Finals hurtled towards them like an out of control freight train. This was wonderful. Izuku could bury himself in studying and try to forget about everything, all these miserable fates he was helpless to change, all these miserable truths that made everything uglier and more complicated. He wondered what Nedzu and All Might and Tsukauchi were doing with the information... He wondered what they thought of him now. He was certainly suspected of something, although it wasn't clear what that something might be.

"Hey, uh, Midoriya?" Kirishima approached him nervously after class one Friday, Kaminari, Sero, and Sato in tow.

"Yes?" he asked.

"So... um... we're all bad at history," Kaminari rubbed his hair sheepishly.

"And you're, like, good at history," said Sero.

"What we're trying to ask is could you help us study for finals?" Kirishima broke in before the conversation could drift further off course.

It took Izuku a full five seconds to process what they had asked him because no one had ever asked him something like that before. He always did well in class, but no one ever acknowledged that he did well in class, not at Aldera anyway, and certainly no one would ever ask him for tutoring. That would be social suicide. "I'm not, actually, that good at history," Izuku replied.

"But you knew all that stuff about the MLA," Kaminari countered. Izuku really needed to learn to keep quiet, didn't he? "More than Midnight, even, I mean she said you should be teaching the unit!"

What would be the harm in trying to help them? Well, he might be torpedoing their chances; he knew a lot about one particular part of history but that didn't make him good at history in general. "I'm r-really not the best person to ask. Yaoyorozu, I know, is always acing the tests--"

"I did ask her, actually," Sato admitted, "but she said she didn't have time. You may not think you're good at history, but you're really good at it compared to us. If you could help us... at least figure out what we should actually be studying, we'd really appreciate it. I understand if you don't have time--"

"I-it's not time!" Izuku flapped his hands. "It's that I'm just... I don't want to wreck your chances by being a bad tutor!"

"What chances?" Kaminari spread his arms wide. "I have no chances! There's nothing to wreck, Midoriya."

What would be the harm, really? It was so flattering to know his classmates considered him a resource like this... "When did you want to meet?" Izuku asked. The quintet grinned.

They were nice. Izuku hadn't spent much time with his new classmates, save those he'd known before school began. Kirishima was... an incarnate ray of sunshine. He was, indeed, very bad at history but he didn't let anything deter him and kept working in the face of adversity. Some people would have assumed it was hopeless and given up.

Tutoring for history mostly meant sitting around in the school library after class and reminding his classmates of facts they had forgotten or where to find facts that Izuku had forgotten as well. They didn't really need him there, but every Tuesday when he met them all four looked so happy to see him...

They liked Izuku. Izuku liked them. That wasn't part of the plan, was it? At some point, Izuku would likely need to convince the lot of them that he had turned traitor. He hadn't cared, but now...

Watching Kirishima snatch Sero's paper airplane out of the sky and smack the creator with the creation, quizzing Sato on a selection of important events in the evolution of quirk law while Kaminari tried to subtly maneuver behind Sato to do... something silly presumably... it hurt now, thinking about "turning" on them, thinking about these five staring him down in the street with malice rather than amity.

He shouldn't have agreed to tutor them. He should have known better. Maybe he would be better off following an underground route, putting thoughts of undercover work aside... and yet, somehow, he couldn't fathom changing the path he was on. The more time he spent thinking about it, the more he knew this was what he wanted to do.

He would be good at undercover work and he couldn't deny that he'd felt both terror and thrill during his brief internship experience. The undercover world held a subtle allure, calling to him like a siren in a very distant sea.

Izuku would be able to do a lot of good, the kind of good that frontline heroes couldn't do, the kind

even underground heroes couldn't do... and somewhere out there in the dark there were men, women and children just like Izuku, people who had been snatched from their lives and trafficked for unspeakable purposes. Frontline heroes sometimes got the credit for breaking up trafficking rings, but they weren't the people who found those trafficking rings. If it weren't for the undercover workers who played long games for months or even years on end ferreting out information, the raids to free the captives could never take place. Often underground and undercover heroes broke up those kinds of operations with no frontline involvement at all, although people tended not to hear about it. Izuku couldn't be frontline, but he could be just as important.

