Midoriya Izuku, for his part in the matter, didn't believe in the UA Curse. And, he thought, as he set off down the street on the sunny first day of high school, he ought to know better than most of the other souls who deigned to give their opinions on the subject.
Oh, sure, he'd indulged in his fair share of theorising over the years. It was hard not to, living in the vicinity of such an oft-discussed series of tragedies, and then growing up into the cradle that tried and failed to hold onto Japan's most infamous lost children. Even if he hadn't been blessed with such close proximity to the epicentre of the disaster, the once-regional rumour had spread like wildfire across the nation by the time he was born; no distance could have spared his ears from the rumour, short of leaving Japan entirely, and humanity's morbid and oft-borderline-sadistic fascination with semi-mythologised death and tragedy could be counted on to do the rest.
Learning about the supposed curse was simple, in the age of the internet. There were video essays galore on the topic - blandly educational ones, scientific ones, analytical ones, conspiracist ones, even dramatic ones with clickbaity thumbnails and titles with too many exclamation marks. There was an abundance of written commentary, too - formal essays on news sites, semi-tabloid articles slightly too focussed on the newest displays of sorrow and lost potential, informal blog posts and cobbled-together rants in hundred-character chunks and whole sites dedicated to the phenomenon. But even after sorting through the muck of human cruelty, pushing the wildest speculation aside to focus on the bare bones of facts and logic, there was nothing to know about the case, really. The histories of the dead were lackluster, the causes lacked complexity, and as for the the varying explanations of the so-called curse itself - well, those were inconsistent enough to fall apart at the slightest of mental poking.
The entire affair was tragic, of course; the death of any child always was, to adults and their peers alike, and the consistent deaths all the more so. The list of causes ran back to the school's beginning with a sad finality, as varied as the names on the list - poisoned, drowned, king-hit, heart-attack, suffocated, electrocuted, crushed, vanished - and all with the simplest of common threads; not a single death could be ruled as intentional. Perhaps it was simple bad luck, or a reflection of higher casualty rates of the neighbourhood, or maybe the prestige of UA simply led people to be more reckless in their behaviour. Whatever it was, however people spoke of it - the fact remained.
Midoriya Izuku didn't believe in the UA curse.
And even if he did - well, there were mitigating factors. UA's middle school chapter, the half of the school with the majority death count, was too good to pass up, for one; far too consistent in getting its students into its adjoining High, and an excellent educational institution even without that in mind. A good third of the country's best engineers, doctors, lawyers, and politicians went to UA middle school, with the majority of them proceeding onto UA High when the time came. The name alone - two little letters on a page - was enough to give you a free boost regardless of your grades, regardless of your quirk, to a speciality high or university or even directly into the workforce. UA was tantalisingly close to Izuku's home, too - within walking distance, even, and would have been by far the best school in the neighborhood even if it wasn't one of the best in the nation. The fees were low, for a private institution - a boon for a small family of two, especially when scholarship programs were readily provided. And as for the deaths, the true sticking point of the matter...
Izuku counted the years on his fingers. One, two - almost three. Nobody had died in almost three years. The last two deaths, a pair of thirteen-year-olds killed a year apart almost to the day, had both "graduated" from public view. Not from the memory of the school, of course - no, people still put flowers under the locked-fast window, still brushed dust off the little pile of stuffed animals in a too-quiet corner of the library, continued to honour their dead as long as they ought to have walked alongside them in the halls, counting down the six years to phantom graduation - but to the public, the wound was well scabbed-over, despite its ugly, eye-catching look.
It was, Izuku knew, the longest the school had ever gone without losing one of its many students. His grade had numbered a solid 80 students, when they'd first entered into middle school; and now, entering into high-school, their roster would number 160, having lost only those who'd left to study to the west or abroad, or else those looking to spend their last years of compulsory education on less traditional subjects. If they could all make it to the end of their school lives - if they could get through three short years of ordinary, everyday learning and childhood - they would have beaten the macabre rumour in its entirety. And then, maybe, no-one else would die, and it would fade, as it should have years ago, into the realm of other imaginary concepts, like yōkai and aliens and superheroes, where it belonged.
In any case, Izuku thought, spotting the campus in the distance, he had better things than curses to worry about. He was growing up, after all - and if he wanted to follow his mother into law, wanted to keep people safe like she did, wanted to uphold society's happiness and give the next generation a safe place to grow up in, he'd need to have his head in the game. UA High was no joke, for former students of their middle school and new students alike - and even if he was already well on his way to his dreams, it wouldn't do to let his spirit flag now. He'd spent too long fighting - too long pushing ahead in a world where people were expected to be extraordinary, and he was simply baseline; too long puzzling over how something illegal to bear in public could be held over his head in its absence, too long pushing a not-quite-satisfied heart after not-quite-his dreams wreathed in the borrowed shine of childhood fantasy - to let such trivialities drag him down now.
