Fanfic / Announcer AU

The Announcer AU is a My Hero Academia Alternate Universe created by RogueVector where Izuku's parents manage to get tickets to the UA Sports Festival a year previous to canon. Through a series of accidents and events, Izuku ends up helping announce the second year's Sports Festival, his face and analytical skill are broadcast to the whole of Japan, and from there, a number of changes ensue.

The series can be read here on Archive of Our Own.

The first story, Sports Festival: Lost and Found, can be read here.

The sequel, The UA Analyst Kid, can be read here.

The third story, The Stormclad Kid, can be read here.

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The story has the following tropes:

• Accidental Celebrity: The plot starts when Izuku gets separated from his mom while attending the UA Sports Festival as a spectator. While he's trying to find her, a series of accidents lead President Mic, who is announcing the Festival, to offer him a seat in the announcer booth so he can wait out the chaos safely. Of course, Izuku being Izuku, he starts commenting on the students' quirks... and then Present Mic points out that the mic is turned on. Cue agencies from all over Japan wanting to take Izuku for an internship, and the internet trying to figure out who he is for a long time afterwards.
• Accidental Truth: The day after Izuku gets One For All/Stormclad from All Might, Fuyumi, who's trying to learn to be a better teacher by complimenting her students, comments that he's looking supercharged today. She's thus confused when Izuku freaks out.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • In canon, the Sludge Villain was a mere D Rank, the second lowest ranking for any villain. Here, Aizawa states the man was a B Rank villain.
  • Izuku also winds up as this, thanks to receiving dedicated training and support from UA’s teachers, including firearms training from Snipe, martial training from Eraserhead, and more analytical practice from Nezu. He also receives One For All earlier than in canon, and is subsequently able to use it competently by the time the entrance exam rolls around.
  • Everyone gets more points on UA's Entrance Exam than they did in canon, with Izuku taking first place.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: All over the place! The first story initially takes place a year before canon begins, so a lot of characters make their debuts long before they did in canon.
  • Mirio, Tamaki, and Nejire all debut taking place in U.A.'s second year Sports Festival.
  • Several Pro-Heroes, namely Mirko, Hawks, and Sir Nighteye, all debut after witnessing Izuku at the Sports Festival, each seeking to have him intern under them.
  • Thanks to an investigation causing Aldera Middle School to can a lot of its staff, Fuyumi Todoroki appears as Izuku and Bakugo's new homeroom teacher, with it noted to be her first teaching job.
  • Kirishima and Tsuyu both appear during the entrance exam, with the former meeting Izuku.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • This fic puts more emphasis on Mt. Lady's heroic traits from the outset, expanding on her canon reasoning for her Glory Seeker behavior by making apparent it's a result of trying to make ends meet.^* Her profile in Volume 10 explains that, due to her Quirk, she's called to fight villains with similar abilities, so her fights inevitably end up with lots of collateral damage that her payouts are barely able to cover, thus why she takes any opportunity she can to solve her agency's financial troubles. Her competency issues are also discussed and explained in-universe, as Izuku, Aizawa, Midnight, and Nezu voice a shared suspicion that Mt. Lady's small school didn't train her properly, comparing her skill level to that of a second year UA student.
  • All Might also gauges his first conversation with Izuku much better than his canon self did, asking Izuku why he wants to be a hero and encouraging him after he answers rather than just telling him to drop his dream over his Quirklessness.
• Adaptation Deviation: When All Might is brought onto U.A.'s faculty, in addition to all of the teachers being let into the secret about him slowly losing his strength, they also are told about the transferrable aspects of his Quirk, and that he has chosen Midoriya, their student intern, as his successor. In canon, they were only told about the first part so they could help keep his secret, and none of them knew that he had given it to Midoriya.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
  • Izuku's relationship with Nighteye is a lot better in this story compared to canon, to the point the latter actually suggests All Might to offer Izuku the chance to inherit One for All... only to learn All Might had independently come to that same conclusion himself.
  • Hawks and Mt. Lady are close friends due to their collaboration in several arrests and edge on a romantic relationship by Chapter 17 of The UA Analyst Kid
• Answer Cut: In their group chat, Bakugo's friends wonder where he is, since he's not replying when they tag him. The story cuts to Bakugo being duct-taped by his parents due to his loud and violent outburst at seeing Izuku on television.
• Anti-Nepotism: UA already has enough detractors over their student recommendation system allowing them to pick and choose prominent hero hopefuls, so considering Izuku's internship at UA, they explicitly don't allow him to go through the recommendation exam, instead putting him through the general exams like any other student hopeful (and for Izuku's part, the recommendation exam never even crosses his mind). In The Stormclad Kid, Aizawa's internal monologue also discusses this trope, wondering how to handle a student that has been their intern, trainee and junior colleague for most of last year (which leads him to instead pick Ochako as his 'first victim').
• Armour-Piercing Question:
  • Bakugo's parents, after witnessing his tantrum over Deku appearing at the UA Sports Festival, manage to make him question his worldview that Izuku looks down on him by asking a series of pointed questions that shows how baseless that belief is.
  • When All Might cast doubts over Nezu's claim that every teacher working at UA can be safely trusted with OFA's secret, the mouse-bear-dog has this to say in response:
    Nezu: [...]if I couldn’t trust each and every one of them with the secret of One For All, how could I possibly trust them with children?
