Izuku dropped into the battle, landing on the ground next to Eraserhead as he fought one of the bigger goons. Izuku guessed that the man had a strength-enhancer Quirk, but that was neither here nor there. He called out for Eraser to dodge, which he did, as he ran toward the goon with six percent of One for All flowing throughout his body.

Izuku leapt up and threw a punch, decreasing his One for All percentage to four just to be safe and connecting it with the goon's jaw, and sent him skidding back a few metres before falling to the ground. He landed, and looked back to see Eraser nod at him before going off to find other, big targets to disable with his Quirk. Izuku looked around to find any more enemies, and saw the man he had punched getting back up already. Okay, so he was durable outside of his Quirk; what did that mean for his powers with his Quirk?

Getting ready to engage with the giant again, Izuku felt Danger Sense tingle in his brain. He didn't feel it get any stronger, just a low hum of warning, so disregarded it as the passive threat that was this behemoth of a man. Taking a deep breath, Izuku readied himself to fight the man, who was now glaring at him like he had just socked him across the face. Oh, wait. He had done that. He was dead.

"Well, looks like the kid's got some power behind that tiny fist! What do you reckon your limit is? Do you wanna find out?" the giant said.

Izuku said nothing, bracing himself for an impact. He didn't know exactly what this man's Quirk was, but it had to have something to do with his physical strength, due to the unnaturally large build of the man. He shifted into the stance All Might had been drilling into his head, and waited. The man was seemingly waiting for something, too, but … Eraser! Of course, the man was waiting for the lingering effects of Erasure to disappear before he attacked. That meant that right now, he was wide open!

Launching forward, Izuku launched a kick at the man's chest, keeping his One for All percentage at four. Naturally, this guy's durability would be a little bit higher than is normal due to the mutations that Quirks often induce in their host's body to be able to function properly. Izuku's most prominent example that came to mind was Bakugo, whose arms had to be shock-resistant and palms had to be fireproof to withstand the backlash of his Quirk. Izuku forced himself to focus on the present as the man stumbled back only slightly from the kick, putting a hand to his chest in surprise.

"HA! You're not bad, kid! Too bad I'll have to kill you," the giant said, getting into a fighting stance of his own.

Okay, four percent didn't work. Izuku raised his percentage to five, hoping that would pack a little more punch than he had been working with so far. The giant lunged forward, reaching out toward Izuku as he got closer to the Hero in training. Danger Sense got a bit louder in Izuku's head, so dodged under the attack and came up directly behind the giant, in just the right spot for a perfect attack that could end their little battle right then.

Izuku immediately cranked up One for All to six percent, and crouched down. He felt the lightning crackling around him as the power built in his body, then leapt. Izuku shot up, flying through the air in an instant as he twisted his body to the position it needed to be in. He found that, after training with Float so much, it was much easier to move around in the air than it was before. His core strength had gone through the roof when he had trained with Float, which Izuku was of course grateful for, but not expecting.

Landing on the ceiling, Izuku felt the concrete give a little bit, and knew there would be cracks in it if he were to look. He kept his eyes on the giant, though, and tensed his calves as he worked out his trajectory. After a moment of the giant looking around for his target, Izuku felt gravity begin to take hold, so he kicked out with all his might, and launched himself downward, right onto the giant's head. As he soared toward his enemy, Izuku shifted his body so that he landed a kick with the power of One for All and the momentum he had built, smashing his head into the ground with his kick.

Izuku touched down on the ground, standing over the giant's unconscious body. He waited for a moment, to make sure that the giant was really down, before feeling a pang of Danger Sense warn him of an incoming threat. Izuku ducked down, seeing a large dagger sink into the wall in front of him. He looked back, seeing that Midnight was fighting with one of the few who had both a gas mask and a Mutant Quirk, meaning that both Midnight's and Eraser's Quirks were taken out of the equation.

Fun.

This person's Quirk made them look like a lizard, with a bunch of scarves and other accessories decorating their body. Izuku knew that meant they likely didn't have a lot of attack power, that theory being confirmed by the numerous knives they carried on them. From the looks of the lizard's arms, Izuku would only need about three percent of One for All to take this one out.

