Chapter Text
“I didn’t pass,” Shoto whispered. His hands were shaking. Katsuki stood at his side, silent, his face pale, his eyes darting around at all of the green that scattered the board.
Out of the ninety-six hero students that had passed the first portion of the exam, ninety had passed. One, an independent student, hadn’t followed the original plan or listened to Yo and Mawata’s orders, and had gotten an actor hurt because of it. Another, a UA second year, had been put on field administration and abandoned his post for no reason to run around ‘doing something’ leading to a clog up from the direction he was supposed to be watching. One of the Shiketsu students had caused a building to topple because they didn’t listen to instructions, nearly hurting people.
Yoarashi Inasa failed because he started a fight and didn’t make a proper report of action.
Bakugo Katsuki failed because- even though he wasn’t supposed to be interacting with the actors for this expressed reason- he was an asshole. Enough of an asshole that he got no points from the actors. Also, since he wasn’t supposed to be working with the refugees, he technically went against orders. Just doing one of those things, he would have passed. Both- well.
Todoroki Shoto failed because he engaged in a fight with a fellow hero student. Apparently, it was an auto-fail. If he hadn’t gotten in a fight, he’d have been one of the top scorers in their class, with an 86%. The only people who’d scored higher than him had been Tenya, Izuku, Hitoshi, Ochako, Kyouka, and Mezou, and most of them not by much.
“That’s not right,” Ochako mumbled, “you didn’t start that. They shouldn't have put it on you when Yoarashi was trying to hurt you.”
“I didn’t pass,” Shoto whispered, his eyes bleary, “I failed.”
“Sho, Shochan,” Izuku called, “Sho, it’s going to be okay. I’m going to make sure it’s okay. For both of you.”
He glanced over at Katsuki, who was staring. There were no words on his lips, nothing running through his brain. He was still, and he was quiet. It was uncanny. If Izuku hadn’t seen his head move, he’d have thought he was dead.
“I-” Shoto made a pained noise, like he was about to start crying, reaching up to his heart and clasping his shirt instead of tearing through his skin, thankfully.
“C’mon, c’mon, let’s sit down,” Izuku said, trying to pull Shoto, but he didn’t seem willing to move. He was shaking his head, slowly, his lazy eye shivering and his normal eye staring blankly at the ugly linoleum on the floor. Ochako reached out to grab his other arm, so that he could be more effectively dragged towards the benches, but Katsuki was faster, doing the same thing that she was going to do, sending her a nod. Her face drew up, but she tapped Shoto on the back, making it easier to move him.
Ochako sat on Katsuki’s other side on the bench, holding onto his arm and laying her head on his shoulder, a frown on her face. Shoto, as soon as he was sitting, wrapped his arms around Izuku, starting to sob into his shoulder, something he rarely did except in the privacy offered by Izuku’s room-
Eijiro ran over, kneeling in front of Katsuki, cupping his cheeks and delivering one, two, three kisses to his lips, running his thumbs below his eyes and pressing their foreheads together, Katsuki’s eyes going misty at the treatment. In the same breath, Mezou, Jurota, Tetsutetsu, Manga, and a few of the others came over, covering their upset classmates from onlookers.
“Let me through,” Aizawa said, slipping halfway under Mezou and between Jurota and Tetsutetsu, his eyes landing on the two of his students that didn’t pass. Izuku felt his stomach coil, nausea welling up in him. He could see Hitoshi out of the corner of his eye on the edge of the group, noticing his adoptive father coming over to them and trying to intercept him, though not fast enough.
Katsuki stared up at him, and Izuku could see his hands shaking on his lap, even though Eijiro’s body would be hiding it from Aizawa.
“So, teach, how expelled are we?” Katsuki said, his voice nearly cracking. May we all survive til graduation had been an ongoing mantra, an undercurrent to every word they had said to each other since they came back from summer break. Nobody was quite certain if they’d manage.
Nobody thought they’d really manage, but now-
Aizawa’s face drew pained, his eyes wrinkling around the edges. Aizawa didn’t have smile lines, but in his early thirties he possessed grimace lines. He knew- he knew he would kill them if he expelled them, and it suddenly clicked in Izuku’s mind-
The lack of expulsions this year. Aizawa had an expulsion rate of nearly 40%- last year, he’d expelled the entirety of Class A, and only six had gotten re-enrolled. The only person who’d gotten expelled had been before the USJ attack, for something as simple as coming in last for the first day's exam, but after… Despite any of the dumb shit that occasionally got pulled, or the stupid accidents that would have ended in expulsions for any other year, they were all still here. They got threatened with expulsion occasionally, when Aizawa thought they’d be especially stupid, but never actually expelled, and they hadn’t even been threatened with expulsion for failing the Provies, even though that was definitely what Nedzu would prefer.
