A/N: Hey everyone, welcome back to The Crow's Atonement, because Chapter 21 is here.

Disclaimer: Like everybody else on fanfiction, I own nothing.

"Standard" - Normal Speaking

'Italics' - Thoughts

"Bold" - Super Moves

Knowing he'd slipped out of the Observation Room without anyone noticing, Shoto made his way to the boy's changing room, discarded his ruined hero costume and changed back into his school uniform. He was glad nobody else was around to bother him, since with the storm that was brewing inside him, he probably would've lashed out at them.

Seeing Katsuki temporarily expelled had brought him little to no satisfaction.

Shoto wanted the blond to suffer, To suffer like his older brother, Touya had; suffer like his mother, Rei had; like he had. To him, missing out on a weeks worth of lessons wasn't enough. He wanted Katsuki feel his pain.

The furious yelling, laced with belittling taunts and angry sneers. The punches, backhands and kicks that used to bruise his body as he tried to toughen him up.

"How do you expect to protect people if you can't take a simple punch," Shoto could hear Endeavour's voice ring through his head, "Stand up, Shoto! The villains out there won't be as lenient as I am."

Even the small scale exposures to Endeavour's flames. Each and every time, the man would try and coax him into fighting fire with fire, but Shoto would always counter with his ice.

Once he was fully changed, Shoto dismissed the thoughts he had of him, grabbed his backpack and swung open the door of the changing room, pausing when he saw Momo standing on the other side, pity swimming in her onyx eyes.

He didn't want to see any of it.

"What do you want?" He inquired, biting back the scathing insult he'd been about to throw at her, because A) she wasn't the cause of his anger, and B) he really didn't want to talk to anyone at the moment.

"You left rather quickly," Momo said, her voice full of concern, "I'm not going to ask if you're okay, because it is obvious that you're not. So, after what you've been through, is there anything I can do to help?"

Shoto openly scowled, his anger overriding his emotional self-control, "I don't need your pity nor your help, Yaoyorozu."

He moved to step around her, but she also moved so he couldn't get past her.

"Out of my way."

"You don't have to suffer alone, Todor-"

"I said move, Yaoyorozu," Shoto snapped, cursing his current state as his temper began to boil, "I won't tell you again."

She furrowed her brows and pursed her lips, eyes shifting downwards momentarily, "Or what, you'll blast me away with your ice?"

Shoto nearly gaped as he stared at her. He was about to ask how she could think so lowly of him, but then he noticed the ring of ice he stood in and the slight build-up of frost and ice along his right arm.

He assumed he'd subconsciously began using his ice as his anger rose. Such a slipup was unlike him and he wasn't going to let it happen again. Last thing he wanted wasn't another lecture from Endeavour about self-control.

"Why are you so intent on helping me," Shoto murmured, so quietly that Momo almost didn't hear him over the hiss of the steam that came off his body, "is this so you can feel good about being Class Representative?"

Momo actually scowled at him, offended by the assumption, "I'm not doing this as part of my Class Representative duties, Todoroki-kun. I can see that a classmate of mine is in need of help and I want to give it to them."

Shoto shrunk in on himself, feeling his cheeks heating up and it had nothing to do with his quirk, "I'm sorry."

"Apology accepted," she replied curtly, "you don't have to pour your feelings and pain to me, I can tell that you're not that kind of person, but when you need to talk, I'll be here and ready to listen. Class 1-A will be waiting for you."

"Class 1-A?"

"We're all in agreement that what Bakugo-kun did was out of order. And whilst most of them are awed and terrified of the sheer power that the awkward introvert standing before me has, they're all ready to help you out." Momo stated.

A light dusting of pink coloured Shoto's cheeks as he looked away and mumbled something under his breath.

"What was that?"

"I'm not an introvert." Shoto said, slightly louder so she could hear.

"Really," she responded, a smirk playing at her lips, "how many friends do you have? Siblings not included."

"..."

The heterochromatic boy coughed and looked away.

"Exactly. Now with Bakugo-kun out of the way for a little while, hopefully you'll be able to relax a bit. Keep up your angry brooding and you'll go grey before your eighteen." Momo teased.

"Angry brooding," Shoto narrowed his eyes, "I don't brood angrily. And even if I was, how can you tell? Most of the class is usually going on about how expressionless Yaoyorozu and I are."

