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The Resonance took place two hundred years after the glowing baby. Maybe they were incredibly advanced quirked beings, or long forgotten deities, in any case, it was around that time the enochian pantheon began forming.
Cults such as The Library of the Beholding or The Order of the Divine Host were the first groups of worshippers, closely followed by sister belief systems like The Order of Recollection or The Following of the Mesmerising Hope.
Iida’s Enochian Wheel was one of the first published catalogues of divine personae to be widely known, as well as the most reliable up to date. Iida named the newly risen deities as such: The Beholder, The Divine Host, The Ineffable Weaving, The Unseen End, The Mimicking Shadow, The Mortal Binds, The Mother of All, The Spinning Return and The Blazing Virtue. These nine deities have reigned the religious population of all continents for hundreds of years now, only here and there rejected by followers of the older world religions of the early 2100’s.
What even are gods? How do you define something that is conceptually not of human understanding? The first known gods were created to give reason to natural happenings, such as lightning, fire or wind, to earthquakes and tornadoes. But does modern knowledge equal denial of their existence?
They say magic is just science to be discovered, but if that day comes, will magic not be science? Sure, the actual term will fade, but a name doesn’t equal power, or existence.
There are gods, and there are no gods, and both statements are undeniably true. To describe these enochian beings as deities is like describing a sea as a drop of water. But yes, for lack of a better term, there are gods. There are gods who speak, gods who are mute, gods who fight, gods who protect. Some gods manipulate, some gods are corporal, some gods are intangible, some gods are bound to a place, some gods hunt or lurk, some gods know.
The God who knows, The Patron of Knowledge, The Archive of Memories, The Eye that documents, The ever-vigilant Watcher, this particular deity has many titles, but it is known to most as The Beholder.
While mostly eldritch and foreign to human instincts or emotions, Enochians sometimes act strangely alike to their worshippers, which is why The Eye currently and transtemporarily watches one Midoriya Izuku in fondness, former and to-be Scribe of The Beholding.
At some point in time, this precious green haired child will be/was on his way to UA, a temple of The Ineffable Weaving. The Beholder’s metaphorical pupils dilate.
Izuku sighed, feeling his patron’s gaze on himself as he waited for the class to start. His dark frock felt strangely tight and his collar too narrow in the sticky classroom. Always the follower of The Eye, he let his gaze wander over the other occupants of the auditorium.
As an A-rank devotee to The Knowing, it would have been easy to find out more about them, but with that came private information and memories, which was as much of Izuku’s business as their credit card number.
Tasting the air with his senses, he could feel all kinds of religious influence, ranging from the foreign cultists of The Unseen End to the, more familiar, worshippers of The Blazing Virtues. They were forty in total, not counting sentient quirks, all highly ranked priests and priestesses or their children. Just the appearance of some hinted at their religious devotion, such as a tired looking man with lavender hair, who probably belonged to The Order of The Vigilant Eye, a subcategory of Beholding devotees.
Another example was a blond haired young man with spiky hair, red eyes and a certain temper, who stared angrily at Izuku. The young man could almost see foam building in the blond’s mouth. To Izuku’s exasperation, the two of them knew each other. Aldera had been a school that focused largely on quirks, such as the explosions a certain boy named Bakugou Katsuki could create with his hands. Despite having been born a C-rank Seer already, the green haired man had kept his abilities on the down low, seeing as having been born quirkless did outweigh being powerful in a theological way in Aldera’s collective eyes. Not that they found any worth in knowledge, either.
Suddenly, a man entered the room. He had long black hair and wore a padded yellow jacket over a dark jumpsuit, with a voluptuous grey scarf obscuring his lower face. The purple markings of an A-rank marked his eyelids. Another follower of The Vigilant Eye.
“Quiet.“ The man‘s voice, though almost a whisper, carried through the room, and despite being of equal rank as the newcomer, Izuku felt compelled to silently await his next words.
„You are here because you have successfully partaken in the annual ritual of The Web and bested your fellow clerics. Act like it.“
The man’s gaze wandered over them, eyes flashing purple for a split second.
„I will conduct a follow up to see if you are worthy of continuing your studies at this institute.“
Murmurs echoed through the room, only to be silenced by the man’s crimson glowing eyes.
„You may address me as High Priest Aizawa, or Aizawa-sensei if you’re here for longer than…“, the cleric interrupted his sentence to look at the clock on the wall,“twenty minutes. I’ll see you on Training Ground B in your exercise uniforms in less than ten, otherwise you will be disposed of. Go.“
The instructor stepped out the door, and the students leapt to their feet.
Izuku was the first to arrive at the given location, immediately cataloguing the different machines and ritual circles around himself and the tutor in his head and the mental archive of The Beholding.
„Archbishop, if I may“, he addressed the man, who had closed his eyes, seemingly sleeping while standing if it hadn’t been for his theological alignment.
