The first day back to school after the move, Izuku and Todoroki ended up falling into step with each other on their way to the classroom. He didn't exactly know how to start a conversation with Todoroki, since they hadn't interacted with just each other a whole lot, but he made the attempt. It was hard to think of something he thought Todoroki would want to talk about, considering the fact that he knew basically nothing about Todoroki as a person outside of the horrific stories he'd told Izuku of his family. What kind of food did he like? Did he prefer a certain kind of weather? Did he watch TV, and if so, what kind of shows and movies did he enjoy? Izuku would declare their friendship in a heartbeat after Hosu, but he found himself realising as they walked beside each other to class that they hadn't actually talked all that much. It was time to change that.
"I'm glad you came to the dorms," Izuku said.
Todoroki clearly hadn't been expecting a conversation, as he looked over at Izuku with an uncertain look in his eyes. "So am I. My father tried to resist my decision, but I explained to him the kind of force that those two villains have backing them. He saw us off without a word after that."
"That's … good," Izuku said, almost phrasing it like a question. "Your sister's nice. Where are your other siblings? Did they and your mom not agree to come, or what?"
Todoroki stared at Izuku with those narrow eyes that still held a little bit of their intimidating iciness. He realised he must have misstepped and backpedalled. "If that's private, you don't have to talk about that. I was just curious."
"No, it's fine. My older brother Natsuo doesn't live with us. He goes to school in Tokyo, lives on campus. I suppose we have that in common now," Todoroki said. He looked surprised, but not unpleasantly so, to find that he did indeed have something in common with his brother.
"What is he studying?"
"Medicine."
"That's so cool! It's like he's a hero, too."
"Is it?" Todoroki asked, frowning slightly. "I guess so. I haven't really thought about it before."
"It's a shame he didn't come along. I bet he's nice," Izuku said with a smile.
"Maybe."
Izuku's heart skipped a beat as he realised what that might have meant. "What about your mom?"
"She's … I haven't spoken with her in years. She was hospitalised when I was very young. I haven't seen her since. I doubt she would've come if she was able," Todoroki said. His face took on a darker expression at that.
Izuku paused in his questions. He didn't want to push Todoroki into saying anything he didn't want to say. What was another subject that they could talk about? "I noticed back in Hosu that your Quirk started to hurt you toward the end of that night. If I had known your fire was dangerous to you, I wouldn't have pressured you so hard into using it. I'm sorry."
"Don't be. I'm grateful that you did what you did. You and Uraraka both. She was right. I wasn't really rebelling, because I was still under his thumb and still miserable. Using my Quirk the way I want to use it is what will really get under his skin. You were right, too. I want to melt snow and ice from the roads during a snowstorm. I want to cook for the homeless. I want to light a candle on a birthday cake. I want to do all the things he never could with his fire. Even if it hurts. Especially if it hurts. I heard something in an interview a few years ago," Todoroki said. His face contorted in concentration as he seemingly tried to remember what he was thinking of.
"Doing something for someone, even though it grants you no benefit and may in fact harm you in the moment, is the core of selflessness that makes heroes what they are," Izuku said. It was a quote from Thirteen that she'd given after an incident that had involved her trapping herself inside a collapsed building with a dozen children so that they wouldn't have to be alone while they got dug out. "I really like that. I hope you can figure out how to use your fire without getting hurt if you go too hard."
"It should come to me with time. This vulnerability to my fire isn't natural. It's because I haven't used it for so long that it's as if the metaphorical muscles of that half of my Quirk have atrophied into nothing. I can't burn nearly as hot as I should be able to, and I can't maintain it. As I use it more, that should change. It's different to …"
"To what?" Izuku asked, noting how Todoroki had hesitated and cut himself off. He had a distant look on his face, troubled and confused.
"I had another brother once. He was the oldest. Toya supposedly had the same problem, but he was born with a low tolerance to his flames, unlike me. This is something that I brought on myself, and it's something I accept," Todoroki said.
"I hope you get a handle on your flames quickly," Izuku said, grimacing. He couldn't imagine parts of himself flaking off every time he used Decimation. That only happened when he really pushed it, and it had only happened once or twice in his life. The more he used his Quirk as he got older, the less it happened. It sounded like actual torture for it to happen every single time.
