The afternoon was much like the morning. Kota watched him again as Izuku practiced his aim with throwing axes (because apparently throwing knives were too mundane). Izuku ignored the child as much as possible, but the constant gaze made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

Kota drew closer as Izuku continued his practice. Eventually, he had to offer. "Do you want me to show you how to throw these?" the greenette asked.

Kota considered this, cocking his head. "You're not like the others, are you?" the child said eventually.

"In... what way?" Izuku's mind raced over all the ways that might be interpreted.

"Everybody else here, they're all idiots. They think heroes are all so great, like the movies. They don't understand. You, though," Kota glowered aimlessly into the trees. "You've seen how it really is, haven't you?"

Some of Izuku's classmates were definitely in for a rude awakening at some point. Frontline and rescue heroics were not nearly such gritty professions as underground and undercover work, but it wasn't going to be all "glory and rainbows" the way Aoyama and, let's be honest, about half of class 1-A seemed to think. People got killed frequently when heroes were working, maybe not people the heroes knew personally but what difference did that make? A dead little boy was a dead little boy. Grief and guilt did not discern between "close friend" and "civilian stranger you couldn't save." "Most of them have only been in one real fight at most, a real fight where nothing particularly bad happened," Izuku said to Kota eventually. By "real fight" he meant combat where the consequence of defeat would be serious injury or death. "I've seen things they haven't." The "good guys" didn't always win as they had at the USJ... and sometimes there weren't any "good guys" present to begin with.

"Why are you doing this?" Kota demanded. "You get it. I heard you last night," more fall out of the scream, sigh, "you know what's going to happen to you! You're all going out todie! Like attack

dogs for the HPSC. You get it so why are you here? Why are you doing this? I hate you!"

Kota's declaration of hate didn't phase Izuku in the slightest because the child obviously didn't mean it. He said "I hate you" to Izuku the same way Izuku said "I hate you" to Chris, Kuma and Bit Weasel. I hate you because I care about you and wish you hadn't chosen this path. I hate you because I want you to live.

Izuku considered his answer carefully. Some of his motivations had changed or become more complicated lately. He wanted to help people like himself, track down people who had been "disappeared" and bring them back to the light, but that was such a dark, nasty thing to bring up in conversation with a young child... perhaps he should talk about older dreams. "I always wanted to be like All Might, at first because, well, every three or four year old wants to be the number one hero, just like every three or four year old wants to be an astronaut, then later I wanted to be like All Might because..." because, being quirkless and alone and bullied, "he was the only one who could make this world seem right, and if I could be like him then I could make the world seem right and then everyone could be happy, really happy, even me," because Izuku had faked a lot of smiles over the years, often without even realizing it. "I still feel that way. I want to help people, I want to save people, I want to be," he couldn't help but think of False Flag's assessment of their career choices, "the one who works to make sure no one's life is as grim as mine. But also," and this was also an important point, "everyone always told me I couldn't, and then I had an opportunity to prove I could, so I'm going to prove everyone wrong, everyone who said I couldn't do it."

Even that, with all mentions of human trafficking stripped away, might have been too much for a child Kota's age. The little boy considered the hero student, humphed, and disappeared. What was up with that kid? He seemed... really sad and really angry and Izuku had no idea what he could do about it. Nothing, probably.

Sadness. Anger. Those emotions had been rapping at Izuku's own mind all day like a raven at the window and perhaps it was time he let them in, otherwise they might break through the glass and do all kinds of damage.

So. Kuma died. Horribly. Somehow he'd managed to avoid thinking about that until now but he couldn't put it aside anymore. He threw the next axe with excessive force, blood boiling. All For One... hopefully Izuku's body snatcher managed to do some damage to the bastard. Hopefully All Might and Nedzu and their allies tracked him down and destroyed him. A person like that... he didn't just kill Kuma, he shredded her, and he made Bit Weasel feel that bottomless well of despair. It made Izuku sick, remembering what it was like to feel that utterly hopeless, like nothing he could possibly do would matter in the slightest, like he were as insignificant as an orphaned termite freezing to death in Antarctica. It wasn't at all like the feeling in his heart when he went with his army to die at Utapa, no. That vindictive rage had been almost energizing. Izuku had felt justified. He was going to die but he was on the right side of history and he was going to make a difference at Utapa. They would speak his name for centuries.

