"Regular speech,"

"Flashback speech,"

'Inner dialogue,'

'Phone Text Chat'

Himiko splashed around in the open-air bath's water, her head bobbing side to side as she hummed happily. The other girls of 1-A chattered and talked as they soaked in the water, washing their bodies.

Mina-chan came over to Himiko and poked the bite mark on her shoulder, "what happened there?"

Himiko blushed profusely but gave the girl a wide grin, "Izu and I get rough sometimes. He's got way more on him."

Ochako-chan came over next, frowning, her cheeks bright red, "Is that healthy? Don't they get infected?"

Himiko shook her head, "We always clean em really well afterward, and besides, he seems to like it."

Tsu put a curious finger on her chin, "why do you bite him that much anyway? Is it a kink thing?"

Her blunt words made Himiko wince. She shook her head but then wobbled it from side to side, "Not really, but kind of. My quirk makes it so that I have a really heavy fixation on blood, and Izu lets me take some whenever I want. It was just for that at first, but once he got used to it, we started doing it for… fun."

Mina-chan cupped both of her cheeks and squealed, "That is so cute and wholesome! He just let you have blood because he didn't want you to suffer?" She sighed dreamily, "So romantic."

Himiko blushed even harder.

Kyoka was the next to express interest in the topic, "When did you two start dating anyway?"

She had to think about that for a second, "mmm, I think it was in October last year. I know it was a few months before the U.A. Entrance Exam, but he'd been letting me have his blood for the six months before we'd started dating."

Mina-chan blinked, "huh? He let you have his blood before you were dating?"

Himiko smiled fondly and brushed her fingers over the bite mark Izu had given her, "Yeah. When we were kids, he promised I could taste his blood whenever I wanted, and he kept that promise even after ten years apart."

"Awww!" The entire women's side of the bath broke out into excited chattering after that.

Izuku sighed as he rolled his shoulders and unbuttoned his school shirt. He and the boys had stayed a little longer after lunch to clean everything else up, and now they were thankfully going to have a nice long soak before bedtime.

"Whoa, Bakugo, what kinda workouts do you do?" Kirishima slapped Kacchan on the back, making the blond boy snarl.

"Fuck off, shitty hair! I ain't gonna tell you shit, so just get fuckin good!"

Izuku stripped off his shirt and then tugged off the T-shirt he wore underneath, exposing his bite-mark-covered torso. A few were fairly recent, but most of the ones from their celebration after the finals had healed. There were two on either shoulder, one on his upper pectoral, a few along his ribs, and when he stripped off his pants, he exposed a couple running along his thighs.

Kaminari whistled and slapped a hand on Izuku's shoulder, "damn, Midoriya! Did you piss off an angry vampire?"

Izuku flared red as the boys gathered around him and examined his body.

Kirishima looked Izuku over, "Bites aside, you're pretty jacked too, aren't you, Midoriya? What's your secret?"

Izuku flushed at the attention, "Uh, I do regular weight training almost every day, a-and I follow a diet that's heavy on carbs and light on processed foods. Plus, Himiko k-kicks my ass a lot for combat training."

Sero grimaced, "I bet that isn't fun. I saw the way she fought Midnight during our exam. She was really good, but it also looked really painful for Midnight. It looked like she was about to bite her throat out at the end when I started to come back around. Is that where all those came from? Training?"

Izuku went even redder, and he averted his gaze, "N-not exactly. H-Himiko's quirk gives her a fixation on blood, s-so I give her mine so she d-doesn't have to worry about it."

Aoyama cocked his head to the side with an odd expression on his face, "My, how the two of you seem to sparkle for one another!"

Izuku looked at him confusedly, "Thank… you? I think?"

Izuku turned to remove his underwear when a cold hand touched his back, sending jagged shards of cold shooting up his spine. When he turned around, he found Todoroki. "W-what?"

Todoroki gestured with his chin at the spot he'd touched on Izuku's back, "Where did you get that scar across your back? It looks painful."

Izuku sighed, "Ah, that. It was during the attack at U.S.J. Nomu slammed me against the ground a couple of times, and it tore my back open."

Kirishima leaned forward to get a better look, "now that's a manly scar right there."

Kaminari looked Izuku over and frowned, "what about that one?"

