Chapter Text
Shinso stared at the small, now inactive hologram projector disk lying innocently on the table, as if it hadn't just completely dictated a major point in Hitoshi's life.
'Just one point...' he thought to himself. 'Just one point less and I...'
"I-"
"YOU FUCKING DID IT!"
Her mom screaming next to him, arms raised in excitement, brought him out of his stupor.
"I did it. I did it! Holy shit I barely did it. If I had one less point, I would have failed."
"Who cares?!" Her mom said while shaking his shoulders. "Barely getting into UA is like being an honor student in almost all other hero schools, Hitoshi! Ha! My kid's gonna be a fucking hero! Wait, there's an actual letter inside the envelope too, right? Is the library open? I need to make like, a hundred copies of that thing."
Hitoshi shaked his head, still feeling a bit dizzy after hearing Allmight (THE Allmight! The fucking embodiment of being born with a perfect, heroic quirk!) welcoming him into UA. Telling him this was his hero academia.
"Wait, what? Why do you need so many copies of my acceptance letter?"
"I'm gonna tape one on the door of every asshole that doubted you because of your quirk."
That startled a laugh out of him.
"Mom! No!"
"Mom, yes! I have so many on mind already. Like that bastard of a principal from your first school. Oh, I'm sorry, Miss Shinso. But the other children wouldn't feel safe with someone like Hitoshi around. I'm sure you understand."
And even though it was still her speaking, the voice coming out of her mouth sounded exactly like a middle-aged man. Hitoshi grinned. His mom's quirk was so cool. It was called mimicry, as long as someone had a conversation with her face to face, she could perfectly remember and replicate their voices.
"Or that bag of bones from our last apartment building. Oh, you poor thing. You are so strong for caring for such a villainous child." Now it was a wheezing voice of an old woman. "I'm still mad you stopped me from punching her."
Hitoshi laughed harder. "Mom! She was like, ninety!" He said with a snort.
"Exactly! I could have taken her, no problem." She ruffled his hair. Not that it made much of a difference with his already wild locks, mind you.
"For real, though. I'm proud of you, kiddo."
Hitoshi's cheeks hurt from smiling. His eyes were even tearing up just a bit.
"Thanks, mom."
"You know what? This calls for a treat. Screw it, cake for dinner. Imma go buy some."
He shakes his head fondly.
"I'm going to read over my exam results a bit more. Bring me a coffee can?"
"Sure thing. Be right back." With a final hair ruffle, she took her keys and went out the door.
Hitoshi went back to the envelope, searching inside for the exam analysis that Allmight mentioned in the video.
He wanted to see just exactly what these so called rescue points were about.
This past week, Hitoshi had been in a terrible mood because he was absolutely convinced that he had flunked the hero exam. How could he not, when he only managed to get a gran total of eight villain points?
He was so sure he had failed that he even asked his mom to register him for the general studies course as well, just in case.
But apparently, eight villain points were enough for a passing grade. Because he also happened to score fifty-two rescue points.
"Here we go."
The exam points breakdown was just a couple of pages long.
The first one was a simple list of the fake robots he managed to take down.
-
• one (1) point faux villain. Tackled. Unit sufficiently damaged for power down on impact with the ground.
• one (1) point faux villain. Tackled. Was later kicked numerous times until power down was achieved.
• two (2) points faux villain. Baited into charging at a one (1) point villain. Both units destroyed on impact.
• one (1) point faux villain. See above.
• three (3) points faux villain. Destroyed using salvaged weapons system from a downed three (3) points villain defeated by another examee.
Total villain points: eight (8)
-
Hitoshi let out a massive sigh of relief. Thank FUCK. He was so worried that baiting those robots to hit each other wouldn't count for his score. Since technically speaking, they took each other down.
He was also pretty glad he saw another kid judo flipping one of the robots into the ground. Without witnessing that that amount of damage was enough to power the things down, he most likely would have ended up running away from them.
Now, to check the only reason he made it into the hero course. He turned the page.
• ten (10) rescue points. Pushing another examee out of harms way.
• ten (10) rescue points. Using himself as bait to redirect the path of a two points faux villain who was about to charge a downed examee.
• fifteen (15) rescue points. Escorting an injured examee (see above) back towards the start zone.
• five (5) rescue points. Giving directions for the start zone to a lost examee who wanted to forfeit the exam.
• five (5) rescue points. Peacefully de-escalating a conflict between two fighting examees.
• five (5) rescue points. Assisting another examee in carrying a third injured examee away from the zero (0) point villain.
Total rescue points: fifty (50)
Uh. All of these make Hitoshi sound way nicer than he actually is. Half of those situations involved him calling the other kids stupid and grumbling under his breath. Not to mention that "peacefully de-escalating a fight" was him staring dumbfounded at two idiots who were wasting time butting heads about a stolen kill and saying, "The-two-idiots-fighting-say-what?" Real fast. Getting both of them to fall for that was honestly pretty great. He just made them walk in opposite directions before releasing his quirk. It freaked them out enough that they just ran away from him.
Wait. Wait a second.
"That can't be - Ten, twenty, thirty-five... fifty. That's fifty rescue points."
Shit. Shit shit shit!
That's a total of fifty-eight points. He needed a minimum of sixty for a passing grade. Did UA made a mistake? Did he not make it?! But Allmight called him by name! So his acceptance couldn't be an error.
Could it?
Starting to panic, Hitoshi flipped the page to check the back. There was a single sentence on it. Instead of being a print like the rest of the letter, this was clearly handwritten.
* two common sense points for anticipating the exam vias for combat quirks and making the backup plan of signing up for the general course. We need more heroes, and I need more students with hindsight like that.
Oh.
Holy shit. A UA teacher gave him two extra points.
A teacher just vouched for him.
Uh.
Maybe UA really was going to be better than his first couple of schools.
Hitoshi emptied all the remaining contents of the envelope and started sorting through them. Maybe he'll find the name of the teacher who helped him? Would be nice to know who he owned his (hopefully) future career to.
No such luck. The rest of the content was your typical school start paperwork. How and where to order his uniforms, classes curriculum, cafeteria menus, hero costume form to fill, permission slips for future trips, -
Wait.
"Wait."
Hero costume form to fill.
"Oh fuck!"
He never once thought about his hero costume.