This is my first My Hero Academia fanfiction. I have not read the manga in full length but I know some spoilers, so this is a warning that this fic may contain them. This is also taken in their 2nd year, and I will definitely be making plenty of adjustments as I go along! Reviews are greatly appreciated. Criticism about how I write the characters are also welcome. I do not own the anime—I'm merely pulling them away and playing with them for a short while. I promise to put them back when I'm done.

"Mr. All Might?"

"Yes, my girl?"

"Do you read often?"

Toshinori set the tray of tea down at the edge of the table and had just managed to hide an exasperated sigh. It was not due to the girl's question, instead it was due to his injuries. He was not the same man he was years before and the whole world knew it. He stifled a cough that threatened to escape his throat and sat down next to the foreign girl, hunching forward and folding his osseous fingers together. Class was in session, and he thought it was best to chat with her in private in one of the faculty rooms.

"Occasionally," he replied matter-of-factly. "when a plot catches my attention. Why?"

The girl reached for the steaming mug of tea in front of her and twirled the string of the teabag between her index finger and her thumb. "My papa taught me to read better after he saved me. There was a book I read in English—a Japanese author, though, but I don't... remember the name. It was a long one," She sipped the tea and it burned her tongue. Her face scrunched up from the heat. "and there was a quote I read..."

"What was the quote?" Toshinori prodded, and without a flinch the girl replied.

"You can hide memories, but you can't erase the history that produced them." She cradled the mug in her hands. "Is that right?"

Toshinori furrowed his eyebrows and stared away from the girl. "It is true. You can't erase the past. You can't change it... unless you have some sort of a time travel quirk, which is rare... A-Anyways, that's not the point—" He reached for his own cup. "The only thing you can do is move forward. Create better memories, so when you get old and decrepit like me you can look back on them fondly."

There was a smile on her face, and Toshinori felt an overwhelming sense of accomplishment. "You're not old, Mr. All Might. Don't let your age misguide you to think your time is up. Get up and do it at any age. It shouldn't matter, right? Go to a theme park and be a kid again. Take someone out on a date. Go have sex."

He choked on his tea and it sprayed everywhere in front of him with a fine mixture of blood. He coughed and wiped his mouth with his shirt. "Y-Young Spivak!" All Might exclaimed, clearly taken aback from her boldness. "That's hardly an appropriate thing to say!"

"I know, and I apologize," she set her mug on the table. How was she this calm? "But don't act like you weren't thinking about that, Mr. All Might. Your thoughts are louder than you think they are."

Oh.

He had forgotten her quirk.

His face was burning hot now, and the girl laughed loudly.

"Have you no sense of shame, girl?" Toshinori asked, though it came out more as a statement than a question. His embarrassment caused the stoic girl to finally break her facade, but he didn't want it to happen this way.

"Why does the truth have to be shameful?" she replied. "You're human, Mr. All Might. And what am I to do? Tell the whole school? Tell the staff? A Ukrainian student finds out that Mr. All Might is a man and has desires. Shocking!"

He admitted that this girl was wise beyond her years undoubtedly, but he just wondered what her "papa" had taught her. He only convinced Principal Nezu to let her in due to the situation in Ukraine, as well as her powerful quirk. Not to mention that he owed her adoptive father a favor after all these years. But the more she opened her mouth and grew comfortable with him, the more he realized that her audacity and lack of fear was strikingly similar to the man he knows despite the lack of relations between him and her.

"L-Let's change the subject, my girl," he stuttered. "This is far away from what we were discussing in the first place. Where were you getting at?"

"Oh, right," Her face fell back to her routinely aloof stance, and she began to space out. "I'm just wondering... if that applies to the memories that aren't mine."

"The memories that aren't yours?"

"My quirk, Psionic. I couldn't always see memories and change them, you know? It happened when..."

She fell silent, and Toshinori contemplated whether to console the girl by placing his hand on her shoulder or leave her be. He settled for the latter.

"You don't have to talk about it, Young Spivak. But that's why we're here," he straightened his back a little, and raised his voice to catch her attention that was slowly drifting away. "That's why I am here. Ukraine is... significantly different than the rest of the world. Those who keep up with the world media will know, and I know that settling here will take some time. You may have almost mastered your quirk that you were born with, and I know that you want to push away the quirks that was... that was placed in you," he cringed at his choice of words. "but other teachers—other heroes and I are here to help you control it, and to help you make it a whole new quirk that you are proud to call it your own. Can you accept that, Symona Spivak?"

She stared at the man for a long time, searching his mind for any sort of waver of his thoughts, any fumble and slip up. She searched for his emotions, and she searched for any trace of doubt. Instead, the words that she gathered from him were a repeat of 'I am here.'

