The Ice Princess of Josei Academy

It was at the end of the school day that he found her, sitting at her desk.

She was in the far corner, eyes glued to her planner as she blocked out her schedule. She wore the school uniform, but also a pair of simple white gloves. Her platinum blond hair was wrapped around her head in a braid to keep it out of her face as she worked, using tiny, pretty writing to work in details. The perfect student through and through, she made sure to block out her days to cover her studying and extra curricular activities. Gotta keep up those grades if she was going to switch schools later…

"Ah, excuse me," he spoke as he neared, getting her attention. "Are you Bradt Elsa?"

She blinked at him- then promptly dropped her pencil onto her planner as her bluebell eyes went wide. He was an average height boy, with bright eyes and a mop of curly green hair. With a splotch of freckles and polite smile, he seemed friendly enough, but he wasn't in her class. And Elsa's heart began to hammer fearfully as she suspected why he was there.

"Y-Yes," she confessed hesitantly.

"Ah, I'm Midoriya Izuku, from class 1-A!"

'I know who you are,' she wanted to say, but didn't. He was that boy with the crazy strong quirk at the sports festival two weeks ago. But if he was introducing himself like this, he must not have remembered her. Despite herself she began to calm, realizing that maybe she was jumping the gun with her assumptions. "Nice to meet you," she said, instead of her real question of 'What are you doing here?'

"I hope I'm not bothering you!" He continued quickly with an embarrassed smile. "I saw your matches at the sports festival and wanted to ask about your quirk."

"Oh…" She offered a polite smile, though couldn't mask her anxiety. Shoot, he did remember her. And any questions about her quirk were dangerous ones. "Well, it's pretty simple," she answered with a tiny shrug. "I make ice. There's not really much to it."

Especially since Todoroki Shoto could do the same thing. In fact, when considering the fact that he could also make fire, it made her single element quirk sort of pale in comparison. She wasn't all that special here (something a part of her reveled in).

"Well, yeah, that's what I thought too at first, but, then I realized the ice wasn't coming from you, so that couldn't be it."

"Not… coming from me?" She frowned in confusion a moment, tilting her head. "What do you mean?"

"Well, Todoroki's quirk comes from him. Whether it's fire or ice, he releases it from his body. That's how quirks work," he clarified, like a teacher giving a lecture. He switched his gaze to the ceiling and turned thoughtful."But yours doesn't work like that at all. It's like you shoot magic from your hands and just make ice appear- like on the field, or even mid-air! I was so shocked I couldn't figure it out at first! It shouldn't have even been possible to have it separate from you on formation!"

"Ah..." She blinked as she realized what he was saying. Quirks were biological traits, which meant that whatever they did or made had to come from their bodies in the first place. The fact that there could be "space" between her and her ice was what he had found strange. "You know a lot about quirks, don't you?"

"Yeah, I studied them for a while," he confessed, slightly embarrassed. "But-!" He continued quickly back on track and eager to share, "Then I realized it would be possible if you weren't actually "creating" ice, but building it!" He grinned triumphantly. "You're freezing the moisture in the air around you and constructing ice from that, aren't you!?"

Her heart nearly stopped. He had figured that out just from watching her? This boy was smart, and she couldn't figure out a way to lie to him. Maybe if she kept it brief he would be satisfied and leave it at that.

"Well… I-in a manner of speaking, yes," she confessed with a small shrug. She looked away from him, not able to meet his eyes. "I can make tiny particles of ice. Most of the time they just melt before it gets too cold."

"I knew it!" His eyes flashed in excitement. "I realized it after the first match! The longer it went, the colder the air got!" His fists were gripped tight, explanation pouring out of him the more he gained momentum. "It finally clicked when I saw snowflakes starting to form around you without you doing anything! You had to be freezing the air around you to accomplish that!"

Her stomach clenched at the reveal of information. No one had mentioned that to her when talking about the match after. They just assumed the air was getting "colder" because of her ice. Maybe no one had noticed, or they didn't care. But this boy had been watching, and he'd been analyzing her from the moment she released her quirk. "I-it wasn't snow," she said quickly. "It was frost. I can't make snow." She lied.

'He's going to figure it out,' she feared, whole body on edge as she realized this. 'I have to stop him and never talk to him again.'

