"Regular speech,"
"Flash back speech,"
'Inner dialogue,'
'Phone Text Chat'
This sucked, Izuku had been given no time to see his girlfriend, and that simple fact had made him very frustrated.
Sure, he had just seen Himiko the day before, but he was expected to finish cleaning his section of the beach today, and he wanted to impress All Might by showing his progress—not just with a section of the beach, but with the entirety of the sparkling sands being spotless.
If this had been all Izuku would have needed to do, he would've been able to see Himiko after his training for the day, but he had to leave for the U.A. exam in under five hours.
"Move! Move! Move!" Izuku yelled to himself as he lifted garbage that would've been impossible for him to move an inch, not even a few months ago.
Izuku could feel his poor muscles screaming in pain at the frigid air of morning February. The sensation drove him crazy as his sweat left a slight haze of heat around him. It began to turn cold as the longer droplets lingered.
He'd tried putting on his track sweatshirt, but every time he did, the bulkiness of the cloth made him feel uncomfortable, chafing his neck and arms. Doing this had been so much easier in the summer months when he only needed a shirt and shorts.
His steady progress when moving the garbage ensured he had gotten done on time, but he ended up with the most agonizing ache he had ever had during this entire ten months of training.
As he stood on the scrapped truck All Might had tried having him move just four months ago, without success, he could see the sprawling clean sands of the beach he had worked so hard in.
The piles of garbage around him were packed away either in garbage bags or organized in easy-to-throw-away columns that stood taller than he was. The sight sent a jolt of satisfaction up his aching back, and for a moment, all he could do was stare.
And then, for some reason, he was yelling, whether in agony at his sore body or the primal sense of accomplishment he just didn't know. He just knew that he was yelling, and it was all he needed at this moment.
That was until his yell petered out along with his leg muscles, sending him to fall face-first and land on the now-clean beach below him.
About ten feet bellow. This was going to hurt.
'Guess I'll die after all,' he thought, way too tired to try and flail.
"You did good, young man!" The jubilant familiar voice of All Might praised him, and thankfully, he had saved Izuku from his fall.
"Oh, hey, All Might," Izuku croaked very tiredly. "When did you get here?"
"You serious? I was talking right next to you when you were up there screaming your head off."
"R-Really? Sorry, I guess I couldn't hear you," Izuku sighed, trying not to fall asleep in All Might's very warm hands.
To Izuku's annoyance, All Might set him down on shaky feet, stood tall over Him, and surveyed his work. "You've done great, young Midoriya! You've done better than great! I want to show you something." All Might pulled his phone out of the pockets of his jeans, unlocking the screen and scrolling to something.
When he finally showed Izuku, what he saw was a picture of himself, barely a few weeks into the training, crying on the ground.
"Uh, what am I looking at?"
"What, you ask? This was you not even ten months ago, and look at you now!" All Might's hands gestured grandly toward Izuku, who stood shirtless in the cold February air.
Now that Izuku had considered it, the muscle Himiko had complained about four months ago was even more defined. His torso was completely unrecognizable from what it must have looked like almost a year ago today.
"You've worked hard, heck, even harder than what I expected from you, and you've come out of your crucible stronger than when you entered! Now I can confidently say that you are worthy, Izuku Midoriya," All Might plucked a hair from his mane, giving it an odd look. "So, tell me. Are you prepared to inherit my power?"
"Yes," Izuku nodded, his resolve only strengthened by All Might's praise of his hard work.
"Good! Not even a moment's hesitation! This is the moment you'll grab your destiny," All Might waved his strand of hair as if saying this was his thread of fate, "Eat this!"
"Huh," Izuku asked, dead-eyed and disbelieving at All Might's words.
"Come on, kid! You've gotta ingest a bit of my DNA for my quirk to pass on to you! We don't have time; the entrance exam is a meager hour away, so eat! Eat! Eaaaaaaat!"
"Aaaaaaaaaaaah," Izuku's scared scream echoed off the wall of trash above the pair.
"So nasty," Izuku shuddered, his hand clamped firmly around his mouth, remembering how All Might's hair had stuck in his throat for almost a full minute before finally going down.
The U.A. testing hall loomed over Izuku, massive in its size, but he figured it would need to be. After all, people from all over the country came here every year just to get a shot at U.A.
"Outta my way, you fucking nerd," Kacchan's rough glare barely phased Izuku at this point; after all, that look was nothing compared to Himiko's demonic training.
'Between All Might and Himiko, I'm surprised I'm even alive,' Izuku thought, crouching down, acting like he was tying his shoes, but in reality, he was rubbing his poor shins at the memory of all those kicks he'd had to repeat.
