Denki Kaminari winced as he fried yet another robot. It didn't hurt as much as it used to, but so much electricity coursing through your nerves still wasn't pleasant. To make it worse, he was getting pretty close to his limit. Coherent thought was getting harder, and pretty soon he'd be reduced to a helpless, gibbering mess as his brain short-circuited.
He felt himself slipping and paused for a moment, closing his eyes to focus. He didn't go through everything he did just to fry his brain a couple minutes into the exam. He managed to get a hold of himself, opening his eyes and sprinting through the streets, looking for more enemies.
He'd been doing well, but he'd admit that he hadn't been the smartest with his power. There was this girl in his battle center, Kyoka Jiro, that had gotten his attention, and he just might have gone overboard to show off when he knew she could see him. He turned a corner and grinned to himself when he saw her again, temporarily immobilizing a robot with a vibration blast before using her extendable earphone jacks to press a button on the back of its neck, deactivating it.
Unluckily for her, three more of the higher level ones burst out from inside a building all around her, pelting her with bits of debris. His first thought was, well, it's just a test. I should see how she does, it could be cool. Then he remembered his dad telling him about this part of the exam.
"You won't die, but they have Recovery Girl on site so they won't hold back, either. If you slip up, you could end up with some broken bones."
He really did not want to watch the punk rock girl that he'd just decided he liked get any bones broken, so he broke into a sprint. He reached the first robot just as they all converged, sending a carefully controlled wave of electricity to short circuit them without shocking Kyoka. Unfortunately, the power expenditure sent him just over the edge, and he felt a familiar fog settle over his mind.
"Thanks!" he heard Kyoka say, sounding like she was far away. "It was Kaminari, right?"
"Yay," he said, giving her a thumbs up with what he knew to be the dumbest expression ever on his face. "Yay."
She burst into laughter. "Are you okay? What happened?"
"Yay!"
"Okay then," she said, drawing out the 'o'. "I'll be seeing you, I guess." She ran off.
He had one more coherent thought through the haze.
Dammit. Well, so much for that.
* * *
By the time he came to himself, he was sitting on his couch back home. He grabbed his head with a groan, and his mom poked her head into the room. "You okay?" she asked.
"Yeah, I'm back to earth," he said tiredly. "I don't know how well I did, though. I shorted out sooner than I should have."
"Oh really?" she asked curiously. "How come?"
Kaminari sighed to himself. His mom loved talking about this sort of thing, and she would figure it out no matter what he said. Might as well just tell her. "Well, there was this girl—"
He was cut off by her excited squeal, and he winced as the sound exacerbated his headache. "Finally! Oh, there's something special about this one, isn't there? I like her already."
"You haven't even met her," Denki said, confused. What was different this time? Although he did have a tendency to fall hard and fast for certain girls, it didn't happen very often. And his mom hadn't reacted this way to any of his other crushes.
"I can sense this kind of thing," she said, clicking her tongue. "Now, what happened?"
"I talked to her before the exam and got her name, and she seemed really cool. A kind of punk rock vibe, you know? Then during the exam, I kept noticing her nearby and I would go a little overboard to show off. Then she got trapped by these robot things we were supposed to fight, and I managed to take them all out for her without shocking her, which was really hard." He stopped, putting his face into his hands. He didn't want to talk about this part.
"And then?" his mom pressed, obviously uncaring of her son's reluctance.
"That's when I short circuited," he finally admitted. "She said thank you and asked me a couple of questions, but all I could do was say yay like some sort of idiot. I completely embarrassed myself."
"Oh, dear," his mom said with a chuckle. "Well, if you ended up spending more time together, she would have found out anyway, right? It's not a big deal."
"It is a big deal, mom! We just barely knew each other, it's not like I got the chance to explain what happens and why. I just randomly showed up and helped her, then turned into a freaking vegetable."
His mom started laughing, and he glared at her. As she got herself under control, she asked, "And? What was her reaction?"
"She was really confused, and she laughed," he said with a grimace. "When she couldn't get anything else out of me, she just ran off."
"Well, that doesn't matter. You two will meet again, I'm sure of it. It's like it's my quirk, you could say," she said confidently. She seemed to register what she has just said, and she deflated. Denki winced. It had been almost a year since his mom's quirk had just... disappeared. She had Energy Absorption, which coupled perfectly with his dad's Static Shock. One of the reasons the two had gotten together was because his dad was so taken with someone that wasn't afraid to touch him.
It was an understandably sore subject, even more so because of the strain it put on their relationship when they had to be so careful around each other all of the sudden. No one could understand what had happened.
Interrupting them from their sober thoughts, the doorbell rang. Denki quickly shot to his feet, wanting to give his mom some time to compose herself before greeting whoever was there. When he got there, though, it wasn't a guest. It was a mailman, and he was holding a letter that made Denki's heart start thundering in his chest with anxiety.
Why?
Because that was U.A. stamped clearly on the red seal. His letter had come. He took it with shaking hands, gave a quick thank you to the deliverer, and shot back into the sitting room to tell his mother. "It's here," he gasped, and her face lit up.
