After All Might left, it took about five minutes for a substitute to arrive; Aizawa. It was a bit strange for him to have seen them off but have to come back only twenty minutes later to oversee them again. He walked in, immediately saw Uraraka's heavily bandaged body lying still on the gurney, and his hair flared up and his eyes started glowing red like he was using his Quirk. He looked around at the students in a panic, trying to spot any other injuries, but as his eyes landed on Izuku and Kat- Bakugo, he calmed down, understanding what must have happened.
"That man is the height of irrationality. Midoriya, tell me what happened," Aizawa said, approaching the small boy.
"We started off our battle training, but … Bakugo set a trap waiting for Uraraka with the objective. He used about eight times as much force as was necessary, and seriously injured Uraraka. He also used a weapon powerful enough to kill me if I didn't block it with my Quirk," Izuku explained.
"You … how did you block it with your Quirk?" Aizawa asked.
"I think I just developed a new move," Izuku said flatly, looking at Uraraka the same way he had been the whole time.
"Okay. Bakugo, why did you think it was okay to use lethal force?" Aizawa asked, sighing deeply.
"I was fighting as hard as I could. I did what All Might told me to do," Bakugo said, fighting the urge to lash out as best he could.
"Alright. Recovery Girl, what's the damage?" Aizawa asked, turning to the shorter woman in the corner of the room with her patient.
"The girl has second degree burns on most of her upper torso. She was internally bleeding for a short while, but I managed to cut that off quickly. She'll have a severe concussion when she wakes up, and will have to wear a cast on her completely shattered left arm for three weeks," Recovery Girl said, reading off the chart she had written up.
Aizawa looked genuinely affected for the first time since Izuku had met him. He looked like he recognized something in the tone of Recovery Girl's voice, or it had been the same tone he had had used on him once, but Izuku wasn't sure. It looked like Aizawa was getting lost in his own mind, but Recovery Girl snapped him out of it with a quick line.
"This isn't another Oboro. She'll be fine with rest and healing," Recovery Girl whispered, but Izuku heard.
Aizawa visibly relaxed after hearing that. He stepped toward the console to the right of him and pressed a button to turn it on after it had been turned off by a power bill conscious student, probably Jiro or Tokoyami. He looked at the damage to the training building through the cameras, deeming it satisfactory. He turned back around and cleared his throat, putting back on his mask of indifference.
"We'll continue the trials," Aizawa said, picking up the box of lots.
Izuku hadn't seen it happen, but when he asked Uraraka about it while they were walking toward their starting point, she had said that All Might had taken every duplicate ball out of the box and left only one ball for every team, and drawn two out, and that's how he had decided the teams. Aizawa did the same, drawing a white and black ball out of the box and showing the class.
"Teams B and I. Go," Aizawa said, not caring who was on what team.
Todoroki, Shoji, Ojiro and Hagakure walked out of the room. That's when Izuku noticed that Hagakure didn't seem to be wearing anything but gloves and boots. He would have to talk to her about her costume when he caught up with her. The four walked out to the training grounds, and a few people, mainly Kirishima, Kaminari and Ashido, crowded him.
"Hey, dude. You were really good in your match," Kirishima said.
"Oh, thanks. I would've lost if I hadn't miraculously been able to control my strength," Izuku said, not quite understanding how One for All had worked for him.
"Yeah, that was wicked! You were all like 'take this, Bakugo' and he was all like 'fuck you, Deku', whatever the hell that name means," Ashido ranted. Ashido gave off an energy that was contagious, and Izuku found himself chuckling alongside Kirishima and the others as Mina started poorly reenacting the battle.
"How did you get your power to work? You said it hurt your body, but in your battle, it seemed to work for you. Your arm was glowing and everything," Jiro asked, walking over to the group.
"I think that, because it was my first time trying to use my power on a living person, I kinda … subconsciously dialled it back, y'know? I didn't want to kill anyone, so I mentally lowered it to the limit that my body, and by extension Bakugo's body, could take," Izuku said, piecing the answer together as he went along. He kind of disliked how comfortable he was with calling him Bakugo.
