Chapter Text
Everyone knows the story.
The first meta ability was manifested by a newborn baby in China. The baby radiated light. Literally.
After the first phenomenon people all over the world developed these special abilities and the age of Superheroes was born. With the rise of super powered humans came the rise of supervillains, using their new powers in an attempt to take over the world. Each attempt failed, thwarted by the ‘heroes’.
Years after the development of the first quirk, an eccentric billionaire- known to the public as ‘The Monocle’ made it his mission to find the most powerful babies to adopt and raise and train as his own.
He got 7.
Klaus was the fourth Hargreeves to be accepted into U.A. and it looked like he would be the last. He didn’t even want to go (Ben had. He was the only reason Klaus had even shown up at school). The uniforms were atrocious.
Klaus floated through the grey halls, haunting them like a ghost (He wasn’t a ghost. The three people screaming at him probably were though.). Each class was labelled- 2B, 2A, 1B- and he needed to go into one of them eventually (“1A idiot- its literally just there, go in now we’re already late”). The door was tall. Like two of him and little Vanya on his shoulders too (Vanya still hadn’t found her quirk. He didn’t know what Reggie would do when he decided she was quirkless.). 1A was painted on it in large red letters (“Go in now Klaus- were already here you just need to open the door”). His hands glowed a light blue and the door opened (“Finally,”).
Inside a man dressed all in black – except for a grey scarf loosely draped over his shoulders- stood in line of the door. The teacher of class 1A. Shota Aizawa, aka Eraser Head. (“Klaus you need to apologise, you were late. You need to apologise for interrupting him. Klaus just say your sorry!”)
“Sorry,” said Klaus uncaringly. Aizawa would probably presume he was being rude and call Reginald. Maybe he could get expelled within the first day.
“Hargreeves, I presume?” said Aizawa. The question was stupid, every other seat in class was full and The Séance had been on the news every other week since he was old enough to throw a punch. (“Klaus you cant just stare at him! Answer damn it!”) Klaus raised his head briefly in acknowledgement. “Where may be your uniform?”
“It got lost on the way over,” He said drearily. It hadn’t got lost. The blazer and shorts combination had just been to reminiscent of the Umbrella Academy uniform. And his black turtleneck, oversized black tee and red skirt had been too tempting too pass up (“I told you to put on the uniform, why couldn’t you have just listened to me for once! I know you can hear me!”).
“If it would make you feel more… comfortable, I’m sure you can be provided with a girls uniform.” Huh. That was interesting. Reggie will just place him in ‘personal training’ for a day if he sees the skirt.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” He said with a twitch of his lip. “I’m fine with just not wearing uniform.”
Klaus ignored the murmuring braking out across the room and floated over every head to get to the last free chair in the back right corner, right by a window. Maybe this class wouldn’t be so bad, he could stare out the window all day and pretend to be listening. (“You couldn’t even try to sit closer to the front? I want to see what this place is like!”) The other students were… interesting. One particular guy had started a whole rant about how everyone should ‘respect their elders’ with a lot of loud gesticulation too.
“If you want to learn you go sit further up, Ben,” muttered Klaus. All his siblings had said that he shouldn’t talk to his hallucinations and then they’d just go away eventually. Reggie always kept his theories close to his heart but after one particularly gruesome night even he had told him that anything he could see was within his own power to stop. They never left. And now Klaus was stuck with a hallucination of his dead brother.
“It took eight seconds for you to quiet down.” Said Aizawa. “Time is a precious resource. You lot aren’t very rational, are you? I’m your homeroom teacher Shota Aizawa.”-duh-“Pleased to meet you. Quickly now, change into your gym clothes and head out to the grounds.”
It was a strong nope on the gym clothes- a blue, short-sleeved, high collared jumpsuit with white bands spelling out ‘UA’. If anything could be considered worse than the school’s stupid uniform it would be the uniformity of their gym clothes.
Klaus followed the students to the front of the school. All around the field, lines were painted marking out running tracks and long-jump zones. A laugh bubbled up, quickly supressed by horror. A fitness assessment. He hadn’t truly thought he could fail out in one day but Klaus truly was the worst of his siblings in fitness. Luther could lift more than all his siblings combined and Diego’s determination could not be matched. Hell even Ben had a better standing long jump. Every time their rankings came out Klaus was last across the board and ‘gifted’ with extra personal training.
“Softball throwing. The standing long jump. The 50 metre dash. Endurance running. Grip strength. Side-to-side stepping. Upper body training. Seated toe touch. You did all these in middle school, yes?”-well the Umbrella Academy had also done knife throwing and speed gun maintenance but the point still stood-“’Your standard No-Quirks-Allowed gym tests.
“This country still insists on prohibiting quirks when calculating the average of those records. Its not rational. The Department of Education is just procrastinating.
“Bakugou. How far could you throw in middle school?”
A blond kid with spiky hair and a scowl walked to the centre of the nearest circle.
“67 metres.” Said the kid.
“Great.” Said Aizawa. “Now try it with your quirk. Do whatever you need to. Just don’t leave the circle. Give it all you’ve got.”
“Awesome,” the kid grinned a villainous grin. “Ill add a bit of boom to this pitch. DIE!!” A blast of fire propelled the ball far into the sky.
