Fanfic / The Heart of a Hero

The Heroes of Another Story

What can someone do if they find themselves always in second place? Work until you're #1, that's what!

The Heart of a Hero is a My Hero Academia fanfic by DrZenkai that follows Class 1-B as they forge their own path to becoming Heroes, facing all sorts of trials and tribulations along the way.

Starts off as more-or-less canon compliant (the majority of the fic was written before 1-B had received much development in canon, so there are certain divergences present from the beginning), showing off what 1-B was up to during the main plot, before eventually diverging.

Has an ongoing sequel called The Heart of a Hero - A New Era, as well as a series of oneshot side stories including Draconic, Leap of Faith, Atlas and Wild West Hero.

Tropes

The Heart of a Hero (including Side Stories)

• Accidental Innuendo: Due to Pony's occasionally poor grasp of Japanese, she ends up talking like this from time to time.
• Actual Pacifist: Ibara starts out as one. It's eventually brought up by her teachers in-story as her primary weakness as an aspiring hero: she always holds back against her opponents, to the point that she would almost rather lose a fight than hurt her enemy. To fix this, the Final Exam puts her up against All Might, under the logic that she'll either have to go all out against him or fail the test. Ibara ends up throwing All Might through a skyscraper during the test, graduating to Badass Pacifist in the process.
• Adaptation Origin Connection: Kuroiro is a cousin of 13 here, explaining their similar Quirks.
  • Ibara's motivation for being hero has to do with being rescued by Kamui Woods in her youth.
  • Kendo's fighting style and philosophies on heroism were inspired by her uncle, future Eight Expendables member Kendo Rappa.
  • Seikigai Kashiko is the niece of Ragdoll, which is why they have nearly identical Quirks and why Isamu High School starts off on the wrong foot with UA.
  • Pony is revealed to be the niece of Cow Lady from Two Heroes.
• Adaptational Sexuality: While here in this fic Honenuki and Kuroiro are in a relationship The Ultra Analysis databook has confirmed that in canon Kuroiro is straight and has a crush on Kinoko.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: Most of this fic was written well before Class 1-B had been given any substantial development in canon. As a result, the author based the Quirks of Class 1-B off of the then-scant information that was available, resulting in several of the class members receiving different powers than they have in canon. While some are minor or close enough, certain other powers are so different they might as well be different Quirks.
• Babysitting Episode: Chapter 81 has Class 1-B babysitting Eri while Aizawa is on business, while also serving as Monoma's chance to rectify their first bad meeting.
• Badass Normal: a Villainous example: despite being an Elite Mook, Seijo is actually Quirkless. This does not stop him from beating the hell out of Monoma.
• Baseball Episode: Quirkball, in which 1-B and 1-A face each other in a (somewhat) friendly game of Quirk-enhanced baseball.
• Battle Couple: Tetsutetsu/Ibara, Kaibara/Tsubaraba, Honenuki/Kuroiro, Setsuna/Rin and finally Monoma/Kendo all pull this off during the Kidnapping Arc.
• Berserk Button: According to Monoma, Kendo has three of these: people who think that they're better than everyone else, people insulting her friends and people bringing up her femininity. Victoria Hope mashes all three within minutes of being introduced during the Provisional License Arc.
  • Do not insult Ibara's faith, as Setsuzoku found out the hard way.
• Big Badass Battle Sequence: Unlike in canon, the Joint Training Arc is 20-vs-20. It starts out as a modified game of Capture the Flag, but eventually devolves into an all-out street brawl.
• Big Damn Heroes: Kuroiro shows up with a defibrillator to revive Rin from their Disney Death.
  • Horrifyingly Subverted in Chapter 105, when Ibara and Tetsutetsu show up to save Monoma and seemingly have Kashiko on the ropes... and are then absorbed into her.
• Big Damn Kiss: Ibara and Tetsutetsu after the Final Exams, Monoma and Kendo in the aftermath of Kamino Ward.
• Blade Enthusiast: Kamakiri's room in the dorms is filled to the brim with swords, knives and other bladed implements.