He would just have to get used to the idea of Kirishima, Kaminari and the rest cursing his name and spitting at his feet. Becoming a hero required sacrifices. This would be one of Izuku's.

The greenette stumbled out of school in a studying-induced daze one day, Katsuki at his side, and nearly ran into Shinsou. The purple haired student, exhaustion permeating every movement, said, "you wanted to talk to me?"

Yes. "Go on ahead, Kacchan," Izuku bade his friend.

"You sure?" the blonde asked.

"Yeah. I'll see you tomorrow, okay?" Katsuki reluctantly continued to the train alone.

"So," Shinsou demanded, crossing his arms. "What did you want to talk to me about, Midoriya?" Izuku hadn't been sure that Shinsou would know his real name. Apparently he did.

How should he start this... the apology. He should start with the apology. "I wanted to apologize, first," Izuku said.

"For...?"

"The way I was at the Sports Festival," he answered. "I... well, I freaked out fighting you and... I'm not trying to insult you or say I wouldn't have fought my hardest against you under any circumstances because I would have, it would be disrespectful to do otherwise--"

Shinsou raised an eyebrow, interrupting the rambling. "Where are you going with this?" he interrupted.

"Someone used a quirk kind of like yours on me once," Izuku blurted, "and I still don't know who it was or exactly why they did it or what they had me do, and I freaked out because your quirk is like their quirk but that's not fair to you. You don't deserve to have me be afraid of you just because your ability is similar to that of someone who did something nasty to me." Shinsou looked like he had just fallen from a great height and landed uninjured in a children's ball pit, face morphing rapidly between emotions before landing on complete shock. "So I'm sorry."

Shinsou processed this for perhaps fifteen seconds. "I must have scared the hell out of you," he

said eventually.

"Yeah." The fact that he had used his quirk in an underhanded way to claim teammates in the cavalry battle certainly hadn't helped with the panic, but Izuku had no intention of bringing that up unless the exhausted general education student mentioned it.

"You know," Shinsou huffed, crossing his arms, "I'm used to people hating me for what I could do. I don't think I've ever met someone who hated me for something someone else did."

What? "I d-don't hate you. I'm afraid of you for reasons that are irrational but if I really thought you would hurt me or, whatever, I would have asked Kacchan to stay while we talked."

Shinsou raised an eyebrow. "Fine." Silence. "What else did you want to say, besides an apology?"

Should Izuku even try to broach this subject? "I... I was going to ask if you knew anyone with a quirk like yours that could... take over someone's body for an entire week and leave them with no memory of it, but I suppose you're no more likely than any random person on the street to know that..."

Shinsou reclaimed his "fallen into ball pit" expression. "A... week? Wait, you were kidnapped by a brainwasher... for a week and you don't remember any of it?" Well, barring thirty minutes or so... Izuku shook his head. "Holy--alright. You're... I take it back. You're allowed to feel however you want about me. God." Shinsou raked his fingers through his hair. "No. No I--I don't know anyone who has--I didn't know there was--I thought that kind of stuff only happened in horror movies."

This was... not the reaction Izuku had expected, so this conversation wasn't going the way either of them had foreseen. Shinsou actually looked traumatized. "I, my quirk, I've never kept a hold on someone for more than fifteen minutes at a time," the purple haired student explained. "The Sports Festival was the first time I ever used it for something like that. I couldn't--I wouldn't do something like what you say I... I wouldn't," he finished in a whisper.

"I know," Izuku replied, even though he didn't really know. He knew almost nothing about Shinsou, other than he was apparently going through some kind of spiritual crisis right now and behaved in a legal but... morally grey way at the Sports Festival.

"I'm sorry," Shinsou muttered, "for how... how things went at the Sports Festival. I didn't--it didn't seem like--in retrospect I think I was the asshole." The purple haired student turned and left without another word.

Well, that had been a dead end. Clearly it had given Shinsou a lot to think about, for better or for worse. Izuku sighed and set off at a jog to catch up to Katsuki. Hopefully he could still make his usual train.

Izuku had never believed that actual final exams would have anything in common with the description of final exams which he heard from rumors and older students' gossip. He was right.

Todoroki and Kacchan were going to have to fight (or escape from) All Might. Izuku... wasn't sure if he would rather fight All Might or Nedzu. He wouldn't stand a chance against All Might, of course, but Nedzu pretending to try to kill him was... an experience he would much rather have avoided.

