Chapter 3

Mating season was over, the song was written, and Venn was a student at U.A. High. All was right with the world at the moment. Venn and Izuku both left at the same time to go to class. Venn pulled a little at the uncomfortable collar of his uniform. "God, America doesn't have any of this uniform shit. This is so uncomfortable."

Izuku scratched the back of his neck. "O-oh, well, you'll get used to it, I think." He cleared his throat a little. "U-uh, how w-well did you do on the entrance exam?"

Venn gave a small smile. "88 total points. The highest out of this year's entrance exams. 52 villain points, 36 rescue points." He shrugged. "I'm not big on bragging, but if they're gonna tell me that I got 1st place, then why the hell wouldn't I brag at least once?"

Izuku scratched his cheek. "I-I suppose." He paused. "I didn't manage to get any villain points, but I got 60 rescue points."

Venn turned to him with an appreciative look. "Wow. Good job, buddy." He gave Izuku a playful punch to the arm that wasn't scarred. "How'd you manage that?"

Izuku began to stutter even worse. "W-w-well, I p-punched the z-z-zero pointer and d-d-destroyed it. I s-s-saved a g-g-g-g-g-girl."

Venn couldn't hold back a belly-laugh. "Oh, man, this is priceless." His eyebrows wriggled together. "What's her name, huh?~"

Izuku blushed heavily. "U-U-Uraraka." Venn's eyebrows furrowed. The whole "last name first" thing in Japan was still odd to him. Izuku noticed and shook his head. "Er-erm, O-Ochaco."

Venn smiled. "That's nice. I hope to see you two out and about together one day." Izuku went redder, eliciting a laugh from Venn. "Calm down buddy, I'm just fuckin with ya." He clapped Izuku on the back as they walked up the steps to the school. "1-A, right?"

Izuku nodded. Shortly thereafter, they arrived outside the door. Izuku just kinda stood there for a minute or two, too long for Venn to wait for him. He just sighed, rolled his eyes, and opened the door.

He was greeted by a blonde girl with her feet up on her desk, crossed to cover herself, and arguing with the dude who talked shit at Izuku for no reason earlier.

When he entered, having to hunch down in order to fit his 6'4" frame without bumping his head, whatever conversations and arguments were going on very abruptly ended. Collectively, the thoughts of the 18 students inside mostly went something like: 'Tall!'

Venn rather quickly heard two separate squeals, and the sound of someone collapsing out of their desk. His head shot to his left. The pinkette who'd been plaguing his hormones for the last two weeks practically sprinted towards him, leaping onto his arm. He barely kept his balance. "W-whoah, Mina, Jesus." She giggled and let go of his arm as a new presence sprinted over, a notebook in hand.

"Ohmygod, y-you're V-Venn Slater." Venn turned his head to be met by a… rather short girl. Her earlobes ended in earphone jacks, ones you'd see plugged into phones and such. They seemed to move at her will, and currently, they were waving very fast figure eights in front of her. Her dark purple hair laid in asymmetrical fringes on either side of her cheeks. Venn could barely make out heart rate symbols at the base of her fringes. She held a notebook about 2 inches away from his nose, making his eyes cross a little. "I-I'm a huge f-fan." Her earjacks stopped spinning and tapped each other lightly, expressing shyness, as her face erupted in a heavy blush. "C-can I ha-have your au-autograph?"

Venn smiled. "Sure! Been awhile since I've done that, considering ya know, band's been done for a couple years." He reached his arm back and took a blue-ink gel pen out of his backpack and signed his name nice and big, covering the entire page she offered, before he added a small, horrifically drawn snake sketch next to it, his forked tongue flying out of his mouth in concentration.

Mina could've sworn her heart did a tap dance when his tongue flicked. 'He's so hot, but he's also so… wholesome.'

He topped off the snake sketch by drawing it with a wink and looked up, smirking lightly. "What's your name, sweetheart?"

She blushed even harder, if that was possible. "U-uh, J-Jiro." Venn's eyebrows furrowed again. "K-Kyoka Jiro."

His eyebrows returned to setting position. "To… Kyoka…" He wrote that in cursive English above his signature, and handed it back. "Hope you can read that." He winced. "Not that you're dumb and can't or something, just, ya know, I wrote in English, and, uh…"

His voice trailed off, as Jiro shoved the whole notebook up her shirt, the signature facing in, and hummed lightly before seemingly discovering where she was. She squeaked, blushed, slapped Venn in the face with an earjack, and ran away to her seat… about 10 feet away. Her thoughts were running a triathlon. 'Oh my god, I got his autograph.' Her peripheral vision gazed on him. 'He's even hotter with his scales. How????' She flicked her notebook's papers a bit. 'I apologize in advance, my poor, defenseless bedsheets.'

