The Successor (My Hero Academia)

Izuku would be lying if he said he wasn’t tempted for just a moment to have Nana rig it for him. There’s definitely a small part of him that’s all for showing off and being given as many opportunities as possible to do so. And yet… it’s probably for the best that he keeps things reasonable, isn’t it? All in all, he would be better served not standing out more than he already was. It was fine to be the head of the class, but it was another thing entirely to be drawing the wrong sort of attention to what was happening around him.
 
Shaking his head, he gives Nana a rueful smile.
 
“The latter, I say. We leave it purely up to chance.”
 
Nana just smiles and nods, before smoothly rising from her knees. She gives his chest one last touch before they leave the room together, getting on with their day.
 
-x-X-x-
 
“Hello students of Class 1-A. Welcome to the Unforeseen Simulation Joint Facility, otherwise known as the USJ facility for short. You all are here today for the Trial of Rescue, something that every single prospective Pro Hero must go through multiple times over the course of their training. Can anyone tell me why that is?”
 
There’s a beat of silence, and then a hand shoots up, prompting the Space Hero, Thirteen, to nod in their direction. Ochaco Uraraka flushes as all eyes turn to her before ultimately the brunette finds her courage.
 
“Because to be a Pro Hero is to help people!”
 
Izuku smiles at the enthusiastic reply, even as Thirteen carefully nods. His eyes go back to the Space Hero, and he reflects that if it weren’t for Nana’s knowledge, he honestly wouldn’t have known Thirteen was a woman. As it is, she’s covered from head to toe in her Pro Hero costume, which LOOKS like a white space suit, but actually constitutes of a puffy jacket, a black identity-concealing helmet, and a pair of yellow boots.
 
Her voice, meanwhile, is heavily modulated, coming out more robot than masculine or feminine. It would be quite easy to assume that she was in fact a man, but Izuku knew better, funnily enough.
 
“That’s exactly right. Being a Pro Hero is about helping people, first and foremost. Your powers and abilities… your Quirks… they are not MEANT to inflict harm. It is my hope and the hope of those teaching you and guiding you along your paths that you will leave here today with the understanding that you are meant to be a force of good in the world… and that doing good starts with rescuing people, not hurting villains.”
 
It's a damn good speech. Even Izuku finds himself nodding along with the impassioned Space Hero’s words. It makes sense that Thirteen would think such things, given her focus on Disaster Relief above all else. She wasn’t the kind of Pro Hero that tangled with villains on the regular. She didn’t go out of her way to go toe to toe with the worst sorts of reprobates that society had to offer.
 
No, rather, she struggled against the heavens themselves, against the natural disasters that the world brought against them. It wouldn’t be right to say she fought even those natural disasters… more like it was exactly as she described. She helped people. She saved people FROM the harm that nature could cause without any human element behind it.
 
Her focus on disaster relief meant Thirteen wasn’t even in the top one hundred of Pro Hero Rankings, but Izuku still had plenty of respect for her. And it was obvious that her colleagues did as well, from the way Mirko and Nana were letting Thirteen lead the class, and the way she was clearly in charge here at the USJ facility.
 
Ultimately, Izuku intended to be at the top of the food chain. He was going to be the Number One Pro Hero. His father’s sacrifice demanded no less of him. Still, he wouldn’t ever forget people like Thirteen, who did their part as well, even if they didn’t fight villains.
 
After a beat in which Thirteen sweeps her helmeted visage back and forth across the students of Class 1-A, she bobs her head in an exaggerated nod, apparently approving of what she saw on their faces.
 
“Alright then, let’s get started. The Trial of Rescue is a randomized lesson. This facility has harsh environments of all sorts for you to show your skills in. However, there is always an element of… chaos to any rescue operation. Sometimes there WILL be villains getting in your way, even if your only goal is to rescue some trapped civilians.”
 
