Summary:

Aizawa's quirk-assessment is graded by HOW they use their quirks. And Izuku, without a quirk to use, is expelled.

In the aftermath, Class 1A breaks apart.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

XXX

Ochako was still amazed that she'd gotten into UA.

She could still remember that moment so clearly, the building partially collapsing on top of her, and then a boy her age showing up to help.

He'd been rambling, asking her about her quirk with a wobbly-voice that Ochako had attributed to nerves until she realized that one of his arms was roughly tied up in a brace made out of his shirt.

He had a broken arm, and he was still trying to help her.

His rambling about her quirk was also helping to distract them both from their respective pain, and Ochako was honestly probably a little bit smitten.

His ramblings about what classified as 'attached' was also a lot more insightful than anything she'd gotten from a quirk-counselor. Not that they'd really gone to one except for that first time she registered her quirk. Those guys were expensive.

Ochako could tap someone on their jacket and have their whole body go flying. But if someone wore a book on their head, could she make that fly by tapping the person? What could she exclude, and what could she include?

Those thoughts were the reason why she'd even dared to try slapping the zero-pointer's foot when it came down on them.

Ochako had already been suffering from quirk-exhaustion, using her quirk on something that big? Forget about nausea, she'd probably end up in the hospital.

But if she only canceled the gravity on its foot? Destabilizing the robot so that they weren't crushed underneath its feet? It was worth a try. So she'd tried.

And she hadn't been hospitalized.

The boy had passed out from having his broken arm healed by Recovery-Girl however, and she hadn't been able to find out his name.

And then there he was. In her class.

She'd honestly been maybe a little bit embarrassingly giddy about that.

Not that Aizawa-sensei hadn't seemingly made it his goal to drive any of those feelings straight out of the classroom, by having them do a quirk-assessment under the threat of expulsion.

Not a great start to her school-life, but it was kind of amazing to see what she could do with her quirk in gym-class when she was allowed to use it. She even managed to get 'infinity' on the ball-toss.

But as she glanced at the scores, wondering how high that last score would've pushed her in the class, she noticed something that made those happy feelings immediately falter.

'Midoriya Izuku' was the last name on the scoreboard. And the ball-toss was the last test. Her worried musings were interrupted by the voice of Midoriya.

“You're not scoring us by the numbers, are you?” Midoriya asked their teacher, a weirdly blank expression on his face. “You're scoring us by how we use our quirks.”

“It's a quirk-assessment. Anything else would be illogical.” Aizawa responded bluntly.

Midoriya stared at him for a moment longer, before grabbing the ball and- “Uraraka, think fast!” - throwing it directly at her face.

Ochako's hands hit the ball, activating her quirk and sending it soaring upwards.

It was rude, but it was clever, and Ochako honestly couldn't quite help the smile dawning on her face. That was so cool.

“Uraraka, cancel your quirk.” Aizawa barked at her.

Ochako knew in that exact moment why Midoriya's face had been so carefully blank. He'd known. He was being targeted by their teacher for some reason, and he'd known.

“What quirk?” Ochako blinked at her teacher with wide innocent eyes.

Aizawa's eyes turned red, and the ball suddenly dropped out of the sky. “Do you think this is a joke?”

Ochako swallowed nervously, more than a bit intimidated by the man.

The man who turned back to Midoriya. “Seeing as you're in last place. Midoriya, you're expelled. Pack your bags and get out.”

Midoriya didn't even look surprised. Didn't look angry. He just looked resigned. As if it was something he'd expected all along.

Ochako on the other hand was seeing red. “Then I quit.”

Aizawa barely spared her a glance, seemingly completely unbothered by this, but Ochako wasn't paying any more attention to that quirkist sack of shit.

Instead, she hurried to Midoriya's side and walked with him back to the classroom, knowing that if she didn't she'd probably try to deck that asshole. And then she might get into trouble.

Somewhere along the way to the train, Ochako's hand found Midoriya's, and when they made it to the train-...

Ochako was still vibrating, seething in rage at the fucking gall of that bastard to expel one of the single most heroic people she'd ever had the fortune to meet.

Midoriya didn't start crying until they'd sat down.

Softly at first, but quickly the sobs grew deeper and more violent, until Ochako found herself hugging him almost just to make sure that he didn't fall out of his seat.

They stayed like that until they reached Midoriya's stop. And Ochako helped him the rest of the way home.

It wasn't like there was any reason to hurry back to her empty apartment that was now apparently a complete waste of money, because UA hadn't been what it claimed to be.

XXX

Inko wasn't an idiot.

She knew that her son was being bullied at school. She knew that there was a reason why Katsuki had long since stopped coming over to play.

Mitsuki and her had been such close friends back in the day, but nowadays the thought of her just-... She knew that it wasn't really Mitsuki's fault that her son happened to have a quirk that everyone praised, and an outspoken confidence that he'd inherited from his mother.

It wasn't Mitsuki's fault that Katsuki bullied Izuku. Not really.

But Inko could see so much of her former-friend in Katsuki, and in return she could see a lot of Katsuki in Mitsuki. And that wasn't a favorable thing to see.

Regardless, Inko wasn't an idiot.

She knew that Izuku was bullied in school. She knew that the teachers at Aldera had likely been instigating things, instead of just pretending not to see.

Unfortunately, Inko didn't have any proof for any of that.

Izuku's bruises? He was a boy, obviously he was playing in the woods or something.

Izuku's burns? He could've gotten those from anywhere. Matches weren't exactly a restricted item.

Izuku flinching away from loud noises? He was timid, most quirkless people were these days. That wasn't proof of anything at all.

Inko had watched her wonderful bright and clever son turn into a quiet ghost of himself. And she hadn't been able to do anything about it.

But when Izuku came home from his first day at UA, eyes still red from tears, and with a girl his age whose eyes burned with rage? When she was told that a teacher had given them a quirk-assessment that graded people on using their quirks, and then expelled the quirkless student?

Quirkism was illegal.

Aldera had proved how difficult it was to prove. But it was illegal. And it seemed like UA hadn't actually bothered to cover their tracks.

Inko wasn't some kind of big scary person who had lawyers on speed-dial. But she'd looked into trying to sue Aldera before, and she still had the number of a lawyer.

And for the first time in years, through the despairing inability to do anything to help her son, Inko finally had a target.

XXX

Tenya was still not quite sure what to say.

Midoriya had been a seemingly exemplary Hero, passing the entrance-exam exclusively by helping others, and Tenya had been genuinely looking forward to being the boy's classmate in the coming years.

And then he'd been expelled. On the first day. For not having the right quirk.

That... didn't feel right.

Tenya had been so excited to start at UA just this morning, and now the thought of returning there tomorrow was daunting.

Thankfully, Tenya's brother always gave excellent advice.

He just didn't expect him to casually mention that he knew some people at Shiketsu who owed him a favor.

An unexpected kind of advice, but when the thought of leaving UA behind made Tenya's eyes tear-up from gratitude, he knew that it was probably the correct direction to take.

Tenya would of course leave a formal complaint with the principal about Aizawa's conduct as a teacher, but if Aizawa had been a teacher there for several years, with the same attitude throughout? No doubt, others had already complained and failed to achieve any change.

It frustrated Tenya to know that an official complaint like that wasn't enough to oust such a clearly unheroic teacher from his position, but he also knew that sometimes bureaucracy was just like that. And not every fight could be won.

Sometimes, the wisest thing a Hero could do was to retreat in order to fight again another day.

And Tenya doubted that he'd be able to learn how to be a proper Hero underneath Aizawa.

XXX

Momo knew that she'd lived a very privileged life. It was hard not to know.

She also knew that she'd worked hard to get where she was, and it was something that she should take pride in.

But one of her classmates had been expelled on their first day at UA.

Momo had thought that their teacher had been bluffing. Completely convinced, honestly.

And he hadn't been.

And now they'd lost a classmate because he didn't have a quirk that let him do gym-exercises more impressively.

Momo didn't know what Midoriya's quirk was, but there were plenty of mental-quirks that would've been incredibly useful for a Pro Hero and completely useless in that test.

Midoriya had even tried to be clever and bend the rules by involving Uraraka. He'd thrown the ball, and the quirk would've been another 'infinity' if not for Aizawa erasing the girl's quirk.

Maybe Momo could've tried to convince herself that that had been why Midoriya was expelled. That he'd bent the rules and Aizawa had cracked down on him with an iron fist.