Aizawa was discreetly listening while issuing the rules of the battle to the heroes, who'd assembled at the front door, and the villain, who'd picked a room of their choice and been supplied with a brand new bomb. He sounded the horn, and the battle began.
Shoji tried to enter the building, but Todoroki held him back, pressing on while keeping his teammate out of the building.
"What's he doing?" Sero asked.
"I think he's going to use a bigger attack. He's the son of Endeavour, so he's undoubtedly powerful, if not by sheer talent than by the amount of training facilities he'd have access to," Izuku said, tapping his chin with his thumb.
"I don't even know what the guy's Quirk is!" Kaminari whined.
"I saw it during the tests yesterday, but I only saw it sparingly, meaning he either doesn't have many uses for it, or he used it only when he needed to, and I'm leaning toward the latter due to the extreme affect the cold can have on a human body, even with preventative measures put into place, like Quirks," Izuku started talking to himself more than other people.
"If he can produce the same amount of cold as Endeavour can produce heat, it'd be reasonable to assume that he could freeze himself given enough time or output. That's just assuming his Quirk is the ability to produce ice and cold. He may be able to do the same with fire and heat, more like his father's Quirk. That might solve the freezing problem, heating himself up to counteract the effects of frostbite, and also work the other way around by cooling himself down if he uses too much of the fire side of his Quirk," Izuku rambled.
Nobody but Aizawa could hear what he was saying. It was a miracle, really, because if anybody could hear what he was saying, they'd claim the kid was a genius, and he'd seen enough of his nervous tendencies to know that Izuku would hate that kind of attention. Of course, Izuku was extremely intelligent, Aizawa saw that as clear as day, but that didn't stop him from taking pity on him and sparing him that fate of being popular.
Izuku suddenly choked on his breath, and everyone went to help him. He pointed at the screen, however, and the class saw that Todoroki had frozen the building solid, a thick layer of ice now covering it. Shoji could be seen stepping away from the front door in shock, and taking a look at the cameras inside the building showed the class that both Hagakure and Ojiro had been frozen in place, Hagakure by the skin of her feet. She had seemingly gone nude to avoid being seen, but that plan had backfired in the worst way possible.
Todoroki moved through the building, checking every room methodically until he came upon a sharp incline in the ice covering the floor, the ice that was covering Hagakure's feet. He regarded the spot that he approximated her head to be and scowled.
"Sorry, but I want to win," he said coolly.
Todoroki moved on, and found the bomb without any resistance from the villain team. It looked like Ojiro was trying to use his tail to break the ice, but was getting nowhere due to the sheer density of the ice.
Todoroki put his hand on the bomb, letting out a blast of heat that melted the entire room, and soon the other parts of the building, too. He looked back to Ojiro with a passive expression, barely looking like he was thinking anything.
"That guy's a monster!" Kaminari yelped.
"Oh, calm down. He's just the son of the number two hero. Of course he's gonna be better than us. That's why we're here; to bridge that gap," Jiro said, elbowing Kaminari in the ribs.
"He does seem to be vulnerable to his own ice, though. Did you see the frost covering the arm he used to freeze everything? It was all over his costume's left side. I'm guessing that it isn't actually ice that's covering his left side, because it moves. It's probably just armor styled to look like ice, which means it can freeze, too. He needs to use the other part of his Quirk to warm up periodically. That's his weakness; he can freeze and burn just like us," Izuku said, not taking his eyes away from the screens.
"Interesting observations, Midoriya," Yaoyorozu said, stroking her chin in thought.
Izuku didn't know he'd said all that as loud as he had, and everybody was looking like they were considering what he had said, even Bakugo. He had his eyes narrowed at Todoroki's image on the screen, and even narrower when he returned to the room. It seemed to Izuku that their battle and its aftermath had given Bakugo a lot to think about, and that was a good thing.
"Welcome back. Can anyone tell me who the MVP for this match is?" Aizawa asked, his voice a steady tone.
Both Izuku and Yaoyorozu raised their hands, which surprised even her. She had been the only one to raise her hand after Izuku's match, so she expected to be the only one once more. It was reasonable, she thought, that he was still recovering from his match, so she put her hand down and let him speak.
