Author's Note: Chapter 69. I will not be elaborating upon that with any sort of crass joke. Enjoy the chapter.

The common room of 1-A's dorms was full with the majority of those that had chosen to move in after the Hosu Incident. The day after final exams was one dedicated to relaxation for 1-A, and sharing stories. Izuku and Ochako sat together and simply listened. There were some awe-inspiring stories that came out of their classmates, even if there was an outcome that Izuku had expected. He wasn't going to call any of his classmates ineffectual, but there were those among them that were more capable and those that were less capable, and Izuku hadn't been pleasantly surprised by the less capable. By the time that Kirishima and Sato had finished telling their tale, the underwhelming story had even brought Sato himself to laughter at their own ineptitude. Kirishima wasn't laughing, however, and everybody noticed.

"It wasn't even a fight," Kirishima said grimly. "They knew we'd try to just brute force our way through the obstacles he can put up, so they used that against us. Of course you can't beat Cementoss in his home turf. There's cement everywhere in the city. We just wore ourselves out trying to bulldoze through, though. We weren't strong enough to break through his defences before our Quirks took us out. It was stupid. Cementoss didn't even have to do anything. We failed."

"Hey, it's all good!" Sato said, patting Kirishima on the shoulder. "There's no need to be so down on yourself. All three of us failed. You're not alone in that."

"Sucks that you guys can't come to camp now, though!" Ashido huffed.

"Yeah," Kirishima said, his face becoming even more sullen and depressed. "I just wish there was more to me than a bulldozer. I could've passed the exam if I had something else, something more than just my crappy Hardening." He hardened his arm and looked at it longingly. "What good am I if I only have one trick that doesn't always work?" Kirishima looked around the room and saw that he'd brought the mood down, so he cleared his throat and forced a shaky laugh as his arm softened back into normal flesh. "Sorry. What about you guys?"

"Well," Ashido said, giving Kirishima a long look. "Toru and I teamed up with Aoyama." She seemed to say Aoyama's name with a certain amount of disdain. Izuku thought she might have been thrilled that Aoyama had excused himself from the discussion to call his uncle. "Thirteen is kind of a monster in combat. I don't know why they always say that they're weak on their own. They destroyed my acid and Aoyama's laser. Any cover we tried to hide behind? Gone. Like it never even existed in the first place. Reduced to atoms." Ashido pouted at Izuku. "I'd never want to fight you. Not because we're friends, but because your Quirk has to be so annoying."

"It is," Todoroki said. It was the first time in the conversation he'd spoken up without being prompted, so everyone turned to look at him. He paid that no mind and turned to Izuku. "No offence."

"Thanks?" Izuku said, puzzled. "I think?"

"I know you get me," Ashido said with a grin. "But yeah, we found out pretty quickly that nothing escapes a black hole. So we used that against them! I knew that Thirteen wasn't going to actually disintegrate us, so I rode the pull of their Quirk and used it to get close. Then I did some sick acrobatics to pin them! That's how we won!"

Izuku took a moment to consider that. He was suddenly short of breath and couldn't control his shaking, gloved hands. "You used her Quirk against her?"

"Yep!" Ashido cheered. "Oh, it's her, huh? I guess you'd know, since you interned with them. Her. Crap."

"That's really risky," Izuku said as his voice broke. His breaths were shallow and quick. "What if she didn't react in time and you got sucked in by her Quirk?"

"I didn't," Ashido said, her enthusiasm melting away at the sight of Izuku's panic.

"You could have," Izuku snapped. "How …?" He tightened his jaw and didn't say anything more.

Ochako grabbed him by the hand. She smiled at him, and it drew his attention. "Hey, it's fine. Nothing happened," she said. "Thirteen knew what she was doing. I'm sure if she thought she couldn't react in time she'd just shut her Quirk off. Everything's fine."

Izuku nodded reluctantly. He squeezed Ochako's hand tightly, lamenting that he couldn't touch her skin-to-skin. The others were looking at him with sad, wary expressions on their faces, and he almost let the bubbling anger that he knew was within him lash out at the sight. He had to remind himself that they didn't pity him, and that even if they did, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Izuku sighed, and collected himself before considering his next words. He looked at Ashido and frowned. The next word out of his mouth would've been an insult, and Izuku couldn't believe that he had gotten so close to saying it without a second thought. She didn't deserve that. It was his own history that was making him so angry at the way she'd chosen to fight Thirteen. Nothing to do with Ashido herself. Izuku realised that it was just his own hangups about what had happened in his own past that were making him so panicked. Resorting to petty name-calling over it wouldn't do anything good. Izuku breathed deeply until it wasn't so difficult, and sighed again.

