Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Izuku Midoriya was a quiet kid, for a ten-year-old it wasn’t concerning per se, but he spent hours in complete silence as he would pour every bit of himself into anything and everything he found interesting or thought would help him.  Currently, that was learning how to code.

Granted learning the basics of how to code was not fun. At all.

It was far less of those cool fast-paced movements you’d see in the movies with the awesome dancing fingers and sick music and more so making sure you remembered where the god-forsaken semicolon was, so Izuku wasn’t quite having fun.  Logic loops that he was unsure how started, buggy elsif statements he didn’t remember making but can’t remove because it’s somehow a core part of the code now, and the dreaded colon instead of semicolons ruining his life at every turn.

But, for all passion, one must suffer, right?  He didn’t know, he just knew that coding would be super cool when he finally finished up, he couldn’t just come up with things to make like Mei could, Izuku could invent, but working off script wasn’t great for him, he did better in the digital world anyways.

His coding would no doubt be useful for both of them and in this modern world, it was surely a valuable skill for a hero to know, he assured himself over and over again.

What he really wanted to learn how to do was crazy things, but those were currently way out of his league, so instead he was ready to learn how to use variables instead the books and free online coding classes were more obsessed with teaching him how to use JAVA script.

Nothing good runs on JAVA script anymore!

Looking back on it you could argue nothing good ever ran on JAVA script, but Izuku wasn’t here to be mean, he just wanted to learn how to make a variable string.

That thought wasn’t allowed to simmer all that long because the door was haphazardly thrown open so fast it hit the wall, Izuku jumped, which sent his poor book flying out of his hands, landing on the floor with its spine to the ceiling, he had no doubt some of the pages were now bent, so when he looked up and saw Mei with a grin stretching ear to ear as she drug a small wagon behind her, he wasn’t exactly pleased with his sister.

“I FOUND SOMETHING!” Mei’s grin and manic tone made her look positively insane, as did the slight bounce that accompanied every single movement she made, as if she’d been hyped up on three different cups of coffee, sadly Izuku knew better than to think that.  Mei was just like that.

Inko let out a sigh, fear finally leaving her body from the shock her daughter just gave her, she put a hand over her heart, “Goodness Mei!  You shouldn’t throw the door open like that; it scared us.”

Mei’s grin dropped for a moment, “Sorry, but what I got is really cool!  I promise it’ll be worth it.”

“What is so important you nearly knock the door out of its frame?” Inko asked, trying to hide her exasperation.

Mei proudly gestured to the small wagon she had left just outside the door and grabbed its handle, pulling the wagon into the room Izuku got a clear look at the corpse inside of the wagon, and A CORPSE?!

“AH!  DEAD BODY!” Izuku yelled and recoiled, nearly falling out of the chair he was sitting in as he clambered to get away from the corpse.

Mei groaned a little, puffed her cheeks out in frustration she spoke with a slight whine, “No!  It’s a dead robot!  Which is entirely different on every level!”

Inko took a deep breath, trying her hardest to steady herself so she didn’t react negatively, no matter how she looked at this though, it was deeply concerning, after doing a few breathing exercises, she spoke clearly and softly, “Mei, dear.  Where on earth did you find a robot’s corpse?”

Mei smiled so sweetly and innocently, her voice sweet as she said, “The beach.”

Inko shook her head and pinched her forehead, “It’s always that damned beach.” Memories of Izuku dragging the same wagon into her house with Mei in it saying, ‘Look Momma I found a sister at the beach’, she shook her head and inhaled rather deeply, “Did it… did it wash ashore?”

“Nope, it was buried up near the wall.  It’s been there a long time.” Mei replied.

After the assurance that it was in fact not a dead body, Izuku found himself overtaken with curiosity, it wasn’t long before he got up and started examining the robot himself.  Its torso was missing a large chuck and one of its arms, the hips were missing a leg, although the head was mostly intact.  The few patches of pale synthetic but very human-like skin implied the facial shape was supposed to be rather angular underneath all the grime and over top all of the internal mechanisms, on the head there were a few scattered patches of dirty hair that seemed almost brown.

Around the robot were a few pieces of good scrap metal, and amazingly especially considering how long it looked like the robot had been buried were some scraps of clothing, Izuku was enamored with what the story of this robot could possibly be.

“Momma, please!  I’ll be so good if you let me, so can I please keep em?” Mei asked, eyes wide in an attempt at puppy dog eyes.

Inko raised an eyebrow, “What in the world do you plan on doing with most of a robot?”

“I wanna keep him and rebuild him!” Mei exclaimed, just as happy as can be.

What were the risks associated with this?  How would Inko even check?  She couldn’t.  but telling Mei no didn’t look like an option, so instead she sighed and shook her head, “Fine, just… be careful?”

Mei nodded and smiled.  “Izu!  Wanna help me take it to the workshop?”

He agreed and after they wheeled the wagon to the workshop, he helped her get it onto a table by grabbing the legs and helping her drag it.  It bumped against the floor a few times, but that wasn’t too big of a deal for them, not like the robot was going to break any more than it already was.

Once everything was situated inside the workshop, the siblings began working hard to clean off all the parts, especially since they discovered the arm and leg were easy to get off the torso due to having some nice release latches, as they expected a lot of the metal was, corroded, rusted over, or worn so thin it was unusable, but Izuku began to wonder about what this robot might have been like it when it was online.

After all, just how old was this thing?  What was the world like back then?

Mei was the one cleaning the torso itself, “Madicce? What the heck is a Madicce?” Mei asked out of nowhere.

Izuku was curious too, he leaned over to look, curiosity-driven by the fact that he too had never heard that name or seen that logo, the two wandered out of the room like two lost ducklings to ask their mother.

Approaching her desk, Mei stood as tall as she could announcing “Momma!  We’ve got ourselves a question.”

“Yes?” Mom replied.

“What’s Madicce?”

Mom blinked a few times, “I… don’t know, I’ve certainly never heard of it, let’s find out together.” She motioned for them to come closer and turned to her computer, switching over to a new tab, she asked for the spelling and typed the name into the search and an article popped up.

“Madicce goes out of business after years of failure, what could this mean for the future of AI and physical technology?” Mom read the article title aloud. Clicking through a little more, they discovered it was apparently the only real competitor in the field of robotics back in 2017 that the then-famous Kirijo group had, “That article was published back in 2020.  It would seem it’s a company that has been inactive for over 200 years.”

Mei grinned an evil grin, “If the company has been shut down, what about the patents?”

After a few minutes of digging, “All expired.” Mom said, with a tinge of amusement, her tone seemed proud of her children.

Mei turned to Izuku, evil ideas floating through her mind, “Wanna build a robot?”

Of course, she wasn’t the only gremlin in this household, Izuku nodded, equally evil ideas swirling in his head and a fire building in his chest.

Mei beamed, fists tightly clinched as she bounced with excitement, “I can’t wait!  Let’s get right to work!”

That was three years ago.

The Midoriya siblings were very careful in their work, and most time they could spend doing anything they spent on working on the robot, much to the dismay of both Inko and former best friend of the siblings, Bakugo Katsuki.

During school hours he made it a point to remind them they could be rebuilding an evil robot hell-bent on world domination, but they were mostly sure that wouldn’t happen.

Izuku did have a nightmare about it though.

Granted in order to actually rebuild the thing, they were met with so many hiccups, such as parts and power not being super easy to come by.

Much to Izuku’s may though, one of the many coding languages he had to learn to make sure the original operating system could recognize the new limbs was JAVA script.

GOD. DAMN. JAVA. SCRIPT.

Izuku hates JAVA Script!

Izuku tried to learn all he could about the robot, such as realizing its memory appeared to be fully intact, although there was a strangely empty pocket inside of the robot’s head, like, enough space for a human brain strangely big and empty.  He also discovered the memory banks were super heavily encrypted, anytime he made some good progress, he’d be struck by the fact that suddenly the program would change its encrypting style, but he did manage to find the designation of the unit he was working on. The robot was called Genos.  Or at least everyone in the brief audio logs called it, he wondered if it stood for something.

Either way, it was really interesting huh?

Anyway, 10 months before the UA entrance exam they finally got Genos working, for the first time, he was operational.

Mei and Izuku waited with baited breaths as they powered him on.

Instantly as if Genos was a person who awoke from a coma he shot straight up, then pulled away from the cords attached to him, both his vision and Izuku’s laptop that Genos had been hooked up to became overloaded with error messages, Genos held up his hands and looked to the two people in the room, his last recorded memory was a fight, meaning he must still be in a fight, “Where am I?” it demanded in what Izuku could have sworn was Kacchan’s voice.

“Our workshop.” Mei said cautiously.

Genos couldn’t connect to the internet and his internal clock was reading nonsense, the robot seemed to be panicking as it looked around, backing up slowly he lowered his palms, realizing that all but one of his weapons were offline, “Master?” he asked with what seemed to be a hint of fear in his voice.

Mei blinked slowly, “Not what I’d prefer to be called no.”

The robot looked worried as he realized that they were the only ones in the room, he looked between the two children almost as if he were scanning them, the piercing yellow of his eyes chilled Izuku to his very core, “Neither of you is the doctor, nor are you any of the registered heroes in the Association Database.  Children, what is the current day, month, and year?” the robot asked.

“It’s July 17th 22XX?” Izuku replied.

The robot’s eyes shot wide, and the flexible Iron that Stark Industries made was clearly a good investment based on the expressiveness of the robot so far, its voice shook with a slightly horrified sound to it, “That is impossible.  That is 260 years ahead of my last recorded memory.  Which is wrong, I have not been offline for that long!”

Izuku opened up his phone and flashed the date at the robot, “I’m afraid you really have been offline that long.”

Genos’s vision flashed with POWER ERROR warnings, and the children directed him to sit back down on the table, he complied, and they said several things about his current state, they hooked the laptop back up to him and began to try and treat whatever other ailments might be plaguing his systems.

He couldn’t really pay attention to that though, his diagnostics were telling him clear as day that there were no biological components connected to his system, meaning he was completely a robot now.

Add on top of that the fact that if what the children said was true, then everyone would have passed away, they were incredible and strong, but strong enough to surpass death itself for over a hundred years?!

His cruel mind made him think of all of them, Master Saitama, Mumen Rider, Tatsumaki, Zombieman, Child Emperor, Monica, Sonic, Bang and Bomb-sama, Fubuki, Flashy Flash, they were all dead.  All of his friends were dead.

Surely, they hadn’t lost, right?  He desperately tried to scan his memories for information on what he had been doing before deactivation, but so much of his memory past his 21^st birthday was corrupted or encoded greater than what his current power levels could get past.

His eyes shot to the green child, the burning yellow of his iris piercing Izuku’s very soul.  “What happened to Master Saitama?”

Izuku squirmed under Genos’s gaze, “I-I dunno? W-who even is this ‘Master Saitama?’ You speak of?”

The robot seemed ticked by that based on the frown he gave the boy, “How could you not know him!  He is… he was the greatest hero!” his eyes lit up and he looked wistfully towards the ground, “He can defeat any enemy with a single punch!  He is also my Master and Sensei.”

“The greatest hero?  You mean like All Might?” Izuku asked, “I’ve never heard of this Saitama hero, but that power sounds a lot like All Might.”

Mei sighed, “Oh dear, here we go again.”

“Who is this All Might you speak of?” Genos asked.

Izuku gasped in horror, “You don’t know?”

“I could say the same to you.” He fired back.

Izuku rushed and quickly minimized the applications connected to their newfound (relatively speaking) robotic friend and opened View-tube to show him All Might’s debut video.

“So what?  He saved a hundred people in ten minutes.  Master Saitama took out an invading alien fleet in 23.”

“Aliens aren’t real!  If they were we’d know about ‘em!” Mei replied.

“Stop!” Izuku yelled, “Let’s slow down, how about we give introductions before getting into talk about aliens?”

Mei nodded and frowned, “Oh yeah, because playing an icebreaker game is so much more interesting than hearing about aliens from the talking sentient Android, that we spent three years building.”

“It may not be more interesting but it's polite!” he snapped back before nervously turning to the robot, trying his hardest to give the man a friendly smile, “My name’s Midoriya Izuku.”

“Midoriya Mei.”

He stayed silent for a moment, almost as if he was in debate.  “Genos.”

Mei nodded, “So Genos, Aliens you say?”

He nodded, “Like I said, Master Saitama took out a whole fleet of them.  If you don’t believe me, you could watch the stored memory.”

One completely necessary 23-minute special later (One-Punch Man, anime 2015 episode 12, The Strongest Hero):

“And if what you say is true, he took them out so efficiently that they haven’t been back since.” Genos said with a small smile, eyes filled with pride.

Mei nodded, “I really hit the jackpot that day huh Izu?”

“What day?” Genos asked.

“Day I brought you home from the beach, speakin of which, how’d you end up on the beach?” she asked.

He opened his mouth to speak and then he shut it.  “Data locked.  That memory is corrupted.  Strange.  That doesn’t normally happen.”

The siblings looked between each other and the robot, Izuku slowly asked, “Genos, is everything working?”

He hummed for a moment, deep in thought.  His voice was even as he spoke, “Well my battery is abnormally low, it says it is at one hundred percent and yet it doesn’t have enough power to use the electric whips.  Just as well my repulsers are offline as are the boosters in my feet.  X-ray, thermal and color vision are offline as well as plenty of other weapons.”

Mei raised an eyebrow, “You have weapons?”

“I had weapons.  In this build, I apparently do not.”  He replied as he flexed his fingers, “Strange, you seem to have prioritized movement in all of the smaller joints instead.  I can do much more… delicate things.”

Mei looked to Izuku with a look that could only mean one thing, he nodded, and they both spoke in tandem, “Just tell us what’s missing, and we’ll do our best to fix it.”

“Do you children truly believe you can rebuild everything that I once had?”

Mei smirked, confidence oozing out of her tone of voice, “Given enough time and the right materials we could rebuild everything you had and more.”

“Perhaps this could benefit us all.”

Izuku didn’t like the look of the error warnings, lots of ‘file corrupted’ errors, and the like, he pursed his lips as he tried to dismiss all the error warnings, “Do your legs work alright?”

Genos nodded as he stood and kicked at the air a few times.

“Great!  Then we should introduce you to Mom!”

“I do not mind meeting your mother, however, before we leave here, I need to know what happened to Master Saitama’s legacy.”

“Can do!” Izuku replied, quickly typing away, the only thing he could find even when he used the Way Back Machine about any Saitamas was a report about the Hero Association.

“What is this?” Genos asked pointing to the link to a wiki about The Fall of The Hero Association.

Izuku followed the link and Mei leaned in closer, which made things pretty cramped, Izuku had to strain to move his arm without getting in the way of their vision, Mei started reading, “The Fall of The Hero Association is a tragedy that occurred in the year 20XX, taking over three hundred and fifty lives in the process, some heroes, some innocent civilians, so many people died to due to terrible actions,” Mei paused, having to actually breathe.

Genos picked up where Mei stopped for a breath, “The Fall was caused solely by one person, The S-class rank 2, the Tornado of Terror, who lost control of her Meta-ability in a fit of rage induced by another S-class implying that she was a child, the Tornado proceeded to kill every hero in the S-class meeting at the time, rank 1 Blast wasn’t present at the time, after finishing off the S-class she took out the chain of command in the Hero Association causing them not to be able to broadcast word of her turn to evil.” Genos growled, clearly enraged by the article.

Izuku finished the last bit, and all of them worried, about the weird way the article talked about things, “After wiping out S-class and the chain of command she then proceeded to kill every A and B-class hero, sparing C-class because in her own words, “C-class is full of nothing but trash who isn’t even good enough for B-class.”  Afterward, she then faced off against Rank 1 S-class hero Blast, who was able to apprehend and finish the Tornado off at the cost of a C-class she was holding hostage, subsequent funerals were held for each and every life that was lost, Blast being the only survivor worked with the remaining C-class to help rebrand the Neo Heroes into the Hero Public Safety Commission.”

Genos growled, “Bullshit!”

“Hey, cool off, that much anger is gonna burn your thermal paste.” Mei warned.

“Tatsumaki would never have done that!  She was brash and foolish, but never murderous!  And Blast was…” Genos shook his head, “A coverup had to have been made here!  I refuse to believe this.”

Mei smiled, “Oh I love a good conspiracy.”

Little did any of them know that the three of them would be starting to discover a whole lot of information that went far beyond what any of them would expect and would prove that they might just be connected in more ways than just simple happenstance.

Shadow’s office!!!

Bakugo:  *Barges into Shadow’s office* It’s been two goddamn years and I still have several complaints.

Shadow:  *Rolls their eyes* Are you going to do this every time?  I suppose for familiarity’s sake I should say ‘So do I, so suck it up.’

Izuku:      Yeah Kacchan, suck it up.

Bakugo:  *sees Genos* DID YOU REPLACE ME!?

Genos:    I am not a replacement, If you still haven’t read the script, I’m not sure you can be helped, but I still serve a different purpose in this story.

Bakugo:  I can’t believe this, you’ll just let anyone in here won’t you Shadow?  Genos isn’t even from Boko no Hero!

Ryuji Sakamoto: *opens the door* Hey Shadow, about Next week’s script, I noticed that you got like, the word cake a weird number of times and…

Ryuji: OK there’s too many blondes here, I’ll take my leave.

Ryuji:    *Closes door*

Bakugo: Persona?!  God, you’re an even bigger weeb now!  And literally, ANYONE can waltz in here!

Chapter Text

Purpose.

It was never something Genos truly struggled with before, he had a goal.  He was going to defeat the crazed cyborg that destroyed his village, and after he accomplished that goal, living and training with Master Saitama was more than enough for him.

But now, everyone he knew was dead.  Genos was just a science project some children worked on in their spare time.

He was now a true and actual robot.  No longer was he more metal than man, there was truly nothing organic left about him, he only existed to serve simple functions given to him. 

The very thought of it made him want to leave and fall back into the sand where they found him, deactivate and rot, allow whatever might be left in this metal shell of a body to escape and go be with his friends in the afterlife.

But his pride wouldn’t allow that.  He was brought back for a reason, he had to have been.

“Genos, would you please pass me the salt?” Izuku asked, staring at his food.

He compiled and just as soon as he mumbled a thank you the dinner table returned to an uncomfortable silence.

Genos was only here because Miss Inko insisted everyone who lives here must attend dinner, as she says, ‘it makes everyone feel like family’. 

He didn’t understand why he counted since he couldn’t eat nor was he part of their family, but he had learned the very first night that no wasn’t an option.  When he had refused her request, Mei used a release hatch and took his legs, when he tried to use his arms to get away, those were taken as well because ‘What Momma says, goes.’ 

Escape wasn’t an option, Mei made that very clear.

Being a head and chest was unpleasant enough for him to learn that when Mei says she will take his legs, she will take his legs with no hesitation.

But he’d been active for a week now, learning about the world that passed him by while he slept, technology had barely evolved at all, if anything it degraded considering the parts to rebuild him were scarce.

He had been made with top-of-the-line stuff, Kirijo and Stark Tech at every point, even the bolts holding him together had been the best money could buy, and yet, now he was put together without a blueprint and made of actual scraps.

He could, however, feel in his fingers.  It was something he couldn’t help musing over as he grabbed the salt, he could feel it again, something he couldn’t before.  It was more like when he was a human.

He paused, narrowing his eyes at the salt, a pointless gesture, could he even truly remember what being human felt like?  After all he just comparing data stored on a hard drive compared to the raw data he received at the moment.

Things have been… strange.  He doesn’t feel less involved in the world, he’s still actively living in it, able to react as he used to, but his thoughts are linear in nature.  He supposed that was the limit of the processors he now had as a brain, but it still bothered him to think so sterilely.

His thoughts were organized, less vocabulary used, just a simple train of thought each time.

He supposed with his lack of an actual brain, he should have been thankful that he wasn’t just a thoughtless droid who was nothing but a tool, but in some ways he almost wished he was a brainless tool, if he wasn’t aware of what he was before, this emotional pain he felt might not be there.

The children rebuilt his brain incredibly well, to the point where he can think and have emotions almost like a human, and due to this fact, he was inevitably overcome with a feeling of sadness and dissatisfaction.

All of his features only made it more obvious as to what he was missing, not that they could have possibly done any better, for children they had done far beyond what could ever be expected, but the knowledge still bothered him.

It didn’t help that for as much as he wanted to express this, dumping this on children was uncalled for in every way, but how ever could he be okay with this?

He was a machine without a directive, and being more charitable, he was a man without a purpose.

He didn’t complete his life goal and he was well aware of it!  He was supposed to become a student worthy of Saitama-sensei, to really make him look at Genos, to see his strength, but he failed and died to circumstances he couldn’t even remember!

The last thing he truly remembered without summoning error messages was him being on the table in Doctor Kuseno’s lab, strapped to the table with his voice module disabled.  The Doctor softly repeating ‘It’s hopeless, he’s lost it.’

Had Genos gone mad, and the Doctor merely discarded him on a beach due to him being unfixable on a mental level?

If so perhaps he should just be deactivated again.

