Aizawa began writing names and numbers on the board. "These are the number of internship offers each of you have received," he told the class. Bakugou had several thousand. Todoroki, "keep calling me "Zuko," please," Shouto had a similarly large number of offers. Iida and Tokoyami had several hundred each. The rest of them had a few dozen at most, and some students didn't have any at all. Ojiro and Shouji had a few, not as many as Izuku, though. He had twenty-seven.

The greenette wasn't sure what he'd expected. Some pessimistic part of his mind had, perhaps, expected no offers whatsoever whereas the realistic part of his mind had assured him he would have at least a handful given that he made it to the second round of the final tournament and did not hopelessly embarrass himself in his fight against Todoroki; he lost, true, as he was destined to, but demonstrated some degree both of agility and persistence. There was the issue that, more likely than not, those who had put forth offers to Izuku hadn't the slightest idea he was quirkless. That could be... problematic. He would have to be very careful about who he chose to work with. He should probably ask Aizawa for advice about which heroes would tolerate a quirkless student.

"The rest of you will have to pick from the master list of agencies that agree to take students from UA," Aizawa told them. "Choose carefully. This isn't an opportunity you'll get again. I know third years who sorely regret their first year internship decisions to this very day."

"No pressure," Kirishima muttered under his breath. Kacchan snorted.

Lunch saw the entirety of class 1-A and 1-B absently nibbling on their food while flipping through their offer packets. "I can't believe they printed out all six thousand offers for you," Izuku ribbed Katsuki, looking at the ridiculously thick packet.

"Check the font size," Kacchan held up the paper with an unamused glower. Izuku squinted, trying to read the tiny type.

"Why didn't they just email these to us?" Ojiro wondered. "It's not like I have many offers but still, why did they do this? Why?"

"Yeah. I could have at least searched for names in a god damned PDF," Katsuki groused. "I know I shouldn't be complaining about my good luck--"

"Then don't," Ojiro, Shouji and Izuku interrupted in tandem. The Sports Festival victor fell silent.

"I don't think I know many of these heroes," Izuku hummed, flipping through his packet. That was saying something. He was, as Kacchan so often said, a nerd.

"Underground?" Shouji asked.

"And undercover," Izuku nodded. "In fact, a lot of them are undercover heroes... I'd never really considered that as a career but now that someone mentions it... it would probably be a good move for me."

"Why?" asked Ojiro, confused.

"Because it's not so difficult to pretend to have a useless quirk, like natural immunity to certain diseases, slowed or accelerated aging, even something ridiculous like feeling confident no matter how over or under dressed you are, but it can be hard to pretend not to have a quirk you do have because people use them instinctively."

Kacchan considered this. "Yeah, fair points. I would really prefer it if you chose a safer career path, nerd, not because you're going to be bad at your job or anything but because undercover work is really dangerous, even compared to frontline and I..." he trailed off before being forced to admit he cared about someone.

"I've heard that, too," Ojiro said, also looking a bit nervous.

"Depends on the kind of missions you accept," Izuku replied, "what kind of groups you work to infiltrate. It's not like there's any kind of heroics that's really safe. Even rescue heroes lead hazardous lives."

It was at that point that the four of them realized they had spent most of lunch reading their offers instead of eating and they had better pick up the pace or go hungry to afternoon lessons. Izuku shoveled food into his mouth.

As they arrived back in class, Izuku finally caught up with Iida and then realized he wasn't quite sure what to say. "Hey, uh, Iida? I don't want to... to overstep but I just wanted to say I'm really glad to hear your brother's going to be alright."

The class president nodded gravely. "Thank you, Midoriya. He was incredibly lucky. Stain... apparently lost interest and left without dealing the final blow he intended. I had planned to intern with my brother," he continued, "but it will be several weeks before he is recovered enough to return to work. I will have to find..." a spark of vengeful fire glittered in the student's eyes, "alternative arrangements."

"Sorry about that, Iida," Izuku said cautiously. "Be safe, alright? And wish your brother well for me?"

"Of course." The hollow tone made Izuku incredibly nervous.

"Uh... I-ida? Are you..." At that moment Aizawa called the class to order and Izuku scrambled for

his chair. They never managed to finish their conversation.

Shinsou did not seek Izuku out. The greenette didn't see the general education student again until after internships.

