Chapter Text
Izuku’s first day at UA had gone… poorly, to say the least, but he was determined to make sure his second would be better.
Sure, his teacher already didn’t like him, and he still didn’t know how to use One For All without breaking all of his bones, but he would make the best of it! Things could only go up from here, he was sure.
Probably.
The grin on Aizawa-sensei’s face when he got their attention to begin class was not a good sign, however.
“UA prides itself on being rigorous in all aspects of its curriculum, not just on the Heroics side of the equation. As such, we expect the best out of every one of our students. Yesterday, I tested you on the physical aspect of being heroes. Today,” he pulled out a large stack of papers from somewhere, “we’ll see if your minds are up to snuff.”
Izuku practically vibrated in his seat as the teacher handed out the thick exam packets. Yes! His brain was one thing he could always be proud of, even if he was the only one who knew the full extent of his knowledge. This was his wheelhouse, and he was happy to meet this new challenge head-on.
He could hear a couple of his fellow students groaning, asking if Aizawa-sensei was serious or if this was another logical ruse, but Izuku disregarded them, too busy speculating on the content of the test.
Once Aizawa returned to the front of the room, he announced, “You have until the lunch bell rings. You may begin.”
Izuku and the rest of the class were too busy flipping over their tests to notice the worrying gleam in their teacher’s eye as he watched them get their first look.
The test was just as challenging as Izuku would have expected from a school as prestigious as UA, certainly much harder than anything Aldera had ever offered. Still, Izuku reasoned, that was to be expected. Aldera wasn’t exactly the peak of middle school academic achievement.
The questions covered a wide array of topics, but tended to put concepts in the context of quirks and heroics. The math and physics questions were about calculating the distance a hero could run in a certain time or the forces exerted on the body as they used their quirk, the chemistry questions were about the chemical makeup of substances produced by a quirk and how they would react with other substances in the environment, and so on and so forth. It was like writing an entry in one of his analysis notebooks but with someone else asking the questions, and it was great fun. Even the things he didn’t know outright he tried to logic his way through the best that he could with what he did know, and he had to keep the hand not scribbling away lodged firmly between his teeth to keep himself from mumbling.
He happened to glance up just in time to meet Aizawa-sensei’s intense gaze before it slid off of him, and a jolt ran through him, his pencil pausing for a moment. Of course, he chastised himself, how could he forget the consequences of doing too well?
Aizawa-sensei already didn’t like him, that was made abundantly clear during the Quirk Apprehension Test, and teachers never liked it when he forgot himself and did a bit too well on one of their exams. The beginning of the year was always a balancing act, finding the teacher’s sweet spot of scoring well enough to not be publicly shamed while also scoring poorly enough to not be pulled into their office and accused of cheating. Again.
It was a miracle UA even considered his application with the number of academic misconduct claims that must be in his record. He figured All Might had something to do with that.
With Aizawa-sensei, he thought, it would be better to err on the side of too good considering the speech about UA’s academic rigor. So he was careful to only mark a couple of the questions intentionally wrong as he continued, and not to try too hard on the questions he didn’t know outright. That would keep the man from accusing him of cheating while also preventing the possibility of being expelled for not meeting UA’s high standards.
He knew that Aizawa-sensei claimed that he wouldn’t have expelled anyone, but Izuku had seen the look in his eyes when he’d canceled his quirk during the ball throw. He knew for a fact he’d escaped expulsion by the skin of his teeth.
Izuku was so caught up in the test that he barely even noted the passage of time, and so it felt like it was all too soon before he was doing a final flip-through of his test, absently calculating his projected grade in his head, and the lunch bell finally rang.
Izuku took a moment to close and turn over his testing booklet before he turned his attention to the front of the room, slowly becoming aware of his surroundings once again.
It was then that he discovered he might have made a… miscalculation.