His finger pointed at a very faded but prominent burn scar in the middle of Izuku's chest. The skin was pale and discolored, the skin slightly raised in a softball-sized patch.

His eyes darted over to Kacchan, and his eyes met the other boys for a fraction before he jerked his eyes away, "I… don't remember."

Kacchan glared down at the towel in his hand and stepped past everyone into the open-air bath, "quit fucking around and get in, you assholes."

It seemed everyone's curiosity about Izuku's wounds had ebbed, and he could finally sigh in relief as they all followed Kacchan, 'That was close.'

It wasn't like he particularly wanted to protect Kacchan; he was the one who had given him the scar, after all. However, he also didn't want everyone to know about his shameful past. Most people would sympathize with the fact that he had been bullied most of his life, but he didn't want anyone knowing about that. It was a huge source of his own self-hatred that he'd let it go on so long.

Honestly, he would rather leave that portion of his life where it belonged, in the past. But with Kacchan around, that would always be difficult.

Izuku sighed and walked into the bath.

Izuku stepped out of the bathhouse changing room, his hair damp and cold in the summer air but feeling refreshed after losing all the built-up grime of the day. He wore a faded blue, yellow, and red All Might hoodie with a pair of workout shorts as he walked toward the boys' sleeping area.

Before he reached the stairs, he caught sight of Kota and hurried up to the boy, keeping his groin a safe distance away, "Uh, sorry to bother you, Kota, but I wanted to apologize if I'd made you angry in any way."

The boy glared up at him and just turned away angrily, "Just get lost if you don't wanna get punched in the nads again."

Izuku cringed and covered his groin protectively, "r-right, sorry."

"Don't think too poorly of him," Mandalay smiled apologetically at Izuku and then frowned. "He doesn't like heroes all that much, and I think seeing you with that girlfriend of yours made him even angrier."

"He… seems to not like heroes very much. I mean, I've been hearing more and more recently that people aren't very fond of heroes today, but I feel like it's strange for a boy his age to feel that way." Izuku bit his lip and watched the boy as he walked away, "I don't know if it's my place to ask, but why is that?"

"Right, well, I'm sure you've noticed a lot of people in society don't like how heroes handle things or don't think very highly of them. If he had been raised normally, he might have looked up to heroes just like any other kid."

"Raised… normally?"

"Kota's parents were Mandalay's cousins," Pixie-Bob said, handing Mandalay a cup of tea. "They were heroes, and they died in the line of duty fighting a villain two years ago.

Mandalay sipped on the tea and frowned, "when his parents died, people kept praising them for dying to protect others, but for a kid that young, he couldn't understand that. All he knew was that his parents left him, so I'm guessing that when he looks at you and Toga-san, he's reminded acutely of that."

Izuku turned his gaze to the ground, 'there it is again. That same idea of putting everything on just a few heroes' shoulders and how it's affected yet another person for the worse.'

He didn't know if the current system was right, but he was getting more and more examples of just how wrong it could be. That didn't mean he agreed with Shigaraki's insane idea of tearing society down and letting chaos break out into the streets. It definitely didn't mean he agreed with Stain's idea of culling unworthy heroes, either. If anything, it made him wish for a society where everyone would work together to make the future a better place, not just a select few who had the drive to; after all, everyone lived in society, not just heroes. The average person needed to know when to stand up and not to just sit by waiting for someone else to get the job done.

'But then what about all the regulations and laws around unlicensed quirk usage? And what about when people get hurt unnecessarily when quirks are used improperly during that usage?'

He sighed, furrowing his brow down at the ground as he ran a frustrated hand through his hair.

Mandalay put a comforting hand on Izuku's shoulder, "You don't have to solve Kota's problems; you're just a kid, too, after all."

Izuku just glared down at the ground all the harder, "Right."

He turned away and walked up the stairs, heading for the boy's sleeping area, 'I got so used to being able to solve my problems by hitting stuff, and now I'm at a loss… god, I'm turning into Kacchan.'

A pair of delicate but calloused hands fell over his eyes, "guess who!"

Izuku laughed lightly and pulled the hands away, "Good one, Himi-chan. I still want to know how the heck you move so silently."

