"You can be a hero too!"

She could still see that stupid bloodied face of his as he held his hand up, curling those broken fingers up into a fist. It was so fucking cheesy and wanna-be heroic, it was almost kind of cool. Still, everything about that fight, about the Sports Festival as a whole, had opened her eyes. Izuku, his name burned into her head after he was declared the winner, almost looked like he understood what she was talking about.

About having a quirk that people just automatically assumed would be perfect for a villian. The more she thought about it, the more it pissed her off. Yeah. His quirk hurt him. Badly. She saw him get carried to the infirmary, and even caught a glimpse of his new scars. With a quirk like that, people probably told him he couldn't be a hero. So what if he understood her like that.

Self-sacrifice was heroic, so his quirk was heroic.

"And now I'm just making excuses." Hitomi let out a long tired sigh and flopped on her bed, finding the cold side of the pillow as she glared at her phone for a few seconds. She wasn't going to check the time, she wasn't going to check the time, doing that would just make her inability to sleep worse. It was a trap.

3:15 in the morning. Fuck.

She glared at her phone, her eyes watering at the bright light before it dimmed down. Well, there went any plans of trying to sleep and having a fully charged phone in the morning. Unplugging the cord she rolled back over and began to make some bad mistakes. Namely, Google.

Search: Izuku Midoriya.

Ahh. He had a Facebook.

With a tap, she was brought to his page. The profile pic was old. Very old. He looked like he was wearing a middle school uniform, and this Izuku looked so different from the one she fought. He looked scared, unsure, skinny, and scrawny enough that she could probably flip him over her shoulder. Which, considering how she barely managed to pass the obstacle course, was saying a lot. Fitness wasn't something she ever really considered.

But Izuku had.

She scrolled down past his basic information and saw a few posts. Most were pretty boring, him gushing about a new All Might figure, pretty boring all things considered. Why was she even browsing his profile? Oh, because it was 3:20 in the morning, and she had a terrible sleep record.

Plus she was curious. Though it didn't look like he had used the page in quite some time.

She finally found a post that made her stop mindlessly scrolling and actually think about what she was reading.

Izuku Midoriya: I'm starting to think I should give up on being a hero.

Katsuki Bakugo liked that.

Katsuki Bakugo: You should have already, you quirkless nerd! You better not even try to apply to U.A!

Okay. Three very important things happened right there.

One. Katsuki Bakugo was a fucking jackass, but she knew that already.

Two. Izuku could empathize with her a lot more than she thought.

And lastly. What the shit was this about being quirkless?

People were born with their quirks sure they took a while to appear but people just didn't randomly get a quirk.

Google: Quirk Development age.

Google: Quirk Development late.

Apparently some guy had a quirk that made his hair always blue so it went undiscovered for decades. There were a dozen stories of adults who had quirks but never knowing what they were until they discovered it by accident, such as a quirk that required them to sleep one less hour, or being fireproof, or being immune to diseases. There were a lot of late bloomers with passive quirks.

Izuku's wasn't passive.

Google: Quirk Development Teenager.

Nothing of note.

Google: Izuku Midoriya. U.A. Quirk.

She found a very detailed article reporting on the Sports festival, and scrolled through it until she found a picture of Izuku. It was when he came in first during the race looking like a panicking lost child ready to cry at a moment's notice. The next picture of him was of him actually crying, there were a lot more pictures of Shoto though, which made sense given who his father was. Then she got to her match against Izuku, and the article went into more detail about their quirks.

Well, it went into detail about Izuku's quirk.

Because she wasn't in the hero course a summary of her quirk wasn't available to the media, but Izuku's was. Apparently it was just super power and that using it hurt him. That was just about as uninspired as she thought it would be. But there was something of note, a link to another article.

It was about All Might saving two boys just over a year ago, one was Katsuki Bakugo, and the other was Izuku Midoriya. Huh. There was a photo of Izuku wearing his middle school uniform, he looked just as scrawny in the picture. That meant that he went from a weakling to someone quite fit in less than a year. That was a special kind of insane and equally impressive.

"So what the hell have I been doing?" She glared at the bag of chips sitting on her desk. She knew those weren't healthy, she knew that she wasn't exactly in shape. She barely knew how to throw a punch. And yet, she wanted to be a hero. But she used everyone saying her quirk was for a villain as an excuse to not try.

