Musutafu City (VI)

"I… I think I'm going to have to leave for a few weeks," Inko said, refusing to look up at her son as she fiddled with her hands anxiously.

Izuku had just told her everything about his powers, his adventures, and his current standing in the grand scheme of things.

"Hisashi would never understand unless I told him first hand, and… And, I think it'd be for the best… For our family… If I sought him out, while you focused on getting stronger at UA," Inko eventually said.

"You think he's going to be able to help me?" Izuku asked.

"At least, here in this world…" Inko said, seemingly unsure of the terminology even if it was just as ridiculous as the extent of her son's powers, "His ties to several heroes and governments as an official Vigilante might help you. I think…"

"I see… Well, just let me know when you plan on leaving and I'll help you pack and carry your bags to the airport. I'll be sure to visit our apartment every week when I get the chance and keep it maintained until you come," Izuku said, accepting her rather abrupt decision to leave for America to hunt down her husband.

She left within three days, while Izuku moved into the Alliance Heights Dorm the day he and Katsumi received their acceptance letters.

…

"This is bullshit," Katsumi sulked as she walked with Izuku, carrying boxes full of her possession which she would later unpack in her new room.

"Is it though?" Izuku asked, half teasing her and half seriously. "I mean, it makes sense that the staff here would judge people on the practical for more than just how easy they can massacre robots. Hero Points seem like a sensible enough thing to me, and it's not like you didn't get your own fair share of them as well for voluntarily blowing up your zero-pointer."

"Four hundred points though? Four-hundred?" She glared at him challengingly.

"You know I can blow up buildings dozens of kilometers away with perfect accuracy, right? What can I say… There were a lot of cowards and idiots in my block that needed the help," he ended up saying.

"Fucking… Bullshit powers," Katsumi continued to sulk.

This time, Izuku left her to her mood. She would just as easily get over it as she would get agitated. He just quietly helped her bring up her valuables and essentials before leaving her to decorate her room.

As he went about the mindless process again for himself, this time taking even longer as his room was on the fifth floor whilst Katsumi's was on the third, he ran into the first of his unknown peers to have arrived to move in.

"Good day and nice to meet you. I am Tenya of the Ida family!" The man loudly announced as he bent at a perfect thirty-degree angle and offered his hand in greeting.

"...Nice to meet you, Ida. I'm Izuku Midoriya," Izuku said as he awkwardly shook the man's hand.

"I hope to get along and make great comrades with you and everyone else in this dorm by the time we graduate! For now though, I must retrieve my belongings," Ida said before taking off.

Izuku liked his straightforward and direct mannerisms. Perhaps, he came off as a bit of a straight edge and even likely robotic, but at least you know he was always speaking his mind.

Izuku returned to his task of moving in and after redecorating his room, he decided to take a tour of the entire campus. Thanks to his ID Create, that meant he'd be able to see inside every room and in the process test out the extent of UA's security. With his Semblance Maxed out, the illusion of his IDs could simulate reality with virtually no difference within a range of ten kilometers.

Thus, Izuku began his tour by visiting the various colleges and academic departments whose buildings littered the perimeter of the campus.

As a fully-fledged, accredited university comparable to the Ivy League Universities of Harvard and Yale in the United States, UA taught tens of thousands of students every year. Only forty made it to the Premier Hero Course, but all their students could potentially graduate with a hero license; their usual turnout being around 1% of their graduating class accomplishing such a feat.

Naturally, for a "school" that had enough resources to give its freshmen prospects seven entire city replicas to freely battle robots without restraint, UA's campus was the size of a megacity itself. Izuku, going at a relatively casual pace, took hours just to pass by the various colleges and public sections.

'College of Business, School of Medicine, Support Warehouse for Material Requisition… They even have a few houses built for Fraternities and Sororities...' Izuku thought, thoroughly impressed even if he had already known all of his from his research of the place. It was one thing to read about an ultra-wealthy megaproject masterpiece and another thing entirely to see it for oneself.

When he was done, he went further toward the center of the campus and passed by all the different training grounds and athletic fields. The majority were restricted for use by Students either in the heroics program or with provisional licenses, but even the ones that were available to all were state-of-the-art quality.

Izuku whistled, 'That's three gyms, four stadiums, five environmental sectors, and seven fields.' Only two of the gyms and three of the fields were available to the public.

It was a shame that most of the training material would probably end up being useless to him, but he could appreciate how impressive it was for people who weren't physically capable of only improving thanks to the Gamer System.

By the time it was nearly dusk out, Izuku made it to UA's signature principal building. It was where most of the staff's offices were as well as the location of various important buildings, like the auditorium that was used to hold school-wide announcements and events.

There, Izuku was met with the most interesting security measures he'd seen thus far. Outside, the worst he'd faced was just a reinforced shield deploying if he triggered certain sensors; those, he gauged could be physically damaged with 500 Strength. Inside the principal building, however… there were all kinds of traps that became increasingly deadly as he got further up into the building.

Bolas trappings, tranquilizer darts, incapacitating gas… By the time he entered the University President's Office, he was actually blasted by an assortment of guns under a field that produced 10 G-force units of pressure.

