Disclaimer: This is purely a fanwork and I own nothing

It was Wednesday night, the night before Midoriya Izuku started his Hero Courses. With his week of house arrest almost up, Midoriya allowed his mind to wander over the last week while in the shower. No matter how he tried, his mind always went back to his conversation with the Principal after rescuing Eri.

The Principal dismissed everyone besides Aizawa and Midoriya after his announcement. If Midoriya was upset about being transferred from Support to Heroics, it was nothing compared to the look of rage on the face of Eraserhead.

"Sir," he seethed through grit teeth, "I beg you to reconsider, his acts of vigilantism..."

"Are indeed a gross show of disrespect to the law yes, I remember you telling me that on the phone earlier." Nezu interrupted. "But the media is already growing with distrust in the Hero scene. Moreso, some even trust vigilantes to get things done more than the licensed professionals. What will become of that trust if it comes out that we've had a vigilante amongst us? We can turn this situation into a win. But that means you will need to teach this boy how to control One for All. You may go. I will brief you on the Quirk's details tomorrow."

Again, this was not something to be questioned.

"And Midoriya..." Nezu said, bringing full focus on the boy, "from now on, we will all be watching you closely. Consider this probationary. Your last chance. Any more unlicensed activity, and I will be forced to forego my promise to All Might and then turn you over to the authorities. You are on thin ice. Do you understand?"

It had been a turbulent week of cleaning, and the only time he was allowed to leave the dormitory was when Aizawa got him after class to begin Quirk training.

On the first day, Thursday, Aizawa made Midoriya run through an obstacle course to test his normal physical capabilities. While months of training, self-defense classes, and vigilantism left him in above-average shape, he was given a strict workout regimen to follow.

This would be the easiest day of his week.

"One for All is a dangerous, destructive power," Aizawa had sighed from inside his sleeping bag as Midoriya hit two hundred pushups. "If it were in my hands, I'd expel you because it's difficult to control. But that decision isn't mine. You'll need to muscle up to handle such power."

Sore and tired, on day 2, they began actually training his Quirk. Or, trying at least. The first thing that happened was when Midoriya tried punching a sandbag. The sandbag exploded across the gym, and Midoriya shattered his arm in the process, ending up in Recovery Girl's office. Still, Aizawa told Midoriya that they would spend some extra time on the weekend to get that restraint down.

"If you listen to me - which listening to authority seems to be a problem for you," Aizawa warned, "you shouldn't have to end up here all that much. Otherwise, if you keep smashing stuff with abandon, you'll become a regular."

It was later that night of their house arrest before Hatsume or Midoriya could even figure out what to say to each other, and even then, it was when they were lying in bed, facing away from each other in uncomfortable silence. It had been a long, awkward, and silent two days, which is only good for building tension when you or your romantic partner, "needed to talk."

"Hey...Izuku?"

Midoriya rolled over to face her as she did the same. He knew an awkward conversation was coming, or, maybe even needed to come, but he had no idea where to begin over the last two days.

Things between himself and Hatsume had gotten odd. She was allowed to work on his Hero suit since she had experience with One for All tech, but only under direct supervision from Power Loader. And she was going to be taking over all the commissions he had been assigned, though the patents were still under his name.

"What is it?"

"Does this mean..." Her voice was strained, and even in the dark, it wasn't hard to tell she was trying hard to hold it together. "Does this mean we can't be partners anymore?"

He hadn't expected the question to make him cry, or that his crying would make Mei cry in return. But it was what he had been fearing for the last forty-eight hours, and to hear it out loud just broke the dam. He pulled her close and held her tightly, her doing the same as they broke down. After a few minutes, the two managed to calm themselves down.

"I don't know." He admitted, honestly. "We can't do the vigilante thing anymore. I have to...I have to do this the right way. Or else we're both screwed."

He didn't move as she buried her face in his chest. Midoriya could feel his chest dampen from her cheeks. "It sucks," was her muffled reply.

Izuku let out a long sigh. He didn't really have an argument. All his life, Midoriya Izuku had grown up idolizing All Might, analyzing Pros, chasing Kacchan, and wanting nothing more than to be the Hero on the television or websites, saving the innocents with a smile on his face. Now was his greatest chance.

So why wasn't he happy?

He looked down at the pink haired mess laying against his chest and thought about his partnership with her - both romantically and professionally. He thought about how his dreams had changed after Kacchan died, meeting Power Loader, and working with her.

He loved the life he had built for himself in Support, even in the short amount of time he had chased the new goal. Did he have to just give it all up?

