A/N: Since I am cross-posting this to SB and SV, if you want a list of all the changes from canon 1-A and the quirks of the Oregairu characters, check the threads there, I'll have them available in a day or two.

Thank you again everyone for all of your reviews! They are the fuel that keeps me motivated on this wild NaNoWriMo ride. With that, here's the chapter.

Some of my favorite days that I had in Junior High school were when we took the No-Quirk Gym Tests. Since my quirk was barely useable to begin with, it was one of the few chances I had to compete with people on an even level. Because I got around basically everywhere by bicycle, I was actually pretty fit, and it wasn't unusual for me to be at the top of the Emitter-Quirk or even Transformation-Quirk rankings for my year before I started cheating at workouts using Stockpile and Regeneration. Afterwards, I was almost always first for everyone except kids with Mutation quirks, and often scored higher than even a few of them. Basically, my high physical capabilities without using my quirk were one of the few things about me that I could point to with pride!

So I shouldn't have been surprised when Aizawa-sensei immediately denounced them as pointless. "Softball throwing, standing long jump, the 50-Meter dash, the 5 kilometer run, grip strength, side-to-side stepping, upper body strength, and the seated toe touch. Altogether, supposedly they're a comprehensive measure of physical capability. But 70 to 80 percent of students have a quirk that would be applicable to at least one of those tests. Basically, in order to preserve the status quo, people are getting out of schools without any knowledge of what capabilities their bodies really have. It's illogical."

It's also probably cheaper, I thought to myself while looking at the pristinely manicured grounds and expansive athletic field of U.A.. Sure enough, when Bakugo was given the chance to throw an example ball, with an explosion and a shout of 'DIE!' he sent it nearly three quarters of a kilometer away, which would probably have broken a window somewhere across the road from the school I'd just graduated from. And it wasn't like knowing how strong you were without your quirk was completely useless… but I also got his point.

Certainly, my classmates all seemed excited about the chance to cut loose with their quirks. Almost immediately, they started laughing and shouting in excitement over how cool being a hero was. And then… something about Aizawa-sensei changed. His tone of voice dropped to a growl, his slouching posture suddenly got ready for a fight, and his sleepy eyes opened just enough to turn a listless gaze into a ferocious glower. "Let's get this straight. I didn't go out of my way to pull you guys out of orientation just so you all could have fun playing with your quirks. I did it because you all only have three years to get ready to be pros, and for some of you, that won't be long enough. I could bore you with a long speech about how you all need to take this seriously, but instead I'll just say this: the person with the lowest average score across all eight events will be judged a waste of time and expelled."

"Wait, seriously? On the first day? Before we've had any chance to train? That's not fair!" There was a generalized murmur of rejection, but the clearest voice I heard in protest was from a round-cheeked girl with brown hair.

"Neither is life. Car accidents… villain attacks… earthquakes… they can all strike at any time, and there's no guarantee that you'll be prepared for those, either," Aizawa said. "If you want to be a hero, you're going to have to learn to handle a little bit of unfairness, because making the unfair more fair is what we do for a living. If you're not ready for that, if you're not ready to spend an obscene amount of hours every day working to be ready for the next attack, the next disaster, then you might as well find that out now instead of wasting your time and ours. This program is for those who are willing to go beyond… Plus Ultra. "

Quietly, I debated just giving up and washing out. How the heck had I wound up in U.A.'s Course for Extremely Motivated Children? Everywhere I looked, people were grinning, stretching out, and otherwise getting ready to work harder than they had to in exchange for the privilege of working even harder than that. Was I really going to go through with this? And then I heard a voice, as if from afar. "Well, guess you're out of luck, then… Last Place-san." I looked over to see Bakugo Katsuki leering at me, and I realized: yes, yes I was. In fact, I was going to score higher than that ass on every. Single. Exam.

For the first exam, Aizawa-sensei had us pair up by seat number and run the 50 meter dash, two at a time. My partner was Yaoyorozu Momo, a fairly serious-looking girl with a big, spiky ponytail; as seats numbered nineteen and twenty, we had time to chat and watch a little bit as everyone else did their sprints ahead of us. "Um, how are you feeling?" Yaoyorozu asked me in a slightly diffident manner. "Are you comfortable in not getting last, at least?"

