The Bright Hero, Cobalt

Chapter Twenty-four

"Normal speech."

"Buff Might/AI/SHOOOOOTOOOOOO/Kacchanese speech."

"Telepathic speech."

'Thinking speech.'

'Sign language.'

A Week After The Incident

Each of U.A.'s students had been moved into dorms. It had been a bit awkward at first, some of the students having odd habits that came out of nowhere, but they were able to overcome, and affectionately joke about the insomniacs, sleepwalkers, and shirtless macho men that plagued their everyday lives.

Mei had received text files involving All for One's plans from an anonymous source that everybody knew was Ao, even if they didn't outright say it. Izuku would have been suspended for what he'd done, if not for Himiko reminding everybody that he had permission to do what he did, since All Might technically failed to defend Ochako. He was, however, scolded for not bringing backup, seeing as All Might had been right there to bring along.

Shigaraki had evaded capture, but a high profile doctor who'd been an important part of All for One's support network had been easily apprehended.. Kurogiri's arrest had nearly ended in tragedy, since a monstrous villain called Gigantomachia attempted to join the fight. Ao had been in the area, however, and held the abomination off so Gran Torino and Detective Tsukauchi could retreat safely with the unconscious warp user. Mei and many others were hard at work figuring out how to build artificial bodies that could enjoy food, hugs, and sweet aromas, for the two heroes and other innocents trapped within the sentient Nomu. Progress was slow, but steady.

Three of 1-A's teachers were devastated upon learning the identities of the two heroes trapped within Kurogiri's consciousness. Eraserhead and Present Mic nearly had to be restrained from going out to murder Garaki Kyudai, who had been largely responsible for the creation of the nomu, and apparently the disappearance of their dear friend Shirakumo Oboro, who was one of the two heroes imprisoned within the artificial being. The other imprisoned pro…

All Might had wailed in despair upon learning that not only was Shigaraki actually his mentor's grandson, but his dear mentor herself, Shimura Nana, was one of the two trapped souls inside of Kurogiri. The man had shut himself off from everybody else for nearly an entire day before emerging once more, grimace set upon his face as he was determined to do that much better at teaching his students.

Speaking of the users of One for All, Ochako was relieved to find that receiving the quirk had returned Force Manipulation to a usable level of strength. She had suggested returning it to her boyfriend, but he declined, fearing that doing so would deprive her of Force Manipulation once more.

We join our heroes in the common room of 1-A's dorm, in the middle of a Smash Bros. tournament with 1-B, the sibling heroics class invited over in the hopes of helping both groups of students recover.

"Our champions will annihilate you pathetic weaklings, 1-A scum!" the phantom thief screamed with a manic grin.

1-A's favorite cinnamon bun grinned back. "That's the spirit, Monoma-kun!" Izuku exclaimed happily.

"How dare you speak to me in that way! I will learn how to defeat your adorable kindness someday, Midoriya Izuku-kun! Mark my words!"

"RAAAAAAGH!" the hardest of men roared in defiance as he lost to his steely rival. "I'M NOT SATISFIED! WE'RE TAKING THIS OUTSIDE!" Eijirou shouted in challenge as he set his controller down.

"YEAH! THAT'S WHY YOU'RE MY RIVAL! YOU WON'T GO DOWN EASY!" Tetsutetsu replied eagerly, as the two slammed their hardened fists together in their own form of a bro fist.

The alien queen grinned. "I'll avenge you, Eijirou-kun!" she shouted after her boyfriend as she followed the two outside to watch them tussle.

"No quirks!" Momo and Itsuka called out in tandem, the former sounding serious while the other shouted with a grin and a wave.

Komori Kinoko stepped up to the controller with a smirk and a single eye gleaming menacingly from beneath her bangs. "Which of you scrubs am I about to demolish?" she asked cockily.

Dark Shadow emerged from within Fumikage with a flourish. "Hello there!" the sentient quirk quipped.

The Lady of the Mushroom Kingdom let out a giggle. "You are a bold one," she said, then stomped the floor menacingly when a couple of her classmates seemed like they were going to protest the participation of the sentient quirk. "BACK AWAY! I will deal with this shady slime myself!"

"Your move."

The two classes could have sworn they saw Shemage's single visible eye flash as she removed a decorated controller from her purse. "YOU FOOL! I've been trained in your Jedi arts by Count Yanagi!"

The gauntlet was thrown, the match was on.

An Hour Later

In the end, it was the quiet and terrifyingly efficient Kodai Yui who won the tourney. Ashido had successfully avenged her boyfriend, but was struck down by Count Yanagi, who went on to defeat Darth Raven AND Uravity. This, however, earned her the ire of the Dark Lord of Smiles, who absolutely devastated the girl with Young Link. However, Yui was more machine than girl, and so was very accustomed to killing Young Links.

