Whoo, I actually got this written in four days (plus one for editing). I'd thought it would take longer. Also, partway through this, I was feeling like I was running out of material, and then... I ended up inventing more side plots? Sorry that the cookies keep reappearing.

If anyone noticed some missing words near the beginning of last chapter, I fixed it. ...I hope.

VIII

Shouto practiced with his ice on the way down to the dorm's common area for breakfast.

He was more proficient with his ice side, since he had worked with it more over the years, but he was trying for even greater control now. In some ways, fire and ice were similar: they both wanted to spread, and could get out of hand easily. However, the two took completely different methods to control the way he was trying for.

Shouto had to struggle with his flames to get them to move how he wanted them to, perhaps like trying to tame a wild horse.

For his ice, on the other hand, he'd been working on keeping it from growing. The ice portion of his quirk worked a lot like frost, where it would quickly spread across any object it touched and begin forming ice crystals. If he were to control it the way Backdraft controlled water, he would need to keep it contained better than he already could.

Then there was the secondary issue: ...he couldn't shift the shape of his ice. Not without using his fire side. His ice crystals were as moldable as rocks.

The only way he knew of to move or change the shape of his ice was to grow more ice. He could build up a deformed ice sculpture that way, but it wasn't what he was going for.

It was a road block he didn't know how to push through. So, he just kept practicing with containing his ice to smaller and smaller areas. Keeping the frost to his hand and building up ice crystals. Or keeping it to one finger. Or touching the side of the elevator and keeping it within a small circle.

Or a try at forming ice cubes in his glass of juice.

He sat at the large dining table with his tray, nodding a hello to his classmates as they wished him a good morning or otherwise acknowledged his presence.

Midoriya was the only one with his head down, seeming to be completely absorbed with his phone.

Mineta approached the table, before giving Midoriya a wide berth, circling around him to sit farther away.

A few of their classmates had been a bit skittish around Midoriya lately. It was probably because of him continuing to talk to Toga. As far as Shouto knew, none of them had said anything about it—except for that one time with Asui, at least. One day she had asked, 'Midoriya, are you talking to a villain?' and Midoriya had insisted it wasn't how it seemed and ran from the room.

Shouto could see how communicating with a villain could look bad. However, it was a little rude to judge without knowing the whole situation.

Perhaps he should let Midoriya know he was also talking to a member of the League. Except he had promised Fuyumi he wouldn't tell anyone about Dabi yet.

He was pulled from his thoughts by a quiet, "Oh, shoot."

Beside him, Yaoyorozu was staring at a pencil. She had a few pages of notebook paper next to her tray of food.

"Is that for the essay due next week?" Shouto asked.

"Yes," she answered. "I was making a few notes when my lead broke."

She activated her quirk and a small object began to form from her arm. Shouto watched as it became a pencil sharpener.

After a moment, she asked, kindly, "Todoroki, was there something you needed?"

Oh. She had already finished and had paused in the middle of sharpening her pencil.

He hadn't realized he had been staring that long. He looked away, saying, "Apologies."

Then he changed his mind and said, "Actually... Yaoyorozu, when you use your quirk, how do you shape the objects you create?"

She blinked. "Well..." Her eyebrows furrowed a little. "I imagine what I want to create, and then I create it."

"...Oh."

"Is this related to what you've been doing with your hand this morning?" she asked.

He had been repeatedly growing ice crystals on the back of his right hand and then melting them using his left hand.

He decided to nod.

She smiled as she said, "Give me a little time to gather my thoughts, and I'll get back to you, alright?"

Shouto was listening to Ectoplasm explain the new Mathematics unit, when Midoriya's muttering became noticeable.

"She sent the text fifteen minutes after I sent mine, so, if I assume she walked, she would probably be going about six kilometers per hour. Fifteen minutes is a fourth of an hour, so that would be about one point five kilometers. Unless she had transportation, in which she may have been traveling around fifty kilometers per hour, so a fourth of that is... Twelve and a half kilometers. That would mean they're located either near or within the city. Would they really pick here, despite the high hero presence? Maybe it's to be closer to UA. But I can't assume it's the right location based on a single test; she might not have been at their base at the time. But even if she was, I would need to run a few more tests to verify and pinpoint the exact location..."