Izuku and Yaoyorozu huddled in a back corner of the bus as it drove slowly to their testing ground. "We should split up," Izuku said softly. "I think trying to fight against Nedzu is probably hopeless. We're not even going to see him unless he wants to be seen."

Yaoyorozu considered this. "So you think the best goal is escape?"

"I think it's the only real possibility of success. Nedzu will probably have... some crazy plan to try to stop us, and forcing him to enact two different plans at the same time in an effort to keep both of us away from the gate out of the city should give us the best chance of success."

She nodded. "Intentionally acting unpredictably and basing decisions on truly random things, like coin tosses, might help, too, if Nedzu is going to be predicting our movements. Do you have a coin on you?" He shook his head. "Here," she pulled one out of her arm.

"Thanks."

"And when the test stars I'll give you some smoke bombs. Setting them off at random might help disrupt the principal's vision and planning. Will your quirk help us any?"

"No," Izuku shook his head without elaboration, "not in a test like this."

They split up moments after the buzzer sounded, sprinting in opposite directions through a deserted pseudo-city.

The smoke bombs might be helping. Maybe. Buildings still seemed to collapse in Izuku's path whenever he attempted to make his way towards the escape gate across the city. Hopefully Yaoyorozu was having better luck... could Izuku get underground here? Travel through the sewers as he had once upon a time during their very first heroics exercise? He was yet to see a manhole cover in this training ground. Should he go forward or backtrack? He flipped his coin--backtrack. Maybe he could climb over the debris left behind from a previous building's demolition and start moving east again.

How in the world was Nedzu doing this? Izuku was forced to cower beneath a bench, arms covering his head, as buildings all around him collapsed like some sort of bizarre comedy sketch parodying the fall of dominoes.

Okay. Things were through falling down... There was nothing left in front of Izuku for Nedzu to destroy. The greenette lunged through the debris field, leaping from stable section to stable section, coughing on the dust, smoke stinging his eyes. There seemed little point in setting off another smoke bomb here... the air was already full of obscuring clouds. Izuku was at least getting closer to the gate now. That was something--he lunged for cover beneath another bench at a fake bus stop as buildings began to topple around him again.

It wouldn't take much of a mistake, either on Nedzu's part or on Izuku's, for the greenette to be seriously injured or killed in this situation. Other teachers, All Might among them, would be supervising, ready to intervene in an emergency, but still... Izuku's life was more important than his final exam score. He didn't move from his makeshift hiding place until he was completely certain the chaos was over.

A buzzer sounded as Izuku exited another debris field. Wait, was time up already? No, it couldn't be--"students pass!" someone announced. It wasn't Present Mic. The voice was unfamiliar.

"Yaoyorozu must have made it out," Izuku hummed.

Without Nedzu trying to smash him flat, Izuku had no trouble locating the gate. Indeed, Yaoyorozu and the principal awaited him there.

"Well, that was an interesting game," the principal chirped. He looked very pleased with himself, whiskers widely spread and ears pricked forwards. "Splitting up was an interesting strategy. It was much more difficult," beady eyes shone with malevolent fire, "to manipulate circumstances so as to crush both of you at once." Yaoyorozu and Izuku exchanged a concerned glance. Their principal might be a little evil. Hopefully it was only the fun kind of evil... if that made sense.

The greenette and his battle partner, both bearing only scratches and the occasional bruise, seemed to be the only ones who had made it through their exams without any injury worthy of note. Jirou and Koda were both bleeding from the ears. Kacchan and Todoroki looked like they had been thrown into a clothes dryer along with a bag full of bricks. Apparently they had passed, though, and Katsuki at least looked pleased. Todoroki was hard to read. Ojiro had skinned his palms. Shouji was covered in bruises and had a brutal black eye. Kirishima and Sato had clearly both failed; they looked physically and emotionally destroyed. Izuku grimaced in sympathy. It wasn't clear if anyone else had failed their exams; if so they didn't show it on their faces.

"It was a logical ruse, by the way," Aizawa told them casually, "all of you are coming to the summer training camp, whether you passed or not. Enjoy the brief break until then. You'll need it." There were a number of audible gulps.