Medical information might be confidential, but rumors were unstoppable and Monoma had made the news. Monoma was not the only UA student who was injured in the riots that night, but the blonde's was by far the most serious injury, or rather by far the most serious non-lethal injury.

Channel seven talked about him every fifteen minutes or so. Monoma's story was good for ratings, apparently, even more so than reporting on the death of the general education student whose name- -to his shame--Izuku kept forgetting. Both students' parents had refused to interact with the news-- good for them--but UA had to issue official statements.

Nedzu must be missing out on sleep writing speeches. Hopefully someone would make sure the poor mammal was taking care of himself.

The girl who had attacked Monoma, a student herself by the name of Yakumo Miwako, was being charged with attempted murder. Laying charges against protestors (or rioters or things in between) had provoked public backlash in many cases. Not this time, though, not even when the news mentioned that another UA student (hah--nobody knew his name) had broken Yakumo's ribs and she alleged excessive force.

Many people might be angry with heroes, police and government institutions, might be ready to fight a war against them and cluelessly hold All For One up as a martyr for a cause he had never cared for in the slightest, but Monoma was very pretty and his elegant facial structure made him look much younger and more delicate than he truly was, like a little kid. Among even the angriest and most bloodthirsty of the war hawks, among even those who sympathized strongly with the PLF, murdering children was still generally regarded as vile. That was something at least. The moral decay was not total.

Teachers heaped on homework, all the practical kind. Heroics lessons became more intense, although instructors were careful not to push students until they were sore and unable to fight at their best on short notice. Support classes joined heroics every other day, bringing out new projects

for field testing. Hatsume had built a harpoon gun for some reason. To poor Powerloader's consternation, Nedzu asked Hatsume if it "could be electrified."

Storage buildings, closets, and abandoned corners of UA, long empty, began to fill with stockpiled items. Some were innocuous, supplies for the kitchen, support classrooms, nurse's office, or general studies. Other buildings, now carefully secured with heavy locks, cameras and laser defenses, were almost certainly storing weapons.

Several large residential buildings appeared on campus overnight and people moved into them immediately. Some of the arrivals were heroes not previously associated with UA. Izuku spotted Kesagiri Man walking into the lobby with a box full of clothes. Others arrivals included police officers, government bureaucrats and family members of UA students.

"They did all this in a week, huh?" Monoma asked incredulously, staring out the window of his room, a private suite of sorts adjacent to the nurse's office. "I'm not crazy, right? None of those buildings were here a week ago, were they?"

"Well, one of the buildings you just gestured to is our dorm," Izuku pointed out.

"Well not that one, obviously," Monoma waved his hand dismissively then winced, pulling something. "I figured this would stop hurting so damn much after intensive healing every day for a week. Apparently not."

"I"m sorry," Izuku said, wondering whether he should take the blonde's clenched hand. Monoma never really seemed to be the touchy-feely type. "I didn't realize what that girl was doing until it was too late." He hadn't even seen the attack until it was over.

"Neither did I," Monoma muttered sulkily, as if ashamed. "They always told me I didn't focus enough on hand to hand and it's not that I didn't believe them--"

"This was not your fault, okay? Even the best fighters get unlucky sometimes."

"And I'm certainly not one of the best fighters. That would be you. You knocked her down and crippled her while keeping me from falling over. You didn't even need your hands and I..." he shook his head. "Couldn't do anything."

"Because you weren't willing to blast her head off with a borrowed quirk," the greenette replied dryly. "You're not useless. You didn't have this coming. You didn't deserve it. It could have been any one of us." He wasn't going to let his friend spiral down into a pit of self-recrimination. That helped nobody. "If you want to get better at hand to hand, though, I'd be happy to spar with you once you're back on your feet."

"You would?"

"Of course I would. You helped me learn to use my quirk better. I can help you learn to use your hands better. Only fair."

Monoma raised an eyebrow. "Most people would say saving my life with the aforementioned quirk more than pays for the lessons."

"Well, I'm not most people."

"That you're not."