Honestly, could these kids be anymore dramatic?
Aizawa continued: “Its important for us to know our limits. That’s the first rational step to figuring out what kind of heroes you’ll be.”
In his hand, Aizawa held a small screen displaying the kid’s new distance. 705.2m. That was… not very much. With Them, Ben used to average 1500m.
“You’re hoping to become heroes after three years here and you think it’ll be all fun and games?
“Right.
“The one with the lowest score across all eight events will be judged hopeless and will be expelled.”
“Klaus. Klaus. I know you probably want to intentionally fail out but please, please, for me, just try to get through today- it might even be fun!” The hallucination had a point. Real Ben would have wanted Klaus to follow him through all three years and Klaus would have, even if just to make Real Ben happy.
“Hargreeves. Your sister has warned me that you may try to intentionally fail out. From here on you will go first in each challenge.” Because you cant fail out if you don’t know how bad everyone else is. Damn Allison was going to make him pass this test. “Your father has also asked to be frequently updated on your progress at UA- your sister implied this may be of more incentive?” Damn Ailison.
“She really knows how to get you to work harder, doesn’t she?” said Not-Ben.
“Event 1: 50-metre dash.”
And he will be up first. Most of the kids didn’t have quirks that looked like they would visibly help but of course that would never be a good estimator. Klaus would probably be the slowest anyway, might as well stop trying to guess the others’ potential scores.
Klaus floated lazily over to the starting line, uncrossing his legs and letting hem dangle a few inches off the ground.
“3, 2, 1, Go!”
Angling his body to be more streamline, Klaus took off like a rocket going faster and faster.
50 metres isn’t that far. Soon a white blur passed underneath him and Klaus pulled up to resume his usual floating.
“3.54 seconds.” Read out the automated robot. Not bad. Not his best time but still slightly faster than his average. A small gasp flew from the crowd of students. A lot of them had open mouths or even looks of fear. Why? He was the least competent of the Umbrella Academy and probably would be here too.
“Why are all of you looking like that?” His new classmates looked away. “That wasn’t even fast,” he mumbled.
Ida Tenya. 3.04 seconds. His quirk put engines onto his legs and allows him to go fast. Why isn’t he running in under a second?
Tsuyu Asui. 5.58 seconds.
Ochako Uraraka. 7.15 seconds. Her quirk is zero gravity and she couldn’t think of something better than just running? Over 7 seconds would have had Klaus locked up back home.
Yuga Aoyama. 5.51 seconds. He can shoot a laser beam from his belly button but had to stop after a few seconds. Why didn’t he learn to use it for longer? Its not very useful like this.
Katsuki Bakugou – blond fire kid. 4.13 seconds. Why is everyone so slow? Are they all trying to fail too?
“Event 2: Grip Strength.”
“47 kg.” said the device. Welp Klaus would always have noodle arms.
“Event 3: Standing long jump.”
Being able to levitate makes this one too easy.
“Event 4: Side stepping.”
Nope, thought Klaus floating over the line once. Too close to actual exercise. So he just hovered over the line until time ran out.
“Event 5: Throwing.”
This one could be… interesting. Klaus made his way to the circle. Luther always said it didn’t count as throwing if he used telekinesis on the ball but here they were told to use their quirks as much as possible…
Klaus pulled of his shoes and sunk to the ground.
Immediately he could feel the power of the earth, could see the ways in which life and death danced and could see how they could be manipulated. The grass blades around him each had their own pull each asking for more life each wanting to take his life each-
Ben told him once that his eyes glow blue if he’s touching the ground. He said it was scary. Klaus started floating everywhere around then.
Its funny though. Not-Ben definitely has a something. In the leaves and soil and insects Klaus would call it life but Not-Ben had an aura similar to a carcass on the side of the road as it was dying. Its like the absence of life and therefore its own thing in itself. Once he thought that maybe he wasn’t even hallucinating and the people he sees were just ghosts. Alison just reminded him that there is no such thing as ghosts and if there were, someone’s quirk would’ve been to see them. The world would know because the world knows everything. Ghosts aren’t real.
Anyway. The last event. The ball had its own strings. Its own woven matter of creation. So Klaus pulled on those strings.
“Is it done?” he said.
“Yes.”
Klaus pulled himself away from life’s matrix and back into the real world, floating again. The device kept reading numbers each flickering for only a second.
Klaus waited until everyone else was done to ask the important question.
“So… how’d we do?”
Aizawa raised an eyebrow. “Your quirk wouldn’t appear to pertain to any of these assessments and yet you managed better than most pros do in similarly unusual quirk-skill pairings. For most first year students at U.A., this quirk assessment is the first time they get to truly push their quirk to the limit. By seeing how much they’ve improved I can guess what they’re capable of. Umbrella Academy members are different. Each of you joins the school used to working with your quirk n every aspect. And yet, I’ve seen your siblings each learn new things here and grow in skill. You intrigue me, Klaus Hargreeves, as you are commonly perceived as the worst of the Umbrella Academy but what the general population seems to forget is that the Umbrella Academy represent the best of a generation. You intrigue me, Hargreeves, because I wonder what the worst of the best can learn when compared to your own generation instead of pro heroes.”