Chapter Text
In a strange twist of fate, what had begun to feel like the best day of his life turned out to be the worst day of his life, only to finally transform back into the best day of his life. Ever
Meeting All Might was a dream come true. Giving the circumstances though, it didn’t go the way he had planned it, because yes, he had a plan for this. The first few pages of his notebook consisted in a bullet list of all the questions he wanted to ask his hero on the off-chance he would meet him one day. He still got around to ask the most important one.
The answer had crushed him.
“Never meet your hero," they said, and he had never understood that stupid saying until that moment. He could endure his friends, his teachers, his mother, the entire world telling him to forget about his dream and move on, but coming from All Might, so finale, so full of absolute certitude… It felt like the end of the world.
To make matters worse, him seeking out this terrible answer had resulted in the sludge villain escaping, more damages and more people getting hurt. Kachan getting hurt.
He knew it didn’t make sense, how much he clung to the other boy. It worried his mother who counted the bruises and dejected looks, but Izuku just couldn’t give up on him, just like he couldn’t give up on his foolish dreams. They had been friends once, truly. They had grown up together. Kachan was like a brother to him and that was probably the heart of the problem. You didn’t stop caring about your brother because he was mean to you. In spite of everything he still wanted the other’s boy approval, wanted to be close to him, he still chased the feelings Kachan used to draw from him, awe, safety, comfort, before it turned to fear, sadness, regrets. It had happened so gradually too. At first he had thought “it’s not so bad, it’s not so bad”, constantly, as Kachan became more and more violent and angry at everything, but mostly Izuku. There was no defining moment. Nothing that could have made Izuku think “okay, that’s it, it has gone too far.”
Well, nothing apart from maybe the very last barb Kachan had thrown at him.
“Why don’t you just jump…”
And yet, even that didn’t stop him from lounging himself at the monster that was holding Kachan hostage. If no one did anything he was going to die, and then how would their relationship ever get better? How would he prove himself to him? And no one was moving, no one was doing anything. So he did.
He knew that was a terrible idea and that Kachan would be pissed, that he would hurt himself and anger the adults. He didn’t care. He wasn’t thinking about anything.
It was already the worst day of his life anyway.
All Might came to the rescue to avoid both of them being killed. Kachan made it clear that Izuku was a useless idiot that didn’t do a single useful thing. Izuku agreed.
But then, the table flipped, again.
“Thank you, young boy, for reminding me what a real hero was.”
He didn’t get what the man was saying. He answered his questions about his actions with his head down, eyes glued to the floor because they were red and puffy and shining and his nose was ruining, and he didn’t want All Might to see.
“Listen, I was wrong to talk to you the way I did earlier. It was terrible of me. But it was the truth. You want to get into UA, right?”
Izuku nodded minutely, ashamed of his childish want like he had never been before. He felt so stupid now. No wonder his classmates made fun of him.
“I meant what I say, you can’t be a hero without a Quirk,” All Might said and really, was he set on making Izuku cry again? “Meaning,” he added forcefully as though he could read Izuku’s thoughts, “you can’t enter the Hero Course without a Quirk, not with how the test is made. But the entrance exam isn’t the only way into the Hero Course, and the Hero Course isn’t the only one there is.”
Izuku’s head snapped up at that, his eyes round. What was he saying? As far as he knew…
“Okay, can you keep a secret? I’ll be teaching at UA this year, that’s why I’m in town. So I can’t disclose that kind of information, but you’re a smart boy, right? Look into the functioning of the school, I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”
It was encouraging, but also frustrating. Izuku still felt pretty down, and the strange looking man in front of him wasn’t really making him feel any better, even if that was supposed to be All Might. What was up with that anyway? He wanted to ask but didn’t have the courage. He didn’t have much of anything left in him.
“Listen, Midoriya. You’re young. I know you think there is only one path to take. That’s what they say to you after all, that once you’ve made your choice you can’t go back, your path is set in stone. But that’s not how life works. You were born Quirkless, and that’s a major let down in this world. It’s not fair, but that’s just how it is. The usual ways are closed to you. So you have to find others, to carve it, to dig it yourself if you have to. You will have to work twice as hard as anyone else, it won’t be easy. But if you really want to, you can do it.”
Izuku stared, amazed, as All Might grew back to his usual muscular form and gave him a blinding smile, one hand on his hip and the other with his thumb pointing at the sky in the perfect hero posture. He stared, open-mouthed and drowning in tears, as his hero said, “You can be a hero.”
.
His mother fussed, of course, when he went back home. She had heard about the incident in town, had seen him on TV, and launched into a confusing mix between scolding him for his recklessness, worrying over his injuries and sort of praising him for his courage and good actions. He indulged her for a while – he hated to worry her for nothing – but his mind was still buzzing from what All Might had said and he couldn’t wait to start looking for what the man had hinted at.
There wasn’t only the entrance exam, he had said. Izuku knew all there was to know about UA and the hero system, but the way All Might had talked about it, it wasn’t anything official or well-known. Izuku escaped his mother’s clutches with the promise of hanging around at the dinner table later so that she could get the whole story out of him and went to his room.
As he pulled up his laptop to start his research, he thought about Kachan. The other boy would be pleased not to see Izuku at the entrance exam – almost as pleased as if he saw him fail it miserably. He could hear him, "I told you so, stupid Deku. Why do you even bother?”
But his true objective wasn’t to impress Kachan. It wasn’t even to join the Hero Course. His real goal was to become a pro hero, to become like All Might, as inspiring and relatable, as heroic and powerful. No matter the means, he would get there.
