The morning of my first day at U.A. High School, I woke before my alarm. Five years of intensive training had ingrained early rising into my very bones, but today felt different. Today, I would finally step into the world I had dreamed about in my previous life.
Mom had prepared a traditional breakfast—rice, miso soup, grilled fish, and pickled vegetables. Dad sat at the table reading the morning news on his tablet, occasionally muttering about villain activity reports. They were trying to act normal, but I could see the tension in their shoulders, the way Mom's enhanced senses kept flickering toward me as if she was unconsciously checking for signs of stress.
"Remember what we talked about," Dad said as I adjusted my new U.A. uniform. "Your quirk makes you stand out, but that doesn't mean you have to carry everything alone."
"I know." I checked my appearance in the hallway mirror. At fourteen, I was tall for my age, with dark hair that seemed to shift between black and deep purple depending on the light—a side effect of my reality manipulation quirk. My eyes were perhaps the most unsettling feature, appearing normal brown most of the time but occasionally flickering with silver when I used my powers.
"And remember," Mom added, giving me a fierce hug, "you're there to learn, not just to be the strongest person in the room."
The commute to U.A. was surreal. I had walked these streets countless times in the preparatory program, but now I was heading to the main campus as an actual student. Other teenagers in U.A. uniforms shared the train, all of them clearly nervous about their first day. I caught snippets of conversation—worries about the entrance exam, excitement about finally becoming heroes, speculation about their classmates.
None of them knew that their entrance exam had been yesterday, and that today they would meet the teacher who would shape the next three years of their lives.
U.A. High School was even more impressive up close than it had appeared in the anime. The massive building rose against the sky like a declaration of intent—this was where the future heroes of Japan would be forged. Students streamed through the gates, some confident, others nervous, all of them carrying the weight of their dreams.
I found Class 1-A easily enough, though I paused outside the door for a moment. Behind this door were the people who would become some of the greatest heroes in history. Izuku Midoriya, who would inherit One For All and become the Symbol of Peace. Katsuki Bakugo, whose explosive personality matched his explosive quirk. Shoto Todoroki, carrying the weight of his father's ambitions and his own trauma.
And they were all younger than me, less experienced, unaware of what was coming.
The responsibility of that knowledge settled on my shoulders like a lead weight. But I had trained for this. I was ready.
I opened the door and stepped inside.
The classroom was already buzzing with activity. Students clustered in small groups, introducing themselves and showing off their quirks in small ways. I recognized faces from my previous life's viewing—Iida's earnest expression as he tried to organize everyone, Uraraka's cheerful demeanor as she chatted with other students, Mineta already being inappropriate.
And there, near the window, sat Izuku Midoriya. He looked exactly as I remembered from the early episodes—nervous, excited, and completely unaware that he was about to inherit the most powerful quirk in existence.
"Oh! You must be the early admission student!" A cheerful voice drew my attention. Uraraka Ochako bounced over with a bright smile. "I'm Uraraka! Nice to meet you!"
"Yamamoto Akira," I replied, giving a slight bow. "Nice to meet you too."
"Early admission?" A spiky-haired blonde looked over with obvious interest and irritation. Bakugo, of course. "What makes you so special that you didn't have to take the entrance exam like the rest of us?"
Before I could answer, the classroom door opened again and everyone fell silent. A yellow sleeping bag writhed on the floor, and from it emerged the disheveled figure of Shota Aizawa—Eraserhead.
"If you're here to socialize, you can leave," he said without preamble, his voice flat and tired. "It took you eight seconds to quiet down. Time is a limited resource—you would do well not to waste it."
He stood up, sleeping bag pooling around his feet, and fixed the class with his penetrating stare. His eyes found mine for just a moment, and I saw the flicker of recognition there. We had met briefly during my pre-admission interviews, but this would be our first real interaction.
"I'm your homeroom teacher, Aizawa Shota," he continued. "First order of business—you need to pick a class representative. But before that, we're going to have a quirk assessment test."
The excitement in the room was palpable, but Aizawa's next words brought it crashing down.
"Also, whoever comes in last place will be immediately expelled."
The shocked gasps and protests from my classmates were exactly as I remembered, but experiencing them in person was different. These weren't anime characters anymore—they were real teenagers whose dreams could be crushed before they'd even begun.
"That's not fair!" Uraraka protested.
"Fair?" Aizawa's smile was sharp and humorless. "Natural disasters aren't fair. Villain attacks aren't fair. Death isn't fair. If you think your future as a hero will be fair, you're in for a rude awakening."
He looked directly at me then. "Yamamoto, you had the highest overall scores in the preparatory program. You'll demonstrate first."
The testing ground behind the school was familiar territory—I had trained here during my preparatory program visits. But standing here as an actual student, with my future classmates watching, felt entirely different.
Aizawa handed me a softball. "Softball throw. In middle school, your average was probably around seventy meters. Use your quirk and show me what you can do."
I took the ball and stepped into the throwing circle. Around me, my new classmates watched with mixture of curiosity and nervousness. This would set the tone for how they saw me—not just as the "early admission student," but as a potential rival or ally.
I could have simply thrown the ball with enhanced strength, or created an illusion to make it appear to go further than it actually did. But that would be wasting the opportunity to demonstrate what my quirk could really do.
Instead, I reached out with my reality manipulation and found the boundary between what was real and what was possible. I looked at the softball and saw all the different things it could be—a baseball, a tennis ball, a sphere of pure energy, a miniature star.
