The Holiday party involved lots of silly hats--Todoroki wore several pointy party hats at once in one of his usual attempts to look ridiculous but it didn't work very well--and lots of disturbing rumors, but no traumatizing truth or dare games.

"So everyone has to do work-study this time?" Jirou asked Ashido, 1-A's Rumor Queen. "That's what I heard," Ashido shrugged.

"I heard something like that, too," Kaminari agreed, appearing with a glass of punch in one hand and a cookie in the other.

"But... how?" asked Uraraka, joining the group. "I only managed to find placement because someone scouted me... mostly heroes don't want to take first years."

"And that makes sense, doesn't it, kero?" The conversation ensnared more and more passersby as it continued. "First years generally don't have much experience and can be liabilities rather than assets."

"I mean, since it's required, UA will have to help us find people, right?" Kirishima shrugged. "Has to be that way, right?"

"That's what I assume," Ashido nodded. "I was talking to some third years and they say mandatory work-study's never been a thing before, so they didn't know what to make of it and started arguing about what the procedures might be."

"Never? So this is the first year...?" Kaminari furrowed his brow. "But why?"

"Why do you think?" Izuku couldn't help himself. He should have stayed quiet. The group turned

as one to face him.

"What do you mean, Midoriya?" Jirou asked.

"Is it really not clear?" the greenette wondered. "Times are changing. All Might left his post, a top ten pro was assassinated in a secure hospital and they never figured out who did it," or they never announced it publicly at least, "and our class has been targeted by villain groups multiple times. The joint training exercise together with 1-B and now this... We're preparing for worse things to come."

"That's... a pretty grim outlook, Midoriya," Jirou said.

Was it grim? No, definitely not. "I'm not grim. I'm just... realistic. And well, maybe a bit cynical." He could admit to it.

"You are grim though, nerd," Kacchan said, bumping against his shoulder.

"No I'm not," but maybe he was. If even Katsuki thought he was grim...

"You're likely correct, however," Ojiro put in with a grimace.

"The next few years could be trying times," Shouji hedged, Izuku's three friends having arrived together from the buffet table. "The more experience we all have the better."

"Here, nerd, have some punch," Katsuki handed him a glass, abruptly shifting the focus of the conversation from "future gloom" to "excellent food."

"Uh, thanks, but why?"

"Because I ended up with two by accident--don't ask--and I feel weird about keeping 'em both." Izuku glanced at Shouji. "There was a miscommunication," the many-armed student shrugged.

To work with False Flag again or not to work with False Flag again. That was the question. She was one of the best the undercover world had to offer. She also... knew something about Izuku except she actually didn't know anything so what did she actually think...? And what should Izuku think of her? On paper, returning to work with her was by far the best option but could Fossa survive another week of constant word games and double meanings? Well, almost all of his conversations these days involved word games or double meanings so what was the big deal?

He could work with Flag. She would have his back. She didn't seem to care who he was or how he came by his skills, whatever she might privately hypothesize about him. She likely thought Izuku was one of Bit Weasel's descendants given what he'd said during the Hassaikai raid, that he was hiding some kind of bizarre and tragic past life. Well... he was, just probably not the kind she assumed.

Funny, if the Hassaikai raid happened now, Fossa would have been forced to reply with his real, legal name to that truth quirk given that he was now certain that he was Izuku. He would have blown the whole mission right there. Odd how things worked out in unexpected ways...

Unfortunately, Izuku's inquiring text to False Flag's latest burner number was met with the reply: "My day job's too rich for new blood," implying she was on a long term, deep cover mission and not available at all in the near future.

"Now what?" Izuku hummed to himself, dropping his own burner into a pocket as he made his way towards the dorms after a long study session in the library (sometimes books were the right backdrop for mathematics even if one were using the internet instead of paper).

"'Now what', what?" asked an excessively cheerful voice. Izuku whirled to face the wall on his left, shifting into a loose ready stance, hands protectively held out in front of his face. "Oh, hi! Didn't mean to startle you."

Izuku regarded the blonde head sticking out of the solid brick wall incredulously. "Who are you and what are you doing?"

"Mirio Toogata, third year heroics," the face introduced himself. "We met each other at the Hassaikai Raid. I work with Nighteye." Oh, oh of course. It was just hard to recognize a disembodied head completely out of context.

