CHAPTER 3

ROAST MUTTON AND ONE FOR ALL

Anyone who had survived self-inflicted hell would have this to tell you: that it became easier after the first few instances, the first few days, the first few bruises. When everything had become routine, when your body and mind had become used to the strain and the stress, as long as you wouldn't give up, force of habit alone would carry you through.

The problem, of course, was to survive until that critical point, and on that day Izuku thought he was going to die of exhaustion long before that.

A part of him felt a pang of regret as his sleepy legs dragged him to Dagoba that fine morning. By the time he saw what they were supposed to do, it ballooned ; only to deflate when All Might crushed an old refrigerator into a compact trash plate while declaring how hero work was about putting the heart into it.

So Izuku gave his all, because that was what he'd been spurred into doing.

By the time he was through with the day's cleaning and training (yes there were two components to it), Izuku was a dead boy walking. He didn't know how he actually got home. Did All Might carry him back? Or did he, with all his limbs and joints threatening to fall off the sockets and all his muscles crumbling into dust, somehow dragged himself home through force of will alone?

He suspected the former, but from the way All Might looked at him the next day, nodding with approval, it was likely the latter.

"Well now, ain't that a surprise," said All Might, puffing himself back into his heroic build. "No complaint? No question? No 'I give up'?"

"No, sir," went his answer. "I... I have to do my best! No, more than my best, more than my hundred percent! I'm already too far behind everyone else as is, sir!"

"More than a hundred percent! I like the sound of that!"

All Might's smile normally meant "Everything is alright".

In this context, it meant "Hell hath commenced."

"PLEASE RUN QUICKLY, ALL MIGHT IS WAITING!"

The words flashing on the smartphone screen almost made Bilbo tumble out of the bed. All Might? Waiting? What was this all about? Wasn't the famed hero supposed to give Izuku his quirk and that was the end of that?

Bilbo spent the next half an hour reading Izuku's note: of what had happened the previous days, of his deal with All Might and, a mite too late, how the last few days had been hell and oh four guardians deities of Japan preserve him, why was Bilbo still there reading?

By the time he had done his homework (and therefore understood what was required of him), Bilbo wished he hadn't wasted all that time reading.

He was half an hour late for the training with All Might.

"Well now, lad," said All Might, and though he was smiling his tongue was nothing short of biting . "I thought you said you're going to give training your all yesterday? Suppose laziness is a tough dragon to slay, huh?"

"Err... well, sir, I overslept," said Bilbo, and deep inside he felt like punching himself.

And so Bilbo's torture began.

It was not just about the work itself: dragging garbage all across a long beach into a dump truck was menial labor and therefore not what Bilbo was used to, he'd give it that. Problem was hardly a couple of hours had passed when he lost count of how many well-meaning-but-snide comments All Might had tossed at him: words meant to really sting a fauntling and spur the hyperenergetic creatures to work, darn it!

"Break a leg and hurry up now my prince."

"Shelves ain't gonna move themselves – ain't that sad?"

"Crate goes on the truck – no, that's not on the truck , that's twenty inches too low for that!"

"Times like this makes you wish you've got a pulley or two, huh? Well, tough luck!"

Except, well, Bilbo wasn't a fauntling. He was a middle-aged, affluent, respectable hobbit who rarely ever got so insulted and especially not for such inane reasons! So he was miserable and he was grumbling and mumbling even as he was dragging and dragging and dragging some more, and got dirt and mud and smudge all over his clothes.

As it happened, hobbits were not strong. But they were resilient, and never before had Bilbo been so thankful for that which he'd taken for granted all his life. As the sun was setting against the horizon, Bilbo had covered "less than half of the day's work load, precious." But Bilbo was alive, though his arms were numb, his hands raw, his head ringing, his ears about to bleed, his legs dragging and his lungs about to collapse on themselves.

Now he had a choice. He could fling a snide remark back at All Might the Cruel, Torturer of Hobbits, Purveyor of Bad Humor, Fellest of Taskmasters and Chiefest of Adversities to Befall Bilbo son of Bungo Baggins.

Or he could leave it well enough, not for his own sake but for the boy who would take over the next day.

It was a no-brainer, really.

"I will do a better job tomorrow," he said, and hoped Izuku could do at least that much.

