Chapter Text
7:02 AM, train station
You sat on a bench at the station, scrolling on your phone with your headphones on while waiting for your train to arrive as one does; that's what you've been doing for the past five minutes at the very least.
Somehow you've managed to arrive a little too early and now had to wait at the station instead of relaxing at home for five extra minutes, but that's fine; this wasn't the first or last time you've gotten somewhere too early by accident. It was a natural habit at this point.
While you waited, you made sure to check the time every now and then; the train should arrive at 7:10, so it'll be here soon enough.
You glanced over at the top left corner of your phone for the fifth time and noticed the number stayed the same as it was the last four times: 7:05. Just a little more.
You sighed with mild irritation and turned off your phone after turning on some music, then got off the bench and moved closer to the edge of the platform, making sure to stay behind the yellow line, and looked toward the direction where the train should be coming from in the next two minutes.
You shoved your phone into one of your sweatshirt pockets and crossed your arms as music blasted in your ears, holding yourself back from tapping your foot against the floor and opting to simply tap your finger against your arm.
Finally, FINALLY, that pesky train arrived. Technically it did arrive on time, but you've been working on this for years now, and the thought of having to wait any longer was driving you insane.
You entered the train and walked toward one of the two designated mutant wagons. It did feel a little weird when you thought about the fact that there were entirely separate spaces for people with quirks that simply change how they look, but nobody was forced to go into them, and they had bigger seats, so you weren't about to get mad at that.
It's not like your quirk was completely unconventional; it was actually pretty useful. If only quirk usage was legal in public spaces, you could get everywhere so much faster.
You plopped down in one of the seats and let out a small huff as a new song started playing and you let your wings wrap around you. You specifically sat down in one of the seats with holes in the lower back so your tail feathers had somewhere to go, because you couldn't really twist them much without snapping them.
The wagon was mostly empty, with only a few others using it, but you weren't really paying attention; you were just glad you got to sit alone and didn't need to stick your wings to yourself.
The train finally started and you pulled your phone out, skipping the song begrudgingly because you just weren't feeling it right now, you didn't feel like listening to it when you heard it start but felt bad for not giving it a chance. You opened your phone and texted your mom.
You
The train finally started
My dear mother
You really need to work on
your patience
And you know I'm busy rn
You'll tell me everything
when you get back, k?
You
Kk😔
I love you too❤️❤️
My dear mother
Good, ily too❤️
You sighed, looking at the top left corner of your phone again; 7:14. Could time pass any slower?? Like, actually, what other context other than getting through class makes time pass slower than this? I mean, it's only a twenty-minute ride, but you'll have to walk for ten more minutes to get to the entrance exam location too... that's just plain annoying, honestly.
The written exam was already done, so now you were heading over to do the practical exam, which you could only hope you wouldn't die in because you had absolutely no clue as to what it could be.
You set your phone down and leaned back in the seat as well as you could and turned your head towards the window on your right and looked at the city outside.
You've only been here for the last three and a half months, so you didn't explore much, but you got your neighborhood mapped out in your head well enough for your liking, and that was enough for now.
It did look quite nice right now too; with the sun only coming up about an hour ago, the sky still had a light orange hue to it.
・・・・☆・・・・☆ ・・・・
Finally, after that grueling 20-minute ride, you got off and started walking towards the school since that's where both the written and practical exams will be held. How are they even going to have enough space for that many kids? Especially for the practical exam?
You would have a bounce in your step if it weren't for the fact you were literally going to an exam, well, an exam you actually prepared for, but still.
As you thought about what you'd have to do at the exam, all your thoughts were suddenly scrapped at the prospect of there being other people... people your age, nonetheless, that would be taking the same exam and competing against you. Gosh, a bunch of them probably had so much better quirks than you... let's just hope you won't have to fight any of them.
Your train of thought was interrupted when you realized you had arrived at your destination. You stopped at the giant school gates and looked around for a moment; there were only a handful of other students there. I mean, you were kinda early, but that was the only train available that would get you here at a comfortable time.
At least you weren't the first one there, I guess at least that makes you look like less of a try-hard. You took a deep breath and took off your headphones and let them rest around your neck before checking your phone to see what time it was: 7:36. Guess you walked a bit quickly, nothing unusual, that just means you have extra prep time.
With a sigh, you started walking in. There were plenty of signs signaling that this was, indeed, the UA High School Entrance Exam location so nobody would be confused, which was much appreciated but also kind of pointless.
You entered the school and saw even more signs, looked over them, and followed the one that said ‘UA High School Hero Course Entrance Exam Orientation’. Direct enough, but the school still felt like a maze even though it was pretty empty as of now.
