Chapter 4
"Am I boring you, Midoriya?" The dry tone of his Chemistry teacher caused him to jolt, looking up from his journal.
"Ah, n-no ma'am, of course not!" Izuku met the eye of Mrs. Urutsuji, which was peering down on him as she kept her other eye towards the rest of the class.
"I don't think frogs have anything to do with covalent bonds, Midoriya." Her tone was patient, but it was clear she was unhappy.
After a beat, Izuku realized she was waiting for a response. "Ah, no teacher, they don't." A ripple of laughter flowed through the class.
She nodded, her ears swaying back and forth with the motion. "See that you take notes on the lecture and not on… frogs." The Durable Hero, Cottonball, was another teacher of his that was a retired Pro. Urutsuji Hiyako wasn't popular, but the reason for her retirement was… obvious.
When she got back to the board, her support robot passed her the stick she was using to point to words on the board. Stick firmly in her teeth, she continued her lecture about chemical bonds. She sounded surprisingly clear around the wooden dowel, though to describe it as 'easy to understand' would be overstating things. Still, he pulled the notebook for actual class notes out from underneath his training notebook to try and follow along.
Tsuyu's Quirk was way more interesting than the lecture though. It had so many little details, so many places he could imagine development of. How could she decide on what to train? She went over a bit of her usual routine when they worked out yesterday. He barely had time to talk to her between instructing Eijiro and Kacchan, getting his own workout in, and fielding whatever random question or distraction Mina had decided to toss his way. It was really strange to talk with so many different people! Sure, they were really Kacchan's friends, not his friends, but that wasn't anything new.
Tsuyu's workout mostly consisted of leg exercises as well as various dexterity and strength-building tasks to practice with her tongue. But she had other things she could do with her Quirk too, and if he could figure out how to train those parts of her Quirk, she could experience a large increase in her versatility, something far more valuable to a Rescue Hero like she aspired to be than increasing her power. She could secrete slime which was mildly poisonous and also helped protect her skin slightly from heat, other contact poisons, and could function as a lubricant if she adjusted the water content. It was an ability with a lot of depth, and his Quirk would be perfect to work…
Izuku resisted the urge to audibly sigh. Right, his Quirk. The one he wasn't actually supposed to use on people. He's not in the Hero course, so he can't sign up to get a timeslot with one of the several teachers who supervised Quirk training outside of normal class hours. Izuku admitted he tried to make sense of the pages of clauses and exceptions in the student handbook, but the section on mental Emitter Quirks was more complex than any of them and Izuku was pretty sure they directly contradicted themselves at least twice. Apparently in addition to needing a teacher to supervise in person, he also needed a remote supervisor to ensure that he wasn't using his Quirk to influence the in-person supervisor, and he needed written permission from the guardians of the student he was using his Quirk on. Except apparently all that went out the window if it's part of a school exercise? Also, he's not completely sure, but all of that might not even apply to him unless he was on probation? Except the entire section about mental Emitter Quirks almost seemed to assume that being on probation was the default. The whole thing gave Izuku a headache.
Not that the rules seemed to matter to most students he'd seen. Basically any first year needed the supervision of a teacher to practice with their Quirks anywhere on campus but nobody seemed to care about that. He'd see half a dozen students he knew for a fact were first years doing Quirk training on the way to the gym, much less after he got there. The whole damn handbook could just be legal protection and had no reflection on reality.
He glanced up at the teacher. She was kind enough at least to constantly point at what she was discussing on the board. He skimmed the whole thing early on, it was mostly foundational groundwork for stuff they would be covering over the next week or two. She didn't seem to notice his inattention this time, though the reason for that was apparently more because she was focusing on the other side of the room. She kicked something at Tatemono, beaning her in the head and scolding her for using her lecture time to file her nails.
Thinking about Tsuyu's mucus, of course, reminded him about Ashido's Quirk. It was seriously impressive; not only did she generate an incredible range of substances that varied widely in consistency, toxicity, pH level, and solubility, she could also make an incredible amount of the stuff. Mina had admitted that she got the terms mixed up when she tried to describe the properties of the acid she made and prefers to describe them using the way they feel or smell to her. Slicker substances felt smoother, highly acidic substances felt bristley, alkaline substances felt bumpy… she had an incredible range of descriptions once you stopped trying to get her to use the proper, scientific terms.
Izuku had to be grateful that Mina was the most recent addition to his Hero Notebook, as she was taking up way more space than he thought she would. She had gotten his number from Kacchan and had sent an enormous stream of texts talking about the kinds of things she could do with her Acid. He'd spent homeroom faithfully copying down the information in a more coherent form as well as recording some questions he wanted to ask her to get a better understanding of her Quirk. Her sketch was a bit rushed compared to the others, and since he didn't color them it was a bit difficult to convey her sheer pinkness, but he made sure to capture her dark sclera with large eyes half-shut in a mischievous grin. Her horns and wild, bushy hair completed the image. Well, she called them horns, they really reminded him more of antennae, but if she didn't sense anything out of them than horns were probably a better descriptor.