• Body Horror: Setsuna's quirk allows her to eject her own limbs and regrow them from the stumps, which in turn causes the originals to decay into dust in a matter of moments (this is downplayed from canon due to fic!Setsuna being introduced months before her canon self had received more than barebones characterization, forcing the author to write her based on what little information was then available).
  • Honenuki inflicts this on Chimera after crossing the Godzilla Threshold, softening Chimera's body. Although he stops before going to far, Honenuki speculates that if he had continued he would have turned Chimera into a puddle.
  • Kashiko Dokasuru's Quirk, Absorption, functions in this matter as well. We're not actually shown it at work directly, but Tetsutetsu describes it as being "a nightmare pregnancy." It's also all but stated that those that Kashiko absorbs are conscious while inside of the fusion.
• Boss Battle: Overdrive and Ryukyu for the Internship Arc and the Provisional Licence Arc, respectively. All Might could also count for the Rescue Training Arc.
• Bound and Gagged: Going with both instances of Damsel in Distress (see below).
• Breaking the Bonds: Kendo in the Kidnapping Arc after hitting the Rage Breaking Point towards Kashiko.
• Breather Episode: Six of them in a row right before Chapter 87, in which everything goes to hell and the final pre-Time Skip arc of the story kicks off.
  • Earlier, the Cultural Festival serves as a break between the Provisional License Exam and the Joint Training A Rc.
• Catapult Nightmare: Setsuna has these constantly in Draconic due to trauma from her and Rin's fight with Dabi and Toga.
• Childhood Friends: Monoma and Kendo are these and they eventually bloom into an outright Childhood Friend Romance.
• Christmas Episode: Heroes on Holiday, a slice-of-life chapter showing 1-B's Christmas Party (which eventually grows to include the entire UA teaching staff, 1-A, and roughly a dozen pro heroes).
• Cloudcuckoo Landers Minder: In Canon, Kendo has to constantly keep an eye on Monoma. In this fic, she has to constantly keep an eye on everyone.
• Commonality Connection: Pony and Fukidashi quickly build a close friendship due to their mutual love of manga and anime.
  • Setsuna and Rin hit it off initially due to both of their quirks being reptilian in nature (Setsuna can regrow her limbs like a lizard can regrow its tail, Rin can cover himself in reptilian scales).
• Cool Teacher: Vlad King is interpreted as one, especially in the immediate aftermath of 1-B's sound thrashing in the Sports Festival, first helping them rebuild their all but shattered confidence by telling them about his own failures in the Festival as a student and later spending the lead-up to the Internship Arc using every connection and favor he had in the Hero community to get his students good internships.
• Crazy-Prepared: Kuroiro in the Kidnapping Arc. As a rescue hero, he serves as the de facto Medic for the class when they go to rescue Kendo, and he apparently takes this position very seriously, describing himself as being a "walking, talking ambulance." He didn't just bring medical supplies either, he packed a defibrillator on the off chance that he might need one, which allowed him to revive Rin after the latter's Disney Death.
• Curb-Stomp Cushion: Setsuna and Rin vs Dabi and Toga is pretty one-sided in the villain's favor, but the heroes do get some good hits in. And then Rin's 11th-Hour Superpower kicks in, and he and Setsuna inflict this trope back on Dabi and Toga.
• Damsel in Distress: Added to Ibara's backstory: her motivation to be a hero is revealed to be that in middle school, a pair of thieves broke into her and her parent's home and left her tied up a closet for 22 hours. After being rescued by Kamui Woods, Ibara was motivated to never let anyone feel what she felt in that closet.
  • Kendo becomes a Badass in Distress during the aptly named Kidnapping Arc, being kidnapped in order to draw the rest of 1-B into a deadly trap.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Rin's full dragon form may be pretty awesome, but it can only be accessed by pushing his Quirk far past its usual limits and puts an immense amount of strain on his body. As a result, when he throws himself between Setsuna and Dabi's final, overcharged attack, the ensuing stress results in his heart stopping .
• Day in the Limelight: The entire purpose of the fic is to do this for Class 1-B, who had in canon received very little development at the time of the fic's writing (with the arguable exceptions of Monoma, Kendo, Tetsutetsu and Ibara). It also does this for Vlad King.
