The next day felt like the beginning of a routine for Nana and Izuku. As she fell into the pattern of training and learning and spending time with her new friends, Nana almost forgot she'd technically come back to life just a few days before.

Then Izuku would look across the room at her, and she'd slip into his thoughts almost as easily as she did her own; that made everything come rushing back.

At lunch, Toshi invited them to his office. While Nana floated around and prodded at the books and pictures laying on various shelves, the boy she'd given One For All to explained, "Gran Torino is coming to visit this afternoon."

"Wait, Sorahiko's showing up? That's awesome!" Nana chirped; fragmented memories came to the front of her mind, of an impish, quick-minded boy who had never quite looked at home on the ground, of the dependable, sarcastic friend who'd fought by her side.

Of the crying, angry eyes that had looked back at her when she threw Toshi to safety as her death approached.

Izuku frowned at the memories, and when Nana looked into her boyfriend's knowledge of Gran Torino, she wanted to cackle.

Was that what he looked like now? Izuku had to be misremembering, surely!

Toshi asked, "How much do you remember about him?"

"A decent amount," Nana answered, "I met him at UA, so I have a really good handle on our early friendship. Other than that...there's a lot of fragments, pieces of conversations through the years."

Toshi nodded at that. Then, he said, "He was devastated when you died, Nana. He trained me like you'd asked him to, but as soon as I graduated, he quit heroics. He only came back two years ago to help with the fight against the League, and when Izuku beat Shi...their leader last year, he went back into retirement."

"I heard that, Toshi," Nana warned, "what are you trying to hide?"

"N-nothing, Nana," Toshi stuttered, sounding more like the timid boy she'd known than ever.

Nana would have pushed him on it, but then another thought struck her.

"Okay, first of all, what the fuck is the League? Second of all, you did what? " Nana asked Izuku through their link.

"Later, Nana. It's a long story," Izuku replied, his voice distant and a little pained even in Nana's mind.

She pouted for a moment, then had another thought. She still didn't know that much about what Toshi had done after her first death (and oh boy, was thinking the words "my first death" a fun exercise in sudden-onset existential crises over your own mortality, thank you brain.)

"Damnit Nana, it's too early for existential crises," Izuku groaned, having unfortunately been looking in her head at that exact moment.

Cheekily, Nana replied, "I don't have to listen to that from a guy who shuts down completely when I tell him how much I want him to fucking ruin my-"

She didn't even have to finish the sentence to cause another bluescreen in her boyfriend, who sat perfectly rigid in his chair, his eyes looking haunted.

Grinning at her victory, Nana turned back to her actual question.

"One of these days, you'll have to tell me more about your hero career, Toshi. It sounds like you did pretty damn well for yourself," Nana observed.

Toshi smiled faintly at the praise, but his eyes seemed to look back over a lifetime with dissatisfaction.

"I'll tell you about it," he promised, "but not right now. You two need to get back to class."

Izuku nodded once and practically sprinted out of the classroom, with Nana following closely behind.

Nana grumbled under her breath all the way to the heroics locker room, but she couldn't really be mad. She was going to see her best friend again in a few hours, after thirty years for him and...some amount of time for her, she still wasn't sure of any sort of timeline for her last memories, or even if she'd had a sense of time passing while her (ghost? echo? soul?) had been merged with One For All.

She couldn't wait.

Sorahiko had been told by his old student to meet him in front of UA at four.

He arrived at three-thirty; his jets nearly smoking from how quickly he'd flown here.

He marched up to Toshinori's office (which was actually the same room Sorahiko had used as an office while he was a teacher here. Somehow, he blamed Nezu for this) and kicked open the door.

Toshinori jumped with surprise and spluttered, "W-what are you doing here, Gran Torino?"

"I said I was going to be here, didn't I?" Sorahiko replied as he sat down in an armchair to wait.

Toshinori looked like he was about to say something else, but instead he just sighed, "You know they won't be here for thirty minutes, right?"

"That just means more time for you to tell me everything," Sorahiko reasoned.

"What do you want to know?" his former student said with resignation; he knew better than to argue.

Sorahiko glared at Toshinori and repeated, "Everything, brat. My best friend just came back from the dead as a teenager. This better be good."

Groaning again, the recently-retired hero began to explain everything he knew about Nana's return.

When he was finally done, Sorahiko leaned back in his chair, wishing he'd brought some alcohol with him.