The cleric, who could only be described as scruffy looking at best, opened one eye to make his attention apparent. „What is it?“
Izuku folded his hands behind his back, which gave him a more military and serious look. „Will this ritual include only theological abilities or overall competence? Because if so, I feel like I should inform you about my… situation.“
A sigh, pregnant with tiredness and exasperation. „The later. What is this ‚situation‘ you speak of?“ If not for the look in his eyes, Aizawa would have seemed uncaring.
„I am quirkless“, the green haired man told him, without wait- or stuttering. If there was something a follower of The Beholder would appreciate, it would be honesty. Now, given both Izuku’s own natural prowess at reading people, combined with the domain of his patron, he was very apt at deciphering people‘s body language. Thankfully, Aizawa showed no signs of disgust or disapproval, just mild surprise. „What is your rank, boy?”, he asked, his eyes following the other students exiting the building that included the locker rooms.
Izuku just smiled. Yes, worshipping The Eye made one appreciate honesty, but it had also taught him the true worth of knowledge. “I guess we will have to wait and see who passes this test.”
The cleric just smirked. “I suppose we will.”
Once everyone had managed to find them, some barely within the given time frame, Aizawa spoke up. “Now. We will begin with a quirk assessment and end with an appraisal of your other abilities. You will be ranked, and everyone must acquire a certain amount of points unless they’d like to leave these facilities.”
An overall very pink girl shouted:”Oh, this is gonna be so fun!” Izuku rolled his eyes, what a dumb move to start the first day with. As anticipated, red eyes found themself locked onto the speaker.
“Fun, you say. Well, you won’t mind then if I take it upon myself to make victory just a bit more sweeter. No matter how many points you get, the dead last will be expelled. You know who to blame.”
And indeed, some of the students did in fact begin to look at the girl with disdain. Someone murmured:”Damn Mutter.”
(In Izuku’s case, well, it didn’t take a Seer to recognize the not-so-quiet voice of Bakugou.)
“First up, Aoyama Yuuga.”
As the blond used his quirk, a blue laser coming out of his stomach region, to propel a tennis ball over two hundred metres far, Izuku’s senses screamed at him through wordless feelings and tastes and smells. Having had eighteen years to categorise these kinds of mental assault, it didn’t take the man long to deduce that Aoyama had to be aligned with The, in this case very-much-seen, End, or Desolation, or the thousands of other names the deity of finite was called by.
Next was a green haired woman called Asui Tsuyu, who possessed an amphibian mutation quirk and a personality mostly found amongst worshippers of The Blazing Virtue.
As they watched their maybe-probably-hopefully future classmates fulfil their tasks, Izuku leaned towards the two young woman to his left, one with dark purple and one with raven black hair, aligned with both The Listening and The Absolute Truth, and The Spinning Deceiver, respectively.
Not only were enochian clerics with more than one central deity rare, but her dark haired companion’s stance practically screamed confidence issues, a rare trait for a follower of The Eight-Eyed Knowing.
“Common or Recommended?”, he asked, watching a red haired boy harden his arm and hurl the ball towards the marker for 150m, exuding incredibly strong Bastion vibes.
The shorter girl with purple hair sighed. “Common. She’s Recommended.”
Blushing, her friend exclaimed:”I can speak for myself, Jirou! I’m not that shy!” Which was met with a look that screamed ‘Oh, really?’
Izuku chuckled. “Midoriya. Midoriya Izuku, or Midori or Zuku for my friends, he/him pronouns.”
The girl who had spoken for both lifted an eyebrow. “For friends? We only just met. Jirou Kyouka, standard settings.”
“The Archive of The Beholder is allied with the People’s Church of The Divine Honesty, is it not?”, Izuku replied with a smug smile. He was already starting to like them.
“You speak like a politician.”
Yaoyorozu gave a small smile. It seemed she was quickly warming up to the green haired man. “Politicians lie. He talks with the silver tongue of an academic.” She held out her hand. “Yaoyorozu Momo, she/her. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
Izuku let his lips hover above her knuckles for a moment, before letting go.
The woman seemed delighted by his mannerisms. “You know the old customs.”
“Well”, he pointed at his eyes,”It has got to be good for something.” A vague sense of amusement washed over him, signalling The Eye’s approval.
“And please. You don’t seem very standard to me. In fact”, Izuku winked,”I’m very interested in getting to know the both of you.”
Someone cleared their throat. “I think I’m going to barf”, a brunette boy commented.
It was at this moment that Aizawa called:”Next. Midoriya Izuku.”
“Oh, please. Just a bit of light flirting to loosen up”, Izuku smiled at the speaker, only for a girl with vines for hair to blush:” That is what you call ‘light’?”
Jirou poked him in the side. “The interest is reciprocated, but now go before Aizawa tries to kill you through intense eye contact.”
He sighed theatrically. “If I must.”
Once he had walked up to the small circle signalling where to throw from, the man heard his tutor mutter:”I don’t appreciate having my time wasted.”
Izuku cracked his knuckles and grabbed the ball. “Neither do I.”
In the end, he landed somewhere halfway in the middle, with a score of 183 points for the quirk assessment.
