Chapter 4
Izuku opened his eyes to the white walls of the UA infirmary. He could see a few other students who were resting in the beds near him. They must have gotten hurt during the practical, he thought as he closed his eyes again to rest some more. Wait, the practical! His eyes flew open and he rolled himself out of bed, only to fall to the floor with a thud. He groaned in pain as he got up. He heard chuckling as Recovery Girl came into view.
“I haven’t seen that happen in a while,” she chuckled some more before she gave him some gummies. “Here, this’ll give you back some of your stamina.”
“Thank you,” he said as he popped them into his mouth and immediately felt his energy rise and his tiredness fade.
The heroine performed a few quick checkups before deeming him fit to leave and allowing him to exit her infirmary with a promise to take it easy for a few days just in case.
However, instead of going home to an empty apartment, Izuku made the familiar trek to the Domo. He was greeted by an excitable Kingo and a grinning Gilgamesh, whom he promptly collapsed against and, once again, passed the fuck out.
He woke up to the feeling of fingers carding through his hair, it was so soothing he almost went back to sleep. That is before he felt his gut telling him move, danger, now! And he called forth a cosmic shield right as Thena’s spear crashed down on it.
“What. the fuck, Thena?” he asked deadpan, not at all bothered about the giant spear inches away from his face, only being held off by a hastily made shield.
“It woke you up didn’t it?” her spear vanished as Izuku faded his shield and threw his legs out of bed.
“How long was I out?” he asked.
“You went to the entrance exam 36 hours ago, it is now Sunday.”
“Great..” he sighed. “Well, the acceptance letter should get here in about two weeks. So that’s two more weeks to get better and try out for Ketsubutsu.”
Izuku wasn’t stupid, he knew the chances of him getting into U.A. were pretty slim considering he passed out at the end and has only had his powers for under a year compared to the other examinees. So he’s being smart and applying to Ketsubutsu in case he doesn’t get accepted. The Hero Course exams for each school are spaced out within a week of each other so participants have time to recuperate between them and try out for more than one.
So he trained. A week later he went to Ketsubutsu’s hero course exam and he’s pretty sure he nailed it. Their exam was different from U.A’s in many ways. First one being the interviews. Every heroic student candidate had to pass an interview so the heroics teachers could gauge their personalities and such. Then it was the sections. The examinees were separated in groups of those who wished to go into Rescue, Underground or Villain Apprehension, or as it’s better known, Limelight. The school didn’t limit their students to one area but the classes focus more on them then the others, giving the students skills in all areas they would need while helping them become more proficient in their areas of expertise.
After that exam he returned to the Domo to sleep off his exhaustion before his training began again in earnest the next day.
………………
He was trying to figure out how to influence people with Druig’s ability without completely taking over their minds. He wanted a way to make them do as he said without complaint or without being able to deny him. Sue him but he spent nearly a year with people who loved him and enabled his vengeful side. He wanted to be able to make people calm down without having to spread out his mind among a crowd, only having to speak to influence and control people would be invaluable in the field. Petty revenge is just a very nice bonus. The Eternals all ignored Ajak’s reproaching gaze at their revenge plans, they wanted blood, namely Thena and Sprite. Sersi once made a comment about turning Bakugou into a statue à la Medusa and selling him for some quick cash.
Izuku had received his U.A letter and had made his way to the Domo to open it with his family.
“What are you waiting for? Open it.” Sprite said from where she was draped over the couch behind him.
“Hey I’m preparing myself. It's not like my future is in this letter or anything.”
“Even if you didn’t get into U.A, which I highly doubt, you still took other entrance exams. You’ll be fine hijo,” Ajak comforted him from her place on his right.
He still hesitated to open the envelope. His fingers froze as they were about to rip it open.
“Hmm.” Thena said from his left. She raised an eyebrow and looked at him with a look that clearly portrayed ‘Do it or I’ll do it for you’ which was both a threat and a comforting statement. He knew she wasn;t judging him for not being able to open it, and she was offering to do it for him.
“I can do it.” he told her with a resolute nod. He closed his eyes and ripped open the envelope in one swift move. He expected to pick up a letter but instead a tiny metal puck dropped onto the common room coffee table. (A.N. They added a common room with couches and stuff because Izuku basically moved in and they wanted him to be happy so Sersi started transforming things and they made it for him) Suddenly the surprised silence of the room was blown apart by All Might’s booming voice as he yelled out his famous catchphrase.