Venn scratched his head and stepped further in the room. He was only able to take in a few more people, as Izuku stepped in: A blue-skinned girl, with even darker blue hair in a short ruffled right part. 'Hm. My kinda color.' He shook his head clear of the thought, turning his head again to find a brunette. Her cheeks looked to be in a state of permanent rosy-ness, and following her eyes, Venn 's eyes went to Izuku, trying to defend himself (and failing) against the rude words of the obnoxious and mean blonde girl from earlier. He smirked. 'Oh, Izuku, you caught yourself a pure one. Lucky you.' He shot a general grin around the room before a large yellow sleeping bag, like a caterpillar, stood up at the front of the room. He quickly dashed to take an unoccupied seat near Izuku, sitting behind him. Next to him, the only seat next to him since he was against the wall, was a boy who appeared to have a bird quirk of some kind, if Venn was to guess. Behind Venn was a girl with a spiked black ponytail.

Venn's tongue flicked once or twice before he tuned back into what the haggard, homeless looking teacher was saying, appearing to be reaching the end of a sentence in Japanese. Venn sighed and pulled out his translation book, drawing the teacher's gaze. "Slater. Don't worry about understanding me. I will reiterate the gist of my Japanese sentences in English for you, until the whole class is able to understand English well enough to only use that. You probably didn't catch my name, my name is Shouta Aizawa, I am your teacher."

Venn nodded. "Ok, thank you, Mr. Aizawa. Also, erm, can you just use my first name? I uh, I'm not adjusted to the last-name-first thing yet. If I don't hear my first name, I might not respond to my last all the time."

Aizawa sighed. "Fine, but understand that within our culture, that could send very mixed signals, depending upon who you ask it of." Venn simply nodded. "Anyway, take your gym uniform and head to the training area. Yours has been custom made with fabric that won't tear to ribbons when you use your… quirk."

Venn silently picked up his uniform as his brain registered something. 'So he knows what I have isn't a quirk. Great.'

Venn went into the boys locker room and changed, ignoring the other guys furrowing their brows at Venn's apparently full-bodied scales. There was a large hole in the back of his gym uniform just above his butt, along with boxers likely made from the same material as his uniform, for his body-length tail.

He left the locker room, his uniform slightly unzipped just because it felt stuffy, and made his way to the training field alongside the other guys.

Venn immediately uncovered a problem that he'd likely have for a very long time: 'The guys only really talk in Japanese. I have no idea what the fuck they're saying to know if I can hop into the conversation.' He jammed his hands in his pockets and scratched his cheek as Izuku fell into step with him.

"H-hey, are you ok? You look a little down."

Venn sighed. "Yeah, I guess. I just don't have any idea what the guys are saying. None whatsoever. It's not just a self-conscious idea that I don't fit, it's more so that I don't know if they're talking about me." He shook his head. "I don't exactly look normal."

Izuku scratched the back of his head. "O-oh. W-well, if someone says something to you that you don't understand, just c-call me over. I'd be happy to translate for you."

Venn smiled, slightly pointy canines flashing in the sunlight. "Thanks Izuku. I got lucky getting you and your mom for my foreign exchange hosts." He clapped him heavily on the back.

Izuku flushed a little red and began to stutter terribly before they'd already arrived at the training area. It was mostly just a dirt path with a white circle on it, with a massive field next to it. The students gathered around in front of Aizawa as he began to speak. Izuku beside him drew a notebook out of absolutely nowhere and wrote the english translations, which Venn read as it was written. He nodded in understanding as he heard Aizawa begin to repeat himself in English.

Venn just put his hand up. "It's okay, I got it. Izu- erm, Midoriya, translated it for me." He scratched the back of his head. "Sorry, I'm really trying."

Aizawa shook his head. "It's fine. But regardless, Venn, what was your record ball throw in middle school?"

Venn paused, his face visibly faltering for half a second, before he gave a small smile. "I uh… I was homeschooled for the most part, so I uh, I never did it. Sorry."

Aizawa sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He spoke a paragraph or so in Japanese, which Izuku again translated for him, and turned back to him. "Here, our middle schools do fitness tests, which involve throwing a baseball as far as you possibly can. They outlaw quirks in them, for some reason, but not here at U.A. Venn, you scored the highest in the entrance exam practical. Show me how far you can throw this with your… quirk."