Aizawa was a human trafficker, a child beater, a villain killer, one of Nedzu’s favorite toys.
And he would not let them die.
For something more than his own reputation, he would not let them die.
“You’re not,” Aizawa said, straining, “you’re not. You got 75% on the fall finals. You are both going to the remedial courses. And you will pass them, understand?”
Katsuki’s eyes went misty.
“Yeah,” he smacked Shoto on the back with the back of his hand, trying to get his attention, “hear that, Icy-Hot? We’re going to remedials.”
Shoto sobbed, a short, broken noise, that they both took as agreement.
“You will pass,” Aizawa said.
“We’ll pass,” Katsuki replied, and Aizawa drew up a breath, settling his face.
“You’re both doing quirk cardio when we get back,” Aizawa said, “six hours. No complaining.”
“No complaining,” Katsuki parroted, and Aizawa patted him on the head, before looking at Shoto, and then Izuku. He dipped his head, a feigned bow to Izuku, before walking away. Hitoshi managed to get there as soon as he was leaving, before hiding behind Manga so he wouldn’t notice him as he walked away. As soon as he was gone, Hitoshi scrambled over.
“What did he say? Is everything okay?” he asked, and Izuku frowned, his eyebrows furrowing.
“It’s fine,” he said, “for right now, it's fine.”
Because sentimentality got you killed, and Aizawa was the most sentimental of them all.
~
They had a week break after the Provisional License Exams. Despite that, they weren’t resting, because the day they caught a break was the day they died.
They’d had Class F- Costuming- students assigned to them after the Sports Festival by the teachers themselves. After the internships had ended, many of them had gone to Power Loader and Alleycat to be assigned support course students to help better their gear and costumes as well, and by the time of finals, everyone had a support student. But both of those had been with the aid of the teachers, and now they were on their own.
They needed to get a student from the Law classes- L and M- and a student from the Management classes- I and J- to agree to work with them. It was training for all parties involved. Management (with the help of UA’s management department) would make appointments, represent the hero students in non-explicit meetings- meetings about shit like merch-, have semi-control over official accounts, help with sponsorships and appearances, and generally make sure nothing stupid happened. Law students (with the help of UA’s legal department) would make sure the heroes under their care didn’t get in trouble for stupid shit, represent their copyrights, defend them in case of suing, and make sure they didn’t do something stupid that would get them sued.
It was notoriously difficult to get students to agree to work with them. For some reason, there was a UA tradition of hero students having to prove their worth to law and management students. ‘Winning them over’ led to some of the most ridiculous behavior he’d ever seen. Hero students would send flowers, chocolates, leave notes in shoes and in lockers (and now that there were dorms, mailboxes), hang banners and posters in the halls, and generally twaddle around like idiots with a middle school crush. They’d offer food, they’d offer money, they’d do weird interpretive dances like a courting bird- and he was only semi-joking about that one-, all to get these students to agree to working with them. Occasionally (rarely), if a law or management student liked a hero student, they’d do the same thing back.
While it was extremely weird, it did kind of make sense. The hero student would enter contracts with both students if they agreed, and only the hero student would be able to cut off the contract, just like in real life, so in fear of working with an asshole this whole… nonsense evolved.
Also, the hero students were the ones that got in trouble for not having legal or management people. Not with the school, but hero students who didn’t have these people did more often get in trouble with the law and have worse popularity. While those two groups got actual workplace experience and therefore had good chances at jobs after their contracts expired, it was completely unnecessary for them to graduate.
It was made slightly worse by the fact that seven management students and four legal students had been expelled in the first year courses. There were thirty-three management students and thirty-six legal students for forty hero students. Some people would have to go to the second years, but that was more difficult- they’d lose their contracts when their seniors graduated, and then likely need to make a new one with the year after them.
Since they were doing this as first years, the bullshit had grown to exponential proportions. Usually, hero students got their licenses in the second year, and therefore the longest in-school contracts were a year and a half. The contracts they created would end up being two and a half years long, which was way longer to be stuck with someone you hated. Not to mention expulsions- nobody wanted to waste a bunch of time on a hero student that would get expelled, nor would a hero student want a delinquent management or law student.
