3 months later; 5.5 months until the entrance exams.

"And break!"

"Gladly." Midoriya collapsed forward in a perfect arc, completely prone in the sand. Toshinori snickered at the teenage dramatics. His skeletal visage widened into a teasing smile.

"That was a cool fall, Midoriya-shounen. Completely prone the entire time. Someone has been practicing. Perhaps" his smile turned a little more devious "some Smooth Criminal practice?"

"Mrgldtf" came the response from the sand.

"Really, until last year? Quite persistent."

"Grfladgrt" Izuku remained on his face.

"Honestly, very admirable that you tried to do it without your quirk. I suppose everyone learns he had hooks on his shoes eventually."

A pillar of sand pushed Midoriya back upward in a perfect (though faster) reversal of his fall. "He WHAT."

"Oh yes, it's a pretty common thing out in the States actually. At some point you find some archived music from the pre-quirk times, you think it's more meaningful. You find the classics, and of course then you find MJ. You see his music videos, and then you try to copy the choreography. You learn Thriller real easy, you moonwalk, and then you find the gorgeous Smooth Criminal video."

His voice carried nostalgia, but it was a strange nostalgia. His eyes were far away. "And then you think you've got it and you go to show your friends, and you do the lean and you fall on your face. They all laugh at you and they explain how he actually did it. And then you're just on the ground laughing and you've broken your nose like an idiot."

"That was unnervingly specific, sensei." The voice came from a mouth that popped out equidistant between Midoriya and All Might. With all the grace and subtlety of a drunken alligator Yagi sidestepped his apprentice's remark. "Nice work, Mezo-shounen! Almost didn't feel that one coming. Keep it up and we'll make hero students out of you yet!"

Unlike usual, where he would've been giddy getting praised by All Might, Midoriya remained catatonic, seemingly still processing the betrayal from the ancient music video. From his left, however, a column of sand erupted, hitting the engine block flying at him just right to redirect the trajectory 3 feet overhead.

All Might's pride in his work and his students overrode his good sense and he inflated, his heroic persona projected loud."HAHAHA! Fantastic job, Midoriya-shounen! Half insensate and still aware enough to defend yourself! What progress we've made. That said. Mezo-shonen! Awesome throw! Went right for him. Where are ya, kid?"

"I've been 5 feet away from you this whole time, sensei. You told me I couldn't move. Said I should learn how to get leverage when using Al-" a beat "all of my quirk." The voice was Shoji's actual mouth from where he was sitting. One of his arms was planted in the sand, and the other 5 spread open and held outward, fleshy tendrils branching in every direction, a disturbing yet elegant tree of observation.

A poof of smoke and the powerful visage vanished, a classic magic trick. "So that was you using 1 arm to do everything like I said to?" Shoji nodded his physical head, collapsing on to his back after retracting the… almost 4 dozen? apparatuses he had to make. 7 per arm, he made the sensory parts of a face. Basically had to make himself a hydra. 'ooooh, that's a name. Heads of The Hydra? Attack and observe from all angles.'

That hadn't even been counting the several hands and eyes he had to make in order to grab and toss an engine block from behind a giant pile of trash on one arm.

Even now however, the 8-limbed teenager didn't let himself remain ignorant of his surroundings, a trio of eyes watching what he couldn't directly. A deep voice lulled him gently.

"Mezo-shonen. Rest. I've got you for now. You're gonna hurt yourself if you use your quirk again immediately after that incredible display." The eyes vanished, leaving Shoji staring into a beautiful Dagobah sky. For a while now, the sight hadn't even been spoiled by the sight of trash piles in his peripherals.That's not to say they were done. But 8 hands were faster than 6, and Midoriya had kept asking him questions on how he used his limbs. After a lot of work [and several migraines, and a couple nosebleeds!] Midoriya had advanced in his ability to control multiple complicated operations at once. It was now more like "10 (and a half?) hands were better than 6". He'd likely never have Shoji's ability to constantly know how those operations were currently going, but they celebrated finally crossing a plateau that they had all been struggling to help him past.

Midoriya had been toying with the idea of having his sand hold up mirrors that he could use to expand his field of vision, but that level of precision in an emergency was somewhat impractical. A minor slip-up and he'd

crush them into dust.

Shouji sat bolt upright, previous 'make that current' exhaustion shoved backwards. "Midoriya." The response he got was a muffled "hmm?" At some point the other boy had returned to his prone position, face down in beach sand.

