Fanfic / My Hero School Adventure is All Wrong, As Expected

Art provided by Ozlyk

"Society calls someone who suffers so that another person can benefit a victim."

"Society calls someone who suffers so that society can benefit a hero."

— Hikigaya Hachiman (our "hero")

Hikigaya Hachiman is the last person on earth who should ever apply to U.A. High School. Yet somehow, he manages anyway. In a world of irrepressible optimism and idealism, these are the adventures of a young man who believes that idealism is a lie.

A Fusion Fic between My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, as I Expected and My Hero Academia taking place in the setting of the latter but with characters from the former integrated into the world.

Written by storybookknight, this story is available on SpaceBattles.com (here), Sufficient Velocity.com (here), FanFiction.Net (here), and Archive of Our Own (here).

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These Trope Examples Are All Wrong, As Expected:

A - H

• The Ace: What everyone else in Class 1-A views Hikigaya as, and for good reason. The first thing the rest of his class learns about him is that Hachiman jumped in front of a vehicle to save a dog, broke his leg, and then proceeded to pass the hardest hero test in the country despite that. He won first place in the class Quirk assessment exercises, uncovered a villainous infiltrator right after the representative elections, rallied the rest of the students against the League of Villains during the USJ Incident, and directly assisted Eraserhead and All Might in forcing the main villains to retreat. He's incredibly well built, intelligent, charismatic, has an amazingly versatile Quirk, and, to top it all off, he's the de facto leader of his entire class. This being Hachiman, however, he has quite a few mental hangups lurking just beneath the surface.
• Adaptational Heroism: All the characters from Oregairu are this in comparison to their home series; by virtue of being Pro Heroes, Hero students, or interested in the career.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • Hayama. Since Hachiman (accidentally) assumed the position of both leader and most popular student of Class 1-A, Hayama hasn't had to step up and play peacekeeper as much between the rest of the students, allowing him to be more sincere and relaxed around his fellow classmates. That being said, it's implied that he still failed to stop the bullying Yukinoshita underwent in middle school and doesn't know how to help her mend her relationship with her friends after her team pulled a Cavalry Betrayal on Hachiman and Yui during the U.A. Sports Festival Cavalry competition.
  • Zig-zagged with Bakugo's relationships with 1-A. Much like the original work, Bakugo at first couldn't care less about his classmates, but after being bested by Hachiman, he gains respect towards him, and later Yukino and Yui, and with a bit of planning from Hachiman, comes to at least care about the other students' abilities. This isn't because he cares about them as people, rather he recognizes that it won't mean anything for him to be number one of his group if said group is mediocre, as was taught to him by UA. His reasons for hating Izuku are also expanded, almost bordering on Jerkass Has a Point; from his POV, Izuku was obsessed with having a Quirk and neglected the physical work required to be a Hero, so while being lied to is still the main part, there is still the fact that Bakugo saw Izuku's dreams as insulting because beyond studying other heroes, he wasn't putting in the effort.
  • Miura's noticeably less pompous, doesn't have any kind of animosity with Yukino, and lacks any real Jerkass qualities. Here she acts more like a subtle Gadfly and is put off by what she sees as unnecessary antagonism. In her POV chapter, it's revealed that these changes were brought about by her forcing herself to act like a hero.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: Some Quirks in canon are classified as Mutant/Heteromorph types, which Hachiman is explicitly unable to copy. However, in this story, some may be wholly or partially reclassified as Emitter or Transformation types if the author finds it necessary for the story.
• Adaptation Expansion: Many side characters in canon are expanded on and given plenty of time to shine that they otherwise didn't get in source materials for both series. There's also more focus on the inner workings and dynamics of the hero industry from the perspective of lower-tier pro-heroes.
• Adapted Out: Several Class 1-A and 1-B students were adapted out to make room for the Oregairu cast. On the 1-A side, Satou, Ojiro, Aoyama, Kouda, and Sero were removed to make room for Yukinoshita, Yuigahama, Hayama, Miura, and Tobe. In 1-B, Kamakiri, Komori, and Rin were replaced by Ebina, Iroha, and Kaori. Subverted with regards to Mineta, who lost his spot to Hachiman, but is still in U.A. as one of the General Studies students.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Hachiman to his little sister pretty much all the time. It's revealed later on that there's more to the gesture than just showing affection. Komachi's automatic Adaptive Ability Quirk improves her body without warning her of what exactly changed, which was a constant source of anxiety and frustration to her until Hachiman got a good enough handle on his Quirk to identify the changes and advises her how to make the most out of them. Patting her head then became a daily ritual for Hachiman to scan Komachi's Quirk looking for those changes.
• Affectionate Nickname: A Class Representative is typically referred to by their title in Japanese ("Iincho"), but the majority of Class 1-A refer to Hachiman as "Taichou" (lit. "captain") out of respect and admiration for their de facto leader, with several referring to him affectionately as "Hikitaichou".
• All Your Powers Combined: Komachi's Quirk constantly picks up beneficial changes that it encounters and incorporates them into her body, adapting to give her all the benefits at once. Unfortunately, she doesn't have any control over it, or get any direct feedback about what changed, but it makes her a physical powerhouse despite her age and size.
• Anger Born of Worry: Yui sees this as the cause for Bakugo's grudge against Midoriya for his self-destructive behavior, rather than the real reason being Midoriya's self-sacrificing nature triggering his Inferiority Superiority Complex.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Hachiman's Quirk primarily produces copies of others' Quirks at a negligible level of power, but it also gives him a detailed grasp of how those powers work and what they do. Notably, when Hiratsuka asked him to demonstrate his analytical skills on her own Quirk, he provided such a precise clinical examination of how her power interacted with her body that she uncomfortably felt like she was hearing a record of a medical examiner's report of her own autopsy.
• Backhanded Apology: Todoroki gives the most backhanded apology possible to Hikigaya after messing up the plan for the cavalry battle by allowing Monoma to copy his Quirk. He even delivers it while stabbing Hachiman and his team in the back. Word of God is that Todoroki meant it to be an honest apology; he's just so awful at personal communication that everyone took it as an insult.
  "Sorry, Hikigaya." I heard Todoroki's voice saying from above me. Then, the soft whisp of fabric brushing against fabric as Todoroki took the headbands from a stunned and unresisting Yuigahama. "Your plan almost worked."
• Band of Brothers: Invoked by Hikigaya with regards to the rest of Class 1-A. Hachiman manages to convince the rest of his class to work together in the upcoming sports festival to show the villains that attacked them that messing with Class 1-A only makes them stronger. This being Hikigaya, he of course has an alternative motive behind his ploy, that being to make sure that he makes it to the final rounds of the sports festival to secure himself a place on Cyberpunch's investigative team.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: During the Sports Festival's Battle Tournament, Bakugo and Hachiman are scheduled to fight, but Hachiman offers to bow out and give Bakugo an easy win. Bakugo naturally declines, arguing that it will be more beneficial to him if he can beat the kid who can "do anything." He gets his wish, and Hachiman probably gives him the fight of his life, and by the end of it, he was visibly panicking. Had Hachiman not fainted, Bakugo would most likely have lost.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: So thick between Hachiman and Yukino that, in Bakugo's candid opinion, they should "just get over it and bone already."
• The Bet: The reason why Bakugo doesn't call Totsuka by a nickname. One time Saika insisted he didn't want Bakugo to call him "Ladyboy" anymore, and Katsuki dared him to keep up with his workout regime if he wanted him to stop. Despite throwing up twice in the process, Saika managed to complete the sets and Bakugo kept his side of the deal.
• Big Brother Instinct: Hachiman pedals 50 kilometers every day rather than getting himself a place closer to U.A. simply because he doesn't want his sister to come back after class to an empty house. Predictably, Yukino calls him a siscon for it.
• Big Eater:
  • Many of Hachiman's copied Quirks consume his body's resources, meaning he has to eat extra to supply them. And that's on top of his bodybuilding trick that requires a lot of protein just like regular strength training does. He ends up having to use a Quirk to enhance his digestion in order to eat enough to catch up.
  • Yaoyorozu's Quirk runs on her lipid reserves, and she finds it "inconvenient" that she has to constantly eat high-calorie food like sweets and pastries because of it. That single sentence earns her the silent ire of Hagakure, Yukinoshita, and Yuigahama.
• Big Man on Campus: Hachiman in U.A. High. No, not even he is sure how the heck that happened.
• Blatant Lies: Hachiman pretends to be lying badly and obviously about not having any feelings for Orimoto, intentionally blushing and looking away as he says it, in order to embarrass her.
  For some reason, people took this as a confirmation of the rumors. It was petty of me, probably.
• Boring, but Practical: One of Hachiman's most prized Quirk copies is the ability to always get a good night's sleep. It's not on the same level as the original Quirk, which allowed its holder to get a full night's sleep in 15 minutes, and it's not spectacular at all, but for someone who needs to follow a backbreaking schedule to make his powerset worthwhile, it's still priceless.