• Ascended Extra: In the original series, Fuyumi gets extremely little screentime unless the story is covering the Todoroki family as a whole. Here, she takes over for Izuku's teacher after the man is fired and nobody already employed wants to be with him.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Izuku's analysis skills are so good that he receives hundreds of internship offers even while still in the middle of his commentary, including from Hawks. As Eraserhead says, such talent, from Quirks or not, is rare, and people with those talents can demand high pay.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • The UA teachers are on the lookout for anyone cheating during the Entrance Exams, and those they do spot are sorted onto a bus ostensibly to take them to their practical exam location, only to be taken instead to Hound Dog who tells them their applications have been terminated.
  • When Izuku recognizes Shouto's last name, Shouto is prepared for the usual identifier as "Endeavor's son", only to instead be blindsided by Izuku asking if he's related to Todoroki Fuyumi, who became Izuku and Katsuki's homeroom teacher last year. Shouto is flummoxed since he thought she was a kindergarten teacher.
• Big Damn Heroes: Just as Tsubasa is about to lay into Izuku for appearing at the UA festival and stealing his internship with Hawks (see One Dialogue, Two Conversations), who should show up at the window but Hawks himself, who plucks Izuku out the window for a more private conversation.
  Hawks: Say… is that how schoolyard fights are supposed to go?
  Izuku: No. Because, uh… Usually, a pro hero doesn’t come to save you.
• Bound and Gagged: Minus the gagging since they ran out of duct tape; a few cutaways to the Bakugo household during the Sports Festival shows that Mitsuki and Masaru had to literally hogtie their son to prevent his tantrum from destroying more than his cup.
• Brick Joke:
  • In Chapter 3, Gang Orca emails Nezu requesting Izuku for an internship. It ends with an unexplained keysmash. A few beats later, @HeroWatchOfficial tweets a video of Gang Orca arresting two villains while "trying to keep his phone unsmashed," accompanied by a content warning for "juggling and swearing." Six chapters later, Hawks blows up Izuku's phone with texts trying to convince Izuku to intern with him, ending in a keysmash. Immediately afterwards, the narrative cuts to a tweet from @HeroWatchOfficial with an attached video of Hawks and Gang Orca colliding mid-street. The tweet includes a reminder that people should not walk and text and a content warning for swearing.
  • The last chapter of The UA Analyst Kid story starts with Izuku helping test out the video recording software for the acceptance messages, by recording one for Neito Monoma. One of the last scenes is Monoma confused about having his acceptance letter delivered by some unknown green kid, on account of Vlad King creating the holographic message discs while half-asleep and importing the wrong file.
• Can't Count Bullets: Avoiding this is part of Snipe's gun training to Izuku. When he clicks on an empty magazine, Snipe has him doing laps (without forgetting to safety the gun, which would've resulted in even further punishment).
• Casual Danger Dialogue:
  • Toshinori and Aizawa have a group call with Inko about Izuku's progress while the former are fighting a group of villains committing a robbery. They pause the conversation only once so Toshinori and Aizawa can apply handcuffs.
  • When Izuku, Mt Lady, Hawks, and Mirko are on an outing together (the three heroes in civilian attire), they are jumped by a rather inept mugger. Izuku, Mirko, and Mt. Lady are all noting little details about the mugger (poor posture and knife grip, etc)… while Hawks is wondering if the boba tea place they passed earlier is still open.
• Catapult Nightmare: All Might catapults awake when he has a nightmare where Izuku exploded after he got One for All.
• Catch and Return: One suggestion that Izuku has for Togata's Quirk is to become tangible while a projectile is phasing through him to send it flying back out, and with enough practice, aim it right back at the sender. A later scene has Izuku helping the Big Three practice that trick with baseballs.
• Cluster Bleep-Bomb: Present Mic's reaction when he sees Izuku using One for All during the practical exam, with all the bleeps provided by his colleagues shouting "Mic!".
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: During the Quirk Assessment test, Eraserhead, instead of saying that the student who comes in last will be expelled, says that the student that comes in last (along with anyone else he feels isn't giving their all in the test) will have to join in UA's welcoming ceremony (which the class is skipping) as 1-A's representative, late, alone, and in front of everyone.
• Cut-and-Paste Note: Izuku's acceptance video to U.A. is the audiovisual equivalent of this: a series of holograms of himself delivering various video messages spliced together into a "coherent" video. The U.A. staff take great glee in his reaction.
• Cutting the Electronic Leash: As Izuku's analysis at U.A.'s Sports Festival is blowing up on social media, Nezu takes glee in reading all the posts on social media on his personal phone, while ignoring his other work phones buzzing with calls about said kid in favor of locking them in a drawer.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: On his first day as a heroics student in UA, instead of going to the classrooms, Izuku initially heads to the offices by the support labs, like he'd been doing for the past year as a UA intern, before remembering where he’s supposed to be going. He hopes to sneak past Snipe again without getting noticed, but no such luck.
  Snipe: Don’t get lost on your first day, Midoriya!
