The few weeks leading up to the school festival weren't all sunshine and rainbows, but Izuku felt that he was handling it well. As class representative, he and Yaoyorozu, his vice representative, were in charge of coordinating all their classmates and their disparate roles and tasks in the preparation phase of the festival. The class had split off into three major groups, with the band —led by Jiro and consisting of Yaoyorozu, Tokoyami, Kaminari and Katsuki — rehearsing for their performance, the dance ensemble — led by Ashido and consisting of everyone else — doing the same for their own showing. Technically, there was a third, smaller group inside the dance ensemble that they'd taken to calling the technical crew, which consisted of Todoroki, Hagakure, Sero, and Izuku himself, which were working together to pull off a cool trick that Hagakure had come up with a few days ago. Things were going well, and everyone was working together smoothly. Well, Katsuki still hated being made to participate in a musical performance, and Todoroki still preferred to keep to the outskirts of the group and remain detached and unfeeling, but that was expected.

However, there was something wrong. Something about the air tasted strange, like there was something in it that made all his food taste bad, and made his stomach squirm when he moved around too much. It started happening in mid-to-early-October, the ninth of that month, and it persisted for weeks. At first, it was just a small thing that caught him off guard maybe once in those first few days, but when that sick feeling intruded on him the first time, Izuku had been holding up a crate using One for All, and one of his knees had buckled in response to this feeling. He hadn't dropped the crate, and he'd managed to get back up to his feet and put the big box of lighting equipment where he needed it to be, but he did catch Yaoyorozu's eye, as they were unloading this stuff into their performance space together while the other groups practised their roles.

"Are you alright, Midoriya?" she asked, looking at him with furrowed eyebrows. He and Yaoyorozu were friends, he would say, but they didn't talk a lot. He'd already felt a little awkward simply doing the job and not talking, but now he wished there hadn't been something worthy of a conversation, because he realised in that moment that they hadn't spoken in so long that he'd forgotten what theyhadonce talked about. Funny, that.

"Yeah, I'm okay. I just … tripped," Izuku said. He was never good at lying on the spot — lying in general, really, but it was easier when he could plan out his story beforehand — so she saw right through him with a raised, curious eyebrow.

"Was the crate too heavy? I know you've been training harder recently, but do make sure you don't push yourself too hard," Yaoyorozu said, a dry tone telling Izuku just what she thought about that kind of behaviour. "Were you not using your Quirk?"

"I was, I just felt a little sick for a second. I probably just ate something weird earlier that my stomach doesn't agree with. I'll be fine," Izuku said with a forced laugh. He really didn't know what he'd felt, but it wasn't the kind of sick one got from eating something bad. He'd had food poisoning before, this wasn't it. It was something deeper, like something in him wanted something, but didn't know what.

"Are you sure? You …" Yaoyorozu paused. She looked at him with those sharp onyx eyes that he had always been a little intimidated by. He got the feeling that Yaoyorozu always saw more than she let on, and Izuku had wondered a few times if it was a latent secondary Quirk, like a more subtle variation on the phenomena that allowed Todoroki to have two completely different powers in one Quirk, but he'd never had the courage to ask about something that would be held so close to the chest. "If you're sure."

"I am. Thanks for the concern, though. Sometimes I think you should be the class rep, since you're always so worried about everyone's wellbeing," Izuku admitted as he fired up One for All again, small arcs of green energy flickering around him as he worked. He grabbed another crate, and moved it to the space next to the first crate.

"Nonsense, you do a fine job. Though the girls certainly like that idea. Mina and Toru specifically have voiced their support of me deposing you," Yaoyorozu said with an amused glimmer in her eye and a small smile.

Izuku laughed lightly. "I'm not a king. I wonder what kind of schemes those girls get up to when nobody's watching them."

"So do I," Yaoyorozu said with a restrained chuckle.

It was easier to talk to Yaoyorozu after they'd laughed together, but something was still bugging Izuku. What exactly had he felt at that moment? He was stumped, and couldn't figure it out on his own. Luckily for him, it didn't happen again for a few days.

