Everything was going horribly for Izuku. Which is even more embarrassing because eight minutes ago, everything was going perfectly for him. Izuku had cleaned the beach before he had to go to the entrance exam for his dream school, UA, had been bestowed with a powerful Quirk, the power of the top ranked hero in Japan himself, All Might, and had entered into the entrance exam of his dreams. The thing was, he had no combat training, no knowledge of how to activate his new Quirk and no backup plans for either of those things. Izuku prided himself on being intelligent, but he was thinking about rescinding that right now.
Izuku was running along a road in the mock city that UA had seemingly dozens of. He turned a corner and ran into a villain-bot, the enemies the examinees were supposed to kill to earn points which, now that Izuku was thinking about it, was kind of barbaric for a school meant to produce civil servants. Not knowing what to do, Izuku resorted to dodging the robot's missile fire until another examinee destroyed it for him, earning him no points and a crappy reputation. Great.
He had been doing exactly that for eight minutes, and he had no points to speak of. He watched as everybody else used their powerful Quirks to destroy the robots, or to find ways to destroy the robots. Even a kid with purple hair that stuck up at wild angles had found a way to defeat the villain-bots with a metal pipe because of his seemingly mind-centric Quirk. Izuku was about to give up and resign himself to having wasted a powerful Quirk when something pretty cool and pretty terrifying happened.
The Zero Pointer came. The robots they were fighting had been assigned differing amounts of points to them to vary the encounters and the point allocation per student to even it out somewhat, but there was one type that was worth nothing, and Izuku had expected that to mean that it was like a civilian-bot, because of Present Mic describing it as an obstacle back in the auditorium. How wrong he was. Instead, the Zero Pointer was something akin to a Kaiju, a massive beast made of metal and nightmares that created craters deeper than Izuku was tall whenever it took a step.
The Zero Pointer was wreaking havoc, spinning its arms around wildly to turn the top few floors of the taller buildings into dust, almost. The massive robot swept at a building close to Izuku, and it basically threw the rubble and debris in his direction, causing gigantic chunks of concrete and metal to come falling down onto the road above him.
Izuku ran. He turned around and bolted, knowing that if he stayed in that spot, he would die. In the back of his mind, he knew that UA would never allow themselves to conduct an exam where there was even a possibility of participant death. That being said, another part of his mind, a more primal and fearful part of Izuku, told him to not even risk injury, because that's stress that he didn't need to deal with right now, and Izuku couldn't help but agree with that part.
Next to him was the purple haired kid that had circumvented his ill-suited Quirk, but he was running far slower than Izuku was. Izuku looked back to see if the other boy was being weighed down by something, but no, he was just kinda slow. Not that Izuku was judging him, it was just that the debris was still falling, and he didn't think that the boy could outrun another onslaught of concrete.
Once the chunks of cement stopped falling from the sky, the two stopped to catch their breath. Izuku was tempted to drop onto the ground and press his face into the nice, cold cement, but was stopped when another person joined them, also out of breath from running for their life. This person was a girl, and it took Izuku a moment to figure out that it was the same girl that had stopped him from making a fool of himself outside the entrance to the campus by face planting into the concrete before he had even stepped onto the school grounds. She had some sort of levitation Quirk, but other than that, Izuku knew nothing about her, other than she had the most adorable rosy cheeks he had ever seen. That could wait, though.
"Are you two okay?" Izuku asked, wanting to make sure of that before doing anything else.
"Yeah, I'm good. Just a little winded. Holy shit, that was a big robot!" the purple haired guy said, looking off into the distance where the bot was still raging.
"Mhmm! That was super scary!" the girl said.
"That's good," Izuku breathed, still trying to catch his breath.
Izuku knew that he had no points left, and there was probably only a minute and a half left in the exam, probably less. Izuku knew that he was almost sure to fail at this point, unless he could miraculously acquire fifty or more points in the couple of moments he had left. He looked around, meeting the purple haired boy's gaze.
"You don't think you're passing," the boy said.
"H-How'd you guess?" Izuku asked.
"Magic," the boy said, his tone not changing at all from its monotone drawl.