Todoroki didn't answer, he simply nodded and the two of them continued walking in silence. They reached 1-A's classroom shortly after that, and took their seats not far away from each other. Most of the others from the dorms arrived in a cluster, and shortly after that, those who hadn't moved into the dorms entered the classroom just minutes before homeroom was to begin. At the exact time that the school day began, down to the second if the clock on the wall was to be believed, Aizawa entered the room. He seemed ready to drop down to the ground and pass out, as usual, and as he stood at the podium at the front of the classroom, he glared at the students with his eyes shining red and his hair standing on end. The idle chatter that had filled the room before that point was silenced immediately, and Aizawa nodded to himself after a moment, his eyes returning to normal and his hair falling back down. He then made an announcement.
"Listen up, because I'm not going to say this twice. It's unfortunate that so many disruptions have kept getting in the way of your education this term. Since we believe that is going to change, the difficulty of your classes are going to increase. As we get closer to the end of the term, I encourage you to study for exams on your own time. We will no longer have the time for games and assessments of your baseline, like we have in the past. You will be dedicating all of your time in class to improvement of your skills and your Quirks. If you can not do that, you will not succeed here. Exam season, like anything here at UA, will be a challenge for the best of you, so none of you can afford to slack off now. If you think you're safe and can relax just because you avoided dying in the field, think again. Got it?" Aizawa said.
Izuku didn't bother saying anything as the rest of his classmates muttered in the affirmative. Way to kill the mood. Aizawa wasn't wrong, though. UA was an elite school just for its traditional tracks alone. Its hero course was the best in the country. The best of the best sometimes couldn't hack it. If Izuku wanted to succeed at this school, he needed to take everything seriously and do his best and more every time. It didn't matter if it was a pop quiz or final exams. It wasn't enough for him to simply succeed, either. Izuku didn't just want to be a hero. He wanted to be the best hero, the greatest hero Japan has ever seen. At first, he'd just wanted to be a great hero so that he could prove people wrong and show everyone that someone with his Quirk could do it. He'd changed since then, though. After the sports festival and Hosu, his friends had begun to change him. Izuku no longer simply wanted to spite people as a hero. He wanted to save lives, help people as well as he could. He needed to become as strong as possible, train until he had perfect control of his Quirk so that accidents would never happen again. Nobody would ever die by his hands again. His hands would only help. He swore it. Acing his first term exams was a stepping stone to that. He was absolutely ready to tackle that head-on.
Time passed quickly after that. Over the next few weeks, it seemed like everyone in 1-A started taking their grades much more seriously, even the students who'd been doing well prior to Aizawa's lecture. Even Kaminari and Sero stopped making as many jokes as they once did. Mineta stopped talking entirely most days, which was a surprise. Ochako could've sworn that she saw him talking to Tsu a couple of times — and even weirder, she could've sworn that Tsu had smiled at least once — but she didn't have a bunch of time to worry about how the morale of her classmates had dipped so dramatically. She really hit the books after Aizawa's lecture about how seriously they still had to take their academic studies, and didn't really think about much else until weeks had passed. She still thought about her training, of course, and she still followed All Might's meal plan, which was doing wonders. She and Izuku didn't get to go on many dates during this time, since they were both concerned with doing their best at school and didn't have a lot of time for much else, but they made it work. A lot of private study sessions were held in their rooms, where they ended up just watching a movie together or talking about whatever was on their minds. It was nice, even though they both ended up feeling guilty that they were using up time that could've been spent on studying.
It was during one of these study dates that Ochako brought it up for the first time. It was hard for her to ignore how much her body was changing, and the conclusion that she'd come to during her internship felt heavy sometimes, like she knew it was wrong somehow but didn't know why it was wrong. It hadn't felt good putting away her concerns about her body, ignoring the things she felt when she looked in the mirror. It didn't serve her to worry so much about those things, and that was still true, but it also didn't serve her to lock her feelings away and not allow herself to feel those things. It felt wrong to look in the mirror one day and notice that her arms were bigger than they had been the last time she looked. It felt weird to suddenly notice that her waist was slimmer, her legs more solid, her stomach harder. The results of All Might's training were becoming glaringly obvious to the girls, too. She got comments in the locker room almost every day now, and it was very validating, but one thing was somewhat troubling to her.