Momo smiled, tilting her head slightly.

Shoto nearly rolled his eyes, glancing away from her. Why was she looking at him like he was some kind of adorable five-year old?

"What?"

"You're not quite as expressionless as you think," Momo started, startling Shoto, "with my brother, his indifferent front is unreadable. If he doesn't want you to know what he's thinking, you won't. Although, as his sister, I can usually tell. You on the other hand, you think you have his unreadable, mysterious front. I'll admit, you have a great poker face, but your eyes give everything away."

"My eyes?" Shoto pushed, suddenly feeling self-conscious about his dual-coloured eyes. What was wrong with them?

Momo nodded, her smile dimming, "When you aren't focused on a certain task, they're filled with anger and resentment. Now, remember, try to relax now that Bakugo-kun won't be here for a while and we'll be here when you need us. You might not consider us as such, but we're your friends, Todoroki-kun."

Shoto nodded, then smoothed out his face into a neutral expression as he took in her words, even if the notion of friends was foreign to him.

Having a feeling that they were done, Momo stepped aside, allowing him to walk past her. She watched Shoto stride down the corridor, stop halfway down and glance back at her. His eyes flashed with something, then he turned back and continued walking away.

Knowing her older brother and his way of having an unspoken conversation, Momo knew Shoto had pretty much told her 'Thank you'.

She smiled behind a hand, "You're welcome."

"Kacchan, hold on."

The blond raised his eyes skywards as he passed U.A. security gate, cursing the unforgiving existence that was the 'Stupid Fucking Nerd' who didn't know when to quit or leave him alone. What did the moron want now? Was being part of the vote that got him expelled not humiliating enough? How could he possibly embarrass him further?

Shouldering his bag, Katsuki lowered his eyes and turned around, fixing a scarlet glare upon Izuku whose pace slowed from a run to a light jog. He didn't stop entirely until he was no more than a few feet away.

Telling Deku to back off was pointless, the shitty nerd would keep invading his personal space no matter what he said.

"The fuck do you want, Deku. Come to gloat?" He sneered.

"No," Izuku replied, no trace of fidgeting or stuttering to be seen, "I wanted to tell you why I cast my vote to expel you, even though I really didn't want to."

'Oh, yeah, this'll be good.'

"Hurry the fuck up and spit it out," Katsuki glowered, taking satisfaction in Izuku flinching slightly as a small explosion leapt from his hand, "I'm not standing here for my health."

"R-Right."

Izuku clenched a fist, and for a moment, Katsuki thought Deku was going to take a swing at him, but then the green-haired eyesore looked him in the eye, "Recovery Girl's medical rooms had speakers allowing us to listen in to the rest of the fights. When it finally came around to you, I thought you were just going to trash talk the other team. I didn't expect you to go after Todoroki-kun."

"Huh?"

"When we both got into this school, I hoped it would've been a good influence on you. But it seems like the opposite. You've gotten angrier and more volatile since I threw that ball further than you and Todoroki-kun's display of strength in the first Battle Trials. But, I don't know what could've driven you to hurt him like that. I just want to know, why did you say what you said? Why did you bring up memories that Todoroki-kun clearly didn't want to recall." Izuku questioned.

Katsuki snorted, unable to believe the questions being asked of him.

Then a low chuckle slipped past his lips.

Izuku promptly frowned at him, "Kacchan? This is serious, this isn't funny. Why are you laughing?"

'Gods above, surely Shitty Deku can't be this stupid?'

Katsuki stopped his laughter, but a malicious smirk continued to play at his lips as Izuku stared at him with a mixture of confusion and frustration.

"Fuck me sideways, you really don't get it, do you?"

Izuku frowned, "Get what, Kacchan?"

"You know what my goal is, right, Deku?" Katsuki inquired, unable to believe he was having to hold Izuku's hand for this. How could the 'Stupid Nerd' for figure it out by himself?

"Um, y-yeah," Izuku swallowed, "to become Japan's greatest No. 1 hero. To become a hero more powerful and popular than the likes of All Might. I know that, but I still don't get it. Why push Todoroki-kun until using his other half?"

"Because, you stupid fucking nerd," Katsuki spoke slowly, as if he was trying to explain something complicated to a primary school student, "how are people supposed to take me, Japan's No. 1 hero, seriously if they found out that everyone I fought was fighting by handicapping themselves by 50%. Nobody would take a top hero like that seriously. They'd be seen as a joke. Everyone would think their fights are staged."