Hup, Mrs. Urutsuji was wrapping things up. Time to look attentive. "… and then you'll need to answer questions one through six after that. If you do that, you'll have a good grasp on the easy parts so I can start bringing in the new stuff." She turned to leave but paused. "Even if it is mostly review, I do expect you all to respect me enough to pay attention anyway. I don't teach this class for my health." Giving one last sniff of disdain, she walked out the door that her support bot was holding open for her.
The class seemed to let out a collective breath a moment after the door closed. "Think those ears are just for show?" Kobayashi asked, barely audible to Izuku from the distance.
"She's actually deaf in the left side, and the right is average at best." Dosatsu informed everyone.
"Cool, so I guess that means I can say how much I hate that bitch." Kita groans. "I thought sheep were supposed to be nice and meek."
Several members of 1-C decided to scold him simultaneously, speaking over each other. Kita definitely liked getting a rise out of people, Izuku decided.
"So can I see them?" He jolts as Fusa addressed him directly, bushy red tail quirking curiously.
"Uh… what do you mean?"
"The frogs! Cottonball said you were drawing frogs, I wanna see." Fusa slid out of her chair and peeked at his journal, which was still open on the solid page of notes about Mina's Acid.
"Sure?" Izuku supposed he did have a drawing of Tsuyu in there, stylized though it was. He flipped back the few pages obligingly, turning it towards her so she could see it better.
"Aw, cute!" She apparently liked the small, happy looking sketch he had of her head. "… Why is that one just a leg?"
"Oh, I wanted to get a good reference for how her leg differed from a homomorphic one. I think I have to make a model at home if I'm gonna be able to figure out if she can stretch more efficiently. Ah, I'm probably getting ahead of myself though, she hasn't even asked me to help her with a workout plan like Mina and Eijiro have…" Izuku paused at the blank look of confusion on Fusa's face. "Ah, sorry, they're my best friend's classmates in 1-A. Asui, Ashido, and Kirishima."
"You're hanging out with 1-A?" Fusa looked around awkwardly as half the class starts paying attention. Izuku doesn't think she meant to be that loud. "I-I mean, they're the Hero Course, why'd they hang out with you?"
Midoriya felt the room's eyes shift toward him and he gulped. He managed to find just a bit of steel for his spine as he was able to respond, "Kacchan's been friends with me my whole life, we wouldn't stop working out together just because I didn't make it into…" He trailed off. They knew what he meant.
"Why not?" Miyabi's question was blunt and immediate. "I thought me and Awase were pretty tight, but he's too busy for me now that he's in 1-B. Hey Kyokusei!" The magnetically charged student in the front paused in his phone typing to look back. "Didn't you say you went to middle school with a Hero Course student?"
"Uh, yeah? Me and Minoru still hang out, he's got good taste in anime. Why?"
"Uh… no reason." Miyabi apparently didn't expect to have his point undercut so quickly. He refocused on Izuku. "So you work out with them, huh? Trying hard to transfer into the Hero Course?"
Izuku wasn't really sure where he was going with this, so just nodded. "Yeah? Aren't… aren't you doing that too? Training?" Izuku looked around the room at his classmates, trying to gauge the mood.
"You don't get it, do you Midoriya?" Izuku almost wasn't sure where to look when he heard the unfamiliar voice, but Himura turned to him and affixed him with a cold stare. "The Hero Course is the opposition in this case. You can't promote to the Hero Course without defeating them in the Sports Festival. Therefore? Training away from them so as to not give away your strengths and weaknesses is a better strategy."
"It's easy to gather information on the Hero Course, keeping your Quirk and capabilities secret is worth far more than any information you gain with them." Miyabi agreed before pausing. "Wait… you said your Quirk was called 'Please', but now that I think of it you never did explain what it did."
Midoriya had an argument all prepared to counter their point about training with them, but that question derailed him. "Uh… Well, it…" The looks being given to him now were intense. Even Shinso, who normally just puts his head down and ignores the world between classes, was drilling his gaze directly into Izuku's soul.
"If he needs to win the Sports Festival, wouldn't he need to defeat us as well?" His defense came from an even more unexpected direction. From the other side of Hojo, Hotoke finally turned around and fixed Miyabi with a pensive look. "By your own logic, he should be telling you nothing." Judging by the suddenly sour expression on his face, Miyabi didn't appreciate Hotoke's point.
The tension in the air was thick as it seemed nobody wanted to be the next one to speak. It took several nerve-wracking moments before Allen sighed and turned to Hana next to him. "So remind me, we're supposed to be in high school right? Not some kind of shounen anime?" She let out a somewhat unladylike snort before covering her face, mortified. Atmosphere dispelled, most everyone went back to doing what they normally do. Izuku let out a breath of relief before closing his journal. He needed to focus on something else for a moment.