I snorted. "Like he's actually going to expel us," I said with a roll of my eyes. The first pair of runners to go were Miura Yumiko and Ashido Mina, the blonde bow-user and the all-pink acid sprayer respectively. Ashido was faster, able to use her quirk to let her skate over the surface of the track, while Miura seemed to be able to hold onto her arrows and use them to push her along.

"As expected, I knew I couldn't have been the only person who thought it was a ruse." Yaoyorozu said, sharing a secret smile with me. Next on the track were a froglike girl named Asui Tsuyu and a stiff-looking boy named Tenya Iida, both of whom appeared to have mutation quirks and neither really caught my interest - though Iida in particular seemed like he was quite speedy. "Still, though, are you confident?" Yaoyorozu asked curiously.

With a shrug, I nodded my head. "To be honest, I'm pretty fit. I think I could avoid coming in last even without a quirk at all." The next pair, Hayama and Uraraka, were a study in contrasts. Hayama actually leapt forwards off the starting block, his arms stretched out in front of him, and then he didn't land for the rest of the 50 meters. "Hm. A flight perk?" I said, half unconsciously. Behind him, Uraraka just ran normally, although she appeared to have some sort of power related to things that she touched.

"So it seems," Yaoyorozu said with a nod. "You said your quirk was a… fractional copy quirk? I don't think I've actually heard of one of those before." The next group was a pair of boys named Kaminari Denki and Kirishima Eijiro, one blonde and one red-haired, neither of whom used their quirks for the dash, though both appeared relatively fit. "What happens if you copy my quirk?"

"I find out what it does and get it at 1/108th strength, which… isn't enough to be helpful for most peoples' quirks, but for a few people can come in useful." My eyes narrowed as the girl who saved me during the entrance exam stepped up next to a tall boy with brown-dyed hair. Since Aizawa-sensei was calling us out by name, that meant that I could finally put a name to the pretty face. She was Yukinoshita Yukino, and the boy running with her was Tobe Kakeru. Yukinoshita sped past him at the speed of the super-strong, leaving a trail of snowflakes behind her, leaving him to shout 'go go go go go!' as he struggled to try to keep up.

Yaoyorozu's face lit up. "You can find out what people's quirks are by touching them? That's an incredible tactical advantage! But, how much detail do you get? No, I know! Here, try copying mine!" Wait, seriously? As the next pair of runners, a tall Heteromorph named Shoji Mezo and a girl with long dangling earlobes named Jiro Kyoka got ready to run, I reached out and poked my seat partner in the arm.

A rush of information flooded into my mind. "Feels like… conversion of adipose tissue into… whew, matter of any element, no, any combination of elements, in nearly any shape?" I raised my eyebrow at her. Glancing over at the track, Yuigahama was running with surprising speed, her gym uniform rippling in the wind as she sped past a much taller boy with a crow's head.

I looked back to Yaoyorozu to find her preening a little bit. Everybody liked showing off their quirks, I guess. "I just call it Creation, but yes, that's the gist of it. What about your copy? How does it stack up to the original?" There was a murmur of impressed sounds as Todoroki Shouto, a boy with two-toned hair, skated down the track on a field of ice. Behind him, Hagakure Tohru made normal time - well, it didn't really seem like an invisibility quirk was going to be any good in a physical test. One more reason that his so called expulsion rule was obviously just a hoax.

"Slower. A lot slower. And it feels like something that requires a lot of practice to begin with, because figuring out how to make things is…" I shook my head. As the last pair before us got into position, I watched a little more closely. The kid with green hair was apparently named Midoriya Izuku, and whatever his quirk was it didn't seem designed for running, because he ate Bakugo's dust as his friend exploded his way down the track. So, 4.13 seconds, huh?

