A/N- Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you enjoy this lighthearted instalment of my story!

Midoriya was feeling battered and drenched with sweat by the time Himiko finished with him, returning to her own apartment with a singsong later, Izukuu. Midoriya showered again, dumping his gym gear in his laundry basket, and pausing to examine the collection of bruises blooming under the skin of his arms and chest. The place Himiko had kicked him in the face was swelling up, but that was just the nature of facial injuries- they always looked worse than they were. And if his quirk was really returning from death, Midoriya supposed he'd better get used to pain. He put on a pair of pyjama bottoms and logged into his computer. He'd never been much of a gamer, so it was pretty much the same machine he'd had as a teenager, give or take a few parts.

A little nervously, he opened the hero fansites he still followed. They were traditional style message boards for the most part, and since he'd been on them forever, he'd earned moderator status on one or two of them. His handle was the one he'd held on to since forever, AllMight#1Fan, and it might have been a little dated, but he was glad he had kept it. Scanning down the front page, he looked for threads about his deaths last night. There were more than a few, but they seemed to contain the same two videos, and aside from users speculating on the exact nature of his abilities, the discussion was pretty dead. Midoriya went through the threads, archiving the majority of them, and considering his approach carefully before he posted to the largest of the threads.

Latest information is that this man's Quirk is called "Rekindle", he wrote. Seems like it's some kind of high speed regeneration.

It might have been risky, but he owed the site members that much. A couple of members responded immediately, asking him what his source was, but he didn't reply. He was a site moderator, so most people would take his word for it.

The other topic filling the boards was a string of sightings of Ingenium in Musutafu. Most of the supposed images had the approximate quality of potato prints, but at least one enterprising photographer had managed to train a tele-lens camera on the vigilante.

The vigilante was kneeling on the verge of a rooftop, if kneeling was even a word that could be applied to him anymore. His legs had been crippled by the notorious Hero Killer Stain, so badly that he'd been forced to retire as a pro hero.

Ingenium, or Tensei Iida to use his civilian name, had chosen to amputate his own legs and allow his quirk to regrow in place of the missing tissue, like a scar. Waist down the vigilante was entirely mechanical, a twisted mass of pipes and vents, with nozzles to control his direction. The media had dismissed his unconventional recovery, claiming he would never function properly in his strange new body, that was, until he'd used that body to murder Stain. Midoriya wasn't sure if it was his knowledge of what Ingenium had done, or if he just uncomfortable with the man's quirk, but he found the pictures of the vigilante deeply unsettling. Even half shrouded in shadow, Ingenium looked inhuman, the angle of his spine and neck skewed into a position that would be uncomfortable for a normal body.

Midoriya rubbed his aching shoulders, closing the image on his screen. He had better things to do than stare at a man who had thrown his dream away.

The next day he wrote his landlord about getting a new key and bought a deadbolt from the store. It wouldn't stop people breaking in while he was out, but it would at least stop anyone kicking the door in while he slept. The next thing on his list was replacing his phone and bank cards. Considering that his quirk had destroyed his last phone and that with any luck he'd have a hero-issue communications device, Midoriya opted for the cheapest phone that he could find, a simple model that just did text messages. He ported the number over from his previous phone, though his contacts were lost.

There was one message for him, from an unknown number, sent at 6:01am that morning. It read, sign the divorce papers. Midoriya smiled and saved the number. Todoroki. The papers in question were still on the side, still in the envelope they had come in. It was as if Midoriya's world had moved around them, leaving them in place, an anchor in the universe.

He picked the envelope up, held it in his hands and sat on the floor between his couch and television. They'd moved into the apartment together, laughing young university graduates in matching black and white business suits and shiny shoes. It had been empty the first night, and they'd eaten takoyaki from a street vendor and slept on the floor in a sleeping bag. She'd been happy with him, hadn't she? Maybe him finally realising his dream would make her reconsider. But she'd always been most upset when she'd been standing at his hospital bed, begging him to stop putting himself into danger. Being a pro-hero was no guarantee to an end to that sort of situation, but maybe his quirk was.