Turning around, Thirteen raises a gloved hand and reveals a remote she’s holding. Pressing a button, she unveils a large monitor set into the wall behind her. On it appears… well, there’s no other way of describing it. There’s a massive wheel, and on that wheel are options, slices of a pie if you will. Each slice is a different size, denoting the percentage chance that it might happen or so Izuku guesses.
 
Before anyone else can say anything, another hand shoots up and Thirteen calls upon the owner of said hand.
 
“Yes?”
 
Tenya Ida shoots to attention, before pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
 
“Ahem! Sir! I notice that one of the options on the board is ‘All against One’! Isn’t that a little… excessive?!”
 
Ah, so Izuku wasn’t the only one who had looked at the options and immediately gravitated towards the smallest sliver of a slice. Indeed, with less than one percent chance of happening was ‘All against One’ and Izuku could easily understand what that meant… even if it did sound excessive, like Tenya said. But the Space Hero just shakes her head.
 
“Excessive? Do you think rescuing people from a tornado would be ‘excessive’? Do you think holding back a hurricane so that civilians have an extra hour to evacuate would be excessive?”
 
Tenya shrinks with each example, rapidly seeing her point. As Thirteen notes this, she sweeps her gaze around to all of them.
 
“As I said, you can very rarely control the encounters you will have as a Pro Hero. We are an inherently reactive force, responding to the actions of others, or to nature itself. You won’t always get the benefit of picking and choosing your battles. So yes, it is possible that today’s Trial of Rescue will be… lopsided. Let’s find out, shall we?”
 
Izuku watches as Thirteen pushes another button, and the wheel on the massive monitor begins to spin. He can understand now how Nana might have rigged it for him. His original daydream fantasy of being the single hero tasked with rescuing all of the female students from the male students acting as villains… it wasn’t so far off from what could have been, was it?
 
Hell, what still could be. Though the chances were low. First, it would have to land on that slice of the piece. Then, he would have to be chosen as the ‘one’ rather than part of the ‘all’. Yes, the chances of that happening were slim indeed. And yet… and yet as the wheel begins to slow down, the little ticker at the top gets closer and closer, tantalizingly so, to that one small sliver. All against One. One against All. It would be fitting, wouldn’t it? It would be… so very thematic.
 
Izuku tenses up along with the rest of Class 1-A as he watches the wheel finally grind to a halt, and the ticker inch ever closer to that insane, less than one percent chance option.
 
… But alas, in the end, it ticks right over it into one of the bigger pieces of the pie… Hero versus Environment. There’s a notable slump to the students around Izuku at that. Probably not because any of them WANTED to be the one against everyone else, but more because just seeing a super rare thing happen like that option getting chosen was something the human brain was trained to get excited for.
 
Instead, well, they’d ended up with one of the more common options on the pie. It was hard not to be a little disappointed, in the end.
 
Of course, Thirteen doesn’t agree. The Space Hero turns to them all with a renewed vigor, and though her true visage is hidden beneath her mask, she exudes pleasure.
 
“I’m actually glad that it landed on this option. None of you will be playing the part of villain today. Instead, you will all be splitting up into different sized groups and facing off against the harsh environments that USJ has to offer. Some of you WILL have to play the part of civilians in need of being rescued, however. We’ll figure out the split now.”
 
There’s more randomized options, and Izuku watches as his classmates are all paired off. Probably the most interesting one is Momo and Katsumi, especially given the… somewhat caustic nature of their relationship ever since he’d chosen the former over the latter after that one lesson. There’s also some groups bigger than two as well, but ultimately Izuku will confess to only really looking for his name. When it finally comes, he’s pleased with what he gets. Him and Ochaco Uraraka are apparently a pair. However, he… has to play the role of civilian.
 
That’s a little frustrating, but then, he had been the one to choose this hadn’t he? He’d had the chance to have Nana rig this shit, but he’d let it be random and so here he was. Still, it wasn’t the end of the world or anything like that. It did give him an opportunity to get to know Ochaco a bit better.
 
“H-Hi! You’re Izuku Midoriya!”
 