Every single one of his classmates looked as though they’d just been through one of the most harrowing experiences of their young lives. Uraraka’s hands were trembling and her breathing was ragged, Kacchan’s knuckles were white from how tightly he was gripping his desk, even the usually cold eyes of Todoroki looked haunted. Mineta was curled up in the fetal position in his chair, quietly crying.
Aizawa’s unfeeling facade broke, his face splitting into a wide, sadistic grin. “That, class, was what has been dubbed the Hell Test, written by Principal Nezu himself. It is an abbreviated, simplified version of a test he gives his personal students before they graduate. Doing well on it as non-genius-level first years is by no means expected. You are, however, meant to try your hardest. Now everyone, go eat lunch.” His eyes took on a more vicious sheen. “Except for Mineta, you stay behind.”
Yeah, Izuku thought to himself as he tried to quell the shaking in his hands, he was fucked.
~~~
“You may begin.”
This, Shouta reflected, was his favorite part of starting the school year. The Quirk Apprehension Test was a close second, but watching the pure despair spread through the room with no effort on his part felt like a reward for all his hard work.
(No, he was not a sadist, Hizashi.)
The Hell Test, given to every first year at UA on the first day following the opening ceremony, existed for two reasons. The first was to test the incoming students’ capabilities. Students came from all across the country and even the world to attend UA, and each of their previous institutions had different curriculums and standards. The entrance exam ensured that none of the students admitted were by any means dumb, but it tended to focus more on creativity and problem solving than general knowledge so as to give students from disadvantaged communities the opportunity to succeed. That being said, a lack of general knowledge needed to be caught now, so students didn’t continue to fall behind. It also helped catch students who might be above and beyond in certain subjects, due to their quirk or circumstances. Such as Yayorozu, whose quirk relied on her knowledge of chemical structures and was thus leaps and bounds ahead of her peers in that subject. Nezu wanted to make sure all of his students were appropriately challenged whenever possible.
The second reason for the test applied mostly to the Heroics students, but any student who showed promise in this area was noted. The Hell Test was a test of will, of determination to keep going even in the face of an impossible task. How would students react in a no-win scenario?
Most homeroom teachers, even Vlad King, told their students that the test was challenging and assured them that they weren’t expected to know everything, but Shouta thought that detracted from the point. By throwing them in the deep end without so much as a heads-up, Shouta got to see their natural responses to overwhelming odds. Would they freeze? Give up? Or would they buckle down and persevere?
As much as his husband liked to joke about his sadistic tendencies, he knew the other man understood.
A poor reaction to stress was the quickest way to die in their industry, after all.
Shouta was pretty sure the secret third reason for the test’s existence was the rat’s desire to get petty revenge on humanity, but that was neither here nor there.
Shouta blinked, bringing himself back from his musings to enjoy the chaos unfolding in front of him.
One by one, he watched the students’ focused looks morph into confusion, and then frustration, and then fear. It was an interesting study in the part personality played in how one traverses the five stages of grief, he mused as he watched Bakugou jump almost immediately to anger, while Iida stalled a long while in denial, staring at the first page trying to make any of the questions make sense.
He was amusedly watching tears begin to form in Mineta’s eyes (his perverted tendencies hadn’t gone unnoticed, and Shouta was pretty sure this would give him the opportunity to kick the little perv to the curb) when his eyes caught on a mop of wild green hair.
The kid was leaning so far forward Shouta had almost missed him entirely in his scan of the classroom, but when he looked closer, he realized that it wasn’t in despair like he’d been expecting. Instead, Midoriya was happily scribbling away, pencil barely pausing. It was like he hadn’t even noticed the impossibility of the task set before him.
Now, Shouta knew genius children existed, and were much more likely to be at UA than anywhere else. He’d even taught a couple of them over the course of his tenure at the school. But the geniuses were always, always snapped up by Nezu before they even made it through his classroom door. Not that he’d never see them of course, they were still in his homeroom, but Nezu would always make him aware of their status and call them away at certain times for private lessons. There was a special, harder version of the Hell Test just for them that they’d take with Nezu during the designated block. Shouta didn’t know what was on it, but he did know they tended to come back looking even more traumatized than his regular students.
