9

The next day was a return to the usual school schedule that Izuku didn't miss very much. He agreed that having pro heroes for teachers was certainly cool, though, and he didn't think that the novelty of that would wear off anytime soon. Even lunch was prepared by a pro hero, which Izuku was especially curious about because one man was cooking for an entire school and doing so successfully, even providing a multitude of options for them to partake in. Izuku had no idea how the man managed to pull it off, but he was thankful that he did.

The only real deviation from traditional schooling was after lunch when the time came for their Foundational Heroics class. No one knew who their teacher was going to be, and the class was rife with speculation. Izuku had his own suspicions, but he kept quiet about them. There had to have been a reason that Nezu elected not to tell him about All Might teaching at UA, and their dedicated heroics class being the only one with a teacher unaccounted for was too convenient for him to overlook.

"Yo, Midoriya, who do you think our teacher's gonna be?"

He looked over to the boy seated to his immediate right, Hanta Sero, looking back at him with his perpetual grin. He made a side-note to learn more about his quirk later; meanwhile, he figured he could have a bit of fun with his classmate.

"All Might," was his simple reply. He expected to catch Sero off guard with the admittedly ridiculous answer and not elaborate any further to mess with him.

What he did not expect was for the entire class to stop and look in his direction. Now, with 19 pairs of eyes on him, one being an especially scrutinizing red-eyed glare, Izuku found himself a deer in headlights. He could even feel the invisible gaze of Hagakure fixed on him two seats ahead.

"All Might? Seriously?"

"I don't know if The Number One Hero could take time out of his schedule to become a teacher."

"Well, he did do the recordings for the acceptance letters, so it's possible, ribbit."

Deciding to roll with it, he pointedly turned to the door and held out his hand. The class went silent again, and he silently counted down from 5 with his fingers, then he pointed at the door upon reaching 0. The class remained dead silent as they watched the door on the edge of their seats. The tension in the room was only heightened by the sound of footsteps making their way towards the classroom.

And then, nothing happened. The class waited in silence for a little while longer to see just who would come through the door. When the door hadn't opened after another 5 seconds, Bakugo turned back to Izuku with a mocking sneer.

"Ha, ya nerd! There's no way All Might himself-"

"I AM," a familiar voice boomed from outside of the room, "coming through the door like a normal person!"

"Holy shit, it's All Might!"

"Midoriya was right!"

"Is that his Silver Age costume?"

Izuku slowly craned his head to face the dumbfounded expression of Bakugo, and he gave him a dry smirk before doing a small bow. It was worth it to the green head to see the blonde valiantly fight off blowing a gasket in his seat.

All Might pressed a button on a remote, and a panel in the wall opened to reveal a set of lockers with numbers corresponding to their seats. After they grabbed the cases containing their costumes, they were herded to the locker rooms to get changed for their first practical lesson in heroics.

Izuku sat on a bench and stared down at the unopened case holding his costume. When he first drew up a design at the age of 4, it was heavily inspired by All Might. It even included a cowl with two long appendages that were supposed to be reminiscent of All Might's two signature locks of hair. As he grew and his hero worship of All Might slowly diminished into something less fanatical, he revisited and reworked the costume idea. He wanted to keep the influence of All Might, as the insurmountable mountain of a man was still his hero, but he also wanted to pay homage to his mother's costume for her efforts in getting him to this point in the first place.

The end result was a black spandex suit with white flame decals traveling up the sides of his abdomen and down his legs, as well as a reflective flame symbol on his chest that the notes in the case assured was as flameproof as the rest of the suit. He wore a pair of white gloves and a matching pair of white boots, and on his waist was a green utility belt as a nod to his mother since he felt wrong not having green anywhere in the costume otherwise. Completing the ensemble was a white cape that he included as a callback to All Might's older costumes. He requested the cape to be made of a special material that allowed him to remove it and use it as a capture weapon, similar to the capture scarf used by Eraserhead.

'Wait a minute…' Izuku thought with a contemplative frown. 'So, that's who Aizawa is. How did I not piece that together sooner?'

After getting dressed into his costume, he started to make his way towards Ground Beta, noticing someone begin to walk in step with him.

"I was expecting a lot more color for the Rainbow Comet," the blonde kid with a black lightning bolt in his hair (Kaminari, he believed) playfully remarked.

This was it, a casual social situation with someone he hadn't explicitly befriended. He somehow made it through the interaction with Sero and the resulting mishap in class unscathed, so he knew he could make it through this one too. He wasn't going to mess this up.

"My quirk provides enough color as it is," he responded with a totally unrehearsed laugh. "Anymore color on the suit would have been overkill."

"Ha, I hear ya," Kaminari replied with a smile.

'Wow, I made it through that! I should ask him about his quirk!' Izuku excitedly thought before taking a breath and calming down. 'No, I'll wait until after class. I'll probably see it in action again, anyway.'

The bulk of the class reached Ground Beta to see All Might waiting on them. He proudly looked over their costumes until his eyes landed on Izuku, and his breath hitched. There were certainly differences, but watching the boy walk out in his black jumpsuit, white boots, and oh-so-familiar white cape gave him incredibly warm and painful flashbacks. One For All buzzed inside of him again, and he swore that he could faintly hear a voice shouting in the back of his mind, "That's him! That's him!"

'Yes, that's him, my successor,' he thought to himself seemingly in confirmation.

