Pro Hero Metal Bat

by Phantos God of Horrors

Izuku Midoriya had no quirk and had no one outside of his mother. And aside from his smarts, he didn't have anything. All he ever carried with him was the weight of insults and depraving speeches everyone gave him for being him. So when the heroes yell at him for saving Kacchan's life, he escapes to the beach to find peace. Instead, he found a chance to make his dream come true.

20. Chapter 20

Returning to Yuei was no easy feat for Mashirao, and he assumed the same weight or worry rested on all of his schoolmates. His parents had barely allowed him to leave the house to see Midoriya or his mother the other days, and they were just as worried about sending him back to the school he was nearly assaulted in. Nedzu had assured his parents of his safety — of everyone's safety — following the break-in of their simulation facility; how they had upped their security measures and rescheduled classes to ensure everyone's close proximity to one another and the central school facility for the time being to disway anyone looking to attempt a follow-up, and how the police were knee-deep into their investigation on the coordinators of the attack and arresting the perpetrators before they could even think to strike again.

Mashirao knew it was sugar talk, the way the principal had worded everything. There was little they could do against a man capable of making portals out of thin air; how to even prevent such a thing required knowing how a quirk like that worked, and the tailed boy could not pin down a solid answer himself without any information beyond it existing in the world. And the police had caught everyone — the hordes of henchmen and the giant purple man that somehow submitted to the police without a fight — except the two criminals at the heart of the conflict; two men he had seen with bounties for the public to confirm the identities of for them. All the school could do was promise to continue their efforts in keeping him safe as they had before, and all Mashirao could do was put their faith in them, as he had before.

Seemingly, his classmates had done the same. Most everyone was in the classroom when he finally arrived — a bit later than usual but maybe he was just that more hesitant than everyone else. Shoji and Sato had cornered in the back with Ashido and Tsuyu over a board of checkers; Kaminari, Kirishima and Sero were posing playing cards into a pyramid; Ibara and Kendo oversaw Aoyama teaching Tsunotori a Japanese phrase; Yaoyorozu and Iida were writing together in a notebook; Tokoyami had his tiny quirk, Dark Shadow, performing a balancing act of pencils in front of a crowd of Jiro and Uraraka. The only two not yet present were Todoroki and…Midoriya.

Last he saw his friend was waving goodbye with half a head of hair left to his name and a Jojo tattoo gone wrong atop the bald spot, wearing sunglasses just to manage being outside on a clear day. It wasn't exactly a condition Mashirao considered healthy, and certainly not one he expected to see for a few more days. To be down one classmate for his violent tendencies and another for being on the other end of someone else's, he wasn't too fond of the idea of their head count dropping as the year continued; especially not if it went at its current rate. Was this what hero school was going to be like? It wasn't enough to whittle them down through the exam; they'd be half a headcount short by next school year?

"Mornin', Ojiro."

The voice that greeted him from behind doused him with ease, and just a hint of surprise, of which Mashirao welcomed with haste. Hearing Midoriya's voice was somehow a treasure he missed the last few days, and the bump to his shoulder dried him off with warmth.

"Hey, Midori—"

The greeting the tailed boy had prepared died in his throat as he turned to his friend, and his eyes trailed upwards to the tall brick of green hair situated atop the other boy's head. He promptly turned back around to stifle a laugh, clutching his eyes shut and his hand over his quivering lips.

"What?" Midoriya did not seem to find it as funny as he did.

Mashirao waved him off. "Nothing," he chuckled and turned back, taking a humorous look at his friend's new mohawk. "I just remember you having more hair last time. Did you get into another accident?"

Even though Midoriya was still wearing his sunglasses, Mashirao could see his eyes shut during his slow inhale. "Hilarious. I asked for this haircut, alright? A giant gap on the side needed to be balanced out and there was no way in hell I'm military shaving what I have left. And I always wanted to try a mohawk; hard to do that with a natural afro like mine."

"I mean by legal definition, it is a hair style." His joke earned the tailed boy a swift punch to his arm as the green-haired boy pushed past him into the room, and it was at that point they noticed everyone had watched their entrance.

Midoriya surveyed every head in the room with an almost blank stare, had Mashirao been beside him to see his emerald eyes waver brighter and brighter with each head he passed over. "Todoroki nearly froze himself to death," the green-haired teen muttered. "Makes sense he's not here today—"

Mashirao had barely the time to react as Midoriya was tackled backwards by horns and the body connected to them. The green-haired teen was just as slow to notice Tsunotori slamming him to the front wall of the room in a hug, her tail wagging hastily above her skirt as she crushed the ribs of the now shell-shocked teen.

"Mornin', Tsunotori," he wheezed out, his hands struggling to grasp her shoulder and pull himself free. "Help. Air."

"Too bad," the equestrian girl argued, squeezing him tighter. "This is for scaring me."

Mashirao just breathed a short laugh as his friend struggled to balance the weight of two people. It didn't take long to find himself barrelled into, as pink skin tackled him towards the embracing duo and made them into a hugging quartet. "Yay, group hug!" Ashido exclaimed, taking advantage of the moment to punch the air out of Mashirao's lungs.

"What did I do to deserve this?" he pleaded weakly.

Midoriya's tauntingly growled in his ear, "Laughing at my demise."

"And for saving me." The blond boy twisted his head past Ashido's horns to meet the eyes of their frog-quirked classmate standing beside their huddle. Her big eyes blinked blankly at him before she leaned forward and joined his corner of the hug. "I'm sorry I was a burden to you. Thank you for looking out for me."

The fight in him lessening, Mashirao shuffled his arm free from Ashido's grip to wrap it over Asui's shoulder. He hadn't actually seen her since handing her off to Recovery Girl to tend to the girl's ailment. "You weren't a burden, Asui. I'm glad you're feeling better."

The frog girl hummed happily, rested her head on his shoulder and quietly asked to be called "Tsu" instead. Claustrophobic as the embrace was, Mashirao was fine resting in it a bit longer. That contentment was put into question as their tall, tentacle-armed classmates walked up to cover them all in his shadow.

Midoriya shuffled beside him, tilting his head back to look up to Shoji. "…Let me guess: you want to hug too?"

Said boy extended his arms outwards, folding the webbing between them to look less giant. Even with the boy's dark mask still on, Mashirao believed he could see it wrinkle from a small smile beneath. "Would that be all right, now that you're okay?"

Midoriya considered it in silence between Ashido's welcoming ushering, and Mashirao wondered if he remembered being carried by Shoji after the hit he took. "As long as I don't break a second rib, fine."

Shoji took the information happily, stepping into their embrace and wrapping up the entire group with his gentle arms. The groan from each party member drowned out Asui's question about Izuku's first broken rib, but the group hug lasted in silence for several seconds longer before Mashirao and his friend were given the gift of release. The tailed boy cracked his back as he used his space to breathe, and Midoriya rolled his neck with a grimace as Tsunotori made an English-spoken comment about his new hair style. "I don't even know who Bazz-B is," he whined. "This was a necessity. What else was I supposed to do?"

"Did you get into another fight with a villain?" Mashirao turned with most of his classmates to face the entrance, greeting them with Todoroki's presence standing in the doorway. He looked past them all at Midoriya, expressing a dulled shock in the size of his eyes. "You lost more hair. Are you okay?"

"Frankly, no," Midoriya loudly admitted, shoulder checking Mashirao as he moved to greet Todoroki into the classroom. "Not only do I have to see your ugly mug again today, but everyone sees the need to inform me on how hideous my own is. What are you doing here? You nearly froze yourself into a popsicle. Shouldn't you still be at home resting with a cold?"

The other face-scarred boy lifted a hand to run along his chin, probably contemplating the green-haired boy's comment on his face, before answering, "I've already treated it, I'll be fine. I'm surprised you're able to move at all, after what happened to you. I thought your quirk was just infusing your strength into objects. How are you this durable?"

Mashirao grimaced at the question, watching Midoriya's shoulders roll from the mention of his "quirk." It was still weird to consider his friend's strength and power as anything other than a quirk, but having locked their lie into such a rigid explanation was proving to be a hassle in conversations he hadn't expected to hear. How would his green-haired friend formulate an answer to such a curious inquiry?

"Because I'm that stupid."

By not answering, apparently.

"I am your class president," Midoriya continued, jabbing a thumb into his own chest. "Not only am I allowed to be stupid, I'm especially granted the right to be so if any of you are in trouble. That means telling villains what for if they want to hunt you down and hurt you. I can't do that if I'm out of commission."

"Midori-bro," Kirishima interjected from across the room, shouldering past Hanta with a concerned look. "Do you even feel good enough to be up right now? We're not going to judge you for sitting out another day."

"The only part of me that still hurts is my heart having to hear that this isn't working." The green-haired boy pointed up to what hair he had remaining from his last salon visit, and Mashirao did not succeed in concealing a snicker from his friend, receiving a corner-eyed glare for letting out so much as a sound. "Everything else about me feels fine. Because everybody else is here. So long as everyone else is fine" — his eyes glazed over the room, his head rolling until it landed on Mashirao with a small smile — "I'm fine. You can trust me on that."

"I can't trust you to follow my instructions." The tailed boy blinked past Midoriya's ridiculous hairstyle, watching their homeroom teacher sulk into the room and training a glare down on the green-haired boy. "I have no reason to trust a self-diagnosis, either."

Midoriya stared at their sensei for a few seconds of silence before readdressing the class. "I amend my previous statement. Now everybody else is here."

"Sit down."

"Okay."

Mashirao snickered at his friend rigidly shuffling between the desk and their classmates' welcoming pats, while the tailed boy himself watched Aizawa silently walk to the podium. He remembered briefly the sight of their homeroom teacher cradled in Ibara's hair and Kendo's hands, unconscious and cradling a bleeding arm. He was relieved to find the man almost fully recovered without so much as a bandage when he and his friends came to check up on Midoriya. His best friend's health had superseded his teacher's, and he was ashamed to have given so little thought to the older man's health but smiled and gave their teacher a welcoming bow and greeting before he hurried to his own desk.