The next time it happened was in class four days later, during a lecture from Aizawa about how the hero work study program had been more or less a success, so they were letting the students that had secured those extracurriculars keep them for the foreseeable future. Izuku had missed out on that program, just like he'd missed out on getting his provisional licence, as well as the remedial classes for said licensing exam. That was actually the reason he hadn't been allowed to participate in the work study program — he hadn't gotten a provisional licence to legally act as a hero when it was called for, so he, according to the law, could not work at a place even as a student hero. That was what happened when a hero student injured themselves so badly it required two months of healing. They missed out on important things like that. Sure, Aizawa and All Might had explained to him that the provisional licensing exam typically only occurred in their second year and that the only reason 1-A had gotten their licences was because of the increased villain activity over the last months. Still, it brought Izuku's mood down considerably to hear them talk about everyone else getting to be real heroes out in the city but having to stay at school himself. That was an exaggeration, not everyone went on work studies, but all his closest friends did, so he was left by himself most of the time when they were out being real heroes.

That meant this strange sickness returning at this time caused his mood to plummet to depths unknown by humanity. There was rarely a day where Izuku could say that he was in an actually bad mood, but this was one of them. He felt jittery to get out and train, but when this sickness hit him again, it stopped that thought before he could even have lunch. He sat at the table with his friends, but didn't eat, as he felt that he would throw up if he did. Ochako was the one to notice this, and from her spot next to him leaned over and pointed this out.

"What's up? You're not eating," she said, looking between Izuku and his food with a sceptical eye. She'd said it quietly, so Tsu, Hitoshi and Katsuki hadn't heard, but he doubted they would either way, since Hitoshi and Katsuki were having an argument about which Quirk type was superior. Naturally, Hitoshi was on the side of mental Quirks, and Katsuki was on the side of elemental Quirks.

"Nothing, I'm just not hungry," Izuku said, trying for a smile that probably didn't work out too well given the disappointed look on Ochako's face.

"Don't," she said.

"Don't what?"

"Don't keep secrets. You promised when you told us about OFA. I can tell something's up with you, Izuku," Ochako said, giving him a pouty glare from just inches away to keep their conversation more or less whispered in its entirety.

"I'm fine. You're such a mother hen." Izuku realised how close their faces were to each other and pulled back slightly, sighing as he did so as he tried to will his face to get less hot. It didn't work. He frowned, abandoning the attempt to hide how he was really feeling. "I just feel a little sick. It's probably a seasonal thing. It'll pass."

"If you say so. But if it doesn't pass, you gotta say so, yeah?" Ochako said, giving him another look, this time a softer, gentle kind of reassurement. He couldn't help but mirror the smile, as Ochako's positivity had always been infectious.

"Yeah," Izuku said, turning back to his food. He managed to get a few bites in before their afternoon classes started. It had mostly passed by the time he'd gotten into the heroics lesson, which was simply stamina training.

The next time it happened, another two days later, it persisted for two days. He'd managed to hide it on the first day, since it was Sunday and they had no classes to test his focus. This was the first time Izuku sat and thought about what he was experiencing. He theorised all sorts of things, from his initial half-hearted guess of food poisoning to fatigue due to his body readjusting to training again, or it may have even been that he wasn't eatingenough. He ran through all the possible causes for these things up in his room, and found that none of them were likely. He hadn't eaten anything out of the ordinary lately, he was feeling fine outside of this strange sick feeling in his stomach, and he'd been consistent about his strict eating habits since he'd started training with All Might when he was fourteen, all that time ago. None of those explanations were likely, and Izuku realised at the end of a wasted 'study session' that it was because they were excuses. He didn't know what this was. He needed someone else's help. But who could help him with this? All Might and Aizawa would think it was something to worry about him over, and so would Ochako, but Hitoshi and Katsuki would probably just think it was something to muscle through. Izuku couldn't tell what Tsu thought most of the time. They were enigmatic that way, like their eyes saw too much of you at one time. He liked them well enough, but they were intimidating sometimes. Izuku didn't mean to insult them or anything, but he didn't think any of them would be very good sources of advice for this.