“I AM HERE! AS A PROJECTION! Good day to you young Midoriya! I am here to tell you about your test results!”
“Wow he’s obnoxious,” Kingo muttered under his breath. They all looked at him with deadpan stares.
“Pot, meet kettle.” Sprite said as she nodded to the projection.
“I’m not that bad!” he cried out.
“Debatable,” Thena stated.
Kingo kept quiet, even he knew you didn't contradict Thena. They let the video pass in silence as they listened with rapt attention.
“You, my boy, scored the highest mark on the written portion of the exam in the last 30 years! You aced it with a whopping 99%! You should be very proud of yourself!”
“Can he not speak without exclamation marks?” Ajak asked worriedly. The others cracked up at that.
“Not only that, but you also got the highest score on the practical portion as well! As you might remember, the practical exam was evaluated on several criteria of which you were only informed of one, the villain point system. Every examinee was evaluated on Villain points, Rescue points, Teamwork points and Style points. You, my young Hero, amassed 64 villain points, 38 Rescue points, 9 teamwork points for giving up your weapon to someone who needed it, and 56 Style points for your impressive and captivating destruction of the robots, especially the Zero Pointer. With those points, you, Midoriya Izuku, have earned the number 1 spot on the U.A entrance exam. Welcome, to your Hero Academia.”
The projection disappeared as All Might finished his speech. The Domo was silent until Sersi let out a high pitched scream and threw herself onto Izuku and embraced him as tightly as she could.
“You did it!” she yelled as he hugged her back. The others began congratulating him and patting him on the back as he slumped against his honorary older sister.
Sersi was surprised to feel a wet spot forming on her shirt, she gently moved Izuku away to arms length and found him crying. Not those giant tears that threatened to flood the ship more than once, no, these were silent tears that flowed down his cheeks in gentle streams. He didn’t even seem to notice he was crying until she brushed one of them away with her finger.
“Why are you crying?” she asked gently, “You should be proud.”
“I’m not sad. I’m happy.” and he smiled. It knocked the breath out of every one of their lungs, because that, that was the first time they saw him smile so genuinely. Sersi slowly brought him back into her arms and Ajak laced hers around them both. Izuku sobbed in their arms as the Eternals celebrated his admittance into the Hero Course at U.A.
After they all calmed down, Thena handed over the letter that was with the projector in the envelope. It was a list of materials and a letter telling him to submit a design for them to send to the support company that makes the students' hero suits.
Izuku turned to Phastos. “How am I going to tell them I already have one?”
“Like this.” Thena picked up a pen and wrote ‘I already have one made thank you.’ on the design section of the sheet and gave it to the teen.
“Really Thena?” Phastos asked exasperated.
“It’s to the point and not offensive. I don’t know what more you want from me.” she shrugged.
“That’s Thena for you,” Gil laughed as he threw an arm around her shoulder from where he sat on the arm of the sofa. He and Izuku were the only ones who could be physically affectionate with the Olympian without risking bodily harm, it still made Kingo pout.
“It works.” Izuku took the letter and brought it back to its original form using transmutation. He’s gotten a lot better at it. He made the ink rewrite itself to be sent to U.A High School. He’d send it out when he left.
“I guess all that worrying was for nothing huh?”
“I don’t think so, remember, hope for the best…” Thena started.
“...Prepare for the worst. I know, that’s why I went to Ketsubutsu’s exam.”
“Why didn’t you go to Shiketsu’s, aren’t they the second best school?” Makkari signed (I totally didn’t forget she was there, nope)
“They are, but they’re too closely tied to the army for my taste. Plus, they don’t allow relationships and its curriculum is super strict. I just feel it would be too constricting for me.”
“Make sense.”
“It does, now you, young sir, need to go to bed.” Druig told the teen, “Your training with us is only going to get harder from here on out, you’ll have school work on top of your usual training so
you need to be well rested. Off you go.” Izuku didn’t even realize it was late but taking a quick look at the clock revealed it to be almost ten pm.
“Alright, alright, I’m going to bed. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.” The young Eternal made his way to his room on the Domo, not noticing the worried looks Ajak and the others sent his way.