"I think it was Ojiro," Izuku said, surprising everyone, even the boy himself. "The way Todoroki stopped Shoji from entering the building and did everything himself was immature and selfish, the way Shoji accepted it was not indicative of a willingness to take over when things got out of hand, and the way Hagakure whined wasn't very heroic. Out of all the participants, Ojiro was the only one who honorably tried to fight until the end, as well as the only one who accepted his defeat like a man. He's the MVP," Izuku explained.
"Huh. That does make sense," Sero said.
"Yes, it does. Well done, Midoriya," Aizawa said.
Yaoyorozu was staring at Midoriya like he had said the holy words. She had been about to declare Todoroki the MVP, but everything Midoriya had said had made sense, and he had more points than she did to support his claim. She clearly had to step up her analysis game if she was going to compete with someone like Midoriya.
"Alright, Teams H and J are up next, but we'll have a break while all the ice melts. Todoroki, could you come help with that?" Aizawa asked, moving toward the exit.
As Aizawa and Todoroki left, Izuku remembered that he wanted to talk to Hagakure, and now was the chance. He looked around, looking for her gloves and boots, finding them in a casual conversation with Ojiro. He approached and nervously waved at the two to get their attention.
"Oh, hey, Midoriya. What's up?" Ojiro asked.
"Uh, can I talk to you for a minute, please?" Izuku asked, looking at where he thought Hagakure's face would be.
"Sure! Just a sec, Ojiro!" Hagakure replied, and the two took a few steps away from the rest of the group.
"Um, I wanted to ask you about your Quirk," Izuku said, trying to ignore the fact that he was talking to a naked girl.
"Shoot!" she said, making finger guns at him.
"Well, I think you're wrong," Izuku said, hating having to rip the band-aid off immediately.
"What?" Hagakure asked, her hands going limp.
"I think you're mistaken about what your Quirk really is. See, invisibility as you describe it is the ability to have all light pass through your body, but you don't really exhibit the downsides of that power. If all light passed through you, you wouldn't be able to see, because the light would pass through you retinas, instead of being caught and being processed by your brain to form an image," Izuku explained.
"Okay, so why aren't my eyes visible?" Hagakure asked, making a gesture that was probably opening her eyes wider with her fingers.
"That's what I'm getting at. I think that your power isn't Invisibility, but Light Refraction. The first recorded Quirk was a person that could produce light from their body uncontrollably, and they figured out that all light that interacted with this person's body was multiplied by a factor of ten, thus the glowing baby," Izuku said, gesturing strangely as he told the story.
"Okay?" Hagakure said, still not getting it.
"I think your Quirk works similarly to that baby's. I think that, instead of light passing through you, light passes around you, bouncing off of a thin bubble just above your skin to give off the appearance of invisibility. This would explain why you can still see, but not see yourself. Think of it like a one-way mirror; you can see through it from one side, but not the other. Does that make sense?" Izuku said.
"Yeah. I … yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Wow. That's … wow. I never thought of it like that. What do you think I should do with that?" Hagakure said, taken aback by the revelation.
"Well, I think I can help you get a costume that'll go invisible with you, as well as let you become visible," Izuku said, beaming his brightest smile at her.
Hagakure was silent for a long time after that. If not for her gloves and boots, Izuku would've thought she had left.
"How?" she asked, her voice small.
"Well, if we can get a strand of your hair, we can use that as a base for the material that we can then have med into a costume. A lot of heroes with Quirks that only work on their own body and their cells do this, including a student at this school. I've done some research into the subject, and they've found ways to cancel out Quirks like yours, that are always on. I know that Aizawa's Quirk doesn't work on you, but they've tested it on villains with Mutant Class Quirks, and it's worked. If you want, we could bring it up to the Support Department after class one day, and we can make a start," Izuku explained.
After his explanation, Hagakure went silent again. Izuku had wondered if he had overstepped her boundaries, but was proven wrong by Hagakure wrapping him in the tightest hug he had ever experienced. It took him no time at all to remember that Hagakure was, in fact, nude, but he could get over that if bringing that up with her would make her uncomfortable. Hagakure, though, had noticed his hesitation, and pulled away.
