Fanfic / My Hero Academia: Ultra Achievement

My Hero Academia: Ultra Achievement is a My Hero Academia fanfiction series, written by Kyon2261 and hosted on Archive of Our Own.

The series currently has three fics; one fic is a prologue detailing the events prior to the characters starting at UA. This fic also sets up the deviations from canon. The second and third fics continues on to characters' time at UA.

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My Hero Academia: Ultra Achievement contains examples of:

• A Day in the Limelight:
  • Chapters 64 and 65 are dedicated to the members of the League of Villians, offering insights into their past.
  • Chapter 103, save for the prologue, is dedicated to Toru Hagakure.
• Actually, I Am Him: During the internship arc, Ryukyu suggests to Izuku that he read the work of Kotatsu Raiki and Manaki Yozuki on Quirk Framework. Izuku then reveals that he is Kotatsu Raiki.
• Adaptation Name Change: Several characters have different hero names in this fic.
  • Mina gets to keep her original choice of Alien Queen.
  • Toru goes with The Spirit Hero: Yokai.
  • Ojiro chooses The Great Sage Hero: Sun Wukong.
  • Yaomomo chooses The Creation Hero: Alchemist.
  • Tenya chooses The Reactive Hero: Reciprocator.
  • Aoyama is The Shining Hero: Photon.
  • Izuku chooses The Unwavering Hero: Ultra.
  • Mineta changes his name from Grape Juice to the Earthy Hero: Vintage.
  • Bakugo chooses The Explosive Hero: Detonator in Chapter 25.
  • Jiro changes her name to The Soundwave Hero: Distortion.
  • Todoroki becomes The Centigrade Hero: Thermodynamic in Chapter 58.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
  • All Might and Aizawa have a more cordial relationship than in canon, due to properly meeting and working together since Aizawa's senior year at UA.
  • All Might is also better acquainted with Izuku and Inko due to how Hisashi helped All Might defeat All for One at the cost of his own life.
  • Izuku stops seeing Bakugo as his friend early in this series.
  • The break between All Might and Nighteye is much worse than in canon due to how the latter reacts to All Might passing One for All to Izuku.
  • Because of Izuku's efforts, Classes 1-A and 1-B have a much closer relationship, easily hanging out during their lunch periods.
• Adaptational Early Appearance:
  • Iida meets with Izuku early when they are both 12, and develop a friendship from there.
  • Aizawa and Present Mic show up during the fight with All for One as newly-minted heroes.
  • One chapter in the prelude is dedicated to glimpses of the future 1-A students and Shinsho.
• Adaptational Badass: Thanks to Izuku's analysis, Ochako realizes that her Quirk isn't just negating gravity, but being able to modify an object's inertia, and that the nausea she suffers from negating gravity is because she diffuses the energy through her own body. With training, she ends up being able to affect bigger objects, increase an object's weight, grant herself pseudo-Super-Strength (by putting more force into her punches), and even fly.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • Bakugo is a big Jerkass at the beginning of canon, but somewhat mellowed out - particularly as he got hit by several events that showed him he was no longer at the top. Here, he never goes through those events, and becomes unhinged enough that he deliberately fires a lethal attack through Izuku just to hit All Might during the end-of-term examination — all so he can claim victory for himself.
  • Endeavor is even worse than in canon. During the fight with Stain, he reveals that Shoto is actually a Designer Baby that he commissioned just for the sake of his ambition - as far as he's concerned, Shoto's not even his biological son. When Toya died, he bribed the registry officials to erase his name from the family registry, and took out his tombstone so no official trace of Toya's existence remained. He would later threaten Natsuo with the same thing after the latter attempted to denounce Endeavor's abuse of Shoto.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Interruption: During their practical test, Kyoka is belting out "Under Pressure" to discombobulate Ectoplasm's giant clone while Shoji runs for the gate. The original Ectoplasm tries to stop him, and when Kyoka sings "It’s the terror of knowing what this world is about, watching some good friends screaming...", Shoji finishes the line with "Let me out!" as he pushes Ectoplasm through the gate.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Izuku uses his observations of heroes to give the latter new ideas on what they can do. Present Mic, for example, realizes he can fire off ultrasonic blasts.
• Batman Gambit: Izuku's plan for the Heroes vs Villains fight partially hinges on knowing just how Bakugo will react to the situation. Tenya later thinks that Izuku is conducting Bakugo like a symphony orchestra playing the 1812 Overture.
• Beautiful All Along: Toru, after she gets a Quirk suppressant bracelet.
• Been There, Shaped History: Nezu was the one who kickstarted the Age of Quirks due to the experiments he was put through in Pripyat - and in fact he witnessed the Luminiscent Baby's Quirk awakening.
• Big Damn Kiss: Ochako gives one to Izuku during their fight at the Sports Festival's tournament final.