Izuku hadn't said anything yet. He had to see how she was changing by the day, but he hadn't said a word. In some ways, that just made her like him even more. However, part of her remembered the comment he had made all the way back before the sports festival, about how the backwards, ruthless beauty standards of the heroics industry were a necessary evil. Did he still believe that now that her figure had begun changing? Would he say that it wasn't worth talking about the messed up double standard that didn't care what men looked like but cared very much about how women looked, now that she'd begun to resemble the kind of girl that the double standard favoured? That remark had hurt Ochako, and she wanted to talk with him about it, so she spoke up one afternoon when they were alone in his room, which was decorated with all sorts of hero merchandise, though there was a notable lack of All Might in the room.
"Hey, Izuku?" she said softly.
"Yeah?" he asked, looking up from his notes. Unfortunately, she'd chosen to interrupt a real study session.
"I've been thinking about something you said a while ago, and I wanted to talk to you about it. Is it okay if we take a break for a minute?" she asked.
"Of course. What is it?" Izuku said, shoving his notes away and sitting up cross-legged across from her on his bed.
"Do you remember when I told you about how I … I sometimes feel like I'm not all that great compared to some of the other girls in our class?" Ochako asked. A writhing knot formed in her stomach, trying its best to make her stumble over her words, but she didn't let it win.
"Yeah," Izuku said. He looked confused, and concerned, and his big green eyes looked nothing like the ones that had stared down Bakugo, or Todoroki during those fights. "Do you still feel that way?"
"Sometimes. Not a lot lately, but I guess I've just been thinking about what you said back then. When I explained to you that I felt pressured by the expectation that female heroes be powerful and strong and capable in addition to being beautiful, you said something that kind of hurts, in hindsight. You said it was a necessary evil." Izuku looked lost, so Ochako figured she should get to the point. "At the time, I didn't think about it all that hard, but now, I look in the mirror and see my body changing because of how hard I'm working, and I remember that. It's probably silly to say so, but I don't really see myself when I see these new muscles, when I notice how much looser my costume feels now. I think about how bad it felt to wear a skintight costume around girls that were so much better-looking than me, and I think about how I'm kinda conforming to what I always felt shamed by. I don't like it."
"I don't understand. What are you conforming to?" Izuku asked, blinking rapidly.
"That idea that heroes have to look good as well as be competent. Every time I notice that I'm slimmer than I used to be, it's like it confirms all my worst fears about how people see me. Getting fitter has made all the difference in my training, but more often than not lately, locker room talk has just turned into, wow, Ochako, your arms are crazy, or, hey, lookin' good. And that feels good, but it's just …" Ochako couldn't find the words. She was probably not getting the point across, so she trailed off.
"I think I get it. I-I used to think my anger was a necessary evil. It followed me everywhere. I held onto it so hard that I barely felt anything else. I felt like I couldn't be anything without my hatred of Bakugo propping me up, motivating me to do better. If I let my anger go, I wasn't sure that I wouldn't just be empty inside. But then I found something that motivated me better than spite and envy and anger, and I started using that," Izuku said. Ochako realised that he was talking about her, but didn't interrupt. He looked at her with such intent that she almost felt the air get heavier between them. "But that anger didn't go away. I still hate the kind of person that uses what makes them special to put others down. I know it's in there, just waiting for me to tap into it, even though I try not to. I'm proud of myself for moving away from that anger, but every time I can't do something, part of me thinks that I might've been able to do it had I not been afraid of using anger to solve my problems. Part of me thinks I would've been able to beat Bakugo that night if I had met him on his level. Moving past the thing you were insecure about almost feels like it proves that you were right to be ashamed of it, in a messed up way. It feels bad to feel good about the thing you used to feel bad about. That's a tongue twister, but does that resonate at all with you?"
"Maybe. I'm not really sure. I just know that I don't like how this feels. I want things to be different. When I was in middle school, I always thought that I would feel better about it once I got into a hero school and got strong and in shape. But I don't like how this feels. It does kind of feel that way, like feeling good about myself means that I was right to feel bad about myself in the past. That feels like it's wrong. I don't want to feel this way. Nobody should feel this way," Ochako rambled. It felt like she was making no sense.
"Then let's make a promise," Izuku said, shifting closer to her across the bed. "When we graduate and we're heroes, we'll change things, make it different."
"How?" Ochako asked, leaning closer.
"We'll talk about it. About the role heroes play in shaping young kids' perceptions of themselves, about how the perception of certain kinds of Quirks affects the people who have those powers. Everything. Do you want to change the world?" Izuku said. Ochako was unable to take her eyes off of him. She was taken by the burning determination in his eyes, the unshakeable confidence that had her transfixed.