Plus Ultra - wasn't that what he was meant to say?
Midoriya Izuku sighed to himself, squared his shoulders, stepped off the curb towards the school gates, experienced full-body contact with a truck travelling 40km/h over the speed limit, and was pronounced dead at the scene.
The idea was a preposterous one; but then again, making preposterous ideas a preposterous reality had always been the UA principal's specialty.
"It's not as if they have many other choices, anyway," the chimeric creature said, offhandedly, echoing words well-burnt into Aizawa Shōta's mind, even after years devoid of their sound. "You agree that this phenomenon has, previously, caused quite some problems for its subjects, don't you, All Might? UA provides the safest possible place for those young individuals displaced within the continua of space-time and causality, at the simple cost of training them for roles they are, provably, already predisposed towards."
The man called All Might - the man who looked more like Yagi Toshinori, right now, stretched-out and gaunt and tiredly human - didn't quite manage to look the principal in the eye. "I always thought that the drive to do good on your own was an important part of being a hero," he said - admitted, more like. "Ah, perhaps I'm old and idealistic. But most made their way here on their own."
"Most, but not all!" Nezu - that was what he called himself, although Shōta wasn't sure that was really the being's name - tapped a paw on the documents sitting neatly stacked on the table before him. "Predisposition is not predestination, after all. Why, I'm terribly predisposed to evil, and yet here I am!"
"Ah," All Might said. "This document - it's about that young lady, yes? The one from three years ago."
"Partially," Nezu chirped. "There have been other cases, of course, both of children declining to participate in our program and of them outright turning to crime - but I'm afraid the government has been quite clear on hers. UA and its surrounds are the epicentre of this phenomenon, and thus we will be held accountable for any further failures to maintain control of our prospective students."
All Might still looked uncertain; Shōta sighed. Despite holding years of experience over Shōta, he was still frustratingly fresh-faced, when it came to matters such as this. "UA's control over the Displacement program isn't a foregone conclusion, Yagi," he said irritably. "Out of the generations before yours, half of the Displaced ended up getting rounded up by whatever government was in charge or dropped off the map. You know that. We're trying to prevent that from happening again. It's illogical, but if an agenda or someone with an overinflated ego gets a foothold, we lose the students."
"I thought you didn't like this idea, Aizawa," All Might said, not accusingly, and Shōta gritted his teeth.
"I don't," he said shortly. "But I dislike people dying or going off the rails more."
"And I," Nezu cut in, "Don't like people interfering with my school or my Displaced! I expect you don't like the idea of losing track of One for All either, do you, All Might?"
"I don't," All Might admitted. "I'd just... hoped nobody would have to be forced into anything. All for One has passed itself down for decades without having to - push anyone. Our holders have always chosen to step forwards on their own, so we've never worried when our Quirk starts to fade. I'd hoped it would be the same for everyone else - even if the situation isn't a perfect match. I've always thought forced heroism is - untenable."
"If they fail out of the hero track, they'll still be able to take on other jobs," Shōta pointed out. "The class isn't a life sentence - just a control measure."
All Might looked at him, half-aside. "Aizawa," he said, "When was the last time one of UA's Displaced failed to graduate?"
Nezu shuffled his documents around. Shōta failed to answer. Everyone in the room knew the answer didn't matter so much as it hurt, anyway; just like everyone knew there was a difference between failing out of the track and failing to graduate.
Shōta wondered, illogically, if it was possible to be Displaced twice - and then, if he even wanted it to be the case.
He supposed it didn't matter, anyway.
Midoriya awoke to spasms across his right side and a hand shaking his left. A phantom sensation, half-painful, half-airy, fluttered across his skin as he opened his eyes to the sight of a clear sky fringed with leaves - and then a head of blond hair leaning over his downed form, presumably attached to a body of some kind. He blinked up at it, squinting past the glare of the midday sun at the shadowed face above him, and the hand let go of him, instead coming to wave itself in front of his eyes.
"Hey, you with me?" a voice asked, light strains of concern audible through the youthful tenor.
In what passed for a response, Midoriya reached out and pushed the hand above him away with a grumble, turning his head away from the light, and the hand's shadow fell away from his face as he felt grass press against his cheek.
"Hey, c'mon, man," the voice said - the boy, probably, Midoriya thought to himself blearily. "You've been out of it for a while, now, don't go passing out on me again!"