"Sorry, I sometimes forget that I'm naked!" Hagakure said, a small giggle letting Izuku know that she was just as embarrassed as he was.
"That's okay. You might not stay that way for long," Izuku said.
"Thanks, Midoriya. You're a real hero," Hagakure said, accentuating her point with a small kiss to the cheek.
Izuku's brain very simply couldn't handle any more in one day, and short circuited. He stood there, trying to comprehend what had happened as the class watched the screens. Hagakure had obviously been sure to do it when nobody was watching. Izuku felt like he could die at the moment, but at least nobody was looking at him. Oh, wait, they were.
"Midoriya! Do you have any notes on this fight?" Kaminari asked, awed.
Izuku looked at the screens, happy to be distracted from the kiss. This match was Tokoyami and Tsu versus Kirishima and Sero. He took a moment to think about it, and decided that the teams were pretty much perfectly balanced, or as perfectly balanced as they could be out of all the people in their class.
"Well, both teams are pretty evenly matched, with Dark Shadow being able to slowly chip away at Kirishima's defence, while Tsu can outpace Sero's Tape and shoot back her tongue, so the two have pretty similar movement and grappling abilities. I think that it'll all come down to resilience and willpower. They are at a pretty big disadvantage, though, going up against Kirishima in a defensive context," Izuku said, watching as the round began and the heroes, Tsu and Tokoyami, made their way inside.
The class watched as the heroes and villains moved around the building, narrowly missing each other and coming close to revealing each others' plans. It was a whole five minutes before the teams ran into each other, and by then Izuku had already decided on eliminating someone from being an MVP, and it was Kirishima. It was nothing against the guy, Izuku actually quite liked him, it was just that, if he was thinking about how to best use his Quirk to win the battle, he'd have stayed with the bomb and let the heroes come to him, anchoring himself and making it a war of attrition, using his hardness to whittle the two down until they gave up.
He watched as both Tokoyami and Tsu came upon Kirishima as the three both turned around the same corner. Kirishima radioed to Sero that he had found the heroes, and all three got into battle positions. Tokoyami called Dark Shadow out of his torso, and the entity immediately went on the offensive, barraging Kirishima with punches from its clawed hands.
The assault lasted for a few moments, before Dark Shadow realized that he wasn't going to break Kirishima's defence so easily, though it had been giving his Hardening a tough time on its own. Tokoyami stepped back and said something to Tsu, who nodded and opened her mouth. Her tongue slid out of her mouth, falling until it almost reached the ground. She then wrapped her apparently prehensile tongue around Tokoyami's waist, acting as a tether. Izuku doubted that it was how long Tsu's tongue was, because she had emphasized that she could do everything a frog could do. That meant extending her tongue more than twenty feet, scaling up to human proportions.
Izuku was proven right when Tokoyami jumped back, and Tsu leaped onto the wall, together more than tripling her tongue's length. When Tokoyami gave her a signal, Tsu suddenly reeled her tongue back in, releasing Tokoyami from its grip as he passed her. This flung Tokoyami toward Kirishima, and as he was soaring through the air toward his enemy, he manifested Dark Shadow from his stomach, letting the entity wind up a stellar punch. The hit knocked Kirishima off his feet, sending him through the wall from the impact, but didn't shatter his Hardening. He got up and chased after the two, as they had run away to rework their plan.
"That was amazing! I wonder if Tsu or Tokoyami came up with that move? They used the momentum from the swing to power Dark Shadow's punch. That's really clever. I wish I had thought of it, but that'll be useful for if I ever have to go up against Kirishima," Izuku muttered.
After a minute more of moving around, the heroes attacked again. They crashed through the floor of the upper floor of the room the bomb was in, effectively blowing the roof open and jumping down the hole and into the midst of the villain team. The two had landed facing the opponents that Izuku had attributed, but spun around in a circle, facing the other in an instant. This surprised Izuku, because he hadn't thought Tsu, for all her strengths, would be very willing to face Kirishima, an enemy she'd need to use brute strength with. Sero was dextrous, but so was Dark Shadow, and Tokoyami had shown that close combat wasn't his strongest area of expertise, so facing off against Sero, another long to mid-range fighter, would be comfortable for him and Dark Shadow.
