Chapter Text
Izuku looks up at the building in awe, slowing his pace a bit to admire it.
The photos don’t do U.A. the justice it deserves.
From the pristine windows to the carefully laid bricks of the pathway, U.A. truly is a sight to behold.
Izuku tightens his grip on the straps of his backpack and continues to walk towards the building.
Izuku instinctively flinches when someone shoves their shoulder into his.
A fearful glance to his left shows that the person is none other than Bakugou Katsuki.
Izuku’s anxiety levels skyrocket.
“Stay out of my way, you useless freak,” Bakugou snarls.
He hasn’t been Kacchan in a long time.
Izuku has always been Deku but Bakugou has not been Kacchan for years.
“What’s your problem? He wasn’t even in your way,” someone says from behind him.
Izuku barely manages to suppress his flinch as he looks back at the speaker.
It’s a girl with purple hair, tilted bangs, and dark eyes. A length of flesh comes from each of her ear lobes.
“Shut up, bitch,” Bakugou snarls at her before turning around and stomping towards the building.
The girl only raises her eyebrow.
“He seems like a pleasant person,” she sarcastically comments in a dry voice.
“Are you okay?” The girl asks Izuku. There’s so much genuine concern in her voice that it hurts.
She wouldn’t be concerned if she knew he was quirkless.
“Ah, I’m- I’m fine,” Izuku manages to say.
He doesn’t like speaking.
There was no point in speaking when he would only be silenced or mocked.
The girl shrugs and begins walking.
Something inside of Izuku screams that he should walk with her.
Izuku hastily jogs to catch up to her and clears his throat.
“Which, uh, which course are you going into?” Izuku asks.
He hasn’t talked this much in months.
“I’m aiming for the hero course. What about you?”
“I am too,” Izuku says back. His voice finally betrays him and becomes quieter without his permission.
“Good luck man. I wonder if we’ll be in the same class.”
Izuku smiles at the girl whose name he still doesn’t know.
“That would be nice.”
The auditorium is crowded with people and occupied with a cacophony of voices.
Unfortunately, Izuku has to sit right next to Bakugou.
The nice girl with purple hair who he had talked to is in the second row in the front of the room.
A movement out of the corner of his eye catches his attention.
Someone of an extremely short stature walks out from double doors next to the large projection screen.
The room immediately comes to a silence.
The figure walks up to the podium, their shoes clicking against the polished linoleum.
Izuku sucks in a sharp breath as the figure comes into sight on top of the podium.
“Good evening everyone! Am I a mouse, a bear, or a dog? That doesn’t really matter because I’m the principal of U.A.!”
As Nedzu speaks, he analyzes this batch of potential students.
He will never get tired of the light behind the children’s eyes when they enter his school.
Most of the children fit the archetypes of past students; excited, happy, or even anxious.
As his eyes scan over the children, he mentally matches the names and pictures he had seen on their applications to their real appearances.
Right as he pauses to add emphasis on the upcoming explanation of the zero pointer, a tall child stiffly rises to his feet.
“Sir! There’s four robots on this page yet you have only explained the points of three! If this is a mistake on U.A.’s part, I believe you should update it as soon as possible!”
Nedzu can’t help the small spike of irritation that ruffles his fur at the boy’s claim.
“And you-,” the stiff boy turns behind him, “-have been writing in a notebook this entire time! It’s quite disrespectful for you to not be paying attention to what the principal is saying!”
Ah.
Nedzu now does not have a positive opinion on this child.
The boy that Iida Tenya is criticizing is none other than Midoriya Izuku, U.A.’s first quirkless applicant to pass the application process.
From what Nedzu has gathered, the boy has suffered greatly throughout his life. As for his ‘disrespect,’ Nedzu knows that the boy is simply dividing his attention between the speech and whatever he is writing.
Midoriya hunches in on himself in panic, looking at the table in embarrassment.
The boy next to him — Bakugou Katsuki — has the nerve to let out a scoff.
There’s a few poorly hidden snickers from some children.
That simply won’t do.
“Iida Tenya: that is your name, correct?” Nedzu asks despite already being aware of the boy’s entire school record, the hospital he was born in, and his mild allergy to nickel.
“Yes sir!” Iida confirms, adjusting his glasses.
“Sit down,” Nedzu orders.
All the cheerfulness has vanished from his voice.
The children straighten their postures out of fear.
Iida hastily sits down.
“What you have commented on is not a mistake. If you had allowed me to continue speaking, you would have realized that.”
Nedzu glances at Midoriya who is looking at him in shock.