"Now that you're seated, let's begin. Todoroki, Midoriya." Aizawa's head turned between the two boys at opposite back ends of the room. "For starters, don't make a habit of being the two I have to single out every time homeroom starts." Mashirao puffed a breath out his nose, doing better at holding back a laugh than a few that sounded around him. It was nice to know their straight-laced teacher had a sense of humor. "And secondly, what both of you did was reckless and dangerous. You abandoned your teams of classmates and went out of your way to pick fights with villains when you should've stayed to protect each other and make it out safely."

The glare of his red, glowing eyes was hard to understate, and Mashirao could feel it burn past his shoulders to look at his classmates. Harsh as it was, he agreed with their Sensei. Todoroki had nearly incapacitated half of them to go and fight the villains' leaders in the facility's center, and Midoriya had gone and nearly killed himself for butting in. He'd already given his friend a stern complaint over his actions, and he was biting back his tongue from sharing that sentiment the dual-haired boy's way.

"That aside," their teacher continued, lowering his gaze away as his eyes dimmed back to their normal black shade, "all of you performed an amazing job under extreme circumstances and overwhelming pressure. Though not in our intended way of having you practice, you worked exceptionally well in teams both assigned to you prior and that you had made on the spot in the face of danger. And when I and your fellow classmates were hurt, you accumulated your resources and did your best to tend to our ails and rush us to safety and treatment.

"It's not a situation any of you should have been in so soon." His eyes glazed over the class, addressing each of them just once. "But it is one where you showed your drive to be a hero in the face of danger and expressed why all of you are here: to protect and save, both each other and the innocent. For that, I am proud of all of you."

Mashirao could feel it surging through him, the brief feeling of pride straightening his back and puffing his chest. He could see the classmates sitting in front of him do the same. Despite the mess that was the villain break-in, they had gone the long way around in carrying out the assignment originally planned for them, hadn't they? Through hell and high water, they had worked together to make each other better heroes.

"And with that out of the way, it's time to prepare you for your next fight." Mashirao felt the room audibly tense back up, as mutters behind him wondered his thoughts out loud for him. What did he mean by fight— "The Sports Festival." Oh. "In two weeks' time, Yuei will be hosting its annual Sports Festival at our event stadium on the other end of campus. Not too far from the Unforeseen Simulation Joint. If you are not yet aware, it is a televised event in which you will compete with the students of your grade level through two randomly selected challenges and sports, and a final event that is a tournament bracket of sparring matches among those of you who pass the first two challenges. A suitable workout uniform will be provided for each student to wear, so know your hero costumes are barred from the event."

"In two weeks?" Jirou asked in front of the tailed boy. "Isn't that when it's normally held?"

"Should we be doing that so soon?" Kirishima asked from the back row, voicing the same concern running through Mashirao's head.

"Sensei!" Iida shot to life in the front, his hand darting above his head as though he needed to raise his hand for their teacher's attention. "Is Yuei not postponing such a massive and public event after the incident at the USJ? Is that enough time to improve the school's safeguards and defenses if another break-in is to occur?"

"Given the date has not changed from schedule, the first question is an obvious no," their sensei bluntly answered, rounding the podium to stand in front of if. "As for the second, the school has already presented and greenlit several improvements and changes to our surveillance system to be finished three days before the event. And for you lot" — his eyes rolled to a few select heads in the class — "I understand not all of you have fully recuperated from the attack. This event will have not only extra heroes licensed and employed as extra security outside the stadium grounds, but tradition will have it that heroes and sidekicks off the clock will be present in the crowd. Our assailants do not have the time to amass a force of men and women that could handle the numbers present, nor do we believe they will be foolish enough to try without them."

Mashirao wasn't fully convinced by his words, and the stirring of his classmates consoled him with the fact he wasn't alone. Grand defenses as they may be, and the quantity they may have, it did little to bat off the weight of worry those villains left on their shoulders. Who was to say even that army of criminals under their command was the most of who they had to spare? Group numbers like that were far from common in criminal activity, but had the yakuza been involved, or if crime syndicates like those in spy films the tailed boy watched were real, were those chances too low for the school board to worry of their possibility?

"Furthermore," their teacher continued, "this is an event to prepare you for the curriculum following; hero agency internships. All pros present and watching from their homes will be using this event to scout you and your schoolmates for a week of understudying eight days after the Sports Festival. This is your chance to show to them what you're capable of and why they should pick you as an understudy, verbally or physically."

As maybe the first verbal sound of excitement that day, Kaminari whistled and leaned back in his desk. "A chance to work under pros, right," he repeated their sensei's words. "Even the best in the nation could be looking to scout us. Wait, does that mean we could be training under you, sensei?"

"No," their teacher quickly dismissed the question. "There are still classes to teach here for the other classes outside heroics that the staff will be too busy with to train any of you in a work study. The most time anyone here has to offer you is as a teaching assistant and no time for anything more. You will be looking to hero agencies outside of this school's borders for your work studies. Some of you may receive direct request letters depending on your performance, but you will all have a universal list of open agencies to study under.

"But this event cannot be postponed. Villains have broken into our school grounds, assaulted our students, and the masterminds behind the plan continue to walk in the shadows, no doubt plotting again. They chose to attack our class, during a lesson in which you were fully provided with your gear, because they thought you would be an easy target. Because they thought you were children and nothing more." Aizawa's slumped shoulders rose, pushing his head up with them and straightening his posture proudly. Though he had seen his eyes shine red before, Mashirao watched as they gleamed a bright fiery orange across his classmates. "But you are hero students. You didn't apply for this course to be afraid; to bow away for criminals and villains to run amok and spread their fear. You applied to step up, stop them, and protect those who cannot. Your teachers are heroes currently, and we'll fight the battles you shouldn't have to. But this festival is your opportunity to show those cowardly villains the kind of heroes you will become and that they should rightfully fear."

That inspiring speech turned the energy of the classroom around, and the tailed boy pumped his fists up to his chest while the majority of his classmates cheered and spurred on the support to the dismay of their visually deflating homeroom teacher. Mashirao had disregarded the Sports Festival initially in his application as nothing more than his chance to show off his martial arts knowledge and hopefully get picked up by a few certain agencies where he could learn to better his skill set. Then their class was attacked by a swarm of villains looking to kill them and their teachers, and the mere mention of the event only injected him with doubt at its existence. But their teacher was right; if the heroes were going to be watching them, then any villain with cable could too.

They were not only facing judgment and critique on their abilities and skill, but they could be singled out and targeted by anyone with ill intent. They were children, and while it was less often to hear targeted acts against their age in the news, that didn't stop their attack at the USJ. Those same villains who escaped would likely keep an eye on their festival in case they tried again. As terrifying as it was being on the run even in home territory and watching his classmates and friends hoddle off with injuries, it was only a sudden introduction as to the world real heroes shielded them from; it would be the world they fought against once they, too, became proper heroes. Those villains were likely to challenge them again, and the Sports Festival would be their school's challenge extended back at them. Mashirao couldn't just show how much martial arts he knew, he'd have to show how dangerous of a fighter he'd be to face.

Gazing back around the classroom, Mashirao found his peers exuding a similar confidence surging through him. There was a sparkle in Iida's eyes that shone through his glasses and threatened to overpower Aoyama's constant twinkling. The air around Uraraka sizzled and swayed as a scorching fire burned over her eyes. Kaminari's hands kneaded sparks and bolts that flashed between his fingers and lighted his broad smile. Yaoyorozu's skin glistened as though her quirk had coated her with a newfound fighting spirit. And Midoriya sat quietly.

Past the arms of their classmates — through the whoops and pumping blood — Mashirao watched his best friend stare blankly ahead, unmoved by the noise and unheard in the roar of the class hyping each other up. This was an event where they would finally stand before the world's eyes and express their dreams of becoming heroes through their actions and strengths. An event where they would only be able to compete with nothing but the clothes on their back.

And Midoriya without his bat.

---

Izuku didn't know how telling his mom about his "powers" would go. It was only the two of them around when the doctors gave them the news of his quirklessness — his father halfway around the world for work — and it had been defining their lives for over a decade. At home, at school and around the block, his lack of a quirk was an excuse, a reason, a target and a problem. From people at school or on the street, Izuku had gotten used to brushing it over his shoulder.

At home, no matter how much time has passed, its existence continued to loom in the air.

"So you have a quirk?" his mother asked slowly, fiddling beside him on the couch. After being released from the school's medical wing, the Midoriya family had bid his friends farewell and gone straight home. It was uneventful, aside from his mother worrying over his new big wound and crooked face and ungodly idea of a haircut he had in mind and pitched to Masaru before they parted ways. But instead of filling his stomach when they had finally gotten home, Izuku sat his mother down and told her everything new he knew about himself, and all he now knew himself to be capable of. "You've always had a quirk?"

"I have something," he corrected her, squeezing their hands gently seated between them. "Works like a quirk, acts like a quirk, quacks like a quirk but no one wants to call it a quirk. Don't know why it waited until now to show itself, but something is making me strong. I don't understand it myself."

"And you knew since Christmas and didn't tell me?"

"I" — Izuku clicked his tongue and stared into space a second, briefly accepting the absurdity of the words in his head — "didn't really notice until last week. And I couldn't get myself to consciously use my strength until our school trip." Izuku recounted every event he had been through — a mall shooting, fighting a giant robot, trading blows with a roided villain — and pursed his lips in mild anger. "I don't know how I missed it either; I might be blind. Were dad's eyes ever that bad?"

In contrast to every reaction he thought his mother would have, the woman cracked a smile and laughed softly. "No, he only ever needed those glasses to read. He just wore them more often because it made him look like a scholar. He thought they were the reason he even got a promotion." Her free hand fidgeted in her lap, and the small smile she wore shrunk ever so slightly. "I am grounding you from the television for a week, though."

"For worrying you?"

"Oh most definitely. Brave and kind as I know you are, I think I flooded our neighbors downstairs after hearing how you fought the villains head on. Don't scare me like that again."

Izuku simply nodded and gave her hand another squeeze. "I'll do my best." They say peacefully in their silence for a minute afterwards. "Does this change anything?"

His mother's mouth opened to respond instantly, but it hung open wordlessly for a few seconds before closing back shut. "You're a selfless boy, Izuku. You're smart, but you always got into a scrap with the other boys trying to be someone's hero. Even without a quirk, you wouldn't stop, would you? I thought letting you be around other heroes would keep you safe and get you in less fights. Or at least for a while, being heroes and all.