• Breather Episode: Chapter 12.2, which after the immediate aftermath of the various personal dramas created by the Sports Festival, has Hachiman's Heart group plus Kirishima, Ashido, Yaomomo, and Saika spend a day hanging at an arcade without (too much) personal conflict, and a great time had by all.
• Brick Joke: Hachiman informs Kirishima during the first Heroes vs Villains exercise in Chapter 6 that the latter's Quirk leaves behind deposits in his skin to help with the hardening process and that undergoing body hardening exercises may help his Quirk grow. In Chapter 10.1, Hikigiya is having a conversation with a pair of robots when one gleefully informs him that another student has just requested it to go vigorously beat his epidermis for training purposes.
• Bust-Contrast Duo: Yukinoshita and Yuigahama. The former being described as "flat" (with Bakugou unflatteringly comparing her to a cement wall), while the latter has several passages dedicated to her ample chest.
• Career-Building Blunder: The teachers all explain to Service Group D that their attempt to apprehend the U.A. infiltrator, one Himiko Toga, was an extremely reckless move, but they're also undeniably proud of the four teenagers' heroic drive and make sure to commend them for their intentions while encouraging them to learn from their mistakes so as to become even greater heroes in the future.
• Cast from Calories: Several of Hachiman's copied Quirks burn extra calories, especially things like rapid muscle rebuilding (very helpful for workouts). It gets to the point where he's eating five meals per day plus snacks, even using an Efficient Digestion quirk to absorb more from his food, and is still severely malnourished.
• Cavalry Betrayal: During the second section of the U.A. Sports Festival, the cavalry battle, all of Class 1-A agrees to assist each other when possible against the other students and to not attempt to steal each other's points unless doing so is absolutely necessary to advance to the final round while 1-A is in possession of all the points on the field. Todoroki's group betrays the agreement after his mistake allows Monoma to copy his Quirk, despite Hachiman specifically warning Todoroki about 1-B's power copier, which puts their chances to make it to the next round at risk. Instead of continuously attempting to retrieve their points from Monoma, Todoroki instead switches targets to Hachiman's party because the former knew the latter wouldn't think of them as an enemy until it was too late. It's also heavily implied that Todoroki (and likely Yukinoshita too) didn't want Hachiman, in particular, to get to the next stage because he's just that dangerous of an opponent.
• Celebrity Superhero: Discussed quite a bit, deconstructed and reconstructed. Many of the top heroes, like Endeavor, are more concerned about their public images than actually helping people — and yet, the resulting cash flow can actually do a lot of good. The Well-Intentioned Extremist style of villains, however, are highly offended by the phenomenon.
  Campestris: I stop more crimes by being famous than I actually do stopping crime. It's true! After I got the Strike contract, crime in Chiba went down by three percent. Because I was more visible, because more people knew that a 'big league' hero was in town, criminals and villains went elsewhere. Civilians called for help instead of using their quirks and getting themselves hurt. And I made enough from it all that I can afford to hire Meguri-chan full-time at the end of the year, so things will be getting even better. Face it, Yukino-chan. The hero industry runs on fame, and the sooner you make like your friend Hikigaya and recognize it, the better off you'll be.
• Character Witness: The Essay that Hachiman submits to the faculty of U.A. as part of the written entrance exam would likely have disqualified him from admission were it not for Yui and Yukino. Both girls came forward to the school's teachers and informed them of how Hachiman jumped in front of a speeding car to save a dog, broke his leg, and then proceeded to take the Hero exam anyway. The devotion that Hachiman's actions, rather than his words, showed towards the ideals of heroism convinced everyone that he was a worthy candidate for U.A.. Even then, it was Aizawa of all people arguing on his behalf that sealed the deal.
• Class Representative: Hachiman of all people ends up elected as the President of Class 1-A. Ironically, Hachiman himself didn't want the position at all, even filling his nomination speech with the reasons why they shouldn't vote for him, but enough of his classmates were impressed by his heroic actions during the entrance exam, his achievements during the Quirk assessment exercises, and his insightful advice on the nature of individual Quirks that he won by a landslide. Yaoyorozu, elected alongside him as the vice-representative, doesn't fail to address him as "President Hikigaya" or "Hikigaya-taicho" whenever she can. He thinks she just likes how it makes him twitch, but it's actually an Affectionate Nickname.
• Clothing Damage:
  • Yui's Hero Costume is mostly destroyed by Kirishima and Hachiman during the first Heroes vs Villains exercise, and given that her power needs fabric in direct contact with her to work, this trope is practically an Instant-Win Condition against her.
  • Yukino's clothing in the same exercise is very nearly destroyed, being flash-frozen and forcing her to surrender or risk shattering it. And she's less forgiving than Yui.
  • Hachiman's shirt is destroyed three times in the U.A. Sports Festival, first in the Cavalry round when it is hit with acid, then again during the third stage when he is forced to phase through an attack but with his shirt unaffected by his ability and thirdly with a combination of Yui's quirk and one of Bakugo's explosions.
• Clueless Chick-Magnet: After entering U.A., Hachiman has gained the romantic attention of quite a few of his fellow students. The author has confirmed that Yukinoshita, Yuigahama, Yaoyorozu, Kawasaki, Hagakure, and Orimoto are all interested to a greater or lesser degree. Rather than being Oblivious to Love, Hachiman is almost physically incapable of seeing positive gestures directed towards himself for what they truly are, and instead stubbornly misreads all their cues for something else. This applies even to pretty unambiguous stuff like Saki instantly agreeing to go on a date with him.
• Conveniently Seated: Hachiman Lampshades that he almost got "an Anime Protagonist Seat". That is, the second seat from the back, but he is next to the wall rather than the window.
• Counter-Attack: Hachiman copied the Shock Absorption Quirk from the USJ Noumu which, combined with his Heroic Build, allows him to store the kinetic energy from blows that he receives in his muscles before unleashing a supreme amount of force back on his opponents.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Todoroki vs. Tsuyu in the tournament stage of the U.A. Sports Festival. She gets the Sero treatment from canon and is immediately frozen in a glacier of ice before she can make a single move against her opponent.
• Cute Bruiser: Komachi's Quirk, Homomorphic Chimerization, allows her cells to copy any alterations done to a person's body by their Quirk as long as it doesn't change her basic body shape. By the time the story has started, she's copied so many her bones are like titanium and her skin is as tough as Kevlar. To paraphrase Hachiman, she's a "T-Rex squeezed into the body of a little girl".
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique:
  • Tokoyami's Quirk, Dark Shadow, becomes too powerful to control in the darkness, but this is Subverted with Hachiman's copied version of it. Thanks to starting at merely the 1/108th power base of the original, pitch-black darkness instead just makes it strong enough to be usable even without Stockpiling first.
  • Hachiman's regeneration quirk becomes this as it requires body fat to properly function, which his current Heroic Build doesn't really allow for. If he uses it too often without proper dietary supplements, while it would heal him and potentially save his life, he risks a whole host of resulting medical complications.
• Dare to Be Badass:
  • To his own horror, a panicking Hachiman finds himself mouthing off to Kurogiri at the start of the USJ incident. To himself, it's just his brain defaulting to snark in response to running into another life-or-death situation just a day after he almost bled out. To his classmates, his smartassery is the spark of defiance they needed to hear to get out of their shock and fight like the heroes they aspire to be.
  • A sorta accidental example also happens when Shinshou and many others in the General Studies course come to Class 1-A, to warn them that they're intent on doing better than them at the U.A. Sports Festival in order to get one of their seats in the Hero Course. Hachiman retorts with a trademark "The Reason You Suck" Speech, but as Bakugo puts it, the actual effect of his words was like "lighting a fire under everybody's asses", driving Class 1-A even further to improve. The best part? Later chapters reveal someone recorded the whole thing on their phone and uploaded it for everybody to see. Since then and to his utter embarrassment, Hachiman's speech has been motivating at least all first-years to really go the distance. It's even become an In-Universe case of Memetic Mutation with jokes like, "Did you put your three hours in yet?"
    Shinshou: The admission test doesn't work well for all quirks, and some of us feel like we lost out through dumb luck. Scouting out the enemy? We're not really here for that. This is our declaration of war.
    Hachiman: [unimpressed] Ah, is that so? That's even more pointless, though. [looks at Shinshou straight in the eye] Students in the Hero Course are in class for fifty hours a week. Hero classes are half of that, and some of the classes are book work, so let's just be conservative and say that U.A. provides us about two hours a day to practice using our quirks and to exercise our bodies. Let's just say that you're right, you're totally hero material and you got screwed over by the test. All you have to do is work out two hours a day on your own, and you can keep up with us and get in due to the more favorable circumstances, right?
    [Beat]
    Hachiman: [to his classmates] Class 1-A, hands in the air if you put in at least, let's say, an extra hour a day of exercise, quirk training, or other practice that you weren't assigned for school.
    Class 1-A: [everybody raises their hands]
    Hachiman: Whoops, guess you need to work out three hours a day. And that's just to keep up with the slackers in our class. On the other hand, if you want to impress the teachers, you might have to do better than that. Class 1-A, who does at least two hours a week extra?