• Death by a Thousand Cuts: Setsuna's Quirk may have strengthened to the point where she can pretty much regenerate, but the original limitation of her Quirk (she loses blood every time she uses it) still exists. In her fight with Toga, Setsuna is subject to getting killed by thousands of repeated cuts despite her Healing Factor, because she can't regenerate her blood, and Toga is able to bleed her until she's too exhausted to fight back.
• Determinator: By the time of the Kidnapping Arc, pretty much everyone in the class is this to at least some extent.
• Discard and Draw: Villainous example: Kashiko may have had Kendo beaten out of her, but she quickly replaces her with Tetsutetsu and Ibara.
• Disney Death: Rin, courtesy of Dabi during the Kidnapping Arc. He gets better.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Head Games, a villain group specializing in Black Market Support Equipment, first appears during the Internship Arc. They're the final pre-Time Skip villains of the fic, kidnapping Kendo and forcing the rest of 1-B into a killing game in order to rescue her in a bid to supplant the League of Villains by wiping out an entire UA class.
• 11th-Hour Superpower: Rin's Quirk gets a massive upgrade during the Kidnapping Arc, allowing to fully turn into a dragon.
• Establishing Character Moment: The entire first arc (a class 1-B version of the Heroes vs. Villains excercise from canon) is devoted to giving these to the 1-Bs.
• Exact Words: Kashiko Dokasuru promises Kendo that she nor any of her underlings would harm Monoma any further if Kendo allows Kashiko to absorb her. Too bad Kashiko never said anything about Kendo's Quirk doing the harming.
• Eye Scream: The reason Victoria Hope constantly flinches whenever an attack gets close to her face? She lost an eye, and nearly her life, trying to stop Stain.
• Fire-Forged Friends: 1-B as a whole with classes from Gaikoko and to a lesser extent Isamu High Schools, who they went up against during the first phase of the Provisional License Test.
• From Bad to Worse: Chimera was pounding on Honenuki, Kuroiro, Bondo and Fukidashi before he injected himself with Trigger. After, it shifts from a Curb-Stomp Cushion to an outright Curbstomp Battle.
  • Kashiko was dangerous enough when she absorbed one person. After being forced to unfuse from Kendo, she absorbs Tetsutetsu and Ibara.
• Funny Foreigner: Downplayed with Pony, but her occasional poor grasp of Japanese still lends itself to hilarity at times, like when she tells Vlad King that Togata 'got naked and showed her a good time' (she meant to say that he accidentally lost his clothes due to his phasing quirk while acting as a substitute teacher for 1-B).
  • Monoma also technically counts, given his anti 1-A antics and the fact that he was born in Belgium.
• Halloween Episode: A Monster Mash, featuring 1-B's Halloween Party.
• Godzilla Threshold: Honenuki injects himself with Trigger, a Quirk-boosting drug in order to stop Chimera from killing him, Kuroiro, Fukidashi and Bondo during the Kidnapping arc.
• Heroic BSoD: Played for Laughs after the first ever villain 1B fights is revealed to be All Might in disguise giving them a training exercise.
  • Decidedly not played for laughs when 1-B is watching All Might get the hell beaten out of him by All for One.
• Heroic RRoD: A major factor in Rin's Disney Death: he pushes his Quirk way too far while fighting Dabi, placing an intolerable amount of strain on his body. This allows Dabi's last attack to stop his heart due to it hitting Rin in the chest.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Rin comes within an inch of doing this for Setsuna, but Kuroiro is able to revive him.
• Hope Spot: Just as Kashiko is about to kill Monoma, Ibara and Tetsutetsu show up and seemingly beat her. Except that after spitting Kendo out, Kashiko absorbs them instead.
• Hybrid Power: Played Straight and Subverted|Trope}}.
  • Monoma plays it straight once he unlocks the ability to copy two Quirks at once.
  • Kashiko, meanwhile, subverts it, only having a crude, basic, savage use of [[Tetsutetsu and Ibara's]] Quirks.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Monoma has a rather severe one. This is due to the nature of his quirk: his heroic career is entirely dependent on having strong allies around him that he can copy. He thusly thinks that he's completely unworthy of being a hero, but he covers it up with cocky brashness and a slightly over-inflated ego.
• Instant Expert: Subverted with Kashiko , who can effectively only use the Quirks that she absorbs in a brute force manner.
