Chapter Text
There was no easy way to do this.
Noriko waited outside her new classroom, just down the hall from 1-B. “Let me go in and introduce you,” Aizawa muttered as he passed her. He opened the door and slipped inside, settling his class down.
Heart fluttering with nerves, Noriko focused solely on breathing evenly. It didn’t matter what he was saying, really. The outcome would be the same.
She had been the target of hate in her previous class, and it would be the same in this class. Changing rooms didn’t make a difference. Her last name didn’t change, after all, just the room in which she got her education.
What did matter was that 1-A was more experienced and had more talent than the combined forces of 1-B. That was why she’d done what she did. In 1-B she wouldn’t have become a hero, even if everyone liked her and they got along. In 1-A, she knew she’d be able to challenge herself. She could grow from her peers, even if they hated her. That was why she’d requested, or rather, demanded the transfer. She could deal with the hate, the same way she’d already dealt with it for the last month. Numbing herself had become nearly second-nature; she’d been doing it for most of her life, after all.
Aizawa was motioning for her to come in, so she did, stepping over the threshold of the classroom to be greeted by the twenty looks of surprise on her new classmates’ faces. Her own cheeks burned with the embarrassment of attention, but Noriko pushed those thoughts to the back of her mind. “-I believe some of you met her during the sports festival,” Aizawa said, Noriko caught the words as she moved to the desk at the very back of the classroom. The only one that was empty. Hers.
“But Mr. Aizawa,” one of the students began, hand raised. Momo Yaoyorozu; she’d made it to the battle tournament of the sports festival. “It’s the middle of the semester. What’s the reason for her transfer?”
Aizawa paused a beat too long. Noriko sat, keeping her gaze on her desk, only glancing up once he spoke. “Administrative error.”
The expressions that her new classmates wore told Noriko that not one believed that for a moment. And really, they shouldn’t. It was a weak excuse at best, but it was the best that the principal had come up with. Actually, he had come up with better, but it had been too complicated to be practical. “Administrative error” simplified it. Besides, she couldn’t tell them the truth. It was too shameful.
“But never mind that,” Aizawa changed the subject, moving on swiftly. “Today we’ve got Hero Informatics class, and a special one at that. You’ll be coming up with your hero aliases-”
The class didn’t even let the man finish before they erupted in an uproar. He immediately used his quirk, negating theirs to nothing to settle them.
Oh yes, class 1-A was sure to be at least a little more interesting than 1-B.
Aizawa was saying something about hero agencies picking them and showing interest. The internships would be coming up fast now that the sports festival was over. Of course, looking at the board, half the class didn’t even register. Or maybe agencies just hadn’t been interested in them? Monoma was always going on about how 1-A was hyped up. Was he right?
Still, Aizawa didn’t linger on the subject with Midnight coming in instead and getting class started on the name-choosing.
“What future do you see for yourself?” Aizawa asked rhetorically as he took his sleeping bag with him to the corner of the room. “The name you choose will bring you ever closer to cementing a certain image because names are capable of reflecting one’s true character.”
Midnight gave them fifteen minutes initially, the class finally quiet to the point that a pin could have dropped and it would have been heard down the hall.
Noriko had at least chosen a good day to transfer. Or rather, the school had. Name-choosing day meant that no one would be focused on her.
Still, trying to focus with the remaining embarrassment in the back of her mind was nigh impossible. And tapping her marker on her desk only earned a new reason for them to look at her.
Noriko gripped the marker in her hand so tightly she was sure it would leave marks, her nerves transferring to her leg instead, bouncing it quietly beneath the desk.
No, she needed to focus. She couldn’t let her new class dictate what she could focus on.
Trying to breathe evenly, Aizawa’s words came back to her. A name reflecting one’s true character. An image to project.
Over the years she’d written out the names she would come up with in her sketchbook, only to leave the pages shredded in trashcans at the mall or at her school, or somewhere else that no one would ever think to find. If she’d been born with a fire quirk, she would have burned the pages to ash. As it were, she’d left them shredded.
The first of her classmates was called to the front.
Noriko had thought of several names over the years, but none of them ever had the right ring to them.
With all the betrayal and the despair she’d inflicted on herself, only one name came to mind, but did she dare claim it for herself? It was flashy and called attention to itself. She would be in the spotlight with it. People would judge her with it.
Of course, she would be judged anyway. That had always been her life.
“The Rainy Season Hero: Froppy!” the girl at the front of the class announced, the third one to announce her name, holding up her name board proudly. Midnight loved it. It was cute, Noriko could admit.
Okay, so she had a name… in theory. Did she have a hero tag?
“The Sturdy Hero: Red Riot!” Another classmate announced his, proudly. He was the guy that had gone up against Tetsutetsu.