If he wasn't ready for this exam with All Might's strength training and quirk under his belt, then he thought about all the practical combat training Himiko had given him at least once every week for the past month.
'I can do this. I didn't work that hard and train half to death for nothing!'
So, feeling very confident, Izuku took his first step toward realizing his dream.
And he promptly fell face first, tripping on his own feet, 'or I guess I'll just die.'
Thankfully, he didn't die, but a weightless sensation settling over his his body, arresting his downward momentum.
"Sorry," a girl with round pink cheeks said, smiling at him. She quickly reoriented Izuku, setting him on his feet, and then she released her quirk. "I kinda used my quirk on you without asking, but I figured it'd be bad luck if you fell right before the tests."
Her bubbly smile reminded Izuku a lot of Himiko, and she seemed to have the odd rambling quality his girlfriend often had when she was flustered. Somehow, though, she didn't quite stack up to Himiko's cute, blushing face and toothy grin.
"Anyway, good luck on the test, and watch where you're walking next time," the girl waved at him, smiling.
"Uh, sure, thanks," Izuku said absently, not sure the girl had even heard him.
'Well, I guess I'm not the only one who's nervous,' Izuku sighed, watching where he put his feet for once.
Detective Tsukauchi was thoroughly stumped; close to a year ago, a string of similar attacks had happened to leave each victim heavily wounded.
This case seemed to be no different: a house filled with bloody splatters, a pair of dismembered bodies, and a girl tied up bleeding left for the police to find.
The strange thing was, the girl they'd found tied up was the same girl investigating officers had seen fleeing the scene.
To any regular cop, it might've been cut and dry. The imposter running was the murder culprit, and this girl had been framed. But Tsukauchi knew all too well because of his quirk that things weren't as they appeared.
At the scene, there were telltale marks that another fight had broken out, not between the daughter and assailant but between the daughter and someone else; perhaps the parents.
When Tsukauchi had asked the daughter, she had sworn up, and down that she didn't kill her parents. She claimed it had been another girl who had assaulted her, killed her parents, and, after subduing her, had been living in her house.
Of course, Tsukauchi knew that was a lie, not the part about the other girl assaulting her that was true, but Tsukauchi's quirk was lie detection. And this girl was lying when she said she wasn't the one to kill her parents, but the other girl.
This whole thing just got more and more complicated as it went on, but the first thing Tsukauchi had to do was establish a reason for the girl killing her parents. Then he would need to look into this mysterious "other girl" who'd attacked his current murder suspect.
The wounds the girl had on her body were very similar to a string of stabbings that had been steadily making their way down into Mustafa City. Each victim shared one thing in common; however, they were criminals in some form or another.
The first victim had been found in January of last year, and while he'd said he wasn't doing anything wrong, the girl who came forward a few weeks later painted a different picture.
She'd said she had been walking home from school that day, and the alleged victim had taken her into a side alley to do only god knew what. Then, a blonde girl came from nowhere and stabbed the guy three times before running away.
The second victim had been a petty mugger; he'd just snatched a woman's person and taken a detour down an alleyway when, you guessed it, he was stabbed. The purse had also been returned minus a couple of bills, however.
This pattern continued until the victims became more and more dangerous, now leading to the girl sitting in front of Tsukauchi.
"Naomi Tanaka, right?" Tsukauchi asked the girl.
"Y-Yes, sir."
"If you don't mind humoring me for a moment, I'd like to do a little test," the detective said, having something in mind just to make sure his quirk wasn't inaccurate. "I'm going to ask you a few insignificant questions, and you'll answer all but one of them truthfully. Got it?"
The girl looked at him very confused before she nodded, "Yes, sir."
"You currently attend Mustafa High; is that correct?"
"Yes, sir."
"Your parents are Daisuke and Michiko Tanaka, correct?"
"Yes, sir."
"And your favorite color is green, correct?"
"Yes, si—" Naomi froze for a second, confused. "Wait, no, my favorite color is purple."
Tsukauchi smiled to himself. It was a cheap trick, but it usually worked on nervous suspects, even more so when they were as young as this girl. He'd simply been asking her question all afternoon, whose simple answer would be yes. Then he'd thrown her a random question that held no real significance other than helping confirm his quirk was indeed working.
Her favorite color was not green but purple. Of course, that meant when she said the girl who had assaulted her had killed her parents, she had been lying. Using his quirk for evidence would not be admissible in court, but it gave them a solid basis to form the investigation on.