"Midoriya," Ectoplasm said, startling Midoriya from his thoughts. "This may be Math class, but I would prefer you to pay attention to today's topic. If you don't find it challenging enough, you may see me after class for extra work."

As Ectoplasm spoke, Midoriya sunk deeper and deeper into his seat. "Y-yes, sir."

(Earlier.)

Dabi glanced up as one of Kurogiri's portals formed within the apartment.

Toga skipped out of the portal, a large plastic container of cookies in her arms. She seemed a lot happier today. Very bouncy.

"My boyfriend's so nice! He ordered me cookies after hearing about someone eating my other ones."

Why was she looking at him as she said that?

"Oh! I need to remember to thank him after I put these down."

"Wait, what did you mean by 'ordered'?" Dabi asked. "You didn't tell him this address, did you?"

"Of course not. He had them delivered to a park, and I picked them up," she said with a smile. "Of course, he wouldn't have had to if someone else had bought me some." Then she pouted. "If your brother were here, I bet he would've been nice enough to buy me replacement cookies."

"Stop calling him my brother," Dabi said wearily. Despite her better mood, she still had to talk that way.

Kurogiri said, "Dabi is right, your teasing is unfair when he was ordered to partake in this masquerade. Additionally, regardless of whether Dabi is truly related to the young Todoroki—"

Dabi's eyes widened in surprise. "Hey, wait—we're not related."

"Regardless of whether Dabi is truly related to the young Todoroki, you should not antagonize him over eating some of your cookies, as you had left them sitting in the kitchen for all to see."

"Wait..." Dabi said, turning his gaze to Toga. "That was why you were so upset with me yesterday? I thought you brought those back to share. If I knew that wasn't the case, I probably would've asked before eating two of them." Probably. Maybe.

"Two?" Toga repeated, appearing confused.

"I believe Tomura Shigaraki ate quite a few," Kurogiri mentioned, seemingly trying to play it off as a casual remark.

Shouto was eating lunch when Yaoyorozu approached him.

"My quirk requires an elemental knowledge of the object I want to create. Once I know the chemical makeup, I can duplicate the material or materials. I also need to have a good understanding of the object inside-and-out. Such as, if I were to try creating a clock, then without having knowledge of the inner workings, I could make an object that resembles a clock, but is solid wood on the inside, or completely hollow. I could add some gears to control its hands, but I don't have enough knowledge to make it tell time accurately.

"As for the actual process of shaping an object, I need to concentrate while forming it from my body. There is a brief moment in which I can mold my lipids into the exact shape I want. If I become distracted partway through, the object may not turn out as intended. I usually pause in using my quirk until I can regain focus. Let's say I create a pencil. I would begin by imagining the long graphite core, surrounded by cedar wood, and coated with yellow paint. The outer shape is a long, hexagonal cylinder, which tapers to a point on one end. Now, if I were partway through creating the pencil and became distracted, and didn't pause to collect my thoughts, the outcome would depend on the amount of focus I'm able to retain. Perhaps half of the pencil would be round rather than hexagonal. Or perhaps it would look perfectly normal, except for the graphite core not continuing through the entire length. Or, if I were to completely lose focus while continuing to use my quirk, it may, for instance, become a fist-sized lumpy mass of wood, streaked with veins of yellow paint and graphite."

That last hypothetical outcome seemed oddly specific to Shouto.

"The time it takes me to create an object depends on how large or complex it is. However, the more times I make the same object, the more the process becomes ingrained in my memory and the faster it becomes. Such as my Russian nesting dolls or metal rods. However, no matter how well I can visualize the outcome, it also takes time to gather and form my lipids. During the training camp, I had focused on that physical aspect," she said.