The villainous hero… the darkness hero… the shadow hero… But all the tags that came to mind were everything that she wanted to get away from. Everything she’d spent her entire life battling against. Even her quirk wasn’t “hero” enough. It never had been. How could she hope to embody anything except darkness and despair?
More of her classmates took to the front of the class, announcing what they’d come up with, one after another. Every so often Midnight would offer her suggestions, but for the most part the class was student-run.
“You’re all doing great,” Midnight exclaimed after half the class had gone. “Let’s keep ‘em coming! Matsuda? Your turn!” Her name caught Noriko’s attention, and the entire class seemed to still. There it was again; she was an outsider.
Still, Noriko stood, her chosen name written on her name board. Even through her doubts, a small flame of determination gripped her heart. She’d fought for this for years. Even Dai had believed she could become a hero. She’d earned her place at UA, and Principal Nezu hadn’t expelled her on the spot for offering the terms for the information she had.
Reaching the front of the class, Noriko turned the board toward the class. They didn’t know her quirk. Class 1-B barely had; she’d made sure of that, so the looks of confusion on their faces was something to be expected. Midnight was the only one who looked remotely amused.
“Divinity,” Noriko announced quietly, the word rolling off her tongue before she could re-think her decision.
“No Hero tag?” Midnight quirked a brow.
Noriko shook her head, ginger waves bouncing. “Just Divinity.”
Noriko could feel the stares of her new classmates follow her back to her seat, but it didn’t last long as the rest of her class took to the front to announce what they’d chosen.
The class finished quickly after that and Aizawa unzipped his sleeping bag, clamoring out slowly. Was he always like this?
“Alright, now that everyone’s decided on their hero names,” Aizawa began, “we’ll go back to talking about the internships. They will last for a week. As for where you’ll have them, those who had offers from pros will be given your own lists, so you can choose from those yourself. Those who didn’t have offers will choose from among forty agencies around the country that will be accepting our interns. They all work in different places and have different specialties.”
As he spoke, Midnight passed out the papers to the students who had had offers, and then the papers that listed the forty agencies. She continued from where he left off. “For example, Thirteen would be focused on rescues from accidents and disasters more than fighting villains.”
“Think carefully before you choose,” Aizawa said as he headed for the door. “Be sure to turn it in before the end of the week.”
“Just two days?” Kirishima complained loudly, but no one seemed to mind him. Everyone was studying their respective papers.
Noriko had taken the page with the forty agencies. No one had extended an invitation to her. And why would they? She didn’t even pass the first event of the festival.
Bending the corner of the page back and forth, she scanned the list. It was divided into sections based on the type of work each did. There was the coastal agencies, rescue agencies, urban agencies, rural agencies, intelligence agencies, and then within each they were divided again based on any specialties.
She knew she’d always wanted to fight crime in an urban area, but at the same time, as long as she got on with a good agency it didn’t really matter where she was. As long as she could use her quirk to stop villains.
Even villains like her family.
The thought was sobering, but true. When Dai had asked her that very question all those years ago, she never would have thought the choice would be so hard. Now? Now, she was on the other side. And she was sure it had been the worst thing she had ever done. She had no confusion on whether or not it had been the right thing to do, but it had been hard.
At any rate, she would have to go through the list of agencies that night when she got back to her room. Do some research on them and figure it out that way.
Most of her classmates seemed to have the same idea as they read over their respective lists, talking to each other. Some stood, stretching, and meandered to their friends’ desks. Noriko carefully watched them, using her hair falling over her shoulder as a cover, suddenly finding herself with too much free time and nothing to keep herself occupied with.
“Noriko Matsuda, huh? I don’t think I met you in the sports festival,” Yaoyorozu said, turning around in her desk to face Noriko suddenly, making the new girl jump. A smile played on her lips. Incredulous that anyone was even talking to her, Noriko could only find herself gaping like a fish, trying to find words in her blanked-out mind. No one talked to her. At least not in 1-B. 1-A was proving themselves to be very odd, indeed.
“I, uh,” Noriko finally found her voice as two other girls stepped closer. Uraraka and another, with earphones hanging from her ears. Had she said her name was Earphone Jack before? “I didn’t make it very far,” Noriko admitted. It wasn’t like it was a secret. The entire festival had been broad casted to the nation. “I didn’t make it past the first event. But you both did amazing-” Noriko began, looking between Yaoyorozu and Uraraka before cutting herself off.
Don ’t seem too eager. They’ll think you’re up to something.
Noriko instead leaned back in her seat, disengaging, but none of them seemed to notice. “Well, thanks,” Uraraka replied cheerfully. Watching her fight against Bakugo had been inspiring, but Noriko held her tongue. If she said anything there was a good chance Uraraka would think Noriko was trying to cozy up to her. 1-B had, at least.