"If you prefer, we can call it even and say that we're just having a friendly spar. Because that's

what friends do sometimes. Ojiro and Shouji and Kacchan and I used to do that all the time when we were training to be admitted to UA." That felt like a lifetime ago... several lifetimes ago, really, lifetimes full of war.

Monoma glanced away almost shyly. "I'd like that." A wound like this could be terribly traumatizing. Hopefully assuring himself that nobody would be able to hurt him like that again, or at least not without much more luck and effort, would help the blonde recover smoothly. There was still a glimmer of wild fright in Monoma's eyes, as if he had never quite left the battlefield, or perhaps as if he had brought part of the battlefield with him.

"Good. I'm looking forward to it. How long are you going to be stuck here, do you know?"

Monoma sighed. "Not quite. Open heart surgery is a bear to recover from, even with healing quirks, but you kept me from losing too much blood so it's way better than it could have been. I expect I'll be allowed to limp back to class in a week. By then, if the trend continues, my bedside table will be completely covered with "get well soon" cards of questionable workmanship."

"I didn't think to get you a card." There were an awful lot of them and some of them were a bit lopsided, but it was clear from Monoma's tone that he was quite touched by the outpouring of support and likely found the lopsidedness of some cards endearing.

"Don't worry about that. You gave me... well, my life, I guess, which is sort of like saying you gave me all these cards." He gave a soft little smile. Izuku's responding smile was incredibly awkward. He did not like this at all.

It would be nice to think that someone else would have saved the blonde if Izuku hadn't been there, that Fossa hadn't really given Monoma his life, but it wasn't the case. If Izuku had he been assigned to a different riot control group, swapped for Ojiro or Ashido as had nearly happened, Monoma would almost certainly be dead. It was only good luck that had saved the blonde and good luck always ran out eventually.

He didn't want his friends relying on a nonrenewable resource to live. Maybe he could recruit Ojiro to help Monoma practice hand to hand.

"Mom?" Izuku hadn't seen her in ages and here she was without warning, a rolling suitcase gripped in either hand.

"Hello Izuku," she dropped the handles to embrace him. He was still sweaty from heroics--the final class of the day--and on his way to a much needed shower but she didn't care in the slightest.

"W-what are you doing here?" the greenette asked.

She sighed. "A lot of parents are moving in here, at least temporarily..."

"Seemed the thing to do," Mitsuki joined them, striding rapidly out of the newest of the residential buildings. "Some asshole left threatening notes on our door every day last week, then burned down a tree in your mom's front yard."

"What?" Izuku demanded. "Why didn't you say anything?" He still called his mom at least once a week.

His mom sighed, shaking her head. "You already have so much to worry about... I didn't want you worrying about me, too, but now--"

"What the hell are you doing here, hag?" Katsuki interrupted, finally catching up.

"I live here now, brat," Mitsuki told her son, dry as salt.

"Since when?" Katsuki balked.

"Since today," his mother sighed. "We can't stay in our house anymore. It's not safe. I know for a fact a lot of your classmates' parents will be here for a while. Hopefully not for good."

"Oh god this is a nightmare," Katsuki moaned, "I thought I'd finally got away from you!" He wasn't serious. Kacchan might not be thrilled to see his mother, but wasn't unhappy to see her, either, merely prone to dramatics, or maybe trying to make a screwed up situation into a joke via comical overreaction and not really succeeding. The blonde was likely just as relieved as Izuku to have his family members safe within UA's walls.

Mitsuki huffed. "I don't know where you got the melodrama from. That father of yours, I suppose."

"Hey, don't blame me, hag, you're the one that married him!" "Such a brat."

Iida's entire extended family now resided on UA grounds, as did Ashido's, Ojiro's and Shouji's. They were hardly the only ones, either.

Monoma's parents had come with him when he was moved from the ICU and had remained on campus ever since, although it seemed they planned to return home shortly. A few dozen of the new arrivals met for a communal meal in the dining hall that evening. Students seeing each other's families for the first time was entertaining. Sometimes parents were exactly what Izuku expected; sometimes they really were the exact opposite of what Izuku expected.