    Class 1-A: [more than half keep their hands in the air]
    Hachiman: So if you want to match the average student in our class, you need to be putting in, oh, about four hours a day of extra work. And that's assuming that you aren't behind, that the U.A. faculty really did make a mistake, and don't need to work even harder than us to catch up. And if you wanted to be sure of getting in, of being able to keep up with the very best in the class.... 1-A, how many for an extra three hours a day?
    Class 1-A: [six of them have their hands up]
    Hachiman: So there you have it. If you, [jabs Shinshou in the shoulder (and copies his Quirk in the process, because how could he not?)] or you [same thing with Mineta] or anybody else here getting in our way are really serious about being heroes? Consider whether standing around like this is a good use of your time.
• Darker and Edgier: A mildly darker take than compared to canon BNHA, at least the earlier parts of the manga. Rather this story puts more emphasis on the students being teenage kids, with all the emotional and hormonal issues that bring; as well as putting more focus on how real-world behavior would translate in a society of superpowers and physical mutations, such as racism and mundane criminal elements, which are more hinted at in canon.
• A Day in the Limelight: Chapter 9 is narrated from the POV of Hiratsuka, Midoriya, and Bakugo.
• Deadly Dodging: Fast as he is on a bike with his copy of One For All, Hachiman still wouldn't be able to keep ahead of a motorcycle gang forever. But knowing the roads better than them, he's able to veer off onto a side street just before they come over a hill, and at the bottom of the hill he knows there's usually a speed trap.
  The bwoo-woop of the police cruiser served as an impromptu race flag declaring my victory as I pedaled on into the city, putting distance between myself and the now-distracted bikers.
• Defeat by Modesty:
  • Hachiman and Yukinoshita's first fight in a training scenario ends up with him firing a water cannon at her point-blank, soaking her Hero Costume through, which was promptly frozen over by her own Quirk and made the special fabric brittle. While the battle officially ended because he used the capturing tape on her while she was immobilized, the real reason she didn't break free and continue fighting is that her white kimono was now see-through and clung to her every curve and she didn't want to give him even more of an eyeful.
  • Something similar happens right afterwards in his fight against Yuigahama during the same Heroes vs. Villains training exercise. Thanks to his partner Kirishima weakening her Quirk-empowered Hero Costume before Hachiman arrived, just one good hit from him aimed at her kidneys was enough to shatter a large chunk of it. Naturally, a panty shot ensues and an embarrassed Yuigahama squatted down to cover herself, an opening that Hachiman exploited to run to the bomb she was defending and tag it with only 16 seconds on the timer to spare.
  • Also Deconstructed for laughs. The fact Hachiman seemingly Invoked this trope twice in the same exercise earned him the suspicious stares of all of his female classmates, plus admiring/envious looks from the male half. Thankfully, All Might helped him out by imparting a lesson on the high likelihood of Wardrobe Malfunction during superpowered battles as Pro Heroes' bodies tend to be tougher than their costumes. Yukinoshita, predictably, just won't let him live this one down and treats him like a sexual harassment lawsuit just waiting to happen much like her canonical self does.
• Defeat Means Friendship: While Hachiman's defeat of Bakugo initially only earned him the other teen's respect, that respect proved to be the foundation of their relationship moving forward, which ultimately culminated in the two developing an odd, but genuine, friendship.
• Deliberately Bad Example: Midnight sets herself as one In-Universe. As an over-the-top erotic Heroine, most of the female students with Fanservice-prone Quirks, such as Yuigahama who needs to wear form-fitting clothes for her Cloth Armor to work effectively, look pretty tame in comparison. Of course, Midnight's main reason for it is simply because she likes it.
• Dialogue Reversal: In Chapter 8.1, Yukinoshita makes sure to have Momo sit with the rest of Service Group D so that she can inform her that, if she were ever to say that Hachiman was harassing her as his VP, Yukino would believe her. In Chapter 11.1, after Yukino states to Bakugo that the only person at the table she finds less attractive than Hikigaya is himself in response to Bakugo's demand for them to Get a Room!, Hachiman fires back with the perfect response.
  Hachiman: Yaoyorozu-san. Yuigahama-san. Hagakure-san. If Yukinoshita makes any inappropriate advances towards you, or makes you uncomfortable in any way, let me know. I'll believe you.
• Didn't See That Coming: Yukinoshita could have easily defeated Hachiman in their first sparring match after catching him on a perfectly executed aikido hold, but she had no way of knowing he could turn his captured arm into a water cannon and shoot at her with it point-blank.
• Didn't Think This Through: In a later chapter, after the students have settled on their internships, Yukino questions why Hachiman didn't go with Haruno's offer. When he tells her he always had Cyberpunch in mind, she reminds him that an internship with a popular up-and-comer like her older sister is an almost guaranteed ticket into stardom. Hachiman tries to blow it off … but it quickly sinks in that he just threw away all of the potential money he could've made for the sake of his vendetta, and all he can do is sheepishly trail off his sentence. However, this is a good thing as it helps prove to Yukino that Haruno was wrong to think Hachiman was a scheming Social Climber.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • 108 Skills. Just bringing his Quirk to any level of usefulness requires lots of backstage preparation, effort, creativity, and intelligence, (or as Hachiman puts it, cheating the hell out of it) and even that's nothing compared to what it takes to make it function at his classmates' level. Even so, 108 Skills has easily made Hachiman one of the strongest and most versatile members of Class 1-A.
  • Hachiman's assessment of Yaoyorozu's Quirk. He barely uses it at all despite copying it because it's hard as hell to do it right. The best he can do is create small single-material objects in basic geometrical forms.
• Distressed Dude: Hachiman winds up being captured by the Sludge Villain right along with Bakugo, and rescued by All Might. Notably, this is the incident that lets him copy both One For All's Stockpiling as well as the Sludge Villain Quirk; two of his most essential Quirks that lets him become a Hero.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • During lunchtime at U.A., Hachiman bumps into a nondescript schoolmate and copies his Quirk, a Shapeshifting one that perfectly mimics a given person's appearance after ingesting a sample of their blood. While Hachiman finds it too creepy to keep, he doesn't think too much of it. The readers, on the other hand, collectively went "Oh, Crap!, that's Himiko Toga in disguise!"
  • Hachiman's main motivation to do well at the U.A. Sports Festival is to impress Shizuka Hiratsuka enough to let him join her investigation as an intern in the case of Zaimokuza's disappearance and likely murder. He has no idea that just the profiling skills he displayed a few minutes after making that deal was more than enough to convince her that he would be a real asset to the case.
• Dropping the Bombshell: Hachiman has a moment of silent panic when Yaoyorozu oh so casually mentions that her parents arranged physics lessons for her as early as possible to warn her about the science and dangers of radioactivity. Why? Because they realized that her Quirk could be used to produce fissionable materials and didn't want their young child to become a walking violation to the Nuclear Weapons Taboo.
• Dynamic Entry: During the USJ incident, Hachiman manages to take Kurogiri's attempt to make him "go splat" by teleporting him thousands of feet above the ground, and turn it into a gliding punch to another Villain's face.
• Embarrassing Browser History: One of the many things that crossed Hachiman's while the Sludge Villain choked him with his mud was wishing for someone to erase his hard drive before his parents could see it.
• Entertainingly Wrong:
  • After finding out that All Might and Deku share the same quirk, Hachiman has come to the conclusion that All Might is Deku's father. His reasoning is that he knows One for All can be passed on through DNA, All Might and Deku seem to be closer than they let on, and All Might still appear to be as strong as ever, so he must not have passed on his Quirk.
  • After finding out that All Might is much weaker than he lets on, Haruno Yukinoshita comes to the conclusion that Japan's number one hero is like her: a conniving hedonist who only cares about their public appearance.
  • Principal Nedzu isn't sure whether Hachiman is merely an edgy teenager with Age-Appropriate Angst given his background, or a dangerous element that either will go Villain in the future or is already working for one. His genius-level intellect can provide detailed pieces of guesswork that support either interpretation.
  • Haruno, due to her general cynical beliefs about people, thinks Hikigaya is a calculating Social Climber, and that all of his speeches and shirtless moments are carefully engineered to garner the best possible responses for his reputation. The truth is that they really are unplanned, and very unwanted. Unfortunately, Yukino starts to believe her, especially after Hachiman admits to manipulating his class.
• Expy: The author is fond of including characters from other series into the story, with characters from Skip Beat being prominent in the Internship Arc. As this story is a crossover between My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, as I Expected and My Hero Academia, they mostly serve as minor characters in place of OCs, but with hints that their own stories are playing out of focus in the MHA world.
• Eye Scream: For lack of any other options, Hachiman ends up flinging acid into Stain's eyes.
• Facepalm: Upon hearing Bakugo's first idea of a hero name (Lord Explosion Murder), Hachiman can feel his palm being irresistibly drawn toward his face, "as if by magic, or some strange twist in gravity." Yukinoshita offers to list the problems with that name either alphabetically, or categorically, whichever Bakugo prefers.
