he bruise under my ribs woke me first, then the quiet. I lay still and counted the new aches until they organized themselves into a map. The satchel waited on the desk, mouth open, twenty slots empty like the city had taken bites out of my gear. The Tome lay beside it with last night's handwriting still wet in my head:
Never again if I can help it.…unless a life is on the line.
The house mother knocked and pushed the door in the same motion. She held out a heavy envelope with the UA crest stamped into the flap.
"Parcel," she said, which was her way of pretending this place didn't have soggy ceiling tiles.
My thumb split the seal. Two smaller envelopes slid out. The first was blue-edged:
Dear Candidate Potter,Congratulations! You have been admitted to U.A. High School's Hero Course…
I read it twice because my eyes tried to blur the good parts on reflex. The second envelope was thinner, red-stamped Private — Administrative Intake Required with an appointment time for the next day and a line that tightened my chest: Bring any artifacts used during the exam for audit.
"They noticed," I said, mostly to the satchel.
The house mother studied my face and—finding it survivable—let herself smile. "Good. Ice your jaw, iron your shirt, and don't break any furniture if they compliment you."
"Compliments make me nervous."
"Good," she said again. "Nerves will keep you polite."
She left the door open a sliver; the orphanage hallway breathed in and out. My phone buzzed. WE DID IT bounced on the screen from Midoriya, followed by a crying emoji, a flexing arm, and something green that might have been a vegetable or a victory blob.
Accepted, I typed back. Knew you would.
YOU TOO he replied, then thank you and, as if embarrassed by gratitude, SEE YOU SOON.
I tucked the blue letter into the Tome like a pressed leaf and slid the red one under the satchel strap. The empty slots looked like open mouths. I didn't feed them yet.
UA up close felt like a promise someone had engineered. Glass caught the morning and threw it back brighter. A student worker at the front desk printed a temporary pass that blinked VISITOR in friendly red and called ahead to Recovery and Support with the competence of someone who'd been taught the phone buttons during a fire drill.
Recovery Girl's clinic had soft lighting and the smell of antiseptic politely losing a fight with tea. She peered over her glasses at me as if my bones had sent a letter in advance.
"Sit," she said. Machines hummed circles around me. "Interesting assortment of bruises. Nothing broken. Underfed."
"I'm working on it."
"You'll keep working on it if you plan to keep doing what you did." She clicked her tongue, then her pen. "Any fainting? Nosebleeds? Tingling that isn't explained by poor life choices? Seeing stars in rooms with normal ceilings?"
"Standard post-exam package. Nothing… strange today."
"Mmm." She made a note. "Your stress response spikes and drops sharply. Not unusual in candidates who carry their tools on the outside instead of the inside." Her gaze flicked to the satchel. "You'll log that in Support."
"On my way."
Her candy was impossibly small; she crushed it like a secret. "If something strange does happen, you come to me first," she said. "Doctors are much better at being heroic than heroes are at being doctors."
"I'll try not to prove you wrong."
"Do try," she said, and waved me off like a child she pretended not to be fond of.
Support smelled like hot plastic, metal shavings, and a ringtone someone had lost two weeks ago. Power Loader—grease on cheek, eyes bright—met me in the doorway.
"You're the satchel kid," he said, delighted.
"Harry," I offered.
"Satchel Harry," he said cheerfully. "Let me see the patient."
I unslung the bag. He handled it with the care mechanics reserve for old machines and brand-new ideas. He turned the flap back, whistled low where the node matrix nested like a second skin, and leaned in without touching.
"You did this in… ink?"
"Blood," I said. "Ink over the top to stabilize the lines. It binds better."
He blinked once and recalibrated without comment. "Twenty nodes, voice recognition matrix… the response is keyed to your inscription." His finger hovered over a junction. "If I'm reading this right, nobody else could have bound this the same way."