• Ironic Echo: The line "Don't you want to be close friends?" is used twice in the story, the second instance being a very dark twist on the first. Both times, the speaker has just found out about someone else's Quirk (Setsuna learning about Rin's and Toga learning about Setsuna's, respectively). The discovery of this Quirk leads to a form of infatuation in both cases, but with very different results: In the first, Setsuna starts flirting with Rin because she thinks that reptiles are cool, which kick starts their entire relationship (a relationship that eventually develops into them being an Official Couple). In the second, Toga's Blood Lust gets kicked into high gear and she starts obsessing over Setsuna, calling her an "endless friend" and demanding that Setsuna become her pet.
• It's All My Fault: Kendo, with regards to being kidnapped, which leads to everyone else in the class being hurt during their attempt to rescue her.
• Knight of Cerebus: Head Games on the whole is this before the Time Skip; The New Power Generation for afterwards.
• Legacy Character: Sekigai to Ragdoll.
• Look Both Ways: Pony and a villain have a race/fight in the middle of a crowded urban area, repeatedly racing in and out of traffic while doing so. Inevitably, they have a momentary lapse in awareness, and are subsequently both hit by a car.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: SETSUNA. Every other line out of her mouth is either flirting with something or an innuendo. When having a sleepover with the rest of the 1-B girls, every suggestion she made for an activity was something sexual, and she made them all dead seriously. Surprisingly, she's in a committed, apparently exclusive relationship with Rin.
• Mama Bear: Natsuka Kendo in the aftermath of the Training Camp Arc, initially refusing to send Kendo back to "that deathtrap of a school."
• Mid Fic Upgrade: Most of the class manage to access an improved version of their quirk between the Provisional Licence Arc and the fic's version of the Joint Training Arc. Specific examples include:
  • Monoma is able to copy two quirks at once.
  • Yui's height maximum is increased by around 60%.
  • Setsuna can regrow any body part that isn't her head, giving her de facto regeneration abilities.
  • Tsuburaba develops an offensive variant of his solid air, "Whistle Spear," a solid air spear that he fires from his mouth.
  • Tetsutetsu develops "Heavy Metal," a move that massively increases his weight and density.
  • Rin grows flight-capable wings in addition to his scales.
  • Kaibara gets a wrist-mounted rotor from Hatsume that allows him to create air attacks and is usable as a helicopter blade for mobility.
• The Minion Master: Fujimi Romero's Quirk.
• Mood Whiplash: Chapter 87. After half-a-dozen chapters of fluff and slice-of-life comedy, this chapter comes along and kicks the reader between the legs.
  • In Chapter 12, Kendo, Shishida and Monoma almost end up having to fight against Kuroiro, Honenuki, Tetsutetsu and Ibara in order to stop the latter four from trying to intervene in the USJ attack. Just before the fight breaks out, The Big Three show up.
• Musical Theme Naming: Various chapters are named after songs, such as Dear Friends by Queen, Like a Rock by Bob Seger, Stiff Competition by Cheap Trick. Even the Fic's title is a reference to Never Surrender by Stan Bush.
• My Life Flashed Before My Eyes: Setsuna, when Dabi throws an attack that he describes as "a funeral pyre" straight at her. Rin ends up taking the brunt of the attack, but the stress from doing so stops his heart .
• Opposites Attract: Tetsutetsu (loud, goofy, and forwards, loves fighting) and Ibara (quiet, serious and reserved, despises violence).
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Class 1-B as a whole by Class 1-A. This is canon, but it's especially emphasized here: It turns out that during the Hero Killer Arc, Monoma, Ibara and Reiko were helping arrest a major villain of their own, Overdrive. The media barely covers the Overdrive story (despite Overdrive being a villain that was incredibly dangerous, taking on All Might himself on relatively even terms several years before, having escaped prison and currently being deeply involved in the Black Market for villainous support equipment) and focuses all of its attention on Stain.
• Power Copying: It turns out that copying another's powers is pretty useless when up against someone with no powers, as Monoma finds out when going up against Seijo, who despite his Elite Mook status turns out to be Quirkless.
• The Power of Love: What is it that pushes Rin into activating his full dragon form for the first time, despite being half dead and Dabi lighting him on fire? Setsuna screaming for his help as she's being dragged off by Toga.