Bilbo didn't quite recall how he'd spent the rest of the day, except that he was reading the American Dream Plan for the third or fourth time when he lost consciousness altogether. It was the first time in a long, long while that Bilbo fell asleep slumped on the table, his entire body ringing out in pain. His greatest mystery remained unanswered: "what is an American Dream, anyway?"

When Bilbo Baggins woke up as himself again, the pain lingered on in his every tendon and ligament. This had not happened before and the hobbit couldn't help but be a little alarmed. Did that mean physical conditions he acquired in the other world would transfer back to him in his own world as well? And maybe vice versa?

Then again, he had never quite worked out half as much in a year as he had the previous day.

And then his eyes caught Izuku's notes and his heart skipped a beat.

He'd fully expected Izuku to, if not throw a tantrum, then make a show of being angry at him for taking his place at training and making a right mess out of everything. All Might would probably be giving him hell right about now, and Bilbo suddenly felt himself so guilty and inadequate.

So when he flipped the page to find it prefaced with "I AM SO SORRY!" in large block letters, he almost jumped out of his seat again; like he'd seen a wraith rumor'd to prowl the ruins of such old holdfasts of Arnor as once devastated by the Shadow yet in the North.

And then Bilbo read and read and reread everything Izuku wrote for him: a two-page apology for not having told Bilbo the whole thing with All Might beforehands (even though there was no way he could have done so), and offering to do anything, anything, anything the hobbit decided Izuku should do for Bilbo's homestead (even though he was more likely than not extremely exhausted himself).

When he was done, Bilbo was grinning, but his eyes were wet and he was ever so thankful to the ubiquitous force of habit, that a gentle-hobbit would not leave home without his handkerchief if he could.

That was the moment Bilbo decided he had to up the ante on supporting the boy. If physical conditions were to transfer, he thought, then he had just the right thing for Izuku in mind.

"An army marches on its stomach," quoted Bilbo. And that meant he'd better start that-a-way: Beginning with digging up the family wisdom on cooking.

It just so turned out his father had a treasure trove of the thing stocked in the study. Hardly abnormal, but surprising in its own way. His late father had never been much of a cook – few Hobbitish men were, as a rule – though he was fond of eating and towards the dusk of his life, good eating.

It was well past time for elevensies when Bilbo finished his very initial foray into the art of cooking for maximum nutrition.

"The key to delicious, tasty and filling Hobbitish cooking for bright young farmhands," he read out loud, "is mutton and beef, carefully picked, leaned and stewed; and eggs many and poached, not fried (pray that you don't break them!)"

There were other preparations as well. Preparations that needed to be drafted out in drawings and pictures. His aching hand picked up quill and stretched a sheet of paper; he worked up his love for maps and drawings, and there started sketching curious tools not often seen in polite hobbit company.

First we need wood, and then a lot of sand, and then plenty of linen; and someone to put all of them together...

The bedside table was drowning in drawings and diagrams the next time Izuku showed up in Bilbo's guise. As per normal, he was greeted by Bilbo's notes. Given the lukewarm note apparently written under great fatigue the other day, the boy couldn't help but fear the very worst-

"Izuku, my good lad, I hope this note finds you in less bodily pain and discomfort (because cleaning up that beach is certainly not meant for a boy to do alone)."

Bilbo was not angry with him. Izuku's eyes widened, and his heart thumped and thumped and thumped some more. Bilbo. Was. Not. Angry. With. Him.

"I have a proposition: Let us do this more cleverly and harder rather than merely harder."

And then it became obvious what Bilbo had actually meant by that. Walking into the garden treated Izuku to a distinctly un-hobbit-like sight: Bilbo had converted a chunk of his yard into a training ground. Whether he did so alone or with other people's folks was anyone's guess, though he'd told Izuku not to worry too much about how it came to be.

There was a crossbar and weights to be lifted, and a solid wooden crate the size of a hobbit-sized bookcase filled with sand on smoothed ground to be pushed and pulled. There was a sandbag, too, of linen stained with so many hobbitish finger-prints and knuckle-prints hung over a very sturdy frame. The cords were wrapped in layers of linen, as were the crossbars, obviously so that he wouldn't hurt his hands.

But that wasn't the biggest surprise.