Except he'd already had expulsion hanging over him, and apparently Momo wasn't as good at reading people as she'd been assuming. No, Aizawa had known all of their quirks beforehand, and graded them only on how they used their quirks.

Not by how well they did on the tests, but how well they used their quirks in the tests.

Momo had complete faith in her ability to pass any academic test, and she knew that she'd trained hard enough that any physical test was also unlikely to hold her up for long.

But that hadn't been how Aizawa graded them. He'd said it would be how he'd graded them, until Midoriya had called him out on it. He'd lied to them about what he was actually testing them on, and then arbitrarily expelled one of them when they failed to measure up.

Momo had faith in her ability to pass an exam, but did she have faith in her ability to pass an exam that she didn't know about? Did she have faith that she'd be graded fairly in such a hidden exam, and not just be graded however Aizawa might please for his desired end-result?

No. Momo didn't have faith in that.

And despite the recommendation she'd received for UA, there had been other Hero-schools that had made similar offers.

Her parents had enough lawyers on speed-dial that a simple school-transfer this early in the year should be no problem at all.

And if Momo perhaps hinted that her parents should maybe stop their generous donations to UA and its quirkist staff?

Well, that was just the heroic thing to do, wasn't it?

XXX

Eijiro had, just like everyone, been excited to get into UA.

Seeing their teacher expel a classmate because he didn't have a good quirk was-...

Eijiro had wanted to remake himself, to stop being such a coward. But when the teacher had done that, Eijiro hadn't been able to move at all. He'd been completely frozen, just like everyone else.

Well, everyone except for the gravity-canceling girl. Her snapping back at their teacher had been so manly!

Eijiro had wanted to speak up right then, but he still hadn't been able to move. Hadn't been able to sacrifice his place at UA to make a point for the sake of someone he'd never met before.

What a joke. Dyed hair or not, he hadn't remade himself at all.

The next day, four seats were empty. The expelled guy, gravity-girl, the girl who could make things, and the loud guy with engine-legs.

Eijiro kind of wished he'd remembered their names, because it felt rude to refer to them by their quirks, even in his head.

There were sixteen of them left, and the mood was... pretty bad.

A few of them seemed completely unaffected. Like Todoroki, whose expression hadn't changed at all, and Bakugo, who-...

Honestly, Eijiro thought that the guy was pretty manly, being able to simply brush off losing so many of their classmates before lessons even started. The guy had a lot of confidence, and it kind of made Eijiro jealous. But like, in a good way.

Except then it turned out that he actually knew the guy who was expelled. He called him 'Deku', and went on a brief rant about how he was quirkless and should've 'known his place'.

So. It wasn't really that Bakugo had a lot of self-confidence, it's simply that he's just as quirkist as their teacher, and was expecting to be immune to that kind of thing in the future.

Eijiro felt the admiration blooming in his chest wither and die at that point. But, once everyone recovered a little bit from breaking out in a cold sweat when Aizawa-sensei entered and fell asleep at his desk, there's more than a bit hushed discussion in the class.

On the one hand, Eijiro can't really imagine a quirkless person becoming a Hero. But at the same time, he did make it through the exam, right? Expelling him after all of that doesn't really feel better just because he's quirkless.

If UA didn't want a quirkless kid to try and become a Hero, then they should've just rejected his application outright, instead of pulling the rug out from under his feet. Right?

Still, their first day of classes goes mostly-okay. Everyone brightened a bit when Aizawa handed them over to another teacher after homeroom, and at the end of the day they end up being taught by All-Might.

Todoroki froze the whole building during the battle-trials, and Eijiro very much gets the feeling that his unwavering poker-face comes from a similar place as Bakugo's. His quirk was 'too strong' for him to be expelled.

Though at least he wasn't as loud and obnoxious about it as Bakugo.

Bakugo who faced off against Eijiro and proved his every judgment about him to be spot-on.

Bakugo was on the Hero-team and yet didn't even try to get to the objective. No, more than anything, he just seemed to be trying to prove that he was the strongest.

He still won, but not before Eijiro started bleeding from his ears from the concussive force of all of those explosions. And not before Bakugo nearly brought the whole building down on top of them, because for some reason his support-equipment included some kind of super-bomb that he wanted to test out.

And when the next day Aizawa didn't even bother scolding Bakugo after reviewing the footage, let alone punish him for the wanton destruction and reckless endangerment of his classmates, Eijiro knew that Bakugo was entirely correct.

Like calls to like, and apparently Aizawa and Bakugo were two peas in a pod.

XXX

Toru had a lot of complicated feelings about UA.

Their teacher was an asshole, and so were a few of her classmates, but there were some good people too?

It was complicated, and Toru had a lot of schoolwork that she ought to be focusing on instead of that.

Then came the USJ.

They'd been attacked by Villains and scattered all across the massive area.

Toru, being that none of those Villains could detect her, had been able to make it back to the main-square pretty quickly.

And then-...

Then she'd watched Sato be... disintegrated.

Just... so much blood.

He'd been screaming, and then he'd stopped screaming. Stopped moving. Stopped being alive.

He'd been right next to her, but obviously the Villain hadn't seen her. She was invisible, beneath his notice. If she hadn't been, she would've died too.

She'd always wanted to become a Hero so that people would pay attention to her, and yet-... And yet, if she'd drawn the Villain's attention, she would've just died. Just like Sato.

All-Might arrived too late.

Too late for Sato, too late for Toru's dreams about becoming a Hero.

With a shock-blanket wrapped around her shoulders, her eyes met Koda's. Koda who'd hung back, because he wasn't a front-line fighter. Koda who'd seen Sato die too.

Toru met Koda's eyes, and she knew that his dream had died too.

XXX

Fumikage was used to being discriminated against.

Dark Shadow was a scary quirk, and Fumikage didn't really have a lot of control over them, because they were a person. Telling Dark Shadow to keep quiet in class? Fumikage had mostly managed that, but only because Dark Shadow knew that not keeping quiet would get Fumikage into trouble.

Fumikage having the head of a bird had played some role in things too, no doubt.

So in this sense, Fumikage was used to having quirkist and discriminatory behavior aimed his way. He wasn't happy with it, but he could manage.

Aizawa expelling a fellow classmate on their first day for the crime of being quirkless? Fumikage hadn't been happy about it, but he wouldn't risk his own future career over trying to confront an outspoken bigot with the power to make Fumikage's life very difficult.

Dark Shadow had probably even more opinions about it than Fumikage, but that was in no small part because they were scared.

Aizawa could make Dark Shadow disappear. Force them away from being able to even talk to Fumikage internally. Trap them inside of a tiny little box.

It was an incredibly unpleasant experience, and Dark Shadow was scared and furious with Aizawa for constantly aiming his quirk at them for seemingly no other reason than because he could.

Regardless, Fumikage was used to discrimination. And so were a few of his classmates.

Tsuyu and Shouji both had mutant-quirks, and for all that they'd overcome the nasty words they'd been exposed to through their lives, they hadn't been happy about seeing quirkism being blatantly displayed by their teacher at UA.

They, much like Fumikage, hadn't been willing to stick their necks out in order to fight a losing battle against a superior force.

When the USJ happened, and the three of them realized that not only were their teacher quirkist, but that one of their classmates had been killed? Had been murdered on school-grounds by Villains?

The three of them had finally done more than trade some uncomfortable glances, and sat down to talk about it. Far away from UA and any of its listening ears, of course.

Fumikage wasn't entirely comfortable with their conclusion, because it felt manipulative on a level that wasn't very Heroic, but if it meant that Dark Shadow would finally be free from Aizawa? It'd be a thing that he'd be willing to live with.

Trying to get Aizawa fired was unlikely to go anywhere, but using his behavior and the attack at the USJ as a way to give themselves an opportunity to enter a different Hero-school? That was a lot more plausible.

The press were salivating about a student dying during UA's classes, and there was a lot of rivalry between Hero-schools. With an interview or two about Aizawa's quirkism and their own safety-concerns, and giving the other Hero-schools the opportunity to swoop in and 'do better' than UA?

Fumikage wasn't entirely happy about their strategy, but it gave them a way out, and that was a lot more than what they'd had before.

When Aizawa returned to class to tell them that the Sports Festival would be going ahead as planned, as if a murdered student wasn't anything worth speaking of. As if any lingering feelings they might have about it were weaknesses that they should've long since abandoned. As if Aizawa would happily expel them for asking to see a therapist after their friend was murdered?