"'M not," Midoriya mumbled, the words forming as if through half-thickened air. The grass was slightly damp, he noted now - the moisture just barely pressing cold through his uniform jacket in the spots where gravity pulled him a little harder towards the ground. The sun, on the other hand, was uncomfortably hot, between his suit jacket and the dark fabric of his uniform trousers, and together, the environment made for a vaguely unpleasant contrast. Carefully, so as not to be waylaid by the tremors still running through the right half of his body, he pushed himself upright on his elbows, glancing over for a proper look at his companion as he did so. They were, as Midoriya had thought, a boy - around his age, by the looks of it, with amber-yellow eyes and pale skin. His hair, now that Midoriya's view was uninterrupted by untold watts shining directly into them, was really more of a sunny yellow than a blonde, cut short but past his ears in an asymmetric part. Even in his mildly blackened UA uniform, he popped against the backdrop of green grass and scattered trees. It was, Midoriya noted vaguely, not a backdrop he recognised. "What happened? Where - where are we?"
"Well," the boy said, drawing the word out with something half-split between sheepishness and good humour. "I touched a power-line on the way to school this morning, and I have no clue where we are. Not sure what's up with you, though."
Midoriya cast his thoughts back to what he could recall of his own day. Getting up, eating breakfast, putting his uniform on, walking to school...
"Ah," he said, aloud. "Something hit me, when I crossed the road." He paused; and then the situation caught up with him properly, clicked into place, and he stiffened. "Something hit me - wait, am I - are we - are we dead?!"
The boy shrugged, vaguely. There was a twitch to his movements, Midoriya noted with a muted, half-interested horror - tiny, jerky motions running all the way through him, as if a current was still flowing beneath his skin. "I dunno. If we are, the afterlife kind of blows, though."
The place they were sitting did look an awful lot like an empty public park, Midoriya thought - and a rather low-quality one at that, with a single bench visible somewhere past his companion's left shoulder and patches where the grass had turned to straw or died off completely. "I - I guess," he said. "That - I don't like the idea of being dead, very much." A thought occurred to him, and he gasped, wringing his hands. "Oh, no, I can't be dead, what will my class think? We were supposed to - to get to graduation without anyone dying, and - and if I've gone and done it they'll kill me!"
The last part, Midoriya realised about a second after he said it, was thoroughly lacking in sense and reality. To the other boy's credit, though, he only blinked at Midoriya in vague surprise, then grinned. "Man, your priorities are worse than mine!" he chirped. "Well, s'nice not to be alone here." He shuffled a little closer, maintaining a cross-legged position, and leaned forwards, planting his hands in front of him in the soft ground. "I'm Kaminari, by the way! Kaminari Denki. Quirkless. Who're you?"
"Midoriya Izuku, same," Midoriya said, more automatically than anything else. "I -" He glanced around, searching for something unrelated to potentially-met deaths to talk about, and his gaze fell to the distinctive stripes on Kaminari's blazer. "UA! You - we both go to UA, right?" He paused. "I mean, we - we're meant to, I mean."
Kaminari hummed. "Yeah, I guess we were. Weird coincidence, I guess."
"Maybe," Midoriya said - and refrained from listening to the little voice at the back of his head that muttered about the Curse making up for lost time. "Ah, Kaminari? Did you see anyone around here, other than us?"
Kaminari tapped his fingers against the ground. "I don't think so?" He scrunched his face slightly in thought. "Ah, well, I thought I heard voices when I first woke up. But that was a while ago - and I might have been hearing things, anyway."
Midoriya fidgeted. "Maybe. But, ah - we should probably look around, anyway, right? Just in case there is anyone around. It'd be weird if it was - if it was just us, you know?"
Kaminari nodded. "I suppose that makes sense," he agreed, and carefully got to his feet, stretching so his shoulders cracked with a surprising volume in the quiet air. "There's gotta be someone out there eventually, right?"
"And if there isn't," Midoriya said, more musing than actually speaking as he stood up in turn, "We'd have to leave to find food and shelter eventually..."
"If we even need to eat," Kaminari said, offhandedly, and jerked his head away from the trees in a directional gesture, towards what looked from the distance to be a footpath and road. Midoriya felt his brow twitch more than chose to frown as he followed, but Kaminari seemed to notice, sending him a sidelong glance as they fell in step next to each other. "Midoriya?"
Midoriya tapped his fingers against each other nervously. There was a hazy pit in his stomach, a coldness he couldn't quite grasp in his hands. "Do you really think we're - think we're dead?" he asked timidly. "I mean - if you're dead, you can't really tell, right? Because you could have been - been knocked out, or something."
