Yo, so ik i skipped a day but i just had shit going on yk. I'll be honest with you guys my motivation on this fic is running low rn. Updates might be slower for a bit. Appreciate everyone who's been reading, commenting, and leaving reviews, you lot keep me going more than you know.
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The acceptance letter arrived on a Tuesday.
His mom opened it before he got home from the gym. He found her at the kitchen table, letter in both hands, mascara running, a small metal disc sitting on the table next to a torn envelope.
"Watch it," she said. "You have to watch it."
Ren picked up the disc. It activated on contact. A holographic screen projected into the air above the kitchen table, bright enough to make his mom squint.
All Might.
The number one hero, enormous even as a projection, filling the kitchen with a grin that was wider than the table. He was wearing a suit that didn't fit him because nothing fit All Might except the sky.
"CONGRATULATIONS, YOUNG ASANO! You have passed the UA entrance exam with a score that, I must say, left quite an impression on the faculty!"
His mom made a sound.
"73 villain points, placing you among the highest combat scores across all battle centres. But that's not all! The judges also awarded you 45 rescue points for your heroic actions in saving a fellow examinee from the zero-pointer. Your total score of 118 points places you FIRST among all applicants this year!"
The hologram showed a scoreboard. Asano Ren: 118, Bakugo Katsuki: 112, Eijiro Kirishima: 74, Ochaco Uraraka: 73, Ibara Shiozaki: 68, Itsuka Kendo: 65, Tenya Ida: 61, Izuku Midoriya: 60, Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu: 59, Fumikage Tokoyami: 57, Yosetsu Awase: 56
"Welcome, young Asano. This is your Hero Academia!"
The projection cut out. The disc went dark. The kitchen was quiet.
His mom was crying properly now. The crying was from her pride of her son, she was proud of him.
She hugged him.
His dad got home at eight. Read the letter. Looked at the score. Looked at Ren.
"Good job, son."
The dad smirked. A smirk that seemed like he knew a bit more then he should of.
His phone started buzzing around nine.
**Isaac:** *BRO*
**Isaac:** *BRO BRO BRO*
**Isaac:** *FIRST PLACE??????*
**Isaac:** *FIRTS PALCE AT UA?????*
**Isaac:** *I COACHED A NUMBER ONE*
**Isaac:** *THSI IS GOING ON MY CV MY LINKEDIN MY BUISNESS CARD MY GRAVE STONE*
**Isaac:** *IM PUTTING "TRAINED THE #1 UA ENTRANT" ON EVERYTHING I OWN*
**Isaac:** *REN*
**Isaac:** *REN RESPOND*
**Isaac:** *I KNOW YOUR READING THESE*
**Ren:** *thanks isaac*
**Isaac:** *THATS ALL I GET???? THANKS ISAAC???? I PROGRAMMED YOUR PERIODIZATION FOR A YEAR AND ALL I GET IS THANKS ISAAC IN LOWERCASE??????*
**Ren:** *Thanks Isaac.*
**Isaac:** *I hate you. congratulations. im so proud of you. also stretch tonight your left trap is going to be tight from the stress.*
---
April.
First day.
UA was bigger in person. Glass and concrete and the letters U and A built into the architecture so you knew where you were from three blocks away. Ren walked through the front gate with his bag over one shoulder and his uniform fitting wrong because his shoulders were too wide for the standard size.
He found Class 1-A. Slid the door open.
The classroom was half full. A tall kid with glasses and engines in his calves was lecturing someone about having their feet on the desk. The someone was Bakugo, who had his feet on the desk and was telling the glasses kid exactly where he could shove his school rules.
Ren walked in.
Heads turned. The unconscious rotation that happened whenever he entered a space, bodies moving before brains caught up.
Bakugo saw him. Their eyes locked. Two seconds. Bakugo's jaw tightened. His hands went still on the desk.
"Tch."
He looked away.
Ren walked to the back row. Sat down.