After all, he hadn’t completed his life goal and now, he never could.  The crushing emptiness couldn’t be worth a second chance, he felt as if he could truly feel just how cold the metal that made up his body really was, how he would never be warm again.

On top of that, everyone he’d ever known is now long gone.

Master Saitama, Silverfang, Tornado Brat, The Hellish Blizzard, Flashy Flash, Sonic...

He was still having trouble coming to grips with the fact that he will never see any of them ever again.

Perhaps deactivation is worth it.  He wondered briefly if since he is no longer a man, is some kind of soul attached to him, will said soul leave his body if it were destroyed?  Is the original Genos now in the afterlife?

Just as it all seemed so hopeless.

He just wished someone would give him a purpose, something to live for.  A goal.

Miss Inko cleared her throat to gain everyone’s attention.

Her eyes remained soft as she looked to him, “So, Genos.  It’s been a week now.  You are welcome to stay here but I will require something of you first.”

He looked up from the table where he’d been staring, “What can I do for you, Ma’am?”

She smiled, it was a warm and kind smile, much like the one he had faint memories of his own mother giving him just before bed as she would tuck a young Genos in, it makes sense as to why such a smile would be on Miss Midoriya’s face.  She is a mother herself after all.

Oh, Genos seemed to have lost himself in thought.  It happened so fast, he was unsure how that was possible…

“Well, I have a rule.  Everyone who lives under my roof must have a job.  I work as a lawyer, and Izuku and Mei go to school.  If you want to live under my roof you must contribute something. So I’ll give you a choice since you seem in need of options now.  You can either get a traditional job, or there’s a position only you can fill.”

“And what would that be?” Genos asked with a raised eyebrow.

Inko motioned to the children, “Protect them as a bodyguard.  I trust that since you are a fully grown adult, you would be able to keep my children safe.  Do this, and I would allow you to say under my roof.”

Izuku’s eyes widened, and, in an instant, all of his attention was on Genos as he stared at him with pleading eyes, “Would you do that Genos?  You wouldn’t have to do it too long, perhaps just until we get through UA?”

Mei punched Izuku’s shoulder lightly, “Come on Izu, have some self-respect, don’t beg.  Side’s he’s his own person, we gotta respect that.”

Genos couldn’t help but allow a soft smile to creep onto his face.  To have been rebuilt by such intelligent kids is an honor.

It also wasn’t the worst possibility, he could have been found by a mad scientist, a government organization, or turned into scrap metal.

But he wasn’t.

These children could have wiped all of his memory banks and deleted Genos, started fresh with a personal robot.

But they didn’t.

It suddenly seemed to clear to Genos that he couldn’t believe he didn’t realize it before.  He had a purpose; it was given to him by his re-creators!  Without a doubt, he knew and understood why he was rebuilt.  Why he’s still here.

“I only hope I can live up to your standards.”

She chuckled, “I have every belief that you will Genos, of course it’s not going to be easy, trouble seeks these two out like moths to a flame.”

Mei puffed out her cheeks and crossed her arms, “We’re right here momma!  Don’t talk about us like we ain’t in the room!”

Miss Inko chuckled, “Sorry Mei.  Force of habit.”

Soon they finished dinner, and while Genos was helping clean up a new conversation arose, most of which he tuned out.

Something about the children’s friends, almost wholly unrelated to Genos, but something caught his ear.

“Are we still going to see Kacchan tomorrow?” Izuku asked.

Miss Inko nodded, “Yup, maybe this time Mei’s dress will stay intact?”

Mei scoffed. “It is not my fault that the last dress was torn to shreds.  Bakugo is the one who decided to bring out a drone.  Ain’t my fault I was the only one brave enough to fetch it from the rose bush.”

Miss Inko pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head, “What am I going to do with you?  Why did you decide to jump in a rose bush?”

“I already told you!” she said with a pout and a whine, “It was the only way to get Bakugo’s drone back!”

Genos’s eyes shot wide open and focused on Mei, “Did you say Bakugo?” he spoke with an unusual optimism.

“Yeah…  Why?”

He would have to explain wouldn’t he?  He readjusted to be sitting up straighter, “You know how I explained that I was once human?”

Mei nodded, “Ain’t sure what that’s got to do with my dress or Bakugo but alright.”

“Mei!  Don’t sass your elders.” Miss Inko instructed.

“The connection is simple, Mei.  Bakugo is my family name.” Genos replied.

Izuku’s eyes shot impossibly wide. “For real?  Oh my god, this changes EVERYTHING!”

“How so?” Genos and Mei asked in unison.

Izuku clasped his hands and a grin stretched across his face, “Well for one it means I have shots to fire back at Kacchan now…” he shook his head, returning to his normal cuter and contained expressions as he turned to Genos, “And it also means you might be related to our friends.”

“When exactly are you planning on visiting this family?” Genos asked.

“Tomorrow.  You are more than welcome to come but only if you are comfortable, Genos.” Inko offered.

He nodded.  “I would like to see these possible descendants.”

Especially since he knew very well that his family died years before he deactivated.

*---*

Bakugo Residence - The next morning

Originally this was going to be simple.  Fast.  A quick visit in and out.

Now it would be anything but.

Izuku couldn’t help his strange feeling of unrest as they ascended the stairs to the Bakugo apartment, after all, it isn’t often you get to tell your friend you dug up one of their ancestors and kinda sorta reanimated him.

Would they think they were mad scientists?

Actually Kacchan already thought him to be crazy so he wasn’t sure if this would actually change anything.

Mei seemed completely unbothered by their recent realization that Genos was a Bakugo, but Izuku didn’t get how she could be so nonchalant about it, this was big!

Mei really couldn’t care less though.

After Inko rang the doorbell, Izuku waited with bated breath.

Mitsuki opened the door with an uncharacteristically bright smile on her face, “Inko, dear, welcome!  Come on in!  I think the damned brat’s near done with his cleaning.”

Ushering the group inside she gave Izuku a light and knowing pat on the back with an evil smirk, “You know, Katsuki has just been dying to talk to you again.”

“Have not!” Kacchan yelled from the living room as he made an effort to quickly put down the duster.

Mitsuki gave Mei a hug then blinked a few times when she saw Genos.

She looked around at Izuku and Mei, then to Inko and Genos again.  She didn’t remember that one.  “Inko.  Who’s this teenager?  Where did you get a kid?  I know he can’t be yours.”

Inko took a deep breath, “His name is Genos.  I’m sure you remember the little ‘project’ the kids were working on.”

She lowered her gaze and tried not to let her jaw hang open while Marusu gasped, “You’re shitting me.”

With a huff of laughter she approached Genos and grabbed his face, turning his head in all different directions to get a good look at him, it really felt like she was studying him, “This is the hunk ‘o junk they dug up on Takoba eh?”

She pursed her lips and her eyes shot to Izuku, “He sure uh, looks familiar.”

“Yeah.”  Inko chuckled nervously, hiding her hands behind her back so she could fidget with her hands, “There’s a lot to go over, you might want to sit down.”

Mitsuki complied, as did Marusu and Katsuki, all watching intensely as Inko struggled to find a good way to phrase it, after explaining the backstory of it all she capped it off with, “And apparently, Bakugo Genos is his full name.”

“Different Kanji, I’m sure.” Mitsuki replied as if it was a demand.

“There’s no way he’s one of us.” Katsuki added.

Inko sighed and shook her head, “Nope.  Same Kanji.  There is no doubt about it, he’s certainly a member of your family, just… one from around two hundred years ago.”

“Pleased to meet you Ma’am.” Genos held his hand out.

She returned the handshake, “So you were human at some point I assume?  I know my family is weird, but I don’t think we’re that weird.” She said it with a certain snark that implied she didn’t intend the malice behind her words,

The corners of his lips raised at that, “Oh I assure you they were plenty weird, but yes.  I was a human a very long time ago.” Genos replied.

“Well then it’s great to meet you!” Izuku was blown away by the kind smile Mitsuki offered Genos.

Marusu spoke up, “Now that you mention it, I think I remember hearing the name Genos somewhere, do we still have that photo album out, Honey?”

She nodded, “I think so,” she turned to Genos with as friendly of a smile as her rough features could manage, “looks like we might even have a picture or two of you in an old family album.”

“So, this is the famous Metal Head that has been taking up all of your time?  Doesn’t look like much.” Katsuki asked as he appeared behind Genos and Izuku, scaring Izuku greatly by speaking suddenly.

He knocked on Genos’s leg, which was met with Genos trying to shoo Katsuki away.

Mei was grinning like a devil, “Actually that’s your great-great-great-great-great uncle. You outta show some respect.”

Katsuki looked over Genos.  “Don’t think so.  He’d be dead.  And much more handsome.  Us Bakugos are a good-looking bunch.”

Mei scoffed and made a grossed out looking face, “The only part your right on is the dead bit.  Auntie and Uncle must have hogged all the good looks.”

When he made sure that Inko and his parents weren’t looking he shot her the bird which she returned two-fold.

She rolled her eyes when he stuck his tongue out and began shifting from her heels to the balls of her feet, “Anyways, if you can believe him and all the crazy stories he shares about the past then yer looking at the very first robot zombie.”

Genos raised an eyebrow, “Mei I’ve put up with quite a few of your nicknames but I draw the line at zombie.”

Katsuki nodded, a pretentious air forming around him as he crossed his arms and did his best to get right in Genos’s face, “Ok, then.  If you were really a Bakugo, then what was your quirk?”

Genos shrugged, “It’s been 200 years since I was a human, even if I had’ve had one I certainly wouldn’t remember.”

“Tch.  Whatever.  Everyone knows we’ve had great quirks for generations.” Katsuki rolled his eyes.

Izuku coughed and earned a further roll of his eyes, “You know that wasn’t directed at you, Deku.”

“I think I found it.” Mitsuki’s voice distracted the kids as she placed the book down on the dinner table and started to flick through the pages, finally stopping on the page she needed, “Here it is, we have one picture of him,” she glanced between the picture and the man in front of her, narrowing her eyes as she examined them, “Yeah that’s definitely the same guy, but he’s next some random person.”

Genos turned to Mitsuki with widened eyes, continuously impressing Mei and Izuku with his expressive capabilities , “May I see?”

She shrugged and tried her hardest to suppress a groan, “Isn’t that the point?”

She found the picture and pointed to it, sure enough, it was of Genos and some bald guy holding up their hero licenses.

Genos smiled as soon as he saw the photo, “Sensei…”

Mei frowned, the man looked exactly the same in the picture as he had in Genos’s memories, completely unimpressive.

She pursed her lips and tried to find something nice to say, “He sure is uh… something.  He doesn’t really look like the earth-shattering hero you talked about.”

“He never did,” Another soft smile that was almost comically fond, “that was part of what made him so powerful, everyone was always surprised by his ability.”

“Is that the Saitama you told us about?” Inko asked.

Genos nodded, not looking away from the picture, a unique sorrow on his face and sadness in his voice as he spoke, “Indeed, that was the day we became licensed heroes.”

“Those don’t look like hero licenses, what’s with the letters on the side?  And the layout is pretty jumbled.” Izuku couldn’t help but ask, after all he knew heroes licenses, and those didn’t look right at all.

Genos seemed surprised, “You’ve never seen a hero license before, have you?  The letters indicate what rank you are, lowest being D and highest being S.  Most of everyone starts at C class.”

Inko laughed, “Oh dear, that system was abandoned long ago, before I was even born I believe.”

“What?  Then how do you rank your heroes?” he asked.

Inko patted Izuku on the head, “I’m sure you can explain it better than I can.”

He smiled and nodded, “Numbers!  I suppose your S class would be our Top ten!  As you go down the list they haven’t risen yet or they are worse than the hero above them.”

Genos nodded slowly, “Seems counterproductive to only have ten S class heroes but I can see the point.” Turning to Mitsuki he held up the book and pointed to the picture of him and Saitama, “May I keep this picture?”

“Of course not!” she yelled, her features softening the moment after, “However, I’ll gladly make you a copy of it.”

Genos nodded softly, still staring at the photo, “That sounds nice.”

Mei pursed her lips, “Hey, Genos is made outta metal there too.” She pointed to the picture, “What’s up with that?  Ain’t no way you and Boom-boom are direct descendants.”

Mitsuki nodded, “Oh yes, in that generation we’d come from…” she flipped through some pages but was interrupted by Genos.

“My brother,” Genos stated as she flipped to a page where a picture of a man who looked a lot like an older Katsuki but with a scar running down the left side of his face was also posing with Saitama, “Kusuo.”

*---*

Once they were home, they escorted Genos to the roof for his first charging time, “Sorry about this, it’s the easiest way to power you though.” Izuku said as Mei attached some wires to his back that kept him hooked up to a solar panel.

Mei shook her head and decreased her zoom, wiping her forehead of sweat, “Some of these are awfully tricky to hook up too.”

“I understand, I appreciate the effort to keep me powered on.” He replied as he sat down.

Mei nodded, “All systems in the green?”

“Well my battery is near empty.” He snarked.

“If you’re well enough to joke then you’re well enough to sleep.” She stuck her tongue out at him, “Good night Genos.” And with that she gave the signal for Izuku to power him down.

As they descended the stairs back into the apartment Mei asked a question Izuku didn’t expect, “Do you think it’s like sleeping?”

“What?”

She pursed her lips, “When we turn him off, do you think it’s like sleeping?”

He nodded, “Yeah, I can imagine it is.”

“I hope it is.  Otherwise….” she sighed and began putting her hair into a ponytail to keep the heat off her neck.

He shook his head, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, at least not until you tell me.”

“Well, if he doesn’t dream, then the world would just stop for him.  Isn’t it kind of sad to think of the world passing you by for an unknown amount of time?  Theoretically we could forget to reactivate him and he’d just be stuck there forever.”

She shuttered, “He wouldn’t even know he’d been abandoned, he would just cease to be.”

“Mei have you been reading horror stories again? I don’t exactly want to get existential before bed.”

“Right, sorry.”

*---*

The next day – The workshop

Genos insisted on watching Mei and Izuku work, all they planned on doing was tinkering with no real goal so it shouldn’t have been a big deal, except having a pair of robotic eyes following you wherever you go is really unnerving.

“Is there something I can help you with Genos?” Mei asked.

He shook his head.  “I am just observing.”

Mei sighed, “Alright then, but if you have something to say, spit it out.”

He was silent for a moment, yellow irises observing their every movement for a long period of time until he startled them with his voice, “Well, in that case.  I was wondering if I still had my hero’s license.”

“Of course not?  No way that card survived being buried with you.” Mei replied.

He pointed to the left side of his chest, “I used to have a small pocket built-in, did you remove it by any chance?”

Mei chuckled, “Oh so that was a pocket!  I thought the metal was dented.”  Mei pointed to the large box in the corner, “If we kept it then it’s probably in here.”

They spent an hour helping Genos dig through the scraps of… himself in the corner, his wild goose hunt seemed to be important to him so they were willing to help.

“I found it!” Izuku said as he pulled the thin metal pocket out of the many bits and bubbles.

He handed it to Genos, and he carelessly opened it up by simply pulling the metal apart.  Indeed, his license was still in it and intact.

“I guess that means I am still a licensed hero.” Genos said.

Mei shook her head, “Ain’t no way!  Surely it expired by now.”

Genos smirked, “The rule was unless your license is revoked then you have it until you die.”

“This license says you’re a registered hero with the Hero Association.” Mei observed.

“And?” he asked.

Izuku smiled sheepishly, “They had a name change, it’s the Hero Commission nowadays.”

He shrugged, “Surely I can get it renewed?”

Mei and Izuku shook their heads and spoke in unison, “Surely a living weapon of mass destruction is something anyone would want to get their hands on.”

“I currently can’t use any of my weapons.”

Mei nodded as she closed her eyes, “Currently.  Regardless they’d still try to steal you.” She swiftly got behind him and began to pat him on the back, “I may not have made you originally, but I damn sure built at least ¾ of your current limbs.”

“I agree on that matter.” Genos replied.

Mei smiled, “Then surely you agree that it’s not ok, if someone tries to take you away from me!”

“I’m not sure why but you kids remind me of Sensei.”

“I hope that’s a good thing.  Being compared to a middle-aged man isn’t exactly what most girls wanna hear ya know.” Mei replied.

“It is a good thing, there’s something special about you kids, even if no one else realizes it.”  Maybe not break the universe with time travel and hand Genos the only proof that you yourself do not remember, but certainly these kids were powerful.

After that day Genos would sometimes call Izuku Sensei and Mei Master.

Chapter Text

It was a Sunday when the Midoriya siblings went out with Genos for his first real mission slash beginnings to integrate him into real society, the hardest test of all meant to really force him to act normal: Grocery shopping.

Of course, shopping meant they couldn’t exactly cause problems, any of them, which meant they were given a list and told to head out in a timely manner, meaning they had to spit up and play rock paper scissors to figure out who got Genos to carry the bags for them.

Mei won with a devious smirk and a rather pointy pair of scissors, she had Genos carry her away to show off her crushing victory and promised to update him if they buy anything from his side of the list due to a really good sale or something.

As soon as he left the store with his half of the groceries his phone dinged.

Meimei: I think I’ve found out what Genos’s quirk is.

Meimei: He is a beast when it comes to bargains, mom is gonna love the extra funds!

That calmed Izuku’s nerves somewhat, at least as much as it could knowing his sister was walking around with a giant machine of mass destruction.  

They had tried to hide that fact, of course he was wearing a few more layers than normal but hopefully people would think his eyes were part of his quirk and he was just a little paler than the average person.

He shook his head, he’s thinking too much again, “I really need to hurry back.”

With one more quick text, he shoved his phone back into his cargo shorts, he was so far in his own head he almost tripped on nothing, he really shouldn’t be carrying all of his bags in his right hand, equal weight distribution would help him more anyway, he needed to bulk up evenly for the hero course.

He began to wonder if Mei was having better luck than he was, at least three of the items on his list weren’t in stock.

He had entered an overpass while trying to get past his ever-intrusive thoughts, he didn’t need to worry about Mei, Genos was there to stop her from fighting someone if they cut in front of her in line.

He took a deep breath to try and ground himself in the moment, and he realized just how awful the overpass smelled, there was a positively putrid stench lingering in the air.

He snuck a glance at the sewer grate that was no doubt the culprit, he hoped all the pipes were in order, but it was pungent enough that he was sure a shower would be in order.

He shrugged, it had rained yesterday, perhaps that was the cause, it was nothing to concern himself with.

The manhole cover burst up and a grotesque green sludgy and gelatinous blob of sentient slime slowly crept from the sewers, the sheer shock of it was enough to cause Izuku to fall over.

At the noise it turned its head to look at him, the creature split its face open to smile at Izuku, huge disproportionate yellow and rotting with chunks missing in places, all of that coupled with its horrifying and bulging eyes made Izuku want to run away and never look back, but he was completely paralyzed with fear.

“Oh, it is just my lucky day!  A weak and unsuspecting looking stealth cloak, just perfect.” its voice sandpaper across his eardrums, full of gravel and malice and more than a little human waste.

Izuku screamed at himself to run, but he couldn’t convince his body to move in the slightest, when the thing finally lunged at him he managed to convince himself to scramble to the left, but one evasion wasn’t going to keep him safe forever.

In a quick shuffle of limbs, he tried to move farther away from it, he only backed himself into the walls of the overpass.

The presence of the villain was overwhelming, the smell was enough to stop his thoughts in their tracks and it was a constant battle for Izuku to keep his lunch inside him.

The position he found himself in spelled doom for him.

In a second it shot a tendril of slime towards him, and he couldn’t even dodge it as it grabbed his arm, his struggle to get free all but ended when another tendril wrapped around his leg.

Nothing managed to help him anymore, his strength meant nothing against something that had no bones or flesh, fluid is a lot harder to break when it’s stronger than you.

He felt the sludge rise above his neck and he forced his eyes shut, it was everything he could do not to breathe as he was fully immersed in the slime, he became aware of just how violating this all felt, sludge was everywhere, everywhere.

He couldn’t breathe but he could feel the horrible pressure building around his nose, eyes, mouth as it tried to force his jaw open, even his ears weren’t safe.

“Stop struggling!  If you just give me a few more seconds it will all be over, now open your mouth.” The villain demanded.

The thought enraged Izuku in a way he hadn’t expected, how could he just stop?! 

He was going to be a hero, the world’s greatest, and if nothing else the support for Kacchan, there was no way he was willing to be turned into a mere c-tier villain’s getaway body!

As the world seemed to dull from the suffocation, Izuku opened his eyes.

The sludge no longer trying to invade him as a gust of wind knocked a large amount of it off of him, the pressure had let up, the world was so bright it was almost painful, he couldn’t really make out anything beyond the blinding white and the large shadow in front of him. 

There was this feeling of floating.

‘I’m dead, aren’t I?’ he thought.

Then his back hit the pavement.  Hard.  A crushing pressure was released, and every single part of his body ached horribly.

Nope, definitely alive.

Then everything went black.

A tiny sting, so slight one could miss it, but so persistent it was infuriating, a pain so minor that it hurt more than it should.

