"Izu~"

"Ku~"

"Kun~"

Izuku was so distracted talking to his friends that he didn't notice Himiko was running right at him until it was too late, and she announced herself just as she was about to slam into him. She wrapped her arms around him in a tackle-hug as her momentum carried both of them to the floor.

"H-hi Himi," Izuku said awkwardly.

"You're slacking, that's the second time this week!" Himiko said with a predatory grin on her face.

"You're so ruthless," Izuku complained.

"And how am I supposed to feel if a villain catches you slacking?" Himiko asked innocently. "I just want to make sure my little brother's ready!"

Despite her teasing, Himiko untangled herself from him and pushed herself up to a standing position. She flashed a toothy grin at Izuku's friends before she started walking off toward her classroom.

With a sigh, Izuku pushed himself up and began dusting himself off. Himiko was right, he shouldn't have let her catch him off guard like that. After all of the training the two of them had done together, he had gotten good at catching her when she tried to sneak up on him. But after the sports festival, he had a lot on his mind, and he was starting to realize how much it was affecting him.

Minoru broke him out of his thoughts by speaking up. "Man Midoriya, I'm jealous. I wish I had girls jumping all over me at school like that! And you just treat it as a normal thing!"

Izuku gave his classmate an incredulous look. "You realize that is my sister, right?"

"But I heard that she was adopted! There are plenty of stories where adopted sibl- ack!"

Minoru was unable to finish his comment as Tsuyu smacked him in the face with her tongue, before she quickly walked down the hallway, taking off after Himiko. Everyone watched her leave until she turned the corner and disappeared from view.

Just as quickly as she left, Tsuyu appeared again, walking back to her classmates with her usual neutral expression. But nobody was paying attention to her. Instead, the class saw Himiko coming back down the hallway, her hands behind her back as she was casually skipping toward them.

When Izuku saw the look on her face, he swallowed the lump that formed in his throat. She wasn't wearing her predatory grin. No, this was a sweet, innocent smile. One that made her look innocent until you looked into her eyes. Then you learned the truth.

That wasn't good news for Minoru.

"Deku, your sister is scaring me," Ochako said.

"Is Mineta going to die?" Asked Ashido.

"Whatever happens, he deserves it!" Hakagure yelled.

Tsuyu saw Iida glaring at her. "I know what I did, kero."

Himiko skipped over to where Minoru was and leaned over to reach eye level with him. As she watched his eyes, she saw where he was looking, and she couldn't help but giggle. She wasn't even trying and he was leaving himself wide open!

"So, I hear you're jealous that I give my brother so much attention?"

"I mean yeah, who wouldn't want a hottie all ov- eek!"

Minoru screamed as Himiko suddenly had a knife inches away from his face.

"Maybe it's because Izuku is an absolute ball of sunshine, and treats women as people and not objects." She slowly lowered her hand, keeping the knife inches away from his body as it hovered over his school uniform. Somehow, she was managing to keep an innocent smile on her face the entire time.

"H-how do you even have that? Are those even allowed in school!?"

Himiko never broke eye contact. "Of course, it's allowed! I have them registered and everything! You never know when a sweet, innocent girl like myself might run into trouble."

Himiko giggled again, and Minoru somehow looked even more terrified.

"I just want girls to like me!" Minoru wailed. "How is it fair that Midoriya has all of these girls around him all the time? Why does he have to hog them all?"

Himiko dropped the act and looked like she was done with Minoru. "Three words. He. Respects. Us."

Minoru yelped as Himiko's left hand suddenly appeared, holding a second knife near his face.

"You see, us girls like it when we are treated like people. Not like-like- objects." The disgust in Himiko's voice when she said that was palpable.

Minoru looked at his classmates and saw almost all of the girls nodding their heads in agreement with Himiko. Images from the first day of class suddenly came to mind, where he was ogling the girls in all of their wonderfully revealing costumes. Meanwhile, Izuku was giving them suggestions to make them feel more comfortable.

And then yesterday, all of the girls were thanking him, and hugging him! Meanwhile, he didn't do anything but lament his loss at the costume changes.

"And a word of advice. You have a teensy weakness to any female villain you encounter."