Kaminari was silent for a moment. "Well, yeah," he said, slowly. "You can't tell if you're dead, really, 'coz there's nothing to tell if your mind's gone. But, ah - you don't really come away from touching a live power line good-looking, man." He gestured vaguely to himself - hair slightly mussed and uniform faintly carbonised, but otherwise entirely unmarked. "For me to look like this... either someone with a healing Quirk decided to kidnap me and dump me who-knows-where, or I'm not exactly in the same body I started out in." He flashed a grin; genuine, but wry. "And it'd have to be a damn good Quirk to heal me up and restart my heart both, yeah?"
"I guess," Midoriya muttered. He didn't want to believe he was dead, really; but from what memories he could scrounge up, of loud sound and the briefest, crushing pain across half of his body, it really was strange, to wake up whole and unmarked in an unfamiliar place. "Although, a local time-reversal might do that for you, or one that counteracts energy input. And there's always the possibility of dreams, or illusions... there's no real reason for the aftershocks, either, with or without external healing."
"I guess dreams are a possibility," Kaminari said breezily. They'd reached the footpath; what looked like city blocks stretched out in front of them, eerily silent and lacking in inhabitants. "But it'd be kinda counterintuitive for you to say that to me, right?"
"Huh?" Midoriya paused in his staring down the road to stare at Kaminari instead. "What do you - what do you mean? It's just - just logical, right?"
Kaminari shrugged. "Well, yeah," he said, and stepped out onto the bitumen without checking for vehicles, turning to face Midoriya fully as he did so. "But if I'm dreaming, that means you're not real, right? So if I wake up, you die." He paused. "I think."
The idea was even less encouraging than the thought that Midoriya's earthen form was lying flattened by a vehicle somewhere. He puffed up, irritated. "Well, maybe - maybe I'm the real one, and you'll die if I wake up!" he exclaimed. "And that - that'd be bad for you, wouldn't it!"
Kaminari just laughed. "Damn, I guess. I'd better make sure that doesn't happen, huh? Would be a shame to zap myself for nothing, wouldn't it."
Midoriya frowned. "Eh, why did you touch a powerline, Kaminari?"
Kaminari made a face. "Hey, I didn't do it on purpose this time! A tree fell down in that storm last night, and took the powerline with it, and I stood on it."
Midoriya elected not to comment on "this time". "Storm? Do you live far away from the school?"
"Huh?" Kaminari squinted at him. "No, I literally moved closer to make the commute. You must have seen the damage, dude, there was stuff knocked down everywhere."
That was... odd. "I didn't see anything on the walk there," Midoriya said. "Um, maybe they got it cleaned up already?"
Kaminari shrugged. "Maybe. They've got some crazy tech coming out of the engineering department, there's a reason the universities love UA grads. Hey, where were you headed, anyway? It's the arts track for me - thinking of going into linguistics."
"Business," Midoriya said. "My mum's a lawyer, and - I always wanted to do what she did, y'know?"
"Eh, my Dad's a salaryman, and he met Mum at work. Can't relate."
Midoriya laughed. "Ah. Too boring?"
"I hate math, man," Kaminari said - whined, really. "And spreadsheets. My old man's computer scares me."
Midoriya sighed; glanced up into the sky. There was nary a cloud in sight. "Well," he said, "I guess you don't have to worry too much about that now, right?"
"Huh?" Kaminari looked up, too, as if it would give him insight into Midoriya's thoughts. "Why d'you say that?"
Midoriya bit his lip. "Well," he said, again, "If we end up going to UA, you won't have to worry about taking difficult math classes if you're in the arts track, right? And if we're, uh..."
He trailed off.
"Ah," Kaminari said. "Right. Yeah."
Their footsteps echoed dully off the concrete paving.
"Hey," Kaminari said, "If we are dead, do you think we're in heaven or hell?"
"You're not dead."
Midoriya's head snapped in the direction of the voice; Kaminari reacted a little more casually, spinning on his heels, but taking a step back. There was a man standing by the side of the road; almost monochrome, but for the cool tone of his skin, and looking distinctly like he hadn't slept in a week. There was something white wrapped around his shoulders, and some sort of communicator in his hands; as they watched, he raised it and spoke, voice tired and low.
"Nezu, I've found the last two. They got lost in one of the training grounds, I'm collecting them now." He let his hand drop, and stepped closer to the pair of teenagers. "Students. What are your names?"
"I'm Kaminari Denki, that's Midoriya Izuku. Who are you?" Kaminari shoved his hands in his pockets. "And where are we?"