All that is to say: why was Midoriya sitting here, taking this test, if he was smart enough for it to not faze him?
It was possible it was some sort of false bravado, or the kid simply didn’t know what he didn’t know, but that didn’t line up with any of the things Aizawa had observed about the student.
This was just one more piece added to the puzzle that was Midoriya Izuku. When Shouta had seen the footage of the entrance exam, he’d assumed the kid would be cocky, overconfident, a spoiled little hero brat through and through. He’d clearly had no training, in combat or in his quirk, so it was logical to assume he’d expected to skate by on a powerful quirk alone.
And then he’d met the kid and realized he’d never been confident about a thing in his life, much less overconfident.
Then he’d assumed the kid was a coward, too scared of the potential consequences of his quirk to use it, or was simply reckless, not caring about the damage he did, even to himself.
And then, during the Quirk Apprehension Test, Midoriya proved Shouta wrong once again. First by having the restraint to not immediately break every bone in his body to complete each of the tests, and then again when he displayed a freakishly high pain tolerance by barely flinching as he broke every bone in his index finger.
Technically, the fact that he would have broken his entire arm if Shouta hadn’t erased his quirk could count towards the reckless theory, but it seemed more like the kid didn’t have another way to use his quirk, instead of him recklessly using it at the highest output to get the best results. Besides, a certain amount of recklessness was to be expected in all teenage boys, especially the ones in training to become heroes.
Shouta was out of theories, and left with even more contradictions than he’d started with. The kid was driven, but he’d never trained. The kid was analytical, but hadn’t found a way to use his quirk without hurting himself. The kid had a powerful quirk, the kind that would put him at the top of any social hierarchy, but he was skittish and unsure of himself. The kid was intelligent, but hadn’t caught Nezu’s attention.
Shouta got the feeling that he was missing something huge, that would make every other scrap of information fall into place. He also had a feeling he wasn’t going to like the image that formed.
He’d need to set up a meeting with the kid, after school today maybe. Nezu would fasttrack the grading of the test if he voiced his suspicions that the kid was personal student material, so he could kill two birds with one stone and get Midoriya set up with proper training for both his quirk and mind at the same time.
He considered pulling him out of the first practical Heroics class that afternoon, but decided against it. The first class was always going over safety procedures, reviewing costumes, and maybe some basic hand-to-hand instruction. How could the kid possibly get hurt doing that?
Now that he has a plan in place, he thought as Midoriya glanced up for a moment and they locked eyes, he might as well enjoy the rest of the class’s reaction to the Hell Test.
He was just in time to watch Mineta curl up in a ball and begin to sob.
Shouta smiled, mentally checking “expel Mineta” off of his to-do list. Life was good.
~~~
Shouta rubbed a hand over his face as he stared down at the student in the infirmary bed before him.
Goddamnit all, he jinxed it.
He wasn’t quite sure who he was the most pissed off at. All Might, for not following the lesson plan? Bakugou, for not knowing the meaning of the word restraint? Whoever in the support department approved the giant grenades in a first-year’s costume, for obvious reasons? Midoriya, for once again recklessly putting himself in danger? Himself, for allowing all of this to happen?
Yeah, let’s go with “e. All of the above”. Plus Nezu for good measure. Cryptic rat definitely knew more than he was letting on.
At least he’d graded the test promptly and gave Shouta the go-ahead to talk to the kid about alternate lessons, both for his mind and his quirk. Which he was going to do as soon as Midoriya woke up, because he was not putting it off and risking the kid getting himself injured again.
Really, he couldn’t blame the kid for getting hurt this time. He’d exhibited some amount of restraint, only using his quirk when he thought it was absolutely necessary, and most of the damage he’d sustained was inflicted by Bakugou. He’d done a better job at approaching the exercise from a strategic point of view than some of his classmates, even if he was worryingly self-sacrificial.