"The world is a big place," Ochako mumbled.
"Japan, then! Come on!" Izuku jumped to his feet and took her by the hands, dragging her to her feet with a grin on his face. "Let's do it. There's nothing that can't stop us when we really want something! Nothing we've faced yet, at least! Cosmo and Breakthrough can't be beaten by a literal monster stronger than All Might! Mochi and Matcha, saving lives and changing minds. Right?"
Ochako stared at him in shock. Izuku had just confessed something horrible, something deeply upsetting to her at least, but here he was trying to cheer her up and make her feel better. He was surely just as torn up about his shortcomings as she was about her own problems, but he didn't care about himself when he could be helping her. That was so sweet, but it also made Ochako feel like she wasn't doing all she could as a girlfriend. How long had he been carrying that before he'd told her just then? She was going to do better. How could she catch up to him, though, when he was already so perfect? Ochako didn't really think about what she did next. She just stood up on her toes and planted a kiss right on Izuku's lips just as he went to start talking again. It was quick, not the kind that you see in movies, but Ochako wouldn't have minded if it had lasted forever. Her face had to be bright red by the time she got a good look at Izuku's face, which was probably the only thing capable of being any redder than hers. He stared down at her and grinned, clearly unable to process what had just happened.
"You and me. Breakthrough and Cosmo. Matcha and Mochi. Saving lives and changing minds," she said with a grin somehow even bigger than his.
"What was that for?" Izuku squeaked.
"For being amazing," Ochako giggled.
"Huh."
Izuku immediately returned the kiss. That was the one that sent Ochako into a full breakdown of all the confidence she'd displayed just seconds earlier. Her heart beat hard in her chest, and she found herself unable to breathe properly as she became short of breath. The two of them had to take a few steps back from each other after the two kisses, and they couldn't stand to meet each others' eyes afterwards, but they somehow finished their study session. Ochako left Izuku's room a blushing mess, her face bright red and her hands unable to stay still for even a moment. The last she saw of Izuku that night, he wasn't any better than her. She'd never want him to be any other way.
The next few days after Izuku finally found the courage to kiss Ochako were perfect. Did it matter that she'd kissed him first? He didn't think so. All that mattered to Izuku was that he had finally found a moment to express just how grateful he was for her presence in his life. He'd been walking on clouds after that, unable to stress or panic about exams too much after the pure elation he felt after that incredible moment with Ochako. It had been his first kiss, though he hadn't told her that, and even though he sometimes found himself slipping back into panic and wondering if it had been her first kiss, he always managed to remind himself that it didn't really matter. He wasn't jealous of people he wasn't sure existed. Izuku wasn't going to allow his own mind to conjure up an imaginary thing to get upset at. He was done with convincing himself to be mad or sad. He was just happy.
In the aftermath of one of their first returns to the USJ, roughly two months after their first attempt at rescue training had gotten interrupted — even though it seemed like it had happened years ago — Izuku created himself an opportunity. He visited Thirteen after classes had concluded for the day at the staff room. He used the complete and utter lack of any nervousness in his body after his talk with Ochako just days beforehand and strolled up to Thirteen's workspace to talk about the thing that had driven him to take an internship with her in the first place. Her small office — just a desk, really — was decorated with a number of stickers displaying astronomical effects, such as stars and planets. Thirteen looked at him silently, the big eyes of her non-expressive helmet giving none of her thoughts away as he approached her.
"I wanted to talk to you about what happened during the USJ attack. Privately, if that's possible," Izuku said, glancing around at the many teachers who were working around them, a few of which could clearly hear him and were pretending that they couldn't.
"Of course. There's a conference room just down the hall," Thirteen said, her tone chipper as always, even though Izuku saw how her posture shifted when he'd brought up what had happened back then.
Once they were seated across from each other in an otherwise silent room, Izuku continued the conversation from where he'd left off. "I feel bad that we didn't get a chance to talk very much after the USJ incident, or during the week-long internship."
"Why's that? It wasn't your fault. Other things got in the way. Being a hero is all about putting yourself between those other things and the people they threaten most, which you've done time and time again," Thirteen said.
"Right. I just wanted to apologise to you. Back then, during the whole USJ incident, I wasn't in a good place, mentally, and I did something pretty stupid," Izuku said, rolling back his jacket sleeve and then his shirt sleeve to reveal the scarring that had taken its place on his arm from when Thirteen's Quirk had ripped up his skin and muscles. It was like strips had been torn away, but he'd kept almost all of his muscle mass. It hurt some days with phantom pains, but it was manageable. Thirteen looked down at it and sighed.