• Dark Horse Victory: Izuku manages to get over two-hundred internship offers for his analytical skills. While this is below average compared to the finalists of the Sports Festival, it is most certainly very impressive when not only did Izuku not take part in the third round, he's not even old enough to attend UA in the first place.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • When Present Mic gets excited that Ms. Joke sent Aizawa a request to know more about that UA analyst kid in the announcer booth, as well as an invitation to her wedding, Aizawa just tiredly responds, "As the groom."
  • Upon seeing Hawks and Mirko fight over the former trying to get Izuku as an intern, Best Jeanist snarks that he thought it was UA students who were supposed to fight that day at the Sports Festival, not full-fledged heroes.
    Hiro To Help @Moriyama Hiro: Hello I need the police I just saw @DenimDelights murder @HawksOfficial and @Mirko over the custody of a child.
  • When Mirko, Mt. Lady, Hawks, and Izuku spend some off time together, the former is incredulous when the latter three (a country girl, a Child Soldier, and a social outcast) admit they have no experience with these kinds of social gatherings. Mirko and Izuku then have this exchange:
    Mirko: (who has been crashing cage matches at 16) How the fuck am I the normal one here!?
    Izuku: Process of elimination.
• Death Glare: Played for Laughs. Eraserhead gives one to several heroes after learning that they signed on Izuku's cast since because Izuku is such a hero fanboy, he would never want to take the cast off. Thankfully, Recovery Girl carefully cuts the cast off without ruining any of the signatures (but not before adding her own).
• Didn't See That Coming: The Aldera Principal initially thinks that Nezu and the UA staff are coming to talk to him about Bakugo, whom everybody expects to make it to U.A., and is completely floored when they instead want to talk about Izuku, a boy everybody in the school considers worthless.
• Didn't Think This Through: While testing one of Izuku's ideas for her quirk, Mt. Lady places her hands atop a six storey building and leaps into the air while deactivating her quirk, letting her land safely atop the roof. When Hawks asks if she can get down the same way, she face palms and starts walking towards the roof access door.
• Does Not Know His Own Strength: When trying to teach Izuku control with Stormclad, Lunch Rush came up with the idea of having him cook a meal while keeping it on. It took Izuku an hour and a half and a lot of broken utensils to make lunch that day.
• Dramatis Personae: A variation. Starting in Chapter 15 of The UA Analyst Kid, each chapter begins with a list of the usernames that appear in the chapter if applicable and a Lemony Narrator summation of who those characters are.
• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • Mina makes an early appearance in tweet form laughing at Aizawa's Ham and Deadpan Duo dynamic with Present Mic and Izuku. It's likely the person she's addressing, @RockHardRockOut, is Kirishima.
  • When All Might mentions how One for All can be transferred between people, Izuku mentions a woman in Mie who can temporarily pass her zero-gravity status effect to someone else - a clear reference to Ochako Uraraka's family.
  • Kinoko Komori from class 1-B makes an appearance in chapter 17, working in her family's restaurant which Izuku, Mirko, Hawks and Mt. Lady visit.
• Embarrassing Nickname: While advising the heroes in how to defeat the Sludge villain and rescue Bakugo, the various heroes start calling Izuku "Kid". Izuku doesn't exactly think much of it, but follows Snipe's advice: "If it's stupid and it works, it ain't stupid".
• Entertainingly Wrong:
  • Most people assume Izuku is a student when they see him in the UA sports uniform helping Eraserhead and Present Mic announce the Sports Festival. A reasonable assumption, but he's actually a guest who got lost, was found by Midnight, who left him in the announcer's booth, and the uniform is borrowed because someone previously spilled juice on him.
  • In The Stormclad Kid, Bakugo takes the facts of Izuku interning at UA for several months, Present Mic's outburst during the entrance examinations, Izuku somehow getting a new Quirk, and a few rumors about underground UA facilities from his friends and arrives at the conclusion that UA experimented on Izuku to give him a Quirk.
• Epic Fail:
  • Hawks once crashed into his own closed window, fell into a pool, and panicked and thrashed around before realizing it was shallow enough to stand up in. To his horror, Mirko found the footage and put it on social media.
  • Izuku's bullies' attempts to slander him to Hawks fail so spectacularly that not only did Hawks gets the personal info he was looking for to be able to offer Izuku an internship, the actual slander portion fell on deaf ears, assuming Hawks noticed at all.
  • In The UA Analyst Kid, Izuku suffers a broken arm from the Sludge Villain incident...but it didn't come from the actual villain. Instead, Death Arms, in his cheerful congratulations and thanks to Izuku, accidentally high-fived him too hard when Izuku was already somewhat injured. This revelation causes Snipe to fall down wheezing in laughter, Aizawa to glare in irritation, and Death Arms to say that he already said sorry.
• "Eureka!" Moment: When he reads Izuku's entry on him, Eraserhead notes the particular stress on how a Quirkless hero would be able to use his fighting style, but doesn't connect the dots until Present Mic asks Izuku what his Quirk is - and he mentally compares Izuku's reaction to a student who didn't have an answer to a question.
• "Everybody Laughs" Ending: The last scene of The UA Analyst Kid has the UA staff cackling at Izuku's expression when he sees his holographic UA acceptance video - with spliced-together clips of himself delivering the message.
• Exact Words:
  • An intentional example occurs when one of Izuku's bullies talks about his uncle working for the HSPC, only to learn the man is a janitor there, not an administrator like he thought.
