Chapter Text
With all these villain attacks happening, it was a no-brainer that we’d have to move into dorms. I was definitely fine with it, and so were Ochako’s parents- it would be more convenient for both of us, and I promised to call often. Even though it would be annoying, I’d have Ochako do the talking, so it wouldn’t be too bad. It was definitely going to be bigger than where I’ve been staying. Surprisingly, though, the entirety of our class was currently standing in front of where I’d be staying. Did Aizawa just pick a random place? That seemed like a him thing to do for sure. I’d stayed in something like a dorm at summer camp before, but I could definitely deal with it better when I could actually have my own bedroom and bathroom.
“Is everyone here?”, Ms. Aizawa said, looking over the class with a deceptively casual eye.
Mineta saluted. Again. I think he’s been doing that more recently. “Yes Ma’am!”
The rest of the hero course- at least, what I thought was the rest of the hero course, nodded.
Momo confirmed it. “I did a head count and this should be everyone.”
Aizawa nodded and began.
“Good. To begin with, I hope all of you have had productive internships. Even if they were cut short by the incident earlier this week, your mentors should have had some time to teach you something valuable. Remember these lessons and hold onto them as we return to normal hero classes.”
Kaminari rubbed his arms, clearly thinking about something.
“Not sure about everyone else’s… but there was a lot of trouble during mine.”
Mineta looked concerned.
“You alright dude? I heard everyone got hit pretty bad.”
“Got stabbed, slashed, and overall had a wonderful time. Not sure how legal it is for me to talk about the rest of my time.”
Yikes. So everyone had a shit time, huh. And if the League was able to target so many of us at once that means they’re likely growing in power beyond where they’re “supposed” to be at this point in the story. Hm. That’s dangerous. Well, can’t cry over spilled milk now, guess we’ll just have to shank them all.
Kirishima spoke up, seeming cheerful as always, although obviously still acknowledging the seriousness of the villain attacks.
“From what I’ve heard it was pretty bad but could’ve been a lot worse; I’m really glad to see that everyone’s made it out alright. Don’t forget to go to Hound Dog or talk to one of us if you guys need a friendly shoulder!”
Looks like he roped Yaoyorozu into the “us” bit.
But even if some of the class agreed Hound Dog was nice, a friendly shoulder wasn’t exactly what I needed or wanted right now. Ugh, even in my original universe I hated therapy. Just yap yap yap and nothing gets solved.
Aizawa cleared his throat, still deadpan.
“Let’s get back on track. While I’m very excited to see all of you in class tomorrow, today is supposed to be spent discussing dorms. Both of our first year classes are going to share one dorm building, with each student having an individual room and four to five students on each floor. As a reminder before I announce these groupings: living in a dorm with your fellow classmates like this is a privilege, not a right. While we will not be kicking you off campus, I will warn you that living in the teacher’s dorm is a much less pleasant experience.”
Yes! So it was like canon. I could deal with living with others pretty alright, then.
“Be quiet, don’t burn anything down, and don’t do anything stupid inside the dorms. That about it?” Kaminari rattled off, sounding excited.
A few others chimed in, agreeing to behave. No one got kicked out in canon, and I’m sure the other SIs will behave too. Dorms should be the least of our worries right now. Even if we ignored the threat of villains showing up and killing us again, we did have finals soon, and that was a very normal problem for high schoolers. Very boring, very human.
Aizawa continued, beginning to announce the dorms.
“With that in mind: Dorm #1 is going to be Fumikage Tokoyami, Shihai Kuroiro, Kojiro Bondo, and Kosei Tsuburaba.”
Oh, the edgelords were gonna be in the same dorm. That would hopefully be pretty fun for them.
“Dorm #2 is going to be Yosetsu Awase, Denki Kaminari, Mashirao Ojiro, Togaru Kamakiri, and Katsuki Bakugo.”
Seemed chill enough with canon Bakugo out of the picture. Except for Kamakiri, maybe.