"Well maybe not on purpose, but you could if there was already rainclouds in your range of field!" Unfortunately he was too excited to notice, slamming his hands on the desk and beaming in realization, his eyes practically glittering in exuberance. "That must've been what happened at Josei! It was already going to rain, and you just had to freeze the moisture! You're the one that froze over Josei Academy, aren't you!?"

Her stomach plummeted. Her entire body turned to ice. Everything zeroed in on his excited face, weeks of terror and panic rushing back to the surface.

"Look at her, the ice princess."

"I can't believe she froze over the whole school!"

"I'm going to fail my entrance exams because of her!"

'No-' she was glancing behind him, trying to see if anyone had heard him. But the few groups of students still behind were happily chatting amongst themselves and not paying them any heed. 'They can't know, they can't-!'

"I bet she loved the attention. All the reporters, the news outlets-"

"They had to bring in so many pro heroes because of her-"

"Some students had to go to the hospital!"

"That would explain everything! I just couldn't get it before, you know?" He he elaborated, hands gesticulating as he thought back. "It would be one thing if it was just the school frozen over, but there was also a snowstorm! Even if you could change the weather it wasn't like you could have two quirks, but if the school was already frozen, but your quirk kept growing to reach the clouds, then-"

"What a villain."

"You're WRONG!"

The slam echoed after her scream, and Izuku jumped out of his ramblings. The students did notice that, turning about to face the pair. Elsa was on her feet, panicked eyes blazing at him and leaning over her desk, hands on her notebooks where she'd slammed them.

"That's not me!" She argued. "You have my quirk completely wrong!"

"O-oh…" he stammered, too shocked to say anything else for a moment before he relented. "Sorry," he offered, worried at the sudden change. "I-It just made the most sense to me, so I thought-"

"Well you're wrong!" She snapped. It all came pouring out of her- desperate attempts to deflect and deny everything. "That's very rude to assume that about someone, you know! How could you think I was some kind of villain?!"

"I didn't!" He squawked, hands up in alarm as he stepped back. "I-I just thought you might be a student, and-"

"Well, don't! Maybe you should ask someone first before figuring that out on your own!"

"O-oh… yeah I guess so," he conceded. One hand went to the back of his neck, face down in shame. "Someone like that would've used more power at the sports festival, right? Sorry, I got carried away."

Seeming to believe her, and letting the subject drop, Elsa snatched her notebooks and her bag, in too much of a hurry to stuff them in. She practically raced out the door, dodging glances and flying out of the room. If it had just been that, Izuku would have let it drop, and let this be just an embarrassing episode to try to forget later. But as he looked after her, he noticed something on the ground, tiny patches of ice leading out the door where she had fled.

'Did she… mean to do that?' He wondered as he followed the icy footsteps out the door. 'Or… can she not control her quirk?'

That single thought suddenly connected everything into place.

When Izuku returned home, he usually went right to studying to get his homework out of the way. But this time when he sat at his desk, he took out his phone and started searching online articles. Back when he'd first heard about this, it had been in the middle of the event, so the details had been scarce. And then everything finally concluded, well, he'd been way too busy training with All Might to look everything up and research it like he would have liked. And, well, with everything going on he had frankly forgotten about it. But now that he was free, he could finally look up all the details and see for himself what happened.

(Maybe he should have done this before asking her.)

'3 injured and 10 hospitalized at Girl's Boarding School'

He gaped, focus turning to horror. Hospitalized? What happened?

He scrolled through the articles, filtering through several to try to get a clearer picture of the chain of events. Each news source had interviewed different parents and got different stories. It wasn't until he managed to get to a couple with the students saying in their own words on what happened that he was finally able to pull everything together and get the full history.

One night a couple students had been up late cramming for entrance exams. They noticed it had gotten colder, but since the office was closed at this hour there was no one to complain to (they tried). They bundled up and went to bed, thinking the AC had simply been turned up full blast. The next morning however, they temperatures had reached subzero, and everyone realized that the east dormitories had literally frozen over from the outside. Thick sheets of ice had wrapped around the outside of the building, and down the second story hall, literally trapping the girls in their rooms. The school turned up the heaters to attempt to melt the ice and keep the students warm as they called the police, asking for battering rams. The officers managed to get through the ice, but the more time passed, the thicker the ice grew and the faster it spread, making it harder to get the girls deeper inside.

(Here, Izuku had to think about it as he wondered what was happening. If she knew help was coming, why would she thicken the ice? Unless she just couldn't control it? But then he realized that the heater must have been melting and evaporating the ice, putting more moisture in the air and conducting her quirk more quickly. It had ironically hindered the rescue.)

