"I'm really not a fan of that game," replied his conversation partner, an amused shine in her hazel eyes. Her hair, blonde with grey streaks, was neatly cut to the shoulder, the emblem of an MLA general proudly displayed on her shoulder. Apparently Izuku was joining this conversation already in progress. "First person shooters aren't all that interesting, now that I've actually, you know, shot people... in first person." She grimaced. "But, you know, they were going to shoot me if I didn't shoot them. That should make it better, right?"

"Something like that," Izuku sighed. "I... every time we try to deescalate things, everything only gets worse. Every time we escalate things, everything only gets worse. It doesn't seem to matter what we do..."

"Not always," the general replied. "There was open combat on the streets of Switzerland a month ago, and now the laws are all settled and the streets are being rebuilt and metas are happily helping out with their shiny, legal abilities. There's still some violence, of course, but it's decreasing steadily and it looks like something similar is going to happen in Costa Rica, too. At the end of the day, just agreeing to not oppress people isn't that much of a sacrifice. Don't give up hope. We can win."

"Hm," Izuku considered, taking a sip of coffee. "It's not like I've lost hope. It's just... hard. I miss not being afraid for my friends' lives. I miss the days where my choices weren't "accept the oppression of people like me in the good countries and the mass murder of people like me in the bad countries" or "run an international terrorist organization.""

""Terrorist organization" is a loaded phrase," the general pointed out. "Is that really what we are?"

"Yeah, I think that much is pretty clear cut," Izuku replied dryly. ""Revolutionary" is another word for "traitor" just like "freedom fighter" is another word for "terrorist." Do we have a point? Are we justified in most of our actions? I'd say so, yeah."

The general nodded thoughtfully. "Did you ever read V for Vendetta?" "I did. It was interesting. Sad, too. I think I cried."

"Like you said, there's a subtlety. At what point does "terrorist hiding in the crowd" become less accurate than "freedom fighter standing against the oppressive tyranny of a dystopia?""

"Yeah, good question," Izuku sighed. "All I know is I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I stopped fighting now."

"Fair, that."

Chris turned the corner to the small sitting room where Izuku and his conversation partner were sipping hot drinks. He stared at them for a moment, brow furrowing. "Huh. You two actually getting along for once?" He shook his head in exasperation. "Which one of you is Rafael?"

"I am," Izuku declared at the same moment the general opposite him said, "me." They exchanged glances, then pointed to each other and said in perfect synchrony, "she is."

Chris face palmed, turned on his heel, and walked away. Izuku and his companion burst out laughing.

"Alright then," Izuku groaned. Two dreams in one day. Apparently getting hit in the head had jarred some things loose, like knocking books down from a dusty shelf. He hadn't recognized the woman when he was... asleep? Unconscious? One of those, but upon awaking he immediately knew that the MLA general he'd been speaking with was, or rather looked like, Bit Weasel. And Chris walked into the room and demanded to know which one of them was Rafael, Switcher. So, if he had this straight, Destro had walked around a corner and found two identical copies of one of his generals, asked which one of them was a changeling and accidentally offered up a grand opportunity for teasing. Teasing Destro... they... even having lived through it he could not wrap his head around what he had just seen. He couldn't wrap his head around the moral debate the MLA generals had been having, either. They didn't have a point, did they? Killing someone for your cause was never justified, with perhaps the exception of actual, organized warfare between nations, but then who got to decide what constituted a "nation?" What was war and what was terrorism? They called it the MLA War, after all...He didn't want to think about this. It was too disturbing, made him feel like he was sympathizing with murderers. Regardless, it was hard to believe that the two generals actually... cared anything about subtleties of morality, hard to believe the conversation he had participated in.

Ignoring the cognitive dissonance, the long and short of it was that Izuku could now be quite sure that his memory donor was Bit Weasel. He could have misinterpreted the situation, maybe. He was pretty confident he had it right. So, apparently Bit Weasel and Switcher didn't usually get along, so much so that Chris was surprised to find them having a civil conversation. Interesting.

As if finally confirming that he remembered being a girl wasn't distracting enough, there was the bunker from Izuku's earlier dream. He could probably find it if he were careful. Should he, though? That memory had been... different. Small details, hidden cues, and his gut instinct said that this memory was of modern Japan, not something from the era of the MLA War, so... it was

quite possibly the first of his real memories, in the sense that it might well depict something Izuku had done "himself" during his missing week.

Should he go back to the bunker? Should he tell someone more qualified where to find it? He would do it anonymously, of course. He couldn't admit how he knew, couldn't even hint at it by "stumbling" upon the location. Izuku had every reason to expect the--presumably old MLA-- bunker was exactly where he remembered it to be, but in order to give directions to it he would have to go there himself first and that didn't sound like a great idea. Maybe he should just forget about it. It had lain there undisturbed and unobtrusive year after year; why change the status quo?