“Dorm #3 is going to be Mezo Shoji, Neito Monoma, Minoru Mineta, and Hanta Sero.”
“Sweet!”
At least Mineta seemed pretty happy to be rooming with Sero.
“Dorm #4 is going to be Izuku Midoriya, Tenya Iida, Juzo Honenuki, and Jurota Shishida.”
This should be a well-behaved dorm, with Iida and Shishida on the same floor. SI Iida was still very calm.
“Dorm #5 is going to be Eijiro Kirishima, Shoto Todoroki, Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu, Hiryu Rin, and Hitoshi Shinso.”
I hoped the rest of them could sleep peacefully with Kirishima and Tetsutetsu in the same dorm…
“And lastly for the boys, Dorm #6 is going to be Sen Kaibara, Manga Fukidashi, Koji Koda, and Nirengenki Shoda.”
I snapped back to attention as Aizawa began to announce the girls’ dorms.
“For the girls: Dorm #7 is going to be Momo Yaoyorozu, Kyouka Jirou, Itsuka Kendo, and Setsuna Tokage.
Dorm #8 is going to be Reiko and Emily Yanagi, Mina Ashido, Yui Kodai, and Tooru Hagakure.
And finally Dorm #9 is going to be Kinoko Komori, Ibara Shiozaki, Pony Tsunotori, Tsuyu Asui, and Ochako Uraraka.”
Not the best, not the worst. Everyone in my bloc seemed pretty tolerable.
Pony smiled. “Sounds fun!”
Yep, yep…
“Not bad. Let’s keep our room clean, guys.”
As we grabbed our dorm keys from Mr. Aizawa, Iida spoke up.
“So I don't know a good time to let you guys know, but Iida’s dead.”
Yeah ok cool uh what I’m sorry WHAT!!!
Even Kirishima didn’t really know what to say.
“Ah, I’m- I’m sorry to hear that, man.”
But what did Iida, or I guess not Iida mean by dead?
“ I got blown up by Compress who was throwing bombs, was in like, a vestige realm talking to Iida and he said his connection or something has been weakening and he's just gone now.”
Oh! …oh.
“Alright, can’t pretend- Okay… so we’ve seen SI’s disappear. But… this is a fresh new hell… Alright. Anyone else missing friends?”
Kaminari seemed concerned at this new development, that even the “canon” personalities could die.
“Fallia is no longer among us.”
Hm, Tokoyami lost his SI.
“I’m… sorry to hear that. I don’t know if you even knew them or what things were like before… this. But sorry about well… everything.”
I don’t know why Kaminari was so sorry, it wouldn’t change anything. But I guess if it comforted Tokoyami? Was Tokoyami even the type of person to be comforted by that kind of thing?
Some of the class started talking about a funeral, and I tuned out, even though Ochako was clearly listening. Especially because Ochako was listening.
I signed, grabbed the key to my room, and went upstairs to unpack and take a nap. I slept on a futon at home too, so I just brought that over and a few blankets for the different seasons. I brought practical bs too, obviously, like toothpaste, chargers, and a desk lamp. But most of all, I brought a bunch of plushies that Ochako and now I had accumulated, and proceeded to very ceremoniously dump them all over my futon. I changed into something more comfortable and cleaner before lying down and falling asleep.
…
I blinked blearily, becoming aware of the world once again. That made waking up sound almost poetic, which it wasn’t. I immediately checked my phone. It was a habit that I did whenever I woke up, which probably was bad, but oh well.
[Eijiro Kirishima, 5:01 PM]: Heya, folks- we’re going to be doing a little room competition. If you’re interested, drop by the common room in the next ten minutes and we’ll get going!
[Neito Monoma, 5:02 PM]: When we get to my room, please try to avoid letting Wanko dash out.
[Kosei Tsuburaba, 5:02]: Dang it, I was just down there talking to Luc. Coming down now.