"No, I don't. I haven't gotten a single point, yet," Izuku admitted, hanging his head low.
"Well, that doesn't mean you won't!" the girl chimed in.
"Doesn't it? I'm probably the only person to ever even get a zero! I guess that's just another trip up in my uneventful life, though," Izuku sulked.
"Hey. Look at me," the girl said, and Izuku found himself obeying her for some reason. "You can't give up. You know this school's mantra, right?" she asked.
"Plus Ultra," Izuku lamely uttered.
"That's right. That means you do your best, no matter the situation. Now, let's go fight some robots!" the girl said, before running off to get more points.
Izuku stood there, watching her run away. He had been so in his own head that he had forgotten why he had been chosen to be the next wielder of One for All. All Might had chosen him because of his spirit, because of his willingness to never give up in the face of failure. Of course he was going to stumble, but he couldn't let that put him off. Izuku had to pass, if not for himself than for All Might and his mother, Inko, the people that had supported him unconditionally up to this point. Steeling his nerves, Izuku took off again, in the same direction the girl had run off in.
The purple haired boy just stood there, staring after the two.
"What the hell just happened?" he asked himself, a puzzled expression on his face.
Izuku ran as fast as his exhausted legs could carry him, and eventually came across some of the only robots that hadn't been destroyed yet. It was a type of robot that was only worth one point, but that was better than nothing. Izuku ran up to the machine, and as it swung its metallic fist, he ducked under it, getting closer to a bot than he had the entire exam. As Izuku spotted the bot's weak spot, it's giant eye, the bot was destroyed by a large chunk of concrete that Izuku hadn't seen or heard coming. The small shockwave that the resulting impacts caused threw Izuku away from the corpse of the bot.
He landed on the ground with a grunt, seeing that the Zero Pointer was making its way around the corner right in front of him. He also saw the girl from before, now running away from it, but barely outpacing the bot. Izuku stood up, though he was fairly sure that he had sprained some part of his leg when he landed. He decided that he would still be faster carrying her than she was at the moment, even if it would embarrass the both of them. He steadied his breathing and took off toward the girl, and the Zero Pointer as well. That part scared him, but Izuku could deal with it. As Izuku reached the girl, he slowed down and turned, running alongside her.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"I can help you! If you let me carry you, we can get out of this thing's range together!" Izuku yelled over the roaring of the machinery behind them.
"Um, okay!" the girl said, blushing profusely.
Izuku quickly scooped her up in his arms, getting a little squeak from the girl. It was funny, really, that he could ever be confident enough to literally sweep a girl off her feet when just a few weeks ago a random compliment about his hair had almost sent him into a coma. Izuku decided that the time for irony was later, and focused on the task at hand. He pushed with all his might, getting himself to run at least three times faster than the girl had been running alone.
"Wow, you're really fast," the girl said under her breath, though Izuku could still hear it. That's when he realized that the two were pretty much face to face.
His blush only lasted a moment, as a large BOOM sounded out behind them, and Izuku knew it to be the Zero Pointer's big move; sending a large collection of debris down onto the street to crush it's enemies, even those enemies were fifteen year old kids. It was only a moment, but after a small silence, the chunks of concrete started to fall all around Izuku and the girl, almost like a meteor strike. He did his best to dodge where he thought the debris was going to land, but after the first few successes, the girl in his arms gasped, and he blacked out, left with the vague feeling of weightlessness.
When Izuku came to, he was leant up against a block of cement with a piece of rebar jutting out of his left arm. Numb to the pain for the moment, Izuku tried to move his arm, only to find that it wouldn't respond. Izuku simply powered through that and stood up, still in shock and quite registering the pain. More important than his arm, however, was that he didn't know where the girl was. He couldn't see her, though there was still a massive cloud of smoke that had yet to disperse, so that meant he couldn't have been unconscious for long. Only a moment at most.
"Hey! Um, I don't know your name, crap. Uh, floaty girl! Are you okay?" Izuku called out, getting no answer. "Shit," he whispered, and took off to search for her.