Now, usually, Izuku wasn't much for snooping around the private information of others. But after suffering a rather unpleasant few minutes making his way up there, he rationalized his actions to be a way to remedy his grievances. Sure, he hadn't been hurt in any meaningful way, but the incapacitating agent in the gas he breathed in felt like it would keep stinging for a while and the sudden unexpected change in gravity had made him nearly stumble to his knees.

"Hmm…" Izuku's confusion was clearly expressed as he slowly read, "Prank Contingencies for Heroic Staff… Municipal Districts Across Japan… Cosmology and Tea: The Art of Divination…" He had no idea why any of these documents, files, or books were lying around on the president's desk.

'Probably just a front for the actual work he does,' Izuku guessed, but as he dug around further, he continued to encounter similarly nonsensical things. Even on the president's computer, the Quirked animal's search history was full of equally random search queries interspaced with the occasional link to an online portal for actual management work.

'...Is he just eccentric?' Izuku left the office, more confused than he'd been in a long time. 'President Nezu is recorded to possess the Quirk, High Spec, which takes his natural intelligence beyond human comprehension. His IQ can't even be properly tested as it's gone from a minimal estimate of 250 to a high of over 5,000…'

'For all I know, he could be smart enough to have his actual work hidden in plain sight, coded throughout the random nonsense that seems to litter his room,' Izuku thought.

He returned to his room in the dorms just as the sun finished setting and exited out of the illusionary world of his ID. Checking his phone, he saw a new text from Katsumi.

"Five Minutes Ago — From Katsumi: You plan on eating here tonight or do you want to go out to eat?"

"You: Have you seen our dorm's kitchen? It's stocked with a bunch of top-quality ingredients, so I want to make something nice for once."

Within seconds, Izuku saw Katsumi start texting back.

"From Katsumi: For once?! Are you insane, Izuku? With your bullshit Cooking Ability, you could make brussels sprouts and sour garbage taste good. I don't see how much better it can get, to be honest with you." It was the finest praise Katsumi could give, considering those were her most hated foods.

"You: In any case, do you want me to make you something specific or what?"

"From Katsumi: Surprise me. If you're the one making it, I'll probably be willing to eat anything. I'll be over in like half an hour, though. Gotta wrap up all the mess I've made in one of the gyms."

"You: Sounds good. See you then."

Thus, Izuku left his room and took the elevator down to the common area for all the dorm's residents on the ground floor.

…

"Hmm…" Izuku hummed as he looked through the industrial-grade refrigerator and considered his options. He'd already looked through all of the cabinets, cupboards, and the stock room, and pretty much confirmed he'd be able to make any recipe under the sun.

'Chicken, Beef, Pork, Lamb, Veal… Ribs, Round, Breast, Thigh, Loin…' The options were overwhelming, but he eventually settled for, 'Pork? No, Let's do something indulgent like fried chicken. Fried chicken wings… with a spicy rub for Katsumi and a sweet and sticky sauce for me.'

He promptly got down to business in a manner that would have been considered a show to all but himself. Butcher knife in hand, the drummettes, flats, and tips started flying into their respective trays with two quick chops and a flick of the wrist per whole wing. Even more ridiculously, Izuku then peeled off the skin off the tips to render out the fat he would use to fry the wings.

He didn't understand why he could manage all this with a knife despite his god-awful talent and curse for weapons, but he accepted it to be a loophole in the Gamer System's logic. Maybe it was because he wasn't using the knife as a weapon, but instead as a tool. Maybe it was because his Cooking Skill superseded his curse. Whatever the reason, Izuku ran with it and after months of cooking for his mother every day, he'd mastered the use of just about every common cooking utensil.

As he rendered the fat out of the wing tips, he took out a cutting board along with various spices, sauce bases, and garnishing materials. He tossed the knife he used to cut up the meat into the dishwasher and picked up a fresh chef's knife to evenly slice garlic, spring onions, and shallots thinly by hand.

He made and applied an "extra spicy" spicy rub for Katsumi's wings and seasoned his own portion with basic salt, pepper, and msg after ensuring they were as dry as possible. By the time enough fat had rendered out and raised to temperature, he had finished double coating the wings with a binding agent and seasoned flour.

Observe made it trivial to keep track of the wings as they were frying. So he finished his sticky sweet Korean-style sauce and cleaned up the mess he'd made by preparing the food, by the time the wings were done.

"Very impressive skills, Midoriya," a familiar voice called out to Izuku as he finished plating up the wings.

Before he could turn back and respond, Katsumi happily added, "I know right? He makes a damn good show of it even when he doesn't realize people are side-eyeing him."

"Thanks, uh… Tsuyu Asui, right?" Izuku said as he recognized the face and name from the list of people that had made it to the Premier Hero Course for his graduating year. It was the frog-woman he and Katsumi had met back at the entrance exams.

"Sorry if I come off a bit strong, but do you think you could teach me how to run a kitchen like that later? It would have been so much easier growing up if could cook like that for my younger siblings," Asui said.

"Eh, you're fine," Izuku said as he shrugged. "I mean, we're going to be living here for four years, so I'm sure there will be plenty of time to cook something together; maybe even for the entire dorm, when we start getting into the special events and stuff like that."