"Why are you standing in a wall? Or did you shapeshift into a wall? Or are you a hologram or is the wall a hologram...?" Izuku muttered to himself, stepping forward and poking the offending bricks. "Bricks are solid, so that's not a hologram, unless it's a force field projection that keeps me out but not him out. That sounds awfully complicated, probably not if it's just one person's quirk--"

"I'm a phaseshifter," Mirio interrupted with a cheerful chirp. Once upon a time, people had called Izuku "sunny," but they didn't do that now did they? He wasn't... incessantly cheery anymore. His last year of life had been a constant whirlwind of stress and fear. He'd seen... almost as much death as life at this point, all be it through someone else's eyes. The cheery part of his personality hadn't been crushed, but it definitely didn't shine through anymore, did it? Not like Mirio's did. Mirio reminded him of Todoroki at his best... minus all the maniacal bits. If you built a Venn Diagram of Todoroki and Nedzu and then selected the parts of Todoroki that did not overlap with Nedzu, that described the cheeriness that emanated from Miro. What a force of personality...

"Did you need something?" Izuku asked, slowly relaxing. "I was wondering if you have work-study lined up yet?"

Wow. That was... awfully convenient if Izuku were guessing the conversation's trajectory correctly. "My usual place isn't available this time around, but I'm not... I'm not training for frontline..."

"I mean, you were with False Flag last I saw you so, yeah, no, clearly not frontline," Mirio chuckled. "Sir Nighteye's worked with Flag plenty of times... we do a lot of street level investigations... the same kind of stuff you're training for. If you don't have something lined up yet... Nedzu suggested to Sir that you might be a good fit for us and here I am making an offer of sorts."

Huh. So UA was pulling strings to find everyone a place to work. Had Nedzu already known that False Flag wasn't available? Probably. He tended to know what people were going to do before said people knew it themselves. That, however, did not answer the most obvious question. "Why make an offer from inside a wall?"

Mirio looked ever so slightly abashed, eventually answering, "it just seemed like it'd be funny?"

Talking to a head sticking out of a wall... yes, yes he could see why that might be considered amusing. "I'd be happy to meet Sir Nighteye and discuss what work study would entail," Izuku said.

Mirio grinned, the intensity of his cheerful aura skyrocketing. "Excellent. I'll let him know," the head vanished back into the wall.

Most of the class had worked out their work-study arrangements promptly. UA had helped to set them up, getting the ball rolling for most students. The only people who found their own placements already had established work-study contacts. Izuku was behind the game. Hopefully he could work with Nighteye.

Todoroki, who had also been behind the game, looked extraordinarily pleased with himself that evening as he strutted into the common room with all of his Fire Wheel merchandise on full display.

"Let me guess," said Kaminari, "you're interning with Fire Wheel?"

"How did you know?" Todoroki nearly chortled.

"Is that everyone placed then?" Uraraka wondered, setting aside a pile of homework.

"No, bunch of people are still looking. I don't think I've heard--I mean what about you, Midoriya? I don't think you said?" asked Kaminari. "You had work-study before, right? Same mentor?"

Izuku shook his head. "She's not available. I might intern with Sir Nighteye."

"Really, nerd?" Kacchan wandered in from the kitchen with a bowl of curry so spicy that its mere proximity singed nose hairs. "Since when?"

"A third year named Mirio appeared out of a wall and asked me if I might be interested in working with Nighteye," Izuku replied, waving the fumes away from his nose. "Seriously, how can you eat that stuff Kacchan? If you used it on a battlefield it'd be a chemical weaponry war crime."

"You've got no taste, nerd."

"Our of the wall?" Ojiro glanced up incredulously from an English assignment, pointedly ignoring the side conversation about Katsuki's defective tongue.

"He was trying to be funny for some reason," Izuku shrugged. "It mostly came off as just... bizarre."

"Well, you're not really one to talk about coming off as bizarre," Kaminari said.

"Hey!" Izuku almost protested, but from the perspective of most of the class, well, not just most of the class, mostly everyone including Izuku himself, the greenette was bizarre. "Fine. Whatever. It was still weird to have a business conversation with a disembodied head. What about you guys?"

"Not worked out yet," Kaminari admitted.

"Three Ring is taking me," Katsuki said, "and I figure we'll be working with Gang Orca a lot, too. Genius is sort of merging with Gang Orca's agency through... like the bonds of shared outrage," the blonde admitted. "I wouldn't be surprised if they actually merged in the next year or so... not sure what that's really gonna' look like..."

