Momo frowned even as she created some more rope to tie up the criminals her and Midnight had taken down. "This work?"

"Boring!" Midnight sang. She still used it but Momo sighed and wracked her brain to figure out what else she could do.

It was the final night of their internships but it seemed like she still had so much to learn still.

The internship had been nothing like she had expected. Oh, they had patrolled and Midnight had taught her all sorts of wonderful tricks and trips for stealth that, honestly, Momo needed to learn. With her deciding to change her whole theme to 'ninja' she had to learn how to sneak about and get in and out of places quick. How to pick locks. How to take out cameras and security lights. How to quickly make her way up to locations that were out of sight of the criminals but would give her the perfect view of what they were doing.

They had also worked on her quirk and how to… well, for lack of a better word… manipulate it better. Something people didn't realize was that due to the nature of her quirk Momo was able to manipulate just where here fat went to throughout her body. It wasn't the most pretty of things to watch but she could send it streaming through her body. Even her parents and trainers hadn't known about that feature of her quick because she feared what they would do if they learned it. Not be upset… rather she knew they'd be pleased. They had been pressing her to be the "right shape" for a heroine. They were pleased with her height but felt that her measurements needed to be "perfect" in order for her to be the proper hero. Already they were suggesting that during her break from school she go in for breast implants to bring her up to a half cup size larger. They also wanted glut implants, to have some lipo on her lips… everything to get her to the "right figure".

Momo knew that if they learned she could manipulate her fat they would have her constantly changing her shape to fit whatever they needed. Since her skin could stretch and contract with the movement of her fat so that she never had any stretch marks or the like they would be able to have her manipulate her body in a thousand different ways. She had suffered nightmares of her parents having her expand her feet because "foot fetishes are in" then making her breasts so big that she needed a wheelbarrow to get around, and then inflating her rear…

Midnight though, upon learning the truth, both in terms of her quirk and her fears, had agreed that until she was a fully licensed hero and no longer under her parents' thumb she needed to keep her quirk's true abilities a secret. But that hadn't meant that she couldn't experiment with it. When pressed on it she had admitted that her breast size was FAR too big for her tastes and she would much prefer a modest B cup. Midnight had told her to pick what made her feel comfortable and even had her personal support staff make Momo a top that would make it appear as if her breasts were still rather large when in reality they were much smaller.

The first time she'd dared to go down to an A cup and found that she could leap about without her chest screaming in agony she'd broken down in tears. She hadn't felt that free since puberty.

That had led to a lot of experimenting when it came to her body. Tripling the amount of fat in the soles of her feet allowed her to jump from higher points and not feel the impact. Shifting her breast fat to her stomach allowed her to take punches better. Momo had brought up that the brain was technically fat and at once Midnight had decided to put in a call to Nedzu once they were back at UA, for she wanted him to help design a safe experiment that would allow them to test if Momo could increase her intelligence through the process.

"Come on, you can do better than that!" Midnight teased, bringing Momo out of her thoughts. "That rope doesn't have the raw daring appeal that we both know you can produce!" She snapped her own whip and flashed a saucy grin at her. "Come now… show me what dark desires lie in your heart."

"… I've heard you read fairy tales to your daughter and it still weirds me out to hear you switch from that to this."

"It's a gift. One I plan to teach her. Oh… with her papa's ability to talk circles around anyone she is going to be the most dangerous hero when it comes to gab the world has ever seen!" Midnight laughed. "Now come on… give me something spectacular!"

Momo though frowned. "You told me to be myself. That this entire week was about me embracing who I actually was and not who the world wanted me to be." She held up the rope. "This is me. Practical. No flash. No flare. Not pink and sparkly or with a thousand lights or so gaudy it would blind you. This… this simple rope. This is me."

Midnight… smiled.

"Finally," she said gently, walking over and placing her hand on Momo's shoulder. "And never forget there is nothing wrong with any of those things. The practical. The exciting. The daring. The droll. The dark. The light. All of them are wonderful choices… so long as they are YOU."

Momo slowly nodded at that. She would keep that in her heart. She promised herself that.

But… she also promised herself that maybe it wouldn't hurt to be a bit more… daring.

That girl from the Support Class, Mei? She had mentioned a few ideas of projects they could work on together and looked to be someone that wouldn't blink if Momo changed her style…

~MC~MC~MC~

Katsuki grunted as he fell to the ground. "What was that?"

"Nubian Flow Fighting," Star Might stated.