Shockingly, Katsuki and Shoto were two of the first people to complete their support teams, even though they were unlicensed. Katsuki had been one of the only people in class to receive a letter from a girl requesting to be his manager. She’d recognized him from his modeling, and since she was interested in breaking into that industry, had gone to him. His legal representative had been gotten by Ochako- the identical twin of her own legal representative (who Izuku was fairly certain just wanted to date her- Izuku eagerly awaited her killing him for sport), and they’d agreed on a pay-off because of Katsuki already having established copyrights and public appearances.
Shoto had just given promise-to-pays to two students on the first day. The business student had agreed, but the law student denied him, and he’d had to try another. That one had agreed to work with him. Apparently Endeavor was covering it/Shoto stole a bank card, bought a bunch of jewelry with it, pawned the jewelry later, and used the money for this.
Momo, Tenya, and Kyouka had also done promise-to-pays with top students. Tenya had actually bothered to do the paperwork involved to associate his team members with the Idaten Agency- unlike Shoto. Momo connected her new team members with family associates, and Kyouka had introduced her new team members to her parent’s manager for communication purposes. Momo had been upset, though, about her original legal student denying her.
Maybe Izuku was just stuck because he didn’t know who to go for. He knew more than the names and classes of two people out of the hero course: Unabara and Mei. Mei didn’t like interacting with people when it impeded her inventing- which it nearly always did, because Izuku’s group was really the only one that had gotten used to the explosions in her lab. Unabara just didn’t care about people- she was generally a recluse, less because she was avoiding people and more because she didn’t bother to interact with them, part of the reason Aizawa and Lacemaker had decided they should be grouped up; Since Unabara didn’t care about anything, she wouldn’t haze him for being the child of a villain.
Because he also had to worry about hazing and sabotage. Because fuck him.
Not to mention Toshinori was not giving him money for this because he wanted him to develop rapport on his own. He’d offered him a black credit card to keep that he’d pay off if he passed the Provies, but he wasn’t going to give it to him until he completed his team. Fuck him too.
He’d ended up walking around a lot in the meantime. UA’s campus was big, and it gave him time to think. There was nothing better for him to do, and he was restless anyways. If he was walking for a particularly long time, he could even work with his quirks- particularly on trying to get the other quirks associated with One for All to wake up. He knew what they were because of his father, now was just trying to activate them.
The sky was dark and cloudy today, and soon enough it would be raining. There were already lightning flashes on the horizon, the crackling of thunder more like a whisper than a scream. He’d found himself in the forest roadway, close to where the greenhouses for the agriculture students and the forest training center lay, nearer to where UA campus broke off into hiking trails.
He paused. There was a snake on the path ahead of him, curled up, and he frowned. It looked like a melanistic rat snake based on size, so he came closer, wondering if it was dead. It wouldn’t be too surprising- a bike running it over would kill it, as would teenagers spearing it with sticks for the crime of being a snake.
The snake flicked its tongue out at him, appearing to size him up, and he tilted his head, smiling.
“Good, you’re alive,” he said. Judging by its head, it was nonvenomous. It hissed at him as he came closer, “I’m going to move you to the grass so you don’t get hurt, okay?”
His hand jerked out, grasping the snake’s neck firmly, his other hand coming up to support its weight as it squirmed.
“That’s cool, you have a quirk,” Izuku said, “there aren’t many animals with quirks, you know. I’m sorry for having to grab you like this, I know it's not comfortable, I just don't want you to bite me. I’m not sure what you are.”
He crouched down to place the snake on the other side of the grass, and it hissed at him, starting to slither around back towards the sidewalk. He smiled, laughing to himself.
“Really? You do know I’m going to move you if you go back, right-?”
Izuku stiffened as arms wrapped around his neck, feeling his heart jerk into his throat.
“You gonna move me?” a voice hissed, a much longer forked tongue flicking out, barely in his line of sight as someone laid over his back, “What if I want to get run over?”
His stigmata pulsated, preparing to latch on.
“Get off of me, now,” he said, his voice deathly cold, his pupils slitted. One for All welled up in his body, Blackwhip preparing to burst through his shirt and break.
“Aww, no fun,” the other teen said, but did come off of him, plopping down on his butt in the grass. Izuku whipped around, scowling, his quirks zipping through his skin. The boy had black hair, black eyes with no visible sclera, black lips, and black fingernails. His tongue flicked out again, snake-like.
“Who the fuck are you?” Izuku asked, and the teen pouted. He was obviously a UA student, because he was on the property, but otherwise Izuku was at a loss.
“Rude. You are the one that scooped me up, you know,” he said, “I should be asking you that.”
“Midoriya,” he said.
“Oh, I knew that,” the teen said, nodding, “Midoriya Izuku.”
“Then why ask?”
“Why not?”