[Katsuki Bakugo, 5:02]: whatever
[Yui Kodai, 5:03]: I’ll drag a friend along.
[Mezo Shoji, 5:03 PM]: I’ll be there as well.
[Fumikage Tokoyami, 5:03 PM]: Revelry in the dark.
[Tsuyu Asui, 5:04 PM]: Sure
[Emily Yanagi, 5:04 PM]: Me and Reiko will be there!
I sighed and shot out a reply.
[Ochako Uraraka, 5:04 PM]: I’ll meet you guys soon, too lazy to head down rn
I didn’t want to head downstairs yet, and I still had to clean up a little if I was going to be showing everyone my room. I sighed again, took a long drag of water, washed my face, and began picking up my plushies and placing them on the futon once again.
I stretched and grabbed my water bottle and a granola bar so I’d have something to eat if I got hungry. Sato was the traitor, so we didn’t have cake to look forward to anymore during this. They should still be on the first floor, right? I sighed again, put on my shoes and stepped into the elevator.
Behold, there they were. It wasn’t exactly hard to spot them, considering they consisted of a sizable part of 1-A and 1-B. Well, basically. I didn’t think Bakugo was here, but maybe he was and I just didn’t catch him??
Well, everyone was currently checking out Kuroiro’s room, so I quickly joined in on the watch party. Everything was completely black. The bed was black, the sheets were black, the desk, the walls, the curtains…the only drop of color was a Phantom of the Opera poster on the wall. The room smelled of spray paint. Clearly Kuroiro had not shied away from a bit of a crafts project.
“Ventilate your stuff after it's spray-painted…”, I mutter.
The next room I remembered was Neito’s. Somehow, despite the fact that we had literally just moved in, it was already messy. Even worse than mine, really. There was stuff for cats everywhere, a TV mounted on the wall with a gaming setup below it, containers scattered around, a surprisingly sizeable whiteboard, and, of course, a cat.
A cat that immediately tried to make a mad dash out the door before Neito managed to grab it.
“Clearly, I am not winning.”
There was a pretty nice exchange between him and Pony. I briefly considered asking to pet his cat too, but decided to let it adjust to its new environment first. It had also just moved in, after all. Still, it seemed pretty comfortable with Neito. He had even carried it out.
Hanta’s room was pretty sick as expected. It was the same as canon, and had a nice neutral color palette with warm tones. Again, it was pretty cool to see another side of someone like Sero.
“Honestly it is really pretty.”, Midoriya admitted.
Sero just grinned. “What can I say, I'm a natural born artist.”
“Can’t deny that.”
The Yanagis’ room had a bunch of horror movie posters on the walls. They must’ve spent a lot of time putting them up, because the room was literally plastered with them.
“Welcome to our room.” Reiko spoke.
The speaker Reiko carried around crackled to life.
“Hope you survive the experience…”
The door shut behind us and the lights suddenly flickered before going out completely. A recording of a scream played from somewhere hidden.
Kirishima still seemed cheerful despite the scare. “How many times did it take you guys to get that down?”
The lights turned back on as Reiko sighed.
“Far too many.”
“…Spooky.”
As I looked over at Neito, who had been the one to speak, I noticed he had a scratch on his face. Looks like the one that had gotten most scared from that little routine was his cat.
Kirishima’s room had the same theme as canon. There were a bunch of superhero posters, and even one of Superman. Huh, didn’t know he was still a thing.
“Here we are! Got some posters up and everything.”
Well, he was pretty happy to have a bunch of people suddenly gawking at his room. I know I wouldn’t…but I had to do this, anyway, didn’t I? Ugh…
“...And here I thought most media from the past was dead. This makes me wonder if other stuff is still around now.”
Yeah, that was what I thought too, Kaminari. It’s pretty crazy that Superman is still around somehow.
“ Well, there’s a lot gone, but managed to dig this up- I’ll have to see if I can find any old comics.”
Kirishima replied, sitting down on his bed.