"So, let me get this straight," he began, "Your successor was fast asleep when Nana, somehow, popped out of his head as a teenager, and he didn't realize it until he woke up and saw her naked in his bed?"

Toshinori nodded, and Sorahiko visibly suppressed a sigh.

He continued, "And then, while they were trying to get out of the dorms to come tell you all this, one of their classmates walked in on them, and Nana had to lie about being his girlfriend to protect the secret of One For All, a lie you decided to support by claiming that she was your secret daughter?"

Toshinori agreed, "That's about it, yes."

Sorahiko snapped, "I'm not done! You said that your successor and Nana have a psychic link or something?"

"Yeah, they do. Something about her being reborn with his One For All, I suppose," Toshinori said, "it is certainly a very strange situation.

Sorahiko huffed as he thought, "There's no way in hell I'm going to tell Toshinori this, but I know Nana way too well to not assume that if she and Midoriya aren't fucking yet, they will be soon."

He corrected, "A very stupid situation, you mean. But moving on...you said she doesn't remember everything. What does she remember?"

Toshinori thought for a moment. "Not much," he admitted, "she says she has all her memories up until her current age from the first time around, and beyond that she mostly remembers tiny fragments. She barely remembers you and me; she still seems to be remembering bits and pieces other than that. And...she remembers her death. Vividly, from the little she's said."

Sorahiko hung his head, thirty-year-old memories rising unbidden to make old wounds bleed anew.

"God," he choked out, "what a thing to remember…"

Toshinori didn't say anything, but his eyes glistened in agreement.

They sat there for a while, two old men who remembered a day when the world got dimmer and never brightened again.

At last, they remembered that dawn might have finally broken, and the moment passed. Sorahiko asked, "So, does she remember anything about her husband or son?"

Toshinori shook his head. "No, and I haven't told her," he answered.

Sorahiko felt a flash of surprise and irritation. "Why?" he demanded.

Toshinori's expression was rueful as he replied, "Well, for starters, how am I supposed to bring it up? "Hey, I know you've just come back from the dead, but do you remember that time your husband was murdered and you gave your son up for adoption because you couldn't bear to risk leaving him an orphan?" She doesn't even remember that she had a family, much less that she should be missing people she doesn't know existed!"

"If you can't do it, then I'll tell her!" Sorahiko snapped, "she deserves to know!"

Toshinori looked at his old teacher, and Sorahiko was shocked by the desperation he saw in the blonde man's eyes.

Toshinori pleaded, "Please, Gran Torino. When you see her, let her be happy. You and I both remember what happened to Nana after her husband died. She...she broke, and she didn't know how to put herself back together. I was only a kid, but you were her best friend. You know better than anyone how destroyed she was, the way she faked a smile to tell everyone she was fine when she was crumbling. I'm...worried that she's going to break again, if I tell her. I can see it in her face, she's starting to be happy again, like the Nana we knew, not the one who died. I can't be the reason she loses her smile again."

Sorahiko slumped in his chair again; he couldn't meet Toshinori's eyes. His old student was right, Sorahiko knew that. He couldn't help the painful memories that haunted him.

Walking into Nana's apartment with Toshinori to hear her screaming at her dead husband.

The fights they'd had when she couldn't take it anymore, and had given up her son. He'd begged her not to lose the last thing she had to live for; she'd refused, perhaps no longer believing she would live.

That final conversation on the rooftop the day before she'd died, where she'd looked like a dead woman walking, with eyes that saw ghosts.

Sorahiko decided that he couldn't see his best friend like that again, but he knew he couldn't just lie to her, either.

He said, "Fine. I won't tell her. On one condition."

Toshinori sighed with relief as Sorahiko spoke, only to tense up again as he heard his teacher's last sentence.

"That you tell her yourself when the time is right, sooner rather than later," Sorahiko finished.

"I just said I don't know if I can tell her!" Toshinori protested.

"You'll figure it out," Sorahiko replied dismissively, "now, it's almost four. Let's go find Nana and her boyfriend."

"Izuku isn't actually her boyfriend," Toshinori pointed out.

"Yeah, right," Sorahiko thought, "Nana always had a weakness for muscles."

Instead of voicing that thought, he simply said, "Now, Toshinori, let's see if that successor of yours has gotten any better at dodging."

Izuku didn't even need the link to feel the nervous excitement rolling off of Nana as they walked towards All Might's office; it was plain on her face and how she practically bounced up the brick path towards the towering glass building on the hill.

"Nana, there's no need to be nervous," he assured her.