This girl was the murderer, and the stabbing vigilante had most likely either witnessed the murder or walked in on it. So, their top priority at this point was to find the girl who had assaulted Naomi. However, she had inadvertently given them a big clue about her identity. She had some sort of shape-shifting quirk because there was simply no way the girl fleeing the scene was Naomi Tanaka.
'That written exam wasn't too difficult,' Izuku thought, smiling to himself as he stood in front of the practical exam's Test City A.
Looking around, Izuku could see a few familiar faces in the crowd of kids in his testing group. For one, the very strict-looking boy with glasses was glaring in Izuku's direction, no doubt remembering Izuku from when he had called him out for his nervous muttering. The nice girl who'd stopped him from falling was also here. Izuku might have approached the girl if she hadn't already looked so clearly on edge herself.
The entire assembly of kids looked extremely nervous, though, 'm-maybe I'm not the only person freaking out.'
Izuku slapped both of his cheeks, remembering what Himiko often told him.
"If you don't focus, you'll just make mistakes, so if ya need a little encouragement, just remember the marks on your neck," the wink she had shot Izuku after saying that made him blush from head to toe.
A gentle smile curved Izuku's lips as he ran his fingers over a bite mark on his shoulder that Himiko had left a few days ago.
A loud buzzer sounded, signaling the start of the test; most of the kids froze in their conversations with one another and looked around, confused.
Izuku's green eyes focused on the opening gate leading into the city. He could hear Present Mic yelling over the loudspeaker," Hey, at least one of you has the right idea! There's no point in being a hero if you gotta wait for me to tell you to start kicking butt!"
That made the other dumbstruck kids, watching the small curly-haired boys back and getting further away, snap out of their confusion and chase after Izuku.
The first person to reach and pass him was the boy with glasses. Izuku could see his lips pressed into a thin line as he refused to make eye contact with Izuku.
'I wonder what that was about,' Izuku frowned, shaking his head, then focused on his sprint, very thankful Himiko had made him begin building up his speed and stamina.
A few other examinees were close behind Izuku, but none could catch up to him before Izuku caught sight of a robot the size of a car. It was built strangely, walking on all fours and sporting a scorpion-like tail.
Izuku grabbed his neck, thumbing the teeth marks Himiko had left, 'I can't hesitate now!'
Tensing his legs for a fast upward lunge, Izuku was very surprised when he cleared the robot's legs, landing butt first on its back, "Holy whoa! I knew I could jump high, but I haven't ever really paid attention!"
Izuku stood shakily on his feet as the robot tried in vain to shake him off.
'I need to look for a weak point,' Izuku looked around at the robot's body, quickly noting the joint on the loosely connected tail and the delicate-looking head casing to hold the cameras used for the eyes.
Izuku quickly grabbed hold of the stinger, bracing his foot against the base of the tail, and yanked with all his might. The satisfying sound of metal and wires tearing made him grin.
Hoisting the tail over his head, Izuku brought it down on the robot's head, destroying the delicate casing. He couldn't stop now; even if he destroyed it, he'd wasted too much time on this one robot. Looking down at the large stinger in both his hands, Izuku found an odd mechanism near the tip he was sure he knew the function of.
"Gotta make this easier to carry," Izuku studied the sections of the tail for a moment, noting that each section had a power cell, "so if I do this, it should still work."
Izuku quickly smashed the longer sections of the tail, keeping only the stinger and the joint directly below it. He then quickly ran from the destroyed robot, catching sight of three more robots lined up.
'Perfect,' Izuku grinned, pointing the stinger perfectly vertically to the line the robots had inadvertently made. Izuku flipped the mechanism near the stinger, and a concentrated beam shot from the stinger, shooting through the heads of two of the robots. The final robot had taken the dulled blast quite well, losing only a few legs, but Izuku wasn't about to let it get away.
He quickly jumped over the rubble of the two robots he'd destroyed and brought the stinger viciously down on the robot's head.
"That's four! That's not bad, but I've only gotten nine points. I destroyed that two-pointer at the start, then another one with the blast; the one behind that one was one point. Then this last one was a three-pointer."
Izuku stepped down from the three-pointer scrap pile and looked at his improvised laser. The thing was all but out of juice with that intense blast he'd used, and then he'd finished it when sinking it into the head of the three-pointer. So he dropped the useless weapon and turned.
A metal arm nearly took Izuku's head off in surprise, but thankfully, Himiko's constant sneak attacks helped improve his reaction time. He still took a cut to the side of his cheek, but as he twisted away from the robot, he brought his leg around and smashed his shin into his attacker's head casing. It promptly shattered under the force.
