Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The day after UA's entrance exam, Bakugou Katsuki marches out of Aldera without glancing back. They still have three more weeks of classes, technically, but it'll be busy work at best and fawning over prized students at worst. Bakugou's got a five-mile stare in his eyes that says he doesn't give two shits about any of it.

Not that Izuku really blames him. Or anyone. Attendance today had barely been a third, too many nurse's notes and vindictive parent calls or just unexcused absences. Musutafu's streets are littered with those who tried for UA and got humbled, dreamers swatted down under their own weight. There's a reason the entrance exam is called impossible. 

Which is why, instead of nursing bruised skin and ego alike, Izuku had a perfectly normal day and is now leaning against the brick border wall lining Aldera's courtyard, drumming his fingers over his wrist, and waiting for who he knows would never skip class. 

Bakugou stalks out, all stiff shoulders and bristling hackles, and glances over. He scoffs. 

At least their little ritual hasn't been disrupted.

Izuku pushes off the wall, pulling his bookbag higher off his shoulders. Bakugou doesn't stop him when he falls in line—by that he means slightly behind—and they start down that well-worn path back to their apartment complex. He's out of breath almost immediately, glasses slipping down his nose, chest flaring up. Walking at Bakugou's pace has never been good for him. Or his health. But mostly for him. 

Musutafu is cold around them, that initial sinking of winter's teeth, but the familiarity of the walk takes the bite off. Izuku bounces a bit, tossing weight between his feet; it's not every day they walk home together, hardly even a passing fancy in the many, many years they've been going to school together, but today's different. For all Bakugou's got leftover sparks trailing from his palms and the gritted teeth of someone quite determined to look unbothered, he hasn't attacked Izuku yet, so this is going great. So far. 

It's probably fine. 

"So," Izuku starts, because he is an endless vat hungering for knowledge and the idea of death by explosion is a weak deterrence at best. "How'd it go?"

Bakugou must be in a fantastically good mood, because he just rolls his eyes with that sharp-toothed grin he wears whenever he finds a face to plant his fist in and actually get away with. 

Unfortunately often.

"Spent more time getting checked in than anything else," he snorts, rolling his shoulders back. There's the white of some gauze under his sleeves, around the edges of his unbuttoned uniform. For all he's cavalier about the exam, Izuku's got no doubts it was still beyond difficult. It's UA. They didn't get their reputation by having hero hopefuls play kendama in the front yard. 

"Did you know," Izuku says with some satisfaction, because he's been holding onto this fact for two weeks in anticipation of today, "that UA's security system for the entrance exam has caught more attempted thefts and impersonations than even the Hero Billboard Chart JP?"

He waits, graciously, for Bakugou to glare at him before continuing. "But I know you did great," Izuku says like a fact, because it is. For all Bakugou's got faults, being a dedicated tryhard is not one of them, and Izuku won't be surprised if the announcement says he got first place. "How was the exam? What did you do?"

Bakugou huffs. "What, something you finally don't know, Kindaichi?"

Izuku perks up despite himself. Kindaichi is said with the same level of contempt as Deku, another nickname to stack onto Izuku's shoulders. It's marginally better than the Four-Eyes he gets when there's problems with his glasses, and the less said of the apathetic string of words Bakugou comes up for the classmates he truly doesn't care about the better; it's a nickname meant to be insulting, and Bakugou clearly thinks it should be. 

But, well. 

Calling Izuku Kindaichi means calling him old, pre-quirk, the name of a fictional detective from century-old stories that have long since passed out of the public's eye; half a wonder either of them know it. But it means calling him analytical. Observant. A detective.

It means the Plan is working.

"No," Izuku says, and widens his grin. "I'd love it if you could tell me!"

Bakugou's eyes rattle around in his skull. "It was robots, Deku. Big fuck-off robots I had to blast the shit out of until I won. One the size of a skyscraper, even; they don't fuck around."

"Of course they don't," Izuku says, mind already racing. Robots—that makes more sense than his previous hypothesis of fighting the teachers themselves, or other heroes they bring in; easier to have a baseline rather than having to adjust scores off the various strengths of the heroes. But also, you know. Terrifying. Quirks or not, those are real beasts of metal and electricity you're up against. "It doesn't make sense to spend so much budget on just an entrance exam, though; do they have a way of producing the robots by themselves? A mechanical department, or partnership with a support company? Or is their existing support department well-equipped enough to make it themselves?"

There's a low popping noise. 

Izuku trails off at the right moment to let his point stand but not beat it over the head. "Sorry," he says, and only partially means it. "Just curious."

That's a baldfaced lie. He's never just curious. He is always curious, in the deep, gnawing desire to know; both from a love and a desperation. 

It's a bit of an unwieldy combo. He'll make it work. 

Bakugou grunts. It's his version of a shrug. "So you weren't there," he says, with the first look he's graced Izuku with in this conversation—it's a shrewd, quick sort of glance, the same torn-edge bite Bakugou always has, but with the underlying confusion reserved for Izuku specifically. It's been there since Izuku was seven, when he stopped saying Kacchan, when he stopped following behind, when he stopped being useless.

They're still—acquaintances. Maybe. They're something, that nebulous realm between friends and strangers, fifteen years of history and yet not really knowing each other at all.

Maybe it was always that way. 

"No," Izuku agrees, mild. "My quirk isn't suited for the entrance exam, you know that—I'm taking the general exam though!"

Pen and paper he can do. Robots, a little less so. 

Bakugou's still staring at him, though. He probably doesn't mean to, since he tends to prefer Izuku doesn't exist except for these rare walks home, when there's a memory of their years together before quirks entered the pictures and Deku came to be, before they turned seven and things changed again, before it all went away. 

Before the Plan, really. 

Bakugou tches, which is a waving red flag he's exhausted his teaspoon of hospitable conversation and is about to graduate to sparking palms instead. "Slink your way into UA all you want, but I better not see you in the hero course."

"Oh, don't worry," Izuku says, very brightly. "I have no intention of going anywhere but general education."

He's not lying.

-

Izuku comes up with the Plan when he is seven years old. 

Or, to be more accurate and more forgiving; he comes up with the first piece of the Plan when he is seven, because at that age he is quite concerned with All Might first and everything else second. 

This is not necessarily a bad thing. All Might is, after all, a very good role model when you are far too young to actually copy him, throwing yourself off couches in an attempt to fly rather than hills and balconies, and the only villains you have access to are the villain action figures the HPSC lambasts down to make look less cool and thus less popular. 

Izuku isn't All Might, but when he's scampering around the apartment and drumming up noise complaints by the dozen from their downstairs neighbors, it doesn't really matter, not in the moment. 

Elementary education is the star his life orbits now, if the tired bags under his mother's eyes mean anything as she now has to adjust to both his schedule and that of her work. He's in his second year, traveling up the ladder alongside his yearmates, and he loves learning, so this is great. Life is great. 

But for all he thinks so, still the facts present themselves: he is seven years old, and he does not have a quirk. 

This is not great, in comparison. 

Hope is a soft and fickle thing, starved by Kacchan's quirk he's surely going to get control over one of these days and the rising side-eyes of his peers and teachers. When he was five, it wasn't bad; everyone's quirk comes in at their own pace, after all. It's only the really lucky ones who get theirs right at four. At least a quarter of his class passed by their fourth year without getting theirs. 

But then that quarter decreased, and decreased and decreased and decreased, and now they're all seven, and Izuku still hasn't gotten his quirk. 

He is seven years old, and he is not All Might, because he does not have a quirk. 

And it starts one night, late and creeping in the ever-present claws of Musutafu's brand of silver darkness, when Izuku sits at the home computer, types in the password written on the sticky note, and cues up the video always waiting for him. 

Then his mother comes over. 

Inko had, rather accurately, started to worry about an infestation where brain cells that only knew this video would take over anything else he had, and she, with gentle suggestions and non-subtle control of the mouse, tried to show him other related videos to pry him away from simply clicking the replay button until he passed out in the chair. 

And it happens that one of the queued videos is of a detective on the case, one in a sweeping trenchcoat and bags under her eyes and a to-go coffee cup gripped in the type of fist that will crack well after the tectonic plates do. And she explains, in low, exhausted words that suggest she is not particularly pleased to have to be the one telling this to the media, exactly what happened at this site and how All Might knew to proceed. It's filled with jargon about the villains' quirks and the ground zero of the explosion and many other fettered words that would fly over seven-year-old Izuku's head, except those words are related to All Might, and he is gripped with a sudden, deadly fear that there is something about All Might he does not know, and he must rectify that before it's too late. 

Too late for what, he's not really sure, but all it ends up with is Inko coming home from her shift to find her old university textbooks scattered on the floor with Izuku in the center, crying tears of frustration as he tries to make sense of the even-more-complicated kanji. 

But. It starts like this. 

Izuku watches the video, wonders whether he could do that, and realizes, with the kind of quiet recognition that doesn't hit him until he's lying in bed much later, that he doesn't know what the detective's quirk is. Only that she knew all these things about the quirks and the case and the villains. 

Maybe it's transformation, or something hidden by her trenchcoat, or something mental. Maybe it's all three. Maybe it's something else entirely. 

But whatever it is, he doesn't know, and still she's on the case, and still she's speaking to the news without any questions snapped back, and still she's there. 

The first piece of the Plan settles. 

-

Over breakfast, Inko watches him with the kind of weary exhaustion that comes from juggling a kid who has no concept of healthy habits. Morning is a very targeted time for Izuku, considering he can't watch the video too much or risk being late, and normally he's shoveling food down his gullet with air as an optional side dish before scampering off to school. 

Not today, though. He's thinking. 

Because this morning, he woke up and his first thought was, as normal, to go watch the All Might video—to mouth along to the well-loved solace before braving a world growing less and less fond of him with each passing day. It's a mantra that's gotten him as far as he's gone, I am here! as a defense against all that comes. It's a comfort. 

It's a very familiar comfort. 

The video isn't long, less than fifteen minutes, and he knows that because he's been watching it for years. He can quote it. He can quote it in his sleep. He has.

But it's the same video. How much can he learn from the same clip? There's nothing new.

In the quiet contemplativeness that haunts him the entire way to school and throughout his first classes, his thoughts slip down a different route of familiarity; the video he watched last night. Something unmemorized. Something he doesn't fully know. 

And then, because Izuku's brain is a wriggling little thing that does not enjoy being corralled and being contained even less so, he goes right home and watches the detective video. Watches it again. Fiddles with the website and finds a way to automatically loop it so he doesn't have to waste the microsecond it takes to click the replay button. 

He stares at it until it's burned into his retinas, and he stares, and he wonders.

She's on screen, shorter than average, the street broken and cracked behind her—there's the wreckage All Might pulled people from, empty and looming. In comparison, she's dwarfed by it, where All Might had towered above. Small, tired, looking like the villain could have stopped her with a spare thought. He watches it again, and again and again and again, and he can't find her quirk; can't find anything about it. 

Maybe she isn't a hero—maybe she's just a detective. That isn't quite right, because Izuku is going to be a hero, but–

But no one is saying she can't get involved. That she shouldn't be on the field, interacting with villains, interacting with heroes. She doesn't have a flashy quirk, no explosions sparking from her palms or other things that have lit up his elementary classrooms for their two years together, and she's still on the field. 

Izuku wants to be a hero. Being a detective isn't it; close, but not it.

And still.

She's there.

The Plan comes together rather quickly after that. 

-

The question comes down to how would he have a quirk if he doesn't actually have one? It's a very interesting question, one of those without an answer all equations lead to; and Izuku doesn't even have the equations, so it's about to be a very long journey to find this answer. 

He ponders it, moving through life in a daze as his brain reroutes power to more important things; and finds himself in his class, surrounded by his yearmates, teacher in front, gesturing to a blackboard with a lone, droning voice that fades perfectly to the background. 

There are plenty of kids with quirks in Izuku's class. He stares at them until his eyes migrate up to his brain just to remind it he has to blink. There are antlers, bat-like wings, extending fingers, coloured fireballs, all other sorts of wondrous and brilliant things; things that Izuku, unfortunately, cannot do. 

And his gaze, ever so slowly, drifts to two kids solidly in the middle of the pack. 

They have quirks. He just can't see them—and not in the way of lesser mutations or emitters sitting with their thumbs on the activation clause; he can't see them, because they're invisible. They're mental quirks. One for translating anything she hears into Portuguese, one for identifying birdsong. 

But. Here's the thing. 

They're weird.

Now, Izuku is not going to unpack the logistics of calling them weird when he's been staring at them unblinking from across the classroom all day, but the fact is that they're weird—their mental quirks give them quirks, for lack of a better word. The first will mutter translations under her breath when too many people are talking around her; the second freezes any time there's birdsong to identify it.

Their quirks are invisible, just like the detective's—on the surface, they could be thought of as quirkless. 

But they aren't, because they're weird, because they have mental quirks. 

Izuku can't change the weather. Can't explode. Can't grow horns. 

But they can't do that either, and still they have quirks, and still people know that.

This is perhaps to his future self's detriment, but seven-year-old Izuku goes right home and starts figuring out how to be weird. 

-

Izuku's got a list in front of him, written in the shaky penmanship of someone who has only just started to learn more complicated kanji, and he stares at it. His face starts to hurt from the furrow in his brow. 

Because now he's wondering what his actual quirk will be, which is an interesting sort of question to ask yourself when the main quirk you look up to involves punching so hard you change the weather. That goes a bit beyond acting weird. 

Being weird is one thing. Being weird for a reason is another.

Because see, here's the problem—Izuku is smart. He's narcissistic enough to know that's true, and he's proud of it, in the awkward, shuffling way he acts whenever his mother coos over his report card, but. 

But the issue is that he's just smart.

And as prodigal and genius and intellectually blessed as he could be—he isn't—the problem arises that no matter how smart you are, you're going to make mistakes. 

And if Izuku is faking a quirk, he really, really can't make a mistake. Because a person with a quirk could make a mistake and chalk it up to human error; but Izuku is all human error, and if he starts poking enough holes through his own defense, sooner or later it's going to fail.

So. He needs something else.

Quirks are the first thing that jumps to him. He loves them, maybe more than anything else; he's spent time and sweat and brain cells to figure out how they work, how they function. If he was going to fake anything, this wouldn't have to be faked—he loves them, and if he wasn't going to be a hero, becoming a quirk analyst wouldn't even be a question. 

But he has to be weird, and quirks are normal enough people don't talk about them in ways he could analyze; and if he can't analyze, then he won't be weird, or he won't be weird enough.

No. It has to be more. 

Because this isn't just coming up with a quirk, he knows; it's coming up with a quirk that he's definitely had for all his life. It's a quirk to fight past three years of being without, of sneers and side-eyes and the twisting of a childhood nickname into something crueler, something that no longer warms his chest. It's a quirk to make anyone he interacts with think he has it, even doctors, even professionals, even those who know him. 

More than a quirk, really. It's an identity. It's a him. 

So maybe it isn't just quirks. Maybe it's just knowledge—because bringing up things in a conversation has to happen more than quirks specifically. Maybe it's a quirk about learning things; not about knowing, because then he would be expected to know things and he can't know everything, but something that helps him learn. Absorb. Notice things more than other people. 

Analyze everything, not just quirks. 

And he could be weird about it—mention it constantly, bring it up, butt his way into conversations to mention tangential tidbits. Would it be weird enough? Would it be enough?

Would it be more than three years without?

Because that's the thing, at the end of this—Izuku is only seven, but he knows lies, and he knows catching them. And the people who will be able to catch him are the heroes, the ones who know quirks, the ones who know liars and how to stop them. If Izuku interacts with them, as starry-eyed and awestruck as he gets, he'll be caught. 

If he wants the Plan to succeed, he can't be noticed by heroes; can't have them focus on him, pay attention to him. Because he's not a good liar, even if he becomes one eventually. The heroes will catch him. He'll have to avoid them.

Something that would be grief if he wasn't seven sinks through him. 

He loves heroes. 

But he wants to be one more. 

In the corner of his room, where he's singlehandedly driven the view counter up enough that the poor news outlet who posted it is probably having a conniption, the detective video plays. Iuzku looks at it. 

Really looks at it.

The detective isn't a hero, not with her trenchcoat and baggy eyes and coffee cup; but she's got a quirk, and she's smart, and she's trusted. 

Did you know, he mouths along with her, the video on endless repeat, that the original ground zero of the bomb-based quirk could have claimed up to fifteen hundred lives if All Might hadn't arrived less than two seconds before it exploded?

That's… an interesting turn of phrase. Short, memorable. 

Weird. 

Izuku is seven years old, and he sits on his bed, and he wonders. Wonders about being weird, about being normal, about combining them both in a way that makes him belong. About a world in which he does. 

And that's not the world he's in, unless he makes it so. 

He's always loved learning. 

Detective has a nice ring to it.

-

There is time after this. Time where the world harshens, where Izuku tries and fails and makes mistakes, where he begins to be weird and is punished for it. Time where he falters, where he schemes, where he stays up until his eyes bleed red. Time where the research comes to a head and he sits, weary, before a screen with UA's name—a screen that tells him, in plain, certain words, how quirkless people are not allowed to apply. That they aren't allowed to even try.

Izuku has been trying. He has only ever been trying. 

The Plan is scraped into existence, piece by fragile piece, and he refines it; sharpens it into something foolproof. Something that will work. 

It takes time. It takes a frightfully long time.

But that doesn't matter, because on a Saturday morning, freshly exhausted from lack of sleep and nerves clawing hooks down his vertebrae, Izuku walks into the kitchen and throws down the first true step of the Plan. 

"Mom," he says, with all the confidence of a seven-year-old who has no idea of consequences. "I think we need to go to the doctor."

Inko stiffens, setting down her strainer with careful hands, and kneels before him. She scans him for injuries with a nurse's eye, that hesitation of not wanting to see anything and fearing she will; and then, when she finds nothing, because Izuku is in his neat little uniform and the bright-eyed smile of a child who fears nothing, she frowns. "What for, sweetie?"

"Did you know," he says, and feels the phrase settle into the marrow of his bones; feels it become him, in a way. Or, rather, feels it become who he will be, who the Plan says he is. "That your quirk only lifts five pounds, but it always tries to pull five pounds, even if the object isn't? That it pulls dust and other things to try and match your five pound limit, even if they're too heavy to move?"

And Izuku waits, in the sort of horrible waiting that hurts, because this is it, and it needs to work. 

It needs to. 

Because he spent days buried in the search bar of the library computer, where she couldn't see the history, hunting for answers that were smart and reasonable and could have been noticed by someone with a quirk. Because he pretended to be doing homework when she did chores, and he was watching her like a hawk as she used her quirk, writing notes with frantic speed he's never had before. Because he figured it out in the darkness of his room, staring up at the ceiling, and knew it was something she hadn't told him. The fact stayed trapped in his ribcage, fluttering like an anxious bird, and now he sets it free, and now he waits.

There's a moment of silence. 

"Huh," Inko says, with the polite confusion of a mother who isn't quite sure when her child got replaced with a late night trivia show host. "Where did you learn that, Izuku?"

"I noticed it," he says, and balls his little fist up to tap the side of his head. "I notice everything, Mom—I thought it was normal but I don't think it is anymore. I– I was talking to Kacchan—to Bakugou—and he said he doesn't notice things like I do. That no one does."

The silence stretches, the distant hum and buzz of Musutafu, the emptiness of the apartment and the heady smell of dinner. He's standing there, staring up at her, desperate and anxious and pleading. This needs to work. It needs to. 

"Izuku," she starts, and draws off. Frowns. Chews over the information he's presented to her.

The Plan trembles. He clings to it like a lifeline.