Finally, you arrived at your destination; yet another sign sat in front of a door that said the same thing as the previous one. You took a deep breath and opened the door to the exam hall. It was kinda dark, which was weird, but you could see just fine. There were already some other students gathered there who didn't really bother to look at the door when you opened it, so you just slipped inside and closed the door behind you, like a cultured human being does, before sitting down in the last row of the connected desks and setting your shoulder bag down on it.
While you waited, some other students started pouring in; how lucky were you to avoid that crowd by just a minute.
Once it finally hit 8:00 AM and the other students were probably all there, a man appeared in the center of the stage. The most noticeable thing about him was his hair that resembled a banana. Seriously, what kind of stylistic choice is that?
The round lights above the center of the stage turned on, making him more visible, and as the lights turned on, he started talking as well.
“For all you examinee listeners tuning in...”
He started in a slightly lower tone of voice, but it was very understandable without straining to hear him.
“...welcome to my show today! Everybody say “hey”!”
Yeah, no, you should've seen that coming; he does look like a loud one, if the literal speakers around his neck and the DJ look weren't an indicator of that already.
He turned around on the stage and struck a pose as the whole room stayed silent, almost awkwardly so. You just leaned back in your seat and kept your wings close to yourself so you wouldn't touch the person sitting next to you with them.
“What a refined response. Then I’ll quickly present to you the rundown of the practical exam!”
“Are you ready!?? Yeah!”
Another, this time more tense, silence followed. Hey, wasn't he a teacher if he was here? God, he was gonna give you an aneurysm...
Finally, he was getting on with it, albeit still dramatically, but that's fine, I guess.
Basically, he went on to explain where they need to go and how the exam will be held. So after the presentation everyone will be going to their specified battle centre written on their tickets they received earlier.
You looked back down at yours just to check again, Battle Centre B, I guess it's whatever, you’ll all be doing the same stuff anyways.
・・・・☆・・・・☆ ・・・・
After the orientation was done you were all escorted out and all took buses to the respective Battle Centers you were assigned to, which was a little weird. Were they that far away?
Apparently not because the ride was fairly short (thank god because you did NOT feel like staying cramped up in that bus for any longer) and you got to Battle Centre B.
Everyone got out and you stood in front of the huge wooden gates of the fake city, and when I say it was huge it looked like it could be an actual independent city. Where the hell does UA pull these out from???
What you had summarized the rules down to was the following:
- They will be fighting robots, the robots are worth a certain amount of points
- The points go from 0 to 3 points, the 0 pointer is apparently huge and there's only one in each Battle Centre, there's no point in defeating it
- There's a ten minute timer, so not too much time is given
- You earn points by immobilizing the faux villains, simple enough
But how were you going to even go about defeating big hunks of metal? You weren't really a big power type, maybe they could be small enough for you to lift up and then drop down? Yeah, that might work, you’ll see.
As you thought about it more and looked around once, a loud, almost grating, voice yelled out for them to start already, it was the hero that was at the orientation, and pointed out that there's no countdowns in real fights before telling them to run already.
Before you could think of anything else the gates opened and you turned towards them, running forward to gain a little bit of momentum before spreading your wings and finally flying up with one strong flap of your wings, grinning from ear to ear as you felt your second eyelids glaze over your eyes like clockwork and the wind hitting your cheeks.
Flying in such an open space felt incredible, it's been a while since you got to do it like this.
Immediately as you got through the gate you went off to what was basically the opposite end of the fake city so you could get more bots to yourself.
For now your main tactic was to grab the smaller bots and drop them from a certain height or hit them into buildings as you flew over them. So you just had to hope they didn't weigh five tons.
Finally, you spotted one of the robots, a two pointer, doesn't it seem too big. So you swooped down and grabbed it, it was a bit too heavy for you to carry around for too long so you just used it to ram it into the other robots that were nearby and luckily only getting closer to you, which made it even easier.
Once those were done you let the robot fall down on the ground and headed back up to a bigger height to find more of them.
You stayed up in place for a few seconds and looked around before you saw one of the other contestants, a guy with glasses and blue hair, he appeared to have engines or something similar in his calves as he moved around at an impressive speed.
That doesn't mean he was completely safe, though.
While he was bringing down another two pointer a different robot came in from around the corner and lunged towards him.
Tch, with a flap of your wings you propelled yourself towards him and swooped down, taking the robot and ramm
ing it against the edge of the building that was at the other end of the street, sighing as you landed back down and turned back to him.
“Yo, you good?”
You yelled over at him, placing a hand on your hip as your wings stayed half spread behind you.
