The festival was the same kind of thing he'd been to a thousand times: food, games, pop-up booths plastered with so many banners and flags that they all blended together into a colorful merchandising fever dream. But it had been a long time since Toshinori had been at a festival from this perspective, down among the crowd, browsing the event instead of being the event. He couldn't help but feel off-kilter: he didn't know who was sponsoring this thing, he hadn't talked to any staff whatsoever, he couldn't even remember where he was supposed to show up; any second now a handler was going to pop up and scold him for wandering off...

...then he would catch himself, and chuckle a bit, and Midoriya would look at him slightly baffled as he tried to figure out what was so funny.

He picked up some yakitori skewers to work through, while Midoriya peered out like a wide-eyed little fawn from under his elbow. "Were you planning to get something to eat too?" he asked.

Midoriya looked over the food booth with an exacting gaze. "Well... we don't go out to eat that much, so I would want to get something we couldn't make at home..."

Something about the way the boy started murmuring under his breath told Toshinori that this would involve a calculated analysis of every single food item in the park to narrow down the ultimate ideal dinner. But they had time, and it was incredibly entertaining to watch the kid obsess. If only everyone had this much passion about the little things.

Midoriya, however, seemed like he had too much experience with people who didn't find his obsessing quite as fun. He was bashful about hovering too long in one place, and reluctant to wander more than a meter or two away before skittering back to Toshinori's side with a guilty look on his face.

That is, until Midoriya's eyes fixed on something up ahead, his face lit up in excitement, and he shot off into the crowd, completely forgetting to be timid.

Toshinori followed the direction he'd run off to and emerged from the crowd in front of a booth full of hero merchandise, where Midoriya was fawning over the offerings on display at a low volume but a very high speed, as if his brain needed an extra layer of running commentary to process everything in front of him. The vendor—a robust fellow with long fanlike ears like an elephant's—didn't seem to know what kind of greeting to give in response to that kind of verbal onslaught, so he just stood back with raised brows and let the kid browse.

Midoriya quickly zeroed in on a scarf that hung down from the ceiling of the display, a warm-looking wool thing dyed in big chunky stripes of primary color...

...Wait, that was an All Might scarf, wasn't it.

He sighed, and smiled. He always felt a little guilty when he saw his own hero merchandise nowadays. Another reminder of what he couldn't be right now. But at least it was here to do his job while he couldn't. It had always been his goal to connect with the public, to become a constant, familiar part of their lives... granted, he had expected to connect with them through things like ideology, not scarves or toothbrushes or the sometimes unsettling fanart he saw at conventions. But whatever worked. It certainly seemed to be working for this kid.

Midoriya was wrapped up in a fierce self-debate as he toyed with the edges of the fabric and inspected the tag. "...I probably wouldn't be able to wear it much until next winter..." he murmured, "but it's one I don't have..."

One I don't have. "...Do you like to collect hero merchandise?" he ventured, feeling an odd sense of foreboding.

Midoriya glanced over in surprise, finally seeming to notice he was there. "Um, mostly All Might things," he replied, with a happy little smile. "Well, pretty much only All Might things."

Oh... how ironic. What a time to not be himself. He knew he wasn't supposed to get too personally invested in whether people liked his hero persona, but it was still a little flattering.

Then a curious spark flashed through Midoriya's eyes, and Toshinori must have suddenly channeled Nighteye's Quirk, because he knew exactly was was about to come out of the kid's mouth, don't you dare say it—

"Do you like All Might too?" Midoriya asked, completely and utterly oblivious. Amazing. The boy peered at the price tag on the scarf and apparently liked what he saw, because he reached up to unhook the scarf from its hanger.

"I guess you could say that," he replied, a little grin on his face. It was charming whenever things like this happened. Made him feel like he was in a spy movie.

Then the boy kept talking. "I noticed the alarm on your phone was music from an All Might commercial," he said, pulling out a coin wallet from the pocket of his backpack. "Well, a group of them? A line of food commercials, I think they started ten years ago. You don't hear it as much nowadays, but it's still used to promo certain product lines they sell in convenience stores..."