"I mean, Genius is a clothing line, too, is that still going to exist?" Kaminari asked rather tactlessly.

Katsuki almost snarled, but then deflated a bit and replied, "probably not. Hakamata spent a lot of time sort of... manipulating people into wearing clothing that was easy for Fiber Master to screw with. That was the main purpose of having a fashion side of Genius, not the money, though that sure came in handy... but no, since they no longer have a heavy hitter with a legitimate, tactical reason to be promoting one weird type of clothing... probably not."

"I knew it," Todoroki clenched his hand into a triumphant fist.

"Knew what?" Ojiro asked, although the expression on his face suggested he had his doubts about

whether he really wanted to know.

"I knew Best Jeanist was promoting lines of denim clothing in order to increase the average fire

power available to him. I knew it was a conspiracy."

"Isn't that just an ulterior motive, not a conspiracy?" Ojiro flicked his tail in contemplation.

"Multiple people had to be involved, plotting it out..." Todoroki nodded to himself, "conspiratorial. It definitely counts."

Izuku and Ojiro exchanged glances. The greenette shrugged. "It's probably better to leave it at that," Izuku attempted to convey with his eyes alone. Ojiro nodded in understanding and vanished into the kitchen.

"Seriously, Kacchan, take that tear gas curry somewhere else," Izuku said. The blond was standing entirely too close with his steaming bowl. The greenette's eyes burned.

Katsuki gave him a very unimpressed look and took a pointed step towards him, an evil grin spreading over his face. Oh this was not going to end well.

Just as Ojiro should not have asked Todoroki about conspiracies, Izuku should not have complained to Kacchan about curries.

Sir Nighteye was weird. This was not what Izuku had anticipated from All Might's old sidekick, not given their previous meetings. The weirdest thing, or the weirdest thing immediately apparent, was that he had a tickle-related torture device in his office which Izuku was pretty sure must count as sexual harassment of some kind. The greenette himself would certainly pull the word "lawsuit" out of his pocket if Nighteye ever tried to use such a contraption on him.

"So," Izuku said, awkwardly. "You... wanted me to work here I believe?"

Light caught on Sir Nighteye's glasses like a movie effect as he straightened them. "You need somewhere to work. I have plenty of jobs which you could help me with. Eavesdropping might be the single largest task I have in mind, and some paperwork perhaps."

"Eavesdropping I can do," Izuku acknowledged with a nod. "Paperwork, too." This would certainly be a far more laid back experience than his first work-study.

"The question is... why would I want to work with you?" Nigheye steepled his fingers.

Was this a rhetorical question? Izuku raised an eyebrow. "You asked me to come here and talk to you," the greenette replied.

"Yes."

"Why would you do that if you don't want me to work here?" Izuku huffed. Was Nighteye just wasting everyone's time or did he want to hear Izuku explain his skills and how they might be useful? But how was Izuku supposed to do that if he had no idea what kinds of assignments the agency was currently working on? "Are you trying to ask me what kind of skills I have in a round about way?" he asked. Straightforward might be the only way to clear this up.

Nighteye cocked his head and readjusted his glasses. "Essentially."

The greenette began his laundry list. "I am a good enough knife fighter to have survived a two against one match versus Stain when lightly armed and unprepared." Nighteye raised an eyebrow. "I am a good enough actor that I was able to play backup to False Flag at the Hassaikai raid as you likely know. I have better first aid skills than some of UA's first aid instructors." Izuku knew how to suture and how to start an IV. "I am a skilled unarmed fighter; also decent at improvising weapons. Kesagiri Man was teaching me how to use swords. I am very good at leaping from rooftop to rooftop and scaling walls. I have some skill repairing heavy machinery. I'm fluent in English." That definitely wasn't an exhaustive list, was it? Was his entire life summed up in that handful of sentences? Most of that wasn't even his own life, not really. "I can quote every line from every All Might movie ever made from memory," Izuku added after some thought. He was talking to All Might's former sidekick; it might be good to mention such a thing.

Nighteye sniffed, showing the slightest hint of a smile. "I suppose that's a good start. Can you drive?"

