During the months when Izuku had . . . given up, he hadn't really made many changes to his life.
He hadn't stopped doing his best in school, because there was no reason to give up on whatever future he might be able to pursue now that he couldn't be a hero. He hadn't stopped analyzing heroes and quirks, because that was a pleasure and a comfort during the otherwise unremarkable haze of his life. Sure he had started exercising a little bit more, working out and improving his physical performance, but that in itself had been an act of complacency. He'd been preparing not to save others, but to have a shot at defending himself against the dangers of the world. He had been planning to run, and only fight if cornered, which he had been sure would happen sooner or later. He had been settling, miserably, into a life of victimhood.
He also hadn't stopped liking All Might, even though his idealized vision of the Symbol of Peace had been shattered. Izuku had believed everything he'd said, that becoming a hero was impossible without a power, was simply the truth. There was no reason to stop idolizing the man just for telling the truth. He'd stopped drawing inspiration from All Might, but he'd never really given up on him either.
As such he hadn't touched his All Might merchandise collection, either to admire or get rid of it, so now he found himself staring around his bedroom wondering where to start packing. He would be moving into the dorms tomorrow, and the shipping company was going to be here in the afternoon to pick up his boxes and furniture. He needed to have enough stuff to decorate his dorm room packed, and soon, but he didn't really know what to bring.
What parts of himself was he supposed to take, and what parts was he supposed to leave behind?
"Is everything OK sweetie?" his mom asked, poking her head into his room. She'd been asking him if he was OK all morning. He was definitely starting to think it was more for her own comfort than his.
"Fine," he said, glancing down at the cardboard box on his bed. It contained the contents of his desk drawer, and nothing else. "Just having a little trouble packing."
"Do you need help?" his mother asked, coming in and closing the door behind her. "You certainly do have a lot of All Might things to pack."
"I think I'm gonna leave my All Might stuff here actually," Izuku admitted. "I just, don't think I need it any more."
His mother looked at him in wide-eyed surprise. "Really? But you used to love All Might! Isn't he
one of your teachers now? Don't you still like him?"
"I like him just fine, it's just . . ." Izuku struggled to put it into words. "Now that I know him, he's a lot more real to me. Being such a huge fanboy that I have all these posters and figurines feels much weirder now that I know him as a person. He's only human, after all."
He had expected that sentiment to be met with sadness, but his mother surprised him when her look of concern melted into a smile.
"I think that's very mature of you Izuku," she said, coming over to him and reach up to card her fingers through his hair. "It's a very good perspective to have as a student. Even All Might's not infallible, so don't go thinking you are."
"I know mom," Izuku ducked his head a little so she could continue petting him. "It's just that, well, now I don't know how to decorate my room."
"Have you checked the back of your closet?" she asked, with a small, almost sly smile.
Izuku blinked, then shook his head. His mother withdrew her hand and went to the closet, and as Izuku watched she opened it and pushed the mass of shirts to one side to reveal a small stack of three boxes, and one longer box like for a curtain rod.
"What are those?" Izuku asked, going over to take one of the boxes from her as she began pulling them out of the closet.
"Open it," she encouraged with a knowing grin.
Izuku set the box down on his bed, next to the half-packed one. It was dusty, and in danger of ripping apart as he unfolded the top, but once it was open Izuku gasped. Packed neatly away inside was a collection of toys and action figures, many of them showing signs of having been played with quite frequently for some time. However, none of them were All Might. Izuku remembered his All Might toys vividly -- he'd ended up destroying more than one just by playing too hard with them, and most of them had ended up lost or so worn down they'd been thrown away -- but suddenly a flood of earlier memories came rushing back to him.
There were plushies for Best Jeanist and Gang Orca he'd used to sleep with, both of them faded with many washings and sewn shut at the corners where the seams had started to rip. There were dolls in varying sizes for nearly every hero that had worked in Musutafu when Izuku was a child. He thought that the Kamui Woods action figure, obtained when he was five the same year that the hero had debuted, was probably indicative of his eye for talent given that Kamui was now in the top ten.