Toshinori listened with a rising sense of alarm. Wait, exactly how much did this kid like All Might? He wasn't even sure if his own staff could quote that kind of info off the top of their heads.

Suddenly, he felt like he was in the part of the spy movie where the operative got caught. It had been years since he worried about anyone connecting the dots out of the blue; he only got antsy when he was trying to discreetly transform around big crowds, when someone might ask themselves what happened to the thin guy who wandered around a corner and then never reappeared again. But now all he could think of was his towering stature and distinct blond hair, his voice—it did sound different in this form, but maybe not different enough to someone who could narrow down a ringtone to its release year. Maybe it was time to derail this conversation.

"Speaking of food, weren't you planning to buy something to eat?" he asked. Midoriya was counting out nearly every coin in the pouch.

The kid did a little double take at his words, looked down at the few spare yen he would have left. "Oh, um... I'm not that hungry." Toshinori gave him a frank look. "I'm not! ...You have to sacrifice for the things you love!"

Toshinori raised his hands in surrender as the kid handed off his allowance to the vendor and took the scarf with a huge smile. He became a hero to help people live happy lives, not drive them to memorize musical jingles from ten-year-old commercials or starve themselves. Where had he gone wrong? Did those things bring some people happiness? The kid did seem happy, bunching up the soft fabric to rub against his cheeks.

Maybe he needed to expand his horizons. He definitely needed to change the ringtones on his civilian number... and watch what he said around this extremely observant trivia sponge of a child.

They continued to idly peruse the booths as the sky slowly dimmed, Midoriya fussing with his new accessory every now and then. Toshinori was sure there had to be some law that forbade him from letting a child go hungry in order to buy his merch, and if that law didn't exist, it needed to. So he got some sanshoku dango, then immediately decided he was actually too full and asked if Midoriya would keep it from going to waste.

They kept up a fairly constant conversation that mostly revolved around the local heroes (no more All Might, thank god). He had almost forgotten what it felt like to just... talk... without any purpose to it, no worries about what it meant in the grand scheme of things or whether he'd check his phone the next morning and find seventeen voicemails from PR. Whenever the conversation lulled, all Toshinori had to do was ask a question he'd been wondering about a local hero, and Midoriya would eagerly fill up the next several minutes with encyclopedic detail. Toshinori was actually learning quite a lot... he wasn't sure if that said good things about Midoriya's intellect, or bad things about the level of research he'd done before coming to this city. Probably a little of both.

Eventually, they made it through all the booths and emerged from the warm, bustling walkway into the brisk chill of the rest of the park. Almost every patch of grass was papered over with picnic blankets, but they eventually found a spot under a tree where they could relax without feeling like they were going to trip over someone.

"—And in her debut, Mt. Lady took out..." Midoriya's eyes lost focus for about half a second, "...five power lines, three utility poles, a traffic light, a seven-meter section of wall... and part of a building. And cracked some pavement."

That actually wasn't half-bad, when size Quirks were involved. "Well, everyone has to start somewhere." He paused. "Speaking of which, how are your U.A. plans?"

"My plans?"

"You said you were applying for the hero course, right? Are you training your Quirk?"

"I, ah..." Midoriya glanced away, frowned. Hm, maybe he wasn't. Strange, considering how much he seemed to love observing and analyzing and exhaustively talking about them. Well, it was hard to train certain Quirks properly with all the regulations out there. That was part of the reason why schools like U.A. were so sought after.

But it seemed like more than that. Midoriya looked downright unhappy at his question, sinking down into the bright colors of his new scarf like a turtle retreating into its shell. Finally, he muttered in a low voice, "I, actually... don't have one."

What. The shock stabbed him in the chest and he burst into a cough that he only just managed to catch in a napkin.

"Yh—" he cleared his throat. "—you're Quirkless?"

"Yeah." Midoriya stared at the ground, hunched away defensively.

Quirkless. Oh, things made a tragic amount of sense now. Why Midoriya was so fascinated by all the powers he didn't have... why he wasn't here with a circle of friends. It had been bad enough when Toshinori was young; he could only imagine how isolating it was now, when Quirklessness was so much rarer.