Venn gulped slightly and took a deep breath, catching the baseball that Aizawa tossed to him mid-transformation. The members of the class that hadn't already seen his transformation bore mixes of horror, awe, and curiosity. His electricity erupted and Venn cocked his head to the side. "I very much sssuggest you all get back a bit." His voice was the same, but it was as if it was layered on top of a hissing growl. Rolling his neck, Venn closed his massive right hand around the baseball, which fit very neatly in his palm. Venn spun, as if he was doing a hammer throw, before he leaped, spinning parallel to the ground upwards, turning into a blackish blue blur, before a shockwave erupted. Not a single student could see him actually throw the ball. All they knew was that the sound barrier was shattered three times over. He came down from his spin to land on one hand, bringing his feet down to join it. He turned his head to Aizawa. "How'd I do?"

Aizawa's right eye twitched as he turned his display to him. "You threw it hard and high enough that it's gonna take a few minutes for it to actually land, considering it's falling down through the atmosphere. Go ahead and shift back, we'll get started with everything else once it lands."

Venn's blue scales went to a slightly more vibrant blue, a blush, as he shifted back. He glanced to his right and chuckled a bit when he spotted Mina starting a stopwatch and staring in the direction Venn threw the ball.

Venn's skin had been regrown for about 5 minutes when the ball finally landed. Aizawa turned his distance-measure thing around, and it read, in large digital letters, "ERROR". Mina's stopwatch ended there, reading that it took 45 minutes for the ball to land.

Aizawa began to speak but his phone rang before he could. He began speaking English into his phone. "Sorry, what did I do?" There was a pause. "Ball through your window, huh. What?" Another pause. "Oh. Yeah, I guess that was us. Sorry." There was a little more of a squabble before Aizawa hung up and turned back. "We don't have the processing power to measure a ball throw that lands in America, sorry. That ball just went through the living room window of one David Shield and broke his tv." Aizawa sighed. "I need coffee."

The students all understood what was said just based on "lands in America", and collectively picked up their jaws from the floor.

Venn scratched the back of his head as Aizawa did some scrolling on his phone for a second and then nodding. "Slater." No response. "Slater." Venn continued blushing and looking around. "Sla-..." Aizawa sighed. "Venn!"

Venn turned around. "Huh? What?"

Aizawa turned his phone to face Venn. "From Japan to California, your home state if I'm not mistaken, where David Shield resides, is roughly 10,988,600.8 meters, Or 6,828 miles."

The entire class went pale as ghosts. Venn blinked. "I uh… wow. I didn't know I could throw that hard. Neat."

Aizawa shook his head. "What you did involved more than just your raw strength. You included momentum and centrifugal force. Very well done, Slater." He turned to the rest of the class to speak in Japanese.

According to Izuku's written translation, there would be some more tests.

Then he heard a dreaded exclamation from Mina that Izuku translated for him, followed by a terrifying revelation from Aizawa.

"Oh god, no. Expulsion?" He turned to Mina's direction and narrowed his eyes at her. "Judas."

She gasped in mock offense. "How dare? I only said it would be fun." She pouted.

Venn sighed. "For some reason, I don't think Mr. Aizawa agrees with you."

The blue skinned girl Venn saw earlier slumped her shoulders a bit before she straightened and took a breath. She said something in Japanese that Venn didn't particularly catch, but based on the body language, it was probably some declaration of determination.

The rest of the class's ball throws were destined for the last test, but there were still plenty of other tests to get done. First up was the 50-meter dash. Cracking his knuckles and shedding his skin once again, Venn found himself lined up next to the blue-skinned girl from earlier. At the signal, Venn leaped forward onto all-fours in a gallop. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the girl barefoot, emitting what looked like some form of soap from her feet to slide. 'Huh. A lot like Mina.' Venn's gallop, however, was too much. When his hands would come down to the ground, he'd push off hard, sending himself many feet forward each time. When his hands and feet weren't on the ground, his limbs stayed close to his body, streamlining himself for speed. He reinforced his fingers with extra scales to gain better traction. He passed the finish line with a time of 3.5 seconds. The blue teenager in the lane next to him wasn't very far behind him, passing the finish line with a 5.38.