"I'm sorry," he said lamely.

"That's cool, man," Ashido said, smiling sadly. "I know you've seen some stuff. I get it. I mean, I didn't then but I do now."

"Right," Izuku said, letting his head hang. "Let's just forget about it."

"Shoji, how was your exam?" Ochako asked, saving Izuku from having to sit in the depressing mood created by his outburst any longer.

"Koda, Jiro and I passed," Shoji said using a duplicate mouth on the end of one of his arms. "Present Mic was a tough matchup for us, considering that he can basically negate all our strengths and target all our weaknesses. Koda pulled through, though. His bravery won us the match." Beside Shoji, Koda tried to sign something — likely a deflection of Shoji's praises given his bashful nature — but the taller boy wasn't having it. "Doing something solely for the sake of another person, no matter how it may affect you, is the mark of a true hero to me. Own it."

Koda smiled and nodded hesitantly, and Shoji nodded in return.

"I just realised that none of the people on the four man team are here!" Ashido said petulantly. "I wanted to hear all about that one!"

"Power Loader surely must have been a force to be reckoned with," Iida said as he entered through the front door. He'd gone to speak with his mother and brother, and had promised to bring back good news. "I would've liked to hear that story as well."

"How was your brother?" Izuku asked.

"He is well. I can wait to divulge the details." Iida turned to Ochako. "Uraraka, have you shared the story of how you overpowered All Might yet?" Iida said, grinning like that was a totally normal sentence to say.

" What did you do?" Izuku said, snapping his attention back around to Ochako, who scowled at Iida.

"That's not what happened!" Ochako said as murmured — in Ashido's case, shouted — questions started to fill the air. "Seriously, that's not how it happened."

"Then what did happen?" Kirishima asked, a look of awe and something else on his face.

"Well …" Ochako then told the story of how she and her teammates, Iida and Mineta, had successfully stalled All Might for long enough that they could escape the arena and pass the exam. "I didn't overpower All Might," she said with a pointed glance at Iida. "We just weighed him down so that the majority of his power was going toward keeping himself upright and not crushing us. And I may have dropped the weight of a couple of cars on him a dozen times over. Just in case it didn't work for the first time."

"It was a brilliant display of wit and strength," Iida said as he joined Todoroki on a mostly empty sofa. "I'm only sorry that I couldn't have done more to meet that standard."

"Don't be silly!" Ochako said. "You pushed your engines way past the limit for us. You outran All Might!"

"I did not outrun All Might. That's ridiculous," Iida said, before catching what Ochako was doing and sighing faintly. "Very well. We also must not forget Mineta's contributions to our victory."

"No, he's right!" Ochako said when Izuku and Ashido started grumbling under their breaths. "Mineta was actually nice, and cool. Turns out that even All Might can't remove those sticky balls of his. It was weird."

"Huh," Ashido said, her tone conveying pleasant surprise even though her face was the polar opposite. "It's always the ones you least expect."

"Yeah," Izuku muttered. He'd never thought that Mineta was a bad person. He just had a strong personality that had been hard for the class to completely get along with at first. It was good to know that Mineta had actually taken Izuku's advice to heart, though, and made some changes within himself.

"What about you, Midoriya, Todoroki?" Iida asked. "How did you and Yaoyorozu fare against Aizawa?"

"It was rough," Izuku laughed. He explained the broad strokes of their exam, and he got a few winces when he described how brutal Aizawa had been with his attacks. Todoroki rested his hand on his ribs when Izuku recounted the time they'd fought him Quirkless. When he got to the part where they'd turned it around on Aizawa, Ashido kicked up a stink.

"Oh, well jumping out the second story window isn't risky at all!" she cried, throwing up her hands in defeat. It was clear that she was joking around, though, considering that she still had a smile on her face.

"Yeah, if he dodged I could've broken my legs or something. Thirteen would've atomised you," Izuku said, giving her a smirk in return. "But anyway, Yaoyorozu made this special material that I don't remember the name of—"

"Shape-memory alloy," Todoroki said. "You can alter its shape while it's cold, but it snaps back to its original form when it's hot."

"That's … right," Izuku said, surprised that Todoroki had at all cared about the specifications of the material. He went on to describe the way they'd defeated Aizawa for good. Izuku hadn't thought that it was very impressive at the time, since Yaoyorozu did most of the work in making the plan possible, but his classmates ended up congratulating him and Todoroki on their victory. For some reason, Kirishima had this intense look on his face, like he was thinking deeply about something. He stared at Izuku and Ochako with that expression, and Izuku couldn't help but think there was something that he didn't get just yet.