Izuku searched as best he could while not having use of his left arm and not being able to see more than a foot or two in front of him. After the cloud dispersed some more, Izuku could clearly see the destruction that had been incurred by the Zero Pointer. Everything was broken in some way. All the buildings he could see had the tops blown off, or were heavily damaged at the top, with floors missing and walls cracked. Izuku heard a small whimper and, recognizing it as the girl's voice, rushed over to it, letting his left arm hang as he bolted to the sound without hesitation.
When he reached the source of the sound, Izuku discovered that the girl had been trapped under a larger piece of concrete that had crashed down because of the Zero Pointer, likely the thing that had collided with him and knocked him out in the first place. Izuku doubted he could lift it on his best day, but when he was exhausted, still recovering from being knocked out and out an arm? That was futile. He resigned himself to getting the girl out another way, but was distracted by a loud whirring sound that he knew to be the gears of the Zero Pointer, and Izuku looked up to see it turning its head toward him, its singular red eye glaring into his soul for a moment.
The Zero Pointer moved its hand to hover over Izuku and the girl, and he started to panic. He leaned down to the girl and tried to summon One for All for the hundredth time since the exam had begun. Izuku had been trying to call on his new Quirk for the entire time, but the power simply wasn't collaborating with him. He didn't know much about One for All, only being sure that it would give him strength on par with All Might and that he should, according to All Might, clench his buttcheeks and yell 'smash' from inside his heart, and the power would flow. Izuku had been trying, but nothing was working. He would've been glad if the power ripped his arms apart when he first got it; at least he'd know if the transfer even worked.
"Hey, I need you to work with me, here!" Izuku yelled at the girl. "What's your name, for starters?" he asked.
"Ochako Uraraka!" she said, her voice airy and not totally present. He reasoned that she was going into shock, making her a bit loopy.
"Okay, Uraraka. I'm gonna try something, so don't panic, alright?" Izuku said.
"Alright," Uraraka said, giggling slightly.
Izuku gripped Uraraka's arm and pulled, but she was securely pinned to the ground under about a tonne of concrete and metal. Izuku saw no way to help her, and he was sure that a version of him that was mentally sound at the moment was living out this exact same situation and thriving, which just made him feel worse about himself. Izuku sighed harshly, looking up to the Zero Pointer's hand, which had clicked into gear and started falling at breakneck speeds. It was going to crush them.
It was then that he felt something. Izuku felt a small flicker of something in his core, like a spark, and he knew it was One for All. Izuku immediately acted upon his base instinct, which was to crouch down and pull on that spark as much as he could. Feeling One for All finally cooperating with him, Izuku shoved the power that was quickly filling him down into his legs and kicked off the ground, feeling whiplash as he rose to the face of the robot in nearly the blink of an eye.
"What? NO!" Izuku screamed, seeing that he had overshot his target.
He looked back at the hand, which was still rocketing toward the ground, toward Uraraka. He needed to keep her safe. She had probably passed, if her attitude was anything to go off, so he needed to ensure that she was still alive to attend the school she clearly deserved. Izuku reached out for the hand, but he was too far away already that it was a pointless endeavour. He refused to give up, though, and pulled on that spark of One for All again, willing it to do something, anything that could keep the hand from moving.
Izuku felt a power growing in his right arm, like the build up of a sneeze waiting to be released. Izuku took this as a sign that One for All was once again complying with his wishes and, as the building of power began to hurt, released it, letting the power flow through his arm and toward the Zero Pointer's hand. Instead of a burst of strength, like Izuku had been expecting, from his arm flowed a black substance, almost like smoke or a living shadow, that quickly went haywire, manifesting more of itself from his hand as it latched itself onto everything around Izuku, including the Zero Pointer's arm, hand and head.
The tendrils wrapped around everything, throwing the objects around as it grew and undulated around Izuku as the forces the smoky tendrils were exerting on the various objects around him kept him airborne. It hurt, like these tendrils were pulling on his bones to reach further. It ripped apart the head of the Zero Pointer, as well as its arm and hand, and threw it far away. It somehow solidified when it collided with the main body of the robot, and pushed him away from the scene, pulling him along for a ride as the tendrils grabbed onto everything it could find, dragging itself along the street.