The man sighed, raising the comm again. "Names, Kaminari Denki and Midoriya Izuku." There was a faint crackling murmur; he ignored it, pressing a button on the side and clipping it to his hip. "You'll be calling me Eraserhead, or Aizawa-sensei. You're at UA. Looks like you both died on your way here."
Midoriya started. "Huh - we guessed right? But - you just said we weren't dead, right?"
Aizawa shrugged. "I did, and it's true. You're not dead - but you did die. And something - somewhere - gave you another shot. Which one of you was the truck accident?"
"Me," Midoriya said. "Um, I think. I didn't actually see what hit me, but it felt, uh. Pretty big."
It sounded stupid, said aloud; but Aizawa just scrutinised him, before turning to Kaminari. "And you?"
"Powerline," Kaminari said.
Aizawa hummed. "Interesting. Any injuries, medical concerns?"
Kaminari shrugged.
"My side felt weird when I woke up," Midoriya said, "And I noticed that Kaminari was pretty shaky. But I feel fine, now. And neither of us can experience any interruptions to our Quirks, so you don't need to check that either."
"No, I don't," Aizawa agreed. "But don't get used to telling people that." He checked his comm again. "Follow me, or we're going to be late."
He started walking; Midoriya and Kaminari hurried to catch up to him. "Wait, hold up," Kaminari said, "Don't get used to telling people? It's just basic safety, right? So people know not to worry about a quirk going off when it shouldn't?"
"I thought it was for insurance reasons," Midoriya said. "And so people don't get mad at you for hiding that... you know."
Aizawa sighed. "Those are all reasons I've heard," he told them. "But none of them matter for you two, anymore."
"Why's that?" Midoriya asked.
Aizawa muttered something under his breath about inconvenient timing. "Because," he said, "Neither of you is Quirkless anymore."
There was a hanging pause.
"You're joking," Kaminari said. "There's no way. What is this, a light novel?"
"Quirks are illogical," Aizawa said, simply. "UA - this UA - acts as a receptacle for students who die while registered as students in other, parallel UAs. We don't know why, but upon arrival, the students are given a Quirk related to their cause of death and often - and are enrolled in our hero course." He paused. "You ought to get used to being dead, by the way. I'd much rather teach you after you've had time to come to terms with it, but class starts today, and UA is the best of the best. It'll be better for you to get your mourning over and done with, before we start doing anything where your mental state could put you in danger."
"Mourning?" Kaminari asked, apprehensively.
"You're dead," Aizawa said bluntly. "Wherever you came from - you're not going back. As far as we know, the only way out is dying, and that would be illogical."
"Oh."
Midoriya scuffed his feet against the ground. "Um, this hero course thing?"
"Compulsory," Aizawa said, shortly. "I understand that you may not have been aiming for it, but it's policy. If you're not fit for the field, we'll pull you out, but we do require the Displaced be enrolled."
"It's not that," Midoriya said. "I just - you mean, hero, like *superhero*, right?"
"Duh," Kaminari said. "What, you didn't dream of being one as a kid?"
"I - of course I did, but - Kaminari, heroes aren't real."
Aizawa twitched.
"Uh, yeah they are? Dude, if you don't have heroes, who do you call to deal with, like, a robber or something?"
Midoriya spluttered. "I - the police?"
"Very few worlds with Quirks fail to produce a hero system," Aizawa said. "Although we do have records of those that do. This is not one of them. You'll have to get used to that, too."
"I - why?"
Aizawa shrugged. "Don't know. The Principal might - ask him." He stopped walking; they'd reached the edge of the cityscape, revealing a simple wall with a small, metal door. "Here we are," he said, pushing it open and walking through. Outside was a small drop-off point with a couple of car spaces; he walked to the edge, looking around. "We should be getting a transport back to the main campus... ah, here it is."
A bright blue car pulled up next to them, the driver rolling the window down. It was another man, broad-shouldered with prominent canines and silver hair. "Eraser. Cutting it close with the last two."
"Displacement is inconvenient," Aizawa replied. He jerked his head towards Kaminari and Midoriya. "One of them's Yagi's. Don't let him get overexcited, or Recovery Girl will have both our heads."
The man hummed in assent. "I'm Vlad King - or Kan-sensei," he said to the teenagers. "Displaced of 2XXX. I teach the standard Hero Class while Eraser gets you lot, but you'll be seeing me whenever we team up. Hop in the back; you got any more questions, we'll answer them on the way." He glanced back at Aizawa as Kaminari and Midoriya hurried to comply. "Nezu says he's putting you on retrieval duty more often, by the way."
"Over my dead body," Aizawa grumbled, and Vlad laughed.
"Your dead body, huh? I'll tell him you agreed, then."