Mei, who had been dragged away from her work by Himiko and Jin, smiled as she crowned Rule as the Smash Champ, before she made her way over to Izuku with a wide grin. "I got you something~!" the rosette said in a sing-song voice, before pulling a long cable out of her pouch and handing it to him. "For the record, this isn't the thing I got you. Well, not the thing I was excited about getting you, at least. I do think you and Ko-chan will be able to enjoy this, all things considered, though."

Izuku gazed at the cable in confusion. One end was a typical USB plug, but the other didn't look like anything he'd seen before. "What is it?" he asked curiously.

"An interface cable. Ko-chan has one as well. You should be able to use it to connect to that system and have a one-on-one match with perfect movement. Well, not completely perfect, but there will be no misclicks, and the characters will move as soon as you think it. Have your girlfriend help plug you in," the reticule-eyed girl said with a teasing grin.

Jin looked up from where he was playing a match against one of his clones. "I sense a disturbance in the Force," he said ominously, before his doppelganger roared, "A challenger approaches! Himiko-chan wants to battle!"

Surely enough, the Cyber Newtype Hero approached, a cable of her own in her hands. "Jin-kun, plug me in. I need to measure my little brother's power level," she commented with a smirk as her boyfriend moved to disconnect her faux backpack.

With a blush, Izuku locked eyes with Ochako. "Um, s-sorry, would you mind…?" the boy asked shyly. Ochako nodded mutely, her face luminescent with her blush.

The two heroics classes and Mei gathered at a somewhat respectable distance as the two siblings were aided by their partners. Jin plugged Himiko in like he'd done it a million times before, and for all they knew, he very well may have. Ochako, however, was so out of it, she tried plugging the wrong end of the cable in several times before she realized it.

"Wow, already messing with his interface port, Ochako-chan? You work fast!" Pinky joked with a grin.

Uravity rolled her eyes and walked up to her friend, delivering a gentle slap. "I sentence you to ten minutes of Ceiling Prison," the brunette said boredly as the horned girl floated slowly to the ceiling, touching down then having her weight returned to one G, just in the wrong direction.

"I REGRET NOTHING!" Mina laughed from the ceiling.

"I'll take care of your pet rock while you're in the slammer, Ashido!" Red Riot called out with a bark of laughter.

As the horn buddies joked back and forth from opposing gravitational pulls, Team G-Force was blushing heavily. All joking aside, due to the memory sharing, they'd technically seen one another naked before, even if it was from a first person perspective, but to be so close when one had removed their shirt was something different.

Izuku was very aware of his girlfriend's trembling hands as they tried their best to plug the cable into the odd port in his back. It was...pleasant, even if it made him incredibly fidgety. The pads on her fingertips, once again, made him appreciate the things about the brunette that made Ochako Ochako.

As for the girl of infinity, she was having issues dealing with her raging hormones, seeing and feeling her partner's toned, powerful back under her hands. It mostly distracted her from the port in his back and what it represented, but in the back of her mind, she cursed the man who hurt so many people and caused the mechanical device to be there. Sobered slightly by the reminder of how the port got there, the brunette soldiered through and plugged the corresponding end of the cable in with a tiny click sound.

Upon realizing she didn't hurt him at all, the tenth inheritor breathed a sigh of relief and unintentionally leaned against the freckled teen, which sadly was too much for the boy, Izuku falling over as he fainted from the sudden contact as their schoolmates teased the two of them mirthfully.

Himiko and Jin just smiled fondly at the two as the latter disconnected the former, and Mei started harassing the bespectacled blue blur about upgrades for his armor. Truly, the mission to unwind had been a success.

Hours Later

The goggled rosette laughed with merriment as she guided Izuku and Ochako around the myriad gadgets in the support workshop, occasionally boasting about one she'd made that they passed, before she got to a panel in the wall that slid down to reveal a key card slot, which she quickly unlocked, causing a small area of the ground to slowly open up, revealing stairs leading down beneath the earth.

"This is where the crazier things are kept, or just things that support students want kept as a surprise for their clients and/or friends," the soot-covered girl said proudly as she gestured for the two of them to follow her down.

The slightly nervous couple were startled by how deep the stairs went, eventually finding themselves in a large hangar, where the only things not covered by tarps were being worked on at that very moment. One thing that the two of them were certain was being built by their mad engineer of a friend was hidden by a section of shuttered off wall that was high enough that they decided to pretend it wasn't there.

They were escorted over to a, thankfully, reasonable-sized tarp, that Mei quickly removed. "Tadah! Feast your eyes on Unit 2!" the oil-stained teen exclaimed.