"I'm not nervous!" Nana protested, even though Izuku could, again, see her emotions.

After a long moment where Izuku stared evenly at her, Nana cracked and admitted, "Okay, yeah, I'm a little bit nervous."

"You'll be fine," Izuku said, gently putting a hand on his girlfriend's shoulder. She smiled softly as she leaned into the touch.

Suddenly, Izuku heard a whistling sound. Wait, it seemed familiar. Wasn't that-

"THINK FAST, BRATS!" came a shout as Gran Torino dropkicked Izuku in the face at several hundred kilometers per hour. He went sailing backwards until he smashed into the sloping ground.

Nana would have been hit, too, but she'd recognized the sound even faster and ducked just in time. She stood up again to watch Izuku pick himself up off the ground with a groan, nursing a very healthy bruise on one cheek.

"Really?" he complained.

Nana followed the track of his eyes to the blur that had sent him reeling. Her heart skipped a beat as she saw a familiar face.

When she'd last seen it, his hair had been naturally gray, he'd been nearly as tall as she was, and he'd had the lean, dynamic strength of a gymnast or acrobat. Now, Sorahiko was old. His hair was gray from age, not natural color, he was hunched over and shrunken, his body still strong but clearly diminished.

He was staring back at her, as though trying to make sense of her own face.

Nana wondered if he'd pictured her aging alongside him all this time, and seeing her seemingly frozen in the past was forcing him to change that.

Best friends looked at each other for the first time in thirty years.

Then, Nana felt her lips crack into a wide, amused smile.

She said, "Hello, Sorahiko."

Softly, as though speaking too loud would make her vanish like morning mist, he replied, "Hello, Nana."

She sized him up for another moment. Pursing her lips, she said, "You got...shorter."

Sorahiko raised his eyebrow and retorted, "Yeah, well, you got...younger."

"Why, thank you! It's my new skin treatment, it's called "dying and coming back after thirty years." You should try it!" Nana said.

Izuku winced from where he was watching the exchange with Toshinori, who had come running up behind his old teacher as quickly as he could.

Nana worried for a second that she'd gone too far, but then Sorahiko chuckled and said, "It's good to see you again, old friend."

Nana didn't even respond to that, she just hugged him. He returned the embrace, and soon the two were both laughing, tears filling their eyes. As Nana reunited with her best friend, Izuku and Toshinori watched, their hearts lifted by the sight.

Thirty years can change a lot, but not hearts, and never souls.

Finally, Nana and Sorahiko let go of each other. Craning his neck to look up at her, Sorahiko grumbled, "God, it feels so weird, seeing you this young."

"It's not much better for me, either," Nana pointed out, "how old are you, seventy?"

"Oi! I'm sixty-eight, I'll have you know. I'm not old! Just...well aged!" Sorahiko claimed.

Nana smirked and replied, "You're old enough to be my grandfather, Sorahiko. If that's not old, I don't know what is."

"And yet I'm still faster than you, I'd bet," Sorahiko pointed out.

"Wanna test that theory, Grandpa ?" Nana taunted, hands on her hips.

Sorahiko shuddered. " Never call me that again," he demanded.

"Why not, Gramps?" Nana asked with a vicious grin.

Sorahiko opened his mouth angrily, then shut it again. His eyes started glittering just like Nana's, which Nana didn't like at all.

"Does this mean I get to call you "Sport?" Sorahiko wondered out loud.

Nana stared at her best friend in horror.

"No," she said, "don't you fucking dare."

Sorahiko's evil grin told Nana exactly what he was going to say before he even opened his mouth.

"Whatever you say, Sport," he said in a singsong voice.

Nana yelled, "THAT'S IT! GET OVER HERE, OLD MAN!"

She launched herself at Sorahiko, who simply leapt upwards with a cackle. As Nana coughed in the dust that had been kicked up, she heard him taunt, "Come on, Nana! I thought you could catch a decrepit old retiree like me!"

Nana grinned; she'd missed trading barbs with Sorahiko more than she'd ever admit.

"You're on, Gramps!" she shouted, leaping into the sky after him. He responded by zooming off even higher up, passing the buildings and the trees. Nana pursued him higher and further, until Izuku and Toshinori were tiny specks on the ground.

Within seconds, they were in the clouds.

Gran Torino burst through the cool, wet center of a nimbus cloud, joined by Nana a moment later. As soon as she appeared, he dashed off in another direction, zigzagging between the edges of the clouds to try and lose her.