“As for your actions of criticizing another applicant, you are being disrespectful, not your fellow applicant. Here at U.A. we do not allow targeting of any kind. As for those of you who were laughing, that type of behavior will not be tolerated by myself and my entire staff.”
Midoriya looks at Nedzu as if he had just parted the seas and hung the stars.
No child should be so shocked by decency.
“I apologize for my interruption, sir,” Iida hesitantly says in a much more subdued voice.
“I believe Applicant 6410 deserves an apology as well,” Nedzu comments. He feels a twinge of sadistic glee at the ashamed look on Iida’s face.
Iida stands up, turns around, and bows to Midoriya.
“I deeply apologize for my behavior, 6410.”
There’s a slight tremor to Iida’s voice.
Nedzu wonders if he’s gone too far but decides to abandon that train of thought.
Midoriya nods and Iida sits back down.
The students remain on edge as a heavy silence blankets the room.
Nedzu clears his throat.
“Let’s continue, shall we?”
Izuku is still mentally reeling from Nedzu — the Nedzu — standing up for him.
There’s no way Nedzu thought he had a quirk.
Nedzu knew he was a quirkless, deformed, useless Deku, and still stood up for him.
Izuku…
Izuku is confused.
People don’t stand up for things like him.
A buzzer blares throughout the battle center, causing Izuku and the purple haired girl with extended earlobes next to him — he really needs to get her name — to flinch.
“GO, GO, GO!”
Izuku breaks into a sprint and runs into the fake city without hesitation.
Aizawa Shouta’s eyes scan over the various screens, mentally noting where some of the children could improve.
Despite Iida Tenya’s handle on his quirk, he doesn’t jump very high once he’s using his quirk. If someone poured screws in front of his feet in a thin hallway, he wouldn’t be able to avoid injury.
Despite Bakugou Katsuki’s powerful quirk being fit for combat, he isn’t keeping track of the people around him, thus occasionally putting them at risk of being in his line of fire.
“Shou, check out screen five,” Hizashi mutters from his side.
Shouta obediently glances at the aforementioned screen and balks at the sight of a green haired boy using the torn off arm of a two pointer as a shield against a one pointer.
“What the hell?” Shouta whispers in a combination of horror and surprise.
The boy raises a red object — oh god, it’s his shoe — and smashes it into one of the hinges of the panel of the back of the one pointer’s head.
With his left hand occupied with the shield, he shoves his right hand into the head cavity of the robot before the three pointer begins moving at a steady pace much faster than its programming should allow.
“Is he riding a robot?” Kayama squawks when she glances at the screen.
Hizashi laughs incredulously.
It’s hard to not see it that way.
The boy’s legs are wrapped around the neck of the one pointer. Lo and behold, he’s down to one shoe. His other one has been abandoned behind him on the cracked ground.
One hand is inside the head of the one pointer while the other is wrapped around the front of the head for stability. He must have dropped the makeshift shield after boarding the robot.
“Those are active wires,” Maijima whispers in horror.
“What?” Yamada hisses.
“He’s actively electrocuting himself. The programming should limit the power supply but since he’s holding the wires away from the connector, the bot isn’t acknowledging the limit I placed,” Maijima explains in a panicked voice.
“Oh my fucking god,” Kayama whispers.
Recovery Girl lets out a ‘tsk’ of disapproval.
“I think it’s about time we release the zero pointer,” Nedzu chirps, slamming his paw on the red button before anyone can protest.
Shouta looks away from screen five to glance at screen three. A brown haired girl is trapped under some debris.
“Nedzu, there’s something wrong with the cameras in battle center E,” Hizashi announces, his voice serious.
Everyone looks to screen five which should be displaying live footage of battle center E.
The screen is black.
Jirou Kyouka winces and brings her hands to her ears when a muffled shriek comes from a nearby building.
She throws an annoyed glance at the building only to remember that’s the building where that green haired boy (6410?) had crashed into. He had fallen through the broken wall with his pet robot.
Kyouka sprints through the dilapidated door frame to check if he’s okay.
6410 is nowhere to be seen.
The one point robot he had been riding is on the ground with all of its lights out.
There’s a small red puddle on the ground.
Kyouka hesitantly walks forward to get a better look at the red.
Oh shit, that’s blood.
Kyouka’s heart drops.
Where was the green haired boy?
The speakers come to life with a small spike of feedback.
“ALL APPLICANTS IN BATTLE CENTER E, REPORT TO THE GATES IMMEDIATELY.”
Kyouka glances back at the blood one last time before running towards the gate.
Her heartbeat is thudding in ears.
Just what the hell is happening right now?