"I forgot about this stuff," Izuku said, reaching in and pulling out one of the old action figures, a poseable Backdraft with flexible water spouts. "How did I forget about all these toys I used to love so much?"
"All Might was all the other kids wanted to talk about," his mother said sadly. "You wanted so much to fit in, especially after we found out you were quirkless, that you only focused on the coolest hero, the one everyone could agree was the best. Eventually All Might became your whole world, and you put all your other toys away."
Suddenly his mother looked off to one side, hiding her face behind a curtain of dark green hair. He could hear her sniffling, and when he took her by the shoulder she looked back at him with eyes shining with tears.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I know the other kids . . . weren't kind to you. When you were little you'd come home covered in bumps and bruises and I knew they weren't just from playing. I talked to your teacher once, but she insisted everything was fine. You just never told me . . . but that's no excuse. I should have known better than to let you deal with that alone."
"I was never alone mom," Izuku assured her, taking her by both shoulders now. "I knew you loved me just the way I was, even if no one else did. I didn't wanna bother you with everything that was going on, it's my fault-"
"No," his mother cut him off, wiping at her eyes with her fingers, "it's mine. If you learned how to put too much on yourself, it was because I let you. I should have been there for you more, should have protected you. I'm sorry."
She sniffled, looking down at the front of his shirt rather than looking him in the eye. For a moment Izuku didn't know what to do for her, but at last he shifted his grip and pulled her into his arms. For a moment she hesitated, but then she wound the fabric of his shirt around her fingers and began to let out little snuffling sobs.
"It really is OK mom," he said as she cried into his shirt. "Things are better now. And UA really is helping, even though I know its scary for you. The people there, they like me, and they want me to be safe. They're teaching me how to keep everyone safe, including myself."
Silence reigned for another few minutes while his mother cried. Then she pulled away, rubbing her red eyes and smiling shakily up at him.
"So," she said, with as much cheer as was possible, "do you want to take any of this stuff with you to the dorm?"
Izuku did. In the other boxes there was a Selkie brand water bottle, some Ms. Joke curtains, a Wild Wild Pussycats alarm clock that recited their introduction when the alarm went off, and other useful things. He had no need for the Air Jet lunch box, much as its design reminded him of Hatsume, but he excitedly packed the little refillable tin of band-aids with an old image of Recovery Girl on it. In the long box was a collection of posters, some of them practically vintage now, most of which Izuku barely remembered owning. Some of them didn't even have tape or pushpin holes, suggesting that he'd never even put them up.
"I have an Ingenium poster?!" Izuku shouted, unrolling one sheet of paper to reveal a hero in familiar white armor.
"Not just that," his mother said brightly. She rerolled the poster she had been looking at and handed it to him. "Look at this one!"
Izuku unrolled the poster, then made a noise of disbelief as Present Mic was revealed, leaning over a microphone stand as though dipping a dance partner and backlit with a sparkling pyrotechnics display. It was an early piece of merch, his costume had changed a bit since then, but the looping silver signature at the bottom was the same as ever it had been.
"I have a signed Present Mic poster!?" Izuku yelled even louder this time. "When did I get this?!"
"You were about seven," his mother recalled, tapping her lip with one finger. "You were just getting into his radio show when they did one of those Call In To Win contests. You had me wait exactly seven seconds to call, and when we did they said you'd won the poster."
"I don't remember this at all!" Izuku protested, looking back at the poster in his hands.
"You were really getting into All Might at the time," she explained. "You didn't have room on your own walls, so you wanted to put it up in the living room. I said no, and I guess it just kind of . . . ended up back here."
Carefully but quickly, Izuku rerolled the poster and put it back in the box. "That's definitely going with me," he said, then pulled his mother into another hug. "Thanks for reminding me of all this stuff mom."
His mother didn't say anything, just held him tightly. *
Hitoshi was surprised by how little actually changed upon moving into the dorms. They moved in over the weekend, spent a day setting up their rooms, and then classes resumed on Monday. The routine of school, homework and training was maintained with very little interruption, and the small injection of free time they didn't spend traveling didn't make that much of a difference. Most of his classmates enjoyed waking up later, since the trip to school only took five minutes now, but Hitoshi tended to wake up at the same time no matter what, so he mostly just had more of a chance to enjoy his coffee.