"Midnight!" Izuku yelled, noticing that the lizard was preparing to strike.

Izuku used Blackwhip to grab the knife out of the lizard's hand, yanking it toward himself. He caught the knife, but the lizard was still going to attack Midnight. She could defend herself, Izuku knew that, but she didn't really have any weapons suited to destruction. More like a quick knockout after the enemy is already subdued by her Quirk. That hadn't happened though, so Izuku stepped in. He hoped that Danger Sense worked this way.

Using two percent of One for All, Izuku flung the knife at the lizard, making sure that the handle flew in front of the blade. The knife hit the gas mask dead on, the handle cracking the mask into a few pieces. They were weak masks, Izuku realized, if just two percent of his Quirk could crack them. Midnight gave him a wink, which Izuku took as a 'thank you', and released a puff of her Quirk at the lizard, which subdued him almost immediately. There was already a fairly thick cloud of it covering most of the warehouse, but that extra cloud in his face seemed to knock the lizard out right away.

Izuku remembered Midnight saying once that her Quirk works better on men than it does on women, so that might have had something to do with it. Izuku didn't know the reason behind that facet of her Quirk, but maybe she'd tell him once this was over.

Looking over the battlefield, Izuku saw a few smaller skirmishes going on. Eraser and a few officers were trying to take down a woman who could make shields, blocking Eraser's view of her, and his Quirk by association, Shinso and a few other officers were slowly making their way through a crowd of Brainwashed goons and removing their gas masks, Midnight's Quirk knocking them all out instantly. That left about fifteen more goons, one of which Izuku was sure was the boss of this operation.

Running over to Eraser's group, he arrived just as the Hero let out a frustrated groan. Izuku tried his best to approach silently, but he still alerted Eraser somehow, who just let out a sigh deeper than any Izuku had ever heard from him.

"Any injuries?" Eraser asked.

"Not on my end," Izuku said.

"Attack this one from the opposite side so that I can get her with my Quirk," Eraser ordered.

Izuku nodded, leaping into the air and using Blackwhip to swing over the woman. He saw that she could only create one shield, made of what looked like steel, at a time. As he landed on the other side, he saw that each time the woman made a shield, it looked like she got a little bit lighter on the other side of her body. Interesting. Maybe she converted her own mass on one side into a shield on the other? That would mean that she wouldn't be able to make two shields at once, due to the conflict between her activation requirements and the amount of shields.

He telegraphed his move, swinging his arm back as he smirked at the woman. He let a few strands of Blackwhip flow from his arm, to let her know what he was going to do, as he readied his 'attack'. The woman's eyes widened as she saw the wind-up, and she pivoted to face him while still keeping her shield facing Eraser. So, she knew what he was capable of, and wasn't just being cautious.

"Whip Wack!" Izuku called out, hating the name immediately. He had been going for something cool, like a super-move, but it was just lame.

Blackwhip surged forward as Izuku threw his arm with it, launching a tendril at the woman who immediately shifted her weight away from Izuku. He watched as she manifested a shield in Blackwhip's way, leaving her open on the other side. Her shield suddenly vanished as Eraser finally was able to Erase her Quirk, leaving Blackwhip free to wrap her up. Midnight's Quirk did the rest of the work, Blackwhip having knocked the woman's gas mask off, and she quickly passed out.

Izuku and Eraser met up again, and Izuku couldn't help but notice that Eraser was hiding a smirk behind his scarf.

"Not my best work, I'll admit, but I thought it was pretty good for an on-the-spot name," Izuku said, not really believing himself, either.

"It wasn't," Eraser said, before running off to fight another goon.

It wasn't long after that that all of the criminals were apprehended. Izuku was surprised at how many of the goons were stronger than he assumed, and how many weren't as strong. It was a real eye opener about reading your opponents and gauging strength.

After the whole thing was over, Izuku looked around, and saw that the person who he had assumed was the leader had been captured by Midnight. They had definitely secreted a substance, but Izuku wasn't sure it was the substance; Dizzy. Izuku started to run over, but Danger Sense started screaming at him to move. Izuku leapt backwards, narrowly avoiding a large piece of rubble that had exploded out of the wall.