"You're still who I'll turn to for my Hero suit." He relented. "And I'll still work with you on any of your assignments or hangout in the lab after classes."

"It still sucks and I kinda hate it." Mei grumbled, though not as sad as at first. "But...this is your dream, right? I should be more supportive, I guess. Girlfriends do that, right? But classes are going to suck without you there."

"It's okay..." He chuckled softly. "I wanted to be a Hero with all my tech. Like I talked about with All Might after the Sports Festival. This...I don't know. It's my dream but this isn't how I imagined things."

Hatsume looked up at him and smiled. "Every time we make a plan it never ends up going how we imagine it too. Then we change it until it works, right?"

Midoriya nodded. "Like with Stain?"

"Right. So, it's just like that. We'll figure it out. You just figure out how not to explode your arms when you slap people silly. And I'll be right here, making us millionaires with my big sexy brain."

On day three, Saturday, Aizawa began teaching Midoriya restraint. Midoriya could only seem to summon 100% of One for All, like a light switch. Midoriya would summon the power, but at the last second, Aizawa would nullify it.

"Now do it again but summon less. Imagine a power meter in a video game or..." Aizawa explained, tiredly.

"Like microwaving an egg and stopping it before it explodes?" Izuku had suggested.

"No, that's a stupid analogy." The teacher snapped. "You have very little control in that scenario. Feel the power in you, and try to control the flow, like water pressure from a faucet. You can turn it all the way for full water pressure...or a little for a trickle. Right now, you can only handle a trickle. You're no good to anyone if you break your arms every time you throw a punch."

It had become clear in all of this that the principal had not done Aizawa a service by assigning Midoriya to his care either. After all, it had become clear weeks ago to Deku that Aizawa had suspected him for his vigilantism and wanted him out of the school. Still, he was right. I can't expect to be a hero and be in the emergency room every day.

After an hour of using the faucet method, Midoriya managed to summon only 20% of One for All into his arm, and when he went to throw a punch, Aizawa stopped him again. "That's better, but even at that level, you're still going to break your arm, even if it's just stress fractures. Go do your workout and get back to the dorm, we'll see if we can cut the power down more tomorrow."

He stopped and wiped sweat from his brow, examining his hand. "I could probably develop some bracers and restraints to lessen the impact-OOMPH!"

Midoriya had been shocked as Aizawa wrapped him up in his restraining scarf once again. "No. Those types of items are fine for whatever Hero Costume you design, but you need to master your Quirk under your own power. Then you can make modifications and gear to work around your abilities." Aizawa loosened the restraints before grunting, "you aren't in Support any more, like it or not. You have to think like a Hero course student."

Midoriya had frowned. He loved building gear, but, admittedly, Aizawa wasn't wrong.

The rest of the weekend had been no better. The Support students of class 1-H were quite messy, and on top of that, he had to find time for a workout regiment, leaving him feeling stretched thin.

Sunday had come, day four of the house arrest, and Midoriya managed to drag himself to Gym Gamma early, as Eraserhead commanded. The teacher was waiting there, outside of the building, still in his bright yellow sleeping bag.

"Let's get to work." Aizawa muttered, hobbling inside.

Midoriya had frowned at the time. He accepted that he had been caught. He played with fire one too many times, played the Hero until he was finally caught and now, all things considered, the consequences he was being dealt could have been much worse. But if Aizawa was going to be his homeroom teacher, would he ever be able to win the Pro over? He didn't regret what he had done; if he hadn't been there, what would have happened to Tsuyu or Eri? What would Mirio have done? Would One for All cease to exist? Him being there had to have been for the best, he had figured.

But now he was stuck with Eraserhead.

After numerous attempts with restraint, Midoriya managed to hit the punching bag with 10% of One for All's power, Aizawa not holding back his power at all. Even with such a small amount, the bag swung on its chain in almost a complete arc, and Midoriya yelped as he jumped out of the way as the sandbag careened back towards him.

"Looks like you got it to a point you can use." Aizawa said, though not at all congratulatory by any means. "Try a few more times, then see if you can do it with your left."

For the next hour or so, Midoriya got the hang of using One for All in bursts of 10% and managed to do so in both arms. Exhausted, he was shocked when Aizawa nullified his power as he was working on his left hook.

"That's enough punching for now. How are your arms?"

Midoriya looked down and stretched the two limbs out. "A little achy. More like an intense workout though, nothing broken or sprained."

