As Izuku told his mother all the events of his first day after dinner, he had illustrated them in the leftover sauce on his plate with a chopstick. Even that had awed her with his newfound skill: she had insisted on photographing every scene.
The morning after, he woke up to a transformed room.
His collection of figures had been arranged into an inspiring diorama, with the different scales of the models adding an illusion of more depth than his shelf could fit. All of his tools had been remade to take full advantage of their arbitrary material properties, except for a couple with sentimental value like the tissue paper pliers or the toothbrush with pins for bristles. A constellation of origami satellites with functioning fold-out tinfoil mirrors hung from the ceiling next to the crumpled mess of the original to remind himself how far he'd come.
-----
It was only the third time that Izuku had taken the long commute into U.A., and already he was feeling bored by it. He wanted to be at school already, not sitting on a train carriage doing nothing. He couldn't even draw the passing scenery in his notebook, because then the people sitting next to him started rubbernecking and asking if he took commissions. Not wanting to shut them down or earn even more money, he scribbled down a quick portrait for each of them and then decisively shut his notebook before anyone else got interested.
[5.1 THIS LOOKS LIKE EVERY OTHER KIND OF SPACECRAFT I DON'T KNOW HOW TO FLY UNLOCKED - 250 STORED]
To his surprise, his Quirk seemed to respond to his frustration: he felt like if only he could get in the control room, he could quickly learn to drive the train himself, and that feeling was echoed for each of the cars outside. While he doubted he could get a license, it did give him something to do, as he spent the rest of the ride watching videos online of how to operate all sorts of different vehicles.
-----
As their class schedules had stated, every morning was to be spent in the workshops.
"The way I like to put it, your first year you learn how to learn, your second year you learn what to learn, and your third year y'all get to the learning. Part of your first-year workshop grade is for how varied a set of tools you can show proficiency with, producing a good-quality item from a different workshop room each month being what you should aim for. I want to see you exploring the frontiers of your skills to learn where your true talents lie, and that means not hobbling yourself with what anyone else says you should be good at. That's a reason why the "mad scientists" do the best here," Snipe said.
"The most important rule is that you work safely and under supervision, which any of the teachers or certified third-years can provide. "Go Beyond" means pushing your own limits, not the safety limiters on the circular saw, and I can, have, and will expel - on the spot - any student who recklessly endangers themselves or others."
-----
The first workshop class, Izuku went to the machine shop. Most of the other students were swarming the rooms with the exciting high-end equipment, and he wanted to feel out the limits of his crafting talents in private.
Other than a bored third-year supervising, the only student with him was the uncannily-symmetrical Yokote Sode. He seemed determined to learn purely through trial and error: machining away at a copy of the metal he was working on without taking any measurements, replacing it with another copy with his Quirk when it came out wrong, and repeating it over and over until by lunch he could make precise cuts with one of the machines by muscle memory alone. His approach meant he had to keep his fingers on the metal and close to the dangerous moving parts, so Izuku hadn't risked breaking his focus with any conversation.
For Midoriya, it was almost too easy: his material sense told him where to find everything he needed, and once he knew what to do he could rely on his Quirk-granted skills to perform all the steps correctly. Most of his time was spent keeping an eye on one device at work while he read through the instruction manual for the next one or looked up designs online.
-----
By contrast, his afternoon classes demanded constant attention just to keep up. He barely had time to appreciate that he was being taught by Pro Heroes, because the curriculum condensed a normal high school day of lessons into half the time. A small mercy was that he could scribble down his notes as fast as his hand could move, and yet look down at the page afterwards to find regularly-spaced impeccable penmanship.
-----
Tuesday morning saw a heavy presence of the press at the gates of U.A. as the news of the Number 1 Hero's teaching position leaked out, but Midoriya was able to duck past by mumbling about how he was in the Support course and needed to get to his workshop. He felt a pang of envy for the students he overheard who had been taught by All Might already, but his time would come.