Himiko stood up straight and slid the knives back into their holsters. She knew she finally had his attention when he wasn't watching her hands even as she stored her knives on her thighs.

She managed to put on a sweet tone again, which somehow felt even more threatening than before. "If I wasn't such a nice girl, think about what could have happened. It would be such an embarrassing end for a hero."

Himiko giggled and gave a thumbs up to the girls in class 1-A, with Tsuyu returning it. "Class is going to be starting soon, we don't want to be late!" she called out, before skipping back off down the hallway.

Minoru slid down the wall he was pressed against in tears, before looking at the girls.

"Am I really that bad?"

He flinched at the collective "yes" that came from all of the girls, and several of the boys in his class.

While he knew how smart he was, right now he didn't know what to do with that information.

As Izuku and his friends sat down for lunch, they were joined by Shinso.

"Hey! You were pretty impressive during the sports festival." Izuku greeted him.

Shinso smiled. "Turns out that Aizawa's training was actually helpful. I'm going to be unstoppable by the end of the semester."

Izuku brightened hearing this. "I'm glad! Hopefully, it will be enough to get you transferred into one of our classes!"

"Well, it's looking good so far," Shinso said, as he fished out a tablet from his bag and dropped it on the table. "I actually got about 20 internship offers, which is almost unheard of. Aizawa-sensei told me that there were supposed to be a lot more, but since I'm a general course student I could only accept offers from heroes who are certified with teaching licenses."

"That's amazing!" Ochako said. "That's still a lot of offers since you aren't even a hero student!"

"Indeed! I must admit though, I am surprised that they are allowing a general studies student to go on an internship." Tenya added, albeit with much less enthusiasm than usual.

"Well, that's why they need teaching certification," Shinso explained. "It's going to be much more Hero 101 for me than for the rest of you. Or, in other words, another week of hell-training similar to what Aizawa-sensei is putting me through."

"You don't seem too upset, kero."

"Why would I be?" Shinso gave Tsuyu a look. "I need this to catch up to you all."

Izuku couldn't help but smile. Shinso still sounded too much like he used to, but the purple-haired student seemed happy with his improvements so far.

"I'm glad."

"Well, don't expect thanks yet. I still have a few more months of training to go, so I may decide to give up." Shinso was smiling as if he was joking.

"Somehow, I doubt that," Tenya responded.

That caused Shinso to laugh. "Of course, I'm not going to."

"So, who are you going to intern under?" Ochako asked, curious.

Shinso gave a ghost of a smile. "I'm going to go with Mrs. Joke."

"The laughing hero?" Izuku asked.

"I need to provoke a reaction out of my opponents if I want to use my quirk, after all."

"Oh yeah! You never told us how you use your quirk!"

"Now that you don't need to keep it a secret for the sports festival, I must admit I am curious as well."

Shinso gave everyone a toothy grin. "It's a verbal response. If I say something and you respond to me, then I can activate my quirk. It doesn't have to be a question, so if I can annoy them with a joke, that would work just as well."

"No wonder you didn't want to tell anyone how your quirk worked, kero."

"Yeah!" Izuku said. "That makes so much sense now why you want to keep it a secret."

As Izuku was reaching for his notebook, Shinso smirked and activated his quirk. "Put your notebook away."

Izuku's face suddenly went blank and immediately shoved his notebook into his bag, to the laughter of the rest of the table.

"Sorry, I'm not in the mood to answer questions today."

Izuku frowned. "You could have just asked nicely!"

"But then I wouldn't get to show off my quirk," Shinso said smugly. "And now you know how it works."

Izuku looked at his friends, but nobody was coming to his defense. Sighing, he conceded. "Fine, you win."

As they were changing into their hero costumes, Izuku couldn't help but look at Tenya. It has been over a week since his brother had been attacked by the Hero Killer, and he has been in a somber mood ever since. Everyone had hoped that he would improve with time, but he still hasn't shown any signs of improvement.

Izuku couldn't help but feel bad. He had been so caught up with everything going on with Himiko and himself, that he didn't have a chance to help his friend out. Even though Tenya was a rather rigid person, his heart was in the right place. If Izuku could find a way to help him feel better, he wanted to do it.

So when it came time to choose partners for today's training, Izuku shot his hand up.