The one thing that did change was that the class started growing closer. Not that they hadn't been close before, especially after Izuku's crash course in heroics had gotten them all working together toward a common goal, but there was something about having a smallish space they all inhabited that made boundaries fall away. Spontaneous study groups sprang up in the common room, a few nights a week at first and then more and more often. Training became an open topic of discussion, and different configurations of students broke off to monopolize a gym or a mock battleground every day. The girls were all excited to show each other their dorm rooms, and who had seen which rooms became a status symbol, like a collection of trading cards.
Even Hitoshi found himself growing closer to his fellow students, in ways he wouldn't have thought possible. Koda had seen his cat themed bedsheets on move in day, and it turned out that the shyest student in class actually could speak above a whisper when discussing animals. Hagakure apparently liked coffee almost as much at Hitoshi did, and more than once he'd found the pot already made and half-empty when he came downstairs. Dark Shadow, as it turned out, had become slightly afraid of him after the sports festival, but once Tokoyami had approached him to ask if Hitoshi had any particular ill will toward his shadow Hitoshi had been able to put both their minds at ease.
Even just hanging out, relaxing in the kitchen and common spaces, was becoming a more frequent activity for more and more of the class. They talked, they laughed, they helped each other with their homework. It was . . . comfortable.
It was perhaps because of this strange level of comfort that the subject came back around. One afternoon -- about two and half weeks into living together -- half the class had collectively sprawled out over the dorm's living room space. They were all tired from training, and were laying across the floor, the furniture and each other, when suddenly Ashido made a noise of frustration.
"What's wrong?" Yaoyorozu said, looking up from her book.
"My phone's almost dead!" Ashido complained. "And I'm coooomfy! Don't wanna get up!" "Here," said Kaminari, reaching out to where she was laying on a couch, "pass it."
With a curious expression, Ashido handed the phone down to Kaminari on the floor. He took a
short, cheap phone charger out of his pocket, and plugged one end into the phone. Then he put the other end in his mouth.
The phone beeped and began to charge. Ashido blinked. "What."
Hitoshi was inclined to agree, but Kaminari merely grinned at her around the wire in his mouth. Izuku, however, stood up from the table where he, Hitoshi and Shouto had been studying.
"An ambient electrical current!" he said excitedly, then adopted a thinking pose and began pulling on his lip, muttering to himself. "This suggests that he doesn't just draw in electricity from his surroundings, but rather generates it inside his body and releases it in one large strike. But then why isn't his brain overloaded all the time if he's constantly generating that much electricity? Could it be that the discharge from his overload attack disrupts the internal circuit and-"
"Uh, Midoriya?" interrupted Uraraka, and Izuku snapped out of his reverie with a jolt. "You got something you wanna share with the class?"
"Oh, no!" Izuku said hurriedly, putting up both hands as though to ward her off. "I was just thinking, that's all!"
"You were analyzing his quirk!" Kirishima realized with a grin. "Just like you did at the USJ!"
"Oh yeah, I almost forgot about that," Kaminari said, looking up at the ceiling as though in concentration. "You were there to analyze our quirks when we met you. How come we never got that feedback from you?"
"Everything just started happening so fast," Izuku rubbed the back of his head with one hand. "I didn't really get the chance to give you guys any notes."
"It was kind of a mess that day," Sero pointed out.
"And after that everyone was helping me train," Izuku continued, "so I didn't really feel right giving you guys notes on your quirks when you were the ones teaching me."
"Not that we told you much you didn't already know," Hagakure chimed in. "You guys were a big help!" Izuku insisted.
"So why don't you give us your notes now!" Kirishima suggested eagerly. "You're always writing stuff down in your notebook after class, have you still been taking notes on us?"
"Well, yes," Izuku admitted, looking down and twiddling his fingers nervously. "You guys really wanna know what I think?"
"Yeah, yeah!" Uraraka pumped both fists into the air. "We wanna know what you came up with!" "Do me first!" Kaminari called, waving to get Izuku's attention.