Fumikage decided that, actually? If it meant that he could throw mud at UA's reputation, he was actually pretty happy about their strategy.

XXX

Nedzu was used to Aizawa's little games.

He didn't particularly enjoy them, because they caused him a bit of extra-paperwork, but he wasn't so petty as to ruin another person's fun. Especially since he produced results.

Oh, probably not the best results, but good enough. Especially when it meant that it gave Nedzu access to his incredibly useful quirk.

Aizawa was unimpressed with his students, because that's just the kind of person he was. But with how many child-prodigies arrived at UA's doorstep, children who'd spent their entire lives showered in compliments from authority-figures, that kind of unimpressed attitude was incredibly effective at curbing misbehavior.

When a child isn't given the praise that they desire, then they'll work even harder to get it.

Well, up to a point anyway. Nedzu knew enough about human psychology to know that after that point, they instead became hateful towards the person failing to give them the praise they believed themselves entitled to. Which in turn made them act out even worse.

Again, Aizawa's approach wasn't the best, but it did give some decent results on the whole.

Seeing some of the students' faces as their hopes and dreams were destroyed by Aizawa's little games was at times also greatly entertaining. So, Nedzu did very much appreciate the man, even if he did cause him some extra-work that he didn't enjoy.

But Midoriya Izuku-...

Oh, but that was a hornet's nest that Aizawa had taken a swing at, and then left Nedzu holding the bat.

Nedzu was used to parents trying to sue UA for one reason or another. Some of those reasons were laughable in their legal standing, and some were laughable on behalf of UA's very well-paid lawyers.

Midoriya Izuku's case wouldn't have been that bad, because Nedzu could've cut a deal with re-enrolling him in Gen-Ed, and given him a new opportunity to 'earn his spot' in the Hero-course.

Unfortunately, Uraraka Ochako had quit UA in protest against his mistreatment, and Midoriya Inko was apparently one of those people who just didn't settle.

And the problem was that it was quirkism. Blatantly so.

Legally, Aizawa and UA were absolutely in the wrong, and Midoriya Inko knew that.

Even so, Nedzu had buried people over this kind of thing before, and he hadn't been overly worried about it. The law might be on Midoriya's side, but the court of public opinion was on UA's.

After all, who'd ever heard of a quirkless Hero? Such an absurd idea should've been nipped in the bud, long before Aizawa got involved in the matter.

Then Iida Tenya quietly transferred out of UA, which... definitely made a lot of other Hero-schools suddenly start paying attention. Not a good look for UA when a legacy-Hero-to-be decided to transfer out before classes had even started.

Then Yaoyorozu Momo transferred out of UA with an army of lawyers at her back to make sure that Nedzu didn't get any funny ideas. And then their family publicly vowed to avoid donating to UA in the future, on behalf of rampant quirkism amongst their staff.

That one definitely hurt. Both in the sense that Yaoyorozu had a lot of money to donate that suddenly wouldn't be coming to UA, but likely to their competitors, and in the sense that with such a public statement of quirkism from a reputable source? The press were beginning to pay attention.

Then the USJ happened, which was a disaster on multiple levels. Not the least of which being that a student had been killed on school-grounds.

One student was killed, and two students who witnessed the murder quit UA immediately.

Then three more students joined hands and uniformly quit UA in an incredibly public display of distrust. Both in UA's ability to keep them safe, and in UA's teaching-methods as a whole.

With the media already in a frenzy about UA, this was pretty much a nightmare-scenario. And the three students all having very visible mutations put even more weight behind UA being sued for quirkism.

Genuinely, if Nedzu could go back in time, he would've probably just suspended Aizawa for a week before he could play his usual little games. But there wasn't much point in doing that now. It would just pour fuel onto the fire.

Hopefully, the Sports Festival would at least distract the vultures.

XXX

Togaru wasn't entirely sure what to think.

He'd heard about the USJ of course, and there were a bunch of media-fuzz about the whole thing. But it's not like he'd ever seen any of UA's supposed quirkism, so he was pretty skeptical about it.

Monoma was clearly of the opinion that it was a bunch of hot-air and sour-grapes, and that 1A should be ground into the dirt for being shitty examples of Heroics, but Monoma tended to pivot into '1A sucks' a little bit too often for Togaru to entirely trust him.

That said, Bakugo Katsuki definitely seemed to match with Monoma's opinion.

Still, for all that Togaru was excited about the competition, there was something-...

There was definitely something chilling about seeing their sister-class being half their size.

A single person quitting? Yeah, they probably failed to make the cut and started crying about it. Togaru wasn't going to call them a bad person, but he wasn't going to be sympathetic about it.

Half of an entire class quitting? That didn't sound right. That sounded like something had gone terribly wrong.

Well, Togaru knew that something had gone wrong, because someone had apparently died at the USJ, and the media was really loud about worrying about their safety as students. But one person was still only one person, and 1A had lost a lot more than a single student.

So Togaru wasn't entirely sure what to think, but seeing the haunted look in some of their eyes? Togaru definitely felt like something was very wrong with class 1A.

XXX

Mashirao dropped out rather than participate in the tournament.

He didn't remember the second part of the event, so it didn't feel right to go on. He wanted to be acknowledged by his own merits, not carried over the finish-line by someone else.

But more than that, Mashirao didn't want to be carried over the finish-line by someone behaving like that guy.

Shinsou Hitoshi was a Gen-Ed student who'd come to their class to 'declare war' on them. Not just one of the crowd desiring to gawk at the survivors of a Villain-attack, but someone actively sneering at them about it.

Mashirao hadn't been close to Sato, but they'd been on decent terms. And Mashirao wasn't going to yell at people for being 'insensitive' when he knew that he would've probably come to gawk too, had he been in their shoes.

But that had been his first impression of Shinsou, and Mashirao wasn't some kind of saint.

Still, seeing Shinsou in the tournament where he relied wholly on his quirk and then was immediately defeated when someone decided to get physical with him? It made Mashirao wonder about how Shinsou got into the tournament-part to begin with.

Shinsou had the physical athleticism of a wet noodle, and the idea that he could've made it into the second part on his own out of hundreds of other students? Doubtful.

So doubtful in fact that Mashirao actually decided to ask around with some of the Gen-Ed students about it. And yeah.

Shinsou had literally been carried through the entire race by someone else. Several someones actually, seeing as running whilst carrying someone else was a lot more tiring than just running on their own.

Shinsou picked a target, had them carry him until they were exhausted, and then used them to distract and delay other competitors whilst he found a new victim.

It was... incredibly unsportsmanlike, and honestly downright parasitical.

Mashirao understood that Shinsou was 'allowed' to do the things he'd done, because those were the rules, but it felt like that kind of behavior should be punished in a Hero-to-be, right? Someone doing things like that shouldn't be rewarded for putting others down in order to gain an advantage, right?

The whole point of being a Hero was to work together and to help people.

And yet, as Mashirao looked around? UA was more than happy to praise Shinsou for his actions.

Mashirao had already known that UA wasn't as fantastic a beacon of Heroism as he'd expected when he'd applied. But this was the final straw for him.

This was the kind of Hero that UA wanted to encourage. A parasite stealing the glory of others for their own gain. Someone who'd yell about 'quirkism' in their entrance-exam when a quirkless kid managed to get in, and then refused to put in any kind of work to improve themselves.

If this was the kind of Hero UA wanted to turn them all into, then what was even the point?

Forget about being a Hero, Mashirao would rather be a NEET than become that kind of person.

XXX

Izuku wasn't quite sure what to feel.

He'd been expelled from UA, and then a girl he'd just met quit in protest and took him home, holding his hand the entire time.

His mom had decided to sue UA for quirkism, which felt absurd, because UA was the Hero-school. But quirkism against quirkless people still counted? Legally?

Uraraka was amazing.

Not only was she brave and passionate and had a really cool quirk, she was his friend.

Izuku had still been a bit too stunned and emotionally drained to really know what was happening around him, but his mom hadn't been. And so it'd been revealed that Uraraka lived on her own in an apartment specifically for attending UA.

Which had led his mom to call Uraraka's parents and talk about where to go from there.

Uraraka's parents were very busy with their work, and not exactly flush with cash, whereas Izuku's mom was-...

They weren't rich, but well, there was a reason that Izuku had so much Hero-merchandize. And it wasn't because he was good at haggling. They had more than enough for a few more mouths to feed, and Uraraka was only here because she believed that Izuku deserved to be called a 'Hero'.