Midoriya stared at the forms, the empty space for him to put his name. He had promised Todoroki he would sign them. Maybe he should call Fumiko. He dialled her number from memory, saving it into his new phone, but something stopped him calling it. If he reconnected with her now, she'd take time away from him training for the exam. Sighing, Midoriya put the forms back in the envelope, put the envelope back on the side. What Todoroki had said had been right. She'd made her choice, whether he cared for it or not. But he couldn't bring himself to give up on her, and that was what signing the forms felt like.

Midoriya spent his next few evenings watching videos of the sports festivals from the hero schools across the country. Not just Shiketsu and UA, but the minor schools like Ketsubutsu and Seijin. Videos from the lower ranked schools were harder to track down, but proud parents tended to put theirs online, and the schools themselves published showcase reels as part of their promotional material for prospective parents. He quickly filled a notebook with observations. There was no telling exactly who he'd be competing against, but just as there had been clear powerhouses in UA, there were front-runners in each of the schools. A kid with a frightening level of control over tarmac, a kid who could extrude diamond shards from his body, a kid with the power to excrete a powerful glue from her hands. The list went on, and Midoriya watched the videos on repeat, hoping his activity wasn't getting him put on some sort of list.

Information on the license exam was scant. Midoriya knew that the format tended to change each year. He browsed the boards he moderated, reading other people's speculations on the sports festival results for the top two schools.

Every day, Himiko came over, bugging him to spar with her again, and Midoriya generally obliged her, stopping at the convenience store on the way back to buy snacks and a few ingredients for supper. He'd never been much of a cook, but he could manage a simple curry and stuff like cabbage rolls, which was apparently more than his new friend. She sat on the arm of his couch, her knees tucked under her chin as she watched him prepare the food, peppering him with questions. Would he make the curry with some red meat this time? Why did he want to be a hero? Did he think chickens had souls? And so on.

Midoriya found he didn't mind. Not having a job meant that he spent a lot of time alone, so he welcomed the chance to talk with Himiko. He'd missed having someone to eat supper with after Fumiko had walked out, more than he'd have liked to admit. Even if Himiko was much too young for him, the prospect of having her walk into his apartment made him keep the place cleaner than he would have otherwise, his bed neatly folded away in its cupboard and his heavy bag wiped down. To his annoyance, his favourite red trainers didn't seem to fit well anymore, and he stretched a bit of his already thin budget to buying new ones for himself, a size up from his old ones. Now that he didn't have a job, he pretty much lived in his gym gear, drawing suspicious looks from people as he ran circuits of the neighbourhood.

He had a second chance. To realise his dreams and be a hero. He wasn't going to mess it up. When he slept, new dimensions added themselves to his dreams of dying, the faces of the kids in the sports festivals, leering down at him, throwing a ball bearing through his skull with pinpoint accuracy or exploding into razor sharp crystals under his fists. He couldn't lose. Not now.

In the second week he went to the storage unit he rented and brought out his childhood notebooks, volumes one through twenty. His notes on quirk combinations, support items, everything. After a little hesitation, he took out the rest of his All Might merchandise too, the posters carefully rolled into cardboard tubes and the plush toys in vacuum packs. It was almost like reviving his childhood self, inviting the ghost of young Midoriya to watch him and cheer him on. There was even the costume design his mother had made for him, though that was both too small and too combustible to be practical.

From the outside it probably looked like he was having some kind of mental breakdown following the loss of his job.

Himiko, at least, was delighted by the new additions to his apartment, and would sit leafing through his notebooks, his special limited edition All Might sofa cushion squashed between her knees, as Midoriya constructed his support equipment. He could have asked Melissa Togata, he supposed, but it seemed a shame to distract her from her real job. And he didn't need much.