• Break the Haughty: Bakugo is forced to face the fact that he is no longer the top dog - particularly when he not only has the lowest score among those admitted through the Entrance Exam due to his poor Civilian and Hero scores, but the person right behind him was just two points away from knocking him off the Hero Course.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Izuku reveals at one point that he can lift fifty tons without using his Quirk.
• Chekhov's Gun: During Hagakure's costume refit, Mei notes that the former's hair can hide an object if it is behind it. Hagakure later uses this trick during the Cavalry Battle to hide the 10-million-points banner from the other teams.
• Chekhov's Gunman: One of Izuku's bullies turns out to work at the laundromat where Ochako washes her clothes, and his reveal of what he, Bakugo, and the others at Aldera did to Izuku ensures Ochako's earlier dislike for Bakugo grows into hatred.
• Children Forced to Kill: During the USJ Incident, Aoyama kills a villain that was about to kill Ojiro and Shoji by shooting him in the head with a full Navel Laser blast.
• Cliffhanger: Chapter 81 ends with Endeavor dying in a massive explosion, killing Stain and everyone else present - including Izuku, Ochako, Shoto, Eraserhead, Present Mic, Burnin' and several media crews. Solved when it turns out to be Izuku having Combat Clairvoyance, allowing him to prevent the catastrophe.
• Combat Clairvoyance: Izuku sees how Stain killing Endeavor will cause an enormous catastrophe, so he asks Aizawa to cancel Endeavor's Quirk just enough for Izuku to knock him unconscious and away from Stain's thrown knife, distracting Stain so Ingenium can arrest him.
• Contrived Coincidence:
  • Ochako ends up renting the same apartment where Aizawa lived when he was a U.A. student.
  • After finding a box that belonged to Aizawa, the discovery and the scare from the situation end up shaking Ochako so much All Might suggests she spend the weekend at Izuku's house - and that same weekend her apartment is destroyed in a fight between Mt. Lady and a giant villain.
• Costume Evolution: Some of the 1-A students get costume upgrades in Chapter 22.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • During the Sports Festival tournament, Ochako deliberately gives Bakugo a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to both Break the Haughty and get revenge for his brutal bullying of Izuku, while Bakugo is unable to touch Ochako at all.
  • When Bakugo attacks Izuku after the internships, Izuku not only tanks the huge explosion the former began with, he quickly armlocks him so he can't attack again.
• Dance Battler: All Might encourages Mina to use her passion and talent for dancing as part of her fighting style.
• Death by Adaptation: Death Arms and Mister Blaster are murdered by Stain.
  • Averted with Endeavor and Stain - as it was a vision from Izuku's Danger Sense.
• Drives Like Crazy: Midnight.
• Door Stopper: As of chapter 118 in the second fic, this series clocks over 580,000 words, and the fic is in the middle of the Final Exams Arc.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Averted. When Bakugo is assaulted by Toga, it's played up as the horrifying, mind-searing event it is, with the victim left traumatized.
• 11th-Hour Superpower:
  • Izuku temporarily awakens Danger Sense in the form of Combat Clairvoyance, allowing him to prevent Stain from killing Endeavor and potentially causing a catastrophe that would have led to hundreds of deaths.
  • All Might wasn't Quirkless as everyone (including himself) believed, but instead had a Quirk that increased his ability to adapt to anything - which meant he was able to adapt to One for All's Life Drain properties. Learning of this and fully activating the Quirk becomes key to help save Izuku's life.
• The Empath: Nejire is empathic, which can play merry hell with her mood when surrounded by unhappy people.
• Enemy Within: All for One took advantage of his access to Aldera to access Bakugo and keep swapping his Quirk with a copy and back, and then merged both together, allowing him to establish himself as a Split Personality in Bakugo's mind that can copy his mannerisms so well it is virtually impossible to differentiate between them.
• Even Evil Has Standards: When he learns of how Shoto was a Designer Baby commissioned by Endeavor, Dabi decides to take his youngest brother out of his revenge plans.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Bakugo may be a jerk with an extreme sense of entitlement and the belief Izuku has it in for him, but he still has standards and maintains (sometimes) a level of objectivity:
    • During both the Entrance Exam and the Heroes vs Villains exercise, Bakugo seemingly throws around his Quirk with no care of collateral damage, culminating in his use of his explosive-storing gauntlets at full power against Izuku, not caring that he could bring down the building and quipping it wouldn't kill Izuku if he dodged. It's later revealed he knew exactly what he was doing (and he believes his knowledge of explosives matches if not surpasses Power Loader's): during the Entrance Exam he didn't kill a single "civilian" bot, and during the Heroes vs Villains he only fired his gauntlet after making sure that Izuku would indeed dodge and the blast wouldn't hit any load-bearing part.