Symona finally smiled again.

"You know, Mr. All Might, when I saw you for the first time today... I thought that my papa lied. I thought, 'This is not the man my papa said he was.' Skin and bones. Sunken eyes. You sounded like you had just woken up from a thousand year sleep," All Might opened his mouth to protest. He didn't sign up to get insulted by a sixteen year old. The girl soon cut him off before he could say anything. "but I was wrong. You really are the man my papa said you are. He told me stories of when he fled from Ukraine to America for a short time, and how he found you with a friend. He told me stories of how the rest of the world was, a society of heroes and villains, while Ukraine shunned those with quirks. Prymkhy we would call quirks. I'm... sure you are aware of what's going on in my country, right?"

He nodded. "Your papa is leading the rebellion."

"Which is why he sent me here... where I'm safer."

A heavy patch of silence hovered the two of them, and Toshinori didn't know what to say to break the ice. She must have read his thoughts, because subsequently she stood up and folded her hands in front of her.

"Bowing is a custom in Japan, right?" Symona asked. Without him replying, she continued on and bowed in front of him. "Thank you, Mr. All Might, for pulling the strings. Thank you for allowing me to attend U.A. Thank you for everything you have done, and everything you will continue to do."

"H-H-Hey, now," he held up his hands. "No need to be so formal, kiddo. Your father is one of the greatest men I have ever met. I saved his butt a few times and he saved mine while in the states. If anything, it's an honor for me to train and teach someone he considers as his daughter. In my eyes, your papa is a hero despite the legalities in Ukraine. Whether or not you choose to stay in Japan after you graduate... I'm sure that you will become a worthy hero. Mark my words, young lady."

There were tears in her cyan eyes that threatened to escape its defenses.

"Thank you," she said, this time in a voice barely above a whisper. "I will not disappoint you, Mr. All Might. I will not disappoint my papa."

"From the letters he sent me you are all but a disappointment." Toshinori relaxed on the sofa. "Did you know that I was the first person he told about you? He also told Dave—another friend of ours from America. He said that when he found you all battered up and broken... He looked in your eyes and saw nothing but determination. He knew that you were special, and if not to the world then to him. You are everything to him, and when I first heard that I thought that someone had brainwashed him. That was not the Urahan: The Vigilante I know. But now I see it, Young Spivak," he stood up to face her, and she lifted her teary gaze to view the man before her. "You have potential. You have power. You have motivation. You have heart, despite everything you have been through. I think that is the most important trait in a hero."

She wiped away the evidence of tears with the back of her hand and inhaled sharply.

The girl had gone through a lot. It pained him to see someone so young have such a heartbreaking background. He couldn't imagine any of his students go through that sort of trauma. Sure, there had been... some bumps in the first year of him teaching, and resulting in that the security of U.A. had been bumped up quite a few notches. All Might thought that the rumors of quirk trafficking and distribution were false since there had never been any evidence, but Symona's story was legitimate proof.

If they were in Ukraine, then they were all over the world.

They had to be in Japan.

He knew nothing of this organization, and he was sure that Symona knew more than he did. However, any information she knew must be sensitive for the girl to speak about, and for that he would have to tread the waters lightly.

"Let's get you situated in your dorm," Toshinori said, extending a hand to pat on her dark ivory waves. "Do you have everything you brought?"

She nodded. His touch felt so much like her father's. Suddenly, despite her country's condition, she started to miss her home a little. "I didn't bring much. Some weekend clothes, a toothbrush, some books..."

His eyebrows knitted together. Being surrounded by teenagers for the past year he knew that many would have more than just that. Action figures, video games, manga, porn magazines—something that would scream adolescence. Talking to her was like talking to an adult, and that scared him a little bit. He hated to admit it, but seeing her cry eased him up and made him realize that she is still a kid, and not only he wants her to be a hero but he wants her to live a little in her teenage years. He made sure that Young Midoriya would do so, and now he needed to make sure that this girl does too.

"Let me help you with the bag, it looks heavy—"

That said bag started to hover on its own and was adjacent to the girl's head. She smiled a bit.

"Thank you, Mr. All Might, but I think I've got it."

He sighed dejectedly.

He wasn't quite used to students with psionic, mind-based quirks.

Symona, once more, must have read his thoughts and she pursed her lips just slightly. Her nose wrinkled, freckles drawing in together and finally she let out a breath.

"If it will put your mind to ease, Mr. All Might, then you can carry my bag."