It was...not that much different from Unit 0, at least from what the two of them could see at first glance. It was a bit shorter, if you didn't include the two shields mounted on its back, and its color was entirely gold, instead of the white-with-some-black that Unit 0 had sported. Honestly, though, the most intriguing difference they could see right now was…

"The eye slit is blue. Does this armor use Izuku's blue aura in some way that's special?" Uravity asked curiously, having apparently drawn the same conclusion as her partner.

The Hatsume genius nodded with pride. "Yup! It needs a daily refill, since your blue aura is difficult to contain on the best of days, but this baby can give you temporary access to your good mood juice, regardless of your situation. It probably won't be as powerful as when you're actually happy, but considering how OP you are when you're all smiley, I can guarantee it'll be powerful enough to turn most bad situations around," Mei explained, before pulling a remote out of her top and grinning maniacally.

"More importantly, it'll grow tall with you, so you won't have to bring it in every few months while you're growing! Override Command: Magic wand, make my monster GROOOOWWW!" The tentacle-haired teen cackled like a certain space witch as the armor gradually increased in size until it was approximately the height of All Might, before Mei clicked another button and it reverted to being Izuku-sized again. "It can also relay visual and audio data to Uravity's headset, and receive the same data from her, so you two can synchronize your POVs with less hassle. All that's left is for you to sync with it."

Izuku nodded, even as Ochako practically shoved him to the armor with excitement. The device opened on command, and Izuku carefully lined his port up with the plug in the back of the machine. He almost didn't catch the wince from Mei when the armor closed around him. The device plugged into him, and synchronized quickly, Izuku's vision temporarily being replaced by the view of the camera attached to the head before he exited, intent on finding out what was wrong. He felt things in that wince.

"Mei-san, is everything okay?" Ochako asked, accustomed enough to the bond that she quickly deduced what was bothering her partner.

The mechanically-inclined prodigy shook her head ruefully. "I forgot that you're a lot more perceptive than Ko-chan, both with and without your powers. I'm...worried about her," the rosette confessed, her smile turning melancholy. "She's gotten a lot better, but she still gets nightmares and flashbacks sometimes. Opening up has done wonders for her, but some part of her probably feels vulnerable despite all the support, and so, her nightmares have gotten a bit worse as of late. Midoriya-chan, Uraraka-chan, you two can connect to her in a way I can't, and I've already gone over this with Bubaigawara-chan, but...please try to pull her out of it, if she starts falling into that place again."

The couple walked up to the rosette and gave her a quick hug. "We'll watch out for her. I don't know what I can do that Izuku can't, but I'll try," Uravity said with a thumbs up and a smile as the two of them pulled away.

The Zoom user grinned despite her tears. "Redundant castle walls, Uraraka-chan. Same concept," the gear girl said with a giggle as she pressed a button and a claw arm took Unit 2, presumably to where Unit 0 used to dock, and the trio made their way back upstairs.

Izuku frowned as he thought of something. "Wait, there's Unit 0 and Unit 2. What about Unit 1?" he asked curiously.

Mei stuck her tongue out teasingly. "The Absolute Unit series is what I call my special babies, meant to protect my friends in the field and look cool while doing it. Unit 1 is Kshatriya, my young padawan!" the yellow-eyed girl joked as she ruffled the verdette's hair, before commenting, "Wow, Uraraka-chan. You lucked out. His hair is so fluffy. You need to rub it more!"

The Next Day

The students of 1-A laughed as they exited the provisional exams stadium on the way to the changing rooms. "That Yoarashi guy was a riot! Once he got over his hate boner for Todoroki-san, he was actually pretty fun to work with," Chargebolt commented with a grin as he fiddled with his duel disk, as his classmates had taken to calling it.

Tooru shook her fists in a fit of anger. "Oooooh, I couldn't stand that Utsushimi girl, though! She was staring at you too much, Kacchan!" she exclaimed angrily at her boyfriend, who tilted his head in confusion.

"What are you on about, Bright Eyes? You were VISIBLE when that was happening. She was making eyes at YOU. Friggin' adorable moron," the grenadier commented as he patted his girlfriend's head fondly. The occasionally-unseen girl made noises of contentment as she pushed her head against the explosive palm atop her hair.

Cobalt smiled at his friends, having removed his helmet as he walked. "Some of the teams were really cool, if you ask me. Those ninjas were really well-coordinated, along with those sharply-dressed girls from that one school. I really wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition-themed trio, though!" the empath exclaimed.

"NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!" a trio of red-clothed hero trainees exclaimed from their right, having appeared shortly after they were spoken of. Like Satan, or Cao Cao.

After getting changed, 1-A boarded their bus, headed for their dorm, and found a familiar mighty twig on board. "It's Small Might-sensei!" Mina exclaimed fondly once the doors to the bus were shut, a few of the students crowding the number one hero to give the ham a quick hug before heading to their seats. The heroics teacher grinned happily at the affection his students showed him.