Himiko giggled and sauntered in front of him, her hands clasped behind her back and a glowing smile on her face. She wore a white T-shirt with a bleeding heart graphic on the front and a pair of red athletic shorts. "Thaaaaaaat's a secret~!"

He smiled fondly at her but frowned after a second, "Do you… think Eri would hate heroes if we died protecting people?"

She blinked owlishly at him, "Where'd that come from?"

Izuku told her what Mandalay and Pixie-Bob had about Kota's parents.

Himiko leaned against the wall, looking down at her feet thoughtfully. Izuku watched her, slightly enjoying getting to see the girl with her hair down for a change as she did, "I… don't know if Eri would hate heroes, but at the very least, I know she would be devastated. I can tell she's had a rough childhood, and that's the pot calling the kettle black, but it doesn't make it any less true. I can see why you're so hung up on this; you've been so twisted up about everything that's happened, and after seeing how flawed this system is, I can't blame you for being frustrated. But you can't fix everything, Izu. Sometimes bad stuff happens, and more often than not, there's nothing anyone can do about it whether or not they're a hero."

Izuku shook his head and leaned against the wall with her, taking her hand in his and studying it. "I at least want to make a world where Eri can live happily without needing to worry about anything happening to her or the people she cares about." He turned to smile fondly at Himiko and brought her hand up so he could kiss her knuckles. "And I want you to be able to live however you want without anyone telling you it's wrong or strange."

Himiko cupped his cheek and kissed him tenderly on the lips. She pulled away and smiled, "You're sweet, naive, but sweet."

He sighed and nodded, "Yeah, yeah. That's me, Mr. Naive. Now, you should head back down; the girl's room is on the first floor." She gave him a look that he knew all too well, "Himiko, no! We're in a camp surrounded by our classmates and a ton of adults; there is no possible way we co—"

Her mouth crashed into his; her soft pink lips moved in a steady rhythm, making him groan lightly. Her tongue traced along his lips and snaked into his mouth; she backed him into the wall, her hands slamming next to either side of his head as she pressed into him.

Izuku resisted as long as he could, but Himiko's fresh, clean scent filled his senses, and the tickle of her long hair against his cheeks made him shudder. The girl was usually very forward, but this was on a different level and in a very dangerous place. They were just openly making out in the middle of the hall where anyone could find them, and most embarrassing of all, he was sure it would look exactly like Himiko was the one taking charge.

It was true, but that wouldn't make it any less embarrassing for people to know.

Her hand slid along the wall, tangled in his hair, and tugged his head back so that she could deepen the kiss. Her other hand roamed over his chest, feeling his torso through his hoodie, making him shiver as her fingers traced patterns into the material.

Finally, she pulled away, and Izuku was left panting up at her; his knees had slightly buckled, and he'd slid down the wall. His cheeks were flushed, and a thin line of saliva linked them. Himiko smiled down at him, her fanged grin wide and filled with hunger, "You look so cute when you're out of breath, Izu. It makes me want to tease you more.~"

Her hand slid under his hoodie, her fingers traced up along his toned stomach, and then circled around one of his nipples.

Izuku jumped at the contact, a small gasp escaping his lips as she pinched lightly, "A-ah! H-Himiko, t-that feels weird."

Her feral grin seemed to spread even further if that was at all possible, and she leaned down to suck lightly on his neck right below his ear, "I didn't hear you say you hated it."

His mouth stayed clamped firmly shut; he knew if he opened his mouth even a fraction, he'd make another noise, and this was dangerous enough already.

Himiko studied him for a second, staring down curiously, at least, until their eyes met, and she pressed her knee into his groin. He jolted, and his hands shot up to cover his mouth as she moved her leg in slow circles up against him.

She did that for a solid minute, seemingly enjoying just watching his reactions as his chest heaved and his eyes filled with tears of embarrassment and frustration.

'This feels good, but why is she just…'

Izuku looked down, wishing she would touch him with her hands, but just as he removed his hands from his mouth to ask for just that, she abruptly spun and left. She shot him a huge grin as she disappeared down the stairs.

Iida came from around the corner leading to the blue room and chopped his hand at Izuku, "Ah, there you are, Midoriya! We were all wondering where you were—"

Izuku sank down to the floor, covering his face with his hands, "Please… kill me."

