Chapter Text
February 26th, for most of the population it was a fairly average, if not slightly cold, Wednesday. For one Midoriya Izuku, though? It might just be the most important day of his life up to this point, the day of the U.A. entrance exams.
For the past 10 months he’d torn his body down by cleaning up an entire landfill covering a local beach with the help of All Might, the number one hero and his personal idol. By the time he was done, he’d built it back up into good enough shape that he could handle the power that All Might was entrusting him with, One for All.
He still can’t really believe that the number one hero actually sees enough potential in him to give him such an amazing power. There are some nights where he wakes up and wonders if it was all a dream, but seeing the man’s contact in his phone, *holy shit he has All Might’s contact info*, is enough to remind him that it’s real, that and the power he can feel coursing through his veins. See, Izuku was nothing if not determined, and maybe a little too willing to put himself through the wringer, and because of that, he managed to finish cleaning the beach early by a few days.
After eating All Might’s hair, something he did his best not to think about, he didn’t feel anything for a few hours as the hair had to digest, but around noon All Might said it should have finished digesting, so they decided to test his new power, and the first thing Izuku learned? Broken arms hurt. After a quick trip to recovery girl, Izuku decided that he’d lay off the testing for a bit to keep his limbs in one piece, and instead he’d spend some time trying to figure out a way to keep his arms from turning to a bloody jelly.
It was while watching an old All Might clip where he ran down a street while throwing punches at a fleeing villain that he came to a realization so obvious that it made him feel like a total fool. All Might isn’t channeling his quirk into one part of his body; he uses it all over his body all at once. And with that revelation, he quickly found a way to use One for All to enhance his body without breaking any limbs, even if it did limit his power output to somewhere around 3%.
And that brings us back to February 26th, with Izuku sitting on a train taking him towards U.A. He absentmindedly flips through his notes on One for All, not really paying all that much attention, as he’s already pored over them so much that he’s pretty sure he could recite them backwards, but people already find his notes creepy enough, so that would probably only make it worse.
He continues using his notes as a distraction from the nerves until he hears his stop called, standing up from his seat, he triple-checks to make sure he didn’t drop anything before he walks out the now opened doors. As soon as he leaves the heated train car, he feels the cold morning air hit his face, and he nearly trips face-first into a rail, but he catches himself. He shivers a bit as he walks, but he doesn’t mind the cold; it gives him something else to focus on besides the fact that he currently has what might just be the strongest quirk known to man resting inside him, and he has to use it to pass the hardest entrance exam in all of Asia. No pressure, right?
As he approaches the imposing figure of U.A.’s massive twin glass buildings, he feels his nerves building, but he pushes them back down. All Might believes in him, and there’s no way he’ll let the man down just because he got nervous. He passes through the larger than life gates of his dream school along with other hero hopefuls, including an explosive blonde who shoulder-checks him as he throws a few choice insults his way for even showing up. Right as he nears the entrance to the building where the exams are being held, his foot catches on a rock, and he starts to fall face-first. ‘Sorry All Might, I haven’t even gotten inside the building, but I’ve already failed you…’ he says to himself as the ground rushes up to meet him. Right before he can kiss concrete, he feels a sudden sense of weightlessness come over him, and he opens his eyes in shock to find himself floating inches above the hard ground.
“Sorry for using my quirk on you like that; I just figured that it was better than faceplanting right before such an important exam, ya know?” came a bubbly voice from behind him, along with the weightless sensation fading, allowing him to get up off the ground and turn to see his savior. When he turns around, though, his face suddenly goes bright red as he realizes that he was just saved by a very pretty girl. “O-oh, u-um, I-I… T-Thank you…” He eventually manages to get out as he inwardly cringes at his inability to talk to girls. Thankfully she takes it in stride, giggling a bit at his response; however, it's far less harsh than the laughs the girls at Aldera would give him whenever they saw him walking by in the halls.