    • When, during a no-Quirk spar, Izuku struck him in exactly the right nerve cluster to make him open his hand and release an explosion, Bakugo explained what happened... and admitted it could only have been an accident because, as he himself points out, there was no way Izuku could have known beforehand since he too had only found after Izuku moved to Tokyo.
    • During his tournament match with Ochako, Bakugo opened with what everyone assumed was lethal force. It later turns out that it was his AP Shot, used in such a way that it would have simply thrown Ochako out of the ring almost unharmed had she not been able to fly. And during the rest of the fight, Bakugo took extreme care to not use any sort of excessive force even by accident in spite of being on the receiving end of a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
  • After learning how much of a bastard Endeavor actually is, Burnin' begs Aizawa to get Shoto away from the internship and decides to leave Endeavor's agency.
  • Endeavour himself may have the personality of a dumpster fire, but he refuses to discriminate against the Quirkless, prioritizes saving lives over his feelings toward his pride and other Heroes, and when Burnin leaves he doesn't try and sabotage her. He also tries to have Fuyumi stop defending him, as he's aware any association with him could ruin her.
• Explosive Overclocking: Denki does this to himself in the final exam versus Midnight. His normal charge is about three million volts, but he overcharges himself up to three hundred million volts, which gives him an impressive mental boost but also hurts a lot. When Midnight surrenders so he will get rid of that much electricity, the resulting lightning bolt is heard for kilometers around, destroys all the windows in the zone and causes all the lights in the training grounds to shut down in order to avoid surges.
• Fantastic Racism: A subtler example than most: The narration notes that during lunch period, baseline humans tend to stick together, shunning those with mutant-type Quirks. In order to combat this, Izuku invites people with mutations such as Ashido and Tokoyami to sit with him and his friends, hoping to encourage other baseline humans to mix with heteromorphs.
• Fix Fic: The story takes care of dealing with things that made little sense in canon.
  • U.A.'s Entrance Exam is expanded so the would-be students demonstrate that they are actually able to handle themselves like Pro Heroes, instead of just having them destroy robots.
  • Bakugo only got his grenade gauntlets because Power Loader modified Bakugo's design so the limiters would be harder to remove. Due to his misuse of the gauntlets, as well as the fact that Bakugo thought nothing of removing the limiters, the teachers decide to outright remove the gauntlets from his costume and forbid him from getting any support gear to store his sweat until he gets a license to handle explosives.
• Foil: Endeavour and Bakugo: they both have highly destructive Quirks, enormous pride, and terrible tempers and feel a one-sided rivalry toward a One for All bearer, but Endeavour knows when to put his pride and temper aside and is an excellent Hero while Bakugo lets his rule him to the point he tries to murder Izuku to try and pass the end of term exam. Also, All for One is messing with both of them through powerful gifted Quirks in different ways: with Endeavour he created Half Hot-Half Cold and put it into his son but hasn't apparently manipulated him, while with Bakugo he gave him a copy of his Quirk and made sure it came attached with a vestige that is directly responsible for increasing his hatred of Izuku and pushed him in the attempted murder.
• For Want Of A Nail:
  • The fight between All Might and All for One happens when Izuku is 3 instead of 9.
    • All For One is not only ballsy enough to initiate the fight himself, but to do it during a celebration ceremony for All Might reaching Number One on the Hero Billboard chart, which is happening on UA's campus grounds.
    • Izuku did have a Quirk, but All for One scrambled it before it could properly form, rather than him being born genetically Quirkless.
    • All for One is damaged way worse than in canon, Hisashi being the one to turn his head into a mass of scar tissue instead of All Might, who instead uppercuts him into space and leaves AFO paralyzed from the waist down. It's bad enough that he's stuck getting around in a spider-like exoskeleton, while his legs atrophy.
    • All Might's wound from his fight with All for One is different - instead of losing his stomach and damaging his respiratory system, he was infected by a slow-acting poison that eats away at his ability to use One for All.
  • Izuku gets One for All several years before he begins U.A., allowing him to control his power much better.
  • Instead of All Might's unwillingness to retire, the cause of the break between All Might and Sir Nighteye is that the former picked Izuku as his successor.
  • With All Might at the USJ from the beginning, Aizawa escorts the students to the gates, leading to him fighting Kurogiri and discovering he was his friend Oboro.
  • Instead of Izuku, Himiko Toga becomes obsessed with Katsuki Bakugo.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Bakugo may have suffered a traumatic experience when Toga assaults him, but, as pointed out by pretty much everyone else, that doesn't give him leave to act out or attack Izuku just because he believes he had something to do with the attack.
• Freudian Slip: Ashido lets out that she would have fought Ochako if she had kissed Kirishima during their fight — in front of Kirishima.
• Friendly Rivalry: Invoked by Aizawa and Vlad King, who play up their own supposed rivalry to give their classes a healthy sense of competition.