He hadn't expected it to be fun swapping stories of their fights, but Izuku found himself enjoying the conversation. He regretted that Yaoyorozu couldn't be there to share in the fun, and to explain some of the more complicated parts of her plan that had only ever existed in her head, the parts she'd never explained out loud. That was a new thought — Izuku had never wanted to be in a room with more people. It was usually his wish for less people to be present, since he'd never really had a lot of people he enjoyed being around. That realisation was tough; to come to terms with the true extent of his prior loneliness so suddenly brought a deep sadness to Izuku as he sat with his friends, but things were better for him now. He had people he cared about, and who cared about him. He was living his best life. That didn't mean, however, that those past wounds didn't still hurt sometimes, or that his pain was invalid simply because the causes were no longer in his life. That had taken some time to accept as well. Izuku found himself smiling at the end of the night, though. He sometimes thought it was a miracle that he could still do that. He didn't want to waste the miracle, though, so he just enjoyed the moment.


The next time they had homeroom, Aizawa wasted no time in making sure the entire class was aware of who failed their exams and who passed, and for what reason. He did not provide feedback to those who failed in a way that was particularly nice. Ochako glowered at him from across the room, and didn't fail to notice that Kirishima was sending a gloomy look down at his desk. Did he just not see how his casual cruelty toward his students was making them feel or did he simply not care? Ochako didn't know which was worse. She was about to speak up, but Aizawa's voice drowned out the start of her defiant complaint.

"Aside from Kirishima, Sato and Kaminari, one other person failed. Sero," Aizawa said with a grin.

"What?!" Sero asked, shock written all over his face as he stood up to protest. "But my teammates passed! How did I fail?"

"Despite the format being team-based, I graded you all individually," Aizawa said. "If you were coasting by on the efforts of your classmates, then you failed, even if they passed. Simple as that." Sero sat back down silently after that, his face scrunched up in frustration.

"So that's it?" Toru whispered to Momo at the back of the room. "They just can't come to camp with us?"

"Yes, those are the terms Aizawa set," Momo whispered back, her expression equally as disappointed as Toru's tone.

"That would be true," Aizawa replied in his flat, dry voice. "Unless, of course, I had never planned to abide by those terms in the first place."

"What do you mean?" Kirishima asked, snapping to attention.

"I mean that all of you are going to camp. I never meant to enforce the rule of failure meaning you don't get to participate. I just said that so you'd try your hardest," Aizawa explained.

Sero, Kaminari and Sato were celebrating, but Kirishima still looked grief-stricken at the news. Ochako watched as Kirishima processed the information, but his face didn't change. Of course it didn't. She hadn't thought Kirishima really cared about camp before, but that just confirmed it for her. He was crushed because he had been utterly powerless to do anything. Kirishima was struggling with something bigger than summer camp. Ochako saw red and stood up. Was this what Izuku felt when he got into that zone of his? The sounds of her celebrating classmates were suddenly gone as her clenched fists trembled. Kirishima wasn't standing up for himself. There was no way that he could, since he'd been completely emasculated, and Ochako was done watching Aizawa kick the boys she cared about while they were down.

"Do you think that lying to us over and over is gonna make us trust you?" she asked as the class fell silent.

Aizawa stared at her, his shock only half-hidden behind a mask of false apathy. "What?"

"Do you like teaching?" Ochako asked, pointing at Aizawa with a shaking finger. "Or are you in this to demoralise kids for fun?"

"Where is this coming from?" Aizawa asked, genuine confusion written on his face.

" This is coming from the months I've spent watching you put people down and get away with it," Ochako said. Her heart was beating hard, and she didn't pause to consider her next move before she was taking it. "The first time we all met you, you lied to us. You've been obviously biassed against Izuku since the start of the term. That embarrassing training plan for the sports fest, you blaming him for that maniac Monoma hurting him with his copied Quirk, the criticisms around him causing a tiny bit of environmental damage when you know what his Quirk can do." Aizawa didn't have anything to say to that, and he simply narrowed his eyes at Ochako, waiting for her to continue. "And now this. Why do you feel the need to take from Kirishima when he's clearly not okay? You basically just said that his efforts didn't matter only after he tried and failed!"

"Uraraka, you don't need to do this," Kirishima said, standing up and meeting her eyes pleadingly. "I'm fine."