"I've never heard of it."

"A lost art, I admit. After… well, some villains invaded my home and tried to take it over. We were too peaceful, relying on heroes to save us instead of trying to save ourselves. I decided after that to learn how to defend myself. I refused to be helpless ever again."

His surprise must have shown on his face because Star Might laughed.

"You think I was a powerhouse when I was a child?" she asked. "No… I had to learn how to fight."

Katsuki got up and rolled his shoulders. "That was impressive."

"Its based on the rivers of my home," Star Might stated. "They are mighty ones that weave about but still get to where they need to go. Nubian Flow Fighting is all about using your momentum. When you hit me with that last punch rather than try and stand against it I moved with it. That not only lessened the impact but it also allowed me to shift and take you by surprise."

Katsuki nodded at that. While he wanted to believe that he could power through any attack and that no one would ever be able to touch him he also knew that wasn't always the case. That someone would get a lucky shot in.

'Shit Horns certainly did,' he thought darkly before pushing that thought from his mind. Shit Horns didn't matter… the rest of the fucking Extras didn't matter. All that mattered was himself. So long as he kept pushing himself he would be perfectly fine.

He'd be fine.

"I know you're wondering why I had you with the Black Suits," Star Might said, never once dropping for her defensive stance. That was one thing he liked about All Might's daughter: She didn't stop and yak. Sure, she would talk his ear off at times but she was also always on the move. Doing several different things at once. The day before they had been working on a better containment unit for his sweat while also discussing some of the outreach programs she was setting up; not the namby-pamby therapy sessions that one heard about to try and get criminals (not villains, criminals… there was difference and Star Might had stressed that hard) to open up and see the light. No… she had said that people turned to crime many times because they had nowhere else to go so if you gave them a place to go they would push aside those desires to become criminals. Katsuki wasn't a hundred percent sold on it but she'd ended up making some good points, referencing his own ability to train and how, thanks to his parents providing food and shelter for him, he didn't need to get a job and thus COULD focus on being a hero.

But what had made him actually listen to her was that they kept working. They didn't stop what they were doing just because she wanted to ramble on. It was something Deku had never gotten. The annoying waste of space just DIDN'T SHUT UP… and when he did get on a ramble he always stopped whatever they were doing. They'd play video games and he'd stop in the middle of a fight and lose them a match. They'd be walking to the train station and he'd suddenly have to STOP RIGHT THERE… and they'd miss the train because he couldn't stop himself for blathering on.

'Stop thinking about fucking Deku,' he thought to himself before saying, "Sure you had your reasons."

"Of course I do," she said. "Just curious what YOU think my reasons are."

"Teach me that hero work isn't all flash? That we shouldn't lose sight of saving people?" he shrugged.

"Good guesses." And suddenly she went on the attack, startling him with how quick she was. He knew she was powerful but she wasn't trying to overwhelm him with her strength. No, she was coming at him just with her speed and it shocked him that for a woman so big was so fast. Star Might easily towered over him and looked like she should lumber about but she was insanely nimble on her feet. She was at his side and he had to fight the urge to use his quirk to avoid her strike. "But not quite it." He moved to try and elbow her in the face but she'd already slid around him, grabbing onto his arm and actually using his strike to help propel her right into him. Her body hit him like a speeding car and Katsuki was down on the mat, gasping. "The Black Suits never get an ounce of fame. They aren't interviewed by the papers or appear on late night talk shows or get their own breakfast cereals." She suddenly was on him and Katsuki's eyes nearly popped out of his skull when she wrapped him in a submission hold.

The same one Shit Horns had used on him.

"Yesterday you saved more people than most heroes in the Top 50 did. They will scream and screech how utterly amazing and wonderful they are but that won't change the fact that, in the end, all they did is screech and scream. 'He who must say, "I am the king" is no king'. And any hero… any true hero… who needs validation from others is no true hero. All Might doesn't go out and demand everyone's attention. He gets it just being himself. That's why the likes of Endeavor have no hope of ever being Number 1."

She let him go and he rolled onto his back. But he made no move to actually get up.

"You need to decide… what kind of hero are you. Really. Because the young man that ranted at Ahsoka Tano was not the same man who saved so many lives last night."

And with that she left the training room.

~MC~MC~MC~

Tenya winced as Anakin stuck the rag in his exhaust ports. "You okay?" he asked. "I thought you said this didn't actually hurt you."

