So. It had come to this. It shouldn't be such a difficult decision, but somehow it was. It wasn't as if he were running from the League of Villains at the training camp, trying to discern what course of action was most likely to keep him alive. This shouldn't be so hard.

"Bring them or leave them?" he asked aloud. He had thirteen and a half notebooks full of hero analysis, the records of everything that he had ever seen in his dreams, and Bit Weasel's sketch book... and he did not know what to do with them now that he was moving into the UA dorms.

He didn't want to leave them at home. What if someone broke in and stole them? He would spend his days at UA wondering whether they were safe and it would be impossible to check. His mother would quickly tire of his endless, paranoia fueled text messages asking about the funny journals hidden in a box beneath his bed. He'd have to explain what they were and still... it would be weird. If he left them here he would just have to hide them well and never speak of them again.

If he brought them along with him... he would not have to worry so much about them being stolen, except maybe by one of his classmates or teachers. What were the odds of that? UA would have the authority to search the students' rooms, but what was the chance of the school actually doing so in Izuku's case? Probably fairly high, at least compared to the rest of his class. He had pretty much stapled a sign to his forehead reading "suspicious" during the conversation about All For One... and plenty of other times besides.

Alright, time to organize his thoughts. What were the worst case scenarios? Well, the worst case scenarios were the same in both cases: the building where his notebooks were stored burned to the ground in a villain attack, or the notebooks were stolen in a villain attack. Theft would be worse than destruction. What were the relative odds of those things happening at the two locations? Hard to say... UA had impressive security but was a potential target for many groups whereas, as far as Izuku knew, no villains had any idea where his home was thus this apartment was very unlikely to be attacked. It could still happen. Someone malevolent might know where the greenette grew up...

maybe he should try to convince his mother to move after Izuku went to live in the dorms. Yes. He would do that.

That was besides the point... or was it? If he planned to convince his mother to move, then he absolutely wanted all of his notebooks (and irreplaceable All Might memorabilia) squirreled away safe in Heights Alliance at UA. It was far more likely that a hero or police detective might search his room and find his notebooks at UA, but how bad would that really be? Bit Weasel's sketchbook... would be hard to explain, really, really hard, like impossible to explain... if the people who opened it recognized the individuals in the sketches. They very well might not. Kacchan hadn't seemed to know who any of the people were until Izuku identified them. The notebook was clearly old but not so much so that it would be considered noteworthy. He could always say it was his father's if pressed. The coded dream notebook wouldn't seem out of place, either, as Izuku had brought a page from it when he spoke with Nedzu, All Might and the others about All For One. There would be no need to excuse its presence. He would just write "Dream Journal (You Know What I Mean)" on the cover and that would make its purpose clear. Nedzu would have no trouble cracking Izuku's code if the book were confiscated, but would he see a reason to do so? The principal would have to be more than just suspicious to bother with that. Again, it was hard to assess the risk... As for the hero analysis journals, there was no harm in bringing them. The first one was obviously the work of a child, someone whose writing and illustration skills left a lot to be desired. It would be immediately obvious to any searcher that the analysis journals were a hobby that Izuku had pursued all his life rather than the result of some recently developed, malicious interest.

The greenette sighed and finally decided to bring all the books along with him. They would be concealed in a place out of the way but not so out of the way that it looked like Izuku had something to hide... deep in a drawer, obscured by odds and ends. That would do.

"At least this way I'll know if someone steals them," he muttered, "and having them stolen without knowing about it would be a disaster."

Izuku brought only a very small (irreplaceable) subset of his hero memorabilia to Heights Alliance. The walls of his new room were promptly plastered with posters. No flat surface lacked a sprinkling of figurines. One whole drawer of his desk, all be it a shallow one, was filled with merchandise. It was strange to have so much empty space... but it was also liberating. His room at home had started to feel too crowded lately, all the piles of collectibles pressing in on him, constricting him as his mind swelled with increasingly complex and frightening thoughts.

"I suppose that's that." It hadn't taken him long at all to unpack. Now what? He slipped out into the corridor and made his way downstairs, joining a crowd of his classmates.

"Hey, Midoriya!" Kirishima called to him cheerfully. "We're going to do a contest--whose room is the best and all that. Are you in?"

"Oh, sure. Is everyone ready?"

"Nah, gotta' wait for Aoyama and a few others," the red head replied. "Shouldn't be too long, though."

It was about thirty minutes before the entire class finished unpacking and everyone agreed that a "room survey" sounded like a good way to spend their first night together in the dorms.

A few people, including Ashido and Kaminari, were obviously homesick. The idea of Izuku's mom not being in the next room over was pretty strange to him, too, more distressing than he'd expected. The contest would be a good distraction for everyone.

There weren't many rooms that surprised Izuku. Ojiro's strict minimalism fit him to a T, but Shouji's new abode had entirely more fluffy blankets and plush pillows than anyone could have prepared for. Sato had his own oven and that was... that was going to be hard to beat, especially since a batch of cookies had just finished and the browning-sugar scent wafted through the entire floor. Kacchan had... every bit as much hero merchandise laying about his room as Izuku and more posters than the greenette. Even his ceiling was covered in them. He stared the class down, daring anyone to say something about it. No one did.

