The door labeled 1–A felt heavier than it looked. My hand paused on the handle just long enough for a breath and a rule: make things better. Then I pushed it open.
Noise washed over me—new voices, chair legs scraping, the particular hum of a dozen quirks discovered and a dozen destinies still deciding. Desks shone with edges sharp enough to cut the first week. Windows framed a clean blue morning that had the audacity to act normal.
I caught faces the way you catch a deck in a shuffle: Ochako waving with both hands, Iida standing stiff and earnest like a poster for posture, a boy with half-red, half-white hair looking like he'd been painted by a committee, a kid with dark elbows like elbow knives. Bakugo slouched with his feet on a desk near the back, scowl already warmed up. Midoriya sat two rows in, gripping his pencil like it was a flotation device.
"Hi!" Ochako popped up as if springs had been fitted under her seat. "You made it!"
"Morning," I said.
"Ah—good morning," Iida added, bowing exactly the right number of degrees to be intimidating. "I am Iida Tenya. Congratulations on passing the exam. Let us all strive—"
"—to not turn this into a pep rally," Bakugo cut in without looking up. "Tch. Scarface finally here."
I lifted my hand in a vague greeting that could be interpreted as hello or I don't have time for this. He rolled his eyes and went back to violently relaxing.
The room stuttered as something in a bright-yellow sleeping bag unfurled on the floor like a disgruntled caterpillar shedding. A man with the expression of a cat that'd been woken up exactly once too often pushed himself upright, hair like black seaweed, eyes heavy-lidded but somehow still sharp.
"Homeroom," he said, voice flat as chalk. "I'm Aizawa Shota. Put on your training uniforms. We're doing a test."
Someone started to raise a hand. He produced a clear pouch with toothbrushes inside and shook it once. "If you have time to ask questions, you have time to move. Training ground, ten minutes."
He tossed a bundle from the sleeping bag. Tracksuits slapped onto desks with neat, accusing thumps. The class buzzed, half excitement, half panic. I caught my uniform, slung my satchel's strap higher out of habit, then paused when his gaze flicked to it.
"Support gear stays here," Aizawa said without looking directly at me, which somehow made it worse. "If your 'quirk' needs equipment, a villain can make sure you don't have it. I want to see what you can do."
"Yes, sir," I said, swallowing the reflex to defend the bag. The satchel thumped into my locker like a disappointed dog and stayed. My fingers felt light without the familiar weight. It was like leaving my notes before an exam and deciding to pass anyway.
We spilled into the corridor. Midoriya fell into step with me, nerves disguised as energy.
"G-good morning," he managed, which for him was practically a speech.
"Morning," I said. "You okay?"
He nodded three times too fast. "Just—first day. First real day. And a test. And Aizawa-sensei is… intense."
"Understatement," I said, and he snorted, surprised into a laugh that shook some of the static off him.
The training ground was a stretch of packed dirt and painted lines, the kind of place where school insisted on pretending chaos was scheduled. The air tasted like dust and rubber and something electric.
Aizawa stood with a tablet that looked like it would rather be a brick. He didn't bother with a speech. "Quirk Apprehension Test. Same items you did in middle school: fifty-meter dash, grip strength, standing long jump, repeated side steps, endurance, and a ball throw. Difference is, you get to use your quirks. Whoever comes in last"—he looked up then, eyes suddenly very awake—"goes home. Expelled."
Ochako made a small noise. Iida snapped his head toward Aizawa like a periscope. "Isn't that—unreasonable? On the first day?"
"Reasonable would be villains sending you a calendar invite," Aizawa replied. "Life doesn't care if you're ready. I do. Line up."
A hush crawled across our row like a cat beneath a sofa. People glanced at each other and made quick calculations about who they were and what this day would allow them to be.
I swallowed and ran my thumb over my palm, ringing the first shape of a model in my head. No satchel. No paper. Real-time only. Keep it simple. Small mass, narrow constraints, fewer moving parts. If I tried to draw a cathedral in the air, it would collapse. Better to lay a few bricks well.
"Fifty-meter dash," Aizawa said. "Iida Tenya—go first. I want a baseline for fast."
Iida saluted reflexively and took his mark. Engines flared where calves became turbines; on Aizawa's curt "Go," he sliced the track like a rumor, finished before my brain finished saying wow. Numbers blinked on a handheld: 3.04 s. The class ooh'd with relief that someone knew what they were doing.
Bakugo went next and turned the lane into a string of directional explosions. He grinned like physics owed him money. His time slotted near Iida's. My gut registered this information and filed it under don't race them.