Izuku frowned, “What do you want? You obviously know who I am.”
“Oh, I want a lot of things,” he waved a hand, gesturing broadly to the world, “a crazy girlfriend that wants me dead, some adderall, maybe a cat or two to eat. The normal stuff.”
Izuku stared at him, his eyebrows furrowed.
“I’m leaving,” he said, standing up, “be careful using your quirk on school property. You can get in trouble if a teacher sees you.”
“Wait, don’t go!” the other teen said, but Izuku was already walking away. The boy groaned, before forcing himself to his feet and jogging after him, “I have a proposition. A genius idea if you will! The best of them all!”
Izuku sighed, continuing to walk.
“Wait! My almighty, wait!”
He jerked to a stop, his quirk flaring as he rounded on him, and the boy took a few rapid steps back, waving his arms.
“What did you just call me?” Izuku asked, his eyes glowing as electricity zapped around him.
“Uh, I think you heard me,” the boy said, only slightly cowed despite the fact that he was fully leaning away from the aura he protruded.
Izuku’s eyes narrowed.
“Who are you?”
“Tominaga Taido,” he said, waving his arms, “don’t worry, we’re at one of the few spots where there aren’t microphones or cameras, and the robot guards don’t come through this way for another thirty minutes. I was thorough.”
“What do you want?” Izuku said. The name Tominaga was familiar, but he didn’t know where he’d heard it. It wasn’t the name of any particularly high-ranking villains or heroes, nobody high in government, either.
“To be friends,” Taido said, nodding, mostly seeming to do it for his own sake, “I’m in the law program, you know. And I’m good.”
Tominaga. That was where he recognized the name- this was the student that had denied both Momo and Shoto’s promise-to-pays.
“I can’t pay you,” Izuku said, “nor do I believe I can offer you anything you want.”
“Maybe I don’t want to get paid,” Taido pursed his lips, “maybe I hear and see a lot as an itty-bitty snake.”
“Nothing good, I imagine,” Izuku said, and Taido grinned.
“Oooh, a lot of good. Assassination and betrayal and strife,” Taido hissed, “and money. And influence. And power.”
“I can’t give you money,” Izuku reminded him, and Taido shrugged.
“Oh, but you can. Maybe not now, but maybe eventually, maybe soon with me at your side,” Taido said, “you’re one of the powerhouses like that bitch in office and Nedzu, right? You need people to offshore your money, keep you in good graces, lie, steal, and manipulate for you, and baby I will do anything you want me to.”
Izuku raised a brow, and Taido smirked, dropping to his knees, clasping his hand in prayer as if he was a deity, looking up at him through his eyelashes, pupils slit with mirth. His tongue flicked out, his lips curled in glee.
“Babyboy, I want you to run me through.”
~
Tominaga Taido had become his legal representative. A friend of his, Mai Gamazumi- the granddaughter of Japan’s president and daughter of the Chief Cabinet Secretary’s PR Manager and the Hero Public Safety Commission Bureau Head of Hero Law had become his manager.
(She was a girl ruled by nevers and had to’s. Despite- or maybe with- the power of her family, she was still a rich woman, expected to marry well and have children she didn’t want, and worse than that, was a heteromorph in a family of emitters. Her quirk made her immune to the cold, at the expense of always looking like she was suffering from hypothermia. She would never become a Commission member, as a heteromorph was not capable of such a thing. She would never hold public office, her blue lips and dead eyes too uncanny for voters. She would never marry into the royal family, like her younger sister likely would. She would never become major stockholders like her brothers. Izuku likened her to a haunted doll- incapably capable of great violence, mysticism, and influence.)
They were both beautifully, dreadfully loyal, and had no love for the current system- not when there was a chance of gaining even more power and influence through him, rather than by bowing to Nedzu; or even the HPSC President- though she was losing more and more ground to Nedzu by the day. They cared not for heroes, cared less about villains- their worries lied in vacation homes in the Bahamas and arbitrary numbers in their bank accounts.
He’d give them what they wanted, and they knew that. They knew how his quirk worked, and would give in return, because they knew he had to deliver. It was a relationship based on heartless ambition for power- it was one of the easiest relationships in Izuku’s life, as simple as Unabara’s relationship with him, and extremely familiar. He’d watched his father and mother manage relationships like that with gentle, probing words and calloused, guiding hands.
