"Can't believe I'm telling you all this shit, IcyHot."

"Well, you're doing it. I guess you'll have to believe."

"What is your goddamn deal?!"

"Stay focused, bottom feeders!" Orca yells at us. I huff and sigh and look IcyHot in his stupid overly serious face again.

"OK. I lost to Deku in that stupid test. Bet it made you feel good to win that one, huh IcyHot?"

"We'll do that on my turn. Now it's yours."

I sigh. "Whatever. I lost to Deku. End of story."

"What's up with you and Midoriya anyway?"

"None of your business."

"We're supposed to be talking through these things, not just listing them."

"What the hell good's that gonna do? You're not a goddamn psychiatrist, neither am I."

"Well, it's what Gang Orca told us to do." He stiffened his jaw. "And I want my license. So I'll go next. I lost to Yaoyorozu in the Quirk Assessment tests. I placed below her, even though we started from the same place. That is a failure to be the best. But I've chosen not to resent her for doing better, because she's a friend of mine. And I appreciate the challenge of having to do better."

Stupid mature jerk. "Ok. Well, I want Deku to do better too."

Silence. "Is that why you're always so harsh on him?"

"Who's harsh? My own mother says harsher shit to me than I've ever said to Deku."

He blinked at me. "She does?"

"Sure! If the living room's a damn mess, or I speak out of turn, or fail at school, or get kidnapped by goddamn super villains, I get a hell of a lot worse talking to than Deku ever got from me!" That just sort of came out, and when I'd said it, I'd assumed it was just pointing out to IcyHot that I take it easy on Deku. And then it occurred to me that with his stupid dramatic family background, maybe that sounded…"But whatever."

"I never knew your mother was like that…"

"From the sound of it, she's a saint compared to your old man."

"That's not a high bar."

"OK, well you go now."

"We just did me. Your turn."

"Fine." I thought backwards. "Back at the USJ, I didn't beat those villain creeps in time."

"All Might had trouble with them. Even I did."

"That's arrogant as shit, IcyHot."

"I know my strength. I'm nowhere near All Might, but I know my combat capabilities."

"Well, so do I. And I should've been able to beat those creeps."

"Exactly. They're creeps. The League of Villains. They're a bunch of pissed off bastards looking to cause trouble." He actually clenched his fists. "Blame them for trying to kill us, not us fro nearly getting killed."

"Like you don't blame yourself for not beating them when you had the chance."

He smiled a little again. "Of course I do. And even more for not…" his voice trailed off.

I looked away. I was not ready to talk about fucking Kamino yet.

"OK, my turn. I lost to you and Deku in the Sports Festival."

"You beat me."

"Only cause you gave up."

He looked up at me. "I'm sorry."

I blinked. I couldn't believe what I was hearing out of his freaking mouth. "Excuse me?"

"I'm sorry I threw that match. I was too wrapped up in my own problems back then to hear what you and Midoriya were trying to tell me. And I ended up treating you both with disrespect. That's something I admire about you, Bakugou. I realized later on that when you were fighting Uraraka, you were showing her respect as an equal. I didn't understand it at the time. But you and Midoriya deserved at least as much from me."

"Well, Deku got what he deserved," I huffed.

"He said something to me that…for a moment changed my mind."

I remembered what I'd told Deku back when we'd fought before. That resolution: You've been watching everyone. Well, I can do the same thing and keep getting better myself. Well, Deku. Let's find out. "What'd he say?"

IcyHot blinked up at me. "He told me my power was my own, and not my father's."

Makes sense Deku would say something like that. Given how he got his own quirk. "Took you that long to figure that out?"

Another weird smile. What does this idiot keep grinning when I insult him? "Even then I didn't quite get it. As you saw. I hope you can forgive me for that."

I felt annoyed with him again. "You wanna be number one? Then you better bring your best, every time. Don't get hung up on what other people think. Doesn't matter if I 'forgive' you or not. Go be better for you."