Some kind of fly or mosquito oh god he prayed it wasn’t a stupid mosquito biting his cheek, he wanted to slap whatever was causing this awful pain but his arms were far too heavy, but at the same time, the sting was so aggravating that it might be worse if he didn’t do anything.

Izuku reached up and slapped the bug and the stinging stopped but it didn’t feel right so he squeezed whatever was in his hand, he didn’t feel his skin but instead a larger, stronger, hand.

He shot up like a bullet, it was quickly apparent to him that he was not in his room.

The memories rushed into his head as he looked around and Oh GOD!  The All Might was in front of Izuku and the first thing he had done was SLAP him!

IZUKU SLAPPED THE NUMBER ONE HERO!

S-sure it was just his hand, but what a way to make an impression on the number one hero?!  Izuku would never get that autograph now!

“Hey you, you’re finally awake Eh lad?” He said.

Izuku was in a panic as he looked around for something All Might could sign, but much to Izuku’s dismay he had forgone the large chunky backpack at Genos’s suggestion, he also couldn’t focus too greatly on that as the movement was making it very hard for Izuku not to smell that stench that was now everywhere on him and if he kept moving he would throw up on the number one hero.

“Check in your pocket young lad!”

Izuku reached into his pocket and saw a piece of paper with All Might’s signature on it, and he basically wanted to faint then and there.

‘OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH!  ALL MIGHT GAVE ME AN AUTOGRAPH!  That almost makes up for what just happened to me!’ he thought.

“Well, lad I must be off now.”

“What?” Izuku shook his head and stood.

“N-No!  There’s still stuff you gotta do!” Izuku yelled, because he knew that isn’t how heroes are supposed to handle cases like this!  Izuku had actual sewage in his respiratory system, All Might should be escorting him to the hospital, not to mention all the paperwork!

He chuckled, “I’m Afraid I don’t have time for a Q&A Lad.  Justice calls.”

All Might wasn’t listening, so Izuku threw a can of beans at him.  Gambit style, of course, Izuku’s can didn’t explode but Izuku was no Homo Superior, so who could blame him?

Oh, now he’d made himself sad again.

“Young Lad,” All Might blinked, “Did you just… throw a can of beans at me?”

Izuku chuckled nervously, “Well, I am sorry, but you weren’t listening!  Well, I mean, you aren’t really following proper procedure for a hero a-and I know you must be busy but you should probably take me to the hospital as it’s, you know, literally your job!  N-not that I’m saying you aren’t doing your job, you are and you do it very well, you’re the number one hero after all so I guess that’s not for me to decide, but there’s procedures put in place for this for a reason and you weren’t listening as I tried to explain that so… beans…”

All Might nodded and flashed his signature smile, “Well, if you can say all that, you seem plenty fine, so I’ll be off.”

He shook his head, “But you can’t just be off!  You still have stuff you have to do as its literally part of your job!”

“You seem well enough though lad!  Goodbye now!” He tried to jump away so Izuku did the only logical thing, he jumped on his leg as he took off, ya know, normal stuff.

As soon as he realized that there was a child stuck to his leg, he landed on a building and decided to lecture Izuku before taking off again.

“Young Lad, you are being rather annoying, this behavior is unacceptable, I reach very high altitudes when I jump, it’s quite dangerous especially when I do not know that you are there!  You look like a teenager; shouldn’t you have basic common sense by now?”

“All Might please!  Just, just listen! Look, I’ll change my aim, just listen to my question and I won't report you for improper hero protocol.” Izuku said like the little shit that he is.

All Might thought over his choices, not getting another mark on his record sounded nice, especially since Mirai and David would surely have his head if he got another infraction on his record this year. “Since you seem so… dedicated, I’ll listen, but make it quick.”

Izuku nodded, cool, he could get a little motivation and All Might got off scott free, shame talking hurt so much with the whole actual sewage in his lungs thing going on, “I don’t have a quirk, but since I’ve always looked up to you I promised myself if I ever met you I would ask, do you think I could be a hero?”

He stared at Izuku in complete silence for a while, the air felt thinner as his heart thumped loudly in his ears, time felt like it was going in slow motion when All Might finally opened his mouth to speak and instantly crushed Izuku with his answer.

“No.”

Oh god Izuku felt like he was having a fight or flight reaction, he seriously wanted to do something stupid right now, he was having a hard time deciding between yelling at All Might or reporting All Might more than once under several pseudonyms. The world felt like it was pressing on Izuku, the air was hard to breathe, almost as if it was thinner than usual. 

Unconsciously his hand rose to his chest to try and alleviate the pressure by tugging at his T-shirt, but that did absolutely nothing.

“If it is a drive to help others, you have other options; you could be a police officer, a firefighter, or a doctor.”

The tears started to fall about then, and then out of nowhere All Might start coughing up blood, then he went up in a puff of smoke and when the smoke cleared in his place was a small sickly skeletal man.

“Yikes, what happened to you?  All Might?” Izuku asked, horrified by the sudden skeleton that was in front of him and had formerly been All Might.

“Being a hero happened, I’ll show you exactly what you’re aiming for,” he started pulling his shirt off and Izuku looked away.

“What is it kid?” he asked, sounding like a chain-smoker.

“All Might, I know you’re close with your friends, but this is highly inappropriate, I know I said I wouldn’t report you but this is a different bag of worms entirely.” Izuku replied, holding his hands over his face as he angled his neck away from the hero.

After a moment of silence he sighed, “Kid, I’m trying to show you something.”

“I-I-isn’t that illegal?”

“Would you just pay attention?!” He asked.

“NO!  Keep your shirt on!”

He grunted and pointed to his wound, eventually Izuku turned around to look after being assured that the shirt was the only item of clothing that had been removed.

“Five years ago… an enemy did this to me.  My respiratory system was nearly destroyed, and my stomach had to be removed, I barely eat at all now, life is an active struggle and not fun at all, if you think being a hero is still fun, take a good look at this.”

Izuku pursed his lips, in a weird way, the lack of stomach was reminding him of Genos, and Izuku began to wonder if Genos was saddened by his inability to eat, if so, he wondered if there was a way to give him that function back, he’d briefly mentioned that he could eat back when he was a cyborg, and Izuku wondered how that worked, was the food power or just for Genos’s own gain?  Did it feed his original organs?

“I’ve wasted away because of the aftereffects of those surgeries; you might know but there is a reason All Might only works for about three hours a day now.  That is all my body can handle.” Oh… he’s still talking.

“Wait, five years ago you say?  Didn’t you fight Toxic Chainsaw back then?  Surely, he didn’t rough you up this bad, he was a decent villain but with Deadpool there, surely he didn’t give you that much trouble...”

(That’s a canon event by the way.  You can look it up.)

He seemed surprised by Izuku’s seemingly extensive knowledge on the subject, “So you’ve done your homework, but you are incorrect, that lowlife didn’t do this to me, he couldn’t!  It takes far more than that to put a wound like this on All Might!” That doesn’t sound very heroic…  “The battle that gave me this injury was never made public, I asked for it not to be.”

“I-I don’t understand, wouldn’t you want people to know that you're injured?  Take time off to get better?” Izuku asked, not getting All Might’s wack logistics.

“Do you know what All Might is boy?” Despite being a sudden question, it felt like Izuku had spent his whole studying for this very question.

“The symbol of peace, the number one hero.” He replied without even having to think.

“A symbol of peace, who saves people with a smile, someone who must never be daunted by evil.” All Might replied in a tone that implied he was correcting Izuku.

“Y-yeah, All Might is famous for smiling fearlessly.”

“Do you know why I smile?” Oh god too many times being put on the spot, Izuku’s mind went blank.

“The reason I smile is to starve off the overwhelming pressure and fear I feel.”

Those words hit him like a freight train, Izuku’s knees felt weak, and he knew something was wrong.

“Someone as great as All Might got hurt this badly, and that’s with power as great as I have, so once again.  No, without a quirk you cannot be a hero.”

And with that, he left the roof.

Once Izuku knew he was out of earshot, he stood near the edge of the roof and grabbed onto the railing, and let out as loud and as angry of a scream as he possibly could.

Spite was a powerful thing, and Izuku could feel it welling up within him, he wanted to prove All Might wrong now, everyone from Aldera too, even Kacchan to an extent.

Behind him he heard the sound of an engine?  Fire?  He turned around to see Mei sitting on Genos’s shoulders while he landed, “Are you ok, Sensei?  Why are you on a roof, and why are you screaming?  That was quite loud.”

Mei nodded, hopping down, “Yeah, ‘m pretty sure people heard you all the way in Shibuya.”

Izuku sighed, “Long story, basically, never meet your idols.  Did you two get everything mom asked for?”

Mei held the bag with a smile, “And for real cheap as well!  Turns out Genos knows how to get all the best deals!”

Genos gave a proud smirk and slight blush, “I learned quite a few things from Master Saitama.”  His face turned deathly serious, “You will not distract us Sensei.  Tell us the long story.”

Mei nodded, “Yeah, explain why you smell like that.”

“Well, I was attacked by a villain and met-” an all too familiar explosion rang out from the distance, smoke appeared in the sky, sirens started to wail.

“Genos, think you can get me down there fast and without being seen?” Izuku asked.

“Can you survive this fall?” he asked.

“NO!  Carry me down dummy!” Izuku yelled in reply.

So Genos picked Izuku up princess style and jumped down, surprisingly he didn’t even crack the concrete.

There are some people who you never see with certain emotions, be it sadness or anger, some people are perpetually happy.  Something Izuku never thought he’d see, never wanted to see was Kacchan with true, unbridled terror in his eyes.

The sludge villain from earlier now had Kacchan in its awful grip.

He struggled more than Izuku did, and even threw in a few explosions in the mix, but none of it damaged the sludge, whatever he blew off just attached itself right back.

As Izuku got closer to the crowd he could hear the nearby heroes, Backdraft, Mt. Lady, Kamui Woods, Death Arms, all of them talking about how they couldn’t save Kacchan because their quirks weren’t perfect for the situation! All of them were perfectly willing to sit by and watch a person die just because they thought someone else might show up.

Despicable.

Izuku couldn’t help it, he thought they were despicable!  They were all professional heroes, and they were going to let a kid die?!

There was nothing Izuku could do about it, he himself was less equipped to save Kacchan than any of the cowardly heroes were.  And despite being well aware of that, he still fought his way to the crowd, he didn’t care if he could get hurt or might just die in the process, no one else was doing anything!  He had to save Kacchan because no one else would!

But Genos placed a hand on his shoulder, stopping him in his tracks.  Izuku turned to him, expecting to reprimanded for trying to rush in as a quirkless person but instead he was met with a firm expression, one that said, ‘I can handle it.’

“Izuku, Leave it to me.” Genos said.

“The hell’re you talkin about Genos?  You barely have any combat features!” Mei reminded, “You can’t do anything, none of us can!”

Genos pulled off his gloves, “I will do what I always have.” He said as he tore through the crowd and made his way to the center.

“Genos!” Mei yelled out and tried to catch up with him, but both her and Izuku were held back by Death Arms.

“Stop this nonsense children, that guy is being foolish, don’t follow in his steps!” Death Arms advised.

Genos ran towards the villain, he tore through the sludge in one swift motion and grabbed Kacchan, yanking him back out of the sludge he delicately placed Kacchan on his shoulders, and then with no hesitation raised his palm towards the villain and vaporized the villain. “Incinerate.”

Genos saved Kacchan.

Kacchan coughed and wheezed as he tried to regain his breath, “Than… oh god thanks Rust Bucket.” In a moment Izuku never expected to see, Kacchan actually held on to Genos’s head, allowing himself to lean on Genos for a moment. “Never thought I would be happy to see your ugly mug.”

Mei and Izuku ran over, Mei making it a quick effort to have Genos put his gloves back on, “I can’t believe you did that Genos, it was stupid and dangerous but, thank you!”

Izuku nodded, “Thank you so much!”

“I simply did the right thing, what kind of monster would I need to be to let my own kin perish?” he asked.

“Shut the fuck up Genos.” Kacchan wheezed.

She sighed and lightly punched Genos’s arm, “You are undoubtedly the hero of the day. You… stupid, scary guy.”

In an instance Death Arms came up to them, he had the audacity to take a harsh tone with Genos, “Hey, blondie, I get that kids your age always wanna be the hero but that was reckless, leave that kind of thing to the pros.  A hero should have handled that.”

Izuku grit his teeth, ‘The heroes had plenty of time to handle that.'

Genos turned around to glare at Death Arms; it might have been way scarier if there wasn’t a coughing and slimy Kacchan on his shoulders but perhaps that merely emphasized his point. “Was I supposed to stand back and watch while you did nothing?”

Death Arms was stunned to hear him talk back like that, “Listen here kid-”

“I am 24 so calling me kid is factually incorrect, and I will have you know I am a licensed pro.”

“Oh yeah?  Lemme see your License.” Death Arms demanded.

Mei winced; he had Genos in a checkmate.

But Genos fearlessly whipped out his hero licenses, covering all but his name and picture as he flashed it in Death Arm’s face with a pointed glare.

“Oh.” Death Arms couldn’t say anything.

‘Disgusting.’ Izuku thought.

Genos ignored him, “Come on, Master, Sensei, Kacchan, we should be heading to the hospital, Sensei please call Mrs. Bakugo.”

Kacchan’s eye twitched, “YOU DON’T GET TO CALL ME KACCHAN YOU RUST BUCKET!” he said as he pouted.

“On it.” Izuku replied.

Genos gave a slight smile, “Good to know you still have your fighting spirit Kacchan.”

“It’s Katsuki!  No one calls me Kacchan.”

“Izuku-Sensei and Master Mei call you that.”

“WELL, YOU AREN’T THEM!” Kacchan yelled in reply like a petulant child.

As they started walking away from the scene of the crime, Genos held onto Kacchan’s leg with one hand, held Izuku’s hand with the other, and Mei latched onto Izuku, they looked like an adorable family, if you didn’t account for how haggard and traumatized two of them looked.

It was almost comical when they rounded a corner and All Might was there to stop them, back in the hero form he should have been using to save Kacchan. “Young man, you said you're a hero, correct?”

“Why are you in my way?” Genos asked.

Panic struck Izuku then, “Genos!  That’s All Might!  Ya know!  Number one hero?!” Izuku whisper-yelled into his ear.

“I don’t care; besides, your parents are probably worried sick about you.” Genos replied like he was ratio-ing Izuku.

All Might’s smile gained a nervous tinge, “Please, I’ll only take a moment of your time.”

Genos looked at Izuku, “Do you want me to talk to him?”

He thought about it for a moment before he pursed his lips, “No, I wanna go home.”

Mei and Kacchan were flabbergasted, “You do realize who that is right Izuku?”

“Yeah Deku! That’s All Might!  In the flesh!” Kacchan called out.

All Might’s eyes widened in realization that Izuku was the same kid from earlier, “Kid, you, you didn’t tell them my secret did you?” All Might mouthed.

“Nope.” Izuku spoke aloud knowing Mei would ask questions.

Mei turned Izuku so he was looking at her, “Izu, what happened?”

“Remember how I said I got attacked?  Yeah All Might is the one who saved me, and he said I couldn’t be a hero as a quirkless person.” Izuku replied flatly.

Mei started fuming, she turned to All Might with a fire burning in her eyes, fearlessly she marched right up to All Might and started poking him in the side, right where Izuku knew his wound is, “I do not know who you think you are, but you have some nerve!  You stupid quirkist Asshole!”

All Might was fighting a mighty powerful wince, and they were pretty sure this counted as assault on Mei’s part, “Young Lady, please refrain from poking me.  And watch your language.”

“Shutdap!  You don’t get to talk bad to Deku and think you can get away with it!” Kacchan hopped off of Genos’s shoulders and got in All Might’s space as well, “You’ve got quite some nerve to say those kinds of things to my best friend!”

Mei turned to Kacchan with an evil glare, “Not right now, Katsuki.”

She jabbed her finger into All Might’s side, “You may be the number one hero right now, but I assure you!  Once my Momma hears about how aggressively discriminatory you are and that you failed to help rescue someone in mortal peril despite being in the area, you will fall from grace!”

Her eyes widened, “You didn’t even drop Izuku off at the police station.” Despite saying it herself it seemed to shock her, “You weren’t even following hero protocol?!”

All Might stepped back and his shoulders slouched a bit while he dropped his arms to his sides to protect them, “I-I’ve been told…”

“I quite frankly am disgusted that someone like you can even call themself a hero!” she went in for more jabs when Genos caught her hand.

“Master, you need to stop, this is bordering on assault.” Genos said without much care in his tone.

She relented in her all out attack and instead stood to sneer at All Might, “You can say what you want to my big brother, only if we can listen..”

All Might sighed, he was running out of time yes… but these children seemed so… he shook his head, “Fine, but I’ll need you to keep this to yourselves, no telling anyone, alright?”

“I promise.” Izuku said.

“I swear on my mother’s life.” Mei added.

“Sure.” Kacchan replied.

Genos looked to Mei, “Your mother but-”

She stared at him, “Think long and hard about that sentence and rather you wanna say it or if you want legs.”

Genos nodded, “My silence is assured.”

All Might sighed, “Somehow I get the feeling none of you are being fully truthful…”

Where did All Might lead the children to tell them an earth shattering and all-important secret?  An alleyway?  His House?  One of their houses?  No.

He took them to yet another roof.

“Young hero, I have a quirk that can be passed down from one to another, growing stronger with each user, my quirk is called One for All.”

“Alright.” Genos said, nonchalantly. “Why are you telling me this?”

Mei was already raging and ready to attack All Might again, but Kacchan was holding her back.

After he finished giving his whole speech, “I saw your bravery as your rescued that boy, and for that, I want to hand down my quirk to you.  So,  young man, will you take my quirk?”

“No, and there are several reasons why, which I will now list.  (1) I am an Android with no biological components or parts; therefore, it is most likely impossible to pass it down to me and well as it makes no sense for you to hand down your power to a droid.”

All Might stared at him dumbfounded, yet Genos continued, “(2) I have plenty of weapons to keep Master and Sensei safe and I do not require more.  (3) there is someone far more worthy of a quirk like that on this roof.”

Genos picked Izuku up and showed him off all Lion King style, “Izuku-sensei here is both quirkless and heroic, without him I wouldn’t still be alive to this day, and I certainly wouldn’t have been able to save Kacchan.”

“Genos!  Please put me down, this is embarrassing.” Izuku said as he covered his face with his hands to try and hide his blush.

All Might seemed stunned, so Izuku took his chance once Genos put me down.  “So, All Might, I hope you have a good day.”

“Wait Lad, if he suggests so, then I am alright with it, I wish to give you my power!”

The anticlimax of it all was insane, and above all, it was simply the wrong thing to say after all that he’d been through today.

Izuku was tired, hungry, and desperately wanted a shower, not a great combo for someone to be polite or pleasant.

Izuku sneered at the man he once considered his biggest hero (who needs to know once was three hours ago), “And I don’t want it.  Keep it and give it to someone who has a quirk since that appears to be what you want.”

And with that, they all went to meet up with Kacchan's parents at the hospital.

Mitsuki hugged Kacchan as soon as the group entered, “Katsuki you stupid brat!  Don’t go scaring me like that!”

Maurus joined in the family’s group hug.

Once that concluded Mitsuki bowed, “Thank you for bringing the brat here safe.”      

“No problem Mrs. Bakugo.” Genos replied.

Mei smiled and gave a thumbs-up, “Don’t worry ma’am!  I can promise I won’t let anything like that happen to either of my little brothers!”

Kacchan rolled his eyes, “I’m older than you.”

Regardless as soon as they were released, they all headed home, which was great considering Izuku and Kacchan both desperately needed a shower.

Things began to settle down after that, and Izuku was thankful for it, his nightmares would find another topic soon enough.

*---*

“I’ll just come out and say it,” Mei announced as the three of them walked into another store, “We’re changing that hero name as soon as we can, it’s so lame.”

Genos looked personally offended as he held his jaw open in offense, “Excuse you, Master, it is a great hero name and it's the last thing I have linking me to my past.  I will keep the hero name.  No objection will be heard.”

She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow, “Do you really wanna be known as ‘Demon Cyborg’ for the rest of your life?  You aren’t even a Cyborg anymore!  And you were never a demon!”

“It wasn’t meant to be literal.”

“So what was it supposed to ‘mean’ then?” Mei asked.

Genos scoffed, his tone implied it was supposed to be an obvious fact to the children, “It represented how I killed my enemies with the fierceness of a demon,” he paused and mumbled the ending, “and because I was a Cyborg...”

Izuku smiled awkwardly, “Y-yeah, about that, heroes aren’t allowed to kill, under basically all circumstances.”

He turned to Izuku with a look of hurt, “You too, Izuku?! You simply must hear me out, it’s special to me.  I got it while severing as Master Saitama’s apprentice!” he replied.

Mei raised an eyebrow, “Did he like your hero name?”

Genos paused, “No.”

“Did he even like his own hero name?” Izuku added.

Genos pursed his lips, “No.”

Mei rolled and clapped to accentuate each word she said, “You’re getting a new hero name.”