Izuku winced, not in pain, but at how powerful his kicks were. He knew he'd gotten much better at leg attacks, and sure, he'd been kicking super hard stuff. But this was ridiculous, and it barely even hurt.
"Make that ten points," he muttered, looking at the one-pointer, "but I won't get many points at this rate. I need to find some way to destroy them faster."
'Maybe if I just focus on their heads,' he thought.
As he moved to attack the next robot, he heard someone groaning nearby. Izuku stopped, looking around, all thoughts of points gone. A boy was on the ground nearby, one of the robots wailing on him, giving no mercy.
Izuku's feral snarl was almost on par with Himiko's when he quickly ran toward the robot. He leaped into the air, kicking the robot's head clean off without hesitation.
"You okay," Izuku asked, holding a hand out to the boy, whose tired purple eyes met Izuku's.
"Yeah, I'm good. Thanks for that, I knew this would be hard, but I didn't think the robots would just beat the crap out of us."
"Y-Yeah, one of them almost took my head off a second ago," Izuku said, pointing at his cut from the one pointer as he hoisted the purple-haired boy to his feet," I'm Izuku Midoriya."
"Shinso Hitoshi, listen. Thanks for the help, but I'm going to get back to it, okay?"
Izuku stopped, realizing he'd forgotten the test altogether. "R-right, me too. I'll see you around Hitoshi-san."
The boys parted, and Shinso headed further into the city; Izuku, for his part, was thinking.
'I've only got eleven points currently, so I'm gonna have to pick up the pace, but there are a lot more people around here, now the points are gonna be way more scarce in this area.'
A loud rumbling filled the city near Izuku when he tried to head deeper as Shinso had. The large looming figure of the zero-pointer made Izuku shudder.
'That thing is huge,' Izuku thought, starting to run along with the other examinees.
"Ow," a familiar voice cried out in the direction Izuku had turned away from. He turned, dread filling his stomach, knowing he'd regret it if he didn't turn to look.
Sitting on the ground with her leg under a large chunk of concrete, Izuku recognized the same girl with round red cheeks. The enormous zero-pointer was steadily approaching her, and the grinding of its treads gave no illusion that the girl would be fine if she fell beneath them.
Looking down in fear, Izuku realized his stupid feet were moving again, running not away from, but toward, the girl and the giant robot.
"Oh, come on," He yelled in fear at his stupid instincts, "What the hell am I doing?!"
The girl seemed to hear his shouting. Their eyes met for a moment before Izuku was past her, leaping with all his strength in one leg to propel him.
*Snap*
'Shit,' Izuku gasped, feeling the utter pain that shot up his entire body, making his brain go fuzzy. Even through the pain, Izuku could feel the cold wind on his face, and he could see he'd leaped so hard he had already reached the robot's head. 'Gotta get it just right !'
Winding his unbroken leg back, Izuku brought it forward like he was kicking a soccer ball. The force of his kick sent even more jolts of pain up his sides, making him gasp.
The force of his blow all but obliterated the robot's head. However, the destruction didn't stop at the head. His windup had made a trail of wind that followed the initial blow of the attack, which slammed into the robot, impacting it a second time and sending it flying into the distance of the sprawling test city.
"Huh?" Izuku gaped at the force he had exerted. He'd meant to destroy the thing, but he'd punted it like a soccer ball.
Before he could stare in even more open shock, he felt the whoosh of air slamming into his body as he fell several stories.
"Aaaaaaaah!" This fall was very different from his attempt at taking his life almost ten months ago. This time, he was terrified of the impact that would definitely end his life.
'Wait, All Might lands all the time from this high up without breaking any of his bones. Idiot! All Might doesn't have already broken legs when he tries to land! If I use the force of the wind from a punch, I can stop my momentum, but do I use one or two arms for that? The force of one kick was this destructive, so a punch should be powerful but not anywhere near the earlier blast.'
Izuku cocked back his fist, ready to sacrifice another arm for the meager chance he could survive this fall, "aaaaaaah!"
Just as he could feel his arms tense up, a soft-handed slap slammed into the side of his face, arresting his momentum and sending him flying sideways. The familiar weightless sensation of the hurt girl's quirk made Izuku feel dizzy, but it seemed to be worse on her.
"And release!" She sighed, touching the tips of her fingers together, seeming very relieved, and then she promptly vomited all over the ground in front of her.
Izuku felt awful; his legs were bent at odd angles, and he could feel them beginning to swell, "ow, that hurts." He winced, sitting up on his butt, trying but not wanting to touch his legs.
As he poked at his right leg, an intense pain shot up his entire body, "yep, they're broken.