-----
By the end of his second session in the machine shop, Izuku had finished his first piece: the frame for a bike, using the same modular retractable design as his staff so that it would be easy to pack away. He needed to learn welding to make a few connections and set up the handlebars, and he had no idea how wheels were made yet, but he was confident he'd be able to cycle in on a direct route by the end of the week rather than taking the two-connection train ride.
In that time, Yokote had moved on to the next lathe.
"Are you really planning to learn how to do everything by eye?" He asked, once they were leaving for lunch and the other boy's hands were nowhere near any spinning drills.
"You noticed? Yeah, I'm sure you're aware there's nothing better than being able to make a tricky task look effortless, Mr. Chalkboard Calligraphy Champion. My parents taught me that."
"What do your parents do?" Izuku asked. He didn't know how to handle the good-natured teasing, so he ignored it.
"They're stage magicians. Good ones too, they hit the U.S. west coast casinos often. But for me, that kind of lifestyle is… what's the opposite of a vocation? I dunno, but I know I don't want to do it."
Yasakani waved Midoriya over to her table once they'd got lunch, and Haze gasped when she saw Yokote heading over with him. Izuku couldn't hear it over the noise of the canteen, but she had her hands on her insubstantial misty cheeks and was visibly growing taller from the extended inhalation.
Thankfully, she had composed herself by the time the two boys joined the table. Also with them was Akagi Taiki, the redwood Heteromorph, who plucked an apple from the branches that made up his hair and bit into it.
"I still think that's gross," Haze said, after greeting Midoriya and Yokote and inhaling her own vaporized lunch. "It's like eating your toenails."
"One, like I said before it's a graft so the DNA is completely different, and two, your friends are eating, don't talk about toenails," Akagi rumbled back.
On the first day, Yasakani had grabbed Midoriya, Haze, and Akagi to have lunch with her on the pretext that they were the only people in the class she didn't have to worry about her lie detection with, as neither mist nor trees had ordinary nervous systems and anyone could see when Izuku wasn't telling the truth. The four of them had found they shared more common ground than that, though: Haze liked being around Akagi for the pollen some of his grafts gave off, Izuku found Yasakani easy to talk to about Hero gossip, and all of them were interested in different aspects of costume design.
Yokote joined in with their conversation smoothly, blithely accepting another apple from Akagi and then using his bare hands to split it into halves with casual ease.
"Oh, you've been practicing that, I could see your brain just light up with smugness behind that poker face," Yasakani said with an accusing finger.
"Does that make it any less impressive?" He retorted, holding up both halves and then using some sleight of hand with his Quirk to make it look like he was juggling three pieces instead.
They were interrupted by the piercing wail of a siren. Half the table turned to look at Haze.
"What? It's not me, U.A. doesn't use the kind of fire alarms I can set off by accident - I checked," she said. "Besides, we heard what they sound like at the commencement ceremony."
"Level 3 alert! There are intruders on the grounds, everyone evacuate!" An upperclassman called, turning unease to panic as everyone got up and started towards the exits. Yasakani held onto her visor tightly as their small group got jostled, Akagi's steady bulk providing an anchor for the other four of them. Izuku's Quirk reached out again.
[10.75 THE FIRE IN THE FORGING - INSUFFICIENT CHARGE - 350 STORED]
Nothing came from it though. They were making slow progress towards the door when a deafening clap resounded. Turning as one, they saw a blond boy with large rapidly-shrinking hands floating weightlessly above the crowd by the windows.
"Look outside, it's just the press! 1-A is supposed to be better, not contributing to the crush," he sneered.
A very familiar "Fuck off!" was yelled at him from the midst of the 1-A students. Izuku was glad to be out of the blast radius of Bakugo's temper, and to hear he was alright. With the other students close enough to the window murmuring confirmations that there was no urgency, what had been a brewing stampede became a relaxed exit.
-----
Classes resumed as normal in the afternoon, but the disruption was enough that Izuku had forgotten who was teaching the last class of the day, Modern Art History.
Midnight strolled into the room like it was a catwalk, and he could hear Yasakani snickering from the seat behind him as he froze up. The R-rated Hero had been too far away during commencement, but up close he could see that the leotard portion of her outfit had been changed from leather to a certain weave of chainmail, one suitable for wearing over bare skin.