So it came to be that Uraraka moved into their guest-room, and they spent the days together doing weird online-courses in the living-room, until his mom could sort out a proper homeschooling-schedule.

After all, it wasn't like they could really transfer to a new school, now that UA had left Izuku with a black mark on his records. Well, Uraraka probably could, but again, she didn't want to go to a school that wouldn't also accept Izuku.

Having a friend was amazing.

Izuku's dream of going to UA and becoming a Hero might've crashed and burned, but sometimes it felt like he was still somehow the happiest he'd been in years.

XXX

Yuga wasn't a good person. That ship had sailed a great many years ago, when his parents had made a deal with a devil.

Made a deal with a devil in order to spare Yuga from the kind of fate that his classmate Midoriya had suffered.

To some extent, the fact that Midoriya was expelled was a relief. Proof that his parents' decision hadn't been without reason, and also-...

It meant that when Yuga betrayed UA, he didn't have to feel as guilty.

If this was how UA treated a genuinely good person? Someone who'd passed their exam and done everything right, but who just didn't have a good quirk? Then maybe betraying them to the Villains wasn't a bad thing.

That had at least been a little bit of a relief, until the USJ. Until Sato was murdered, by actions that Yuga had aided.

He would've loved to say that he'd gathered his courage at that point and renounced his position as spy, but he hadn't.

Again, Yuga wasn't a good person.

Bakugo was a horrible person and if he was the only classmate here, Yuga would've probably even managed to smile when delivering his reports. Mineta wasn't much better, for all that he was a lot quieter than the blond.

Todoroki mainly kept to himself, rarely deigning to pay attention to much of anyone at all.

Ashido and Kirishima were close friends, and Kaminari and Jirou were too. Sero had been closer to Ojiro than anyone else, and mostly still reeling from the boy suddenly quitting after the Sports Festival.

Yuga didn't get close to any of them, playing up his over-the-top persona. Some of that was him trying to limit the heartache of hurting innocents, but some of it at this point was honestly that Yuga was hoping that they all dropped out.

They were by all accounts good people, and they didn't deserve to suffer through Aizawa's constant bullshit or Bakugo's constant insults. If only those last five students left, Yuga could do his job without regrets.

Well, he'd still feel guilty about it, because he wanted to be a Hero, not a Villain. But it'd basically be karma at that point, so Yuga wouldn't feel so bad about it.

Unfortunately, Yuga also knew that the devil wasn't just planning on tearing UA down and rebuilding something better in its place. The devil wanted to destroy all of society, and cared very little about UA beyond the understanding that All-Might had turned the Hero-school into a target.

XXX

Toshinori could still remember seeing Midoriya Izuku in the entrance-exams, could still remember the way he straightened in his seat as he watched a boy with a broken arm pull another girl out of the rubble, could still remember the feeling of-...

Toshinori hadn't been allowed to 'vote' on points, but once he'd realized that the boy had passed? He'd been looking forward to having that boy in his class, to see for himself if it was a fluke or if that boy really did-...

But Midoriya Izuku was quirkless, and was expelled on his first day, before classes had even started, because his homeroom-teacher decided that quirkless people couldn't be Heroes.

In that moment, of realizing what Aizawa had done, Toshinori had nearly punched him in the face.

Here was a boy with the heart of a Hero, someone with a spark that they as teachers were there to nurture, and Aizawa expelled him before ever letting him show them what he could accomplish.

It wasn't that Toshinori didn't understand his reasoning. People with weak quirks didn't really survive being Heroes for very long, and a quirkless person was effectively just even more of that, on top of being a possible controversy for the HSPC to whine about.

Toshinori understood Aizawa's reasoning, but that could've been-... But it wasn't like Toshinori could just tell the man that 'quirkless' wasn't necessarily a forever-diagnosis.

Still, Toshinori's feelings towards Aizawa had gone from the resigned acceptance of having a senpai who didn't really like him, to very much not liking the man back. Not that Aizawa seemed to notice.

Also, it wasn't like Toshinori could seek out Midoriya on his own, because now there were legal documents being drafted with Midoriya's quirkless status front and center, and suddenly gaining a quirk after that would be a nightmare for any cover-up.

Then came Toshinori's first class with the first-years, the class that should have included Midoriya, and there were more than a few things that felt like red flags?

Toshinori knew from his own school-days that classmates didn't always get along, but walking into that room and dividing them into groups felt like it had a lot more tension associated with it than it ought to. And then of course came Bakugo's match.

If Toshinori had the ability to expel students, he would've probably expelled him. And not just because he was still upset with Aizawa about Midoriya. But Toshinori didn't have that ability, and so that was a moot point.

The only thing he could do was to tell Aizawa that he really needed to curb Bakugo's behavior before something bad happened. Which the man brushed off, even as he promised that he'd deal with it.

Toshinori wasn't entirely sure that Aizawa had dealt with it, but right after that came the USJ, and suddenly there were bigger problems in the world than Aizawa failing to be a good teacher.

A student had died, and the Villains who'd done it had been targeting All-Might. Toshinori had allowed children to enter the crossfire, and it made him feel tiny and pathetic and so full of rage that he wanted to tear down the entirety of the USJ brick by brick.

And it was possible that All-For-One was still alive. Maybe he wasn't, maybe it was just someone with a similar quirk, or capable of doing something similar through science, but maybe it was. Maybe Toshinori had failed to kill that man.

Which meant that suddenly it was very important that Toshinori find a new heir for One-For-All.

Yes, he'd defeated that man before, but Toshinori was a shadow of his former self these days, and it was entirely possible that All-For-One was back to being in the prime of his life. Who knew what quirks that man had hidden away.

But finding an heir had been part of his goal for joining UA all along, so this was just speeding up the timetable.

Sir Nighteye had insisted that Mirio Togata was the perfect option, but Toshinori knew Mirai well enough that he didn't trust him at all. Mirai was the kind of person who'd think of an idea and then hold onto it with the kind of dogged madness that gave addicts a bad name.

Whatever Mirai proclaimed to have seen in Mirio was irrelevant, because Toshinori trusted his judgment about as much as he trusted Aizawa's.

He'd still looked into it, because he was a student at UA, but for all that the boy definitely had the Heroic instinct, it was-... Putting aside that he was pretty damn sure that Mirai had only singled him out because of his blond hair and muscled frame, the boy's quirk was... worrying.

Toshinori remembered that his own mentor's quirk, 'Float', had supposedly morphed under the weight of One-For-All into something more akin to 'flight'. A boost in potency that had no doubt been incredibly beneficial for her.

But what the hell would that kind of boost turn 'Permeation' into? Would it do nothing at all? Would it send the poor boy spiraling down into the core of the planet?

Toshinori wasn't a quirk-consultant or whatever, but Mirio had clearly spent a lot of time and effort in honing his quirk into a razor's edge, and suddenly replacing it with a sledge-hammer felt like an insult to that dedication.

No, instead of Mirio, he'd tried to focus on other students. Students with good hearts and quirks that didn't accomplish much.

Weak quirks, rather than quirks with drawbacks that might suddenly become deliberating.

Not that he'd made a lot of progress on that front.

In fact, it'd reached the point where Toshinori had decided to ask for help. Which meant that he needed to find someone he actually trusted, and that was-... That was a lot easier said than done.

He didn't trust Aizawa, and by extension he didn't really trust Nedzu and his judgment in keeping Aizawa as a teacher through all these years and complaints. He trusted Naomasa, but the man had almost no insight into the Hero-side of things at all. He trusted Gran Torino, but would rather cut off his own legs than contact the man.

Who did that even leave him with?

Well, as the first-year students went off on their internships, Toshinori decided to visit an old friend.

A friend he'd kept in the dark about One-For-All, rather than risk dragging him into the war against All-For-One all of those years ago, but a friend whose judgment he nonetheless trusted.

Which was why he found himself greeting little quirkless Melissa with a smile as fragile as glass.

She'd shot up like a reed, in all of his memories she barely reached past his knees, and she wanted to be a Hero. A quirkless teenager who wanted to become a Hero, despite everything.

He could give that to her. Could let her become the Hero she so clearly desired to be, and he knew that she'd be an amazing one.

But All-For-One was still alive, and the idea of gearing up his friend's daughter for the eternal war against that monster was nearly enough to make him throw up.

And if those were his feelings, then-... Then why was he looking for children to march into war in the first place?

XXX

Shouto wasn't happy about his internship.

His father had insisted that it would be with him, and apparently Shouto's opinions didn't matter. As always.