Once you saw him nod and say something you didn't really catch, you nodded and went back up, basically repeating the process.
Picking up the robots, ramming them into each other or buildings, helping out some other people there, nothing special for now.
After a while of that you got a little tired and decided to land on one of the rooftops of the buildings to look around, just as you did so the ground started shaking almost violently.
The hell? Is this an earthquake?
You immediately jumped off the roof and flew away from any nearby buildings that were higher up than you, looking down to check if anyone else was in danger just in case.
As you turned around to check a different spot you saw it, a giant, green robot with multiple red dots on its ‘head’ was mid swing with its arm to squash you with it.
You flapped your wings furiously and evaded just in time, you could feel a huge gust of wind as a slam on the ground could be heard as the aftermath of the robots attack.
You looked down at the street and saw a blond boy with some sort of metal belt around his stomach running away, almost pathetically so. So you swooped down and picked him up under his arms to get him away from the robot.
His first reaction was to panic and start speaking… french.. So you just saved a French person, wow. But then he finally looked back at you and calmed down.
“Quit thrashing around or I'll drop you.”
You said and looked down at him as you kept getting as far away from what you guessed was the zero pointer, slowing down and setting him down first once you were far enough.
“There you go...”
You sighed and looked between him and where the robot was, the dust had now settled from its initial appearance, so it was more visible now.
“Thank you, mademoiselle, that flight was most impressive. however now I must leave you alone here!”
His voice was kind of shaky but at least he was nice about it, so you decided to let him keep his dignity and just nodded while you watched him strike a dramatic pose and leave. Once he was gone you flew off, hearing that same voice from the orientation again announcing that there are less than 2 minutes left.
You sighed again as you looked for more robots but to no avail, they were all already wrecked, then you turned you head to look at the direction of where the robot was before, only to see someone in a teal tracksuit, mid air, punching the robot square in the face and breaking it.
You just stayed there, completely bewildered, mouth wide open as you watched both him and the robot fall down to the ground.
Yeah I'm not getting in, at least I had fun I guess. That's what you thought to yourself as you stayed in the air like that, a sense of doubt creeping into you.
“ONE MINUTE LEFT!” you heard the announcer say again and snapped out of it, flying off to try to reach the person that basically made the zero pointer crumble into pieces.
You didn't manage to get there in time but as he almost hit the ground a girl nearby slapped him as he fell and made him.. Float? That's pretty neat, way better than you yet again.
“TIME’S.. UP!”
You let out a breath of relief and landed on the roof of the building underneath you, sitting down at the edge and observing the situation below. Just then, a small old lady with a cane in the shape of a syringe appeared.
Don't some people have a fear of those? It's a bit weird to have a giant one for walking.
You thought to yourself cocked your head to the side with a raised eyebrow, watching as she approached the fallen boy, who you just noticed had both of his legs and one arm twisting in unnatural ways that definitely weren't comfortable, not to mention his arm was purple.
She stood over him for a second before stretching out her mouth in a… unique way and smooching him on the top of his head, that did not help your initial confusion.
But then his arm looked like it was healing rapidly, the purple being gone and going back to its normal color as the area glowed with a soft green light, you watched curiously and came down to watch more closely but stayed far enough as to not interrupt.
The best guess you had that it was some sort of healing quirk, well it would make sense considering this was UA, they probably had similar incidents happen before
・・・・☆・・・・☆ ・・・・
Later that day you finally arrived home, standing in front of your apartments’ door and took out your key. Well that's what it was supposed to be, now it's more like a hodgepodge of keychains with a key somewhere in there.
Once you fished your key out you stuck it in the keyhole and unlocked the door with two clicks, opened the door and announced yourself loudly and proudly for your mom to know you're back just in case she didn't hear the jingling outside the door moments ago.
“I'm back!”
Once you were sure your entire floor knew you were back you hung the key up on the shelf next to the door and started taking off your shoes as footsteps could be heard coming from the kitchen.
“Heey hun, so, you gonna tell me how it went? Or do I need to ask questions again for you to remember where you even went today like it usually is with school?”
A woman in her mid forties that looked exactly like you came out from around the corner, the same wings and everything, the fathers genes weren't even TRYING man.
“Ha ha, you are so funny, I think I would've died of boredom by now if it weren't for you.”
You responded and shot her an unamused look as you took your shoulder bag off and let it hang in your hands while you held it by the strap.
“Let me put my stuff away and change, then I'll tell you everything and you can ask me anything, deal?”
“Deal, and hurry up.”