Another even broader smile now. "Right. I suppose…" And it dropped. "What bothers me even more is that…afterwards, when All Might gave us our medals, they chained you up because you were angry with me. I could've stepped in, taken you aside so we could talk or have a rematch or something…but I just like them tie you up on TV. And that's apparently what Shi-"

"Whatever," I cut across him. "Throwing a tantrum's on me, not you. Don't go acting like you're responsible for every goddamn thing."

"You're avoiding it."

"Of fucking course I am."

He sighed. "I used to avoid this." He placed his fingers on the scar over his eye. "I spent a long time avoiding it. Avoiding Mom. I didn't even visit her until after I lost to you. And then I avoided thinking about her and my old man until that wind hole reminded me about it. Because I'd been avoiding it, it took me over. And now I'm here." He looked around at our miserable surroundings. "Avoiding confrontation only makes things worse. And avoiding things isn't really your style, Bakugou. You're not afraid of fighting the strongest villains in the world. Are you really going to run away from this?"

I wanted to slap him. I wanted so badly to unleash a giant barrage of firepower into his stupid face. I know what you're doing. You're trying to provoke me. And dammit it's working. "Fine. You wanna talk about Kamino?"

"Yes. I have to. We're talking about failures. That's one of mine."

I stared again. "Yours?"

He took a deep breath, and he wasn't looking at me. "When you and Tokoyami were marbled that that villain, there was a moment when Shoji and I - when we were able to grab you two. He caught Tokoyami. I almost had you. But that villain with the patchwork face got you first. I was just a second too slow. If I'd been faster, All Might wouldn't have had to…" Deep breath. "Go there."

One half of me wanted to immediately scream at him. You moron, you almost had me, you almost stopped all that shit? I can blame you for this? That was a tiny part and it shut up quickly. The bigger thought, however…

"That's moronic. It's my own damn fault for getting kidnapped in the first place."

I'd said something similar to Deku. Even though All Might had reassured me he was going to run out of energy anyway, it was still true.

"Don't blame yourself."

"You just said it, IcyHot. The goddamn Sports Festival footage was the reason those creeps went after…and that's on me. So forget about it. And hey, take your own damn advice and remember it's the goddamn patchwork villain creep and the rest of the fucking league's fault for being kidnapping assholes. Got that?"

"You didn't deserve to get kidnapped."

"Well you didn't get me that way."

A moment of silence, then a small breath of release. "I guess that's the big one. Failure wise."

"Yeah. Everything else feels kind of trivial."

"Can't change the fucking past," I decided out loud. "Just what comes next."

"Agreed."

"So you give your all in fights. Got it?"

"Yeah. And you quit being so hard on yourself."

"Sure."

We were silent now, and the room was starting to quiet down. Gang Orca clapped his hands together and everyone turned to him.

"Now that you've admitted your failures, you've found what you've done wrong before. You will have found behaviors - actions - mistakes you have made - and you will discover the best method to correct them. That is what you will conquer while you are here. The mistakes of the past, so they do not become the same mistakes in the future."

He strutted around, glaring at us all. "You will reflect on what you learned about your partner, and next time you will provide your partner, based on what they have told you, a list of what they must do to change their behavior. Think about what they can do to avoid making the same mistakes in the future. You will bring that to next week's course. For the rest of the day today you will do physical training."

I was ready to fist pump. Excellent! Quirk training. Real hero stuff.

"With no quirks."

WHAT?!

"You will make it across the obstacle course set up around the perimeter. Any quirk use means you will have to return to the start and begin again. Your goal is to complete it without quirks in less than half an hour. Once you've done so you can move on to quirk training. You will do this course every session until you are able to do it in that time. Understood?"

Goddamn it. So you're gonna make me experience what it's like to be Deku, then listen to Todoroki tell me everything I'm doing wrong? This must be my own personal hell.