• Fast Ball Special: Hachiman, through the use of Gigantification and Stockpile, takes advantage of Falcon Flight's ability to increase the durability of its user in proportion to how fast they are traveling to launch Hayama through the USJ glass dome so that he can alert the teachers of the villain assault.
• Feed It with Fire: The villains at the USJ are aware that Yukinoshita is An Ice Person, so they choose to fight her in an area that's on fire. Unfortunately for them, the reason that she uses ice is because her Quirk absorbs ambient heat to make her stronger and faster. As Hachiman internally puts it, "This was just not their lucky day."
• Fire-Forged Friends: Service Group D, composed of Hikigaya, Yukinoshita, Yuigahama, and Bakugo, become a noticeably closer team after working together to track and fight off the U.A. infiltrator.
• First-Person Smartass:
  • The story is narrated by Hachiman, so this trope comes without saying.
  • Yukinoshita manages to be an even worse one than him in her canonical omake, which is really saying something.
• Flat "What": Hachiman's only response to All Might informing him that he actually did pass the practical portion of the U.A. entrance exam thanks to the large number of hero points he acquired is to mentally repeat "What." over and over again in his head. He's so disgusted by the fact that his selfish actions resulted in him being accepted that he immediately runs to the bathroom and throws up.
• Flipping the Bird: After beating Bakugo for the first time, in a 50m sprint, Hikigaya raises his index finger at him, not his middle finger, but Bakugo reacts similarly.
• Foil: Has its own page.
• Four-Philosophy Ensemble: HEART Group D falls into this rather neatly:
  • Hachiman is The Cynic. Naturally. He doesn't actually care about the assignments and has poor relationships with the other people in his group, but he's usually the first to take the most expedient and pragmatic options.
  • Yui is The Optimist. She wants to do the assignment the best way possible and get the best result because that's what a hero is supposed to do.
  • Yukino is The Realist. Very much like Hachiman, Yukino tries to find the best course of action. Unlike him, she is more interested in actually solving the problem.
  • Bakugo is The Apathetic. Like Hachiman, he doesn't care about the assignment at all and would rather not do it. However, he can be motivated to go along if he's properly goaded into doing so.
• Friendless Background: Just like canon, Yukino is implied to have had no friends prior to coming to U.A. This is in part due to her overwhelming beauty and talent but also due to an unfortunate accident in her youth when a friend of hers almost lost her hand to frostbite after surprising a young Yukinoshita.
• Fun with Acronyms: HEro Assistance Request Training teams, or HEART teams for short.
• Fusion Fic: The premise of the story is having most of the Ore Gairu cast as native inhabitants of My Hero Academia world. To wit, Hachiman, Yukino, Yui, Hayato, Yumiko, and Tobe are Class 1-A students, Orimoto, Ebina, and Iroha are in Class 1-B, Saika and the rest of Hayama's posse enter General Studies, and Saki Kawasaki is in Support. For others, Yukino's sister is a successful Pro Hero and U.A. High alumna, and Hiratsuka-sensei works as an Investigative Hero.
• Gilligan Cut: Yukino in her omake.
  Yukino: [narrating] As my partner and I planned our strategy on the way to the building, I almost hoped to get to face off against [Hachiman].
  [scene break]
  Yukino: [after her Defeat by Modesty] [narrating] I was going to tear off Hikigaya Hachiman's head and shove it up somewhere unmentionable.
• #HashtagForLaughs: The pictures of Hachiman administering Intimate Healing to Tohru during the second round of the U.A. Sports Festival quickly go viral, with the most prominent accompanying tags being #PresidentialTreatment and #HeroNameCasanova.
• Healing Factor: Zaimokuza's Quirk, Regeneration, quickly heals him by burning through his body's fat reserves. The potency of the quirk is so great that Hachiman considers it incredibly useful even at ~1% power and the League of Villains kidnaps Zaimokuza and steals his Quirk for the construction of the USJ Noumu.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power:
  • Many of Hachiman's least flashy copied Quirks are actually the most important. For example, Efficient Sleep allows him to have the health benefits of an entire night of full sleep in just a few hours, which is essential to his current lifestyle. Hachiman doesn't get any of the cool stuff of his sister's Homomorphic Chimerization, but the aspect of her Quirk that protects her human form is the one thing preventing Hachiman from suffering a body dysmorphic disorder from his various Heteromorphic Quirks telling his brain that his body should have the Heteromorphic characteristic that comes with each of them, like wings, scales, or whatever.
  • Lunch Rush can increase the heat conductivity of matter, which sounds underwhelming. With the resulting faster cooking times, though, and a good kitchen, he's able to single-handedly manage meals for more than 600 people, including various personalised meal plans, assisted only by a few serving robots. After copying the power, Hachiman finds that the ability to heat instant noodles faster is enough to make Cyberpunch envious.
• Heroic Build: Invoked in Hachiman's case, who gives himself a Bruce Lee-quality build in a matter of months. Realizing that the basis of strength training is damaging one's own muscles in just the right way and at the right pace for the body to rebuild itself stronger little by little, Hachiman comes up with the idea of throwing a strong Healing Factor into the equation. That way, he just had to experiment by trial and error until he found the most time-efficient way to cause himself that kind of damage, heal up, and repeat, collecting the benefits without any actual exercising. While this does have its fair share of drawbacks — first of all, the procedure is very, very painful, requires abundant nutrition to maintain, and he had to forgo the chance to include more gymnastics, martial arts training, etc. into the regime — Hachiman does manage to cram years of physical conditioning into less than one, giving him at least a chance to endure the physical aspects of the Hero Course.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Our protagonist wouldn't be Hachiman Hikigaya without it.
• Hypocrite:
  • Monoma is filled with immense outrage when Class 1-A works together during the Cavalry battle and is especially incensed at Deku's group being able to move about freely and pick off other teams after they've already battled, the very strategy he was planning to utilize against 1-A.
  • Stain is first seen in the story hiding amongst a group of homeless people during his killing spree and taking their existence as further proof of Hero society caring more about wealth and fame than helping those in need. He then goes on to describe each individual in a highly judgmental fashion, views each of them as being personally responsible for their circumstances with disgust, and doesn't hesitate to mortally wound most of them after they learn he's the Hero Killer, though he notes that they'll most likely survive if help arrives soon enough.

I - Z

• I Am Spartacus: In the wake of the Sports Festival, Hachiman sees that relations between 1-A and the rest of the school (especially 1-B) are at an all-time low thanks to him. After a tense moment with 1-B students, he just can't ignore his conscience anymore and openly confesses to manipulating his class to get ahead in the Festival, fully expecting his classmates to turn on him. However, his classmates interpret this as him falling on his sword for the sake of the class, so they (led by Yaoyorozu) admit to their small part in the plan as a show of support and solidarity. This largely foils Hachiman's hope of reducing the tensions between the two classes and only Yukino saw it for the admission of guilt that it was.
• An Ice Person: Predictably Yukinoshita, but as an atypical variant. Her Quirk allows her to absorb ambient heat and convert that energy into a directional force that she uses to boost her strength and speed, leaving visible frost in her wake. She also trained herself in her own brand of martial arts based on the sudden spikes of acceleration that she can give herself with her Quirk. Hachiman calls it the Yuki-onna Quirk.
• Ideal Hero: Discussed and Deconstructed in Hachiman's essay that serves as the story's opening paragraphs. In it, he describes a cynical thought experiment to artificially produce an Ideal Hero that will tirelessly serve society by taking a Quirkless nobody who never received any praise or respect, suddenly giving that person a powerful Quirk custom-made for heroics, and then just letting them get addicted to the approval that society never gave them as they won't have any psychological defenses to it. Doubles as a cynical Take That! to Izuku's entire Character Development in canon.
• In-Series Nickname: "Hikitaicho" for Hachiman, a portmanteau of Hikigaya and "taichou" as in "captain" in Japanese.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • Despite happening in a different school, at a different time, and in a different world altogether, Hachiman still unthinkingly jumps in front of a speeding car to save Yuigahama's dog at the start of his first high school year. The key differences are that it happens before the entrance exam rather than the day of the opening ceremony, and Hachiman had an effective, if painful, Healing Factor to fall back to.
  • Hachiman, Yuigahama, and Yukinoshita end up in the same HEART group, which is basically their canonical "Service Club" with a Small Steps Hero flair as a Hero Public Relations class assignment. Partially Subverted in that Bakugo of all people ended up in there too, whose presence alters the awkwardness-prone interpersonal dynamics between those three with the subtlety of a live grenade.
• Instantly Proven Wrong: Yukinoshita about Bakugo, when discussing the irrelevance of their "Service Club" assignment.
  Hachiman: Oh, it's nothing. I just thought, man, if I were already giving up on my declaration of not letting anyone else take first place, the easiest way would be to declare that all of the hard contests didn't really matter.