"Okay, nerd, this is just getting creepy," Katsuki was whispering, like he was legitimately freaked out... and maybe he was. The two of them hadn't spoken much on the ride to Mandar. There were too many ears on the train, fewer on the bus, but still enough to make talking freely inadvisable. "How do you... where are we going?"

"I'm not totally sure," Izuku said. His memory of the dream, though, was vivid enough to guide him between the trees. Things had changed a bit in the past year and the seasons weren't a perfect match either, but he was confident he knew the way.

Here it was, the clearing. "We're looking for a hatch in the ground," the greenette said. He couldn't tell exactly where it had been... Izuku pulled out a knife (not a switchblade, a blunt kitchen knife) and began stabbing the dirt, trying to imitate the actions he had taken during his possession.

The click of metal on metal heralded success. "Here it is," Izuku and a rather pale Katsuki worked to unveil the trapdoor hidden beneath the dirt. They heaved and the hinges creaked in annoyance before inching open. They should have brought some WD-40.

"What in the world is this?" Kacchan hissed, eyes wide.

Izuku had promised to tell him, hadn't he? "It's a bunker," he said, "from the Meta Liberation Army War. Here. I brought an electric lantern on a string for you to wear around your neck. I'm going to tie a rope around that tree," he set about doing so, "just in case there's a problem with the ladder when we try to climb back out."

"Why are we going into an old MLA bunker?" Kacchan asked, sounding only marginally less freaked out as he gazed down into the pitch darkness of the slim hole they had uncovered.

Why was he doing this? "I want to see if I can figure out what I was doing here the first time, or jog my memory or something," Izuku said eventually. "And I don't want to admit to anyone at UA or in the police that I remember being here, because... well..."

"Well what, nerd?" Katsuki asked as Izuku switched on his lantern and began to clamber down into the darkness, the meager light he brought with him chasing the ancient shadows back. The intense scent of aging dust and cold earth was nearly overwhelming. Yes... he remembered this. He felt as if he could take a casual step in a fourth dimension and find himself a year in the past, descending this ladder for the first time. It was all right here, so close!

"I've been having dreams," Izuku began at last.

"Yeah, that I know, you've said before that you didn't want to talk about them beca--good god that

is a hell of a lot of guns!"

"Well. Yes?" Of course there were a lot of guns. This was the bunker of a group that carried out a successful guerrilla war against dozens of countries for years. The history books never said as much, but Izuku's own research had made it evident that the MLA had won for all intents in purposes in a number of countries, not just Costa Rica and Switzerland where the MLA ceased hostilities when an acceptable compromise was reached about the treatment of meta humans but also in Russia in the sense that the government was at least forced to stop sending bus loads of meta humans that annoyed them off to labor camps in Siberia to die. That was beside the point, though; the point was Izuku would have been surprised if there were any fewer guns.

"This place looks like it's been abandoned since the end of the war, 'Zuku. Check the spiderwebs." Katsuki's train of thought had been quite thoroughly derailed and that was probably for the best.

"Yeah," Izuku agreed. "I remember knowing that... they were going to the last stand, to Utapa. They knew they were never going to make it back... it was our Shiroyama, five hundred samurai against thousands of the imperial forces..."

""Our?"" Katsuki demanded.

"Oh god why did I say that?" Izuku pulled at his hair, trying to stifle the panic. Why? He wasn't... he hadn't been there. He didn't even remember being there, at Utapa, although chances were he was going to see the last stand in a memory at some point. Was his personality being overwritten? Was this "our" the first sign or was he just... starting to think of himself as a member of the old MLA? He'd spent so much time with these people. He couldn't help but think of Chris as a friend, not just a friend of Bit Weasel but as a friend of Izuku. God, what was happening to him?

"Calm down, nerd," Katsuki said, clearly far from calm himself but doing his best. "I couldn't understand half of that. Why are you so freaked out about saying "our?" I mean it was weird, but not like lose your freakin' mind weird."