"Correct," I said. "It only answers me because I made it. It's… personal craftsmanship. I can't teach someone to reproduce these inscriptions like a class project."
A support student with pink goggles arrived sideways, eyes huge and hopeful but hands tucked obediently behind her back. "So you're a unique-maker," she breathed. "It's bound to you as the artisan, not just the user."
"Bound to both," I said. "But the making is mine."
Power Loader nodded, professional now. "Then I'll ask you a question I don't get to ask often." He met my eyes. "Would you be interested in crafting artifacts for other heroes in the future? Under UA safety standards. Voluntary. Only if it's possible for you."
I blinked. Of all the things I'd prepared to defend or explain—what happened in the alley; why I said words I don't understand; why I ran toward the giant foot—I hadn't prepared for Would you like to make tools for other people?
"I… hadn't thought about it," I said honestly. The idea unfurled in my head with a weight and a brightness that didn't match. "I'll… think about it."
"That's all we're asking." He snapped a few photos, took measurements, ran a sensor wand along the seam until the satchel purred like a small, guilty cat. "As built, it's safe. No volatile discharge if jolted, clean separation between nodes, sane tolerances. If anything about its behavior changes, or if you intend to craft for others, loop Support in immediately. We'll help with guardrails."
"Deal," I said.
The goggled student rocked on her heels. "If you ever want to… talk shop," she said, managing not to bounce, "Support students love weird. We're built for it."
"Noted," I said, and meant it.
A student aide with a clipboard materialized like a side quest. "Potter-san? Principal Nezu will see you now."
Power Loader handed the satchel back like a friend. "Welcome to UA," he said, and made "welcome" sound like an open toolbox.
Principal Nezu's office was half library, half parlor, all precision. Shelves carried books and curios that nodded politely to one another. A kettle grinned steam on a warmer. Nezu sat in an oversized chair as if he'd chosen the mismatch on purpose to prove that scale and authority weren't the same thing.
"Harry Potter," he said, bright as a bell. "Welcome. Tea?"
"Yes," I said, because it felt rude to refuse someone whose eyes looked so glad to make you comfortable.
He poured with practiced grace and slid a cup toward me.
"Let us start where compliments belong," he said. "Your performance during the practical was exemplary—not in raw destruction," he added, amused, "but in what we value at UA. You triaged. You shielded. You enabled. You chose rescue when others chased spectacle. Your Rescue Points reflect this. You earned your admission."
Relief washed through me like rain on hot metal—hiss, steam, a soft settling after.
"And," Nezu went on, still pleasant, "we saw everything." He clicked a remote. A screen unrolled from the ceiling as politely as a tongue. The paused frame: me and a girl in a gray alley, the zero-pointer's foot hanging overhead, dust caught in a ring like chalk. He pressed play. The hiss pried at the room. The shearing had weight even as pixels.
He paused again. "We have labeled this Anomalous Phenomenology," he said. "We do not mean 'bad.' We mean 'unknown.' We prefer to make the unknown known before it becomes unkind."
"I was out of… tools," I said, slow because I wanted to be understood and not excused. "I don't cast well in real time under pressure. That—" I tipped my head toward the frame with the red under my skin. "—isn't part of the system I built. It happens when I'm… angry. Or scared. It doesn't feel like mine."
Nezu's ears tilted. "Does it hurt?"
"The scar, yes." Saying it made the air denser. "Sometimes it glows. And I… speak. Not Japanese. Not English. Hissing. It doesn't feel like language I own."
"Do you want to use it?" Nezu asked, not accusing, simply measuring.
"No." The word jumped out before I could sand it down. I breathed once and added, because truth deserved completeness: "Unless someone might die if I don't."
Nezu's smile tucked away its sharpness. "That is a moral stance—and a heavy one. You do not have to carry it by yourself." He slid a small stack of papers across the desk. "These are not punishments; they are promises. Regular check-ins with Medical and Counseling. An artifact registry so our Support Course can verify safety as you iterate. And if you ever decide to craft for others, we will establish standards and consent protocols before anything leaves your bench. In return, you notify us immediately of any anomalous events. You do not have to be alone with this."