The more tendrils sprouted from his arm, the more Izuku felt like every bone in his hand would shatter, and he felt the comfortable warmth that had come from One for All when it first activated morph and turn into a raging fire inside him, burning him from the inside. It was around this time when Izuku noticed that both his legs had been shattered from the immense power he had put into his jump, likely the 'kickback' that All Might had warned him about when they had done the transfer earlier that morning. His legs now were being dragged behind him, flailing around and likely exacerbating his injuries, similarly to his left arm.
On the ground, Uraraka woke up just as Izuku had been dragged away by the dark tendrils. She had watched as his Quirk wreaked havoc on the false city, not being able to pursue because of her broken ankle. She looked around, not seeing anybody that could help her. Uraraka propped herself up on a chunk of rubble as she continued to watch Izuku get dragged around by his crazy power. She didn't know why he hadn't used it before, as it looked to be pretty strong based on the way it was wrecking stuff, but she guessed he had a good reason to not use it, as it didn't look like he could control it very well.
Looking down the road, Uraraka saw the purple haired boy from before, she didn't know his name, running down the road toward her in a panic. She tried to step toward him and call out, but realized that her ankle was still hurt, so she stayed back until he got to her.
"Hey, are you okay? Those black things didn't get you, did they?" Uraraka asked.
"Nah, I'm okay. Are you? That doesn't look too good," the boy said, gesturing to her ankle, which was twisted around at an awkward angle.
"Oh, I'm fine! Just a little pain; it's nothing I can't handle," Uraraka said, though the pained smile she gave betrayed her attitude.
""O … kay," the boy said, regarding her strangely.
"What's your Quirk?" Uraraka asked.
"Why?" he asked, stepping back slightly.
"Because, we need to help him," Uraraka said, gesturing to Izuku, who was still getting dragged around by the black tendrils, though he had since moved closer.
"Uh, if I can get somebody to respond to me, I can put them in a trance where they'll do anything I say," the boy answered.
"Great! What's your name? I'm Uraraka," Uraraka asked.
"Hitoshi Shinso," he said, a bit shocked that Uraraka simply brushed over his Quirk.
"Alright, Shinso, here's what we'll do …" Uraraka said, moving onto her broken ankle.
Uraraka immediately collapsed, wincing from the pain. Shinso moved to support her with his body, and the two started shuffling toward Izuku, who almost looked like he was getting a bit of control over his Quirk. That control immediately slipped, it seemed, as the tendrils recoiled, but then shot back out in the blink of an eye.
"I'll use my Quirk to remove your gravity, then you'll float up to his level and use your Quirk on him," Uraraka said, taking smaller steps.
"Okay? What'll that accomplish? If I put him under, he'll just fall to his death. That helps nobody," Shinso pointed out.
"We have to try something. It might as well be this," Uraraka said, shooting Shinso the dirtiest glare she could, but it just came across as a bit miffed.
"Fair enough," Shinso sighed, thinking of what he should do to get the guy's attention. He didn't even know his name, so calling out for him was kind of difficult.
Back with Izuku, he was almost at his breaking point. He felt the bones in his arm creaking as this strange power only grew with his anger. He was mainly angry at himself for not being able to do anything, but also angry at All Might, slightly, for not telling him about this. The man had never used this sort of ability, which made Izuku doubt that he could, so his anger was probably undeserved. It didn't help his self-loathing, which seemed to fuel the tendrils, which seemed to revel in destruction like it had emotions and actively enjoyed tearing things apart.
"Stop! I DON'T WANT THIS! Why aren't you listening to me?!" Izuku cried.
"Hey!" Shinso called out, standing on one of the rooftops that had been ripped apart by the robot, and not Izuku's out of control Quirk.
"Get out of here! You'll get hurt!" Izuku screamed back, exactly as Shinso thought he would.
Izuku was suddenly consumed by the feeling of numbness, even more than when he had been impaled in the arm by the reber, and he saw as the black tendril froze in place. Not being able to move his head, despite his efforts, was a strange feeling, and he found his entire body to be under the same effect. Izuku reasoned this to be Shinso's Quirk, feeling strange to refer to him as 'the purple guy', since he still didn't know his name. It was funny, he had met more people today than he had met in the last year under All Might's training. He had devoted all of his time to his training, and had less time to run around the city and document villain fights he saw, so he ended up running into less people.