  • Hawks causes an unintentional example when talking to Tsubasa and mentions "Knowing the name to write on the internship paperwork." Tsubasa thinks Hawks wants him as an intern when Hawks was actually talking about Tsubasa giving him Izuku's name.
• Face Palm: Mt. Lady does this when she fails to notice something that should have been obvious.
  • It happens first to Izuku pointing out that if she can't cross a narrow street while giant-sized, all she needs to do is shrink down to normal size.
  • Later, when the two of them are in the hospital, she asks Izuku for his autograph, not realizing that Izuku's right arm is in a cast until he points this out to her.
  • When she successfully tests one of Izuku's ideas (to climb a building by growing, grabbing the edge of the roof and then shrinking), Hawks asks her if she can get down the same way. She palms her face when she realizes that no, she can't.
• Famed In-Story:
  • Izuku becomes famous for his part in announcing the second year's Sports Festival final tournament, where his analysis skill is on full display.
  • Unlike in canon where Izuku only recognized him after he revealed his Quirk, Eraserhead is instantly recognized by Class 1-A once he gives his name, as U.A. had to tell everyone the reason why there was an entire class missing from last year's Sports Festival.
• Fantastic Ableism: Staff and students at Aldera Middle School are highly bigoted against the Quirkless Izuku. While Bakugo is unable to involve himself due to being restrained by his parents, Bakugo's social group in particular assume Izuku could only gain positive attention from heroes under false pretenses and believe the authorities will remove and arrest Izuku once notified that he's "a Quirkless", and spend the story doing their best to make this happen. This ends up absolutely blowing up in their faces when the teachers of UA happen to be taking a tour there to find out more about Midoriya, and the principal's (and by proxy, the entire school's) bigotry is exposed in front of them. By the time of the sequel, Izuku's homeroom teacher has been replaced and a substantial chunk of the staff is in danger of losing their jobs permanently once the current school year concludes, much to their terrified dismay.
• Fastball Special:
  • At Izuku's suggestion, Hawks and Mt. Lady try this trick to capture a bunch of thieves, with the latter as the "ball". It'll later get the hashtag #MtYeet.
  • Later Izuku would perform this same trick with Kirishima during the entrance exam.
• Foodfight!: Implied in the sequel. After returning from offering Izuku One For All, Sir Nighteye runs into his agency shouting, "WE’RE UNDER ATTACK, ALL MIGHT IS THROWING BOWLS OF SOBA AT PEOPLE!” This is immediately followed by “I AM HERE, WITH A LATE LUNCH!” and the sounds of screaming.
• From Bad to Worse: As Nezu and his secretary Shimakaze leaves their meeting with Aldera' school staff (where they effectively dismantled them for mistreating a Quirkless Izuku and got them to sign over his heroic education to U.A.), Shimakaze removes a recording device and asks if Nezu is going to call her father off. Nezu laughs and answers no.
• Fun with Acronyms: UA named one of its robots the "Precision Iterative Testing by Chucking-things-at-Heroes-for-great-Enhancement Robot." P.I.T.C.H.E.R. for short.
• Gilligan Cut: While out spending time with his friends (Hawks, Mirko and Mt. Lady), Inko tells Izuku not to get mugged. What do you think happens next scene?
• Got Me Doing It: After becoming part of the UA faculty, All Might finds himself referring to Nezu as "the rat" and thinks that his colleagues are rubbing off on him.
• Hairpin Lockpick: Aizawa mocks a burglar for using this in the sequel.
  Aizawa (internally): Idiot forgot to bring a tension wrench… or he’s been watching too many cartoons.
• Ham and Deadpan Duo: Of the Straight Man and Wise Guy variety. Aizawa plays the deadpan straight man against... basically everyone. Most often Present Mic, his fellow announcer, but also Hawks and Ms. Joke—and even Izuku, occasionally. Discussed in-universe by viewers of the Sports Festival, who laughingly remark online about how "completely done" Aizawa seems with Mic's and Izuku's excitement.
• #HashtagForLaughs:
  • The hashtags that develop as a result of Izuku's accidental debut include #UAnalyst and #GoGreenie.
  • The sequel has #1HandcuffSalesman and #MtYeet.
• Hypocritical Humor: A brief gag between Yuu and Usagiyama in the sequel:
  Yuu: Okay, okay! Just hol’ up! I need ta’ write this shit down, so go slow!
  Usagiyama: Oi, you watch your fucking language, there’s a child present!
• Incoming Ham: All Might makes his intervention into a burglary with the required bombastic announcement. It even garners the hashtag #1HandcuffSalesman.
  All Might: Gentlemen, I am here, with some brand new handcuffs! Who would like to try them on first?
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • Even though things have radically changed, Izuku is attacked by the Sludge Villain, only for All Might to save him, with the villain escaping in the same circumstances and capturing Bakugo.
  • Similarly, despite Izuku organizing various heroes to both counter the Sludge Villain and put out the fires Bakugo started, they still end up needing All Might to save the day.
  • And All Might offers One for All to Izuku after the Sludge Villain incident, seeing in him the successor he was looking for. Even if as opposed to canon, where Izuku accepted immediately, he needs some time to think about it, he ultimately accepts.