"Did you know," he says, curling his arm to his chest, "that mental quirks are the hardest to diagnose, because the person doesn't know it's a quirk? That because they always had it, it's normal to them, and there's no way to know it's a quirk until someone tells them it's not normal?"

And he shifts, drawing himself up to his miniscule height, hand still on the side of his head. "I think I'm different," he says, slow, hesitant, like he doesn't believe it himself. Like it's unexpected. "I think–"

She's staring at him, mouth agape, and she drops to her knees; stares at him like she's not sure what's happening, but she's looking at him, and there's none of the sneers, none of the derision he's known from everyone else. It makes Izuku want to give up right there, to explain everything—but if she doesn't believe it, then no one will, and so he smiles, wet and watery, and runs right into her chest. 

"I have a quirk, Mom," Izuku says, and immediately breaks into tears. 

-

So. 

What it comes down to is this: the Plan is very simple. 

Izuku has a quirk. Its name is Detective. He has always had this quirk. 

He is going to become a hero. 

-

Two days after the heroics course entrance exam, the general education course opens up, which is fantastic, because Izuku just really needs this day to happen so he can stop panicking about it. There are facts running fast and hard through his mind, the dates of the support course, the management, the recommendation—UA's a busy, busy place, the premier spot for everything and anything heroes. 

So it means that as Izuku steps off the metro, he is one of absolute thousands, swarming around with the nervous, buzzing energy of a flock of starlings. 

It makes sense, objectively—anyone can fail the course-specific applications but still get into general education, and so today is full of everyone who didn't want to get into a course or weren't confident enough for it, or just wanted to shoot their shot for UA without hopes of a higher course, or something, or nothing, or any kind of reason that brings them to the top heroics school of Japan.

So. It's a lot of people. 

Izuku, famously, does great when surrounded by a lot of people. 

He gets a quick lesson in how much jostling can happen in a crowd of terrified teenagers as they all shamble their way towards the school, the ruckus of voices echoing off and around each other, thrumming deep into the concrete like Musutafu was constructed on it. There's a wide, enormous silver gate, the kind that costs more than Izuku's entire apartment complex, and its doors are thrown wide open—he takes a brief, escapable moment to marvel at it, because, well. It's UA.

Then, steady as a beehive, they're funneled inside, and the towering gate fades away into the perimeter, and before them all stands the actual, actual school.

Izuku stares up. 

It's stories upon stories upon stories, gleaming silver metal, tinted windows, gabled roofs. There's some tangible aura there, the bleed-edge attention from a sentient being even if the building is nothing but immaterial, and shivers race down his spine. UA is just as massive and enormous and dwarfing as he feared it would be—which is fantastic, really. He's in stiff, professional clothes, the nicest he had without drawing too much attention for being a tightass, but now he feels underdressed. Nearly in his pajamas. What is he doing here?

Well, lying, cheating, and faking his way into the school he just told Bakugou has a higher success rate for stopping impersonations than the HPSC, so his anxiety is justifiable, at least.

Izuku tightens his grip on his sleeves and marches inside. 

This isn't UA's first run with the bulls; they've got every doorway and hall blocked off except for one straight line through the school, narrow-eyed guards looming over all the teenagers' heads. Izuku falls in with the crowd, blinking to adjust to the harsher lights within; reaches up to adjust his glasses, since it feels right for the moment. Not that they really do anything. 

They're small things, plain glass with a slight tint. Not prescription at all, but that halfway state between sunglasses and decorative glasses. He says they're for concentrating. They're actually for making him look smart. Look weird. 

He's got a lot of things for that. 

The Plan is, after all, still intact.

Nearly every door is locked, guarded, and with printed papers saying not open! in the kind of tone that threatens anyone who dares disrespect it, but politely, with equal-to-higher honorifics. Welcoming. Not the language of a shiv in the kidneys, but a medical scalpel in the kidneys. 

Considering UA's principle is the infamous Nezu, it's right what Izuku expected. 

On they march, with what are likely meant to be whispers except there are dozens of people saying them and thus aren't quiet at all, until the funnel directs them to a wild, sprawling entrance, doors blown wide open, everything but neon red lights directing them inside. 

And by directing them inside, Izuku means everyone but him, because he slips for a one brief, starstruck moment to collect his breath. He knows, objectively, that he's at UA, but there's a block in his mind refusing to let him acknowledge it. Probably for his own protection. He can feel the hyperventilation perching like a battle-ready gargoyle in his esophagus. 

It's a great time, really. 

He lets the rest of the student hopefuls trickle in, hunting for a gap in the crowd; finds it, because of course he does, and slips back into line. Takes a deep breath, which really doesn't help, and enters for his general exam. 

And then, right as he walks through the door, squinting past the dimmer light within, an elbow cracks into his ribs. That deep breath flees his lungs in a really pathetic yelp. 

"Woah!" There's a voice—a very, very familiar voice, one loud and chipper, with all the sun and lilt of a radio host. "Sorry, little listener, I didn't mean to bump you!"

Oh.

Oh, shit.

There's someone right on the other side of the door, a foot or so taller than him, made more by the golden streak of hair off their head. Leather jacket studded with spikes and curling down with matching cuffs, bright eyes, speaker around their neck. Tall, lean, and standing with comfort in these halls, like they belong. Which they do. 

Izuku stands there, hand frozen, staring up at the hero—at the fucking hero—before him. The one thing the Plan says he has to avoid. The one thing he just ran into.

His heart thuds loud enough he's surprised it's not audible. It's all he can hear. 

Present Mic stares at him, a crease between his brow; the showman's smile dims a bit into something gentler, more comforting. He leans down a bit, his hair extended like a waving flag, looking at Izuku with kind eyes. "You alright, kiddo?"

Izuku is not alright. He is everything except it. But Present Mic is looking at him, and he's concerned, and he's worried, and if he's any of those things then he'll start looking deeper and investigating and finding secrets–

As he is wont to do, Izuku panics. 

"Did you know," he says with some desperation, "that your glasses are the same shade as corrective lenses for colourblindness?"

Present Mic blinks. Izuku kind of wants to cry. 

He reaches up and taps the sides of his glasses, as if to remind himself they're there, and then a grin splashes over his face. "You're quite perceptive! Most people think they're about matching my costume instead. Did you just notice that?"

Izuku did not just notice that. He noticed it when he zoomed in on photos of Present Mic until the wee hours of the morning with frantic desperation in case a situation like this happened.

He nods. 

Present Mic flashes him with a finger gun, still smiling. "That kind of skill can take you far in this field," he says, kindly, maybe because he can see Izuku is one missed heartbeat from keeling over. "Keep it up, yeah?"

"I will," Izuku echoes, clutching his arms closer to his sides. "Um. Thanks."

The hero's eyes crinkle at the corners, hidden behind glasses he absolutely already knew were for colourblindness, why else would he have bought them, why did Izuku say did you know for a fact Present Mic without a doubt already knew—and straightens back up. "Happy to hear it," he says, glancing back over the rest of the room. "Best get to your seat, yeah? You'll want to have enough time for the exam!"

Sure, Izuku thinks hysterically. He nods, maybe says something he can't remember, and skitters away as Present Mic turns back to the speaker's podium. All his planning takes over his subconscious and he manages to find his seat, squeezing through row after row of other frantic students before tucking away in a soft, cushioned seat with a fold out desk. 

He sits there and really, really contemplates his life decisions. 

Well. That was his first encounter with a hero. Thirty seconds into his introduction to UA and he almost snapped the Plan in half over his own knee. This bodes well for the future. 

And then, because that whole interaction was great for his mental health, Izuku spends the first ten minutes of his exam untensing muscles he didn't know he had and feeling like he's breathing through a straw. 

Then he frantically flies through the actual test, flipping over papers with a few scattered thoughts about the cost of having this be a physical exam and not digital, the wriggling rabbit hole of researching facts of UA's paper use and what kind of conversations he could bring that up in, which is handedly taking all the space in his brain instead of the actual exam he's taking, and then the alarm chimes, and he sets his pencil down, and he just deflates. 

Well. That's that.

There's security, the patting-down of pockets to make sure they're not stealing anything, yet another confirmation of his identity, the hustle and bustle from thousands of hopefuls murmuring with the vague disappointment that comes from Principle Nezu not walking out and welcoming them to UA the second they set their pencils down, and then it's over, and Izuku is outside. 

He stands there for a second, squinting up at the sun. 

It's odd, in a way. He's spent so long worrying about being caught he's not actually that scared of getting in. 

Or maybe that's the shock talking and he's going to spend tonight curled in a small ball under his comforter. 

Hard to say. 

Izuku trots to the subway station before he implodes. 

-

It's a busy two weeks, made busier by the fact Aldera is honestly more concerned about acceptances than those who did the applying, but Izuku finds ways of distracting himself. Not that it matters now, as he stands in his apartment genkan, slippers half on, with an envelope in his hands. 

He stares at it. 

It's one of those envelopes that just reeks of money, which is an odd thing to think about a slip of paper, but it's thick and warm-toned and heavy in a way paper shouldn't really be. The postage stamp is UA's logo, and there's his printed address on the front—printed, not just a sticker slapped on the front of a blank envelope. 

So. Uh. Would they go through this much effort if he didn't get in? Is UA rich enough—they are fantastically, impossibly, unbelievably rich—to print off a specific envelope with his specific address just to tell him he's not accepted? Or is this a sign he's made it in?

The part of his brain he's cultivated like a weed in concrete shudders, the Plan battered away for raw data, emotions doing their best to choke it out. He. He did well on the exam, he thinks, because he remembers all the questions and his answers and he had enough time to double check before the timer rang. And. It feels like? He did good? Probably?

Hells above hells. He can't move. 

"Izuku?" From within the apartment, the bustling of computer keys. Oh, right, his mom's home; likely working from home, since the Midoriya family is nothing if not a collection of workaholics, and she'll be coming over. Fantastic. Just what he needs. His slipper clings with valiant effort to his soles. 

"Oh," she says, and he manages to crank his neck up to see her, framed in the doorframe leading out of the genkan, a soft smile on her face. "Come here, Izuku, let's open it, okay?"

The Plan runs, shakily, through his head. 

"Okay," he says, and that cracks the magic; he's able to put his slippers on fully and follow her into the apartment, a metaphor about sheep and ducklings he doesn't have the power to pick apart running through his mind, and then they're sitting at the table, two chairs pulled back, and the envelope lies between them a bit like a nuclear bomb. 

Inko chuckles, not the mean kind of the laughter but the amusement Izuku has well-earned over years of doing his damnedest to be weird, and reaches out to take his hand. "I can open it for you," she says, all kind, all warm. "But you probably want to, right?"

Yeah. Yeah, he does. 

With a butter knife that could use a sharpening, Izuku cuts through the upper fold of paper, so slowly he might as well be dividing atoms, and pulls out the letter inside. That same stiff, monogrammed paper, nearly bleeding money, their logo in the upper corner and printed words below. 

Congratulations, Midoriya Izuku! 

Your performance at the general exam was exemplary, and your scores have earned you a place within general education, class 1-C!

Oh. 

Oh.

There's more written beneath it, more that Izuku will study until his eyes bleed, but he stays locked to those first two sentences. They're rattling around his brain like a wind-up toy. 

"I made it in," he says, and blinks. 

The Plan curls, all soothing, all excitement, around his chest. There's no mention of his lack of quirk, of any suspicion; all his files went through, the doctor's change holding up—because of course it would. He got it confirmed by a licensed doctor. No one knows he doesn't have a quirk. 

Fucking UA doesn't know. 

It worked. 

He's going to UA.

Izuku looks up, at his mother, at the green eyes mirrored on his face; and repeats it again, just because he loves the way it sounds. "I made it in," he says, and there's something wobbly in his voice now, bright and unbelieving and stupefied. But he isn't, because the Plan said he had to get in, so he did. There was no other way. 

There were plenty of things that could have gone wrong. But they didn't. 

He's going to UA. 

"Oh, Izuku," Inko whispers, and he almost breaks right there; almost cracks in half and reveals what he's spent eight years hiding, tumbling out like rain after a drought.

She… might know. Surprise of all surprises, Izuku wasn't a great liar when he was seven. But she hasn't said anything, and Izuku hasn't, and so for tonight they just hug, the paper crumpling between them. 

He's going to UA.

-

On his first day, Izuku wakes about four hours before he needs to, paces a brand new hole through their carpet, catches the subway six cycles before the one he'd planned on, and loiters outside the UA gates like the world's most anxious stalker. 

He's going to go inside. Soon. Really soon. So impressively soon. 

It's just– wow, is that a durjaluminium plated door? Those are fantastically rare, the kind of material that's still being developed in those hush-hush labs clinging desperately to their patents despite the government's pressure to release them. Manufactured first in… somewhere Slavic, he thinks? A fact to look up. Maybe someone will ask about it; or, more accurately, they won't, but Izuku will bring it up regardless, because that's plenty weird and the Plan demands it, and–

"Oi, Deku. Gonna unlock those damn gates or what?"

Izuku squeaks—a very professional, composed, and normal squeak—and spins; and there's Bakugou, hands stuffed in his pockets and shoulders up to his ears, untied tie and wrinkled blazer, one eyebrow raised. 

Right. Right right right. They're both going to school here now. Izuku kind of hates himself. 

"Of course," he manages, in what comes out buttery smooth and confident and not with a voice crack lingering on the edge of every syllable, and turns back to those silvery gates. The introduction email told them not to open the main gates, since, uh, unnecessary, but there's a more human-sized doorway off to the side, a card reader protruding off the side. 

His ID—his UA ID, what is even happening—makes the screen flash a chipper green, and it rumbles open. Durjaluminium folds neatly into a side compartment, and the screen cheerily informs them they have fifteen seconds to get inside before it closes. 

Organized system. About what he expected. 

Izuku skitters inside and waits for Bakugou, who stalks through with only one general glance up at the building before them—unwilling to show any awe now there's someone with him. "Did you know," Izuku starts, because why the hell not, "that they rebuild these gates at least once a year, switching up the security systems each time so no one can figure out how to break inside or get around them?"

Bakugou, because he's unfortunately experienced enough with Izuku's preferred level of bullshittery to dodge around it, just grunts. Rude. 

But he does glance over, red eyes narrowed, that underlying confusion still in the brightness of his pupils. Something shrewd and tangible burns through his gaze. "You made it in, then," Bakugou says, and there's a world hidden behind those words. 

Izuku bobs his head. "1-C."

And there it is, that minute release of… not tension, probably, but something in the curve of Bakugou's shoulders. 

Izuku's never really been able to figure out where they stood. He was Deku for three years, where the word meant what it means, and then Deku afterward; a nickname again, with flavouring of derision but less of it. Detective is, after all, a useful quirk, just not for active heroics. Detective-heroism is the best he can hope for, even if Bakugou has said, both explicitly and not, that he should just stick to detectivism and ditch heroism altogether. 

Izuku's not going to, but Bakugou still recommends it. As much as Bakugou can recommend anything. 

So. There's something. Bakugou doesn't want him in heroics, for reasons that evolved past just quirklessness, and Izuku has never been able to figure out why.

"Guess they're lettin' anyone in these days," Bakugou says with a roll of his eyes, the rattling self-confidence that comes from, well, being the best. "Least you're not any of those other fucking extras from Aldera."

Izuku blinks. 

Woah. Was that. Something vaguely-sorta-kinda positive about Izuku?

Holy shit. Maybe UA really does work miracles. 

They enter the building proper, all stark and imposing and glaring down at them like bugs beneath its metaphorical feet—Izuku has spent hours memorizing the maps their introduction email included, and even with all the guards and signs removed, he's decently confident he'll be able to find his way through. Mostly. 

"See you after school?" He offers, because they'll end up taking the same subway anyway. Might as well not be alone. 

Bakugou scoffs—must be saving his eloquence for his actual class—and stalks off down the side hall, shoulders bristling and jaw set. He's got the look of a particularly pissed hyena, and Izuku wishes some small force of mercy on his classmates. 

It won't be enough. 

Izuku, for his part, goes to the opposite hall; it's all the same crisp white tiles, freshly cleaned and smelling faintly of bleach, a few students milling around in the same uniform he's wearing. 1-C is tucked off the east wing, away from the more explosive sides of UA, and it's under ten minutes before he sees the classroom with his homeroom number emblazoned on the front. 

Another deep breath, despite the last one not working at all, and then in he goes. Simple as that. Easy. 

It still takes him a minute before he musters up the courage to open the door. 

The classroom's mostly empty, since Izuku was tapping his foot impatiently before dawn woke up, and it's… honestly not that different from the ones at Aldera, in a disappointing way. Desks lined up with plenty of room between, windows along the opposite wall, chalkboard already dusted white on the corners. A few students wander around, trying to find their assigned seat from the cheerful email the day before, and at the front there's–

Izuku doesn't freeze like a mouse sensing a viper, but it's a close thing.

Fuck, his homeroom teacher is Present Mic. 

As in, the one teacher Izuku has already interacted with—that already recognizes him. That is one step closer to unraveling this all. 

The hero's just sitting there, hands tapping a song out on his desk, grin wide and firmly in place; he's already got some English phrases written on the board behind him, and Izuku can see a flash of papers to be passed out on his desk. A normal teacher, all things considered.

But, well. 

It would be easy to look at the man's smile, sunnier than anything smog-choked Musutafu has ever seen, and feel comfortable. To think back to videos of how he treats civilians, how his Voice-powered shouts can dip to gentle jokes and soothing words; how far his radio show spreads, how he still finds time to be a teacher here. That would be easy. 

But it would be easy to do that if Izuku had been able to come to UA without faking a quirk.

He's seven again, sitting before the computer screen in the library, night all around and closing hours fast approaching, staring at the screen, at the fine print on the bottom. No quirkless students allowed.

It's not Present Mic's fault, necessarily—he doesn't have the same say as the principal, as the HPSC. But Izuku remembers his old teachers, turning away from any kind of discrimination, not doing anything to change the situation even if they couldn't change the rules. For all he could be kind, still he teaches at UA, and still the rule is in place. 

Izuku is quirkless, and if Present Mic figures that out, he'll be lucky if they just expel him. 

He can't let that happen. 

It's fine. Izuku just won't let his guard down. He's good at that.

So he bobs his head in an awkward nod and pushes further in, knuckles white around the straps of his bookbag. His chair is against the wall, far from the windows, and he sinks into it like a protection from the world. 

There's about fifteen minutes of awkward spacing, where arriving students stare at each other like they're all waiting for someone to be brave enough to start the first conversation—but absolutely no one does, so it ends with a silent classroom as the clock finally clicks over to eight. That's probably a bad sign. 

Not that their teacher is going to let it stand, considering how he all but throws himself out of his chair to pose before them. 

"He- llo!" Present Mic shouts, and Izuku's ears skitter back like kicked dogs—hells, he's loud. Which, expected. Wow. 

"I am Present Mic!" He announces, like someone in this room doesn't know him. "Your new homeroom teacher for the next three years, guiding you through UA—showhost, teacher, and pro hero! That's the UA way! Yeah!"

This is. A lot. Izuku can feel his hair shift from the man's shouts. Maybe he should invest in earplugs. 

"Now, before we get into the boring stuff," Present Mic says, leaning forward on his desk like he's about to kick it out of the way to have more room to maneuver, "introductions! We'll pop around the room; say your name and quirk, yeah?"

Ah.

Before he can help himself, Izuku's lips thin. He should have expected this. He did expect this. And really, he's been living so long in a masquerade of being quirked he shouldn't be surprised, but it's still an old pain to hear it so– so normalized. That everyone should say their quirk because they all have one. 

Well. Midoriya Izuku does have a quirk, as far as UA knows. As far as Present Mic will ever figure out. 