"I was okay letting you go to Yuei because all your friends are there to look out for you and protect you and be heroes for you, too," she continued, her hand squeezing his back. "Ojiro snuck by the other day to say hello — just for a minute. I heard about what happened from him, and what he saw. And everyone was looking out for each other and taking care of you when you were hurt." Her shoulders shook with a long breath, and Izuku scooted closer to her to brush their shoulders together. "It gave me reassurance I made the right call about them. You have some wonderful classmates, Izuku. Good friends."

Izuku smiled with her words, nodding slightly along. "They are. I'm happy I have them."

"They don't sound like the kind who'll pull you out of a fight, which would do my heart wonders, but they sound like the kind who will be there to fight beside you. And I know they're the kind you'll need if you're to be a hero." Her other hand rose to his face, cupping his cheek gently and brushing her thumb on the edge of his big scar. "The only difference now is that I know you'll be safer in the future. I can live with that. Just promise me you'll leave it to the future and not tomorrow."

Izuku brought his other hand up to lay against her's, before it swung out and caught her in a hug for him to lean on her. "I promise I'll try. I'd like to not deal with it until after I graduate, and maybe then some. I'll stick to purse snatchers."

His mother chuckled lightly as she returned the hug, and the two rested in each other's embrace. It was the first time since Izuku woke up that he felt truly at peace; calm and collected and safe. A year ago felt like an eternity, at a time when he didn't know his friends, his mother's support felt absent, and the label of quirkless blared in his face at every given turn. Now, he barely felt the weight of confusion that was his newfound strength, and the almost laughable worry he held onto — in his choice to hide the truths from his friends not knowing what would change — was let free. And with his mother's support behind his journey ahead, he was happy.

And then she just had to sigh loudly, shake her head against his shoulder and say, "And please don't get that mohawk."

Izuku couldn't stop himself from cackling and shaking in laughter. "It's not a bad haircut, mom. I need to balance out the sides; it just looks weird like this."

"You'll look like a yankii, and before I know it you'll come home with cigarettes in your pockets and ride a motorcycle to school and walk around with a girl under each arm. If you need to know what'll give me a heart attack, I have a checklist."

Izuku chose to ignore how his face heated up and continued to laugh through it. "Yeah, that's not happening any time soon, don't you worry. Nothing's going to change because of a mohawk. I won't be a different person."

"You're like an entirely different person with a mohawk."

Izuku just peered silently at Hanta through his sunglasses before he grunted. "Are you sure it isn't the new vertical line going through my face?"

Hanta shook his head. "It's definitely the mohawk. Like that afro suited you before; add these glasses to that and I'd believe you're into disco, especially with the parachute pants on your costume." Izuku spent too long crying internally at that detail to correct him before the tape-shooting boy continued. "I can't wrap my head around the mohawk. It's still throwing me off."

Izuku shrugged and threw his hands in the air. "Stop looking at it?" he suggested. "Like half my hair went missing, and I wasn't getting a buzz cut. I needed to do something that didn't look stupid."

Hanta returned to Izuku a sassy "are you sure about that" look, but to save the green-haired boy dove in Kaminari dropping onto the desk of the black-haired boy's seat. "Honestly, I don't think anyone else could pull that off anyways. You trying this at all is more effort and style than I'll ever have with that." The blond boy's head snapped around, his eyes glazing over their classmates' heads as he twisted about. "I wonder if Tokoyami could do that. He still hasn't told me if those are feathers and not hair."

"I think he told me it's hair: but then his quirk plucked a piece of it out so I don't know if he'll tell you the truth."

"Oooh, you think maybe it's a mixture?"

Izuku relaxed back into his seat as the other two boys moved their conversation away from his new hairstyle and went to pester their bird-headed classmate on his, instead. His eyes drifted around the classroom, watching as everyone huddled together in clumps and conversed lively with one another. A piece of himself was still on edge from the attack they'd all gone through last week, but it felt lighter not seeing so much as a chip on anyone else's shoulder. Their class was still going strong, and maybe even more so after that day. It felt nice to be surrounded by people who cared for one another so kindly.

It almost made him forget about the lie of his 'quirk' he was still holding over fourteen of their heads.

Izuku desperately wanted to keep this comradery, not just directed at him but his friends too; his accomplices in pulling the wool over their eyes. He wondered how they'd respond when he admitted he wasn't telling them the full truth. He wondered if they'd believe him if he explained the oddities of his strength and the possibility of it not even being a quirk. He wondered if any of them would even care about the discrepancies or the lie or how long he tried to keep it going. He wanted this peace in his life to stay, even if it was just in this aspect of it, but he understood this debate well and over analyzing in his head would do nothing to lessen the risks he was taking.

Maybe that's why he was beginning to accept his title as class president. A role placing even more responsibility on his shoulders, now in regards to caring for his classmates and seeing to it they all got along. His doubt over his qualifications remained, but the USJ was painting his eyes differently. They all were targets now, their association with All-Might unwillingly dragging them into a targeted assault on the number one hero. If they were dumb enough to attack once, the villains would find a way to do it again, which meant danger would loom over their heads until these men and women were behind bars. Izuku could no longer leave connecting with his class to verbal means alone; he now had to ensure they understood his desire to befriend them through his actions in defending and fighting for them.

"Hey, Midoriya." His orange-haired classmate appeared across from him, taking over the desk Sero had occupied moments ago.

"Hey Kendo," he greeted her back with a smile, one she returned with her own. He took a long breath trying to find something to say, and she did the same despite coming over to him, so he stumbled his thoughts over to their homeroom class from hours ago. "Surprised as I am that we're still getting to participate in the Sports Festival?"

"I think everyone is surprised the school is still going through with it," she edited his question, sulking over her knees with a sigh. "I mean the place is going to be packed with heroes so it's going to be safe, but I don't think I'm excited for it anymore."

Izuku agreed with her there. He'd grown up watching the Sports Festival every year either live and off recordings after the fact to jot down notable quirks and students. He had forgotten of the fact he would one day participate in the televised competition after Yuei accepted him into their attendance, and his brief moment of realization at that fact died when the excitement never followed. Even after the villain break-in they were subjected to, the school still ran them like race horses. Yuei was much tougher than he ever thought it was, the hero work the school put its students through aside.

"I'm not sure if I will be competing in it," he shared his trailing thoughts out loud. "Big, visible, easy-to-hit-and-reopen wound and all. Everyone else wants to participate so I'd like to, but I probably won't get to do much." Not to mention his uncontrollable strength. He needed his bat to perform anything beyond average — a requirement he still did not understand — but if he were to lose grip in the middle of a course or not get to bring it at all if no one else was allowed to use outside tools, then what was he doing other than running around like a headless chicken on live television? What could he do against even the quirks he already knew in his classmates not to be kicked out from the start?

"Midoriya," Kendo's voice came in, snapping Izuku's attention back to her curved eyes and sympathetic frown. "No one's going to pressure you to compete. You have every reason to sit this out. I'm" — her lips trembled between a grunt and a sigh — "mad at you myself for running off to fight and leaving us behind in the middle of a villain attack. Ashido, Shiozaki and Tsunotori will probably tell you the same, if it's not obvious." It was, Izuku confirmed in his head. Even in the group hug he could feel daggers coming from the vine-haired girl's eyes and their pink-skinned classmate digging into his side completely intentionally. "But we're all happy you're okay. We don't want to see our class president work himself to the bone and drop on us. Everyone will understand, I know they will."

Izuku nodded, eyes drifting down as his attention reflected on his classmates just that morning. "I know," he replied. "If I am allowed to choose, I'll think about it. Thank you." His eyes tilted up, past his classmate's soft smile, to the clock over their chalkboard closing in on the hour. "The principal actually needs to see me; y'know, check-up on this and all, so I'll know soon enough if they think it's okay." He gestured to his scar as he picked himself up, Kendo following suit herself. "And thank you for not kicking my ass for running off to be in that fight."

She shrugged back nonchalauntly, giving him a light knock on the shoulder. "Glad to know you can tell I would if it wasn't Sensei's life you were trying to save. No promises if you do it again."

He took the threat with a laugh — withholding behind his lips how he thought everyone else would have been targeted if he didn't at least try to hold them back — and gave a parting wave as he shuffled his way through the desks. He passed his group of friends, cluttered near the arrangement's front, the same message with a silent gesture to imply it was about his "quirk" as well, if they understood it. Whether they did or not, they bid him farewell in return, and he moved on to make his leave through the classroom's entrance.

Instead of the empty hallway he was expecting to see, Izuku slid the door open to be greeted by a crowd of his schoolmates piled in the hallway.

Barely a voice emitted from the crowd, and what little conversation Izuku could hear behind him died down as his classmates took notice of the horde before them. The green-haired teen scanned his eyes over the crowd, loosely counted every head he saw, and made his decision to calmly close the door. His finger tapped lightly on the door handle, and he lowered his head with a deep sigh carrying it down.

"Everyone else saw that, right?" he heard Kaminari asking out loud.

"Was I supposed to miss it?" came Hanta's sarcastic remark.

"Just…making sure."

Iida came up to flank Izuku's left side, and Yaoyorozu on his right as they all stared blankly at the door. "Any idea what this is about?" the raven-haired girl asked the two boys.

"Nothing I can begin to assume," Iida admitted bluntly. "Sensei made no mention of the classes meeting together today. And that's too much for it to be a class representative meeting for you two."

Izuku turned his head to look up at his friend. "We have those?"

Watching the blue-haired boy shrug in such a distracted manner was not a sight Izuku could recall before. "We're supposed to, but our first few weeks haven't been all that open in our schedule to attend or plan. Maybe the principal has been holding them off because of that."

"I'll make sure to ask him," the green-haired teen let him know, before reaching at the door again and sliding it open slowly. The crowd was still there, as silent and apprehensive looking as he remembered them. A few seconds of silence passed before he took one step towards them. "Can we help you?"

"No." He turned his attention to a puffy purple-haired boy who stepped forward through the crowd, standing just a few inches taller in front of Izuku. His lazy eyes rested on bags beneath them, and his palpable frown twitched as he looked around their classroom. "We just came to get a look at you all. See what Class A was all about."