  • Izuku and Ochako's first meeting goes very similar to canon. He's able to talk to her this time around, though.
  • Izuku still takes down the 0-pointer saving Ochaco with a One for All Smash, breaks himself in the process, and needs her to use her quirk to save him from falling.
• Internal Reveal:
  • The staff and students of UA eventually learn Izuku is Quirkless, and they don't care beyond making sure he feels safe and comfortable.
  • Bakugo's parents learn how poorly he's been treating Izuku after the former loses his shit upon seeing Izuku on television.
  • Present Mic finally learns about Izuku's new power by witnessing it at the entrance exam.
  • Izuku's classmates in 1-A find out he was not a U.A. student when he accidentally got involved in announcing the previous year's Sports Festival on the first day of U.A.
• Irony:
  • In a meta sense. After meeting Izuku, and realizing his great potential, Nighteye gives serious thought to the possibility of making Izuku the next One for All Torchbearer instead of Mirio.
  • In The UA Analyst Kid, All Might is given a work study opportunity at Aldera Middle School as part of his teaching education. When All Might announces this over the staff chat, Nezu is quick to insist that no one tell Izuku ahead of time. Mic in particular replies "LMAO." Little does Mic know that they're pulling the same stunt with him—keeping him in the dark about Izuku inheriting One For All so they can laugh at Mic's face when he hosts the entrance exams.
• Is This Thing Still On?: The catalyst for Izuku becoming famous is due to him accidentally leaning on the broadcast button while in the announcer's booth while giving his analysis on Suneater and Shieldwall. Eraserhead notices him leaning on the button, but Present Mic stops him from pointing it out until after Izuku realizes it for himself since the analysis is both great, on-point and entertaining.
• Joke and Receive: Upon finding out that Izuku is the analyst from last year’s Sports Festival, Kaminari jokingly asks if Izuku was a lost kid, only to be informed that that’s precisely what happened.
  Kaminari: I was just joking!
  Jirou: Task failed successfully.
• Karmic Jackpot: After Izuku becomes an intern at U.A., some U.A. students who notice and ask about him pass notes to him stating that they will fight to protect him if it turns out Nezu was experimenting on him. They are rewarded with extra credit.
• Lame Pun Reaction: The U.A. staff boo All Might when he makes a pun of "Might privilege".
• Laser-Guided Karma: Izuku's bullies trying to get him in trouble with UA and the Heroes only gets them to suspect something is wrong at Aldera Middle School and, in Hawks' case, gets him there at the exact time to catch them in the act of attacking Izuku.
• Let Me Get This Straight...: From the teacher's chat in Chapter 7:
  AizawaShota: So, while we’re still repairing after the round, let me get this straight; you all want to set up a post-Sports Festival deathmatch tournament/battle royale/survival game to decide on who gets to be Midoriya’s internship mentor?
  WentTooFarWest: yes
  Midnightie: yes
  NOOOOO: yes
• Literal Metaphor:
  • Nezu has the missiles used to keep Hawks (who has shown up unannounced) out of U.A. fitted with an actual boot - so he can be literally kicked in the ass.
  • When squabbling in the teacher's chat over who gets to be Izuku's mentor, Snipe invokes shotgun. Thirteen brings up that shotgun only applies to car seats. Snipe responds by posting a video file in the chat of him picking up and racking a pump action shotgun, following with the message "Hand over the green bean intern and nobody gets hurt."
  • Nezu again, in response to the above: in the post-festival staff meeting, Snipe tries to again call shotgun. In response, Nezu calls automatic chaingun turrets. Everyone sitting near Snipe immediately vacates their seats.
• Locked Out of the Loop:
  • Vlad King manages to miss Izuku helping announce the Sports Festival due to being on security detail and dealing with someone who tried to break in.
  • When Nezu suggests hiding All Might passing One for All to Izuku from Present Mic (so he will act as a benchmark for the intended cover story, to train Izuku on information management, and because it would be funny), Vlad exclaims to be glad that he's not the one out of the loop this time. And indeed, when the practical exam begins, Present Mic basically swears up a storm when he sees what he believes is a Quirkless kid running at super speed and jumping huge leaps, until Midnight gasses him.
• LOL, 69: At one point, Present Mic is fined 69 yen for cursing in the official U.A. teacher's chat. Several different teachers (including Present Mic) immediately comment, "Nice."
• Malicious Slander: Izuku's bullies try to ruin Izuku's reputation to U.A. and Hawks by telling them that he's quirkless and making up all sorts of lies. It goes exactly the opposite way to how they expect.
• Miles Gloriosus: Tsubasa, who also takes part in UA's entrance exam, accosts Izuku before it and shouts that he'll make him fail. In the actual exam, however, he is seen fleeing in panic from the villain bots, while other kids his age easily take them down. The author also mentions a deleted scene where he accuses Nezu of making him fail the exam, to which Nezu replies that he could've, but didn't have to.
• Mistaken for Servant: Aldera Principal Hayasui at first wonders why the U.A. delegation showed up to his school with a hobo in tow, until Nezu introduces him as Eraserhead.
• Mistaken for Superpowered: Izuku's on-the-spot analysis of two sparring students is so good the general public thinks that he has some sort of analysis Quirk when he is actually Quirkless. When Izuku hears Sato call him that, he is a little irked that his skill is written away as a Quirk.