So, instead of learning anything useful, he spent the week being told by his father to use his fire-side. Which Shouto had learned to ignore years ago.

Then, his father decided to throw a tantrum about UA 'teaching him wrong', by failing to push him enough to use his fire-side. From where he promptly decided that he ought to transfer Shouto to a different Hero-school.

Shouto didn't really care, because it didn't matter what Hero-school his father sent him to. Shouto would become the Number One Hero with only his ice.

Fuyumi seemed to think that it was a big deal however, and urged him to make sure to tell his classmates about it.

Shouto wasn't sure why he should do that, because he hadn't really spoken to any of his classmates before, but if it would keep Fuyumi from being upset then he wasn't really opposed to it either.

'Classmates' didn't have to include the actually annoying classmates, after all.

XXX

Having spent barely five minutes in the same classroom as Shinsou, Kyoka wholeheartedly understood why Ojiro had quit UA.

She didn't entirely agree, but she understood it.

Shinsou Hitoshi was a person obsessed with quirks, just from a slightly different angle than Bakugo was.

Shinsou was the kind of person who would cry foul over the most minor of offenses, find insults where none were intended, and respond viciously in kind, and when called out on it would immediately get defensive about it because he assumed that everyone else were quirkist against him.

Kyoka had met a few people like that over the years, and the thought of having someone like that as a Hero was genuinely disturbing.

Perhaps he was overreacting from assuming that 1A was a place of close friendship and that they'd target the 'new guy', but it wasn't like there was really a 1A left at this point.

There were nine of the original twenty left. No, eight now, because Todoroki had apparently been transferred out following his internship with his father.

It felt like the only people not actively looking for an exit-strategy that wouldn't also ruin their Hero-career was Bakugo – who didn't seem to think that anything about their class was wrong – Aoyama – who might be actually insane – and Mineta – who was too easily distracted by any girl nearby to seemingly think complicated thoughts.

Kaminari kept staring at his homework with a constipated expression, constantly aware that he hadn't exactly coasted into UA on academical merit. Kirishima was justifying his fear of the unknown by how 'unmanly' it would be to 'give up'. Sero's strained smile hadn't shifted in days, the expression seemingly having frozen stuck on his face at some point along the way. And Ashido was still around because... well, the rest of them were still here, and she seemed to be under the impression that she owed it to them to keep their morale up.

Kyoka was just waiting for a sign of corruption or quirkism or something that she could take to the press to somehow buy her way into a different school.

She wasn't planning on leaving her classmates behind, because nobody deserved this shit-hole. Except maybe Bakugo. But she figured that if they just found some kind of scandal-like thing then they could do what Tokoyami, Shouji, and Asui had done.

A united front against some kind of bullshit at UA that they could all appear 'Heroic' for taking a stand against, and that some other Hero-school would be willing to snap them up after in order to generate good press for themselves.

It was a bit cynical, but between Bakugo's unchecked violence, Shinsou's constant defensive accusations, and Aizawa's inevitable threats of expulsion for minor inconveniences? Kyoka doubted that they'd need to wait for their moment for all that long.

She just hoped that the moment wouldn't be another USJ.

XXX

Rumi had been very confused when All-Might had sent her a message, asking to meet with her.

She'd also been a little bit excited, because meeting with All-Might sounded like an opportunity to ask the man to fight her. But she was realistic enough to know that All-Might probably had some kind of really big and important reason for it. He was just that kind of guy.

When she arrived to a meeting-room without anyone else there, she briefly wondered if this was the start of some kind of very uncharacteristic sexual-harassment, but-... Well, it was hard to really be suspicious of All-Might doing something like that.

Then the door closed, and All-Might... deflated.

“This is... something of a long story, Miruko. You might want to sit down.” The skeletal All-Might gestured to a chair. “I'll of course ask that you don't spread this around, but that's not really why we're here today.”

“No shit?” Rumi's voice barely wobbled as she sat down, feeling a bit like the world was tilting on its axis.

“I suppose the best place to start would be at the Dawn of Quirks, when two brothers were born.” Toshinori started, before unloading a whole shitload of history-bullshit that culminated with-...

“You want to give me your quirk, so that I can kill the guy who nearly killed you.”

All-Might gave a grin that didn't have any amusement in it at all. “I'd love to kill him myself, but I'm too injured at this point to actually use that quirk. And for all that I hope that he didn't just bounce back from having his head turned into chunky mist, I'd be remiss in my duties as the Eighth Holder of One-For-All to simply make assumptions.”

“So... why me?”

All-Might made an uncomfortable sound. “Before I realized that All-For-One still lived, I was thinking of finding an heir. A new Symbol of Peace. But I'm not sending a teenager out to fight that monster if I can help it. I myself wasn't in any shape to take that fight for several years after receiving One-For-All.”

That was fair enough. Rumi had heard enough whispers about Heroes being 'child soldiers' over the years that the thought of crossing that line with intent wasn't a great feeling. Even if she doubted that her teenage-self would've had any complaints whatsoever for an opportunity to pick a fight with some unstoppable quirk-hoarding monster.

“That leaves an adult I can trust with this kind of power. So a Pro Hero. And One-For-All will enhance your quirk, so someone who won't accidentally hurt themselves or others if their quirk goes a bit out of control.”

That sure sounded reassuring as fuck. “Out of control how?”

“Imagine Endeavor, with his fires suddenly hot enough that he accidentally turns himself to ashes before he even recognizes his new limits.” All-Might shook his head. “A 'simple' mutation quirk like yours might result in a few broken bones as you adjust to the power-output, but it shouldn't be much worse than that.”

Rumi understood his point immediately. “You want me to take a quick vacation, master the quirk, and then kick that guy's ass. Before he can figure out that something has changed.”

All-Might nodded. “It shouldn't affect your fighting-style overly much, just your speed and overall strength. And if All-For-One is as injured as I hope, you'd be able to tear him to shreds before he realizes that you're a threat.”

And really, since when had Rumi ever turned down the opportunity for a fight?

XXX

Rikiya had seen a lot of scandals in the Hero Industry over the years.

Some of those, he'd been able to capitalize on to spread the message of the Meta Liberation Army, but most of the time their ideals had been better served by keeping quiet.

When UA had come under fire for allowing a student to die during the USJ-attack, Rikiya hadn't particularly cared. Young Heroes died sometimes, that was just how it went.

However, with the spotlight shining on UA, its legal-case against Midoriya Inko for the quirkist expulsion of her quirkless son had quickly become headline-material. And that was something that Rikiya could use.

Quirkless people were a residual defect in humanity's genome, and the idea of allowing such a useless creature to attain the rank of Hero was laughable. Also infuriating. That ungrateful parasite should've been thanking UA for even allowing him to step onto its finely polished floors, not trying to sue them for 'discrimination'.

No, once that had moved into the public spotlight, Rikiya had made sure that his subordinates threw in their support for the correct side in that conflict.

But he'd also made sure that his aid of UA came with a few harmless strings attached. A loose agreement of scratching each other's backs, that would no doubt help them when the time came for their glorious revolution.

XXX

Naomasa wasn't some kind of political genius, but his work and quirk had let him meet a lot of people over the years, working on a wide variety of different cases.

And that diversity meant that he was one of those people who just kind of knew everyone. He wasn't necessarily close to everyone, because again, his work took him a lot of different places. But he knew a lot of people, and a lot of people were willing to gossip about things with him.

And as far as public opinion was concerned, UA was up shit-creek without a paddle.

The death of a student had been a tragedy, but nothing that Hero-schools hadn't experienced before. Heroics was a dangerous career, and even in carefully structured classes, injury and even death wasn't unheard of. That was just the sad reality of it.

But the timing of that death had brought public attention to UA, and by association the legal-case about quirkism that they were fighting in court.

A legal-case that had caught the eye of people like the Hearts and Minds party.

Anyone who knew anything about quirkism in their society, knew that the Hearts and Minds party were almost absurdly quirkist. And they'd decided to wholeheartedly support UA's side.

In the court of public opinion, it was a bit like a police-officer being officially and legally supported by a yakuza-group after being accused of taking bribes.

Naomasa wasn't entirely sure why the fuck Nedzu had decided that accepting their aid was in any way a good idea, but his assumption was that it had something to do with the principal's silent feud with the HSPC. It probably also included dozens of contingency-plans and was part of some incredible long-term plan on Nedzu's part.

But the optics of it were that UA were absolutely guilty of quirkism.