• Please Wake Up: Setsuna to Rin when the latter "dies."
• Poor Communication Kills: Most of the comedy around Pony centers on her saying things that are just incorrect enough that they become hilarious.
  • Somewhat more seriously, Ibara and Setsuna run into relationship troubles with Tetsutetsu and Rin respectively due to miscommunications between the respective partners.
• Recycled Premise: The Rescue OVA from canon is reused with 1-B substituted for 1-A. The in-universe explanation is that the UA teachers, having seen 1-A in action against a villainous force they hadn't been prepared for, wanted to see how 1-B would react to a similar situation.
• The Rival: Gaikoko High School to UA, and more specifically Victoria Hope to Kendo. It's revealed that this is due to UA being the ones to bring down Stain. Stain was a former Gaikoko student who went rogue, and Victoria tried to catch him before he could destroy Gaikoko's reputation. She failed, losing an eye in the process. Victoria then trained obsessively for another shot a Stain, which she felt robbed of when Midoriya, Iida and Todoroki were the ones to bring him in. She subsequently took her rage out on the first people from UA that she came across, which happened to be Class 1-B, and she manages to press Kendo's berserk button in the process.
  • A bunch of these develop during the story's version of the Joint Training Arc, including Monoma and Bakugo (continuing from all the way back during the Sports Festival), Honenuki and Todoroki (both Recommended Students), Kirishima and Tetsutetsu (an example of a Friendly Rivalry, again continuing from the Sports Festival), and Rin and Ojiro (each classes' main Martial Artist).
• Say My Name: Kendo to Kashiko during the Final Battle.
• Series Fauxnale: Chapter 107 is the final chapter in the Kidnapping Arc, which was supposed to be the end of the story, but alas, it continued with chapter 108 onwards.
• Sense Freak: Kashiko Dokasuru does this with the emotions of the people that she absorbs, practically getting high off of Kendo's anger and despair while trying to kill Monoma, and later describing Tetsutetsu and Ibara as "a delicious cocktail of emotions."
• Serial Escalation: Various commentators noticed that the fights during the Kidnapping Arc gradually escalated in scale and damage done.
• Shipper on Deck: Setsuna for Monoma/Kendo, Tetsutetsu/Ibara and pretty much every other ship in the fic.
• Shout-Out: In-universe, to Dragon Ball: nearly everyone notes that Shoda's quirk pretty much allows him to go Super Saiyan.
  • The play that 1-B performs at the Culture Festival has them doing a musical featuring various songs from Ninja Sex Party.
• Shrinking Violet: Kimori and Yui start out here, the former simply being shy and the later lacking in emotions in general. They start growing out of this with the help of their classmates as the story progresses.
• Spoiled by the Format: Yay! Tetsutetsu and Ibara are here, and they've pretty much defeated Kashiko! So why is there still most of a chapter left? Sure enough, Kashiko has another trick up her sleeve: she blinds the heroes with a flashbang, and in the ensuing chaos she absorbs Tetsutetsu and Ibara.
• Stealth Mentor: Ryukyu to Rin during the Provisional License Exam. Having figured out that his Quirk is actually far more powerful than it appears, Ryukyu pushes Rin into accessing his wings for the first time.
• Strong as They Need to Be: Name-checked by Ibara in the Kidnapping arc with regards to her and Tetsutetsu tearing apart the Goliath Maxim, a tank designed to fight against All Might in his prime. Also a justified example, as Setsuzoku drastically underestimated how far Ibara and Tetsutetsu could push their Quirks.
• Take Up My Sword: Ragdoll to her niece Seikagi.
• Team Mom: Kendo. Slightly Deconstructed in the aftermath of the Training Camp arc, as Kendo spends so much time and energy trying to take care of the rest of the class (most of whom are in the hospital) that she barely takes care of herself. The result: she nearly has an emotional breakdown while watching All Might's fight with All for One, as she has no emotional energy left to spare and watching the Symbol of Peace being wailed on is almost too much for her.
• Taking the Bullet: Rin for Setsuna during the Kidnapping Arc, resulting in Rin's Disney Death.