A shuffle clattered behind Izuku, and he peered over his shoulder to see Ashido, the least perturbed of his classmates making the most of the moment; posing against a desk and winking their way. "How do we look?" she chimed at the boy. Izuku bit his tongue as Tsunotori shuffled beside her, confused but ultimately copying her physical demeanor on the desk behind the pink-skinned girl.

"Unimpressive," the purple-haired boy responded, and Ashido deflated in an instant across the desk, crocodile tears pouring down her face that the other horned girl tried to dab away. "Most of us who didn't make it into the hero course from the exam were slotted into general study classes. Fill up the rooms and meet the school's attendance quota. I don't see what makes any of you different from us."

The boy's attention turned directly on to Izuku, the green-haired boy returned the gaze, locking challenging eyes with his schoolmate. "Depending on our performances in the Sports Festival this year, we have the chance of being accepted into the hero course, come next year. And some of you, the chance to be kicked out; like the blond-haired boy you dropped in our class." So that's where he went, Izuku noted to himself. "If he's representative of what this course has to offer, then this is the perfect year to knock you all down a peg." That thin frown the boy had worn turned up slightly, and his head tilted back as he continued to stare down at Izuku. "Consider this a declaration of war."

A majority of the silent crowd behind him nodded in agreement, many putting on their own tough-guy show with crossed arms and puffed up chests directed at them. This was not a side nor a moment of other Sports Festival years Izuku had heard about, but he reasoned against being surprised by it. Of course a lot of kids who didn't pass the exams into their preferred courses hurried to attend other studies if it meant a chance at transferring up in the following years. He wondered what that effort felt like, had he not made it in himself and still had the chance to try again.

"My condolences about Katsuki but he isn't representative of our class," Izuku informed the other boy, smiling back to mock his own. "We are." Without another word about it, Izuku turned to his friends beside him. "I gotta talk with the principal today, so don't wait up for me. See you guys tomorrow?" Iida and Yaoyorozu nodded, both still dazed by the crowd in front of them, but they shared their goodbyes for the day before Izuku stepped past the purple-haired boy and pushed through the crowd of their schoolmates. "Excuse me. Pardon me. Coming through. Excuse me."

"A challenge of battle is presented before you and you turn away without answering?" another boy's voice shouted above the crowd, and Izuku turned to find the silver-haired boy shoving his way through to glare at the green-haired teen. "That's just unmanly! Who are you to make us hero course students look like arrogant jerks?"

Ignoring the boy's growling frown and gruff accusation, Izuku swung his hand out between them, holding it open for the other boy to shake. "Midoriya Izuku, Class 1-A president representative," he introduced himself quickly. He hadn't met anyone outside of Togata from hero classes, and though he wondered which this boy was from he guessed the crowd of other first-year students gave that answer away quickly.

Instead of the silver-haired teen grabbing his hand, another boy — smoothly-combed blond hair, a clean and unwrinkled uniform, and a grin spread across his face reminding Izuku of a goblin — took his hand and shook it quite gently. "Monoma Neito, Class 1-B vice president," he introduced himself, stepping in between the two boys. "Our class prez already went home; didn't want to join us in meeting our sister class amongst this crowd."

"I can see why," Izuku mumbled back, taking another peer through the crowd to find no head of pink hair bobbing about. He hadn't seen Hatsume all day, once again; he hadn't thought her love of tech and development would demand every second of her day. "Pardon me, I got somewhere I gotta be."

"Of course." Despite his words of understanding, the blond boy still held onto his hand several seconds longer before finally letting him go. "We'll meet again on the contest grounds of the Sports Festival, I hope. Friendly competition, and all." Izuku gave the two 1-B boys a squinted look before he turned away and continued down the hall. Sure, friendly competition was great and all, and he'd prefer it over the more confrontational challenge the purple-haired boy presented to him and his class (and he'd have to apologize later for leaving them behind with the crowd to go meet with the principal), but their conveyance of such an agreement did not pass off an genuine towards him. Was there no synergy between the classes; of students all aiming to work in a cooperative profession?

A dirty yellow caught the corner of his eye as he continued down the hall, and he would have moved on past it if the cold red eyes below weren't so apparent. He stopped, turned slowly on his heels, and came to face Bakugou leaning against the corner wall down an adjacent hall. He didn't speak a greeting or an insult Izuku's way, and his flat lips and stiff eyes expressed none of the aggression the green-haired teen expected. He just stared, silent, with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders slouched, and Izuku stared back.

Not a word was shared between them. Izuku had nothing to say himself; no conversation starter or condolences to his demotion to the general studies class. And if Bakugou had nothing to say to him — no fight to start nor a comment to make on his appearance as everyone else had — then Izuku took it as an offer to turn back away and continue towards the principal's office upstairs.

Was Bakugou still given the right to compete and transfer back into the hero course if his performance was good enough? Did the school believe he had a chance to be better and prove it so soon? Would they even be allowed to face each other if the competition called for it?

Why did Izuku want to?

---

Nedzu loved being a principal. The school board representatives and the district overseeing their curricular performances were an annoying pest of people looking to mold children into roles that needed fitting rather than their best individual selves, but his job and control of his school and its faculty gave him the chance to work around their strict regimens. Especially for a hero school that could have been uniform and harsh like their sister rival in Shiketsu, that freedom for the children to find themselves was highly important. Sure, the teachers of each grade had the choice of expelling children from their classes for Nedzu to replace elsewhere, but keeping them around to learn from the punishment and grow under their watchful eye and life-preserving care was an important part of his teaching philosophy. No matter how rowdy or rough a child was, there was still time to help them grow to become someone better and set them down the path to continue living that life.

He knew humans who grew up to be the lesser of men. They worked on him — tested, abused and tortured him — and he in turn rebelled, broke free, ended their terror and went on to climb Yuei's ranks until he was in control of making sure no one under his eye grew up to be like them. He would never credit that experience publicly.

When a knock came bouncing on his door, he ushered it with a, "Come in," and plopped himself on the little chair atop his desk as Thirteen guided their student Midoriya into the room, ushering the boy into the seat in front of Nedzu's desk.

"Thank you for meeting with me today, Midoriya," he greeted the teenage student, before turning his snout to the space suit-wearing hero. "And thank you for bringing him. You're free to leave. I believe Power Loader was requesting your presence."

"If he was, he could have just texted me," the woman grumbled through her helmet. "I need to buy that man a phone. Thank you sir." The heroine returned out the door and closed it behind her, leaving the principal alone with his student.

"I see you've redecorated," Nedzu opened their conversation, gesturing a paw at the teen's hairdo. He could never grow his own fur to such lengths, but he had yet to find a hairstyle that suited him beyond his short white coat. And he couldn't just buy a toupee either; his staff hadn't let up on Vad's attempt at a goatee, they'd never let him live down a wig. The boy awkwardly ran a hand through his stylized green hair and huffed a short laugh to the principal's comment.

"Thought I'd try something new," Midoriya admitted. "Needed to balance out both sides. I couldn't comb my hair down to cover it if I tried." His eyes fluttered behind his sunglasses a moment before his smile turned down. "It's not against the school' dress code, is it?"

Nedzu waved his worry away with his paw. "Not at all. Many students have unnatural hair due to their quirks and like your classmate Shiozaki, they can even be their quirks. Hair style regimen is an archaic restriction this school does not impose on its student body. Though a tie is usually provided with the uniforms." He patted his own chest to gesture to Midoriya's, and the teenager managed another quick laugh as he flicked his shirt collar.

"Yeah, I think I misplaced mine somewhere at home. Forgot I wasn't wearing one until I got here. Been kinda distracted, sorry."

"Don't apologize. If it has anything to do with what your class went through last week, I understand. Let that bridge us into part of why I asked you to meet with me today; how are you feeling, Midoriya? Emotionally, physically, mentally. Has anything been troubling you these past few days?"

Midoriya sat silently, twiddling his thumbs while Nedzu watched quietly. The boy's shoulders were stiff and square, and his feet jittered against the carpet floor, but his facial expression screamed shyness more than it did fear or worry. "Not really," he answered after a moment's breath. His hand rose to wave over his face, gesturing at the vertical scar that cut through his lips and eye. "My head feels fine. My eyes work fine. I feel fine. Ya' know, beyond the not-a-quirk super strength. Still trying to figure that out."

The boy had come clean with his knowledge over his own strength to Aizawa, Nedzu was made aware of that. In spite of his grand intelligence — to toot his own horn — the principal hadn't assumed the boy was in the dark of his own power. The feats he had managed were nowhere near subtle enough for them to miss, so how did the child performing them fail to notice? Could his adrenaline be blinding him in his moments of super strength? Would such an effect cause lasting damage on the boy's brain and perception as his classmates Kaminari and Sato faced with overuse of their quirks?

"That is reassuring to hear," Nedzu commented on the boy's well-being. "If that changes, do let Chiyo know. She's more personally familiar with our health center partner companies than I and can schedule therapy sessions under our contracts with them. Heroic work can be stressful and taxing; take no shame in seeking assistance through it."

Midoriya nodded after his words, sharing with the adult a small smile. "Thank you, sir. I'll keep that in mind."

"Good. And it seems we share a boat on the mystery that is your grand strength." Nedzu extended his smile, hopping off his chair and scuttering across his desk to sit on the ledge closer to his student. "Aizawa informed me you seem to find your abilities confusing. I'll admit, we've taken notice of your great strength since the entrance exam. The fluidity in which you sliced through our examination bots with a simple baseball bat was not something we could chalk up to simple human strength, and your disabling of the zero pointer was but the nail in the coffin. No doubt we're both aware of every supernatural feat you've accomplished, but I do struggle to understand how you yourself were blind to your own actions until just recently. Do you have an explanation for that?"

Now thrown onto the hot seat, Midoriya fidgeted in the chair, shaking and fidgeting and lighting up like a ball of fire across his face. "I'm not sure myself, sir," he admitted embarrassedly. "I've grown up thinking I was quirkless; that I don't have any power of my own. I was" — his lips fumbled together in a series of frowns, his head bowing lower under the weight of shame — "angry during the exam thinking I had failed to enter and my friends were terribly hurt. I didn't know about what I did until someone told me about it…last week? Maybe two weeks ago?"

