"This is the gym! Feel free to use it at any time!" Moe Kamiji sang, gesturing at the wide array of equipment stacked around the large room. Her burning green hair bounced on her head, little licks of flame like waves dancing on its edges.
"Woah," Izuku smiled broadly. He followed the sidekick through a door in the middle of the gym's far wall. Through it was an area, around as big as the stage from the Sports Festival. Several wooden posts lay scattered throughout the area in pieces. Izuku recognised the source of destruction as his fellow student. He grinned. "Hey, Todoroki! Practicing your quirk?"
Shoto slid his right foot forward, exhaling as he went. A fissure of ice blasted towards another wooden post, shattering it on impact. Almost as soon as the post shattered, the Ice turned into thick snow.
"You have an insane level of control over your quirk!" Izuku praised. "Able to attack like that, shattering the posts without even damaging the floor? That's incredibly impressive."
Shoto breathed heavily, he looked like he was about to reply when he narrowed his eyes and stalked off to a bench at the side of the room.
"Not that his control helped him in the festival." Endeavour boomed from behind him, causing Izuku to startle.
"It helped him in the first two rounds." Izuku noted. "And he made it to the semi-finals of the tournament with practically no effort. I think-"
"If I require your input, I will ask for it." Endeavour snapped. "Otherwise remain silent. Had Shoto used all of his power he would have won."
"I'm going out." Shoto said evenly, brushing past Izuku.
"Yes. You will come with me." Endeavour noted. He snapped again before Shoto could reply. "I seek no debate on this. Get dressed."
"Fine." Shoto said. "Give me ten minutes."
"I will be expecting you in the lobby in five." Endeavour growled. "Do not make me wait."
Moe and Izuku watched the exchange silently, Moe in apprehension and Izuku in confusion. When they were alone in the gym, Moe let out a sigh of relief.
"Kamiji-San..." Izuku ventured. "Forgive my presumption. But are they always so…"?
"Belligerent?" Moe grinned. "No, Midoriya-Kun, they are usually much worse. I expected them to start fighting again."
"Fighting?" Izuku blanched. "But… they're family."
"Family…" Moe grimaced. "Family is a sore subject with Todoroki-Sama and his son."
"But why?" Izuku frowned.
"I don't know." Moe admitted. "And even if I did I would not say. It would likely earn me Todoroki-Sama's ire. Follow me. I will show you to the sidekick barracks, where you'll be staying, and then we can go have lunch."
Izuku's stomach chose that moment to rumble thunderously. He touched his index fingers together silently for a moment.
"Lunch first?" Moe suggested.
"Please." Izuku grinned thankfully.
Lunch was an uneventful affair, especially in comparison to the banquets Lunch Rush was capable of. Endeavour prized efficiency, and the tightly packed high energy boxed meals reflected that mindset. The room was packed with a smattering of sidekicks and various other members of the impressive staff that made Endeavour's agency one of, if not the, most effective hero agencies in all of Japan. By the time Izuku had finished, Shoto and Endeavour had returned, the tension between them as bad, if not worse, than when they left. Shoto avoided eye contact with Izuku to such an extent, he couldn't help but take it personally.
"Come on." Burnin's smile seemed fixed. "Let's go put your stuff away."
The barracks he would be staying in was sparse. Two beds, two desks, a door leading to a small bathroom, and a single window looking out into the wall of the building across the alleyway. Whomever he would be sharing with had only unpacked a white towel, hung over the desk chair, and a few writing utensils seemingly thrown onto their desk. Burnin' didn't know who he was sharing with, since she was in a different room, while Kido and Onima shared the room adjacent. Izuku was sitting on his bed, aimlessly scrolling through the Omnitrix.
The door slammed open revealing Shoto Todoroki's thunderous expression. His face quickly melted into confusion.
"What are you doing in my room?" He asked.
"This… this is my room?" Izuku gestured to his duffel bag by the foot of the bed.
Shoto took a moment to imitate a goldfish before slamming the door shut again. Izuku shrugged and started turning the dial in the opposite direction. The sun was already setting, and he had yet to spend five minutes in Endeavour's presence. Izuku pressed the nub to return the Omnitrix to its default state and got up. Least he could do was go exercise.
He opened the door, revealing Shoto Todoroki pacing on the other side. He froze, staring at Izuku. Izuku stared back.
"I'm gonna…" Izuku started, gathering his composure. "I'm gonna go to the gym."
"Ok." Shoto said.
They remained in the same position, staring at each other.
"You… uh… wanna join me?" Izuku ventured.
"Uh…" Shoto rubbed his neck awkwardly. "Not really?"
"Ok." Izuku said and moved out of Shoto's way. Shoto stayed where he was. Izuku slowly closed the door. "See you later then."
