Tomura Shigaraki was happy.

It had been a long time since he actually was happy in his life.

He could easily be exited by his games, or angry and frustrated. He had been glad Sensei took him in and gave him what he needed to crush and destroy society. But Izuku Midoriya was new and intresting and fun. He had someone to talk to, someone to nerd out with. They weren't exactly the same age but the difference was insignificant.

Tomura had grew up alone.

He remembered very little of his childhood before the street. Fuzzy images of his sister, of his dog. Pains and ghost yells in his ears. Then he was in the street, covered in ashes, in dust, asking for help, begging for help.

He had watched passerbys ignore him, purposlly turn away from him. He had seen a hero come his way before turning around. He had felt his heart shatter. He had shacken in fear, hunngru, cold, scared. He missed Hana and his mom. He didn't eat properly fro days. He didn't where to go, with who.

And Sensei had found him. He had took him in, gave him a new name, told him he had every right to be angry and should learn to use this anger.

He had given him Kurogiri, and the League, his help, guidance and ideas.

And he had given him a friend. He had told Tomura to go and meet Izuku had this café and now Tomura had a friend.

They played and bickered and never Tomura had had a friend.

He had grew up away from everyone but Sensei and the doctor. He had to learn to be even more alone since Sensei's fight with All Might. He didn't know how to act around others.

And Izuku didn't know either. And he liked to talk about quirks the same way Tomura liked to talk about his games. He hated heroes for the same reasons as Tomura did : they were abandoned, seen as useless members of society.

And Izuku had joined the League. All by himself, for his own believes. He was player 2 and Tomura was Player 1 and together they would destroy this shitty dungeon and show everyone in it what it was like to ignore the strongest characters.

Now Izuku would go to UA, and he would get info for them. They would prepare an attack and take down society piece by piece if they needed to, until the very nature of the world revealed itself, until the codes that shaped it could be changed, and they would turn the game in their favor.

—

Alone in his room, staring blindly at the far wall, All For One was thinking.

Everything was put into motion already.

Tomura was listening to him better than he could ever had imagined. He was ready to do all the handy work before he himself would join the game.

All For One was playing the long run. He added the knowledge offered by Izuku Midoriya to his brain, well trained after decades after decades fighting heroes and keeping secrets.

The Quirkless boy was a gift, god sent truly. He was smart, but so weak, so easily manipulated. For the first time in his useless life he had been offered comfort and support, and he had jumped right into their arms, no question asked. He was going to give them all the intel necessary into UA, the things even his hero-course student couldn't tell him.

And if he got found out?

Izuku Midoriya didn't even have a quirk to steal. He would just fade away. Disappear into nothingness, in the folds of history. Banished from memory, unimportant. Whenever he needed to stop existing, he would. He would serve his purpose, give Tomura was last push, and All For One would be, once and for ever, seen as who, as what he truly was.

A God. All mighty and powerful.

No one would stop him? Even the smallest stepstone could push him farther to his dream. Even quirkless nobody could serve some purpose for a moment.

—

Inko Midoriya sat at her table, a warm cup between her hands, as she waited for her son to come home. He had gone to the entrance exam, the one he dreamed of for his entire life.

The light was dimming outside, the sun starting to set in a flash of colors. The walls were dyed in gold as the mother stared worrying at her tea.

Were entrance exam suppose to take that long? Has something happen to her son? Was he dead, killed by accident during an exam in which he had no place? Hurt because his body didn't hold the same strength at those by his side?

She didn't want him to be a hero, or to want to be one. He couldn't do it. Her son wanted to help, and this warmed her heart, but she knew, deep down, that he couldn't. A hero, in order to help, needed to be strong, to have a power, something undeniably theirs to fight harm and villains. Izuku didn't have that. Izuku was a kind and small boy, smart and shy who liked heroes too much for his health. The fact that he held the desire to fight head on villainy, still after so many years where he surely learned that he didn't have what it take to be a hero, Inko heart shattered each day more.

She had always wanted her son safe and sound, by her side, at home, where she knew nothing could happen.

When Izuku diagnosed quirkless it had seemed like blessing in a curse's disguise. At least her boy wouldn't run into fights! At least he would stay with her.

But he didn't want to. He still held into this false hope and Inko was so scared it would kill him one day. She dreaded the time when she would receive a call, from the police, the school, the hospital, asking her to come because Izuku had been hurt, had been hit by a villain, as to face a building falling, had tried to run to save someone while not even heroes would. She feared this moment when she would lose him to a dream that he couldn't achieve.

Yet, she heard the door unlock, shoes took off and keys fall into the bowl intended for and a sweet, tired 'I'm home' coming from the door way.