“I suppose.” He sighed, “Perhaps this new one will represent my time with you two better.  It is a new Era for me.”

He was met with a smile.

Chapter Text

The UA entrance exam that everyone dreaded so much ended up being much easier on the siblings than it was on any hero course students.

Mei aced the practical portion of the exam, her ability to think on her feet and create a grappling hook out of a security bot impressed the examiners and her score on the written exam was well above average.

On the other hand, Izuku’s written exam was most likely 99% correct, he had followed the blueprint given by the examiner instead of doing something from scratch, but his robot worked so it couldn’t have held him back too much.

Because of their obviously stellar results, it wasn’t surprising that they were accepted.

Exciting? Yes.

Life changing? Yes.

Causing Genos to ask weird questions?  Well obviously yes.

On the first day of school, Izuku and Inko stood in front of the door trying to figure out Genos’s insane request.

Izuku took a deep breath to help him steady his emotions as he placed a hand on Genos’s shoulder, to try and soften the impact of his words he gave him a small smile, “Stop asking, it’s impossible.”

“Very little in this world is impossible, let us get on the same page, the only reason I cannot follow you into the school is the uniform is it not?” Genos quirked his head slightly as he spoke in a monotone, “Then to solve that problem, I will simply wear a UA uniform.”

“No!” Izuku shouted and began pacing around the room, he made wild arm gestures while he spoke as if he was pointing to his own words, “It’s the principal of the matter!  You can’t just waltz into UA!”

He raised an eyebrow, “And why not?”

“Wh- why not?!  Because it’s one of the best hero schools in the world!  Its other courses are nothing to sneeze at!  It’s probably already in the rulebook that you can’t sneak robots onto campus, and if it isn’t, I don’t want to be the reason it becomes a rule!”

Pausing from shoving her books into her school bag, Mei sighed, “Genos, even if your plan worked despite the rules, you aren’t going to fit our uniforms.  Mine’s too long in the leg department and Izu’s shirt and blazer are too small for ya.”

“Then I’ll wear your spare blazer and the spare pair of Sensei’s pants.” He replied as if it was a simple solution to their problem.

Inko crossed her arms and sighed, “Look Genos, I appreciate the effort, but there is no way you’re going to get into UA.  The security system will detect that you aren't a registered student, and you’ll have to go home.”

“I want to try.  UA might be the greatest hero school in the world, but I do not feel like letting my Master and Sensei go in unprotected.”

“Unprotected from what?” Izuku asked, “The heroes?”

Genos’s eyes shot to him in an unexpected intensity, as if he was remembering something horrible, “Yes exactly.”

“Will you stop complaining if we let you come with us?” Mei asked, when Genos nodded she quickly unbuttoned her blazer and threw it at him, “Then knock yourself out.”

He carefully pulled it off of his head and mumbled a “Thank you.”

Mei waved his words away as she made for the door, “We’ve settled that, so now are we ready to head out?”

Izuku nodded and turned to face their mom, who was clearly holding back tears, seeing them stood up and in their school uniforms.

Her babies really were growing up! They looked so mature she couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride and melancholy and by Izanagi!  She never taught Izuku how to tie a tie, “Izuku!  That tie is atrocious, let me fix it.”

Izuku mocked a pout as Inko fixed it up for him, trying to explain the steps as she did so.

Afterwards she huddled them together and took a picture, Genos protested lightly at being included but Inko’s insistence eventually wore him down, letting the four of them snap a picture together.

Once the picture was taken he clamored back up stairs to begin getting properly dressed.

“Right, now that that’s all out of the way, do you have everything you’re supposed to take in your bags?  Are you mentally ready?  And you gotta remember to behave for your teachers!” Inko stammered and floundered about, even using her quirk to put some of Izuku’s flyaway hairs back in place.

Mei gave her a bright and reassuring smile as she dodged her attempts to fix Mei’s unruly locs, “You don’t gotta worry about us Momma, I’ll be keepin Izu outta trouble.”

Inko nodded feeling relief wash over her. “Alright, alright.” She opened her arms and gave her children a squeeze, “Be good kiddos.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Izuku saw Genos coming down the stairs and was blown away by how good his cover was, being as he was roughly Mei’s height he fit the bill for a new high schooler, it seemed the shorter legs and arms Mei had designed ended up as a blessing in disguise.

His face was young and youthful, he wasn’t overly muscular, he really could pass for a high schooler!  At least until he opened his mouth, he still sounded like someone from two centuries ago.

“Genos is really dead set on going with you, huh?” Inko shook her head, “You know that really isn’t likely to work, right?  You don’t have a letter of acceptance or anything.”

“I have Katsuki’s face.  That will be sufficient.”

The three Midoriyas sighed, but they couldn’t be late, so the three ‘children’ began their trek to school.

They walked to UA, they met up with Katsuki due to living around the same area.  He was none too pleased to see the Metal Man with them.

As he approached he instantly gained a sneer and turned his nose up at Genos, “Oh please, don’t tell me you’re bringing your Rust Bucket to school, think they’ll give you pity points for digging up robot corpses?”

Genos’s eyes narrowed, “I would much prefer you call me by my name, Katsuki.”

He was met with the bird as Katsuki turned his head to pay attention to the humans in the room, “Seriously though, you know this is the best hero school in Japan, there’s no fucking way their security is lax enough to let it in.”

“He probably won’t make it to the door, but as our bodyguard it was only natural he insisted on coming with us.” Mei replied.

Katsuki hissed and rolled his eyes, “Whatever, you two ended up in the support course yeah?  Not like you to settle on whatever’s easiest, Deku.”

Mei growled and was ready to lunge at Katsuki, but Izuku held a hand up and stopped her, “I enjoy inventing, Kacchan. I’m sure I’ll be able to help lots of heroes this way.  Maybe even you?” he smiled nervously, “I mean, surely you’d trust me to make your gear, right?”

He clicked his tongue and stomped away from them, taking an inefficient route just to get away from the three.

The air of the street grew chillier despite the previously warm spring breeze. She shook her head, “I swear, just when you think he’s finally ready to go back to normal.  Don’t mind him Izu.”

Izuku watched the area he’d gone off in, “Yeah…  I’ll try.”

It was so obvious Katsuki didn’t like the Midoriyas that much.  Genos couldn’t imagine forcing himself into the life of someone that obviously was displeased with him.

Finally, they made it to the gates of UA, anything that crosses through here that isn’t authorized will set off alarms and call the pro heroes inside to action.

Mei, and Izuku both walked through the giant gates without a problem, as did Genos?

Wait, what?

“Maybe it is because I am not a living organism?” Genos asked.

None of them had answers, so they entered UA, and instantly it was incredible, the place was cleaner than Aldera had ever been, and the high ceilings, long corridors and seemingly endless hallways made finding their classroom an absolute pain, luckily after they all got too lost, a little robot appeared and led them to their classroom.

The door to 1-H was huge, wide enough and tall enough that even people with mutant quirks would easily be able to get in, something about the accommodation being in even the support course made Izuku feel hopeful.

Also lucky for them, once they found their assigned seats, Genos found one that didn’t have a name written on it.

Right in between Mei and Izuku.

“Someone is gonna need to sit there and you’re gonna be in the way, ya know that right?” Mei asked.

Genos shrugged, it wasn’t his problem, and he made that abundantly clear as the rest of the students shuffled into the classroom.

Once the stream of students stopped, they still had a few seats left empty, there 20 seats but only 15 students (if you count Genos, Mei, and Izuku).

Izuku almost began jittering out of his seat when Power Loader walked into the room with a smile just barely visible from underneath his helmet, “Welcome to UA students.”

“It is great to meet you all.  As I’m sure you can guess, I’m going to be your homeroom teacher for the next three years. My name is Higari Maijima although most of you probably know me better by my Hero Name, Power Loader.  I’m pleased to meet you all and I hope together we can build an environment conducive to experimentation and education.”

Maijima had to fight off a smile, he totally nailed it!

With a clap he ended his small speech, “Now if you would be so kind as to allow me to do a roll call, I’ll have you right on your way to the opening ceremonies.”

“Akabane.” He called out.

“Here.” said a red-headed kid with a wicked grin, the vibes on him were all over the place.

With a nod, Power Loader continued, “Mayaya.”

A shy looking wiry girl with very fluffy hair done into an afro nodded and raised her hand just slightly, “Here…”

“Midoriya.”

In an instant Izuku practically shot out of his seat, too much vigor and energy in his voice as he called out, “Here!”

Mei reached out and grabbed him by the blazer, pulling him back into his seat as she boldly declared herself, “In the room.”

“Present.”

The siblings’ eyes shot wide as they realized just how much attention that was going to bring to their unnecessary addition.

“Y-Y-You aren’t a Midoriya!” Izuku whispered harshly.

He stared at Izuku as if he had just said something utter preposterous, “I live in the Midoriya household.”

“He has a point.” Mei whispered back.

Power Loader continued with the roll call, but Izuku was still distracted, surely the three Midoriyas would raise an eyebrow or two.

He pursed his lips after reading off the last person’s name. “I have one too many students in this classroom.”

He looked around the room until he caught the siblings gesturing to Genos, “Oh, alright.  You might be in the wrong class kid, did you mean to go to F or G instead?”

Genos shook his head, “Master and Sensei are in here; therefore, I am in the right class.”

“Master and Sensei?” Power Loader asked as he began visibly sweating, his otherwise flawlessly professional demeanor seemingly cracking in an instant.

“That’s just Genos!” Mei said, “he’s our pet project.”

He raised an eyebrow, “Master I am not a pet.”

A harsh elbow to the side and a death stare that said ‘I will disassemble your arms’ made him sit up straight and nod, “I am the pet.”

Power Loader pursed his lips, “L-look, as sure as I am that you all want to go here together, he isn’t on the list and we can’t just change classroom assignments on the random…”

“Why not?” the Akabane fellow from before called out.

“Because the principal won’t allow me to break the rules!” the small man wasn’t fairing very well already, “Look, I can’t just allow you to stay here, and to you Miss Midoriya, you really shouldn’t call other people pet projects.”

Mei ripped Genos’s arm off, “He isn’t other people, he’s our pet project, see?”

Power Loader flinched away from the sight, “That just means he has a prosthetic arm which you rudely just ripped off, which is completely unacceptable!”

“Pfft, it ain’t no prosthetic,” she held it out to him, “here, shake!”

He gently lowered the arm, “Give that back to him, now.”

She shrugged, arm still in hand, “Alright then, Genos, take the blazer off so you can put your arm back on.”

He complied and Mei stopped him before he put it back on, tapping the center of his chest where a strange bluish light was coming from, “If you draw your attention right here you might see a bluish glow! That would be Genos’s core!  Not really something a human would have.”

Power Loader held his hands out in an effort to try and calm her down, “Ok, certainly not human, if I agree to that will you stop ripping his limbs off?”

Mei smiled as Genos reconnected his arm, from there opening ceremonies ran by without a hitch, none of them were called away and things seemed to be going swimmingly.

It was pleasant as could be.

After opening ceremonies, Class 1-H was told to head home for the day, be on their merry way, and be up early in the morning and be ready to start inventing tomorrow.

Despite having planned to meet at the gate, Katsuki was over thirty minutes late and when he did finally arrive, Izuku couldn’t help but notice how utterly pissed he looked, so he asked, “Why do you look so mad Kacchan?”

“Tch.” He just continued stomping past the three.

“I wonder what angered him so much.” Genos voiced.

Mei shrugged, “Who knows what burnt his beans, he probably isn’t the highest-ranked student in the class.”

Izuku wanted to chuckle, but something about it fundamentally wasn’t funny. Something had obviously agitated his best friend.

He was Izuku’s best friend, even if Izuku wasn’t his.

“Maybe the teacher called him out for that attitude of his.” Genos suggested.

He watched as Kacchan stomped past the other students, getting even farther away from Izuku by the minute.

Katsuki was such an angry person nowadays.

*---*

For the next week, general chaos ensued but the good kind.

Mostly, it was still chaos after all.

About the only complaint Izuku truly had was how he could not spend any amount of free time within UA without All Might rounding a corner and attempting to talk to him.

As Izuku tried to drink from the water fountain, he found All Might beside him, “Keeping hydrated are we lad?  That’s very good.  It’s incredibly important to maintain your health!”

Izuku stared at him blankly.

“It’s been a while since we last spoke.”

“You’ve talked to me every day since the first day.”

“Twenty-Four hours is a long time lad.  Have you given my offer some more thought?”

A year ago if you had told Izuku that he wouldn’t be able to be in UA without being offered a quirk and subsequent training for said quirk by All Might himself, well he wouldn’t believe it because there would be no way he didn’t accept.

But now, it seemed like All Might was going to pester him until he accepted.

Granted… All Might’s incredible power did sound nice, with that he could easily use one of UA’s Sport Festivals to transition into the hero course…

No!  Izuku had morals!  He would not fall into the trappings of power, if he made it into the hero course it would be on his own merits alone!

“I’ve given it more thought than I’ve wanted to…”

Something in his usual grin seemed almost cheekier than usual, “And?”

“The answer is still no.” Izuku would never understand how All Might always managed to pick the times when there were no other students around to see him propositioning Izuku.

Katsuki hadn’t really been talking to them since school started either, they would pass in the hallways and sometimes sit together at lunch, but he always finished his food first and hardly said a word.

It was better than being yelled at all the time, but Izuku was starting to wish he would just talk to them.

The third day of school was when Power Loader Officially let them into the labs, and within only an hour of working on the assignment, Mei had instead made magnetic hover boots, which while very cool (and impressive considering they were supposed to be making spring loaded sneakers) weren’t the assignment and did in fact cause one explosion in the midst of making them.

Mayaya from their class was profoundly interesting, apparently she had a fascination with model trains and wanted to make them as realistic as possible, this childhood obsession spiraled into her getting pretty fiercely into engineering.

She rubbed the back of her neck as the Midoriyas crowded around her desk during free time, “Oh, um, hi you three.  You want to talk to me?  A-again?”

Mei nodded, “You promised us last time you’d show us your newest model if we did!”

She blushed profusely as she reached into her bag and carefully pulled out the small bullet train, “It’s based on the L0 Series Maglev, the fastest train in the world as of the moment, of course it doesn’t actually match it in speed, but as far as the scale of my model set goes, it’s as accurate as possible.”

The Midoriyas found her exceptionally cool.  Out of everyone in UA, she was their first collective friend.

*---*

The ride to the USJ had been infuriating, slow and boring.

Not only had Katsuki been forced to sit next to some frog kid as well as the shark extra from the entrance exam, but they spent the entire ride poking and prodding at him, as if making him angry would benefit them in any way.

It wasn’t much better once they had finally arrived, Thirteen the space hero was the instructor for whatever exam they were going to be taking here, Katsuki was in a bad enough mood that their instructions only served as annoying background noise.

Focus didn’t seem possible, the way Thirteen spoke about their quirks was infuriating.  They had been taught how dangerous these things were since childhood.  It made no sense to give them this lecture, they were in high school, not a bunch of kindergarteners who just got their quirks.

“While it may sound just like a cheesy quote, with great power, truly does come great-”

Mid sentence they were interrupted by some kind of purple portal opening up behind them in the town square, in an instant hundreds of villains came pouring out.

This wasn’t part of the plan and they just got fucking played.  Katsuki could feel it in the air, see it in the way Eraserhead and Thirteen stiffened up.

“Greetings Eraserhead, I hope you don’t mind me dropping in!” one of the villains called out.

He was covered in a myriad of hands, at least fifteen by Katsuki’s count, grabbing his throat, his arms, his head, everywhere, he spoke with a horrid rasp as if he’d never had a single drop of water in however many years that thing has lived.

Katsuki readied himself into a fighting stance because he could tell this wasn’t going anywhere good and fighting was gonna be a necessity, besides if he got the chance to defeat an actual villain, he would surely prove himself superior to everyone in his class!

Before he could rush out though Eraserhead grabbed and tossed Katsuki back towards the other students, “Behave Bakugo and stay here!” Eraserhead shouted, once Katsuki was with his classmates his head snapped to Iida, “Iida, you’re the fastest, leave this place and go get help from the teachers at UA!”

Turning on a dime, he took off to go fight the hordes of villains by himself.

As Eraserhead jumped into the fray, Thirteen tried to calm the students who were panicking but were clearly overwhelmed by the situation.

Shinso, one of the extras in Katsuki’s class stomped over to him, “What was that Bakugo?!  Do you have a death wish or something?  Eraserhead clearly told us to stay put.”

Fucking ass kisser, that’s all he was, it boiled Katsuki’s blood. “I was only doing what heroes are supposed to!” he yelled it in reply, maybe he should be nicer to his classmates, but they were idiotic enough to ask if the literal villain attack was planned.

Yaoyorozu glared at Katsuki before she sighed. “Rushing into a fight completely unprepared is not what a hero is supposed to do!  Aizawa-Sensei very clearly ordered us to stay here while Iida gets help!” she reprimanded.

“If we stay where we are, I can guarantee this ain’t going well for us, we’re getting screwed over in more ways than one!” Katsuki fired back.

Yaoyorozu was about to start talking but before she could out any retorts, they all saw a warp gate open in front of Thirteen who tried to vacuum it up, unfortunately a gate containing the vacuuming opened behind Thirteen and ripped their suit open and most certainly took a layer of skin.

Before any of them could move to help Thirteen, another a warp gate opened up under the class’s feet and Katsuki could only mutter ‘Oh shit’ as the entirety of class 1-A was thrown all around the USJ.

Katsuki was lucky he tended to land on his feet, mostly because landing on his head might have killed him considering the large drop between the 6-foot height he was dropped from and the roof on which he landed on.

Sweat was already pooling around his face, the sound of fire crackling drew his eyes upwards, he was on top of a roof of a structurally unsound building, the buildings in the area were equally on fire.

This was a shit location for the villains to drop him, they popped him right into his goddamn element!  That also meant the villains were either unable to control who ended up where or didn’t know the quirks of the students.

Either was fine for him, he quickly ran through the building and found a pair of floating gloves, joining up with her they ran out onto the street and found Shinso laying face down on the ground.

Katsuki kicked at him, “Get up.”

The collection of students was somewhat useful, having seen their battles earlier, he knew they weren’t total pushovers.

Hagakure sighed and he watched gloves dust off where he guessed her legs probably were, “I hate to say this, especially since you’re one of the people involved and are most likely going to yell so loud it pops my eardrums, but Bakugo, I think we’re gonna need to work together.”

“HUH?” He sneered, “What makes you think I don’t know that?” he outstretched a hand to the ruined area around them and the smoke clouds in the distance, “Take a good look around!  Villains are attacking, I can see when objectively it’d be a fuckin mistake to ignore you!”

“Shush!” She yelped, hand over her mouth, “Yelling is just going to draw them to us.”

“I know that dipshit!” he whisper yelled, forcing his upper body closer to her.

“Nice to know you’re so enthused about working with us.” Shinso said, scratching behind his right ear, a nervous tick he seemed to have, Bakugo had noticed it in class, hard not to since the little shit sat right in front of him.

“Heroes have to deal with team-ups they don’t like all the time, I’m sure you’ll be fine working with me for a while, now come on, we gotta get back to the plaza.” Bakugo commanded in a calm and level tone.

Hagakure over emoted with her arms by throwing them out wildly, “Excuse me?  Are you actually crazy?  There are villains there!  We need to leave!”

“Staying out of trouble is what Eraserhead told us to do…” Shinso muttered.

Katsuki genuinely couldn’t believe what he was hearing, the little bit of the fight they had seen proved this wasn’t Eraserhead’s specialty, Thirteen was out for the count and they were playing a waiting game, and he let all of that show on his face.

Katsuki turned his back towards them, “Fine.  Go and run if you want, but the heroes we have with us aren’t going to make it if we do nothing.  Way I see it, we help until the other heroes get here thanks to Glasses, or Eraser dies.”

Shinso visibly tensed, and sighed, “I’ll try to help.  I may be able to pull one of the stronger villains away.”

He turned back around and placed a hand on his hip, “Bout fucking time you said something worth a damn.  Maybe I do like your spirit, Zombieman.”

The two stood confidently and Hagakure swayed back and forth nervously before shaking her hands wildly, “You two idiots are so crazy!” she sighed, “Count me in, you glorious bastards.”

Bakugo could work with this team, for as crazy as Hagakure seemed to think he was, it seemed to him these two were the right kind of crazy.

As they began following Bakugo back in the direction of the fountain Hagakure coughed, “Just so you know, my hero suit is just made of my own hair, it’s not super burn proof, so you too better cover for me!”

“Relax Sue Storm, I’ll muscle us through things, you’re for if we need to get close and apprehend something, Marin Karin personified, explain your quirk while we walk.” He demanded.

Shinso pointed to himself, “A-am I ‘Marin Karin’?”

“Yeah, it’s a brainwashing spell, I know you do that much, so tell me the rest.”

“Right,” Shinso seemed cagey about this, “right, my power.  In simple terms, if someone reacts to anything I say, I can take over their body and make them do what I want via simple verbal commands.”

