimized for strength and defense. Izuku was proven right as Mic moved onto the third, and he realized that he had tuned the Hero out somewhere along the way. It was kind of disrespectful, but oh, well; he'd live.
As Mic continued with his explanation, Izuku spotted a kid seated a few rows down from him slowly getting more and more agitated. It was like he knew something everyone else didn't. Could this boy be a Villain in disguise? No. That sort of thing only happened in manga and fiction, that wasn't the reality they lived in. Nobody could just walk into UA, even if their Quirk was specifically the ability to not be found. They had Quirk cancelling technology at the gate, which temporarily shut down any Quirk that passed through it. It was only for a moment, but it was still more than enough to have a spy trying to sneak in be found out and apprehended or scared off.
Getting back on track, Izuku looked back up at the presentation to see that the 3-Pointer looked like a tank. It was like a hunk of metal that came to life with the sole goal of destruction. Izuku would marvel at the engineering feats that were these bots later, though. For now, they were his enemies, and he'd destroy them soon enough. Izuku absently started picking at his gloves as he waited for the explainer to be over, which got him a strange look from Mineta beside him. He hadn't explained the gloves, though he didn't feel like he really needed to; loads of people had little support items that helped their Quirks function or, in Izuku's case, not function at full efficiency to protect the users and those around them. Just before he walked in, he spotted a blond boy wearing a belt that seemed to have a magnifying glass in it. Gloves with a finger missing really weren't that strange in the grand scheme of things.
Soon enough, the applicants were moving. Izuku stood and followed, falling into conversation with Mineta once more. The two talked about how they felt they were going to score, and it seemed that Mineta wasn't confident he would get in. Izuku understood that, but he seemed to be a defeatist about the exam, which didn't bode well for his actual performance. Izuku knew a lot about how mindset influenced our reality, and how if someone expected to lose, or even subconsciously wanted to lose, they would. They would limit themselves, even if it was subconscious, and then their mindset would become reality. On the other hand, if someone was willing to give it their all to win, they were more likely to succeed, and that's what Izuku was set on. Plus Ultra style.
"You seem to be pretty sure of your loss. What does your Quirk do?" Izuku asked.
"I can pull off these balls on my head, and they stick to anything for up to a whole day if I'm feeling good. It's pretty crappy, I know," Mineta said, pouting slightly.
"I think that's a wonderful Quirk for Hero work!" Izuku said, smiling brightly.
"Really?" Mineta asked, stepping away.
"Yeah! You could immobilize Villains like that," Izuku snapped his fingers, "and holding a failing structure together would challenge even All Might, but you could do it like it was nothing."
The walk after that was quiet, with Mineta walking silently with a pensive look on his face. Izuku remembered something about capture being a viable method of disabling the robots, so Mineta's Quirk would be almost perfect for this. He could simply go along and throw swathes of his sticky spheres along roads, trapping every robot in sight. He would have to have some kind of natural limit, but those could always be worked around.
The group of applicants exited the main building, seeing that there were a series of busses waiting for them. Izuku checked his identification badge and, seeing that he was assigned to Battle Centre C, began to make his way over to the bus marked with the letter 'C'. As he walked over, he waved goodbye to Mineta, who made his way over to the bus marked with 'D'. Izuku took deep breaths as he approached the bus, repeating his mantra under his breath.
'We control our powers. Our powers don't control us,' he thought to himself, stepping onto the bus and sitting down on the first seat that was available.
He could do this. He could win. He had to.