"Have you ever tried controlling glass?"

The question was met with a soft 'boom' as the other boy launched himself, still prone, mumbling incoherently, with a couple "so simple!" and "this changes everything!" audible. Before he got too far, though, he suddenly stopped dead, realizing something important.

"Shouji." His voice was no longer muffled.

"Yes, Midoriya?" Shouji responded uncertainly.

"Am I currently prone and hovering in midair?" The question was dry.

Not quite certain where this was going, Midoriya got his answer regardless. "You are."

"Shouji."

"Yes Midoriya."

"I can fly."

"Yes, you can- Oh my god, you can fly." Shouji blinked as the penny dropped. As obvious as it seemed now, this use of his sand truly hadn't come up previously.

"Shouji?" This time the "question" was practically oozing self-recrimination.

Still in shock, "Yes Midoriya?"

"Can you smack me upside the head from there?" Midoriya had not moved from where he had stopped.

Shouji didn't turn. "Toshi-sensei?"

The man's response was shaky, clearly struggling not to burst into literally gut-busting laughter. "I'll allow it."

Well, Mezo Shouji wasn't the type to ignore a friend's request after getting explicit permission. Still not standing, he let a chain extend from one of his right arms (they were all numb, he couldn't have told you which one) and complied. Izuku's genuinely absurd cloud of hair dulled much of the impact, but still some remained.

"Thank you."

"Of course, Midoriya."

"Call me Izuku, we've been doing this for a while." Izuku still hadn't moved."Only if you call me Mezo." "Deal. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna test this bad boy out. Oh, first!"

A notebook appeared directly under his floating (still prone) form. 'His backpack is on the other end of the beach and he's wearing workout clothes, how did he get that?' The thought was unknowingly echoed in the heads of both master and apprentice.

"Gonna make sure I remember to test out glass after flying." A quick note taken, the pen and notebook simply vanished, in sheer contempt of the observational powers of the other two people watching. As Izuku rocketed up and away, he snickered. He knew exactly how his notebook trick looked to people around him. As he flew, he felt it pressed against him, snug between two layers of telekinetic hold under his shirt. 'Don't watch the hands. Watch the sands.'

He got high. It seemed like that so long as he had his sand on him, he could go however high he wanted. As he let go of the upward mobility for a freefall, he came up against a problem that somehow hadn't really come up a second ago: He couldn't see.The wind blasting into his face completely blinded him. Trying a to put a screen of sand in front of him was a little helpful, in the same way it was helpful to clog the sink and run it while trying to escape a house fire. He tried rotating it, hoping that the movement would disperse more of the wind's presence without sacrificing his visibility. Again, some. But that took the problem from a 10 to a 9. Izuku admitted defeat. He cut down his speed until he could use his eyes. While it was a decent clip, (much faster than he could do on his own legs) it was still basically riding a moped at low gear. He touched down smoothly right around where he started.

He looked at the other two men and shared his findings. "I'm gonna need goggles or a helmet before I can really take my sand out for a spin." As he collapsed into a sand chair (always juuuust right), another brainwave clicked into place. "If I use my sand to fly, does that mean…" his chair started hovering underneath him, and he scootered along. "Neat. Hey Shouji-I mean, Mezo. Wanna come find some broken glass I can play with?"

'There are some sentences that you just never expect to hear come out of a child's mouth', Yagi mused as he watched the two boys scooter off, Midoriya having conjured up a second chair under Mezo. Shrugging, he followed at a sedate pace behind them. An old cartoon popped into his brain as he watched the boys lounge in motion. "Meet George Jetson.."

It didn't take long to find broken glass in a dump, even one that was probably 50-60 percent cleaned up. Between Shouji's enhanced perception (even without the aid of his quirk, he had trained in the arts of observation) and Midoriya being able to simply pick it up regardless of size or edge they quickly netted a jagged chunk roughly the length of Izuku's forearm. Holding it up with his sand he attempted to connect mentally.

The shard didn't move. "Try crushing it."

"Mezo-shonen probably has the right idea about that. Even when you make your constructs it's more compaction of the grains than a full bonding."

Nodding thoughtfully, Izuku did just that. After three more months of such intense training (under All Might!), he barely needed a thought, the sand forming large jaws and crunching down just for fun before he started working the grains to grind down the glass. Soon enough, a pile of deceptively dangerous, glittering "sand" sat underneath Izuku's roiling grinder. He let the sand explode upward, now free to disperse to the whims of the wind. They all turned their gaze to the small, shimmering pile before them.