Something about the way Midoriya and Bakugou interacted set off Shouta’s instincts, danger bells ringing in his head, but he couldn’t put a finger on what it was.
And then there were Midoriya’s exam results. As expected, the kid was a borderline genius, though he seemed to have some self confidence issues. Several times Shouta could see eraser marks indicating that the kid had gone back and changed a correct answer to a wrong one. Overthinking, most likely.
There was so much shit that he needed to do, like rip All Might a new one for breaking protocol this badly, but all that could wait. He sent off a text to his husband that he’d be home late before pulling out his sleeping bag and taking a well-deserved nap on the floor.
~~~
Izuku’s first thought when he awoke to the sight of the tiled ceiling of Recovery Girl’s office was not again.
His second thought was Bakugou is going to kill me.
Welp, time to get up and face the music. Maybe he’d been asleep long enough that everyone was gone home? No that would be worse, he’d just end up cornered in an alley, away from the safety of UA’s security cameras.
He groaned as he levered himself up to a sitting position, his arms still aching even after Recovery Girl’s quirk, but froze when his eyes landed on a familiar yellow sleeping bag.
The pile of yellow fabric quickly stirred and transformed back into his teacher, the bag somehow vanishing. “Good, you’re awake. How are your arms feeling?”
“They’re f-fine, Aizawa-sensei,” Izuku squeaked.
The man gave him a considering once-over before shooting a flat look at him. “I don’t believe you, but I think you’re well enough to talk with me at least.”
“T-talk? Right now?” Izuku had a sinking feeling he knew exactly where this talk was going to go. But it was fine, he’d been through this before, he could do it again. He just hoped his teacher didn’t immediately expel him.
“Yes, right now. The last time I put it off you ended up hurt, again, so I’m not taking any chances.” Aizawa plopped down in the chair by his bedside, pulling a file from somewhere (seriously, how deep were the man’s pockets?).
Izuku… didn’t know what to make of that. The way it was phrased was strangely caring, but he couldn’t mean it like that, could he?
So he ignored it, pushing himself back against the headboard and sitting cross legged in an attempt to feel less like an invalid.
It didn’t work very well.
“Alright, so, first things first, you scored incredibly well on the Hell Test, leaps and bounds above your classmates, so good job on that. Nezu would like to pass along an offer to become his personal student, which while it isn’t mandatory it is very much recommended. Either way you’ll need to do some more testing to figure out where exactly you are academically. You understand?”
“Yes, Aizawa-sensei,” he responded on auto-pilot, his anxiety skyrocketing. He most certainly did not understand. He… wasn’t in trouble? ”This isn’t right. That’s not how this is supposed to go. Is Aizawa-sensei not going to accuse me of cheating?”
“No, Midoriya, I’m not accusing you of cheating.” Aizawa was frowning, but the tilt of his brow seemed more concerned than angry. “What do you mean by ‘this’? How does it usually go?”
Damn his mumbling habit. Izuku shrugged, trying to play it off, saying “Teachers don’t tend to like me.”
“So they accuse you of cheating.” Aizawa’s voice was flat, making Izuku hunch his shoulders.
“Only when I do too well on things. But I’m usually good at avoiding that.”
Aizawa’s face flicked between several unidentified emotions before he closed his eyes, rubbing a hand over his face. He took a deep breath before opening his eyes once again, seeming more calm. “Midoriya. I’m not upset with you, but I need you to understand that neither I nor any of the teachers here will ever accuse you of something like that without performing a thorough investigation first. What your past teachers did was not normal, nor was it right, and I’m sure Nezu is currently opening up an investigation into academic misconduct on your behalf.” He shot a look at the ceiling, and when Izuku followed his gaze he found a small camera.
Izuku’s eyes widened as the man’s meaning hit him. “O-oh that’s not necessary, he doesn’t have to-” he said, flailing around a bit.
“It is absolutely necessary. Keeping a student from reaching their full potential due to petty dislike is cruel and any teacher who subjected you to that should lose their license.” The teacher leveled him with a glare, daring him to disagree.