Like the real Pro Hero walking in, Ectoplasm! It wasn't his first class with the trenchcoat-wearing Hero, of course, but the excitement of being taught by such a well-regarded Hero has yet to wear off. "Good morning, class. I hope you brought your brains with you today, we'll have a brief pop quiz to see if you remember what we taught yesterday." Ectoplasm tapped his phone and the digital blackboard swapped away from Mrs. Urutsuji's dense interface and now showed three problems. "You have ten minutes, go ahead and start now."
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Football was one of the sports that were always popular in middle school. UA, as fitting for their position as the premier institution for Heroes, had a bit of a different twist on football than most.
"To the right!" called out Miyabi, kicking the ball to Kureta. Kureta was tall and fairly fast, but he was a bit awkward on his feet. He nearly lost the ball by kicking it away on accident, but his Quirk allowed him to teleport it to his other foot in order to keep it under control. The score was currently two to one in their favor, with Miyabi's raw athleticism and Kureta's perfect Quirk making them an offensive forward powerhouse.
That's not to say that the defensive line of Izuku's team was helpless. Kyokusei and Fusa kept close watch on the goal, choosing not to stray due to the constant threat they were under. Kureta's aggressive hit was easily intercepted by Kyokusei. Rather than rely on his own skills, he kicked it back towards Hotoke. His position as the goalkeeper meant that they had a solid core to repel the attacks when they came around, and he had excellent accuracy as he drove the ball towards the midfield.
Their offense, comparatively, completely relied on a single member of their team: Kobayashi. His Aim meant that the ball always went where he wanted it to go, and their sole goal was from a truly impressive kick that looked like it was going to the top right before the spin he placed on the ball caused it to rocket to the opposite side of the goal when it touched the ground. Izuku's place as the second striker meant all he had to do was get the ball to Kobayashi, so he intercepted Hotoke's pass and assessed the field. If he could rely on his attacking midfield to get it to Kobyashi they had an excellent position, but…
Filling out their midfield with the less skilled players meant that the ball was almost always in complete control of the other team. Ueda, Natsukawa, and Tatemono were not particularly interested in playing the game, though they spent enough time running back and forth and looking like they were trying that Mr. Xiong, their gym teacher, did not scold them for laziness. Midoriya had a clear pass to Ueda, which would avoid the enemy forwards and allow her to pass it to Kobayashi, but frustratingly she wasn't actually paying attention.
The other team had similar problems with Henshin, Tsubaki, and Dosatsu, though unlike his team they simply were in terrible physical shape instead of just refusing to try. Their team realized early on that their offense was better, so they put those players in the defensive line and filled out the midfield with the athletic Kinko, Himura, and Allen. Midoriya moved more towards the center of the field, easily manuevering the ball past Allen's questing feet and passing backwards to the only midfield he could actually rely on, Yosai. Yosai didn't exactly have the best athleticism or excellent coordination, but he was so incredibly competitive that at least he could be depended on to do his best. In this case, that meant passing the ball back to Midoriya when he finished crossing the field.
Izuku saw his opening and passed aggressively to Kobayashi, avoiding the charging Miyabi. Kobayashi reacted instantly, drilling the ball past the ready defenders. "Hey shortie!" Shinso had apparently chosen to try and distract Kobayashi as soon as Midoriya passed it, but the elfin boy's quick reaction meant Shinso was scrambling to try and block the ball instead.
Kobayashi seemed to register Shinso's words after the ball sailed into the goal, scowling. "Hey I'm not short!" Shinso gave an inscrutable, almost ironic look at Kobayashi at that but didn't do anything else before retrieving the ball from the goal.
"We're tied up now!" growled Xiong Genma, the teacher. "We don't have that much time left, so next point is definitely taking home the prize." The Bear-style Hero, Pandaman, hadn't specified what the prize was, but Izuku knew that it didn't need to be much to inflame the competitive spirit of the class. Izuku took a moment to lament the fact that the Hero Course had the entire rest of the day for their Foundational Heroics class while General Studies had a perfectly normal physical education class for only one class worth of time. He did allow them to use their Quirks, so it wasn't completely useless when it came to training for a future in Heroics, but the raw difference in the amount of class time dedicated to this meant Izuku finally understood why you so rarely heard of General Studies students hopping that barrier.
As he saw them pass to Kita, their final midfielder, he winced. He had warned them about his Quirk, Sweep, at the start of the class. He had a lot of trouble controlling it when engaged in high intensity activities like soccer, and he knew that this was going to be one of those hits. Sure enough, Kita kicked the ball and an enormous gust of wind spilled out from his foot. Izuku made sure to position himself to the edge of the field, out of the brunt of the storm, but the ball rocketed through his midfield like they weren't there. Fusa shows her utility on defense once again as she simply blocked it as a statue, transforming back as the ball came back down from the sky. She tried to pass it forwards to Natsukawa, but she wasn't ready and it was stolen by an aggressive Miyabi once again.