• Mugging the Monster: Izuku is on a group outing with Hawks, Mirko, and Mt Lady, when they get jumped in an alley by a mugger, who had no idea that he was trying to hold up a group that included three pro-heroes (two of whom are in the Top Ten), due to them all being in civilian attire at the time.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Someone thinks What Would Izuku Do? and feel bad about the idea of relying on him. Here, though, it's Mt. Lady.
  • Izuku's first encounter with Ochako Uraraka is before the entrance exam, with her using Zero Gravity on him.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Nezu is trying to find information on Izuku - who has such little presence in social media that Nezu is forced to request help from his contacts. In comes Tsubasa's email, sent through his school email account, giving Nezu exactly the information he needed.
• Non-Indicative Name: Played with. Izuku decides to call his iteration of One For All "Stormclad", relating to the visual appearance of being cowled in lightning. Following the theme, he and his teachers measure the quirk's power by storm categories (Categories 1 through 5) instead of percentages. But while visually the name is very fitting, Stormclad is still One For All, a physical enhancement quirk, and has no known connection with storms or storm-related phenomena; as Nezu notes, the green lightning isn't even actual electricity.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Hawks comments on how Nezu used him as a target for the school's anti-air missile defences when he showed up unannounced. A side story showed what happened.
  • According to The Stormclad Kid, Aizawa apparently used to start fires on purpose during the first year he began teaching, with the heavy implication that he did this in retaliation for his students waking him up from his naps. He claims he's since learned better.
• Not So Above It All:
  • Recovery Girl wasn't pleased about being asked to carefully cut around all of the Hero Signatures on Izuku's cast, but she also added her own before doing so.
  • Izuku apparently agreed with Nezu's plan to keep Present Mic Locked Out of the Loop regarding One For All.
• Not What It Looks Like: Downplayed. Bakugo's first impression on much of the class is grilling Izuku with thinly-veiled hostility over the "late" emergence of his quirk. Bakugo clearly thinks Izuku obtained some "unfair" advantage by participating in secret experiments with UA, but to everyone else, Bakugo sounds like he's bullying someone for how their quirk differs from their parents, which—despite being a known and legitimate, if unusual, phenomenon—is immediately understood, per common soap opera plots, to imply unclear parentage and infidelity accusations. To those paying attention, it sounds like Bakugo's trying to publicly humiliate Izuku by implying that his mother committed infidelity and that he's not his father's son, which upsets onlookers enough that they separate the two and try to comfort Izuku afterwards. It's downplayed because even though the classmates misunderstand what Bakugo is actually trying to imply, they still correctly understand his intent to bully and intimidate Izuku.
• O.C. Stand-in: Several students at Aldera Middle School that appeared as background characters in canon are given names and personalities here. The standout example is Sagiri Fuka, a girl with floating light blue hair who appeared only once during Izuku's Training Montage, but is here the only classmate of Izuku's to become his friend and be nice to him following his time at the Sports Festival.
• Ocular Gushers: In Chapter 16 of The UA Analyst Kid, the Midoriyas and (most of) the UA teachers have a party to celebrate Izuku inheriting One For All. After All Might toasts Izuku, the chapter cuts to Nezu instructing his secretary to cancel the security alarms, as the flooding in the lobby is due to the Midoriyas' crying. He also notes that everyone is fine, but they're waiting on a bilge pump in the teacher's lounge.
• Oh, No... Not Again!: After Present Mic trolls the entrance exam participants by telling them to raise their left arms, then their right arms, and then concluding the exam, before laughing and handing out the actual exam papers, a watching Eraserhead groans in frustration.
  Eraserhead: He did it again. Didn’t we specifically tell him not to do that this year?
  Nezu: Well, Eraserhead, you told him not to do it again this year. I find that it’s a great way to make sure everyone in the exam hall knows left from right. Sometimes prior educators miss out on the fundamentals.
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations:
  • Played straight in the conversation between Hawks and Tsubasa. Hawks isn't even paying attention to Tsubasa's accusations towards Izuku, and due to a mistiming between messages, Tsubasa ends up thinking that Hawks mentioning how having a name would be important for making an internship request refers to him instead of Izuku.
  • Inverted. During a phone call between All Might and Sir Nighteye, the latter tells the former he found a kid worthy of taking One for All, but All Might turns said suggestion down since he already has his sights on somebody else. When the two of them realize they're talking about the same kid (Izuku), they burst into laughter.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: When he finally realizes that the UA staff and the Pro Hero Hawks are asking about the social outcast Midoriya instead of the golden boy Bakugo, Aldera Principal Hayasui blurts out in front of them why they would want someone who's quirkless. The conversation quickly goes downhill for him from there, especially once Nezu gives Midoriya Inko free rein to air her grievances.
• Original Character:
  • The author created several characters to fill out the third-year classes (second year in this fic due its time frame), given we only know a few canon names for that year (namely Mirio, Tamaki, and Nejire in particular).
  • There's also Shimakaze Hatsue, Nezu's secretary. Her dad Taruki is also one of Nezu's contacts, who Word of God says is part of an investigative hero agency.