And that wasn't really a good look for the most prominent Hero-school in the country.

Not helped by how UA's Class 1A was hemorrhaging students at a ridiculous rate, and who some of those students were.

Yaoyorozu was an incredibly powerful name, both in Heroics and in Japan as a whole. Iida was perhaps not comparably well-known, but their family were highly regarded in the Hero Industry. So UA had clearly fallen out of favor with some powerful people after they'd been exposed to their teaching-methods.

Tokoyami, Shouji, and Asui all had mutant-quirks. Or a vestigial mutant-quirk in Tokoyami's case. And those kinds of quirks were well-known to be discriminated against, to the point where there was a big political movement fighting back against it. So for them in specific to leave in a united manner the way they had, meant that any rumor of quirkism had suddenly become incredibly believable.

Ojiro had surrendered the position he'd won in the Sports Festival, and then immediately quit the school, with some public statements to the press which had lent credence to accusations about sabotage that some of the other Gen-Ed students had been talking about on various online-forums. Implying that UA as a whole was willing to cover up academical sabotage and possibly bullying.

Todoroki, the son of the Number Two Hero, had been pulled from the school following his internship with his father. Again lending further credit to the assumptions that something was very rotten with UA's training-programs.

With all of the attention being paid to UA and Class 1A, and with the Hearts and Minds party making noise in support of UA's legal problems, it was blatantly clear to Naomasa that UA wasn't going to simply weather the storm.

It probably wouldn't be forcibly closed, and Nedzu might even manage to continue to cling to his title as principal, but something was definitely going to break. And scapegoats would no doubt be needed.

So Naomasa reached out to Yagi.

The Symbol of Peace couldn't afford to be made a scapegoat, and for all that Naomasa doubted that anyone would believe it, Nedzu was a sneaky bastard and Yagi was a very inexperienced teacher in a high-stress environment.

Better to have All-Might speak up on this mess sooner rather than later.

XXX

Mina knew that All-Might was different.

Not just in the sense that All-Might had a long and storied history of being All-Might, and the thought of him agreeing with Aizawa was absurd. But in the sense that she could see the way All-Might so deliberately swallowed his words.

All-Might vehemently disagreed with Aizawa's methods, but he was a teacher, and a teacher couldn't exactly undermine another teacher in front of their students. Especially since All-Might was relatively inexperienced in teaching.

So, All-Might would open his mouth to speak up about Bakugo's most recent spot of unchecked violence, and Aizawa would cut him off by saying something that wasn't a scolding. Or All-Might would try to focus on Mineta's inappropriate behavior, only to be cut off by Aizawa talking only about the end-results. Or All-Might would try to ease Shinsou away from antagonizing everyone around him, and Aizawa would give some kind of praise for Shinsou's quick thinking or something.

And every time, All-Might would close his mouth, give Aizawa a quick glance that spoke of wanting to crush the man's head like a grape, and then swallowed his own comments.

Jirou had only strengthened that read, by admitting that Aizawa and All-Might had argued behind closed doors more than once.

So Mina knew that All-Might was different. That he wasn't... whatever the fuck Aizawa was.

And Mina was getting desperate, because with Ojiro gone and Shinsou constantly telling everyone that they were actually horrible people because their quirks weren't 'villainous' enough to not have been spoiled rotten? They needed to get out of UA.

They'd tried to grit their teeth and push through, and Aizawa had just piled more bullshit on top of things. And nobody could seemingly get the bastard to stop.

Which was why Mina had gone to talk with All-Might.

All-Might took one look at her face, reached into his desk, and gave her six letters, only one of which had her name on it.

Mina blinked at them, not entirely sure why he'd given her letters or what-...

“Those are letters of recommendations, from me, to you. For any Hero-school in Japan.”

Mina stared at him. At the way he wasn't smiling at all. And she knew why there were only six letters included.

There were nine students in 1A, but All-Might wasn't sticking his neck out for the last three.

But he was doing it for them. He believed that they could be Pro Heroes, that they deserved the chance.

Mina broke down crying.

She wasn't sure if she was happy that he had so much faith in them, or if she was just relieved that he'd been willing to save them.

That they'd finally be able to leave UA behind.

XXX

Hanta wasn't the only one worried when Ashido came out of a meeting with All-Might with eyes red from crying, but the smile she gave them helped with that.

She honestly just looked relieved.

The letter placed in his hands was-... It was indescribable. The relief, the pride, the hope, the uncertainty. It was all mixed together in his head.

And it was the same for the others. Kaminari was openly crying, Jirou kept turning the letter over in her hands and had seemingly forgotten to close her mouth, Aoyama-...

Hanta saw something in Aoyama's expression, something that didn't look like relief at all. But then it wasn't there anymore, and instead he was back to ranting about how sparkling the letter was, but how he was more sparkly than even that. Which he promptly demonstrated by pirouetting out the door, leaving his letter behind.

Everyone exchanged glances, because they'd all known that Aoyama was a little bit crazy, but surely he wasn't that crazy, right?

Except-... Except, even as everyone agreed to leave it in his shoe-locker for later, Hanta knew that Aoyama had already made his decision.

He'd been offered an out. And he wasn't taking it.

For whatever reason, Aoyama was planning on remaining at UA.

XXX

Sorahiko hadn't expected Miruko.

Some of that was that he'd expected Toshinori to pick some kid, some of it was that he'd expected him to pick someone with a bright smile and a big heart, and some of it was that he didn't know why the fuck she had tentacles now.

Oh, he could make an educated guess. One-For-All was a stockpiling-quirk, and who's to say that it didn't just stockpile 'energy'? But being called in by Toshinori because his successor's quirk had interacted strangely with One-For-All?

Yeah, Sorahiko hadn't expected Miruko.

She was a violent and spiteful little bastard, and Sorahiko was pretty sure that she'd only agreed to take on One-For-All because she thought that the idea of fighting a resurrected All-For-One was 'fun'.

Sorahiko loved her like the grandchild he'd never wanted.

XXX

Mirai clenched his fists as he stared at the screen.

There it was. The nebulous Villain that he'd predicted in All-Might's future. All-For-One, still somehow clinging to life.

He could feel the panic bubbling up at the thought of All-Might fighting that monster on his own once again. He didn't even have a successor, because for some reason he kept refusing to meet up with Mirio, who was perfect-...

Mirai blinked.

All-For-One was hit into the ground by a second arrival. Someone who'd no doubt just be a liability, because he'd steal their quirk and-...

Except... wasn't that Miruko?

Mirai felt his jaw grow slack as he watched the woman hit All-For-One over and over and over again, sending him flying across the battlefield, laughing all the while, covered in violent black tendrils.

A quirk awakening? No, why the hell would it manifest like that-...

Mirai watched as the Ninth holder of One-For-All ripped All-For-One to shreds, with All-Might backing her up.

A battle that-...

Mirai suddenly understood why All-Might hadn't ever bothered with meeting Mirio.

Mirio would be an excellent Hero, and could've easily stepped into the role of the Symbol of Peace. But that wasn't the purpose of One-For-All.

One-For-All had never been about creating an incredible Hero. It was the weapon designed to kill All-For-One.

All-Might had picked his successor, not as the Symbol of Peace, but as a soldier in a war against a monster.

And suddenly Mirai felt grateful for All-Might's stubbornness in refusing to listen to him, because the alternative would be for Mirio to stand there, on that battlefield. And Mirai would've rather cut off his own arms than watch that from the sidelines once again.

XXX

Hitoshi had known that there was something messed up happening in 1A, but he hadn't really cared about it.

They'd been attacked by Villains and half of the class had quit. Whoop-de-fucking-doo.

The kids with the perfect flashy Heroic quirks had run off with their tails between their legs the moment they'd faced some actual hardships. Who'd have thunk it?

No, Hitoshi hadn't exactly been feeling very charitable, and it's not like they'd tried to be nice to him, so who cared, right?

Except, in the wake of All-Might and Miruko fighting and killing some super-scary Villain on live television, Aoyama had somehow gotten an interview with some other news-outlet. And suddenly-... Suddenly Hitoshi's feelings felt incredibly small and petty.

“In that moment, my heart ached. Because if more people were like Uraraka-san, perhaps my parents would never have made that deal with the devil to begin with.”

An apology. That's what it was. An apology and a confession, and a genuine admittance of his admiration for his classmates. Or, his former classmates, rather.

Aoyama didn't condemn Hitoshi for his harsh words or villainous quirk, he just ignored him. Same as he did that creep, Mineta.