• Fun with Acronyms
  • The anti-spying cube technology that Nezu develops is called Communication and Understanding Bafflement Equipment.
  • Nezu's name itself is one; an acroynm of the Russian phrase нетипичный экспериментальный Зоологический организм нуль, which translates to Non-typical Experimental Zoological Organism Null.
• Giant Wall of Watery Doom: Chapters 110-111 deal with a tsunami and the heroes' (both Pros and students) efforts in fighting it and dealing with the consequences.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Izuku has this view of the world; that there is no such thing as a useless Quirk. Using his Quirk analysis skills, he helps various people discover different and more effective applications of their Quirks.
• Heel Realization:
  • Mineta realizes the pain his attitude causes to the girls, and resolves to become a better person.
  • Aoyama turns against All for One when he realizes the invading villains are planning to kill his classmates.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Hisashi Midoriya used his fire-breathing Quirk to save Izuku from All for One, but cooked his own chest from the inside through overuse and died as a result. All Might has him posthumously declared a Pro Hero to honor him and ensure Inko receives a pension.
• Hidden Depths: Bakugo reveals in Chapter 60 that he's studied the effects of explosions extensively, especially in relation to his own Quirk, to the point where he believes he can match Power Loader in knowledge of safely handling explosives. Therefore, despite looking like he's just setting off blasts with no regard for his surroundings, his explosions are actually calculated to take down his opponents with minimal injuries and collateral damage. He also points out that he didn't kill a single civilian bot during the Entrance Exam, which wouldn't have been possible without knowing his own Quirk inside and out.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: For their test against Nezu, Momo creates as many copies of the target dummy as possible that Tenya then distributes around the city, forcing the principal to either destroy them all or track the original by following the students while the original remained at the starting point, covered in an insulating sheet so the principal would be unable to scan for it, allowing Momo and Tenya to win by running the clock.
• Honey Trap: Himiko Toga sets herself up as one for heroes she encounters, as part of Stain's "crusade" against "fake" heroes. He kills Death Arms this way, but since Manual instead rejected Toga's advances, offered to buy her food, and then took her to a shelter for homeless teens, Stain decided to spare him.
• Horrible Judge of Character:
  • Endeavor fell for Garaki's disguise as Dr Tsubasa, not knowing he was playing into the hands of All for One.
  • In spite of all the proof put in front of her, Fuyumi persists in sticking to her father's side, even as he himself urges her otherwise, out of a (possibly misguided) hope of fixing him.
• How Do I Shot Web?: Izuku faces a lot of challenges as he learns all the different ways in One For All could be used.
• Ignored Epiphany: At one point, Bakugo begins to have doubts about his hypothesis that Izuku had something to do with Toga attacking him, but it doesn't take him long in shedding the idea and latching back on his baseless theories thanks to the piece of All for One in his mind.
• Insistent Terminology: Stain claims he isn't a "Hero" Killer, but a Fake Killer.
• Insult to Rocks: When Natsuo makes a comparison of his sister Fuyumi hoping to have a fairy tale family but not seeing the prince (their father Endeavor) is a frog, Shoto protests because one of his classmates has a frog Quirk, so Natsuo shouldn't compare frogs to Endeavor.
• Internal Reveal:
  • Aizawa discovers that Kurogiri is his friend Oboro during the USJ incident.
  • Aoyama confesses to All for One forcing him to become a spy into U.A.
  • Izuku reveals the truth of One for All to Ochako and Tenya after USJ.
• Intimate Haircut: During the Heroes vs Villains battle, Izuku gets some of his hair burned, so Ochako offers to cut his hair. Midnight surreptitiously makes a video of it for teasing purposes. After this, she pretty much becomes Izuku's hairdresser.
• Irony:
  • When they meet at U.A.'s entrance before the exam, Bakugo boasts that he'll be taking first place while Izuku becomes dead last. When the results come, Izuku takes first place with a perfect score while Bakugo barely scrapes the last Hero Course slot in the exam.
  • When Momo gets her new Hero costume, she notes that, even though it covers much more than her Stripperiffic original, it is so skin-tight that it is somehow more revealing.
  • Tenya doesn't have a reason to go after Stain in this fic and considers doing so the height of foolishness.
  • When Bakugo is trying to escape from the League of Villains after they kidnap him, he ends up in a recycle clothes shop and puts together an ensemble that makes him look like Izuku.
• It's All About Me: Bakugo is this, all the way. He's convinced that he's going to become the Number One Hero in spite of being a horrible human being and that a good number of his classmates are much better fighters than him, and that anything Izuku does is aimed exclusively at making him look bad, even things that have nothing to do with him. It's to the point that he's willing to murder Izuku in the end of term exams just so he (and only he) can claim victory.
• It's Always Sunny at Funerals: Discussed and invoked at Hisashi Midoriya's funeral.