"I'm going to partner with Iida."

"Midoriya, while I appreciate your enthusiasm, you don't have to-"

"I'm partnering with Ochako, kero," Tsuyu announced next, and the two turned to see Ochako nodding vigorously.

Izuku gave the girls a look of silent thanks before he turned to Tenya. "Sorry, looks like my usual partner's taken."

"I guess so." Tenya adjusted his glasses. "Very well then. I was hoping to practice mobility training if that is ok with you?"

Izuku nodded. "Sure! Uraraka and I did some races yesterday, but it showed me that I'm going to need a lot of practice."

"Indeed, your new move has greatly increased your speed!"

Izuku laughed nervously. "You're still going to win on the open parts of the course. It's just a question of if I can make up for it when we start moving through the buildings."

He saw the sunlight reflecting off of Tenya's glasses as he adjusted them out of habit. "Thank you for pointing that out, that means I will strive to improve my movement over the uneven parts of the course as well!"

As the students broke up to go to the different training stations, the two walked over to the starting area for mobility training, and Izuku picked up a remote. Pushing a button, he brought up a hologram of the training ground and turned to Tenya.

"What difficulty do you want to start at?"

"Seven."

Izuku nodded and chose an option. The two saw a blue line denoting the course appear in the hologram, and they began studying it. Izuku made note of all the terrain along the way. Due to several embarrassing mishaps with Ochako yesterday, he knew he had to work on his split-second decision-making. If he had time to plan his jumps he could easily cross an area, but Tenya wasn't going to give him that time. And neither would a villain.

"I believe I am ready." Tenya finally announced.

Izuku gave him a determined look and nodded, and the two walked to the starting line. "Ready whenever you are."

The three looked at each other one last time before they got into their starting positions.

"Three. Two. One. Go!"

Tenya took off, easily gaining the lead. Izuku tried to keep up as best he could until he reached the buildings. Wrapping himself in Full Cowling, as he had taken to calling his new move, he took a running leap towards the nearest building. As he landed on the wall he made a micro-adjustment before kicking off of it with the power of One For All behind his legs, the ground underneath him flying by as he began to close the gap with his friend.

As they entered a dead-end alleyway, the course moved upwards. Izuku saw Tenya using his thrusters to enhance his jumps, allowing him to parkour up the side of a building with ease. With a fierce smile, Izuku allowed himself a moment to analyze the alleyway, before he began jumping up the wall himself, catching up with Tenya as he flew onto the rooftops.

He heard his friend call out something, but Izuku didn't have time to fire back. The next part of the course required him to run across several rooftops, and he needed to focus to maintain as much of his lead as he could. As he expected, his advantage was short-lived as he heard the telltale sounds of Tenya's engines as his friend flew past him, racing across the rooftops and leaping across buildings with ease.

The two continued along the course, trading the lead back and forth until they came to the final stretch. While Izuku had somehow managed to achieve a sizable lead, he wasn't expecting his friend's competitiveness, and desire to avoid a repeat of what happened at the Sports Festival.

"Recipro Burst!"

Tenya activated his special move, and closed the gap in seconds, flying past Izuku and crossing the finish line before his engines sputtered out.

Despite that, Izuku crossed the finish line only a few seconds later, panting heavily.

"That… was… quite the challenge you gave me, Midoriya," Tenya told him between breaths.

"You… too." Izuku took a deep breath. "I wasn't expecting you to use your Recipro Burst."

"I do not want to be left behind," Tenya admitted. "Just as you are pushing the boundaries of what you can do, I too must learn to push past my limits."

The two walked back to the remote that controlled the course and used it to bring up their times. Izuku was happy to see he had beat his old record by a whole twenty seconds, while Iida had shaved a mere 3 seconds off of his record.

"Hmph. For Recipro Burst to save so little time, clearly I am not working hard enough." Tenya pounded his hand with his fist. "I must train even harder!"

Izuku laughed nervously at that. "You don't want to push yourself too hard though, or you'll hurt yourself!"

"You are right, of course! But there is still room to improve!"

"Why don't we go sit down and talk about it?" Izuku asked. "Since we need some time for your engines to cool down anyways."