And then it suddenly clicked. Last week...this was why Midoriya looked at him like Toshinori had handed him the sun, moon, and stars after he said the boy would make a good candidate for the hero course. He had meant every word, but he hadn't understood, didn't realize the gravity of it, hadn't even been able to fathom...

"...Do you think it's a stupid idea? Applying to U.A.?" Midoriya blurted out, still not meeting his eyes. There was a quiet, painfully familiar desperation in his voice.

Oh, kid. How could he have said those things? He had meant to be kind.

"No, not stupid..." He fumbled to find something else to say. "U.A. does allow Quirkless applicants to its hero course..." And it absolutely did not matter what U.A.'s policies claimed on paper. It would never happen. He couldn't just lie.

Maybe... maybe there was a way to put this gently. He knew there wasn't, not really. There was no gentle way to smash someone's dreams. But he'd still try. "...The problem is that 'hero' is a legal term. It was made to regulate a specific condition... a condition that you don't have."

That was the crux of it. It was harsh, but it was reality. Surely Midoriya already knew that.

Midoriya flinched like Toshinori had slapped him in the face. "But... that's... not..." he murmured, his brows scrunching together, and Toshinori's heart broke a little. The boy had to know already, and yet he still dared to hope, and now the one person who had encouraged him was taking back what he said and smacking him down just like the rest of the world.

But then Midoriya looked up again, and there was a defiant spark in his green eyes. "Last week, y-you didn't say anything about Quirks, or laws, when you told me I'd make a good hero." he said. "That's not what you were thinking of at all."

He opened his mouth to reply, but couldn't find any words. What could he even say? The boy was right.

Midoriya seemed to have burned through his burst of bravery. He shrank back, dropping his gaze to the ground again. "I, I'm sorry, I'm not trying to put words in your mouth..." he said. "I'm not stupid... I know the hero profession got started because of Quirks, I know it's designed around them... but..." he glanced up again. "It's more than that, isn't it? That's not why it means so much to everyone. It's more than just... some legal word."

He could dimly remember saying something similar himself, a long, long time ago, another lifetime ago. "Is that why you want to try for the hero course, and not support or general studies? I think you could make a wonderful analyst."

"Yeah... it's not like anything else, I can't really explain it..." Midoriya's expression changed into something softer, not quite a smile, but less distraught. "...There are lots of popular singers or actors... right? And sometimes they do stuff like donate to charity, but that's not why they're famous. But heroes are famous for helping people. That's their whole point! And instead of focusing on who spent the most money on movie sets, people are most excited about who is making the world a better place!"

His eyes had a fiery spark in them. "I think we need that! I think everyone should be focused on stuff like that! Nobody else has managed to capture people's attention like heroes have. I mean, they're not showing off the local firefighters at this festival, are they?"

"Maybe they should."

"Yeah! They should! We should have trading cards of them! Everyone should know their names! If we could take the, the... the passion people have right now, and, don't know, expand it..."

He gestured with his hands, but it didn't seem to help him find the words he was trying to say. Finally he sighed, and looked up.

"Just... can you imagine what the world would be like if, if everyone thought that helping others was the most important job a person could ever do? Even if they don't have a super fancy Quirk."

Even if they don't have any Quirk at all. "Yes, I can imagine," he murmured. "I think that world would be a much better place."

Midoriya smiled, and didn't say anything else, just idly toyed with the edges of his scarf.

Midoriya understood what was important... what really gave that word its power. Why people looked at it with so much longing and hope. Deep down, it wasn't about powers or flashy costumes... it was about knowing that there were people out there who were working hard to make everyone's lives better, who thought that helping each other was the most important duty there could be.

That had been the spark that started it all for him, hadn't it? When he understood that himself. When he decided he was going to stake a claim on that power and become its emblem, even though he was the last person who was supposed to have any right to be an inspiration. That spark ignited a flame that went on to consume his whole life.

This boy was still faltering, still trying to find his footing, but there was the same spark in his eyes. A vision that could change the world.

All he needed was the power to make it real. All he needed was...

The realization engulfed him all at once, and he drew a breath so sharp it stung.

No... he wasn't supposed to have to think about this until later. Some other week, some other month, someday. Not here, not now.