When he looked, the wall that led to the street had blown in, meaning that something had destroyed it from the outside. Izuku tried to look through the smoke, but couldn't. He hoped that Smokescreen, the sixth's Quirk, came with the ability to see through the smoke he created, because if he didn't, he might never use it. That was an exaggeration, but it was how Izuku felt. It would be too unfair. Well, as Eraser said; it's a Hero's job to combat unfairness.

Just outside, there was a hulking abomination of a man. It was barely human. Izuku thought it was an actual monster for a moment, but knew that it was just a man; probably a heavily modified and enhanced man, by the looks of his exposed … brain.

Nomu.

"Eraser!" Izuku cried out.

"I see it!" Eraser yelled back.

Izuku could see two red dots that he presumed to be Eraser. He turned back to see that Hypnos was staring at the Nomu with wide eyes that looked far too distant to be good. Izuku rushed over to him, unintentionally using a bit of One for All to get there quicker. Hypnos snapped out of it when he met Izuku's eyes, blinking away the wetness that had accumulated as he had kept his eyes open longer than was healthy.

"That's the same thing that was at the USJ!" Hypnos said.

"Yep. We have to fight one of these again, and we don't know what Quirks this one has," Eraser confirmed.

"Well, I'd say that it can kill any one of us judging by what it did to that wall," Izuku said.

Midnight launched herself forward, ripping at her costume to get as much of her Quirk out as possible. Izuku saw what she was doing, but it was too little. The cloud flowed out a bit, but it stagnated far too quickly to be effective. It was just not getting to the Nomu, so Izuku acted. He ran up the small incline that the rubble had created and kicked at the cloud with two percent of One for All, blowing the cloud toward the Nomu's face.

Izuku was reeled back in by Eraser's binding scarf as the cloud of Midnight's Somnambulist did its work. Izuku didn't even know if it would work on Nomu, but they had to try. The Heroes waited, with bated breath, as the Nomu took a deep breath of Somnambulist, enough to immediately incapacitate a grown man. The Nomu swayed, but didn't go down. It looked like the Quirk had some effect on the Nomu, but it didn't take it down.

"Damn it! Not even a Nomu likes me," Midnight cursed under her breath.

"Your Quirk did enough that we can probably take it down now, though!" Izuku cheered.

The cloud of Midnight's Quirk was suddenly ejected from the beast's body, sent back at them with almost as much intensity as Midnight herself. It was likely less forceful in its ejection of the gas because of the inherent 'jack-of-all-trades' syndrome that things with multiple Quirks suffered from. Izuku had coined the term in his notes; it meant that while the Nomu did have multiple Quirks, it wasn't necessarily a master, or even good, at any of them. They had a lot of powers, but they couldn't use them to their fullest due to being braindead.

"That thing can absorb our attacks? That's some bullshit," Hypnos cursed.

"Yeah, but look! It's still swaying. That means that it can absorb and release, not negate. The effect of Somnambulist stuck, which means that I have a plan," Izuku pointed out.

"What?" Eraser asked, joining up with the main group.

"I'm gonna hit it," Izuku said simply.

Everyone shared a look, knowing the stupidity of that sentence.

"You're gonna … hit it?" Hypnos asked.

"Yeah. I'm gonna hit it really hard," Izuku clarified, which by the looks on the Heroes' faces, didn't help.

"It'll just redirect your attack," Midnight said.

"Not if it dies instantly," Izuku said, making everyone around him wince.

"Kid, I agree, but you can't just say stuff like that," Eraser said.

"So, what percentage are we talking about here?" Hypnos caught on.

"A hundred," Izuku muttered, letting One for All flow into him.

Izuku focused on raising his percentage as the Heroes around him fell silent. They all knew what it meant that he was going to use all of his power in an attack. Eraser especially, since he knew the truth about his strength. He was going to hit this Nomu with even more power than All Might could summon at his prime. This was going to have some kickback.