"I can do that," I said. It sounded easy. It wasn't. It was a different shape of brave.
Nezu's eyes twinkled. "Splendid. Also, paperwork never sleeps." He pointed to three lines that wanted signatures and a fourth that wanted initials. We signed them like we were making a pact with an institution that knew how to keep one.
When I stood, the satchel felt lighter, though it weighed the same. Maybe because, for the first time, someone else's hands had been under it with mine.
"Thank you," I said.
"Make things," Nezu replied. "Better yet: make things better."
News traveled through corridors faster than sound. By the time I reached the orphanage that evening, it had already been decided in three hallways and a convenience store that Deku got in, some girl floated, and someone in Field E did weird magic with a bag. In the morning, Bakugo brushed past me on the stairs with a shoulder like a weapon.
"Paper tricks won't save you at UA," he hissed, sparks clicking lazy threats over his knuckles.
"They saved someone," I said, not stopping. The words were for me. He could borrow them if he wanted.
He stopped, spat a laugh with no humor in it, and kept going. Sometimes the bravest thing I did that day was not turn around to see if he'd followed.
At the gate the next day, Midoriya was trying to restrain a grin big enough to trip over. Ochako waved with both hands like we were old friends and the morning hadn't yet decided whether to be kind.
"You made it!" she said. "Both of you!"
"You look okay," Midoriya blurted, then turned red. "I mean—after the exam—are you—"
"Thanks to you," she said, with such honest happiness I had to look away for a second. "And someone said there was a guy in another field who kept pulling people out of trouble. If you see him, say thanks?" Her eyes ticked to my satchel and back.
"Team effort," I said. "Let's not make 'getting crushed by signage' a habit."
"Working on it," she laughed.
We split at the main hall. Midoriya's text buzzed my pocket before I'd reached the stairs: We're going to be okay.We'll make it okay, I typed back.
Back in my room that night, I rebuilt the satchel slowly, like resetting bones. Aegis into slot one. Gale into two. Mend. Lift. I labeled each node with a tiny mark only I'd recognize, then did retrieval drills until my fingers and voice agreed on rhythm. In the Tome, I wrote First Week Goals:
Inventory rebuild (restock satchel, stress-test retrieval).
Barrier endurance testing (with Support oversight; log shatter thresholds).
Binding precision drills (short intervals; small targets).
Report cadence (weekly check-ins with Recovery/Counseling; immediate alert on anomalies).
Consideration: feasibility and ethics of crafting for others—decision deferred.
At the bottom, in large letters: No dark power unless a life is on the line.
I underlined unless once. The world didn't care about absolutes.
Orientation morning painted UA in expensive light. Students gathered in knots that buzzed at different frequencies: too loud, too quiet, pretending not to be either. Proctors clipped past with clipboards and the kind of smiles that made you show up on time. Present Mic's voice leaked under doors like a gas the building had decided was safe.
I followed the signs: HERO COURSE — 1-A. The hallway swallowed sound until it was just my steps and the whisper of leather as the satchel settled against my side like a cat that had decided to be good.
The door at the end loomed a little because first doors always do. 1–A, printed in crisp black like it had never been turned upside down. I stopped long enough to let my heart catch my breath. My palm hovered over the handle.
I pictured the room beyond: desks with edges that hadn't yet learned the names of their owners; windows framing a city that had reluctantly agreed to let itself be saved; a teacher who would decide what kind of questions we deserved. Midoriya's face when he realized whose seat was beside his. A scar that would keep its silence if I did my part.
"Make things better," I said under my breath because Nezu had made it sound like a job description and a blessing.
I took a breath that felt like putting weight on a healed ankle.
My hand settled on the door.
And I was ready to go in.