Izuku went a little pink, but dutifully dug out his analysis notebook and flipped through to find the page he wanted.
"Judging by what I just saw," he said, speaking aloud as he wrote on a half-full page, "you generate electricity inside your body rather than drawing it from your environment. The attack you use most frequently discharges a massive amount of electricity, 1.3 million volts, but charging a phone
without overloading it requires a much smaller amount, only about 5 volts."
"Only 5 volts?" Kaminari looked down at the phone in his hand. "Wow, I had no idea these things took so little power."
"That suggests that you can control the voltage to create smaller attacks, but you rarely use that ability," Izuku went on. "I bet most of your training has consisted of increasing the amount of electricity you can generate, right?"
"Yeah, I've mostly just been raising my limit," Kaminari admitted. "Why, is that wrong?"
"You should probably focus a little more on finite control," Izuku suggested. "Generating smaller amount of electricity and channeling them in precise ways can have a lot of applications I haven't seen you take advantage of."
"I can regulate down to about a third of my maximum to give myself more shots," Kaminari said. "I need even more control than that?"
Izuku nodded, then flipped to an earlier page in his notes. "If you could channel smaller amount of electricity, much smaller than that, you could do a lot. By discharging about ten thousand volts onto a person's clothes, you could use static cling to stick them to an appropriate surface. If you gave yourself a small electrical charge and held it steady, you could attract small metal objects and even secure yourself to metal surfaces, which could allow you to climb sheer metal walls or stop yourself from falling. I'm not sure what voltage would be required for this, but it's hypothetically possible you might even be able to track electrical currents through the air, like cell phone signals or remote control devices."
When he was through with this speech Izuku looked up, to find the entire congregation staring at him, dumbfounded. Kaminari's mouth was open, the cord having fallen into his lap.
"Yeah," said Hitoshi into the silence. "He does that."
"Was it that bad?" Izuku asked, shrinking in on himself.
"That good," Uraraka corrected.
"Can I really do all that?" Kaminari demanded enthusiastically. "How could I start trying to get that much control?"
"Uh," Izuku thought for a moment. "Maybe try something like the cell phone, but a little stronger? Like a lightbulb, which takes about 120 volts."
Immediately Kaminari jumped up, and then everyone was following him to try and find a lightbulb. Izuku looked nervously after the others, but Hitoshi and Shouto both stood up and tugged him along to join the search. Eventually Uraraka tracked a box of them down, in a supply closet off the kitchen, and Kaminari eagerly pulled one out and held it in his hand by the metal end.
The lightbulb lit up, flared and then exploded, showering the students in broken glass. Everyone shrieked and shielded their eyes, but by the time they did it was already over.
"Well," Kaminari said, once everyone was looking at him again. "Guess I need more practice." "Put the next one in your mouth," Izuku suggested.
Kaminari looked at him dubiously, but obeyed. He pulled out another lightbulb and put the metal
end in his mouth, wrapping his lips around it just below where it transitioned to glass. Again the lightbulb lit up, but this time the light held stable, and after a few seconds it became apparent it wasn't going to explode.
"OK," said Kaminari, once he had removed the lightbulb from his mouth. "Why did that happen?"
"You must have better control through your mucus membranes," Izuku said, tugging on his lip. "We need a way to mimic that quality in the rest of your body, but it's hard to say what the specific mechanism is that allows the membrane to channel electricity more subtly. I have one theory, but I'm not sure-"
"C'mon man, spit it out!" Kirishima said, grinning excitedly. "You've been right every time so far, what do you got?"
"Yaoyorozu," Izuku said, turning to her, "can you make a jar of moisturizer? Something that's a humectant, not an occlusive or an emollient, and as simple a formula as you can manage."
Yaoyorozu concentrated for a moment, then pulled a small, unlabeled container of white cream out of her arm. Kaminari dipped his fingers in and rubbed a generous layer of lotion over his hands, then picked up the lightbulb again.
It lit up quickly, but again held steady without exploding.