There's an awkward pause, no one willing to be the first, but Present Mic whips a finger gun at the student in the top left desk. "Let's start with you!"

For her part, she looks thrilled at being chosen. Izuku can't relate.

"Nakano Rin," she says, leaning forward, thumping an arm over her desk. It makes the grey-black fur on her face stand on edge, round ears perking up behind her hair. "Quirk's called Mink."

"Shinsou Hitoshi," a boy with wild purple hair says. He's not-quite staring, not-quite glaring at the rest of the class, tapping bitten nails on the edge of his desk. "Brainwashing."

"Takamori Honoka," says a girl with large, glassy eyes, though they're almost hidden by the medical mask she's got pulled up to the bridge of her nose. Hardly muffles her voice, though. "And my quirk is Amnesia. I can make people forget about me."

"Shibuya Imasu," from a sprawling boy with clouds that disperse from his mouth in loose, lazy spirals. "Meteorologist quirk. Obviously."

And then Present Mic's finger slides back a row, continuing the path, and it's pointed in a way that would feel targeted if it hadn't just happened to four other students. 

Izuku takes a long, deep breath. 

"Midoriya Izuku," he says, and there's an overwhelming pulse of relief that his voice stays steady. "My quirk is called Detective; it improves my observational abilities."

There. Plain. Scientific. Sounding like it came from a licensed doctor's mouth instead of the rambles his seven-year-old self explained it with. An interesting ability, since all quirks are, but nothing more impressive than anyone else. Takamori and Shinsou both have mental quirks, even, so he blends in. Normal. 

Present Mic moves on, and Izuku could probably pass out.

Piece by piece, the rest of his classmates move through their names, listing their quirks with either blank names or more descriptions, stuttered platitudes or prideful musings on their power—Present Mic hears it all with the same wild grin, happy for anything. Twenty students wrap up faster than expected, and then they're all looking at each other, that hesitation of trying to attach names to faces with varying levels of success. 

Izuku's going to need facts for all of them. 

"Awesome!" Present Mic chirps, kicking out a leg to sit—perch—on the side of his desk. "One quick question, before we really get jumping—how many of you are looking to be heroes?"

In an instant, there are twenty hands in the air. 

Izuku barely hides a wince.

That reaction is expected. UA has courses for specialization, of course, but they're not as competitive—not easier to get in, because it's still UA, but much less of the world wants to go behind the scenes when they could be number one. And of the leftovers general education picks up, the overwhelming majority are likely to be heroics hopefuls. 

Just Izuku's luck that it looks like every single person in his class wants to be heroes. 

Well. Hopefully they'll all be dramatic about it so he can hide better. 

Present Mic grins at them, flicking a hand through his hair. "Just as I thought! That's what UA is for, and I'm glad to see you all so determined!"

Someone—Takamori, Izuku thinks—murmurs something under her breath. The rest of the class looks similarly incensed. Of course they're determined. They made it into UA, didn't they?

"Now, I want to preface something," Present Mic says, and though his smile stays in place, there's something more serious in his tone, a deeper note with hidden edges. "There's a reputation that general education is the catch-all, where those that don't make it into the other courses end up."

Izuku frowns. Yeah, he was… kind of relying on that. Really hoping for it, actually. 

"But that's not true. You worked to get here, and you're not any lesser," he says, and the gentleness comes back to his voice. "We're general education, yeah, but gen ed in a heroics school is still plenty heroic! Don't worry about not getting a chance; you'll actually be more well-rounded here, taking support, management, and heroics classes instead of learning just one!"

There's a murmur rippling through the class. That faint sound of disbelief, the chip-in-the-shoulder that of course everyone else is going to stay here, but not me. I'm going to transfer to heroics. I'm going to be a hero. And I'll beat my whole class to get there. 

Judging by the slight furrow in Present Mic's eyebrows, he can tell. And he looks deeply familiar with the reaction.

Izuku's class already sounds like a little pocket of joy. He's going to have a great three years with them. 

He narrowly avoids the urge to plant his face into his desk. 

Homeroom crawls on, slow and steady, the syllabi passed around and expectations set. Present Mic keeps, well, presenting, half teacher and half showhost, doing his best to break the ice of twenty teenagers determined to hate each other in order to win. 

It's a losing battle. 

-

The first day ends early, because UA is wonderfully polite like that. Finishes right after lunch, so they get a taste of the amenities they'll be surviving on for the next year, before cheerfully shoving them out the door. 

Izuku mumbles his excuse-mes and pardons as he fights his way onto the metro, head down, shoulders in. There's a few other UA students with him, uniforms a touch too distinctive for Izuku's tastes, but he's able to bleed his way to the back. 

And promptly run into Bakugou. Great.

There's a moment where they just stare at each other. 

The other boy is slumped in his seemingly permanent sprawl, back against the window, not holding onto any of the bars because of course he isn't. His tie is still undone, collar more like a bedraggled doily, but UA's symbol stands proud on his chest. The same picture of who he was at Aldera, only higher, only better.

Izuku can't smell caramel, though—looks like Bakugou got to use his quirk today, which makes sense, and is also a little concerning considering this is day one. UA, as it turns out, doesn't mess around.

The silence stretches longer, tucked under the rumble of the subway starting up. 

"So," Izuku broaches, because this ride is about to be the kind of awkward he doesn't have any nails left to gnaw down for, so he might as well try to break the urge before it manifests. "How'd your first day go?"

Bakugou grunts. "My teach expelled a kid on day one. Not like I'm going to miss the shitstain."

Izuku maybe draws in a breath at that, because his heart rate picks up to a point his fingertips tingle. That's. 

That's not good. 

If they do that to a regular student—because admittedly, Bakugou calling someone shitstain could mean anything from wanted villain to minor annoyance—then what will they do to a quirkless kid lying to get in? 

"Oh," he says, a little faintly. "Expelled?"

Bakugou adjusts his stance as the metro takes its habitual hard left, metal screeching outside in what should really have been fixed by now. "Yeah. Finished our fucking aptitude test and told him to leave. Said he didn't have what it took to become a hero or some shit."

He's saying it all blasé, like there wasn't even the beginnings of a worry he would be kicked out, but Izuku can read the way he's talking about it. There's real– maybe not fear, because that word doesn't belong in the same sentence as Bakugou, but respect. 

Whoever his homeroom teacher is, they expelled someone on the first day, and Bakugou clearly thinks they'd do it again. 

That's. Ah. 

Okay.

Izuku exhales, knuckles white in his pockets. "Huh," he says, like it's a vague interest, like his heart isn't thundering through his chest. "Plus Ultra, I guess?"

Bakugou's eyes narrow, sensing something. It's probably not difficult. Izuku's frozen stiff, the Plan shadowboxing all the thoughts about what the heroes would do if they discovered him, if his eight years of blatant, hollow lies come to the surface. What UA would do—what the HSPC would do. What anyone would. 

"...yeah," Bakugou finally says. "Plus fucking Ultra."

Izuku laughs a bit to break the tension. It doesn't work.

-

There's steam in the air when he pushes the door open, bright and heady with spices: katsudon. A celebration. 

He kind of expected it, because hiding pork cutlets behind milk cartons isn't that effective of a strategy, but warmth floods through his chest regardless. 

Izuku kicks on his slippers, shouldering his bookbag off and wincing from the weight. There's a flush to his cheeks from the venture up five flights—it took getting into UA before he decided it might be a good idea to take the stairs instead of relaxing in the elevator, sue him—and he takes a second to compose himself. Maybe he should really start working out. 

Later, though. 

"Hey, Mom," he calls, and the sounds from the kitchen stop. There's the clatter of setting something down and Midoriya Inko appears in the genkan, flour dusted around her wrists, hair pinned back. She took today off work to be there when he got back, because she's wonderful and kind and thoughtful like that, and all the conversations with Bakugou in the world can't dim the peace he feels as he sees her. 

"How was it, sweetie?" She asks, smiling, that mix between hopeful and worried. Which. Fair. Izuku hasn't exactly escaped the consequences of purposefully acting weird. Schools and him don't tend to get along. 

He thinks about it. 

Well. He survived his first day at UA without anyone swooping down from on high to kick his ass back onto the streets. He is successfully going to a heroics school. He has a goal and a purpose and path forward. 

He hasn't been caught.

"Good," Izuku decides, and goes to eat.

-

He spends the rest of the day preparing for school, lining up all of his syllabi and writing out a schedule, regaling his mom with everything he's excited for and how cool UA is, just existing. It's easy to bleed past his fears when he's talking to her, eyes wide and hands fluttering and mouth moving at the speed of light. It's easy to forget. The evening passes fast and comfortably. 

And then Izuku's lying there, staring up at the ceiling; it's dark, scattered with stick-on stars that have long lost their luster, in constellations he can name from heart because there's always the chance someone will ask about them, and he needs to be ready with a fact. His room is stuffed full like that, little observations, a lifetime's collection of research and information and things he told himself to learn in the off chance they could be useful. 

He's spent so long learning, so long hiding, so long toiling away under the weight of the Plan. 

And now he's going to UA. 

Izuku's not going to kid himself that it'll get easier from here; his teachers are pro heroes trained to sniff out liars and fakers and all other sorts of miscreants. He's a quirkless kid tucking himself in amongst the quirked like he belongs; and for all his records went unchecked when he was at Aldera and mistakes could be smoothed over by teachers not giving a shit, that isn't true here. If the Plan is going to be uncovered anywhere, it will be at UA.

But he's going to UA.

He sinks into his comforter, into the warmth and the familiarity, and looks up at the constellations; at the Pleiades, gleaming overhead.

"Did you know," he murmurs to the empty room, "that there are seven stars in the Pleiades, and only six are visible? But we call them the Seven Sisters because a hundred thousand years ago, we could see all seven stars, and that name has been passed down through history to today."

He likes that fact. It's one of his favourites—the idea that before there was written language of any kind, ancient humans still looked up at the stars and thought they were important enough to remember, to pass down through cultures rising and falling. The Seven Sisters have lasted a hundred thousand years because someone loved them enough to remember. 

Izuku isn't going for importance, not really. The limelight is brilliant and he admires all those there, but he isn't suited for it; not him, not his quirk, not his lack of one. Maybe working for limelight cases, the detective aspect of a detective-hero, but that's it. He's not looking to lead from the pillar's peak.

But maybe, he would like to be worthy of remembrance; to save one person that will know him, even if the world won't. 

And to do that, he has to become a hero. 

The Plan settles around him. 

He's not going to get caught.

-

Izuku waits, in a very polite, worried little fashion, until their second day wraps up—they're still in the introductory phase, teachers describing their subject like Izuku hasn't been taking maths classes since he was six—before grabbing his bag and heading deeper into the building. 

He's timed it carefully; the sun's already creeping towards the horizon, the city bustling with the ending shifts of those the Japanese work ethic calls underachievers, and most students have already packed up and left. There are teachers floating around, because UA is still open, but Izuku is relatively convinced this is as uninterrupted as he's ever going to be as he not-sneaks towards the west wing of the school. 

It's not. Well. This is all technically allowed, but there's a reason they haven't been told about it; only heroics course students are given custom gear as a built-in part of their curriculum. If anyone else wants it, they have to find a support student with enough free time to make them something, though UA will cover the cost. That's why it's not mentioned. 

But Izuku has read more about UA than most will learn for their chosen career, and for all the Plan says he needs to shy from attention, there's not a godsdamn chance he's missing out on custom gear. 

So here he is, after wandering through white-tiled hallways and unadorned walls in a way that makes him feel like he'll turn a corner and run into some escaped specimen from a mad scientist's lab, standing in front of an enormous steel door, and feeling his courage curl up somewhere behind his pancreas. 

There are… sounds coming from behind the door. Really quite concerning sounds. Some he expected from the support department, the clunk and clatter of metal, a power tool's low whine—and some he didn't, like vague squeaks of pain and the crackle of open electricity. 

It's not exactly a red carpet. 

But life won't send him a full threat report of what is in the room, so Izuku squares up in a way that would probably be threatening if he wasn't a twig, sucks in a deep breath, and knocks firmly on the metal. Inside, the sounds keep thumping away, the shriek of rending hardware. Footsteps.

And then, because this is Izuku's life, a hero opens the door. 

He's tall—or, he would be, but he's currently hunched over, hands slumped on the door handle. In the depths of his enormous helmet, yellow metal curling around his jawline like a mechanical set of teeth, there's two eyes peeking out with the kind of weary exhaustion you could reach out and grab. 

"Yes, I'm aware of the noise," Power Loader says in lieu of a greeting. He looks two steps from keeling over. "I don't know when she'll finish—there's an open room in the eastfold hall, if you want to study somewhere quieter."

As if on cue, there's another distant crash. 

"Um," Izuku says, brilliantly.

Power Loader squints at him, messy orange hair spilling through the cracks of his mask. Whatever he sees, it's clearly something confused, because he sighs in a way that rumbles his chest like a forge's bellows. "Do you need something?"

Maybe he should transfer to the support course. If this is what Power Loader looks like after the second day of school, he'd never have to worry about the Plan being discovered. 

"Support gear?" Izuku says, in what was not supposed to be a question. "I mean. To see if one of your students would be willing to make something custom for me?"

Power Loader sighs again. "You're welcome to ask her," he says, and nearly slumps to Izuku's height. "But at your own risk."

That's. Ah. A ringing endorsement?

But then Power Loader steps to the side, waving a clawed hand inside with the apathy of an executioner, and Izuku rather meekly trots inside. 

The support lab is a wild, raucous thing, enormous and sprawling, support pillars plunged through the tile floor. Hundreds of trace paper diagrams are already thrown over the walls, pens and markers rolling underfoot, and giant carts piled high with mechanical parts lurk on the edge of every desk. 

Izuku's a little jealous. Their desks are about four times the size of what he gets. 

But it looks like she needs it.

There's only one other person in here, beyond Power Loader who has already slumped his way back to his table, and she's sprawled over around three desks tugged in to surround her chair. Paper and wires and enormous sheets of corrugated metal clatter around her, the whine of a completely unattended miter saw, two abandoned welding masks clinging for dear life on the edge of the desk. 

The rest of the room is empty. 

Izuku knows there are twenty students in every class at UA. It's… a little telling she seems to have scared the rest off the minute class ended. 

He's never seen a more kindred spirit. 

It takes her a second to notice him, crouched over a sketchbook, but then she rockets upright with the force of a volcano's eruption. She's got bright pink hair that looks like the ends were burnt off, a uniform more scorched than whole, and golden eyes narrowing in on him with a ferocity. 

Izuku stands there. There's the vague urge to shiver. 

"You look like someone who doesn't care about safety regulations," she declares. 

Okay. Okay?

"Thanks," Izuku says, to what he's pretty sure is a compliment. In the front, Power Loader has tugged off his helmet so he can slam his forehead into his desk. "Uh. You too?"

He must have passed some sort of test, because she grins, wild and deranged, and hops over the desk to march up to him. She's shorter than him, which is really saying a lot, and he still feels like a rabbit approached by a lion. 

"Hatsume Mei," she declares, nearly punching him in the stomach as she sticks her arm out. "First year support course. You?"

"Midoriya Izuku," he says, and shakes her hand like something radioactive. She's got more callous than palm, and judging by the strength in a simple greeting, she could snap him in half over her knee. Why had he come here, again? "First year general education. I was. Ah. Looking for support gear?"

Hatsume's face lights up in the way he genuinely thought was only a turn of phrase until encountering her—he can see each neuron in her skull flash to life and throw back four consecutive shots of espresso, as if she wasn't awake enough already. There's a glint to her eyes like a firecracker. 

"Brilliant," she says, every molar exposed in a grin. "Been waiting for someone to come—only second years get to work for the heroics course, and I'm not about to wait that long to make some real babies."

Babies. Right. This is fine.

"No exploding, corroding, or biological warfare," Power Loader chimes in, face still firmly planted in his desk. He says it with a kind of cadence like he's repeated this statement many times today. 

"As long as you don't catch me," Hatsume says back, just as fast. She clicks her fingers together and her eyes move, zeroing in with little crosshairs until her pupils have filled in with gold. "And you. Not the snitching kind."

She says it like a fact, so Izuku just nods. He's decidedly not, anyway, if the Plan means anything. 

He does rescind his previous thought on Power Loader, though. Having Hatsume as a student, even for only two days, feels like plenty to exhaust someone to their core. 

"What are you looking for?" She asks, and kicks a swiveling chair—it bounces sadly, colliding with an abandoned stack of them, and she hipchecks another out of the way as she sweeps one of her three desks clean without breaking eye contact.

Izuku had a whole speech planned, but it's falling out of his grasp like paper scattered to the wind. He makes a valiant effort to recollect it. "I'm looking to become a detective-hero," he says, and inches forward to peer at the paper she's dragged out. She's already drawing a worryingly accurate sketch of him. "Someone who investigates villains and also engages them. My quirk can't be relied on in combat, so I need gear for that, as well as for gathering information."

There. Open ended and guiding. Izuku's got plenty of ideas for what he'd like, but there's something to be said about hearing other options first. 

Hatsume hasn't blinked yet. "Limelight or underground?"

"Underground," he offers. "Maybe undercover as well."

The Plan has made him uncharacteristically adept at lying while telling the truth, and that's a field where the lack of a recognizable, flashy quirk does the opposite of hurt. Not something they tend to teach at UA, since it requires care and precision teenagers do not have, but there's no harm in planning for it. 

You know. If he survives. 

She scans him up and down like an MRI. "You're weak," she declares, which, ouch, "but workable. Bulk up so you can use some of my real babies, but in the meantime–"

Hatsume lunges over the desk and tugs out a sketchbook, emblazoned with UA's symbol across the cover. Despite presumably only having been in her possession for two days, the thing's weather-beaten to hell and half full. "Combat's easy," she says, tossing a pencil over her shoulder when it dulls and just grabbing a new one. "Suit with layered armour over your squishy bits. Weapon that's not too flashy. You got a theme?"

A theme?

"My quirk is named Detective," he tries. 

"Retro fisticuffs, then," she pops back as fast as anything, like she just had that stored in her head. "Iron knuckles. Shod boots with stilettos in the toes. See? Classic. Boring." There's a sigh, something long and suffering, even though everything she suggested he wants. 

"But information gathering," Hatsume says, and there's glee ribboned through her voice. "That's where things get interesting."

Izuku has never been more frightened of that word before. 

"Turn your iron knuckles into gloves," she says, scribbling down a list with the worst kanji he's ever seen. "But the fingers have utilities; pen light, cigarette flame, chill touch. Lets you test things on site. Audio recorder on a necklace. Makeup that actively muddles your facial structure. Blowdarts with trackers. Breakaway adhesive cameras. The possibilities are endless!"

And then, instead of saying it for Power Loader to hear, she writes paralytic smoke grenades, waits for him to read it, and very pointedly erases it. 

Holy fucking shit. 

In about three minutes, she'd come up with designs, strategies, and more gear options than he'd thought possible. And that's before she starts actually making the damn things. 

"You're a monster," Izuku breathes, with the awe typically reserved for star-deaths and black holes. "We're going to do fantastic things together."

Hatsume's grin is all teeth.

-

Izuku wanders out of the lab many, many hours later in some kind of daze. Hatsume had been very willing to keep going until the universe imploded, but apparently five hours after last bell is when Power Loader draws the line, and for some, completely unexplainable reason, first year support students aren't allowed in the lab without supervision. 

Or maybe it's just Hatsume. 

But either way, there's a sketchbook filled with measurements he didn't know existed and the promise of future gear, and Izuku has been politely shooed home to go and have some kind of life. 

He's missed dinner, missed his original subway, missed catching his mom when she gets back from work. Tomorrow is full of classes he hasn't prepared for yet. 