No, that would be what he discovered in the kitchen. There, inside the stove lay an absolutely gigantic bowl of mutton-and-egg stew, and chopped basil and thyme and onions and a dozen other kinds of spices and herbs. "Add everything to the stew and leave it to simmer for an hour, and there you go," went the note stuck under the chopping board.

There were other notes, too: "Apply to your arms and legs and wherever there might be bruises," was pinned to the dressing-table upon which a jar of pungent-smelling balm sat. "But better to think about the kind of exercise you've been doing and why it hurts," put on the rocking-chair in the study. And later in the day, when Izuku was about to take a hot bath, he found "Good luck and godspeed, my dear lad," on the towel rack.

All of them pointed to one thing: He was to work hard, and when he was tired and worn out and couldn't carry on, there was Bag End and its comfort – a pitch stop for a day of rest, relax, refuel.

Izuku could swear nothing he had ever eaten (spoken though a true fan of his mother's cooking he might be) would beat the stew, that melted in his mouth and carried with it the taste and aroma of herbs and spices that grew upon the rolling hills under the sunshine of the Shire. Midoriya Izuku went to bed that day with a belly full, his muscles strained then soothed then strained again, and a face wet with tears of joy.

He woke up the next day more energized and spirited than a boy of fourteen years being worked halfway to death had any right to be.

And it was in such ways that ten months passed by in a blink of an eye, and Bilbo suspected the exercising had something to do with it.

He had been unable to flawlessly replicate the "American Dream Plan"; but the program he had devised for himself was as close to perfect mimicry as he could manage. When Izuku was to lift, he also lifted. When the boy had to haul garbage, he dragged the sand-filled crate. When the boy would jog around his neighborhood, Bilbo's bare feet made their marks many more laps around Bagshot Row than he could count. And of course there was those times he was actually doing Izuku's work for him, because there were only two certainties in Bilbo's life nowadays – certain annoying relatives and body-switches.

At first the sheer amount of strenuous physical exertion made Bilbo feel like his body was being forcibly rearranged every day one bone after another. Then it became endurable. Then something almost routine, if not fun in its diversion from the lifestyle of a quintessential hobbit of letter.

It had become even more of a diversion when Bilbo realized All Might, for all his taunting, somewhat of a hobbit in the trappings of the other world's mightiest hero: good-hearted, optimistic and witty if well-humored. Hobbitish dry humor was not only accepted but welcomed, and once every so often All Might would flash this world-saving superhero smile at Bilbo-wearing-Izuku's-flesh and say, "Young man, you can save lives with that wit!"; and Bilbo would pat himself on the back for a job well done. And then he would return to hauling garbage, which had become less of a demanding chore with every passing week.

Soon summer gave way for autumn, autumn for winter, and winter shifted into spring again. One fine morning Bilbo was sitting in his chair outside the round green door again, allowing himself a rare smoke of the pipes as he surveyed the fine morning about him: the sun was shining, the grass swaying in the breeze, and birds chirping in the canopy above.

It was then that he saw Gandalf the wizard once more, shuffling along the winding Bagshot Row under the shade of the oak trees. He was wearing an extra layer of travel cloak, worn and dusty, and his travel stick was just a little more bent than the last time they met. Apart from those he was largely the same, silvery beard tucked in silvery belt, as though locked in his old-wizen-advisor form for all eternity. That was the Gandalf Bilbo knew, and the Gandalf who kept to his words – mostly.

"Good morning!" shouted Bilbo, and tipped his hat.

"Good morning indeed, Master Bilbo Baggins," said the wizard. He looked at Bilbo, then his eyes followed the smoke-rings Bilbo had been blowing. "I see you've given up giving up Old Toby's!"

Bilbo grinned, and blew himself another very enormous smoke-ring that rose to the bough above. "Knowing when to renounce a lost cause, my good Master Gandalf, is a mark of wisdom," he said.

"I should think so," said Gandalf, and approached the fence. He produced from his person a little envelope. "I had a thought to leave this to the post-hobbits, but then correspondence for certain matters needs a certain level of... measured confidentiality. Here's your mail for the day, Master Baggins." Then he smiled like the kindly old man he was, and wait for Bilbo to open his envelope.

