6

"Quirkless?" She asked both shocked and confused. 

"Yeah, I've had my quirk for less than a year now" I nodded before adding, "I am what people call a late bloomer. I had the potential to have a quirk but I was quirkless until I almost died. You saw how for me the device attacked my head straight away and not my feet like Kacchan. Well the villain had dropped down on me when I was alone. I heard some of what he said but I passed out before All Might even arrived."

"I woke up to find the villain in custody and All Might standing nearby to make sure that I would wake up. I thought for sure I was going to die." I felt my face tightening at the memories I have been pushing down for far too long but I kept smiling anyway. I saw Todoroki raise his hand but he kept his eyes on me before he finally looked at All Might who gave the go ahead to speak.

"Why did you two react so differently to being held hostage? It was almost the same with very little differences but when he," he motioned to Kacchan before continuing, "was attacked he was trying to do what looked like him swimming away. But you kind of dropped, as if you could break their hold or knock them off balance. I don't understand."

"Young Yagi, you don't have to answer that," All Might quickly spoke up before I could answer.

"It's okay All Might, I'm not the same as I was before," I smiled at him and I meant it too but Kacchan covered my mouth with his hand stopping me anyway.

"Why are you all badgering Deku? He wasn't the only one held hostage and yet you seem more comfortable attacking him as if he hasn't already gone through enough? Do you actually want to be heroes?" Kacchan snapped at them leaving his hand on my mouth but he wasn't holding my mouth shut and his hand was only at the top of my lips so there was plenty of space to breathe through my nose too.

"You can answer my question," Todoroki looked at him blankly not actually caring which one of us answered while everyone else in the room were fidgeting at the way Kacchan worded that, looking guilty.

"The answer is simple, I wasn't used to being attacked. I can lash out and explode really fucking easy but I was not used to being targeted by anything but people's flattery at the time. Deku however is. He is used to getting away from people who are simply bored with nothing to do but torment him. He knows how to break someone's hold when they are strangling him and how to get away when someone is flying in the air trying to pick him up. He can correctly figure out which direction someone is trying to spit acid at him from and he can dodge out of the way of sporadic explosions without getting hurt. Those are all things I couldn't do. I have never had to do and if I didn't want to be a hero I might not ever have to do." Kacchan narrowed his eyes ready to defend himself but no one asked about the explosions.

I took Kacchan's hand away from my mouth before adding, "Like I said, I was still quirkless at the time. I had to be careful to not get sent to the emergency room any day of the week and I already feared death. The hostage attack kind of took that from me though which is one of the reasons why All Might has been working with me pretty much since then. Someone who doesn't fear death isn't likely to live for long and it's hard to cope sometimes."

Kacchan took over, "Where someone like me who was always told that I'm the best and I'm SO powerful, was knocked the fuck back down to earth when I realized that I could actually die. Without being able to do anything at all. It wasn't until Deku came running that I even had a prayer of surviving, you all saw the video. None of the fucking heroes there did a fucking thing at all to help me. They just kept people away while they filmed it, me dying was entertainment to them." Kacchan was fuming again so I think I should get back on track with the actual question.

"That's why we reacted differently. We are different people with very different experiences," I turned my attention to All Might before asking. "Can we go now? I think we are at our limit."

All Might gave a sad smile before agreeing, "Five minutes, limbs stay attached and no killing each other." I smiled in thanks before pulling Kacchan back to the gym and we ran for the door ready to let go of some of our pent up frustrations. Once the door closed behind us we saw the clock switch over to a five minute timer and we turned to each other and I coated myself in my quirk before throwing a punch at him, one that a lot of air pressure followed so even though he dodged by jumping up he was thrown into the air and he had to use his explosions to both fight back and keep himself safe.

"Come back here you fucking Nerd," he yelled but a large smile was on his face as we sparred, I'm sure it was a big show for them all to see and I can only guess at their thoughts but it wasn't long that I had to do a back flip just to get out of the way of one of his explosions in time. I don't know when we started laughing but by the time the buzzer sounded, letting us know our five minutes were over, we were both laughing hard enough I had to hold my side so that I didn't fall apart.

We sat there just breathing and laughing long enough that the pain in my side stopped. I'm not looking forward to the looks of pity but this would prevent several instances that things were awkward, or difficult in general because no one knows about my quirk and with any luck at all it will stay that way. I don't want to become a tool of the government again.

I want to keep my freedom.

"Come on Nerd," Kacchan huffed before nudging my shoulder towards the exit. "Time to deal with their fucking pity bullshit."

"Don't be like that, they'll be our friends soon," I reminded him and I saw him roll his eyes.

"Deku, we changed a lot of shit and it's only been a few months. I think things will be very different," he rolled his eyes careful with his wording but I can feel his disappointment.

"We have a while before the next big thing happens, today is only the first day of school."  I try to cheer him up before I opened the door and he just rolled his eyes again, motioning for me to open the door. Fine we'll talk about it later.

I opened the door to find Eraserhead questioning All Might about what exactly he had been training us to do and for how long.

"Oi, it was AFTER we recieved our acceptance letters that we started training our quirks with him around. Before that Deku was shattering his fucking bones everytime he used the damn thing, so he had to strengthen his body and build his endurance. Are you really going to fucking tell me that you would rather a kid that couldn't hold back and broke something every single time he did anything?" Kacchan snapped at Eraserhead and All Might looked at me slightly confused and I just kind of nervously smiled at him.

"I'm fine, really," I tried to calm him down but that just set him off about me needing to take better care of myself. Again. I guess that will never change. He was slightly shaking me by my shoulders and I kept trying to placate him but still.

"How did you break your bones?" Sero asked and I looked up a bit embarrassed.

"By not holding back, my quirk isn't really the green energy you see. That is just the excess power that my body can't hold in, by me doing it like that I don't hurt myself. But it also weakens my endurance a lot. It's kind of like running in place even when all I need to do is stand there," I shrugged and Kacchan started dragging me to the locker room and I noticed that everyone else already changed. "We'll be right back!" I called out before turning and Kacchan finally let me go.

This time when we returned Eraserhead just looked conflicted and All Might slightly confused. I'm sure we'll get hammered with questions during lunch but it will wait at least until then.