It was on the second day in a row of this feeling sticking around that things got harder to cover up. It was the first time that Izuku had, without warning, felt that something waswrong. He suddenly whirled around in his seat during homeroom, looking at a random spot in the wall that his mind had clocked as bad. There was nothing there. Most of his classmates that were right next to him — Sero, Katsuki, Yaoyorozu and Hitoshi — looked at him like he was crazy, but Katsuki and Hitoshi looked at him like they were expecting something. After all, they knew the truth about what exactly his Quirk was, and while they'd both given him plenty of grief joking around about how he was All Might's favoured student — at least hethoughtKatsuki was joking — he could tell that they looked at him differently now. Katsuki had challenged him to a fight, a spar to test themselves against each other, a few days after he'd revealed One for All to him, but he hadn't been able to take him up on that because of his injuries. Izuku had a bad feeling that that conversation was going to be brought back up any day now. Hitoshi, on the other hand, had playfully admitted that he'd been considering Izuku as an unofficial bar to clear, the standard which he wanted himself to meet, ever since the sports festival, where they'd gone up against each other for the first time, and that feeling had only intensified during their first semester's final exams where they fought again. Izuku guessed that other students saw him that way, but it was more of a shock coming from one of his best friends. All of that showed through in that moment where he got spooked by a wall, which he knew was exceptionally brave of him, and both Hitoshi and Katsuki's stares felt more pointed, like they were trying to communicate with each otherthroughhim. Izuku wasn't sure he liked that.

"Midoriya, are you okay?" Aizawa asked in his droning, monotone voice.

"Uh, yeah. I'm good. Please continue," Izuku said, his voice breaking as his face turned red due to the many eyes on him. As the class's attention returned to their teacher, Izuku could sense that one pair of eyes across the room, familiar brown ones, stayed on him for a while longer than the others.

The second time that he felt that sensation, that sudden and unprompted feeling that something bad was about to happen, thankfully came when he was alone. He was walking to the support department's development studio, as he'd been back in his costume for about two weeks now and it was feeling a little lacklustre compared to all the others', who'd gotten their costumes upgraded to stand up to the provisional hero licensing exam. He was walking with his case in his left hand, as his right arm still creaked whenever he tried holding particularly bulky objects without One for All active, and walking down the hall to the development studio when his stomach sank and he felt a cold shadow pass over him from behind. The shadow was tall and thin, like All Might, but with none of his encouraging warmth, and Izuku spun around with a shout to see that nobody was there. He could've sworn … he'd felt his skin cool from the shadow blocking the setting sun peeking under the high-hanging ceiling. He'd felt something. He had. But there was nothing behind him, and when he turned back around, nothing was in front of him either. Izuku stood there for a moment, trying to figure out what in the world was happening, but decided that he'd put another day aside to figure this out. This was getting out of control. He had to tell someone, he decided, and it didn't matter who. He just needed to tell someone about this so that he could make sure he wasn't going crazy.

He had things to do first, though. Izuku entered the development studio to see just who he'd been hoping for — Power Loader and Mei Hatsume were working away on hero costumes in silence, the only noise in the studio being the banging and scraping of their tools as they tinkered. He knocked on the door and stepped inside, getting their attention. Power Loader looked up at him and nodded respectfully, and Izuku did the same. They'd collaborated on a project at the beginning of the school year, and they'd come to an understanding of each other then. When Izuku said collaboration, it was more like Izuku giving Power Loader an idea he wasn't sure would work, and Power Loader somehow putting together a device that proved his wild hypothesis correct. It had worked out, though, and now Hagakure spent most of her free time visible now, whereas before she'd had to be invisible at all times. The reaction that scared Izuku was from Hatsume, her wild pink hair swinging around her head as she all but sprinted to greet him.

"Midoriya, you're back in action! I just know you're gonna love some of the new babies I've whipped up for you in the last few months!" Hatsume said too loudly for how closely she'd pushed her face up to his, so close that he stepped away while muttering lamely about personal space.