The notable results from the dash were a navy-haired tall guy with engines on his calves who passed the finish line with a nutty 3.04 time, and Mina, who came in just a bit faster than the soap girl, at 5.25 seconds. Venn raised an eyebrow high at Izuku when he took his turn. 'I thought he had a quirk? Hm.' Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the spiky blonde-haired girl with explosions, who Venn had now labeled as the class brat, huff when he didn't look her way when she got a good time of 4.13, just behind Venn and Engine Boy.

Next was the grip strength test. The class got lucky in there being multiple machines for the grip strength test, because Venn broke his. Just the whole thing. The class was silent for several seconds before a guy with spiky red hair began crying for some reason. There wasn't really anything worth noting in this test other than his own result. Maybe the guy with 6 arms. He pulled off a nice 540kg of force.

The next test was the standing long jump in front of a sandbox. Venn smiled deviously, as the whole class watched, and stabbed his tail into the ground with sharpened scales. His resulting jump, using his own leg muscles plus his tail using mostly the same strength to push off the ground for a second jump, cleared the equivalent of two sandboxes. Noticeable results from this was the spiky blonde brat, whose name Venn had heard to be Bakugo, cleared the sandbox (but didn't bother going any further), and then a dude with an odd pointy chin used a beam that came from his stomach to clear the sandbox.

The next was the repeated sidesteps. Venn's tail made this easy. He stabbed it down outside of the lines he had to jump between and just used it to push and pull himself back and forth.

The following 3 tests were the seated toe touch, which Venn won by a long shot by basically putting his chest to his knees, the sit-ups, which had Venn coming up to about 3 inches from Kyoka's face, catching a heavy whiff of chocolate for some reason, every time he curled upwards (his stamina won him this test easily without even transforming), and then the long distance run, which he again won without even having to be transformed. He wasn't even out of breath at the end of the long distance run.

There were only three noteworthy ball throws besides Venn's own: Bakugo's, the girl Izuku referred to as "Ochaco", and Izuku himself. The Bakugo girl managed to snag 705.2 meters. Ochaco, much to Venn's chagrin, scored infinity by just taking the weight from the ball.

Before Izuku even went up to do his, Venn stopped him. "Hey. Don't go all out, dude. We don't want the same thing that happened at the entrance exam to happen here. You need arms to properly function."

His words seemed to stop Izuku's train of thought. Izuku nodded to him and then stepped into the circle. Izuku seemed to stand for a second to think before he began to spin a bit. He did a couple spins and then let the ball go. Venn narrowed his eyes to see what happened and nodded in satisfaction at seeing that Izuku had kept his quirk to just a finger to boost the ball, instead of his whole arm. Venn again nodded with a small smile at seeing Izuku's score. The little spin did alright for him, netting him a 715.2 meters. Venn's senses flared quickly when he smelled sulfur and brimstone storming in Izuku's direction. He transformed and spun, catching Bakugo's wrist in his hand.

He growled. "Sssit. Down." The blonde bitch growled right back and set off an explosion in Venn's face, expecting to be let go. Go figure, she was not. When the smoke cleared, Venn's other hand was in front of his face, scales bunched up and threaded through his fingers in a sort of shield. The hand went back down and Venn hissed in her face, his 9-inch fangs unsheathing from the roof of his mouth. Venn saw Aizawa attempt to erase his powers out of the corner of his eye which made him internally laugh. Venn shook his head. "It's none of your bussinessss if he has a quirk or not. Obviously he doess, and whether you knew that or not is irrelevant. You're here to be a hero, he'ss here to be a hero, we're all here to be heroess." He threw her wrist away and morphed back to a human shape, still in her face. He snarled. "You stay out of his way and let him try, and you and me won't have problems. Capiche?" His tongue flicked out, just a few centimeters away from her face.

His furious mask almost failed when his tongue picked up on a few things: 1. He was making Bakugo sweat like hell, probably out of fear. And 2. He could smell what he could only assume was some twisted form of arousal, which both confused and amused him, layered thickly over the smell of something he'd probably put in his secret booze-flask, except minus the acrid alcoholic smell.

Bakugo stiffened up, trying to keep some form of bluster, and scoffed. "Whatever, Tongue Fucker."

Venn's anger subsided instantly and instead he began dying of laughter. He wiped a tear before he sighed. "You really need to come up with a better nickname if you're trying to be insulting. I always fuck with my tongue first, so you're just telling the truth at this point."

Bakugo didn't respond, and instead blasted herself in the face with an explosion to hide a blush. Venn was lucky that Aizawa was busy talking to somebody on the phone at the moment, and so didn't have the opportunity to comment.

