Chapter Text
As if stranded in a wide, blue sea, the students of class 3-A, who had studied and trained together every day for the past three years, drifted further apart in skill and mastery. The significant gaps in ability did not go unnoticed by either the pupils in question or the faculty, who did what they could to course-correct the underperformers with extra training and lectures. It did little to help. Extreme differences of skill was simply the fate of every graduating class at U.A. And while some students knew that they were more likely to wind up a sidekick to a more powerful hero, they still said little to one another about their obvious imbalances.
Thus, class 3-A settled into its second semester of senior year with sense of pushing and pulling between students. The advanced felt a sense of duty to their struggling peers, pulling them through their classes by way of study sessions and tutoring, while also literally pulling them through their physical training—sometimes physically carrying a collapsed or exhausted teenage body through Ground Beta. And those who struggled to succeed pushed themselves harder than ever in these last few months of high school. This would be their last chance to secure recommendations from their teachers and professional mentors. At U.A., there could be no such thing as senioritis.
In mid-February, about a month before graduation, the last of class 3-A reached the age of eighteen. Now free to plunge the students into even more dangerous and experimental training (sans the need for complex forms to be signed by parents or guardians), the staff at U.A. knew they had to get creative if they wanted this year’s low performers to have any hope of catching up.
“So do we have to spit in a tube?”
Aizawa didn’t open his eyes. As was his usual position in their homeroom class, he was slumped over on the floor at the front of the room, wrapped in a yellow sleeping bag.
“No,” he said after a few seconds’ delay, his response more an exhale than a spoken word. “Cheek swab.”
“Gross,” Kaminari replied.
The other students gave one another apprehensive looks. Midoriya Izuku, seated at the far side of the class, looked especially concerned.
“So…for this DNA sample…is it just for our records?” he asked.
Stirring, Aizawa opened his bleary eyes and fixed them on Izuku.
“It’s for the development of a Quirk-swapping drug you will all be taking. You're going to be trading Quirks.”
The class erupted.
“Are you serious?!”
“After all these years perfecting our skills, and we’re just…going to give them away to someone else?”
“Are you saying I have to give my Quirk to Ashido?”
“I’m dropping out.”
Izuku’s face was scarlet. He was obviously no stranger to Quirk “swapping” (or, well, “donating”), but why on earth would the staff at U.A. want to develop drugs like that and distribute them to the students it had invested so much time and money into training?
“The drugs are temporary,” Aizawa explained in a monotone voice. “Most of you will only feel their effects for two to three hours, long enough for a robust afternoon of training. You’ll merely let the tablets dissolve on your tongues, and within ten minutes should feel yourselves suddenly capable of an entirely new skill. The training will take place only next week, meaning you will each swap Quirks five times. I’ll have the pairings listed every morning.”
“Sensei!” Iida cried, his hand flung high into the air. When Aizawa ignored him, the class representative blurted his question anyway: “What purpose does this serve in our training? Are there many villains with the ability to swap Quirks between victims?”
“Perhaps,” came Aizawa’s cryptic answer. “But I’m not concerned about villains exactly.” He had been instructed to discuss the matter of students’ gaps in ability with some delicacy that hadn’t been required years earlier. Anyone who became too discouraged could fall even further behind, perhaps even dropping out of the school entirely just months before graduation. It would be a major waste of time and resources. Personally, Aizawa was all too happy to see the students who couldn’t keep up make their leave, thus leaving him with one fewer unmotivated junior hero to worry about. If they didn’t want it bad enough, then it simply wouldn’t happen. But Aizawa wasn’t the one responsible for the school’s reputation on the coveted Japan’s Best Hero Education lists (sponsored by the Kansai Provisional Licensing Test Prep Board). Low graduation rates were trouble, especially for a school like U.A., with such selective acceptance criteria.
“What if we swap and then realize we like someone else’s Quirk more than ours?” Ochako asked.
“You could say that’s the point,” Aizawa said. “All of you have trained together for years, yet none of you started from the same place, nor do you know what it’s like to experience any Quirk other than your own. Plus, most of you will wind up working together at partner agencies, which will require your keen understanding of not only your own Quirk but the Quirks of your peers. My hope is that this exercise will result in a better understanding of both your strengths and your weaknesses. Use this knowledge to your advantage, and you’ll be surprised how quickly you improve.”
Ochako followed up with another question: “Will we lose our own Quirks while this is happening?”
The answer was immediate.
“Yes.”
The class erupted again, students shouting over each other to either ask Aizawa pleading questions or to exclaim to their friends that this exercise was total fucking bullshit. Students with Quirks that manifested in the form of nonstandard body shapes and levels of opacity seemed especially concerned.
Aizawa closed his eyes and slumped further down the wall. To his great relief, the bell rang just a short moment later, signaling the end of the school day.
As the students scrambled out of the classroom, still as rowdy as kids thirteen years younger, Izuku heard his name.
Shifting the weight of his backpack from one shoulder to the next, the senior turned around and walked back over to Aizawa’s slumped body, which everyone had carefully stepped over on their way out the door.
“Midoriya,” Aizawa repeated. His eyes were still closed.
“Yes, sensei?” Izuku replied. He squatted down, out of a sense of awkwardness at towering over his own teacher. Even at eighteen, Izuku didn’t tower over very much.
“You should know that this exercise may affect you differently than the others,” Aizawa explained. “By the age of eighteen, most people have had their Quirks since they were young children. They’ve had over a decade to grow up with these Quirks, which in turn have an effect on every cell in their body. This compounds over the years.”
Izuku’s face went red again. He nodded, then realized Aizawa couldn’t see him and replied, “Yes.”
“This doesn’t mean that a late-blooming Quirk can’t be just as strong as one that became obvious when a child was still in daycare. However, in the case of these Quirk-altering drugs, trials seemed to show that late bloomers tend to hold on to the swapped Quirks a little longer than others.”