You're the one, aren't you? You must be.

"Oh... it's starting..." A small smile crept back onto Midoriya's face, then got bigger. He looked up at Toshinori. "It's starting!"

No, it was too soon, it couldn't start now, he wasn't ready, he was supposed to have a whole year left, at least, before he had to look his successor in the eye and accept how this was going to end, one more year to cling to the last fragments of himself—

The distant warble of a megaphone cut through his thoughts. Down at the end of the park, Mt. Lady was getting up from her corner as an announcer piped enthusiastic-sounding announcements over the crowd, too echoing from this distance to make out distinct words.

He took a deep breath. That was right, he was here to see the Quirk exhibition. He was specifically here to not dwell on the future. "Best not to get stuck in the peanut gallery, then," he said, feeling distant. Midoriya hopped up, and Toshinori followed absently, weaving among the increasingly dense throng of people until they finally reached a spot where the boy could see the whole stage area.

He tried to pay attention as the announcer introduced the heroes there: Mt. Lady (normal-sized at the moment), Kamui Woods, someone named Slugger who he'd never seen in person before... but his eyes kept drifting down to the boy beside him. Midoriya had regained all his excitement and then some, alternating between looking raptly up at the heroes and scribbling frenetic sentences down in the lined notebook he'd produced from his backpack.

How much more obvious could it get? The boy needed one thing. Well... a few things. But there was a hero in him desperately trying to claw its way free. He deserved to have his dream come true, didn't he?

Was this what Nighteye felt when he used his power? Cold, unforgiving clarity. He'd spent so much time trying not to look straight at the path ahead, or what lay at the end of it. But now it was right in front of him, so real, too real, inescapable, bundled up in an All Might scarf for god's sake, those bright, intent, ever-searching green eyes focusing off on something in the distance, burning with a vision that could change the world...

He jumped as Mt. Lady suddenly activated her Quirk, shooting up so rapidly she sent out a shockwave of air. Midoriya let out a burst of delighted laughter next to him. "That's so fast!" he cried.

He had plenty of other things to focus on right now. This was not something he wanted to think about, not now, not here. He felt the sudden lurching urge to run, to wrap himself up inside One For All where nothing could touch him, where everything was exactly the way it was supposed to be. But he couldn't do that, wouldn't be able to for hours, probably not until tomorrow, because that's what life was, now: short moments of being himself, and long, long moments of waiting until the next time he could be himself again, and once he passed on the torch, those moments would stretch longer, and longer, and longer, until they never ended...

Just how fast would it fade, anyway, once he gave it away? Nana never brought up how she felt afterwards, just smiled and told him not to worry about it, told him she'd be fine. She kept that smile on her face all the way to the end, and he would never know whether she might have survived her last fight if if she hadn't been running on embers, if he had let her keep it for just a little longer, if he hadn't been so eager, so impatient, so goddamn selfish—

—the choking, drowning sensation wasn't just in his head anymore. Shit—he scrambled for his handkerchief, choking down a rising cough, which made it go up the back of his nose and flood his senses with the smell of blood, but at least it didn't end up all over the woman in front of him.

He wheezed a semi-coherent apology to the people around him as they tried to politely back away from his sudden coughing fit. Then he felt a touch at his elbow, looked down to see Midoriya peering up at him with wide-eyed concern. "Are you okay?" he asked. The boy's eyes flickered over to the cloth clutched in his hand. "Do you want to go sit down?"

He cleared his throat. "No, no... I'm sorry. Don't worry." Worry was the last thing he was supposed to bring to anyone's mind. He needed to—he had to get out of his own head. Focus on the exhibition. Something.

Midoriya looked like he was about to push back, and Toshinori interrupted with the first distraction he could come up with. "What are those numbers?" he asked, nodding down to Midoriya's notebook. The page was a stream-of-consciousness free-for-all, and the latest addition was several pairs of numbers, one after the other. There had to be some verbose explanation behind them that the kid could engulf him in.