"Damnit Natsukawa get your head in the game!" Yosai's frustration with his fellow midfielders was palpable and Izuku empathized. He couldn't help but be impressed by Miyabi though. His Quirk, Chop, was a properly effective melee Quirk, but it was completely unusable in soccer without being the goalkeeper since it used his arms. Like Izuku, he was dominating the field with nothing more than raw physicality and skill.
Izuku assessed the field, watching Miyabi retreat towards center while juggling the stolen ball. He was setting up another push, he just needed to talk to Kureta to plan the attack. Previously Izuku had followed them to try and overhear their plans, but since he couldn't rely on his midfield to support a counter strategy, it was a waste of time. No, Izuku decided, he needed to change things up.
Shinso decided to spend some time shouting instead of defending. While Izuku didn't know the purple-haired boy well, he seemed to be just as intensely competitive as Yosai. Why would he do that? It must have something to do with his Quirk. Although he knew it was called Brainwashing, the details of his Quirk's function was still a mystery to Izuku. Dosatsu had mentioned they had a similar activation, something to do with understanding. That gave Izuku an idea, though he grimaced. Mr. Xiang said they could use their Quirks so long as they didn't hurt each other, so it was now or never.
Izuku retreated to his defensive area, seeking out his less reliable defensive player, Hojo. "Hey, Hojo, how are you feeling?"
The pink-haired girl started in surprise before grinning. Her skin, previously completely untouched and without freckles, starts to develop a few. "Jishaku's been protecting me, no need to worry! I'm pretty sure I told you to call me Aicchan though." She giggles, rocking back and forth on her feet while Miyabi gathered an impromptu huddle with his entire midfield.
"That's great, but this game is going to come down to this last play." Izuku took a deep breath to steady himself before pinning Hojo in place with a stern expression. "You need to steal it. When you get the ball, please pass it to Ueda." Izuku felt the unexplainable weight behind his words as Hojo understood what he was saying. His Quirk activated whenever he asked someone to do something, but when he intentionally tries to invoke it like this it always left him tense and filled with a nervous energy.
"Uh… Sure, I can do that." Hojo agrees, freckles receding as she gave him a curious look. Izuku knew he was running out of time, so he thanked her quickly and dashed forward towards Ueda. He heard the pink-haired defensive player question herself as he left. "Steal the ball? From Miyabi? Are you crazy?" He didn't have a choice in this matter.
"Un?" The redhead he spoke to next gave him a neutral, inscrutable expression. She didn't much like him, he thought, but they sat on opposite sides of the room so he didn't think he would be able to change her mind any time soon.
"Ueda, it's going to have to be down to this last play. Please, when you get the ball, pass it to Kobayashi. I'll try and get him open." The shiver that traveled down his spine was more tension than anything his Quirk was doing, but he felt her understanding all the same.
Izuku didn't have much information about how different people reacted to his Quirk, but her eyes widening and assessing him was a new reaction. Did something about his Quirk cause her internal Metronome to react? "Yeah, okay. I'll do it." She agreed, looking away after a moment and reaching up to toy with a lock of hair.
"Thanks!" Izuku couldn't help but smile brightly. Her Quirk meant that she had a lot of raw natural talent as a midfielder, theoretically capable of getting the ball through very tight defensive screens. She glanced back at him before looking away again, looking towards centerfield and where the ball was still under Miyabi's control. Kobayashi was making some aggressive plays, trying to get it away from him, but with his midfield informed he easily was able to keep it away from their forward.
Izuku wished he had time to discuss passing it to Ueda with the rest of his defense, but the other team were clearly getting ready for their push. He just had to make sure he could make it count. He stormed forward, gunning for Himura as he controlled ball. He had merely kept a cloak of chilled air around him, making it singularly unpleasant for anyone to approach him to try and take the ball, so he was taking his time deciding who to pass it to.
"Kobayashi!" Izuku cut into the dance between the two forwards, gesturing for him to back off slightly and get Miyabi out of hearing range. The enemy forward took the opportunity to break away, dashing down the field and getting into position for an aggressive push. Izuku cut off Kobayashi's angry rebuke with a chop. "Get into striking position, I need you to get that ball into their goal. Don't let Shinso think, I'm not sure if he can stop you but the quicker you shoot the better chance you have." Midoriya didn't allow Kobayashi to respond as his Quirk reinforced his order, instead rushing over to try and intercept the ball as Himura passed it forward.
The time was now. Himura feinted left before passing the ball laterally towards Kinko. The brunette danced around the ball in a complicated pattern before passing it laterally again back towards Himura. The ball was interrupted by Kita who blasted it with wind, moving it forward and through the frantic attempt Yosai made to stop it. Miyabi was easily able to pick it up, Natsukawa completely unable to stop the much larger student.