Izuku blanched.

(Within One For All)

"Woooow, this kid is a dick. I know I told Toshinori to face his problems with a smile, and his successor is far too nice to consider doing so, but I would've decked this brat already."

"Lemme at him. I wanna push Blackwhip through this kid and give the other one a lesson!"

"Now now, Banjo-kun," Hagoromo chided, though he was equally disappointed by what he was hearing, "Midoriya-kun has barely gotten a hang of 5% of One For All. Who knows what forcefully unlocking your quirk for him to access might do to him."

"Tch, you're right. Can't believe what I'm hearing though."

"You did that... just so you could fight Todoroki-kun at his full power? And because you thought Class 1-A wouldn't take your declarations of being the 'strongest student' if you beat Todoroki-kun using only half of his quirk?"

"Damn straight."

"Kacchan, that's horrible!"

"Nah," Katsuki rebuffed him with a smirk, "that's just how I work, Deku. Nobody gets respect if they half-ass things like IcyHot was."

"Icy- I thought it was Half'n'Half bastard?"

"Eh, that's too long." Katsuki responded, shrugging, though the idea of any kind of insult, even one as mild as bastard, coming from Izuku was hilarious to him.

"I see," Izuku mumbled, "and t-there's another reason I wanted to expel you."

"Yeah? And what's that, Deku?" Katsuki growled.

Izuku steeled himself, "When you said Todoroki's mother should've killed herself by taking a swan dive, it brought back memories of what you said to me at secondary. When you told me to pray that I had a quirk in my next life and take a swan dive off the roof of a building. I could've let everything else pass, but that crossed the line for me. You tried to hurt Todoroki-kun the same way you hurt me."

Katsuki spat on the ground, "Tch, piss off, Deku."

"Is this all some kind of joke to you, Kacchan," Izuku inquired, disbelieving that Katsuki didn't think anything he said wasn't hurting people, "you can't keep going on like this. How do you expect to become a hero if all you do is insult and hurt people?"

"Endeavour's attitude sinks, but I don't hear anybody complaining." Katsuki shrugged.

"Actually, there's complaints about him all the time."

The blond felt a vein throb in his temple, "Fuck off, Deku."

"And one more thing, Kacchan, I don't know what's going to happen in the Sports Festival, but going by what I've seen of previous events, it pits students against each other," Izuku started, causing Katsuki to grunt in response, "You've put me down my entire life and I want it to stop. That's why, if we're pit against each other, I'm not going to back down like I used to..."

Katsuki blinked.

"...because I'm going to fight and beat you. Ah, uh, Happy belated 16th Birthday, Kacchan."

'Oh ho ho ho, the fucking nerd's balls must've dropped for him to challenge me like this or he's gone delirious.' Katsuki thought, so amused that his usual furious response to such a challenge didn't arise.

"To be frank, Deku, you've got some front challenging me, borrowed quirk or not," Katsuki sneered, his hands crackling with small explosions, "just don't go crying to your mom when I beat your ass into the ground for all of Japan to watch."

(Residence of the Todoroki Family - Tokyo)

Going through the stacks of homework she'd picked up from her primary school students, Fuyumi jumped in her seat as knocking on the front door of the house abruptly brought her out of her musings. Setting her pen down, she got out of her seat and headed over to the door and opened it, her face brightening and then falling when she saw the anguished expression on her little brother's face.

To see such a blatant display of emotion on his face shocked her more than anything. Normally, her little brother was so... so blank.

"Shoto, welcome-," she started, before her smile fell from her face, replaced by worry, "Shoto... what's wrong, has something happened at U.A? Was there another villain attack? Did one of your classmates get-"

The heterochromatic boy couldn't seem to keep still, shifting his feet every few seconds, "I-I need to- um, I mean, is Endeavour here?"

"No," Fuyumi stepped aside, gesturing for him to not keep standing outside like some kind of stranger, "Father is still working. It's just gone 6, so he probably won't be home for another couple of hours. Why, what's so important that you don't want to him here. Surely, if something drastic has happened at school, he should-"

"I-I used it."

She cocked her head to one side, confused, "You used it? What do you use, Shoto?"

