Chapter Text
Today was the U.A. High entrance exam, the day when several high school students demonstrated their mental and physical abilities in order to become students at the prestigious U.A. High School. For those who want to enroll in the heroic or general class, the entrance exam consists of a written test and a practical test; the latter is the more important.
The reason the practical test is more important is that it allows the U.A. staff to see how the participants use their quirks and, if they spot one that catches their eye, they may consider prioritizing that student for enrollment in the heroic class. The dream of many children around the world is to become a hero. But in this year, the U.A. staff saw something unusual: a green-haired kid wielding a strange blue grimoire in one hand while blasting spheres made of energy with the other.
That wouldn’t normally have caught the attention of the U.A. teachers, or even the principal, who was overseeing the exam alongside them in the observation room. Quirks in this world came in different forms and flavors, making that display understandable if his quirk worked that way. But what caught their attention was the energy itself. It changed shapes, forms, and even effects based on what the kid said before firing the sphere. After a couple of seconds, Nezu had on a tablet the information and documents that the student presented to U.A.
"His name is Izuku Midoriya. Age: 14. Quirk name: Grimorio de Magia Azul." Nezu said. That kind of name surprised him, as the quirk name was quite long and didn’t give many clues about what it could do unless the Magia part of that name implied that he could do magic tricks in a way with his quirk.
“Grimorio de Magia Azul? That is quite lengthy for a quirk name...Is that Italian or something?” One of the female teachers said. She was the heroine Midnight, and while she was not only an accomplished heroine but also an expert on modern art and capable of teaching it, her grasp of any language that wasn’t Japanese was quite shaky at best.
“I think that it’s Spanish...” A male teacher said. People moved quite quickly from that conversation as they were seeing how those spheres of energy were turning into fire, ice, thunder...and even real missiles based on what that boy said, from what they were seeing at the moment.
“Andanada Ardiente! Vendaval Gélido! Descarga de Plasma! Misiles Autoguiados!” The videofeed showed that kid shouting those things before performing an attack that made either his free hand or the grimoire release whatever he was calling for. They had seen how that boy had first created a massive fireball, which then split into smaller ones that sought out other robots to destroy. Then they saw him release a gust of cold air that had frozen only the robots that were caught in the blast of said cold air, and then consecutively unleashed a blast of dark purple electricity that completely fried those frozen robots....to them, at last, make some smaller missiles to be fired from his book that had destroyed some of the robots that weren’t near him.
That display of versatility was what caught their attention, as quirks were quite limited on what they could do, and quirks that were versatile at first glance, like the one of that kid, were quite rare...and quite dangerous.
Needless to say. Nezu decided to up the ante and activated the Zero Point Robot to put pressure on all the participants, now that they had only 10 minutes left in the test. There was one hero in that room who saw all that was happening and, subconsciously, touched the left side of his body. That hero was All Might, and in comparison to a lot of people in that room, he was the only one who knew far more about Izuku’s potential than everyone else in this room for personal reasons, and he knew that the Zero Point Robot wouldn’t be too much of a problem for the boy as long as he played his cards right, but the hero was frantically looking at those screens to find someone else after he paid a long gaze to that screen that showed Izuku’s performance.
The hero’s gaze relaxed a little when he saw the pale gray hair of his niece, who was taking part in the entrance exam at U.A., and saw that she decided to turn back when the Zero Point Robot appeared, but not before using her quirk to rescue one kid who had tripped and fallen to the ground while panicking after the robot appeared. All Might didn’t want to either play favorites or act like an overbearing parent, but considering that said girl and her family were the closest thing to a family that the number one hero had, and how his own responsibilities as a hero had partially damaged her family until the situation improved somewhat, then All Might couldn’t help but worry for the condition of Reina Shield during this exam.
That poor girl had suffered a lot because of the dedication of both her parents to him and his duties as a hero, to the point of breaking her family in half and having her and her mother move away from where they lived to stay in Japan when she was only 5 years old, to have her mother take a position in an inportant organization in japan so she could give the hero some extra help from within that organization to help him to hide his injured state from the public, and it was only thanks to that green-haired boy that Reina found a childhood friend whose quirk had performed more than one miracle both for her family...and All Might himself.