He really, really, wanted to go there, though. It was... ridiculous, but he was so curious he could barely think straight. This was the first memory that had resurfaced that might be from Japan, from the time when Izuku was missing. He might now know whose memories he had obtained, but he still had no idea what he had done during his missing week or how or why. Going back to the bunker might reveal something or jar his memories more.

Was he... kidnapped by some modern MLA cell and used as a disposable pawn in a covert operation? That... that made a lot of sense, actually. Of all the possibilities... that was probably what had happened to him. Was he going to remember all of it at some point? It had taken like, a year, to see even that brief glimpse of his missing days... but would it all come back if he waited long enough? Or did he have to get hit in the head repeatedly in order to gain any new insight?

"Good evening, Midoriya," Aizawa said, walking into the room slowly.

"Evening?" Indeed, upon glancing out the window he discovered that it was sunset already. "Huh." Well, at least his head didn't hurt anymore.

"Todoroki was quite upset about injuring you so seriously," the teacher took a seat beside his bed. "He... may have accidentally said a lot of things he would not normally have let slip." Izuku blinked dumbly. What was this about? "Could you tell me what happened with Endeavour before your match?"

Oh. Izuku had not expected Todoroki to say anything to Aizawa in the immediate future. Izuku, in Todoroki's position, would have agonized for weeks over whether he should tell his teacher anything. The greenette answered, relaying exactly what he had heard, seen and done. Aizawa listened stoically. "Thank you, Midoriya," he nodded. After a few moments of silence he added, "you did very well, by the way, in the Sports Festival. I was quite impressed."

Really? He had thought his performance mediocre. "I didn't stand a chance against Todoroki and with Shinsou..." he shook his head. He shouldn't talk about that in front of Aizawa, it was--

"I expect his quirk must have been extremely disturbing to you," the teacher said, not a hint of judgment.

Izuku considered not answering, then shrugged, "it wasn't fair for him, really. He's not--I m-mean, I'm sure people have been awful about his quirk his whole life, and it's not his fault someone else with a similar ability did something nasty to me and I shouldn't feel this way about it but I..." he sighed, unable to put his thoughts into words.

"Can't help it," Aizawa filled in. "It's not your fault any more than it is Shinsou's, you know. The most anyone could expect from you is conscious recognition that you aversion isn't logical."

Was that really all they could expect? Izuku had expected better from himself. "Thanks I suppose?"

"Mhm. Your mother should be here to pick you up shortly. I have a few disasters to attend to before I go home."

"Sorry..." Somehow he was sure this was his fault.

As if reading his mind, Aizawa told him, "very few of my problems are your fault. Only one of these is even remotely related to you," before departing.

Recovery Girl came to check on Izuku ten minutes later and cleared him to leave when his mother arrived. The greenette got out of bed and dressed to depart. He felt dizzy and exhausted, but other than that little worse for the wear.

"Hey nerd," Kacchan called, trotting into the nurse's office. Izuku's mother walked in behind him. "Hi, Kacchan," Izuku said. "Hey, mom."

His mother hugged him fiercely. "I was really worried about you."

"I'm fine," Izuku assured them. "Did you win, Kacchan?"

"Yeah," he replied with a sharp-toothed grin. "Todoroki gave me a really good fight for it, but you know his quirk makes him hypothermic after a while. I wore 'im down. Iida and Tokoyami are third and fourth. Iida took off right after the award ceremony, though. Family emergency or something."

His family all worked in heroics, didn't they? That didn't sound good at all. "I hope nobody's really hurt."

"I didn't see anything on the news," Katsuki replied, "if one of Iida's family got killed it would probably be on the news." That was something at least. "Now let's get out of here. I'm starving and I'm sure you are, too."

"Now that you mention it..."

"I arranged to pick up some takeout on the way home," Izuku's mom said. "I figured you would all want to eat promptly." Implied was that the Bakugou and Midoriya families would dine together that night.

Izuku found himself increasingly distracted as dinner progressed. The food was good and he was ravenous, but there was so much on his mind. Shinsou. Bunker. Bit Weasel. Todoroki. Kurogiri. Iida... It was too much. Everything felt completely out of control. There was nothing he could do about most of these things; he couldn't even put into words exactly what the problem was in most cases. In the case of those few problems that he could actually articulate, there either wasn't anything he could do about them or were far too many things he could do about them, none of which sounded like particularly good ideas.

Mechanically, Izuku answered a few questions about the Sports Festival from Mitsuki and from his mother. When they asked him if something was wrong he told them he was just, "drained and tired."