“But that’s not…” he broke off, frustrated. His previous teachers hadn’t treated him like they had because of petty dislike, they’d done it because he was quirkless, but he couldn’t tell Aizawa-sensei that. So he wasn’t sure how to convey that it was different when it was him.
“Hey.” Aizawa waved a hand in front of the thin infirmary sheets he was glaring holes into, making him meet his teacher’s eyes. “Whatever you’re thinking right now, stop it. I can practically see you trying to rationalize their behavior. No matter what their reasoning was, it doesn’t make their behavior any more appropriate.”
They stared at each other for a moment, Izuku’s doubt-filled eyes meeting Aizawa’s reproachful ones, before his teacher huffed, burying his face in his capture weapon for a moment. “Okay, we’ll come back to that later. I have one more question for you about your test before we move on.”
Aizawa shuffled the papers in front of him around, pulling out a familiar packet. “You said you’re good at avoiding doing too well. Can I take that to mean you would purposefully answer incorrectly to avoid getting too high of a score?” Izuku nodded reluctantly, not liking where this was headed. “Did you do that on this exam as well?”
“Yes?” he said, the word coming out more as a question than a statement.
An expression Izuku couldn’t make sense of crossed Aizawa-sensei’s face as he raised his eyes heavenward. He heaved a sigh before speaking. “Okay kid, I’m making an executive decision here. Lessons with Nezu? No longer optional. You need to learn to use that big brain of yours, and the rat will be good for your self-confidence anyway. Just promise me that once the two of you take over the world you’ll keep the chaos to a minimum.”
Izuku laughed a little, assuming his teacher was joking, but it died out as the man just continued to look at him, completely serious. “Okay Aizawa-sensei, I promise.”
“Good. I’ll hold you to that.” Phew, Izuku thought to himself, he’d made it through that minefield of a conversation. “Now there’s one more thing I need to talk to you about before you leave: your quirk.”
God fucking damnit.
Izuku sputtered. “M-my quirk? What about it?”
“It keeps hurting you. Gravely.” Aizawa gestured around them. “This can’t keep happening, and I need to know what’s going on so I can keep it from happening again.”
Izuku shrank back into the headboard, curling in on himself. “Are you going to…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it.
Aizawa-sensei held up a hand. “I’m not going to expel you. You’ve more than proven your potential, but there’s clearly something else going on here that needs to be addressed.”
“W-what do you mean, something else?” he hedged, wondering if there was any way to get out of this with his secrets still intact.
Aizawa shot him a flat look. “You’re clearly intelligent, incredibly so according to this test, and driven to become a hero, more so than most of your classmates. But your quirk is ridiculously untrained. It’s almost as if you’d never used it before starting at UA.”
Izuku paled. Fuck, there was no getting around this, was there? Even if he somehow managed to dodge the question well enough to satisfy his teacher, the man was likely to be a part of the investigation into Aldera and his previous teachers (he didn’t really understand what the big deal was, but with Nezu involved the investigation was inevitable), so he’d find out about his previous quirkless status then. He couldn’t lie his way out of this one.
But what if he told the truth, just not the whole truth? The best lies are just the truth repackaged, after all.
“My quirk… manifested late. Really late.” he said slowly. “I was told if it had come in any earlier it probably would have blown my limbs off.” he added, trying to distract the hero from the obvious next question.
But Aizawa was undeterred. “How late?” he asked, eyes narrowed in suspicion.
Izuku grimaced. “The entrance exam?”
~~~
The entrance exam.
All at once, the puzzle pieces clicked into place, and Shouta did not like the picture he saw.
Quirkless. The kid had been quirkless.
The skittishness. The lack of control. The discrimination. The dangerously low self-esteem. All of it finally made sense.
Damn, the kid needed so much therapy. Shouta knew the statistics, knew that the life expectancy of a quirkless kid was well under 18. He’d even talked one or two down from a rooftop in the early hours of the morning.