Miyabi aggressively running down Izuku's defensive area with the ball described half the game thus far, so Midoriya had figured out a long time ago his normal route. After getting past Natsukawa, he lists to the right as he brings it into striking range. Hojo was posted there for most of the game and she didn't do anything to stop him. Kyokusei has to cross a little more distance to contest him than normal, but he's been making that trip every time. Miyabi has a crucial moment where he faces off with essentially only Hotoke. Just him, Hotoke, the ball, and the goal.
Well, that's how it had happened the last twelve times he had gotten here. Hojo Aisha getting behind him and, with a deceptively simple twist of her ankle, stealing the football from him was so unexpected he took a few seconds to even register it had happened. He turned back, mouth agape, as the ball took a somewhat rough path towards centerfield.
Ueda was a good four meters away from where the ball had been kicked, but Izuku had been watching her. He stormed the enemy midfield, startling Allen and causing him to miss a step. This helped Kobayashi pull away from the defender. Ueda, an uncharacteristic stare of focus locked onto the ball, broke into a dead sprint towards the ball. She kicked it as hard as she could, sending it directly towards Kinko. The cute brunette squeaked in surprise, avoiding the ballistic projectile with a quick backflip into handstand, but her grimace showed she clearly realized she needed to stop the ball, not avoid it.
Ueda's kick was perfectly timed. Kobayashi had pulled away from every defender just enough that he could jump into the way of the ball to stop it with his chest and, without even looking, set it up for a picture-perfect bicycle kick to the enemy goal. Shinso actually leapt to block it with his body, only barely managing to hit it with his wrist, but the ball ricocheted off the left post, smacked Shinso in the head, and ricocheted again off the crossbar to drop into the goal, scoring their third point and locking in their victory.
The reversal was so sudden and unexpected that Mr. Xiang didn't even call the point right away, staring agape at the pair of Ueda and Hojo who were congratulating each other, giddy. Once he seemed to process the play, he blew his whistle, calling the game for Izuku's team. Yosai gave a whoop of excitement as his entire team gathered and cheered for them, starting up a chant of, "Aicchan! Aicchan! Aicchan!" while Kobayashi tried to override him with a three-syllable, "Chieri! Chieri! Chieri!"
"Excellent playing class." Mr. Xiang rumbled. "I'll admit I thought some of you were being lazy, but that play… That was seriously impressive. I don't normally like it when a player pretends to be a weak link to bait a steal like that, but if it works, it works." The bear-like heteromorph pulls out his phone and starts typing away. "I'm marking you guys down for the reward, it's extra credit. That won't be the prize every time we do a team sport, but I find it's useful to get a bit early in the year to help with class rankings." Most of the winning team cheer, happy with the boost. "Hit the showers, you'll have to be ready for the next class. Midoriya, I want to chat for a second."
Izuku regarded his teacher warily. The Bear-style Hero, Pandaman, was UA's most recent hire other than All Might. He had announced his retirement from active hero work and immediately joined UA's staff last year. The half-Chinese Hero was a master martial artist, and Izuku held out some hope that he might have some advice for training.
After the rest of the class trickled out of the field, Mr. Xiang sat on his wide chair and looked at Izuku. "I didn't give you credit in front of everyone else, but I saw that. I wasn't sure what to think about that Quirk of yours when I read your student profile, but if you can coordinate people like that all the time it's a really useful skill. I never had a lot of sidekicks, but I know places like Iidaten look for people skilled in leadership like that for their hires." He scratched under his muzzle, eyes closing in thought. "Not gonna be easy to get past the Sports Festival though. You're in really good shape, no doubt, but you'll need to put in some overtime if you wanna actually fight them. I looked over their profiles, some of them have crazy Quirks that I don't see how you can beat in the one versus one event."
"Ah, I train every day! My best friend is in 1-A and we've trained together for years!" Izuku gives a proud flex. "It's not just the two of us any more either. We've got more than a few other Hero Course students training with us too."
"That's good, that's good." Pandaman agreed. "It's not exactly ideal but the second event in the Sports Festival almost always a team based event. Impress Nedzu enough during that event and you might be able to move up even without winning the whole thing."
Izuku startled. "Wait, you don't have to win?"
He gave a loud guffaw, slapping his knee with an enormous paw. "Ha! The principal wouldn't limit his options like that." He furrows his brow, suddenly serious. "That being said, he does let people think that. I still haven't figured out why he misleads students so often, but he's some kinda super genius so I don't question it."
That was… fair. "Mr. Principal's High Specs is a truly terrifying mental enhancement Quirk." Izuku nodded, arms crossed.
"Yeah, that's what he called it I think." He scratched his chin again. "Mmm, what was I saying… Right, the Sports Festival." He looked at Izuku, eyes scanning him up and down. "Look into some basic Muay Thai forms. You have good physical conditioning, Muay Thai helps you leverage that into aggressive attacks. The focus on kicks and attacking vulnerable areas will help your lack of offensive Quirk, and you'll be able to control the pace of the fight to compensate for your lack of defensive Quirk."