"Not the engine," Tenya informed him. "I just sat wrong." He had pulled… well, he had pulled a LOT of muscles the night before getting as many people out of Hosa as possible and even after a long night (day?) sleep they were still hurting him.

Anakin smirk.

"What?"

"A week ago you would have leapt up, bowed to me, begged for forgiveness, and called me Skywalker. You've come a long way, Tenya."

The young man shifted uneasily at that. "I… well… that is-"

"Hey, it's a good thing. You know why Obi Wan suggested you come to me?"

"Your mechanical skill," Tenya said at once. "Already you have helped me gain so much more speed." He was very eager to try his hand out… hand out? He truly hated metaphors sometimes… with the new modifications that had been done to his engines. Nothing major… just Anakin increasing their output and abilities. He could already tell that they were converting food into fuel at a better rate and the smoke that came from them was far cleaner too. Anakin had come up with ideas for his diet that would help and already he was seeing benefits to it all.

But Anakin shook his head, much to Tenya's surprise. "Nope. That's a benefit but not the reason." He leaned back in his chair. "I was a lot like you, Tenya, when I was your age."

"You were?"

Anakin laughed. "Oh yeah. I was a little terror and honestly I'm surprised Obi Wan hasn't already gone gray thanks to some of the stuff I used to pull. Its weird to think about now, being past it all, but…" He let out a bemused sigh that was also, in Tenya's opinion, tinged with melancholy. "When I was a kid my mom had a… boss… who basically got to tell both of us all we had to do. We-" His jaw worked a bit and Tenya knew that Anakin wanted to say one thing but also didn't want to say it. So he was trying to pretty it up, as Tensei would say after a hard day of patrolling. Sometimes Tenya was the only person he could talk to about those things but his brother also knew that some stories weren't meant for "little ears" so he'd try and censor them.

Sometimes he wondered if censoring the tales was less for his sake and more for his brother's.

It was why he had never pressed him on it.

"-we lived in an apartment he owned and my mom was desperate to keep him happy. I worked at his shop too so I had to obey his rules. He… he wasn't a bad boss. I would never work for him again and last I saw him it was all I could do not to punch him in his smug face… but there were far worse bosses out there. Anyway, he had all these rules but I never minded them. They were the only ones I knew and I also understood that if I broke them it would cause trouble for me and my mom so I never did. And I didn't mind because honestly there was never really a time I felt the rules were out of line. I knew others who had stricter rules so I just accepted them.

"Then I came to live with Obi Wan and everything changed. He was as strict as Watto but he handled it differently. No threats just conversations and orders to go to my room or extra home work. And the rules were all about my quirk and how to use it, you know? Watto's rules were all about what he wanted just for himself while Obi Wan's were all about how to make sure I was safe and protected as I used my quirk. To learn to master it so it wouldn't hurt myself and others. Otherwise I had a lot more freedom.

"But… because I didn't fear Obi Wan… I rebelled against him. I pushed the boundaries every chance I could. Sneaking out, getting in trouble, doing the exact opposite of what he wanted. I was a terror. No… that's not right. I was a little shit. That's what I was. A little shit with a chip on his shoulder. I didn't care what Obi Wan said so I was willing to do what I wanted and when he punished me I got mad and made it out like he was the one at fault for me breaking the rules." He shook his head. "I was horrible to him and I am thankful that he has so much patience not to give up on me."

Tenya though frowned. "Sir… I don't see how that is like me at all." He shifted a bit, a touch out of nervousness and a touch out of trying to ease his strained muscles. He opened his mouth to tell Anakin how he always followed the rules… in fact he LOVED the rules and thought that more people should follow them. That rules were the backbone of their society and it was only by listening to them and understanding them that one would be able to live a long and happy life.

He ignored the little voice that whispered to him the fears that one day he was going to snap because of his stubbornness and it would going to end badly for everyone.

"Oh really?" Anakin asked, bemused. "So when Tensei tells you to stop working on homework and relax you do that?"

Tenya flinched as if he had been struck by Anakin's metal hand.

"What about that time the two of you were at the bank and even though no one was in line you demanded he go through the velvet rope maze and when he didn't you complained the entire walk back to your house?"

"How… I-"

"I talked with Tensei all about you. He told a ton of stories. Like how he once told you that he wanted you to take a nap because he could tell you were tired but you refused and he found you an hour later still working out and locked the fitness room so you couldn't get back in. You went on a rather long rant about sticking to your schedule, if I remember…"

Tenya stared at Anakin in shock. "My… Tensei had no right to tell you any of this!" His threw his hands out wide. "This was private information!"