"Is that an athletic cup, Izuku?" Himiko scrunched up her face, the offending article dangling from her fingertips.

"You've tried to kick me in the balls at least three times this week," said Midoriya, taking the cup away from her. Thankfully, he'd not used it yet, so the smell it emitted was one of neutral rubber and plastic.

"Emphasis on the tried. You don't need that thing."

Midoriya flicked the athletic cup back into his pile of potential support equipment. "Think of it as a preventative measure."

Assuming his quirk worked every time and he could Rekindle from death, the biggest danger for him in any fight would be incapacitation. Protecting his balls was just part of that- he also needed to protect his face. Several of the kids in Shiketsu and UA's upper years had hypnotism or visual quirks, and a way to block out those was imperative. To that end, he'd taped a pair of noise-cancelling headphones to the inside of a motorcycle helmet, and tinted the visor.

"This is pretty good stuff," Himiko commented, peering down at his sketches for the gear. "How come you never got onto a support course?"

Midoriya thought about it a moment, turning the headphones over in his hands. It was hard to put in words what he'd felt at age fifteen, his failure to get onto the hero course an open wound, and All Might's voice in his ear, telling him to be realistic. "It would have been like giving up," he said. "Like admitting that everyone who told me I couldn't be a hero was right."

"And you don't give up." Himiko's eyes narrowed as she smiled at him.

Midoriya nodded grimly, slotting the headphones into the slot he'd cut in the helmet. "That's right," he said. "I don't."

Midoriya was not surprised when one of Uraraka's agency vehicles turned up to shuttle him to the exam. It was pink, with a white moon and stars across the side, along with the words URAVITY HERO AGENCY in a friendly font. What was surprising was that Uraraka herself was driving it. Midoriya was waiting for her on the gantry outside his door, his support equipment in a gym bag over his shoulder as he tried to pretend he wasn't nervous.

"Hey Midoriya." Uraraka floated level with him, arms folded over her chest. "Are you ready for the exam?"

"Yes ma'am." Midoriya stood at attention. Should he salute, he wondered, watching the number two hero. Probably not. Uraraka didn't seem like the saluting type.

She poked at his kit bag with her index finger. "What's that?"

"Support equipment," Midoriya answered, pulling the bag a little closer to his body. "I heard that you're allowed it in the exam."

"You could have asked for help from our support department," said Uraraka, giving him an appraising look.

"I didn't want to bother anyone," said Midoriya, wondering for the first time if that was the right call. "These will be fine, though."

"If they've been approved by the ministry," said Uraraka, her expression sceptical.

"Which these have," said Midoriya brightly, pulling out the approval certificates from the front pocket of his kit bag. Apart from his helmet and a couple other pieces of minor protective gear, the only other concession he'd made to being basically quirkless was his weapons- taking heavy inspiration from Sir Nighteye, he'd packed himself a set of handheld weights, about five kilos each.

"Huh." Uraraka leaned forward and gestured, the certificates floating towards her.

Midoriya tried not to gape at her casual use of her quirk, a thousand questions spinning in his mind. At the UA entrance exam she'd had a touch limitation to her quirk, but by the time she was a pro she had overcome it somehow. What was her weight limit nowadays? The skyscraper the other month was probably two hundred and fifty thousand tons, but she probably hadn't reversed gravity on the whole thing, just enough of it to right the structure-

Uraraka pressed one finger to her lips as she looked up from the paperwork. "I guess you're not entirely an idiot. Your friend Lord Explosion Murder was trying to say you wouldn't know your ass from a hole in the ground."

"Ah, he remembers me as a dumb fourteen year old." Midoriya grinned, shoving the certificates back into their pocket. "I spent a couple of years doing the paperwork for equipment registration for Aoyama's sidekicks. The process is pretty simple once you know your way around the regulations. Did you know that the maximum allowable power for a laser based support item is five Watts? And it's less than that if it's infrared or-" He paused, looking sheepishly up at Uraraka. "I'm sorry, I do that a lot."

