Japan, Musutafu, U.A. High School.
"*Yawn*... I don't know who had the idea of making school start this early, but I curse this bastard to step on legos barefooted every day for the rest of his life."
"Stop being lazy Hayato, today's an important day so be serious."
"Yeah yeah I hear you, Ren! But..."
"No 'buts', plus you are not even tired. With how strong our bodies are, it's easy for us to stay awake for days, it's even more true with you who has the strongest body among us all. You are just being lazy again."
"I'm not lazy! I just don't like school! Seriously, the Orphan school was already boring enough, I don't know if I can survive another three years of this crap!"
"What are talking about? U.A. and the Orphan school are two different things, U.A is a school for heroes, we are here to become heroes, it's two different things!"
"Ha! Heroes? You are the only one among us who truly wants to be a hero, I'm just here because you guys are here! The kids here are weak, I bet none of them can even be a challenge to us."
"*Sigh*, you know what..."
As Ren and Hayato were having their little argument, not far from them, a handsome young man around 180 cm tall, with black hair and jewels-like blue eyes, was currently looking at the entrance of the famous school he was about to get in.
"We are finally here... U.A."
"Are you alright Dante-kun?"
Hearing a beautiful voice coming from his left, the handsome young man who was none other than Dante, turned his head and looked at the beautiful 170 cm tall young woman with long black hair and deep black eyes. When Dante looked at this young woman, he simply smiled.
'Kioko really has changed a lot... Who would have thought that the gloomy little girl from before would become such a beautiful and elegant young woman...*Sigh*, if only she wasn't so...'
Seeing that Dante was still lost in his thoughts, Kioko turned her head towards Ren and Hayato.
"Is it okay for them to cause such a ruckus in front of the school Dante-kun? Such behavior is unbecoming of people of their strengths, we should stop them before our rights to participate in the entrance exam are taken away from us."
Hearing her, Dante couldn't help but smile wryly.
'Ah, here it is... When did my cute Kioko-chan become so... dignified? I knew Featherine would have a bad influence on her! Although she acts way more elegantly now, it's still... Argh! Bring me back my cute gloomy loli!'
After he was done lamenting, Dante turned his attention toward his two male friends.
'Aaaah, although those two sure have grown up, I'm glad to see that their personalities haven't changed that much."
Both Hayato and Ren had indeed changed quite a lot when it came to their appearances. From his previous 105 cm, Hayato was now 175 cm, and he had grown to be a perfect copy of Ogun from the anime Fire Force. Ren on the other hand had ended up just like Dante imagined, a 182cm tall version of Laxus, with blue hair instead of the original blonde.
'Well, Hayato is still the honest guy he has always been, although he is still as childish as before, he now emanates a certain air of confidence that reassures people. Ren on the other hand still has that reliable big-brother vibe, and an air of security emanates from him, I'm sure his dream of being the greatest hero isn't far away.'
After he was done looking at his friends, Dante finally clapped his hands two times to put an end to their arguments.
"Alright guys, enough. Let's get in before all the seats are taken."
That's right, today was an important day for Dante and his friends. Now that they were all fifteen years old, today was the day they would finally take the number one hero school, the U.A. High School entrance examination!
Just as they were about to enter the school, Dante suddenly stopped and looked in a certain direction. When his friends saw that he had stopped, they all followed his eyes, only to find that he was looking at a somewhat short young boy with a round face and messy fluffy dark-green hair, who was running toward the school entrance.
"*Gasp* *Gasp*, I made it in time!"
Although the boy was quite skinny, for experienced people like Dante and his friends, it was easy to see that he had started to train his body not long ago.
"Mm... That boy looks weak. Is he gonna be alright?"
"I would usually tell you to not judge a book by its cover, but I have to agree with you on this one Hayato... he looks weak. Is he gonna be alright?"
"I have to agree with Hayato and Ren, the boy is cute, but looks weak. Is he gonna be alright?"
When he heard his friends' comments on the main protagonist of the manga MHA, Dante couldn't help but laugh.
"Hahaha, you guys are right, he is weak, but you guys are also wrong, he is strong."
This time, the trio all looked at Dante with weird expressions.
"What do you mean Dante-kun?"
To this question, Dante's answer was simple.
"Use your haki."
When they heard him, the trio immediately looked back at Midoriya Izuku, but this time with their kenbunshoku haki, aka observation haki.
Kenbunshoku haki is a form of haki that grants its users a sixth sense that allows them to sense the presence, strength, and emotions of others, as well as gain limited precognitive abilities.