"Of course," Izuku said quietly, tugging on his lip again. "The humectant draws water into the skin, and the water acts as a conductor letting electricity pass through the membrane easier. Then because its easier for the electricity to pass through the skin it doesn't have to build up a strong current before it can break out of his body, so he's able to let it out in smaller amounts."
"Huh," said Kaminari, looking dazed.
"Amazing," Izuku concluded in a reverent whisper. Then suddenly he turned and ran back toward the common room. "Sorry, I gotta write this down!"
The others began to clean up the glass, chatting animatedly amongst themselves, but Hitoshi and Shouto both went back to the common room. Izuku hadn't bothered to sit down, and was leaning over the table from a standing position, scribbling madly in his notebook. He didn't seem aware of their presence until Hitoshi coughed pointedly, making him look up.
"Sorry," he said, smiling crookedly as he stood straight. "I know it's silly to want to take notes on something I've already told him, but-"
"I understand," Hitoshi told him, smiling despite himself. "The notes are proof of what you can do, all the work that you put in. You like having them."
Izuku smiled sheepishly, and Hitoshi felt like his heart was being squeezed by a fist. That had been happening more and more often around Izuku: that overwhelming fullness in his heart, the butterflies in his stomach, the way his palms and fingertips tingled like he wanted to reach out and touch. He glanced sideways at Shouto, to see an expression that suggested he was going through something similar. Hitoshi had never felt closer to him. Izuku was someone you just had to have strong feelings for.
Not that Izuku would ever guess those feelings. He thought too little of himself to ever suspect that someone might feel . . . that way, about him. Even now, writing in his notebook, completely in his element, he didn't think he was anything special. Hitoshi wanted to tell him how special he was, but he'd never been good at that kind of thing.
"I feel . . . kind of jealous," Shouto admitted, making both Izuku and Hitoshi look at him. "Jealous?" Izuku repeated in confusion.
"You put so much energy into analyzing Hitoshi, and now Kaminari," Shouto said flatly, then tilted his head in a way that gave him an oddly innocent look. "When do I get a personal consultation with you, Izuku?"
"Me first!" Uraraka said, and Hitoshi turned to see the rest of the class filing in. They had picked up a few people, namely Tokoyami and Shouji, and Uraraka was leading the pack, nearly jumping up and down in her excitement.
"You go next," said Ashido dismissively, "I wanna hear about Yaomomo's quirk!" "Mine?" Yaoyorozu asked, placing a hand to her chest in surprise. "Why my quirk?"
"Because it's the coolest!" Ashido insisted loudly, then shoved Sero out of the way when he would have protested. "Pretty please!"
"I do have a theory I'd like to test," Izuku admitted shyly. "If you're willing that is."
"Well, what do you want to try?" Yaoyorozu asked. "I don't see how my quirk could do any more than it already does."
"It's not so much what you can do as how you do it," Izuku said, opening up his notebook and flipping through it for the right page. "I've noticed that you often eat during class to keep your energy up, right?"
"It's to fuel my quirk," Yaoyorozu told him, coming to look over his shoulder. "It allows me to convert lipids into inorganic material. Is that Japanese?"
"It's a code," Izuku explained. "And, uh, that's not how digestion works." Yaoyorozu blinked at him. "What?"
"Food isn't digested enough to convert into fat cells for a minimum of four hours," Izuku informed her. "If it were lipids that you were converting into other materials, eating wouldn't do you any good in the short term."
"Really?" Yaoyorozu looked taken aback. "Then, how does eating increase the amount of lipids in my body right away?"
"I don't think it does," Izuku continued, reading from his notes as though reciting from a textbook. "You're able to make objects much bigger than your body, which shouldn't be possible if you were just converting one type of matter into another. Even if there was just a completely broken exchange rate, you come up against a limit to what you can make without any noticeable decrease in stored body fat. Your entire, uh, figure should change when you run out of steam, but I've never noticed your costume fitting differently after you overexert yourself."
"So then what am I converting into the things I make?" Yaoyorozu wondered.
"Almost as soon as you eat food you can make more things, right?" Izuku asked. When Yaoyorozu nodded he went on. "I think you convert food into a certain kind of energy, and this energy is what generates the things you create with your quirk. That's what creates that sparkling effect when you pull something out of your body; that's the energy in action."