"Wha—?! Midoriya?!"

Himiko yawned sleepily and stretched her back out; the satisfying pop her back gave made her mewl in pleasure as the tension left her. Waking up at five in the morning wasn't exactly new to her, but it had been a while since she'd needed to. None of the others looked particularly like morning people either, though.

Izu looked the worst out of all of them; he had heavy bags under his eyes, his shoulders were full of tension, and she could tell he was having some intense muscle cramps. Maybe it hadn't been the nicest thing to leave the poor boy high and dry like she had, but it was more his fault because he'd been acting so sexy all day.

Jumping around, kicking dirt monsters apart, grabbing her around the waist and throwing her, and the ways his muscles had flexed as he fought…

Himiko shook her head and wiped away a line of drool, 'No! Don't jump Izu's bones! Everyone is right here.'

Mr. Ex-Mummy stepped forward, his usually dead tired expression in place as he looked at them all, "This is where the real training camp begins. Ideally, you'll all come out of this stronger. Strong enough to acquire your provision licenses. As some of you know, and some more than others," he shot Izuku and Himiko a look, "there's a force of villains growing and it seems like they're hellbent on targeting some or all of you students. Through this training, you'll be prepared to face them at least. Bakugo!" Aizawa threw the blond asshole a ball, "you know what to do with this, right?"

Himiko rolled her eyes as the blond dickhead's face broke out into a feral grin, pulled back into a baseball pitch, and sent the ball flying with an explosion, "GO TO HELL!!!!!"

Himiko watched the ball soar off into the distance. It wasn't a bad throw, all things considered, but as Aizawa showed everyone the score, they all seemed disappointed for some reason.

"Seven hundred and nine point six meters. That's only a four-point four increase since your throw at the beginning of the year. It's understandable; so far, we've only focused on honing your technique, but during the camp, we'll be pushing you past your limits." Aizawa smiled evilly at them all, "This'll be so harsh. You'll wish you were dead, so do your best to stay alive."

Himiko slowly regretted becoming a student at U.A. Her skin felt like it was sloughing off with every transformation. Her body cycled between Izu and herself so fast she was growing dizzy, and she was quickly running through her supply of his blood, which she usually kept in reserve these days.

Aizawa had said they would be pushing their quirks, but going in and out of a transformation really made her body ache as it grew and stretched to fill out the new shape. The puddle of discarded goo at her feet after she released each transformation was slowly sinking into her shoes, and the sensation made her shudder.

She looked over at Izu through the flood of goop she kept creating to transform and expelling to turn back.

He looked just as miserable; his body was covered in the green electricity of One for All, his muscles seemed to squirm in protest under his skin, and he barely avoided a punch from Tiger, the buffest out of all the Wild, Wild Pussycats. His training was a bit more straightforward than hers; he was meant to use just enough of his quirk so that it put a strain on his body that his regular wattage wouldn't normally do, and when he finally got used to it he would be forced to go up another level.

A particularly painful kick collided with his face, sending him reeling to the ground; One for All dissipated, and he slumped.

Himiko winced and looked away. Watching Izu get the crap beat out of him wasn't fun when she wasn't the one doing it, and in fact, it made her want to run over there and stab that stupid buff guy.

"Toga, switch to timed transformation training." Ragdoll, the member of the Pussycats with green hair and yellow eyes, looked at the muck gathered at her feet, "and step away from that."

Himiko sighed and transformed into Izu. The timed training aimed to lengthen the time she could transform into somebody with the smallest amount of blood possible. So now, all she had to do was hold the transformation as long as possible.

She sauntered over to Izu on the ground and crouched beside his head. Her voice was a perfect copy of his. "Are you okay, Izu?"

He jerked at hearing his own voice but relaxed when he looked up and saw it was Himiko, "I… feel like… my arms are… gonna rip off!"

Himiko tilted her head to the side and grinned wide with his face, "Want a kiss?"

Izu grimaced and thought about that, "I… feel like that… would be weird on so many levels… with you looking like me."

She shrugged and rested her hand on her chin. "You say that, but some people would pay good money for the opportunity."

He grimaced again, "Darn, and here I am flat broke."