Toshinori thought it wouldn't take so long for her to settle in, he didn't expect it to be this quick. When she put every article of clothing in her drawers and placed all of her books in alphabetical order it would have taken an average person about an hour, perhaps a little bit more depending on the amount of belongings they had. But Symona used her mind to gather everything and set everything in place, and she was careful about it too. She made sure that every book that floated in the air went over and around his head, and every piece of clothing was folded neatly and tucked away in the crevices of her drawer.

During that time he simply watched. He wondered, 'What would Young Midoriya do in this situation?' Knowing his prodigy he would release a stream of mutters about the girl's quirk and take notes swiftly in his notebook number however many he had. Toshinori knew little about her quirk as her file was currently being written by the principal himself. He knew fragments of details from the letters her adoptive father sent, but seeing it in person was an entirely different experience. He wanted to know the drawbacks of her quirk, how often she used it, how she trained her mind, and how she—

"You could have asked, Mr. All Might."

He coughed and sputtered a bit of blood and pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe away the smudges on his lips. Shit. "Sorry, Young Spivak," he said. "You're right. I should have asked, but at the same time my thoughts should remain private. I did let it slide the first couple times."

Symona hummed as she placed the last book on the shelf. "You're right. I'm sorry for that, too, but my quirk doesn't... shut off like that. I can't block away other people's voices. That's one of my drawbacks, since you were wondering." She walked to her bed and sat at the corner of it. It was a plain, twin bed with cream-colored sheets that smelled of mothballs and dust. "Who's Midoriya?"

"He," All Might started, careful to keep his mind blank and to choose his words carefully. "is a student of mine. One that I train. His quirk is... very similar to mine."

She stared at him. She was doing it again, trying to read his thoughts, and he did his best to keep it a clean slate. Blank. 'Nothing. Think of nothing. The color black. Think of a black hole, Toshi...'

"Do you like space?"

'Goddammit.'

Symona laughed a childlike laugh and a spark went off in Toshinori's chest. He felt like a proud father, making his overly-mature daughter break her sincere character. He groaned as he sat on the floor, one leg lazily resting on the floor while the other with the knee up to allow him to rest his elbow on it. He took a good look at the room and frowned. The only light that was in the room was from the setting sun that sneaked its way through the cracked blinds. The walls were once white but were now a faint orange hue, and it was so warm that Toshinori wondered if it was even a color anymore. The carpet was rough under his hands. Through the walls he could hear some of the 2-A students laughing and exclaiming muffled words.

"Will you be okay for tomorrow?" Toshinori asked. "It's your first night here and tomorrow is your first day. Do you need another day to rest?"

She shook her head no. "If I'm going to be a hero then I need to start my education as soon as possible."

"It's a foreign land, my girl. It's okay to—"

"Do you want to know what I tell myself to calm my nerves?" Toshinori was silent, and she took that as an indication to continue. "If I had survived what I went through, then I can survive living in a foreign country. If I survived the past five minutes, then I can survive another five minutes. If I had done an hour, then I can do another hour. If I managed to get by in Ukraine this past year, then I can get by in Japan this upcoming year. See how I break it all down into pieces?"

Symona smiled. It was a smile of reassurance and gave him a feeling of intense well-being. Not joy, but something akin to peace. A sort of not-a-worry-in-the-world sensation. This girl had grown up fast—too fast—and while she still had a lot to learn she carried the mentality of an old soul.

"That's an interesting way to put it."

"It helps me. Breaking minute by minute down, hour by hour, day by day, year by year. It makes me realize how fast time went by, and how far I came along." She lifted her fingers and placed them between her lips, teeth grazing on her nails. "Is that weird?"

Toshinori shook his head. "Not at all, my girl. If it helps you cope then I see nothing wrong with it." All Might watched the girl chew on her nails, and he tried hard but he couldn't read her expression. He had many students that showed maturity early on—Tokoyami, Todoroki, Asui, Yaoyorozu—and he was sure that Young Spivak would be quickly added to that list. Unlike the other students, he saw himself easily carrying on a conversation with the girl. She didn't see him as Japan's greatest hero, she didn't see him as the Symbol of Peace, and she didn't see him as a teacher.

She saw him as a man. A man who knows her adoptive father. A man who vowed to look after her if needed.

"I used to think," he began. "...I used to think that time like that goes in complete order. You know? That you grow older and mature one year at a time. But it's not like that, Young Spivak, as much as I hate to admit it. It happens overnight."

There was some truth in his words, Symona thought. She never thought of it that way. She didn't respond to the clarity of his words and pulled her fingers away from her mouth, folding her hands together and resting that just below her abdomen. There was a lapse of silence between them, and Toshinori wondered what he could say or do that could break that very silence again. He licked his lips and opened his mouth to speak, but Symona cut him off once again. Her crystal eyes darted to the door.