  Yukinoshita: [thinking] Oh, please. Not even Bakugo is so stupidly prideful as to fall for—
  Bakugo: Fuck you, you shitty extra, I said it was fucking busywork, not that I wasn't gonna fucking do it! What's so hard about this shit?
  Yukinoshita: ...
• Internal Reveal: Haruno Yukinoshita manages to figure out that All Might is Secretly Dying.
• Intimate Healing: Since he copied Recovery Girl's Quirk, Hachiman has used it on multiple occasions for the benefit of his Class, first during the USJ Incident when he healed Eraserhead, allowing him to assist All Might in his fight against the Noumu, and then again when he healed Hagakure of the acid burns he had to give her to remove the Festering Fungus Ebina had hit them with.
• Irony:
  • Hachiman took U.A. High's entrance exam mostly to spite Orimoto, give his lost Chuunibyou dreams of becoming a hero a proper sendoff, spite Orimoto, stealthily copy whatever interesting Quirks other examinees have, and spite Orimoto. He never expected that his fake efforts to help other prospective students during the practical, just so he could high-five them or shake their hands to copy their Quirks without raising suspicions, would grant him "Rescue Points" that counted for the admission process. For extra irony, saving Yuigahama's dog and taking the exam despite breaking his leg impressed the teachers enough for them to mostly ignore his cynical essay on professional heroics and grant him a rock-bottom but passing grade on the entrance exam.
  • The fact Izuku thinks that Hachiman is an ideal riajuu and admires him for it. He particularly looks up to him because Hachiman can talk to beautiful girls confidently (actually, he's simply on a Snark-to-Snark Combat basis with one too many people, especially Yukinoshita) whereas Izuku stammers just chatting with Ochako, but that's nothing compared to how thoroughly awestruck Izuku is by the way Bakugo actually listens to Hachiman with minimal swearing involved.
  • When Yui expresses frustration at Best Jeanist forcing her to wear different costumes in order to better her abilities with her Quirk instead of simply explicitly explaining it to her, Kawasaki expresses sympathy and states how aggravating it is people simply don't tell each other their thoughts and feelings. The whole story is littered with people not openly expressing themselves, including her and the other girl's interest in Hachiman.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: After becoming accustomed to Bakugo's roughness and earning his grudging respect, Hikigaya decides that under the exterior of an egomaniacal thug, Bakugo turns out to be an egomaniacal thug with poor impulse control, and presumably a heart of gold somewhere in there.
  Or a kidney of gold. Maybe an appendix.
• Last-Second Word Swap: In her canon omake, Yukinoshita's narration first describes Yaoyorozu as "the girl with the long ponytail and the huge... ponytail".
• Locking Macgyver In The Store Cupboard: Yukinoshita's biggest weakness is running out of ambient heat to power her Quirk. So of course the League of Villains teleports her to a part of the USJ that is on fire.
• Logical Weakness: A few of the Oregairu cast's Quirks have them:
  • Yuigahama's Quirk becomes useless if there's no fabric for her to manipulate. This means that Clothing Damage is a very real concern for her beyond the scope of the Defeat by Modesty trope. (Although if no cloth is lost, she can repair it very quickly.)
  • Yukinoshita's Quirk of absorbing heat makes her body a natural insulator so if she's in an area with too much heat, like a city street on fire, she risks her body overheating. Conversely, if she's in an area that has too little heat, she's rendered as powerless as a normal person.
  • Hayate's Quirk increases his toughness with how fast he's moving, thus stopping and restraining him, as Shiozaki did in the Calvary battle, also makes him helpless.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: The crossover isn't just limited to the MHA and OreGairu canon, but also featuring guest stars from properties such as Skip Beat, Toradora, Komi Can't Communicate, Horimiya, Bakemonogatari, among others.
• Memetic Mutation: In-Universe. Hachiman's stunt at the Cavalry Battle during the Sports Festival goes viral.
• Mind over Matter:
  • Yuigahama's Quirk, Cloth Armor, lets her control and reinforce any fabric within a few centimeters of her body.
  • Motormouth lets Tobe command inanimate objects with his voice.
• Mistaken for Gay: At some point, Yukinoshita really wonders whether Hachiman is into guys from how much he blushes around Totsuka.
• Mistaken for Romance: Hachiman and Saki's interactions are really easy to misinterpret like this by others in-universe. Especially after Saki gives up her chance to go to the third stage of the Sports Festival, seemingly just to give Hachiman the chance.
• Mugging the Monster: Defied by Kaminari, who almost accepts an arm-wrestle against small skinny Komachi, but then considers Hachiman's comment that they'll break the table and she'll shatter his ego.
  Kaminari: You know what? She's your sister, I'll take your word for it.
• Mundane Utility:
  • Hachiman copied a Quirk that lets him emit infrared signals. He uses it to emulate a TV remote control and change channels without pushing a button.
  • Another of his copies makes his skin just a few grades hotter than normal, which is great for faking a cold or coaxing cats to snug up to him.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Hikigaya's entire Quirk and how it functions is a reference to how in the original work he would occasionally boast about having 108 skills that were all little things anyone could do (or references to Doraemon).
  • Just like the novels, the story begins with a transcription of Hikigaya's smartass essay on society, of course, flavored by his particular brand of cheeky cynicism. There's another Mythology Gag embedded in it where he gives a recipe to artificially produce an Ideal Hero that describes Izuku's whole Character Development in canon in the most cynical way possible.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Had not the League of Villains attacked the USJ, incidentally allowing Hachiman to find out about Zaimokuza's fate and giving a new goal for revenge, he would have dropped out of the Hero Course that very same day.
• The Nicknamer:
  • Bakugo and Yuigahama continue the nicknaming traditions of their canonical selves. Naturally, each of them has one for each other that they both dislike, namely "Airhead" and "Bakubaku".
  • Hachiman nicknames his weaker copies of others' Quirks as they function sufficiently distinctly from the originals to warrant it. For example, Ochako's "Zero Gravity" becomes "Moon Gravity", and Hayama's "Falcon Flight" is "Vulture Glide".
• Noble Male, Roguish Male: Downplayed, but Hikigaya and Bakugo fall into this dynamic, with the former being a sullen yet gentlemanly Noble Male, and the latter's loud and combative Roguish Male.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Hachiman lending his cloak to Yukinoshita to spare her the indignities of the Wardrobe Malfunction trope, allowed her to find some embarrassing pictures of him from his Chuunibyou phase in its pockets.
• "No. Just… No" Reaction: Yukino realizes that, with Katsuki and Yui being mostly a brat and innocent Nice Girl, respectively, she's the second most perverted member of Group D by default (after Hachiman, of course).
• Odd Friendship: Hikigaya ends up in one with Bakugo of all people. This relationship has actually managed to produce a fair amount of Character Development from both teens with Hachiman forcing Bakugo to become much more of a team player and Bakugo, through his honest and straightforward personality, forcing Hachiman to internally admit that the two actually are friends. This gets deconstructed when Hikigaya returns to school after the Hosu Charity Gala. Bakugo –- who's used to the dedication Hikigaya showed building up to the Sports Festival -– interprets Hikigaya's significant drop in power as him slacking off and becoming egotistical from beating Stain, which naturally causes Bakugo to lash out, both in anger and concern. What he doesn't know is that Hikigaya has not only been severely traumatized by very nearly dying for the fourth time in a row, but also critically exhausted his Quirk stores, to the point that it'll probably take months for him to get back to half of his strength. The problem being that they're both people with very different sets of values and lack the communication skills to properly express themselves.
• Oh, Crap!: Bakugo realized he may have bitten off more than he could chew when, during the singles rounds of the U.A. Sports Festival, Hachiman took his strongest attack head-on, immediately healed himself of all his injuries, and proceeded to use Shock Absorption, making him bulk up like the USJ Noumu, so as to pay Bakugo back for every one of his blows with interest.
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations: When Hikigaya and All Might finally have a private meeting, the young man confirms to the superhero that he'd not only copied his quirk but 'learned his secret' about him and Midoriya. Of course, Hikigaya thinks the secret is that Midoriya is All Might's son, while All Might thinks the young man has learned that One for All can be passed on to another person. Still, Hachiman comes out of the conversation with All Might's blessing to keep the quirk and isn't angry at all about the copy. This doesn't quell his anxieties at all, but it's something.
• The Paragon: While Hachiman sees himself as the cheatiest of cheaters, all of the other students in Class 1-A tend to draw inspiration from him, whether it be through his heroic actions, his determination, or one of his unintentional Rousing Speeches.
• Pass the Popcorn: Hachiman sees a brewing confrontation between Monoma and Bakugo, and just turns to watch, "munching on french fries like they were popcorn."
• Personality Powers: Almost all of the 1-A and 1-B Oregairu cast have powers that reflect their personalities:
  • Hikigaya Hachiman is an incredibly observant individual who initially has trouble actually accomplishing anything due to his poor social standing and people skills, but he becomes immensely more effective when working with others. 108 Skills provides an incredibly detailed amount of information on others' Quirks and, while having no offensive ability of its own, is able to combine a fraction of other people's powers to create amazingly synergistic effects.
