Their walk was quiet and uneventful. The cars passing by and slow trickle of uniformed students was almost methodical enough to calm Aylin down.

"How do you get accepted here? This place seems very… elite." Aylin said with a glance around the grounds of UA; everything seemed pristine, and tense.

"It's hard, they don't accept many people per year. I was accepted by recommendation. Other students do an entrance exam," Todoroki explained. "Apparently it's very rigorous."

"Oh."

Thinking about it more, Aylin didn't know whether or not she was still in school, or what school she was meant to be in at all. She was lost in the thought of faceless students in a different building wondering if they were thinking about where she'd been, or if they cared about her. If she had friends.

"Do you have a lot of friends here? Do all the people in your dorm go to the same course?"

"I get along well enough with the class. Everyone in the dorm is a part of the 1A hero course. Refining quirks and learning to be heroes is what we do, mainly."

"Sounds fun," she tried to say it with some kind of smile, some light tone of voice that she couldn't quite catch.

"Here. This is where you're needed." Todoroki said, stopping short of a fancy door a few moments later. "I guess this is where we part ways."

The sound of that pulled her mouth into a light frown. "I guess so, yeah. Thanks for taking care of me."

He seemed to hesitate, stew on something small while she was trying to convince herself to knock the door. "Hey–"

Aylin turned to look at him but couldn't talk over the chime of a bell. "Even your bell sounds posh… What a place."

"I have to go. I – I hope that everything gets worked out."

In a beat, Aylin felt like the only person in this whole corridor. Uniforms in all of the same colours seemed to blur around her and she stuck out, but she didn't feel as nervous as she thought she would surrounded by people when she'd been alone so long. If anything, Todoroki looked worse off; she clocked the small droplets of sweat collecting under the red side of his hair, an uneasy line pulled on to his mouth. She said, because she had to say something at least, "Thank you, Blue Knees. I hope I see you again soon. I appreciate what you've done for me."

And she smiled, and felt gentle, and the scars up and down her entire body for just a second weren't burning. Then she walked into the room, without knocking after all.

She didn't hear him say, "They aren't blue."

Aylin greeted Nezu – surprised at his form to say the least. She blurted out, "Is this a Squip side effect? Some people looking strange? Todoroki showed me someone who was on fire, is that normal?"

And luckily for her, he laughed.

A few moments after that bell a few other adults trickled into the room, taking seats around a big table. Aizawa nodded in her direction, but everyone kept their distance. She wondered if she smelled bad before she remembered the real reason these teachers were avoiding her.

The discussion began without her. Everyone had an opinion except her – in her mind she was still on her walk with Todoroki until a policeman said to her, "Is this you?"

There was a laptop shuffled down the table hand by hand until the screen finally reached her. An article was up, among a thousand other tabs, that screamed its headline into her face: ENTIRE FAMILY REPORTED MISSING. POLICE INVESTIGATE POTENTIAL HOMICIDE.

The article itself was a lot better at using its inside voice:

A local family of 3 were all reported missing in the early hours of January 3rd. Neighbours told the police that they noticed the family's car hadn't been used for a few days despite knowing the rigorous routines of the family.

A picture of three women was tucked under the text. Aylin's face looked back at her, almost angrily, and a tag at the bottom said: Aimi (16). The two other faces had two other names: Mayu (41). Yumi (21).

A mother and her two daughters have been reported absent from their respective jobs, schools, and extra curriculars, allegedly disappearing without trace: the scene is described as undisturbed, as if the victims left willingly. Victims have been described as a Quirkless family which may explain the lack of violence found at the scene.

A neighbour tells us that their car is almost always in use, and when they noticed it had been parked for 3 days untouched and there was no answer at the door, they filed a missing persons report, but had no eyewitness account to give. Police were investigating this initially as a missing person's case, but took a darker route into homicide investigation on the discovery of a note that read: LOVE FROM, THE LEAGUE. More to follow.

Aylin struggled. "Yeah. It is."

"Do you recognise your mother, or sister?"

She was choked up, burning from the inside out. Her brain was forcing pieces together despite the fact that it felt impossible for them to fit anywhere outside of this article that showed a version of her. "No."

The discussion flared again. Deciding what to do with her, what not to do with her. Deciding what course of action to take or avoid.

Aylin – Aimi? – wanted to cry. "Sorry," she interrupted. "But as I understand it, you didn't find me. I was let go. So have you found my – my family?"

A policeman looked forlorn, tilting an exposed part of his neck to her animalistically, as if to apologise. "No. We're very sorry, we haven't found them yet, but we are looking."

"Can I… leave?" She asked tentatively, eyes firmly on the table. "Do you know where my address was – is?"

Aizawa looked at her sideways, too. "Are you sure you want that?"

"I can't stay here. Clearly I don't go here. I don't really know my way around, but it isn't like I can suddenly enrol here, especially if I don't have one of your little powers."

Most teachers mumbled, then looked at their police representative. "We're… happy to escort you there, but we can't guarantee your safety there. We were prepared to offer you a safehouse so that we could keep an eye on you and monitor your progress, at least until your family is found or you're in a better position… memory-wise."

"I understand." She said, almost diplomatically. "But if you'll excuse me. I think I might be sick."

She fled the room, and when she was far enough away from the door, began to run.