She responded with a firm nod and gave a thumbs up before walking back to the kitchen. Whatever she was making smelled amazing as per usual, but you it was familiar, probably been a while since she made it if you couldn't guess what it was immediately.
You walked through the apartment and over to your room, opened the door and set your bag down next to your desk. Your room was as neat as it could get for someone your age, I mean you had a schedule for cleaning it so it was better than nothing, it just wasn't one of those days today.
Post it notes with random tasks you had to finish hung from the sides of your shelves, some were crossed out furiously while others had certain points underlined or circled with a ‘DO THIS ALREADY BITCH!!!!’ above them. There was a shelf above your desk that had a closed part (that's where the textbooks did their jailtime) but it was also used to put away any paper scraps or old notes that might be useful for a future subject.
The open part of the shelf was under the Textbook Jail™ and that's where the normal books you actually liked were, along with some mangas because you wanted to bring some joy into the room, yeah? On the shelf there were also pictures of you with your old friends from your old schools that you got printed out, and the infamous post-its scattered in between them.
However, on the top of the shelf was where you kept packs of papers and your sketchbooks piled up, just to have some sense of looming danger that they might fall onto you any second now when you least expect it.
Then your work desk, oh god your work desk, your laptop was in the centre back with a lamp on its right, with papers littering the rest of the empty space and a printer seated on the floor in the underside of the desk while your chair stayed in the same position you left it in last night when you went back to bed.
Getting up this morning was a crazy experience, you left your lamp on last night so you had to shut it off, you ate nothing because it was way too early for that so you packed up a sandwich to eat at the station, your mom literally got up after you, now it's past 3 PM and you haven't eaten anything for the past nine hours. Amazing!!
But of course you didn't make your bed, it was never meant to be anyways. It was always more akin to a nest honestly, with pillows and plushies wrapped up with blankets to make.. Some shape on the mattress that you could drown yourself into when you laid down and throw that heavenly weighted blanket over yourself and forget about everything else going on.
The neatest thing in your room was probably your closet, and that was only because your mom always complained about you looking like you got chewed through whenever you put your clothes on with how wrinkled they'd get. How are you even supposed to fold baggy clothes for them NOT to get like that??? Obviously she was using witchcraft to be able to do that, you totally didn't simply say that just to put down the fact you couldn't fold clothes properly. No, never.
You went over to your chair and picked up the pants and shirt you hung over the backrest last night when you changed into your pajamas, those were part of the designated Home Clothes you had put separately from the others just to make it easier to find.
It didn't take you too long to change, all of your Home Clothes™ had more elastic in the holes you made in the back for your wings so they were always easy to slip in and out of, plus they were all pretty baggy just for comfort's sake.
Once you were done you walked out of your room and went back to the living room that was connected with the kitchen. Ok well basically the whole apartment was one big room with yours and your moms bedrooms plus the bathroom being separated by walls. But the view was amazing, you picked one of the higher floors on purpose, one part of the wall was literally just a huge window that led to a terrace that you two had taken the liberty of decorating with various plants and your own artworks.
You plopped down on the couch and allowed yourself to sink into the pillows and blankets with a content sigh, relaxing as the smell of food surrounded you and the familiar sound of some classic TV show you watched with your mom a few too many times played on the tv quietly.
“What are you making?”
You asked and turned around on the couch, your arms hanging over the edge of the backrest as your wings spread over the rest of the space, raising an eyebrow.
“Well we had some bread that went stale and made the usual toast, how come you didn't sniff it out?”
She responded, looking over at you as she sat down on one of the stools at the kitchen island.
“Well it's been a while since you made it, and it smells really similar to your warm sandwiches so it really could be anything.”
You answered defensively and turned your head away to hide your pout.
“Right, right.. So, how did the exam go? Tell me everything, and you know I mean it literally.”
“I feel so attacked, I can't even get to eat properly before giving my testimony about one of the most stressful and disturbing days of my life. How monstrous of you.” You whined dramatically and turned onto your back as you dipped lower into the couch, one hand draped over your forehead while the other grasped at empty air and flopped down onto the pillows again.
“Oh shut it, come over here and talk, were there any cute boys? Girls? Anyone? Did you even talk to anyone?”
She raised an eyebrow and gestured towards the chair next to her, you sighed and got up lazily, coming over to her and sat down on the stool.
“Nah, i mean i saved some french guy, dont know how to feel about that. Nothing in particular outside of that.”
You slumped over the kitchen island and let your wings droop down to the floor, resting your head in your arms.
“Really? There are French people around these parts?”
“Mhm, seemed like a rich kid too.”
“Alright.. Well what about the exam?”