  • Yukinoshita Yukino's Quirk converts ambient thermal energy into kinetic energy, allowing her to quickly subject her surroundings to glacial temperatures while increasing her own strength. Yukino herself is someone who always excels, even while alone, but she has difficulty making friends and allowing others to get close.
  • Yuigahama Yui's Quirk allows her to telekinetically control and reinforce fabric up to a maximum of 15 cm away. Compared to Hachiman and Yukino, she's much more optimistic, idealistic, and totally above misanthropic tendencies and cynicism. In a group, her presence serves as the glue to keep others together and reinforce a bond.
  • Hayama Hayato is able to quickly make decisions and follow through with them, but he is unwilling to challenge others or go against the crowd because he is something of a coward at heart. Falcon Flight allows him to accelerate quickly and increase his durability in relation to his speed, but he can't turn without losing momentum, making his Quirk ideal for running away.
  • Miura Yumiko is able to fire a barrage of light arrows that are very accurate and pack a good deal of force, making her very useful for long-range combat, but less useful against close-range opponents. Miura herself is fairly socially savvy and can give good advice to others, but she has trouble looking at things objectively if she herself isn't removed from the situation.
  • Tobe Kakeru speaks constantly, even if he doesn't always have much to say. His Quirk grants him the ability to command objects with his voice, encouraging his motormouth personality.
  • Orimoto Kaori is a friendly person, but she's also very obtuse when it comes to picking up on the feelings of others. Fog of War allows her to alter her density to take the form of a thick mist. Either way you look at it, she's a very vapid individual.
  • Ebina Hina is a perverted girl who tends to see the world as it is in her fantasies. She took the place and Quirk of Kinoko Komori, allowing her to surround herself with a near-endless amount of phallic objects (mushrooms).
• Playing Sick: Take a Quirk that heats up the user's skin to red-hot levels, reduce it to 1/108 its original strength, and you have a perfect tool for faking a mild fever to get a day off.
• Point of Divergence:
  • Hachiman's experience hurting himself by misusing strength-boosting Quirks allows him to give Izuku a few pointers at the start of the school year that make a huge difference in the number of times Recovery Girl has to heal him up.
  • Hachiman bumping into a U.A. High student with a Shapeshifting Quirk, a power that the same guy didn't have when he originally copied it, allowed him to realize a Villain just infiltrated the school. More specifically, he discovered that Himiko Toga was the one Kurogiri hired to sneak into U.A. to obtain the intel the League of Villains needed to target the USJ. While this didn't actually prevent the attack, it at least forewarned the good guys to be on the lookout for a Shapeshifter.
  • Hachiman's copy of Recovery Girl's Quirk was a key element in the resolution of the USJ incident, by healing Aizawa up at a critical juncture of the fight, who used his Erasure to support All Might and easily defeat the Nomu. Both teachers were spared from the worst of the battle damage they received in canon, with Aizawa in particular requiring a lot less recovery time thanks to getting prompt treatment from Hachiman.
  • Thanks to Hachiman collecting intel on the competition, Izuku is forewarned about Shinshou's Compelling Voice Quirk and wins his duel against him in the tournament stage of the U.A. Sports Festival as a Single-Stroke Battle.
  • The same report allows Yaoyorozu to avoid Mineta's attempt to literally glue himself to her back during the Obstacle Course portion of the Sports Festival. She profusely thanks Hachiman for helping her prevent her canonical fate, pointing at the little perv hitching a ride at another girl's expense as a representation of the bullet she just dodged.
  • The fact that Hachiman's quirk is so versatile and he proves to be an accidental paragon for his class, Todoroki focuses his attention more on him than either of his canon rivals — Midoriya or Bakugo. So, during the Sports Festival, Todoroki loses out on the Epiphany Therapy his canon counterpart receives from Midoriya and never embraces the fire half of his quirk. Bringing his character arc to a stall.
  • Because of Hachiman and Yukinoshita's participation, Midoriya ends up the winner of the sports festival, rather than Bakugo.
  • Due to the existence of a heteromorphic pro-hero like Cyberpunch - who herself is a major advocate for heteromorph rights - she gets a significant boost in popularity for fighting the Nomus during the Hosu Incident, and it causes Spinner to become a massive Fanboy for her and never develops his obsession with Stain.
  • Midoriya (and Bakugou) never found out about Todoroki's parental issues motivating his handicap since the latter chose to disclose it to Hachiman instead, who dipped out of spite. Thus Midoriya was able to put his Plus Ultra into winning the match instead of trying to give Todoroki the counseling he needed.
• Portal Cut: During the USJ incident, when All Might subjects the Noumu to a German suplex, briefly trapping it in the ground, Kurogiri tries to get it out with his teleporting mist just like in canon. Unlike canon, Hachiman heals up Aizawa with Recovery Girl's Quirk (yep, kiss and everything, don't remind him), allowing the teacher to deactivate Kurogiri's Quirk just when the upper and lower halves of the Noumu are in separate places, cutting it in half. When the Noumu's high-speed regeneration threatened to kick in, Aizawa simply kept using Erasure on it to keep it wounded, which is when Kurogiri wisely took Shigaraki and teleported away.
• Psychological Projection: Haruno Yukinoshita is only in the Pro Hero business because it's a ridiculously profitable career when you're sufficiently popular and she got the looks and the skills to make it so, which also makes her prone to assume the same about others like All Might and Hachiman.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: Komachi turns pleading eyes on her big brother when she wants something, even though her eyes are neither puppy nor properly human anymore.
  I was pretty sure her actual eyes had way more to do with hawks or naval targeting reticles than they did dogs.
• Put on a Bus: Subverted with Mineta, who didn't make it into the Hero Course thanks to Hachiman managing to do just a bit better than him but makes a reappearance as a General Studies student.
• Pyrrhic Victory:
  • Each of Yukino's victories in the second and third rounds of the sports festival is incredibly bitter. Her team only managed to pass the second round by means of a Cavalry Betrayal against her two closest friends, her breaking of Ashida's arm leads the rest of Class 1-A to question whether or not she is too quick to use excessive force, and her similar fight against Orimoto wherein all of Class 1-B cheers for their last candidate while the 1-A stands remain completely silent leaves her feeling empty.
    I was one step closer to matching my sister's legacy.
    It tasted like ash in my mouth.
  • Midoriya gets the enviable position of coming in first place in the Sports Festival, getting the greatest exposure one could ask for in his pro-hero career. However, as Bakugo points out, he didn't actually earn it through any skill on his part as he was just reaping the rewards of Hikigaya's plan. After the festival, he is seen conflictedly looking at his first-place medal, rather than celebrating his victory.
• A Rare Sentence: From Yukinoshita's canon omake:
  Yukinoshita: [narrating] The rest of the fight went as could be expected. Hayato made himself useful by getting thrown by Hikigaya through a window (a sentence I could have never imagined myself saying before that day).
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: What Hikigaya thinks he is doling out to his opponents. He is somewhat embarrassed that others tend to view them as Rousing Speeches instead.
• Recursive Fanfiction: There are plenty of material written by other users, both canonical and otherwise, in the forum version of the fic.
• Required Secondary Powers:
  • Hachiman's 108 Skills not only allows him to copy another Quirk, albeit a massively weaker version of it, but it also gives him an extremely detailed understanding of the mechanics of said Quirk, allowing him to use said copy in ways the original user never thought possible. His junior high counselor even advised him to make a coaching career out of it.
  • Also Invoked. People with copy Quirks are likely to get hurt trying to use another person's Quirk, so Hachiman took the precaution of copying Zaimokuza's Regeneration to compensate.
  • Averted for Zaimokuza's Quirk. While it does heal him, it does NOT turn off his sense of pain during the process. If anything, it magnifies the pain of the wounds as it shortens the entire healing process to a matter of seconds.
  • Yukinoshita's heat-absorbing Quirk also protects her body from the cold she creates.
  • Hayama's Flight Quirk gives him Super-Toughness in proportion to his speed. This helps him endure the harsh conditions of unassisted flight at high speeds.
  • The fact Bakugo hasn't gone deaf despite creating explosions strong enough to produce lift is also commented on.
• Ring Out: Even after having to go through arguably the hardest block in the U.A. Sports Festival, Bakugou still would have emerged victorious in the finals if his foot hadn't stepped the smallest amount out of bounds.
• Rousing Speech: An odd case as Hikigaya frequently gives out what he believes to be vicious diatribes to his enemies that everyone else finds to be highly motivational. One even ends up as a popular motivational video among the Gen Ed and Support course students.
• Running Away to Cry: After several members of the class call out Todoroki and his group after the cavalry battle, Todoroki responds that he doesn't care what any of his classmates think because he's not there to make friends and leaves. After leaving Recovery Girl's office, Hachiman happens to run into Todoroki right after the latter left the stands and we see that Todoroki was actually crying from the confrontation.
• Running Gag:
  • Hachiman doing something embarrassing that both saves the day and he will never live down.