The only people Aoyama condemned were Bakugo, for violently breaking the rules, and Aizawa-sensei, for letting him get away with it. No, that wasn't true. He condemned Aizawa-sensei for a lot more than that.

He condemned him for being exactly the kind of quirk-supremacist that'd pushed his parents to do what they'd done, in the hopes that he'd at least get some kind of life, as long as he had a quirk. He condemned him for allowing the single most Heroic person Aoyama had ever met to quit before classes had even started. He condemned him for ruling his classroom through fear, and for teaching his students that asking for 'aid' was the same as admitting to a 'weakness' that made them unfit for being Heroes.

Aoyama very much didn't like Aizawa.

But no, beyond that, the only times he mentioned another student by name it was with genuine praise and heartfelt regret. Praises for their kindness in the face of hardship, regret for the consequences of his own unheroic actions being reflected onto them.

Aoyama had been quirkless, and in exchange for a quirk, his family had been held hostage for Aoyama to work as a spy for the Villains against UA.

It was the kind of tragedy that made the harsh words spoken to Hitoshi by his classmates suddenly seem... ridiculously petty.

Hitoshi had come into 1A with nothing but his own selfish motives of becoming a Hero to prove people wrong. And in his haste to make a space for himself, he'd mocked and insulted people who'd been in the middle of being psychologically tortured by their teacher. A teacher he'd looked up to, for letting him hurt people.

Hitoshi knew now why five of his classmates had transferred out with recommendation-letters from All-Might himself, and Hitoshi had been excluded.

It hadn't been about his quirk, or his lack of training. It'd been because his attitude had made him act more like a Villain than a Hero.

And wasn't that a laugh? He'd finally managed to claw his way into the Hero-course despite his Villainous quirk, and then he'd thrown it all away with his Villainous personality.

Understandably, nobody really cared about that. Hitoshi was a tiny pebble in the middle of a landslide.

Nedzu had been forced to resign from his position as principal of UA. Aizawa had been stripped of both his teaching-license and his Hero-license. Bakugo had been expelled. And Mineta and Hitoshi had both been quietly transferred back into Gen-Ed, as the doors finally closed on Class 1A for good.

Not that Hitoshi had any friends in Gen-Ed. He'd burnt those bridges with his stunt during the Sports Festival.

No, Hitoshi might've returned to his previous class, but whatever 'friendliness' had existed between him and his classmates? It'd long since withered and died, because that's what happened when you used other people as stepping-stones.

XXX

Katsuki had been expelled.

He'd done everything right, won every fight, and they'd just expelled him.

They'd told him that he was supposed to hold back, when the assignment was clearly that he wasn't supposed to hold back. And it was bullshit.

He'd been one of the only fuckers who didn't chicken-out and run away the moment things got a little 'scary'. Who understood that being a Hero meant that you couldn't just sit on your ass and do well in fucking math-class.

He'd been the one sticking with it, and now they'd expelled him. For bullshit-reasons that didn't make any fucking sense.

Except it did make sense.

Katsuki wasn't stupid. He'd seen the bad press UA had been getting.

Between the Villain-attack and the weakling who'd gotten killed at the USJ, the legal-case about 'quirk discrimination' – as if Deku even had a quirk to discriminate against – and then the sparkle-fucker revealing that he'd been a Villain all along.

Katsuki knew that UA had been getting bad press, but expelling Katsuki for that was absurd. So that wasn't it.

No, that wasn't true, there was probably something there. Specifically, there was the fact that it was fucking Deku suing UA for quirk-discrimination. And Deku always looked down on Katsuki.

In light of that, it made perfect sense that Katsuki would be expelled. Deku cut some kind of deal with UA, and UA – scared of even more bad press – had folded like a cheap fucking suit.

Deku had once again ruined Katsuki's meteoric rise to the top, and he was going to beat the shit out of him for it.

And Deku knew that Katsuki had seen through him, because he didn't even look surprised when Katsuki showed up at his apartment. Just resigned.

“I knew you'd do this, Kacchan.”

Katsuki didn't dignify that know-it-all bullshit with a verbal response, and instead swung for Deku's face, his quirk-...

And then he was on the floor, and there were grown men in police-uniforms standing over him.

“I'm sorry, Kacchan. But I knew you'd do this.”

That fucker had set him up. He'd done all of this to set it up to make Katsuki look like the bad guy, when he was only putting Deku in his fucking place.

He'd set him up, and Katsuki had walked straight into his trap, like a fucking idiot.

XXX

He'd been made a scapegoat, that was the gist of things.

Shouta couldn't exactly claim to be 'surprised' by this, because the world was filled with irrational people.

Of course he'd expelled the quirkless boy. Hero-work was dangerous, and people relied on them to succeed. Not having a quirk meant that he'd inevitably fail, and then people would be hurt.

Shouta didn't care that the boy had made it through the entrance-exam, because it was obvious that his points hadn't been properly weighted. Not even Shouta had been able to make it in to the Hero-course from the entrance-exam, because the exam was designed for people with 'flashy' quirks.

Shouta hadn't found any proof that Nedzu had doctored the boy's inflated rescue-points, but then he hadn't really bothered to look. Nedzu would always be able to hide his schemes under layers upon layers, and Shouta had enough work to do to not bother trying to dig into that kind of thing.

The truth was that it was obvious that a quirkless person couldn't be a Hero. Shouta ought to know, he made people quirkless and then took them down. A quirkless person was useless in a fight.

So he set up a quirk-assessment for his class, and then graded them on how well they used their quirks.

After all, it's not like he could've graded Hagakure for how her quirk made her 'better' at physical exercise, when that's not how her quirk worked at all.

Then Midoriya had tried to get clever with him by having someone else do the heavy lifting for him, shirking his responsibility and again proving himself to be completely without heroic potential.

So he expelled him, as was his right as a teacher. The Uraraka-girl quitting just proved that she thought of this whole thing as a game.

Giving up just because her friend couldn't play with her. Childish.

Just like the spoiled princess who got in on a recommendation, running away the moment things got real. He'd expected a bit more from Tensei's brother, but the man was probably spoiling him too.

All-Might trying to give him flak for it just proved that he didn't understand how to be a teacher. He even tried to tell Shouta how he should handle his own students, because apparently Bakugo had been 'too violent' in the exercise.

Shouta had looked through the footage at high-speed and he hadn't seen anything more damning than the usual reckless behavior of someone with a flashy quirk. He'd get over himself in a few weeks.

Not that All-Might seemed to understand that, because he kept grinding his teeth and glaring whenever Shouta supervised him to make sure that he didn't do anything stupid. Really, just because some government-agency had arbitrarily decided that he ought to win a popularity-contest didn't make him actually competent.

The USJ also proved that All-Might's presence had made UA into a target for Villains, so that was just great. A student died, and two students quit, but it wasn't like UA could allow itself to look weak.

Tokoyami, Asui, and Shouji all quitting over Shouta's supposed 'quirkism' was annoying. Shouta wasn't quirkist, that'd be irrational and he was too intelligent for that.

Ojiro dropping out of the Sports Festival was childish. The world of Pro Heroes was cutthroat, and trying to be 'sportsmanlike' would just result in people getting hurt. Shouta would've probably threatened to expel him if the boy hadn't gone and quit on his own immediately afterwards.

Endeavor pulling his son out of UA was just more nepotism, and then All-Might went and gave recommendation-letters to a bunch of their remaining students, pressuring them into dropping out of UA? Before fucking off somewhere for like a month? Despite how he was supposed to be a teacher at UA?

But no, Shouta was the 'bad' teacher, because he wasn't the photogenic Number One Hero. And when Nedzu tried to cover his own ass after Aoyama admitted to Villainy on live television, he threw Shouta in front of the bus.

Not that it'd helped the rat. He'd lost his place at UA too. Though, he might've still been able to keep his Hero-license. Which Shouta hadn't.

Of course the one with the 'creepy' quirk would be fired and completely stripped of his ability to do his work. Not the one with the responsibility to run a damn background-check on his students, or the oaf who pretended at friendliness in order to stab them in the back by pushing their students away. No, it had to be Shouta's fault.

Even Hizashi and Nemuri were being annoying about believing Aoyama. As in, trusting the words of a self-admitted Villain, over the words of their Pro Hero colleague.

He supposed that he shouldn't have expected much from the two of them, they'd always been hopelessly irrational about these kinds of things.