He was... Bit Weasel was on the right side of history, wasn't she? At Utapa, at least, where the MLA fought against All For One and the obviously corrupt Japanese federal forces... Regardless of what other parts of the war were or weren't totally immoral, the MLA were the good guys in that last battle. The anniversary of Utapa was coming up in just a few weeks. Izuku should do something for them, for the MLA soldiers who died in that battle. They didn't deserve all the derision modern society heaped upon them, or the confused worship of amoral, violent extremists who didn't understand a single sliver of what their idols had fought for.

At dinner, Kota reentered Izuku's vicinity like some sort of fast-orbiting comet with a permanent glare and perched on a chair at the edge of the patio. The greenette was no longer intimidated by this. He continued eating his mediocre curry while Kacchan, Ojiro and Shouji gave the child concerned or suspicious (in classic Katsuki style) glances.

"Is he... good?" Shouji asked nervously.

"I don't know, but we talked some earlier," Izuku answered. "He wanted to know why I was going into heroics given how dangerous it is."

Ojiro considered this. "Given where we are... I wonder if he lost a family member in the industry." "What's his family name?" Kacchan asked.

"It's Izumi I think," Izuku answered.

"Oh... yeah... Waterhose Duo," Katsuki said. Oh god, he was right, wasn't he?

Shouji winced. Apparently everyone in their group kept up with the grimmer side of hero news. "Poor kid. That's got to hurt. At that age... at any age, really, but we must all look crazy and cruel to him." Kota, perhaps realizing they were talking about him, got up and stalked inside.

"Alright, listen up!" Pixie-bob shouted. "We're going to play a game now. Class 1-B? You're going to hide in the forest along the central track and we're going to send class 1-A through in pairs... and your job is to scare the living daylight out of them!"

Monoma grinned nastily. A handful of other 1-B members expressed similar enthusiasm, as did Ashido, Sato and a few additional 1-A students. "After that, we swap! We'll grade you based on the number of screams we hear."

"Those of you who are in remedial courses will be studying with me," Aizawa broke in. Monoma visibly drooped. That was too bad. He looked like the most enthusiastic of the entire cohort.

"You know," Izuku said as he paired off with Kacchan and waited to depart, "this seems like... just a really, really bad idea."

"Why?" asked Ojiro.

"It's just asking for someone to get lost in the dark or fall out of a tree... I suppose with Ragdoll's Search quirk they may be able to avoid some of those problems. Still, though..."

"You worry too much, nerd," Kacchan told him.

Izuku disagreed. "I worry just barely enough given the number of absolute disasters that follow me around wherever I go."

"Fair," Ojiro declared. "You do seem to be a disaster magnet sometimes."

"Hey," Izuku said without any bite.

"It sounds mean if someone else says it," Shouji put in, "but it's alright for Midoriya to call

himself that."

"I'm also allowed to call him that," Kacchan said, "because I remember that time when we were five with the flour--"

"That's enough, Kacchan!" Izuku burst in. Ojiro cocked his head quizzically. Izuku had the sinking feeling that he was going to be asked about the flour many, many times before graduation.

Fifty minutes later, running for his life from an army of advancing knives that yelled, "flesh! Blood!" over and over for some inscrutable reason, Izuku screamed, "I told you this was a bad idea!" to no one. He heard Katsuki shout for him, but the other student was clearly quite distant already and rapidly growing more so. Disaster magnet...

Izuku ran as far and as fast as he could, fleeing the ever-encroaching glow of blue fire. He couldn't see anything and nearly fell on his face time after time. Twice he actually fell, rolling through the impact by reflex and getting back on his feet without a moment's delay. Once he felt something-- maybe a knife or a bullet, or maybe a bat, it could have been a bat--whiz past his ear. He had no idea who had thrown (shot?) the thing (presuming it wasn't actually bat and someone was, in fact, responsible for it) or where that person was but he didn't slow down and no further projectiles came his way.

At some point the wind changed and the greenette was no longer at risk from the fire. He had absolutely no idea where he was... given how his legs ached and lungs heaved, Izuku had likely run several kilometers. He was totally disoriented, completely exhausted... and he could hear voices, shouting, that might be growing closer. It could be a search party of heroes but it was more likely to be a group of villains who had followed him all this way. The greenette could also hear the bubbling song of a stream. Good.

Sprinting to the bank of the tiny trickle of water, Izuku stepped into it and moved quickly down with the current. The water soaked through his sneakers and he shivered at the horrific clinging of wet socks. He would just have to deal with it. This was a good way to confound tracking by scent or sight. After a few hundred meters, now certain the shouting was getting closer, Izuku jumped directly from the stream into a maple that leaned over the water, pulling himself up to the lowest branch as quickly and quietly as possible. From there he made his way ever higher.