"It." Shoto stressed, practically trembling.

"What's it... I, oh, right, you mean you used your flames?" Fuyumi deduced, eyes widening.

Her little brother just nodded, coughing as he wiped as his teary eyes. Letting out a gasp, Fuyumi captured Shoto into a hug that he hurriedly reciprocated, letting out a breath as they stood like that for a couple of seconds, in each other's embrace.

She let a few seconds pass, and with him on the same train of thought, they pulled away from each other, though Fuyumi kept her hands on her younger brother's shoulders which trembled through his tears.

"Shoto," she said softly, "what happened? Come on, you can tell me. And I swear to you, I won't utter a word of this to Father... not without your direct permission of course."

Shoto nodded, rolling his shoulders and taking a deep breath to calm himself, "We... had a lesson, another Battle Trials session, where one student who was the designated hero took on four other students acting as villains. The hero was meant to rescue a hostage. The match started and in short order, the student playing the hero, Bakugo Katsuki, dismantled my team in short order. It was just me and him."

"Okay, go on."

"Hold on," Shoto mumbled, holding his breath to stave off the hiccups that were plaguing him for a moment, "Can I- Could you get me a glass of water, please?"

"Of course. Just water?"

Shoto nodded, "Just water."

Fuyumi hurried into the kitchen and grabbed a clear, glass cup from a raised cabinet. Turning to the other side that had the sink, she grabbed a jug full of water and poured out water until the cup was three-quarters full. Setting the jug back down, she passed the cup to Shoto who backed the water without pausing to take a breath.

She smiled at him, "Another glass?"

"Please." Shoto replied, holding out the glass to her.

She refilled the glass and, like the first time, he downed the glass without pausing to breathe. Sufficiently deeming himself hydrated and no longer liable to burst into tears again, Shoto set the glass down and then he and sister moved to sit in the living room.

"Okay," Fuyumi hummed, a concerned smile gracing her face as she ran a hand through her bi-coloured hair, "when you're ready."

Shoto sighed, an action normally foreign to him.

"Bakugo started off by asking why I wouldn't use the fire half of my quirk," Shoto started, voice firm but tense, "he started asking if it was related to why mother is in hospital. I threatened to kill him for bringing her up, but Bakugo wouldn't stop talking."

Fuyumi gasped, "He brought her up? That's horrible. How did he even know about Mother?"

Shoto's face morphed into a glower, "He read the police report that he provided after that day."

She could already feel her emotions welling up inside of her, but Fuyumi knew she couldn't back down now, tears be damned. She had to persevere. If not for herself, but for Shoto's sake.

"Sorry," she sniffed, "I interrupted. Please, go on."

"Bakugo went on to mock Touya's suicide," Shoto continued, almost wincing as Fuyumi's horrified gasp. Unlike Shoto, she'd been old enough to remember how their father had come home, broken and defeated with the news that his eldest son had committed suicide. Only the eventual revelation that Shoto's quirk had rejuvenated the bright spark Fuyumi used to see in her father's eyes, only for it to return with more sinister undertones.

Undertones that she desperately tried to look past. To look past and see the good, wholehearted man that was trapped underneath. Between her and her two brothers, only Fuyumi had faith that she'd see her loving father come back and she didn't care how long see had to wait.

"H-He went on to mock how I got my facial scar," Shoto went on, shifting his gaze to the floor, "Bakugo said that she was scum; t-that she wasn't worth calling a mother. He said that if she could handle having a husband like him and a son like me, then she... she... she should've killed herself and h-hoped for a better family in her next life. I unleashed my flames after that."

Fuyumi's emotional dam shattered like glass.

She burst into tears, openly weeping and sobbing as she imagined all the emotional torment her younger brother had to endure, and Shoto flinched as there was an almighty 'CRACK' as the living room, barring the two seats they were sat on, were suddenly encased in ice. And it had nothing to do with him.

Fuyumi was openly crying, face in her hands and she got out of her seat and almost tripped over the ice as she captured Shoto in another hug. His shirt grew damper and damper as she cried into his shoulder. He awkwardly returned the hug as he clenched his left fist, expelling his much heat as he could to thaw the room and reheat his sister's body temperature which had plummeted from the uncontrolled release of her quirk.