Rubbing his eyes after having had to use his quirk to restrain Bakugou from attacking Izuku, Aizawa announced:”Next is the theological part. Form a row behind your respective ritual circles. Some of your possible upperclassmen have graciously allowed us to use them as test subjects. Don’t hurt them in a way we can’t repair and you should be good.”
For the Beholding appraisal, Izuku had to perform a range of different features on an unlucky bastard called Mirio Togata. Except, maybe he wasn’t as much as unlucky as he was dumb. After all, who in their right mind would volunteer to get their psyche cracked open like a pistachio?
The blonde smiled all the way through it, though Izuku knew it couldn’t be comfortable for him if the way his mind cramped up whenever the he went too deep was any indicator.
“Mirio Togata, born on 15th July, quirk discovered on 21st July, has a tremendously obvious crush on his best friend Tamaki Amajiki and was seriously dumb enough to refuse the money UA tried to give him for participating in this. That good enough?”, Izuku asked.
Aizawa marked a big fat check on his clipboard. “Receiving works, now try the reverse.”
Suddenly, Mirio began to blush.
The teacher raised an eye. “What did you show him?”
The green haired man smiled sharply. “Lets just say he’s very, very gay.”
Aizawa nodded in understanding. “Good for him.”
They continued with the assessment, ranging from asking Mirio questions and making him answer out loud to Izuku making eyes appear on his own skin, until…
“One more thing. Your rank, brat.”
Izuku pouted. “You're so mean to me, dad.”
Aizawa’s eyelid twitched. He didn’t ask again, and so the cleric rolled up his sleeve and willed the markings on his wrist to the surface.
“So you’re an A-rank then”, Aizawa stated, looking only the slightest bit impressed. “Very well then. You’re finished. Join the others on the side or something, I don’t care.”, he told him while marking down something on his clipboard.
Following a hunch, Izuku shouted:”I’m back from war”, as he walked towards Jirou, only for her to respond:”Hellooo Sailor!”
Chuckling, he let himself fall to the ground, grass softening his sudden impact. “How’d it go?”
“Pretty good. You?”
Izuku contemplated for a moment how to phrase his next words for maximal comedic effect, before casually mentioning:”I just pushed someone out of the glass closet and tortured him with horny jail visions. I think Aizawa gave me extra credit for that.”
They gave in to the need to laugh, only stopping when Yaoyorozu sat herself down in front of them, the embodiment of anxiety herself. She was silent for a moment, which Izuku used to send a quick prayer to his patron for whatever had happened. “Yaoyorozu? Are you… alright?”
Yaoyorozu across from them began mumbling a myriad of words even Izuku, who was quite the mumbler himself, couldn’t understand. Jirou rolled her eyes fondly and shuffled towards the taller woman.
“I’m sure it wasn’t that bad”, she tried to reason, her quirk helping her pick up what her friend was saying. Yaoyorozu only shook her head and started listing off graphs and percentages, probably regarding the acceptance rate of U.A.
Izuku, who had understood what was happening by now, decided to solve this quickly and accessed his Beholding reservoirs to act, bypassing Aizawa’s mental barriers almost entirely unhindered. “I wouldn’t be worried if I were you. After all, you’re in third place.”
Two pairs of eyes locked onto him, one hopeful and disapproving, the other relieved. “Y-you shouldn’t use your powers like that”, the taller woman scolded quietly.
Izuku raised an eyebrow. “A Weaver lecturing about the moral component of using one’s powers. That’s a new one.”
Blushing, Yaoyorozu shook her head lightly, as if to shake off an unwelcome thought. “You of all people should know that’s not how it works.”
“I know many things, dot. As I said, interesting indeed.”
Aizawa called out for everyone, and soon the junior clerics banded together at the foot of a huge monitor.
Flickering, their names’ kanji and scores began to appear and move up or down from the earlier quirk assessment. The first to declare their contentment with a smug smile was a blonde man with the slightest french accent. North of France, if Izuku wasn’t wrong. (Oh, who was he kidding, of course he wasn’t.)
A green haired woman with sharp teeth claimed the second place, and immediately celebrated her success by breaking apart and raining down onto them like a particularly gross batch of confetti.
At the next announced rank, Yaoyorozu turned an interesting shade of red, and Izuku would have cooed if he hadn’t felt tiny, haired legs dancing over his skin.
The young man’s own score amounted to 6th place, while Jirou took 9th.
In the end, no one had to leave the field. ‘A stratagem’, the high priest, now Aizawa-sensei, had told them.
“It seems you are capable of following basic instructions. Now that you have proven to be passable excuses for clay in U.A.’s hands, I expect you in the same atrium as today at 6am, not a second later, understood?”
A resounding ‘yes, sensei’ was his answer, mixed with an ‘amen’ or a ‘positive’ here and there.
“I trust you to know the location of the accommodations?”, The man asked, tilting his head, stance almost seeming to challenge someone to confess the opposite.
Another positive mass response.
“Very well then.” Aizawa let his quirk infused gaze wander over his new students one more time. “Welcome to U.A. Try not to give me extra paperwork by dying and we’re going to get along great.”
Somehow, Izuku doubted that.