"Oh, it's..." Midoriya pointed towards the stage. Kamui Woods was showing off his Quirk, fanning out his branches into long, complex shapes. "I'm counting the number of branches... and number of forks... " Toshinori glanced back down as Midoriya trailed off. The boy stared intently at Kamui, then scratched out a new pair of numbers as the hero switched to a new formation. "...there's... there's a theory, a, um..." Midoriya trailed off again, momentarily transfixed, the same way he looked when he monologued, but focused outwards this time instead of inwards. "...a model, that some Quirks are limited less by mass or energy, than by..."—another pause, another set of numbers—"...complexity... how much the user can visualize. I want to find out which it is for him..."

Toshinori looked at the bogglingly complicated branch display, then back down. Wait, really? "You can count that fast? He only holds them for a second!"

"It's..." Midoriya squinted, "...you group the shapes..." he jotted down another pair of numbers, held his pencil poised above the page, but Kamui Woods stopped the elaborate branch displays and was moving on to something else while the announcer gave a little verbal interlude. Midoriya let out a puff of breath and relaxed a little, then looked up. "...there's a lot of shortcuts. It's not as hard as it seems. And I'm not sure I was totally exact..."

Toshinori raised his brows. "Still, not everyone can take things in so fast, even with shortcuts," he said. "That takes a huge amount of skill." Midoriya smiled sheepishly. The boy certainly wouldn't have any problem with visualization limits if—if he had a Quirk of his own—

No. He was not doing this, he was not going to confront forty years of existential angst in the middle of some city park. He was going to enjoy this Quirk exhibition alongside the locals like an ordinary human being, because he'd put in an honest day's work and earned the right to stop tormenting himself for a few hours out of his entire goddamn life.

He pointedly looked back towards the stage. Kamui Woods had started up another demonstration with the other hero, Slugger, whose Quirk, according to the announcer, revolved around manipulating the speed and direction of the things he threw... he was off on one corner of the stage, flinging projectiles at Kamui, who shot out his branches to deflect and redirect them in long sweeping arcs. Mt. Lady started catching the ones that he sent straight up in the air.

Midoriya looked on in wonder. "How do they have reflexes so fast..." he murmured.

Toshinori smiled, though it felt a little strained. "Well, the footwork helps."

"Footwork?" Midoriya asked. He peered out on his tiptoes, trying to see the floor of the stage.

Hm, Kamui would probably be the best example to explain something like this. Slugger was obvious, but maybe too obvious. "Do you see how, before Kamui sends out his branches, he shifts his stance? Like... there. That."

"Um..." Kamui changed stance again, this time very noticeable, moments before sending out an explosion of foliage. "Yeah! Yes! Isn't he just bracing himself? So he doesn't throw himself off balance when he uses his Quirk..."

"Yes, exactly." Toshinori said. "And if you know how people's bodies move, and how their Quirks behave, you can get a very good idea of everything they're about to do—before they do it—just based on those little movements."

Midoriya's eyes went wide. "Oh..." He paused. "It seems like it would be bad to telegraph like that."

"He'd never be this obvious in a real fight," Toshinori said. "I think he's doing it on purpose here. Do you know why?"

Midoriya watched for a while longer, frowning, as Kamui kept up the routine. "It's... oh, that's what you meant! It's for the other heroes! So they have more time to respond!"

"Yes... to the audience, it looks spontaneous and impressive. But to the other heroes, he might as well be shouting out what he's about to do. Plus, big stance changes look flashier for a crowd. They're dynamic!"

Midoriya gazed on, utterly enraptured now that he had a whole new dimension to analyze, and Toshinori inhaled, exhaled.

Everything was normal here. He was at a cozy little hanami festival, a thinly-veiled excuse for people to get out of the house and drink a bit too much. He was watching these local heroes connect with their citizens and get their names out to the world. He was standing next to a stranger he'd met once before—twice if you were generous with definitions—who had been bored enough to follow him around for a while.

That was all. Nothing had happened, and nothing had to. He had gotten worked up over a stray thought, one of those silly impulsive ideas that everyone always berated him for taking so seriously.

The streetlamps had flickered on by the time the show ended in a shower of applause and cherry petals, Mt. Lady striking a showy pose, backlit dramatically by the setting sun. The pink trees glowed with orange fluorescent light and red rays of sunset, and the area was abuzz with the chatter of the semi-dispersed crowd as they discussed all the things they'd seen.