How odd, Nedzu analyzed. Conditioning into believing was no new concept to his brilliant mind, especially on victims of harassment and abuse. Finding themselves to be at fault, taught and told and forced to think their aggressors or assailants were in the right; he had heard it all before. Its implementation on quirkless was new, however, in tricking people into believing they held no ability. For a quirk as invisible as Midoriya's and the acceptance of his status as quirkless his entire childhood, the possibility it had gone unnoticed for so long was on the table. But with no means of proving his strength was a skill obtained later in his life and only grown and honed through training, the most likely reality was that he always had such potential or even the same level of strength available when all the other children discovered their own quirks; had they tested too soon and tricked themselves into believing a quirk would never show up? Even considering the oddities of its biology and reaction to the world around him such as Aizawa's quirk erasure, could it all boil down to a simple mistake and a childhood of bigoted conditioning?

"The blindness of anger is a cautionary tale unbiased in who suffers from it," the small headmaster embellished the student's observation. "Succumbing to a sea of red and a surge of adrenaline has led to many incidents in hero-related operations and events. Stories of heroes and villains alike who retold their perspectives of such muddled memory and awareness. To miss beating a building-sized robot down through a paved road directly in front of you, however?" He perked an inquisiting eye at the boy who flinched back into a proper seated position. "I have every reason to doubt that but you seem to be more forthcoming to your teachers than to your classmates, and truthfully I fail to see a reason to lie that does not fumble itself into hypocrisy regarding this very conversation and investigation. But if we stand on equal understanding regarding your current capabilities now, all that we can do is move forward to find a reasonable explanation."

The green-haired teen nodded stiffly, hands clenched together in his lap. "What more is there to go off of? It's all the power of a quirk with none of the biology or interactability of one. I don't see where to go from there…"

"May I relay to you a theory I have been bouncing around, then?" Nedzu offered. "The opportunity to converse with you over this matter excites me so, and I am anxious to hear your opinion of the hypothesis."

"Uhm, sure."

The principal scooted further off the edge of his desk, closing the gap between him and the boy by another centimeter. "What if your quriklessness is the source of your superstrength? Your biology may reflect that of all quirkless life across history, but your actions shatter that mirror image without hesitation. What you carry now in your blood is a new wave like that of quirks injecting themselves into everyday human life, but now an evolved strength not attributed to a special genetic sequence like that of the quirks." He raised his paw and pointed his stubby finger at the boy. "You are the first of a new stage of human evolution, disregarding the laws of our quirked society and species and ushering in an age for humanity to accommodate to."

Nedzu could almost see the boy be shoved deeper into his chair by the weight of his assumption knocking into him. "That's…" Midoriya stared blankly at him, his wide eyes overshooting his sunglasses while they swirled information through his brain. "Is that even possible?"

"Quirks were a sudden change to humanity and an instantaneous form of evolution unlike its slower ancestral example; there's no reason this too could not happen."

"That just feels like a lot of responsibility…"

"How do you think the glowing boy felt?" Nedzu swung his feet opposingly, tilting his head in an attempt to capture the teen's gaze. "Your power is a situation unique to yourself, so far as I am aware. Our list of answers is limited in reasonability, so we can only assume under an umbrella of comparable instances to our world. What do you make of it?"

Midoriya sat silently with his thoughts, and Nedzu waited patiently, just as quietly, while he watched the boy's mind work. His hands unraveled and rolled over in his lap, and the principal could see his eyes, analyzing them and projecting all his thoughts onto them. After a while, he could even see the boy's eyes dip and his whole face bend to his frown. "It just sounds like I'm only special because of it, then; like it was any other quirk to me. That none of this is because of me, but because of it alone."

To that, Nedzu sighed deeply, and bowed his head low. "Then we see quirks far differently from one another," he concluded. "Our quirks are extensions of our very selves, an extra limb or a tool we rely on and use throughout our lives. We are one in the same, we and our abilities. Such is true of you and yours, Midoriya. Your strength is like your bat; you wield it, you train it, you hone it and you use it. You and your power are synonymous with one another. We may be unique from each other, but we are not so different. Our powers may be strong, but they are only so because we use them, not because they use us." He climbed back onto his feet, stalking across his desk back to sit in his little chair.

"But from how you've spoken to All-Might, how you've questioned your survival, and how you've come to view this, I believe I understand where you come from. To be quirkless means anything you do can only be credited to you; your actions, your struggles, your victories. It is because of your effort and your effort alone that you are here today, in this school, with your friends and your classmates, working to become the hero you want to be. Does that sound right?" The boy gave no verbal acknowledgement, but as his body sagged and his gaze drifted wistfully into space, Nedzu found the answer he was looking for. "To attribute your hard work to a force beyond your awareness — beyond your full control and consciousness — would be to strip you of that accountability and credit. To say it all happened in thanks to something that is not simply the result of the work you've put in being quirkless would declare your effort as meaningless.

"However, it is not the quirk that enrolls in this school. It is not the quirk that sits around at lunch to mingle and bond with his classmates, or at dinner to recount the day to his mother. It is not the quirk that steps up to defend his friends, to challenge the unstoppable and the immovable, and yet still finds a way to push back. That, I can only credit to you and you alone, Midoriya Izuku. With or without your strength involved, your actions and accomplishments are because you made them, and you earned them. None of your hard work has been in vain; that, I can promise you."

Midoriya didn't look up to him, still, as Nedzu fell silent to watch his reaction. He continued to stare at his own hands, though his eyes were distant and unfocused. His fingers twitched and curled inwards, but loosened and uncurled before they could reach his palms. "I'll think about it sir," he muttered. "Thank you."

Nedzu simply nodded and flashed the boy a kind smile. "Take your time. I told you before my school does not tolerate discrimination towards quirkless; I will not disrespect your upbringing. Reflect on it as long as you need, just know my staff and I will credit your actions towards you, not your powers." The small headmaster tilted his head back, eyes rolling aside to stare at his branching thoughts. "Do note that does include any trouble you cause, as Aizawa will hyperfixate on anything your class does under that umbrella term."

That at least pulled a snort out of the boy, rocking forward in the chair to stand. Nedzu could not blame the child for weighing his future on the stability of his own pride; many heroes did. The principal of Yuei could point to students of past generations — the likes of Mirko and Endeavor came distinctly to mind — who sought their future based on their individual hard work. Heroes who would credit themselves for their success, and many cutting out the laundry list of supporters backing them along the way. There was nothing truly wrong with basing his drive to becoming a hero on his pride, but in his perception of how he succeeded and what could be stripped away from his name and credit. The short mammal would have to inform Aizawa so a teaching regimen could be mapped out to help ease him into considering a more self-helpful outlook on his situation.

Whatever parting request the green-haired teen was going to make was cut out from his voice as he dropped back into the chair, sunglasses bouncing off his face to openly reveal his wide eyes. "Uh, right. Sir, I was hoping to ask you about the Sports Festival."

Nedzu's ears perked at the mention of the event, and he vibrated in his seat simply thinking about the past years' outings. "Ah yes! I do believe your homeroom teachers should have passed on the message that we would be hosting this year's Festival at its regularly scheduled time. As your class's president representative, I take it you have a democratically written message to pass to me on behalf of your student body?"

The boy's eyes fluttered in a moment of bewilderment before his whole body relaxed into a hunch. "No, sir," his answer drew out slowly. "I wanted to ask about using my bat in the competitions. I can't really seem to find this strength of mine when I'm not using it."

Ah. "Right, I was meaning to update you on that case myself. Thank you for reminding me; it had almost slipped my mind in the midst of your wondrous mystery. And I commend your commitment to using your strength instead of denying it; though it does sound like a departure from the disappointment you expressed a few minutes ago. May I inquire as to why?"

Midoriya nodded slowly, but he did not answer immediately. His lips pursed and puffed while his tongue swirled around beneath them, his eyes dragged away to stare off to the side, and his breath puffed out in long drawls until he had pieced together a thought worth sharing. "I want this power to be mine. I don't know where it came from, how I got it or why, but I have it now. I don't want this to be some invisible strength outside of my control; I want to know how to use it, and when I want to use it. And if it is what I am capable of, knowing the Sports Festival is going to be watched by" — his eyes widened as his lips stretched sideways to tense — "a lot of people, then I want to show it. I want to be in charge of this."

Nedzu watched the boy's fists clench in determination. Maybe some anger was mixed into it, but who was he to judge? "Such a quick decision to make on the spot. I commend your open-mindedness and willingness to give it a chance. But after discussing with the school board on the matter in preparation for this event, they have chosen not to permit your use of a bat during the competitions. Because it is not a tool of your own creation with a support and development course, nor is it a device for channeling your quirk's output for medical reasons — as is the case with your classmate Aoyama and the specially designed belt he wears — it is deemed a tool of outside interference and thus cannot be brought in or used during the Sports Festival."

To that information, Midoriya slumped over, closing his eyes with a sigh and reopening them to glare at the ground around his feet. "Damn."

"It goes against the rules and regulations of our school for this event, so my hands are tied on the matter. True, you could ask Yaoyorozu during the event to create a copy with her quirk, or request a student in the support course to develop one for you to use; the favoritism shown your way may be unfavorable in the eyes of some viewers of the event, but it will also show teamwork and the development skills of whoever you choose to find support in to many others. And while normally, I would fully support such a display of friendship, teamwork and marketing, I would personally implore you to forgo the use of any tools or weapons for the festival's entirety.

"Yes," he continued, raising a paw to silence the rising head of a surprised Midoriya, "as you have just said, you do not know how to consciously control your strength outside of any instance when you use your bats. But as I said, your strength is only like it. It is beyond reason to assume your weapon — no matter how many new ones you go through — is the source of your power. That strength is within you, and though you have shown to wield it with a bat to project it on, it is still something you should be able to show with nothing but the clothes on your back. You and your class have two weeks to train between classes and prepare for the Sports Festival, and you're a brilliant young lad. I have no doubt you'll figure out how to summon it whenever you please."

Even still, Midoriya looked displeased. "I don't have much of a choice, do I?"

"None that I would recommend. Chiyo told me you've healed well enough and will probably be in better shape by the time the Festival rolls around, so abstaining is your choice. To face the challenges before you, separating your strength with the bat from that without, would undersell you to the scouts attending and analyzing the event, and that's just poor reputation." The principal spun his chair around, staring up at the rotating ceiling with wide-open eyes. "But if you're willing to attend the Festival and give some training a try to handle your strength, just let me know ahead of time. You first years usually need all the time you can to put together an Athlete's Pledge ahead of schedule, so if you're unable to attend, I'll have to pass it on to our next available representative."