He just stared dumbly down at his broken and twisted legs, thoughts focused on the fact that he was still alive, 'Oh, thank god! Himiko would've killed me if I died during the test.'
"The test!" Izuku shot up, his legs aching as he did. He glanced around, scrambling to find something, when his frantic hands closed around a baseball-sized rock. "Perfect!"
He gazed around, setting his eyes on another robot that hadn't been destroyed, but just as he was winding up to send the stone through the robot's head, the exam buzzer sounded.
"Uh oh! Heads up, everyone—it looks like time is up, and the exam is officially over!" Present Mic yelled through the loudspeaker.
Izuku fell back, dropping the stone to his side and letting his hands fall to his sides. "I only got eleven points." Izuku sighed dejectedly. There was no point dwelling on it, though.
A huge crowd gathered around him and the girl who had saved him.
"Are you alright," Izuku asked, sitting up from his painful position.
"Me! Your legs are broken!" She screamed at him before the loud, jarring rattle of her voice made her retch again.
"H-Hey calm down," Izuku said very worriedly.
"What's all this racket," came a wizened voice to Izuku's right.
A very small old woman was pushing her way through the crowd of kids, making her way over to Izuku.
"Whoa! You're Recovery Girl," Izuku yelled, star-struck. "I saw you when you were volunteering at the same hospital I went to as a kid!"
A soft yet firm wrap of her cane on Izuku's head made him shut up instantly, "Stop yelling, boy! Your legs are broken enough as they are without all your fidgeting."
"O-Oh, sorry," Izuku sat quietly, very ashamed of himself, but not so much as when her lips pressed against the side of his head, making a wet smooching sound.
Before he could recoil in utter embarrassment, he could hear loud cracking, snapping, and popping noises that made him cringe. In a matter of moments, his legs had straightened and fixed themselves.
Izuku poked at his legs, feeling no more pain, so bracing himself, he stood on shaky legs.
"Oh! You can already stand? You've got some good legs on you, huh," Recovery Girl remarked, rapping the backs of his knees with her cane.
"Y-Yes, ma'am, I did a lot of strength training, but I focused the last month on reinforcing my legs."
"Well, at least you put some thought into it and didn't just come here trying to take the test easy."
As Recovery Girl made her rounds, healing participants who needed it, Izuku made his way to the exit, not wanting to waste any time getting home. After all, Himiko was waiting with his mom in the apartment.
"I don't think I did too bad; all things considered, I still managed to get eleven points, but I don't know how that score will compare to the other people's."
Himiko and his mom were listening to him as he explained how his exam had gone. At the mention of almost getting a concussion from one of the robots, his mom was all but in tears, and Himiko was slapping his back playfully.
"I'm glad my combat lessons helped ya not die!" She laughed, making his mom's sobs intensify at the mention of Izuku dying.
Izuku stumbled over his words, not knowing who to respond to first: "M-mom! T-Toga-chan, you know how sensitive Mom is!"
As her crying subsided, his mom smiled widely at the pair. "You two should head into the living room and talk. I've got to get dinner ready to celebrate Izuku finishing his test."
" 'Kay!"
"Alright!"
"Say Izu? Now that you're done with the U.A. entrance exam, you've got a lot more free time, right?"
"W-Well, yeah. Why?"
"Let's go on a date!"
"H-Huh?!" Izuku's heart leaped into his throat. Sure, they'd said they were dating and had done some intense things. But a proper date? Neither of them had outright said they were on a date before when they'd hung out together.
"A-A-Are you s-s-sure? W-W-We've been doing stuff like that already, and I know we're b-b-boyfriend and g-g-girlfriend, but-"
A rough, toothy kiss met Izuku's lips, cutting his stuttering off and sending jolts up his spine. For a moment, he froze, but then he wrapped the smaller girl in his arms, giving her a tight hug and returning the kiss, just not as roughly as Himiko had.
"A-All right, did you have something in mind?" He asked as Himiko broke off the kiss, plopping down on the couch.
"Mhmm, I wanna go watch a movie!" The grin that spread across her face made Izuku blush as he sat beside her.
"That's a pretty normal date idea; what'd you want to watch?"
Her smile widened, making Izuku very worried, "a horror movie, of course!"
Izuku just knew he'd probably be shaking by the end of that date. He was no good with horror; even the slightest surprise made him jump several feet.
But it was what Himiko wanted, so he'd give in. After all, maybe they'd have a lot of fun. "Okay, just let me know when we'll go."
"Okay!" Himiko cheered, falling sideways to lay across Izuku's lap.
Izuku smiled, resting his hand on her head and running his fingers through her blonde locks.