After multiple decades of training, Dante and his friends all had reached a monstrous level of proficiency in all forms of haki. Be it busoshoku, kenbunshoku, or haoshoku, they had all reached the absolute peak. Thanks to their powerful haki, Ren, Hayato, and Kioko were quickly able to capture the uniqueness of Midoriya Izuku.
"Oi, Ren, can you feel it? What a strange boy... I can feel his anxiety, excitement, and doubts..."
"Yeah, but all of these are nothing compared to his wish to save others, what a kind kid."
"There is more important than that."
When Kioko said that, Ren and Hayato both nodded with grave expressions.
"Yeah... he is weird."
"He is weak... but strong."
This being the first time that she met such a scenario, Kioko looked at Dante who seemed to know something about it.
"What's going on with this kid Dante-kun?"
Seeing his three friends looking at him, Dante smiled and answered.
"This kid's name is Midoriya Izuku, a boy whose dream is to be the greatest hero. As you may have noticed, he is a bit special, he is weak and strong at the same time."
Hearing this, his three friends didn't waste their time by asking him how knew all this, with time, they learned that with his quirk, he could get all the answers he wanted... little did they know that Dante was simply giving them the knowledge from his past life.
"The reason why you can feel both strength and weakness coming from him is that his strength has been given to him by someone else not long ago. Currently, his body is still trying to digest that new power, and since he wasn't born with that strength, he will have to work hard to make it his own."
After he was done with his explanation, Kioko's deep black eyes flashed with understanding.
"His strength has been given to him... His body is still trying to digest it... Do you mean that someone gave him his quirk?"
Seeing Kioko being as sharp as ever, Dante smiled and nodded. With Dante acquiescing to Kioko's guess, a dangerous air suddenly started to emanate from his three friends. Knowing what they were thinking, Dante quickly calmed them down before anyone could feel the abnormality.
"Relax, he isn't with AFO, in fact, you can even say that both of them are bitter enemies haha."
After Dante said that, the trio immediately calmed down and the dangerous air coming from them quickly disappeared.
"So you are telling us that there is someone else besides you and AFO capable of gifting others with quirks? Damn, the world sure is a large place."
Hearing Hayato's words, Dante simply smiled and opted to not tell them what One for All was and where it came from. Instead, he looked again in Midoriya's direction, only to see another important protagonist of the story make his entrance.
"Get out of my way, Deku!! I will kill you!!"
After he saw the explosive problem child make his entrance, Dante smiled and introduced him to his friends.
"And the kid that just arrived is Katsuki Bakugo, a 'friend' of Midoriya."
When Hayato heard the word "friend", one of his eyebrows rosed up in confusion.
"Friend? You call that a friend? If they are friends, then either my haki is going bonkers, or we simply don't have the same definition of the word friend."
Ren could only agree with Hayato.
"He is right, although my haki is telling me that he is strong, I can only sense pride and disgust from that kid, I can't find any proof of friendship between them."
Kioko's opinion was even more direct.
"I don't like him."
When he heard them, Dante did not elaborate and simply smiled. Since he was a fan of the manga and it was a good thing for his future organization, Dante had already planned to help Midoriya get stronger quicker and get Bakugo out of his emo phase as soon as possible.
After he saw what he wanted to see, Dante stopped looking at them and finally moved forward and entered the school grounds, it was a place that would be essential to his plan of creating the greatest hero organization this world would ever see.
"Now let's see how it goes."
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"Hello there youngsters! Welcome one and all to my live show!!
Everybody say 'hey'!"
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"I've got shivers down my spine too, listeners!
All right, examinees... I'm gonna give you the low-down on how this will go down! Are you ready?!
YEAHH!!!"
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As Present Mic was... trying to hype the crowd, Dante and his friends were observing everything that was happening around them from their seats that were in the middle of the amphitheater. Seeing that most of the students were so serious and focused, Hayato couldn't stop himself from laughing a little.
"Damn, that guy on stage is having it hard haha!"
Even Ren found the situation quite comic.
"Yeah, the public is harsh. Well, at least his skin looks thick enough for him to get through this."
While Hayato and Ren were having fun, and Dante was busy looking for the different members of the future class 1-A, Kioko was the only one who was truly listening to Present Mic, even though she wasn't really interested in the whole thing.
"Now pay close attention, listeners!
Today, we will be testing your mettle by running a ten-minute practice run at our replica city district!