And still, as he stares at a ceiling filled with dim stars, there's a burning excitement in his chest that won't go away. 

-

Their fifth day makes a fair attempt to snuff it, though. 

The actual day went fine enough, classes thrumming by—they're out of the introduction phase and now the full weight of UA's expectations are falling on them, daily assignments and readings and essays. None of it has been busy work so far, which is great for learning and bad for time management, and more than once has Izuku had to repeat plus ultra to himself as he glares at a textbook refusing to give up the secrets he needs. 

But it happens that he clambers onto the metro home, tucking himself in the same back car he always does, and his jaw drops. 

"Woah," he says, before he can stop himself. "What happened?"

Bakugou scoffs, derision boiling over as if that'll hide the stark white bandages climbing up his forearms. "My teach's a bastard."

No kidding. His uniform is as pristinely unpristine as normal, but he's holding his arms tight to his sides, and there's a faint echo of a bruise over his right eye. Considering UA has Recovery Girl on premise, it must have been a hell of a shiner to stick around. 

"What happened?" Izuku repeats. 

"Expelled another kid," Bakugou mutters. His gaze has slid away from Izuku, not that it was ever on him to begin with, and there's almost… worry in how he's glaring at the ground. "Right after some stupid heroes versus villains bullshit. She was a fucking dipshit only in it for the glory, anyone could see that. Being a celebrity instead of an actual hero. Godsdamn idiot."

Huh. 

Now, Izuku's got a good memory, and he's pretty sure he's only ever heard Bakugou mention being number one instead of saving people. Not out of maliciousness, but like the thought hadn't occurred to him. 

Judging by the look in his eyes, he's beginning to realize that attitude won't cut it in UA. 

Whoever his homeroom teacher is, they've done more in five days than anyone else did in fifteen years, and expulsion is very, very far from merely a threat. Bakugou's got what could be called concern on anyone else in his face. 

It'll do him good, Izuku thinks. Even just the fear of getting kicked might be enough to get Bakugou to sit down and consider things he hasn't before. A stick to match the carrot that's ruled his life so far. 

But also. 

Two expulsions in under a week. 

For all Present Mic might be complacent in a school-wide ring to keep quirkless people out of UA, at least he isn't doing that.

It's the small things, sometimes. 

-

Okay. 

Izuku has encountered. 

A problem. 

See, he's got a long-running reputation as being odd—which is great, because he's spent the prime years of his life digging a panicked grave for said reputation just to make sure everyone thinks he's got a mental quirk—but it's a comfortable sort of box to live in. He can drop did you know in a conversation and have everyone file it away in their Midoriya Izuku is weird cabinet without another thought.

But the problem comes that he, ah. 

Doesn't know what to really do when someone starts getting closer.

And for some reason he thought this would be just like Aldera, where people kept to their cliches and he didn't have to worry about being noticed, about being seen; but it's lunch on Monday, when he's curled in the back of the cafeteria with three textbooks spread before him, and Hatsume has just marched right up and slammed her tray across from him. 

What. 

Izuku stares, a distant relative to shock flooding through his system. She doesn't seem to notice, eyeing his textbooks with idle curiosity but nudging them out of the way, her own tray pushed to the side and forgotten for all there's food on it. Hefting a tote bag with enough grease to remove it from UA's dress code, she digs around in it for a bit before dropping something in Izuku's hands. 

He takes it, because what else is he supposed to do. His brain really hasn't caught up to the situation yet. 

It's a cylinder of mesh, stiff enough to hold its rough shape though he can adjust it. Only an inch or so thick, maybe four in length, and he can see wires threaded through the fabric. So. You know. 

Considering who gave it to him, it might be a bomb. 

"Hatsume," Izuku says, very slowly. "What is this?"

She stares at him, eyes telescoping back and forth in what might be her version of a blink, considering he's pretty sure she consumes too much caffeine to do the normal kind. "Prototype," she says, like that explains everything. "Made it over the weekend. Trying to get the penlight to work. Put it on."

Put it on? It's a cylinder. 

But there comes that star-fire in his chest again, quiet awe that the Plan is working, and Iuzku slides it over his pointer finger. It's a bit scratchy and plenty stiff, enough he can't bend his knuckle, and Hatsume frowns. 

"Damn," she mutters, and fumbles for rice in a way most would choke on. "Thought there'd be more give. That was the only fabric I could thread the wires through." She leans back in her seat, lips pursed. "Putting the components on the outside of the gloves would be too obvious, and might damage them when punching. Hm. Palms?"

It has been a long, long life of training himself to notice things in order to fake a quirk, and Izuku is pretty sure that's the only reason he's keeping up. 

Hatsume cocks her head to the side, chewing on the tip of her chopstick. "But putting the cigarette fuel on your palm means the risk of breaking it when you punch," she murmurs. "Unless that's a strategy to use? Light your hands on fire to burn your opponents? That'd mean a lot of testing."

She frowns at her food, like she's annoyed she has to waste time on such a frivolous task. 

Everything she's saying is exciting and terrifying in equal measures, and this is after a single weekend; he'd been hopeful for custom gear after reading it on the UA website, but it had been a faint, pleasant sort of dream, the kind he used to cushion the Plan when the going got rough and miserable. Nice if it happened, but unlikely. 

Now it could be in his grasp, if only she's able to make it work, if only someone else with another, more interesting project doesn't come to her. 

This is not in the Plan. 

But still Izuku opens his big fat mouth, and still he asks, "do you need help?"

Then it's Hatsume's turn to blink at him. 

"With designing," he clarifies. "If you want, I could be in the lab, helping you. I'm pretty good at learning things." And exceptionally willing to estrange sleep in order to do said learning.

The grin flashing over her face is anything but human. "Upgrade from client to assistant, huh?" 

Well. If Izuku does this, he gets support gear, an excuse to stick around the one hero who looks far too exhausted to investigate him, and he gets to collect a shit load of facts about support. 

That's a win-win-win. 

"Absolutely," he says, and falls facefirst into a conversation about wiring utility gloves that makes them both late to their next class. 

-

"Alright," Present Mic says, with the quiet tone he uses in the morning before his coffee kicks in. "Zero in, yeah? Bit of an announcement."

1-C does as requested, students swiveling around to face the front. It's their third week and they've all but adjusted to the rhythm, which is understandable. Once the shine of UA wears off, what's left is the fact that it is, unfortunately, still a high school. A lot of the wonder of being taught by Midnight tends to fade when you're cursing her name the night before a five page essay is due. 

Present Mic still treats them just as brightly and energetically as he did day one, whether they're talking about English conjugations or agency organization or brand identities. He's nothing like any of the teachers back at Aldera, from before, from anywhere.

Still the Plan croons in the back of Izuku's head. Still he knows the dangers of getting caught. Still his guard stays up. 

"There was a tiny little mishap yesterday," Present Mic says, all smiles. "Someone in 1-A got a touch rowdy in the open gym, and I just want to remind you all of the rules, you dig?" He pauses, tilting his head to the side, bird-like. "How many of you have used them?"

A couple hands go up, mainly from Takamori and Shibuya. 

Present Mic hums, a loud enough sound it trembles in Izuku's ribcage. "Right on! The basic rules are that the machines are available any time, systems you need a buddy, and courses are locked off unless you have a teacher supervising! They're open as long as the school is, and they're recorded the whole time, so don't think about getting clever on us!" He waggles a faux stern finger at them. 

One person offers a pity laugh. 

"But truth, more of you should go!" He throws his arms open wide, spikes on the edge of his leather jacket catching in the light. "Studying to be a hero's all well and good, but unless your strategy is to throw books at villains, you'll need to be able to catch them! We start taking heroic practical classes in your second year, but that's no reason not to get a head start, yeah?"

Izuku can't help but feel a little targeted. 

Because, well. He's spent a lot of time perfecting his quirk, fake as it is, and a lot of brainpower goes into that—so much power, in fact, that he has very little to spare anywhere else. If he were to get into an actual fight, he'd be folded like a lawn chair. 

Not a very heroic quality, that. 

Present Mic hums, glancing around the room; most everyone is staring back, either with the bland, disinterested look that lives in the territory of eight am classes, or with the determined bite of those looking to transfer out. Most of them, Izuku is a little pained to admit, are already quite strong and athletic, and that's only been going up over the past three weeks. It's, ah. Not quite the same for him. 

Then–

"You want to be a hero, right, Midoriya?"

What. 

Izuku goes stock-still, so stiff frozen doesn't even begin to cover it, eyes wide and smile permanently etched onto his face.

What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck.

 "Yes, sensei," he manages. Barely. Hardly.

"Heard you were working with support already," Present Mic says, blissfully unaware of the rising decibels Izuku is screaming inside his mind. "That's the Plus Ultra attitude we're looking for! Everyone else, feel free to do it too; hit the gyms, go to support, rise above. That's what it's all about!"

Sure is. Sure fucking is. He's going to pass out.

Everyone is looking at him. Everyone is looking at him with the jealous hunger that comes from his name and the word hero being used in the same sentence, said by a pro hero himself, and Izuku can't exactly say hey, not looking to transfer in any way that doesn't bring even more suspicion. 

He settles for staring right ahead and digging nails into his palms. They continue to stare at him, some obviously, some from the corner of their eyes, even as Present Mic begins their actual lecture for the day. 

So. Turns out his little escapades with the support department haven't been as subtle as he'd hoped. 

Life is great. 

-

"Third room, all the way in the back, avoid the laser trap," Izuku mutters a bit like a prayer under his breath. 

After that little announcement from Present Mic, there had been a moment where he genuinely weighed abandoning his custom gear to once more fade to the background—but he'd decided against it. The fact is already out there, after all, and he can't take the attention back. The damage's been dealt. 

So back to Hatsume he went. 

They're taking a break on the utility gloves, since it's been a frustrating time trying to hide so many finicky parts in what are supposed to be disguised as classic, unsuspicious articles of clothing; and in the meantime, they're giving the paralytic smoke grenades a whirl. Which. 

Izuku won't be able to test them, won't be able to show them off, and won't be able to use them, but Hatsume had been determined, so that's just what they're doing now. 

Unfortunately, depending on your point of view, Hatsume has absolutely no access to the chemicals needed to produce said grenades, and Power Loader watches her like a hawk anytime she goes into the storage rooms. Which means it falls to Izuku for gathering the necessary materials. 

He'd, ah, tried to argue against it.

Go, minion, had been her rebuttal, which is. You know. Probably not a great sign for a healthy relationship, but he'll take what he can get. 

So he's creeping through the dark rooms at the heart of the support department, old labs and discontinued parts looming around like ancient monuments. There's cameras and sensors by the plenty down here, but Izuku knows they're keyed in on non-UA members. He's been scanning his ID on everything he passes, keeping his head high and visible to the cameras. It's technically against the rules to gather the materials he is, but the price to pay is a lot less than trying to disguise himself and making UA think an outsider broke in. If he plays his cards right, they'll see how often he's scanning himself in and not even think he's doing anything suspicious because of it. 

The Plan is rather worried about this whole thing, which is playing hell on Izuku's sense of courage, but off he goes anyway. 

This part of the building is rarely used anyway, it seems. UA needs an insane amount of storage, but they're only a month or so into the year, not enough to reach the point of scrounging in the back rooms when they've only made a dent in the more frontward dens. It'll be a long while until someone comes here for inventory, and Izuku will have a laundry list of excuses by then. 

Hopefully. 

It's that kind of reasoning that has him scan his ID one final time and enter the room Hatsume guided him to. 

The whole thing is dark and cold, walls lined in freezers storing all the various chemicals Izuku is suddenly very grateful she doesn't have access to. A single step and dust picks up at the motion, swirling around his legs; it's easy to tell he's the first person to come here in a while. 

Or, he would be the first person, if there weren't footprints stretching out before him. 

That's… weird. 

Izuku has a monopoly on being weird, so he's well prepared to notice. Who else has been here, and why? He's here because he knows this is one of the back up storage rooms; the one the students and faculty use is a floor up, filled with all the same materials and closer to the lab. The only reason he's not there is because he's relying on them doing inventory for this room far less. 

So why would anyone else come here?

There is, of course, the immediate thought of theft, but that doesn't make sense either. These are higher grade materials but not exactly legendary; if you were going to go through all the effort of breaking into UA, you'd want to take the real treasures hidden a few floors beneath, not these admittedly expensive but more common things. As if anyone would be stupid enough to steal from UA. 

But. 

The footprints stare back at him. He frowns, stepping forward; the wind scatters the dust over the ones closest to him, removing them entirely. Relatively fresh then, if the dust is so thin. Maybe from the beginning of the year?

He tries to get closer to any others, but they disappear at his presence, whisked away like they were never there. Izuku gathers the materials Hatsume needs, but it keeps biting at him, something cold that has nothing to do with the temperature of the room.

But investigating means drawing attention, and he can't do that if he wants the Plan to succeed. 

So Izuku slips out of the room, closing the door behind him, and heads back to Hatsume. He tries to push the thought from his mind. 

It doesn't work. 

-

Izuku doesn't even finish the week before things go wrong again. 

It's the end of the day, but Hatsume is busy on an actual assignment and he's got a while before his mom gets home, so he's puttering around UA with the kind of curious aimlessness that comes from studying too long. It's– well, he's been reading his ass off all his life for the Plan, and having access to UA opened doors he didn't know existed. So he threw himself in with reckless abandon and no thoughts to proper management. 

Sometimes that backfires. Like now, where he's trying to retrace his steps through UA, as he has apparently lost every single possession in his bag. 

Great. 

He's managed to track down most everything, from notebooks underneath library tables and essays covered in more shoeprints than kanji, but his history textbook is staying stubbornly missing. There's a faint memory of leaving it in homeroom, but only vaguely, because whenever he falls deep into a research rabbit hole the only thing important enough to remember is whatever new facts he learns. 

It's not the most healthy of habits, but nothing Izuku does is, so he's just learned to live with it. On he trots, drumming fingers over his thigh, and pauses outside the door—voices, soft and murmured, from inside. A meeting, maybe?

Anxiety digs daggers into his confidence. Izuku wavers like a tree caught in a hurricane. 

But the essay is due tomorrow, and he really needs that textbook, and he gives himself a moment to breathe for his stupid nerves before pushing the door open. 

The classroom's empty of students, which is great, but Present Mic is up at the front, sprawled over his desk because he seems allergic to chairs. There is someone sitting in it though, a tall, slouched man with dark hair.

The conversation dies a quick and painful death as soon as he enters, which is great, really. Izuku just wants his textbook. The Plan doesn't account for forgetting things everywhere. Maybe it should have. 

Present Mic perks up, grin splashing over his face, looking entirely unsurprised by what Izuku knows wasn't planned. "Oh, Midoriya! I've got someone I'd like you to meet!" He gestures, with all the flashiness of a showhost, towards who's sitting with him. In return, the man hums, the kind of ambiguous, lazy noise of a bothered cat not yet willing to move from the sunbeam. 

"Okay?" Izuku says, in what shouldn't really be a question but is anyway. 

"This is Aizawa," he explains cheerily. "Homeroom teacher of 1-A! Premier class of heroes, not that you heard that from me." He leans forward, elbows knocking folders over and nearly displacing the paperweight. "And this is Midoriya Izuku; a real wizard on analysis, let me say—you'll love him."

Izuku blinks.

There's a flustered heat rising through his face, one rooting in deep amidst all the insecurities and social anxieties—and that's before the fact this is a hero, a teacher, someone he's explicitly trying to avoid getting too close to. But. Well. 

That's a very nice thing to say. 

"High praise," Aizawa drawls, like each word pulls on his mortal soul. Not a fan of talking, then, which doesn't really make sense for being a teacher at UA—especially for a heroics course homeroom. 1-A is, after all, supposed to prepared those looking to strike out for the Top Ten; a job title with the very implicit idea of interacting with the press. Izuku's not about to strike someone down for not enjoying talking—look at him, his anxious energy has the density of a black hole—but it is interesting for those two traits to coincide. Maybe that's why he works with Present Mic, a contrast being the grit and the showbiz of heroism? Or he could just be working with Present Mic the hero instead of Present Mic the teacher, which is why he's here now after school hours, and–

And then he turns to face Izuku, and there's a dark jumpsuit, a white scarf, and deep black eyes.

Oh.

Oh, fuck, that's who Bakugou's teacher is.

Izuku had a couple of theories bubbling on the backburners, because he's the type to whip up a functional hypothesis from the stray fragment of a sentence, and an underground hero was pretty high on the list—not having an announced hero name, implying it needed to be protected; stern, unforgiving, teaching them teamwork rather than publicity stunts; no flashy quirk to make them identifiable around school. He hadn't narrowed it down yet. 

Except it turns out he does know who 1-A's homeroom teacher is.

Izuku has a list of heroes he has made a life mission to never interact with, and he's vaguely considering hyperventilating at the knowledge one of them works at his school. 

Because this is Eraserhead. One of the few heroes who has a quirk tying directly into other quirks; he can erase them, hence the name. As in. He likely knows what it feels like to erase someone's quirk, and how it feels to encounter someone who doesn't have one. 

If Eraserhead looks up and flashes his quirk, the Plan could crumple like that. Dead. Gone. 

If there's a worse situation out there, he can't picture it. 

"Eraserhead," he manages, thickly. It comes out far less confident than he wanted. 

Aizawa—Eraserhead—raises an eyebrow, and manages to make that threatening. Izuku's about to pass out.

"Oh!" Present Mic says, all pleasantly surprised, eyebrows rising above his orange-tinted glasses. "You know him?"

Aizawa also looks very interested in the answer. He unfolds in a way that doesn't feel human, tilting his head back—in a smooth, practiced motion, he blinks away eye drops, slipping the bottle back into the pocket of his tracksuit before turning back to the conversation. For his quirk, probably. For his quirk-erasing quirk. For the most dangerous quirk Izuku has ever been in the presence of–

"DNA," Izuku says before he can stop himself. 

That damnable eyebrow cocks even higher. 

Oh gods why is he talking why is he talking–

"Um," Izuku manages shakily. "You're–" he swallows, insofar as his saliva stops actively choking him. It's really not much better. 

"Did you know," he starts again, because why the hell not, he doesn't know what else to do, "that if you have chronic dry eye, your tears can leave behind enough DNA to identify you? Like you probably do? Because of your quirk?"

This isn't Eraserhead's fact—he'd stored it in case he ever ran into Solarflare, with her eye-based beam attack that surely dries her eyes out, but, well, time to use it. Always use it. Be weird. 

Dying on the spot would be equally weird. He's pretty close to it. 

Present Mic grins at him, pride over a student, pride over a student's quirk. "Told ya," he says, teeth bright as Charybdis before she drowns a whole ship's worth of sailors. "He'd analyze your socks off if you let him!"

Izuku has never wanted to be complimented less in his life. 

"A mental quirk," Aizawa says, slow. Considering. He tilts his head to the side, hair spilling over his shoulders, black eyes gleaming under the overhead lights. "Are you looking to become a hero?"

Not in 1-A, that's for sure. That's for fucking sure.

"I am," Izuku manages, behind gritted teeth, behind a spine curling up like an accordion. "I want to be a detective-hero."

Wow, that's a great sentence, isn't it? Such a unique thing to want to be. Something to draw attention. Could've just left it at wanting to be a hero, couldn't he?

There's a vague, terrified part of Izuku that wonders how they would react if he punched himself in the face. 

"Interesting," Aizawa hums, which, horrifying, but then his attention slides off, lazy as apathetic streetlights. "Did you need something?"

Present Mic rolls his eyes. "Rude, Aizawa."