Uraraka laughed, her cheeks pink. "It's okay. Do you get this enthusiastic about everything or just regulations?"

"Uh, just hero things really." Midoriya headed down the stairs, Uraraka floating beside him. "I'm surprised you came to pick me up personally."

"You're meant to be joining my agency," said Uraraka with a small shrug. "So it's my reputation on the line." They got into the front of the van, Uraraka in the driver's seat. The steering wheel had a special design, Midoriya noted, with an indent so that Uraraka didn't have to keep her pinky fingers raised the whole time.

"Do you know anything about the test format?" he asked, as she started the engine and the van began to move.

"They change it every year," said Uraraka. "So I can't say anything for sure. Sasaki was on the advisory board for this year's exam, so he should know, but no-one's been able to get hold of him for weeks. I guess it's just as well- Mirio wouldn't approve of us cheating, even if it is for a good cause."

Midoriya frowned. "Shouldn't you be worried about Sir- about Sasaki?" he corrected himself. He couldn't help but think of the man by his hero alias.

"No," said Uraraka, her eyes on the road. Traffic lights reflected in the visor of her helmet. "He does that a lot. He's a strange sort of guy. Because of his quirk, I guess."

"He was a great hero, though," said Midoriya. "One time, back when he was a sidekick for All Might, they were visiting a town on a meet and greet tour, and he foresaw an earthquake. Rather than cancel the event, he had the location moved last minute to one of the buildings that he knew would survive the disaster, and had the organisers offer free admission, so that as many people as possible would be out of danger. He said it was statistically better than an evacuation, and caused less panic. It was a big earthquake, but All Might only had to rescue three people." Midoriya told the details of the story as he remembered them, mostly from the documentary that had been released about the event, and the cards that had come with the commemorative poster.

"I've not heard that one." Uraraka smiled. "It's a good story. Sasaki doesn't like to talk about that time, though. Not since, you know-"

Midoriya nodded. "Yeah, I know." Somehow everything came back to All Might's death.

Uraraka drove him to the location, pulling up in a car park filled with buses covered in school logos. Midoriya glimpsed the blue and white of UA and the black of Shiketsu. "Did the students go inside already?" he asked.

Uraraka frowned as she pulled into a parking space. "No, I was expecting them to be crowding the van by now. There might be something wrong. Wait there," she said, sliding the door open quietly.

"I'll come with you," Midoriya insisted, pulling on his protective helmet.

"It might be dangero-" Uraraka paused, hands on her hips. "Silly me, you're immune to death, aren't you? Fine." She shook her head. "In that case, come with me."

Midoriya nodded, following the number two hero as she crept behind the nearby Shiketsu school bus. He could feel his pulse quicken, his focus on Uraraka's small figure in front of him. She stalked to the front of the bus, and touched her own leg, floating a couple of feet off the ground, far enough to see through the bus windows. Midoriya drew close, unsure, and Uraraka pressed her fingers together, landing noiselessly in front of him.

"What did you see?" Midoriya asked, not daring to raise his voice above a whisper.

"Well, the good news is it's not a villain attack," said Uraraka, her cute features distorted into a frown.

"And the bad news?" Midoriya asked.

She sighed, rubbing the front of her helmet with her fingers. "It's Shouto."

Midoriya clambered up to take a look for himself. Shouto Todoroki. Or Permafrost. The Ice Prince, as the news sites called him. He was dressed as he had been when Midoriya had first met him, in his blue and white hero attire, a crown of ice covering his red side, and he was surrounded by teenagers clamouring for his autograph. He was handling it well on the surface, but Midoriya could see strain in the pro-hero's smile as the students bombarded him with questions and praise.

"We should help him," said Midoriya, firmly.

"He's a pro-hero. He should be able to handle a few teenagers."