They stood like that for a few minutes. Fuyumi hugging him and crying into his shoulder with zero effort going into controlling her quirk, while Shoto hugged her back as he counteracted her quirk with his unreleased flames.

"Fuyumi," he started, sounding slightly strained, "please get your quirk under control. I can't do this forever."

She nodded, pulling away and wiping at her eyes as she started sniffling. Wiping her nose with a tissue, she focused on her quirk and slowly reigned it in, allowing Shoto to cease the minor usage of the fire half of his quirk.

"Right," she said, although her eyes were red and puffy, "did this Bakugo get punished, or do I have to go down there and make some noise? I'll fully bring Natsuo if I have to. And we both know what he's like when he's angry or upset."

"He did. Our Homeroom Teacher, Eraserhead, wanted to permanently expel him, but he left it to student vote. He's been expelled for a week, so he'll be back in time for the U.A. Sports Festival."

"He should've been made to miss the festival." Fuyumi pouted.

"Agreed."

"So, um, this is probably going to sound stupid, but now that you've used your flames-"

"That was a one off," Shoto interrupted, a hard glint in his eyes, "I will never use it again."

The following morning, Katsuki found his blissful sleep interrupted by a screeching voice that belonged to someone who, no matter how he loved them - he'd never actually tell her that thought - was the bane of his existence.

"Katsuki! Why the hell aren't you at school, get your ass out of bed!" Was the sentence that ripped him out of his sleep.

Huffing and groaning, and wishing that he wouldn't have to deal with explaining why he wouldn't be attending U.A. for a week, he rolled to one side and smushed a pillow against his face. His silence was broken once more a few seconds later.

"Katsuki, get the fuck out of bed before I drag you out by your hair!"

Letting out an anguished sigh as he threw his duvet and pillow aside, Katsuki rolled out of bed and stretched, feeling popping in the bones throughout his body. Yanking his dark red dressing gown off of his door and pulling it on, he swung open his door and headed over to the bathroom; quickly taking a piss, wiping down his face to freshen himself up and brushed his teeth.

Walking out the bathroom, Katsuki took his time getting down the stairs. Quickly reaching the bottom, he yawned and then made his way into a spacious living room where his mother and father were seated, looking highly apprehensive, and... Shota Aizawa, still wrapped up from head to toe in bandages.

'For fucks sake.'

His mother, Mitsuki, presented him with a sunny smile as soon as he walked into the room. She was out of her seat in an instant, pinching Katsuki by the ear and hauling him over to an unoccupied sofa.

Ignoring how he slapped her hand away, she glowered down at him, "How nice to see you with us, Katsuki. Mind telling your father and I how you got expelled for a week from U.A?"

Katsuki glared at the floor, wishing it would open up and take him away.

"Son, please, look your mother in the eye and answer her." His father, Masaru, told him, his voice soft.

His son continued to try and burn holes into the floor with his eyes.

When it quickly became clear that Katsuki wasn't going to be answering any questions, Shota grunted and stood up, then pulled out a case with a DVD in it. He fixed his piercing stare upon his student for a second, then looked at Masaru and cleared his throat.

"Excuse me, sir, since it is quite clear that your son doesn't want to answer your wife's questions, may I use your DVD player?" Shota inquired, removing the DVD from the case.

Masaru got out of his chair.

"Of course, Mr..."

"Eraserhead." Shota supplied.

"Of course, Eraserhead," Masaru chuckled, rubbing his head nervously as he took the DVD from the other man and placed it into the silt in the DVD player. He then grabbed the TV remote and switched it over to the DVD setting. Setting that down, he picked up the DVD remote, sifted through the various records before pressing on one as per the instructions of Shota.

"There's sound, so you can hear every word that came out of your son's mouth," Shota stated, "I want you to play through the whole thing. Don't pause and I don't expect any questions until you've watched the whole thing."

Mitsuki looked like she wanted to argue, but one look from the pro hero killed whatever she'd been about to say. Taking that as his cue, Masaru turned up the volume and allowed the recording to play.

Shota watched, face as unreadable as a brick wall.

Katsuki refused to watch, scowling as he glared at the floor.

Mitsuki beamed with pride as she watched her son steamrolled most of his opposition, then as the video progressed to the one-on-one with the boy who was ice, her pride disintegrated as her face became as stormy as a thundercloud.

Masaru blinked once, twice, before dropping his head into his hands, letting out a soft sigh.