Blinking in amusement, Izuku slowly nods his head at her.
 
“And you’re Ochaco Uraraka.”
 
His tone causes her to blush, but the smile on Ochaco’s face doesn’t go away. They’re alone at the moment, currently in the Landslide Zone, waiting for Thirteen to make her way over to them and help them get started. As they stand there staring at one another, Izuku takes a moment to go over what he knows of Ochaco.
 
Her Quirk is an interesting one. Its called Zero Gravity and does exactly what it sounds like, allowing her to nullify gravity for solid objects, be they living or inanimate. Honestly, Izuku was interested to see exactly how she would handle this assignment, given her Quirk SEEMED like it was better suited for restraining evildoers over saving civilians.
 
But as Thirteen had tried to claim, their Quirks weren’t meant for harm, but for helping people. And Ochaco seemed determined if nothing else to shine. That was part of her personality though, as Izuku had learned from his research.
 
She was very bubble and somewhat of a ditz a lot of the time. She could come across as quite the airhead, and also tended to be incredibly blunt without even realizing it. She was, altogether, a warm and lively young woman. However, she could also be quite serious at times, despite her cheery attitude. Right nowo was one of those times, even though she also seemed to have a thing for him… be it strictly platonic admiration or something else.
 
Jutting out her chin and inadvertently thrusting her chest out as she puffs herself up, Ochaco grins.
 
“That I am! Don’t worry Izuku, I’ve got this!”
 
Before he can say anything else, Thirteen arrives at the Landslide Zone. The Space Hero looks at them both for a long moment, perhaps going over what SHE knows of their Quirks and general ability. Is she also wondering exactly what Ochaco is going to do here with Zero Gravity to ‘save’ him from a landslide? Well, either way… she apparently decides there’s no helping it.
 
“Uraraka. Midoriya will be your civilian. You are the Pro Hero in charge of saving him. Midoriya, you were out on a morning run when the landslide began, trapping you and cutting you off. Uraraka, it is up to you to figure out how you will reach Midoriya and save him.”
 
“R-Right!”
 
“Are there any questions?”
 
“No, I’ve got this!”
 
“No ma’am.”
 
He plays it off as a slip of the tongue, but in truth its on purpose. He wants to see Thirteen’s reaction more than anything else. Ochaco doesn’t even seem to notice, but Thirteen definitely does. Even through her stylized space suit, Izuku sees how the Pro Hero pauses for a moment, staring at him through her mask. He doesn’t give anything away, doesn’t show any panic… but yes, he knows that much about her.
 
The moment passes without Ochaco catching on that anything is happening between the Space Hero and her designated civilian.
 
“… Good. Then get into position.”
 
After being directed towards where his ‘position’ even is, Izuku does exactly that, settling in to wait for the whole shebang to start. It doesn’t take long before the Landslide Zone whirls to life. As Thirteen had said, he soon finds himself cut off and without any visible avenue of escape… if one pretended that he didn’t have the number of Quirks he had.
 
Indeed, the situation would seem quite helpless at a glance, but then that was where Ochaco came in, right?
 
Izuku stays put, acting the part of the hapless civilian with no hope of escape and in need of rescue. It takes him some time, but eventually he sees Ochaco making her way towards him… or trying to, anyways. It’s not going well for her, mostly because she can’t use her Quirk on herself to get across the landslide easily. Instead, she’s having to be very careful about things.
 
He wonders, briefly, if he should step in. Thirteen hadn’t said anything one way or another about that, and maybe that was on purpose. Technically, civilians weren’t supposed to use their Quirks to save the day. There was a whole suite of laws about it. You had to be a Pro Hero in order to do that. But Thirteen had very conspicuously given ZERO instructions to Izuku or any of the other students playing at being helpless civilians, save for where to go and what their ‘motivation’ for this little roleplay was.
 
So maybe… maybe he should step in and help Ochaco out. Or maybe, for better or for worse, he should let her pass or fail on her own merits…