The dead silence that followed dragged on for too long before Nedzu stopped his momentum and looked to his student, seated still in the chair, and his begrudgement washed away by the torrent of sweat pouring down his body. "I have to do what?"

The school's headmaster hoped that wasn't chronic stage fright. "Each year's Sports Festival is opened with a speech or a declaration from one student of each grade year. For your senpais, that responsibility falls onto the student with the highest grades at the end of their previous year. For you first-years, we appoint that role to our entrance exam's top scorer, both in the general tests and the recommendation tests combined; which so happens to be you." He gestured a paw at the boy, and he swore the teen's skin shook upon registering his words. "It doesn't have to be too long, if you wish for brevity. So long as you avoid profanity you're free to say what you wish. Though I would recommend referring to the Festival itself."

"I" — the boy stuttered about, his eyes dancing in their sockets — "forgot that was a thing. I've watched the Festival every year; I knew that's how the grade-year representatives were chosen. How did I forget about that?"

"Well this has been far from an average start to any school year, so I can't blame your mind for being preoccupied elsewhere." He took one more glance up and down his student's shivering composure. "If you do not feel comfortable in such spotlight at this time, you are free to forfeit the position. Given the circumstances, the opening ceremony would be held by one of your classmates, Todoroki Shouto, in your stead. I don't want to force this upon you without your consent, but I would encourage you to give it some thought first. No doubt Aizawa informed your class of the hero scouts spectating the event. I think it would be a wonderful opportunity to appeal to a few agencies with some inspirational words, and as a good back-up in the event you do not discover the means of accessing your strength without the bat in hand in time for the Festival. Let me know a week before scheduled so your grade's announcer has the right name to call."

Midoriya nodded with his upper body almost absentmindedly, turning to look away as he probably did just as Nedzu had asked. "I'll…give it some thought," he answered. "But I need to figure out" — he paused, and a flick of light swam over his eyes — "how my strength works. No agency is going to take me in if I can't fight."

Nedzu nodded solemnly. "A fair assessment, but one I have faith you'll figure out in due time. We encourage our students to live by our motto, Plus Ultra. To give your all and your everything, to whatever your dreams or hopes may be. You've shown us already a drive to live up to that idea, intentionally or not. Even if it's only another step in the journey, I have no doubt you'll find something while participating in our Sports Festival. For now, though, I should let you leave before it gets too late. A few of your friends are waiting at the campus' front entrance; best we leave them waiting no longer."

The teen bowed his head as he stood. "Thank you sir-wait, how do you know that?"

"CCTV footage," he calmly answered, pointing to his computer monitor turned slightly to face him. "I always watch the front entrance, assuring you kids come to school safe and leave healthily. Everyone wants to know they're doing the right thing."

Though his face screamed confusion, Midoriya took one more bow before finally leaving the office, leaving Nedzu to watch his computer silently. It took only a few minutes for the mohawk-styled teen to walk into frame, briefly glancing up at the right camera before disappearing in his huddle of alliances offscreen.

Truthfully, Nedzu wanted to postpone their Sports Festival. Its yearly early schedule, especially for the first years, was to waste no time in introducing them to the larger world and offering only a tease of their fullest capabilities so early on in their education. However, no prior years had such a sudden run-in with villains into the first semester, and the principal would understand their reluctance to fight even just one another after holding on to each other to make it out of that fight alive. But the school board and broadcast studio strong-armed him and the staff to maintain their normal time frame, only offering the kids the choice to surrender such a valuable moment of their experience for the sake of saving face after such a bold attack on school grounds. If their education suffered or stagnated, it was all in an effort to prevent the villains from thinking they won in any manner of the word.

Protecting these kids from the monsters who wished to hurt them and the heartless that didn't care to comfort them was a daunting task, but one Nedzu met head on every year.

The phone atop his desk lit up, and the short headmaster patted a paw on the blinking light to answer it. "Yes, Higari?"

"Hey, principal," the voice of their support department's head teacher, Power Loader, echoed through the line. "You remember the note I left with the Bakugou kid's costume gear, right?"

Nedzu spun on the seat of his pants, his beady eyes boring into the little speaker box of his stationary phone. "Of course I do. Have you found the answer to its tampering?"

"Worse; I found the kid who did it."

---

"Are you sure your helmet is the piece needing a check-up?" Majima asked over his shoulder, while his iron-bulbous fingers tinkered with the steel and glass bowl before him. "I've ordered all your materials ahead of schedule this time, so you don't need to contract a studio to craft a new one any time soon—"

"And put those men out of business?" a layered, echoed feminine voice responded from behind him. "The Association pays them greatly for maintaining such important hardware and fibers already, I'm pretty sure half their staff has to tend to my costume. You help all of the students with their costumes already; you'd risk a whole grade year's worth of kids' costumes just for one measly heroine?"

"As if you were some simple hero, Anan," he argued back, screwing the glass visor back into place. "The principal considered, you are the most mysterious and most spectacular living being this side of the universe. If all their work can be handled by one man, then I will develop for you the grandest suit there ever will be."

She chuckled, her laugh bouncing off the walls of his private office around them and pulling every object just an inch closer to her, himself included. "I'll take that as 'beautiful' and thank you for the compliment, Majima."

The Excavation Hero only muttered to himself and continued to tune the Space Hero's helmet. He was Power Loader, not just a pro hero but one of central Japan's greatest tech and costume developers. Yuei employed him to grow the support studio marketplace with talent and drive to match his own work ethic. The school employed external studios to craft and ship their students' costumes, but each draft went through him first to correct each child's request with the proper fabrics, metals, shapes and so forth before being passed along. He handled over one hundred costumes and every grade level of the support course devices and patents; what was one more costume for the black-hole-bodied and space-skinned Thirteen added atop that pile of work?

"It's too much," Thirteen spoke up, her gloved hand resting on his shoulder suddenly. "And you're talking out loud again."

"It helps me work," Majima claimed, slamming his tools onto his desk and spinning the helmet between his hands. "And I'm done. The visor should better reflect and emote your expressions, and the water shouldn't drag its functions this time. The studio is too slow to perform a check-up on your equipment."

"Or I'm waiting too long between check-ups to go in." The heroine accepted the helmet as it was offered to her, clicking it back in place on her suit and flicking on the expression visor. "I might have to reschedule for four a year instead of three so you don't always have to do this."

Majima watched her programmed eyes bloom on and blink into working order. "What else would I be doing, if not making sure you're okay?"

The Space Hero's eyes curved fondly at him. "Sleep. I'm pretty sure that Hatsume girl is looking at your time-table as an influence. And you better not take that as a compliment."

"I could guess," Majima grumbled, looking at his office door, trying to see through it where the pink-haired student was still crafting in the workshop. "Brilliant a mind as she has, she's too infatuated with her work to go home without a reminder."

"Reminds me of someone," Thirteen quips. Her visor flicks off and then up, and Majima gets to stare at the dark skin sprinkled with spots of light swirling around two solid-yellow orbs that made up the heroine's eyes. She leans forward, her face disappearing above Majima's helmet before he hears a smooch followed by a creak of metal. "I'm cooking tonight, so don't stay too late."

Majima tapped at the sides of his helmet, just beside where Thirteen was holding it, and blew out a cold breath to balance out his heating cheeks. "I've only a few third-year students' costumes left to update. I'll be done in an hour."

"See you then." Her cosmic face lowered into his vision once more to flash him a smile of swirling dark matter in place of teeth, and she left not a few seconds later.

Without hesitation, Majima threw off his helmet, assessing the damage her kiss left; the spot of his helmet she touched had been pulled up and reformed into a tiny horn above its teeth, as though she had sucked it up with a straw. He was lucky she didn't tear it apart this time, but he'd have to replace it or fear the endless days taunting him about the "hickey" scarred onto his costume. No fault of her own, at least in the vocal department of the hassle, but such teasing was a hassle to fix outside of his coworkers' prodding eyes.

A clap of technological thunder roared into his office, shaking his office wildly, and Majima could hear the maniacal cackle of a girl's voice bounce after it. The hero dropped his helmet on his desk with a thud and shuffled out, looking up disappointedly at the mushroom of smoke pouring into the ceiling's air fixture. If Anan was to be his death by embarrassment, this child was to be his death by homicide.

"Hatsume!" he shouted over the static sparking of a welder and clanking of metal, at the girl dancing around the room's furthest back table as she clumped together some round contraption. "Classes ended an hour ago. Go home." The girl continued to hop like a rabbit over her work, her speed unwavering as she continued, so he stomped down the room with a heavy sigh. "Hatsume!"

"Yeah, teach?" she finally acknowledged him with a shout back between the ruckus of a stick welder and a hammer. "Wassap?"

"School's done for the day," he informed her again. "Go home. You don't get to stay in the workshop after hours."

Her head snapped up harshly, pink locks smacking around and her goggles rising to her forehead on their own accord. "But I'm not even halfway done! I can't just leave my babies unfinished!"

"You can work on them tomorrow or figure out how to roll this thing home. I'm not making exceptions."

"I won't remember even half of what I'm doing if I go to bed now!" she continued to complain, her hands shaking without the permission to work. "It'll take me two more days to finish!"

Majima did not fully understand how her brain worked at all. During lectures she would tinker and fiddle with small metals and trinkets, and she would do nothing but work with tools during workshop hours. He wouldn't have believed she owned a pencil had Ectoplasm not seen one during his math lectures. Photographic memory was one thing, but this kid took it one step further than even he worked with; talented as that may be, it still wasn't flawless.

"Then work on it for two days." Majima threw his hands in the air frustratingly, stomping around the desk to the bin by its corner. "You kids have the next two weeks before the festival with approved after-hour access to use. Or just try taking notes while you work like your classmates do. You barely write enough as is. I'm surprised you have any trash at—"

His voice died slowly as he peered into the wastebasket, littered only with a few crumbled balls of paper. That was nothing special, normally, not even for a girl he hadn't seen write once. A few were probably notes or scribbles abandoned by her neighboring classmates or upperclassmen, but the one silver paper Majima plucked from the bin was not from any of them.

It was written by him.