A kid with half-red half-white hair didn't look at him. Uraraka was near the front, talking to the glasses kid. Midoriya arrived a few minutes later, stood in the doorway processing twelve emotions at once, saw Bakugo, saw Ren, added two more, and sat near the front without approaching.
Then a man in a sleeping bag appeared at the door. Dark hair, dark circles, a capture weapon around his neck. He stood up out of it with the energy of someone who resented consciousness.
"I'm Shota Aizawa. Your homeroom teacher. PE clothes. Outside. Five minutes."
---
The Quirk Apprehension Test.
Eight fitness tests. Use your quirks. Last place gets expelled.
Twenty students on the field. Aizawa held up a softball.
"Asano. You scored highest on the entrance exam. Step up and throw this. Give us a baseline."
Ren walked to the circle. Twenty pairs of eyes on him. He picked up the ball.
He didn't wind up. Didn't set his feet. Didn't rotate his hips or do any of the mechanical things Isaac had drilled into him about generating force.
He just threw it.
The ball left his hand and disappeared. It just went from being in his hand to being a dot on the horizon so fast that the transition was invisible.
Aizawa's tracker beeped.
1,437 metres.
Nobody spoke.
Aizawa looked at the number. His expression didn't change, but his eyes stayed on the tracker for a beat longer than they should have.
"That's what you're all aiming for," he said. "The rest of you, don't disappoint me."
The class erupted into chatter. A blond kid with a lightning bolt in his hair said "what the FUCK" loud enough for the whole field to hear. The ponytail girl was staring at Ren with her hand over her mouth. A pink-skinned girl was grabbing the arm of the person next to her.
When Bakugo's turn came, he stepped into the circle and detonated everything he had. The explosion shook the field. 987 metres. A monstrous number by any standard. In any other year, at any other school, 987 metres would have been the story of the entrance exam for a decade.
It was 450 metres short of the number that was already on the board.
Bakugo stared at the tracker. His face didn't move. His body didn't move. He stood in the circle for three seconds longer than he needed to and then walked back to the group without saying a word.
The rest of the tests followed.
Fifty-metre dash. Iida clocked 3.04 seconds with his engines. Ren hit the finish line in 1.7. The ground cracked under his first step.
Grip strength. The measuring device was industrial, rated for quirk-enhanced strength. A student with extra arms hit 540 kilograms. Ren picked up the device and squeezed. The readout climbed past 800, past 1000, past 1200. At 1,573 the casing split down the middle. The screen flickered ERROR and went dark.
Ren set the broken halves down on the grass. "Sorry."
Standing long jump. He cleared the sandbox entirely. Side steps, distance run, sit-ups, toe touch. First across the board. Not by small margins.
The class stopped reacting individually. A kid with red hair who'd been getting louder with every test finally just started laughing. "Bro what ARE you," he said to nobody in particular.
Aizawa announced the final rankings.
Asano Ren. First.
Todoroki Shoto. Second.
Bakugo Katsuki. Third.
Midoriya Izuku. Last.
Aizawa told them the expulsion was a lie. The class exhaled. Midoriya looked like his soul had briefly left his body and was still finding its way back.
On the way back to the building, Aizawa fell into step beside Ren. Not in front of him. Not blocking his path. Just walking at the same pace, clipboard under his arm, eyes forward.
"Regeneration."
"Yeah."
"That's your registered quirk."
"Yeah."
"Interesting word for what I just watched."
He peeled off and walked toward the building without looking back.
Ren watched him go. Then he walked inside.
The campus was green. The sun was warm. Twenty teenagers were heading back to their classroom to start their first year at the best hero school in the country.
One of them was the most wanted vigilante in Musutafu.
He thought about the kitchen table with the wobbly leg. About his mom's mascara running. About his dad's smirk. About Isaac's texts in all caps with bad grammar.
About the hollow behind his eyes that was quiet today.
First day.
---
I heard some knews that cliffhanger-kun has escaped his seals, and might be out to get us now. Lmk if you spot him.
Let me know what you think.
And cya next time.