  Narration: A bright and cloudless summer day commemorated Hisashi Midoriya's funeral. Many people associate funerals with the rain, but statistically the sun is just as likely to shine on grief.
• Jerkass:
  • Nighteye outright demands All Might to take One for All back from Izuku, regardless of how this would affect the latter, just because of a Prophetic Fallacy.
  • Endeavor, as per the standard. After the USJ incident, he loses little time in barging in and insulting U.A. and Izuku before demanding Shoto to move, even though he's injured. It's later revealed he's arguably worse, as he openly considers Shoto a tool he commissioned for his own glory, unpersoned Toya after his death (although he claims he only took him out of the public registry and moved his tomb to private grounds to keep crazy fans away) and threatened to do the same to Natsuo because he reported Endeavor's abuse of Shoto.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Bakugo is convinced that Izuku is extremely dangerous and has plans on how to kill everyone in the class, and had the habit since he was eight... because when they were both eight, he spotted some of Izuku's notes having the heading "Things that can kill Kacchan", and found in it instructions on how to burn his hands into charcoal. While he didn't want to murder anyone, Izuku himself admits his social failures as a kid, including his bluntness in writing his notebooks, could be the origin of Bakugo's hate as he talks with Ochako during their first date, noting specifically that part.
• Kansas City Shuffle: Izuku's, Ochako's and Tenya's teams run one during the Cavalry Battle event at the Sports Festival, constantly taking point banners from Bakugo and keeping only enough to pass to the next round, giving the rest to the other teams - while they hide the ten-million-points banner under Hagakure's hair.
• Layman's Terms: Played for Laughs. All for One really likes to speak in chess metaphors and analogies. Too bad for him, Shigaraki has no idea of chess, and Kurogiri has to translate it to video game terms.
  All for One: [...]my boy, this raid is merely an opening move. A feint to test their defenses. I don’t mind sacrificing pawns for this battle, but I don’t want to waste a rook. I can give you a powerful Nomu, a knight or possibly a bishop, but I want you to stick close to Kurogiri. The two of you are far too valuable to lose this early in the game, or at all.
  Shigaraki: I don't understand...
  All for One: Kurogiri! Translate.
  Kurogiri: This section is the tutorial and is therefore level capped. You haven’t earned enough XP yet to unlock multiple elite units. We are executing a Zerg Rush using trash mobs, although the Master will allow use of a DLC character, so long as the two of us avoid permadeath by rage quitting, if necessary.
• Lethal Chef: Nana's attempt at baking a cake, as revealed through Toshinori's internal narration.
  The word terrible summed up his master’s cooking. She regarded measurements as advice (meh, close enough) and never fully grasped how to crack an egg (the shells add character, Toshi! Gives it a bit of a surprise crunch!).
• Living on Borrowed Time: Endeavor has suffered multiple strokes from overheating, most minor but one major, and any intensive use of his Quirk is slowly pushing him closer and closer to his death, leading to his obsession with creating a Superior Successor that will do the dirty jobs he believes All Might and others won't do.
• Locked Out of the Loop: All for One doesn't know that All Might had been poisoned during their fight from when Izuku was three.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • During the summer camp trek, Aizawa jokingly states he's a villain mastermind directing the other teachers against the student heroes before asking Mandalay to warn the heroes about the students' movements. Mandalay warns the students about the cameras Aizawa is using to track them.
  • During that same trek, each student has five flags that can be stolen by the teachers (only two per teacher and student), Pixie-Bob's beasts (one), or each other, and if a student loses a flag, they can't get it back. When All Might steals two of Izuku's flags, Ochako steals them back and lets Izuku take two of her flags.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: During the fight between Tokoyami and Hagakure at the Sports Festival, Dark Shadow tells Hagakure (whose hero name is Yokai) that it is an actual Yokai, but Hagakure isn't certain if it was just messing with her or not.
• Mama Bear: Inko Midoriya is a mother who will do anything to protect her son. When Nezu calls her to tell her about Bakugo nearly killing Izuku and admits he was the one that pressured to put them together in the same team, Inko makes it obvious that, if Izuku doesn't survive, Nezu is going to be next.
• Meaningful Echo: After giving Bakugo a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, Ochako calls him a pebble on the road.
• Meaningful Rename: All Might declares Katsuki a villain and gives him a new name, after Katsuki uses a lethal attack on Izuku just to get a hit in on All Might during the end-of-term Finals.
  All Might: I declare you a villain, Bakugo. You are nothing more than the shattered remnants of two futures that you just blew straight to Hell, destined to rain down your poison to the ground and desecrate all you touch. From this moment forth, you are the Aftermath Villain: Fallout!
• Memetic Mutation: In-Universe, Izuku punching Endeavor to prevent the terrible future he's seen quickly becomes a meme all over the Internet.