She gave him a wink and launched into the class, explaining her role in the creation of the laws on Hero costumes, how those regulations impacted the Support sector, and hinted at the loopholes and workarounds open to them: breathable materials like chainmail that did not impede her Quirk, fragile fabrics for durable Heroes seeking to boost their ratings, and abuses of the coverage requirements by Mutation-types who could clothe their additional body parts to fill the surface area quota.
After the class, Haze chattered breathlessly about how her new costume design was clearly from the exclusive and enigmatic Velvet and Iron Hero costume boutique for so long that she shrunk down to half her normal size.
"- and they have no social media presence, no website, it's all completely word-of-mouth -"
Midoriya buried his burning face in his notebook as he left.
-----
Wednesday morning saw Izuku move to the welding section of the workshops, where Kokonoe Hifumi was hard at work. He had tried greeting her but received only silence in reply. It might have been a Quirk thing, though: with exacting care, she was repeating the same welding steps three times in a row, and then her body flickered and the piece she was working on had nine more identical welds on it.
Moving over to his own welding station, Izuku took ten minutes to make sure he knew what he was doing then got to work, using his sense for modularity and crafting skills to ensure his collapsible bike would be even tougher than a conventional one.
Lunch was more subdued than the day before, everyone remembering the crush of the evacuation, and the incident seemed to have cemented the seating arrangements. Not that Izuku minded, as Kokonoe still hadn't responded to him after she finished work, and despite her coldness seemed to have become the center of the other group of students from their class. She wasn't his problem, so he happily spent lunch listening to Yasakani about how her Quirk made designing op-amp circuits trivial while Haze and Akagi bickered about the air quality of their respective neighbourhoods and Yokote showed off more casual displays of dexterity.
-----
"Cementoss, sir?"
Izuku jumped as Yasakani interrupted the Modern Literature lesson. He'd got used to her presence behind him as a source of snarky comments, this was the first time she'd chosen to participate in class.
"There's a big smoking hole in one of the buildings there, and spark-gap noise is spilling out of it. That's not supposed to happen, right?"
The class followed her pointing finger. A column of smoke rose from a large domed building on the horizon.
"Stay put, class, I'll check on the situation. Read ahead if I'm not back when you finish the exercise."
Cementoss closed his book and strode out the door, seemingly unconcerned. As soon as he was out of sight of the class, however, they could hear his heavy footsteps break into a run down the corridor. The students broke out into speculation.
Izuku had some experience finding buildings on a map from a bearing thanks to his material sense practice. "Domed… that's the USJ that's been damaged," he shared.
"Wasn't 1-A going there today? Could they have messed up?"
"You said you saw electrical noise? Maybe it was that lightning bolt kid."
"Nah, I saw him in action during the practical exam, his Quirk looks completely different," Yasakani shut down her classmates.
"Then that means another strong electric Emitter-type is on campus. Are they another intruder like the reporters yesterday? If so, U.A. could be under threat." Toyo stood up from his seat as he made his deduction.
"Teacher told us to stay put," Kokonoe countered.
"Whoa, look at that!" The brewing argument was interrupted by another student's voice. The class rushed to the windows to see Cementoss carrying what had to be half the faculty on a tidal wave of cement, rolling towards the smoking building faster than the police cars on the road beside them.
"You know, I think they have the situation in hand," Akagi concluded.
-----
Izuku stayed glued to the window and to his phone, flipping through the three buzzing group chats that had spread through the school in response to the sudden departure of the teachers and waiting for any more news to come in beyond the arrival of more police vehicles. The bell rang, followed by a robotic voice that told the students to stay in their classrooms and do the homework for their next lesson, though only the most diligent students complied with the second instruction. Every previous Villain fight he had watched had fascinated him, but in the absence of information he was left to worry about what could be happening in the domed structure, to people he'd taken an entrance exam with or passed in the corridor. He hated feeling so helpless.