She made him drop the case and dragged him by his left arm toward her pile of inventions, which she called her babies. Honestly, Izuku was shocked by the fact that she'd dragged him by his good arm. He didn't think she took enough interest in people to know he'd been hurt, but a smile came to his face as he indulged in her a little bit, as a thank you for considering his well being and not just how he could model her support items and gather sponsors for her future tech empire. He let her explain all the new gadgets and support items she'd cooked up while he'd been unable to test them out during his recovery. There was a suit of power armour that almost twisted his legs off his body, boosters that reminded Izuku of Tenya Iida with a pang of guilt that he forced himself to ignore, and a net gun. After she was done explaining how they worked, Izuku tried to think of a way to gently turn her down on all of them, since he had powers that could outperform these gadgets in their applications.

"I'm sorry, Hatsume, but I don't think I need any of this stuff. I mean, my strength and speed is already better than the armour and the booster could give me, and anything faster is just going to overwhelm me. And I have a capture technique, already, remember?" Izuku said. He knew she knew about Blackwhip — she'd seen it in person after all — but Hatsume was prone to forget little details about people when it came to her work, so he let a few Blackwhips wiggle in the air for a few seconds to show her.

"Right you are! Well then, have I got the perfect thing for you!" Hatsume said, not skipping a beat and not even acknowledging the fact that he'd tried to put it gently for her. That was something he found easy to engage with in Hatsume — she didn't really care how she said what she said, as long as she got the thought out of her head and across to whoever she was talking to, she was happy to move on. She moved and spoke with a confidence that Izuku wished he had. "If you're not interested in any of my general use babies, then how about the custom stuff?"

"Custom stuff?" Izuku asked, feeling an uneasy sinking in his stomach that had nothing to do with his current problem.

The stories he'd heard from Hitoshi and Ochako about dealing with Hastume's particular brand of enthusiasm when she was in her natural habitat didn't bode well for him. She'd upgraded their costumes as well, and while those upgrades were useful, like the improved gyroscope in Ochako's costume that helped her keep her balance while weightless and the different kinds of trick bombs she'd given Hitoshi — which he had beenveryhappy with, showing off his smoke bombs, rapid-setting foam, flashbangs, noise traps — Izuku still felt a little queasy thinking about his own Quirks and how they would be a playground for someone like Hatsume. At least she wanted to help him, in her own special way, unlike some of the business course kids he'd met in passing who thought of heroes as marketing opportunities. Izuku wondered how he hadn't met any other heroes like Aizawa, who hated the media and the corporate side of heroics, as Izuku found himself agreeing with some of his teacher's grumblings after hearing the way business course kids spoke about heroics. Izuku came back to himself, snapping out of his thoughts as Hatsume exclaimed, apparently having found the item she'd been searching for in her layers of inventions. The pile in the corner reminded him of Dagobah Beach Park, and he could almost smell the saltwater for a moment before he honed back in and focused on Hatsume in front of him.

She handed him a red pouch. It was about the same size and dimensions as an A5 piece of paper, which was the same format his notebooks were. He unzipped it to find the material was tough, like plastic, but malleable, like leather. It had straps that he guessed were supposed to hook into something, making it look kind of like one of his mother's purses, only smaller. He didn't think he could fit a lot of things in there, but he looked back up at Hatsume and smiled, waiting for the inevitable onslaught of information Hatsume called 'a brief overview'.

"I know you're a thinker, so I've taken the time to whip up this completely impervious pouch that you can put your notebook in and hook up to your costume's belt. It goes at the back, so it won't get in your way while you're running and fighting and stuff, and it's easy-access!" Hatsume said with a brilliant grin. Her eyes, which had crosshairs for pupils, were honed in on his, gauging his reaction by the looks of it.

"Whoa! What do you mean 'impervious'?" Izuku asked, his eyes wide with wonder.

"It's fireproof, waterproof, the zipper is airtight and it's made of ultra-resistant materials so it'll withstand beatings like you can," Hatsume said. "Now, you can take those infamous little notebooks you've got into battles with you and you never have to scramble to remember something. You can just write stuff down wherever you are!"

Izuku wondered how she could get a zipper to be airtight, but put it out of his mind. Since he'd started at UA, he'd seen technology that had blown his mind much more than a very good pouch. "This is great, Hatsume. Thanks!" He also didn't want to ask why his notebooks were 'infamous'. That was better left alone.