• Mercy Kill:
  • Antsugu, the man who had once been Toxic Chainsaw and turned into a Nomu, begs All Might to kill him several times as they fight. All Might attempts to non-lethally stop him, but in the end realizes it's the only way to stop him. The same thing happens with all other Nomus on the scene - Hawks, in particular, becomes distressed after having to kill the winged Nomu, knowing it was a young teenager before being put through the transformation.
  • Nezu gave one to the only two people that treated him well in the Pripyat lab that 'created' him because he didn't want them to suffer from the Fate Worse than Death he had planned for everyone else.
• Mis-blamed: In-Universe, Bakugo thinks Izuku set up Toga's attack on him because she called him "Kacchan", Izuku's old nickname for him. No matter how many times he's told Izuku had nothing to do with the attack, he remains convinced of it, to the point that he interprets Izuku mockingly calling him by that name before the end-of-term exam as Izuku boasting of doing that.
  • Now invoked on Katsuki by All for One, who used his behind-the-scenes control of Aldera to create opportunities to swap Katsuki’s Quirk out for a copy, switching them back and forth, before merging them together to ensure that a fragment of his consciousness has been permanently embedded within Katsuki, quietly manipulating his thoughts and influencing his feelings, and being able to assume direct control at times, which he uses to launch an attempt to kill Izuku that Katsuki is now being blamed for. Furthermore, All for One makes it clear to the heroes that, thanks to spending so much time inside Katsuki’s head, the fragment of All for One’s consciousness can imitate Katsuki’s behaviors perfectly, so they can never be sure whether Katsuki is in control or All For One is.
• Morton's Fork: When Stain has his mind made up about a hero (no matter how heroic they actually are), he crafts scenarios where, whatever his target does, he can claim them to be a "fake" hero and murder them.
• Named by the Adaptation: The USJ Nomu didn't have a name in canon beyond "Nomu". Here, it's called "Peacebreaker".
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: While Bakugo might have been the best at Aldera Middle School, things are different at UA. While his Quirk is powerful, there are many other students (including Izuku) whose Quirks are as strong, if not stronger, than Bakugo's. This is also lampshaded by Kirishima in chapter 19.
• Odd Friendship: Monoma and Shoji become close friends. After the USJ attack, Monoma was the first 1-B student to come running to the infirmary and asked about Shoji after learning he had been injured.
• Old Shame: In-Universe. When All Might had just graduated from U.A., he signed a deal to allow a filmmaker to create a movie based on his life. The result was such a horrible mess that All Might made it a mission to track down every reel and video copy of the movie, in order to ensure no one else gets to see it. Gran Torino has a copy he keeps around as a Guilty Pleasure. So does Izuku - who lets his classmates watch it.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: When Izuku first uses One for All, he rips a force plate off the floor, sending it out the window of the fortieth floor and crashing to the ground. No one was hurt, but everybody keeps on bringing this up to Izuku, who is embarrassed by the whole thing.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: During his last day at Aldera, Izuku refers to Bakugo by his last name instead of 'Kacchan'. Bakugo, while noting the significance of this, does not inquire further due to his pride as his classmates were watching.
• Out-of-Character Alert: Katsuki not calling his mother "old hag" and expressing a wish to do the Mount Fuji track with his father even though he's claimed to hate it is noted by both parents but not acted on - which they should have, because "Katsuki" is actually Toga.
• Papa Wolf:
  • Hisashi jumped into the fight against All for One to save his son, gravely burning the supervillain.
  • Aizawa considers all of his students 'his kids', and it shows: when he realizes Endeavor is abusing Shoto through his Training from Hell, he warns Endeavor that, if he keeps doing it, he's going to kill him.
• Parental Substitute: All Might to Izuku, as per canon. Several characters (including Izuku) note that All Might has taken on the role of being Izuku's father.
• Poor Communication Kills: When a reporter asks Endeavor about his opinion of a Diet Act that is being currently debated, Endeavor, unwilling to either remain neutral or admit he does not know what it is about, gives his support to the Act under the belief it's meant to provide aid to Quirkless people. He learns too late that said law intends to force Quirkless people to be sterilized unless they somehow show signs of not being Quirkless.
• Poor, Predictable Rock: When playing rock-paper-scissors, Aizawa leads with paper.
• Prophetic Fallacy: The reason why Nighteye is so opposed to Izuku getting One for All, to the point that he tells All Might "It's either him or me"? He uses Foresight on Izuku (without permission) and sees him standing in front of Nighteye's and All Might's graves - but can't tell when it happens, why it happens, and he can't even see Izuku's face to find out his expression. As All Might points out, the vision could mean anything rather than Nighteye's rushed conclusion that Izuku getting One for All will cause their deaths.