Those miracles that Izuku Midoriya did both for Reina’s family and the hero himself made All Might fully consider Izuku as a hero in the making, and he even told the boy that he could sponsor him so he could take the recommendation exam instead of the one that he was doing, but Izuku refused that offer, saying that he wanted to make it to U.A. hero school like a normal person would do over having someone giving him a boost as he wanted to do things right.
All Might was somewhat surprised by Izuku’s refusal to accept his endorsement and sponsorship to take the recompensation exam, but he respected the boy’s decision to stick to his principles and do things his way. All Might just hoped that Izuku’s bouts of reckless behavior when he was a kid were now under control.
Because the last thing he wanted to do was to tell Reina that her childhood friend had gotten injured and failed to enter the hero course because he hadn’t grown up enough from his reckless behavior. But aside from that, All Might had a good feeling about the situation and hoped for things to go well for both kids during this exam...
"What the...!?" Izuku said as he saw the Zero Point Robot appear in the distance. Buildings around the giant robot began to collapse, and some of the kids near him lost their nerve and ran back to the entrance in panic. It was a valid strategy given the situation. However, Izuku decided to stay around a little while longer to make sure he was truly alone before pulling back. He knew it would be unheroic to simply run away and not check the area in case someone could be left in danger behind, just to save your own skin.
“Help!” The sound of a girl asking for help reached Izuku’s ears as he was still in the area, and he saw that there was a short brunette who was almost buried alive by debris and barely avoided being crushed to death by sheer luck.
“Give me a second...” Izuku said and then checked his trusty grimoire. The grimoire was the way that his quirk manifested in this world and had been with him since his quirk appeared in kindergarten. It looked like a thick, old blue book that he could summon at will. Although summoning a book was less impressive than creating explosions with your sweat and other flashy quirks, the grimoire served as a vital tool, allowing him to channel and organize the diverse powers he absorbed. Izuku’s quirk required a more open mind to be usable.
His quirk worked by obtaining data from other people's quirks through either observation or being affected by their quirks, and once he obtained enough data, he could use his quirk to create something akin to a magic spell based on the information he had accumulated from other quirks. This power made his quirk far more flexible in terms of what it could do, as it wasn’t limited to doing only one thing... but it made him something of a pariah in society, as people became upset at the idea of someone taking what made them unique and using it for their own benefit. This quirk cost him his bond with Bakugo when they were kids; Bakugo flipped out and became really upset when Izuku managed to learn how to pull off something similar to his explosions with his quirk, to the point of cutting ties with him and even breaking the friendship between their mothers because of it. But considering how far Bakugo had fallen since their childhood days, Izuku was happy when he got a better childhood friend than Bakugo after their friendship was broken because of jealousy.
“...This one. Peso Pluma!” Izuku said as he focused on the spell he wanted to use, then released a small sphere of energy that expanded into a dark-energy dome for a couple of seconds, which made all the debris holding the girl trapped lose almost all its weight and become as light as a feather. Izuku had a habit of naming his spells in Spanish because of practical reasons. He believed that in a world in which English was so widely spread, calling your attacks in another language that wasn’t as widely spread as English was a tactical advantage. Of course, Izuku knew that Spanish was also spoken in many places and had something prepared in case he encountered people who spoke it.
Izuku took that chance to quickly pull the girl out of that mess, as Izuku's control with his spells was good enough to allow him to decide who was affected by certain spells and who wasn’t. Izuku called what he could do with his quirk spells because it was a way to define what he could do in a way that made sense...and because he was a fan of RPG games, and he wasn’t going to waste that opportunity to call what he could do in a way that he liked.
“Thank you...” the girl weakly said. She was still with her heart in her throat as the fear and shock of the situation hadn’t abandoned her body yet, even if she was free now. Izuku was about to tell her to leave, but then the Zero Point Robot arrived at their location, and the girl panicked as she saw it extend one of its hands to grab them.
“Guardia Final!” Izuku shouted as he called upon the power of his quirk to create a dome of energy that kept both the girl and himself safe from that robot hand as the dome repelled it the moment it made contact.