As he saw the tendrils receding back into his hand, he felt One for All die down, but also his own field of vision was shrinking and he knew that he was slipping into unconsciousness. He felt a hand on his back, and a subsequent feeling of weightlessness before blacking out.
Blacking out wasn't the end of it, though. Izuku opened his eyes to see the same sort of wispy smoke that the tendrils had been made of, though it seemed to comprise everything around him, like he was inside of a dust cloud at night. The ground beneath him was solid, but it looked like everything else was unstable, constantly shifting like shadows. Speaking of shadows, Izuku looked down and saw that most of his body, save for his face above his mouth and his right hand, was made of the same smoke. He would've made a surprised noise, but he had no mouth, so he couldn't.
"Hey! What are you doing, you weirdo?" a man's gruff voice called out, causing Izuku to snap his head up to look at the man standing in front of him, also partially made of the black smoke.
"What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?" the man asked, knowing that he couldn't talk, judging by the smirk that spread across his face after. "Hey, don't sweat it. I know you won't be able to talk here. At least not for a while," the man said.
Izuku didn't understand what the man was saying. This would happen again? What even was this? It was all very confusing.
"I need you to listen up real quick, 'cause I ain't repeatin' myself! You just used my power, Blackwhip. It's pretty good for mobility and capture, like you saw, but it can also be a tough bastard to get under your control. You gotta be the boss, and not take shit from it, got it?" the man said.
Izuku nodded slightly, not sure what else to do. He was so unprepared for this, mainly because All Might had only talked about the purely physical strength compiled by each user, and had said nothing about One for All storing all of the previous Quirks of the users inside itself as well. Thinking about it, that meant that All Might probably didn't know, or he suspected it, but was being cautious. Izuku would've done the same, but he was still hurt that All Might didn't trust him completely, like he claimed.
"Good. We don't have much time, but let me just say this: You ain't alone in this, boy. You've got a whole family in here, rootin' for ya to succeed. Keep that in mind, and you'll figure it out. Good luck with our Quirks, Nine," the man said, before fading into the smoke while flashing Izuku a blinding grin.
With that, Izuku woke up, opening his eyes to see that he was sitting in a hospital bed in a sterile white room, with a short old lady, who Izuku recognized as Recovery Girl, UA's school nurse, tending to a clipboard hanging off the end of his bed. He looked around, not seeing anyone else. Izuku tried to sit up, but Recovery Girl snapped her attention to him and rushed over to his side, fretting over him for a moment before collecting herself and speaking.
"Are you okay, boy?" she asked.
"Um, I'm fine, I guess. I have a headache, but I kinda always have a headache, so that's kind of a moot point," Izuku said.
"What do you mean by that?" Recovery Girl asked again.
"Uh, I have this friend - well, we used to be friends - and he has this Quirk that lets him fire explosions from his hands. I was around it a lot when I was growing up, so my ears ring a lot and I get these weird headaches. My eyes also always hurt, but I think that's unrelated," Izuku explained.
"This 'Explosion' Quirk was never used on you physically?" Recovery Girl asked.
"Oh, no. Well, a couple of times, but it was always in small ways. Nothing too serious," Izuku hastily explained with a small, nervous laugh.
Recovery Girl grimaced, but let it go for now. She moved to the machine that was feeding Izuku through an IV drip. The door opened, and Izuku looked over to see All Might in his skeletal form, along with Uraraka and Shinso, though Izuku realized he should probably learn the name of the boy who saved him from Blackwhip.
"Young Midoriya, are you okay?" All Might asked.
"I'm fine, sir! Just a little bit shaken," Izuku said, rubbing the back of his head with his only free hand, which was still heavily bandaged from Blackwhip running amok.
"That's good to hear," Uraraka said, her posture relaxing slightly.
Izuku and Shinso locked eyes and nodded to each other, the former sensing that the latter wasn't the type to open up to people right away. He also looked extremely tired, and was eyeing the empty bed next to Izuku almost hungrily. Izuku would laugh if it didn't clash with the serious air in the room.