"I saw you," Ochako said. Her frustration began to turn into the kind of anger that made her want to cry, because she couldn't understand why he wasn't defending himself. She held it in. "Don't say you're fine if you're not."

"I am," Kirishima said, and smiled sadly. "I'm not gonna lie and say that I wasn't sad, but hearing that I still get to go to camp has given me something to look forward to." He clenched his fist and looked down at it with a smile that grew bigger by the second. "I'm not done yet. Sure, I failed, but what hero hasn't? Crimson Riot failed, and it made him the hero he was. I failed once, in a way that actually mattered, which is how I know I can get back up from this. Thanks, but you don't need to be all up in arms. I'm never gonna accept failure again, so you don't need to worry about me!" Kirishima gave Ochako one of his usual grins, all sharp teeth.

"Are you two done?" Aizawa said, his eyes burning red as his hair stood on end. Ochako and Kirishima both rushed to sit back down. "Good. I can't deny that I've lied to you all in the past. And I've been …" He seemed to search for a word. "I haven't always been completely impartial with some of you. The world is going to be cruel to you, so my method has always been to introduce my students to a little bit of that cruelty so that they aren't overwhelmed by it when they're on their own for the first time. I can see how that approach is flawed. But to accuse me of not caring about my job is absurd. Every single one of you in this room has the potential to be a great hero. I would not allow you to be here if you did not. I am dedicating my time to honing that potential into ability. Do not tempt me to reconsider that commitment."

The day continued like normal after that. Aizawa finished up his announcements and exam feedback, and Ochako didn't have the nerve to keep the attitude she'd captured for that brief moment. She wasn't used to being confrontational, so it had completely sucked all the energy out of her body. Ochako sat silently and stewed in her feelings. Had she been wrong to jump to Kirishima's defence? She couldn't bring herself to be sorry for that, and he seemed to be feeling better, so Ochako liked to think that she'd helped. The rest of the day after that was a breeze, since they were no longer taking actual classes. It was more of a victory lap. The teachers handed out the required reading that the students were to complete over summer break for next term. The students mostly brushed it off and, like always, were sure to forget about all of the necessary texts until a week before the term was due to begin and they no longer had the luxury of procrastinating. At lunch, Ochako and all her closest friends got to talking about how they were going to be spending their summer aside from camp, which Aizawa had clarified was to take place over the last week of July.

"Well, my birthday comes between now and then. My mom is sure to go overboard and totally embarrass me," Izuku said. "That's the one downside to her living so close to our dorm. She can't hold back when you guys are around."

"Nah, your mom is awesome," Mina said with a grin.

"How is your mother? I recall that her cast is due for removal any day now," Iida asked.

Izuku's sheepish smile melted away. "Yeah. Recovery Girl says that since the break was pretty clean, and since she doesn't live a very active lifestyle, it would be better for her to heal on her own. I tried to talk her into using her Quirk to just skip all that, but that lady does not move when she doesn't want to."

"I think it's sweet that you tried," Ochako said, smiling at Izuku from her spot beside him. The return of his own smile only made hers grow wider.

"Who knew that all the fighters in our class would turn out to be such mama's boys?" MIna laughed.

"How do you mean?" Iida asked.

"Well, I'm still fairly sure that you're a literal knight in shining armour that was shot forward through time," Mina said, and laughed when Iida spluttered in response. She turned to Todoroki. "Your sister is kind of an angel, so I'm willing to bet your mom is amazing, too." He stared at her with a vacant expression on his face and gripped his chopsticks tightly. Mina didn't seem to see, and turned to Kirishima. "You're just a clone of your mom, from what I saw of her that one time." Kirishima went to argue, but his expression mellowed out as if he suddenly didn't see the point. Finally, Mina had made her way back around to Izuku. "And you fought the most wanted serial killer in the country and the guy who almost killed you once before, just 'cause they hurt your mommy." The boys at the table looked at Mina in varying states of shock and amusement. "I respect your game, guys. I wish I could play it."

"So you just don't run out of steam, huh?" Izuku muttered. The grumbling seemed to be pointed at Mina, but he was looking at Todoroki. Ochako followed his line of sight to see that he was in the process of smoothing out his expression and putting his old mask back on, the false apathy that hadn't been there in months returning once again.

"Never in my life!" Mina said. She still hadn't noticed that Todoroki had been affected by her little bit.

"I don't think it really matters if the guys are mama's boys. I think that's a good thing," Ochako said. She saw Iida and Kirishima's faces lose some of their gloominess. She knew from middle school that boys didn't really love being acknowledged for having softer sides, especially ones that were focused on maintaining certain reputations. Kirishima's thing for manliness especially was probably not very conducive to bragging about how much he loved his mom.

