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Izuku concealed a groan as he stumbled sideways into the wall, smashing his busted up arm even more.
He messed up.
It was supposed to be a quick training exercise before class so he could get ahead. It was supposed to be something small, something to help him master One For All. It wasn’t supposed to backfire and blow up in his face like one of Kacchan’s explosions.
Now he was running late to class.
He shouldn’t have stopped at the park. He shouldn’t have spotted the big tree branch swaying overhead. He shouldn’t have taken the challenge. He shouldn’t have used his power to try and knock it down, especially with how he could barely control it.
Why was he so stupid?!
Izuku cradles his bad arm with the other, trying to make it look natural as he stood outside classroom 1-A. He could hear his classmates chattering through the door, which meant he couldn’t be too late then. He stared at the doorknob. Wait, how’s he supposed to open the door now?
He ruled out the possibility of using his bad arm. Even if it wasn’t too serious, it still hurt like heck.
Hoisting his foot in the slightly cracked open doorway, he slid open the door, trying to be as silent as possible while creeping over to his desk. Only a few eyes glanced up at his presence, and luckily, Mr. Aizawa wasn’t in the classroom yet. Izuku let out a sigh of relief and plunked down in his seat, setting his school bag at his feet.
He hadn’t been caught. If he just got through the day, he could go home and attend to his injuries. Recovery girl was gone for the week, so their brawling exercises were pushed back, which he was extremely grateful for. Except that meant he couldn’t get healing at the moment. Gosh, his mom was gonna kill him.
“ Alright, class.” Izuku glanced up to see Aizawa at the front of the room. “ I’m late due to personal reasons, get over it.”
Izuku raised his eyebrows slightly at the bold remark, but no one commented on it. Everyone was used to their teacher by now, even if it had only been a few weeks.
“ Mina will pass out some papers. We will be starting off with a short ungraded quiz, then move on to watch a film and analyze certain hero’s.” He stepped over to the corner and started digging around in a bag, pulling out their quizzes and dumping them on his desk.
Izuku glanced wearily at his arm. His fingers had begun to swell up, and there was no way he could write with them. Then again, there was no way he could write with his non-dominant hand unless it was multiple choice.
The girl slapped a paper and pen down on his desk, walking behind him to give one to Minetta.
It was a short answer test.
Great.
Izuku gingerly lifted his arm with his other and laid it beside his paper. Guess he’d just have to suck it up and get it over with. He stared down at the paper defeatedly for a while before slowly wrapping his fingers over the pen. He grimaced at the effort, tilting his wrist so he could write with his arm against the table. Even if he was writing with his dominant hand, his handwriting came out in unreadable squiggles. He crossed out the words and tried again, gripping the pen harder.
This was gonna suck.
But he only had himself to blame.
***
“Midoriya.” Aizawa gruffly shouted out as Izuku headed for the door along with his classmates. “Stay behind after class.”
“ Ooooo!” Kaminari joked from over his shoulder. “Someone’s in troubleeee.”
Izuku nodded solemnly, turning around to stand by his desk as he waited for everyone to head for lunch.
“ What did you do?” Minetta whispered to him.
Izuku shrugged with one shoulder, possibilities swarmed his brain. Did Aizawa know about him being late? He doubted it, since he technically came before his teacher. Was there a problem? Did he do something bad? What could have-
“ Izuku.” His teacher was now standing in front of him. “ What did you do now?” He inquired exasperatedly, pinching two fingers on the bridge of his nose.
“ Wh-what?” Izuku was confused. What did he mean?
“ What did you do now?” Aizawa repeated, removing his fingers from his face and crossing his arms.
“ Um, nothing that I know of…..” Izuku furrowed his eyebrows.
“ Don’t beat around the bush.” Aizawa scolded. “I’ve been watching you today, and I know something is wrong.” He lifted up a paper from the desk in front of him, displaying the poor penmanship from his test he took earlier.
“ This,” he pointed at one of the smudged sentences. “ is not your normal handwriting. Unless you wrote with your non-dominant hand.”
Izuku looked down at his shoes, flexing his fingers, resisting the urge to cradle his arm again.
Aizawa lifted another piece of paper. Sero’s test.
“ The writing is almost identical to Sero’s. Your seat mate. It could be a coincidence, a crazy coincidence. Care to explain?”
Izuku lifted his eyes to stare at his teacher in disbelief. He would never cheat, or ask anyone else to do a test for him! He always would do his best. It stung that he was being accused of the sort.
When he didn’t answer right away, Aizawa spoke again. “ This isn’t like you, Midoriy-“
“-I went to the park today.”
Aizawa raised his eyebrows.
“ -and I saw this branch, and I know it’s stupid but I thought of my quirk, so I tried to use it to knock it down. I-I hurt my arm and I can barely move it. It’s not that bad, so I thought I could get through the day with it and so I took the test still but I was late to class and-“
Aizawa raised a hand to silence Izuku’s rambling.
“ Which one is it?” His eyes flickered over his arms.
“ My right.”
The teacher carefully grabbed Izuku’s arm, earning a pained grimace as he rotated it slowly.
“ I knew you were hiding some kind of injury. You barely wrote anything on your test.”
Izuku let out a yelp and pulled his arm back.
Of course Aizawa noticed. The whole ‘accusation of cheating’ thing was to get information out of him.
“ I don’t think it’s broken, possibly fractured.” He informed Izuku, turning around and walking back to the front of the classroom. “ You are dismissed to go to lunch, but stop at the Recovery Girl’s office first . There should be someone there who could lend you a sling.”
Izuku nodded, lifting his bag off of the floor and slinging it over his good shoulder. “ Thank you, sir.”
“ Oh, and one more thing, Midoriya.”
Izuku stopped in his tracks, turning around to face his teacher.
“ Don’t do anything reckless like this again, It’s becoming a habit of yours.” Though his words were serious, a playful glint shined in his eyes.
Izuku laughed. “ I won’t. Thank you, Mr. Aizawa.”
Aizawa waved him off, grabbing his coffee from his desk and muttering something like, “ These kids’ll be the death of me.”
Izuku chuckled to himself and stepped out of the classroom. He waltzed down the hallway with a newfound pep in his step. Sure, he’d probably need to retake his test, and probably hear an earful by his mom once he came home with another injury, but he felt great for some reason.
Now, off to the nurses office.