(He tried not to think about the ones he couldn’t save. He didn’t always succeed.)
When he thought about the hell his student must have gone through, he was caught between being sick and white-hot fury. How could they treat his student like this? How dare the world be anything less than covetous of the child sitting before him?
“A-aizawa-sensei?” Midoriya’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts, and he looked up into eyes filled with fear. Fuck, his anger must have bled through onto his face.
“Not angry at you, kid. Just angry at the world on your behalf. You didn’t deserve any of the,” fuck not swearing when this pissed off was hard, “stuff you must have gone through, when everyone thought you were quirkless.”
Midoriya nodded. “Because I have a quirk now.” It wasn’t a question, just a quiet statement of fact.
Internally, Shouta snarled. Someone was going to die for teaching this kid that his life mattered less than his quirk. He just barely managed to keep that rage from showing on his face and scaring the kid even more. “No, not because you have a quirk now. Because you were, and still are, a child. I might not know much about your situation, but I’m an underground hero, I can put the pieces together. No one, especially not a child, deserves to go through that.”
Tears welled up in Midoriya’s eyes, and Shouta had just enough time to think oh fuck before the kid burst into loud, heaving sobs.
Fuck, crying children were not his strong suit. Where was Hizashi when you needed him? He was much better at this sort of thing.
As it was, all Shouta knew how to do was hand Midoriya the box of tissues on the nightstand and awkwardly stare at the wall opposite the bed in an attempt to give the kid some privacy.
Eventually, the sobs quieted to whimpers, then ceased. Midoriya wiped his eyes and blew his nose one more time before turning to Shouta, embarrassed. “Sorry, sensei.”
“Nothing to be sorry about, Midoriya. That was some emotional stuff we were talking about, crying is a perfectly natural reaction.” Shouta assured his student before something else occurred to him, something that made his stomach sink. “ I don’t want to push you any harder today, but I need to ask. Are you safe at home?”
The kid looked confused for a second before realization dawned. “Yes! Yes of course, my mom would never hurt me.”
Shouta scrutinized him for a moment, but he looked sincere, even a little miffed that he’d asked. That didn’t take abuse off the table completely, but it did make Shouta feel comfortable enough to send the kid on his way after they were finished. “Good. If you ever feel unsafe, at home or otherwise, tell me.” It was not a question, so he didn’t wait for a response. “I think that’s enough emotion for one day. How about we just work out a training schedule for you, and then you can go home.” He decided to save his suggestion of therapy for another day. The kid wasn’t the only one who was wiped out.
“A training schedule?” the kid repeated blankly.
Shit, he’d gotten sidetracked on the whole ‘entrance exam’ thing and forgot to tell the kid about the quirk training. “Yeah, you’re going to be working with me on finding ways to use your quirk that don’t harm you. It’ll also double as quirk counseling, since I’m guessing you haven’t had any of that. Considering the circumstances, I’d recommend we meet daily for the foreseeable future.”
Shouta expected the kid to protest that, but apparently he was also feeling the toll of the bombshells that had just been dropped because he just nodded along as Shouta outlined his proposed schedule.
Training once a day, during Heroics when the class was doing a practical exercise and after school otherwise, with Sundays as rest days. There were no protests, just a mumbled, “I’m always free after school,” which made Shouta’s heart twinge.
(The little Hizashi in his brain was laughing at him. He wasn’t sure why.)
As Shouta watched the kid scurry out of the room, mumbling something that might have been a thank you, he thought about the kid’s test results. Not the formal ones, those were obviously outstanding, the ones that never made it into any gradebook. Midoriya responded to an impossible task by simply not noticing it’s impossibility.
And that wasn’t just a fluke due to his genius. The kid’s entire existence was one impossible task after another, and he faced each one with the kind of hard-headed determination that was going to make him a great hero someday.
If it didn’t kill him first.
Shouta was determined to beat some survival instincts into the kid before that could happen.
Shouta groaned. He really had his work cut out for him, didn’t he?