There was a contract, affixed with a makeshift seal and dwarven runes. "Thorin and Company?" Bilbo read them out loud, "To Master Burglar Bilbo Baggins greetings ? And these runes... these folks are dwarves, aren't they, Master Gandalf?"

"Why, yes, that's our 'client'. Certainly not the very best of their stock (and their kind have once enjoyed some spectacular individuals just so you are aware), but clearly among the boldest and most given to this quest!" said Gandalf. "Their quest has been delayed by one year because of your family business, yet evidently they are still quite eager to hire you for your services."

"I should be thankful," said Bilbo, and suddenly there was a bit of guilt that reared up in his heart – which he promptly crushed. Izuku is more important, he told himself.

"Oh, and just so you are aware, Master Baggins," said Gandalf. "I strongly recommend making ready for a party of thirteen dwarves. Rowdy, hearty and highly partial to alcohol – strong and plentiful if you have it. Probably round this time next month, maybe earlier. Do keep your pantry stocked just in case!"

Bilbo Baggins nodded. After all, he had prepared meals for a hungry, physically exhausted gourmand of a teenage boy for a year.

Bring on the dwarves.

When winter shifted into spring again, Midoriya Izuku was crushing the last of the trash on the beach. Figuratively, and at times literally. He'd gotten that much stronger.

Of course it was not all him: Bilbo Baggins had been, to his best estimate, responsible for at least a fifth of the beach; more if Izuku was to account for how the hobbit's fastidiousness had made life much easier for him. Sorting out garbage was one third a matter of organization and two third strength, and Bilbo had been happily taking care of Izuku's share of the former.

That just meant Izuku had to push himself harder into supplementary training in Bilbo's yard; because otherwise he'd feel unbearably guilty about letting Bilbo do his work for him. It was a good thing that his working out in Bag End carried over to his own body after all. Smart work-out with proper rests and a lot of mutton had made his work a lot more efficient than it would have otherwise.

And so it was ten days before the U.A. entrance exam when he stood on top of a rock, bare-chested and bright-eyed, and shouted at the rising sun.

It was the end of his baby steps.

"Congratulations, young Midoriya."

He turned around, and find his idol walking down the step to the now spotless beach. He was clapping and nodding and his smile seemed to have grown more brilliant than it had ever been.

"Well... to be honest I had my doubt at the beginning, so let me just get out here and come clean about that." All Might scratched his head and looked awkwardly at the ground. "Especially seeing you fumbling after the third day."

Izuku scratched his scalp and smiled sheepishly. Part of him had wanted to retort and say it wasn't fair because Bilbo hadn't been prepared for the whole 'clean up the beach' business and was more or less a middle-aged man who probably never lifted before.

For obvious reasons he said nothing, but Izuku did grin as All Might showed him the photo of himself on the first day and how he was now: how much he'd changed was palpable.

"You must have a very good supporting family, young man" said All Might.

"I do!" Izuku said, and his grin couldn't have been broader if he tried. "I... I wouldn't be here without them."

And then unceremoniously All Might handed Izuku one of his hair and told him to eat it. If anyone would ask Izuku how exactly he did it, he'd claim 'I forgot!' and smile that sheepish, puppy-eyed smile of his, and sweep everything under the rug.

What he could not and would not sweep under the rug was the next thing he asked All Might.

"Um... I don't suppose, sir, since we do have some time, uh... could you please teach me how this actually works?"

The first time Midoriya Izuku tried out a One-For-All powered punch, he could not even finish the full motion.

Perhaps he'd had the adrenaline and the inclination to save someone else in that first time, he would have ignored the pain and go on to break himself.

As it happened, there was no villain to crush and no innocent to save, and Izuku's body had done a very good job telling him " No. Stop. " In a blink the bright line that had emerged along and across his calf vanished with a fizzle. Nasty-looking bruises popped up on his exposed shoulder and elbow joints, and Young Midoriya collapsed on his knee with a scream.

"You alright, young man?" All Might asked, and at once felt like an idiot. Of course the young man was not: tears were streaming down his contorted face, and at that moment All Might realized how lucky he'd been that such a thing had never happened to him.

It was five full minutes before the boy could stand up again (and that was with some ice-packs Toshinori had always kept stacked in his truck). And no sooner had he been back on his two feet than young Midoriya's arms flare up again.