Izuku was more interested to see how Tsu fared, as Kirishima was not a person he saw her dealing with well. He was excited to see how she managed to deal with the problem that was Kirishima's Quirk. She started off by bouncing around him in quick succession, which was the right way to go for evasion and confusion. He watched as she shot her tongue out at him a few times to gauge the strength of his Hardening, which is alway a good first move; work out how aggressive to be, and then be it.
After a while, Tsu launched herself at Kirishima, but stopped a bit short. She landed on the ground, just in front of Kirishima. He looked down, expecting to be hit by the shorter girl, and simply stared at her, not knowing how to proceed. Tsu took her chance, and leapt up to kick Kirishima in the face, which had little effect due to his reaction of Hardening his own head, but Tsu kept climbing into the air, the kick having been both a diversion and a chance to jump higher.
Once Tsu had decided she had gained enough altitude, she opened her mouth, and her long tongue shot out toward Kirishima, wrapping around him in the same way it had for Tokoyami. She spun around using her momentum to help her along, and gained enough motion to lift Kirishima off the ground and to hurl him out the window, eliminating him from the fight.
"Alright! That was incredibly clever. She used Kirishima's own sturdiness as a weapon by forcing him out the window using momentum. I'll have to talk physics with her later," Izuku said, cheering for his new friend.
Soon enough, Tsu and Tokoyami had Sero tied up and had won the match. They had surrounded Sero on both sides, and waited for him to attack one of them so that the other could attack from behind. They brought both of the villains back basically unharmed, as well as a positively glowing Kirishima.
"That was really cool! I've never flown like that, not even from the robots in the entrance exam!" Kirishima gushed.
"Thank you, Kirishima," Tsu said, smiling contently.
Izuku just realized, in that moment, how tired he felt. It was probably due to the drain of healing from his broken ribs and his concussion, but he had no idea how exhausting the drain on the patient's energy levels was. Izuku looked over at Bakugo, and he was also falling asleep. Knowing that he would pass out soon, because he felt nowhere near healed. He knew he had quite a bit of healing to go, so he would likely pass out before he was done if he had only been healing for about fifteen minutes and was already passing out.
As he made his way over to the gurneys, he caught Bakugo looking at him. He stopped, sighed, and turned to his childhood friend with a flat expression.
"Hello, Bakugo," Izuku said, not sure why he was even doing this.
"Fuck off. I don't wanna hear your shit, Deku," Bakugo said, looking away from him.
"Sorry, but too bad. I have some things to say. I want to tell you that I do admire your talent, and your drive to be a great hero, but you're going about it the wrong way. You think that being a hero is about alway winning and beating the bad guy, but that's not all being a hero is. Being a hero can be comforting a frightened child, or clearing the rivers after a hurricane. I think you need to re-examine your priorities, so when you have, come talk to me and we can start on the track toward being heroes. Together," Izuku said, actively getting more and more sleepy and beginning to slur his words.
"Whatever. Get out of my face, Deku," Bakugo said, lacking the heat and venom his voice was usually dripping in.
"Oh, and about that name. I want you to stop calling me that. I've had enough. I want you to call me by my name, Bakugo," Izuku said, before turning around and collapsing on a gurney.
When he woke up, he was still in the observation room. The class was resting after their battles, and Izuku realized that he had slept through the rest of the trials. He shot up, but slowed down when his body screamed at him in pain. He winced as he sat up the rest of the way, looking around the room at each of his classmates, seeing two missing; Uraraka and Bakugo.
"Hey, Midoriya's awake!" Kaminari said, brightening up.
People crowded around him, making sure he was alright, but he shooed them away. He looked at everyone and started tearing up at the fact that they were really so worried about him that they would react like that to him just waking up. He looked around the group to spot the person he was looking for, and found his crazy purple hair.
"Shinso, where are Uraraka and Bakugo?" Izuku asked, his voice breaking at multiple points.