"How would we test a theory like that?" Ashido asked while Yaoyorozu was busy looking thunderstruck.
"It's simple," Izuku said. "All we need is a bathroom scale."
Ashido and Hagakure immediately took off for the common bathing area, and a few moments later they came back bearing a cheap plastic standing scale. Hitoshi didn't recognize it, which probably meant it made its home on the girls' side of that space.
"It's a pretty simple test," Izuku explained. "We weigh Yaoyorozu, and then she makes the biggest thing she can with the resources she has right now. Then, we weigh her again. If she weighs less, she converted part of her body into the new object. If she weighs the same, then she converted energy."
No one could find a flaw in this plan, so Yaoyorozu stepped onto the scale. Hitoshi politely looked away, and a moment later Yaoyorozu stepped off. She hesitated, then went to the front door, unbuttoning her top as she went. Hitoshi and most of the boys stayed behind, only Izuku and the girls following her out, but they could see the shower of bright purple sparks through the window and Sero went to go peek at the result.
"She made a boat," he said, eyes wide. "Like, a motor boat."
Eventually Izuku and the girls came back in, Yaoyorozu looking a little lightheaded, and went straight back to the scale. Yaoyorozu stepped on and Hitoshi averted his eyes again as the girls read the outcome.
"She hasn't lost an ounce!" Ashido cried in triumph. "You were right Midoriya!"
"We were wrong," Yaoyorozu said, staring into the middle distance in something like horror. "So completely wrong. I falsified the quirk registry."
"You can change it a few times you know," Shouto said soothingly. "It's not a problem."
"What do I do with this information?" Yaoyorozu asked, hands comping up to clutch at her face.
"Well, there's a few things you could look into," Izuku said, hands hovering over Yaoyorozu's shoulder, clearly trying to be as gentle as possible. "You'd still have to convert some food to the type of energy that lets you move around, so there's probably a certain amount of decision making that goes into the process you could work on controlling. And you get more nutrients out of eating food that you enjoy, so you should probably play around with how different kinds of food affect the resultant energy ratio."
Yaoyorozu continued to look lost for a moment, then suddenly she gasped and slammed one fist into the opposite palm.
"Of course!" she said energetically. "If its actually energy that means it doesn't matter what part of my body I use to make the object! I can pull it out of any piece of exposed skin, without needing to worry about drawing lipids away from any particular area!"
"Uh, yeah," Izuku said, blinked a few times in succession at her. "That's right, I guess."
"That means I can totally redesign my costume!" Yaoyorozu exclaimed, eyes blazing with renewed fire. "Thank you Midoriya!"
She darted over and gave Midoriya a quick hug, then rushed back to the armchair where she'd
abandoned her things and pulled out a notebook and pen. Midoriya blushed deeply, stammering out a shaky "y-you're w-welcome!" but she was already working, head bent over the page as she sketched a new version of her herosona.
"Me next!" cried Uraraka, jumping up and down in unbridled glee.
"Hey we all want a turn!" Ashido complained.
"The siren call of secret knowledge is strong," Tokoyami concurred.
"She did call dibs earlier," Kirishima pointed out reasonably. "You picked who went last, it's her turn."
"Yes!" Uraraka pumped a fist in the air.
"We probably wanna go to a gym to test out my theory about your quirk," Izuku said immediately, still a bit pink from Yaoyorozu's hug, or perhaps from all the attention. "I think a five pound weight would be the best thing to use, and I don't want any mishaps in the dorm."
Uraraka looked nothing short of delighted by this news, and quickly Hitoshi found himself swept outside with the rest of the crowd. The boys all stared at the legitimate motorboat laying on its side on the lawn, and they would have been left behind by the girls if Shouto hadn't hustled them along. It was afternoon, but not yet late, so when they reached the nearest gym they found a handful of upperclassmen working out.
Izuku, however, directed them to the weight room.
"So here's what I've been thinking," Izuku said, once they were all crowded around a rack of weights. "Uraraka, you say your quirk works by canceling the pull of gravity on any object you touch?"