"It takes a lot of practice," Yaoyorozu agreed, then she started rolling up her shirt to expose her belly. I blushed and looked away hastily, then looked back in fascination as she started pulling a motorized scooter out of her abdomen. "Shall we?" I nodded and tapped into Ooze. I copied Gigantify, springing up to 5 meters in height, and left the other copy 'slot' blank for now as I got into position at the blocks, crouching down as low as I could go. "Clever," Yaoyorozu said as we got ready. "At that height, you're running the equivalent of a 20-meter race instead of a 50-meter."

"Yeah, at that height," I said, and as the starting whistle blew I immediately plugged the other end of Ooze into Stockpile. While I didn't have nearly as much Gigantify saved up as I had during the entrance exam, I still had enough to instantly take me up to 10 meters tall, and my arms and legs blazed with orange light as I hurtled forward. Sprinting with super-strength is challenging - you need a lot less upward force proportionally to clear your feet off the ground for the next step, so if you run with the same form that a person without super strength would use, you wind up bounding about like you're walking on the moon and spend more time falling than you do pushing yourself forward. The key is to lean so far forward that you think you're about to fall, and then to just hammer your feet backwards as fast as you can, one after another, frantically chasing after your center of gravity to keep it from hitting the ground. It was a tricky maneuver, but thankfully I only had to keep it up for about ten steps.

The high school record for the Quirkless 50m dash was 5.59 seconds. I wasn't quite that fast, but I could usually make it in under six and a half. Of that six and a half seconds, it took me probably about four seconds in the first half to get up to speed, and then in the other two and a half seconds to finish the race. With quirks, it was a different story. At my current height, I was only running the to-scale equivalent of maybe ten meters, and with Stockpile pouring strength into my oversized body, acceleration was instantaneous. "Two point two seven seconds!" Aizawa called out, and I grinned. After about another three quarters of a second, my stockpiled Gigantify ran out and my body shrank back to its 'normal' five meter height in mid-air, giving me an extra second or two to get my feet under me and start slowing down.

Turning back, I saw that the class was looking at me with astonishment. "Whoa, dude! That was even faster than Iida-san!" Tobe said, both hands in his long brown hair to exaggerate his astonishment. "Power copying lets you do that?"

His comment broke the silence, and suddenly everyone else started shouting at me at the same time. "Ah! It was just like the time with my dog, except this time you got all big and stuff too!" "Super manly!" "W-wow…" "Not bad, ribbit". It was a scene right out of my junior high dreams - and I had no idea what to do. Ah! This is bad! All of this friendship and praise, I don't know if I can handle it! I'm not cut out to be a riajuu! Quick, focus on something I understand - that's it! Spite! Petty Spite!

I muttered a few thank-yous to everyone who was complimenting me, and then I looked in Bakugo's direction. He was glaring at me, looking like he wished he could explode me with his eyes. I smirked. Ever so slowly, I raised my hand in his direction and raised one finger. No, I didn't flip him off, just raised my index finger, but the effect on him was just about the same as if I had. He scowled, ground his teeth, and set off a couple of explosions in his hands as if he was getting ready to tear me apart. To be honest, it was a little unsettling, so I quickly turned back to everyone who had been congratulating me. Sure, I wasn't used to being praised, but the only way to get used to it is to have it happen more often, right?

"All right, everyone," Aizawa-sensei droned in his dull voice. "That's enough of that. Get moving over to the long jump pit, we don't have all day." Well, there went that idea. As everyone jogged over to the long jump, I made sure to take the time to compliment Yaoyorozu, who had made a very respectable time of just under four seconds with her electric scooter.

"Oi. How long did it take you to figure out how to make an engine with that quirk of yours?" I asked. "And a fully charged battery?"

Yaoyorozu smiled sweetly, happy to be acknowledged for her hard work. "Oh, electric motors are fairly structurally simple. Batteries are a bit trickier, but all you have to do is zero-inflate the hypergraviflax particulate with a slithy tove-like structure and caraloo the vindahable." She said, or something like that anyways - it sounded like Japanese, but I couldn't understand a word of it. Curse you, my terrible science grades!