"Potter," Aizawa called.
I stepped into the lane and rolled my shoulders. The model for Feather—my light-body buff—was the simplest thing I could risk while running. Reduce effective weight, cheat friction, keep the stabilizers broad enough to handle uneven force. Hold shape. Don't chase speed. Don't let it wobble.
"Go."
I breathed on the model and stepped forward into less. The ground answered with less interest. My shoes kissed it and lifted back off like polite strangers. The world narrowed to a ribbon and the sound of my breath counting down the shape in my head: hold, hold, hold—
Halfway, Feather hiccuped as my right foot landed a hair too heavy; the effect staggered for a microsecond and the floor went from friend to suggestion. I corrected with a small inhale across the stabilizer and finished without eating dirt.
"7.05," a student murmured near the clipboard. Not a headline. Not an embarrassment. Above average for a guy whose best quirk was "paper," according to Bakugo.
I stepped out, calves buzzing. Feather stuttered once more as I let it go. Focus cost: noticeable. Stamina: fine—for now.
Midoriya's turn came and passed with a time that would have made a track coach write we'll work on it and underline the we twice. He didn't call on whatever it was he'd used to crush a giant robot—my chest tightened with knowing and not saying. Aizawa's eyes narrowed like thread going through a needle.
Grip strength followed. I did the numbers straight. No augmentation. I could have thrown a microburst of Gale or tricked the scale with local Lift, but the point wasn't to lie to a machine; it was to learn where the machine-me ended and the magic began. The dial ticked to a human number. Aizawa's stylus scratched: support-type; picks worthwhile fights.
Standing long jump. I tried to time a tiny Gale at toe-off with a touch of Lift on my shoes. Attempt one: the repulse hit a hair late and mostly turned into a dramatic dust puff that nobody respected. Attempt two: better synchronization; I cleared a mark that didn't make anyone whistle, but it didn't make me want to bury myself either.
Aizawa flicked a glance up. "You're thinking too hard. Villains won't give you time to solve for x."
"Noted," I said, and wrote it on the inside of my skull.
Repeated side steps and the endurance run were the same lesson in different outfits: steady beats flashy, but flashy is distracting. I feathered Feather on and off, finding the rhythm that let the model breathe while my lungs did. I kept a constant clip and didn't collapse at the end. A few students had blown out early chasing highlight reels. I grimly celebrated being boring.
High jump was where the wobble came home to roost. I tried a clean Lift arc, but mid-air the stabilization sheared as my focus jittered—adrenaline chewing at model edges. My ankle grazed the bar; it rattled but stayed. On the second try I cleared, barely. My heart hammered a note labeled practice under stress.
We rotated to the farline. Aizawa held a baseball up between two fingers as if it offended him. "Ball throw. Same as middle school. Furthest wins. Use your quirks."
He handed one to Ochako. "Uraraka."
She grinned like someone told a favorite joke. "Ochako Uraraka! Zero Gravity!" She stepped in, touched the ball with two fingers, and flicked her wrist. The ball went up, up, and failed to come down. The measuring device's screen looped politely through its capacity and gave up. Aizawa glanced at it.
"Infinity," he said, deadpan as a cliff. "Impressive."
Ochako pumped a small fist and then clutched her stomach, swaying. Iida blurped something like concerns-per-second and guided her to step—she steadied. "I'll be okay," she managed, grinning at no one and everyone. The class buzzed for her. It was a good buzz to stand in.
"Potter," Aizawa said.
I took the ball. It was cool and definite in my palm. Small mass, narrow constraints, long hold. This was where Lift shone. The model liked small, liked tidy, liked being asked to do one thing well. I fed it a thin stream of intention, pictured a rail of air stretching into the afternoon, pictured the ball as a bead sliding along a wire.
"Whenever you're ready," Aizawa said, the whenever sounding like a threat.
I opened my hand and let the ball go up into the path I drew. It obeyed because I didn't give it a chance to do anything else. Ten meters. Twenty. I added Gale nudges in little clicks like a metronome for velocity. The ball kept going. Whispering started. The model hummed—the good hum, the one that means it's locked. I felt it flex at forty meters, corrected by easing tension rather than adding more.
The device beeped and flashed a number with more digits than the rest of my day had managed. Someone whistled.
"Second place," the student with the tablet said, sounding surprised to be impressed. "Behind 'Infinity.'"
Ochako whooped. Bakugo tch'd, annoyed that anything had gone well for anyone else. I set the model down like you set down a sleeping child and turned off Lift with a breath.