Not rude. Polite. Very polite. The most polite there has ever been. In a stroke of luck Izuku has never had the joy of experiencing before, he can see his history textbook, perched neatly on the corner of his desk. "My textbook," he says, arms tucked into his sides like he can melt in on himself. "I. Ah. Just wanted to grab it before leaving?"

Then, before they answer, he skitters over to his desk and snatches up the book he's positive he could have just bullshitted his essay without and was not nearly as critical as he'd thought, slipping it into his bag. It hits the bottom like an anchor catching on a reef bed. "Sorry for disturbing you," Izuku says, and his voice has picked up in both decibels and speed as he scampers back to the door. "Um. See you tomorrow, Mic-sensei?"

Present Mic flicks him a pair of finger guns. "Bright and early, little listener!"

Aizawa hums again. 

Izuku throws himself through the door like a revolution era cannon, taking an extra second to shut it silently behind him so he can half-run, half-slither his way down the hallway until there's plenty of space between him and the classroom of doom.

Then, and only then, does he slam his back against the wall and exhale a breath grown old and stale in his throat. 

Humans don't hibernate, but man, after that encounter, Izuku's more than willing to give it a shot. 

Holy fucking shit.

-

It's about a day later, after he's avoided all eye contact with Present Mic and sprinted home the second the last bell rang after turning in the worst essay of his life, when Izuku sits down to really confront everything that happened. 

There is both a lot and a little. The conversation was very short, he didn't technically draw much attention, and he stayed polite and quiet and got out before anything could happen. 

He's fine. Probably. 

Aizawa knows who he is, and that he wants to be a hero. 

That is less fine.

Well. If he needed anything else to cement his decision not to get into the heroics course, there it is; Eraserhead as a homeroom teacher already established as expelling students. So. 

Call it an odd sort of hunch, but Izuku's pretty sure faking a quirk fits in the category of "not prepared to be a hero". 

He stares at the stars overhead, glimmering in the subtle way he can only pick out after years of sweating through panic attacks beneath them. There's a weekend of recovery before him, and then he has to go back to UA, where each hallway holds the potential threat of fucking Eraserhead around the next corner. And he'll have to keep doing this. For the next three years. 

Everything is great. 

-

"I have," Hatsume announces, spinning a chopstick between her fingers, "an idea."

Izuku, halfway through his rice and a textbook about cumulus clouds for facts he'll mention to his classmate Shibuya, freezes. That is an uniquely horrifying phrase to hear from Hatsume on any hour, but particularly one where he's unprepared. And you can't be prepared for Hatsume, so every time. 

"An idea?" He repeats, drumming his fingers over the textbook's cover. His fight-or-flight instinct he's had to squash ever since coming to UA does its best to activate in face of her smile. 

"Glasses," she says, thumping her fist down on the table hard enough Izuku's bowl skitters a few inches to the right. "Glasses. Your little pair is useless; and if you're going to be a detective, you need something actually made for the field. So! My eyes! Your glasses!"

"Detective- hero," he corrects. She doesn't seem to hear him. 

"If you want them to blend in–" he does, she knows this "–that puts a damper on some of my real babies, but I bet I could still make them work. Lasers. Dart launchers on the frame-arms. Nanobots to unfold into a mask!" She pauses halfway through raising an arm in victory. "That small…" she muses, eyes narrowing in as her crosshair-pupils swell. "Not sure I could fit enough receptors on them to have them understand all commands. Could come with a chance of overloading the wiring. Maybe the command boards."

Izuku has worked with her for long enough to understand what that means. 

"Or they could not explode," he suggests.

"Not a chance," Hatsume says, grinning brightly. "That's for cowards. You won't revolutionize the tech field by playing it safe."

"I would prefer if you revolutionized the tech field when it's not at the expense of my face," Izuku says.

She angles a chopstick at him. "That kind of attitude will keep you firmly on the ground instead of the stars."

"I love the ground. Very safe down here."

Hatsume waves an impassive hand at him, dismissing the concern like she can't even comprehend it. She probably can't. "Go to Kurimi-chan if you want that," she says, with the derision that is always directed at the one member of her class who earned Power Loader's blessing to be in the lab without supervision. She believes it has something to do with nepotism and bribery and other various things, and not with how Kurimi has never so much as mistakenly burned a piece of paper, let alone the entire lab. Twice.

But no. Definitely some other mysterious reason. 

"You came to me," she says, with a sharp-toothed grin that has a way of stirring some ancient fear in Izuku's chest. "That means you want something new. Therefore– glasses. What features?"

Well, there's a laundry list of things she's likely already thought of—heat sensing, UI with notes, recording ability. It'll be tough as hell to fit everything on something supposed to look like a normal set of glasses, but this is Hatsume, so it'll be done. Eventually. With only a minor threat of exploding at the worst possible time. 

Izuku hums, thumbing at his chin. 

Something tickles in the back of his mind—those footprints, deep in the barrows of the support department. It's probably nothing, because again, this is UA, but still he's curious. 

And his curiosity has always been a beast to be fed. 

"Did you know," Izuku says, a touch slowly, "that footprints are considered one of the main clues for detectives to identify suspects? Because, based on the size and depression, you can often tell height, weight, and gender from just their shoes?"

There's a pause. Then Hatsume's eyes gleam.

"This is why you're my favourite," she declares, and does an odd little elbow-kick to shove everything out of the way so she can slam a sketchbook down. "Every other student just wants things that are so normal. Better armour, heat resistance, explosion mitigation—boring. That's already been done before!"

Sometimes Izuku is very, very glad Hatsume was born now, and not in some futuristic age where technology is even better. She's enough of a menace with what she's got. 

"Footprints," she says, and already the air fills with the faint smell of burning paper as she writes with triple speed. "Footprints. Pull up a UI to record the analysis. Left side of the display. Pulls tread style to match with common brands."

"Sends the information somewhere automatically," Izuku says, because he's done this song and dance enough to know the rhythm. "My phone or another storage device, so I can study it later."

She hums, bending further over her sketchbook. The lunch passes away in blissful serenity of the Plan.

-

Izuku is a little late. Maybe. He's got a good excuse, probably, and he's hunched so far over he's lost about a foot of height he doesn't have to spare as he slinks into homeroom twenty minutes after the bell. 

Said excuse shrivels on his tongue as Present Mic grins at him, eyes immediately knowing, eyes crinkled at the corners. He's already made his way through the initial day's schedule and announcements to the nineteen students sitting before him in various levels of sleep.

"This-a-way, little listener," Present Mic says, grinning all the while. Izuku flashes him an apologetic smile that definitely looks like a grimace and scampers off to his seat. Takamori glances at him with some kind of laugh emerging from the edges of her medicinal mask. 

There's a horrible moment of silence as Izuku frantically tugs out his papers and clicks his pen open, but Present Mic wrangles attention back on him with a casual ease the world is jealous of. There is something bright in his eyes, more than the caffeine-laced addiction he was definitely born with, and it whispers around the classroom like curiosity given form. 

"Now, I'm sure you've noticed something," Present Mic says, leaning forward; he's got the gleam of a showhost, all glim and glamour, and despite their first-hour apathy, the class lasers in. Oh. Looks like he saved the last announcement for when Izuku showed up. That's.

That's really nice. 

"The Sports Festival is approaching!"

Ah.

That's less nice. 

Izuku sinks a little further into his seat.

He knows about it, because who doesn't—it's the Sports Festival. UA's premier event with all the glitz of being a hero, their first taste of the spotlight for the many, many amongst them who will never know what it feels like to be in the Top Ten. 

So. 

It's a lot of attention. It's a lot of focus. It's a lot of publicity.

It is, in effect, everything the Plan stands against. 

The whole thing's still three weeks out. They've got plenty of time to work themselves up into a frenzy. There's no need to start now. 

Judging by the sounds, no one is willing to stop. 

Present Mic basks in the attention like a sunning rock, for all it isn't directly for him. "Yes, yes," he soothes, in the way that isn't meant to soothe at all but only to excite. "The pièce de résistance of UA, where the world comes together to watch us! Our chance to prove our grit!"

The class rumbles appreciatively, the baring of teeth that comes when their worth is brought up. Izuku bites back the urge to groan. He's trapped in a pissing competition he can't escape.

Maybe there's a way to sit out. Or drop out. Or flee. 

Present Mic stays grinning at them, but there's a flash of that seriousness from their first day, from the teacher who knew he had a class who did not want to be here and saw this place as a stepping stone on their journey up. It's changed a bit, because Present Mic is an extraordinarily charming hero who can make anyone feel comfortable in his presence, but Izuku's seen it, Present Mic's seen it. Of the twenty students here, nineteen would transfer out if it cost them their left arm. 

He probably thinks all twenty do, since Izuku has glued himself to the shadows. 

"Now, I don't want to mislead you," he says, and once more they all lean in. "This can be an opportunity to transfer to our specialized courses if you want to, though by no means do you have to. That all depends on if there are any openings, and in truth, I don't think you should worry about it!" He flashes them with a pair of finger guns. "Transfer or not, this is the time to strut your stuff! Do your best! Plus Ultra!"

There's a vague murmur of the phrase back at him. 

Takamori Honoka raises a hesitant hand, mask shifting up her face. "But I heard the 1-A homeroom teacher already expelled people," she says, glancing around the classroom. "Even though we're only a few weeks in."

Izuku blinks.

Around him, 1-C murmurs, the quiet confusion from a question they didn't know they had until it was given to them. He's got his own curiosity; because, yeah, everything he's heard says Aizawa is a hardass of the highest degree—Bakugou's words, not his—and he expels those he doesn't think of as worthy.

But Izuku's spent so long being terrified of Eraserhead he hasn't really considered that, well. Two students gone in the first week. 

Something tightens in Present Mic's face. Not enough to break his smile, or even his cheer, but a note of discomfort etched in the lines around his eyes. "You're not wrong, kiddo—there's an open spot or two!"

Takamori's hand stays raised. 

"But we're only a few weeks in," she repeats.

"Well," Present Mic says, and he's firmer now. "The entrance exam isn't perfect, yeah? Sometimes kids get through that shouldn't, and when the question of a heroics license is on the table, you've got to protect the people first. Expelling someone is better than giving them a license they might not use for good." 

Discontentment roils through the classroom, that furrowing of brows and tightening of jaws. It's not an attack against them, but there's the implication of it, that even making it into UA doesn't mean they're safe. Izuku can practically watch Takamori's question circle around the room, of being expelled before even reaching the Sports Festival—how could Aizawa know to expel them? How could he know they wouldn't be good heroes? How could he know they weren't ready?

Takamori doesn't push it again, but she's frowning. 

Present Mic lets the conversation die its stilted death, dismissing them with a wave of his hand that doesn't look as cheerful as it normally does. Students mill around, that contentment of having an extra ten minutes before their next class, and Izuku is about to leave himself when something changes. 

He feels a– a weight, some heaviness around his shoulders, that uncomfortable sensation of being seen. Izuku stiffens, disguises it as a stretch while he stands up, but he really doesn't have to be subtle, because he happens to glance up and lock eyes with whoever is looking at him. 

Looking is a bit polite, really. It's more of a glare. 

Shinsou Hitoshi is one of those kids that's got a massive fucking chip on his shoulder from being 1-C instead of anything else, and Izuku is the poor sap whose desire to become a hero has been plastered over everything by sheer force of Present Mic's sportsmanship. Adversarial right off the bat, and not even from anything Izuku has done. 

He's had his fair share of this, because he has and will always value being weird over making friends, but that doesn't mean he enjoys it.

Shinsou stands to match him, bag over his shoulder, their only break in eye contact as students pass before him on their way out of the classroom. It empties in sluggish fashion, Present Mic distracted by a conversation up in the front. He can feel the hairs on his neck begin to curl from the intensity.

"Hello," Izuku offers, because he's about to shrivel into his own kidneys if Shinsou keeps glaring at him. 

"I'm going to get into 1-A," Shinsou says, and his eyes narrow. 

1-A. Great. The class he could physically not be more terrified of. 

"Fantastic!" Izuku chirps. He's probably going to pass out. "I'm going to stay as far away from that class as I physically can."

Shinsou's eyes narrow even further, like he's suspicious, like Izuku hadn't handed him exactly the answer he should want to hear. That's a little rude. "You said you wanted to be a hero," he says slowly, still doing the careful thing of phrasing it as a statement rather than a question, which is a subtle tell Izuku could pepper in some later conversation to uphold his analytic image. 

Not now, though. In his many, many years of reading people—or, more accurately, trying and failing to read people as well as he reads clues—he's figured out that when he's getting interrogated like this, the other person just wants to be told they're right. Or that they'll be fine. Or something. He'll figure it out. 

Shinsou is still staring at him. Izuku recovers with what he feels is remarkable grace. 

"Did you know," he says, "that you don't have to be in the heroics course to become a hero? It greases a few wheels, yeah, but take an extra year for on-field study after graduating and you can get your license easily enough." It's not really his fact, considering Present Mic mentioned it on their first day, but Shinsou doesn't seem to have remembered it. None of 1-C did. They're all shooting for the heroics course. It's very exhausting. 

"I'm going to get into 1-A," Shinsou repeats, and it's heavier this time, more pressing. A real one-trick pony. 

Right. Probably thought Izuku's fact was directed at him. Understandable mistake. 

"Not you," he says, and barely withholds the desire to sigh. That would, ah. Also be taken the wrong way. "Me. I'm going to stay in 1-C."

Which, honestly; why is Shinsou even asking him? Is he planning on going around the classroom and threatening everyone with the knowledge he's going to make it into 1-A? What is his plan there? 

"Present Mic said you've been working with support."

Gods, he knew that would come back to bite him on the ass. "Yes," Izuku says, and he's having to bully his own face into maintaining its smile. "I am, because UA offers custom gear, and that will be useful to me on the field. When I get there. After graduating from 1-C. In general education."

Shinsou stays glaring, but Izuku hardly notices, because brilliant, gleaming genius has just floated down from on high to inspire him. 

"Did you know," he says, in what is really not a typical fact but fits the format, "that I didn't take the entrance exam?"

There is a pause. 

Shinsou is still glaring, but there's confusion, tucked deep beneath his purple eyes and the equally purple bags beneath them. As if the idea is so foreign to him he can't understand it. 

"I didn't even try," Izuku repeats, because he's getting the sense he'll have to hammer this in just to be left alone. "And not because I didn't think my mental quirk would do anything, but because I don't want to be in the heroics course. I'm looking to be a detective-hero, and that means I have to know more than heroics; I want to stay in 1-C to learn everything I can."

And you couldn't force me into 1-A if All Might himself decreed it.

"I mean it," Izuku says, and doesn't have the fake the honesty in his voice. "I'm staying in general education. You don't have to worry about me."

And then, before he has the time to think, hey, maybe not, he's clapping Shinsou on the shoulder, smiling with all the earnestness that comes from knowing you look and sound like a fool on the best of days. "If you need any help, though, just ask!"

Shinsou makes an odd choking sound in the back of his throat, which is exceedingly relatable. 

Izuku busies himself by packing up the rest of his bag and avoiding Present Mic's eyes, who is watching the conversation with a curiosity Izuku does not like, and when he looks up, Shinsou is still staring at him. A little less glaring and a little more gobsmacked, like maybe people don't offer to help like that. They probably don't. Izuku's drifted so far from normal he can't really be compared. 

This is great. Definitely. 

"Okay," Izuku says, pleasantly, cheerily, and flees from the classroom.

-

Izuku has always dealt with difficulties by running, so it's really not a surprise he ends up back in the support department, in the dark and clustered halls where storage rooms lurk like hungry beasts. UA has money out the ass but support has never been one for the glitz and glamour, for shining windows and open concept plans; it's a maze he winds himself through, slipping around corners of plain white tile and sturdy doors. It feels like a spaceship, almost. 

Hatsume is down here, but Izuku's heart is a racing greyhound on a fruitless track to nowhere, and he really, really needs to calm down before he talks to anyone else. And what's life without a little danger—the Plan screams a quick rebuttal—so of course he's back in the storage rooms, swiping his ID on every scanner, and pushing open the door to the back chemical stores. 

The cold air sweeps over him, that deep and dark in the belly of UA, and his autumn uniform keeps it out with partial success. Izuku doesn't really know why he's here, wandering aimlessly, until his legs push him to stop in the center of the room, and his head tilts down. 

Oh. The footprints. 

They're still here, crisscrossing over the tile, but more faint, somehow. Like wind's gotten in and stirred them up. Not clear enough to study, even if Hatsume had finished her prototype. White hexagons sprawling over the room until they tuck themselves beneath the refrigerators. 

Izuku frowns, though. Squats, just so he can get closer to that lack of anything, and runs a finger over the tile; just the thinnest layer of dust clings to his skin. If there are more footprints, it's impossible to tell in the overlap. 

But still. The footprints, the mystery lurker in back storage rooms, still unanswered. 

They're probably nothing. He doesn't know why he's so curious; wow, footprints, in a school with hundreds of students and faculty? Such an unknown and revolutionary concept. Maybe he could even find uniforms and ID cards next. 

Still, though. The thought lingers in the back of his mind. 

Izuku straightens, both of his knees cracking at the motion, and squints at the corner where one of the more visible cameras are. Flashes his hands, just to show he's taking nothing. If anyone's looking. He hopes not. 

Well. Time to get back to class. Maybe by then he'll be able to look at Shinsou without melting. 

-

"Detective, was it?"

Izuku blinks. He's halfway down the hall, other students streaming around as they head to their next class, and he'd been about to head to the library for his free period when the familiar name struck his ears. There's a blond boy walking towards him, uniform pressed and prim and proper, with a particularly obstinate gleam in his eyes that doesn't really care if Izuku wants to interact, because he is about to be interacted with. 

"Um." Izuku checks over his shoulder to make sure the guy's talking to him. "Me?"

"Unless there's someone else around here with the quirk Detective," he says, with the long-suffering sigh of someone who does not give two shits about Izuku's feelings on the matter. 

Which is unfortunate, because Izuku has a lot of feelings about this. He keeps glancing to the side like a door to jump through will manifest. He's got a pretty good idea of everyone in 1-C—ie, everyone who knows his quirk name—and this guy is not on the list. Not on any list. It's exceptionally unnerving.

"I'm sorry," Izuku says, hesitantly. 

When it becomes readily apparent Izuku won't suddenly start understanding what's happening here, the boy sighs, flicking a hand through his hair. "I am Monoma Neito," he says, slowly, like he doesn't trust Izuku to understand what's being said. "Of 1-B. My quirk allows me to copy other quirks, and I'm seeing which would be best for the Sports Festival. I heard yours—Detective, I believe—would be a good analytical ability for observing my competition. Do I need to spell anything else out?"

Copy other quirks. 

Izuku goes very still, a rabbit with a hawk wheeling overhead; he's got a list of pro heroes he knows to evade, authority figures he'll barely make eye contact with. Anything to avoid having the Plan being revealed. But this is, hands down, the absolute worst quirk possible. 

And Monoma just walked right up to him. 

Holy fucking shit. 

A natural disaster disguised in human skin stares at him, manicured eyebrow cocked and obstinance carved into his face. How– how does he copy quirks? Touch, sight, responses? Is being in this hallway, other students streaming around, all he needs? Does he already know?

Well. Forget the fear of 1-A. Looks like Izuku gets to be equally terrified of both heroics courses. 

His heart trembles like a gong, rattling around his ribcage and thundering deep into his spleen. The Plan is shrieking. But presumably, if it was an easier activation, he would already have it, and he's waiting for a response, and he wants a response, he wants a motherfucking response–

"I'm not giving you my quirk," Izuku says, very slowly. 

Monoma rolls his eyes. "It's hardly so dramatic. I'm just copying, you won't even notice. Give me your arm."