"You can be a hero too!"

Dammit, was that green haired punk really trying to motivate her?

"Fuck. Why the hell do I always end up motivated at," she checked the time, "four in the fucking morning? Hopefully this time it'll stick or something."

Maybe she should ask the hero course teachers tomorrow for advice or something.

XXXX

Crap.

She woke up, feeling like she hadn't gotten any sleep - which, she didn't - and to make things worse, she was still motivated. Seriously, who knew some positive reinforcement could do so much good for her outlook. Still, she was kicking herself for letting everyone get to her for so long. Sure, maybe she didn't have the best quirk for being a hero, but that was no excuse not to try.

She blamed her bitterness on all the coffee she drank.

Hitomi sighed and scratched the back of her head. She so didn't want to do this, it was so awkward asking people for things and how the hell did she even go about saying 'Hey, I was an idiot for years and I want to start really trying to be a hero now because some beansprout flipped me over his shoulder and said I could.' Actually that might just work.

With one last sigh—damn she did that a lot—she opened the door to the teacher's room and walked in, spotting both of them going over a lesson plan or something. Which one should she ask? Aizawa-sensei always looked so pissed off, while Kan-sensei was just plain scary looking.

Still. She already opened the door. That was like the first step. Now she just needed to talk to them.

"Umm Sensei," She gave the correct amount of respect and pushed her hair back out of her face. She should have worn make-up or something, wait, would that make it look like she was trying too hard in the wrong way instead of actually trying? At the very least she should have gotten a good night's sleep, but that wasn't something that was going to happen.

Kan-sensei looked up at her and gave a gruff nod. "Hitomi right, general department, class 1-C?"

"Yes sir, that's right sir." Was that too many sirs?

Aizawa-sensei gave a hard humph and started to type on his computer, shutting himself off from the conversation. Well she wasn't surprised.

"You did well in the Sports Festival, but what can we do for you?" Kan-sensei popped his neck and looked up at her more directly, a gruff smile on his face looking even more menacing because of his tusks.

For some reason she doubted there would be a 'we' helping her.

"I was wondering. What do I need to do to join the hero course?"

Huh, that was easier than she thought.

Aizawa-sensei stood sharply, slamming his hands down on the desk and walking towards the door at a brisk pace.

"Well," Kan-sensei pointed at Aizawa-sensei. "You can start by following him."

Fuck.

"Right. Thank you, sensei." She bowed and hurried after the grumpier of the two. Why did it have to be him? He had a long, long, long, list of students that he had expelled. Like, he'd only been here for like five years and had expelled like two hundred students. There were horror stories of him just showing up, glaring at someone and then expelling them.

She caught up with Aizawa-sensei and matched his pace, careful not to look him in the eyes. Or was she supposed to do that? Why wasn't there a manual for this? Not that she'd read it. They exited the teaching building and headed for one of the supplementary buildings that made up the campus.

"Umm, Aizawa-sensei?" She asked as they entered one of the buildings, it wasn't one that she had been in. "Where are we going?"

Aizawa-sensei just grunted and stopped at a door. He held out his hand to her. "I.D."

"Huh?" She blinked. "Oh! Student I.D."

She scrambled in her jacket and pulled out the I.D. that she used to enter the school each morning and even order food from the cafeteria. "Here you go."

Aizawa-sensei didn't waste a second and swiped her I.D. like it was a key-card, the double doors opened up and the smell of sweat wafted out from the room. The sounds of physical activity flooded the hallway, and Hitomi took a step to the left to peer into the room. It was a gym, one of many scattered about U.A. Numerous students were working out and training there, some were using free weights, others machines, and some were even sparring in large matted arenas.

"Zero Hours registered." Aizawa-sensei handed her her card back. "Start here. You have six months to impress me."

And with that the grumpiest teacher in U.A. stomped off, leaving her completely alone staring at a gym filled with people doing a bunch of workouts she had no idea how to even do.

"I'd start with changing into your gym clothes." Aizawa shouted from over his shoulder.

Well, she had a path forward now.

AN: Hi. Wanted to write Fem Hitoshi for a while. Hope you all enjoy.