Ojiro's folks were prone to extreme dramatics and liked to tell embarrassing stories about their son. The poor tailed boy spent the entire dinner attempting damage control and blushing like a tomato. Shouji's mother was even taller than her son and had a strange habit of petting people on the head as if they were dogs.

Todoroki watched these conversations in fascination. He might be surreptitiously taking notes. That was probably fine. At the very least, that was definitely somebody else's problem. The last time Izuku deemed a situation somebody else's problem the situation was Hawks passing secret messages to Nighteye and that did become Izuku's problem to some extent, but Todoroki taking notes on how normal families had conversations was just definitely not going to become Izuku's problem. It wasn't. Not even if it tried really hard.

Izuku spent the rest of the evening with his mother in her new rooms. They were sparsely furnished and smelled of paint but well lit and constructed.

Izuku sat quietly on the couch beneath a fluffy blanket while his mom combed his hair. His locks had grown long lately, the weight of the strands turning curls to waves. There was a lot to comb and that was, without a doubt, a wonderful thing. When was the last time he'd truly relaxed like

this? When was the last time he'd felt this safe and calm? There was nobody like his mom, nobody who could make him feel this sense of peace. What would he do without her? "I heard about Tartarus," she said quietly, "from Nedzu. The parts that you left out."

"I'm sorry," Izuku said, not sure what else to say. He had left out a lot of details. He'd been obligated to do so given how much information was classified. "I know you never wanted me to-- to--get involved in things this dangerous but--"

"I wanted you to be happy. You want to be a hero. You wouldn't be happy anywhere else, doing anything else, I know that. You didn't think I would be disappointed, did you? For what you had to do?" Her face fell as Izuku's did. "Oh. You did. I understand how dangerous your line of work is. I understand that..." she shook her head, trailing off. "I was a bit angry with Nedzu at first, angry that you were in a situation where you had no choice but to do what you did." She couldn't say it, could she? Couldn't say that her little boy had killed someone. "You are still a child. You shouldn't be in those situations, not yet."

"Afterwards, Nedzu apologized to me... for almost exactly that."

"Yes. He apologized to me, too. You've changed so much, haven't you?" she stroked through his hair, massaging his scalp.

"So much?" What did she mean by that? Was she going to reject him now, too, question his identity as Kacchan had, question his loyalties as Aizawa had? He didn't think he could bear that, not from her.

"So much. You've saved lives and taken them..." so she could say it. "There's a coldness in your eyes that wasn't there before." He winced. "For a moment I didn't recognize you..." He winced harder. "But you're still my baby. You will always be my baby, no matter what you have to do, because you will never stop trying to do the right thing. That's what makes you my Izuku.

"Nedzu also told me that you saved your yearmate's life. I don't like that you or your yearmate were put in that position, either, but I couldn't be prouder. You have changed, but in the end that changes nothing between us. It never could."

Izuku curled against her shoulder in relief, every fear quashed by her gentle assurances. "I've been keeping secrets," he whispered, knowing that she would accept this, too.

"I know."

"No, you don't," he said, hoarsely. "I remember things I shouldn't, not just skills... lifetimes. Some of them I know why now. Some of them I don't... I remember a little girl with a broken back getting a coup de grace after being thrown down a pit full of corpses. I remember friends dying on battlefields. I remember so much... I didn't think twice about Moonfish because it was nothing new. The poor guard who died right next to me... it barely bothered me. Even Monoma who's been my friend, I didn't feel it like I should. I know who I am. I am Izuku but am I... Kacchan once told me I was dead, that he'd killed me and now I was a new person entirely--"

"I thought him less foolish than that. You are growing up... and perhaps turning a bit cold. As I said, I can see it, but you will always be my Izuku. You still have the same spirit you always did. That spirit is too strong to be twisted. By anything."

"I don't think even I have this much faith in me." "Hm," was her only reply.

At some point he fell asleep. He woke with several french braids and All Might themed berets worked into his hair. He hadn't felt so warm in months.