"Ah, I see," I lied. "Ah, so what are you going to do in the grip test? Giant pliers?"

Yaoyorozu shook her head. "The amount of mechanical advantage I could gain there would be limited by my arm length. I was planning on something like a screw vise with a long turning arm."

"Ah, that would work." I acknowledged cheerfully, having just about understood that one. For my own part, I decided to experiment with one of my newer stockpiled quirks, one that I had copied from a girl who had saved me in the entrance exam, expecting at the time that I would never see her again. Using her own quirk right in front of her felt a little weird, but I had been copying other peoples' quirks without their permission for fifteen years now and didn't really intend to stop so if people were going to get all weird about it then it was better to rip the adhesive bandage off sooner rather than later. Also, I didn't really have any better options - Death Arms was a good overall strength enhancer, but it couldn't focus all of its strength down to one point the way that Yukinoshita's Yuki-Onna quirk could. In any case, I only had about a 10x charge built up for her quirk, so although the temperature around me dropped as I squeezed, it wasn't enough to cause snowflakes to condense or anything like that. It was more than enough to surpass the blonde idiot who tried to explode the hand grip machine, though, and I flashed him a V-for-victory, or maybe just the number 2, as we moved on to the long jump.

This was an event that I didn't have quite as much confidence in - nothing I had copied seemed particularly well suited. That just meant that I would have to find someone to copy. As the first few people tried their best in the long jump, I took note of their different strategies; Miura shot arrows at the ground repeatedly to stay aloft, Ashido was stuck jumping ordinarily, Asui and Iida just ran and jumped for it, and Hayama and Uraraka just flew or floated over the sand pit respectively. Surprisingly, after he finished, Hayama came over in my direction.

"Hey, Hikigaya," he called out with a smile.

My eyebrow twitched. Darn riajuu, stop calling other people's names so casually when you've just met! That, or teach me how to do it! "Yeah? What's up, Hayama? You need something?"

"No, no," he said with a smile. "I was just coming over to ask if you wanted to copy my quirk for the long jump."

Whoa, seriously? Almost despite myself, my hand started reaching out towards his arm. "You sure?" I asked, halting halfway. "This is sort of a competition."

Hayama's easy-going, friendly expression never wavered. "I'm not too worried about last place," he said with a shrug, "And heroes help each other out, don't they? Besides, if we're here to learn what our quirks can really do, then I think you deserve to be able to use your quirk to its fullest potential."

Despite myself, I was moved. Even though I would probably have copied his quirk without permission if he hadn't given it, even though he was probably the sort of person who was nice to everybody, even though he was probably only seeking me out specifically because Yuigahama had given him a mistaken impression of me, the fact that he was being nice to me… was pleasant. "Then, thanks, I guess." I finished my aborted motion and touched Hayama's arm, ditching an underwhelming wall-climbing quirk for his flight. "So… you get faster and physically tougher the longer you fly straight, but you have to slow down to turn?" I asked, settling the details of his quirk as best as I could in my head before I had to use it.

Hayama nodded with yet another smile. You'd think it'd look creepy for a facial expression to constantly stay the same, but he seemed to have a whole collection of wholesome smiles that he could switch between to reduce the unnaturalness of it all. "Yep, that's pretty much it. I call it Falcon Flight."

"Well, my fractional copy's going to look more like Dodo Flight, but thanks," I snarked. "I'm sure it'll be helpful."

Hayama laughed and gave me a friendly clap on the shoulder. "Good luck. Better get over there, it's almost your turn."

Sure enough, Bakugo was exploding his way through the air, flying up and over the three meters-long sandpit and a little bit past. So, that was where I had to beat. Looked like four, maybe four and a half meters? Idly, I tested my copy of Falcon Flight, jumping in place a couple of times. As I expected, it didn't generate enough lift for me to be able to take off with it - the best I would be able to do with it would be maybe a shallow glide. Still, it'd probably be enough.