"You know what, stop it right there," he said, and Midoriya deflated. "Won't be good to break your arm a week before exam."

"But I... I don't get it," murmured young Midoriya. "Haven't I trained all this year? Is all of this still not enough?"

Then he stared at the ground. "I'm... I'm sorry. I have been slacking."

"No you haven't," said All Might. "I saw what you've done, young man. Yet-"

At first, All Might was as befuddled as his protege if not more. Had he miscalculated how much training and beefing up the boy would need to handle his power? No, that made no sense. Years ago when he'd received One For All, All Might had been scrawnier, poorly looked after. So why-

And then All Might realized he'd been the successor who'd held One For All the longest and therefore had put the most into it. Probably more than the previous six users put together: given how tremendously active in the hero business he had been.

Oh. Crap.

Everything suddenly made so much sense, All Might felt like punching himself.

Making sense was one thing. Handling the fallout was another. And when the going was bad, well, there was no shame withdrawing for the day either.

"Go home and rest for the day, young man," he said, and meant it.

Izuku stared long at the ground. "But..."

"There's definitely a way, you hear?" said All Might, and he clenched every muscle on his face to stretch out his smile. "You did good, young man. You did good and when I say I'm proud of you, I mean it. Don't ever tell yourself this is your fault. You heard me!"

When Bilbo woke up the next day, he found himself buried neck-deep in drafting paper while besotted with a right arm in mortal pain. So many diagrams and scribbling, words scrawled out in a hurry and then scratched again equally hastily. The smell of coffee was thick in the room, half a dozen empty cups arranged in a line at the far end of the table.

Izuku's handwriting was barely readable and grammatically atrocious.

"Full swing arc impossible? Half an arc? A quarter? A fifth? Safe range: two centimeters. One?"

"Time is a factor. Three seconds? Two and a half? Probably less than a second?"

"Whole arm too risky. Fingers? Three fingers hurt badly. Two? One? One fingertip?"

Izuku had been designing something – obsessively, Bilbo noted. He was drawing some kind of box-like gauntlets meant to be fitted around the arm. It was a rough draft scratched and overwritten over and over again, and the final version looked like a a cross between a bracer and a jewel box, with a tube that went between the middle and ring-fingers.

"Marbles go here," went the note pointing to the box.

"Marble tube - Lock to release marbles? (better loading mechanism?)" the tube was annoted.

"Thumb and middle finger rings? Wrapping cloth? Finger-caps? Other options? Must ask All Might!"

"Where to get material? Ask Mom? Hardware store? Trash?"

Running vertically along the sheet were the words, "Note to self: Must not break fingers or collar!"

The design haunted Bilbo's day as he went along with the rest of what Izuku was supposed to do: Go to school, have lunch in a corner, dodge Katsuki and company, and convince Mistress Inko Midoriya that no, absolutely nothing was wrong, why would she even think that?

It was only after he'd finished everything else and returned to Izuku's room at the end of the day that Bilbo reread everything the boy had come up with.

By the time he finally fully understood what had happened to him the previous day, the dull ache on his right arm suddenly grew just that much worse. Having an arm exploded was definitely a no-no, thought a frightened-for-his-life Bilbo.

But what to say? What to write?

After his fourth cup of tea at midnight, Bilbo decided dissuading Izuku from using this arm-busting One For All thing was about as realistic as winning a brawl against a live dragon. For long did he bite down on the pencil, and as the clock struck two a flash of inspiration finally came to him.

"Look, my dear lad, not to disparage but what you need is certainly not a marble-dispensing device, no, sirree!" he wrote. " What you need is a sturdy sling and a pair of good, thick, woolen pair of padded gloves! Think gambeson, except for your hand rather than your chest! Shouldn't take too much training to use."

And then Bilbo began adding his own observations to Izuku's notes. He, too, fell asleep on the drawing board, across the table from a row of teacups of his own.

"A sling?"

Izuku swallowed hard. "I've tried again and again," he said. "I... can't adjust how strong One For All is right now, and uh... I've got to listen to my body and it tells me my hand has a fraction of a second-" He snapped his finger for emphasis "-before it goes bust. That means I have to apply the force to the smallest area possible, the shortest swing arc possible at the shortest time possible!"

