A/N: Warning. Manga spoilers on the full history of One for All in this chapter.

-(-)-

The award ceremony was an amazing experience for Izuku. Standing atop a podium. Kendo taking a gracious second place, Rin the disappointed third. Each of them getting a hug and a little advice from All Might while the crowds cheered for them.

Being genuinely celebrated by people. It was an experience Izuku had dreamed of. Being respected and admired, it wasn't the core of his dream, but it was part of it. Being someone people could look to and see that so long as he was around, everything would be alright. That was what he wanted. This was a step toward that future. A step All Might had asked him to take and there was no doubt he had done it. Not while applause came down on him like rain.

If only the cloud of worry didn't hang over him, marring the experience.

A final check up and smooch from Recovery Girl and he was back in the classroom for Aizawa's commendation for their performance. A commendation that was as brief and deadpan as could be expected from the dour hero. From there, informing the class they would learn more about what it would mean if they had been scouted by any agencies, and finally dismissing them.

"Congratulations, Midoriya!" Kirishima offered as he left the room, Bakugo and Todoroki saying nothing, giving him only a brief glare each before leaving without a word.

"Yeah, congratulations!" Ochako echoed with an uncertain smile as she left in a hurry.

"Congratulations!

"Congratulations."

"Good job, Midoriya!"

"Nice work, champ!"

Ochako, Momo, Tsuyu, Toru, Mina, each of the girls offering their own well wishes and bright smiles that set Izuku blushing at the attention. "Th-thanks, everyone. You all did great too."

"Aww, you're sweet," Mina told him before leaving with a spring in her step, most of the class following after her in ones and twos.

Izuku and Kyoka were the last to leave the classroom. "You did great," she told him with a smile, threading her fingers through his. "I think I made you a promise during the tournament."

The boy swallowed, nodding. "Y-Yeah, I mean not in so many words or with the actual word 'promise' or anything but there were definitely some implications–"

She kissed him on the cheek to shut him up. "There were. Think I'm gonna take a rain check for now. But I'm looking forward to our second date. Pick out something fun, yeah?"

"Uh, s-sure!" He could absolutely do that. He definitely wouldn't be searching up potential date options for the next few hours. Definitely not cross-referencing them for things that could let them do the 'implicated' stuff too in private moments.

They parted ways at the train station, leaving Izuku alone. His mind whirling with the potential possibilities of what he and Kyoka might get up to on their date. He arrived home, bowled over by his frantic mother checking him over for injuries, helping her clean up the trash bags full of tissues she had expended watching the festival. For at least that while, he was able to put his worries behind him thanks to the people most important to him. And just when those worries started to make themselves known again, he received a message on his phone.

"Khh!" he choked as he opened the message. Greeted by a picture of Kyoka lounging on what looked like her bed, wearing only a bra and panties. She looked confident. Maybe even seductive. But her blush and her jacks gave her away. He couldn't help but notice after the month they were together that her earjacks tended to reveal her true feelings. The two cords twirling around each other nervously to not ruin her sexy pose told the whole story. But it only made the picture better.

'You're beautiful,' he sent a response.

'Thanks. See you at school, yeah?'

'Yeah.'

He smiled. Then... Guiltily scrolled back up to the picture. It was really something. Something he very much liked seeing. A certain part of him especially. A part that strained against his clothing insistently, demanding attention. But... Kyoka sent that picture to him. Was that... Was that what she intended him to use it for? Did she even consider he might use it for that? He licked his lips, looking around in paranoid fashion as if his mother would barge in to see him looking at a lewd picture of his girlfriend.

In the end, he didn't. He couldn't let himself. Even if it was really tempting, he couldn't treat Kyoka like that, even just a picture. But then, looking at anyone else would be worse, wouldn't it? Refusing the picture his girlfriend sent him and using other material?

He went to bed mildly frustrated and aroused.

-(-)-

Izuku felt heavy, the kind of weight he felt in a dream when he knew he was dreaming but wasn't fully in control. His eyes opened, finding himself in an open space that was almost his room, but larger, more spread out, more washed out.

"Okay. I get it. And don't get me wrong, your little crisis of morals over the dirty picture your girlfriend sent you was adorable."