He walked back in line with his classmates from where he'd intercepted Bakugo to watch the rest of the ball throws. Venn ultimately came in at the top of the class (just ahead of Bakugo). He visibly winced when he saw that Izuku had come in last. He gave Bakugo a death glare, as if daring her to say something. She must've felt his eyes burrowing holes in the back of her head, because he watched her literally bite her tongue. 'Huh. So the brat can be tamed. Neat.' Venn moved to Izuku and put an arm around his shoulders. He was just getting ready to try to give some words of comfort when Aizawa spoke.

The English translation afterwards was obviously just a summary, considering how much shorter it was than the initial Japanese statement, but it gave Venn the explanation he needed for the loud uproar he heard from his classmates. "The expulsion threat was a lie."

Venn sighed. "Go figure." There was a brief explanation that Venn didn't actually care about in terms of the why, so he just kinda tuned it out. They were informed that the syllabus was on everyone's desks, and then they were sent back to the locker rooms.

The rest of the day passed rather uneventfully. His phone blew up during the day due to the class now having a group chat (which he paid zero attention to for the most part) and set himself to work on finishing production for his song. Once it was done, he looked up the most independent Japanese record company currently active and sold them the song to publish/release, all in the name of giving back to the industry.

He woke up the next morning with a significantly more inflated bank account, and a group chat screaming about the new song.

~~~Mina Ashido created group chat Class1ARulez~~~

~Mina Ashido added Izuku Midoriya, Venn Slater, Ochaco Uraraka, Eiji Kirishima, Kaoruko Awata, Katsumi Bakaugo, and 13 others.~

-Mina Ashido changed her name to AlienQueen-

AlienQueen: Vennnn, when did you release another song? And why is it so saaaaaad?!

-Kyoka Jiro changed her name to Jacks-

Jacks: What?! You went solo?? BRB

Jacks: God, yeah that's sad. Beautiful, but sad.

-Katsumi Bakugo changed her name to Exploder-

Exploder: What the fuck are you talking about?

AlienQueen: Venn was a famous musician from America a few years ago. He released a new song last night.

Exploder: That's all? Whatever.

-Venn Slater changed his name to OneSnakeyBoi-

OneSnakeyBoi: Fuck you too.

-Tenya Iida changed his name to Engine-

Engine: Language!

OneSnakeyBoi: If language bothers you, then I don't think that's the last time you'll be saying something about it to me. My mouth is arguably worse than Kat's.

Venn set his phone to mute so he could get ready for his day. While he wasn't looking, Kyoka posted a link to the song online, which resulted in the entire class listening to it.

He forgot he'd left it on mute, so he never checked it once he was ready. He rammed a raw steak he'd bought the night before on his way home down his throat, brushed his teeth for an hour, showered, brushed his hair, got dressed, and left just as Izuku's alarm had gone off to wake up.

He was the first person inside the classroom, just in time to plop his backpack on his desk and pass out for a 20 minute power nap before he got woken up by a shy earjack poking him in the forehead. He snorted as he woke up, his eyes slowly blinking open. "Hm? Class starting? Sick." With a stifled yawn, he took in his surroundings…

...to see 19 students staring at him like they'd just met a kicked puppy on the street. 'Oh shit, they took the song literally. Uh oh.' "Uh… it was a song. It was in reference to a past situation. I'm fine." He spotted Mina next to him with worry practically screaming off her face. He shook his head as Aizawa stepped in and ended the tense atmosphere.

Kyoka and the other students quickly returned to their seats as Venn sat back in his chair. Aizawa informed them of things they'd missed from orientation, namely who their counselor was and also when the dorms would be done. They were informed of their first Heroics class being scheduled for later, and they were dismissed. Venn waited until everyone else had left and then informed Aizawa of his mating seasons, as Nezu had asked in the acceptance letter, and then also left for the Heroics class, stifling a second yawn.

He ignored the still concerned glances from his classmates in favor of writing down a few ideas for new, less depressing songs. He didn't want to be a one-trick pony, after all. He stuck his pencil behind his left ear, brushed his hand through his blonde hair, and opened the door to the heroics class, sitting down next to the spiky red-head, Kirishima, and a dude with tape on his elbows. The guy with 6 arms, Mezo Shoji, sat behind him, and Katsumi Bakugo sat in front of him. He sat back again, his arms crossed behind his head, and stretched his shoulders as they all waited for their Heroics teacher to arrive.