That was weird. Izuku frowned as he walked down the hall to the gym. Another strange occurrence since bonding with the Omnitrix was that his memory had drastically improved. Before meeting Paradox for the first time, he had been an avid student, incapable of retaining information without spending days studying it. Now, he could remember things he only briefly saw with a reasonable accuracy, even days afterwards.
When he reached the gym, he pulled out his phone and opened the bookmark on his browser, linking to a social media post he referred to when exercising. He couldn't do the daily 100 push-ups, sit-ups, squats and 10 kilometre run that u\Capedbaldy2009 suggested yet, but he could do 30 of each.
He started by walking over to an open area on the mat, and started on the push-ups.
"You're not going to warm up first?" Shoto asked, startling Izuku so much that he fell on his face.
"I thought you weren't going to join me." Izuku stated, hoping he didn't look too much like an idiot.
"You look like an idiot." Shoto pointed out. "You didn't even remove your… watch?"
"Yeah…" Izuku sighed. "It doesn't come off. Part of my quirk."
"Ok." Shoto draped his towel over a bar by the mirror. "You're going to tear something. Let's start with some stretching."
After just an hour of training with Shoto, Izuku felt like he was going to die. Sweat poured from him like radical ideas from a politician, and his legs shook like a rioting Populus.
"You're very unfit." Shoto observed.
"You… don't… say…" Izuku panted heavily. He wondered if turning into Heatblast would help his lungs burn less.
"To think I lost to you." Shoto muttered.
"Hey!" Izuku gestured from the floor. "That's really offensive, you know!'
"Imagine how I feel." Shoto said. "How did you win two out of the three events? You even came second in the cavalry battle. How?"
Izuku activated the Omnitrix and, without looking, twisted and then slapped the dial. Four-Arms kipped up, landing easily on his feet. He walked over to the biggest weight in the gym and twisted it effortlessly into a butterfly knot.
"That weight cost ¥10600." Shoto noted.
"Sorry. Heh." Four-Arms intoned and quickly straightened it. He carefully placed the weight back down, the bar looking like a curly fry. "I don't need to be fit when I can do that."
"I see." Shoto noted. "Then why are you not in that form permanently?"
"Because I time out after ten minutes." Four-Arms explained.
"So…" Shoto tilted his head sideways. "Remind me why you don't need to be fit?"
"Yeah, yeah." Four-Arms waved him off. "That's why I'm here."
"Do we need to wait ten minutes for you to transform back now?" Shoto wondered.
Four-Arms slapped the dial on his shoulder and transformed back into Izuku.
"Good." Shoto nodded. "Now you can get back to planking."
Beyond the glass of the two-way mirror in the gym, Endeavour watched the exchange with distaste.
"Pathetic." He muttered in disgust.
Izuku didn't know which gods specifically to thank, so he thanked every deity he could think of when dinner turned out to be a buffet. He always felt hungry after transforming, and after his workout with Shoto, he was starving.
He stacked his plate with a little bit of everything, especially his favourite, Katsudon. It was almost as good as his mother made it. Ok, to be fair it was likely much better than his mother made it, but dammit he preferred his mother's cooking.
"Do you always have such an…" Moe watched Izuku leave the table they shared with Kido and Onima, only to return with a second plate stacked with food. "Appetite?"
"Mhm." Izuku mumbled through a mouth full of rice. His face contorted with bliss as he swallowed. "Especially after using my quirk. I think that it's also the reason I can't get fat."
"Must be nice." Moe bit out, staring at the plate of food.
"If you are finished," Endeavour's voice cut through the silence like a blowtorch through butter. "I have an announcement. Tomorrow morning I leave for the estate centre with the interns. Shoto, Midoriya, I expect you to be ready to leave by 4AM. Ensure you are rested for tomorrow. Burnin', you will manage things here while I am gone."
"What's the estate?" Izuku wondered aloud as Endeavour slowly stood and left Shoto alone at the table they had shared.
"I guess you could call it a training facility." Onima explained.
"Or a death camp." Kido grumbled.
"They're being drastic." Moe reassured. "The Estate is the ancient land owned by Todoroki-Sama's ancestors. It is far from public view, so Todoroki-Sama can help interns test their quirks without risk of damaging any property. You'll have fun."
Those words rang in Izuku's head as he lay restless in bed that night. Somehow he doubted he would leave the experience with the same sentiments. Shoto was sleeping soundly across from him, and yet the moonlight reflected off the alley wall outside their room did little to soothe Izuku into the realm of Hypnos.
He sighed, and sat up to activate the Omnitrix. He'd taken to fiddling with the device in the late nights where he had nothing else to do. At one point he'd even taken to talking to it, but after his mother caught him, he'd abandoned that particular facet of his relationship with the device.
It was pulsing yellow-green, unlike the bluish green it usually did after a big meal. He twisted his wrist to and fro, and noted that, curiously, the yellow light lulled around the device as a bubble of air would in a bottle. It seemed to light when pointed towards Shoto. Izuku stopped in his motion.