"I'll try to Erase the Quirks I can, but I'm not sure how many there are and it may overwhelm me," Eraser said.

"How can that happen?" Hypnos asked.

"Activating my Quirk dries out my eyes. Each subsequent Quirk makes my eyes even drier, just a little, until I have to blink. The Nomu at the USJ wasn't too bad, just three or four Quirks. This one, though, may have more," Eraser explained.

Izuku noted that down mentally, hoping to be able to put it in his section on Eraser for his notebooks. He looked around, getting nods from the three Heroes around him, before Eraser gave him the go-ahead.

He ran forward, continuing to pool the power of One for All in his arms. As the heat in his arms grew more and more intense, Izuku got closer and closer to the Nomu, which was now shrieking and roaring like it was about to attack. The two ran toward each other, with the Nomu's muscles bulging and twisting as it moved. Eraser still hadn't Erased it yet. Or maybe he had tried, and it had too many for him to effectively Erase. Either one was bad for Izuku.

That left him to dodge as Eraser got ready. Izuku moved to the side as the Nomu's attack came down on the ground where he just was. The power in his arms was beginning to burn, and he needed Eraser to hurry with his Quirk. The two locked eyes, and they both knew that the other was ready. That was a benefit of spending a week with someone doing nothing but combat training; you cultivated a sort of bond that was hard to get in the way of; even excruciating Quirk-induced pain wouldn't do it.

The bulging and distension of the Nomu's muscles stopped, and it fell to the ground without the muscle mass to support its movement style. Izuku pounced, leaping from the small pile of rubble and using Float to guide his descent. He waited until he reached the monster's head until he threw his punch, slamming his fist, powered by one hundred percent of One for All, into the Nomu's brain.

The backlash was enough to launch Izuku into the air, leaving him to feel only his arm twisting and breaking in response to the power of One for All. He could see that the Nomu was blown apart by the hit, and prayed that the beast didn't have a regeneration Quirk that Eraser would have had to return once the immense winds forced him to blink. After a moment, Izuku landed on the ground at a harsh angle, bending his arm and causing even more pain than was already pulsing down his arm.

"Izuku!" someone, probably Midnight yelled.

His head hit the ground as he landed, and after that, Izuku felt nothing.

It was strange; he felt like he was still awake, even though everything was black. Like someone had put a blindfold over his eyes. No, wait. This was the feeling he always got when he went to the vestige realm. Izuku looked around, but found that he couldn't move his body. Okay, not the vestige realm, then. Izuku wondered what was happening, but then realized.

Oh.

He was just unconscious. This must have been the side-effect of having so many visits to the vestige realm. Now, he just … had a space in his mind that he automatically retreated to whenever he lost consciousness. That would be fun. He thought about what he should do while he waited to wake up, and decided to learn how to move in this new realm, since it definitely wasn't the same place he went to when he spoke with the vestiges.

Izuku managed to learn how to move in this realm, and got to work on thinking about everything he knew about the Nomus. He knew they had multiple Quirks, but the Quirks seemed to vary each time. Did it have something to do with their color? The Nomu that attacked them at the USJ had been a dark purplish, black. This newest Nomu had been a light green, so did their power correspond to how physically deteriorated their bodies were? That would explain how two Heroes and two Heroes in training were able to defeat one of lesser degradation, and All Might wasn't even able to permanently put down one that had reached the 'black' stage.

Wait … he wasn't even sure that his punch had put it down. Sure, he'd seen the Nomu's head explode, but he didn't know if it had managed to heal itself or not, like the first Nomu. That was a major issue, and he became impatient to wake up, so that he could see if Shinso, Aizawa and Nemuri were okay. He hoped nothing had happened, but he couldn't be too hopeful. Heroes had a tendency to get injured and even die in the field. He knew that. It wouldn't make it any easier to witness not just his teachers, but his closest friends, killed by something he could have taken down.

He felt a pull on his mind, and knew that this was the sensation whenever he'd been pulled from the vestige realm. He was waking up. Izuku braced himself to see anything when he woke up, and surrendered himself to the pull of consciousness.