Now that he was thinking about it, Izuku realised that he should have been writing down what was happening to him regarding this strange, alien sensation. He stared at the pouch, thinking about what had been happening this past week or so, and felt like he was on the cusp of realising something else, something deeper. He felt like he was balancing on a tightrope, and wanted to dive into the net of realisation but was being glued to the rope by something, and he didn't know what. He lost himself in the deep red of the pouch, the same colour as his belt on his hero costume, and began to retreat to the crazy-person conspiracy board in his mind where he kept all his deepest theories and irrational thought processes. If he just spent the night working on this, he'd figure it out.

"I assume you came here for something, Midoriya?" Power Loader asked, snapping his fingers in front of his face without warning. Izuku blinked and looked down at the shorter, older man.

"Uh, yeah. I guess I should look into costume upgrades, since everyone in my class already has new and improved outfits. I don't know how it would work, but I was hoping for something to reduce the stress my Quirk puts on my limbs?" Izuku asked, stuttering on a few words. He really needed to pull it together.

"Right, you're the one with super-strength so powerful it breaks you, yeah?" Power Loader asked.

"Um, I got that under control, but yeah. I can only use about fifteen percent of my full strength at the moment. We expect that number to increase over time, but that's where I'm at right now. I guess you guys know this already, but I got pretty hurt a while ago, and my arms aren't in the best condition, so something to reduce the strain of my Quirk on my body would be really helpful after all that. Can you do that?" Izuku rambled, explaining while continuing to stutter. He thought he'd dropped the stutter, but apparently that was back. He was also nervous because Power Loader thought he was actually smart, and he didn't want to say anything unintelligent in front of him that would lower his opinion of Izuku, so he thought he could be forgiven for not being very excited at the moment.

"Right, that should be easy enough. We can rebuild your gloves and boots with some denser padding, and maybe give you a bit more joint support. That's entirely doable. You also have other powers, right? Do you need anything for those?" Power Loader mumbled as he wrote things down on a little notepad.

"Um, no. I've already got the Blackwhip tunnels on my gloves, so I can just funnel this new thing I learned, Smokescreen, through there and you won't have to change the whole design. Plus, my Float power doesn't need any support item or anything, so—"

Hatsume was suddenly in Izuku's face, yelling. "You learned something new? Show me!"

"Uh …" Izuku groaned, leaning away with a red face as Hatsume got a little too close to him for comfort. He then lifted his right hand up, the same hand he'd demonstrated Blackwhip with, even though it creaked when he did, and a little wisp of lilac smoke danced in the air as he traced a little figure-eight with it, before letting it fade. "It's not very cool, but—"

"Nonsense! I have so many ideas now! Leave me, I need to work!" Hatsume said, and then she darted off into her corner of the development studio.

Izuku laughed shakily as he watched her go. He took a deep breath, and saw Power Loader looking at him. He smiled nervously, wondering what the teacher could be thinking, but he didn't have to wait long to find out.

"Are you okay, Midoriya?" Power Loader asked, a glint in his eyes that told Izuku that he saw something in him that wasn't strictly okay.

Boy, he was getting a little bit tired of answering this.

"I'm good," Izuku said, but paused. This could be his shot to get some real advice from a smart man he respected. "I just … keep having this weird sixth sense that something's not right. Do you ever get anything like that?"

"Sometimes, but only in a fight. It's like my training takes over and I see more than I should reasonably be able to. That's just adrenaline, though. Hey, don't you have anactualsixth sense? I heard Aizawa talking about that the other day. Apparently he's salty that you've got so many powers and the rest of us have to settle for one," Power Loader said, laughing good-naturedly.

Izuku was an idiot.

"Uh, thanks for the help, sir. Am I supposed to just leave this here, or—?" Izuku asked, cutting himself off when he realised he didn't know what to do with his costume in this situation.

"We should be able to pad your suit and add some shock absorption to it before your next heroics lesson. We can just leave it in your locker when we're done. But where are you off to so fast? Do you need help?" Power Loader said, calling after Izuku as he took off toward the door, speed-walking.

"No, I'm good. I just need to go check on something I left in my dorm!" Izuku yelled, and he was gone.

