A Silent Kind of Strength

Chapter 42

When Izuku became aware of the world once again he found himself laid out on one of the sofas in the corner of Nezu's office. He rubbed at crusty eyes as he sat up, trying to take stock of the situation. His shoes had been removed, and Aizawa and Yamada had left. Nezu was sat at his desk chatting with someone over the intercom system connected to his computer even as he appeared to multi-task, scribbling on and stamping paperwork with one paw and the other scrabbled across his keyboard.

The teens movement seemed to catch his eye though and the mammal looked up from his tasks. "Midoriya-kun! Did you have a nice nap?" The boy hummed an unsure affirmative before reaching for his uwabaki, sliding them on and cringing a little as his toes were compressed uncomfortably.

He realized the woman on the speaker was Hatsume-san as she also greeted him asking how he was feeling. He gave a quiet answer as he settled into the chair across the desk from the principal. "Alright Midoriya-kun. Here is my suggestion for today. I managed to dig up some tests for you to go through. There's no pressure to pass this round ok? Just answer everything you can so we can get a good idea of what classes you can test out of. From there we will decide on what to do about the whole situation. Does that sound good to you?" The boy blinked for a moment, still a tad bit groggy from crying so much and then his nap. "Uh-uhm… I guess?"

Hatsume-san spoke up calmly, "Izuku, if you don't want to do it today that's OK too, you could go to class like usual, or just come to the shop and chill, and we can do the tests tomorrow." The boy took a moment to think, gadging how he was feeling and checking the time to see how long he slept. He hadn't been out for too long, an hour and a half, there was still plenty of class time left. It would be a shame to waste it, but he didn't really feel overly social, the thought of dealing with rowdy support students wasn't as appealing as it would usually be. After a few moments of contemplation he sighed and nodded to himself. "L-let's go ahead a-and get it out of the way?"

Nezu clasped his paws together with a smile. "Excellent! I admire your tenacity Midoriya-kun! Now, let me make us tea and we will get you all set up!" And so they did. After saying goodbye to Hatsume-san, Nezu set the kettle on to boil and piled a stack of packets on the table where their morning meeting had been, asking the boy if he needed any pencils or erasers. Izuku shook his head and pulled out his small pencil box and selected the least battered mechanical pencil and made sure it was full of lead.

By the time he was setting his old yellow backpack back down out of the way the mammal was scampering back to the whistling kettle and prepping the tea. He was quick and efficient and soon the green haired boy was presented with a warm cup that was exuding the relaxing scent of peppermint. "Here we are! Alright now. Each of these packets are for a different class, the classes are for all three grades in all four courses. You can do them in any order you wish, and again, if you can't answer a question that is ok. Most of these are way past what a child your age would normally be learning. Do what you can and we will figure out the rest. Any questions?" Izuku shook his head, it was pretty straight forwards, and he had been through things like this twice before after all. "OK then. Let me know if you have any. You can take breaks whenever you need, and I will let you know when it is lunch time. Good luck Midoriya-kun." With that the rodent retreated back to his own desk and left him to it.

The teen took a deep breath, running his hand through slightly tangled curls in an attempt to center himself. He leaned forwards and dragged the large stack of papers over and looked through the packets, sorting them quickly into four piles, the subjects he liked, the subjects he had confidence in probably passing, the subjects he knew a bit about, and the ones he was unsure on.