Attention: Katsuki Bakugou

Your grenade-modeled gauntlets have been designed and fully crafted, but will be held in storage indefinitely until principal Nedzu approves your full costume for use. No other liberties have been taken with your costume, courtesy of Detnerat's Costuming and Support Gear Department. You will be notified in advance when your gauntlets have been permitted for use.

Higari Majima

This was his handwriting. This was the missing note Nedzu had been looking for. What the hell was it doing in one of his classroom's waste bins—

Majima's head snapped to his pink-haired student as the welder started again, trying to take opportunity of his distraction to continue her work. "Hatsume, do you know what this is?"

"This" — the hand with a hammer raised high, gesturing to the octopus-like contraption instead of paying attention to the paper in her teacher's hand — "is a miniature replica of the Deep Sea Hero Kraken's Octo-Pack! Or it's supposed to be. Yuei doesn't have the right material to coat under the plating to make the tentacles fluid enough to match his design—"

"No. This." He dove into his student's space and shoved the letter in front of her wave, waving it slightly. "Do you know how this got into a trash bin?"

Hatsume stopped the stick welder and bent her head forward to read the letter more closely, before it shot back up with her mouth in a round shape. "Oh yeah, I remember that! Found it when I was looking for Metal Bat's costume. He never sent me his drafts, so I haven't been able to think up a device or tool to fit with his style. How rude is that?"

Metal Bat, Majima repeated in his head. Did she mean the Midoriya kid? "You dug through the students' costumes cases?"

"How else am I going to sell my babies to the hero course if I can't make the right tools to work with their quirks?" she answered with a question of her own, her lips curving into a maniac smile as the welder lit her face from below. "I won't know what their quirks are until I can see them in person, but I can damn sure design according to their costumes' themes until then!"

"Christ," Majima muttered to himself. Support course students were allowed to design gear for the hero course students, sure, but that both came later and only after their understudy internships. Shuffling through their costumes in the warehouse was not permitted. "Hatsume. Did you remove this letter from one of the cases?"

"Yep! I even found the smaller case that was supposed to go with it! The pick-up bots nearly missed it when they were grabbing them for delivery. Can't have one of the hero kids suit up without all his gear!"

"Did you even read the letter?"

"Kinda!" Hatsume crawled around the table, nudging the metallic tentacles together before ending on the desk's other side. What bothered Majima more than her lack of attention was how cheery her voice remained when answering him. "I saw something about gauntlets mentioned but didn't find them in his first case so I had to dig around the mess to make sure he got his whole costume!"

He was at a loss for words. This measly note had been the stirrer of trouble, nearly brutalizing two students and sending the support course on an internal investigation trying to find the culprit for over a week. Majima thought it was a problem with the droids who stocked the walls to deliver the costumes to the hero courses; he didn't even consider his own students knew their storage location or would dare to alter any of the packages. Then again, he wasn't aware any of his students knew the hero kids personally, or that it was the weirdly strong quirkless kid they called by a nickname.

"Those gauntlets were tucked in the back, under stacks of empty cases" — he stressed his words and he rounded the table again, intercepting his student before she could make a full round trip — "because the kid wasn't permitted to use them yet. Do you know how much trouble this caused — that you caused?"

"I made sure one of the hero students got their gear. How is that bad?"

"The kid wasn't trusted by Nedzu to use his gear in a manner that did not threaten the lives of his classmates," Majima pressed, grabbing and yanking the welder out of his student's hands to toss it over her work, completely ignoring her indignant cry of dismay. "His gear was to be put on standby until such a decision could be made that he was trustworthy enough not to kill another students directly. Does that make sense to you?"

Whether it did or not remained unanswered as the pink-haired girl pointed an angry finger at her teacher. "If he couldn't be trusted with the gear then why was it designed and shipped here in the first place?"

"Because Detnerat didn't receive my memo detailing that information, and even still, I have to approve them for use on school grounds." He had chucked it under a stack of empty cases on a short time limit the day before the training day, when the suits had shipped to the school. Not to mention, it was the only weaponized gear the hero students had submitted, so it was the only item requiring his assessment. A temporary solution for a last-minute decision he aimed to rectify the next day, but not one he even got to notice was missing until it was too late. "I'm forbidding your involvement with the hero course students for the next few weeks for this. I can't trust you with direct collaboration with them right now, am I clear?"

Clear he was, as the dismay of such news was evident across his student's face and her goggles went flying in the air almost comically from her widened eyes. "You can't do that!" she protested. "Heroes are the perfect showcases for my babies! How am I supposed to sell my name to investors and companies if I can't build for the most sustainable audience?"

"Well if you nearly kill them like you did Midoriya, you won't be." Crumbling the note in his fist, Majima waved a finger in Hatsume's face. "It is a pivotal role of us inventors to ensure the safety and wellness of the people we provide our gear to, or deciding the circumstances are not ideal and thus cannot be provided. Not only did you fail to assess the gear and deduct whether it was safe or not to pass on, but you explicitly ignored the warning provided with said gear behind my back. Until I can see that you understand the severity such choices can and do have, you are forbidden in tampering with or designing gear for the hero course students' costumes. Do you understand?" Silence followed his answer, and the Excavation Hero grumbled and lowered his hand. "Hatsume?"

In the cold, continuing silence that followed, Majima watched the girl shrink on herself. The loud, emotive expressions coloring her face mere moments ago had washed away, leaving only a dead, blank stare pointed at the hero. Her animated hands had stopped all momentum, dropping by her sides to hang by her hips protectively. The size of her eyes never enlarged, but they hadn't shrunk either, and only a few seconds later did her gaze tilt town to bore into her upturned palms.

"Midoriya?" her question came out softly, latching onto the name early in his rant. Had she even heard the rest?

"Yes, him. He and the Bakugou boy have a feud with one another we were trying to avoid pushing into direct conflict while we tried to understand it better—"

"Is he okay?" she interrupted meekly, the sharp drop in her volume catching the hero's attention.

Slowly did his hands raise, cupping around her shoulders and guiding her to sit at the empty table behind her. "From that incident, yes. The wounds he and the boy whose costume we were restricting were quickly healed the day of." Majima watched as her body remained unchanged from its frozen state. She had gone from bombastic to recessive in a few seconds, and though her facial expressions remained flat, it was clear to see this was how she expressed distress. "You know Midoriya?"

"He's" — her voice stuttered, eyes blinking slowly as she continued to gaze down— "someone I met before school. We were helping each other get here. He's a friend."

All the frustration fuming within his chest earlier evaporated out his mouth with a sigh. The confusion surrounding Bakugou's grenade gauntlets had left quite a few staff members on edge. His dangerous use in the battle trial, the tear down of the school's front gate, the villain attack on their students; presumptions were that everything was connected, or at least they became that. Ectoplasm cloned scouts along the border first thing when he came in, Hound Dog took to patrolling in his free time, and Nedzu was submitting design requests to advance their robotic security. As the first dangerous event in the school year, Class 1-A's battle trial felt too coincidental upon reflection. Had one of the villains tampered with it as they had dusted their front door and learned of a class time to interrupt? Maybe another student was aware of Bakugou's attitude and tried to sabotage his chance in the hero course? Every assumption made was built on the basis of ulterior motives and harmful intent.

To learn it was a student's misguided moral attitude behind it all, and one left immediately despairing over knowledge of its repercussions was a sobering end to the mystery.

"Did you tamper with the gear on your own free will or at someone else's request?" he inquired in a low voice, hunching in front of Hatsume while she shook her head slowly.

"No, sensei. I found it myself. I was only looking for Midoriya's costume but…"

"But you interfered anyways," Majima continued for her, "and tampered with school property while entering a restricted area without my permission or my knowledge." He muttered quietly to himself about installing more security cams around the costume storage locker; apparently its secure design wasn't enough to discourage trespassers. "You know Midoriya. Were you aware of his rivalry with Bakugou?" Hatsume shook her head again, opting for silence instead of flourishing her actions with an explanation.

The hero rubbed his chin with another heavy sigh as he looked over his now moping student. He was prepared to admonish whoever the offender was of his troubling dilemma, not to console a regret-filled child lost in space to their own choices. Not to mention the frightening creature that was the principal heading the investigation and waiting for the soonest report updating anyone's findings on the matter. They were prepared for criminal activity, betting on the worst possible outcomes, and yet had to face the reality of simply calling it a mistake vacant of malicious intent.

"Go home, Hatsume," he finally instructed her, setting a gloves hand gently onto her shoulder. "I'm still punishing you with no overtime in the workshop for the next two weeks, but we'll talk about it more after the Sports Festival. I will be reporting this to the principal, but I'll tell him what you told me. If you are being punished any further, you will know in the morning. You understand why?" Another silent nod. "Go home and rest, kid."

Hatsume followed his instruction without retaliation, packing away her tools and gears into the obscenely large backpack under her desk and left without even touching the work left behind on the table. Majima would stow it away later himself, but with the letter in his hands and the culprit identified, he had more pressing matters to attend to.

Slamming his office door open and closed shook the lamp atop his desk, but he smacked it aside by hand as he pulled out his office phone and dialed up the one staff number he knew. The squeaky voice of the principal answered his call, "Yes, Higari?"

"Hey, principal," he greeted the headmaster with a grumble. He gazed at the silver letter he slammed on his desk. "You remember the note I left with the Bakugou kid's costume gear, right?"

A muffled static of shuffling rang through the speaker into his ear. "Of course I do. Have you found the answer to its tampering?"

He sighed somberly, dropping into his chair with a huff. "Worse; I found the kid who did it. One of my own, Hatsume Mei." He spent but a minute reciting the information of his side and the student's, Nedzu remaining silent throughout to listen. Majima found it easier to look the man in his beady little eyes when they talked, not over the line where he couldn't tell what the man was thinking when the story ended and he finally responded.

"How troubling that a student's accident could result in such violent acts," the principal first commented. "I'll leave security upgrades on your departments to your decisions. My suggestions may be unfit to prevent incidents like this from happening again. I'll ensure you're provided with the required materials and funds for what you deem suitable. The Simulation Joint's insurance could do with some extra bundling."

"That'll be a piece of junk to improve," Majima waved the conversation aside. "I'll work on it later. What will happen to the students?"