Izuku blinked. "I don't have a license," he replied. "But yeah, I can drive." He had plenty of memories that involved driving, usually heavy stick shift vehicles. There was a chance that he might be able to fly some modern helicopters, too, with a bit of practice to accustom himself to the differences in controls. "Do you need me to drive?"

Nighteye nodded slowly. "It's something of a remote country club. Rumor has it several drug lords have been frequenting the establishment. I've been hoping to send someone to snoop under a harmless, "spoiled, naive, rich child," persona. Although some guests have chauffeurs, most prefer to drive themselves. The road leading to the club has dramatic mountain views and, being private property, can be navigated at whatever speed a thrill seeker chooses."

"So... you'd like me to drive like crazy to a country club and pretend to be oblivious while listening in for shady dealings?" That actually sounded like fun.

"Essentially," Nighteye replied. "I would send Mirio but he... is one of the worst liars I have ever seen in my life. It would be a fairly low risk assignment for someone like you, however."

"But, like I said, I don't have a driving license."

"That can be taken care of in the course of an afternoon. Having a provisional hero license allows you to legally drive in emergencies, and to obtain a full license with only a behind the wheel test. Where did you learn, though? Did your parents teach you already?"

"Uh, you remember... i-it's just one of the things I know," Izuku replied. Even in the calmest of circumstances before the war, Destro always drove like he wanted to make sure the roadblocks would be behind him; Kuma constantly forgot that turn signals exited; and he recalled a joke about Bit Weasel being a contestant on Australia's Worst Driver. Arch, however, was a model citizen on the roads.

Nighteye readjusted his glasses yet again, eyes narrowed. "I will be your handler for the course of the assignment. I do need to know what your quirk is. I know undercover heroes often keep those details quiet, but I cannot keep a proper watch over you unless I know this."

That was... fair, but had he not been told about that when working with Tsukauchi, Nedzu and Aizawa on Izuku's case? "I don't have one."

Nighteye blinked slowly. "You're quirkless?"

"Correct," Izuku said, sighing internally without showing any sign of it on his face. This was going to be a problem for some reason, wasn't it?

Nighteye considered something, worrying his lip. "I don't think I've ever seen a quirkless hero student before," he said at last.

Izuku bristled at the tone, face becoming a stony mask. "I've never met another quirkless hero student myself, not that I know of anyway. Most of my class has no idea, but almost all of them are going to be frontline or rescue heroes so it's a different business."

Nighteye nodded repeatedly to himself. "Fine, fine," he said as if heavily distracted. It was hard to tell if he were just surprised or a quirkist who couldn't stomach the thought of a quirkless kid working in heroics. That was... disappointing. Izuku had expected better from All Might's sidekick given that All Might had always treated the greenette exceptionally fairly and kindly in class. Why had these two split up, anyway? If it had been a clash of ideals, perhaps Izuku shouldn't have expected anything akin to the same kind of treatment from Nightye as from All Might. So was that it or had Nighteye simply outgrown sidekick roles and wished to run his own investigations? His agency was an interesting hybridization of a frontline heroics office, an underground heroics office, and a private detective's office. That wasn't the kind of stuff All Might did, so perhaps continuing collaborations had been impractical or perhaps the two had a legitimate falling out. There had been all sorts of talk about that in gossip rags when the pair split, including various bizarre allegations. Izuku hadn't paid it much mind at the time, too young to really understand the sort of scandals that the trashy magazines had implied lay beneath the surface of this "super breakup."

Nighteye frowned at him. "If you would rather pursue other opportunities, I am sure UA will be able to find you work elsewhere."

This was not False Flag. There was no reason why this had to turn into some sort of bizarre verbal sparring session. "I think this sounds like a fine opportunity, a good way to spend the coming week," Izuku replied, "provided that you actually want me here, which you've... kind of been suggesting to me that m-maybe you don't, or that you w-wouldn't want someone quirkless working for you in general." He cringed after completing his sentence, both at the bluntness and the stuttering.

Nighteye gasped, almost as if he had been slapped. That was... not the reaction Izuku had expected. "No. That was... not what I meant at all."

What was going on here? Apparently bizarre verbal sparring matches were mandatory after all. "Alright?"

"Fine." The two of them looked at each other awkwardly for a few seconds before Nighteye finally passed Izuku a work-study employment contract to read over and sign. The terms were amenable enough. The greenette added his signature and handed it back.

"Excellent. I look forward to working with you," Nighteye nodded, slipping the document into a filing cabinet.