Waking up in the hospital was becoming far too comfortable for Izuku. He looked around, trying to get the blinding whiteness of the sterile room to fade to a manageable level. After a moment, he realized that Eraser was sitting in the corner of his room, asleep. It was the first time he had ever seen the man sleep, even though they had been staying in the same room for the past few days. Izuku wasn't even sure Eraser could sleep, let alone want to, but this answered it for him; he did, and the constant complaints about exhaustion were legitimate, so it seemed.

A doctor walked in, startling Izuku out of his thoughts. He smiled politely at the man, but felt like the small yelp he had let out really wasn't going to leave his mind for a good few days. Izuku sighed, but waved at the doctor, whose name tag told him was named 'Wakageara'.

"Hello, Midoriya. Should I wake up your father?" Wakagaera asked.

"What? He's not my father! Did he tell you that? Was it Nemuri? If it was, I'll-" Izuku ranted.

"Whoa, steady! How was I supposed to know that the man who refused to leave your side wasn't your father?" Wakagaera laughed.

Izuku wondered what he was talking about? Eraser had become fiercely protective of his class since the USJ, he knew that, but was it really that much for even individual students to trigger his instincts? He was definitely a lot nicer to the class, and he had been dealing out less harsh criticisms over the course of the few weeks since the attack on the USJ, but Izuku hadn't realized it had become so pronounced as to think that he was really someone's father. Weird.

"No; who knows when his next opportunity to rest will be? Let's let him have this one," Izuku answered.

"Alright. Midoriya, you're now able to count yourself among the very few people to have broken every single bone in a limb. It's not an easy thing to do, and they didn't tell me how you did it, citing doctor-patient confidentiality, so would you tell me what happened to damage your arm this badly?" Wakagaera asked, sitting down in the chair next to the bed, opposite from Aizawa's still sleeping body.

"I'm a Hero in training. They probably said that. My power is a little unwieldy; it breaks my body every time I use it at full strength. I'm working on it, though, and it's healed, right? I can leave?" Izuku explained.

Wakagaera had a sorrowful expression on his face, like he wasn't telling Izuku something. It was weighing on him, that was obvious, but Izuku couldn't really work out in which way. Was it something that had happened after he blacked out, or had they not managed to heal him properly? His arm felt fine, but that could've been due to any combination of medicines and Quirks.

"I'm afraid that you can't leave just yet. We'll have to work out some plans for physical therapy," Wakagaera said, a grim tone to his voice.

"What? Were you unable to heal my arm?" Izuku asked.

"We healed it just fine. There's something you haven't been told about by UA's staff, I'd guess, that's pretty important in the long run. Apparently, since this has happened before, I'm going to have to say this now. If you continue to break your bones like this, even just a few more times, you may begin to lose the ability to move them over time," Wakagaera revealed.

"How?" Izuku gaped.

"Well, every time you've been healed in the past, I presume your school's nurse has been able to get to it pretty quickly, right?" Wakagaera asked, frowning when he got a nod in response. "The thing is, Midoriya, that when you break a bone, there's something there that can't be healed. Ligaments. Your bones and muscles have been healed, but every time that's happened, the ligament doesn't grow back. It stays just a little bit worse off, and that'll build up over time. We're lucky we caught this before it became a real problem for you, but I'd wager that you can only do this type of thing to yourself a few more times before the damage to your arms will be permanent, and you'll lose the ability to even move your arms, let alone use them for Hero work," Wakagaera explained.

Izuku let his body go limp as he sunk back into the bed. He really had to stop. He knew that it couldn't be good for him, but was it really that severe? He was going to lose his arms if he broke his bones only a few more times? This couldn't be happening. One for All was dangerous. All Might had said it, Aizawa had thought it, he was sure, and everyone else was worried about him. He had just shrugged it off as them being exemplary Heroes, but now he saw that what he was doing to himself was legitimately unnerving, and that realization was somehow worse than actually breaking every bone in his arm.

"We'll talk more about it later, when your teacher is awake, but we do need to talk about physical therapies, as well as seeing a Quirk Counselor," Wakagaera said after taking a long moment to let Izuku absorb the information.