"And it releases when I touch the pads of all my fingers together," she said, nodding seriously.
"Right," Izuku nodded, "but the things you use your quirk on don't behave like they're not affected by gravity."
"Huh?" Uraraka looked confused. "But, they float!"
"Only to a certain height," Izuku pointed out. "Then they stop going up and just hover in the air. I noticed it during our battle in the sports festival; if the dust you threw didn't have any gravity to hold it, then it should have just kept going. Instead it stayed close by where you'd thrown it."
"So it's a form of telekinesis?" Hitoshi guessed, interested despite himself.
"Not quite," Izuku shook his head. "Uraraka, what you do isn't so much canceling gravity as it is manipulating it. You lessen gravity to make things float, then even it out so they stay in place. That's why you have a weight limit as well; if you canceled gravity then the weight of things shouldn't matter, but if you're manipulating gravity then the effect of their mass is still a factor."
Uraraka blinked. "So how would we test that?"
"If you can manipulate gravity, then that means you can make things heavier as well as lighter," Izuku said, then tapped one of the five pound weights on the rack. "Touch this, then try to do the opposite of what you do when you make something lighter, OK?"
Uraraka looked dubious, but she closed her eyes a moment and breathed deeply, then opened them again and touched the weight. Nothing happened, at least nothing that was immediately obvious, and for a moment they all stared at it. Then Shouji reached out with one muscular arm and grabbed the weight, trying to lift it up.
The weight didn't budge.
"This definitely doesn't weigh five pounds," Shouji informed them, muscles straining as he struggled to lift it. "Feels more like a hundred."
"Now release it," Izuku instructed, eyes fixed on the weight.
Uraraka pressed the pads of all five fingers together, and Shouji immediately threw the weight through the ceiling.
There was a crash as it hit the tile and kept going, and all of them yelped and jumped back as two broken tiles fell to the floor, shattering further on impact. One by one they all looked back up at the ceiling, at the fresh hole that was very, very obvious to anyone laying on any of the weight lifting benches, if not anyone that chose to walk in. The five pound weight did not come back down.
"We should go," said Hitoshi, after a few moments of stunned silence.
This sentiment was seconded by everyone, and they quickly made their way back to the dorm.
Izuku did a few more consultations that afternoon. He gave Kirishima a long explanation about cleavage structures and the different between hardness and toughness, which Hitoshi couldn't follow but Kirishima seemed to get something out of. Ashido got a lecture about enzymes and was sent away with some reading, which didn't seem to be the outcome she had anticipated. Izuku took Tokoyami into the kitchen and asked the others to keep out while he explained something, and a few minutes later Tokoyami emerged at a run, calling apologies to the others and bumping into the couch as he fled back to his room, Dark Shadow wrapped around his head and shoulders.
"He needed to call his parents," Izuku said by way of explanation when he came back out into the common room. "They need to confirm something, and if I'm right then they need to have a long talk as a family."
"Was there some kind of infidelity involved?" Shouto asked, with a slightly unsettling interest. "No," Izuku said, collapsing onto the couch beside him, "just a big misunderstanding."
Eventually Izuku begged off, pleading exhaustion and promising to consult with those he had missed later in the week. Hitoshi echoed his excuses, but no one was as sorry to see him go, with the possible exception of Shouto who was in the middle of a cup of tea. He caught up with Izuku in the elevator and they rode up to their shared floor together.
"I'm kind of jealous too you know," Hitoshi teased as the elevator came to a stop and the door opened.
"I did experiments on your quirk," Izuku protested lightly.
"Yeah, but I'm still jealous," Hitoshi told him. "Feels weird to watch you do your thing in front of so many people. I want it to just be me, you and Shouto again."
"Well, just remember," Izuku said with his hand on the doorhandle. He paused, then looked at Hitoshi out of the corner of his eye, and his gaze seemed much less innocent than Hitoshi had
anticipated. "It was you, me and Shouto first."
Then Izuku disappeared into his dorm room, leaving Hitoshi with a stomach full of butterflies. Well, thought Hitoshi to himself. Maybe he does know how special he is.