He turned, holding the Omnitrix with its faceplate pointed up. The pulsing yellow light rolled to the edge of the dial, pointing towards Shoto. Izuku turned, facing the door. The light stayed pointed to Shoto. He moved the Omnitrix towards the other boy. The light pulsed brighter.
He stared at the sleeping form of the other boy, and decided that he wouldn't let his curiosity win out over his sense of self preservation. The Omnitrix even seemed to whine as he moved it away from Shoto. The faceplate turned teal, a colour Izuku was more familiar with.
Izuku shrugged, activating the dial, and twisting it to and fro as he usually did.
Moe, as it turned out, did not describe the Todoroki ancestral estate accurately. Neither had Onima or Kido, for that matter.
A dense forest crawled up snow capped mountains, glistening silver in the morning light. The road though the forest led down into what seemed to be a craterous clearing, with high stone walls that fell away to bright green grass, ringed around a glimmering lake.
It made Izuku feel at once peaceful, and yet very underdressed.
Shoto's Ancestral home sat halfway up the mountains, hidden in the forest, with only a gravel path up the hill to access it. The training facility was built directly into the crater wall, like a stone pimple emerging from the mountain. It was angular and modern, all sharp angles and massive windows. It seemed to be at least three stories tall, though it was difficult to tell with most of it buried in the stone.
Endeavour stopped the car outside the facility, under a square awning.
"We weren't told to bring bags." Shoto noted as he stepped out of the car after his father.
"How observant of you." Endeavour grumbled.
"This place is incredible." Izuku breathed.
"Hardly." Shoto rolled his eyes.
"Silence." Endeavour spat and started walking towards the lake. Izuku shrugged at Shoto and followed after the Hero. Endeavour stopped by the shore of the lake, folding his arms in front of his chest. "There are many factors that make, or break a Hero. I would argue that the most important factor is a Hero's limits. You will learn your limits one way or another. Either before entering a battle, or being carried from the field after one."
He didn't turn as he addressed the would-be-heroes.
"That is what we will do today." He explained. "I will push you until we discover your limits. We leave when we have found them. Rest assured, you are not ready."
Is he always this dramatic? Izuku wondered. Judging from the way Shoto rolled his eyes, Izuku reasonned he likely was.
AN: Not really much to say here to be honest. I can't wait to see what minor detail gets blown entirely out of perspective this week.
At this point I have received 16 PMs that have accused me of never watching My Hero Academia. It's strange how many people seem to think I'm writing this story with the express purpose of not being true to the show's power scale.
What's even funnier is the 20 PMs I've received that tell me I'm a MHA fanboy who's never seen Ben 10 and that I'm writing this story to exclusively not be true to the power scale of that show.
I'm considering adding another section to these author's notes where I spoon feed the plot to members of the audience who are too lazy to put the mental effort into trying to figure out the reason I write things the way I do instead of simply accusing me of not knowing the source material.
Better news though, At the time of writing this, the number of follows on the story is equal to that funny number in the upper sixties. Pretty fantastic if you ask me.
REVIEW REVIEW - THE REVIEWENING
The One Beyond You
You are entirely correct. Ben would solo this Universe, including Izuku given his power level in his universe. That is the EXACT reason I didn't make Izuku as powerful. Because then the story would be: And Then Izuku pitched and smacked the lads. The end.
Apart from that I want to thank you for giving me the benefit of the doubt. Really. My whole goal with this story is to entertain, and it is really difficult to do when reconstructing a story as brilliant as the source material I am adapting. Thank you for clamping my nuts every chapter and not allowing me to get away with flimsy logic. I appreciate you keeping me on my toes.
Laitou
Another usual reviewer! :D
Really glad to see you enjoyed it, mate!
Izuku has a lot of expectations on his shoulders in this Universe. Not only the expectations from canon, but he's also the only person who knows of the oncomming storm.
I'd say 75% of this story is based on developing Izuku's relationships with the rest of the world. And Yes, there will be romance eventually, I have narrowed it down to three peeps.
Hopefully the tease in this chapter gives you some idea as to how new transformations will be unlocked. It will become much more apparent soon.
XenonKirito
I address the Monoma thing in the AN section of the Complications chapter, Chapter 9 on FFNET. Also yes. Aliens aren't quirks. I KNOW.
XxGargantuaxX
I'm stoked you like it! Yeah, Going from bullied to powerful is a massive step, and you can easily lose yourself in the transition, especially when put into a situation where you can give your tormentor some much needed payback.
KazoomTheGreat
As usual you pick up on the little details I put in the story and figure out plot points long before I spell them out. It's honestly refreshing to read your reviews, and seeing your name in my inbox is often what gets me off my arse and into writing the next chapter.
My choice for OFA successor is very likely going to end with another angry mob at my door, so I'm looking forward to that.
Looking forward to your next review. :)