• Point of Divergence: The point of divergence is of course Izuku attending the U.A. Sports Festival a year before canon begins, accidentally getting lost and finding his way into the announcer's booth, commentating on the fight and analyzing the Quirks, and becoming famous as a result. The real divergences to canon start coming up in The UA Analyst Kid; during the second Sludge Villain incident where Bakugo is held hostage, Izuku is recognized by the heroes on-scene and comes up with a plan that they follow to take down the villain.
• Profanity Police:
  • Aizawa repeatedly interrupts Present Mic's swearing around Izuku by shouting "MIC!" overtop of the swear words.
  • The Swear Jar Bot pretends to fine people (mostly Mic) for cursing in the teacher's chat.
• Psychological Projection: Tsubasa claims Izuku must have lied to Hawks to get the hero's internship offer, when he made up Malicious Slander to cast Izuku in a bad light.
• Reflexive Response: Izuku still ends up latching onto All Might's leg, but only because his training with Aizawa has conditioned him to tackle fleeing heroes. A later chapter shows he reflexively tackles anyone who runs away from him, like a fleeing mugger.
• Respected by the Respected: Izuku's analytical abilities earn him a lot of respect from Pro Heroes; when he arrives on the scene of the Sludge Villain attack and a few heroes recognize him, he gets patched into the HeroNet radio to coordinate a plan. Mt. Lady even asks Izuku if he'd sign her cast after said incident.
• Running Away to Cry: The moment Izuku realizes Eraserhead is on to his quirklessness, he bolts out of the room and doesn't stop until he reaches an empty classroom and breaks down in tears. Luckily, Eraserhead follows him and is able to calm him down.
• Scrapbook Story: Downplayed. The first story is a fusion of traditional storytelling and this, being mostly told in regular third person narration but interspersed with social media posts, texts, emails, and other such communications that are being created concurrently alongside, and often in reaction to, the events of the third person narrative. As the focus characters are not necessarily viewing these communications, they exist mostly to give the audience insight into various other characters' reactions to the 2nd Year Sports Festival as it is occurring and, occasionally, funny anecdotes of what is happening elsewhere.
• Secret-Keeper: All Might shares the secret of One for All, his current health status and his intention to pass it onto Izuku with the teachers.
• Serendipity Shock: The first story in the series is tagged "the good luck fairy woke up and realized she owes izuku ten years' worth of luck" and "she's paying it back lump sum with compounding interest," and it shows. Izuku's analysis is praised instead of denigrated by the UA staff, other Pros looking to take him on as an intern, and everyone in between, and by the sequel, he's interning in U.A., getting trained by all of the teachers, and remains in contact with multiple other Pros. Not only that, karma has also caught up with Aldera Middle School and Bakugo for how much pain they inflicted on Izuku. More than once, Izuku has gone speechless for how good things are going for him, especially when he reads on social media how much everyone is loving his analysis.
  • During his UA internship, Izuku has regular sessions with Hound Dog, and whenever he starts falling into a loop of quirkless Self-Deprecation and how he doesn't deserve his good luck, Hound Dog will shoot at him with a nerf gun to remind him to knock it off.
• Shame If Something Happened: After Miruko posts Hawks' Epic Fail video, he mentions that it would be a shame if something happened to Miruko's carrot-filled fridge and its contents.
• Ship Tease: There's some teasing between Mt. Lady and Hawks.
• Shout-Out:
  • A subtle example that is confirmed by Word of God. The number of likes on a reddit post discussing the Sludge Villain incident is 849, which is a common abbreviation for the story One for All and Eight for the Ninth.
  • Power Loader's name in the UA group chat is a reference to the Yogscast song "Diggy Diggy Hole."
  • Some of the social media accounts who post in reaction to Izuku's analysis at the Sports Festival are "S. Kudo @SKudoAnalysis" and "TADA!shi @TadashiH4m4d4."
  • After Toshinori tells the UA staff about One For All and his intent to train Izuku as his successor, Nezu creates a server called "The Great Green Bean Conspiracy" for all the adults in-the-know. Its server rules are mostly homages to Fight Club, although Toshinori doesn't get the reference.
  • The UA Analyst Kid mentions an apparel company that caters to wing and tail mutation quirks called Ala Alba. Word of God confirms the reference in the comments and also mentions that the company made a partnership line with Hawks called Ala Rubra.
  • Several to Star Wars:
    • The practical portion of the entrance exam is introduced with narrative set-up: "Somehow, the supervillain ‘Palpatine’ has returned."
    • The numbers for the 0-pointers, CC-2224, CT-7567, CC-3636, and CT-5555 are the numbers for clone troopers Cody, Rex, Wolfe, and Fives respectively. Additionally, Power Loader cries out "NO, CODY!" when Izuku delivers a Detroit Smash to CC-2224.
    • The activation protocol for the 0-pointers is protocol 66.
  • Nezu recommends a UA hopeful that didn't manage to make it in to the Tracey School of Rescue Heroics.
• Shrinking Violet: Twofold example in one of the Sports Festival matches between Tamaki Amajiki and an original character, the shield-generating Mamoru Tate, who's just as shy as the former. Present Mic calls them the "shyguys" in their match introduction, and Aizawa chalks their cautiousness in combat to respect for their opponent (but also due to nerves).
