Chapter Text
“W-what?”
Shinsou wasn’t certain of what had just happened. The only thing he knew for sure was that he had disappointed the only man who had believed in him, Aizawa. And, he was pretty sure Present Mic had taken a liking to him too.
He couldn’t bring himself to look up to the two men, high above the sports festival seating in the announcement room. His ears were ringing and all he could see was vague outlines of thousands of audience members, all who had just witnessed his failure as a hero.
A hand grabbed his, pulling him off the floor where he lay dazed. His hearing began to come back; his back and legs stung from the impact of the floor.
“Are you okay Shinsou?”
He looked down, seeing his helper’s arm in the UA sports uniform, he looked up and his face morphed into surprise as he saw Midoriya.
All at once, his hearing cleared, and the overpowering cheers of the audience, alongside Present Mic’s commentary on ‘chivalry not being quite dead yet listeners, look at these future heroes holding hands after their match’.
How in God’s name had this boy beat him?
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Izuku woke up with a groan. He was tired, his back and shoulders aching from Kachan’s explosions the day before.
‘Take a swan dive off a roof, and pray for a quirk in the next life’
It was something which could have led Izuku to break down, maybe a year or so ago. But now? He didn’t even want a quirk.
He wouldn’t deny that they were cool, but he also wouldn’t deny that they reinforced a structure of oppression which caused disparity in society. Especially, as he had found through personal experience, in schools.
Bakugo may have been an awful friend turned bully, but he was also a symptom of his surroundings.
Sitting up and rubbing his eyes, he got changed into his running kit, tying his trainers. His mum wouldn’t be home from her shift for another two hours, so he would run for an hour, get changed and eat breakfast, leaving some for her, then leave for school.
Like he had every morning for the last six months. And, with ten months till the entrance exam, he still had a long way to go.
As he ran, he begun to try to plan out the next months. He knew with his mum’s help there was not too much need to worry about diet. He had been struggling to adjust to the zero sugar; he had been allowing himself a treat at the cat café on weekends but that would have to be cut for the next ten months.
And he wanted to speak to his sensei about increasing his self-defence lessons from twice a week to three to four times.
That left cardio and weight training. He had already begun Takoba Municipal Beach and once that was done in around three months, he’d have to move onto more focused exercises in the gym. Sensei said he could use the club’s gym, so he’d do just that.
And maybe he should try to improve his flexibility and practise some parkour?
Once done with he run, he moved fluidly through his daily chores, changing the bandages round the burns too. He hissed as it pulled at the surrounding scarred and sensitive skin.
School was rough. He tried to keep his head down, to study. He had hope that UA wouldn’t read his name and check his quirk status when marking. While biases had already been enforced to a point where powerful quirks had an advantage even before the entrance exams, he was hoping having made it to that point the biased would be left in the past.
Yet, it was hard to study. He wasn’t stupid, but he definitely wasn’t smart. He knew the teachers docked his marks. And knew that the others disrupted his learning to a point where he was at a disadvantage just trying to learn in the classroom. Setting aside the burns which caused him continuous discomfort while studying at home, he didn’t know if he could be called smart. It was hard to gauge when any exams he had done were affected by his quirk status.