I chose one of those possibilities and made it real.
The softball in my hand shifted, its mass decreasing while its aerodynamic properties improved dramatically. It became, for all intents and purposes, a sphere designed for maximum distance with minimum air resistance.
Then I threw it.
The ball sailed through the air in a perfect arc, traveling far beyond what should have been possible for a fourteen-year-old's throw. When it finally came down, Aizawa's measuring device registered the distance.
"947.3 meters," he announced.
The silence that followed was deafening. Even Bakugo, who had been preparing some sarcastic comment, stood with his mouth slightly open.
"How?" Midoriya whispered.
"Reality manipulation," I said simply. "I changed the physical properties of the ball temporarily to optimize it for distance throwing."
Aizawa nodded approvingly. "Efficient use of resources, no wasted energy, and practical application of an abstract power. Good." He turned to the rest of the class. "This is what I expect from all of you—not flashy displays, but intelligent application of your abilities."
The rest of the assessment tests proceeded much as I remembered from the anime, with some variations due to my presence. Bakugo still had his explosive confrontation with Midoriya, Iida still impressed everyone with his speed, and Todoroki still held back his fire side.
But I noticed the others watching me more carefully now, trying to understand the full scope of my abilities. During the sit-ups test, I created multiple illusions of myself, each performing the exercise while the real me paced my breathing. For the side-steps test, I briefly made myself exist in multiple positions simultaneously, covering more ground than should have been possible.
I was careful not to completely dominate every test—that would only create resentment and mark me as someone to be beaten rather than someone to learn from. Instead, I placed consistently in the top three, showing competence without overshadowing my classmates' achievements.
When the final results were announced, I had placed second overall, just behind Todoroki. Midoriya, as expected, placed last—but Aizawa's revelation that the expulsion was a logical ruse played out exactly as it had in the anime.
"A logical ruse?" Momo questioned.
"That's how these tests have always worked," Aizawa explained with his unsettling smile. "Yamamoto knew because he's been training under U.A. supervision for years. The rest of you are just now learning what real hero education looks like."
After the other students left for their orientation tours, Aizawa asked me to stay behind. We walked in silence to his office, a cluttered space filled with coffee cups, grading papers, and what appeared to be several sleeping bags.
"Sit," he said without ceremony, settling behind his desk with a cup of coffee that looked like it could stand on its own. "We need to establish ground rules."
I took the offered chair and waited. In my previous life, Aizawa had been one of my favorite characters—a teacher who genuinely cared about his students but refused to coddle them. Meeting him in person was intimidating in a way I hadn't expected.
"Your quirk is dangerous," he said bluntly. "Not just the reality manipulation aspect, though that's concerning enough. Your illusions can be given physical properties, which means you can essentially create temporary matter. Do you understand the implications of that?"
"Conservation of energy violations," I said. "Potential for creating unstable matter configurations. Risk of uncontrolled reality alterations."
"Good. You've been paying attention in your advanced theory classes." He leaned back in his chair, studying me. "But there's something else. Your file mentions that your quirk has 'unusual dimensional characteristics.' Want to explain that?"
I had been dreading this conversation. The dimensional aspects of my power—my ability to glimpse alternate realities and occasionally pull elements from them—were the most dangerous and least understood part of my abilities.
"Sometimes when I use my reality manipulation, I can see... other possibilities," I said carefully. "Other versions of how things could be. And occasionally, I can bring small elements from those other possibilities into this reality."
Aizawa was quiet for a long moment. "Show me," he said finally.
I hesitated. "It's not entirely safe."
"I'll erase your quirk if it becomes dangerous," he reminded me. "Show me something small."
I reached out with my power, feeling for the boundaries between realities. There—a thin place where multiple possibilities intersected. I gently pulled one strand of possibility into our reality.
A single flower appeared on Aizawa's desk—a species that didn't exist in this world, with petals that seemed to shift color in the light.
"That flower," I said quietly, "comes from a reality where quirks never developed, but plants evolved differently to fill the ecological niches that quirk-powered animals and people fill here."
Aizawa stared at the flower for a long time. "You're pulling matter from alternate dimensions."
"Small amounts. And it's exhausting." I was already feeling the drain from that simple demonstration. "I can only do it a few times a day, and only with small objects."
"Can you control which reality you access?"
"To some extent. I can sense the general nature of the realities that are... close... to ours. But I can't be completely precise."
Aizawa picked up the flower, examining it closely. "This is beyond what was in your file. Why haven't you reported this development?"
"Because I wasn't sure it was real until recently," I admitted. "And because I wasn't sure how it would be received."
"The Hero Commission would want to study you," he said bluntly. "Possibly restrict you. A quirk that can access alternate realities is..." He paused, seeming to choose his words carefully. "It's the kind of power that changes the game entirely."
"Which is why I'm telling you first," I said. "I trust you to help me figure out how to use this responsibly."
Another long silence. Finally, Aizawa sighed and rubbed his temples. "Your training schedule just became much more intensive. We'll work one-on-one every evening after regular classes, focusing on control and understanding the limits of your abilities. And Yamamoto?"
"Yes, sir?"
"If you ever lose control of the dimensional aspect of your quirk, I may not be able to stop it with Erasure. My quirk affects the quirk factor in your body, but if you're pulling power from other dimensions..." He left the implication hanging.
"I understand."
"Good. Now get out of here and try to make friends with your classmates. You'll be working with them for the next three years, and they need to trust you if you're going to be effective as a team."