Chapter 1: Prologue
It had been a long time since Toshinori had visited UA. Too long.
Walking through the long corridors leading to the observation room for the entrance, he could almost believe that he was one of those nervous children passing through the doors again, terrified and hoping that they would beat the odds, make their mark, and enter the most exclusive high school in Japan for heroics. Hoping that this would be the start of their heroics career.
"Yagi-san."
Blinking, Toshinori pulled himself from his memories and looked for the speaker. "Ah. Nedzu-san." Reaching up, he patted at his messy mane of blond hair nervously. "My apologies. I was caught up in memories."
"Don't worry," Nedzu said, trotting over to him. "I'm happy that you even managed to find the time to come."
Toshinori grinned sheepishly and bowed. "Well, I figured that if I'm going to be teaching here, I should probably start becoming acquainted with my co-workers. And I understand that watching the entrance exam is something of a tradition for the faculty."
Nedzu smiled. "I'm sure that they'll be thrilled that you're so eager to be a part of things," he said mildly. "You're just in time, too. Present Mic is just finishing up explaining the point-scoring system."
"Ah, is it still the robots, then?" Toshinori asked as he followed the headmaster.
"One, two, and three pointers," Nedzu confirmed, moving quickly in a way that someone that didn't value their life would describe as 'scurrying', "with a zero-pointer to keep things from getting too boring."
Toshinori chuckled. Oh, did he ever remember those robots.
The doors to the viewing room were surprisingly non-descript for UA. Plain metal and unpainted, tall enough to accommodate even him without trouble. Inside, the room was already dim, a massive bank of screens dominating the wall across from the entrance and a long table with chairs set up in front of it. The other teachers were already seated, lightly chatting with each other.
"Jeez, that kid sure was strict," Midnight, the 18+ heroine was saying. Toshinori could only make out a small sliver of her face as he came over to the table, but he could tell that she was grinning. "I like to see that in a hero."
"Mmm, it's all well and good in a structured setting like a school, but if he wants to succeed as a hero, he's going to have to loosen up." Blood King replied. "Too stiff, and he'll break the first time he comes across something that he hasn't been specifically taught how to handle."
Both good points. Toshinori quietly slid into a seat, content to listen. In heroics he may be these people's senpai, but in teaching he wasn't even a kouhai. Scanning the room by habit, he noticed a man dressed in dark clothing leaning against the wall, a mass of capture-tape wrapped around his neck and shoulders like a scarf. If he remembered correctly, he was the Underground Hero, Eraserhead…
"AAAAANND START!"
Toshinori jumped a little in his seat and turned his attention back to the screens. The exam had started.
The mass of examinees surged forward into mock cities and met the battle robots quickly. Toshinori watched them carefully as they began to fight, trying to pick out particularly talented-seeming individuals. The rest of the staff didn't know it, but he was here for more than just teaching.
One of these examinees could be the next bearer of One for All.
"Ah - looks like we have a frontrunner in Arena A," Midnight commented, pointing towards a particular screen. "He's barely letting anyone else get any points." She grinned and licked her lips. "I like to see that sort of vigor in a young man."
"Vigorous or not, he's being rather careless with his explosions," Ectoplasm noted. "A bit of shrapnel just nearly hit some of the other examinees."
"Well, he is trying to get into a school," Blood King replied. "If he was perfect already he wouldn't need to."
Toshinori saw the merits of both arguments. The boy was certainly talented, that was true; he supposed that it would come down to whether or not the boy was willing to recognize his flaws. In any case, for all of the boy's talents Toshinori doubted that he'd be a good fit for One for All. His Quirk alone meshed poorly with it, and the way the boy was laughing on the screen was…worrying.
Letting his eyes drift away from the explosive boy, he began to scan through the rest of the screens, trying to pick out the early frontrunners. The explosion boy was not the only promising-looking test-taker today - there were several others he found catching his attention. A boy with engines in his legs - clearly from the Iida family; Toshinori had worked with them before, and found some warmth blooming where his stomach had been at the thought that they were still going strong. Another boy, dressed in a green tracksuit with curly hair, smashed a robot away from another examinee that had been knocked down with what seemed to be a strength Quirk. A girl with what seemed to be a gravity-manipulation quirk who was making it rain robots. Another boy with bright red hair, using some sort of armoring quirk to smash through the robots - a girl with a mutation quirk that made her look like a frog using her tongue to smash one bot into two others - another with what looked like a sonic quirk -
"Oops, look like the kids have been bunched up too long," Ectoplasm said mildly, pointing towards one of the screens. Looking up, Toshinori saw one of the massive zero-pointers looming over the buildings of one of the exam grounds. He remembered those ones - so intimidating as a student, but now -
"Wait. Something's wrong." Power Loader was leaning forward in his seat, squinting and pointing at the screen. Toshinori looked -
His eyes widened. "That girl is trapped." The girl with the gravity quirk that he'd been admiring - she seemed to be trapped underneath some rubble. And all of the others there were running right past her.
Shit. Toshinori glanced over at Nedzu - he'd never asked if they had a shut-off button here -
"Wait - who is that?"
Toshinori had had his hands on the arms of his chair, about to haul himself up and dash to the rescue when Midnight's voice stopped him. Looking back over at the screen, he just caught it - someone moving forward, towards the zero-pointer, so fast that they were just a blur on the camera - perhaps the Iida boy -
No. Not the Iida boy.
Toshinori watched as the blur slowed down enough for the cameras to pick the figure out. It was the boy with the strength Quirk, or rather an enhancement Quirk, judging from how quickly he was moving. He slowed down just a few dozen meters from the girl -
He crouched, and there was something about his legs -
And then he was a blur again, rocketing up to the zero-pointer's head and hanging in the air in front of it, one arm cocked back like he was about to punch it except the arm wasn't moving -
- but the sleeve of his tracksuit was bulging, tearing and ripping and a mass of twisted flesh, nearly as big as the boy himself and nauseatingly familiar (the arm of the man that had torn a hole in his side with a grin and left him a frail shadow of himself) swung forward and slammed into the flat face of the giant robot.
Silence filled the room as they all watched the face of the robot crumple in, explosions triggering through its joints as the pure power behind the swing forced it back. The boy, a tiny figure in front of it, twisted in mid-air, catching himself on a nearby building and slowing down his fall as the robot continued to self-destruct.
They could feel the impact of it hitting the ground from where they were sitting. A glass of water by Toshinori's hand trembled, ripples playing along its surface.
One second, then two, and then three passed in silence, before excited muttering broke out throughout the room.
"Did you just see that? One punch -"
"Not the prettiest quirk, but that much power -"
"Do we have the marks of that kid, I want to see -"
Toshinori could barely hear anything over the ringing in his ears. If he'd still had a stomach, it would have been sinking down to his toes. All he could think about was that arm. That twisted mass of muscle and power.
Who was that kid?