“Now that the majority of you have gotten your Provies, it’s time to hand out your daggers,” Eraserhead said, heaving up a sizeable box onto the table, “if you are handed your black dagger today, you will have the dagger mark on your provisional license when it comes in the mail. To be clear: heroes who are marked as Daggers are permitted to execute lethal force in necessary situations, as long as a record of the execution is made. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
The first year hero students had all been invited into the main building for a meeting as the week came to a close. It was in the same conference hall as their meeting after the USJ, a memory that many seemed to be reliving as they glanced around the dark room, their hands clasped in front of them and their expressions contained. Nedzu’s scar was dark and stark, and Vlad King’s lips were drawn, his facial expression carefully blank. Aizawa was the most emotive out of the three of them. There was a weight to his shoulders that hadn’t been there before.
He let out a breath, and straightened, and it was like there had never been a moment where he looked like he was carrying the world on his shoulders.
“Like there has never been a year in UA where first years took the Provisional Licensing Exam, there’s never been a year with this many daggers being approved after solely the exam,” he said, “with that being said, let’s begin,” he grabbed onto the first thing in the box, another, smaller box that held the dagger itself, this one wood wrapped in black leather, with a gilded name etched into it, “Hakegure Toru, please collect your dagger.”
She let out a breath, stepping up to take it before going back to where she was sitting. There were a few soft claps, before they petered out into silence.
“Tokoyami Fumikage.”
Fumikage’s hands were shaking as he took the box in hand.
“Honenuki Juzo.”
Juzo’s face was even paler than usual as he took it.
“Iida Tenya.”
Tenya was the only one who bowed to Aizawa before taking his dagger.
“Monoma Neito.”
Neito carried his dagger back to his seat like it was a great weight.
“Kuroiro Shihai.”
Shihai didn’t want it, but there was no way to not take it.
“Tokage Setsuna.”
She traced her name on the box, her gaze somewhere deep in the past, somewhere far off into the future. Izuku wondered how many times she had traced over the gilded names on the boxes of her parents’ daggers.
“Kaminari Denki.”
Denki actually jolted upright, like he wasn’t expecting to get one. He looked nervous as he took it, nervous as he recalled what it was like to actually hold someone’s life in his hands.
“Komori Kinoko.”
She took it politely, if not stiffly. She was the calmest out of all of them.
“Midoriya Izuku.”
Izuku was expecting to get one. He was a weapon, and what was a weapon without souls trailing behind it?
“Uraraka Ochako.”
Ochako looked terrified, but she still stepped up to take her dagger. She took her nausea medication as soon as she sat back down, her hands shaking enough that her shoulders were too.
“Shinsou Hitoshi.”
Hitoshi took it with no fuss, but his jaw was clenched so tightly that Izuku wondered if he’d damn the whole thing and break the dagger- break his ties to heroics, and his own spine along with it.
“Tsunotori Pony,” Aizawa wasn’t holding up another dagger box, rather a smaller brown one with an emblem on it, “as you passed the Japanese Provisional License Exam with the proper score, you have also passed the American Hero Student Exam with an honor attached, called the International Heroics Student Honor. This is the badge associated with it. As you are an American citizen and in Japan on a student visa, you are considered an American hero and constrained by their laws, which you are expected to know and follow. Be a good representative of them. The same goes for you, Rin. Not only did you pass the Japanese Exam, but your score was high enough to pass the Chinese Quirk Police Examination, though you will not get your Chinese license until you turn eighteen because of legal constraints. Understood?”
“I understand,” Hiryu said, “I still get a Japanese provisional license, correct?”
“Yes, you will, and after this your provisional license will be considered your visa and passport for both of you, and your visa will change from a student visa to a hero visa. If you have any questions please talk to Yumikoshi-san in the office. That’s all for today. I’m going back to sleep.”
He left, and Vlad King and Nedzu followed.
Izuku gingerly opened the box containing his black dagger. The handle was a crystal glass with steel rivets, wrapped in a thin strip of black leather, more for decoration than utility. The blade was obsidian. One of the sharpest materials in the world, and one of the most fragile. Breaking the black dagger on accident was like shooting yourself in the foot- breaking your dagger on purpose was like shooting yourself in the head. It was something you had to be careful with. Something that represented the deaths of thousands, that tried its very best to be sacred as a bloodied athame. It was a hero's executioner blade, even if they didn’t use it in their destruction.
Izuku fit the lid back on. The danger wasn’t the dagger itself- more dangerous than any dagger was the black arrow on the hero licenses of more than a quarter of the people in this room. More dangerous than anything was the twelve people in this room who now could legally kill people on a whim- and more than that, the people in this room who didn’t know this was just another method to control, blackmail, and manipulate them. In the end, this was another one of those pathetic monstrosities that made nothing but corpses.
Another load of ceremonious shit with no purpose besides violence.