Sometimes the tiniest gestures, made on a whim, meant more than the grandest overtures.

"Something big is happening," Todoroki announced to the common room without preamble. The chaotic teen stared through one of the slats in the closed front blinds, a picture-perfect nosy neighbor.

"Oh, kero?" Tsu raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah," Todoroki nodded, pointing through the slat. "There are more than fifty heroes in that building right now, including Nedzu. There are also at least a dozen police officers, detectives, and HPSC officials."

The auxiliary building in question was plain and fairly small, having been built primarily by Cementoss only a week previously. "Probably planning a big counterstrike," Izuku hummed.

"You think so?" Yaoyorozu asked him.

"It's what I'd be doing." Or, perhaps more accurately, it was what Arch, Fractal and Destro would be doing.

"What you'd do, huh?" Todoroki squinted at him. Great. Izuku had just given his classmate a bunch more conspiracy theory fodder. Hopefully he wouldn't be accused of being some kind of slime mold again.

"Sorry, Zuko, but you're reading way too much into casual conversation," Izuku told his maniacal classmate. "I'm nothing particularly interesting or special."

"Blatant lies," someone whispered. Unfortunately, whispers have almost no intonation and there were enough people and background noise present that Izuku had no chance of figuring out who he ought to glare at.

"What kind of counterstrike do you think they're planning?" Ashido asked.

"They want the PLF leaders. Shigaraki is in charge, probably..." The news was slightly unclear on that. There was someone called Re-Destro--who Izuku would really like to punch in the face for dragging his friend's name further through the mud--and a bunch of other high ranking Lieutenants who might be more in charge than Shigaraki... Izuku, as a mere student, was not privy to any classified information on the subject and thus reduced to guessing. "They probably have some lead on a base where some PLF leadership has been spotted. Don't spread that around," he added hastily. "It's kind of obvious and everyone on campus is going to know about this meeting and all, but still don't spread it around."

"It'd be nice to get rid of Shigaraki," Uraraka smiled. "We could end all of this..."

"It's not going to go away," Izuku shook his head. "They killed All For One. He had a successor and now his successor is really mad and has found some sort of philosophy that attracts radicalized followers. It's mostly other leaders from the PLF who appear to the media and stir up trouble." Shigaraki didn't seem to be much of an orator. Re-Destro made a lot of noise online. Dabi, with one of Hawks' feathers around his neck on a prominent chain, often appeared in press releases of

sorts to preach against institutions, heroes, and Endeavour in particular, eloquently crowing the philosophy of Stain married to neo-MLA pseudo-social Darwinist pipe dreams. Spinner, Mr. Compress and several new players were similarly eloquent. "Kill or arrest Shigaraki without taking the rest of the leadership with him and someone else will fill the power vacuum. Someone might fill the power vacuum in any event, and the number of angry people wanting to have a civil war isn't going to go down just because a leader was killed; it might even go up. There's no easy solution, no quick one, either."

The MLA war had dragged on for years and the associated societal upheaval was, arguably, still dragging on and, in fact, could likely be blamed for every bad thing that was happening right now. It was like how lingering problems from World War I festered for decades before exploding into World War II. Ugh. Just the thought of that war crime encrusted horror turned his stomach.

"What are we supposed to do then?" Yaoyorozu asked, throwing up her arms. Izuku had scared her with his gloomy prognosis, hadn't he? He'd probably scared other people, too.

What were they supposed to do? What ought their role be? They were heroes--a law enforcement branch meant to address a different class of threats than the normal police--and their country was descending into civil war. They weren't designed to be a military response team but that was what they were rapidly becoming. What part of a hero's job description still existed in the midst of this chaotic upheaval, this twisted world where lines blurred, nobody was really a bystander (innocent or otherwise) and everything was some shade of gray rather than black or white? That was a hard question to answer. Perhaps answering an easier question would serve a similar purpose. What would his mom expect him to do?

"Save people," Izuku replied eventually. "As many people as possible, no matter what happens in the background."