Could he jump to a neighboring tree? Get further away from the stream? Maybe... it looked like the next maple over was older, larger. He hopped across to the neighboring tree's branch, wincing at the rustle of leaves. And there! A hollow in the trunk of the tree's neighbor. It was well obscured by branches and large enough for him to tuck himself inside. Izuku lunged to his target like a squirrel--or perhaps like a Fossa--descended to the hole in the trunk and, after checking that it was not already occupied, tucked himself inside. This was absolutely perfect. With some clever arrangement of leaf debris it would be almost impossible to see him from the ground. Hopefully they weren't tracking by scent... even if they were he would still be hard to find here.

He never did see the people searching for him, but one of them was big. The footsteps sent foliage trembling. "Come out wherever you are," a man's raspy voice demanded. "We won't hurt you. We just want to talk."

"We know you came this way," a cheerier man's voice broke in. "We're going to find you, one way or another. Make it easier on yourself and come out now. We have no intention of harming you." Izuku stayed perfectly still, breathing as shallowly as possible. The villains moved along, or appeared to. He heard them muttering to each other, but couldn't make out anything being said. Did they know he was here? Had he been discovered by some quirk? Were they plotting to knock the tree down? Wait him out?

Why did these things always happen to him? What was he doing wrong? Was he really some sort of trouble magnet? He'd been through worse, right? Charging at Stain and desperately hoping he could convince the Hero Killer to leave Iida alive, that had been scarier than this. Finding out he had been someone's puppet for a week had been scarier than this. Being bitten by War Dog, now that he remembered it, had been scarier than this. The USJ hadn't been scarier than this but it had been about this scary. Izuku's entire life these days, not knowing for sure that he was Izuku, was scarier than this. He could handle this. This was fine.

At some point he stopped hearing the villains entirely. At some point he began to breathe easily again, no longer forcing himself to take shallow, quiet gasps of air. The terror of an immediate death threat faded to the wary tension of a hunted but well-hidden prey animal.

Izuku shivered. He was protected from the wind, the hollow providing some amount of insulation, and it was a warm night but even sixty-five Fahrenheit will seem frigid to one dressed in the lightest of garments, soaked in the sweat of exertion, and forced to hold perfectly still for hours on end... the wet socks also didn't help. He didn't dare attempt to rectify the situation. He would rather be cold and safe than warm and at risk of death.

A pale, rosy glow invaded Izuku's hiding place. What was happening--oh. Sunrise. Wow, he'd been here a long time. Was it... safe to come out now? He had no way of knowing... It would get rapidly warmer now. He could probably stay holed up here for another twelve hours if he had to... but should he? There would be a search party looking for him at some point, of that he was certain, unless the entirety of Japanese society collapsed overnight. When would that party get here and how difficult would it be to tell them from a search party of villains? Should he try to make his way back to the Pussycats' lodge? Izuku wasn't sure if he were in good enough condition and skilled enough to escape to civilization by heading down the mountain. The Pussycats' lodge was the most reasonable option, but Izuku had no idea if it were safe. For all he knew, the villains who attacked might have taken over the lodge and made it their base of operations.

All right, all right. Time to get his thoughts organized. The lodge could have been taken over by villains, it could have been held by the heroes, or it could have been abandoned. If it were taken over by villains and he went there, Izuku was doomed. If it were held by heroes, they would be sending out search parties to find him. Hound Dog would probably be called in if Ragdoll were not able to help. The villains likely didn't have anyone with a decent tracking quirk or Izuku would probably have been found last night.

So, if he headed down the mountain and the heroes were present and looking for him he would probably be found by a search party. If he headed down the mountain and the heroes were not looking for him but the villains were he would have a decent chance of escaping. If he returned to the lodge and the heroes held it he would be saved. If he returned to the lodge and the villains held it he would be doomed. If he returned to the lodge and it was abandoned he might have to head down the mountain anyway.

His course of action seemed clear: he should attempt to escape to civilization. The only question remaining was "when should I start walking?" If he waited until the night, he would have a much harder time traveling but was less likely to be seen randomly by a villain patrol. However, he was

already quite hungry, thirsty and exhausted and if he waited another twelve hours... he was going to be in bad shape and it was a really long walk. To have a decent chance of escape, he needed to get out of his tree and get moving.

Ever so carefully, Izuku extracted himself form his hollow. Stiff muscles groaned in displeasure. His socks had dried in the most irritating way imaginable. The greenette eventually made it back to the ground and, orienting himself by the direction of sunrise and slope of the land, set off in what he hoped was the direction of the last town he had seen on the bus ride.