The heroes saw that happening and were surprised to see that Izuku had something like that hidden in his sleeves...but they weren’t prepared for what came next.
“Ola Corrosiva!” Izuku extended his hand in the direction of the Zero Point Robot and then unleashed a torrent of strange colored water that hit the gigantic robot...and made it rust quickly seconds after the water made its mark, it rusted so fast and quickly that it started to malfunction on the spot and then fell apart. The sound of the robot falling apart on the spot managed to make the girl relax, and then Izuku looked at her.
“We should go back to the entrance now...Can you move on your own?” Izuku asked. He saw how the girl then tried to move on her own after Izuku managed to pull her out, and she almost fell to the ground as she complained of an injured ankle.
"...I'm not a doctor here, but I have something I can help. Viento Albo!" Izuku said as he cast one of his unique spells that had a peculiar property. Viento Albo was a healing spell that was created with the information of a healing quirk, alongside some other emitting quirks. The amount of healing done by it was directly proportional to how healthy he was, mirroring how Final Fantasy's White Wind Blue Magic spell worked by healing someone by the same amount of health as the caster had when casting that spell. That meant that said healing was less healing and more making people who were affected by Viento Albo to be put in a similar physical condition to the one he was at the moment of casting that particular spell, which also included organs, as Izuku learned one day.
The girl felt the pain in her injured ankle vanish and thanked Izuku before they both walked to the entrance of the fake city to reach the others, since the exam was now more or less over, and it made no sense to stay there anymore.
“It’s a shame that ReiRei wasn’t in this area...” That was the last comment that was caught on camera before Izuku, and that girl moved away from the reach of the flying drone that recorded the area, and then the heroes there talked about that display of power from Izuku’s part.
Izuku rode the train back to the station nearest his home. While waiting for his connecting train, he checked his phone to see if ReiRei was active on the chat app, hoping to pass the time.
“How unlucky I had been, Izuku. We had been in the same place today, yet we didn’t manage to find even a second to interact before the practical exam started, and then we didn’t even end up in the same examination area...It’s not fair...It’s not fair at all...” Izuku saw that ReiRei had written him a message seconds after he logged in to the app.
“I know...but it's not like we can’t see each other whatever we want, ReiRei. We both hung up together two days before the exam in order to brainstorm ways to do it, and sadly, luck wasn’t in our favor today.” Izuku wrote. Izuku didn’t have to wait that much before ReiRei wrote a reply.
“I get it...But I was so eager to finally fight at your side, like all those times we fantasized about it when we were kids... and I feel somewhat robbed.” Izuku chuckled a little before writing a reply.
“Come on...I’m sure that we both are going to make it to the hero course, and we will have the chance to do things together, you just have to be patient...” Izuku typed.
“Yes...I’m going to make sure of that...” ReiRei said before she logged out of the app. Probably because she was going to change trains or something and didn’t want to get distracted while she did. ReiRei lived in Aichi Prefecture after moving out of Mustafu years ago with her mom due to job-related issues, but the friendship between their families was quite strong, and since Izuku had little social interaction in his area, he used that free time to spend with ReiRei.
Izuku may call her ReiRei, but that was kind of a childhood nickname that he gave to her when they met for the first time. When she introduced herself to him with two names instead of one, Izuku wasn’t paying too much attention at the time, so he decided to call her ReiRei in those moments. Considering that their friendship is still holding strong after all those years and she likes that nickname, Izuku refers to her as ReiRei almost all the time. However, if they are going to be classmates, or at least attend the same school, then Izuku would have to be more respectful and refer to her by her given name, or her family name, depending on the situation.
But he would deal with that situation the moment it came to him. For the time being, he would return home and hope that his efforts in this entrance exam would pay off and allow him to enter the hero course, as he had dedicated a lot of time and effort to train himself in order to be prepared for the entrance exam of U.A. and didn’t want to disappoint those few individuals who had put their faith in him to become a hero, like his parents, ReiRei’s parents and older sister, and All Might.
Izuku was snapped out of his thoughts as the train stopped at its destination, and Izuku then decided to get off the train to make the rest of the trip home on foot, putting all those thoughts in the back of his mind as he walked back home after the hard day that he had in U.A.