• Really 700 Years Old: Nezu was born before the Age of Quirks began, making him more than 200 years old.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Hound Dog lays down a blistering speech on Bakugo, pointing out that his behaviour, both in general and towards Izuku, are completely unbecoming of someone who claims to want to become a hero, and that if he doesn't mature, then he won't have a chance to even try.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • When Hagakure approaches Aizawa to request a Quirk suppressant bracelet so she can fully see herself for the first time in more than a decade (and so Ojiro and her parents can see her, too), Aizawa finds her one, tells her that she is to come to him if someone insults her appearance and reassures her that she is pretty.
• Related in the Adaptation:
  • Bakugo and Izuku are distant cousins in this fic.
  • Inko and Rei are cousins through the adoption of the former, making Izuku and Shoto second cousins.
  • Nine is a direct descendant of All for One.
• Retired Monster: Toxic Chainsaw. After All Might arrested him, the Number One realized he was a person forced into villainy by circumstances, so he played up how tough the fight had been to boost the guy's cred, and when he finished his prison sentence All Might got him a good job. Sadly, All for One has him kidnapped and turned into a Nomu precisely because of that connection.
• Running Gag:
  • All for One making chess analogies to Shigaraki, only for the latter to need Kurogiri to translate it into videogame terms.
  • The teachers making bets about the students.
  • Bakugo getting his own words thrown back at him.
  • During the Brawl Knight watching, one of the boys will look at the girl they like, admire their beauty, and admonish themselves for looking.
    • People also comment on the dog being the best part of the movie.
• Secret Relationship: Eraserhead and Ms Joke are in one.
• Secret Test of Character:
  • The Entrance Exam as per canon, but in this fic, there are multiple layers to this.
    • The examinees are told about Villain points (for beating the villain robots) and Civilian points (for helping and rescuing civilian robots). They are not told about Hero points, awarded for showing heroic spirit. These can be earned in several ways: by helping other examinees, showing kindness to civilians and mercy to villains, cooperation, etc.
    • If the examinees team up, everyone in the team earns points for civilian rescues and villain captures.
    • There is also a hard cap of 250 points for each category, done to avoid awarding too many points to examinees in any one category, thereby skewing the results.
  • When Mineta reports his own misbehavior to the teachers, Aizawa expels him, but when the former accepts the ruling and admits his faults, the latter re-enrolls him, saying that if Mineta had tried to make excuses or blamed someone else the expulsion would have been permanent.
• Ship Tease:
  • Boatloads between Izuku and Ochako, which everyone notices.
  • Ashido and Kirishima keep blundering into this.
  • Tenya and Itsuka slowly grow more interested in each other.
  • Denki and Kyoka are becoming quite blatant.
  • Yaoyorozu and Shinso are getting hints of it.
• Shout-Out:
  • During the Heroes vs Villains battle, Izuku and Ochako make multiple references:
    • He drops in the lyrics of "Born to be Wild" in the form of a "guess the song" contest.
    • When Bakugo attacks him, he narrates in a David Attenborough style.
    • When Tenya asks Izuku to surrender, he asks "Tenya, did I ever tell you how I got these scars?", while Ochako calls Izuku "Puddin'".
    • After Tenya is eliminated, Izuku says "Frell me dead" as part of his plan to trick Bakugo into losing.
    • When Bakugo destroys the bomb, Izuku calls him Slim Pickens.
  • When Kirishima talks to Bakugo after the Heroes vs Villains class, the former drops references to Yoda and Police Academy.
  • Airplane!'s "Surely you can't be serious!" joke gets much mileage.
  • When she returns from her internship with David and Melissa Shield, Mei declares "No, this was a triumph! I'm making a note here: huge success!"
  • Izuku and Ochako go on a date to Amagi Brilliant Park.
  • When Tenya encounters Nezu, he paraphrases Ray's speech to Gozer, while Nezu replies by stating "Mine is an evil laugh."
  • As Kyoka notices how Ectoplasm creates his clones (singing certain notes), she drops the relevant The Sound of Music reference ("Sol, a needle pulling thread" and "Re, a drop of golden sun") and counters with "Blaze of Glory" and "Under Pressure".
• Show Some Leg: Ashido does this to distract Kirishima during the Cavalry Battle.
• Side Bet: Several are made during the story.
  • Eraserhead, Midnight and Present Mic make two about Izuku's turn at the written exam. Midnight wins the first (she bet that it would take him less than an hour to finish), but Aizawa wins the second (he bet he would need more paper to write the essay).
  • The teachers bet on which of 1-A's students would Aizawa expel first. Present Mic wins by choosing Mineta.
  • There's also a pool on which couples will form in 1-A. Aizawa was fast enough to pick Izuku and Ochako. He wins after Ochako kisses Izuku during the Sports Festival final combat.
  • The 1-A students also make one on Izuku and Ochako hooking up. Koda ends up winning the pot.