"Hatsume and Bakugou, you mean?" the principal inquired, and the development studio teacher confirmed. "I'll leave your student's punishment up to you. As it sounds, Hatsume simply made a mistake in her judgment call, though it is still tampering with school property and ignoring provided safety warnings. However it was without malicious intent, and as it sounds I may have to direct Hound Dog to book a session with her before the Festival to ensure she understands there have been no health repercussions from her mistake. I trust you better to devise a proper punishment for her. As for Bakugou, I'll ensure he understands no blame falls upon him for finding and wearing his gear with no knowledge as to our planned restriction of it. Punishment for his use of it still stands. At least we can rest easy knowing our school isn't being tampered with any further under criminal and dangerous intent. I'll ensure our staff are made aware of the update, and I'll withhold your students name for the time being. No reason to draw everyone's attention over a misunderstanding."

That was far more mundane than the Excavation Hero was expecting. "Is that enough for a situation like this? I saw the damage those gauntlets did to the testing grounds; either boy could have been killed by them."

"Pulling the pin was Bakugou's choice, encouraging him to do so was Midoriya's decision, and putting them in Bakugou's possession was Hatsume's mistake. Both boys made it out of their fight in good condition and faced suitable punishment for their actions and roles in the conflict. Hatsume's action were not intended to spur on their problems with each other, but off a misguided attempt to hold true to her values. You said she knew Midoriya and worried over his health and safety. Do you believe that to have been an act to avoid blame?"

The girl who had come to class on the first day carried by her legs from a flying droid and tried to work on her project ideas instead of attending the opening ceremony? "I doubt it. She doesn't seem the type. Your call to direct her to Ryo was something I was going to suggest."

"Then we should punish her for acting against your directions. She has no involvement between Midoriya and Bakugou's personal conflict outside of this mistake. That fight is far behind us now. With the Sports Festival ahead of us, we can only look forward to the future and prevent our students from getting themselves into any more danger, especially now with real villains hiding nearby."

---

He still visited the beach, even when the kid didn't. An abandoned, quiet place no one else was coming to — least not when he was around. Despite everywhere he traveled, it was still the leading resting place in his eyes. Something about the views of sunrise and sunset, even over piles of garbage still strewn around the sand, felt right. Beautiful markers in his grand mission and story was the least of praise he could give it.

He trained, of course, wasting rubbish and metal as targets to bend and tear through with his fists and feet. He piled sheets and household items atop each other and struck through them down to the sand below. He lined bigger objects across the beach and darted past them, cleaving the edge of his hands through their thickest parts. What wreckage remained he crumbled down to thicker, denser pieces with his bare hands and started all over again. There were quirks all over the world that could bend human skin into a nigh-indestructible material; if he could break through layer after layer without sweat or pause, then nothing and no one could stop him.

Leftover scraps were tossed back into piles of lesser garbage. He left them for the kid to clean up as part of his own training and mission. No need to interrupt his work, and if his training made the garbage more compact and easier to clean, then so be it. Make the kid's life a bit easier — a bit.

As the sun settled high enough above the water, his body well trained and awake, it was his plan to move around the town. He had many places to be, a name to make for himself, and — to accomplish that — many heroes to—

"Hunter."

The tall, silver-haired teen looked back over his shoulder, spotting the younger green-haired boy waddling down the steps to join him on the sand. Least he assumed it was the same kid, even though the bushy hair he remembered was now replaced with a vibrant mohawk and nearly-shaved sides and a giant scar cut down across his face. But he did know the name shared between them.

The kid raised his hand to wave. "Good morning," Midoriya greeted him.

He raised an eyebrow back to the boy and turned his body to face the approaching teen. "You look like a bear mauled you and then sat you down for a trim. Fuck happened to you?"

Midoriya pointed a face of "what can you do" to the sky as he shrugged and pulled to stop in front of the taller teen. "Villain attack at school last week. Fought them, took a hit, made it out with a parting gift." Right, he had heard about that attack on the news. He hadn't assumed that Midoriya himself was in the middle of it, with how uneventful it all turned out to be, but of course a school staffed with heroes let their one quirkless kid get scarred while the heroes were unashamedly praised for their rescue. "And my uncle cut my hair; he's a good barber. Why does everyone have a problem with a mohawk?"

"Because you look like an idiot with it."

Midoriya gave him a glare of a stare as his arms fell to hang by his sides. "The other half of my head was shaved clean because of this." One hand sprang to life to jab a finger at the star of his scar barely visible beneath the short, shaved hairs. "I'm not going bald. I needed to balance it out. What else was I supposed to do?"

"A Regent would look less ugly. Might actually suit you following your afro."

"That would require spending a bottle of gel a day to mold this hair into place. It's standing up like this naturally; that's just how it works."

"Wrong use of 'works' there," he continued to tease Midoriya, walking past him to leave. "I got plans today, so I'll leave you to fix that and keep cleaning."

He was a few steps past the kid before he heard him reply, "I'm not cleaning today, I'm training. The Sports Festival is coming up, so I have to get ready for that."

The older teen dragged his foot through the sand to stop himself, and turned his head slightly to stare off into space. Though he had no recollection of watching that event, he knew about Yuei's Sports Festival. How the school pitted its children against one another in competition for the nation's attention on their television screens. Marketing themselves to the world of heroics as the next big thing until someone came around to outshine them the next year; rinse and repeat. And Midoriya was participating, which meant the nation would see him. And if the nation were to see a quirkless kid trying to be a hero amidst all the quirked kids…

He turned on his heel, a wide smile rising on his face. Midoriya had already dropped his feet apart, falling into a horse stance and punching the air in front of him. "So you get to beat up people on live television. They're actually letting you compete?"

"Kind of," the green-haired teen mumbled between huffs of breath backing his punches. "I can't use my bat since it's a weapon and not technically support gear so I have to compete with my bare hands. I mean, I've taken self-defense classes, but I think I'm too used to using my bat now to actually fight without it. And I know the final sport is a tournament bracket like it is every year, so I need to get used to fighting with only my hands. Everyone else is training, but everyone wants to do it alone, so I guess I'm practicing here."

And of course the big hero school had to strip the quirkless kid of his one weapon to stand a chance against even the weakest of his classmates, the older teen mused to himself. But they were trying to make the best heroes in Japan, so no wonder they were willing to handicap the handicapped. It was to be expected of men like that.

Then he remembered a night of theirs on the beach last December. How the Midoriya boy was riled up and agitated; how he poked and prodded the boy's head and heart to push him over; and how the boy nearly clotheslined him with a broken fridge by whacking it at him with his bat. A sign of how strong and capable the boy truly was, and the school for heroics wanted to strip him knowing full well he couldn't possibly match against powerful quirks in fights.

But if the boy was quirkless like he said, then there was little other option he had to help Midoriya understand.

He walked back to the boy, stopping beside him still dropped in a crouch, turning and twisting his arms into careful blocks and strikes. "What would you do if a punch was thrown at your face?" he asked suddenly, and the younger teen took his attention away from the shore's horizon to the taller boy.

"I'd…block it. Away from my body, usually."

"You wouldn't strike back immediately?"

Midoriya rose from his stance, waddling his feet together to stand taller beneath the other boy's towering height. "I'm more used to grappling with my hands, actually? Can't remember the last time I punched someone."

"Then you're doing it wrong," he criticized the younger boy. "You're a kid without a quirk fighting a school filled with them. All they'll know is how to fight to their quirk's best abilities, nothing beyond that. If you can't have a weapon to defend yourself against them and try to counter them, then you need to strike back faster than they move in. Punch me; I'll show you."

The green-haired boy gave an unamused look to the taller teen and tilted his head, his mohawk surprisingly keeping shape with little bounce in the motion. "I'm not sparring just so you can kick my ass as a lesson."

"We can do that another time. Just throw a damn punch already. And not a slow one, an actual one. I'm not gonna punch you back anyways."

Midoriya's angled eyebrows still spoke disbelief towards the older teen, but he eventually resigned and with a twist of his body threw his right fist towards his chest. His form was good, the taller boy would give him that. Speed could be better, but that could improve with practice.

An inch before the fist hit his chest, he swatted the arm away with one of his own so it flew past his side. With the same hand he blocked, he twisted it to grab the kid's arm and tug it enough to stumble the boy forward. The only thing stopping the boy from tripping down to the sand was the taller boy launching that one arm at the boy's chest, and stopping just short of cracking into his ribcage just enough to catch the boy in his fall.

"You don't have the luxury of just blocking their attacks, if you even can," he continued to lecture Midoriya, pushing the green-haired boy back to his feet. "The only thing you have now is your fists and your speed, and if you're to beat anyone in a fight, then you need to knock them down and out faster than anyone else will try to hit you. You need speed, precision, technique, and force if you're to hold even a candle in a fight."

Midoriya straightened back up on his feet, releasing heavy breaths from the sudden motion and looked up and the older teen with something…wondrous behind his eyes. The taller boy felt himself flutter a moment before he hardened his composure. "You're going to help me train?" the green-haired boy assumed, a wistful tone to his voice.

"You want to learn?" was the silver-haired teen's responding question, and a simple nod from the boy as his expression turned to determination was enough for an answer.

He spent the next two — maybe three, maybe four — hours with Midoriya on the beach, passing on to him his own style and philosophy of fighting, everything he had learned from the old man and what that old man was too afraid to teach him directly. The boy watched, repeated and performed his attacks astutely, and slowly but surely bettered his own performance of them. He took to the taller teen's techniques quickly, though still he hesitated to put power behind his punches. He knew the kid had the strength in him, he just needed to learn how to push it out. The kid would have to figure that out himself, though; it wasn't in the older teen's place to teach him that.

By the time Midoriya finally called it quits for the day, it was still early afternoon. There was plenty more he could learn, but the younger teen was spent on energy where the older had plenty still to spare. A plan to meet on the beach for the next two weeks was thrown about and agreed upon; a short time frame to teach the kid and expect him to perfect his adaptation of the fighting style, but one the older boy knew he was capable of mastering. With a wave shared between them they parted ways, the green-haired boy stuck on the sand to relax and catch his energy while the silver-haired boy finally took to the town.

The kid was everything he thought he would be, the older teen applauded internally. His fangs bared themselves in a wide smile across his face, and he could feel them shake to contain the laughter bubbling within him. If the heroes continued to fumble their hands and like that, then everything would go according to plan.

Midoriya would be a true monster in no time.