You sat up properly again and started explaining everything with animated gestures and dramatic sound effects, telling her about the robots and how you literally carried them to destruction while also saving some other kids. Also, you made sure to make the zero pointer scene extra dramatic and expressed some concern for the kid that went at it because of how he looked afterwards.
Your dear, wonderful mother simply nodded along and listened intently, getting up to take the toast out of the oven mid explanation and set out the bread on a plate before putting it in front of you two and sitting back down.
“Well that was definitely a day of all time, huh.”
She said and took a bite of the bread carefully since it was still hot.
“Mhm, the announcer almost gave me an aneurysm though, mostly because of how loud he was, his way of commentating was fine. Pretty entertaining.”
You responded as you reached out to take a piece of bread too, it was a classic recipe for whenever there was stale bread around. Your mom would whip some eggs, chop up salami or anything similar, cheese and sometimes vegetables if she was feeling extra healthy that day. Of course everything is measured with your heart because it's almost a struggle meal if it weren't for the amount of toppings she’d stuff on top of it.
“So, when are the results going to be announced?”
She asked after swallowing a bite.
“Not sure, they said they’d mail it tho.”
You responded with a shrug and continued eating.
“Think you’ll pass it?”
“... well I hope I do, of course. I think i did the written part well enough, not too sure about the practical though. There were a bunch of other kids with way better quirks than mine, at least for combat. Hell, there were 7 testing grounds, I don't even want to think of how many of us applied in total.”
You said with a sigh and stared at the food in your hands for a second before taking a bite, seeing your moms expression soften from the corner of your eye.
“Oh, come on, I'm sure you didn't do that badly. You worked really hard for this, plus you had to actually think about how to defeat the robots instead of charging at them head first without a plan.”
You felt her place a hand on the top of your head and ruffle your hair, which you didn't mind
because it was probably messy beyond repair already.
“Either way, you crushed it for sure, at least in my opinion, i dont need to see it to know it. And I don't need some stupid school to confirm that my own child is capable of holding up her own in a fight, ok?”
She grinned and nudged you, making you grin lightly with a nod and chuckle.
“Right, I know, thanks.”
You nodded and finished off the peace of bread, reaching out for the next one.
“You better, now go take a break and sleep, I know you went to bed late and woke up early.”
Your mom said sternly, giving you a sharp look until you nodded and laughed at her.
“Yes ma’am!”
Once you were done eating you went back to your room and remembered you didn't take a shower yet and you probably needed one after all of that today, so you picked up your pajamas, which consisted of old sweatpants and a hoodie you cut up in the back messily from the bottom up to the holes for your wings for maximum comfort.
You only really had a couple clothes that came with holes in the back for your wings, mostly jackets since you couldn't sew into those that easily. Because of how rare winged quirks were and how different the ones that did exist were, you never had many options to choose from when it came to pre fitted clothes, so your mom taught you how to sew and measure where to put the holes in different types of clothes, neither of you really bought new clothes too often because sewing the holes in was still a pain in the ass.
Once you were done with your shower you went back to your room and cracked the window open to get some fresh air in, and no, you have never gotten sick from opening the window while your hair was wet.
You went over to your desk, your homeland, and grabbed your most recent sketchbook to draw a little. Once you got it down you put away the papers that you left outside last night and stacked them up together in order to not mess them up before putting them to the side and grabbing your pencil.
Now came the dreaded reference finding.
You opened pinterest and started scrolling, saving some pins and, before you knew it, half an hour had passed. So you stopped that and closed it just to reopen it. After a while of scrolling you found something mildly interesting and started going at it, scrolling down to look for similar pictures and taking some elements from those and sprinkling them in.
As you drew you started thinking of how you got to this point, it was strange, really.
Before aspiring to become a hero you wanted to be an artist, go to art school and learn how to become better and make your own pieces. Unfortunately you did not pass the entrance exam at the school you had put at the top of your list, and you just so happened to put UA at second place.
Luckily enough you were preparing for both and decided to give UA a shot. Looking at it from an outsider's perspective it was ridiculous, you didn't get accepted into art school so you decided to become a hero. Two very different art styles, but you wouldn't mind either.
One would allow you to express yourself and let you follow your passions all day, and the other would allow you to fly all you want wherever you want, plus it makes more money.
Once you were happy enough with the sketch you somehow made, you took a liner and started making a clearer picture of it all.
After a while you stopped and looked at it, said screw it and got up and went over to your bed, grabbed the remote for the LED lights that you set up on your ceiling and turned them on, telling yourself that you'll finish that tomorrow, and went onto your phone to read.
It wasn't that bad, it could've gone worse, plus, i had fun, now i just wait for the stupid letter.