XXX

Minoru hadn't realized that something was wrong until Asui and the other two had quit UA.

Their teacher being a hard-ass by expelling that quirkless kid on day-one, before classes even started? Scary. But it's not like Minoru was quirkless, so who cared, right?

And maybe some people had stronger feelings about that than he did, because two cute girls and an annoying robot left too. But whatever.

Hagakure and the other guy quitting after USJ hadn't been-... Minoru might've stayed at UA, but he'd been so scared during the Villain-attack. He'd been pretty much ready to flip a coin about whether to stick to it or not, so someone deciding to get out? Minoru could hardly blame them for that.

Then the Sports Festival was announced and suddenly Asui and the other two walked out because of 'quirkism'. And Minoru had been the only one among his classmates that had been surprised.

That's when it'd hit him that nobody actually talked to him.

He'd known that he wasn't Mr Popular or whatever, but Asui had saved his life, and yet he'd been the only one to be surprised by her quitting. Not in the sense that everyone expected it from her, but more from the idea that 1A was a shitty place to be.

Minoru hadn't realized any of that at all. They were taught by All-Might!

But as he looked around, and realized that nobody wanted to talk to him? That he was alone? That's when he started to realize that something was wrong.

He started to realize that Bakugo wasn't tolerated by his classmates, he was being actively avoided. And Minoru was too.

He wasn't sure exactly what he'd said to make people as uncomfortable around him as they were around the fucker who tried to actively kill them during class-exercises, but apparently he'd managed to do just that.

So there he was, surrounded by people who avoided talking to him unless absolutely necessary, and realizing that their teacher wasn't just some scary hard-ass who disliked quirkless people. Their teacher was some kind of crazy bastard who'd expel them on a fucking whim for not reaching his arbitrary standards.

Minoru might've quit at that point, but it wasn't like he had anywhere else to go, so instead he'd just tried to focus exclusively on school-work. Maybe Aizawa would chill out after a few months, and maybe his classmates would stop hating him if he didn't bother them?

Internships had sucked. Being treated like a personal slave instead of someone there to learn, made Minoru kind of worried that this was what awaited him if he went into being a side-kick upon graduating. But he'd eavesdropped a little on his classmates, and maybe his pick of a Hero had just been shit?

Then Shinsou showed up and-... And Minoru hated that guy.

Fighting against Bakugo was a fucking nightmare of being used as a punching-bag until he decided that he'd had enough fun kicking your teeth in. But fighting Shinsou meant being insulted and mocked and-...

Minoru had honestly started crying a few times, because Shinsou was fucking mean about it, and he really seemed to have fun with it. Not helped by the fact that Aizawa apparently didn't seem to believe that Shinsou ought to apologize for the shit he said.

If Shinsou's words hurt someone's feelings, that person should just suck it up and stop being so 'irrational' about it.

The others hated Shinsou too, but at least they had friends who could tell them that he was full of shit or something. Minoru didn't have anyone like that.

Shinsou would say something tailored-made to fuck with his feelings, and then he'd look around at his classmates and realize that they didn't really disagree with him.

And then those classmates all transferred out. With recommendations from All-Might. And suddenly it was just Minoru and the psychopath and Shinsou and the sparkles-guy.

By the time Aoyama confessed on live-television that he'd gotten one of their classmates killed, Minoru had already been seriously considering quitting UA altogether.

Except suddenly everyone was being investigated about all kinds of things, and Minoru was transferred over to Gen-Ed because his conduct was 'unbecoming of a Hero'.

They hadn't actually said what part of his conduct was unbecoming of a Hero, and he sure as fuck hadn't actually gotten a warning about that before suddenly landing in Gen-Ed.

He was even stuck in classes with Shinsou once again, but at least this time he didn't have to worry about 'fighting' him, right?

And sure, Gen-Ed wasn't really more welcoming than 1A had been, but at least Aizawa wasn't there to crack down on them for whatever whim had crawled up his ass that day.

Which was why Minoru gathered his courage and asked for help.

“How do I stop making people uncomfortable?”

And maybe the answer wasn't easy, but at least it gave him something to do that wasn't hunching in on himself and trying to do schoolwork without anyone noticing that he was there. Hoping that if they didn't see him there, at least he'd just be alone, not actively excluded.

Minoru wasn't sure if he'd be able to make friends with anyone in his new class, but maybe-... Maybe it wasn't hopeless?

XXX

Hizashi had known that Shouta had maybe not been the best of teachers.

He hadn't been the worst either, and his students – outside of the ones being 'expelled' – never really had any complaints about him.

In hindsight, that perhaps had more to do with them being scared of the man than of his actual skills as an educator. But it'd seemed okay enough at the time?

Then Shouta had seemingly decided to get into a dick-measuring contest with All-Might about being a teacher, despite only being 'okay' at it himself. And Hizashi had tried to get Shouta to see sense, but he really was incredibly stubborn.

Stubborn, and always ready with some long-winded 'logical' argument about how his snap-decision was actually always the correct one and definitely not based on feelings at all. Despite that being how snap-decisions worked.

Hizashi hadn't ever watched one of Shouta's classes disintegrate quite like 1A before, but then there hadn't been a Villain-attack like the USJ before either.

Also, Hizashi was pretty sure that the only reason Shouta had expelled Midoriya had been some deep-seated subconscious jealousy.

Shouta had been arguing about the entrance-exam favoring 'flashy quirks' to the point where it was 'impossible' for people like himself to get in, and yet here was Midoriya casually destroying that entire argument by getting one of the highest scores despite being quirkless.

Hizashi wasn't the only one who'd seemingly been looking forward to seeing Midoriya in classes, and he wasn't the only one to draw the obvious conclusions about why Shouta seemingly had a grudge with the kid before ever even meeting him. But it wasn't like Shouta was ever going to listen to any of them.

All the students beginning to transfer out was genuinely kind of heartbreaking, because Hizashi was sure that they could've been a class of powerhouses. Not to mention the tense silences that lingered in the classroom of those who remained.

Then Aoyama had confessed to being a Villain on live television, and suddenly Nedzu was removed from his position as principal and Shouta was stripped of both his teaching-license and his Hero-license. And Class 1A was finally disassembled.

Hizashi didn't know what had happened in 1A to have Shinsou go from sullen and mean to just being sullen and withdrawn, but he bet it had something to do with Mineta being a quiet lonely figure who actively avoided the other boy.

Mineta hadn't been the loudest student from the get-go, but he'd been relatively happy and bright through the early days. A kind of slapstick-friend with Asui? Hizashi wasn't sure.

But considering that he'd been mostly quiet since she'd left, and that he clearly didn't like Shinsou? Hizashi's assumption was that Shinsou had burned bridges with his new classmates, just as he'd done with the ones he'd left behind in Gen-Ed.

Which was a shame, because a Hero who constantly burned bridges with their coworkers didn't tend to last very long.

It was still a surprise to hear that Bakugo had gotten arrested after being expelled however. Like, what? The kid had apparently tracked down Midoriya and used his quirk to try and beat him up, like an actual Villain.

The only reason nobody had gotten hurt was that Midoriya had apparently known him well enough to be able to predict that he'd do exactly that, and had called the cops as a preventative measure.

Also, during the new little media-storm that followed that reveal, Hizashi discovered that Midoriya and Uraraka were apparently being home-schooled together? And that she was sleeping in their guest-room pretty much full-time?

Hizashi was genuinely kind of upset that Midoriya had been expelled when he'd heard that. Not just because of all of the other stuff, but because he'd always delighted in seeing his students fall in love with each other, and this sounded like an incredible bit of romance that he'd completely missed out on.

Still, there was some crazy shit happening in the world. Like Miruko apparently having some kind of insane quirk-awakening that didn't make any kind of sense at all, and showing it off in a fight-to-the-death with some kind of unnamed Villain – who could use hundreds of definitely different quirks – alongside All-Might.

Hizashi wasn't sure what to believe on that side of things, but there were a lot of theories bouncing around about Miruko somehow 'stealing' quirks from that Villain in order to defeat him. And some people were really upset about it.

Some were upset that she'd lost her 'identity' as a Hero, and others were upset that she'd somehow gained so much power that she could easily fight on the level of All-Might. All-Might who'd retired after that fight, with a bright grin about how Japan would be in safe hands.

Hizashi didn't doubt Miruko's ability in a fight for a second, even before she'd learned how to fly and shoot tentacles, but the thought of that battle-junky being the assumed next Number One was both hilarious and terrifying.

XXX