• Time Skip: About three months pass between the Kidnapping Arc and the start of the Academy Clash Arc. Downplayed because Draconic and Atlas both take place during the gap.
• Title Drop: Vlad King in the final pre-Time Skip chapter, talking about how his students all have "The Heart of a Hero."
• True Companions: The primary strength of 1-B is that they are practically unstoppable when acting as a unit. For instance, they took down All Might while almost completely unprepared and with less than a week's experience (granted, All Might was holding back, but he still admits that it was a rather tough fight), predominantly by using a series of devastating combination attacks that combine their various strengths to amazing effect. Brought up in-story: when comparing the ability of 1-B and 1-A, All Might muses that while 1-A is driven by rivals trying to surpass each other, 1-B is a more cohesive team that is driven to work together to surpass anyone that challenges them.
  • Demonstrated in the Kidnapping Arc perfectly, when the entire class unanimously decides to go after Kendo after she's kidnapped by Head Games, despite Kendo specifically telling them not to come.
• Victory by Endurance: How Kendo defeats Kashiko: the former knows that the latter is unused to fighting with the Quirks that she absorbed from Tetsutetsu and Ibara and will waste her energy using them in a far more aggressive way than their usual wielders.
• Wacky Homeroom: You thought 1-A was crazy? 1-B is just as nuts. Highlights include: Ibara trying to perform an exorcism on Bakugo, Setsuna flirting on anything with a pulse, Hatsume trying to turn Awase into a cyborg, Kendo being the single mom of 19 toddlers and the most screwed up game of D&D ever played.
• Wham Episode: As mentioned above, Chapter 87: Kendo is kidnapped by an up-and-coming gang of villains trying to upstage the League of Villains by doing what they never could: wiping out an entire class worth of UA students. Using Kendo as bait, they hope to draw in and slaughter the entirety of 1-B.
  • Chapter 104. Just... Chapter 104. Long story short, Monoma is nearly beaten to death, and we learn what Kashiko's Quirk is: Absorption, which allows her to absorb other people into her body and gain some of their physical traits and Quirks, a la Majin Buu, which is what she does with Kendo.
  • Chapters 137-141: The New Power Generation launches their first major attack. The result? A complete and utter Curb-Stomp Battle IN THEIR FAVOR.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Nearly everyone to Monoma after he nearly kills himself trying to pass the Final Exam (he uses his own blood as a weapon while copying Vlad King's quirk in order to cover Pony's escape from the test area, and would have likely died if Vlad hadn't immediately put his blood back inside him and rushed Monoma to Recovery Girl), although this is partially due to them interpreting his actions through the lens of his apparent obsession with surpassing 1A instead of being motivated by his Inferiority Superiority Complex.
• The Worf Effect: Downplayed, but the New Power Generation inflicts at least a Curb Stomp Cushion on everyone that tries to fight them during their first attack, if not an outright Curb-Stomp Battle. Justified in that while the Heroes had some idea of what the NPG was capable of, many of them were either caught by surprise (such as Ibara) or were up against terrible Quirk matchups (Tetsutetsu, Ryukyu).
• Yandere: Toga, as in canon. Exaggerated during her fight with Setsuna, as Toga's Blood Lust gets kicked into overdrive when she realizes that due to Setsuna's Healing Factor, Toga can slice and cut her opponent up as much as she wants and Setsuna won't die. This leads to Toga referring to Setsuna as an "endless friend" and describing how she wants to put her in a cage and keep her as a pet (after cutting out her tongue so she can't talk back to her).
  • Kashiko is also this to an extent; see Sense Freak above.

A New Era (contains unmarked spoilers for The Heart of a Hero)

• Babies Ever After: The main characters are the daughters of the Kendo/Monoma and Tetsutetsu/Ibara marriages.
• Hostage Situation: Sofia is taken hostage by a robber in the first chapter, but is soon rescued by Kota.
• Kid Hero All Grown-Up: Well, Teen Heroes: about 20 years have passed since The Heart of a Hero, so the members of the former Class 1-B are now adults in their mid-to-late 30s and have become part of the next generation of professional heroes.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content: A large portion of the main character's class is filled out with fan-submitted OCs.
• Spin-Offspring: The sequel focuses on the children of the now-adult Class 1-B.