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: As Izuku gains confidence and becomes more comfortable with his educators, he becomes more willing to engage in playful verbal spars, particularly with the intentionally goofy and playful Hawks, who lampshades this change.
• Sound-Effect Bleep: Many instances of Present Mic swearing are covered up by someone else (usually Eraserhead) shouting "Mic!"
• Spit Take: When Sir Nighteye plays a video of Mirko doing an All Might impression, a listening Centipeder spews his coffee across the room.
• Spraying Drink from Nose: When All Might mentions how he usually activates his quirk "clench your buttcheeks and yell 'SMASH!'", Nezu snorts his tea clean out his nose. Eraserhead later sends a video of it to Mic to cheer him up from being Locked Out of the Loop to Izuku getting One For All, though Nezu has to cheerfully remind them not to leak it.
• Stating the Simple Solution:
  • During the Sludge Villain incident, when Mount Lady claims that the streets are too narrow for her to cross like in canon, Izuku asks why she doesn't just shrink to normal size. She face palms for not being able to think something so blindingly obvious.
    Mt. Lady: Please don't tell anyone about that.
  • Later in the same incident, when asked how they can use Backdraft to weaken the Sludge Villain when he's busy containing the fires started by Bakugo's blasts, Izuku runs into a nearby building and grabs the fire extinguisher that the local building code requires that every building in that part of town have.
• Super Window Jump: Eraserhead departs his first homeroom with Class 1-A by falling out the window like a diver. Izuku is the only one following his last instructions to get to the training ground instead of clustering at the window wondering where he went.
• Swear Jar:
  • The U.A. staff chat has one, which Present Mic finds out the hard way. It's not really taking money, just displaying messages.
  • Played with in chapter 17. Kinoko Komori's family owns a mushroom-speciality restaurant, and they have a jar for mushroom puns.
    "“I hit them with the portobello grill pun! Did mom and dad drop me on my cap when I was a baby, auntie? I mushroom punned Mirko!” Kinoko paused a moment, thinking back to her most recent outburst, before she threw in a third coin."
• Take That!: The UA practical exam is a hypothetical villain attack scenario that begins with "Somehow, the supervillain 'Palpatine' has returned".
• Teleportation Misfire: One of Togata's sports festival matches ends when he punches his opponent mid-teleport and throws off his aim, causing him to ring himself out by teleporting himself to the top of a flagpole.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: At the end of the first fic, upon seeing Izuku being ushered out by two heroes who say they want him as an intern, one of the students in his class (a girl with floating blue hair) smiles and says that it's about time something nice happened to him.
• Time Skip: Two months have passed between the first story and the sequel.
• Troll: Nezu sets up a virtual swear jar just to mess with his employees and designed the modified QAAM anti-air missiles to have ludicrous-looking boots on the tips just so he can enjoy firing them at Hawks and watching them "literally kick [his] ass!" He also wants to leave Present Mic out of the loop regarding Izuku inheriting All Might's Quirk so he can get Mic's reaction to Izuku's entrance exam on camera and share it on the staff group chat.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Mt. Lady is fairly capable as a hero, but it's quickly noted that if not for her giant size, the second-year students would be able to handle her solo, never mind as a group. It's eventually learned she graduated from a school with a very mediocre hero course, and she lacks the training most pros have.
• Vertical Kidnapping: It's implied that Hawks has experience with this; when he pulls Izuku out of the window to rescue him from his bullies, Izuku notices how silently and efficiently Hawks pulled off the maneuver and wonders how often he has had to do this.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: For those who can claim Aizawa Shota as a friend, this is how it manifests, at least on his front. Case in point, early on he's shown to keep a constantly updating mental tally on the projected lifespans of Midnight and Present Mic (his oldest and dearest friends, mind) before he would snap and murder them. Mic's numbers in particular start off dangerously low.
• Virtual YouTuber: The UA Analyst Kid reveals that Inko Midoriya is one.
• Watch Where You're Going!: A video on social media showcases Gang Orca and Hawks colliding in the middle of the street. The video caption has a reminder to not text and walk, as well as a warning for swearing.
• Wham Line: For readers, it was the moment they knew canon was not done with Izuku yet.
  Izuku ducked underneath a bridge, and began to type on his phone.
• What the Hell, Hero?: After the entrance exam, and breaking his bones taking down the the zero-pointer, the UA teachers all take turns berating Izuku for doing something so stupid when, with all the training he’s had, he really should have been able to think of a better option. Of course, the worst (and longest) lecture comes from his mother.
• What Would X Do?: During her training fight with U.A.'s Second Years, Mt. Lady keeps thinking about what Izuku would do during the fight. It demoralizes her afterward that her hero training was so mediocre she had to take quirk advice from a kid.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are:
  • After learning that Izuku is Quirkless, Aizawa tells Izuku that his status doesn't matter, as he has proven himself to be a smart kid with an analyzing skill few can compete with, and that many Pro Heroes are now interested in seeing him become a Pro.
  • Izuku gives Mt. Lady a pep-talk after the training fight, praising her skill at fighting while causing the least possible collateral damage, and offering tips on future training.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Aizawa's reaction when he learns why Izuku is kept at the hospital after the fight with the Sludge Villain: dehydration and a fractured arm because Death Arms high-fived him too hard on an arm that was already hurt.