The city had been due for rain, meaning the sky was overcast and blocking out the sun. It kept the ice from melting and helped rapidly cool down the surrounding area. The temperature several blocks around the school had dropped to freezing as well. Instead of raindrops the people were treated to snowflakes. Seeing the new scope of what they were facing, the people panicked and called for the pro heroes, both to help rescue the students still trapped inside, and to fight whatever was causing this. Several had arrived, helping police break through the ice. Girls had to be rushed to the hospital for hypothermia, and several suffered frostbite. The casualties were much less than they could have been, the heaters in their rooms helping to keep the worst of the damage at bay.

Endeavor and Eraser Head eventually arrived, finally melting the ice from the school. According to the articles, they "took care" of the student that had been causing all of this, though didn't mention how. Though Izuku could make a pretty good guess what happened.

'The school must have realized that Bradt wasn't doing this on purpose and just lost control. Mr. Aiza- I mean, 'Eraser Head' must've been called in to stop her quirk and calm her down. I'm glad they didn't fight her.'

But still, having to deal with the aftermath of all that…

Several articles had comments from parents complaining about the whole incident- especially those of students who had been in the hospital, and lost fingers or toes. They claimed they were going to attempt to press charges, and wanted apologies from the school and all that. If they knew about the student's quirk, they argued, then why weren't they better prepared? Why didn't they have a better system in place to deal with it?

Some of the other comments made Izuku's blood run cold.

"I'm shocked they even let that girl attend!"

"I'm not sure someone like that should even be allowed near other students!"

"I hope something is done about her!"

It was no wonder Bradt had freaked out when he'd realized the truth. Having something like this in your past- especially when so many people were hurt and hated you for it- could absolutely kill you inside.

And this did answer the other question he'd had. Though the quirk mechanics had made sense, the scale didn't. At the sports festival, she had made headway as being the only person in the business course who had an impressive quirk and was trying. He hadn't paid much attention to her during the obstacle course while he'd been racing, obviously, but she had finished in the top forty-two. And in the cavalry battle, she had been on Shinsou's team, making it into the tournament-

Wait…. Shinsou's team. Now that he thought about it, Ojiro and Neru had withdrawn because they had been under his control. But if she was on his team, it was possible she was too, yet she hadn't withdrawn...

Could that be part of why she was so shaky?

She was an ice user, constantly being compared to Todoroki's power. But he was trained by Endeavor, the number two hero-

Wait… Todoroki… Endeavor…

Had Endeavor's presence at the matches reminded her of that time in Josei? Was that why she had withdrawn?

Looking back on it now, Izuku could understand perfectly. She had been roped under Shinsou's control, and though she hadn't withdrawn at first, she had still been so shaken from the experience she hadn't been able to think straight. And for someone who already feared her powers going out of control, to see the hero who'd had to rescue her…

He clenched his teeth, gripping his phone as righteous anger filled him. It wasn't fair. She should have been transferred into the hero course after that! Not just for her quirk, but for fighting as well as she did, even with the stress she was under…

He nodded to himself, making his decision. He'd fix this tomorrow, and get her into the hero course, where she belonged.

"She already declined."

Izuku gaped at his teacher, too shocked for words. "Huh!?"

"They offered her the transfer, but she refused, saying that she changed her mind. She'll be taking new entrance exams next springs, and switch schools."

"S-Switch schools?!" He gawked in horror. "But she belongs here! She should be in the hero course!"

"She failed the entrance exams and withdrew from the match. She's exactly where she wants to be."

"No she isn't! She wants to be a hero- you know better than anyone else why she's too scared to enter!"

"And that is precisely why I'm not forcing her," He said sharply, eyes narrowing down at the boy. "If she feels she can't control her quirk, then she's too much of a liability to risk letting in."

"Liability," he spat the word out like venom. "She's not a liability- she's a human being!"

"Be that as it may, she's already made her decision." His teacher responded coolly. "There's no changing that."

Izuku whirled on his heel, marching off to head straight for the business course, not caring about the confused stares of his classmates, or that it would make him late for his training. He was going to get to the bottom of this, and get her into the hero course- no matter what.

Hi everyone! Thanks so much for reading! Because I'm excited to start, I'm gonna go ahead and post the next chapter for you all. Am I excited? You bet I'm excited! Please leave a review for me- reading comments really encourages me~!