• Smarter Than They Look: Kaminari is a lot smarter than he normally appears, but this only happens if he is charged up to five million volts. The reason he is normally dumb is because he usually discharges down to half that to avoid hurting his classmates.
• Something Only They Would Say:
  • The Winged Nomu reveals himself as Izuku's old classmate, Tsubasa when he calls Izuku "Deku".
  • When Bakugo mentions Oboro Shirakumo to Aizawa, the latter realizes that he's not actually dealing with his student.
• Stealth Insult: Manual drops two in a row when he meets Endeavor at Hosu.
• Stunned Silence: The entire stadium attending the Sports Festival falls silent after Ochako gives Izuku The Big Damn Kiss.
• Stupid Evil: Downplayed in that Bakugo isn't really "evil", but acts this way during the entrance exam: despite being told beforehand in no uncertain terms that rescuing civilian bots is just as important as taking down villain bots, and that actually destroying the latter will be penalized, Bakugo goes out of his way to ignore civilian bots, and destroys villain bots without any care or restraint. He only manages to secure the very last spot on the Hero Course because he captured or destroyed so many villain bots he still reached the cap in spite of the penalizations and thanks to a few Civilian and Hero points he got by accident.
  • Subverted in the Sports Festival. When he appears to be using his Quirk in an attempt to gravely injure Ochako during their fight, he was actually firing in such a way that she would have been shot off the ring almost unharmed.
  • Then played straight at the end-of-term exams, where Bakugo becomes so unhinged he deliberately fires a lethal attack through Izuku just so he can "win" the practical exam against All Might. Although it's later revealed that All for One managed to put part of his consciousness in Bakugo's mind, allowing him to muddle with Bakugo's perception and memories and making him think the attack didn't touch Izuku.
• Super-Empowering: It is heavily implied (and later confirmed) that Izuku's original Quirk was this, and that One for All might have been able to heal the damage All for One caused. It also seems to depend on how close Izuku is to someone else: people like Inko, All Might, Ochako, or Aizawa see great boosts or lose drawbacks to their power, while others like Bakugo don't get to benefit from it.
• Taking You with Me: In Izuku's Combat Clairvoyance vision, Stain manages to kill Endeavor, who in his death throes has a Quirk Awakening and triggers a massive explosion that kills the Hero Killer - along with everything else within a couple of blocks.
• That Came Out Wrong: When Mina suggests that Ochako could sneak into Izuku's room and "make him a man", Ochako replies that Izuku is already a man (meaning that he's very mature and dependable), not realizing at first how Mina implied it.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: After he begins to grow as a person and stops acting like a pervert, Mineta begins to see things turning around for him: he gets a suit that improves his ability to use his hair, makes a deal to create an artificial version of his hair's adhesive for construction, and Kinoko Komori asks him out on a date. After the end-of-term test, Aizawa and Present Mic praise him for his willingness to go beyond and ensure he gets full marks for the test.
• Tempting Fate: In chapter 78, Ryukyu tells Izuku that his first patrol would end up a bit boring. Cue explosions, signaling the start of the Hosu attack.
• Unwinnable Training Simulation: The Heroes vs Villains Battle trial arc turns into this, due to All Might agreeing to Izuku's suggestion to make the bomb used an anti-matter bomb, making it almost impossible for any Hero team to win. After the first game, All Might modifies the rules to give the heroes a better winning chance.
• Villain Respect: What spares Manual from Stain. The fact that he didn't take Himiko's bait and instead tried to find her help along with not even caring about his spot on the rankings, instead focusing on helping people made Stain consider him a True Hero.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: After Bakugo nearly kills Izuku during the end-of-term exam, Ochako swears to kill Bakugo should Izuku not make it.
• We Used to Be Friends: Kirishima tells an unconscious Bakugo that they aren't friends anymore, not after he almost killed Izuku.
• Wham Episode:
  • Chapter 124: All for One has been manipulating Bakugo for most of his life by swapping his Quirk with a copy and back several times, to the point that he's pretty much a secondary personality in Bakugo's mind.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Aizawa calls Ojiro out for his actions during the end-of-term practical exam because he chose to stay and watch Present Mic leave Mineta almost dead instead of helping him or at least getting the target to the door.
  • All Might brutally lays one on Bakugo after he (almost) kills Izuku in his unhinged desire for a victory.
• What You Are in the Dark: Aoyama was ordered by All for One to not interfere during the USJ Incident, so he hid away. But when he saw Ojiro and Shoji about to be killed by a villain, he decided he could not stay away and killed the villain, even if it meant All for One would attempt to kill him.
• Would Hurt a Child: The villains that attack the USJ explicitly state that they're there to murder the teens, mentioning an offer of a hundred million yens per dead student.
  • All for One's doctor not only turned his own grandson into a Nomu, but uses another of Izuku's old classmates to create another Nomu.

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