It really was so normal. He and Midoriya could spend the next little while talking about the Quirk exhibition and the local heroes, an ordinary chat between ordinary people. And then... he could just walk away. He could bid the boy goodnight, and they'd part, and probably not meet again, not in any way that mattered, and he could have his one final year, and then he could go to U.A. and find the kind of successor he was supposed to. Trained, experienced, the best of this generation. The nation's future could depend on his choice. It would be insane to gamble everything on a random Quirkless kid.

...but he had been a random Quirkless kid too, back when someone took a gamble on him.

Oh, god damn it all.

He took pride in his ability to handle very large amounts of people on very small amounts of sanity, but right now the commotion of the crowd rubbed at him like a cheese grater. Midoriya seemed a little worn out too, with that bright but somewhat glazed look that came from too much excitement and not enough downtime to process it. So they went to go see if the quiet spot on the hill was still quiet, avoiding the packed walkways and weaving through the trees instead.

Midoriya had gone uncharacteristically quiet, especially after something so ripe for discussion. They skirted around picnic blankets and tree trunks in silence for a little while, then Toshinori tried tossing out something to jumpstart him.

"Midoriya, I wasn't able to tell earlier—does Mt. Lady actually have horns, or are they part of her costume?"

Midoriya opened his mouth, paused, then frowned. "...I don't know..." he said. Then looked back down at the ground.

Toshinori would have expected him to immediately hop on his phone to find out. Maybe he was just out of energy. But he didn't look like it; he seemed locked in thought with something that bothered him.

"What are you thinking about?" Toshinori asked.

Midoriya glanced up. "Uh..." he clutched his notebook a little tighter. "The exhibition... the heroes... the things they can do, even when they're just playing..."

"It's pretty incredible, isn't it? They have a lot of skill."

"Yeah..." Midoriya murmured. "It's just... reminding me... I know I'm never going to be able to grow tree branches from my arms, but I've seen plenty of times when someone's physical abilities mattered a lot more than their Quirk... and that's something I can reach. U.A.'s practical is a combat exercise. I need to be prepared. But, I have—" he lifted up one thin arm, made a face. "—a lot of work to do..."

"I'd wondered about that," Toshinori said. "It didn't seem like an oversight you'd make."

It wasn't as if the kid was unhealthy. He had plenty of energy to run villains around town and bounce all over this park for hours. But it was very clear that the heaviest things he lifted in his day-to-day life were laptops and textbooks. Any strength he had was incidental, not deliberate.

"It wasn't an oversight! I mean, what kind of hero isn't in shape? I've always known it's important! Like, when I started middle school, I decided to start jogging every day. I made a chart and everything, to track my times... I had it all planned out!"

"What happened?"

"I, um, didn't follow through..." Toshinori waited, because that didn't seem like the entire story, and Midoriya squirmed through the silence, fiddling with the edge of his scarf, and finally caved.

"Uh, some other kids started messing with me when I would go out... I ended up hurting my ankle and couldn't run for a while anyway, and by the time it got better I was... worried it might happen again... it was the same kind of thing for the clubs and teams I tried to join. I'm not trying to make excuses, I just... didn't know how to deal with it, I thought I was doing something wrong..."

Toshinori frowned. He stopped because he was worried? Then they emerged from the treeline, out into the open slope of grass that bordered the edge of the park. Midoriya hesitated for the briefest moment, and Toshinori saw his eyes flicker across the area before he kept moving forward. The whole thing took a fraction of a second, barely a stutter in his gait, something most people wouldn't even notice.

But Toshinori was very familiar with that kind of pause, the quick sweep that zeroed in on dark corners and blind areas, places people could appear without warning, places you could be cornered. Heroes joked that you could tell how much experience people had in the field by how much of an instinct it became. It wasn't a habit that a child was supposed to have.

His heart sank. Of course. There was a role that Quirkless people were supposed to follow. Midoriya's peers wouldn't be happy seeing him try to act out of turn. It made more sense, now, why so many of the boy's stories were so carefully vague.

"Midoriya..." he asked, as gently as he could. "Is this kind of thing still happening?"