"From the briefing Nezu gave me, that's a good sign. That's what we want. Now, we're going to work on the same thing, but with your legs. This is an entirely different muscle group, so try and get yourself down to 10%."

Izuku assumed this was about as much of a compliment he'd get out of the teacher, so he took it in stride.

Training his legs felt a bit...sillier. He would squat down and draw power - and the teacher was right. His legs were harder to control, and before he jumped, Aizawa cut off his power.

He looked pretty dumb, jumping in place for a good two hours. But persistence in most things pays off, and as lunch time hit, he was able to limit his leg strength to 10%, springing a good ten or so feet in the air, and...

"Ow!" He cried, landing hard in a crouch, cringing as pain shot up to his hips. He hadn't been prepared for that impact.

"Let that be an important lesson for you," Aizawa said, from a nearby bench that he was laying across. "If you're jumping with a strength enhancing Quirk, which One for All resembles, you need to retain the muscle enhancement for landing, or you'll just mess yourself up."

Now he tells me.

"Try it with a few more jumps, then tomorrow we'll see if you can hold that power while running..." Aizawa stood up.

After he had been dismissed back to the dorms, with aching legs and arms, he found there was no rest for the wicked as his classmates had mounds and heaps of trash for him to take to the dumpster. Finally, he dragged himself back inside again. Thankfully, the rest of the common room was spotless. Hatsume was on a nearby couch, feet kicked up on a coffee table, as she watched the automatic vacuum cleaner she slapped together make its rounds around the room.

"Thanks for taking care of the living area while I was learning how not to die," Midoriya had groaned as he collapsed next to her.

"I'm not much for cleaning," Hatsume shrugged, "which was nice during summer break since you did most of it for me! But, inventing stuff to clean? Easy."

"I'm sorry I got you banned from the lab for a week." Midoriya sighed.

She chopped him lightly on the head again. "I told you to knock that attitude off. I knew the risks when I got involved. It sucks, but now maybe I can make cool gear for you officially."

She always bounces back quickly. "That's good. I actually had some gloves I was thinking about...got the idea from that friend of mine I told you about."

Hatsume's eyes lit up. "The worst part about this has been not making tech babies. Tell me all about your ideas so I can get cracking when I go back on Thursday!"

Monday came, and while it was nice not to have to be in class, Midoriya didn't have time to enjoy it. He had to wash all the dirty clothes and dishes for building 1-H, and then get back to his workout regimen. Before he knew it, classes were out for the day, and Aizawa was knocking at his door for his crash course in One for All.

"Now's crunch time." The teacher said as they made their way over to the Gym. "Both in these last three training sessions, and for the rest of the term. Some of the students have had to take Remedial Training, but half of class has their Hero Licenses. Next term the ones who didn't qualify for the remedial training are taking a second qualifier. You'll need to catch up a lot to even dream of passing that."

"Don't they only do those once a year?" Midoriya asked.

"They did..." Aizawa let out a deep sigh as the building came into view. "But with All Might's death and the general public's distrust of Heroes, more courses were added so that more Heroes could fill the gap he left."

The teacher stopped walking, making Midoriya stop as well, confused. "Sir?"

"Part of the problem with your vigilantism is that you were short-sighted." Aizawa replied. "You managed to put away two highly public criminals, which is true, however, when something like that gets News, it hurts the Hero Scene. The public begins to distrust us, turning more people to crime and vigilantism. We're not who should be seen as enemies, but if we seem incompetent, people will start thinking Stain was right."

Midoriya bit his lip. "That...that wasn't my intention, sir."

"If it was, we wouldn't be having this conversation, you'd be in jail. All Might saw something in you, and the Principal believes it. You weren't doing this for fame or righteousness or revenge. At least not that we know of. You genuinely wanted to help, which isn't something we can say about a lot of so-called vigilantes. It's why you were given some slack. I only finally caught you because you saved Asui when it wasn't in your best interest."

Midoriya didn't feel the need to admit that the reason he started vigilantism in the first place was for revenge; he'd long since moved past that point.

"That's enough chatter," Aizawa said, walking forward again. "We're wasting valuable time."

Running with One for All was much different than jumping. Every step sprung him forward, faster than he could react at first, leading to various face plants around the spacious workout area. Even when he stopped tanking with every step, working up to a stride was a challenge; needing to know how far he was running with each step, and prepping each leg with just 10% of the energy to catch himself and spring back.

As he managed ten fast paced strides - and with that power alone was a good distance across the gym, he tripped up again. Maybe this is what they meant by crash course.