He drew in a deep breath, and continued with a gulp. "I've thought of flicking marbles, but that means rubbing my thumb and my middle finger together and that alone would kind of put too much force on both. But a sling, well I probably don't even need to swing it around to build momentum, all I need is flick my arm like so."

He stuck out his right arm and flicked his collar to the left. Tiny lines emerged on his thumb and index finger. The motion whipped up a gust of wind and tossed aside sand and gravel on the ground in a ten-meter straight line. For the briefest moment a jolt of pain shot up his fingertips like he'd slammed them on a hard surface, and they turned just a bit red. "Ouch..." he exclaimed and clutched his hand.

But they were fine. His fingers were fine. More importantly: it worked and All Might had got the message. And he agreed!

"That. Is. Brilliant, young Midoriya!" he cried, and patted Izuku a little too hard on the shoulder. "Although that one's a bit on the weaker side... Ah well, it isn't like you'll need an anti-materiel rifle to pass the entrance exam..."

"I... I see," said Izuku. "I'll just have to try harder, sir!"

"Now don't give me that. What did I tell you yesterday, huh? Breaking your arm's no good! If you can control the power at this rate and keep your arm under wrap... I see no reason you can't put it to good use!"

Then All Might raised a finger to the sky.

"Well how about we give it a whirl?" he said, and off he took (literally)

When All Might came back from the truck, he was carrying a handful of hachimaki – the sort meant to be tied around the head – with the American stars-and-stripes printed on them.

"Here it is!" he announced. "The All-American Hyper-Tensile Cloth Sling! They made them extra-tough for the charismatic career heroes!"

Izuku could hear his jaw hit the ground. "Uh... Aren't they just headbands? Your headbands?"

"Well they are! But in the hands of a hero even a headband can become a heroic tool of justice!"

Izuku rolled his eyes at his idol. And then said eyes sparkled. "Will do, sir!"

The rest of the day passed rather slowly compared to the rest of the year, and quite a bit more exciting. By the time it ended, Izuku had ripped through five headbands, frayed another three, and had taken to wrap another two around his finger (neither of which were whole), and was on the verge of breaking his fingers a dozen times. The keyword is "verge": Izuku's arm had not exploded into bloody giblets, and that was all that mattered.

For an entire week Izuku's life revolved around the sling and how to use it.

It was actually funner than he thought swinging around a pebble wrapped in a piece of cloth had any right to be.

He couldn't adjust very well how strong One For All would be yet, but his nerves were doing a very good job of telling him when his hand would give way, and that in turn made for a benchmark for adjusting everything else: the angle of his arm, the direction of the flick, whether he should spin the sling around and how much, whether he should secure his fingers with cloth wraps to balance between protection and speed, and most importantly, how to actually hit things with a sling bullet.

By the end of his sixth day, Izuku was able to hit a trashed refrigerator fifty meters away with enough force to punch right through it, four times out of ten, with only some lingering pain. Which was far less impressive than One For All was.

Except after that last day All Might gripped his shoulder (as hard as he could in his deflated skeletal form), and said:

"You'll do fine, young Midoriya. Why? Because you've got two incredibly strong weapons: Your head, and your heart!"

In fact, throughout that last leg of training, Izuku's nagging worry was not about the exam itself, or controlling One For All. No, it was whether he'd body-switched on the day of the exam.

As it happened, the switch was on the day before the exam, and for that Izuku could not have thanked whatever deities out there enough.

In another timeline he would have worked himself into near exhaustion until the very end. In this timeline, on that last day he had the garden of Bag End to frolic around, half a dozen friendly hobbits walking by to wave and shout "Good Morning" at, and many a scrumptious buttered scones to munch on (no more mutton, and just about time too. Izuku was getting fed up with the taste of lamb fat). And most of all, just have a day to just unwind.

"Thank you for everything, Bilbo," he wrote. "I'll pass the exam, get into U.A., and have you walk around the most wonderful hero school in all of Japan – no, the whole world! I- no, we will become the mightiest hero ever!"

When he went to bed, he was lying face-up, cradled by Bilbo's warm blanket, and his dream was of Earendil the Mariner who had once taken a flying ship to battle a dragon the size of a mountain range.

Bring on the exam.