"You can come in," she called out. "You could have knocked, too."

Confusion overwhelmed him for moment before turning his head at the door. It opened with a droning creak; a mop of green hair popped through the crack and a familiar, freckled face began to contort with embarrassment.

"I-I-I'm s-so sorry," he stammered. "I-I've been looking for All Might, and I s-saw him come up here—I didn't mean to intrude or listen in, I promise! I'm not a creep, sir, I'm not like Mineta, and I'm so sorry—"

"You can come in," Symona laughed. "Don't be embarrassed. You're Midoriya, am I correct?"

His emerald eyes widened a smidgen, and before he could respond he heard her voice in his head. 'I can read thoughts and memories. Mr. All Might was just thinking about you earlier. I recognize your face in his mind.'

Midoriya's words were caught in his throat as he stepped inside. All Might cleared his throat.

"Young Midoriya, this is Spivak. She is an exchange student from Ukraine, and she'll be in your class this year."

"Whoa," he breathed. "Your quirk is phenomenal, Spivak-san! Do you just read minds? What else can you do with your quirk? I only know one other person with a mind-based quirk, and he's in our class this year! Oh, but it's limited too. That makes me wonder—what are your limits, Spivak-san? Do you—"

"You can call me Symona," she waved her hands a little. "It's my first name, and I'm more comfortable with that. I can show you more when the time comes, but you came here for Mr. All Might instead, right?"

He stiffened. "R-Right, I'm sorry!"

"No need," she grinned. "Take him away. Please. He's been talking my ear off."

Toshinori coughed and twisted his face indignantly. "You are just like your father."

Midoriya was confused with the interaction between the two of them, and suddenly he started to wonder what the relationship was between the two of them. All Might knows her father? From Ukraine? He thought that All Might only visited the states, and Midoriya's mind began to turn its gears. Where else has his mentor been? If he knows her father then he might know about One For All, right? Would Symona know about it too? The boy's thoughts suddenly went dark as he remembered her quirk, and he swallowed dryly.

The skeletal man stood up with a groan and stretched his back, popping some of his bones in the process before stifling a yawn. "Well, Young Spivak, don't hesitate to ask anyone for anything. You have the map of the school?"

"Yes, Mr. All Might."

He nodded and glanced at Midoriya who shifted in his stance uncomfortably. "Alright. I'll be your homeroom teacher this year due to my condition. I will see you first thing tomorrow, Young Spivak."

She stood up and bowed. "Thank you for all your help, Mr. All Might," Symona then turned to face Midoriya. "and it was wonderful meeting you, Midoriya. I look forward to working with you."

"M-Me too, Symona." The boy bowed in return and walked out with All Might, closing the door behind them. All Might placed a finger on his lips as they started to walk further away from her dorm, and once they were far away enough he sighed and closed his eyes. Midoriya's eyebrows creased. "All Might..." he began. "I'm sorry, I started thinking about One For All and my thoughts started to get carried away... and I instantly forgot that she can read minds. She doesn't seem like it... but would she say anything?"

The man strode forward to Midoriya's room. "I don't think so. Her father knows, but I'm not sure if he told her."

"Her father knows?"

All Might nodded. "I knew him when I was in America. He was there for a few years as a refugee from Ukraine. In Ukraine, heroes and villains don't exist. People with quirks are... shunned, to put it lightly. It's terrible what happens to those who are born with quirks in that country. People had tried to flee to different countries where quirks are accepted into society. Some have successfully escaped, but others were not so lucky. Oleksander—her adoptive father—was one of the lucky ones, but I was confused and... worried on why he went back to Ukraine. Now I know why."

He opened the door to Midoriya's room and briefly cringed at the life-size figures of his All Might form. He wasn't sure he'd ever get used to it.

"Why did he go back?" the boy asked, stepping inside his dorm. All Might stood at the doorway and sighed.

"His name is Urahan: The Vigilante. Urahan means hurricane in Ukrainian. He has the ability to control the weather and natural disasters, though it all depends on the temperature and seismic activity throughout the area. I owe him a favor, which is now why Symona is here. She had been through a lot as a child, and he wanted her to get a proper education on how to become a hero. He didn't want her to be involved with the rebellion. With the war."

"There's a war in Ukraine?"

All Might nodded. "Here's my homework assignment for you: go online and search the situation in Ukraine and other countries. See how their society is different from ours. You strive to be the world's greatest hero, right?"

"Y-Yes, sir!"

"You may have started in Japan, but it's only right to know how other countries work too. Right now is the perfect opportunity to do some more research, Young Midoriya."