She ran so fast she almost knocked both her chair and her tea on the floor and went to grab her son.

Both of her hands cupped his cheek, holding on to him as if her own life depended on it.

"How was it? Are you injured?"

She tried to check on every single part of him at the same time. His clothes were unscathed, his hands aside from calluses she didn't know were there, were fine, so was his face. His heart beat steadily at his wrists, and his eyes followed her as she inspected.

"Is everything alright, Mom? Did something happen?"

"Oh, no honey, I was just worried for you." Her smile was tired as she took her son to the living room. "How did it go? Tell me everything? Did you run into any heroes there?"

Izuku eyes were a bit cold at her question but were also shadowed by fatigue and eye bags. He smiled to her and helped her down to the sofa.

"If I get in, I'll have a surprise for you, but yes, everything went just fine. I can't tell you much about it. I want to keep it a surprise. I think you will like it." His tone seemed a tad somber at this. "As for the pro-heroes," the smile shone brighter and Inko's heart warmed up. "I met Present Mic! You know, the voice hero? There were a few others, but you don't know them."

Happily listening to her son, Inko let go of some of the worries that clouded her mind. For now he was safe; in their bubble, in their home, along with her and in safety, they would surely make it through it.

And when the results of his exam came, and that Izuku finally understood the hard truth, at least Inko would be here and help him gather the shattered pieces of his dream to built something reasonable.

—

Eijiro Kirishima sat happily in his kitchen. The TV was running in the backgroung, talking about UA and the entrance exam day that had been held up today. He barely listened when they talked about pros coming out of the school and the current heroes in training that had already quite a name for themselves.

Instead, Eijiro was talking to his mother. He eagerly told her about his exam. Her smile was bright, her teeth just as sharp as her son's as she listened to the tale.

He was quite excited. He had met so many manly people! And met pro-heroes! Present Mic had supervised their written exam and Ectoplasm himself his practical!

He was rather afraid of his results. He had worked hard for his written. School had never been easy and some of the subjects were so boring that he simply wanted to throw his notebook a fire but if he had a chance to be a hero, then it would be worth it.

His practical had gone rather well. He had gathered a good number of points for the various robots he had destroyed though he felt terrible for all the people with non-physical quirks. He had helped three times the same guy, purple hair, broad shoulders, about to get crushed by a one pointer because his quirk couldn't work on the machine. He thought it rather unfair. He thought his quirk wasn't flashy, but he still wanted to help! This guy might have been the same.

He thought of the green kid he had met after this attack and today again. Midoriya something, green kid, curls, freckles and hardened eyes. He had told him that heroes shouldn't be flashy, that they should simply help. And Eijiro agreed wholeheartedly; what else could a hero want to do? He would be one of those heroes who fought for people, not as some others did for money or fame.

He hoped the green kid would enter his course as well. If they could work together on Eijiro costume, they could maybe be friends? He might help Eijiro to gain some confidence and work with him to make a better hero society?

He was tired of seeing his mother sighing deeply each time she took a look in the mirror and saw the scar a hero had caused her. She was gorgeous and strong and it was not fair that someone meant to help people had given her this. It wasn't fair that she thought less of herself because of it the same way it wasn't fair for Eijiro to think his dreams worth less because of his quirk.

He hoped to find a friend in the Midoriya kid and in his ideas, his reasoning. He had so very little of those, maybe UA would be a fresh start?

—

Shota Aizawa stood tiredly on one rooftop. Known, or rather not known as he was an underground hero, as pro-hero EraserHead, he scanned the street underneath him with a careful gaze.

Stain had been following a strange pattern lately. He had changed his usual course and habits, focusing on specific heroes who did specific things instead of targeting his usual 'too famous to be true' heroes. He had also taken a liking in adding, on the corpses, a green arrow.

Even more weird, this green arrow had started to appear on various other site than Stain's murders.

The duo of fame-hungry villains, Gentle Criminal and La Brava, started putting, in some of their videos and actions around Japan, little green arrows when they followed a certain pattern.

They targeted restaurants with discrimination policies, police station who ignored some kind of reports against some kind of people (the famous ones, the heroes and side-kicks, the one who worked in certain agency), in hospitals, schools. Their voice grew and the one they worked with, this Guidance that appeared only once, grew famous as well.

Words in the underground had it they he wanted to destroy society, to overthrow government, to become god. Anything really, but somewhere in the dephs of Japan, their had to be some truth and this green arrow villains, because what else could he be when he allied with the like of Stain's, was starting an up-rise.

Guidance, who ever he was, was changing the face of Japan, must it be slowly, but Aizawa was both intrigued and scared of seeing what ideas the man would put behind his work.