Nana zipped behind, taking hairpin turns at speeds and angles that would have made a pre-quirk fighter pilot green with envy. Slowly but surely, she closed the distance between her and Sorahiko, cruising steadily as she gained altitude.

When he saw her right on his tail, Sorahiko tried to veer into her, but Nana predicted the move. She put on just a tiny burst of extra speed as she matched his maneuver, and suddenly they were in the Rolling Scissors, an old fighter pilot tactic where each plane (or in this case, person) was constantly tracing one half of a helix, trying to get behind the other as they traded positions until one "pilot" got too scared to continue and peeled off, at which point they were in deep shit.

Of course, Nana reflected as the Scissors closed until she and Sorahiko were passing within inches of each other at the intersection point, the thing about these old fighter pilot moves was that old fighter jets didn't have hands.

At the next intersection point, as Sorahiko tried to dive into the cloud layer they were skimming over, Nana simply reached out and grabbed him by the back of the shirt.

"Gotcha!" she crowed as the entangled duo came to a tumbling, screeching halt, plunging through another cloud as they lost altitude.

At last, Nana managed to control their descent, gradually slowing until she and Sorahiko were floating several thousand feet above UA.

"Yeah, yeah, you got me. Now can you let me go?" Sorahiko grumbled, just like he always did when Nana won their impromptu dogfights.

Nana replied, "Once you admit I've still got it."

Sorahiko sighed and said, "Fine, you've still got it."

"Since you asked so nicely," Nana said sweetly, letting go of her old friend's collar.

Sorahiko took a deep breath and continued floating alongside Nana, taking in the sight of UA spread out below them.

He told her, "I'd be more impressed if I didn't know you stole all your dogfighting moves from that old movie you're obsessed with."

Nana spluttered, "H-hey! I didn't steal anything! I was inspired!"

Sorahiko nodded sagely. "Oh, you were definitely inspired, alright. I always wondered if you love that movie more for the flying or the shirtless men," he teased.

Nana said haughtily, "Are you implying that I get aroused watching Top Gun?"

"Yup," Sorahiko replied.

"Well, you're right," she admitted.

That got them both laughing until they were gasping for breath. After a while, though, Sorahiko lapsed into thoughtful silence again.

"That really did feel just like old times," he said eventually.

Nana nodded. "It did. Although it probably felt like a longer time to you than me," she agreed.

Sorahiko looked up at her, visibly searching for words. Finally, he asked, "So...you really don't have any memory of anything between when you...and now?"

Nana shook her head. "Nope," she replied, "for all I know, I just got stuck in One For All for thirty years and only really existed again when it got powerful enough to reactivate me."

"Damn," Sorahiko mused, "and here I was wondering if you finally found out what happens when we die. Gotta admit, that would've been kind of cool."

Nana joked, "Well, unfortunately, I suppose I never really "crossed over," if that makes any sense. You're still stuck with me."

Sorahiko looked at her with a face like stone. "It really is good to have you back, Nana," he said in a low, soft voice, "for the past thirty years...life hasn't been right."

"Oh, come on, Sorahiko," Nana started, even though she wasn't even sure what she was protesting against.

But Sorahiko just said, "I didn't know what to think when Toshinori told me about you the other day, but now I'm just glad you're back. I suppose it makes the last few years of my life kinda silly in hindsight, though."

"What do you mean?" Nana asked.

"Well, I'm probably not the best one to give you the full story," Nana's best friend said curtly, "but I more or less helped your boy down there take him down once and for all."

Nana looked down; she recalled what Toshi had told her that first morning, and what he hadn't told her.

"I still don't know what Toshi did," she admitted, "Hell, the only reason I know that his skinniness is a result of it is thanks to Izuku."

Sorahiko said, "Yeah, it was...not a good scene. And it ain't my place to talk about what happened. But let me just say that I'm not questioning your choice anymore. That skinny little quirkless boy made more out of himself than any of us ever imagined, and I couldn't be prouder."

The certainty in his voice reminded Nana of that conversation long ago, when Sorahiko had questioned her sanity for entrusting her beloved quirk to a quirkless middle schooler.

She smiled and said, "Thanks, Sorahiko, for taking care of him when I couldn't."

Her best friend seemed like he wanted to say something else, maybe something angry, but it died in his eyes. Instead, he scanned her face for a moment before asking, "So, have you fucked Midoriya yet?"

Most people would have spluttered or been caught off guard by the sudden and explicit question.