“Glad to know I'm not the only one here who’s nervous. We should probably get going though; we wouldn’t want to miss the exam when we’re so close, right?” With that said, she turns around and heads into the building, leaving Izuku stunned with a blush still dusting his cheeks. “I just talked to a pretty girl, and I didn’t totally embarrass myself…” he mutters to himself, ignoring the looks people shoot his way.
Once he snaps out of his shock, he quickly runs inside and just barely makes it in time for the written exam.
Unfortunately, it seems like they organized the seating by school, so he’s right next to Bakugo, the very same explosive blonde who cursed him out for even showing up, and when Izuku sits down next to him, he looks about ready to continue hurling every profanity under the sun at him, but he doesn't get the chance as the pro hero Ectoplasm gets up on stage and tells everyone that they have three hours to complete the written portion of their exam and then wishes them good luck.
After internally freaking out that a pro hero just wished them good luck on an exam, Izuku gets to work on the admittedly intimidating test. He breezes through the theory questions and the written portions, he does slow down a bit for the math section, having a bit of trouble with a few questions, but after two hours he feels confident in what he wrote and brings his test up to the front of the room and gives it to Ectoplasm, being one of the first to finish. As he walks out of the room, he can feel a pair of eyes burning into the back of his skull, and it takes everything he has not to run out of the room, but he does speed-walk out as quickly as possible to put as much distance between him and Bakugo as possible.
For the next hour Izuku keeps himself busy with some light exercises that All Might told him can help deal with stress; it’s mostly stuff that helps with flexibility, something that All Might really stressed the importance of to him, which he can’t help but find funny, as the image of All Might doing yoga was enough to bring a smile to his face even in a situation as stressful as this. Once the hour was up and the written portion of the exam ended, students filed out of the room, some looking ecstatic, others crushed, and some just relieved that it was over.
He followed along with them as they made their way into the school auditorium, where they were once again sorted by school. Thankfully, he was once again saved from a verbal lashing from Bakugo as the lights over the stage came on, revealing Present Mic standing behind a podium.
“Hey there, little listeners, I appreciate you all tuning into the show! Now before we get into the explanation… How about you make a little noise?!” His attempt to hype up the group of nervous teenagers was met with a cough and a few sympathetic looks due to the lack of response, but no one made a sound.
“Keeping your cool, I can dig that. Well anyway, let's get into the exam!” A screen came up from the ground and showed a projection of a mock city. “Your exam will be a ten-minute mock battle in this urban environment, as for what exactly you’ll be fighting…” Present Mic continued his dramatic explanation as the screen changed, now showing four black outlines. “You’ll be up against U.A.’s state-of-the-art combat bots!
First off, the one-pointers, they may seem small, but they can pack a punch, so watch out, or you’ll have the beat dropped on ya!” One of the black outlines becomes fully visible, showing off a scorpion-like robot.
“Next is the two-pointer; these bad boys can fire some rockin’ rockets, so you’d better close the gap or you’ll find yourself on the receiving end of a nasty explosion.” Izuku flinched in his seat, being all too familiar with nasty explosions, but in an attempt to take his mind off the unpleasant memories, he starts to strategize how to take on the exam, unaware he's muttering his thoughts.
“And finally the star of the show, the three-pointer! These bad boys are a mix of the last two, being both fast, strong, and having ranged attacks. They’ve been responsible for over 80% of the student eliminations in these exams, so there’s no shame in avoiding them.” Before Present Mic can say anything more, a tall boy with dark blue hair and glasses shoots his hand up in the air and immediately starts speaking.
“Present Mic, sir, the screen clearly shows four outlines, and yet you said the three-pointer is the last one. If this is a mistake, it’s highly unbecoming of a school as prestigious as U.A.” Izuku couldn’t help but feel that the boy was being over dramatic, but as soon as that thought crossed his mind, the boy in question pointed towards him, which caused his heart to nearly jump out of his mouth as all the attention shifted to him.