Tenya looked down at his legs, his engines currently spewing a thick black smoke. "I suppose you are right. It wouldn't do well to train when my legs are in this condition."

Tenya walked over to a bench and sat down, where he began massaging his calves to loosen the muscles. Meanwhile, Izuku went over to the cooler and pulled out a pair of water bottles. As he was walking back to the bench, Izuku tossed a bottle of water to Tenya, who easily caught it. Finally, he sat down on the bench next to his friend.

Izuku sat in silence as he took a long drink from the water bottle. Observing his friend, he still saw a hidden tension eating away at him, one that he felt helpless to address. Feeling a knot in his stomach, Izuku didn't even realize he was apologizing until it was too late.

"I'm sorry that I've been a bad friend."

"E-excuse me?" Tenya asked in surprise, obviously not expecting that.

Izuku gave Tenya a sad look. "Ever since the sports festival, you haven't been yourself. I know what happened with your brother was rough, and we were trying to give you space, but -"

"Midoriya, why are you apologizing?"

Izuku looked down at the ground. "Before I came to UA, I didn't really have any friends."

"What about the second years?"

Izuku shook his head. "Those are Himi's friends, not mine. Even Song - while we spend a lot of time analyzing quirks together, at the end of the day, she is Himi's friend first. The truth is, I consider you, Uraraka, and Tsuyu my first real friends."

"I'm honored you think that, but I still don't understand what you mean."

Izuku took a deep breath. "Well, you're upset, and I don't know how to help you. Because that's what friends are for, right? When we see one of our friends is down, we want to help them. And I've been so caught up in my own stuff, I haven't been there for you this past week. So, I wanted to apologize. And if there's anything that I can do to help, I'll gladly do it!"

Tenya didn't know how to respond, so he looked away. "I appreciate the effort, but I don't think there is anything you can do to help."

"Is it really that bad?"

Tenya took a deep breath. "It's my older brother. He - They haven't made it official yet, but the Hero Killer damaged his spine. Even with the best medical quirks available, they can't fully repair the damage. If someone found him earlier, then maybe he would have had a chance. But he lost the use of his legs."

Tenya looked at Izuku, and for the first time, Izuku saw the pain in his eyes. "Ingenium is going to have to retire, because what good is a hero who can't walk?"

Izuku stood up and walked over to Tenya, before wrapping him in a hug. "I'm sorry."

"M-Midoriya, this is highly inappropriate!"

Izuku pulled back, a sheepish look on his face. "But it helped, didn't it?"

Tenya looked like he was about to argue but then closed his mouth. "Indeed, it did."

"You've looked up to him your entire life, haven't you?" Izuku asked. He remembered what it felt like on the rooftop all those months ago when he found out All Might wasn't as invincible as he appeared to be.

"Yes," Tenya admitted. "He was always inspiring me to be a hero, even more than our father. Ever since you told me that first day about Aizawa's teaching methods, I have been asking myself how Tensei would act. He hasn't steered me wrong yet."

"And now you're feeling lost?"

Tenya nodded. "Tensei wants me to become the next Ingenium. To take up the mantle and carry on as the leader of Team Idaten once I graduate."

"Is that what you want?"

Tenya looked at Izuku in momentary surprise. The question had caught him off guard.

"I don't know."

Izuku had a faraway look on his face, as he recalled his conversations with All Might. "Have you talked to your brother about that?"

"...No," Tenya admitted.

"Why not?"

"I don't want to disappoint him."

Now Izuku was getting a familiar feeling. He recalled his conversations with All Might about the mantle of the Symbol of Peace. He tried to recall his feelings from back then.

"Maybe you should. Maybe the answer would surprise you."

There was a long silence as Tenya thought about it, the pair finishing their water bottles.

"Thank you, Midoriya. I believe I shall visit the hospital after school." Tenya looked at his friend, and for the first time in a week gave him a genuine smile.

"I'm glad." Izuku smiled back.

Tenya stood up and stretched, testing his engines to see if they had recovered from his Recipro Burst before turning to Izuku.

"Well then, are you ready for the next round?"

Izuku nodded his head. "Yeah!"

AN: I know I've been hyper-focused on a specific subset of characters, but now that we have a few weeks before internships it's time to check in on some other members of Class 1-A and see how they're doing.