He ran through the campus, grinning but chastising himself at the same time. Izuku should've tried this days ago. He sprinted back to his dorm room and ran into a few of his classmates along the way. Kirishima stopped him to ask where he was running so fast, and Izuku gave an excuse about catching up to the others due to his time off, an excuse that Kirishima seemingly bought. He passed Todoroki as the two of them turned the same corner going opposite ways, nearly crashing into each other, but Izuku barely had time to apologise before he was off, not even registering until after that he'd gotten a deep scowl in reply. He passed a few teachers, too. All Might and Aizawa were talking about something, Izuku overheard something about lesson plans as he raced past, and he didn't even turn to look at their reaction to him as he left them in the dust. He needed to get to his room to check with the source he should've been consulting a week ago. He didn't know how he could've let it slip his mind this long, but Power Loader reminding him about it had triggered that realisation, pushing him off the tightrope.

When he got to his room, Izuku closed the door and took a moment to calm down. He took deep breaths, and stood in the middle of the room. It was subconscious to him most of the time these days, but when his breathing slowed down back to normal and he couldn't hear his heart hammering in his chest from the sprint over to the dorms, Izuku took the deliberate steps to reach into that core within him where he could feel the comforting warmth of One for All, and touched the power of Float, the Quirk of the seventh user, Nana Shimura. He felt his whole body lift off the ground by a millimetre. He smiled, and crossed his legs as he hung in the air, effectively sitting on nothing in the middle of his dorm. He sat like that for a while trying to get his heartbeat and breathing as slow as possible, and concentrated.

This was a trick he hadn't really figured out, as much as he'd stumbled upon through an accidental application of it. During his first semester at UA, he'd figured out that, during certain times and depending on Izuku's mindset, he didn't actually have to be asleep to communicate with the vestiges of One for All that were still conscious in his head. He could see and speak to them while he was awake, but it took concentration and a real anchor, a tangible desire to speak with a specific prior user. Izuku went through the steps he'd been perfecting into a reliable method more than a hit-or-miss chance it would work, and after a few minutes, he knew it had worked. He saw something akin to smoke swirl in front of him, like Smokescreen but a light, mint green. Out of that swirling mint fog formed a man.

Hikage Shinomori was tall, much taller than Izuku, and lean, with white short hair that parted away from his forehead. His body was relatively young, healthy and strong, but he had an old face, with deep lines portraying an age his body didn't share, with crows feet at the corners of his sharp eyes, which were green like Izuku's but quicker, always flitting about like he saw through the walls and beyond. The most notable things about the man were the two scars, jagged like electricity, that ran from the top left of his hairline and down over his left eye. It was as if lightning had struck him, but Izuku knew the real cause of those scars. He wore a ripped up sweatshirt and workout clothes, which had fallen into disrepair without a way to fix them in the mindscape he occupied in Izuku's brain. He looked down at Izuku, his eyes narrowing even further, and Izuku took a deep breath. He hadn't spoken to Shinomori much, mostly because the vestiges didn't come to him very often. He often went to them, and so he was drawn to the more sociable prior users of One for All, like Banjo, Yoichi and Nana. Even En, who was a bit of a lone wolf and a more introverted personality, spoke up more than Shinomori did, which meant that he didn't know a lot about Shinomori's life and personality. He steadied himself, touching back down on the ground and releasing himself from Float, and looked back up at the fourth user of One for All.

"You feel it," Shinomori said, his voice low and razor sharp. It wasn't a question, but a statement, like he'd been dreading this moment.

"Yeah," Izuku replied, his something in his chest getting heavier at the confirmation that somethingwaswrong. "But what is it?"

"It isn't Danger Sense. That rules out the cause of this being physical danger," Shinomori said, considering Izuku quietly.

Izuku had hoped it was Danger Sense, and sighed at that theory being shot down. If it was Danger Sense giving him these feelings, it meant there was something that wanted to do him harm, and he could deal with that. A physical threat was something he could fight and put a stop to. Izuku had also known, in his heart, that that wasn't it. Danger Sense usually manifested as a sharp sensation in the back of the head, like he was being poked by a knife. It was also accompanied by an intense desire to move and do something, though the Quirk didn't tell Izuku what it thought he should do, which was annoying. It told him of danger, but didn't tell him exactly what the danger was. That was the downside. That, and the fact that it didn't work on people who weren't actually trying to hurt him. He'd learned the painful way that it didn't work on Ochako's attacks during training, but did work on Katsuki. No, this wasn't Danger Sense. This was something else, something more primal. Something older. A little rush of excitement made Izuku feel sick all over again.