Izuku perked up, excited. "Yes sir!" Formal martial arts training was something they had never really focused on, preferring to just work out and figure that out later, but if not now then when?
"Get outta here then. I'm gonna need to prepare for 1-D's class." He didn't move from his chair, pulling out his phone and doing something. Izuku took a moment to decide that was none of his business and hurried off to the locker rooms. He had to change for his next class.
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"Um… I'm kind of waiting for someone so-" Izuku was cut off by a sharp hand gesture from his classmate. Shinso Hitoshi is someone Izuku had been meaning to speak to, but ideally not when he was so clearly annoyed at him.
"I just need to talk with you. Can we get a bit of privacy?" The boy was surprisingly intimidating. He had an intensity to him right now Izuku hadn't see out of the normally lethargic boy.
"Well…" Izuku wasn't able to say any more before things got a bit weird. The world bled into an indeterminate haze, and Izuku felt a familiar mental pressure that he associated with trying to force his Quirk use a bit harder than normal.
No, Izuku decided, it was definitely a different pressure. He struggled to find a word, but after a moment he decided to call it a sudden drop in pressure. It reminded him of waiting in the exceptionally fast elevator at Might Tower that one time he got a tour there on his twelfth birthday. Time lost meaning in that moment and Izuku very suddenly found himself somewhere else. It wasn't a weird place, he recognized it as being around the corner from where he normally waits for Kacchan and his friends to show up.
Shinso was there too, grimacing. "S-sorry, I didn't want your buddies from the Hero Course walking in on us." The apology was very awkward, given through gritted teeth. Izuku got the impression he seldom, if ever, apologized for doing whatever he just did. Wait, Brainwashing. Shinso just used his Quirk on Izuku!
"Oh, wow! That was so cool!" Izuku pulled out the journal for his class, flipping to the seventh entry eagerly. "So you Brainwashed me? I've never been under someone else's mental Emitter Quirk, it was so different! I wonder if I experience it differently from other people since our Quirks are so similar in function, well I'm assuming they're similar Dosatsu said so and I don't think she would mislead me like that." Izuku's hand flew over the paper as he took a breath to continue. "I lost the ability to feel time I think? I don't remember what happened but I wouldn't describe it as being knocked out or unconscious, something definitely happened and time definitely passed but I have no idea how much or what I did and that's so cool-"
"MIDORIYA!" Shinso shouted, cutting through Izuku's stream of consciousness. Izuku, discombobulated, gave Shinso a confused look. "I didn't come here to talk about my Quirk." He amended his statement immediately. "I mean, I didn't come here to only talk about my Quirk. I wanted to talk about your Quirk."
"O-oh." Izuku twirled his pen to keep himself from writing with it. "W-well, what did you want to know?" He preferred not to talk too much about it to people who didn't need to know, but he reminded himself that Shinso had a very similar Quirk and probably had a lot of the same problems he had. If anyone deserved to know more about his Quirk, in Izuku's opinion, it would be his purple-haired classmate.
"Well, I know it's called, 'Please'." He started. "Considering you don't really seem like you like to talk about it and, well, you said yourself our Quirks seem similar. I've made a few assumptions. It's a mind control Quirk like mine, right? A villain's Quirk." The self-loathing he managed to fit into that statement made Izuku's heart hurt, and he rushed to answer.
"N-no! It's not! Well…" Izuku pondered how to say it. "Well, details. My Quirk is classified as a verbally-activated mental emitter Quirk-"
"Like mine." Shinso interrupted.
"Well, not… completely? It's also a meta Quirk, so it's not so simple."
"Meta Quirk? What the hell is a meta Quirk?" Shinso's brow furrowed.
"Ah, it's not part of the HSPC system, they only recognize the broadest categories of Quirks. Emitter, Transformation, and Mutation Quirks, with Emitter types further subdivided into very broad effect categories, specifically mental, energy-based, and physical. Us, Himura, and Yosai respectively if you want examples." Izuku took a breath. This part was getting more into Quirk Science as an academic discipline, so he tried to simplify so as to not lose him. "I prefer the Garaki system, which splits Quirks into different categories. Mental emitter Quirks are still part of it, but meta Quirks are Quirks that affect the Quirks of others. Um, the teacher for 1-A, he's an underground Hero called Eraserhead. His Quirk lets him disable other people's Quirks as long as he keeps eye contact, that would be an example of a meta Quirk."
Shinso digested that information without changing his expression much. He was fidgeting with his hands, Izuku noticed. "So…" he started, unsure. "So your Quirk is both a mental emitter Quirk and a meta Quirk?"
Izuku nodded, smiling brightly. "Yes! My Quirk functions when I make a request of someone. They receive a compulsion- A VERY MILD COMPULSION!" Izuku waved his hands frantically.
"Right, so it is a mind control Quirk." Shinso confirms.
"W-well, technically? B-but it's easy to resist!" Izuku insisted. "I c-can never make someone do something they would refuse to do, l-like hurt themselves or something!"