Once again, Midoriya chose to skip using his quirk for the test, achieving a pretty mediocre result. If Aizawa's threat of expulsion had been real, I would have worried for him, but presumably there were other events he could compete in. And then it was my turn. To be honest, I probably could have cleared the three meter pit without Hayama's perk, but Dodo Flight - no, it was a little bit more useful than that. Vulture Glide? Vulture Glide added in enough lift that I could soar comfortably past Bakugo's marker, grinning as I did. I flashed him a the number three as I landed, enjoying the view of his scowl getting deeper and deeper.

The side step test was a little trickier, since it involved making precise, 30cm jumps while rapidly changing directions. Stockpile was too strong to use in this situation - it would just send me careening all over the place. I sighed. Despite how proud I was of my versatility and my supposed ability to have a quirk for every problem, I was still sort of a one-trick pony at the moment. Fortunately and also unfortunately, nobody else in the class seemed to have a particularly applicable quirk for the event either. Unfortunately, that meant that I couldn't copy the perfect quirk for the situation off of anyone; fortunately, Bakugo's attempts at exploding himself from side to side were too imprecise to be of much help to him. The best two performers were probably Tobe and Yukinoshita. Tobe's quirk seemed to involve him talking, because he kept shouting "bounce bounce bounce bounce" as he moved from side to side - not my style, though I was sure I would pick his quirk up later. I far preferred Yukinoshita's quirk, which since it seemed to be more of a 'channel heat energy into directional force' quirk than a 'convert heat energy into muscular strength' quirk meant that it was actually pretty easily to control precisely. (There was also Tohru, who took her clothes off and just moved her shoes from line to line with her hands, but if I tried that trick I'd be arrested for public indecency.)

However, my best bet for this exam would be copying Todoroki. He had created a pair of short walls of ice to stop his feet from going over the lines on the side; since I had seen him create much larger ice structures nigh-instantaneously, it was a fair bet that I would be able to create little ones like that as well, though possibly not as quickly. Thinking that, I jogged over to him just as he finished. "Hey, Todoroki-san." I called out to him. "Mind letting me copy your quirk for this one?"

"Yes, I do mind." Todoroki said. "Actually, I'd prefer that you didn't copy my quirk at all. Ever."

"A-ah," I said, not really sure how to respond. "I… see?"

"You can copy my quirk, Hikki!" Suddenly I was surprised by a smiling Yuigahama popping up into my personal space. Oi, when did I start having a nickname? "I don't mind at all!" She stretched out her hand towards me, and for lack of a better response to being put on the spot I reached out and tapped her on the back of the hand. Hmm, super-strong telekinesis well suited to fibrous materials, but only within a few centimeters of her skin? That explains the hug, I guess, if she needed her body to be in contact with my shirt in order to fix it. As I withdrew my fingers from the back of Yuigahama's hand, for some reason she looked a little bit - annoyed? Disappointed? I really couldn't tell. Had she wanted to hold my hand? Nah, couldn't be - she must just be irritated about Todoroki or something.

"Uh, thanks Yuigahama, this'll be helpful." I wasn't really sure how yet, but I'd figure something out. Maybe with a Stockpile for one-time armor plating?

"I-" Todoroki called out abortively, seemingly frustrated. "No offense meant, Hikigaya-san. It's just - it's a personal matter, that's all."

I nodded in acquiescence, and started heading over towards Aizawa-sensei, because by now I was out of time. I couldn't set up the ice walls like I wanted, so instead I just used Yukinoshita's quirk together with my Hot Skin quirk to give it a little bit of extra ambient heat to suck out of the air. Despite not being my ideal scenario, though, it was still enough for me to flash four fingers at an increasingly irate-looking Bakugo.

During the Ball Throw, the standout was obviously Uraraka, who was much nicer about letting me copy her quirk than Todoroki had been. Although she called it Zero Gravity, it didn't quite nullify gravity precisely, it just made objects float. The precise mechanism of how it worked was a little strange to me - if I understood as much science as Yaoyorozu then I might have been able to explain it - but the upshot was that where Uraraka could float up to three tons, I could handle a max of three hundred kilos, and where Uraraka could make things actually float, I could make them about 10-15% lighter. Before I could see how useful that would actually be, though, there was another big surprise: Midoriya.