Izuku gasped. “Aizawa-sensei, am I going to lose—”
“Rather than the effect lasting a few hours, you might notice the Quirk you adopt will last closer to half a day. Perhaps twelve hours at the absolute maximum, but my personal opinion is that such an estimate is generous.” He finally opened his eyes, fixing them on his gaping student. “I know that your Quirk is important to you, perhaps more so than the others. But I thought you should know, so that there are no surprises.” He paused, looking thoughtful. “Besides, you generally perform well in class. This could be a bit of a humbling experience for you.”
“Do…do I need to be humbled, sensei?”
“Certainly some of you do. In any case, perhaps more than just the humbling experience this may prove to be, you will also have fewer opportunities to horribly maim your own body.”
Izuku swallowed back his spiking annoyance. He couldn’t fault Aizawa for his comment, not after the gory three years he’d endured. Even as a third-year, Izuku knew that his skills in self-preservation came second to just about anything else in his hero training.
“Ah…I understand,” Izuku answered, glancing away. “I guess I could be better about that.” When he fixed his gaze back on his teacher, Aizawa had closed his eyes again.
Leaving Aizawa to his slumber, Izuku stood up and left the classroom. Making his way back to the dorms, where he hoped to knock out some homework before dinner, he thought about what could befall him next week during hero training. During the “swaps.”
He had already made mental notes long ago of whose Quirks were most covetable. Objectively, he knew that both Yaoyorozu and Todoroki had some of the most well-developed and useful Quirks in the entire class. Both had more than once gotten him out of some extremely dangerous situations during his time at U.A.
He pinched his chin between two fingers as he thought, flipping through a mental index of his classmates’ Quirks and how they used them. Iida’s super-speed wasn’t terribly unlike Izuku’s own, and the same could be said for Satou’s glucose-charged feats of strength, so those swaps seemed unlikely. Perhaps he’d be swapped with Tsu? Izuku smiled at the mental image of his tongue flopping out of his mouth, slapping weapons out of bad guys’ hands. But even her Quirk mimicked his own Black Whip.
More than likely, he reasoned, crunching through the February snow, he’d be swapped with someone with a ranged Quirk. That could mean Aoyama, Todoroki, or…
Izuku opened the front door to the dorms, immediately hit with the sound of the other students cajoling and arguing with one another in the common area. Clearly he was not the only one with opinions of which Quirk he’d like to take for a spin. His mood far too pensive to inspire any patience for his classmates’ raucous discussion, he crept past them, quiet as a cat.
After reaching the door of his room, Izuku turned the knob, his red sneakers clutched in his hands. But right where he would usually neatly place his shoes for the day, at the entryway of his room, was a white piece of paper slightly larger than an index card.
“Huh?”
The paper had been folded over itself just once, carefully creased along the middle. It didn’t seem to have come from a stationary set; rather, it looked to have been ripped from a simple unlined pad. The sheet felt somewhat thick in Izuku’s hands—not quite as thick as cardstock, but certainly higher quality than the printer paper Aizawa liked to use for his poorly photocopied worksheets. (“Sensei, if I can’t read the question, what should I do?” Iida had once asked. Aizawa had ignored him.)
Dropping his shoes, Izuku shuffled over to his desk, letting his backpack slip off his shoulder and land with a loud thud on the ground. He flicked the paper open, brows knit in concentration as he read the characters that had been drafted in smooth gel ink. The handwriting was legible but had a somewhat rapid, messy quality to it, as though the writer had penned their thoughts in short bursts.
Izuku’s eyes widened as he read the brief note. Then he read it again. And again.
Finally slapping the note down on his desk, Izuku rummaged through his backpack to retrieve his notebook. Flipping open to a blank page, he returned to looking at the note, reading it a fourth time just to be sure. This had to be a mistake—whoever sent this had clearly slipped it under the door of the wrong room. But all their dorm rooms were clearly labeled with their names. If it were a mistake, how could someone have bungled their correspondence so badly?
Hey,
You seemed really nervous and wound up lately. I assume it’s because of graduation. But it’s hard to tell with you. Just thought you should know that you’re not the only one.
Izuku was in the first place unsure what the actual contents of the letter even meant. Nervous? Was this a reference to the earlier class? It wasn’t like he’d been the only person that day who had asked Aizawa about the coming swap exercises. Everyone else had seemed just as curious and excited about it. Had his facial expressions been suspicious to someone?
The note was so sparse, Izuku couldn’t help but impart a kind of sinister quality to it. Perhaps this was just teasing him, testing him? Could this be the work of a villain?
He flipped the note over in his hands several times, then held it up to the light. There was no signature, no return address, not even a hint as to who the sender could be.
It’s hard to tell with you.
What was the “get” here? The call to action, at least? He sniffed the note—it smelled faintly like his floor cleaner.
Izuku grabbed his favorite pen, a slim instrument with rich blue ink (All Might branded, of course). Carefully positioning the strange letter at the top of his desk, he then set to work listing the possibilities in his notebook.
February 21—Mystery Letter?
Clues:
- Correct stroke order. Black gel pen, 0.5? Seems rushed. No mistakes; likely native Japanese speaker
- White A5 paper, good quality. Probably ripped from a pad, but seems thicker than normal
- Found at—(he checked his phone for the time)—4:13 p.m.
- Nervous? Wound up? Hard to tell? Not the only one?
- Who else is nervous/“wound up”?
- “wound up”—Sero?
- but Sero hates that pun
- Who else would care that I’M nervous?
- Am I supposed to be nervous?
Izuku sat back in his chair, lost in thought, before suddenly scribbling in the margin, if only to himself: But I’m NOT nervous!