"He's in distress," said Midoriya, remembering how Todoroki had followed him after he'd lost his job.

Uraraka made a frustrated noise. "You sound just like Mirio, you know that?"

"Uh, thanks, I guess?" said Midoriya. Was Uraraka seriously comparing him to the current number one?

Uraraka sniffed. "Just stay there."

There were astonished cries of number two! and Uravity! from the assembled students as Uraraka made herself known, smiling and waving, and a large segment of Todoroki's crowd moved to surround Uraraka instead, some of them asking for her autograph next to the ones Todoroki had just given. The voice she used to greet the students was a few notes higher than her usual speaking voice, and Midoriya wondered if heroes had customer service voices too. Todoroki nodded to Uraraka, and, spotting Midoriya, inclined his head in his direction too. Midoriya froze, momentarily starstruck, before he raised his hand in greeting. There were too many students still around Todoroki for the two of them to talk, but Midoriya could have sworn that Todoroki smiled at him.

"Could all applicants for the exam please come to the hall for registration?" A man in a business suit with a clipboard was standing by the entrance to the building, herding students inside, and the crowds around Uraraka and Todoroki started to disperse.

Midoriya moved to follow the crowd that was entering the building through the open double doors. To his surprise, Todoroki moved level with him, skating on a silvery ramp of ice.

"Are you afraid?" Todoroki asked, his voice its usual hard-to-read.

"I guess I am. My heart is beating fast, and I feel a little nauseous." Midoriya closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. "I suppose mostly I hope that I don't let you down. You put a lot of faith in me."

Todoroki nodded seriously, and Midoriya wondered what he was thinking. "It's okay," he said, his voice low. "Just try not to die."

He walked on ahead, and it took Midoriya a good ten seconds to realise that Todoroki had been telling a joke.

The examination building reminded Midoriya of a convention centre more than anything else, attendants with red name badges rushing around in the big space, a stage set up for presentation at the front. There looked to be about a thousand examinees in all, about an average number.

The kids whispered to each other as he walked in and signed in at the desk, his motorcycle helmet covering his features. The rest of his outfit wasn't anything to write home about, just his regular gym gear- a pair of sweatpants and a tunic that showed his scarred shoulders, but it raised comment regardless. Who's that guy? Is he a pro under the helmet? Some sort of villain? Is he part of the test? Midoriya resisted the urge to activate his noise-cancelling headphones, listening carefully for instruction from the podium. The kids moved in groups, and he clocked groups made of solely UA or Shiketsu students. The rest of the groups would probably be by school, too. Midoriya thought he'd seen a Seiai Academy bus outside, but it was hard to say for sure- their colours weren't exactly uncommon.

There was one kid who was alone, the groups moving around him. He had red hair, gelled up. Midoriya thought at first that he was staring through some kind of time portal. The kid was a dead ringer for a young Endeavour. He was nearly Midoriya's height already, and the lanky awkwardness of his frame, the relative size of his hands compared to the rest of his body, all spoke of a growth spurt yet to come. His eyes were blue, intensely blue, and the only thing that marked him from the original Endeavour was a white lock of hair over his left eye. And he wore a school uniform, a dark blue blazer with the words Koruson Private Middle School stitched in white above the crest. What was a middle school student doing here? Midoriya frowned.

"Hey, old guy." The boy tilted his head to one side, eyebrows raised. "Why are you staring at me like that? You a paedophile or something?"

"No, I-" Midoriya raised the visor of his helmet, figuring that the face cover really wasn't helping his case. "I was just thinking you looked a lot like Endeavour."

Sparks flared in the air around the boy, then winked out. He grinned. "That's because I am Endeavour," he said. "It's going to be my hero name."

"If everyone could quiet down and face the front," one of the organisers called. Around the hall other organisers were doing the same, quieting the groups that had formed. "Then briefing for the first task will begin."