I watched along in fascination, as did almost everyone else in the class, as the green-haired shrimp got cussed out by Aizawa-sensei for using his quirk in a dangerous manner, recognized Aizawa as the Pro Hero Eraserhead, and then finally used his quirk for real, breaking his finger - and the sound barrier. While shouting SMASH.

A sudden inkling of suspicion dawned on me, so after Bakugo finished yelling at his friend for holding out on him (it seemed like they had a weird relationship, but I didn't have any friends to use as a basis of comparison, so who was I to judge?) I gave Midoriya a complimentary pat on the shoulder as I went up to take my place in the circle for the ball toss. I patted him on his gym uniform, so if he accused me of copying his quirk I could point out that I didn't touch his skin. I don't actually need to touch bare skin to copy quirks, but my quirk paperwork said I did, and acting like skin contact was needed had saved me a lot of trouble in junior high, so at least it would be a familiar lie to add to all the other ones I was living.

As I expected, as soon as I touched him my Quirk recognized his as a quirk that I already had, no need to copy it. Midoriya Izuku had Stockpile. The real question was, how did he get it? Stockpile could be passed down deliberately by giving someone a piece of your DNA. Was he an apprentice? But if so, why would All Might choose someone too frail to use his power, without any propensity for heroics? All Might was famously silent on any potential romantic entanglements he might have - was he All Might's lover? His Cata-Might? X-rated images suggesting just how that DNA could have been transferred filled my mind's eye. Blergh, I needed brain bleach! Quick, think of something pure and innocent! Why is nothing coming to miiind!

"Oi, Hikigaya. You're wasting time." Aizawa called out. It jolted me out of my brain freeze and I shook my head, thankful for the distraction. Focusing on the ball, I channeled Uraraka's Zero Gravity quirk into it, wound up, and threw the ball as hard as my miniscule piece of Stockpile could send it. I didn't quite crack the sound barrier like Midoriya had, but it probably wasn't that far off, and with Uraraka's Float active I still managed to eke out a win over his throw - and, by extension, Bakugo's. I tried to catch his attention so that I could show him the number five, but all of his attention was on Midoriya.

Honestly, so was mine. Listening to everyone else's chatter around me, Uraraka and Iida were describing how they had seen Midoriya wreck the Zero-Pointer, his arm, and both of his legs all in one punch. But that had been during the entrance exam, and I was pretty sure that All Might had been on the news fighting villains at least few times between then and now, so he obviously still had his quirk. Maybe if it was possible to pass on Stockpile intentionally through DNA, it was also possible to pass it down unintentionally? As in... at birth?

I looked at Midoriya's green hair, considered All Might's yellow hair, and wondered if Midoriya's mother's hair was blue. It would explain a lot of things - why Midoriya had evidently kept his quirk secret as a kid, even from his best friend, why All Might was suddenly staying in Musutafu year-round and teaching at U.A. - All Might had enemies, the kind of villains who would hurt a child if they couldn't hurt him, so he'd kept his family hidden and his child safe until… hmm. Maybe the Tatooin incident? When his kid got hurt despite everything, and didn't know how to Smash his way out of trouble? The timeline… sort of fit.

The upper body test (a combination of pushups and pull-ups), the distance run, the seated toe-touch, and the sit-ups all passed in the blink of an eye as I ruminated over the idea that my classmate might be All Might's potential secret love child. For each one, I distractedly used the most appropriate quirks for the event - mostly Stockpile plus something else that was useful, except for the toe-touch where I used a combination of a leg-shrinking quirk and an arm-stretching quirk. So in the end, I was as surprised as anyone else when I wound up coming in first, with my seat partner Yaoyorozu just behind me.

I was much less surprised about the 'expulsion' thing being a lie. For one, Yaoyorozu and I had already discussed it; for another, Midoriya was in last place and there was no way that U.A. was going to kick out All Might's love child without a really, really good reason. As Aizawa-sensei - Eraserhead - walked off, leaving us some vague instructions to get our necessary papers back at our desks, I turned towards my 'partner'. "As we expected, huh, Yaoyorozu?"