"You saved my life, you mean?" she asked. "That Kurogiri fellow would have killed me if you hadn't acted. It was absolutely insane that you'd put yourself in mortal danger to save someone you had just met that day, but I'm indebted to you because of that insanity, so you shouldn't be sorry. If anything, I should have thanked you properly a long time ago. I think that internship was my way of doing that. I suppose neither of us could find the time to say the things we wanted to."
"Is it really that hard being a hero? Never having time for the things you would like because you're off saving someone?" Izuku asked.
"For some. For those within the top hundred or so heroes, yes. Most of the others have a pretty good work-life balance. I heard Hawks joke once about how much easier his work would be if he were ranked twentieth instead of third. He'd have so much less oversight and more free time. As the one who is ranked twentieth, I agree, even if I don't get as much time and freedom as I'd like," Thirteen explained.
"If that's what twentieth place is like …"
Izuku couldn't say it. His opinions on All Might had fluctuated over the last year or so. When he'd met the man last year, he'd been the same wide-eyed fan he'd been since he was a baby, because All Might took the responsibility of helping people with his Quirk onto his own shoulders and he did it with a smile. He was the image that Izuku saw in his head when he thought about what he wished he could be. Then, he'd actually met All Might, learned of his secret true form, and had his image of the infallible hero shattered before his very eyes. They'd slowly come to an understanding once Izuku had started at UA, but there was still something unresolved between them, and he was aware that it was on his end. He'd disappointed All Might by rejecting his offer of One for All. They'd both disappointed the other. Neither of them were what they thought the other could be. That was still there between them whenever they happened to speak with each other alone, without the buffer Ochako provided as the one person they both agreed was the perfect one for the job. Learning that such highly ranked heroes had basically no ability to live a normal life definitely pushed Izuku to empathise more deeply with the man he'd seen on that rooftop all that time ago, the sickly, beaten-down, mortal man who Izuku thought he understood a little better now.
"It's worth it, though, to help as many people as I do. I wouldn't give up the life I live now for any other path I could've possibly taken. Ask any of the top hundred heroes and they'll say the same," Thirteen said quickly, as if she thought her words might've come off as critical of heroism.
"Of course. I don't think I could ever turn my back on my dream. It'd betray everyone who helped me get to where I am now, even though I haven't come very far yet," Izuku said.
"Right, and that was the other thing that we missed. Your progress was interrupted because of the attack on Hosu. Do you still wish to learn to do something new with your Quirk?" Thirteen asked.
It was as if lightning surged through every nerve ending in Izuku's body. "Yes."
"Then I think it's time that I finally reveal a secret that I've been keeping for twelve years," Thirteen said gravely. She added with a laugh, "It hurts to even admit that it's been so long."
"You don't have to tell a secret just because I can't figure something out on my own! I'm sure I'll manage!" Izuku stammered.
"No, it's fine. It's only a secret where villains are concerned. All of the UA staff know about this particular secret I keep. Principal Nezu is the one who does the most in helping me keep it. This is something I'm glad to share with you, because that's what it is. It's not really telling a secret — it's sharing something that I think a student could benefit from. That's my job as your teacher," Thirteen said.
"If you're sure," Izuku said haltingly.
"I am," Thirteen said. "In my second year at UA, I pushed myself hard during training one day. It was harder than I'd ever pushed myself before that point. The person I was partnered up with did the same, and we passed the exercise we were doing in class that day. The problem was, I had pushed too hard. The building we were in came down on us, because my Quirk had done some pretty major structural damage. My partner's Quirk made soapy water, and it wasn't strong enough at the time to keep us safe, so I acted. I was exhausted, my body wouldn't move the way I wanted to, but I wished so hard that I could keep that falling debris from crushing us, and my Quirk reacted to that wish. They call it an awakening. It's very rare, almost unheard of, but it does happen. An awakening can be triggered when someone is on the brink of death, or in an otherwise immensely stressful crisis. It allows a person to call upon an aspect of their Quirk that they might not have known about before that time. My Quirk awakened while the building came down around us that day, and I manifested the ability to reverse my Black Hole's function. I generated what's called a white hole, which had been a mere thought experiment before that point. My Quirk inverted and repelled the falling debris, as a white hole is the opposite of a black hole — nothing can enter the white hole just as nothing can escape the black hole. That awakening gave me a way to use my Quirk without destroying a single thing and I saved my friend with that new power it gave me. I've only been able to summon that white hole power a handful of time since that day, since it seems to take a lot more from my Quirk to create energy than it takes to destroy matter, but I can always feel that there's that second aspect to my abilities there, dormant but waiting to be used when I can manage the effort."