“And you! You’ve been muttering nonstop, and it’s highly distracting. If you aren’t going to take this seriously, you should at least not inconvenience those around you who are!” The blue-haired boy's reprimand caused him to sink into his seat out of shame; he hadn’t even noticed he was muttering, was it really that loud?
Before Izuku could spiral even further, his attention was drawn back to the main stage, where Present Mic got to answering the boy's question. “Well, examinee 7111, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but maybe lay off your fellow examinees; this is quite the stressful day after all, but as for the last bot…” Present Mic suddenly let out a chuckle that most students knew couldn’t mean anything good. “All I’ll say is that it’s worth 0 points, and you’ll recognize it when you see it…” With that ominous message out of the way, the students were given cards with their battle zone on them, and without thinking, Izuku looked over to see where Bakugo was assigned.
“Looks like they’re separating students from the same school, wouldn’t want unfair team-ups, I suppose…” Bakugo suddenly shot him a glare venomous enough to drop an adult elephant on the spot. “Don’t look at my card, you worthless Deku!” Izuku flinched at the nickname, wishing Bakugo would stop treating him so badly but knowing that’s not going to happen. “S-Sorry, Kacchan.” He murmured as the blond scoffed and stomped off toward his bus as Izuku did the same not long after.
It was only a short ride to the testing ground, and besides nearly falling on his face when walking down the steps off the bus, it was an uneventful ride.
When he gets close to the gate into the mock city, he sees the girl who saved him, and hoping to get her name, he starts heading towards her until he’s stopped by a heavy hand on his shoulder. “You there, muttering boy. You already caused a distraction at the auditorium, and now you plan on distracting this girl?” People were looking their way, and as much as Izuku wanted to just keep his head down, he also felt a bit of indignation well up in him, something he very rarely lets out, but the stress of the exam was getting to him. “F-first of all, like Present Mic said, the m-muttering was a nervous reaction. W-what kind of hero gets mad at people f-for being nervous? And secondly, I-I know that girl, so it’s n-not your business…” He couldn’t totally control his stutter, but it normally would have been a lot worse, so he was calling that a win. Before the boy could respond, the gates shot open, and everyone stood there staring in at the mock city, not sure what to do. “What are you all doing standing around?! There aren’t any countdowns in real life, so get in there!”
And just like that, everyone came to life and started pouring into the testing area, including Izuku, who was at the front of the pack with green lightning sparking off of him as he used One for All to increase his speed until he and the blue-haired boy were far ahead of the rest of the examinees.
Deciding to look for points somewhere less busy, Izuku ditched the boy who was evidently a speedster, turning down an alley and heading deeper into the city in search of bots.
It didn’t take long for him to find what he was looking for, and he quickly got to work turning bots into scrap metal. The one- and two-pointers were fragile enough that he could take them out with one hit as long as it was to somewhere like the head, but the three-pointers took a few hits to go down, and Izuku took a few blows from them in return, but overall all he was doing well, somewhere around 40 points after 7 minutes. He could have had a few more, but he had stopped to help some people who were struggling; that’s what heroes do after all.
Up in an office overlooking all the testing grounds sat a group of pro heroes, their eyes all glued to the screen sitting in front of them showing live feeds of all the testing grounds from multiple areas; these were the teachers of the prestigious U.A. academy.
“This year's crop seems to have quite a lot of potential, wouldn’t you agree, Aizawa?” said Nezu, the rat-bear-dog who just so happened to be the principal of U.A., as he looked to someone who could easily be mistaken for a hobo. “We’ll see about that; they have power for sure, but it takes more than brute force to pass this test…” Aizawa said as he watched a blond boy with a clearly powerful explosive quirk rip through their bots like a hot knife through butter.
“That’s right, you need to know how to use what you’re working with~” Said a beautiful woman with dark purple hair, as she watched a boy with some kind of tentacles that had eyes on the end that he used to find more robots.