The last bell rang just as the police convoy could be seen returning down the same road, and messages from 1-A students started appearing once they left the area of electrical interference. Almost every phone in the room began buzzing continuously as the chats lit up. Villains had attacked - the students had been scattered throughout the facility - some had even fought Villains themselves - All Might had wrestled a monstrous creature to a standstill then launched it through the roof - the Villains' Quirks kept failing, rumored to be related to the 1-A homeroom teacher - Bakugo had been injured -
Izuku dropped his phone on his desk and ran for the infirmary.
-----
He knocked on the door and was greeted by Recovery Girl, who took his name and closed it in his face again. The small part of him that wasn't worrying about his childhood friend felt pleased to have finally met a Pro Hero who was shorter than he was.
He could hear muffled voices inside - and less muffled ones, as Bakugo yelled something about how the shitty nerd would just cry outside if she didn't let him in. At least he was conscious, then.
The door opened again and Recovery Girl escorted him to the curtained-off bed with a remarkably tight grip and either a gentle smile or a sour grimace, Izuku wasn't sure which.
"I thought I told you to stay out of my way at U.A.," Bakugo said. He was sat up on the bed, wearing an impressive grenade-themed Hero costume just like the ones he'd sketched in class, but it had been cut away so his chest could be bandaged and his right arm was in a sling. The boy glowered up at him, so Izuku sat down on the floor.
"Kacchan, you're alright," he said, tearing up already.
"Tch, I told her to bring you in so you wouldn't cry but that clearly didn't work," he grumbled. "Stop dripping your tears everywhere, Deku, it was just a bad Quirk interaction."
"You got backhanded through a wall, young man!" Recovery Girl's voice rang out from the other side of the curtain.
"Fuck off you old hag, I only got hit because of that thing's shitty Quirk!" He shouted back. "I was going to hit-and-run, had a big blast ready to hammer it and bounce off out of reach, but it stopped it cold and left me off-balance."
""That thing"... Kacchan, did you fight the monster that was there?" He asked.
The room seemed to draw a collective breath.
"You heard about it already? Trust the extras to flap their mouths. Yeah. Yeah, me and All Might did."
Bakugo gripped the sheets tightly with his free hand. "The whole thing was a plot to kill him, not that it worked. He's way too strong for that. Us students, they wanted us as a distraction to keep him in the fight. Most of them were losers I could tear through, barely enough to make me sweat, but the hand creep and the open-brain meathead weren't holding back." He shot Izuku a feral grin. "Deku, if you see them or the misty warper who acts as their crappy chauffeur, just run away and give me a call. Then I can beat 'em up solo and prove I'm stronger than the Number 1 Hero."
Izuku nodded with a smile. That was more like the Bakugo he knew.
There was a light cough from the other side of the curtain.
"Your friend will be just fine, as long as he has enough self-discipline to follow my instructions," Recovery Girl said pointedly. "Classes are cancelled tomorrow, go home and let your parents know you're safe." She ushered him out of the room and slipped some gummy candies in his hand.
-----
Word count: 3187/20193
A/N: As I've hit the one-week and 20k word marks, this seems like a good time to say thanks for all your engagement with this! Much as I'm writing this for my own enjoyment, it's still really rewarding to read your reactions and hear what you like or dislike about it, from parts of the premise down to individual lines. To keep up my momentum I won't be making any revisions at this stage, but I'm already taking notes for a retrospective and I appreciate everything you all have to say, positive and negative.
For this chapter, the main bit I was unsure of was how to handle the conversation with the injured Bakugo in a way that was true to his personality. We'll be seeing more consequences of the USJ fight, and Izuku's absence from it, soon.
Regarding timings, I'm using
this timeline as it's the first one I found that had rough dates.
This Looks Like Every Other Spaceship I Don't Know How To Fly (Schlock Mercenary Rebuild) (100): Except it turns out, you can. You are able to work out at least basic controls for any vessel instantly, and can very quickly familiarize yourself to the point of being able to fly through a busy battlefield. This can extend to figuring out how to ride strange animals.
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