"You have put a lot of thought into this since this morning," Shouto commented.

She blushed a little in embarrassment. "Ah, sorry. I realized you were working on training your quirk, so I tried to be as thorough as I could in case something helped."

"No, it's fine," Shouto tried to assure her. "You've given me some ideas to try with my ice. I'm just not sure I'll be able to remember everything."

"Oh. Then this might help," she said, handing him a three-page stapled document. A glance at the subheadings showed that it said the same things she had told him—and maybe more. On the page about pencil creation, she had also mentioned the graphite-to-clay ratio, and ingredients for yellow paint. And added an eraser and something called a ferrule.

Midoriya abruptly stood and slammed his hands onto the table, leaning toward her. "Can I have a copy, Yaoyorozu?!" he said, despite having been taking notes for the past few minutes.

"Midoriya! That is very rude!" Iida said.

"No, it's okay," she said with an uneasy smile. "Sure, Midoriya."

"Can I also ask a few questions about your quirk?" Midoriya asked. It almost looked like he was vibrating in excitement.

"...Well, alright," she said.

"Is there a limit to how small you can make an object? Such as being able to go beyond the physical limitations of building small objects by hand? Are there certain materials you can't duplicate? Is weight a factor? Do you need to know an object's precise measurements?"

Yaoyorozu struggled to answer the questions. Partly because Midoriya kept asking more before she could answer. "N-no, I don't need to know the exact measurements. Having a feel for the right size is more important than knowing an exact number in centimeters."

"Wait..." Shouto said, a question of his own coming to mind. "I apologize, but, in the hospital after the attack on the training camp, I overheard you talking about a device you had made. If you need to understand the inner workings of an object in order to create it, how were you able to make that device if it was your first time creating one?"

"Ah, about that... Midoriya, did you have any more questions?"

Author's Note:

The title has so much meaning packed into it this time. (Shouto's working on his ice creation, Yaoyorozu's quirk is creation, Toga thinks Midoriya's gift is sweet, cookies are literally sweet. You might could also call Yaoyorozu's printout and stuff a gift, maybe.)

Sorry if I got anything wrong about quirk stuff. ...Or if it was boring. (In the world of this fic, despite Bakugo not needing to be rescued and there not being a team of students going on a rescue mission, Yaoyorozu still made her tracker for the nomu and told All Might and detective Tsukauchi about it. They were like, 'She has a creation quirk—seems legit.' Momo, on the other hand, was like, 'It's a good thing I have experience making tracking devices.')

The one time Midoriya forgets about quirks. With Kurogiri, the League could be anywhere. But he's probably coincidentally right about them being in Mustafar. Also... could those be considered Tracking Cookies?

Sorry about mixing American and British stuff. I'm not sure if I've used American measurements earlier in the fic or not, but I thought I should use metric measurements because they do in the dub (and in Japan). The idea's kinda to write the fic in American English, but keep the location as Japan (...or a Star Wars' fan's version of Japan. I'm still unsure of whether I should use the real Star Wars names for places, or go with the transcribed-from-English-to-Japanese-to-English names. Every time I see those, I think, 'but that's not how it should be spelled'. I think it's more of a language issue than a Japanese issue, meaning I can use the original English names, but it could go either way, since the English names aren't very Japanese and this is Japan). Anyhow, I'm trying to use metrics for real measurements, but I may casually say 'a few feet' without thinking. I think I've explained the metric numbers well enough in-fic to not need a guide (but in case you need one: 6km/h=walking speed, 12.5km=less than the length of the city, 50km/h=Midoriya's guess at how fast a car (or bus?) goes within a city (though the guess is wrong), cm=small, precise measurement).

...I'm also thinking about having a sad flashback chapter with a younger Dabi and Hawks, after the chapter with Fuyumi. Because I guess I need to put Hawks into Dabi's backstory somehow. I don't know much about the manga, though (except what I keep looking up on the Wikis), so I might get some characterization and fact things wrong.