The video ended.

Mitsuki rounded on her son, grabbing a fistful of his hair and pulling him up - not hard enough to rip strands out - until he was looking at her face, "You disgusting little shit, what the fuck was going through your head when you said those thing, huh? Throw as much verbal shit at someone as you'd like, but leave personal loss and people's mothers out of it. You hear me?"

A mute nod.

"Oh," she snapped, "what was that? I didn't quite hear you?"

"I. Hear. You."

"Without the attitude and not through gritted teeth, young man!"

"I hear you." Katsuki repeated, forcing himself to relax and unclench his teeth.

"Better! Masaru, don't just sit there in silence, say something!"

Shota saw where his student got his whole 'explosive' personality from. He watched as the brunette sighed, his face seeming to age with the simple action.

"My son... with you getting into U.A., I can't say that I couldn't see something like this happening." The man started.

Mitsuki let go of her son's hair and turned to her husband, confusion etched all over her face.

Katsuki couldn't bring himself to say anything as he looked at his father.

Shota grunted.

"You used to be this nice, kind boy, especially when you were friends with Inko's boy, Midoriya Izuku," Masaru began his explanation, "and then you just suddenly... switched. For the next decade, it seemed like Midoriya just fell out of your life. Any good mention of him turned into 'Shitty Deku this' and 'Shitty Deku that'. You've always had a competitive streak, something you inherited from your mother, but you were never cruel and prejudiced. I don't know what changed."

Mitsuki seemed to pale.

Shota narrowed his eyes, gesturing for the man to continue.

Masaru took a sip from his glass of water before he did so.

"Something in you must've snapped after your sixth birthday," Masaru continued, "Whenever I went with you to a Parent's Evening to talk to your teachers, you were always belittling other students. 'That kid with the lowest grades is going to be collecting bins for the rest of their life' or 'That dumbass with a stutter needs to learn how to speak properly' or 'That quirkless shit will never achieve anything'."

Shota merely blinked.

Mitsuki sighed, shaking her head.

Katsuki refused to acknowledge any of the shame that seemed to be flooding into him.

"And now," Masaru's voice turned uncharacteristically hard, lacking its usual warmth and softness, "in your quest to become the strongest hero in Japan, you put others down. Calling them 'extras'. Your pride can't allow you to fight others at anything less than their full potential. Their problems become excuses for you, don't they? Where do you get off on mocking the pain of others? To Mitsuki, you're her angel, so I thought she hadn't noticed or had noticed and didn't care. I do, but didn't say anything because I thought she'd bulldoze whatever argument I had with her. Well, son, here's a reality check for you: If either of your parents had married somebody else, guess what, you'd be a nobody."

Mitsuki choked.

Shota's eyebrows disappeared into his bandages.

Katsuki's head shot up, eyes wide.

"What?"

Masaru flexed his hands a few times until there was liquid that looked rather foggy in his palms. The man proceeded to rub his hands together, the friction causing the liquid to explode, going off with the force of a firecracker.

"My quirk, Acid Sweat, allows me to secrete explosive sweat. I can only detonate via rubbing my hands together," the father said, then looked at his wife, "your mothers quirk, Glycerine, allows her to produce exactly that. Her skincare routine notwithstanding, it's what keeps her looking like she's still in her late-twenties."

Shota watched, wholly unimpressed, as Mitsuki preened.

"If I'd had a child with someone else, you'd be born with a quirk no better than mine," Masaru continued, "but through your mother and my genes, your Explosion allows you to produce and detonate the substance that is remarkably similar to, but isn't quite, nitroglycerine. This power, that you love to lord over others, had spawned from the sole fact that I was taken by your mother's domineering personality. Now imagine if I was like most other men, pushing Mitsuki away because a man must be louder and bigger than his wife."

A smirk came about Mitsuki's face.

Katsuki nodded imperceptibly, itching to deck his old man for the lecture he vowed not to give a second thought about, consequences be damned.

"Bakugo."

The blond looked over to his Homeroom Teacher who was staring at with the intensity of a thousand bored, yet intensely focused men.

"What?"