    • Yukinoshita won't let Hachiman forget he ended up resorting to Defeat by Modesty on both Yuigahama and herself, treating him like an incorrigible pervert and tongue-in-cheek warning other girls about it.
    • Hachiman kissing Aizawa in order to heal him up with his copy of Recovery Girl's Quirk during the USJ incident.
    • Later chapters reveal that Hachiman's essay criticizing hero society, the one that also serves as the fic's opening, caused quite a commotion among U.A. High faculty. Heck, Aizawa refers to it as "The Essay" in his narration, capitalization intended. It got bad enough that the teachers really had to sit down and carefully consider if they really wanted someone like him in the Hero Course. Slowly Subverted as time passes and Hachiman's actions rather than his words keep proving he's actually a Knight in Sour Armor.
    • In order to get rid of Ebina's Festering Fungus and Mineta's sticky balls on both himself and Tohru during the Calvary Battle at the Sports Festival, Hachiman gets rid of his infected shirt, burns the contaminants on Tohru's body with a copy of Ashido's acid, then immediately washes off the acid with soapy water and heals her burns with Recovery Girl's Quirk by kissing her hand. While this sounds like a logical course of action, Hachiman forgot they were on live television, meaning that millions of people saw him kissing the hand of Tohru's soapy Sexy Silhouette while she was riding his shirtless self's shoulders. This Is what starts #PresidentialTreatment In-Universe Memetic Mutation.
  • Hachiman keeps inadvertently helping out Bakugo's opponents. First, he advised Midoriya on how to better train with One for All, which allowed him to come up with his Full Cowl ahead of canon and use it against Bakugo as early as the first Heroes vs Villains exercise. Then, he advised Kirishima on how to potentially strengthen his Quirk through body hardening exercises, which helped him against Bakugo in the 1v1 rounds of the U.A. Sports Festival. Lastly, he created a cement platform in the sports festival obstacle course to help out Midoriya which led to Deku finishing first. While Bakugo is quite peeved with Hachiman, he isn't too angry with him thanks to their Odd Friendship.
  • The Switching P.O.V. characters mistaking Saika for a pretty girl.
  • Hachiman complaining how circumstances force him to spend more of his Vancian Magic-like power than he planned to, often tallying exactly how many hours of prep time a given stunt cost him.
  • People being Entertainingly Wrong (could qualify as a Central Theme). People are constantly filtering information through the lens of their own conscious or unconscious biases and drawing a conclusion that's not quite on the mark. Hachiman goes to U.A. because he thinks Orimoto was looking down on him (she wasn't); Yukino briefly believes that Hachiman is gay (he's not) because of his interactions with Saika; Haruno theorizes that All Might is secretly a Fake Ultimate Hero because her quirk registers how little strength he has left (she doesn't know he's secretly dying); Hayama concludes that Hachiman's social success is due to him just being Born Lucky, without knowing/considering that many of his successes are actually due to bad luck; etc, etc.
• Sadist Teacher: Downplayed compared to most examples of this trope, but Hachiman can't help but think Midnight put him in a group with Yuigahama, Yukinoshita, and Bakugo only for her own sadistic pleasure.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Discussed. Hagakure wonders to the rest of 1-A if the only reason Team Todoroki was allowed to advance after Yukino technically broke the rules by kicking Hachiman ^note In kibasen (the Japanese term for the cavalry battle), the horses are not allowed to use their limbs. The rule is that only the rider can attack, the horses can only run into people and hope it knocks them over, nothing more. was because their team contained the relatives of two high-profile heroes. The other members of Class 1-A state that that's probably not the case, but still seem to believe that Hagakure may have a point.
• Secret Test of Character: The school is actively putting Hachiman under one of these–specifically, they're aware he's over-stressed and clearly creaking under the pressure, but he needs to learn how to ask for help if he wants to continue with his education and hero-career; either he swallows his pride and gets some assistance, or they'll kick him out for being a danger to himself.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Hachiman and Yukino deny that their Snark-to-Snark Combat is actually an outlet for their Unresolved Sexual Tension. Bakugo, naturally, responds to said refusal with a succinct "Get a Room!, nerds!"
• Shirtless Scene: Hachiman has provided several during the U.A. Sports Festival, much to the excitement of his female viewers.
• The Siege: Hachiman mentions that the campus feels like it's under siege when the anti-villain defenses are raised to keep nosy reporters out.
  Luckily, the media didn't appear to have any trebuchets, so as long as we could keep them from tossing dead bodies full of plague into our courtyard, we'd probably be fine.
• Small Steps Hero: Invoked. Midnight divided Class 1-A into four-person teams called HEART groups that are supposed to handle neighborhood-level heroics by request for grades in her Hero Public Relations class. This places Hachiman, Yuigahama, and Yukinoshita in a similar environment to their canonical "Service Club", but now with Bakugo as a founding member too.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: Hachiman and Yukinoshita appear to be quite well matched, though she's more cutting and he's more cynical. Some of their friends are concerned about how seriously they mean what they're saying, but Bakugo declares that "this is just how they flirt."
  Hachiman: Cat's tongue, huh? I know you like cats, Yukinoshita, but there are limits to that sort of thing.
  Yukinoshita: Better a cat's tongue than a viper's, Hikireptile-kun.
  Yuigahama: Oh boy.
  Hachiman: I'll have you know that a snake's tongue is exceptionally sensitive to temperature and vibrations, Yukinoshita-san. As such, any resemblances my own tongue has to that of a snake are purely survival strategies developed after being in your presence.
  Yukinoshita: I see. In that case, I humbly apologize to all animals of the Family Viperidae for associating them with you, Slug-tongue-aya-kun.
  Hachiman: The 'Family Viperidae' might accept your apologies, Yukipedia-chan, but if mere apologies were enough to settle slander cases there would be no need for courts. I hereby demand a full retraction of your insults towards me, a formal apology, and ten million yen in compensation plus punitive damages.
  Hagakure: Um...are they okay? Should we stop them?
  Yukinoshita: I'm afraid, Hikigaya-san, that your lawsuit will be pointless. Slander only comes into play when accusations are detrimental to one's reputation, and I'm certain that any reasonable judge would determine that a comparison of you to any vertebrate could only be construed as a compliment.
  Yuigahama: Eh heh heh... They do this all the time, it's fine.
  Hachiman: Did you forget about the jury of your peers, Yukinoshita-san? I mean, they won't be able to hold the trial until January rolls around and they can find enough icicles to fill a jury box, but at least it'll give you plenty of time to prepare a defense.
  Shoji: Are you sure? This seems sort of harsh.
  Yukinoshita: How fortunate for you. Burnable trash is collected weekly.
• Spotting the Thread: When Hachiman bumps into another student during lunch, he doesn't think anything of it until he notices that the student's posture seems to be a little off and that the guy seems a little familiar. When Totsuka tells him that the student's Quirk allows him to play music, however, Hachiman remembers that he had bumped into the student before only last time he didn't have a disguise Quirk.
• Straight Man and Wise Guy: Shinso and Mineta's "friendship" falls under this, as he's a dour stoic who wants to be a hero to prove that his Quirk isn't inherently villainous, and the latter is a shameless pervert who wants to be a hero to get girlfriends. They bonded over their frustration with riajuus.
• Suggestive Collision: During the cavalry battle, Hachiman has a naked Hagakure riding on his back and he mentally notes a couple of times that he can feel very specific parts of her anatomy press into his back and brush up against the back of his head. He does his best to not be distracted by it.
• Superheroes Wear Capes: Hachiman's Hero Costume includes one that doubles as a hood and is lined with inner pockets because his Giant Growth makes regular ones useless. The cape has proved a lot more useful than he originally intended.
• Super-Reflexes: Super Adrenaline, one of the Quirks Hachiman attained from the USJ Noumu, speeds up its user's perception of time and allows their muscles to exceed their previous limits. Using a Stockpiled variant, Hachiman is able to easily take the initial lead in the Sports Festival obstacle race while casually dodging the attacks of all of the students who were gunning for him.
• Supreme Chef: Hachiman is a lot better cook than his canonical self. Due to her Quirk giving Komachi an increasingly sensitive sense of taste, Hachiman tracked down and copied a Quirk that enhanced his sense of smell just so he could teach himself to cook food that his sister could actually enjoy.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial:
  • Hachiman's narration going "I screamed in very manly terror, sounding not at all like a six-year-old girl as I changed quirks faster than I had ever thought possible."
  • Pretty frequent in Yukinoshita's canon omake. For example, when Hachiman pulled off an amazing Dynamic Entry to help her during the USJ incident, her narration goes out of its way to explain "the suspension bridge effect is pseudo-scientific tripe". She also swears she's not bitter about him besting her once in a sparring match, followed by a long string of Backhanded Compliments.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Notably, while Hachiman and Yui both don't seem to think that the Calvary Betrayal that Yukino's group enacted against their own party is unforgivable, with Hachiman even mentally acknowledging that he'll forgive her for it eventually, Yukino herself believes otherwise. She even mentally resigns herself to losing the only friends she has in school, Service Group D, because of her actions.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Deconstructed. It's discussed how Heteromorphs may require certain diets due to their mutations, either because it aids their abilities, like Shoji eating high collagen foods to help his shape-shifting, or to make up for a deficiency, such as Hagakure needing more Vitamin D she can't get with her invisibility.