Izuku tried to simply focus on it. There was a niggling…something. He moved his hand out, grasping and open, the way he once needed to for control of his quirk at any level…almost but not quite. He gently returned himself and Mezo to their feet, letting go of his hold on the seats. Reach out once again...there! He could feel his mind latching on to something. Not well, but it was there. "It's…kinda slippery? I don't know that I'd feel safe doing anything with it."

All Might, experienced in the ways of many kinds of quirks, cocked an eyebrow. "Kid, we're not expecting you to immediately be making shapes. Glass dust is a very dangerous substance to most people, myself included. We're testing proof of concept here. That said…might be the different structures involved? Glass having smoother, sharper edges doesn't allow you to have the same "grip", so to speak?"

Shouji added his two cents. "This does open some possibilities. If you can control glass with time to practice, we could maybe try expanding the definition of what "sand" is. Perhaps even metal sands could be yours to command."

Izuku's eyes, already shining viridian spotlights, went brighter as he continued this train of thought. "Maybe my struggle with my max weight isn't about weight at all! Maybe it's about the volume that a ton of sand takes up." That had been a plateau they had yet to move past. One ton of sand was still his max. He could lift more, he knew that.

How was he so sure? Simple. Controlling the whole at once was still proving elusive. 2 constructs, half a ton each? Doable. 4 constructs, Quarter ton each? Easier. And then the rules broke.

5 constructs, quarter ton each? Still doable.

10 constructs, 20% of a ton each? Easy as hell.

And that wasn't even getting into the amount of force he could exert with them. Those 10 constructs hit like wrecking balls. They weren't very helpful for if he needed to reinforce any structures or otherwise help something stand, which was why he also focused on upping the number of arms he had. Did he also practice using his sand as extra legs from his back, like he once saw a character do in an ancient comic? No comment.

Back to the relevant scene, Izuku had his sand pick up the glass dust, wrapping it around in a tight orb, which he then compacted. "I don't have anywhere to store it at the moment, and I figure it will be better wrapped like this until I can get a jar or something," he responded to the confused looks from the other two.

Yagi nodded. "Better orbed than loose in the sands where anyone can run across it. Well considered, Midoriya-shounen. This gives us another thing to work on over the next 6 months. I'll ask around for sand made of metal. Grab some magnetic and non-, just to control the variables."

Midoriya smiled brightly. Very brightly. All Might couldn't quite look directly at him. "Thank you so much, All- Yagi-sensei!"

Turning to Shouji now, All Might followed up on something else they had been working on since Midoriya joined. "How are the beast parts coming, Mezo-shounen?"

Shouji's grin was only visible from the creasing of his eyes, but he was clearly proud. From his tertiary left arm, a chain of flesh came to hover before him. From the end came…a vibrant yellow eye, pupil vertically slit. A mouth formed from the arm above it. "I managed to get several parts of a cat. I can currently manifest the eyes and claws. You two were right, I definitely benefited from the specialized anatomy books. Should heroics not work out, I think I'll enjoy veterinary science. At the very least I'll have a great head start." He was met with good-natured laughter and cheer.

"Very exciting, Mezo-shounen! Boys, I think we can call it a little early today. Both of you get changed and I'll buy us some dinner to celebrate the new developments." He grinned when both boys just barely kept themselves from trying to talk him out of it. 'No one resists free food. Especially not teenagers.' He smiled as he watched the two boys walk off. Until Midoriya made them some chairs, and then they were off very quickly towards the showers. "Haha. Kids. So energetic."

A PHONE CALL IS HERE!

A PHONE CALL IS HERE!

A PHONE CALL IS HERE!

"Man, am I glad they weren't around to hear that." He answered without even looking at the caller ID. "Hello."

"Toshinori."

"Mirai?"

"There's something we need to discuss."

A/N: Hope this was more satisfying than the little snack I gave you all last time. I've added some fun new places to take their powers, though we're not yet exploring the All Might aspect of One For All. This whole thing is going to be a couple chapters of time skip, each one of them covering roughly 3 months (maybe), and I'll do some swiveling the camera around, we can explore other parts of their lives over the final UA push.

Up next: Transformation quirks. Should they be classified as emitters? Our next guest, Dr. Jenzo discusses quirk science, scientific categorization, and the human biases that come into play there. Thanks for checking out UA radio, listeners. Remember, you don't need to be a hero to go Plus Ultra.