"Using this Quirk in motion is going to be your biggest struggle." Aizawa chimed in from his favorite bench. "Keep this up tonight until you can run across the entire gym."

Midoriya grit his teeth and tried again. It took well until after nightfall, but he was finally able to sprint across the gym. Splitting his focus was hard - running and holding his power level steady, but if he could operate spider legs from inside metal gauntlets while fighting, he figured could at least manage this level of multitasking. It just required practice.

"Good. Tomorrow we'll try putting these moves and skills together." Aizawa informed him. "And hopefully get me to bed earlier..."

"S-sorry, sensei." Midoriya stuttered

On Tuesday, the penultimate day before Hero studies, Midoriya found out just what Eraserhead meant by combining the skills.

Various punching bags and cones had been lined up strategically along cones across the entire concrete floor. Confused, Izuku looked to his new teacher.

"You can probably guess," Aizawa explained, putting a few eye drops in his left eye, "you're going to run to each cone and punch each bag along the way. I'm going to time the whole thing. See how tight we can fine tune the restraint for your Quirk."

His first few rounds of the obstacle course went horribly, which in retrospect, made sense. Learning to control one aspect of the Quirk took hours upon hours each day. And this was combining multiple different muscle groups at once. Trying to turn at the cones resulted in him tripping and skidding across the pavement.

"Again!" Aizawa commanded.

Then, Midoriya overshot the cone, sailing a good five feet over it in his step.

"Again!" Aizawa repeated.

After another attempt, Midoriya ran the cones, but crashed headlong into the sandbag.

"AGAIN!" Aizawa yelled.

After another few attempts, he managed to run the cones, and paused in front of the sandbag, charging his arm...

And Aizawa stopped him. "You're taking too long."

"What do you mean?!" Midoriya gasped.

"It took you a full few seconds between stopping in front of the bag and charging your arms." Aizawa grunted. "The transition should be seamless; a villain isn't going to pause so you can switch energy."

Midoriya let it sink it in. "Need the energy in both places..."

With his new Quirk, it was hard enough to hold the energy in one place.

"One day you'll need to carry that energy across your whole body. The faster you can transition it, the easier that will be." Aizawa explained. "Now do it again."

It was late Tuesday night when Midoriya collapsed into his bed, waking Hatsume who had already been there.

"Jeez," she laughed, "for someone under house arrest, you're gone all day."

"No banter," he sighed into his pillow, "everything hurts."

"That power is tricky, huh?"

He nodded in response; it was all he could manage."

She only laughed harder. "Alright hero boy. Roll over. I'll help you feel better."

Wednesday had doubled the size of the course, but with his training, Midoriya only had half the crashes. It took time, but he managed to cut the length of his transitions in half.

As the sun set, Aizawa cut him off. "I think that's enough."

Midoriya was just getting ready to take off running again when he felt the power drain from his legs and making him stumble. "Sir?"

"It's getting dark soon, Midoriya." Aizawa added. "You've made real progress on your Quirk, as much as I don't care to admit it. You have good potential."

Midoriya was about to smile before Aizawa continued, "but so do plenty of people of people who misuse their Quirk for evil or...vigilantism. I don't trust you yet, so you need to prove that to me."

The teen looked to his feet. "Y-yes sir."

"Now go get some sleep. And at some point, we'll have to see about moving you to building 1-A."

Midoriya looked up, ready to object, but a glare from Aizawa told him it wasn't up for discussion, so he skulked off.

"I kinda figured they'd put you in the Hero dorms," Hatsume admitted. "It's fine. I can hack the security drones and sneak in."

"You could probably just come over," Midoriya deadpanned, tiredly. "We know a lot of the people there anyway."

"Sneaking is more fun, and I get to hack robots!" Hatsume argued. She smiled. "You know, as much as it sucks that I'm losing you in class, I get to build stuff for your Strength Enhancing Quirk. Finish the design for your hero suit, I can't wait to put it together!"

"Just make sure it doesn't kill me."

She pinched his cheek. "My new best customer? Never."

Back in the present, Wednesday night, after that conversation, Midoriya finally turned off the shower and head back to what could be one of his final nights sleeping in 1-H.

Tomorrow he started the Hero Training Course.

Tomorrow everything changed.

He climbed into bed and took Hatsume by surprise with a passionate kiss, which lead to other things. Afterwards, she gently rested her arm across his sore body. "I'm not complaining, but what was that about?"

"Just...wanted you to know how much I appreciate you sticking through this."

And it was true. Because things were about to change more than they could predict.