"And the stuff Aizawa told me about you?" Anakin asked. "About how you train, incidents in class? Or how about when Obi Wan showed me footage of your Hero Classes and some of the problems you've had there working with your classmates."

"That… that is different," Tenya complained. "That is a teacher providing a hero information to better help aid in my development."

"And your brother, who has been assisting you since your quirk came in, isn't a teacher?" Anakin pressed.

Tenya snapped his jaw shut, lips pressed in a firm line.

"You and I are the same, Tenya, even if our rebellions are different. We get hyper focused on the small things and blow them up so they become far more important than they actually are. We look at our failures and refuse to let them go, seeing them as colossal blows. And we only push back against those we care about because they are the only ones we trust. The only ones we know won't abandon us when we push back. Even though they should be the ones we respect the most and want to see happy."

That made Tenya swallow.

Anakin looked right at Tenya. "I've given you the tools to fight those urges. To not give into your natural reactions. And… maybe given you a chance to correct course far sooner than I did."

After that the two of them lapsed into silence, working on their own little projects. Anakin helped Tenya get his engines cleaned and then handed off a box of broken junk so Tenya could do what he wanted with it. He began to strip them, removing the screws and the wiring, so that they could be used for other projects. Anakin focused on the blender they had been working on because "the toaster wants a girlfriend", whatever that meant.

Eventually Anakin got up and said he was going to get a bite to eat but Tenya had said he wanted to clean up his work area first. His mentor had merely nodded his head and told him not to take too long before leaving.

Tenya did clean up… and then he began to pace.

'Is that what I do?' he thought to himself as he began to wander around the workshop. 'Do I view Tensei as not worthy of the same respect as my teachers? He… he is my parent. He raised me. He deserves all the respect that I can give him. Yet he is also the one I am most willing to disobey. I must correct that. I must begin listening to him… even when his ideas go against the clear structure we have.'

At once Tenya closed his eyes.

He knew that wasn't going to happen.

'Tensei and I… we are so different. And I know that worries him. Or at least it worries him that I can't let go like he does. So he'll keep pushing me to relax and stop pushing myself… and I'll just keep fighting back.' He shook his head, idly looking about the different cabinets and crates that Anakin had littered about his workshop. There was no rhyme or reason to the place, at least as far as he could see, but his mentor had been able to find whatever he wanted rather quickly. 'I wish that I could just… relax like so many others do. But I find myself becoming more nervous when I am doing nothing. It is as if every second I spend not doing what I feel needs to be done becomes a great weight, pressing down on me and demanding that I remember that I am losing out on valuable time.'

Time.

Tenya was well aware how precious Time was.

He had understood that the first time he'd remembered his parents wasting a visit to take calls on their phones, utterly ignoring him as he'd tried to spend time with them. He remembered the news footage of heroes that had failed to save civilians because they were just a bit too slow. He remembered the mistakes he'd made when doing his first exam for UA and how that had cost him a recommendation slot.

Time was important. One only got so much of it.

'After what happened with Stain I thought Tensei would double up his training, so he could make sure that he was never caught off guard like that again. But instead he wanted to go to the park and play football. I… I just don't understand it. He said he wanted to revel in being alive but how can you revel when you know that you are living on borrowed time and-'

Tenya's thoughts came to a halt as he stopped by a long locked case, roughly the size of a small steamer trunk. Or rather a case that was SUPPOSED to be locked. But Anakin had clearly closed it in a hurry and hadn't managed to lock it… or tuck away everything properly, because there was a bit of black fabric sticking out of it.

Later on he wouldn't be able to explain why he opened the case. It was a violation of privacy and something he would have normally never done. Yet he still found himself slowly reaching out, tugging on the cloth as he opened the large case.

Within sat a helmet he was very familiar with, even if he hadn't ever seen it himself. But the description his brother had given of the garb his savor had worn, the one that had ensured that Stain didn't kill him, had been burned into Tenya's brain. He would recognize it anywhere.

Anakin used a glowing sword.

Tensei's savior had too.

Both had been skilled fighters.

The vigilante costume had been VERY advanced.

Anakin was an amazing inventor.

Everything came crashing down and Tenya quickly shut the case.

Anakin… was Vader.

Anakin… had saved Tensei's life.

And Tenya had no idea what to do with that information.