Uraraka continued, not noticing Noriko’s discomfort. “My guess is you know about most of us, but what about you?”
“Yeah, it’s odd that you would be transferred halfway through the semester,” Earphone Jack said.
Noriko shrugged, trying to shut down the subject like Dai could. She was a natural at it. “All I know is it was an administrative-”
“Error, yeah,” Yaoyorozu finished for her, but she wasn’t harsh about it, just curious. “It’s just odd, is all.”
“I agree,” Noriko said, trailing off, but not volunteering any more information. Didn’t they realize that she was a Matsuda?
An awkward silence fell between them for a brief moment, but Uraraka wasn’t one to be deterred. “What’s your quirk?”
Noriko had seen the sports festival. She’d been part of it, too, until she hadn’t made it back to the arena with the first forty two kids. If things had been different, she might have had a fighting chance at winning the thing, or at least making it to the battle tournament. But as it was, she’d watched the battles, and knew of everyone’s quirks in this class - her class. The entire world knew. But she had also seen the boy who had a sentient shadow within him, and knew what would likely happen when she named her quirk. She named it anyway.
“I can manipulate and solidify shadows,” she said, lifting her gaze to his momentarily. Tokoyami. He was sitting on his desk, talking with another of the students - the one with six arms. She caught his eye before glancing away again.
Likely no one else noticed, since as soon as she spoke, Uraraka exclaimed, “Oh, wow! That’s kind of similar to Tokoyami.” She turned, then, to the boy.
“That is a coincidence,” he mused, catching her gaze again. Of course Uraraka would comment on it. She was smart, and they all knew each other.
Kicking herself, Noriko fought the flush that rose to her cheeks. Of course attention would now be directed to her.
Thankfully, she was spared any more embarrassment as the door slid open and Present Mic entered with an energetic, “Yo - Yo - Yo! Look alive!” to begin English class.
As soon as the morning classes let out and lunch began, Uraraka glommed onto Noriko’s arm and didn’t let go. “You want to eat with us, Matsuda?” she asked as they walked. Noriko became very aware of Midoriya behind them, as well as Asui.
Wait. Did they actually want to eat lunch with her? As soon as 1-B had learned of her last name, they had seemingly decided as a class that she wasn’t welcome. 1-A so far had had no such rejection. As much as she wanted to believe in that: that things would be different this time around, hesitation held on.
1-B had actually been the anomaly. In middle school she’d had her friends, Aika and Fujiko. Aika had decided she could only hang out with them after she saw Noriko’s house, however, but it wasn’t as if she hadn’t had friends. She just had them quietly and without fanfare. Her parents, as loving as they were, put their foot down when it came to after school activities. If she wasn’t at home, or training with Dai, she was at school and vice versa. It had been a miracle that Dai had found her her job last summer. That job was really the only real reason she’d made it into UA. The recommendation that Safeguard had given her after that summer had been a blessing.
But she’d so far had few friends. Did she dare to trust Uraraka’s excitement?
Still, it was tempting, and a small smile wormed itself past her lips, even though she meant to keep it at bay.
“I’d like that,” she replied. This time would be different. 1-A was a fresh start. “Let me run to the bathroom really quick, though. I’ll meet you there?”
Uraraka and Asui nodded and followed Midoriya on to Lunch Rush as Noriko turned to head to the girl’s room.
Was she really so lucky? Uraraka was strong, there was no doubt about that. And she seemed to be as excited to be friends with Noriko as Noriko was to be friends with her. Did Uraraka really not care? Or did she just not know and would toss Noriko out with the trash as soon as she put two and two together?
Hesitation gnawed at her heart. Clenching her teeth to distract herself, Noriko tried to push past the thoughts. Cautiously optimistic, she decided. That’s all she could hope for at this point.
Of course, she was so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she didn’t see a certain blonde-haired boy approaching.
As they passed, he spoke, “Just because you switched classes doesn’t mean you’ll ever be a hero.”
His words shot ice through her veins, and she froze mid-stride. No, she’d made it this far. She’d make it the full way. She’d become a hero no matter what.
Turning, she opened her mouth to reply, only to find the hallway empty behind her.
Monoma was already gone. Besides. What could she have said? Especially after being the instrument in her family’s downfall? No, she wasn’t a hero. She was just a fake. Try as she might, she would never be a hero; he was right.
But… if that was the case, then Dai’s sacrifice, and her own sacrifices would be for naught. Everything she’d fought for, all the tears and agony she’d endured, it would all be for nothing.
And besides, she’d only done it because that was the only tool she still had in her bag of tricks. It was the only thing she knew to do.
And it had worked. That had to mean something.
No. Monoma was wrong. She’d be a hero.