Okay. Touch activated. Izuku is wearing long sleeves with his hands exposed. He's never realized just how much skin there is on his hands. It's like the surface of the ocean, really, there's so much skin. A truly excessive amount of skin. All of it exposed. 

"No," Izuku says, eloquent as ever. 

Monoma stares at him, a curl to his lips, that derisive pandering to someone you think is an idiot. He sighs, jaw set in the most biting expression Izuku has ever seen. "Fascinating to know UA still allows quirkist students to attend. Do I need to remind you we were both allowed in, or should I go ask Principal Nezu to, once again, confirm I go here?"

Forget being caught. Forget being thrown out. This is the nightmare situation. Izuku wilts like a gentle flower doused in acid. "I'm not quirkist," he manages, and can't spare a moment to enjoy the irony as crippling anxiety crashes over him like a tidal wave. "I'm just–"

Monoma cocks an eyebrow. Izuku is about to pass out. 

"My quirk," he says, which is more to say he opens his mouth and prays for his subconscious to have anything for salvaging this conversation. "It's not. Ah. Easy to use."

Monoma hums, a bland, accusatory sound. "I'm sure I've handled worse."

Not worse than nothing, Izuku despairs. "Not like that!" He squeaks, and oh wow, this couldn't be going any worse, could it? "But it's. Not like most quirks." 

He's not so much scrambling for an answer as flinging himself off a mountain in hopes he'll catch one on the way down. "It's. Overwhelming. I can't shut it off . And it's. Well. Hard to manage. Deal with."

There's a long, long pause. 

"Detective," Monoma says, with slow and steady precision. "Your file–" his what "–described it as a general boost to observation. What do you mean it's overwhelming?"

The fuck was that about a file?

No time. Focus. Fucking focus.

"I notice everything," Izuku says, and lunges for all those safeties he came up with back when the Plan was a mere fledgling looking to take its first flight. "I, well, can't shut it off? And it's taken me a long time to be able to sort through what I notice. To. To not break down from it all." Think, think, think. "It still happens, sometimes. I don't have perfect control of it yet."

He laughs—it doesn't sound like a laugh, and it definitely comes across more desperate than he wanted. "I, ah, go catatonic? When it's too bad? And– I'm sure you're good. Great. At dealing with quirks. But I don't want you to. To go through that."

Well. That's an excuse he's delivered as gracefully as a cat with a hairball. He wilts in on himself even further.

But to Izuku's absolute, absolute horror, Monoma looks considering.

"Huh," he says, still in that bland, unimpressed way, but there's a world of discovery in the sound. "Have you told the teachers about this? Even if you're not in the heroics course, they should help you get a handle on it."

There could not be a worse solution. Izuku shakes his head hard enough his brain rattles around like an empty pachinko machine. "I wouldn't want to inconvenience them–" among other things "–and, well. I don't really. Think they could help? It's. Nothing like any of their quirks. And I want to be a hero, anyway. We have to figure things like this out."

Oh gods why is he still talking.

Monoma looks at him, and some of his derision is gone, replaced with curiosity. "That's their job, you know," he says, but there's this horrible kind of understanding in his eyes, like he's connecting dots Izuku's scattered behind while trying to flee. "But if you don't want to go to them, my quirk is an option. Letting me experiment could help you look at it from a new point of view."

Turns out it could get worse. "No," Izuku manages, unable to keep his eyes from trailing to the ground. "But. Thank you for offering! I do appreciate it, I really do, but—well. It took me so long just to get to this point. I don't want to hurt you."

And I really, really don't want you to hurt me.

Monoma hums, interest with none of the apathy from before spilling over his face. It is a uniquely terrifying expression. "I see," he says, and scans him up and down with the clinical precision of a scalpel. "Midoriya Izuku, was it?" 

He can do nothing but nod miserably. 

"Think on it," Monoma says, and still curiosity lingers on the edges of his words, that crystalline interest Izuku does not want. "If not our teachers, then me. Your quirk shouldn't hurt you."

His lack of it, maybe.

"Sure," Izuku manages weakly. 

Monoma stays looking at him, but they're still in school, and the hallways are emptying around them. He clearly wants to continue the conversation, which Izuku could not want less, but the bell is about to ring, and he doesn't look the type to skip class. There's a worrying similarity to Bakugou in the bite of his jaw. 

Izuku's just used to having the fifteen years of history necessary to deflect Bakugou's questions. 

He does not have that here. 

"I will see you later," Monoma declares, and Izuku offers a shaky nod in return. Then the blond spins on his heel and marches down the hall, shoulders back, until he rounds the corner and his heels click away into indistinction. 

Izuku is left standing in the empty hall, staring at a space his worst threat once occupied. 

Well. He has drawn attention to himself, his quirk, and his aversion to teachers, all in one fell swoop. Fantastic. 

He stumbles to the closest classroom, shoulders it open, and prepares to sit in darkness for the next two hours until his thoughts calm down. 

Life is great, really.

-

He does get out of the room eventually, though if anyone was watching the security cameras they will have a lot of questions; but frankly, he deserves it. Shinsou's interrogation and meeting someone with the most terrifying quirk he's ever encountered is doing a lot against his mental health, and Izuku is really, really looking to just going home and curling in a small ball beneath stick-on stars to shake away the worst of his panic attack. 

Which is when, of course, Bakugou corners him on the subway back, shoulders up and bristling. 

They stare at each other, tucked in the back of the car with its scuffed seats and mysterious stains sunk into the tile, in the whine of metal outside and the rush of blitzing through underground tunnels. This is what they normally do, since there's no reason not to take the same route back—but silence is their conversation, beyond the few times Izuku initiates it. 

This time, Bakugou comes to him. 

They stare at each other. 

"Deku," he says slowly, like the words are being saddled on him. "The Sports Festival is coming up."

Izuku has heard that fun little tidbit about twenty times today. He stays silent. 

"Two open spots in 1-A," Bakugou finally continues, when it becomes apparent Izuku's not going to jump at the bait. "Got the clues yet, Kindaichi?"

The nickname would normally help. It would soothe the worries and aches, remind him the Plan is still chugging along, show no one suspects him. Kindaichi Kosuke, the detective of ages past, still referenced in modern culture in a form so warped it's near impossible to peer back and see those ancient serializations that made him. 

See, it says. They think you're a detective. That you have Detective. The Plan is working.

It would normally help. 

It doesn't today. 

"I'm not trying out for the heroics course," Izuku says, with the patented patience honed over many, many years of interacting with Bakugou. It comes out stilted. 

"Why not?" Bakugou says, and it's not snapped, not angry—or, it is, but in Bakugou levels, it's almost civil. Confusion hangs heavy over the words, the raw bewilderment of why someone wouldn't want to be in the heroics course, why it wouldn't be the honour above honours. Why they wouldn't try.

There's Eraserhead in 1-A and Monoma in 1-B. Those are all the reasons he really needs. 

And, well. 

Izuku is tired. Tired of today, tired of lying, tired of knowing Present Mic would do worse than expel him if he ever found out, tired of avoiding opportunities because they draw too much attention, tired of being so weird people won't talk to him, tired of struggling in a world that doesn't want him.

He's just tired.

"I told you," Izuku says, and feels the weariness drip off his tongue. Today has just– not today. He can't do it today. "You don't need to be in the heroics course to become a hero."

"Sure fucking helps," Bakugou shoots back. 

Yeah. Yeah, it would. Izuku's going to learn more about management and brand deals and support equipment in general education, but he won't get training until his second year or hands-on experience until his third. The heroics course gets provisional licenses. He won't until after graduation. 

Yeah. It would help if he was in the heroics course. 

But Izuku can't, because the world won't let him. Because there used to be a stupid fucking x where a quirk name should go on his file, and UA wouldn't have let him through the front door. 

Because he's quirkless, and he's been lying his whole life to get this far. 

Something must change in his face because Bakugou steps back, a furrowing of his brows he's never seen on the boy before; something taut stretches between them, a live wire, hissing and encroaching on what was safe space. 

Izuku stands there. A tremble races through his shoulders, through his arms. He's tired. He's so fucking tired. 

"Later, Bakugou," he manages, and turns away. He gets off the metro on the next stop, seven before normal, and walks the rest of the way home alone. 

-

Izuku has to hear when his mom comes home, because he can't really see her, considering he's planted his face in their couch and hasn't moved for the past two hours. He hasn't even taken his bookbag off. It feels like the world is perched on his shoulders, pressing him deeper into the cushions, and he honestly couldn't move if he wanted to. 

He's not sure he does. There's no Shinsou, no Monoma, no Bakugou here. Just the faint must of old fabric and a fifty-yen coin pressed into the underside of his jaw. 

So. Quite pleasant, really. 

The front door swings open, and he hears her come in, humming something tuneless under her breath. Hears her set down her bag, swish her nurse scrubs, the click of her shoes going off and slippers going on. The familiar ritual she's had for years. He loses her for a bit, slippers too soft to produce enough sound, but a presence appears over him. 

There's a warm, tinkling laugh, and then a hand on his head, ruffling his hair with fondness. "Rough day?" She asks, and he can hear the smile in her voice. 

"Ghrmh," Izuku manages, which is about the level of eloquence he's feeling. 

"Sounds like it," she laughs, and pulls away. Izuku flumps over, peering at her through the crack in the cushion; she's pulling her coat off, nose pinked from the cold, and love spills from her eyes like a tangible thing. "Would shoga-yaki help?"

Would it ever. 

Izuku fumbles upright, in the slow, lethargic way of a bear waking from hibernation, bookbag slipping off his shoulders. There are projects he needs to do and classes he needs to prepare for, and none of them are happening tonight, and he knows it. Today's just–

Not today. Too much has happened today. 

Inko smiles at him, all soft, all warm, and there's a moment where the world outside slows, and he's just looking at her, at love coalesced into human form. 

Do you know? He wants to ask. Because if there's anyone, it would be her—Bakugou had his suspicions but that was eight years ago, and the Plan has been steady and indomitable ever since. But it's been her at his side all this time, the one who sees him when he comes home and strips away the disguises to relax, the one who took him to the doctor and heard the man's muttered confusions about having a pinkie joint.

And, sure—there's a margin of error for that, and Izuku'd had dozens of other outlier cases lined up at the ready; but that had been defensive, and he had been seven, and it had been after days and days of tests. Still he got his quirk, still the x was removed from his file, but. Well. 

If anyone would know about the Plan, it would be her.

She's smiling at him, eyes crinkled at the corners. Eight years and she hasn't said anything, hasn't challenged him, has only helped him and guided and pushed him to follow his dream. 

Do you know? He wants to ask.

"I love you," he declares instead, and gets up to help her cook. 

-

Two days later, he's mostly shaken off the hell that afternoon was, and though he keeps glancing over his shoulder and covering every inch of skin, Monoma hasn't jumped from the shadows to copy his apparent quirk, so. 

Life's peachy, really. And on life goes, whether Izuku wants it to or not, so he's going to be peachy in solidarity and only scream when he's home alone. 

Peachy, as it turns out, means sitting in the library, tucked as far into the back as he possibly can, that kind of head-down knees-up position he's made his brand. There's no assignments hanging over his head, since his teachers are too focused cramming Sports Festival information into their heads than actual essays, but that's never an excuse not to do more research. Takamori, who normally never mentions anything about her quirk, had dropped—accidentally, he thinks, considering how quickly she tried to downplay it after—that she activates the quirk against herself rather than others, which means she can erase memories from people not even in the same country. Which is fascinating, and of course means Izuku is curled up with book after book about amnesia and a notebook with pages of messy scrawl he'll look over later. 

A notebook that teeters precariously on the crook of his knee. 

A notebook that, as he flips the page on Memory and Amnesia; an Introduction, topples like a collapsing monument and lands ten feet away on the carpeted floor. 

Izuku glares at it. He's quite comfortable in his gordian knot of a pose, thank you very much, and he's got a question to write down. There is a moment, however brief, where he attempts to manifest his mother's quirk through eyesight alone. 

Then someone picks up his notebook. 

Izuku, very slowly, drags his gaze up the dark jumpsuit and past the white scarf to meet black eyes. 

Eraserhead stands before him, notebook in hand, eyes bagged and lazy and looking at him. 

Why does this keep happening.

Whatever shit he did in a past life, it wasn't worth it. 

"Eraserhead," Izuku says, and manages to keep his voice from shaking. 

The hero squints at him, face half buried in his scarf. "Aizawa," he corrects. 

Right. Underground hero. Doesn't want his identity broadcasted. Izuku should not have made that mistake. He also should have left UA as soon as he figured out Eraserhead worked here. There is no upside to this. 

"Oh," Izuku manages, because what the fuck else is he supposed to say. "Sorry. I won't say it again."

Aizawa hums, that same lazy, disinterested sound. But he's not disinterested, because he's still here, and he's still holding the notebook, and he's still looking at Izuku. 

Please understand I am an idiot, Izuku tries to scream with his eyes alone. Maybe he should learn morse code. Leave me alone.

Aizawa flicks the notebook up, pages spiling to each side, dog-eared and ink-streaked as they are. It's still open to one of Takamori's pages, clustered, tiny kanji with questions about her quirk and how she uses it and does it relate to medicinal amnesia or is it just named that and can she make people only forget about her or is it other things and does she need any other activation requirements and does it take a set amount of time and is it only memories with her in them and can she do information and has she ever used it on him and and and–

It's mostly the research from yesterday, which more means a day of coming up with questions he'll answer over the next few weeks until he's got enough fun facts to spring on her if they ever have a conversation. Just how Izuku lives his life. There is a period in which he tries not to talk to people until he's got at least a handful of facts for them, just so he can say did you know, just so he can be weird. 

He's got plenty of facts for Eraserhead. Only. 

Very few of them are anything he'd willingly say aloud. 

"Hm," Aizawa says, gaze trailing over the pages. There's some note of surprise in the sound, which, fair—total retrograde amnesia isn't exactly pleasure reading. He scrolls over the rest of the page, mouth emerging from his scarf, before glancing back up.

In the dim of the library, his eyes are twin black holes, and Izuku can't help but flinch as they meet his. One flash of red– one stupid fucking flash and everything is ruined–

When he looks back up, Aizawa is still staring at him, but something has changed. There's a furrow, near invisible, between his brows and a curl to his lip that wasn't there before. He looks confused. He looks puzzled. He looks interested.

Heart attacks at fifteen are normal, probably.

"Your quirk," Aizawa asks. "Mutation or emitter?"

What the fuck.

Why is he asking? Why does he want to know? Izuku has interacted with him once before this and stayed in the shadows as much as he possibly can; there's no reason Aizawa should be curious. Should even know who he is.

"Emitter," Izuku's subconscious fills in for him, because his frontal lobes are currently too busy screaming at a variety of decibels. 

Aizawa's jaw tightens. It's slight. It's barely perceptible. But Izuku is so godsdamn lasered in that everything is visible, and he sees it, and he's about to shit his pants at the thought of the hero reacting that way towards him.

But then Aizawa straightens, mouth disappearing back beneath his scarf, and he extends the notebook. It hangs between them like a wave freed from gravity. 

"I didn't mean to disturb you," Aizawa says slowly, and there's some sort of understanding behind his eyes, one Izuku would really, really love to dig more into if he wasn't about to drop into a panic attack. 

It takes Izuku a second to remember typical social etiquette and then he's unfolding from his tangled knot of a being, taking the notebook back with only a slight tremor in his hands. Aizawa waits until he's got it before stepping away in long, unbothered steps, already turning away to face the library. Something has changed. He just doesn't know what.

"Sorry," Izuku says with some desperation, though he doesn't know what he's apologizing for. Maybe this conversation. Maybe his entire existence. 

Aizawa nods, bland, and disappears back behind the shelves. 

The library is painfully quiet after that, only interrupted when Izuku slams his head into his book. 

Maybe he should just drop out and save himself the grey hair.

-

There's a week left until the Sports Festival, which Izuku thinks about in the same way most think of an approaching apocalypse. UA is a wasp's nest in anticipation, quivering at the seams from even the thought of competing before a crowd, and most of their classes are halfhearted distractions. No one's assigning any big projects when they know damn well the students are too busy preparing to actually do them. 

Izuku would love projects. He would love doing them instead of anything else. 

There is at least one silver lining to the chaos, and that comes today, sitting at their typical table with lunch trays pushed to the side, and marveling over what spurred this current conversation. 

Chopsticks abandoned, he's running his fingers over what Hatsume had thrown into his hands when she'd arrived. They're bulky in the way of all prototypes, corrugated metal flattened but still lumpy, spidered filigree hugging twin panes of glass. A charging port hardly larger than his pinkie nail blends in on one side.

Glasses. 

Or, 'glasses'—since Hatsume had outfitted these with enough features to make the Kindaichi of ages past weep. "Footprints," she tells him cheerfully, uncapping a can of gyokuro green tea and dumping three bottled espresso shots right in. "If you focus on them, it'll note the length, width, tread style, and indentation. Should help you get the height and weight of the person, and at least narrow down their type of shoes."

Utterly fantastic.

Becoming a detective-hero is one of those ideas that clawed its way to existence, formed after years of rewatching the detective video for a case long since solved; Izuku still wants to be a hero, of course, but solving cases will always be something he loves. And, well—combining them shouldn't be too difficult. He'll just be the guy that both tells the heroes how to go in, and then also goes in himself. 

And these glasses are the first step in that long journey. 

Maybe as everyone is blowing up over the Sports Festival, he can experiment with these; try tracking students around, seeing how accurate the system is, figure out how starkly they stand out from normal glasses. Hells, maybe he won't even have to worry about an excuse for why he's not invested in the Festival; trying a custom-made prototype is plenty reasoning enough. 

This idea is somewhat derailed when Monoma walks right over to their table and plops his tray down. 

Izuku stares. 

Oh no.

Hatsume, not deterred in the slightest, merely shifts so she can stare at both of them and continue with her speech. "The battery's fragile," she says, propping her tray on an angle to write with one hand and down caffeine with the other. "Overwork it—run too many systems at once—and it might explode. Couldn't get you any protections for it, since admitting there's risk meant Power Loader wouldn't let me give it to you, the coward. You'll be fine."

Izuku is, unfortunately, not fine. He keeps staring at Monoma. 

Perhaps wisely, the hero student has decided to let Hatsume ramble her way through before interrupting, sitting with a politeness Izuku does not remember from their first meeting. The correct choice. Hatsume bleeds a hairtrigger-genius aura that's impossible to ignore. 

"Get me at least three hours of testing," she says, speaking around the pencil filling the left side of her mouth. "In UA, outside, and with a control group. Focus on shoe size, that's what I'm figuring out—some people have extra-wide shoes and it's working hell on the diagnostics."

Sure. Right. A good plan for that week. He can get it done today if nothing happens to distract him.

Something is happening to distract him. 

"Monoma," Izuku says, with all the caution of someone defusing a bomb threat. "Can I help you?"

It's a little biting, in a way Izuku would be proud of if he wasn't about to collapse out of his chair. Surrounded by the endless murmur of the cafeteria, he might even make enough of a ruckus to crawl under the table and run away. 

It's a great plan. Unfortunately, it's not the Plan, and so Izuku must grin and bear through this conversation. 

"I have found," Monoma says, with the kind of preamble that means this is a practiced speech, "a way to use your quirk, even if you won't let me attempt to copy it." He's speaking with the kind of magnanimous voice that says he'll be allowing Izuku to do this. It's like a cartoon villain. It would be really funny if Izuku wasn't terrified. 

"Um," Izuku says. 

Monoma makes a disgruntled sigh, as if Izuku not understanding this completely incomprehensible situation is cramping his style. "I heard," he says, resting his chin on his palm with the lazy stare of a big cat, "that you're looking to become a detective-hero."