"Thank you."

Izuku couldn't help but notice that her eyes seemed to be drawn toward his wings. He offered, "You want to share some of my wings? I intentionally made more than enough for a single serving to save some for tomorrow. But, on second thought, I probably shouldn't be eating so much of this junk."

It was a lie. A white lie at that — given Izuku's metabolism was optimally modified due to his Metabolic Supremacy Perk — but Izuku sold it perfectly thanks to his Acting Ability.

"...Thanks again," Asui quietly said.

As he moved half his wings over to another plate for Asui to eat from, Izuku took a discreet look at Katsumi and the only emotion he could pick up from her was a flash of begrudging acceptance. He'd been worried about possibly hurting her feelings by being so openly inviting with another woman right in front of him. But, she was more mature than he gave her credit for.

They were all adults and she knew exactly what kind of person he was. She wouldn't get 'too' jealous over something as little as this.

It was exactly the kind of thing Izuku would do for anyone; another woman, man, or child.

So, the three ate, later joined in the common area by Ida and a few others that had moved in while Izuku had been parading around an illusionary version of the campus.

…

By the time the first day of the semester arrived, Izuku had met with and introduced himself to everyone in the Hero Premier Class; all of them, it turns out, had moved into the dorms. Most of them were friendly, but there were some that were standoffish, arrogant, and other shades of antisocial.

It was a natural thing to expect since everyone had lived different lives and was raised under different conditions. So, Izuku could accept the fact that there would probably a bit of friction between himself and others. What he couldn't accept was the disgusting cretin that dared to openly look for holes between the changing rooms.

This wasn't even about him being mad at another man possibly wanting to see Katsumi naked. That alone was enough to inspire the hottest spark of his wrath. But the fact that it was coming from a man who was accepted in the Premier Hero Course? At UA?

Now that pissed off Izuku more than he imagined was possible; he had never even considered it a possibility.

For this to be the very first thing the short man did, on the opening day, right before their Class was due to take a Quirk Apprehension Test… It made Izuku temporarily loosen his control and let himself be driven by his impulses.

"Hehehe…" The man, Minoru Mineta, childishly laughed even as the majority of the others in the locker rooms openly casted disgusted looks at him. "Ah! I can't believe it! A glorious gift passed down to us by our most charitable, saintly upperclassmen!" He loudly cheered as he removed a poster from the wall and miraculously found the hole he had been searching for.

'Are you fucking kidding me? Is there some kind of insider cult of perverts in this place?!' Izuku's patience ran out.

Izuku pulled the creep away from the wall and used a minor application of Argent Construct to fill in the hole with enough energy to last for the rest of the day.

"Hey, man! What gives?" The lecher who'd been pulled away from his prize fumed.

"What gives? You just tried to perv out on a group of women changing and you don't understand what you did wrong?" Izuku sneered. "This isn't fucking primary or even high school, asshole. You're a fucking adult and that's very clear sexual harassment you were about to commit as a fucking student in UA's Hero Course! Are you fucking retarded?! You must be if you thought not a single person here would stop you."

Izuku didn't know it, but over in the other room, Katsumi was proud as one of the other female students with augmented sound capabilities, Kyoka Jiro, was channeling his rant through her Quirk. It was always a treat when she got to hear Izuku curse something out as she would.

"C-come on, dude! Just let me have this! The worst that will happen to me is just a few weeks of detention anyways. I mean, it's not like UA would blow their reputation by having to report an incident of sexual ha—"

"You've thought this out to that extent, huh?" Madness crept into the edge of Izuku's vision as he stopped frowning in disgust. He now smiled balefully as he opened up his Presence Concealment to put the fear of god into the shorter man's body as he chuckled and said, "Then maybe I should just gouge out your eyes, no? I mean it's not like UA will do much more than suspend me, right? If we're just doing whatever we want without caring about the repercussions, how about I just break you down into the little worm you are!"

When Mineta's eyes rolled back and he started foaming out the side of his mouth, Izuku snorted. He finished changing into his PE Uniform before going back to drag the shorter man's body like a sack of potatoes over to the professor that awaited them at one of the PE fields.

"Why is he like that?" Shota Aizawa, one of the Heroics Theory Professors, asked.

"I may or may not have traumatized him after he found a hole to the women's changing room and tried to peek through it. I didn't hit him physically thought, just emotionally scarred him… a lot," Izuku admitted as he had cooled off a bit.

"God damn it," Aizawa sighed as he resisted the urge to smack his forehead against the clipboard in his hands. "Of course, those worthless bunch from last year would stoop to such a low. And they ask me why I felt the need to expel an entire Class?" He pulled out his phone and called Cementoss, another one of the professors that were also a hero, to inform him of the situation.

"Just leave him over there, to the side, and we'll get his side of the story when he wakes up. We'll investigate this later and deal with it accordingly," Aizawa said.

Happy with how the situation was being handled, Izuku followed his professor's instructions and waited for the rest of his peers to show up. He didn't know it, but they were taking so long because he'd made a massive impression on them; all of them.