Bring along whatever you want!
After this presentation, you will each head to your assigned testing locations!"
Just like Bakugo in the manga, Ren was quickly able to understand why the test had such a system.
"It's probably to prevent those who know each other from helping themselves."
Hearing this, Hayato smiled.
"Oh... That's too bad, I wanted to be in the same group as one of you, that would have made this boring test more interesting."
While Hayato was blaming his fate, Dante looked at his two male friends and said with a smile.
"If you guys want, I can put you two in the same group, that way you guys can have fun. What do you say?"
To this, Kioko only rolled her eyes at the childishness of her male friends while Hayato's eyes suddenly lighted up with passion, and Ren grinned with confidence. Although Ren was rather calm in his way of doing things, he still had in him the desire to compete against his peers, he and Hayato had the habit of competing whenever it was possible.
"We will be sprinkling a large number of faux villains over the different battlefields, and they will appear in three different varieties, with point values scaled according to their difficulties. Using each of your individual quirks, dispatch as many villains as you can! Your goal, listeners, is to rack up as many points as you can! And don't think about directly attacking any other competitors or any of that nasty anti-hero stuff, because that's against the rules, capisce?!"
After Present Mic reached that point of his explanation, a relatively tall and muscular young man a couple of seats in front of Dante raised his hand. The young man had short dark blue hair, flattened neatly down and parted on the right side of his head, he also had a small patch completely shaved near the base of his head, and some rather square eyes which matched the notably pointed shape of his jaw.
"Excuse me! May I ask a question?!"
The moment he heard the young man, Dante didn't even have to look at who was speaking, he already had the answer.
'Here it comes.'
This particular moment was one that Dante was waiting for. Although he knew that it was a bit childish of him to do so, Dante nonetheless really wanted to put the young Ida Tenya back in his place. He couldn't really explain why, but that particular moment of the story had always made him gnash his teeth in frustration.
"On the handout, there are clearly four types of villains listed! Such an error would be the height of embarrassment for a top-tier national academy of U.A.'s caliber! The reason we are seated here today is that we seek guidance on the path to becoming model heroes!"
At that moment, the world around Dante slowed down to a crawl, his sense sharpened to their maximum as he watched Ida turn around slowly, his finger slowly pointing in a certain direction.
'This position... This timing... This angle... Perfect!'
The moment Dante was about to act, something completely out of his expectations happened.
"And you, with the black hair with cornrows on top!"
At that moment, Dante completely stopped moving, and not without reason, after all, the person Ida's finger was pointing at wasn't Midoriya Izuku, it was pointing at his friend... Yamada Hayato!
"Huh? Me?"
"Yes, you! Can't you sit still for a second... you are distracting me!! If you think U.A. is some kind of pleasure jaunt, then leave this place at once!!"
The moment Dante and his friends heard Ida's words and the laughter of the crowd, they did something that all respectable friends would too... they brought out the popcorn!
"Oh?! Are you talking to me four eyes?!"
Immediately, veins started to appear on Hayato's forehead. One important fact to know about Hayato was that even though he had lived more than eighty years, such a thing had not changed him into someone that could stay calm and rational under any circumstances. Because his fighting style required him to be honest with his thoughts, Hayato was someone who would easily show his emotions, and say what was on his mind, plus... he was really prideful!
'I'm gonna kill that fucker!'
Of course, Hayato was only joking, he didn't care about the crowd's reaction, what truly pissed him off was his friends that were laughing at him while eating some popcorn that Dante created with his powers.
'I'm going to make you guys pay! Just wait for it!'
Seeing that the situation was escalating, Present Mic decided to quickly move on.
"Okay, okay, examinee number 7111, thanks for the segue, much appreciated. The fourth kind of villain you will encounter is worth 0 points! They are more of an obstacle! Have you ever played Super Mario Brothers before? Do you remember those things that would go and thwomp on you?! There is a thing like that in each arena! Their gimmick is that they go on a rampage whenever they are crowded! Although they are not invincible, they won't give you any points, I don't recommend you fight them!"
Satisfied with the answer, Ida thanked Present Mic before sitting back down.
"Thank you very much! I apologize for being rude!"
Now that he finally got rid of the kid, Mic was finally able to end the presentation.
"That's all from me! I will leave examinees with our school motto! The great hero Napoleon Bonaparte once said... 'True heroism consists in being superior to the hills of life.'
PLUS ULTRA!!
Go break a leg everyone!!"