“What counts a reaction?” Katsuki asked.

“Any words, laughs, snorts in some cases, anything intentionally directed at me or in regard to what I said.”

The sound of them running was so loud, he huffed out a small laugh “So that counted?”

Shinso nodded as they continued on, jumping to avoid the on-fire bean bag people Katsuki vaguely remembered from the entrance exam.

“That is SO COOL!” Hagakure shouted, prompting the others to shush her, “Sorry, right, villains are prolly hunting us, ughhhh this is so scary, but you two both have insane quirks!”

“Your damn right my quirk is insane, explosion is the best their is when it comes to offense, and the best defense is an offense you can’t beat.”  Katsuki said with a self-satisfied huff, “but time and place.”

The first set of villains they came across were easy enough to take out, Hagakure ducked to the ground and quickly disappeared, Shinso hid behind a nearby rock while Katsuki rushed in first to launch some explosions at them, it wasn’t the most effective since one had a shield quirk and the other had some kind of net based quirk, but he was the distraction for now.

“What the hell?!” the one with the nets yelled as Katsuki continued to use short bursts of flame to maneuver around the air.

Shinso popped up from behind the rock, hands held high in the air, “Listen, I don’t wanna be here, just let me go and I won’t fight, please?”

“HA?  You really think that’s gonna-” Katsuki watched the man fall completely limp after Shinso tugged on something invisible, the other man with the shield was so confused that Hagakure was able to get behind him and take him to the ground.

Shinso had the villain net his companion and himself up before they continued on their way.

Shockingly Katsuki had been right, the other few villains they took out also went just as smoothly, they did make a great team.

They were lucky enough to make it to the plaza without getting attacked too many times, but the sight they approached almost made Katsuki wish he had agreed with Hagakure’s plan of running.

Eraserhead was held down by some overly muscled exposed brain monster that sounds like one of those things the Rust Bucket talks about killing on the daily, except this thing was real and crushing the only teacher he ever respected by slamming his face into the concrete.

The sight was vile, Aizawa’s blood was going everywhere, it was the first time any visible sight had ever made Katsuki’s stomach turn...

Unfortunately for the villains, he only knew one way to deal with his negative emotions, which was to jump in headfirst without a second thought, when he came running at the fucker with all the hands, Eraserhead shouted in anger.

Katsuki charged at the handsy guy ready to launch an explosion when the man simply held his hand out to catch him.

In an instant all of his instincts began screaming at him to move, so instead of being touched Katsuki angled his arms upwards and pulled off the sickest limbo move he’d ever done, forcing his entire body towards the ground caused him to skid right past them.

The pavement tore the back of his costume and a layer of skin off of his arm, although he quickly recovered and got back on his feet and into the air, he knew that he’d undoubtedly made a mistake in coming here.

Even past the hand on his face, the crusty man’s sickening smile was plain to see, “A dead kid should get All Might to come running.” He pointed at Katsuki, “Nomu, handle him, I’ll take care of Eraserhead.”

The giant monster charged at Katsuki, who in a panic did what felt most natural, just as the monster swung at him, Katsuki jumped and launched an explosion which propelled him up just enough for him to hop onto the creature’s back, once up there his instincts saw the exposed brain and knew what to do, he steeled himself and grabbed the fleshy tissue and pulled while launching as powerful an explosion as he could.

Once the creature fell limp to most likely being dead, Katsuki ripped the brain out and threw it at Shigaraki, who flinched away from it and stopped trying to disintegrate their teacher in favor of being grossed out by the burnt brain tissue.

Katsuki stood like Captain Morgan as the Nomu fell over, smirking he looked over to Shigaraki, “How’d you like that Bad Touch?”

“What the fuck is wrong you with you?” Shigaraki asked in disgust, “Who just sticks their hands into brain?”

“I’d do it.” Shinso said.

“WHAT?!” Shigaraki asked in horror, allowing Shinso to take control.

They had them!  Handjob here was clearly the leader of the villains, and thanks to Katsuki setting up the comedic timing they won, they fuckin did it and the credit was Katsuki’s.  Mostly.

And that thought was just exhilarating enough for Katsuki to want to chase that high forever.

Which he sadly lost when the Mist Portal Man slapped Shigaraki and alerted them to the fully powered and pissed All Might now standing at the gate of the USJ and barreling towards them at a high rate.

They retreated into the portal, “Cowards!” Katsuki shouted, hoping they heard him.

*---*

It was like it was a different day now.  Reporters, police officers, even heroes, all of them congratulating him on how amazing he was, but it all felt… hollow.

Katsuki loved praise, he thirsted for it, and he received his fair share almost constantly; but he wasn’t blinded by his need, and he could tell when it was undeserved or fake.

As he told Hagakure, Time and Place.

But the thing that stook out about all this, not a single person was asking him if he was okay, he expected people to demand he see Hound Dog or something, not this hollow and shallow praise that was only half directed at Katsuki.

Questions about how he did it, how awesome he must feel, how All Might showed up and helped defeat the stragglers.

But not a single goddamn question on whether or not he wanted to go home!

Was it so much for a dude to want to go to bed and fucking rest after a traumatic event?!  If he wanted praise he’d tell the story on his own time, right now he wanted to get the twisting churning feeling in his stomach out.  He wanted to get rid of that feeling of dread when he felt he was about to die due to Handjob, all of it he wanted to forget.

In the midst of all the hubbub, Katsuki hadn’t realized someone was shouting out his name, when he finally looked up and looked around he realized it was that godforsaken over glorified toy Mei and Izuku had built.

He also took note of the fact that Genos was alone, with no Deku or Mei insight.

“Sir!  You can’t be here!” one of the detectives said to him.

“I am a licensed hero, it’s fine.” Genos replied dismissively, already walking past the man and over to Katsuki like it was just a casual Sunday, “Kacchan are you alright?” He asked.

Katsuki’s vision went red at the use of the nickname, it didn’t belong to the stupid Rust Bucket, no one gave him permission to call him that, “Tch.” Katsuki turned his head away, trying his hardest to ignore Genos, but he could feel those eyes weren’t moving until they got their answer, “I’ve told you a million and one times.  My name is Bakugo Katsuki, you dumb Rust Bucket.  And I’m fine.”

“And I’ve told you to respect your elders, I’ll be calling you Kacchan until you start calling me Genos.” He replied.  Without any hesitation he just picked Katsuki up and threw him onto his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, then turned to the heroes and announced, “I will be absconding with Bakugo, I shall return him to his parents.”

“Put me down you stupid Rust Bucket!” Katsuki whined as if he was still a little kid, kicking his arms and legs, “And carry me in a normal way at the very least!  At least give me some dignity!”

He then switched to holding Katsuki Princess style, “Oh no, no this is worse.”

He was just so God Damn tired of this stupid robot, he hoped Deku and Mei could see just how unnecessary Genos really was, after all he didn’t perform them any good as a bodyguard and he was just a robot, he wasn’t a friend.

They didn’t need Genos; they didn’t need to replace Katsuki.

They wouldn’t replace Katsuki.

They couldn’t.

Chapter Text

The Midoriyas were enjoying a typical UA lunch chatting about anything and nothing all at once.  Mayaya had become somewhat of a regular at their lunch tables, sharing pictures of the more elaborate dioramas she built at home.

“I thought about trying to get their speeds accurate to the scale of my set up, but then I realized you’d hardly be able to see them, and getting to see how accurate they are is half the fun…” she confessed quietly.

A blush grew on her face when she realized how intently they were still listening, “W-why don’t you guys talk about something you make now?”

“I wanna hear more about the trains!” Mei said with a large grin, although a devilish glint in her eyes, “I like hearing you talk, and you clearly know your stuff.  I doubt you’d wanna hear me talk about my babies and hey I can’t be too open anyway.  You are mighty fierce competition ya know.”

“Competition?”

“Of course.” Izuku matched Mei’s cheery tone, “I have no doubt that when the sports festival comes around, you’re going to be one of the 1-H students to watch.”

Her eyes widened as she began to fidget with the sleeves of her blazer, “This early into the school year and you’re thinking about that already?  You guys are insane…” although her blush remained at the inherent comment, being as she had already seen the swiftly growing pile of items Mei was leaving at her workshop.

Genos watched the conversation play out almost absent mindedly.  He also enjoyed Mayaya’s company, but since he had no such inventions to speak of, (minus the assigned classwork from Power Loader) nor any clue about this ‘Sports Festival’, he had no reason to chime in and no thoughts on the matter.

Rather he truly had thoughts on any matter was debatable.

He was slightly curious about the Sports Festival being as he had heard the words several times out of many students mouths yet never found any context.

Figuring lunch to be a bad time to ask, he turned his attention to other matters.

His eyes and mind would wander quite a bit during the lunches, and dinners, even breakfasts.  Any meal that the children shared, he would find himself watching onwards with pangs of envy.

It felt like it was coming from his chest, but he knew that hollow chassis held little more than a power source and wires.  Upon his faux tongue he could almost taste the meals Saitama used to prepare, but that was a facsimile of a memory.

The world had changed so much.  Everything he knew about heroes was now wrong.

Everything had the ability to change in so little time, it was a wonder to experience the future, and a curse all at the same time.

How could he feel such joy to be alive, around people for whom he cares, and so dead all at once?  Mourning the past and living for the present seemed contradictory.

If he was given the opportunity, would he go back?

He glanced out the window, at that beautiful blue sky.  It was the same as ever, the clouds seemed the only thing taller than UA as the city line stretched below them.

It was like the Hero Association HQ.

He had checked maps, used 3D viewings of old locations he once knew, the craters had long filled in, the landscapes changed after hundreds of years and thousands of storms.

Yet so much was the same.

In Mei’s laugh he could hear Fubuki’s condescension about joining her blizzard group, in Izuku’s smile he could see Saitama’s dedication to doing the right thing.

Yet nothing was the same all at once.

Izuku could rarely stand on his own, he had an inherent overreliance on his sister, and Mei was arrogant and forceful in a way that somewhat mirrored Katsuki.

All of his thoughts were interrupted when an announcement came over the loudspeakers starting with a pop, “Midoriya Genos to the principal’s office, and feel free to bring your siblings.” The playful and cheery voice of principal Nezu rang out through the cafeteria, prompting everyone to turn their eyes to Midoriya’s table.

Mei’s face stiffened and Izuku felt like he couldn’t breathe, neither of them could move as they processed what was surely about to go down in Principal Nezu’s office.

Of course!  It made so much sense they didn’t realize how it hadn’t been a problem earlier, of course the principal is fed up with this!  They’d been taking Genos to school with them for a month, his eyes are cameras and he’s always recording, and since he’s in the classrooms, they’re no better than people with their phones out in theaters recording movies!  He isn’t enrolled and he’s basically an ‘always on’ camera, they’ve been stealing UA’s lessons!

“Heh, looks like someone is getting kicked out, bout time I suppose.” Katsuki huffed with an irritatingly cocky smile that he wasn’t even trying to hide.

He had not even been eating with them but was still close enough to gloat from his own table, “Oh wait, can’t get expelled if you didn’t go here in the first place, buh-bye Rust Bucket, you’ll be missed by someone, surely.”

Genos stood up, a pointed glare going in Katsuki’s direction, “I highly doubt that.  I’m sure if I explain it to him, the principal will understand why I must say here with Master and Sensei.”  Genos believed it a miracle that he found people willing to sit with him especially considering that personality.

Katsuki clenched his fists, but didn’t say anything else.

As the three of them left the cafeteria, he overheard a small bit of conversation.

The invisible girl beside Katsuki turned to look at him, “Do you have something against Midoriya-kun?”

He tilted his head into the air and let out an annoyed huff as he made sure to look anywhere but her direction, “Which one?”

“I mean, considering your position, it is kinda weird that a Hero Course top scorer is so intent on making fun of the Support Course.” Shinso suggested.

“Shut up ya damn Zombie!  I ain’t gotta take that from someone who doesn’t sleep!”

Genos nodded to himself, now too far to hear anymore.

They were gravitating towards ‘Kacchan’ because they could throw heat back at him.

Maybe that would be good for his distant nephew.

When Genos opened the door to Nezu’s office, Izuku’s legs became heavy with lead.

This was going to go badly, of course he didn’t want this to end badly especially since Genos seemed to enjoy going to school with them but the situation wasn’t looking great.  He just hoped this wouldn’t get them in legal trouble with UA, his mother was a good lawyer, but she was also overworked and not in a position to go against UA.

The bear… cat… mouse… rat… thing smiled and waved them over, “Greetings!  I’m glad you all came over, that makes this that much easier.”

In the chair directly in front of his desk, Inko Midoriya dramatically turned to face them like a scene out of a movie, to her right where three more chairs that Nezu pointed a paw towards, “Please students, sit.”

Nervously they all took their seats, once they were settled in Nezu cleared his throat and pulled out a folder which he held down with a paw, “Now Bakugo-san, was it?  You’ve been attending school here for about a month now, you’ve been enjoying the curriculum I assume?”

He glanced down at said folder, “You certainly seem like you are, with these frankly amazing grades you consistently achieve in every subject except the Support Course-specific stuff, before you begin to panic, that is no problem.” 

He smiled, “And should any of you be concerned of such, Bakugo-san isn’t costing UA any significant amount of extra money so please ignore that if it was a concern.”

Izuku finally relieved the tension in his shoulders with a sigh, it seemed like Principal Nezu was reasonable and wasn’t going to force Genos to leave, which meant they won!

His expression grew serious and the mood in the room soured instantly as Nezu held eye contact with Genos, “The problem only starts at the fact that you’ve been using a hero's license that expired 167 years ago.”

“They are lifetime licenses, sir.” Genos interjected.

“And I do believe you have exceeded one lifetime, Bakugo-san.” The rat said in a quirky polite way.

“Now if you would like to renew your license, then go right ahead.  The test should be coming up soon, but I’ll also need you to stop attending this school.  Registered heroes are considered adults and the only adults permitted on campus are staff or parents.”

Nezu smiled, “Of course, if you would like to be transferred to the hero course as an actual student, I’d be more than happy to make it happen. After all, you need the high school education anyways, do you not?”

Genos raised an eyebrow, he couldn’t help but come off as concerned, “What do you mean by that?”

“You never made it past your first year of high school.  I believe I could easily get you transferred over.”

That wasn’t easy information to find out about him back when he was alive, which meant Nezu not only knew how to sleuth, but had a way to find out more about history.

It also meant he was someone Genos didn’t want to get on his bad side.

Meanwhile, Izuku was taken aback with just how… perfect that was!  Genos would get to know how the system works in the modern-day and maybe he’ll even be in the same class as Kacchan!

Genos’s face was stiff and held no joy.  “With all due respect sir, if a special exception for a transfer is to be made, I do not think it should be for me.” Genos said.

Wait.  Did he just refuse a spot in UA’s hero course?!

Izuku could only let out a squeak of shock, “G-Genos do you know what you’re turning down?!  This is your chance to thoroughly become Demon Cyborg again!  Even get a proper rundown of hero history!”

“If special exceptions are being made, then the one with the dream to become a hero should be given the exception.  You deserve this spot more than I do, Izuku.  Besides, above all else I wish to stay with the Midoriyas.”

Genos was just so nice!  And entirely too risky!

Inko narrowed her eyes, “Genos, you are your own person, please disregard my words if you’re trying to act upon your orders.”

“If you want to transfer, do it.  Your future and life are your own.” Her tone was almost pleading.  If he was just following orders to try and appease them… she couldn’t live with that. 

He nodded in response, although no emotion was captured on his ever-serious face, that in turn led to assume there was a weight to what he said, “My choices are always my own.”

“So that’s your decision then, Bakugo-kun?” Nezu’s tone sounded amused, his head resting on his crossed paws and his eyes showing no signs of anything.

A moment passed and Genos seemed to reconsider, it brought ease to all of the Midoriyas when he nodded before speaking.

Genos was going to do the right thing.

“I wish to stay with the both of them.  Not out of duty but because I respect them.  If that means I cannot transfer or cannot stay in the school then I shall live with my decision.”

Mei let out a gasp and Izuku’s eyes widened even further, no one could believe that.

Except for Principal Nezu, whom nodded, “If that’s all, then that can be arranged, with a transfer exam I could have you all in the Hero Course no problem.”

“I’m sorry but that’s not happening.” Mei spoke up, “I want these two to follow their dreams for sure, but I’m an inventor first and foremost.”

A thoughtful pause from Nezu as a paw came to rest on his lower jaw, “I see.  Do you have any interest in hero work, Midoriya Mei?”

“It’s always been my brother’s dream, I want to support him.”

“And you in support work, Midoriya-kun?”

“I love coding, and if I couldn’t make it into the hero course, which um, I didn’t when I failed the test, then I would work with Mei, being quirkless and all makes the gear very helpful.”

“Hmm.” Nezu glanced at the files, “And you wish to stay with the both of them, Genos?”

“Correct.”

“Which means this is an unsolvable dilemma. In order to get you all where you want to be, I would have to make a Hero-Support hybrid wouldn’t I?”

That would really be the dream, Izuku had always wanted to be a hero but had promised Mei if he didn’t make it that they would one day own a Support Items company together.

He dared to hope for even a second as he sheepishly asked, “You can do that?”

He cackled, “Of course I can!  I can do anything, I’m the principal!  But, it’d be a whole lot of work.”

Hearing that seemed to kill all of Izuku’s hopes, he slumped his shoulders and his head dipped down. Of course, principal Nezu wouldn’t go through all that trouble for just three students that were being unreasonable and demanding.  UA’s principal is known for always putting the school’s best interests first, making a hybrid course would just be time, effort, and money better spent on the four pre-existing courses.

Inko cleared her throat, her commanding presence helped her hold Nezu’s gaze, “You wouldn’t have suggested it if you didn’t think my kids were worth the trouble.  After all, you seem to be a rather smart man, Mr. Principal.”

Nezu’s grin widened, “I see you are a woman of intellect as well Miss Midoriya.” He turned back to the kids, “I’ll gladly make that very hybrid class for you three, but there is the transfer exam to deal with.”

“I can pass any test.” Genos said bluntly.

Nezu laughed, “Exactly!  That’s why it won't be a written test.  It will be a physical test.”

Genos seemed to beam with pride while keeping his expression neutral, “The results will still be in my favor.”

“You hit the nail on the head!  A test of strength or stamina would be unfair when an android is being tested, that’s why you don’t have to take the exam Bakugo-san.  Midoriya Izuku, Midoriya Mei, if one of you can make it as one of the top three finalists of the Sports Festival then I’ll approve the transfer for all three of you.”

Mei smirked, “You sure are asking a whole lot from us Support students aren’t ya?  We’d be going up against every course for that spot.”

It was practically impossible.  Most people in Gen Ed where shooting for the top spots so they could get into the Hero Course, all the people in Support wanted to show off their gear to the best of their abilities, and the Hero Course itself had internships and Work Studies riding on their success or failure.

Not to mention if literally anyone found out about it, they would have giant targets on their back to make sure they crushed in an instant.

Izuku found it exhilarating. “You’re only giving us this task because it’s so hard, aren’t you sir?”

He nodded, his eyes closed and his tone level and calm, “Yes indeed, but of course you’d be going up against everyone, after all.  You kids are asking for UA to create a special division just for you.  If the challenge wasn’t hard, would it be fair at all?”

“Besides,” Nezu grinned, “I wouldn’t ask any less of the General Education or Business courses.”

“If you know I can pass the test, why can’t I participate?” Genos asked.

Nezu laughed, “You can participate in the Sports Festival if you want!  In fact, it’s highly encouraged!  After all, you will need people to see what you can do so they can offer you an internship.”

“What about the transfer part then?” Genos asked.

He smiled and opened the file he’d been holding which he slid over to Genos, “You as an android put both the phones and most students to shame with your abilities. However, I cannot allow you to count for the transfer exam when you do not take damage, nor do you need recovery time.  It would be an unfair advantage when facing other students.”

He sighed, “As much as I want to act in your favor Bakugo-san, its already quite the struggle to approve you being in the Sports Festival rankings at all, I could only pull it over by applying the knowledge that UA Hero Students need the attention on them.”

The file contained basic info on Genos’s stats, education, as well as a copy of his birth certificate.  “I would count yourself lucky Bakugo-san, not only are you attempting to create a special division of UA, but you are one of the few to transfer to UA as your second high school.”

Genos nodded, “Again sir, with all due respect I go by Midoriya Genos now.”

Inko offered Genos a soft smile and Nezu cackled, “Of course!  Of course, Midoriya-san! Anyway Midoriyas, you best be going, along with classes you only have a month to prepare for the sports festival.”

“If even one of us is a finalist we all pass?” Mei asked.

Principal Nezu nodded, “Indeed!  You’d have to be absolutely awful in order to fail this exam independently.”

“Define ‘absolutely awful.’” Genos requested.

The mood instantly darkened as Principal Nezu scowled, “Harming another student.”

“I’m glad the students are UA’s first priority.” Inko replied.

“The students should be every school’s first priority, Ma’am.” Nezu answered with a certain distinct sadness to his voice.