"No," Izuku said, snapping his attention to the doctor.

"I'm sorry, but you need to see someone about this if what we're talking about is the reality, instead of just me worrying too much. Clearly, whatever school you go to isn't doing a good enough job at teaching you how to control your Quirk. Have you ever even seen a Quirk Counselor outside of your first manifestation?" Wakagaera said, raising his voice slightly.

Izuku didn't want to do this, but he didn't see any other way. He had to resort to intimidation to get Wakagaera off his case, so he'd do it. Didn't mean he had to like it.

"Are you accusing UA of negligence of duty of care?" Izuku asked, looking Wakagaera in the eye without blinking.

"I … that's Eraserhead," Wakagaera said, finally realizing who the disheveled looking man in the corner really was.

Wakagaera seemed to be having an argument with himself. Izuku swallowed his pride and kept up the eye contact, ignoring how his chest hurt at having to do this. It was against who he was to use his status to worm his way out of trouble, but he'd get an earful from Aizawa about it later, because Izuku was sure the man wasn't asleep. Every now and then, Aizawa would move, almost imperceptibly, but Danger Sense, which was still just a bit too sensitive to threats, would pick it up and alert him as a low buzz in his head. Izuku knew that he was awake, because he could see that his breathing was steady, an obviously controlled effort to remove himself from the other, waking occupants of the room.

"If you promise to tell Recovery Girl about this issue, I'll let you go," Wakagaera said, standing up to leave.

"I will. Thank you for your help, doctor," Izuku said, watching the man slink out of the room with more than a bit of shame hanging over his head.

Iuku looked over to Aizawa, and saw that he still wasn't moving, even when the doctor had exited. He watched his teacher's form intently, and when after a few moments he still didn't move, Izuku was fed up with pretending.

"I know you're awake, Eraser, so you can stop pretending to fool me," Izuku said, cracking a small smile.

Aizawa simply sat up and levelled the same look he always had on his face, thinly veiled indifference hiding amusement, at Izuku. They both then smirked at each other, and Aizawa settled into the couch, comfortably lounging, but not sleeping. They basked in the sweet silence after the chaos of last night. The whole week had been a blur for Izuku, if he was being honest, so he was glad to have a moment to rest. A few minutes later, he felt like he was ready to ask the question he had been needing to ask.

"What happened after I was knocked out?"

"Your punch did most of the work to put the Nomu out of commission. It was almost out, but we just needed to give it that extra push. Kayama used her Quirk on it, and when it absorbed it to release it again, it collapsed. It was worn down enough that the gas attack worked to put it down for good. Nobody got hurt, so stop worrying so much," Aizawa said, his unimpressed expression softening.

"That's good. I was worried that I hadn't been good enough. Is Shinso okay? He seemed kind of shaken up by the appearance of the Nomu," Izuku asked.

"He's fine. Kayama had a talk with him, said he felt guilty for what happened at the USJ," Aizawa said, his finger brushing against the scar under his eye.

"I had a feeling that was the case. I wanted to talk to him, but I wasn't sure that was my place. What would you have done?" Izuku said.

"I would've talked to him, but I can understand why you didn't. It's a tricky thing to judge where it's appropriate to insert yourself into someone else's story. Having that instinct to help, even when you aren't asked, is never a bad thing, though. That's what makes great Heroes. Never forget that," Aizawa said, looking at Izuku with a serious aura about him.

"Okay. Are you mad at me for breaking myself again?" Izuku asked.

"No. While I'm annoyed that it had to come to that, if I had thought of any other way, I would've stopped you as soon as you said you were going to hit the Nomu," Aizawa said, Izuku having the decency to at least look embarrassed. "Unfortunately, it really was the only way we can really beat any Nomu at the moment. One for All is the only thing that can combat All for One in any form, so we're going to have to get you to full power as soon as we can."

"I'm willing to do whatever it takes to reach my potential," Izuku said, smirking at the way Aizawa recognized the way he worded it.

"Alright, Nexus. We're only getting started."

End of Arc 5: Infernal Internships