Izuku was stunned into silence. He hadn't known that was possible, to just create a new ability in the heat of the moment. Or had he? "During the USJ, my Quirk evolved. I no longer need all five fingers on one hand to touch something in order to use my Quirk with that hand. Now, half or more of my fingers touching something will destroy that thing. But I remember that my Quirk could do things when I first manifested it that it can't now. The five-finger limitation was placed on my Quirk by myself, somehow, and I subconsciously decided to remove that block during the USJ attack. Is that the same thing as an awakening?"
"Maybe. When they did some tests on me after my own Quirk awakened, they said that awakenings can't simply give you powers you didn't have before. I was always capable of generating white holes, I had just never discovered that ability before then. They said that common examples of awakened powers are those that the user simply never tried before, aspects of a Quirk that the user has suppressed for whatever reason, or uses of their Quirk that would have hurt them before the exact time that they manifested those powers. I'm not an expert, but that's what I remember. Given all that, I'm inclined to say that you did, in fact, experience a Quirk awakening. What else do you remember that your Quirk can do that you're not capable of now?" Thirteen said.
"My disintegration power could spread the first time I used it. I …" Izuku always had to take a breath before he spoke about this. "I accidentally used my power on my entire class the first time it manifested. Most of them died. The thing is, I only touched one person. It was like my Quirk was infectious. I only ever touched one person, but the whole room was reduced to rubble, and even the ones that survived showed signs of having been hurt by my power. I wonder why I can't do that now."
"I won't profess to know exactly what kind of mental block you've put on yourself, Midoriya. I know that after my Quirk first manifested and my father got caught in it, my power wouldn't activate for a year afterward. I went to a lot of therapists that helped me get to a place where I could use my Quirk without it turning itself off if other people were in the room. Maybe you could benefit from that sort of help," Thirteen said.
"Yeah," Izuku said, looking down at his hands, wrapped in the black fabric that sometimes felt like a taunt. You can't touch the girl you like with your own two hands. If he could master his Quirk, try to do what Thirteen was talking about and somehow negate or even reverse its effects, he'd never hurt anyone with his power again. He could hold Ochako's hand, feel her skin against his skin as they walked hand in hand. "Thanks for the advice. I'll try my best to make it worthwhile that you gave up a secret you've kept for so long."
"I don't think that's the best way to look at it. I didn't share this with you because I thought anything in particular would come of it. I knew you needed help, so I wanted to help. Simple as that," Thirteen explained.
"Yeah. Simple as that," Izuku said. He smiled, but even he wasn't sure how real it was. If Thirteen noticed, she didn't make it obvious.
Izuku left that conference room with a lot more questions than answers. How was he supposed to figure out how to unearth the aspects of his Quirk that had locked themselves away in the aftermath of the massive trauma he'd experienced all the way back then? What would he even do with those powers if he did manage to make them available to him? Spreading the effects of his Decimation beyond just the thing he'd touched wasn't helpful at all. It was the opposite effect he was trying to achieve! Izuku wanted to make his Quirk the least dangerous tool that it was possible for Decimation to be. He didn't want to destroy anything anymore. What option did he have if he wanted to create something, or at the very least preserve something the way it was despite his touching it? That was the question that had been wracking his mind since that night in Hosu, and he still didn't have an answer, but he had a fraction of an idea of how to find one. Following Thirteen's advice, he'd just have to work at it. After all, she'd said it herself. The kinds of awakening Thirteen spoke of didn't just give someone powers they didn't have before. They brought to the surface aspects of a Quirk that were always there but hidden away for some reason. If an awakening could remove his self-imposed five-finger limit, an awakening could give him control over whether or not his Quirk was triggered in the first place. If that was the scope of an awakening, then Izuku had a feeling that anything was likely to be hidden inside him, just waiting to be found. For the first time, Izuku was sure that he could do this thing that he'd been working toward for so long, and internally thanked Thirteen again for her help. He didn't know what he would've done with her.
He was going to do it. If he survived his final exams first.