"Hell yeah!" Kirishima said, pumping his fist in the air. "Real men aren't afraid to wear their hearts on their sleeves! Right, guys?" Ochako almost face-palmed at how he'd pretty much immediately proven her impression of him wrong. So much for knowing the guy.

Lunch ended shortly after that. Their final class, heroics, was cancelled, so school ended early. Due to this, the students who lived in the dorms invited those who didn't to hang out for a while to celebrate the end of their first term at UA. 1-A were all together in one place outside the classroom for the first time. It was a great time, as Mina and Kyoka collaborated on getting a playlist composed of everyone's favourite music put together, Sato baked some muffins for everyone to enjoy, and Kaminari even talked Momo into making some of those joke shirts that Ochako had only ever seen in movies that said 'I SURVIVED X' on the front, except these ones bore the words 'I SURVIVED UA' across the chest. Izuku, whose sense of humour near-exclusively expressed itself through novelty clothing items, seemed to legitimately love them, as well as Ojiro, weirdly enough. All in all, it was a wonderful afternoon, but the real fun started toward the end of their impromptu celebration, when Toru and Mina teamed up to come up with the perfect way to spend some of their summer.


Izuku choked on his drink when he heard Ashido and Hagakure's idea. "No thanks."

"Why not?" Hagakure whined. She and Ashido had demanded that everyone take a seat with the two of them standing in the approximate middle of the common room so that they could present their plan.

"Come on, it'll be fun!" Ashido said. "There's this one specifical mall that I know we'll all love! Kiyashi Ward in Tokyo has the best shopping mall in the world."

"Attending an outing as a class could be an excellent bonding activity," Iida said, more to himself than to anyone else. He hummed to himself, and began performing his robotic arm-motions that Izuku had never understood. Next to him, Todoroki leaned away to avoid getting smacked in the face. "We'll only be more powerful as a unit because of it."

"Oh, I've never been to a big, fancy Tokyo mall," Ochako said next to Izuku. She had the dreamiest look on her face, and it made it hard for him to maintain his opposition to the idea.

"Trust me, you'll have a blast!" Ashido all but squealed.

"I have some concerns about this as well," Shoji said through a duplicate mouth from his spot between Koda and Tokoyami. Izuku realised that he couldn't remember a time that he had spoken with his real mouth, the one hidden behind the mask he always wore. "If the goal is to buy clothes suitable for camp, I probably won't be able to get anything at a regular store."

"Don't worry, big man!" Ashido said, shooting Shoji finger guns. "There are places for heteromorphs at this mall. I get horn-safe hats there! I've thought this through."

"I'm sure," Izuku said, before catching his tone and sighing. "It's not a bad idea. I just don't like being where a lot of people are gonna be pushing past and between each other. Makes me feel itchy." It wasn't intentional, but he punctuated his confession by quickly scratching at his neck as a buzzing itchiness erupted upon it just from thinking about going to a mall.

"I can stick with you while we're there if it'll make you feel better," Ochako said. She giggled quietly and added, in a whisper, "I can hold your hand if you want."

Izuku refused to blush in front of all of their friends. "I think I could manage in that case."

"Then it's settled!" Ochako positively glowed. "We're going to the mall, guys!"

A cheer rang out from Ashido and Hagakure, echoed by what had quickly become a solid chorus of Kirishima, Sero and Kaminari. Soon, even the detractors of the idea — such as Tokoyami, who didn't particularly enjoy anything loud and bright, Koda, who didn't want to leave his bunny Yuwai alone for too long, and Shoji, who was assured that he would be able to find suitable clothing for himself — were getting excited. Izuku wondered if it could technically be counted as a date between himself and Ochako, because if so it would be their second real date ever. They'd had their impromptu date right before the sports festival, but they hadn't really had much time to do anything with just the two of them as a couple. He wanted to show her how much he appreciated her, because he doubted he would've gotten through any of the challenges the world had thrown at him so far without her support. Letting her have her trip to a big city mall sounded like a good start on that. All he needed to do was be calm and collected about being around a bunch of people who were constantly brushing up against him. He'd never been very accepting of touch. His Quirk and Izuku's experiences with it made it kind of hard to be cool about that. He'd manage, though, for Ochako's sake. She deserved every good thing he could give her, and not ruining this for her was just the beginning of what he hoped he could provide for her.

He would've smiled right along with her at the good news, if only he weren't so itchy.