Izuku couldn't go on like this. He had to take charge of at least one thing, put his foot down and solve one of these problems, or he was going to lose it for real. He pulled Katsuki aside that evening as their parents talked over dessert. "I need you to come to Mandar with me this weekend." His phone had informed him that the ward in question was about two hours away by train and bus.

Kacchan blinked. "Uh... why?"

"I told you I keep having weird dreams," he started, "that might be memories."

Katsuki raised an eyebrow. "Izuku..."

"I'm pretty sure that this was a memory from when I was missing, and it was in Mandar," he blurted.

"And you're not telling, like, Aizawa or the detective because...?"

Izuku gulped. "I..." Why wasn't he telling anyone? Because he was afraid that they might doubt his loyalty? Afraid they might think him damaged and demand his expulsion from UA? Afraid they might decide he was useful and lock him away to interrogate or, worse, bring some secret, government agent with a different mind manipulation quirk to read him like a book and try to get information about the MLA (ancient or modern) from his brain? Afraid that he might remember something no one was meant to know, something that might get him or his companions killed? Yes. It was all of those things that forced him into silence. How many were rational fears? That was hard to say. "You'll understand when we get there," Izuku said instead. "Please?" He could go alone, but that would be incredibly reckless.

Kacchan took a deep breath through his nose and exhaled sharply. "Alright, nerd, but you are going to explain to me what's going on, got it? All of it."

He nodded. "I promise to explain if you promise not to tell anyone."

Katsuki's face twisted as if he had just swallowed a lemon. "Izuku." He took a moment to collect his thoughts. "I'm really freakin' worried about you. If... I can't promise to keep quiet if I don't know what I'm promising about 'cause... let's face it, there's weird shit going on in your life and it might be time to consider, say, telling someone who can do something about it."

It was hard to believe that he was talking to Kacchan, that his old friend had just said those words to him. Bakugou Katsuki being the voice of reason, arguing for Izuku to tell a "responsible adult" about his problems? It was borderline unbelievable... and it meant that Kacchan must be really, really worried. But there were so many things... Izuku couldn't risk people finding out what was going on, what kinds of things he was seeing.

Some of his fears were definitely irrational, but some of them definitely were not. If Tsukauchi with his lie detecting quirk were to sit him down and say, "now, Midoriya, have these dreams influenced your attitudes towards the villains of the original MLA? Perhaps made you sympathetic to their cause?" and Izuku would have to say "maybe," and who knew what would happen to him then? Was he going to go off and join some modern wanna be MLA cell, like some bizarre case of post-kidnapping Stockholm Syndrome? Of course not. Was he going to let someone get away with breaking the law just because Izuku remembered being an integral part of the MLA and thinking that law was immoral? Of course not. Would the detective, would UA, would his friends, teachers, the Hero Public Safety Commission, believe Izuku when he made those assertions? Maybe, maybe not.

"Maybe" wasn't enough for him to risk all of his dreams. Izuku'd managed to make it into the hero course against the odds and he wasn't about to lose his place now, no matter what. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a contrary little voice pointed out that the longer Izuku waited to reveal what he knew, the more suspicion would be cast upon his allegiances when the truth eventually came out (for inconvenient truths were wont to surface at the worst times). The contrary voice cast its ballot for "tell Kacchan everything." Izuku soundly outvoted this rebellious part of his personality.

Sighing, Izuku said, "never mind, Kacchan. It wasn't that important, anyway."

"Hey, nerd, don't be like that!" Katsuki growled.

"N-no. Really, it's okay. Don't worry about it. It's just weird dreams, after all."

"Izuku! Don't you fucking dare. Mandar. What happened to you in Mandar? Why do you want me to go with you?"

Perhaps a half truth would suffice, get Kacchan to stop asking questions. God, he shouldn't have said anything at all. "I just saw that that's the city I was in. I wanted to see if the place I remember walking actually exists, but, well, satellite maps are a thing so I guess I don't really need to go there, anyway." He did need to go there, though. He would have to go alone, and he would have to be really careful to make sure Katsuki didn't follow him...

The blonde growled, sparking his palms. "God damn it, nerd! I know you're lying! Argh! You suck for putting me in this position. Fine! I'd rather promise not to tell even if it's totally screwed up and an adult really needs to know. Better that than worry about you going it alone up against who the hell knows what kind of odds. You hear me? I won't tell, promise, but when you go to Mandar, you're going to take me with you. Understand?"

That deescalated quickly. "Uh. Y-yeah. This Sunday."

Katsuki nodded, growling grudgingly. "Promising not to tell doesn't mean I won't nag you to tell someone yourself, though."

Well, fair enough.