It was time to come out and say it. He couldn't keep doing... he couldn't do this anymore. He had to come clean. "I've been having dreams where I am Bit Weasel, one of Destro's generals from the Meta Liberation Army. They're so vivid it's like I was there and I... Chris was the name I knew him by first and I got to know him before I had any idea who he was and we were having snowball fights and he wasn't acting like a megalomaniac terrorist at all and then Bit Weasel and Switcher were pranking him and it was... it was... I like Destro, Kacchan, I... I like a lot of them and I can't like them! They're supposed to be monsters but they weren't but even though they weren't monsters they were still awful! They still fought against the government, still killed people and carried out terrorist attacks and were against everything that modern heroics stands for and I... and I-- if anyone finds out I feel this way they'll throw me out of UA at best and maybe lock me in some kind of brain eating dungeon at worst and I don't know what to do Kacchan! I don't know what they used me for but it must have been bad and it was probably a modern MLA wannabe cell that did it if they knew about this place and the memories are all from Bit Weasel and I should tell someone what I know but I--but I can't! I can't! They'll take everything from me." He gasped a breath at last, tears streaming down his face. He threw his arms around Kacchan's neck and sobbed brokenly into his old friend-turned-tormentor-turned-best friend's shirt.

Katsuki--apparently stunned speechless and stony--eventually leaned forward, wrapping his arms around Izuku's shoulders. "You have all the luck, nerd," he whispered. Izuku focused on sobbing, hoping some of the emotions would drain away with the tears. It wasn't working. "I don't know what to do nerd. If I were you, I wouldn't know what to do, either but... I'm not sure I would have told me and I think it's a damn good thing you decided to do that. At least I get it now." That

twisted up set of sentences was a bit difficult to understand, but the sentiment was appreciated.

Izuku slowly caught his breath, eyes stinging from the tears shed. "Sorry, Kacchan," he muttered, letting his friend go. Katsuki never much liked being touched.

"You've got more important things to worry about than my general objection to being hugged," Katsuki grumbled, reaching forward to ruffle the greenette's hair. "Alright. We came here to look around. Let's look. What's this way?"

They stepped into the second room, the one with the partition. Katsuki rubbed his finger across the table where battle plans would have been discussed, skin coming away dusty. "Three more doors huh?" The blonde opened the first. "Huh. Generator closet... doesn't look like even that crazy support student would be able to get this thing working, though."

"I bet she could," Izuku said, realizing with a start that Izuku had a small chance of being able to get the generator running. It had been sealed away, safe from the elements, and it was well made in its day. There shouldn't be too much corrosion. The fuel would have all long since gone bad, but it wouldn't be hard to get more. Apparently some basic knowledge of heavy machinery was granted to him by Bit Weasel's memories, or however that skill transfer thing worked. This particular skill set wasn't that surprising. "I wonder if I would know how to program computers," Izuku mused, closing the generator closet and opening the second, small door. "Huh. Privy." He closed that closet immediately.

The third and final door led to the bunks. All the foot lockers were neatly arranged at the foot of the pristine beds with one exception. Izuku walked to the far right bottom bunk, the light of his lantern casting long, dangling shadows in an eerie forest on the unfinished walls. All the other bunk beds were covered in decades of cobwebs, but not this one, and something about it... somehow Izuku was sure. "I slept here," he said, taking a seat on the blue, cotton blanket and leaning back, laying his head down on the pillow and staring up at the slats that supported the mattress above him.

What had he thought about when he lay here? The greenette closed his eyes and drifted slowly away in the silence. All he could hear was his own breathing--cold. Quiet. His heart ached so fiercely he couldn't help but think there was something physically broken within his chest. Tears pricked in his eyes... He longed desperately for the good days, for the war. They had always thought the days of the war were the worst days, the worst times they would ever experience in their lives and then, someday, the battles would end--whether the MLA won or lost--and the death and the violence and crying and worrying sick over friends gone away to battle would be over and there would be at least some havens on this god forsaken planet because look, if New Zealand could have a meta prime minister and peace and equality in the streets, a lovely balance even more stable than that Costa Rica or Switzerland had achieved, then there would be at least some happy societies rising in the aftermath.

"We thought the war would be the bad days," he murmured. Was he dreaming? He... was, wasn't he? Sort of? He was barely asleep, in some kind of half-conscious trance. Was he speaking aloud? Could Kacchan hear all of this? "But nothing good came afterwards, and everyone bought it when they said "committed suicide in prison" as if we didn't have the will, as if we weren't going to break them out and whisk them away to the Isles... as if there were a reason for suicide. That god damned book, too... what kind of drugs they must have pumped into him to get the "Book of Destro." They made a monster and now they reap the rewards... the sharp teeth of those who worship a monster rather than honoring a flawed human who hoped to free other flawed humans... none of us managed to get through the war without being twisted a bit." Tears continued to stream down his face. "They were the good days when at least we had each other if only to shed blood

side by side. There's no one anymore, no one I love left... but they can't have her. You can't keep her any longer, Soul Stealer. I'll make you give her back."