“I hate that he feels better sleeping here than in his own apartment.” she revealed.
“We hate it too, but you remember how he was after he spent a weekend with her.” Sprite warned her.
“I know.”
They all remembered it clearly. Izuku’s mother had been frantically worried for her precious, fragile baby after she noticed how little time he spent in the apartment and essentially kept him locked up with her for the entire weekend. When he came back, Izuku looked like he was emotionally stabbed half a dozen times and fell, sobbing, into Ajak’s arms. They hated what that woman did to their Izuku. Kingo tried to breach the barrier that kept them confined to their ship for hours to get revenge on the hateful hag while Izuku slept off the emotional drain that staying with Inko gave him.
Ever since then, Druig made sure to make Izuku master the subtle mind manipulation that made her ignore him to the extent that she only remembered to worry about her son once a month. And it had the effect of helping Izuku develop his mental abilities to match his physical ones. It was with Inko Midoriya that he first tried Charmspeak, a manipulation of the mind where the user sent commands with their voice that either made the target want to do as commanded or it made them do it however unwilling they may be. It all depended on the user's will and feelings at the moment of usage. The reason he didn’t use Druig’s takeover power was that it only took control of the mind temporarily, Charmspeak took root in the affected persons mind if Izuku’s will overpowers theirs.
The next day Izuku sent out Thena’s response to the costume design sheet and prepared himself for another grueling day of cleaning the beach and training with the others. The beach itself was mostly already cleaned, perks of superstrength, superspeed and transmutation. Anything he was too lazy to move he just turned into sand or water, it wouldn’t do much considering it was a beach. He mostly took the scraps of electronics to the Domo so he could tinker with Phastos, which coincidentally was what he was doing at the moment.
“So let me get this straight.” Phastos began as Izuku finished explaining his idea. Kingo snorted in the corner at the last word and muttered something about him being as straight as a circle. Which of them he was talking about Izuku didn’t know.
“You want us to make a vibranium bow that, not only, can be reinforced by Thena’s manifestations, but collapsable and with trick arrows and the like?”
“Yep,” the teen said, popping the p.
“That’s my boy.” the Eternal said as he clapped him on the back. “Let’s do this.”
And for the next four hours they tinkered and designed and exploded the lab they made for themselves. Kingo chose to leave after the third explosion sent a shard of twisted molten metal into the wall an inch from his ear. Not even Ajak dared come into the room to scold them on Izuku’s eating time and how late it was. Which is the exact reason she sent Thena, who summarily grabbed the green haired mad scientist of a teen she called her own and hauled him to the common room where a bowl of katsudon rested on the table in front of the sofa. She sat him in the middle and took up the space on the couch on the right of his, her face clearly displaying ‘eat or you’ll regret it.’ Which, coming from her, was both advice and a threat. So he did, silently.
Phastos and Izuku worked tirelessly for two days before their efforts paid off. He now had a vibranium bow, arrows and quiver that he could collapse and bring back to normal size to use to go with his vibranium hero suit. Sersi transmuted the vibranium for him and Phastos to mess around with (I refuse to believe that in 7,000 years she’s never been to Wakanda and never touched and/or analyzed vibranium before). What can I say, the original inventor and a genius teenager can do a lot with the right equipment.
It was sleek and loosely inspired by the Eternals own costumes with the cosmic energy like lines tracing silver patterns around it. It was practically skintight and mostly a dark forest green that brought out his jade eyes. A forest green hood was attached to the collar with a mask that could be drawn over the nose in case he needed to keep his identity hidden. Every part of the suit was inlaid with vibranium for optimum protection. Phastos, somehow, made it so the entire suit could be drawn into a bracelet Izuku could wear around his wrist, with a tap of a button his costume would spread around his body like nanobots. It even kept the vibranium cloth and mask along with the gloves. The gloves themselves had a magnetic function that allowed him to stick to any surface using low enough amounts of cosmic energy to create a magnetic field and turn whatever his palm was on into a magnet strong enough to get him to stick to it. The way it worked was that Izuku needed to push just enough cosmic energy into them to create the magnet and stick to the surface and stop channeling it to stop sticking to it. It took some practice but he got it down fairly well, he was nowhere near as good at it as that american hero but he wasn’t too shabby.