The boy instantly tensed, looked away. "It's not—" then he stopped himself, his eyes widened, and he looked back. "Um, actually, no!" he said. "Not really!" He looked surprised to be saying it, which was a little heartbreaking all on its own. More importantly, "no" and "not really" were not the same thing.

"—Anyway, it's not a big deal!" he cried. "And it never should've been! If you really care about your goals, you don't give up on them, no matter how hard it gets..."

Toshinori sighed. Peppy motivational speeches had a lot to answer for. "Midoriya, please don't be hard on yourself," he said. "It's very hard to do anything when everyone else is trying to stop you. For most of our history, people could die if they went against their community. Caving to pressure isn't a character flaw... it's a survival instinct."

"But... that's the thing..." Midoriya's voice had a bitter note to it. "I caved because I thought it would be safer... but it wasn't. They never stopped, even when I did what they wanted... I spent all that time playing by their rules, and this is where it got me."

The quiet hill was still quiet, the chatter of the tipsy picnic groups reduced to a soft murmur that drifted up from the trees, mixed with the even thrum of cars on the street nearby. There was a little retaining wall halfway up the hill, and Midoriya hopped up on top of it and sat facing the park, drawing his knees up to his chest. The grounds had sunk into twilight, deep blue freckled with the shine of streetlamps and the warm yellow glow of the booths and tents that wound through the trees.

"I told myself I didn't actually give up," he murmured, "that I was just waiting... for things to get easier, or for someone else to show up and prove it could be done. But... I think I was just making excuses for myself. And now I waited so long that the entrance exam is less than a year away and all I've done is study books..."

With Midoriya up on the retaining wall and Toshinori leaning against it, they were almost eye-to-eye. "Midoriya," he said, "I can't lie to you. Even if you try your hardest, you might not be able to make it into the hero course like you hope." Even if the boy had more than a year to prepare, Toshinori wasn't sure if any amount of training would be enough. There was a role that Quirkless people were supposed to follow, and being a hero was not part of it.

"Yeah..." Midoriya said, with a little smile. "But... I already know what happens when I give up. I'm gonna find out what happens when I give it everything I can."

Toshinori smiled. She would've called you a little crazy too.

"Well..." he mused, "I was about your age when I first started working out, and I was as scrawny as a kid could be. But after a year, I could deadlift twice my weight."

"Wait, that fast?" Izuku said. Then he squinted, a suddenly skeptical look in his eye. "Wait... you used to work out?"

Oh, really, now? "What on earth would make you doubt that, young Midoriya? You wound me."

Most people would chuckle at his theatrically-affronted reply. Midoriya was not most people. "I-I-I, I didn't mean... I'm sorry, I, um..."

He raised a finger, silencing Midoriya's stutters. "Cruelty towards the elderly... I expected more respect from a fellow twig! And that kind of progress is fairly average, if you work hard."

It actually did sting a little, being reminded that the body he'd put so much hard work and pride into was broken and wasted away now, literally beyond recognition, unless he used his Quirk to drag it back from the grave for a few hours. But it was hard to mope for long with this kid here to hilariously overreact to everything he said.

"...w-wh, um, how did you start? What did you do?"

Toshinori smiled. "Oh, I jumped in and did the research later. I made a lot of mistakes... wasted time... got shoved into lockers." Midoriya's eyes got very wide at that last part. "I think you could come up with a much better plan than I did!"

"I've tried to research online before, but every site seems like it says something different... I still don't know enough to tell what's good advice and what's not."

"Well, here, let's take a look at what they're saying."

They ended up huddled together under the light of their phone screens, Toshinori trying to sift through all the useless clickbait to find some kind of primer that wouldn't fill the kid's impressionable head with lies, constantly getting distracted as Midoriya peppered him with an avalanche of questions. The spark was back in the kid's eyes now, that eager voracious appetite to absorb every possible fragment of information he could.

"This site isn't good either," Toshinori muttered. No wonder the kid had been confused. "High reps don't help you cut, that's the oldest myth out there. And vice versa... even when you're bulking, it's useful to go into mid-rep range for—" he glanced over to see Midoriya looking at him in mild alarm.