"But how is that a meta Quirk?"
"W-well, there's another part to the Quirk. Um, if someone agrees to do the thing I asked of them, they produce extra Quirk factor for a brief time. Th-this can have a variety of effects, usually giving them a bit of extra energy and their Quirk functions more strongly for a brief time." Izuku wrung his hands, refusing to meet Shinso's eyes.
"Ah, there's the villain part." That is, until Shinso said that. Izuku gaped. He'd never had someone complain about that part of his Quirk!
"W-what are you talking about?"
"Operant conditioning. I may not know a lot about Quirk Science, but I've had pretty substantial reasons to look into psychology and other people's mental Quirks." Shinso explained, shoving his hands into his pocket and giving an ironic laugh. "Brainwashing, my Quirk, doesn't have the subtlety of yours. I also have to talk to someone, specifically I need to ask them a question. When they respond to my question, I can activate my Quirk."
"Well, I have to ask someone to do something, but-"
"I get it. There's a connection when they agree though, isn't there?" Izuku flinched, which the taller boy picked up on immediately. "When someone figures out in their mind that they're responding to me, I can tell. I have to manually activate my Quirk when that happens. Of course, my Quirk's a bit more… dramatic. They enter a fugue state, just standing there, waiting. People don't remember what happens when I use my Quirk. When they're caught, I can give them an order, I can actually give them as many orders as I want. They can't do anything super complicated, but it's pretty broad."
"… Yeah, I can tell." Izuku admitted. "Th-they only have about three seconds. When I ask them to do something, they have to decide within those three seconds whether or not they're going to do it. If they agree, my Quirk gives them the boost. If they don't agree, even if they do it later, they don't get the boost."
"There's the catch." Shinso seemed almost triumphant, but Izuku felt the fatigue and frustration bleeding off of his words. He leaned against the wall of the building, sliding down into a seated position. "There it is, operant conditioning at its finest."
"You've said that before, what does that even mean?" Izuku will readily admit he's not used to not knowing something, and Shinso put far too much weight on the term for it to not be important.
"It's like training a dog. You tell them to do something, and if they do it, they get a treat. Next time they're more likely to do what you tell them because they think they'll get a treat. If they get the treat, well that justifies that, doesn't it?" He shook his head, starting to laugh. Izuku thought he sounded sad. "We're just a pair of fucking villains waiting to happen, aren't we?"
"No!" Izuku shouted, causing Shinso to jerk and look at him in surprise. "No! I'm not, and you're not either!" Midoriya had to take a shaky breath. He wasn't going to cry! "We're here at UA! We both took the exam to get into the Hero Course! B-being a villain isn't about your Quirk!"
Shinso gave him a look full of pity. "You know that doesn't matter. You saw how everyone looks at me. They don't even know what my Quirk does, they just know that it's called Brainwashing."
"L-like hell it doesn't matter!" Kacchan might be influencing his language more than he thought. He'll have to apologize to Mom later. "Even Quirks like ours can be used to be a Hero! Your Quirk is so incredibly good at nonviolent capture! I struggle to think of an easier way to capture villains without hurting bystanders!"
Shinso rolled his eyes. "Don't you think I already know that? I already know my Quirk would be amazing in Heroics, why do you think I even applied? It's about trust. Nobody can even talk to me without thinking I'm gonna mind control them."
"M-Mina can create acids strong enough to melt a car! Kacchan can destroy a building in less than ten seconds! I don't even need to tell you about Todoroki!" Izuku knew he was shouting but he couldn't stop any more than he could stop the water streaming down his face. "W-we trust Heroes all the time! It's not about their Quirks! It's about the choices they make, it's about the chances they're offered! It's about how hard they work!"
Shinso abruptly stood, fury etched on his face. "How can people like us become Heroes, huh? People don't offer us the chances they offer to psychopaths like that explosion guy Miyabi is always complaining about!"
Izuku saw red. "Don't talk about Kacchan like that!" Izuku felt his Quirk take hold on Shinso's mind, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He felt the rejection of his command immediately.
"Or what?" He had an impressive sneer. "Kids like him are a dime a dozen, people given a flashy Quirk that people say will be perfect for becoming a Pro and get handed every possible advantage to succeed while people like us need to scrape and beg for even a fraction of what they're handed!"
Izuku was very suddenly sharply aware of the physical differences between them. Before all he registered was that Shinso had twelve centimeters on him and had an intimidatingly serious expression, but only now he noticed that he likely had several kilograms of pure muscle over the taller boy. He was very thin and, to Izuku's experienced eye, likely didn't even have an agility-based workout routine, much less a strength-focused one.
This realization had Izuku straighten up and look Shinso in the eye. "Kacchan was given a lot of advantages in life, I won't deny that." He started. His classmate's expression became more guarded, more wary. Good. "But Kacchan worked for what he has. We've worked out together, we've trained every day for years. We've had an intense training plan that we stuck to since we were nine. Y-you complained about how your Quirk didn't work on robots, but did you ever even try anything else? I got fifteen villain points in the exam. Yeah, they were all one-pointers, but I was able to just jump on to them and wrestle them to the ground. They weren't tough."