Where the fuck does he get this information? Izuku's going to need an exact address so he can burn it down. The Plan didn't account for a blond bastard with too much curiosity. 

Oh.

Man, is this what other people feel like when Izuku starts spouting facts about them? He's going to have to do some serious soul searching after this. 

"I am," he says, smiling past gritted teeth. "My quirk doesn't work well in the limelight, so I'm looking to go underground, but I'll still be able to help larger cases by working behind the scenes as a detective-hero." A pause. "Why do you ask?" 

There is an answering grin that Izuku takes to mean he maybe shouldn't have been quite so forthcoming with information. 

"Because," Monoma says, and the pretty-posh-boy aura practically oozes from his skin. "I had planned to use the boost to observation skills to analyze my opponents and their quirks for the Sports Festival. But instead, I can merely ask you to do it."

Ask is the pivotal word here, and by the way Monoma is talking, it's much less of a request and more of a demand. 

Well. Analyzing quirks and opponents, coming up with strategies for and against them, helping someone else win fights they aren't necessarily prepared for. That's what Detective would be perfect for, if it existed. Which it doesn't. 

But it is, unfortunately, exactly what Izuku loves to do.

"Oh," he says to fill the silence, because his brain is doing this odd, stutter-jump thing that only belongs in dial-up internet. 

Then, because she is a blessing wrapped up in many, many layers of property damage and burgeoning expulsion from UA, Hatsume leans forward, neatly taking the heat off Izuku even if that likely had nothing to do with her actual goal. Her eyes gleam. 

"Need help in the Sports Festival?" She asks, all pointed fangs. "Advice's well and good, but you know what's better?"

Monoma blinks. The pompous energy bleeds off now he's on the back foot; he looks like an actual teenager, eyes flicking side to side when faced with the force of nature that is Hatsume Mei recruiting a new client. There's a bead of apprehension moving around his jaw. He looks like he's trying to figure out what's happening.

Izuku wishes him luck. It's been over a month and he's no closer to figuring out Hatsume than he is nuclear physics. 

"What?" Monoma finally asks.

"Babies," she intones, staring directly into his soul. 

Sweat glitters by Monoma's brow. "I'm sorry?"

"You heard me."

He sure did. 

The support course is one of those things that has to be a heroics school, since it's such a complicated, variable career field they need steady access to heroes in order to learn. So of course it's at UA, because where else would it be, but it's– well, it's tucked in the background, mostly. Izuku had to stumble across the knowledge he could get custom gear, and even if that were widespread, most would want licensed support companies or Power Loader to make stuff for them. Students are, in the end, students; limited by minimal experience and pigeonholed by UA's safety regulations.

Support students are known, but that's about it. They try out for the Sports Festival, very few of them make it past the first event, and the focus stays on the heroics course. 

Hatsume, with sheer force of will and moderate homicidal tendencies, is looking to change that. 

"I'll think about it," Monoma says, with the tone of voice that says he will do no such thing. 

But Hatsume's got her hooks in him now, and if he wants to keep coming over to this table, he'll have to play ball. The metaphorical ball in this equation, of course, is his new demotion to assistant and a pressing lack of future dignity. 

But that's if he keeps coming to this table, and there's only one reason he would. 

His gaze slides back to Izuku.

Detective is, above all else, a creation of love. It comes from the things Izuku would be doing anyway, just constructed to make his idiosyncrasies fit into the box the world demands of him. It's– it's hardly a quirk, when you boil it down. It's just who Izuku is.

What he loves is analyzing, and Detective is all about that. 

And, well. 

He's never had anyone interested in his questions. Sure, there are people who listen to the facts he tells them with polite curiosity, and his mother will always hear his ramblings with that warm smile, and Present Mic seems oddly invested in his analysis, but never someone who searched them out. Who wants them. 

This is a terrible idea. This is a terrible idea of such monumental proportions it's almost insane. 

Monoma is still staring at him. 

"Okay," Izuku says, and feels regret crash over him before he's even finished the word. "I could help."

-

"Mom," Izuku asks later that night, pushing rice around his plate a good fifteen minutes after his last bite. "How much should you help people?"

She blinks at him, hair spilling over her shoulders. "I'm sorry?"

Well. There goes his hope she would magically understand the situation and give him an answer that lets him keep doing what he loves without risking the past eight years worth of lying. He picks up a grain of rice with his chopsticks and stares at it like the most interesting thing in the world. 

"Sweetie," Inko pushes, when the silence stretches a moment too long. "What do you mean?"

He chews on the words before saying them. "Someone at school asked for my help with something. Should I do it?"

There. Perfect. Absolutely no more information given than necessary. 

Inko doesn't think so, if her sigh means anything. "Do you want to do it?"

He pushes more rice around. "I like it," he settles on. "I enjoy doing it, I guess. But. What if something bad happens because of it?"

Inko is well-versed in Izuku-isms, because for all she might know about the Plan he's still never going to say something about it aloud, and she picks her way around the not-saids and could-bes. "Is something bad going to happen?"

Well. It depends on your definition. Something bad to him, yeah, because expulsion is the nicest possible option if his lies are discovered, and for all Monoma's got a pompous stick up his ass, Izuku genuinely doesn't know if he's the snitching type. "Maybe?"

Inko raises her eyebrows. "Let me rephrase. Do you think something bad will happen?"

Izuku bites his lips. 

If he rejects it, Monoma might leave him alone—but that's a big might, and there's always the concern he decides if Izuku doesn't help him, then he'll just need to test Detective out for himself. Which, again, is the worst case scenario. Helping Monoma alleviates that concern, and for all it gets Monoma focused on him, Izuku's pretty sure he's fumbled all of their previous interactions enough there's not much he could do to get the boy's eye off him. 

Which. 

"I don't think so."

Inko's got a wry twist to her lips. "And it's something you like, beyond helping people, which you also love to do."

Drat. Logic. His worst enemy. "I guess?"

She smiles, a little fond, a little amused. "Well then. What's stopping you, Izuku? If you're helping someone, and it makes you feel better, and no one gets hurt, what could be wrong with it?"

What could be wrong with it indeed.

-

Her speech wasn't quite a pep talk, but Izuku's taking it on the chin regardless, and he wishes he could be more surprised when the next day, Monoma makes a beeline for their table. 

Izuku clutches his notebook a little closer to his chest. Showtime has never felt more tangible. 

"Midoriya," Monoma greets, all politeness, all pride. That gleam fades a bit as his gaze slides to the next person at the table and he's a teenager again, bravado stripped away in face of a natural disaster. "Hatsume."

Her smile back is all teeth. "Toshiba."

Izuku blinks. Well, that's a nickname without any buildup or history, judging by Monoma's bewildered expression, but Hatsume's sunk her fangs into things before, and she doesn't let up lightly. So. 

Toshiba he is, apparently. 

Monoma, perhaps correctly, does not even try to understand it, instead turning back to who he assumes is the more rational of the duo. "Midoriya," he says, and there comes the echoed cadence of a practiced speech again. "Have you prepared what I asked for?"

Izuku didn't prepare anything last night, actually. He spent all of it walking tight, cramped circles around his room and bouncing this new and upgraded part of the Plan to stick-on stars and other things that couldn't contradict him. A very productive time, that was. 

But he doesn't have to prepare, not really. He's got facts on everyone in UA, stored with the desperation that has powered him the last eight years. "Yeah," he says, and it comes out more meek than he wanted. "Who do you want to know about?"

Gods, he sounds like an informant. Where's his paycheck?

Monoma puffs up again. "I have been considering who I wished you to use your talents on," he says, and there's enough of a yakuza flair Izuku has to pinch himself. "It would be pointless to analyze 1-B, when I am so much closer to them, and for all I wish to hear about 1-C and the other classes, there is one target I must know more about." He waits an appropriate second for tension to build. "1-A."

Fantastic. Izuku's favourite class. 

"They think they're better than us," he says, and there is a sneer there, the first true derision Izuku's ever seen on him. Which. Interesting. "That just because their letter comes first they're more important. They're cretins."

Izuku has decided not to say anything about this. Feels safer.

"They are my targets," he declares. "I have no real need to win the Sports Festival, beyond claiming glory and honour, but my true intention is to dethrone 1-A and prove 1-B's superiority. And thus they are who I must fight." 

He exhales a long, focused breath. His hair is practically curling at the corners. 

Hatsume distracts herself by mixing espresso shots and miso soup, writing some kind of calculations in her sketchbook. Izuku wishes he could join her. 

"And there is one," Monoma says, with all pomp and grandeur, "who has claimed himself king of 1-A. Enormously powerful and callous. He has promised to dominate this competition."

…Izuku's got a sinking little feeling in his chest that he knows who this is building toward. 

Monoma plants his hands on the table, eyes wild and burning with determination. "You must tell me how to defeat Bakugou Katsuki."

Ah, shit. 

"Bakugou?" Izuku repeats, a little faintly. 

Monoma's eyes gleam fever-bright. "Bakugou Katsuki. The beast of 1-A. Explosive quirk. You must have heard of him."

Yeah. You could put it like that. 

The target of their discussion is holed up in the corner of the cafeteria, surrounded by a gaggle of kids with wild-coloured hair and the chatter that drowns out all sentient thought. He's got a grimace and a growl and everything else unpleasant on his face, but… lesser, in a way. 

Honestly, if Izuku wasn't kidding himself, he'd say Bakugou almost seems content.

Hatsume peers over, curious, like he's an error message across a programming screen. "He looks like he's having a bad day."

Izuku kind of wants to laugh. "I don't think he's ever had a good day."

"Oh?" Monoma glances at him, one eyebrow raised. "He hasn't?"

"Well, not in a while," Izuku amends. "But I think UA is good for him."

Shit, that was too much familiarity. 

Monoma stares at him like a bug pinned to a corkboard. "You know him," he guesses, unfortunately accurate. "You keep being interesting, Midoriya."

What a horrifying combination of words. 

Izuku scrambles for an explanation with all the grace of a half-drowned grasshopper. "We were… we grew up close to each other. Went to the same schools, and such. We're not close." We were. Could have been. Might still be. "I, ah. It's a tangential kind of knowing him? Like you know your neighbor. That you've had for. Ah. Fifteen years."

Real smooth, that. He's proving remarkably adept at sticking both feet into his mouth. 

Monoma's got a gleam in his eyes you could package up and ship to Fort Knox. "So you do know him," he muses, all clever intensity. "How he fights, how his quirk works, how to defeat him?"

Oh yeah. Because Izuku's definitely beaten him before. 

"I… think I need some time for him," Izuku settles on. He knows Bakugou's quirk inside out, backward, and forward, but he doesn't– well, he doesn't know how much to give away, not for his maybe-sorta-has-been-could-have-been friend. Acquaintance. Childhood twin. They haven't talked about that day on the subway, where the façade cracked, but they're still– they're still close, in any or no definition of the word. "Was there. Anyone else?"

There is a delirious second of silence after that, long enough even Hatsume glances up. Great. 

"...yes," Monoma says, with the tone of voice that means he is not anywhere close to dropping this line of questioning. "I suppose you could walk me through the quirks of 1-C, while you gather your thoughts. However long that takes."

Considering Izuku is a coward in every possible way, it could be the heat death of the universe. 

But that's a welcome excuse and Izuku thumbs through his notebook, past the various drawings and endless question marks. "Right. The first is Shibuya Imasu, and he's got a meteorologist quirk. Depending on the weather, he can emit different effects from his mouth, like clouds when it's overcast, or lightning in storms–"

The lunch passes quickly, now he's back in comfortable territory—and, in complete contrast to all of his previous interactions, Monoma is a strangely diligent listener. He nods when appropriate, asks questions when he has them, and, most shockingly, thanks Izuku at the end. 

Still asks about Bakugou, but even then, this is a phenomenal interaction. They make their way through almost all of 1-C, just preliminary introductions, with plenty of follow-up questions for the future. Izuku not-quite skips through his classes and starts doing research on 1-A in preparation for the rest of the week. 

-

Izuku is not nearly as petty as Monoma or Shinsou, but he can understand, for one brief, escapable moment, their rivalry with 1-A. 

The class is just a touch insufferable. 

After four days of meeting with Monoma over lunch and divulging a Ministry of Defense's spiel on everyone he can get his eyes on, Izuku has gotten uncomfortably close to them too many times over the past week. He's learned a ton, to be fair, which is plenty of motivation enough to keep going, but they are. Well. Irritating.

It's not intentional, he knows. They're fifteen, and they're bright and bold and brash and everything that comes from being in the premier class of heroes at the premier school for heroes in all of Japan. 

But there's a certain naïvety, too. Not all of them. Bakugou's been figuring out what being a hero means under threat of Aizawa's expulsion, there are hero legacies and tryhards in the class, and some have the burning undercurrent that comes from having two of their yearmates gone before the first week. They're trying, and they're certainly getting further than Izuku is, but from a week of watching them, there's something else, too. 

Some of them think getting into UA is the same as graduating. It's not. They're far from heroes, still. But their boasts echo hollowly without that knowledge to fill in the gaps, hearing through Hatsume what changes they're making to their costumes and their hero name debuts. It's not heroism, not yet. 

Interesting, that's all. Izuku writes it down and moves on. He's got quirks to analyze. 

Monoma—Toshiba, apparently, since Hatsume refuses to call him anything else, despite a complete lack of explanation for what Toshiba means—keeps coming back. Keeps listening to what Izuku tells him. There are several strange glances from his 1-B classmates when he doesn't sit with them, but Monoma lets them slide off his back with the kind of practice that speaks a little worrying about his previous experience at schools, if the cracks in his pompous aura weren't enough. Izuku remembers how Monoma accepted his stuttered reasoning for not wanting to involve teachers a little too easily. 

But it happens that each day passes, and their little trio sits at the table, and they talk, and they share, and it comes naturally. 

Izuku stays on guard, of course. Pulls his long sleeves down, positions himself so Monoma has to be across the table, drops did you know as many times as he can come up with facts for. He's practically waving quirk! on a brandished flag. 

But Monoma doesn't question it. Hatsume doesn't question it. 

And slowly, ever so slowly, Izuku sinks into the conversation and welcomes it. 

-

The Sports Festival is tomorrow. Izuku sifts through a list of various contagious diseases and wonders if it's worth it to fake one. 

Inko insists on carbo-loading the night before, which is a thin excuse for a massive comfort meal Izuku's never going to say no to, and they spend the evening in lazy comas as niku udon weighs heavily on their system. Cleaning can come tomorrow. He's pretty sure carbo-loading is supposed to be controlled and not make him feel like a cow has taken up residence in his stomach, but he's much too content to think about that. 

It's only later, as night darkens their windows and he's dragging himself into bed, when the situation really hits. 

The Sports Festival is tomorrow.

He squints up at stick-on stars. There is less than twelve hours before he will be expected to be on the field, head held high, competing for UA and the prized chance to transfer into one of the specialized courses. Particularly the course that has two openings. 

Life comes at you fast, sometimes. 

There's a knock on his door, right after he's slithered under his comforter. "Come in," Izuku calls, raising his bleary head off the pillows. 

Inko nudges the door open, framed in the light from behind. It's dark in his room, the gentle velvet of approaching midnight, and he can only see her silhouette as she crosses the room to stand by his bed, head tilted down to him. She brushes a curl off his shoulder. 

"Are you ready, sweetie?" Inko asks, pressing a kiss to his forehead like he's five again, hands twitching as if she wants to pull his comforter up to his chin. 

Well. She's a nurse. If there was ever a moment to fake some virus to get him out of tomorrow, it would be right now. 

"Ready as I'll ever be," he says, and grins at her. "Time to prove myself, right?"

She smiles, eyes soft. "You've already proven yourself, Izuku," she murmurs in the dark of his room. "You don't have to do it again."

That's completely unfair. Izuku's traitorous eyes take over. "Thanks, Mom," he whispers past the tears, and hugs her back. 

-

Izuku glares out the window. 

They're huddled in a stupid little waiting room, because apparently UA has specialized waiting rooms for each class in the stadium instead of spending their money on repealing their own discriminatory laws. It means that he got to school and was immediately shuffled off on an identity-checking expedition, because UA takes their security with the intensity it deserves, and now they're all standing around in the waiting room with the vibrating, vicious energy that can only come from twenty teenagers. 

Outside isn't much better, really. 

The sun is up, bold and impassive overhead where it's not choked by clouds; it's one of those days that should be cold but there's so many bodies tucked into such a small place it's sweltering instead, heated by the raucous cry of eager spectators by the thousands. This is one of the largest events Musutafu has to offer, enough it's considered odd if you don't take the day off work to check it out, either by coming in person or watching the livestream. Which is great. Izuku loves having this many people here. 

It's a nightmare. A disaster. A bacchanal. 

It is, unfortunately, mandatory. 

Present Mic struts before them all, hero gear polished to perfection and what must be a café's worth of caffeine running through his veins. He's given his encouragement speech three times now, and all of 1-C is gnawing at the bit with their excitement to get out there. 

Izuku would love to be literally anywhere else.

But then comes the klaxon alert, the beginning of the game, and everyone stiffens like a sleeper agent—the end is nigh, the bells ring, things like that. Izuku digs his nails into the meat of his wrist. 

"You're going to do great!" Present Mic shouts, and the window panes flex. "Now! Get out there and knock 'em dead!"

Unbiased in the slightest. But 1-C calls back to him, that wordless cacophony of agreement, and when the bay doors rumble open, they charge as one onto the field. Izuku jostles his way somewhere up the middle, uniform loose against his sides, glasses—unfortunately regular glasses, since apparently only support course students can bring support equipment onto the field—blinding him with reflected sunlight. 

It's even worse when he can see the crowd. Objectively, he knew how many people come to this event, has even seen the stands when there's nothing interesting on the field and the livestream cameras have to pan to the crowd just to get a roar going. So. He knows it's a lot. 

Still a hell of a difference to actually see them surrounding him, the Colosseum of Rome, the final council of some monstrous final task. 

He's being awfully poetic today. Maybe he can do that instead of competing. 

The microphones crackle to life, that heavy boom of adjusting audio levels for the two wildly disparate announcers—because one of them is Present Mic, chipper as ever, steamrolling over pleasantries in favour of hyping up the crowd. And the other is Aizawa, gruff, interjecting with one word in two hundred before fading to the background. 

Izuku has no idea what he's doing there. He hadn't seemed like a fan of talking in the classroom or in the library, much smaller, more controlled settings. An announcer's booth and him don't even belong in the same sentence. 

But he's up there, and he's announcing, for all his murmured statements can be called that. Wild. 

Present Mic bellows through classic introductions Izuku could quote from heart, the crowd roaring back, and then comes the fabled time—the student representative speech. Out on the field, hundreds of first years pulse, an angry, vicious crowd faced with the first potential of fame they've ever encountered. 

But none of them are doing the speech. That belongs to only one. 

Bakugou stalks to the front of the stadium. He's got a streetdog's hunger to him, that vicious gnawing of teeth the unkempt UA uniform can't hold back, and the crowd murmurs as he clambers up to the podium. He's got his hands jammed in his pockets, shoulders up and bristling, hair golden in the sunlight. 

At Aldera, they used to call him a lion, king of the pride—Izuku can't see it. Lions are lazy things, in the end, careless and content with their power; Bakugou has always been starving for more. 

Izuku stares, tucked in the crowd, hidden away amidst the 1-C students and others Bakugou doesn't care to look at unless they challenge him. There's someone made for the limelight, for climbing the ranks until he's crouched on top with bloody fists. No other path for him to go. 

Bakugou isn't perfect. Izuku knows that. He's always known that, since retiring the name Kacchan, since learning what Deku meant. But in the end, it's not a question of perfection, because heroics isn't perfect. If they were what they touted themselves as, then Izuku would be here as a regular student; wouldn't be lying, wouldn't have the Plan. 