Iida, for some reason had... "why do you have so many pairs of glasses?" Uraraka asked him, looking across the sparkling hoard. "Wouldn't it be better to change to contacts?"

Iida spent five minutes explaining the dangers of contacts in hero work and detailing why shatterproof glasses and prescription safety goggles would always be superior. Izuku nodded along. The greenette hadn't thought about this subject much as he did not wear glasses himself, but Iida made some very good points. The engine quirked teenager had obvious cracks in his reserve, however, his voice sometimes rising precipitously in pitch before plunging downwards again. Ingenium was still hospitalized, as were the other critically wounded heroes of Kamino Ward. Izuku offered the class president a sympathetic look and received a grimace that was probably meant to be a smile in return.

Mineta's room was the final surprise. The walls and ceiling were completely obscured by movie posters showing women, often times in armor, be that a skin-tight hero costume or medieval plates, beating up large groups of good looking enemies. Interspersed were some inspirational posters depicting famous people captioned with quotes about equality and liberation (often of the sexual sort but not exclusively). Other than that, it was a pretty normal room. There was plenty of hero merchandise, all for female heroes, but nothing distasteful (unless you counted that one of his pillow cases had "Safe is Sexy" sewn onto it).

As the reviews finished, there was some debate about how to rate and judge rooms, and then Sato won the contest handily by bribing everyone with a cookie.

It was odd going back to class, taking his usual seat, as if nothing had changed when, in fact, the world was fundamentally different. Endeavour as number one hero... it was still hard to imagine the billboard without All Might at number one, and yet Izuku didn't have to imagine it because it was reality.

Aizawa stalked into the room and said, "you will all be getting your provisional licenses this year. End of discussion. The exam is very difficult. You will all pass it or so help me..." he shook his

head. "I don't need to explain to any of you just how dangerous and precarious our situations are at the moment." Well, he might need to explain it to a few people, but most of the class understood that the country was teetering on the edge of an abyss of chaos. It wouldn't take much to send the entirety of Japan careening into a downwards spiral and UA, in particular, was being targeted on all sides due to the USJ and summer camp attacks. "Training will be intense and will begin immediately."

While the rest of the class worked on a variety of "supermoves" that they would employ for surprise and shock factors during the licensing exam, Izuku practiced dropping down from the rafters, terrifying his classmates. Dodging the reflexive strikes leveled at him when he announced "hello!" centimeters from people's ears was also good practice, for him and his victims. Kirishima's reaction was particularly entertaining. He shouted "argh!" and jumped half a meter in the air flailing his arms.

"That is not the reaction you want to have when something surprises you," Aizawa said from across the gym. Oh... that was All Might with him. He was so... small deflated like that, but seemed to be providing good help to Sato, Sero, and Kacchan. It made sense for the man to have taken a job at UA prior to his retirement; in retrospect, it was a huge warning sign that the number one hero was about to step down which Izuku would have paid more attention to except he just... couldn't envision a world without All Might at its top.

"Sorry," Kirishima rubbed his head sheepishly. "You're like... a slippery snake, Midoriya," he said. "Is that your quirk?"

"Maybe," Izuku replied with a shrug, setting off for the corner again. The brick wall there was rough enough for him to climb easily to the ceiling. Students watched him warily at first, but five minutes of patient silence and everyone had forgotten him again. He stalked across the gymnasium's trussed rafters with an evil grin. Izuku dropped down behind Kacchan. "Hello!" he shouted.

"Argh!" Kacchan reflexively leveled an explosion at where Izuku's head had been moments earlier.

"That is not the reaction you want to have, either. What if he were a civilian asking for an autograph?" Aizawa advised.

"Civilians that stupid don't deserve to keep their damn eyebrows!" Katsuki yelled. Aizawa kept a straight, disapproving face, but Izuku could tell it took effort.

Shouji would be hopeless... he had an eye or an ear on Izuku all the time. The greenette would try Ojiro next. "Hello!" Izuku shouted. Ojiro jumped backwards, spinning around into a ready stance.

"Hello, Midoriya," he said.

"See that?" Aizawa called out, "that was the reaction you want to have when someone surprises you. He reacted immediately, getting away from potential danger and ready to defend himself if necessary, but did not attack without checking to make sure he was not about to make things worse."

"Congrats, kero," Tsu said from her perch on a Cementoss-summoned pillar.

"Yeah, good job," Sero swung past, "yours is the first he thought was good." Ojiro blushed and stuttered a bit on his thank you. It was pretty funny how easily flustered he was by heartfelt compliments. Not that Izuku was one to talk.

Izuku had known for some time about the undercover auxiliary exam. It took place a week before the general provisional exam and covered very different topics. Provisional heroes planning to go undercover did not necessarily need to take this exam, but it was hugely beneficial and without it the greenette wouldn't be able to do work study with any undercover heroes because the proper identity safeguards wouldn't be implemented for him.