Izuku couldn’t help it was they left the office, they all wanted to win this, but he couldn’t rely on Mei for this, he’d need to think of things he could do to get an edge, after all, he was going up against every course.

Everyone wanted the spotlight, and he had no doubt rumors of their deal would put a target on his back.

Good thing he did best when he was being opposed.

“You’ve got a nasty look in your eyes, what’s it about?” Mei asked.

“I’m going to practice sparring with Genos.” Izuku declared, “He has combat experience, I’m sure that would help me.”

Genos shrugged, “I am unopposed to the idea.  If you explain to me what exactly this Sports Festival is, I will assist you, Sensei.”

“Stop calling me that, and see it all starts back at the beginning of UA’s founding when one-” Genos had unleashed one Beast of a history lesson that he got in all of his free time for the day.

UA Cafeteria – One week later

He had spent an entire week worth of free time hitting the gym like someone who’s done all of the confidants they can for the month on their third New Game Plus in P5 so all they could do is go the gym and wait, that’s way too specific for him to reference.

Was Izuku thinking in the third person?

He shook the thought from his head before he could have an existential crisis.

Preparing for the Sports Festival was harsh, harsher with the expectation of getting into first, second, or third.

The weight of it all felt insane, pressure that was crushing him and gaining intensity by the second, but he was just so close.  He could see the door to his future, it was just barely out of his reach and if he just kept running he’d be there in no time!

Izuku was snapped out of his thoughts by Genos tapping on his shoulder, “Sensei, you’ve been staring at your rice for a while.”

Oh he was doing it again… Izuku offered a nervous smile to Genos, “Right, s-sorry.  You were saying?”

Mei cackled and swung her fork around as she talked, flinging three small bits of rice at Katsuki, “I was talking about how we’re gonna freakin crush this, Izu!  We got this, calm your nerves and live for the excitement of it all.”

Suppressing his growls as each piece of rice hit him, Katsuki meticulously grabbed each grain of rice and carefully set them on her shoulder, without her noticing, Genos scowled at him, “Master Mei, Kacchan is putting rice on your blazer.”

Mei shrugged and brushed them off and right back on to Katsuki who turned to Genos with murderous intent, “Don’t worry about its Genos, ‘s no biggie.”

What is with them?  Kacchan seems to hate Genos, Izuku had half a mind to assume it’s just because he helped repair Genos, Katsuki had been so cold to him in these last few years.

He wondered if it was truly Genos that Katsuki disliked or if it was just Izuku.

The thought seemed to start clawing at his chest.

Had Genos really been punished for simply being associated with Izuku?  Did Kacchan really hate him that much?

His heart started pounding and suddenly everything felt a little bit too much, he’d been in his thoughts all day and it was bad for him.

he had to ground himself.

Izuku sat up, mumbling an excuse about needing to use the restroom, as he tried not to dash out into the hall, instead walking or perhaps speed walking.  The cafeteria was just too loud for him, he didn’t some quiet for a moment, some time to think.

He was forcing himself to think about anything else, he just wandered around the halls with no real aim, going in all directions until he was stopped by a loud and unfortunately familiar voice.

“Young Midoriya!  Just who I wanted to see!” All Might said, starting yet another day’s set of uncomfortable ambushes, He leaned closer to Izuku, too close, bending down to be right near his ear, “Are you perhaps ready to accept my quirk?”

Temptation was a horrid thing.

Nezu expects great things from Izuku, and he wanted to deliver, for Mei, for Genos, for Mom, and for Katsuki.

For him.

A quirk would give him an edge, the number one hero’s quirk would give him the biggest edge he was going to get, it wasn’t like he was going to obtain godly powers and start his hero’s journey without a little forgery.

But at the same time, he’d made such a show out of rejecting All Might.

Izuku could do this without the quirk.  He didn’t need All Might in the slightest, it could go to someone else.

And yet…

It would help so very much.  Part of him so desperately wanted to believe in All Might, in this.

And with the deal he had just made with Nezu, he needed all the help he could get. “You know what?  Sure.”

This could work in his favor, and besides, if he didn’t accept by his own choice he wasn’t far from All Might just begging him until he cracked.

All Might smiled his award-winning smile, and it stabbed at a part of Izuku that it didn’t feel the same as it used to. “Perfect, come with me.”

He grabbed Izuku by the arm and took him into an office, one that he knows for a fact must have been built or changed just for him as Power-Loader Sensei’s ‘office’ is just the classroom after hours.

Izuku took note of the tacky and strangely brick-like sofas, they were a shade of green one can only describe as puke green.  The rest of the decorations were just as tacky and strange, pictures of him and all of his ex-side kicks lined the walls.  David Shield’s picture seemed more prominent.

He motioned for Izuku to sit, and as soon as his butt met the ‘cushion’ Izuku discovered the couch not only looked like a brick but felt like one too.

“To weld my power there are a few things you must do, for one, never tell anyone, anyone, at all.”

“What about Katsuki, he’s my best friend, and there’s also Genos, and Mei?  And my mom?  They’ve known me my whole life, suddenly having a quirk doesn’t just happen.” Izuku fired back with a very reasonable question.

“Mei is the poke-y one, correct?  If it keeps her away from my wounds do what you must.  You cannot tell your mother; it would put her in danger.  You never know who might try and steal my power.”

Wasn’t Izuku technically trying to steal All Might’s power, “Noted.”

“Next is some history.  I won't lie to you about this; my quirk is called One for All.  It’s a power passed down from person to person growing stronger with each holder, my time as the Symbol of Peace is growing short.  I need a worthy successor, and from your grades, attitude not so much, but at the very least I can tell from the way you reacted to me that your morals are incredible, and you built Genos with your sister, didn’t you?”

“Repaired, but sort of, yeah.”

“Then by extension, you and your sister saved Bakugo that day.  All of this proves you worthy.”

IN WHAT UNIVERSE?  Izuku knew pretty darn well they could simply force Genos to burn down UA!  If it’s all in coincidence like this, then their morals are barely existent if you're just thinking about it like that!

“I’d like to pass this power onto you.  What do you say?” he asked.

“Eh, sure.” Izuku replied.

He smiled again, “Excellent.” He reached up, pulled a hair out of his head, and extended it to Izuku, “Eat this.”

Izuku absent mindedly grabbed the hair, “I’m gonna go get water.”

“You're going to go into the hall?!”

Izuku couldn’t help but scowl, “You expect me to eat your hair without a drink?” he headed for the nearest water fountain and just as he pressed the button he heard All Might yell:

“Young Midoriya not that one!”

Izuku got sprayed in the face by water.

This day was going so good.

After finding a working fountain, (and a lot of grumbling) he managed to down the strand of hair.

And!

Nothing.

All Might made him eat hair for nothing.

At least very few people could say the Number One hero played a prank on them.

Maybe now he could go back to passively observing All Might as a fan again.   That would be nice.

Later that night - Midoriya residence.

All Might said it would kick in around the time Izuku got home.  And it didn’t.

As usual they were in the workshop, although he’d opted to take a shower when getting home so Mei had been in there unsupervised for too long, as evidenced by her evil laugh that was heard from the hallway.

Opening the door he found the workshop had also been filled with mad scientist evil red lighting, which was Not what the overheard RGB light strips were for.

Sitting on the table, Genos was hooked up to a laptop and spart parts and tools littered the tables around them, screws all over the floor.

He made eye contact with Izuku but it remained a fully blank look.

Mei spun around to face Izuku, the goggles and lighting made her hunch seem ever more pronounced as she pounced at him and grabbed him by the shoulders, pulling her entirely too close to her face as she yelled, “You are just in time!”

“What have you done?” Izuku asked nervously, his shoulders hunching without him thinking about it.

She forced them back down and smiled, “I have created and installed an upgrade so great and marvelous that nothing I do for Genos after this will ever compare.”

“I’m very excited to discover what it is.” Genos said calmly, “I was impressed by the sheer number of upgrade parts.  And her choice to keep me awake during the process.”

“I call it, toaster mode.”

“Toaster mode?” Izuku tried to hide the skeptical look on his face, but it was a struggle, especially as Mei walked over to the nearby counter and grabbed the bag of bread for their emergency sandwiches.

(Inko had decided leaving a minifridge with some lunch meats and bread in the workshop was about the only way to ensure they would actually eat when she wasn’t there to feed them.)

Mei placed a slice of bread in his hands and continued speaking like this was totally normal and she looked super sane, “Now when we simply ask, he can set himself to toaster mode and toast our bread fast and easy.”

Sure enough, after a moment of Genos staring at the bread like he had never seen it before, the bread had been lightly toasted from the heat of his palm.

She picked it up and handed the slice to Izuku, a gloating grin on her face, “Boom.  Toaster mode.”

With a nod he accept it, holding it by one of the corners in equal parts confusion and hopes she wouldn’t make him eat the palm toast, “Anything else?”

The comical evilness was growing tiresome as she whipped around to face her brother, “Camera mode!”

“Alright, you broke me so I’ll be honest.” He forced a smile, “Mei, these don’t sound helpful.  If we’re upgrading him, shouldn’t we be making sure he can, you know, be a hero?”

“You doubt Master?” If their cyborg friend was capable of gasping dramatically he would have based on how scandalized he sounded, “I have no doubts in my mind that she knows what she’s doing!  Master is a genius!”

“I know just as much about machines and engineering as she does!” Izuku fired back defensively.

Mei laughed, “Okay fine, if you want me to describe these in boring terms then I added two low power lasers in his hands and created then installed high end cameras that he can switch his eyes to which emulate my quirk.”

He wanted to pull his own hair out, “Why wouldn’t you start with that?!  Why lead with toaster mode?”

Mei smiled innocently, “Because momma said I can’t let Genos use the blades in his arms to fight.”

“Genos has blades in his arms?!” Izuku shouted involuntarily, hoping he could keep the noise down after that, he didn’t want them to be stuck with a noise complaint.

Mei pressed on his left wrist and a blade popped out of his elbow, she presented this like it was something impressive, “Arm Blades!  That’s something Professor Pickle left in there.”

“Doctor Kuseno.  His name is Kuseno.” A gentle yet firm correction on Genos’s behalf.

Mei waved Genos’s words away, “Yeah, yeah, Kusuo, whatever.”

He stiffened at the name, retracting the blades as he shook his head, “Kuseno.  Kusuo is… someone else entirely.” He sounded distant.

“Who is Kusuo?” Izuku asked, his own curiosity getting the better of him.

Genos sighed and placed his right hand over his heart, “That is a long story involving my past.”

Mei placed her hands on the table and pulled herself up to sit on it, “Go on ahead then, I like long stories.”

Izuku pulled up a chair of his own, “I would like to hear as well.  I wanna know more about you, Genos.”

Genos smiled gently, a feeling he couldn’t quite name welled up within him as he started to explain.

The teens listened, nodding along and doing small things to confirm they were paying attention but did not speak until he finished.

“From age 19 to 24 I was Saitama-sensei’s disciple, I became an S class hero, rank 8 overall.”

“Eventually, we found the rouge cyborg and destroyed him, after taking down the organization he worked for we found out he had taken a hostage when he destroyed my village.  My older brother, Bakugo Kusuo.”

“We tried to help Kusuo to the best of our abilities but having gone through that he never fully recovered.  I can only imagine what my death did to him.”  Genos said, finally, finally finishing his story.

“And we still don’t know who killed you.” Izuku said, unable to stop a frown from showing on his face.

From the age of 14 Genos had been fighting to avenge his family?  That was so tragic.

He really didn’t get a chance to be a kid.

“No.” Genos said and looked down at his hands, “I remember that it was someone… important.”

“To you?” Mei asked.

“I have no idea.” He answered with a sigh, “That someone could have been important to me, Saitama-sensei, the Hero Association, Silverfang, any of my friends… I truly have no idea who it was, only the impression I would know if I saw them.”

Mei patted him on the back, trying her hardest to cheer him up, “Well even though I’m pretty sure they’ve returned to dirt, if we do find the person who sent you to the junkyard, we’ll be sure to trash ‘em.”

“Was that a pun?” Genos asked.

Mei chuckled, “I dunno, was it?”

“I wasn’t prepared for these mind games!” his outburst caused Mei and Izuku to start laughing, laughed but Genos kept staring at them in confusion, “What is so funny?” his insistence they explain only made them laugh harder.

Izuku continued to hit the gym and his sparring sessions with Genos, after all if he could keep up with an android with limitless stamina, surely he could handle some heroes in the making, right?

Half the time he was just getting his butt handed to him, Genos felt horrible about it and apologized when he noticed some bruises where he had hit the poor kid, but Izuku insisted it was fine.

After all, if Genos took it easy on him, he would never grow.

Not too long before the sports festival, he had a very strange dream.

In this dream he was inside of a boring looking black void with purple mist around, above him was a grey platform, he saw a group of seven shadowy figures standing on it.

With their imposing might they stood towering over Izuku,  he couldn’t make out all of them, just that they were menacing and lorded over him as if they were a counsel, judging his every move from now until forever.

One with a scar across his face spoke, he sounded lethargic, “Should we help next time?  You could pull the ole mountain punch trick, that’d really remind him where he came from.”

The one in the middle with shaggy white hair raised a hand, he seemed frail, “No, we should wait, I wanna see the kid beat Genos on his own.”

The one next to the scar faced man spoke, his black hair was short and spiky, his voice befitting someone of his large muscular stature, "I agree.  Let's wait and watch.  This could be entertaining.”

The vaguely female one tapped a wispy shadow that was barely anything, “He chose the kid, surely that counts for something.”

The scarred man spoke again, this time in a snarky tone, “As if I trust anything he does.”

Izuku tried to speak but found his mouth sealed, his hands barely able to move at all.

The first one dropped down to Izuku’s level and approached, his eyes were droopy, in fact he almost looked more tired than the scar faced man with the blonde hair, he got right up in Izuku’s face, “Oh hey, the kid’s awake.”

Izuku tried to respond but nothing worked, still the man nodded.

“Izuku yeah?  Tell Genos I said hi.”

Izuku jolted out of bed, heart racing with adrenaline, it was 4am and he didn’t need to be up yet, only a few seconds of breathing later and he was unable to properly recall just about anything from the dream, but it wasn’t lost on him how he felt a buzz of power faintly on his skin, something was different about him now.

The only part he was able to remember was the final words spoken to him.

But Izuku didn’t have the ability to tell Genos anything, especially not when he didn’t know who was saying hi.

Chapter Text

Classroom 1-A – Free time

Hagakure bounced up and down beside Katsuki, a new favorite habit of hers since their bombastic team up at the USJ, “Are you excited for the Sports Festival?”

He rolled his eyes, attempting to ignore her loud outbursts.  Somehow, the two idiots he had helped decided they had been cast in the roles of his friends when he was decently sure they were just extras.

“I wonder how far you’re gonna go, no doubt pretty far from what we’ve seen.” her hands darted to her face as she gasped, the bracelets on her arms jingled as they clanked together from the quick movement, wildly, “Woah!  What if you win?”

“Stupid question, there’s no what if, I am gonna win.  I’m Bakugo Katsuki.”

“I cannot tell if you are bold or just arrogant.” Ashido commented, still firmly planted in her own area, far away from mister Trouble as she could get.  “Talk like that in front of the rest of the school and you’re for sure getting taken out first.”

“You wanna die?!”

“No threatening people in class Bakugo!” Iida reprimanded, having spun all the way around and jutting his arms out like a robot to make his point.

“Quit making people angry.” Shinso murmured from behind Bakugo, “All it’s doing is drawing unwanted attention to you.”

Bakugo ignored him, kicking his feet up onto his desk, “Stay outta this Zombieman.”

Kaminari leaned over to Kirishima, “Man, it’s still crazy to me that Bakugo managed to get himself a little entourage.” A sigh escaped him, “I’m blonde too, how’s it fair?”

Jiro shot him the meanest glare, “What does that have to do with anything?”

Katsuki was getting tired of hearing himself gossiped about like he wasn’t in the room, but it wasn’t like he could do anything about it.  UA had a no tolerance policy against using your quirk on other students outside of the allotted class time.

It took everything in him to avoid letting the obvious tells of discomfort appear on his face.  Instead he clenched his jaw as he tried to ignore their very existence.

Wasn’t like he wanted them to like him.  The people in his class didn’t matter, half the kids that go through UA end up getting shoved off before the end of the year.

He wanted to be the Number One Hero.  He wanted to be the best.  The fact that a couple of them were also contenders for best just meant he had more chances to show off.

All of them, even his supposed ‘entourage’.   Especially with the Sports Festival coming up, there allies don’t mean much.

He didn’t have friends or allies, only one he ever thought he’d had kept looking down on him with that stupid smile, acting like they were equals, like he needed to protect Katsuki.

Shitty Deku sure showed his appreciation for every time Katsuki got people off of his back, but it was fine.

Katsuki just has to prove that he didn’t have limits, couldn’t be replaced, that he was the number one.

Hagakure gasped loudly next to him and clasped his shoulder with a hand, he stiffened at the touch and shot her a glare that she seemingly ignored.

“Oh my Gosh I just realized, Bakugo-kun if there’s a team exercise, will you pick us?” Bakugo had no clue where the us came from as Shinso sure as hell didn’t look enthusiastic about the whole thing.

And yet he turned to look at Bakugo expectantly.  Like it was a given that he was the other person Hagakure was talking about.

Where the hell did they get off acting like they were his friends?  Just because they had worked together during USJ?!  Just because he tolerated them sitting with him at lunch?

They’d show their true colors eventually.  Probably just wanted to piggy back off of his success and grades, “What good would that do me?” he barked at her, “you wouldn’t make us stand out at all!”

“Bakugo!” She whined, earning a roll of his eyes, “Sure I wouldn’t stand out but invisibility is so useful!”

He would think about it.

Not that it mattered when they had no clue what the festival would entail this year.

He turned his head to look out of the window and see the clouds move for a bit only to be met with the sight of suddenly being eye level with Mei.

Whom was outside.

Before he knew it, she was already plummeting right back to the ground, subtly as he could he leaned over to check what was going on and the entirety of Class 1-H was outside of the school building.

Wearing some kind of ridiculous shoes, they had these giant springs on the bottom and were just bouncing around like lunatics.

Of course the world had to mock him by showing him Deku, right outside wearing a stupid grin on his face.

Support Course, what a joke.  They’re out there playing like children on pogo sticks.

Katsuki hated that guy.

*---*

It was the end of the day and Izuku was about ready to head home as he walked through the halls.  Before he could leave however, he needed to find All Might.

Nearly a week and a half later and absolutely nothing had happened.  He felt no different and certainly didn't have All Might levels of power (Izuku's fists hurt a lot when he tried to punch Genos!).  The only conclusion was that All Might really had scammed him.

"Ah, Young Midoriya, just the boy I wanted to see!" All Might poked his head around the corner and smiled when he made eye contact with Izuku, "I was looking for you my small myrmidon."

Myrmidon?  Izuku shook the thought from his mind and smiled, "I wanted to talk to you too, so I guess everything works out!"

"Not something we can discuss too publicly I'm afraid." Which meant it was back to All Might's office with the brick couch.

Hilariously, once the door was locked All Might took out a clipboard before sitting across from Izuku on the other couch.

This was about to be the worst therapy session ever.  "Alright, the quirk has a few symptoms that may have manifested by now, so if you would, tell me if you've experienced any of the following, alright?"

Simple enough, Izuku nodded and a sort of nervous energy found its way through him.  Maybe something had happened and it was all going to come together in a big 'A-ha!' moment.

"Unusual pains anywhere in your joints?"

"Nope."

"Flight, super strength, an unusual sense of awareness of approaching danger?"

Izuku wished, but instead of sassing him, he shook his head.

"The feeling like you're about to explode due to pressure?"

"Should I be worried about feeling that, and... no...."

"The pressure would only be a worry if you weren't physically strong enough for the quirk."

Oh.  That makes sense, "So if I wasn't strong enough I'd feel pretty uncomfortable, like a localized headache?" 

All Might pursed his lips, "More akin to feeling like you're being crushed for a few days before exploding."

Before he could protest All Might smiled and held a hand out to reassure him, "You aren't experiencing that, and you lug around heavy metal all day.  You're fine, and I was sure you were to begin with." He looked back down at the clipboard and sighed, "But, I didn't expect this."

"Right..." Izuku rubbed the back of his neck, "See that's what I wanted to talk to you about.  I haven't felt anything unusual.  I don't think the quirk took."

All Might shook his head, "Nonsense my boy.  You ate the hair, I was... am willing for it to go to you.  There's no reason you shouldn't be able to take it.  There must have been something, anything!  Think back on this last week!"

And Izuku tried but... nothing.

It hadn't even brought out his dad's ability to breathe fire or his Mother's ability to levitate small items.  No quirks of any kind.  "No, I can't think of anything that could have been One for All."

He sighed, deflating into his usual form, "Damn it, that doesn't make any sense..."

His disappointment was palpable.  Izuku looked to the floor, it felt horrible.  All Might hadn't even wanted to give him the quirk and now they may have lost it because Izuku was selfish enough to take him up on this offer.  With his hands on his knees he gripped the fabric a little tighter.