Himiko chuckled and leaned down beside his ear, "I could always do a partial transformation and just use some of your body for us to have fun with. I bet you'd be all cute squirming while I stick my—"

Izu shot up from the ground, all his vigor returning, "ya know what?! I think I'm actually all better now, yes, sir! No muscle pain for me!"

He ran back over to throw a kick at Tiger and was promptly slammed in the gut by a fist that sent him skidding right back to the ground. He immediately shot back up to his feet and started fighting again.

Himiko giggled. The sound was foreign with Izu's voice, but she stood to her feet and strolled around the field, absently grumbling to herself, "Aww, and here I was hoping he'd let me! Some guys pay good money for that, too."

Izuku sat awake and sleepless in the boy's room for the second night in a row. Everyone was fast asleep, and almost none of them were in their futons properly like he was, not that it did him any good. The only one who was actually in their futons was Iida, but he looked far from relaxed. In fact, he looked like he was standing at attention just horizontally instead of vertically.

Just like the night before, his sleep was held off by a mixture of things. One large one was Himiko and her nonstop flirting when they were able to speak, the entire situation with Kota, and his own dreams.

For the first problem, there were really only two solutions; one involved finding Himiko when they had free time, which they never did, and doing some very naughty things. The other involved himself, a bottle of lotion, and a very overactive imagination, but that was also out of the question. He was almost never alone; the only time he was was in the bathroom, and he didn't think he could get away with anything with so many people going in and out. Plus, even if he didn't have time to meet up with Himiko after that conversation they'd had earlier, he was more than terrified that any extracurricular activities would be the end of him in more ways than one.

'If she wants to do stuff like that, I won't say no, but I have no idea how much I'd really like that. But doing it while she looks completely like me is way out of the question.' He shuddered thinking about that and desperately turned his mind to anything else, 'Kota!'

He'd tried talking with the boy a few times, but all he ever got was glares and a lot of near misses when it came to the boy almost hitting him where the sun didn't shine again. Izuku knew just how hard the small boy could hit, so he wasn't exactly in a rush to get hit. He had brought the boy some of the food their class had made tonight, and he'd even confided in the boy in a roundabout way about how much he had tried to activate his quirk when he was a child despite knowing he was quirkless. Ultimately, he had tried convincing the boy that the point of his story meant that denying who you were would only end up hurting yourself in the end and that maybe his parent's deaths had been tragic, but hating the world wouldn't make him any happier.

Izuki shook his head and turned to his other problem. Last night, he had crashed into his futon, and while it had taken him a while to get to sleep, he had eventually managed it. But he had had that same dream the day they'd finished their exam.

For a few weeks after he'd had it, the dream hadn't come to him, so he'd almost managed to put it out of his mind, but of course, it couldn't be that simple; nothing in his life ever was.

He didn't know how he knew, but there was a creeping certainty that he would definitely have that dream if he slept right now. For some reason, his body seemed to be resisting the pull of sleep on its own, like even his subconscious didn't want to experience the spine-chilling grip of terror that always accompanied it.

Izuku pulled his legs to his chest and rested his cheek on his knee, 'I wish All Might was here, even if I haven't talked to him since the exam.'

A pang of guilt lanced through his chest as he thought about his mentor and the way they had left things. Maybe All Might hadn't handled the whole U.S.J. thing very well, but he was still, above everything else, the person who had believed in him alongside Himiko. That may not have been the case for him when they'd first met, like with Izuku and Himiko, but ever since he'd accepted Izuku as his successor, hadn't he believed in him without a second's hesitation after that?

Izuku nodded, 'Himiko might not be happy I'm forgiving him so easily, but people make mistakes. And isn't that exactly what All Might was? Below it all, he isn't just the Symbol of Peace; he's also a person.'

He sighed and settled into his futon, resigning himself to having more nightmares. Restless sleep was a notch better than no sleep, after all.

At least he could look forward to the event the Wild, Wild Pussycats had prepared for them once tomorrow's training was done. Maybe he and Himiko could use it as an excuse to unwind a bit.

A/N: Man, I'm like… feeling genuinely sorry for what I'm about to put these poor kids through in the coming chapters T_T, but I have so much material already lined up and ready to go. This is the curse of an author getting really attached to their characters as they get them further and further from their canon counterparts.

Hope you guys enjoyed this chapter before shit hits the fan.