He was impatient to rip it open, but when the got to the table and got his dad... he stared at it. There was a good chance he didn't make it; the acceptance rate was less than one in three hundred. "Go on," his mom prompted. He took a deep breath and nodded, tearing open the envelope. He reached in and pulled out a small metal disk, turning it in his hands in confusion before putting it on the table and reaching back into the envelope to pull out the papers.
As soon as he did, though, the small circle lit up and a holographic depiction of All Might appeared in the room, making Denki involuntarily drop the envelope. "I am here!" he boomed, then laughed. "That's right. This year, I will be a teacher at U.A. high school! Now, Denki Kaminari, shall we go over the exam?"
The image changed to show clips of Denki's test footage, racing around and taking out the robots with flashes of his electricity. He'd racked up thirty-one points by the time the camera angle changed, showing Jiro take out her own robot before three more burst onto the scene around her.
"Ooh, she is cute!" his mom said, clapping her hands. Denki's face flushed bright red, but he kept watching as he rushed to the scene, actually looking quite impressive in his opinion as he fried the three robots around her. Then, unfortunately, the footage continued. Even his parents couldn't help but laugh as he did a complete one-eighty from the badass rescue a moment ago to an unresponsive vegetable that just smiled like an idiot, giving thumbs up and saying "yay" while Jiro tried to talk to him. When she ran off, the scene ended.
"Unfortunately, Denki, you did not get enough villain points to pass the test," All Might said, coming back into the image. Denki deflated. "However, luckily for you, that isn't the only way students earn points! We can't just turn away a student that rushes into danger to help others! For your heroic actions, you are rewarded twenty rescue points! With a score of fifty-one, you have passed the exam. Welcome to U.A., future hero! I look forward to seeing you in class."
The device shut off. Kaminari sat in silence for a short moment before jumping up out of his chair, letting out a loud cheer. He he turned to his parents, who had small grins on their faces as they exchanged a look he couldn't interpret.
"What?" he asked.
"Nothing," his mom said, laughing. "You just sound so surprised."
"Do you think All Might made a video for every single applicant?" his dad said. "Considering how fast this got here, I doubt he even did it for everyone that made it. It's probably only for kids that got into the hero course."
"We knew you'd gotten in the second the video started and he said your name," his mom agreed.
He blushed, scratching the back of his neck uncomfortably. "Oh, yeah..." he said. "I didn't think about that."
"So," his mom said, leading him back to the couch and sitting him down. "Tell me about the girl! What's her name? What's her quirk called, how does it work? I can see why you were so determined to impress her!"
Kaminari turned blushed yet again, not sure if he regretted telling his mom about her or not. Considering the fact Jiro was in the video, he probably would have ended up getting interrogated anyway. His mom really did have a sixth sense for this kind of thing, almost like it actually was a quirk.
He glanced at the clock as he started talking, his mom still firing off questions rapid-fire. He'd be going to bed late tonight.
* * *
Midoriya grinned from where he was lounging at the bar as the device portrayed his most impressive moments in the exam. It ended with the grand finale of him launching the two tons of cement through the huge robot's head, and as he suspected, from an outsider's glance it looked like he did it all on his own.
When All Might appeared back on the screen and gave him sixty hero points before telling him he'd been accepted, even the pro hero looked impressed. "So, what do you think?" he asked Shigaraki and Kurogiri. "Enough for the boss?"
"How did you do that at the end?" Tomura asked instead of answering, sounding bewildered. "Sensei never gave you any strength enhancement."
Midoriya laughed. "The girl's quirk that I saved was Zero Gravity. I just had her make the cement weightless for me to throw it before letting it go right before it hit," he explained. "Sure looks impressive though, doesn't it?"
Tomura allowed a smirk as he shook his head. "You always were tricky, you little devil. As for sensei, I'm sure even he'll be impressed."
Midoriya hid a wince at Tomura's continued use of 'sensei' to describe All For One. Midoriya hated him, and he hated being reminded that Tomura—who he'd somehow come to consider as a friend, however that worked—still respected him so much. Izuku still cringed away from both Shigaraki and Kurogiri, and Midoriya figured he should too, but the familiarity and trust that seemed to exist between the three of them made him think they had to have earned it somehow. He desperately hoped the emotions weren't implanted into him by All For One.
Midoriya suddenly realized that All For One, in a strange way, could be considered his father. He knew he'd just been Izuku before; the rebellion, the sass, the desire for revenge, none of that had ever been a part of him before his time with the villain. He hated that train of thought, because as much as he hated All For One, he really liked existing. He preferred to think of it as Izuku creating him to protect him from All For One, but the villain had been the one to shatter his mind in the first place.
At Izuku's insistence, he suited up and changed his appearance, including his height, back to how he'd appeared as a vigilante. Shrinking wasn't nearly as draining as growing was, which was fortunate, but he dreaded the thought of having to shrink and grow taller every time he wanted to do vigilante work.
He once again took to the streets, going back to look into the Eight Precepts of Death. Not only did All For One want more information, but Izuku was insisting he could feel someone begging for someone to rescue them from the group. Midoriya trusted nothing above his instincts when it came to danger and battle, but he had to admit Izuku's instincts for heroics and rescue were just as sharp. If only his other personality wasn't such a cry-baby.
Checking his equipment, he set out on his mission. Someone was crying for help, and he would answer. No law, no villain, and no obstacle would stop him. That's why he was called the...
Dammit, he really needed a name.