But Nana just sighed, "No, unfortunately, and not for lack of trying. He's just so honorable! I've literally been sleeping naked in his bed, and he barely even reacts anymore! What does a woman have to do to get some action around here?"

She wasn't going to explain the telepathic orgasms quite yet; she was still a little bit confused about those, not to mention very excited.

Sorahiko snorted and told her, "I think you've met your match, Nana. That boy's too pure for the likes of you."

Nana squinted at the hunched frame of her aged best friend. "What is that supposed to mean?" she asked dangerously.

One of Sorahiko's many talents was knowing when he'd officially reached the point where his next joke would get him punted into the sun.

That tone from Nana was that point.

Instead, Sorahiko employed one of his famous subject changes, saying, "Last one back to Toshinori has to explain to him that you want to fuck his successor."

Then, he sped downwards, dropping nearly five hundred feet in three seconds.

Nana was half a second behind. She muttered, "You aren't getting away that easy, motherfucker," then plunged after him.

Watching Nana shoot off in hot pursuit of Gran Torino, Izuku asked with a slightly trembling voice, "W-were they always like that?"

Toshinori nodded, lost in memory. "Yeah," he sighed, "yeah, they were. One time, Gran Torino made fun of Nana's hero name, so she threw him out a seventh-story window."

Izuku spluttered in shock, unable to even form a coherent response.

Seeing Izuku's questioning face, Toshinori shrugged and said, "What? He survived, obviously."

Izuku still had some questions, but honestly, he could absolutely see Nana throwing somebody out of a window.

But hearing the story had reminded him of something else: he still didn't know much about Nana's first life, or about his mentor's early life for that matter. He had seen a lot of Nana's memories, but even those didn't tell him everything.

For example…

"What was her hero name?" Izuku asked.

Toshinori looked at him curiously and answered, "Maverick. Why do you ask?"

Filing away the information for later, Izuku explained, "I just realized that I don't know a whole lot about her first life, that's all. I want to learn more if I can."

"Well, we have some time before they show up again. Would you like me to tell some stories I have of her?" Toshinori offered.

Izuku nodded eagerly. "I would love that!" he said.

As they settled themselves on a bench and watched the distant specks of Gran Torino and Nana weaving through the sky above them, Toshinori began, "I met her on a cloudy, gray day, walking home from my middle school. I asked her if a quirkless boy like me could be a hero. I told her that I wanted to help people, make them less afraid."

Izuku remembered another boy, another hero, another conversation that eerily paralleled what his mentor was describing.

"What did she say?" he asked.

Toshinori grinned and replied, "She called me crazy and offered to train me."

Izuku snorted; it sure sounded like Nana hadn't changed a whole lot.

Toshinori started to speak again, and Izuku listened to story after story. Nana meeting Toshinori's foster family and punching one of them through a wall (Izuku hadn't even known that his mentor had been an orphan), Nana showing up at UA, bursting through a window and interrupting a class to invite Toshinori to dinner, Nana laughing at Toshinori after finding out he'd grown six inches between his first and second years…

The more he listened, the more Izuku found himself understanding his mentor's pain at losing such a vibrant, energetic figure as Nana Shimura in the prime of her life.

He'd known her for four days, and already he couldn't imagine a life where he'd never seen her face-filling grin, nor one where he'd lost the chance to see that smile ever again.

All Might's words painted a picture of Nana that Izuku has already seen, but was no less beautiful for it; a woman who shone as intense as a star, who could come into your life like a whirlwind and leave it rearranged for the better, a solid wall planted between evil and the innocent, the best friend and the worst enemy you could ever have.

Even though he'd seen this woman at the level of her very soul, knew her as intimately as she knew herself, Izuku was unable to explain just how thankful he was for All Might's words. Seeing how his mentor, the man whose example Izuku had been driven by his whole life, explain how he in turn had been driven first by the example of Nana and then her memory felt like a moment of perspective, a chance for a broader understanding.

The idea of a woman like Nana, so strong that she was the hero of Izuku's hero, the woman who All Might said was the greatest hero in the world, would have seemed impossible, if her mind and soul weren't conjoined with Izuku's own, available for him to explore whenever he wanted.

But now that she was here, in the world and in Izuku's heart, he didn't think she'd ever leave.

He had one last question, though. How could a woman like this, so full of life, die so young?

He asked, "All Might...what happened to Nana, the first time around? How did she die?"

Izuku's mentor looked at him with eyes that were young and haunted.

"My boy," All Might replied somberly, "that is a story for another time."