Izuku Midoriya's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Izuku climbed the locked fence behind the polished academy building before sunrise. He wanted to be the number one hero, the kind whose presence alone made people feel safe. But no instructor had ever called his name. No scout had ever watched him run. So he came here, alone, to grade himself. He dropped into the empty lot beside the sports arena and set his green notebook on a concrete step. Inside were pages of his own drills, times scratched out and rewritten, every miss circled in red. He had built his gauntlet from stacked tires, bent rebar, and a rope swing tied to a service rail. He ran it three times. He fell twice. He wrote both falls down before his hands stopped shaking. Then a security guard's flashlight swept across the wall, and a voice told him the academy did not evaluate trespassers. Izuku gathered his notebook and walked out through the open gate. The guard did not stop him. No one did. That was the problem, and now he knew it for certain: scoring himself in secret would never make anyone call him number one. He needed a real test, with real eyes watching, and he had until morning to figure out how to get one.