Shinso definitely looked like he didn't know what to say, so Izuku pressed on. "Y-you can say what you want about me. Y-you can say what you want about everyone else who looks at your Quirk and sees a villain. Those people are wrong, they suck anyway." Izuku's gaze, still obscured by tears and locked onto the taller boy's, intensified. "B-but don't say Kacchan didn't work harder than anyone else to get to where he is today, and don't say that you worked your hardest to become a Hero before now." Izuku felt the order in Shinso's mind, but it fell off in that way he associates with them not deciding one way or another quickly enough.
Izuku wanted to say more, he felt that it wasn't a great place to leave off, but a familiar popping sound heralded an intervention. "The fuck did you do." Izuku felt the chill of his hatred roll off Bakugo in waves. Kacchan physically interposed himself between Shinso and Izuku, his fingers writhing in the way they do when he's trying his hardest to not set off his Quirk on accident. "Hisho, the fuck did this guy do."
Izuku very rarely sees this level of raw hatred from Kacchan and rushes to stop him from doing something rash. "W-we were just having a debate Kacchan, nothing to get riled up over." He gives a laugh that sounds fake even to him. "Um, do you have-" A handkerchief was shoved into his face before he could even finish asking and Izuku began cleaning off his face.
Shinso speaks before he could think of something else to say. "We've said what needs to be said. See you later Midoriya, Pochi. I'm sure we'll meet again." Midoriya really does admire Shinso's ability to keep his head under pressure. If he didn't know any better, he would have thought Shinso thought that their conversation was frivolous and entirely without consequence.
Bakugo gives him an ugly glare as he walked away but turned back to Izuku. "Hisho, seriously, if you need me to that guy is six feet under. It already pisses me off we're not in class together, I'm not gonna let some General Education coward mess with you."
"Kacchan you can't be killing students." Izuku says with a sigh. "Um… I'm sorry but can we take a rest day? I don't think I can focus on a workout today."
Bakugo immediately pulls out his phone, making a call. "Sure thing Hisho, more than one way to prepare for the Hero Course." He puts the phone to his ear. "Hey Eijiro, change of plans. We're gonna go over rescue procedures at my place, bring your notes." He makes a face. "Fuck, sure, Raccoon Eyes and Soy Sauce Face can come too. Sending you the address."
As his oldest friend called home to inform his parents of the plans, Izuku had to decompress slightly. That was intense. One thing did bother him though. Why did Shinso call Kacchan "Pochi"?
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Coupla things I want to clarify before the comments get to it.
1. Both Shinso and Midoriya made some good points. They also both made a few BAD points. Neither of them are completely correct or completely wrong, and emotions got high so they were even less able to cogently defend their points.
2. The football game was NOT easy to write. It may have involved looking up the rules of soccer and player positions multiple times. Yeah I don't really watch sports so I'm sure it's pretty bad compositionally. I just wanted some action to break up the fact that the fic is almost entirely talking. Also after it was written I might have made a majority of the girls lazy and not interested in the game? I based them pretty heavily on my memories of high school so it wasn't really intentional, but of the nine 1-C students that wanted to be in the Hero Course, only one of them (Fusa Kasuga, the tanuki heteromorph) was a girl, and the other eight girls were mostly people who actually applied to the General Education course and were not the sporty types. I'm not making a statement or anything with these distributions, it just kind of ended up that way.
3. Shinso's understanding of psychology is definitely 'guy with internet and no friends' level, so while he managed to correctly identify the difference between operant and classical conditioning, he's not speaking as an authority on the matter.
4. Midoriya is slightly more educated on Quirk Science then Shinso is in Psychology, but not a LOT more.
5. I am aware that you're not supposed to train too hard too young. Mitsuki paid an actual professional trainer to make their first schedule and help Izuku learn what he needed to know.
Kita Kazemaru I made with a wind-based quirk because of the hair. His Quirk, Sweep, creates incredibly powerful gusts of wind when he moves his arms and legs when his joints (elbow+wrist and knee+ankle, respectively) are straight. He did not actually apply to the Hero Course, though he tells people he did. He doesn't want to work that hard, so he has no intention to try and transfer.
A very cute girl with a hybrid physical/mental enhancement Quirk called Balance. Has essentially perfect balance and proprioception, allowing her to do moves that a champion gymnast could do with almost no training. Her mother went to UA, specifically the Management Course, so she was pushed into attending her mother's alma mater. When it comes to brains, however, she takes more after her father and struggled to get in to UA. She managed it through the power of cramming for the exam. Went to elementary and middle school with Kobayashi, her mom is a manager that works with his dad. UA is the first time they've had someone between them in the alphabet in their class, so they both have a small amount of resentment to Kureta preventing them from sitting next to one another.