"I want you to think about what's been said today," Shota drawled, "I don't expect a sudden change from you. That unrealistic, but I want you to be better. I know you can be. Your parents want you to be better, and regardless of the power or versatility of their quirk, I have no time for arrogant children like yourself. Whether it takes weeks or months, I don't expect- I want you to turn yourself into somebody worth teaching and paying attention to. To turn into somebody who, when they say 'I'll surpass All Might and become Japan's greatest hero', I'll believe them. Am I understood?"

Katsuki looked away and mumbled something.

Mitsuki furrowed her brow, "Speak to your teacher clearly, Katsuki."

Shota's eyes flashed red, causing Masaru to flinch, "I'm sorry, I didn't quite hear that."

Katsuki forced himself to look at Shota's glowing eyes, "I understand."

Shota blinked, then began administering his eye drops to ease his dry eye, "Good... And on that note, thank you for your time, Mr. Bakugo, Mrs. Bakugo."

Mitsuki waved him off, "Thank you for bringing our son's personality deficit to our greater attention, Eraserhead. We'll ensure our son thinks about what he's been told, won't we, Masaru?"

Masaru recognized the sickly sweet tone his wife was using. A tone that promised no sex for him if he said the wrong thing.

"Of course, dear," he said, then turned to Eraserhead who had stood up, "May I see you out?"

"Sure."

Masaru opened the front door and Shota began to walk out, but paused as his right foot hit the pavement.

"One more thing, Bakugo," Shota said without turning around, prompting his student to come over and look at his back, "if you haven't changed at all by the time your first year has ended, don't expect to come back for your second year at U.A. You've got, what... 11 months to change. No pressure."

He walked out and Masaru shut the door.

A week passed and the U.A. Sports Festival rolled up far too quickly for many in Class 1-A and 1-B. Despite the fact that they'd all been training after the dramatic and explosive end to the second Battle Trials, several students felt like they hadn't had enough to train.

Starting from the 9am of Japan's specific timezone, hundreds of thousands of TVs across East Asia and North America would be tuning in to watch the U.A. Sports Festival.

Then, as Class 1-A was hyping themselves up for the major event, right after half of them had gotten over falling over themselves when Katsuki Bakugo waltzed into the classroom as if he owned it, one Shoto Todoroki decided now was the perfect time to drop an absolute bombshell.

"Midoriya," he started, face carefully blank as the boy turned to him, "looking at things objectively, I can say with absolutely certainty, that I'm stronger than you. You might spend a lot of time with All Might, and I don't know why, but I know that I can beat you."

Itachi turned to watch the sudden confrontation with amused interest.

Katsuki snorted softly.

"..."

"..."

"...Dude, what the fuck?"

"Yo, is this a declaration of war between Todoroki and Midoriya?"

"Hey, hey, hey, there's no need to start a fight. Knock it off, this isn't manly."

Izuku blinked, slightly taken aback, "Todoroki-kun?"

"We're not here to make friends," Shoto replied coldly, turning to walk out of the class, "So what does my 'declaration of war' matter?"

"Todoroki-kun, I don't know what's come over you to make you say that. I know you're better than me, you're more capable than most," Izuku paused, causing the tension in the air to thicken, "but looking at it objectively, everyone here, even those from other classes, are aiming for the top! I can't afford to fall behind either, so I'll be giving it everything I've got!"

Tenya waved his arms furiously, "Yaoyorozu-kun, aren't you going to stop this shameful display? Do something!"

"What's there to stop? It's not like they're at each others throat," Momo replied, hiding a smile behind her hand as she turned to Itachi, "Looks like they're all fired up. Are you ready?"

Itachi internally scoffed, having a feeling that the U.A. Sports Festival would be similar to the Chunin Exams, except there'd be no progression in rank at the end of it, "Of course. Are you?"

"Ready as I'll ever be."

Itachi then looked over and shared a nod with Mashirao who wore a determined expression. Time to display the results of their training and give Japan, and the entire world by extension, a show that they'd never forget.

A/N: That's Chapter 21 for you guys. Momo tells Shoto he doesn't have to deal with stuff alone, Izuku tries to see things from Katsuki's perspective. Shoto vents to the one person he possibly can, his sister. And Katsuki gets a reality check, one of many, and please don't mistake what I'm doing as Bakugo-Bashing. The guy has problems and needs to see them checked out, but he needs to wake up and realize that the world doesn't revolve around him.

Have a Happy New Year, everyone. Tune in when the next chapter drops for the beginning of the Sports Festival.