But they are, so he is, and Izuku will slip to the shadow of underground heroics, analysis, detective-heroism. All lesser things the brand of limelight perfection doesn't pay attention to. And there, he can hide his quirklessness, can shelter it in his chest like some fragile thing until it never sees the light of day. He's got Detective.

And for today, he stands in the crowd, one of hundreds, a wash of students all yearning for the perfection promised to them when they made it into UA. 

He's… panicking, because of course he is, it's essentially his base state of existence—but here, looking up at the stage, blending into the crowd, there's an odd sense of calm washing over him. Some deeper understanding. 

The microphone wails with feedback as Bakugou taps it with his fingernail. It echoes over the stadium like a gunshot. 

"Do your best," Bakugou snaps, and the audio makes the words come out in a growl. "Winner takes all."

That's… not quite the typical representative speech, but Bakugou marches off the podium the next second, so that looks like all they're going to get. The crowd cheers, a little hesitantly, but it's fine. They were never really here for sportsmanship anyway; for good, neat rules and a promise for honour. 

They're here to watch a bunch of teenagers beat each other up for a medal that means nothing. So. 

Midnight prances up to the stage, and Izuku's icy calm disappears with one crack of her whip. 

Right, fuck. Shit. This is still the Sports Festival. 

"Well!" She shouts, purring over the words in the practiced tone she's made her brand. "Time to get this party started, wouldn't you agree?"

By the howls in response, the crowd very much does. 

Midnight grins, whip cracking at the air, and spins the wheel—the stupid wheel that doesn't actually matter since Izuku can see it's holographic, which means they already programmed the answer in, so it's just a spin for show, for nothing else than hyping the crowd and getting Izuku's blood pressure to truly unhealthy heights. It's succeeding. 

And then the wheel stops spinning, and the arrow points cheerily at the first event. A race. 

A fucking race.

Izuku wants to laugh. He wants to throw up. 

A race. Detective is utterly useless here—or, at least, Izuku is able to come up with an argument for why it didn't help. Something about the hundreds of students all hustling and bustling and generally being claustrophobic together, or the pressure of the crowd, or the high-octane action without a chance to sit down and properly analyze, or it was his first time being in front of so many people. Anything and everything. 

He can lose, and he can explain it, and the Plan will hold intact. 

"Okay," Izuku mumbles, because his throat is desperate for something to do and he won't let it scream. "Let's do this."

Let's do this.

With the rumble of some hidden mechanism, the ground beneath them lowers—how much money does UA have—and walls start raising, the distant scream of metal against metal in what is definitely a foreboding sign. The crowd bays anew, because they're able to see what's ahead, and Midnight flicks them a semi-discrete hand to get moving. Get moving where? Maybe their morning brief should have included more information. 

But either way, some tryhards from 1-A know what to do, because they start the slow and steady march towards the gate freshly risen from the ground, more gleaming durjaluminium. Everyone shuffles over. Izuku wants to become one with the dirt. 

Monoma, because of course that's who he ended up next to, looks at him, teeth bright in the sun. He's near vibrating with excess energy, eyes scanning the field like a hunter. Looking for quirks to copy, probably. He just needs to make it to the tournament stage that's always the same despite the first two rounds changing year to year, and then he'll really be able to prepare in advance. For now, he's got to rush in blind.

And that blindness, apparently, has put them next to each other. 

"Plus Ultra," Izuku says, because he's about to pass out. 

"That's the spirit," Monoma declares, fingers flexing. "Why, if you place high enough, I could make a case with Vlad-sensei for you to join 1-B."

1-B. The class with Monoma. The heroics course with Monoma. The heroics course with exercises involving Monoma using his quirk on members of his class. That 1-B.

"Right," Izuku agrees weakly. 

There's another hidden command he's not seeing and Monoma nods to him, though there's a squint in his eyes like he's seeing something—he better not be—before heading to his class. Everyone groups up with their yearmates, huddled bunches of twenty with anger on their teeth. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Izuku is reminded this is a public, stylized event. People are paying money to see this. They are paying unreasonable amounts of money to be in person to see a bunch of fifteen-year-olds dive headfirst into competition without a thought for consequences or bodily safety. To show off bright and flashy quirks to win internships and praise and recognition. To move up the ranks of some invisible hierarchy that won't matter once they graduate. To prove themselves, as if getting into UA wasn't proof enough. His mother's words crash over him. 

He wonders, only for a moment, if there's anyone quirkless in the crowd. If, just maybe, he's not alone. 

Then, with a deep, thrumming crack, the gates rumble open and the faux gun goes off. 

The Sports Festival begins. 

Immediately, things start going wrong, which Izuku can say with no sarcasm is exactly what he wants—a boy with dual coloured hair throws up his hand and a fucking glacier crackles outward, swallowing the path, changing friction to an optional side dish. About half of 1-C falls flat on their asses and Izuku stumbles with them, nose meeting the ice in a bright spark of pain. Fantastic. Fantastic.

He pries himself upright with all the frostbite gnawing over his fingers and worming past his uniform. Other students hurl vicious insults at the ice wielder—Todoroki, actually, from the research he told Monoma—because they're not able to actually do anything to him, considering more ice pops up beneath his feet and he's skating off towards the end with some untethered apathy. Maybe that's just a thing 1-A has. 

But it doesn't matter, because then massive fuck-off robots appear before them. 

Brilliant.

Izuku, as an unfortunate member of the small and squishy club, does not stand an inkling of a chance here; but in the pack of 1-C, Nakano has unsheathed claws from her quirk Mink and Shibuya is hissing clouds, so on they go. It's less of a dramatic, high-octane take down and more hiding themselves under a cover of mist until they can slip by, and they charge forward with all the vicious determination of those who refuse to lose. 

Izuku, ah, wishes them the best. He has to squint to see those in the front of the race, and they don't look to be slowing down anytime soon. 

Nakano growls, low enough her fur vibrates, and tears forward—whatever vague truce they had splinters as the path opens before them, a free trial to rush onward. So of course, Izuku suddenly has a limp and drops to the back. Someone from 1-B punches straight through a robot and now he's dodging falling rubble and twisted scraps of metal, ruined beyond repair—again, where is UA getting this money—and wind from students racing past him. 

In what is driving hot daggers of shame through his chest, his speed is only half faked—Izuku is horribly, regrettably out of shape. This pleasant jaunt is making him wheeze like someone who invites the grim reaper over for afternoon tea. 

He should probably start exercising. The Plan won't protect him if he has to run away from a villain. 

But the front stretch fades away, and in its place surfaces a vast canyon—bored deep into the ground, depths cloaked in shadow. Over its broad emptiness, wires snake their way across, thick and corded like steel-thread harbour ropes. A balance test. Agility. Dexterity. 

Well, Izuku had just complained about how out of shape he is. 

But UA's got cameras out the ass and thousands of audience members when that's not enough, and they will notice if he gives up on the second obstacle—so Izuku swallows any misgivings and strides on over. Other students stream past him, that kicked-dog viciousness to prove themselves, even if he can see Bakugou's explosions and Todoroki's ice all the way on the other side of the stadium, past the exit, past the finish line. 

He's taken another step forward, the ground cracking and splintering beneath his soles, when there's a brisk klaxon alarm. 

An ending.

The first event is over, and Izuku has barely made it to the second obstacle. 

Holy shit. 

The stadium rumbles and starts to reset, Cementoss burying his hands in the soil and mechanical arms retracting all the loose and damaged parts; little lights appear to guide all the students stuck in the middle to the exit, where they at least get to cross the line in a facsimile of an ending, even if it's more to shoo them away. Izuku trots meekly behind the others, arms close at his sides, shaking dust from his hair. His heart is thumping like a hammer on anvil in his chest. There are plenty of students surrounding him, others that didn't make it to the end. Maybe too many. Maybe something went wrong. 

But then he looks up and sees the scoreboard—sees the scoreboard without his name. 

The field resets. The first event is finished. Forty-two students move on.

Midoriya Izuku is not on the list. 

He stands there, just over the finish line, surrounded by dozens, hundreds, of other students, and he is faceless in the crowd, because he's not going forward.

"Oh no," Izuku says, in a voice just loud enough to be heard. A blissful delirium sinks through him like a warm bath. There's so much relief he might actually faint. "Guess I didn't make it in."

There comes a faint bird-squawk of confusion behind him. It takes Izuku a moment to register it, because there's a halcyonian calm floating alongside every thought, but he happens to glance back into the crowd of students around him and meet pale blue eyes. 

Ah fuck, Monoma is looking at him. 

Hatsume's too distracted getting some woebegone fool to wear her babies to notice, but she'll probably be looking at him once this is over. 

Well. Not much Izuku can do about it now. He walks over, limp miraculously healed, a spring in his step that wasn't there before. Monoma's uniform is intact, skin covered, and the Plan only shrieks a little in the back of his head as Izuku claps him on the non-exposed shoulder. 

"Go win," Izuku says, and it comes out surprisingly serious. Monoma has strategies above strategies, and for all they've only been talking a week over lunch, that was plenty of time to see that past the pompous superiority, Monoma's got a real brain beneath his blond mop. Every quirk Izuku told him about was countered with a potential use or combination with others. Even Bakugou's quirk, which Izuku finally relented and told him some details about, was built into the repertoire. Even if Izuku thinks it's a little optimistic to assume Bakugou will just. You know. Let someone copy his quirk. 

"Thank you," Monoma says, ever so polite. He's staring at Izuku like a puzzle box to be unfolded. That is a horrible metaphor and a horrible look. 

"Guess I'm going back to the seats," Izuku says. He's having to actively fight to keep a smile down. "See you after?"

Monoma sniffs. "As long as the press doesn't want pictures of first place."

Between the homicidal support student and the fifteen-year-old primadonna, no one can say Izuku doesn't make friends. At least they're as weird as him. 

The thought sinks through him. 

Friends. 

He's Hatsume's assistant and Monoma's informant, but there is—however small, however brief—the not-impossible conclusion they could view him as a friend. That he's something more than weird, than Kindaichi Kosuke, than the boy who knows too much and mumbles under his breath. 

Huh. There's a traitorous warmth in his chest. 

Izuku nods, and Monoma nods back, and then the alarm goes off, faculty appearing to sweep the disgruntled losers off the field. Time for the forty-two who placed to continue, to keep drawing attention of Musutafu and the world beyond. Izuku is not one of them. 

He is free. 

Then, because today is great, Izuku switches course to the wildly overpriced concession stand near the front of the stadium. 

He's earned it. 

-

Two hours later, nursing butter popcorn and kinoko no yama, Izuku gets to watch the Sports Festival wrap up from the safety of the stands. He's got his legs kicked up, secure in the student section, and he's having, honestly, a great time.

His classmates, not so much; piece by piece, the rest of 1-C trickle in to join him, all with the thunderous fury of the vexed. Only a fifth made it past the first event, and not a single one was any higher than thirty-second place. Then came cavalry, and almost all of them were gone. 

The chip-on-the-shoulder attitude is going to be even worse from now, Izuku just knows it. Class is going to be a touch awkward for the next few weeks. 

Shinsou makes it past the cavalry event, though, the only of 1-C to get so far—he's knocked out in the second round of the tournament, after his quirk was revealed in his first match, but it's still the best showing they get. Considering 1-A has two open spots, there's a half-decent chance he'll get transferred up. 

He'd probably like that. 

Hatsume gets into the matches, which is terrifying, and made even moreso by the fact she willingly steps out. She's the only support student to make it past cavalry, and her poor, poor opponent, a boisterous boy from 1-A with shark teeth and the demeanor of someone who did not know what he was getting into, watches her step out of the ring with visible relief. 

Monoma makes it even further. He took Izuku's advice and copied Shibuya's quirk for the cavalry event—since it's overcast today, he was able to breathe out enormous fields of clouds to drown the visibility in a way UA likely isn't pleased about and then race around with other 1-B students to pluck headbands off. He wasn't able to snag first place, but they got plenty to move on. 

In the single matches, he was a nightmare—not one of them lasted more than five minutes, which meant he could prepare completely separate batches of quirks beforehand, and he powerwalks over everyone who thinks they can come up with a plan. It's only when he fights Todoroki, who makes enormous ice walls and seems plenty content to overwhelm Monoma with glaciers that likely constitute as premeditated murder against anyone who isn't a heroics student, that he's forced out. Third place. 

The crowd's all but baying when the last match rolls around, vicious and hungry—and, uh. Wow. 

It's delivered. 

Izuku has. Well. He knows Bakugou is strong, because of course he is; even ignoring his quirk, he's built like a brick shithouse with the drive that chisels through mountains. His costume has honest-to-gods grenade launchers over the forearms and he's able to swing them around like sweat bands. So. He's strong. 

But maybe Izuku has been underestimating him, because this final match with Todoroki is nothing short of absolute destruction. Glaciers formed and shattered, volcano-bright explosions, the jumping spin of Howitzer Impact with the same force as a nuclear star. The foundations of the stadium rumble uneasily. 

Izuku does a quick little breathing exercise. He's suddenly quite glad he was never shooting for the heroics course. 

Bakugou wins. It's the exact opposite of a surprise. 

-

After the fervour that was Bakugou accepting a golden medal with the same interest as a desiccated piece of roadkill, the first year Sports Festival finally starts to wind down—students are led back to the building proper as the crowd grows more and more rowdy, keeping them separated, which means that instead of melting into a puddle in his bedroom, Izuku is trudging back to his homeroom at the speed of a particularly uninspired slug. 

Safety concerns this, safety concerns that. It makes sense to keep them here until the public is distracted with the second year's event, but that doesn't mean he has to enjoy it. 

He has enjoyed today, though. 

Later, he'll chat with Monoma, offer congratulations and advice and careful skirting of the topic on why he lost so easily. He'll get back with Hatsume to work on support gear now their main distraction is gone. He'll survive the bristling fury his class will no doubt be bleeding, because they'll be the kind of jilted that won't wear off for a while. 

But that's for later, because today, the Plan is going strong. 

The hallways are empty, everyone off at the second year's Festival

He peeks into the classroom, the shutters drawn and desks unadorned. Huh, he's the first one back, the desks kicked back and cluttered, various scuffs and marks they've gathered over the past weeks. Everyone's bookbag is under their desk, considering they didn't exactly need it during the event proper, and there's a little chocolate on top. One of those small wrapped ones they give out as giri choco on White Day, UA's logo stamped on top. Every desk has one. 

Izuku has just eaten, but he knows damn well how much money UA has, and he is vastly curious to know how delicious this chocolate is about to be. So curious, in fact, that he walks into the room before clocking it in entirely, which means he walks right past the desk in the front. 

The desk. The desk which has a person sitting at it. The desk with a pro hero, legs kicked up and hair adding an extra foot to his height.

Present Mic is here. 

What?

The Sports Festival and Present Mic are almost synonymous—he's been the announcer for as long as he's worked here, voice rattling over the stadium. His companion is a random homeroom teacher from whatever year is competing, there for personalized statements about the students, but it's always been Present Mic. Why is he here?

Oh.

Izuku looks around the room—around their homeroom, where everyone will be coming to wait until the second years start. Their last time in UA before a day's break, their final chance to be spoken to before going home. At the wrapped chocolate everyone has. 

He's taking his one break between announcing to congratulate them. 

That's. Well.

Izuku really wishes he wouldn't. It would be much easier to keep his guard up, to stay suspicious, if the hero didn't do genuinely thoughtful things like this. 

Present Mic blinks at him. Izuku blinks back. The energy of a stand off lingers in the air between them, the distant rumble of the crowd outside, the classroom empty and yawning. 

"Hello?" He says, like an idiot. 

"Hey, kiddo," Present Mic says, all soft, smile like the warm light of first dawn. "You doing okay?"

"Oh," Izuku says. Pauses. He'd, ah, honestly forgotten not everyone knows the intricacies of the Plan—that they don't know he wanted to get out early. Because if he stayed in, if he made too much of a name for himself, that makes it easier to get caught. To get discovered. 

Getting out in the first round is, quite literally, the best thing that could have happened to him. 

"I'm fine," he says, and smiles. "I didn't– I didn't really need to win, you know? I'm still going to UA. It's okay."

Present Mic's eyes crinkle at the corners. "That's a good way to look at it. Did you have fun?"

It was a cage match between some two hundred teenagers with free reign to use their quirks in new and exciting varieties of destruction. There was a steady line of those who got healed by Recovery Girl and made their way right back onto the field. Every child watching today has had their mind opened to the exact colour blood and bile can be. 

"I think so?"

Present Mic laughs a little. It's deserved. 

Izuku meanders his way to his seat, because there's a pressing awkwardness about being the only person in here with his teacher, but he busies himself with fiddling around with his bag and steadfast ignoring the chocolate. He's not going to be the first to eat one. 

Eventually, the rest of 1-C stalk their way in, shoulders up and bristling. They're the exact kind of feral fury Izuku expected, and he sinks into his seat as they enter, desperate for a target to direct their rage at and nursing wounds that didn't come for the prize of victory. A right bunch of cheerful folks. 

Shinsou comes in, stumbling a bit with exhaustion—had to go to Recovery Girl, then. But despite it, his purple eyes are the brightest Izuku's ever seen, knuckles clenched white with pride. He looks at absolutely no one in the class, goes right to his seat, and sits with the ramrod straight back Izuku knows from experience is to keep himself from passing out. Great tactic. 

But eventually, all of them are here, vicious and biting as they are, and Present Mic unfolds from his desk with a grin stretched from ear to ear. "Hey! How was your first Sports Festival?"

There is a very pointed silence. 

Present Mic rolls with it, resting one elbow on his desk. "Don't beat yourself up," he chides, head tilting to the side, smile in place. "The Festival's more of a publicity event, not a real test of your skills. You all still made it into UA! This was just a friendly competition, you dig? Nothing to worry about."

That's. Hm. It's all very heartfelt and true, because the Sports Festival is a pissing competition and a way for UA to scrape more money from Musutafu, and for those in general education who don't have hero internships, there's no real outcome beyond being transferred. So. The speech is kind and well meaning. 

It's just– Izuku maybe wouldn't suggest it right now, when the wound's still fresh and raw; the room's full of students pissed about failing, about not getting transferred the second they finished the first event, and they all need a good sulk before they'll be willing to listen to anything he says. 

Maybe sensing this, Present Mic dips gracefully from the topic, adjusting his glasses. "So! We'll be going back to normal now, to get back into the swing of things—you'll have tomorrow off, take some time to chill, yeah?"

That's appreciated, since Izuku needs to both sink into his bed like a lichen returning to the earth and compulsively study all the recordings of the event so he has facts if anyone asks. The class does murmur a little more warmly. 

But they're all sitting there, waiting for the green light to be released, the afternoon crawling on in steady solitude. Present Mic keeps chattering on about how proud he is of them all, and it sounds real, not in the way of Aldera's self-important compliments; he's going around the room, hyping up everyone with personalized encouragement. It's easy to see how he became such a beloved hero in moments like this. 

Through the window, sunlight shafts through the classroom, spilling golden over the desks. 

It's not– well, it's not perfect, because nothing involving the Plan ever is, but Izuku lets himself sink into it. The warmth of UA, the chatter of students around him, Present Mic's endless praise. He has people in this building he could call friends, maybe, and a goal that's more tangible than it's ever been before. There's a logo on his uniform he'd only seen in his dreams and a path sprawling before him with victory at its end. 

Moments like this almost make it seem worth it. That maybe he'll get through this, survive three years without being discovered, become a detective-hero. Live out the rest of his life saving people. 

Izuku exhales. He can do it.

And this is, of course, when Takamori Honoka of 1-C gets poisoned.