Tears in her eyes made it difficult to think – she was stricken with terror at the thought of forgetting her family and couldn't bare to battle with the thought that they might be dead and she, for some reason, was alive. She wondered who her father was, if he wasn't in the article at all.

In her haste, she ran square into someone's chest.

"Shit. Sorry, my b–"

It was Midoriya. He said, "Hi." Then, "Did you meet me?"

"I – what?"

"You know," he laughed, patting her head. "I really do think this'll be a fun way to get under these student's skin. I got under yours. How is it? Did you bleed out as much as I hoped?" He grinned his dangerous grin at her, and she realised she'd forgotten that he had some teeth that were fanged.

There seemed to be a shift from the ground. The gears in her mind moved at such an agonising speed: this was the Midoriya she'd known the last six months. The one who carved his initials into her leg. The other one, at the dorm, was a different person entirely.

Aylin – Aimi – threw up on his feet and ran while he was cussing her out for being disgusting. She moved in slow motion, the shoes she'd borrowed from Momo made earth-shattering slaps on the tiled floor, and knew that she'd get caught eventually.

An opened door was coming up on her right and a class came into view, and there he was again – Midoriya, sat at his desk. They made palpable eye contact; it was loud and panicked and pulsed between them. She screamed at him, turned around, screamed at the other him approaching with a knife and a look that could kill just as easily, a smell of vomit was wafting lightly from the gaping hole in her face.

The students stood in alarm – she wondered if Todoroki was in there – and spilled out of the classroom around her. Mina snatched up her arm and pushed her into the room, with a breath of comforting words streaming from her mouth. Todoroki brushed by, but kept his eyes ahead.

"Wait – wait, don't, I SAID WAIT – where's your Midoriya?" She asked Mina desperately, refusing to let her go until she had an answer.

"I'm right here," he said, "don't worry. I had an idea of what was going on before. I promise I'm – I'm the "real" Midoriya." He told her this gently, but his face has determination lathered all over it, she could tell where his wrinkles were going to be if he kept it up. "You don't have to worry about them hurting you anymore."

And he smiled at her, even though she had been terrified of him.

They fought. Everyone, somehow, was fighting in this corridor. It was so destructive, rubble started to crumble from the ceiling, other students were screaming through their evacuation. But this class was fighting.

"Fake" Midoriya seemed to fit right into the chaos that was unfolding. Aimi had decided that she didn't have to be afraid – how could one person take on these twenty students, and surely the teachers would be here eventually?

But on the other side of the coin, Aimi was terrified. She could take back her name, sure, but the memories of the person it belonged to were long gone, so she crawled under a desk at the back of the classroom and wondered what exactly was going to happen to her next, or who would get to her first. Planting her hands over her ears and dragging her knees up to her chest, she tried to make herself disappear. Again, apparently.

Someone tapped her knee with two knuckles, almost like knocking a door. She hesitated to look; her face was red from an outpour of tears, and her breath was awful. Todoroki tried to smile at her, but his mouth was a strained shape and so were the words coming out of it, "We have to get you out of here."

"I'm sorry. Again. Is he gone?"

"The fake Midoriya got away. It was a girl we've fought a few times before from the League. But there was backup, so I'm getting you away from here since they might recognise you, and target you. You'll be with the rest of the evacuating students – safety in numbers, you know." He offered her a hand up. "Let's go. The Pro-Heroes will take care of it with some of my classmates. You don't have to worry, Aylin."

"Oh. Apparently, it's Aimi." She could almost laugh in the moment, how ridiculous it was to correct him in a situation like this.

"You remembered?" He asked, genuinely glad for her improvement. Pulling her up and out of the door he added, "I'm glad there's been some good things today."

"No, the policeman showed me an article." She decided not to tell him the rest just yet. Besides, she was busy trying to keep up with his pace; he was fast, faster than she'd expected him to be, especially for someone with a fire and ice power.

"When we get somewhere safe, you can fill me in," he said, reaching for her hand after she'd fallen behind. "If you want to."

She was preoccupied with her panting breathes, but nodded. Not that he saw it, running at the speed he was.

When they reached a flood of students he finally slowed, and Aimi all but collapsed onto her knees beside him. "I'm sorry for causing all this. I didn't mean to."

"I know that, don't worry." Todoroki replied, kneeling down to help her steady herself into a sitting position. "If you don't want to tell me what happened, by the way, that's okay. I can see you look upset."

She told him anyway. Despite crying, despite sitting on the floor where they occasionally got kicked by a panicking student, despite not knowing anything about him. She was glad when he was kind about it, but at their silent impasse she said: "You can leave, if you'd like. If you're worried about your friends. I understand."

"That's alright. Last time I left you, this happened. I'd rather be here."

"Do you think that… Am I gonna get in shit for this? There's gonna be so much damage to the buildings itself and I don't even know my own birthday, let alone bank details." But before she considered giving Todoroki anytime to answer she choked out, "I can't do this at all. I should have let him do what he wanted. It would have been so much easier."

"That isn't true. Don't say that."

She wanted to fight him, but the strength just wasn't there. Her bones felt hollow and her flesh felt old and decayed. "I might faint again." She warned when her head pulsed and swam at the thought of any counter-arguments.

"Well, I'll be here to catch you if you do."