Sure Genos couldn't be the holder, but there had to be someone heroic enough, strong enough, "What about your dreams?"

Izuku's head snapped up and his eyes widened, "What?"

"Have your dreams been at all... strange in any way?"

Had they?  "Um... oh.  The other day I got told to say hi to Genos, but it was weird because I didn't recognize the face of the person."

"That sounds like a normal dream.  We'll have to try again."

Izuku shook his head, "About that," Come on Izuku!  Tell him to find someone else.  Tell him to try and find someone worthy, tell him you're not the right fit!

"Oh," All Might smiled, slightly losing his hunch, "did you remember something else?"

"Huh?" 

"About the dreams.  I was going to ask if you've seen strange figures in them, that person who said hi may have been an aspect of the quirk."

What.

Izuku shot out of his chair, "The quirk is alive?"

"Calm down my boy, moving that suddenly is going to give me a heart attack." All Might tried to curb his enthusiasm and once Izuku was patiently back in his chair he began to explain, "It's not alive and it's not sentient either.  Within it lies these sort of echos of its former users.  I've encountered them in my dreams a few times too, back when the quirk was new to me."

He cocked his head to the side, "If that's true then how did this 'echo' know Genos?"

"Well that," All Might sighed, "I don't want to get your hopes up, but it's possible that one of them either knew Genos, or someone with his name. You did say the robot was over a hundred, correct?"

"Android."

He waved the boy's words away, "Regardless,  how many echos were there?"

Izuku tried to recall, there was the one who spoke, the familiar blonde man, "About... seven?"

"Makes sense that you wouldn't see one representing me either, so seven would put you at the correct number of echos!" All Might grinned so much he rocketed back into his true form, "When means there's no need to worry my boy!  You've got the quirk, we just have to wait for the rest to manifest and show up."

"How am I supposed to know when that happens?" Izuku asked, sensing the conversation was nearing its end as All Might stood up.

Izuku stood to join him, All Might set a hand on Izuku's shoulder and looked into his eyes reassuringly. "You simply will.  Once you exert the sort of force it takes to use One for All, you'll know what happened."

His brows knotted together, "And if I don't?"

All Might opened the door, "Then I suppose you're used to extreme super strength."

*---*

“Does everyone feel ready?” Power loader asked his gathered students, a pleased smile grew on his face when they responded with a cheer, “Then I trust everyone filled out their forms properly?  Please remember that you cannot take any support gear with you that you did not already clear with the school.”

After reviewing everyone’s forms and doing a triple check, it was time for the personal check ins with the students.

They were all a little surprised when Power Loader turned his attention to Genos first, “Are you absolutely positive you wouldn’t like to take anything you’ve made during class with you?  A few advantages could be good.”

Genos raised an eyebrow, “I do not think that a high-powered magnet would do me any good in a battle.  Just as well I am already sufficiently advantaged due to a lack of lungs.”

“I get that, I do,” his eyes softened as he stared at the android, “Listen Midoriya-kun, you’re one of my students now, so I want to see you succeed, just like everyone else.”

“Passing up on the gear would be fine if you weren’t going to be going up against every other division of UA.  By now I am positive rumors of the deal have made it out.  So they won’t be taking it easy on you.”

The image of a certain problem child in 1-A flashed through his mind, “There are some students that I doubt would have a hard time justifying it to themselves that it’s okay to rip you apart.” He informed Genos.

Genos smiled, full of pride to the point of arrogance, “There is no need for worry, I’ll be taking it easy on them, Master and Sensei have already said I can’t kill anyone.”

Maybe, just maybe, Power Loader was facing the most insane, worrisome and deadly class he’d ever had to teach.

Usually, it was the Hero Course that was a problem although this year… the thought made Power Loader start visibly sweating. Genos didn’t seem to pay any mind to this and continued on. “So, I appreciate the offer, but I will not be bringing any unnecessary gear with me, I think I will suffice, as I am my Master and Sensei’s greatest creation.”

“Oh, yer going down, I’m taking you out just for that.” Mei said mostly jokingly, sticking her tongue out at Genos.  “I’m fighting to win too Ya know.”

He closed his eyes and smiled, “Then I trust you will fight me with your all then, Master.”

After a moment of consideration he turned his head back to Power Loader, “Actually, if your offer still stands…”

*---*

The Fanfare of the Sports Festival was always a sight to behold but this year, Izuku was in the middle of it.

It was a dream for a fan boy like him, to think that he was finally in the location, standing just outside of the arena in the UA gym uniform… it was something special.

He may not be a Hero Course student yet, but this was the first step in the right direction.  He wasn’t just going to UA and able to use that fact to sooth himself, he was in UA.

All he had to do was manage to place in the top three.

Against every other class.

Quirkless. 

It was time to get serious and never mind all that. They had to get a move on as the crowd all around them slowly began to move at the go sign. 

The whole of the Support Course moved out together as a unit, but as opening ceremonies began, a vicious and familiar whisper started to build itself around Izuku. “I hate the Sports Festival, everyone knows the other courses are just here to make the Hero students look good.”

“It would be one thing if we were just a tool to show off the Hero Course, but this year, we’re totally sidelines.”  Ignore them Izuku.

The thoughts of the others didn’t matter.

“Did you see the way Power Loader was playing favorites?  He’s been giving special treatment to the Midoriyas and their pet robot since the start of the year.

A loud and disappointed sigh came from a female voice, “Well duh.  It’s a Hero school, that robot has been offered a spot in the Hero Course.  Should be obvious that its gonna be all eyes on him and the people who built him.”

Suddenly all of that excitement inside of him was starting to feel rotten in his stomach as Present Mic began delivering the opening speech.

He, and the people he loved most, were targets in this competition.

Although there was no way to know how much they knew, the others did know about the deal, and Izuku half thought the Principal intended this as part of the test.

Can you still try your best when everyone else in your grade level is going for the kill?  These games weren’t about to be very fun, he knew that much.

Things were decently standard as far as Sports Festival openings went, as per usual the highest scorer in the Entrance Exam was called to the stage.

The only thing different about this year was that Izuku wasn’t merely in the audience or watching live, but a participant.  Oh, and of course that the person called up was Bakugo Katsuki.

The highest scoring student in The Hero Course Entrance Exam, a fact repeatedly pointed out by some of the students around him.

It didn’t change much though; everyone had their eyes set on one fact and one fact alone, no matter what happened, the idea that UA only cared about the Hero Course was going to be prevalent throughout the event.

This just so happened to be something that sort of proved their point.

Katsuki stood tall on stage, as if he was always meant to be up there.

It was no secret that he liked the look of the other first years below his feet.  He stood up straight enough to seem confident but relaxed enough to look like it didn’t mean much to him.

He snatched the mic right off of its stand, sending a bit of feedback to the crowd, a smirk spreading across his face as he watched the people’s reactions. “Let me make one thing crystal clear, I am here to win this.  I’m fine with squashing every single one of you if you get in my way.”

The crowd burst into jeers and insults but all that seemed to do was egg Katsuki on.

Genos was almost impressed, he’d never seen someone paint a target on their back better than Amai Mask could. Katsuki just dug his own grave, and yet still seemed to be thriving, did he live off of negativity?

Apparently the shovel looked might appealing as Katsuki kept going, with a wide swing he pointed at Izuku, and the other two Midoriyas by proxy.

“And you three.  I know about that little offer you were given, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you swoop in and become Hero students when I had to work for it!”

The pointing certainly helped their reputation as the majority of the crowd’s negative energy switched from Bakugo to Izuku.

“That’s the Hero hopeful right?  From 1-H?”

“Woah, that robot looks like Bakugo.”

“Imposter syndrome much?”

“Bakugo was the top scorer among the Hero students.  These guys have to be bad news.”

Seemingly satisfied with having made the Midoriyas a sacrificial target, he stepped off the stage and Present Mic didn’t miss a beat when he began the commentary.

“A declaration of war within the first few minutes!  Bakugo Katsuki has made himself the enemy of all the courses including the rising stars of the Support Course!  Will he be able to live up to those words or will he be eating them before the day is over?”

Izuku was suddenly hopeful he made it out of this arena alive.

*---*

Izuku was almost impressed with how fast everyone took off in front of him, it was a mad fight against gravity and the weight of the entire grade as they attempted to trample him.  Eventually he decided to stop trying to fight the flow and ducked to the side.  With even one more bodies worth of space inside the tunnel, even more people pressed ahead of him.

After taking a shove to the ribs, he decided it was morally okay to feel a little good about the fact that all of this didn’t even help them due to the extreme bottlenecking of the tunnel’s exit.

It was nice to have a moment’s rest, but now that he was technically the furthest back, he was also in last place, but there was no way out of this one until some more students cleared out.

He wanted to feel disheartened but that would distract him too much.  He had support gear and a goal, there had to be something he could do.

His eyes darted all around the small area, looking for some way around this tunnel when out of his peripherals he caught a glimpse of Genos doing squat stretches.

Made perfect sense, they were about to be running for the majority of this race and stretching your muscles to loosen up was a smart idea.  Izuku should stretch too.

Wait.  Something about that wasn’t right.

Genos doesn’t have muscles!  Not only but he’s been moving all day; his joints are oiled and anything that could possibly need to warm up was warm already.

A loud springlike boing caught him off guard enough that his brain shut down for a minute.

Genos ascended into the sky and once he reached the peak of his flight from whatever he just did, a set of jets in his hands propelled him the rest of the wall over the wall.

It took Izuku’s brain quite a moment to put together that Genos was wearing a class assignment, the spring shoes they turned into spring loaded boots.

It was an absolutely crazy tactic, but cool as can be!

“Is that legal?” one of the people stuck in the tunnel asked.

“And taking the lead right out the gate is Midoriya Genos!  The first Mandroid to ever be a UA student!”  Present Mic announced.

Midnight’s voice shocked Izuku slightly as he had been sure that Present Mic and Eraserhead were the only ones commentating, “Never thought this would be the first introduction of an Android to the school but I’m certainly not complaining!”

“Nemuri, shut up.”

She laughed fearlessly, “Think about it! An unageing Hero could prove to be so useful!  He could be a front lines hero years past the average human.”

“Or until he becomes obsolete, technology is improving rapidly every year!  Who knows, maybe next year we’ll have a second 2.0 Android here to surpass him!” Present Mic replied.

Turned out there were benefits to not being in the tunnel, which Izuku learned pretty quick when he saw half of it get frozen in an instant.

The culprit was of course, Endeavor’s son.  Most everyone was frozen solid in place, with the exception of those who saw and jumped out of the way like Katsuki and a few of his fellow 1-A students.

Bakugo blasted ahead just like one would expect, but in his efforts to carve through the ice wall left behind, he actually created an opening for a few of his classmates.

Izuku got shoved past by a purple haired boy whom followed after Katsuki like it was his one shot.

Katsuki laughed as the boy came up behind him, “Ha, didn’t think you’d survive Chilli’s death trap.”

“Such confidence you have in someone you’re betting on…” the boy mumbled.

Izuku didn’t get to hear that response though, as he and Mei were attempting to move through the tunnel and past all of the people.

“Excuse me, ‘cuse me, pardon me!” Was about the only thing Izuku heard.  He felt so bad when he stepped on some blonde guy’s foot.

“A thrilling escape from the tunnel!  Todoroki’s gambit to freeze his competitors in place was genius, shame it was defeated by the tactical teamwork of Bakugo and some of his fellow classmates, even some members of Class 1-B managed to capitalize on the openings he made for them!” Mic’s voice chimed over the speakers.

By the time they caught up with Todoroki and Genos, it was clear that Genos had already incinerated one of the giant zero pointers.  As in the whole robot was gone with only the most heat-resistant scraps remaining on the ground.

Paying no attention to the robots, Katsuki blasted straight past Endeavor’s son without a second thought, “I’m going to kill you!  As if you had a chance in hell of me letting you stay ahead of me!”

He lunged towards Genos but was met with evasive and impressive dodges.  It looked more like a chase than a race.

“That is an arrogant assumption, Kacchan.  I do not need your permission nor I am trying to get ahead of you in specific.” His dry and witty reply served him no favors as he was met with a nearby explosion.

He remained in front but he was about the only person who could logically survive what Katsuki was dishing out.

In an impressive move, Mei stood back and shot a grappling hook into one of the joints of the remaining Zero Pointer’s leg.  With the assistance of her spring loaded boots she was able to get herself in the air and swing herself forwards!

The landing was a bit spotty but she did land even further ahead than Genos!

The victory didn’t last long though since her unstable footing and need to build up speed meant the three boys rocketed past her.

Todoroki was both riding an Ice wave for speed and attempting to catch Genos and Bakugo in ice traps, he wasn’t taking too kindly to being ignored it seems.

“Rumor has it that Bakugo has beef with Midoriya Genos!”

“I’m all for youth filled rage and fights but focusing on a single student in the first test is foolish.” Midnight added, “Granted so is making yourself the most hated man in the arena, but that drive to go on and anger everyone is getting me downright Excited!”

Present Mic chuckled, “Foolish acts make the best content!”

“Foolish though it may be, Bakugo has a sort of tactic to his actions.  In singling them out he has declared his desire to win and put forth a bigger target than himself due to their supposed attempts to enter the Hero Course.” Eraserhead replied with a certain detached cadence to his tone.

Izuku was almost thankful for Katsuki, Todoroki and Genos trying to duke it out with their whole ‘I must be the best' nonsense as it meant Izuku had an easy path through the robots.

Taking advantage of it was pivotal of course.  He wanted to show off, but that was for rounds two and three, so for now this was a chance he couldn’t waste.

It wouldn’t be flashy or make anyone pick him when it came to internships, but it wasn’t every day the strongest people in the race hand you the materials you need to win.

So he grabbed one of those said super heat-resistant pieces of robots and carried it with him, it was big, bulky, and heavy. 

Objectively a bad object to be carrying around during a race.

But he now had a shield that was capable of handling toaster mode at heats higher than it should have been able to go.

Mom was absolutely going to grill Mei about that.

But with the big guys in the lead, all Izuku had to do was keep a good pace and keep running.

Some people passed him, many didn’t, but he wasn’t too worried about it.

The spot he managed to be in pretty consistently was seventh place, and that wasn’t too bad.  Sure it was no first, but he didn’t need to come in first in every challenge.

Just needed to be in the top three.

Which meant he had to survive the first two rounds before he could really think about his placement.

“Man, it’s hopeless!  How am I supposed to compete with these guys?” One of the people running next to Mei complained breathlessly.

She grinned, completely ignoring the actual content of the complaint, “I know!  Doesn’t it just make you wanna give it your all?  This is so inspiring!  I’ve got so many new ideas for babies!”

“Are you crazy or something?”

“Crazy is one of the best things you can be in this field!” Mei replied, pulling the grappling hook trick yet again, “It gives you the drive needed to go the extra mile!”

The woman shook her head, “Crazy ass support kids…”

Things weren’t going well for Todoroki.  Bakugo still had all of his focus on Genos which was beginning to piss off the prodigal son.

After gaining a burst of speed he threw out a large Ice spike behind him. It nicked a few of the kids, stopped Bakugo whom almost slammed into it and caught almost all of one of Genos’s legs in it.

Granted the ice itself wasn’t that strong so in a controlled movement he was able to shatter his way out, but with a large loss to his speed.  Toaster mode was ever reliable though.

The wall hardly had a chance between the lasers and explosions.

“And the next obstacle for they must face is…. The Fall!  This large drop could be easy if you're fast and nimble enough!” Present Mic was trying so hard to make this race seem cooler than it really was.

“Careful not to rush as you could hurt yourself!  But go too slow and you'll be left behind.” Midnight’s sing-song voice was an obvious taunt.

Genos stopped running when he approached and began to contemplate.

This… was a bad match up for him.

The obvious bet would be to cross the steel wires made to hold the students, but he couldn’t.  Being as he weighed nearly double that of what a normal human teenager would weigh, he assumed it wouldn’t be able to support him.

Even if it did, it would surely not support the numerous other students who had to go across it.

The jets were also an option, although the energy cost was clearly too high to justify that in the slightest.

When the rest of the Midoriyas caught up, Izuku saw an opportunity and took it.

As it turned out, Mei wasn’t the only one with a grappling hook, she used hers to jump the gap first, and sprinted ahead.

Izuku would have followed suit fast, but first had to strap down that giant piece of metal.  Lucky for him there were straps.

His grappling hook got him across quickly. (Although not as safe considering hers was a backpack and his was just a gun shaped one but who cares.  Batman nor Joker ever died because of his grappling hook.)

“And Midoriya Mei takes the lead!  Following close behind her is her brother Izuku Midoriya, and in third, is Bakugo Katsuki!  I guess the creators of the Mandroid are picking up the slack!  They’re also proving Bakugo wrong on the whole taking them out thing, huh?”

Izuku wanted to correct him, but it wasn’t like Present Mic would hear him if he said they didn’t create Genos.

The second place lead was quickly taken from him when Katsuki sped up to catch him and purposefully landed on Izuku.

Never in his life had he been so grateful for a piece of metal than he was in that moment.

“Bout time I saw you beneath my feet.  I told you I was going to win this.”

Of course he took the time to gloat.

But just as quickly as he ruined Izuku’s shot at second, he sped off.

Todoroki passed by and at least had the good will to ignore him while he struggled to stand back up.

Once he got running again, he tried to comfort himself.  After all 4^th place is still respectable he thought, until Genos sped past kicking him into 5th.

He’d finally figured out that he could just jump the gap, eh?

Sure, Izuku didn’t exactly expect to win this, but it was almost embarrassing how fast they passed him, this game was rigged from the start wasn’t it?

It wasn’t much of a comforting thought as he was pretty sure getting shot in the head wouldn’t get him out of this one.

After so much running, they came up to a minefield.

Mic explained that although they felt bad, one or two going off would do you no harm, just shock you and scare you a bit.

So of course Genos began fearlessly walking through the field with no concern for any of the mines he set off.  This part was a little unfair considering his body could easily handle over twenty of those going off at once.

Seeing Genos being an insane showoff, Mei whistled to gain his attention, “Oi Attention hog!  Showoffs have to pull double duty, now get yer ass back here and carry me!”

She chuckled afterwards because it was a pretty good joke, and as her eyes scanned over the ground to try and figure out the placement of the mines she was caught off guard by being scooped up into a princess style hold.

A small yelp escaped her and Genos looked to Izuku with that quintessentially Genos look, “Would you like to be carried as well, Sensei?”

“No thank you, I have a plan, and if it works, I’ll get one helluva internship!” Izuku smiled and gave a thumbs up as they turned back to the minefield.

Todoroki and Bakugo were working their way through at a steady pace, so Izuku had to speed up if he wanted a chance of this working.  Damned straps weren’t easy to take care of though.

“And in third place, Midoriya Genos is carrying Midoriya Mei across the minefield!  I don’t know if that’s cheating?!” Mic announced.

Eraserhead sighed, “Nezu says to allow it.”

Izuku was doing normal people things.

Like digging through the mine field and carefully collecting a bunch of them.

Really it was a sensible plan after he figured he had enough he grabbed onto the straps of the metal and held in out in front of him.

“I’m, crazy aren’t I?” he laughed as if proving his point then backed up enough to break into a sprint, covering as much of his body as he could with the piece of metal he dove onto it with a jump.

Oh did it give him height, but it wasn’t enough.  It put him just around Katsuki and Todoroki, whom were already so damn close to the finish line that it was anyone’s race.

He had no choice if he wanted to win this, forcing as much of his body weight down as possible he let go of the metal and stuck his feet out, stepping on their backs and using them as steppingstones.

It shoved all three of them to the ground, but Izuku was on top of them and able to slam his hand over the finish line first.

A loud gasp from Present Mic and he confirmed the good news, “And in first place we have Midoriya Izuku!”

Katsuki shoved the other two boys away from him and claimed his second place before stomping off to avoid getting into a physical altercation on live TV.

Not long after Todoroki had done the same, but with more ‘how could this be’ style contemplation, Mei and Genos rushed to his side, both sporting horrified looks.

“Sensei!”

“Izuku!”

He carefully stood and smiled at them, due his tousled hair and thick layer of dirt on him he looked more than a little loopy, “I think I won!”

Mei moved in for a hug but Genos beat her too it, “Sensei, you did it!”

Izuku smiled and awkwardly returned the hug, it felt unusual due to how solid Genos felt underneath the softish fabric of the uniform.

It also occurred to him that this was the first real hug he’d ever gotten from Genos.

The second they made it into the break room Katsuki grabbed Izuku’s collar and snatched him up, putting them eye to eye, “What the hell was that?!”

“Me… doing my best?”

“I’m going to kill you; do you hear me?!  Just because you won the first race does not mean him going to let you stay in the lead.”

Katsuki let go of Izuku’s collar, dropping him onto the ground and turning his head away from him, “But, even though you used one underhanded as shit trick, you did still win.  I will acknowledge that.”

“Is that a compliment?” Izuku asked with eyes wide.

He shook his head, “You’re an idiot.  Whatever, this sets the score for now, but the first round isn’t where the money is at.  I’m aiming for first in the third round.”