"Honestly, it wasn't that hard to figure out." She agreed. "By the way, congratulations on your first place result!"

I shrugged uncomfortably. "There were a lot of different events, and we only had to do them each once. It played well to my skill set, that's all."

Yaoyorozu shook her head. "That's part of it, but you're also exceptionally fit. I could tell you were using some sort of physical boosting quirk, but at a fractional strength some of that has to be coming from just you, right?"

"Yeah, but I cheat." I said bluntly. It was true, though the way I was about to explain it wasn't "With muscle-building quirks, regeneration quirks, and a few really good heteromorphic quirks, you could get this strong in ten months too."

"Ten months?" Bakugo shouted. "I knew I fucking remembered you from somewhere. The other guy who got grabbed by that ooze fucker, that was you!"

"Yup." I said, looking between him and Midoriya, who had a similar look of astonishment on his face. "Long time no see." The rest of the class, who had already been half-listening in as I talked to Yaoyorozu for some reason, were now openly staring in interest at this particular bit of drama.

Bakugo snarled at my nonchalance. "Why the fuck didn't you pull out those moves when we were being attacked by a villain? Or during the entrance exam? Is everybody around here that fucking addicted to sandbagging this shit?" Behind him, Midoriya flinched.

I shrugged, doing my best to keep on a calm front, though the conversation was veering close to areas I didn't really feel like going. "Hadn't copied most of those quirks yet back then, and during the entrance exam there was this whole 'broken leg' thing I had going on." Predictably, Yuigahama looked guilty as I brought the topic up yet again.

"Hmph." Bakugo replied, and shoved his hands in his pockets. "Whatever." With that, he turned his back on me. "I got your point, Hikigaya. Nine for nine. Watch your back, because this is the last time I'm ever letting you or anyone else get first place."

"Ah. Got it." By this point, I was being deliberately nonchalant just to get his goat. It was probably going to backfire on me horribly later, but eh. In the moment, I couldn't be bothered.

As he left, Midoriya came up to me, still clutching his hand and trying not to move his broken finger. "U-um, s-sorry I didn't recognize you, H-Hikigaya-san! U-um, g-glad to see you're doing well I'm sorry I don't really know what to say or anything but you obviously decided to be a hero after that and you did and that's sort of amazing and you were pretty impressive and actually I think you got a lot taller and all the muscle like you said so that might be part of it too."

Halfway through his sentence, Midoriya's speech devolved into this kind of creepy mumble, but I managed to get the gist of it. "Yeah. Um. Don't worry about it, I have kind of a forgettable face. It's... uh, good to see you here too," I finished awkwardly. God, why was I so bad at small talk! "Hey, uh, your quirk."

He froze like a deer in the headlights, as if he was paranoid that I was going to ask him the wrong sort of question, and I understood exactly how he felt. "I've pushed strength quirks too far before too," I told him, leaving out the small detail that it had actually been the exact same quirk. "Most of the damage with mine didn't happen until I actually moved with it on and put stress on my limbs with it. Once you get all fixed up, maybe try lying down in a super relaxed posture and turning it on from there, let your body get used to it slowly, then start with trying to move slowly and carefully while it's on. Speed up gradually, you know?"

Midoriya's face lit up in a brilliant smile. "That might work! I'll try it! Thank you, Hikigaya-san!" Man, with a smile that big, I could actually see the All Might resemblance a little bit. God, this was awkward.

"Good luck, Midoriya-san." I said with a wave. "See you tomorrow." And with that, I headed back to the classroom to get the books and papers Aizawa-sensei had mentioned while Midoriya split off to see the nurse. As I walked back into the classroom, a few people smiled and gave me friendly nods, while others looked at me enviously or with rivalry-filled glares. Using skills acquired over long years of avoiding being bullied, I managed to get my stuff together and get back out of the classroom before anybody could really talk to me. Which was good, because I was exhausted.

My first day of Hero School had been freaking weird.