• Training Montage: Hachiman describes his Training Montage for U.A. High entrance exam by giving directional instructions of how it should be in order to make the most of whatever minuscule budget someone would make the mistake of spending on putting his life on film.
• Trauma Button: Monoma triggers one of Hachiman's when he buries Hachiman in the stadium ring's floor during their bout in the U.A. Sports Festival, reminding him of his near-death experience inside of the Sludge Villain. While Hachiman does initially panic, he goes into Heroic Safe Mode thanks to Taishi Kawasaki's Quirk and proceeds to take advantage of his dark environment to summon Dark Shadow.
  • Monoma triggers it for Todoroki when he copied his fire quirk (which Shoto mentally associates with his father) and used it against him.
• Tsundere:
  • How Ashido describes Bakugo. She's sort of right.
  • Hachiman keeps helping people while telling himself it's for a self-serving reason, like because they will owe him favors.
  • Yukino about Hachiman. For example, she devotes a lot of time and effort trying to figure out whether he's into guys without ever asking herself why the answer matters to her.
• Uncertain Doom: It isn't entirely clear what happened to Zaimokuza. It's certain that he went missing and that the Noumu that League of Villains brought to the USJ had his Quirk, but did All For One take his Healing Factor and give it to the Noumu, or was Zaimokuza turned into the Noumu? And if it's the former, is he still alive somewhere, or was he killed after All For One got his Quirk? A later chapter reveals that the Nomu was built on the "base" of some kid who had an adrenaline quirk, giving us a hint at what most likely became of Zaimokuza.
• Unknown Rival: The three strongest members of Class 1-A all seem to view Hachiman as their rival and goal to strive towards, something their target is entirely unaware of.
  • After Hachiman defeated Bakugo in every one of the Quirk assessment tests (mostly to be a smartass) and proved instrumental in the villain's defeat at USJ, the volatile teen has considered the 1-A Class Representative to be something of a Worthy Opponent.
  • Todoroki also thinks of Hachiman as a goal to surpass due to his success during the USJ event and views him as a threat to his chance of victory in the final tournament rounds of the U.A. Sports Festival. Todoroki even pulls a Cavalry Betrayal on Hachiman's group at the last minute of the tournament's second round, leaving him out of the competition until Shinshou's teammates decided to quit as in canon, granting Hachiman the chance to participate.
  • More than his strength, what Deku seems to admire most about Hachiman are his mental and social attributes. Deku can't help but think to himself that his planning skills fall short of Hachiman's after seeing the strategies and contingencies the other teen is able to easily formulate and implement during times of conflict. Socially, his classmate's ability to incite the rest of his group during the sports festival and USJ incident was so great that when combined with the inspiring figure Hikigaya portrayed during the singles bout, Midoriya couldn't help but favorably compare Hachiman to the Symbol of Peace himself. For a more comedic example, he admires how Hachiman can talk to beautiful girls like it's nothing, but that's only because Izuku is just that shy.
• Unnecessarily Cruel Rejection: Hikigaya was turned down by a pretty girl during high school, but he's actually used to that. What bothers him is that despite the girl in question presenting herself as a hero, and in fact applying to the hero course at UA, nonetheless she went above and beyond in making it clear that him asking her out was absurd, contributing to his Broken Pedestal view of heroes and heroics in general.
  I was subsequently used as a target of ridicule, mocked behind my back and occasionally to my face in order to reinforce her place in the pecking order, to insulate her from any losses of social capital that might have occurred from her giving the school loser the idea that he might have a chance with her. I had admired her for being kind to everyone, for being generous and helpful, for being someone that even a cynical person like me could admire as a good person. And then she decided to drag me through the dirt, tell all of her friends how creepy I was for hitting on her, and laugh at me for thinking that I could apply to the same hero school that she did.
• Unreliable Narrator: As in canon, Hachiman's Heroic Self-Deprecation and Jade-Colored Glasses taint his narration. For example, people usually have a much better opinion of him than he thinks they do, and when confronted with open admiration, he chalks it up to them reading him wrong. Also, most people aren't nearly as bad as he makes them out to be, but he doesn't get them wrong frequently enough to stop doing it.
• Uptight Loves Wild: Implied in Yukinoshita's case. Hachiman always goes against her expectations. Not always in a good way, but he always surprises her in some way that keeps her from reassuring herself she's done figuring him out. He would be a rare case of Manic Pixie Dream Guy for her were it not for the fact he's too dour and cynical to fit that mold either.
• Villain Teamup: In this story, Stain and the League of Villains willingly cooperate for the Hosu Incident, with the League providing Nomu in order to keep local Heroes distracted, while Stain goes about his mission.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Hachiman and Yukino's Snark-to-Snark Combat can get so caustic that Tohru and Shoji got worried the first time they witnessed their byplay. That is until Bakugo explained things for them.
  Hachiman & Yukino: [arguing]
  Tohru: Um... Are they okay? Should we stop them?
  Yui: [awkward laugh] They do this all the time, it's fine.
  Shoji: Are you sure? This seems sort of harsh.
  Bakugo: Nah, this is just how they flirt.
  Hachiman & Yukino: [stop in their tracks]
  Bakugo: Get a Room!, nerds!
  Hachiman & Yukino: [unison] We're not flirting!
• Weak, but Skilled: 108 Skills allows Hachiman to, through physical contact, copy up to 108 other Quirks at the cost of each one being only 1/108th as powerful as the original. This means that, while Hachiman may never be able to hit the hardest among his peers, he always has a useful ability or combination thereof at the ready for whatever situation he may find himself in.
• Wham Line: Hachiman's reaction to copying the USJ Noumu's Quirks immediately extinguishes any feelings of victory he previously felt.
  Hachiman: ...Zaimokuza?^{Spoiler Explanation}Hachiman touched the defeated Noumu hoping to copy a new Healing Factor, discovering to his horror that it carried Zaimokuza's Quirk. This means that either All For One stole his Quirk to give it to the Noumu, or worse still, the Noumu was once Zaimokuza himself.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Several members of Class 1-A call out Todoroki and his group for both their unsportsmanlike conduct and the Cavalry Betrayal they pulled on Hachiman's team, and call out Todoroki himself for his unwillingness to use his left side even though his refusal may someday cost people their lives. Todoroki responds that he's not there to make friends and leaves.
• Will Not Tell a Lie: Despite being plenty deceitful, Hachiman dislikes telling outright lies. His improvised student pledge at the opening ceremony of U.A. Sports Festival is a notable example of this. He got applause, he got laughter, he got to mouth off to the League of Villains on live TV, but most importantly, he got to not pledge to respect fair play and compete honorably without anyone realizing.
• Worthy Opponent: Bakugo regards Hachiman as this after he beat him in the Quirk assessment exercises on their first day in U.A..
• Wrong Assumption: Neito Monoma already thought that all Class 1-A students were a bunch of stuck-up posers, so him seeing the whole lot of them stare down and not even verbally acknowledge a General Course student who asked if any of them wanted to team up just confirmed his beliefs. The student in question? Hitoshi Shinso, whose Compelling Voice Quirk requires the target to verbally respond to him. Monoma's assumptions come back to bite him when he himself tells the student his name later in the cavalry battle only for Shinso to force him to hand over all of his and Setsuna's headbands.
• Yaoi Fangirl:
  • Ebina makes it into U.A. and there are no prizes for guessing that she becomes a total BakuDeku shipper the moment she meets them.
  • There is In-Universe slash fanart and fanfiction of Aizawa and Hizashi. Really.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Once Hachiman realizes that the rest of his teammates in the Cavalry round are feeling down due to being everyone else's last pick, he reassures them that the only reason they were Picked Last was that no one else was able to see their high potential. He then points out that Yuigahama would actually make a great rider since all of the headbands are made of cloth, Shoji is excellent mount material thanks to his large size allowing him to carry multiple riders, and Hagakure's invisibility effectively makes her one of the most dangerous riders on the field.
• You Must Be Cold: After defeating Yukinoshita by modesty in chapter 6, Hachiman put his cloak around her body before her Hero Costume could break apart into frozen pieces. It wasn't just the gentlemanly thing to do though, as he was rather afraid she would make good on her threat to gouge his eyes out if he didn't mollify her somehow and fast.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: To his chagrin, Hachiman just can't convince Kirishima that he didn't purposely pull off Defeat by Modesty twice during the Heroes vs. Villains training simulation, against Yukinoshita and then Yuigahama, and just keeps giving Hachiman badly hidden thumbs-up of approval for it.
• You Remind Me of X: Hachiman reminds Hizashi of Aizawa in his high school years. Aizawa was, in his own words, "a cynical little shit".

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