The woman standing in that room was not so hazy.

"But even if you can't fully control it, you understand why I might have a problem with this, right?" the woman from his dream asked, her hip cocked, a great deal of her olive skin on display. She was clothed, but only in the underwear he had seen in Kyoka's picture. A size more fit to accommodate the woman's amazonian physique. The powerful muscles he had seen she possessed in her tight costume now on full display. Cleavage, washboard abs, powerful thighs–

He was definitely staring! "Uh, I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't–! How did this–?! I'm sorry!" Bashfully, his face was bright red as he looked away.

"You know with your face all red you look just like a little tomato!" the woman laughed. "Come on, kid. I'm not that mad. I've done a couple pin-up shoots before. You're young. It happens. Hell, that tent you're pitching just tells me this old lady's still got it."

"Really?" he asked, looking only out of the corner of his eye.

"Really." She smiled reassuringly as his eyes fully returned to looking her way. Well, to a very certain part of her at least. "Some advice, kid? Look, don't stare."

"S-Sorry!"

"If a woman is talking, eyes on hers. Doesn't matter how nice you think everything else looks." She folded her arms under her chest and his eyes inevitably flicked down. She raised an eyebrow and he very deliberately straightened up, forcing his eyes to stare unblinkingly into hers. "Not a bad start. Also, your little girlfriend? She knew what you might do with that picture. That's why she sent it. Pretty daring if you ask me. Kids these days, I swear."

"Really?" Izuku blurted out, only for realisation to come to him a half-second later. "Wait, you could see that?!"

"I could see everything. I'm part of you now, after all," she confided, taking a little amusement from how uncomfortable he was. He was fun to tease. "Yes, even in the bath. Good for you, by the way. And your girlfriend."

"Hieee!" Panicked, he covered his crotch as though he were still so exposed. "This–! This is not how I expected it to go if I saw you again!"

"We're not in as much of a rush this time." She moved toward his bed, taking a seat next to him. "Thought I'd have a little fun to break the ice. I guess Toshi didn't tell you, but I'm Nana Shimura, seventh wielder of One for All. Nice to meet you properly, Izuku Midoriya."

"Right, I, umm, I gave All Might your message."

"I saw. Thank you." She looked away from him up to the not-ceiling of his dream room. "I'm sure he gets praise and adoration all the time but... I still wanted him to know, you know?"

He understood. Both for her sake and All Might's. It meant a lot more to hear something like that from the people who mattered most. "Did you have a hero name?" he asked, knowing he would look it up the second he woke up.

"Sure. Back in the day I was Miss Sky."

"Oh, because your quirk lets you float!" He remembered All Might telling him that much. "Wow, that's a great hero name!"

"Oh, so he did tell you something about me!" she laughed. "As for my hero name, you'd think! It works for Japan but it turns out 'Sky' is a pretty normal family name in the west. But I didn't leave the country that much so thankfully that never mattered."

"Right." A lot of heroes stuck to their home country. There wasn't a lot of call for international action when it came to the hero commissions of different nations. A kind of expectation of everyone handling their own problems. It made an amount of sense since villains were just criminals, really. And heroes were superpowered police. If a country couldn't handle their own policing to a level they needed international aid, things were going very, very wrong. "So... Why are you here? Is this just something that happens with One for All? The old wielders come with it? Is All Might in here?!" The final realisation worried him. Here he was sitting on his bed with a woman that might be All Might's mentor and she was in her underwear! He didn't want to get smashed!

Nana sighed, shaking her head. "They're not. Not anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"You know how One for All works, right? Each wielder cultivates power in themselves. When they pass on the quirk, they pass it on with that stockpiled power, meaning each wielder is stronger than the last. It's been passed down eight times now, with you as its ninth wielder. But there were problems from the very start. Problems we didn't realise until the fourth wielder. Instead of facing All for One directly, he chose to hide himself away, dedicating himself to making One for All stronger for his entire life until he passed it on. He died of old age after holding One for All for eighteen years." Her eyes showed sadness as she looked at the teen. "He was forty-three."

"Wait, what? How could he die of old age that early?!"