"Decent," Aizawa said. "Small object. Low complexity. Long hold. You found the parameters where you don't fail. Try finding some where you succeed faster."
"Working on it," I said, and meant I know I'm slow. He knew I'd understood; his eyes moved on.
The rest of the throws happened in bumps of spectacle and competence, kids peeling out tricks and laughs. When Midoriya stepped to the line, the air changed into the kind of quiet that happens right before a teacher calls on you. He held the ball as if it might bite.
"Midoriya," Aizawa said, voice mild in the way of a needle. "If you break your body again, you're useless to me and to anyone else. If your quirk can't be used without self-destruction, you need a better plan."
Midoriya swallowed. His hands trembled, then stilled—only just. He set his feet like he'd watched someone set them in a video a thousand times. He raised one finger.
I sucked in a breath on impulse. Not your business, not your secret.
He flicked.
The air snapped like a towel. The ball didn't fly so much as appear somewhere else at speed. It arced and fell and flashed the kind of number that makes data blush. Midoriya gasped as his hand went limp.
He didn't scream. He made a sound you make when you stand up too fast and then pretend you meant to. His index finger was already blooming purple. He bent his arm to hold it against his chest in the universal sign for I did a thing that hurt me on purpose.
Bakugo exploded two syllables' worth of anger. "DEKU!"
"Don't move," I said, already stepping in. I didn't have the satchel. Mend had to be clean and small, a patch not a replacement. I took his hand, gentle as possible, and pressed two fingers lightly at the base of the injured digit. I pictured edges finding edges, swelling subsiding just enough to stop the cascade. No miracles. No heroics. Just a quiet instruction.
"Mend," I breathed, because sometimes words help a picture hold.
Warmth gathered under my fingertips, a domestic hum. Midoriya's breath shuddered and then leveled as the brightness of pain dialed down to a human setting. The finger didn't look right—it wasn't—but the bleeding under the nail eased; the throb receded to a manageable drum.
Aizawa's scarf twitched, then settled, like a cobra deciding not to strike. "Enough to get him to the nurse," he said, tone knife-flat. "Iida. Escort. Rest of you—next station."
Iida appeared like efficiency had a teleport function. "Midoriya, with me." He shot me a quick nod so crisp it could have cut paper. "Thank you."
I stepped back, hands suddenly cold. Midoriya tried to bow and winced. "T-thanks," he said anyway, eyes huge, then let Iida lead him away toward the infirmary at a careful clip.
We finished the set grimly. The novelty had worn off; the work had shown itself under the paint. Aizawa didn't smile. He didn't need to.
By the time Midoriya reappeared—a strip of tape on his finger like a tiny flag—the rankings were posted on Aizawa's tablet and reflected on a portable screen.
Iida and Bakugo had numbers that led the pack, bracketed by Todoroki's impossible cool. Ochako's "∞" sat like an asterisk that made everyone grin except the device. The middle of the sheet was a mix of competence and "needs work." My name landed in upper-mid, buoyed by the ball throw and careful steadiness elsewhere. Not a headline. Not a hiding place. Good.
Midoriya hovered near the bottom, saved from last by one event where his math and stubbornness had lined up. He looked at the board like it could punish him for existing and then looked away.
Aizawa let the tension ride for two beats. Then he sighed as if we'd made him waste a good threat.
"The expulsion," he said, "was a lie."
Half the class made the kind of noise you make when an elevator stops at the wrong floor.
"If you believed it without question, you'll believe villains when they tell you stories about the future." He swept us with a look that was somehow both bored and razor-honed. "You need to learn to separate pressure from truth. But if anyone had performed like garbage without trying to adapt"—his gaze slid over us like a knife across toast and stopped just long enough on Midoriya to cut, then on me, then moved—"I would have done it."
A collective release of breath edited the morning. Bakugo tried to look like he hadn't believed it. Ochako put both hands on her stomach again, relieved and a little nauseous. I exhaled and felt the model of Feather I'd been holding in the back of my head evaporate like a thought that had decided to be kind.
"Notes," Aizawa said, lifting the tablet. He pointed it at Midoriya. "You found a way to act without destroying yourself. Barely. Do it earlier next time, or don't waste my time."
"Y-yes, sir."
He turned the tablet toward me as if it were a mirror. "Support-type. High situational IQ. Your problem is latency. You're solving problems; that's fine. But your quirk—" he didn't inflect the word with doubt or approval; it was a category for his paperwork— "takes too long to execute under stress. Fix it. Villains won't let you draw blueprints."