"Could it be the second's Quirk?" Izuku asked, trying to suppress his smile and not get his hopes up. He couldn't help but wonder, though.

"I don't … know," Shinomori said, furrowing his brow. "My predecessor never told me of his friend's Quirk. Only that it hadn't been enough to kill All for One. I regret not being able to tell you more."

"It's okay. I didn't really think this was the time. I just … wish I knew what this feeling was. If you're feeling it, have you spoken to the other vestiges about this?" Izuku asked, sagging into his desk chair dejectedly.

"Yes, we have been attempting to explain this sensation you've been feeling. None of us can. Shimura claimed something, but I'm hesitant to accept that suspicion," Shinomori said. He scowled when he brought up this suspicion that Nana Shimura had spoken of.

"What was it?" Izuku asked again. He sat up straight in his chair as he waited for the one actual theory any one of the One for All users had given with any kind of confidence.

"Shimura recalled an event that occurred on the night you battled All for One the last time. Before your predecessor defeated him properly. Do you remember how you knew Tomura Shigaraki's true name?" Shinomori said through gritted teeth. It looked as though discussing this option pained him, but Iuzku couldn't see where he was going.

"It was when we made eye contact for the first time. Without the hand-mask-thing. I saw his mole and his eyes and his face structure and he reminded me of Nana Shimura. Then his name just came to me, in her voice. It was like she'd whispered in my ear and told me what I needed to know," Izuku said. He still didn't know where this was going.

"Yes, well she remembers things differently. She never knew Tomura Shigaraki's true name, because she died decades before he was born. You should not have been able to learn his name through her consciousness in One for All. It was something else entirely, as if One for All itself told you something nobody knew. It may have been drawn from the genetic memory from when our shared Quirk was withthat man," Shinomori said, snarling at the end as he refused to say the name of the man he was speaking of.

The way Shinomori had said it, the vitriol and the anger, made it all click with Izuku, and he suddenly got what Shinomori was talking about. There was one man who had known the fate of Tenko Shimura, and it had been All for One himself, the one who had plucked a young Tenko from his home and groomed him to hate everything about the world he lived in. Was Nana Shimura suggesting that One for All still carried things from All for One? Izuku supposed it was possible, since it carried the Quirks and consciousnesses of the past users, and one half of One for All had indeed once been part of All for One's Quirk of the same name. It was possible that Izuku had pulled the name he'd learned that night from the part of One for All that had once been owned by the notorious villain.

"You think we still … you thinkIstill have a link with All for One?" Izuku asked with a tremble in his voice.

He didn't like talking about that man. He didn't like thinking about that man. Izuku had tried hard during the first few weeks after Kamino to get himself to think about anything other than that man. He'd tried hard to ignore the unhinged torture he'd put Izuku, his mother, and Tenko Shimura through just to get One for All back into his hands. Izuku knew he'd have to face it eventually, make peace with the fact of what All for One had done, who Izuku himself was, but he hadn't thought that time would have come so soon. The fact of the matter was that Izuku Midoriya was the spawn of All for One, produced by a twisted experiment involving another creation of that man, Inko Midoriya, a failed clone with a defective Quirk. Izuku tried not to think that way about himself or his mother, but this discussion was bringing all those thoughts back to the forefront of his mind. He took a few breaths, and tried his best to count to ten and back down to one, and when he thought he'd averted full panic, he looked back up at Shinomori.

The fourth user of One for All was simply staring at him, as if waiting for Izuku to speak again. He could tell that Shinomori didn't enjoy this conversation any more than Izuku himself did, and that was saying something. Eventually, after a tense pause where the very air in the room seemed to buzz with the power of One for All keeping Shinomori present and able to communicate, the tall man spoke once again.

"This is the core of Shimura's suspicion, that this new sensation is more evidence for this theory of hers," he said, his voice low and grim.

"You mean that—"

"Yes, boy," Shinomori said. "All for One may be stirring once more."