"The body or soul or however quirks work, it isn't meant to hold multiple quirks at once. It's like putting air in a balloon." In the dream space, a balloon appeared as if simply because of Izuku's visualisation. "Good imagination. You fill the balloon normally, that's your quirk. Nice and stable. Works just fine. But you add another quirk, you add more air, then that balloon strains." The balloon inflated more, and then more, an exaggerated sound of straining rubber filling the space. "Until eventually..." The balloon burst with a startling bang.

"So... That'll happen to me." It was the obvious conclusion. "I..." He didn't know what to say to that. He had wanted to be a great hero. He had the potential to get his wish thanks to One for All, but it was also going to cut his life short.

"Every wielder of One for All ended up in an early grave for one reason or another. If All for One didn't get us, rapidly deteriorating condition did. At least, until Toshi."

"You mean All Might?" That was right. No one quite knew how old he was. Nor how long he had been a hero. Definitely not how long he had been holding One for All. But it had been a lot longer than eighteen years.

"He was a kind of person who had never wielded One for All. When I found him he was just a dumb kid with big dreams of being a hero even though he had no power of his own."

"That's right!" Izuku realised. All Might had told him. "He was quirkless before you gave him One for All! So he didn't have the same problem!"

"Right," Nana nodded, glad he caught on quick. "He took to One for All like he was born for it. Ended up becoming the hero you know. But there was something else. He took to it better than any of us previous wielders could've expected. Able to pull out more power. Able to call on us, even if he didn't realise it. The first wielder understood what was happening. The insane burden One for All had on a person who already had a quirk had more side effects than we knew. But since Toshi didn't have a quirk, he could do more."

"But..." She shook her head, frustrated and angry with herself. "We stopped him. Or rather, we prevented him from tapping into everything he could. You see, One for All doesn't just take stored power. I'm here, right? It takes an imprint of every wielder, and an imprint of their quirk if they have one. Then the power of One for All builds that quirk into itself. If we had let him, Toshi would've been able to use limited versions of the previous users' quirks. Or at least a couple of them. It was decided that One for All wasn't ready for it yet. We'd been handed a miracle. Someone who could do more than we ever dreamed with this power. And then we were greedy enough to ask for another one. We wanted to wait for the ninth wielder."

"You... You wanted someone quirkless," Izuku realised. "If they were quirkless they could be like All Might, but with the quirks of previous wielders too." Suddenly the power that had been entrusted to him, that had been pushing him forward, it was like a lead weight. One he suddenly felt unfit to carry. "All Might chose wrong."

"Hey!"

"Ow!" He swayed away from the darting finger that had just poked him fiercely in the forehead. Wait, shouldn't that have woken him up? It felt real.

"Don't you get into any thoughts like that!" the seventh wielder admonished. "Toshi chose you because he saw potential in you, just like I saw in him! All this circumstantial stuff doesn't mean a thing to how worthy you are! You're the ninth wielder! You're exactly who you're supposed to be!" She raised that finger again warningly, her expression demanding to know if he needed another poke.

"Okay, okay!" he waved his hands in front of his face. "Sorry. It's just..."

"I know," she smiled with an understanding, motherly expression as she pulled him in for a side hug. "It's not what you thought. Don't worry. We're doing what we can."

"How are you even telling me this?" he asked. "I thought All Might was only able to call on you because he was quirkless." Was that not what she meant? That he was able to interact with previous wielders?

"That's because we're trying to make up for our mistake," she answered, squeezing his shoulder. "One for All's at the end of its rope. Quirkless or not, it'll be too powerful to pass on after this. Barring some unbelievable freak occurrence, you're not just the ninth wielder, you're the last wielder. So... We need to make sure you're as capable and live as long and fulfilling a life as we can give you." She shrugged, bringing his eyes up to look at her. "I'm the last one. Everyone else, they're gone. Their quirks are out of your reach anyway. What's left of their strength is all going to keeping your quirks stable so we don't send you to an early grave. Your power, what you have now, that's all you'll get. But we at least hope we can see you live long enough to retire and spoil your grandkids."

Was that better? Izuku didn't know. "It feels, I don't know. Hearing all this it's like there was supposed to be some big destiny and I screwed it up."