"Understood," I said, and filed latency under neon in my brain.
"Everyone else," he added, already halfway into his sleeping bag in his head, "stop trying to be flashy and try being useful. Tomorrow: foundational control. Don't come here to be average."
He actually did start getting into the sleeping bag as we dispersed, a burrito of scorn and pedagogy. The sun had climbed a centimeter. The dirt had stuck to our shoes like proof.
The infirmary smelled calmer than the world. I didn't expect to see it again before lunch; life likes to remind you your plans are not the only plans.
Recovery Girl pursed her lips at Midoriya's taped finger. "I told you," she said, and the rest of the sentence didn't need to be spoken: don't be heroic at the doctor.
"It was only—one finger," he said, mortified at having made it only one finger.
She hummed and then hmm'd again, more interested now. "This healing…"
Midoriya stiffened in a way that read as guilt even if he had nothing to confess. "A classmate helped. Harry."
Her eyes slid to me, measuring in that way good medics measure: not whether they can fix you, but whether you can be part of your own fixing. "Show me."
I held out my hands. "It's more… patching than repairing. I didn't want to interfere with your work."
"You didn't," she said, and tilted Midoriya's hand under the light. "My quirk accelerates the body's own processes. Yours—" She glanced up at me, interest sharpening. "—imposes a pattern. External instruction. Clean edges, minimal vascular confusion. Fast, but shallow. Useful triage if used sparingly."
"Exactly," I said, relieved to have my own description returned to me with better words. "Stabilize on the field. Defer to you for real fixes."
"Good boy," she said, which was both kind and emotionally confusing. She made a note on a chart that had already sprouted too many notes. "Register any medical-adjacent ability with Support and Medical. And you—" She poked Midoriya's forehead with the affection of a grandmother swatting a fly. "—learn to use what you have without breaking what you need."
"Yes, ma'am," he said, and meant it so hard the room forgave him.
We stepped back into the hall. The quiet there had a different weight. Midoriya flexed his hand cautiously. "You didn't have to help," he said, eyes on the tape.
"I like you with ten fingers," I said. "It expands your options."
He choked on a laugh that was more gratitude than humor. "Aizawa-sensei said your—your… system has latency."
"He's right." I exhaled. "I can do small, precise, slow. I need to get to small, precise, fast."
Midoriya's gaze went distant in the way of an engineer given a new problem. "Maybe—maybe you can build macro-holds? Like—set a general field and then do tiny adjustments inside it, so you're not redrawing the whole thing every time?"
"Macro-hold, micro-nudge," I said, tasting it. "I'll try it."
We walked back toward the others. Bakugo shoulder-checked me en route, either intentionally or because gravity wanted to make a point. I stepped around it without breaking stride. He scowled at my lack of reaction and stalked ahead.
Ochako flashed me a peace sign. Iida inclined from the waist. "Thank you for your timely triage," he said, like triage was a thing you could salute.
"You're welcome," I said, startling myself by meaning it not as a deflection but as a simple fact.
In the locker room later, I opened the Tome on the bench and wrote: Latency at the top, underlined twice. Below it:
Feather: stabilize cadence while moving; practice on stairs, then sprints.
Lift: arc stability under adrenaline; clear bar while heart rate > 160.
Ball: macro-hold line + timed micro Gale nudges.
Mend boundaries:field stabilize only → defer to Recovery.
My pen hesitated over one more line. Then I added it:
Real-time drills without satchel (5 min blocks, increasing complexity) → don't need paper to act.
I closed the Tome and let my hand rest on the cover for a breath. My fingers were steady again. The satchel would be there tomorrow. So would villains. So would Aizawa. So would we.
On the way out, I passed the training ground again. Aizawa was half in his sleeping bag, a tired burrito under the shade, eyes slitted open an exact amount.
"Potter," he said, as if he'd been waiting to spend the word.
"Sensei."
"You're not strong," he said. I waited for the insult. It didn't come. "You are careful. Keep the second. Fix the first."
"Yes, sir," I said.
He nodded, which might have been as close as he got to good work. He closed his eyes. The wind tugged a strand of his hair and thought better of it.
By the time the bell rang for afternoon classes, my calves had stopped buzzing and my brain had started. Latency, stability, macro-hold, micro-nudge. Don't chase flair. Be useful. Make things better.
I was not the fastest or the strongest or the loudest. I was the boy who could make a ball fly far by holding a model together long enough to matter. I was the boy who could tell pain to quiet down until help arrived. I was the boy who could learn to do those things faster.
It would have to be enough.
For now.