Shortly after the bus started moving, Izuku felt his teacher nudging his mind. "What's up, Sensei?" he asked, the boy turning to look at him before remembering the symbol of peace might want privacy and spinning his head right back to looking forward.

The proud teacher grinned a bit at the boy's slip-up. "I just wanted to let you know that, since pretty much all of All for One's plans have been foiled, and the ones that haven't been will within the next few years, it should be safe to tell your friends about One for All, if you and young Uraraka wish to divulge that information to them. I can help you with explaining it, but you needn't worry about my permission at this point. I have maybe one major fight left in this body of mine before I'm just Yagi-san again," the man explained with a hint of sadness, even as he smiled.

The verdette did his best not to start crying. "You'll always be All Might to me, Sensei. I'll talk with Ochako about it later. For now, though, I need to make sure I don't flood the bus!" the boy responded with a smile, even as the brunette next to him squeezed his hand comfortingly, sensing his melancholy.

Hours Later

Izuku paced the common room frantically, as Ochako floated around in anxiousness, the girl equally as nervous as her boyfriend. More than a few of their friends had noticed, especially when Hanta had to use his quirk to prevent the floaty one from bumping into a lamp and possibly burning herself. Several of them tried to get the couples' attention, but aside from preventing themselves from bumping into one of their classmates, Team G-Force seemed completely unaware of the world around them.

A scream of frustration from the stairs alerted the students to an irate Himiko, who floated down in a cloud of red aura before grabbing both halves of the Green Tea ship. "Your anxiety is so loud, I'm surprised they can't all hear what you're nervous about! Just share the relevant memories directly if you can't figure out how to say it properly!" the small woman shrieked as she shook her little brother comically.

Izuku and Ochako both blinked in confusion as they were brought out of their musings by the sudden intrusion of the blond's frustrations. "I/He can do that?" the pair asked in sync.

The fanged girl rolled her eyes. "Yes. Ugh. Outside of the presence-cloaking, slowed-aging, and my quirk, anything I can do, he can do better! Just, touch Yaoyorozu-chan's head and remember the relevant events, or something! She'll figure out how to relay it to the others for you. She's smart like that!" she suggested with a sigh.

Ashido giggled. "You heard the lady. President Skroob, go lend Midori your big buff grey matter!" the pinkette commanded, getting behind the class president and pushing her in the direction of Izuku and Ochako, who had stopped floating and gently touched down.

Yaomomo sighed and gave a shrug. "Just...try not to sense my thoughts when you do this. I've had some embarrassing daydreams lately," the top student of 1-A said with a blush as she bowed a bit to give the Vice Rep better access to her head.

Izuku frowned a bit nervously, before he nodded. Yaoyorozu would know how to disseminate this information properly. There's a reason she's Class Rep, after all. He placed his hand on the girl's forehead, and thought back to the events surrounding his obtaining, using, and giving away of One for All.

The ponytailed girl pulled away a few seconds later with a blush and a stutter. "That was...an odd experience, and a lot of info to process. Also, Midoriya-san, you don't ask a girl for their first kiss that way!" Momo scolded, then sighed and added, "I'll have an announcement for the class later, once I've figured out what needs to be said and what doesn't. At least now I know how Uraraka-san's quirk miraculously recovered after being stolen by a villain who can just take and give them away."

The couple blushed like mad at the event the black-haired beauty brought up, Izuku pressing his index fingers together and Ochako whistling nonchalantly while scratching the back of her head. The heroine in charge sighed and walked away, off to her room to get some work done.

That Night, In Himiko's Room

The Cyber Newtype Hero sat up, having awoken in the middle of the night from a nice dream for once, instead of a nightmare. Her fiance sat up with her. "That was a nice one. I want to know what that's like for real!" he said excitedly, then turned to the messy-haired girl. "Sucks that you're too small for us to make a baby safely right now. You can adopt a tiny tot, you dumbasses! Oh, thanks, other me! Shut up, you're all being too noisy."

Himiko smiled fondly at the space in her arms their dream child had occupied before they awoke. She couldn't remember the kid's face, gender, anything really, but the joy she felt was lovely, like what she sensed from Mei when they first met. "We're too busy to adopt a kid now, but we'll do it soon, Jin-chan. We'll find a sweetheart we can connect with, to raise to be big and strong and happy," the woman in the body of a young teen said with hope, a tear rolling down her eyes.

Her partner gently wiped said tear away. "Don't be sad. I told you I was fine waiting for your body to be healthy enough for stuff like that. I WILL STAB YOUR SORROW AND PUNCH YOUR NIGHTMARES IN THEIR DUMB FACES!" the man of many personalities said, one of the crazier ones commenting at the end.

The fanged girl giggled, and quickly checked on the state of her baby brothers, both of them, before lying back down and cuddling her nutty partner, the two finding sleep again soon after.

There was hope in their future.