"Recovery Girl took Uraraka to her infirmary on the main campus, and Bakugo left. He just said that he was going and then bounced. You should go and see Uraraka, though. She was asking for you," Shinso said, downcast. It seemed everyone in the room, including Aizawa, had been down for the same reason; whatever state Uraraka had been in when she had been moved.
Izuku took off as fast as he could, which wasn't very fast. He knew he was mostly healed, he could tell that his ribs were no longer broken and he was only a little dizzy, but it was still enough to impede him from moving as fast as he could at his peak condition. It took Izuku about ten minutes to get to the infirmary, but he managed to get there with the help of Blackwhip to keep himself from falling down a few times.
When he arrived at the infirmary, he saw that Uraraka was awake, sipping on a juicebox. She had a hospital gown on, so any bandages except for the ones on her arms were covered, and for that he was glad. If she was as exposed as she had been when she was first injured, he'd have turned right back around and come back the next day.
"Midoriya," Uraraka said, almost choking on her juice.
"Uraraka, you're okay!" Izuku said, a wide smile breaking out across his face.
Uraraka's surprised expressions turned into a more sombre one, making it seem like he hadn't heard the worst of her condition, even though he was the first to see her injuries. She looked fine enough, though the only bit of skin that was unbandaged, it seemed, was her scalp and the left side of her face. Her left arm was in a cast, and it looked like it had been signed by All Might, the same way that his hero analysis notebook was signed.
"Sit down, boy," Recovery Girl said, a grim tone to her voice.
Izuku did as he was told. He expected it to be bad, but Recovery Girl made it seem like Uraraka was going to have to drop out of hero training. Izuku swallowed his nerves, because he shouldn't be as nervous as he was; this was all happening to Uraraka, not him. Still, though, he felt like this was his fault. Izuku had antagonized Bakugo, made him do the things he did. Even if it was cathartic, he had no right to do something that would cause such injury, and he should be held entirely responsible.
"My injuries are pretty serious, Midoriya. I received second degree burns on twenty five percent of my body. My entire left arm was shattered. Recovery Girl's healing can only take me so far, then I'll need to do the rest on my own. As it looks, the part that's on me may take a few weeks, at most. I'm sorry, Midoriya. I couldn't do anything," Uraraka said with a hoarse voice, beginning to cry toward the end.
"Hey, this isn't your fault. It's mine. I was the one who got Bakugo riled up. I'm the one that revealed to him that you were in place for his trap. If I'd just stayed silent, and not engaged him, you'd still be perfectly fine. You'd be able to get up and go back to the classroom on your own," Izuku said, tearing up as well.
"It's fine. I knew that I was gonna get hurt sooner or later, so it might as well be sooner rather than later, when my body can't bounce back as quickly," Uraraka said, accepting defeat.
"You'll come back, though, right? You have to promise me to come back and try as hard as you can to become a hero. We'll continue forward together. Do you promise?" Izuku asked, looking deep into Uraraka's eyes as he pleaded with one of his first friends in a decade.
Uraraka smiled with big, watery eyes. She laughed, and it was the weakest, yet genuine laugh Izuku had ever heard. She slowly lifted her good arm and lifted her closed fist toward Izuku, grinning like someone who wasn't about to pass out.
"I promise. We'll be heroes. Together," she said in a low, sweet voice.
Izuku bumped Uraraka's fist with his own, and the two giggled. Uraraka started to cough, then when she settled down, looked the most serious she ever had.
"I want you to promise me something, now," she said.
"Anything," Izuku said without hesitation.
"I want you to call me Ochaco," she said.
Izuku was surprised. He had never been asked by anybody to call them by their given names except Bakugo, but that had been over ten years ago, and he felt weird saying it even then, so had invented the nickname he had been calling him since then. He looked at Uraraka's pleading eyes, and her wobbly smile, and decided.
"Of course," he said, laughing softly.
"Yes!" Ochaco cheered lightly.
The two laughed, but Recovery Girl had to tell Izuku to leave so that she could continue healing Ochaco in peace. He agreed, waving goodbye to Ochaco in a hurry.
"See you soon, Izuku," she said softly.
"See you, Ochaco," he said back, before the door closed on him.
End of Arc 2: Trial by Fire