"We screwed up," she corrected. "And who cares what destiny wants anyway? When it comes down to it, none of that matters. What matters is being the kind of hero you can be proud of. That's what Toshi, what All Might did, right?"

Izuku nodded. He was starting to see why All Might had looked so moved when he received the message. This woman, she had a way about her that you wanted her to be proud of you. "Will you be going away too?"

"Not if I can help it," she grinned down at him. "I might have to one day. But hopefully that's far in the future. Gotta help you be the best hero you can be, right?" She eased him down until his head was resting in her lap, not caring at all for her near nudity. "Just rest for now. We'll have plenty of chances to talk in future."

The ninth wielder wasn't sure he had ever been more comfortable as he was resting on this woman's thighs, looking up at her motherly, caring gaze. "There's just one thing I don't understand."

"Hmmm?" Nana asked without words, stroking his hair.

"Who's All for One?"

... Her hand stopped moving. "Toshi never told you?" she asked. "Toshi never told you," she said in a much flatter tone. "That boy! You give him a swat to the back of the head the next time you see him, leaving something that important out!"

"Umm, I don't think I can do that!"

"You can and you will! He deserves it!"

Seeing the woman pout and fume as she went back to stroking his hair was Izuku's last memory of this strange, informative, but guiltily pleasant dream.

-(-)-

All Might sat on the beach. A maudlin appearance and attitude wasn't out of place for his true form, but it was rarely so pronounced. "So... That's what was happening, huh?" Izuku hadn't waited after he woke up the next morning, calling All Might immediately so they could talk privately. The beach they had trained on being as good a place as any. "I remember once when I was first starting out, seeing a bunch of ghosts. But I never really thought much of it at the time. And Miss Sky didn't know what it was about either. Just a weird thing that happened once and never again. I never thought... Damn." He shook his head. "I'm sorry, young Midoriya. I knew the burden I was giving you was heavy but I had no idea how heavy. If I'd known–"

"Please don't finish that sentence, All Might!" Izuku interrupted before he could, his urgency slipping away once the sentence was spoken. "It... I don't know if I would've taken it if we knew. But I believe I would have. If it would've been for ten years or fifty, I wanted to be, I want to be the kind of hero you are! No matter where it leads me, I'm still proud, and I still want to live up to the faith you put in me!"

"Heh," the laugh was weak. As was the great hero's smile. "That's not the kind of thing old guys like me want to hear from the younger generation. We want to hear about how you're gonna live a good long time, spoil your grandkids and get old, fat and cranky."

"Well... Hopefully I can still do that." He wanted to. No one really wanted to die young. But if it happened, it happened. So long as he could be the kind of hero who saved people with a fearless smile, it would be–

Out of nowhere, an image flashed into his mind. Kyoka wearing a carefree smile just for him. Another of Ochako, fierce and determined. His mother smiling proudly as she saw him off for his first day at UA.

They would be sad if he died young, huh? It was something he never really had to think about. Like most young people, it was all too easy to forget he was mortal, even after facing deadly circumstances more than once. No. If it turned out that way, it was what it was, but he wouldn't pretend to be happy about it. Or satisfied with it. More importantly, he wanted to make sure no matter what, the people he cared about would have good things to remember him by.

He didn't know when he would die, but no hero did. So he would live life to the fullest and leave the world a brighter place than he found it!

"Oh," the student suddenly remembered. "Um, sorry about this in advance, All Might."

"Huh?" the emaciated man looked his student's way only to receive a sharp slap to the back of his head. "Ow, what the heck was that for?!"

"Miss Shimura said to do that for not telling me about All for One."

"Oh." All complaint left the hero at the explanation. Suddenly it seemed entirely deserved. "I see. I'll be honest. I was hoping he was gone for good but..." Trailing off, All Might sighed, giving up his excuses. "Okay. I'll tell you everything. At least everything as far as I know it. I thought he was gone so it wasn't important but recent events say that might not be the case. Let me start from the beginning."

-(-)-

A/N: I have it on good authority (guest accounts are good authority now, shut up) that the GREAT FORBIDDEN P shilling is annoying. You know what that tells me? It tells me someone has learned to fear the P. This is what we call progress.