And now Kirishima and Itsuka were flirting again. Ick. I’m saying this affectionately, by the way.
Somehow, Tetsutetsu’s room was completely identical to Kirishima’s, except it was silver-themed instead of being red. How…Kirishima had even changed his room up from canon.
“You have… I think this is the sign I need to go look for some old merch I wanted. But Batman? Seriously? No offense but I thought you’d be a Spider-Man guy or something if anything.”
Why would Tetsutetsu be a Spider-Man guy? That made less sense in my eyes than Batman, honestly. Kaminari was just kinda off here.
“Hey, if it works.” I pointed out.
“True- Fair enough I suppose.”
Eventually, we did get to my room. It was honestly a pretty simple room. Just me, my futon-bed, and a mountain of plushies.
“Took a nap earlier and scattered plushies everywhere. I fixed it, but I didn’t make the bed yet”, I explained.
Neito’s cat was trying to go after my stuff.
“Wanko, no-“, Neito scolded as he carried his cat back out. ”Nice room, Sako.”
His cat’s name was Wanko? That was an odd name. The cat was cute, though.
Sero picked up one of my plushies before setting it back down.
“You wouldn’t expect the winner of the Sports Fest to have a soft side. Pretty cool, huh?”
I mean, no surprises there, what kind of person did Sero think I was?
Eventually, we visited everyone’s room. Yes, even Bakugo’s.
Kiri handed out pieces of paper to us all for voting, as Ashido continued to chirp.
“No voting for yourself, everyone! And may the best room win!”
Hm, if we’re voting for purely rooms I’ll vote Sero. It’ll probably turn into a popularity contest, as always, though.
“And the winner is- drumroll please-“
Wow, Ashido seemed really excited about this.
So did Kirishima, I mean, did he start drum rolling?
“Reiko and Emily!”
“Second place goes to a three way tie between Sero, Yaoyorozu, and Kirishima!”
“And… there’s a lot of votes for the next ones.”
Kirishima chimed in. “We’ll call it there, then- congrats to everyone who won, and thanks everyone for participating!”
“Awesome! I guess, uh, see you in class?”
“Let’s do that!”
So it was a popularity contest. Well, the Yanagis did well enough with their routine, but Kirishima shouldn’t have placed if Tetsutetsu didn’t. At least Kirishima and Ashido were happy. In the face of overwhelming despair. And finals. Mostly finals.
The next few weeks weren’t really kept track of in “weeks”, but rather “days until finals.” I have no idea what the others were doing- probably forming study groups with their buddies and all that jazz.
That kind of thing never worked well for me, so I studied on my own, usually with a can of energy drink next to me and a plushie in my lap.
It was cozy, surprisingly. The others weren’t too loud either, so it was actually pretty to focus. It was a relief, cause I totally would’ve given them an earful if they were too loud. I’ll admit I pulled some late nights, but there was a certain high to it.
The silence of the night, the soft clicking of my keyboard. The hiss of a freshly-opened energy drink. Honestly, it was more about learning how to take a test than actually learning the material, since it was mostly stuff I knew already but had forgotten.
And, of course, because UA wasn’t just some normal mid boring high school, I trained my quirk. Even if we weren’t gonna go mano-el-mano with the teachers like in the story, there was sure to be some kind of practical exam. And I was gonna fucking pass.
Ah, I guess it was practical as well, that fight against Magne and that Nomu went sooo badly. Ugh, and I had thought I was getting better. Everything was such a drag now…
But I was getting better. I was keeping in touch with Mika from the agency, mostly for training tips but also because she was just a pretty chill person. You’d expect someone as energetic as her to drain me, but she respected boundaries and was never overly loud, even when we video called.
I was getting way more consistent at movement, especially with my grappling hook. I was so happy I said “poggers” instinctually when I hooked a target from the other side of the field. I mean, thank god no one was there. Poggers, seriously? That was what I instinctively said?
Ah well. At least I’d have a fighting chance at finals.