Izuku woke groggily. He had, apparently, been "asleep" in the most general sense of the word. Katsuki was staring at him, a piece of ragged paper and pen in his hand. "I wrote down all the stuff you said, nerd," he muttered, handing the note over.

"So I was actually talking?" Izuku asked, nervously.

"Yeah but it... It was really damn clear that it wasn't you talking that you were... just reciting something you'd heard someone else say? If that makes sense? It was like hearing a teacher read some famous nutcase's speech out of a textbook."

"Oh." Izuku scanned the transcript. "That was... I mean, that was why I came here in the first place. I was hoping something like this might happen but..."

"That was creepy as fuck and I hope I never see you do it again," the blonde said dead pan.

"Soul Stealer," Izuku muttered. "Soul Stealer? I could hear the capitals, so it's a name, or a title. Who... what does that mean? And I'll make you give her back? Is she--it sounds like "she" is dead, which doesn't narrow down the options much. All the MLA leadership are dead, I think, except Switcher and Switcher's a he and in the Rebel Isles, and there's no guarantee "she" was in the MLA at all... So who's the Soul Stealer and who is "she?""

"I have no clue, 'Zuku," Katsuki sighed. "That... that was rough to hear. You sounded kind of creepily heartbroken when you were talking about the war being the good days and about," he paused, shifting uncomfortably, "everyone you love being dead. I can't... you're this general Bit Weasel? Or that's who was talking to me? Who you were quoting?"

"Maybe," Izuku whispered. "Maybe not. I know that my memories belong to Bit Weasel, or at least I'm nearly certain they do, but even if she survived the war, and that is an "if," unless she has some kind of longevity aspect to her quirk or something similar she's dead by now but..."

"Sure sounded like you were speaking from the perspective of someone who actually lived through the war," Katsuki said.

"It looks that way," the greenette agreed. "But it's possible that I was just seeing another memory from decades ago of Bit Weasel being miserable about how the war ended and missing her friends."

Cold silence settled over the two for a time as Izuku mulled over each and every word of his recited message. "I hope I'm not going to start talking in my sleep all the time," he mumbled.

"Yeah. Let's hope not. We might... if that's all you think you're going to get we might want to get out of here now. It's a long walk and ride home."

"Yeah. One moment," Izuku said, walking to the end of the bed. This footlocker, too... someone had opened this and not bothered to close the lock again. Presumably "someone" was Izuku. He pulled the latch, opened the case...

Three sets of clothes (two civilian sets and one set of fatigues with the MLA generals' insignia) flashlights, knives, handguns, toiletries, a battered copy of The Art of War, an even more battered copy of The Silmarillion, a still more battered copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare, a collection of charcoals... Izuku picked up the accompanying sketchbook with trembling hands. In the harsh, false daylight of his lantern, he regarded the very first image: a roughly cross hatched

tree frog. Izuku thought of Asui and smiled. The next image was much more carefully done; he might call it museum quality. Izuku found himself crying yet again and leaned back quickly to prevent any tears from falling on the precious, yellowing paper. "Who is that, nerd?" Katsuki asked quietly.

"That's Chris," Izuku whispered, pointing to the unamused man. "And the excitable girl hanging over his shoulder, trying to get him to loosen up and have a drink," it was quiet evident from the handful of carefully chosen background details that this was what was going on, "is Kuma. I'm taking this notebook with me. This is mine now."

"Alright then. Let's get out of here. This place is really freakin' creepy and it's getting late already."

"I wonder whose footlocker this was," Izuku said, snapping the lock closed. "Someone of significant rank, certainly, to have seen those two together, and a general's insignia. I suppose... this might well have been Bit Weasel's sketchbook. She was a native English speaker so the reading material would make sense..." There was no way to know for sure, but it would fit with the rest of his suppositions.

He had so many piece to the puzzle, dozens of them now and yet he just couldn't seem to make them fit together. "There's something I haven't seen yet," he muttered as he made his way back to the ladder, Kacchan encouraging him to hurry up, as if demons might pursue them if they lingered too long below ground. "There's something huge, a gaping chasm at the heart of it that I can't fill because there's some piece of information that I can't even begin to guess at..." He was going to find out. One of these days, either in a dream or in research, he was going to stumble upon one of the pieces that lay within that black hole and it was all going to come crashing together and then... finally he would know who he was again.