"...w-what is a high rep compared to... not-high?" he asked. "What's bulking? And cutting?"

...Oh. Right. He was so familiar with the whole topic that he had forgotten what wasn't familiar to beginners. Teaching was harder than it looked. He was going to need a lot more practice before he tried to educate the students at U.A.

They didn't make it very far before Midoriya's phone chimed. His face fell when he looked at it. "Oh... that's mom, she's wrapping up."

"Hm... here I thought her coworkers looked like the type to stay out until 3, at the very earliest."

Midoriya smiled, but it was quickly chased away by intent concentration as he tried to capture the last pieces of their discussion in his notebook. "No, they are, that's probably why she wants to escape now before it's too late..." He paused, looked over the page with a frown. "I just wish there was more time... there's so much... I still have so many questions..."

Toshinori watched the boy leaf through the pages and finally shut the notebook, and he felt a heavy resignation settle in his chest. Was it even right to encourage the boy if he really wasn't planning to give him One for All? You couldn't get into U.A.'s hero course without a Quirk, no matter what the applicant rules said on paper. He knew this.

Then again, the boy's farfetched hero dreams would smash facefirst into reality whether or not he helped. And being Quirkless gave even more reason to help him hone the abilities he did have.

There really was no escaping this, no matter how many excuses he tried to make. Whether or not this kid was the one, he couldn't just walk away. Not when looking at this boy felt so much like looking into a mirror.

"Midoriya," he said, "I mentioned a few books I have at home. Would it help if I emailed you the titles? I think you can read some of them online."

Midoriya's eyes got huge. "Y-yes! That would really help! If it's not too much trouble!"

"It's not any trouble at all. I'd need to ask your mother if it's all right, though." It would be perfectly fine if All Might offered to send along some helpful info to a fan. Not so much a stranger who looked like a starving homeless person. There were some downsides to this alter ego business.

Midoriya didn't seem to share his opinion. "W-why do you need to ask her!? It's my business who I talk to!"

He laughed. "It's already a little strange for a random adult to start emailing a middle-schooler... I don't need to do it behind your caretaker's back too." Midoriya frowned. "Is that her over there?"

Mrs. Midoriya waved at them, a little more wobbly than she had been a few hours ago, as they made their way over to the main walkway. She looked surprised to see Toshinori.

"Izuku, honey, did you stay up here the whole time?" she glanced at Toshinori, then lowered her voice to something that she probably would have realized was not quiet enough to be out of his earshot if she hadn't been a little drunk. "You weren't bothering him, were you?"

"No! Mom—!"

"Sweetie, we talked about this... just because someone lets you talk to them doesn't mean you should take up all their time—"

Toshinori piped in. "I came here to watch the Quirk exhibition too, and he was nice enough to teach me about some of the local heroes." Midoriya gave him a grateful look. "We got to talking and I brought up a few books that he was interested in reading... I was wondering if it would be all right to mail him the titles."

"Oh...!" Mrs. Midoriya looked pleasantly surprised. "Yes, I suppose that would be fine! Thank you for asking. I'm glad you two had a good time."

So they exchanged contact info, and he waved as they made their way out of the park. He felt a little dazed as he put his hands back in his pockets, looking out at where they'd gone, standing still on the walkway as couples and groups of friends slowly made their way around him.

What had he gotten himself into? Just a few hours of playing hooky, and so much had happened.

...No. Nothing had happened, and nothing had to. He hadn't gotten into anything, hadn't committed to anything. He simply met a promising young man, and hopefully gave him some brightness in his day and some help on his journey.

For now, he still had time.

Notes:

1) Unused scene: Toshinori and Izuku stumble upon a vendor selling unlicensed All Might merch.

2) I don't think Slugger's Quirk is canonically known but I assume it's something along these lines.

3) I hope it makes sense why Toshinori thinks and behaves the way he does here. He acts in a conflicting way because he is conflicted, but I don't know if I'm a good enough writer to convey that properly and not just make him seem confusing and contradictory. He's hard to write! Would love to hear your opinions on his characterization or anything else you liked or didn't like.

Tune in next time to read far too many fitness factoids as these two get this show on the road.