Genos nodded, a serious look on his face as the four advanced further into the room, “Oh I do so hope we get to fight then.”

Mei cackled, “Would you look at that Katsuki, you’ve done gone and yourself the enemy of the whole school.”

“I know what I’ve done.” He mumbled.

Izuku was horrified when something grabbed his shoulder, he brought his elbow back in a panic and hit something.

A new feeling of dread and oh this guy will actually kill me filled him when he turned to realize he had elbowed Todoroki Shoto in the face.

The words came in a rush as he struggled to get out, “Oh my gosh I’m so sorry!”

More than anything Todoroki had an understated but surprised look on his face, but steeled himself after blinking a few times, “You’re the Midoriyas, correct?”

Izuku nodded, “Uh, yeah we’re all here…  Can I help you?”

“You intrigue me.  Bakugo seems threatened by you.”

A nervous sound escaped Izuku and he was hopeful it didn’t sound like a laugh.

Katsuki laughed, “Big words from such a little man.” he turned his head to look at Todoroki, “You gonna be ok in a real fight pretty boy?  I bet you’d hate if that face of yours got scared again.”

Todoroki flinched, something unreadable in his expression stayed for a moment before he turned and stormed off without another word.

Genos narrowed his eyes as he watched Todoroki leave the room, “Watch yourself Katsuki.  that kind of attitude will get you taken out before you even get the chance to face off against Master or Sensei.”

“Shut up, and for the last time it's not Kacchan it’s Katsuk-” he paused upon realizing Genos said it right, then promptly turned his head up into the air and clicked his tongue to move on from the embarrassment of habit, “And I’ll be fine! My attitude has carried me this far in life.” He said dismissively as he went to get another bottle of water.

“That’s what scares me.” Genos muttered.

Chapter Text

Teacher’s area of the UA Sports Festival Stadium

Power Loader and Vlad King were unfortunately sitting right next to each other this year.

See it wasn’t that the two didn’t get along, more so they were like water and oil.  They were similar in a lot of ways, but while Vlad was all ‘my students are the best and going to win’, Power Loader was more concerned with making sure his students didn’t murder anyone.

A win for a Support Course Student is getting one cool moment for their gear, which is a pretty drastic loss for a hero student.

Thusly they judged everything on such wildly different metrics that discussing the event was more hassle than it’s worth and had led to fights in prior years.

The idea that poor Power Loader would be sitting next to him in awkward silence for more than thirty minutes sounded like a personal hell designed just for poor Power Loader.

Granted, they were friends.

Vlad scoffed, “It’s ridiculous, everyone is just paying attention to Class A-1!”

Power Loader nodded, “Class 1-A was all over the news.  Between the attack on their teacher and all the press that came from the Bakugo kid defeating that Monster at the USJ.”

“They still shouldn’t be ignoring my class!  I thought you of all the UA teachers would know how far up or down you are in the letters doesn’t determine strength.  Class B will easily beat class A.”

“No one is saying they’re better just because they are higher up in the alphabet.  I’m sure Class 1-B will shine, Vlad.” Power Loader said.

Vlad King raised an eyebrow, “Hmm?  You don’t sound too enthusiastic, what’s up?”

He chuckled, “Well, I don’t exactly have many stakes in the Hero Course this year.”

“All of your students have been getting good grades yes?  I saw many gadgets get used during the obstacle course.  Something else on your mind?” Vlad was asking leading questions, he wanted to talk about the bet.

Power Loader rubbed the back of his head and let out a sheepish laugh, “Well, this year my class has some interesting characters...”

Vlad didn’t even try to stifle his laughter, “Oh how badly could they possibly do?  What’s the worst that could happen, someone’s gear explodes?”

Power Loader tried not to let his shoulders slouch, “I’m sure you’ve heard about the bet Nezu made with the Midoriyas.”

Vlad shrugged, the arrogance seemingly growing, “I don’t pay attention to that kind of thing.”

A moment of silence passed before he spoke again, crossing his arms all the while, “All that said though, I can’t imagine that these students would make it into the Hero Course.  What with every other student gunning for their heads and all that.”

There’s the usual over cocky Vlad.

“I believe in them.  They want this, badly.  And I think UA being able to have fostered a quirkless hero will be good for all sorts of people.”

“Alrighty then, wanna make a bet?” Vlad offered, a large grin on his face that felt mocking.

“On what?”

“On which of us will have a student make it into the Top Three.” Vlad replied with complete confidence.

“You want us to bet… on a bet that Nezu has already made with them?”

“You said you believe in your students yes?” He uncrossed his arms to give Power Loader a somewhat forceful slap on the back, “You clearly already believe they can win against the Hero Course and I can’t say I’m opposed to easy money; how much are we betting?”

This felt morally questionable.

“I’m… not sure I’ve agreed to this.”

Vlad nodded, “Alright, then let’s make it something simple enough, a thousand yen to the winner and the loser must pay to take the rest of our co-workers out drinking.” He knew exactly how to egg him on didn't he?

Although, Power Loader could deal with a good drink…

"Fine."

They both found that agreeable enough, so they shook on it, “Don’t come crying to me when you have to pay up though, Midnight is no lightweight.”

Power Loader nodded; he was more than willing to bet on the drive of those kids. Was it ethical?  Probably not, but if there was one thing he knew about the Midoriyas, it was that they got what they wanted and were willing to go to extremes to do so.

Like, if they wanted their sort of brother sort of creation to come to school with them, they would smuggle him in via an elaborate series of happenstance.

All of that aside, he did actually have some favoritism towards Izuku.

That kid held endless potential.  If he could pull this off, not only would he obtain his own dream, but he could show the world that not everything comes down to quirks.

After the intermission:

Midnight looked at the gathered students below her.  It was a far smaller crowd now that the herd had been thinned, the drop off from the first to the second half always felt so deeply sad.

No time for that right now, she cracked her whip and got out her best announcer voice, “Welcome back students!  Now that you’ve rested how about I teach you a lesson in heroism?  Those at the top have a higher price on their heads!”

Behind her the billboard announcing the point totals from the last round appeared, with significant jumps in points as you went further up, “The second round is a cavalry battle!  You’ve all earned points for your hard work, everyone on your team’s points gets added together and worn on these headbands.”

Izuku thought the idea sounded fun, right until he finally got a good look at his own point total.

“And Midoriya Izuku here has ten million points on his head!  The number one is always fighting for that top place!” Midnight announced.

In an instant Izuku felt all eyes on him, watching his every move.

Many of the students didn’t like him because of the bet, he was sure winning the last race made him unpopular even then, and now?

Well now they were more than ready to tear him apart.   There was blood in the water.

“You have ten minutes to gather up a team!  Your total starting points will be made of your combined points based on your performance during the race.”

At the very least… he knew he had two people on his side?

Kacchan probably wasn’t going to help at all…

Capitalizing on those people might be a bad idea.  As much as he trusted Mei and Genos, he knew if they joined him it would just mean they were putting a huge target on their backs.

Did he really want to be a reason they might not succeed?  If they join him now, then if they lose it’s a worst case scenario.  If they were all on one team, that greatly increases their chances of being targeted, meaning Genos also gets deprived of the hero course.

Before Izuku could over think anymore, Mei had already thrown her arms around his shoulders, practically hopping onto his back, “So little bro, wanna form a team?  We’d have plenty of points to start with, and not to mention the chances to show off our babies!”

He looked at her in confusion but she smiled in a reassuring way.

She had already realized the risks and was still willing to take the chance for him!  Izuku felt like he might burst into tears at that very moment.  Mei was always there when he needed her.

As he approached, Genos scared away the people who were muttering about them with his fierce glare.

Well he scared the guys away and most of the girls, but there was still a chunk that were muttering about his looks, “Sensei, Master, I recommend adding me to your team.  I would make a most excellent horse.”

Stepping away from Izuku she rolled her eyes yet still couldn't stop from chuckling at the phrasing, “Oh Genos, you do so have a way with words don’t you?”

He shrugged, “I suppose?"  then shook his head, "There are more pressing concerns than my charisma. The average team would be four people, of course the more the better, but I suggest we find at least one more person.”

“Someone to cover our weak spots, yeah?” Mei suggested off handedly.

“Getting someone with defense power would be the best bet, since my offensive capabilities are sufficient as is.” Genos seemed downright proud of himself as he bragged.

He'd been doing that more often lately.

More suggestions between the two were spouted out as Izuku nodded, trying to take in everything they said.  He didn't have anything good to add to the conversation so he needed to scout for someone with all the qualifications instead. 

He looked around the stadium, despite there being 44 students that made it into the second round not a single one looked like they would be interested in joining his team. 

Not that he could blame them, they all had lives to live and needlessly throwing themselves after Izuku wasn’t a great idea.

Still, Izuku was willing to take chances.  There were 44 people, someone had to have a high risk high reward mindset.

Katsuki had a crowd around him, but that was usual.  He noted seeing that same invisible girl and purple haired boy with him.  Kacchan made friends.  That was good.

The thought seemed to trample Izuku’s spirit, but there was no time for this, he had to get a move on.

It didn’t matter how nervous he was, he had to muster up his courage.

The first person he asked was a sweet looking girl with brown hair who shook her head and apologized, “I’m so sorry but I’m already on a team!”

The second was a sparkly man with blonde hair, “You want Moi on your team?  Of course you do, sadly our fates do not align, you do not shine.  Come back to me when you have a sparkle, non?”

Izuku didn’t think he could get a sparkle, whatever that was, in the remaining six minutes, so he moved on.

One other person had drawn his eye though, a person he’d briefly gotten to see during a recording of one of Class 1-A’s practice battles.

Summoning up all of his courage, he tapped the boy on the shoulder,, “H-hello er, uh hi!  Tokoyami-kun, was it?”

Tokoyami turned to face Izuku, eyes wide for a second before closing with and, “That is the title bestowed upon me.  Greetings Sir winner, do you have need of me?”

He smiled sheepishly, “Yes! But if you’re okay with it though.” This, this wasn’t exactly working, “What I mean is, would you two like to be on my team?  I think we’d work well as a team.”

“Two?” Tokoyami asked with his head tilted slightly, otherwise he showed no expression.

“Dark Shadow, your quirk, it’s its own person, right?  I know its sentient at the very least.”

The quirk itself took the chance to pop out, it wrapped its paw like claws around Tokoyami’s shoulder and peaked its head over.  A large grin on its incorporeal face, “Fumikage!  Someone who knows of us!   We gotta accept!”

Tokoyami seemed slightly embarrassed by Dark Shadow’s outburst. He peeked over Izuku’s shoulder to look at Mei and Genos, whom were shaking their heads yes intently.

“Seems we are rather wanted then.” Tokoyami closed his eyes and nodded, “I’ll accept, sometimes it is necessary for the darkness to be present for the sun to shine even brighter.”

That wasn’t just acceptance, it was a compliment too! “Thank you very much, we’re happy to have you!

“I hope I prove to be of some use to your cause.”

With that, Izuku was positive that his team was more than solid!  As were his teammates, now they just had to concoct a plan, which was pretty clear to Izuku with their move sets.

Yep, with Genos’s wonderful offensive moves that could keep everything away, and Dark Shadow and Tokoyami’s ability to get rid of what does come close, it was as obvious as breathing.

They would run away from everything like cowards.

It was a tactical move! 

Sure, if they really wanted to, they could put up a sizable fight.  It would be flashy and they would be remembered but they’d never win like that!

Still, there was ambition in this cowardice. They would fight if forced to, but that wasn’t the end goal.

What he really wanted was to keep the Ten Million the entire time.

It would be easy with the provided support from Mei, because the delightful local mad woman had brought two jet packs and was more than happy to allow Izuku to wear the second. (He would have used his own gear, but Genos agreed, Izuku needed to save his own stuff for the third round.)

Genos was equipped with the second one, that way he wouldn’t be too heavy should they need to get away fast, and so that he drained less power during this fight.

Mei was wearing her exceptional hover boots and to an extent, and Tokoyami should have been able to hold on a decent amount.

Thusly, they were mobile and hard to hit.  The perfect cowardice build.

“Start!” With Midnight’s yell the pressure practically fell onto team Midoriya.  Luckily, this was his environment!  Izuku worked best when under pressure.

Every course in UA was already charging at them, Izuku couldn’t fight his manic grin as he issued the order for Met to start the jets.

They never did start because for some reason, the ground Mei was standing in was suddenly quicksand.

He turned his back and looked all around for the cause, he was willing to guess it was the 1-B student who was touching the ground.

He wondered about the specifics of a quirk able to make such a trap worthy substance, but he didn’t have time to ask, he had to counteract it.

Trying to think his way out of the situation, Izuku bit his cheek hard enough to draw blood before he could properly formulate a plan they were moving again because Genos took charge.

Firing off the jets in his hands, he pulled Mei out of the quicksand and blasted them out of harm’s way for about five seconds.

Then they landed right next to another team.

The girl in front of said team made her hands grow to inhumanly huge sizes and tried to grab Izuku’s headband, or rather his whole skull.

He ducked as Dark Shadow popped overhead to slash at her hands, Genos firing small bursts of energy as Mei got everything up and at em.

It took a few, and they wouldn’t be in the air forever, but for now they were safe in the sky.

Taking the opportunity as he clutched Genos’s shoulders, Izuku turned his head to face Tokoyami, a natural smile forcing its way on.

“Your quirk control is insane, Tokoyami!  You two make such a good team, you can move in very dynamic ways and still trust each other!”

Tokoyami turned his away and blushed, “Much training was required, but thank you nonetheless.”

Dark Shadow chuckled, it sounded somewhat childish, “I like this one Fumikage.  We should keep him.”

Izuku kept smiling but was kind of terrified of what that may mean.

Once they were back on solid ground it was a long game of cat and mouse.

The main goal was trying to avoid both Team Bakugo and Team Todoroki, luckily the 1-B teams seemed to be doing a great job of distracting the big players.  They maintained their tactic of  dashing around the arena and being slippery little bastards.

Honestly, it was kinda fun.

They hadn’t taken much damage too thanks to the dynamic tag team.

However, in the midst of watching Dark Shadow totally own, Izuku didn’t pay enough attention to where Genos was running and they got surrounded by four teams.

“Quickly, we gotta get out of here!” Izuku panicked, attempting to help Mei with the switches but reached a snag in the form of Genos’s foot being taped to the floor.

“Apologizes Sensei, I appear to be stuck.”

“Is that tape?” Izuku leaned over to investigate, which was followed but a yelp as he narrowly dodged someone’s very long, very slimy, tongue.

His eyes followed it as it retracted into a small opening between a student with a Lot of arms… well, between his arms. “What in the world?”

A creepy-looking frog-like girl stuck her head out, “I see, ribbit.  No wonder Todoroki declared war on you.” She was hardly finished speaking when she started attacking with her tongue again as yet more tape was thrown at the group.

Izuku managed to dodge again, but there was only so much maneuvering he could do on top of people.

Sadly, the situation wasn’t getting better since Genos was still stuck and all of these problems weren’t counting the other three teams that were closing in at the time.

Mei groaned in frustration, “For gods sakes Genos!  Just take your goddamn shoes off! We can replace em!”

As if just taking the shoes that were stuck to the ground was not something he had thought of, he nodded thoughtfully and slipped out of the spring loaded shoes.

They didn’t fully fly this time due to limited, well, everything.  Instead they just ran through the air to the other side of the arena, “Apologies for being useless, Sensei.” Genos said as they landed.

“Don’t say that.  You weren’t useless Genos, you’re doing a lot, I can’t even move or attack.” Izuku tried to reassure him.

All three of the Midoriyas couldn’t wait for this event to be over, Izuku was tried, both of the human siblings were hungry, Genos was bored, and Mei was just itching to invent.

After dodging another Class 1-B team, Izuku was almost relaxed, until he heard a series of explosions.

There was hardly enough time to even react, he just knew Katsuki’s team was flying towards him.

With a positively manic grin on his face Katsuki shouted to announce his arrival, “Don’t get carried away Deku!  I’m still gonna win!”

They took off into the air again, but it wasn’t much help since Katsuki ditched his own group like a madman and started chancing after them.

It was an insane length to go to just so he could prevent Izuku from winning.

Before he could get close enough to Izuku’s headband, he was close enough to Genos’s legs for him to kick Katsuki’s chest and send him heading to the ground, “Not a chance.”

“Bakugo!” A redheaded member of his team shouted as they rushed to catch their foolish leader who flung himself away from his horses.

“Stop rushing ahead!” The invisible girl chided.

As Team Midoriya landed, one of Katsuki’s team members threw some sort of Shurriken into both jetpacks, leaving the team stranded on the ground for the remainder of the round.

They had just lost their biggest advantage.

*---*

Vlad King’s laughter somehow echoed despite them being in an open area, “Are those the three kids you’re placing all your bets on?  Look at them!  They’ve just spent the whole match with their tails between their legs, running away like children!

As much as Power Loader wanted to defend the team as a whole, he was a bit stuck on the comparison between children and… children…

He shook his head, “You know, running away is a good strategy here. They certainly don’t need any more points to win this round.”

“Yeah, it’s a good strategy, if you want the whole world to think of you as the scared shitless kids who wasted everyone’s time by running.” Vlad scoffed.

It didn’t help Power Loader’s case when Aizawa’s favorite student destroyed their jetpacks with his projectile weapons, “Those are the students Nezu offered a spot in the Hero Course?  No Hero agency is going to want to recruit them.”

“Hybrid Course.” He corrected. “Nezu plans on making a Hybrid Course for students that might not pass the traditional entrance exam due to quirk limitations and the like.  A mix of two of UA’s courses with split classwork, and he’s offered them the first spot.”

Vlad rolled his eyes, “Exactly what we need right now, to overindulge students who can’t become heroes.”

“It’s not just for the Hero Course, it’s a hybrid of all the courses, someone could be a Business and Support student, a Business Hero, it’s quite a good idea.” Power Loader replied.

“You are overly optimistic, you know that?  Every kid who gets the chance is just going to try and force their way into being a hero.” Vlad sighed, “Don’t you think giving them false hope is unfair?”

“It isn’t false, and there are still qualifiers, like the Sports Festival.” Power Loader argued.

He shook his head, “Higari, if Nezu wanted these kids to have a chance, he wouldn’t have let that rumor spread.”

That couldn’t be true.

He had faith in them.

*---*

“Look at that!  Thirteen whole minutes have passed!  Let’s take a look at everyone’s scores!” Present Mic announced and brought up the scoreboard.

Izuku couldn’t help but sneak a glance at it out the corner of his eye.

Then he promptly felt like he was going to fall over when he saw Katsuki was in last place, or the fact that outside of Team Midoriya, the top of the list was all class 1-B.

“It seems that Bakugo is determined to answer all of our burning questions, to think after that bold deceleration Bakugo still can’t live up to his threats!”

Class 1-B was absolutely dominating the field, it was scary in all honestly.

“At this rate, it looks like the Midoriyas beat him after all, not only that, but the ‘extras’ he dismissed are coming back with a vengeance!” Present Mic added.

Izuku swallowed nervously, did Present Mic realize that he kept putting a red dot on Izuku’s forehead?  He could practically smell Katsuki’s bloodlust.

Izuku felt fear when he saw Katsuki on his left, that whole squad was close enough to start attacking when Katsuki’s head suddenly snapped at a different direction.

Katsuki growled and tapped the redhead, on the shoulder, “Slow down there Rusty, there’s been a change of plans.”

“What do you mean?  He’s right there!” The boy protested.

“We’ll get to Deku soon, but first I’m going to kill that bastard!” and then they ran after a blonde 1-B student who was smiling in an egotistical way.

Izuku nervously chuckled upon seeing, the started internally praying for Monoma’s survival, “Well, at least it seems like it’ll be easy to run away!  Everyone seems focused on Kacchan-” he was cut off when he heard skates grind to a halt.

“You’re very focused on Bakugo.” Todoroki said as he threw up an Ice wall behind him, inclosing the group, “But I told you Midoriya.  I’m going after you.” 

The black haired girl on his team nodded, “It seems like team Bakugo helped out greatly, now that they can’t fly.”

The whole team was creeping closer, slowly but surely, and the ways out of this were looking slimmer by the second.

“Indeed, I’ll have to thank Bakugo for that later.  Since you can’t run and you can’t fly, your options are slim, no way you can fend off anyone like this, so I’ll be generous and take the ten million points off your head.” Todoroki was damn near villain monologuing.

They were figuratively and literally backed into a corner, as Team Todoroki grew nearer, they kept backing up until they were backs to the ice.

“If Genos uses his jets we might be able to-” Mei started, only to be cut off by Tokoyami.

“Bright lights cause Dark Shadow to be less effective, if we do that I can’t defend.”

“Trapped again, are we?” The speedster of Todoroki’s team asked.

They weren’t trapped, they couldn’t be trapped, there had to be something that Izuku could do-

There was.

Genos looked genuinely worried by their dwindling chance for escape, “Sensei?  Should I try anyways?”

“Actually Genos,” he shook his head and pointed to Todoroki, “I’ve got a different plan.  Incinerate.”