“Midnight, remember what we said about making those kinds of comments,” Nezu said, not taking his eyes off the screen for a second, seemingly particularly interested with a certain green-haired boy who was in the middle of helping someone who had been cornered by a group of two pointers.
“There aren’t even any students around, so who cares?” Midnight said she wasn’t interested in getting this lecture again, and thankfully Nezu seemed too busy to give it. “Yes, yes…” He said, clearly not paying much attention to what she said. “I wonder how he’ll respond to something like this? He is his successor after all…” He said quietly as he pressed a large red button, and everything went to hell.
Down on the ground with Izuku, he had just finished helping an examinee who wasn’t all that nice about it; thankfully, he was used to that kind of treatment, so he simply ignored them as they grumbled and ran off to find more bots. Izuku was about to do the same when suddenly the ground started to shake so badly that he assumed it was an earthquake; that was until a metal head the size of his apartment building came out of a hole in the middle of the fake city.
As the bot continued to rise from the ground like some robotic hellspawn, Izuku estimated that it was at least 250 feet tall.
Now he understands why Present Mic didn’t tell them much about the zero pointer; this was totally absurd, even for U.A.’s standards. He was about to turn and run as far as he could from the iron behemoth, but then he heard someone yelp from behind him, and to his horror he saw that it was the nice girl who saved him from falling; she was trapped under some rubble right in the path of the metal monstrosity.
Without even a second to think, Izuku started sprinting towards her, trying to figure out some kind of plan that didn’t involve breaking his body. ‘Could I smash the rubble? No, it's too big; we'd be crushed before I got her out. Could I maybe use a low percentage to knock its foot off course? I doubt I have enough power, and messing that up could get us both crushed… damn it, I guess there’s no other option.’
Bracing himself for the pain, he puts 100% of One for All into his legs and shoots up in the air like a rocket, broken legs flailing behind him.
Once he reaches the 0 pointer’s head, he remembers All Might's advice, and so he pulls back an arm, clenches his butt, and screams. “SMASH!” He throws his fist forward, and as soon as it makes contact with the 0-pointer’s head, it’s thrown backwards as it sparks and explodes from the immense damage.
Izuku has a few glorious seconds to take in the massive destruction he was able to cause with a single punch, but then he’s forced back into the cruel reality of the situation. He’s falling fast, and to make matters worse, he has three broken limbs. As panic starts to set in, he tries to come up with some kind of plan to survive, but it’s hard to really do much thinking as you plummet towards the ground.
Up in the observation deck almost all the teachers are slack-jawed from the immense show of power that they just witnessed from an otherwise normal, if not slightly above average, examinee; however, that awe turns to concern as they watch him falling.
“Nezu, this is bad. That kid can’t survive a fall like that; he already looks pretty beat up…” Midnight says with a concerned look on her face, too worried to even work an innuendo into her comment; however, the principal doesn’t seem to share her concern.
“No need to worry, Nemuri. See that girl down there?” He says as he points to a girl below the falling boy; she seems to have just managed to pull herself out of a large pile of rubble and is now running towards the boy. “I think he’ll be just fine thanks to her.” Nezu says as he takes a sip of tea, simply watching the spectacle as he’s certain the boy is fine.
As Izuku starts to get dangerously close to the ground, he too spots the girl, and at first he’s confused as to why she's running towards him, but then he remembers what happened earlier: ‘Her quirk allows her to make things float somehow; she’s trying to save me!’
He relaxes ever so slightly as he sees her getting closer, realizing that he doesn't need to injure himself again just to maybe not die. He makes eye contact with the approaching girl and gives her a smile as she reaches her hand out, all five fingers reaching toward his cheek.
4 fingers slap against Izuku’s cheek, and only moments later he hits the ground at full speed, not even having time to feel any pain before everything goes black. All anyone can do is watch in horror, realizing that for the first time in over forty years there was a casualty during the U.A. entrance exam.