He thought back carefully about All Might’s words. It’s true there were other departments. Assistance and Management didn’t appeal to him at all, but there was the General Education Course too. It was commonly admitted that people got into this one because they failed to make it into the Hero Course, but the entrance exam was tough all the same. The thing was, only going through the Hero Course led to the delivery of a hero license.
He went to the school website to browse through the departments’ information. The Hero Course entrance exam was shrouded in mystery, probably so that people couldn’t get too prepared. He only knew that there were theory and practice, nothing more. Rumors had it that the practical exam was the real deal though and that it was as close to a real-life fight as it could get.
It relied heavily on Quirks. Powerful ones. No vey advantaging for him then.
For the General Education Course there wasn’t much information either, but still a little more. There was also theory, but not practice. Instead there was a physical assessment as well as a Quirk one, and students were judged of their potential more than their performances.
Izuku sighed. It still required him to have a Quirk.
Feeling depressed, he tried to put the exams out of his mind and to look for the links between the departments. He watched the Sports Festival every year so he had seen the other sections in action, and even if they never made it very far into the competition, some of them were still decent opponents with very good Quirks. He remembered one memorable instance when he was nine years old, where a student from General had made it all the way to the demi-finale of the tournament.
It was unheard of. It was a girl with a very unusual Quirk – making eye contact with people made her privy to their every thought for a short amount of time. In everyday life, it was pretty terrible in Izuku’s opinion, but in combat it was invaluable. Not only could she predict every single move of her opponents, but she could also find out their weaknesses. She had mad fighting skills, she was strong and fast, and she had only lost because her opponent had control over water and had simply flooded the ring until she was out. In a regular fight where getting out of bound meant nothing, she could have beat him too.
Thinking about that girl made him curious as to what she had become. He usually kept tabs on the competitors he liked, but since she was from General she couldn’t make it to the pros…
Except she had.
Izuku stared disbelievingly at his screen. He had just entered her name into his search engine – his crazy memory for these sorts of things was yet another reason why his main nickname was “fucking nerd” – and here she was. “The Reader”, pretty cool. She wasn’t very well known, worked for a small agency in Kyoto, but she definitely was a registered hero. He dug around to find about her time at UA but came up empty. As a last try, he simply pulled up the graduation list from that year and the next. He had been sure she was a third-year but she didn’t appear in that year’s graduates, in either section. He found her on the list from two years later.
“Hero Course. Transfer student.”
He double-checked, but true to his memory, she had entered General Education five years prior to her graduation. She had transferred had some point, studied for two more years and…
He knew that you could be transferred from other high school’s Hero department, but this was different.
She had made it from General.
He dug around some more and found an old thread on a forum that debated the opportunities offered by the Sports Festival. It was believed that if it was a chance to gain visibility concerning all departments, not just the Hero one. Visibility meant sponsorship and internship and maybe…
It was possible. He was sure he could find other examples but for now, it was enough to know it was possible.
His enthusiasm was short-lived – that still didn’t solve the exam problem. Hero or General, he still had to pass the entrance test. He still needed a Quirk.
His mother called him to dinner, distracting him from his thoughts. Even if he was preoccupied he did his best to talk to her and tell her about his day. He hesitated on mentioning his encounter with All Might because with all that was going on in his mind he didn’t know if he could muster enough enthusiasm for her not to get suspicious. He didn’t need to worry – as strange as the meeting had gone, it was still completely awesome, and he launched into a detailed recollection of the event, even if he carefully left out some of their conversation. She cheered and awed for him, ever supportive, and he felt better despite her having done nothing special to comfort him. At the end of the day, he still had his mom. They had each other. Things would be okay.
Back in his room he went back to his research with renewed passion but came up empty-handed. Several hours later he was getting a bit desperate and ready to call it a night and to go sulk in his bed when he stumbled upon an excerpt of the full regulation of the exam. It was only a few words, but it meant everything.
“For the General Section, the ranking is calculated on the pondering of the notes from the three tasks. No grade is disqualifying.”
He stared at it, scrolled down to see if anyone had picked on it and found other extracts that hinted at the same.
"No grade is disqualifying." Meaning you could still pass with a zero in one of the tasks. Like theory.
Or Quirk.
It was beyond far-fetched. To start with a zero in one task meant he had to ace the other two. Not only ace, he basically had to get the higher score possible, and even then he wasn't guaranteed to succeed. It depended on the other students. It was a very, very long shot.
But it wasn’t impossible.
He would have to train like hell to get anywhere remotely fit enough to pass physical. It probably included some sort of fighting exercise too. And he would have to study every waking hour to get the top grade in theory. The exams were in ten months. The amount of work in such a short period made him feel dizzy.
But he was more excited than anxious. It was one chance in a thousand, but one was not zero.
Zero was not disqualifying.
Entering meant having a shot at the Hero Course.
There were no official rules against enrolling while being Quirkless.
It would probably take him double the time to get there, to see the end of the line. Double the effort too, as All Might said. The others were already miles in front of him, but he was nothing if not persistent.
None of it mattered anyway because it was not impossible, and that’s the thought that carried him to sleep with a smile on his face.
.
The day after he contacted All Might – and tried not to die over the fact that All Might had given him his number – and they met on the beach.
“So? Anything you want to share?” asked the skeletal man when he joined Izuku. The boy looked at him with determined eyes.
“I need you to train me,” he said fiercely. Only to deflate immediately, embarrassed by his own audacity. “I-I-I mean I need to get… in shape. And strong. And to train. And…”
He stopped when All Might raised a hand, an amused look on his face. He extended it towards Izuku, offering a handshake.
“Let’s get started then.”
Izuku beamed.
“Yes, sir!”