Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Did you know? The origin of the word classroom is actually a mistranslation. See, back in the sixteenth century, teaching was done in rooms with lots of glass in order to maximize the amount of sunlight they had to work with. Ergo, they were called glass-rooms. Funny, right? One little typo and suddenly there's an entire genre of architecture born. Same thing happened in Australia, actually. Only a century later, one Captain James Cook had his men sail towards that large landmass due south, and they found the Aboriginal people. And one of the sailors pointed to the animals that hopped around and put their babies in their pouch. And he asked what they were. And the Aborigines said kangaroo. It wasn't until much, much later that they learned that kangaroo means I don't understand.

Neither of those things are true. But humanity loves its fun little stories. What really happened is that prisons are just as good at keeping children in as they are adults, and the English sailors killed far more than they talked to the people whose land they were taking. Not fun or little, hm? No. History rarely is, save in small bursts of goodness or levity. To elucidate yourself on humanity’s past is to confront humanity itself; ergo, you observe man to be a very spiteful and cruel beast when given the chance. Power corrupts as swiftly as the earth tumbles through space— if you’re curious, that clocks in around sixty-seven thousand miles per hour. There is no greater accelerant than power over another man, when it comes to the complete collapse of one’s ethics. And now, at this point in time, every eight out of ten children have the potential to be born an arsenal unto themselves. What do you expect to happen to a brain not even fully developed when it’s given such power, when full adults succumb so easily?

And they wonder why cynicism is becoming more common.

I sigh, and try to rearrange the tracks of my runaway train. At least the scenery here was better than my last school. I honestly couldn’t even tell you what it looked like. Imagine a highschool. Imagine a lack of funding due to the state of America as a direct result of— no, no, damn it, happy thoughts. The grounds. They were nice. Almost impossibly nice, honestly. Grass good enough to be part of a golf course, with lots of healthy trees stretching up to a crisp, deep sky. I don’t think the last campus I was on even had grass. We had to make do with gravel and concrete, or…something like that.

I turn back to the board, and an empty chalkboard is so uninspiring I cannot even find a way to wax poetically about it. Okay I could, but even I have my limits for indulging in the melodramatic. At least, when there’s no purpose to it. I return to doodling in my notebook— not in the spaces I’d presumably need for notetaking, don’t worry. I find it calming to draw little roses by overlaying hexagon-esque shapes until you have a mathematically equal bloom— at least as close as my informally trained hand could get.

“That’s nice.” An unfamiliar voice, in English no less, brings me out of that state of focus that art has a tendency to inspire. I glance to the left and…well, it shames me to admit it, but the first thing I notice about the owner of the voice was her horns. I know, I know, how very uncouth of me.

“Thank you,” I respond, giving a flustered smile. “Little piece of advice I picked up somewhere. If you like looking at your notebooks, you’re more likely to remember what you put in them.”

“Ohhh, I'll have to remember that. I can’t draw to save my life but I love collecting stickers!”

“Whatever works, right? And if you don’t mind my saying, your English is excellent. I’d make some joke about being an obvious tourist but I’m sure you’ve heard that before.”

“Well, I should hope my english is good,” The girl says, a slight southern twang seeping into her voice. “I’m from America too. Did the blond hair and blue eyes not tip you off?” I make a show of glancing around the room, eyes lingering on my fellow classmates that look a bit more…esoteric than the others. It’s a struggle to not call them Case 53’s.

“Given the rather fluid nature of appearances thanks to quirks, I do my best to disregard physical traits altogether. Can’t spell assumptions without ass.” My poor attempt at word play pays off, and I get a snort out of her.

“Fair enough. My name is Pony Tsunotori, by the way. Pleased to meet you.” A hand, I shake— wait.

“Your parents named you…” I don’t even finish the sentence but she’s already rolling her eyes.

“Yeah. My mom was uh, pretty out of it when I was born, since the horns didn’t exactly make that whole process less painful. So she was very high on the good stuff when she first saw me, and…well.” She sighs with a shrug. “Not a whole lot I can do about it till I turn seventeen. Trust me, I’ve heard all the jokes.” I give a sympathetic grin.

“Well, at least here most people will just go by Tsunotori. I’m Matthew, by the way. Matthew Addams. But you can just call me Matt.”

“You can call me Tsuno!” There’s a particular edge to her smile. An illness that she’s trying to hide with exuberance and what she hopes to be quick wit. It’s an infectious disease called loneliness. Another thing we have in common, then.

“If we’re doin introductions,” drawls a voice from my right and I turn to see a smile with a very different kind of edge to it. More deliberate, practiced and polished. “Setsuna Tokage. Please and thank you and all of that. So you two are both from overseas, huh?”

“Mh. I came fairly recently by way of a transfer program. Suffice to say I’m very happy to be at a relatively clean highschool for a change.” Tsuno groaned beside me.

“I know, right? I swear, when I first got here I couldn’t believe how much better the air was, to say nothing of the streets. I kept expecting to find hidden alleyways with piles of trash in them or something.”

“Is it really that bad in the US of A?” Setsuna’s smile turns into something less deliberate and more genuine as she brushes some of her dark…green? Hair out of her face. “With how much All Might loves to talk about his time there, you’d think it would live up to the hype.”

“Well, I’m sure the governing body of my esteemed homeland is more than happy to let a famous hero talk up their country. They get good press without having to do any actual work. It’s their favorite thing in the world, besides the military industrial complex.” I spin my pencil through a familiar set of motions in my hands. “But enough about that. Do the two of you think —”

My question dies as the bell rings, and we all make an attempt to look more studious as a hero walks in.

Vlad King is an intimidating figure. He stands at over six feet tall at a guess, with a frame that doesn’t so much imply then it does shout his status as a bodybuilder. Between that and the oversized incisors he has peeking out from his lips, he’s an imposing figure.

“Hello,” he rumbles, voice about as baritone as you’d expect. “I am Vlad King. You may address me as Mr. Vlad, as Mr. King is and always will be Elvis Presley.” The joke takes a second to land, and then the more musically acquainted students chuckle a little, and he even gets a half-hearted whoop from a black-haired student a few chairs over from me. “Welcome to Homeroom— I will be your main instructor over your next three years at UA. I’m sure that you’re all familiar with the terms and expectations for your stay here, so I won’t bore you all with it. Instead, I’d like for us all to get to know each other first, and begin with some basic exercises. If you could, as I take attendance, rise and tell us three things about yourself: your preferred name, one of your hobbies, and your quirk.”

Icebreakers. My mortal enemy. We go down the list as formal names follow nicknames and confessions of mundane hobbies, capstoned by a quirk and quick questions from the rest of the class. Some of them catch my interest— fusion, telekinesis, gigantism. As the line begins to move towards me, I do my best to steel myself.

The last few weeks have been…rough. I’ve only had one person I can count on. And I love her, with all my heart, no questions asked. But this place, UA… well, it’s my shot. Our one shot to get some kind of normalcy. Normalcy, at a highschool designed to pump out superheroes. It’d be funny, if it wasn’t for everything else. And this could screw my chances of making friends, because one thing we’d learned very quickly is that this place wasn’t that much different from back home— appearances were everything.

“Matthew Addams,” Vlad intones, and I rise, forcing a smile on my face.

“Hi.” I say. “You can call me Matt, it’s easier. I’m a fan of English literature and mythology. And my quirk is edge projection.”

The class stares, eyes locked on me like sharks smelling blood. I keep smiling.

Hopefully, I can make it through the school year before anyone realizes I have the same power as a notorious serial killer.