"You aren't okay, brat. Do you have any idea what you put your body through with that stunt of yours?" Recovery Girl asked.
"Um, no?" Izuku answered. The truth was that Izuku didn't remember much of anything that happened, his mind stuck on the dream-like vision he had of who must have been a previous wielder of One for All.
"Well, you shattered all the bones in your legs to splinters, you were impaled in the left bicep by a piece of rebar, you had stress fractures in your right hand and you had a concussion. You're lucky I was able to heal you in one go, you have quite a lot of energy in that little body of yours. Must have been stockpiling it for some time," Recovery Girl said, making eye contact with All Might as she spoke about stockpiling energy with a knowing glint in her eye.
All Might coughed into his hand, standing from the seat he had sat down in when he had entered. He looked to the two kids that were still there, and he knew from Recovery Girl's tone that they were going to talk about things involving One for All, meaning the kids couldn't be in the room with them.
"Alright, children, I think it's time for you to go. I trust you have people expecting you at home," All Might said.
"Um, okay. I'm glad you're okay, Midoriya," Uraraka said, before stepping out into the hall.
"Yeah," Shinso said in a low draw, joining Uraraka in the hall
All Might closed the door and joined Izuku at the bed, sitting by his side. The older man sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, obviously having been thinking about some things for a long while. Izuku wondered how long he had been asleep, but thought that he could always ask later.
"Young Midoriya, what exactly was that … thing that grew from you during the exam?" All Might asked.
"Wait, you saw?" Izuku asked.
"Yes. I was going to keep this a secret from you until it was officially announced, but I'm going to be working at UA this year as a teacher for Foundational Heroics for the first year students. I'd be your teacher," All Might said, clearly not thrilled about revealing the secret early.
"Oh. Um, well, I had been trying to activate … my Quirk, and -" Izuku hesitated, glancing at Recovery Girl nervously as he spoke.
"Young man, Recovery Girl knows about One for All. She's the one reason I'm here, today, in fact," All Might said.
"Really? How many other people know?" Izuku asked in an exacerbated tone.
"Well, there's you and me, obviously. Recovery Girl, UA's principal, and a personal friend of mine. That's it," All Might explained.
"Alright. Well, I was trying to call on One for All the entire exam, but it wasn't working. After Uraraka, that girl, got stuck under some rubble and I couldn't get her out, I started to panic. The Zero Pointer moved to crush us, so I just … jumped, and it worked for me. I overshot the hand, so I reached out for it, but One for All kinda … did what it needed to do for me to get what I wanted, I think, so it manifested one of the previous users' Quirks, Blackwhip," Izuku explained, drawing on information he had learned from his dream.
"One of the previous wielders' Quirks? You know this for sure?" All Might asked, sitting up a bit straighter.
"I do. I had a dream right after I was knocked out. This super funky looking man talked to me about his Quirk, Blackwhip, and how I'd have to learn to control it alongside One for All's regular empowerment. He also said that I'd manifest the other Quirks inside One for All in time," Izuku explained some more.
All Might took this in for a moment. Izuku did as well, and he wondered what the other Quirks inside One for All might be, with All Might undoubtedly wondering the same. Surely he knew the Quirk of his direct predecessor, but beyond that, Izuku wasn't sure that All Might could even get that information.
"I … am going to talk to some people. Young Midoriya, get some rest. I'll speak with you soon," All Might said, leaving in a hurry.
"Um, did I say something wrong, or …?" Izuku wondered, turning to Recovery Girl.
"No, you did nothing wrong. Yagi is a bit reluctant to discuss his predecessor. I suspect they weren't on the best of terms when she died, though that's not my business," Recovery Girl said, before closing her mouth and busying herself.
Izuku was left to wonder about his future, with his new Quirk working for him now, and seemingly another to control with more on the way. He was going to have his hands full, and he was going to have to work eight times harder than everybody else did, and that was just a minimum. Judging by the man from his dream's reference to him as 'Nine', that meant that Izuku had eight predecessors. That meant eight Quirks, including the original One for All, that he had to learn to control and use over the course of three years at UA. This was going to be interesting.