Much to Izuku's surprise, it was Snipe who took him aside during the free period when he should have English to help him prepare for the undercover auxiliary exam. "I'm the only one at UA who's taken the undercover exams," he said, "'though I more often work frontline, my face and name are secret and I do go seekin' villains in their holes from time to time."

"I've not been able to find much information about what the auxiliary exam is really like," Izuku admitted.

"It's much... it's like a toned down version of the non-combat portions of the pro-undercover exam."

"Ah... I don't know much about exactly what goes on there, either."

"And ya' shouldn't. Only people who have taken or are going to take these should know 'bout exactly what goes on. The first thing that's going to happen is something completely unexpected. No idea what'll go on this year. There'll be a few dozen of ya' max at the exam, so they can afford to do things special."

"What... what exactly do you mean?"

"Their goal here is to make sure," Snipe pulled Izuku into a musty closet of bare concrete. There was a dilapidated table and a single dangling light bulb. It looked like a torture chamber out of some horror movie. "That you have the skills to survive." Snipe gestured for Izuku to take a seat in a rickety, steel chair and when he did, the teacher shackled him to the table.

"What's your name, kid?" Snipe demanded.

What did he--? Oh. They were starting now. "Mihara Izuho," he pulled out the alias Konno had assigned him because it was the first thing he thought of.

"Oh really? You sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. I wouldn't forget my own name," Izuku replied, getting into character. "And what were you doing in this part of town, Mihara Izuho?"

What part of town? The bad part of town, presumably. What would a good answer be... something that could be plausible under any circumstances... answering fast was probably more important than thinking of a good story. "Taking a walk. I got into a fight with my mom and I needed to clear my head."

"Oh, what was this fight about?"

"Why do you care?" That would be the response, the response a random person on the street would give.

"Answer me!" Snipe roared, slamming his hand on the table.

Izuku flinched, and that was a good thing. He ought to flinch. A random kid off the street would do that. "I-I'm flunking history! She told me she doesn't work so hard to pay the tuition for me to slack off and--"

"Enough! What did you see?"

"Nothing! I swear! I've b-been so angry I d-don't even know what street I was walking down! I was just... walking!"

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't make sure you don't talk?" Snipe said coldly. Gosh, was the test really going to be this intense? He could... the characters they were playing were convincing. He could almost believe Snipe was thinking about shooting him...

"I-I--my mom is paranoid and she'll call the police if I'm not back soon and she's friends with a detective!" He said. "They'll be crawling around here because I had my phone on me and was making calls so they'll know about where I was. They probably won't find you or anything but it'll just cost you time and make trouble and if you let me go I won't say anything and I don't have anything to say anyway. I don't know who you are or what you're doing or even where I am! There's no risk."

Snipe dropped his persona. "You think fast, Midoriya. That's good." "Thank you." The pro did not unlock the shackles.

"The undercover pro exam will involve..." there was a long pause, "actual torture. There's no other way to put it. Nothin' liable to cause a serious injury and not for long, but they want to make sure that undercover pros can handle "enhanced interrogation," or have at least acknowledge the fact that it is something that may happen to them." Izuku had wondered if that were the case. "You suspected as much."

"Yeah," Izuku admitted, a sick feeling coiling in his gut. "Do they... do they do that in the auxiliary licensing exam?"

"I was pepper sprayed," Snipe shrugged.

Oh. That wasn't so bad. "That's a standard part of training for riot police," Izuku pointed out.

"They are also liable to leave you shackled in very uncomfortable positions for long periods of time," Snipe continued, arms crossed, "and you will be asked questions about torture, including questions about how it is carried out, how to resist it. Ya' should know that the majority of underground and undercover pros I know have never been subject to anything beyond a conventional beating same as frontliners get on a bad day, but... anyway. There is only one strategy that I consider viable in the long run."

"And that is?" Izuku asked. These shackles were very uncomfortable. His joints were going to ache fiercely by the time he was released to his next class.

"Lie. Stick to the story you'd like them to believe for a time, then branch off, tell more and more crazy stories. It'll make it nearly impossible for them to say what's true and what's you runnin' your mouth and also makes it look like you've broken long before you actually have. It's better to

fake a mental breakdown than have one for real." Izuku nodded. "Alright. What else do I need to know?" Snipe chuckled. "It's a bit of a list."

"Are you alright, Midoriya?" Aizawa asked, pulling him aside a few days later. "W-what? Why? Do I look... frazzled?"

"Extremely," the underground hero replied, brows pulled together in worried scrutiny.

"Well, I just spent an hour tied to a chair while Nedzu demanded I give him my handler's name and recited increasingly horrible poetry. I thought my ears were going to start bleeding." Izuku hadn't known what to think or say when Snipe brought the principal in to help, which was the point of course. Interrogators would try to surprise the interogat-ee. He would never get the image out of his head, the mammal posing on the dilapidated table, paw dramatically over his chest, chanting "violets are red, roses are blue..."

"Oh. Alright. That explains everything." Really? It did?