"NO, YOU BLONDE BAFOON! That's my grandson!" shouted a woman wearing a similar getup to Izuku in a black, foggy void.

"He still can't hear you, Nana," a shorter, high-collared man sighed in exasperation.

All Might shook himself out of his stupor and regained his signature grin. "The clothes really do make the man!"

"Izuku, I love your costume!" Ochako bubbily chirped beside him. "I was expecting a little more color, though."

"I wanted to pay homage to my mom's costume and All Might's while still making something of my own," he chuckled. "I'm not sure how much I love the cape, though, now that I'm wearing it. Your costume is really cool, too. I can definitely see the space motif you're going for."

Ochako beamed at the recognition, and then her smile faltered a bit. "I'm glad you noticed! I wanted something a little more puffy, though, sorta like Thirteen's suit. This one's a little skin tight."

Then, something occurred to her. "I've never seen your mom's costume."

"It's like mine, but greener, and no cape," Izuku answered simply. Izuku could've sworn that he caught the eye of Jiro, but she quickly looked away, so he pushed it out of his mind.

'Costume?' were the simultaneous thoughts of Bakugo and Todoroki as they overheard that bit of the conversation.

'Since when was Aunty Inko a fucking hero?'

'So, his mother is a pro? That would provide a motive and an opportunity…'

All Might cut into their radically different rumination by explaining what their first class would be: a battle trial. He explained (with the help of cue cards) that the class would be divided into teams of two. The teams would face off against each other in a mock scenario where one team played the role of villains holding a large bomb within a building, and the other team would play the role of heroes attempting to thwart them.

He held out a box for them to draw lots for what team they'd be apart of, and Izuku found himself on Team J. He looked to Ochako, but she, unfortunately, was on Team C. He looked around for his partner as the class started to group up until he felt something pat him through his cape. Turning around, he saw no one, and he was confused until a floating glove waved at him.

"Hi there! Guess we're partners for today," Hagakure excitedly said.

Izuku blinked, and then he returned the smile he was certain she was sending him. "I guess we are." He noticed that she was wearing a pair of gloves and shoes, but he couldn't see anything else. Before he could ask about it, their teacher's voice filled the area.

"Now, for the first group," All Might bellowed as he reached into a box with labeled slips of paper, "the hero team will be Team J!"

"Oh wow, we have to go first," Hagakure said while Izuku focused his eyes on the box in All Might's hands.

"And the villain team will be Team B!"

Izuku looked around for any team to perk up in acknowledgment, and his eyes landed on the feral grin of Bakugo and cold glare of Todoroki directed back at him.

"Goddamn it…"

Inko stepped into Principal Nezu's office with a contemplative frown. She was on her break, and that usually entailed sitting in the teacher's lounge reading trashy romance novels with Snipe while Aizawa pretended to not fanboy in her presence across the room, but Nezu specifically called her into the office rather than sending her a text. That likely meant that whatever it was, he didn't want a written record of it.

"You wanted to see me, sir?" Inko questioned with a raised eyebrow.

"You may drop the formalities for this meeting," Nezu assured. "Today, we are equals once again."

"So, this is about a case, then," Inko quickly surmised.

"That case in particular, yes," he confirmed.

Inko's frown deepened. "You have a new lead?"

Nezu nodded and pulled out several articles from his desk. "It's a tenuous one, but I feel there's something here. Within the past year and a half, there has been a steady uptick in hit pieces directed at UA, its staff, and myself as the principal. It ranged from simple things like expulsions potentially creating vigilantes and villains, to not-so-simple things like singling out UA for creating child soldiers to fight for the public's amusement in the Sports Festival."

Inko took a careful look through the articles in concern until one thing stood out to her. "These are all from the same publisher."

"So, you noticed." Nezu nodded with a smile. "At first, I wasn't sure if it was just a single writer or publisher with an ax to grind against UA for one reason or another, but I do love a good investigation. A further look into this 'Shoowaysha Publishing' didn't reveal anything out of the ordinary, which I expected. However, a look into their executive director and occasional writer, Chitose Kizuki, unearthed some interesting details."

"Do tell," Inko said while sitting down across from him.

"When I had people go undercover into different quirkist groups I suspected were being financially supported, one of them was a larger group primarily congregating on a message board that had monthly meetups for demonstrations and recruitment." Nezu took a sip of tea from a cup that Inko was certain wasn't there initially, but she learned years ago to stop questioning it. "During one of those meetups, my operative was able to accompany the moderator of the message board to a meeting with a woman fitting Kizuki's description. It was a handoff of information, though we're still not certain exactly what information was given."

"How can you be sure that it's the same woman?" Inko ventured, to which Nezu only retrieved a picture and slid it across the desk to her. "Ah, point taken," she responded upon seeing the picture. "So, you think she's directly involved with the MLA?"

Nezu nodded. "Being a middleman that only runs information between parties wouldn't be worth the time of someone with her position, and it would also be an equally large waste of an asset. As the executive director of a major news publication, she no doubt has considerable influence over information distribution to the public."

"And that means the MLA already had a steady influence on information flow irrespective of their indoctrination schemes," Inko added. "That definitely re-contextualizes all of the news that comes out of there. It also means that UA is directly in their crosshairs if these hit pieces are any indication."

A small, dangerous smile baring more teeth than Inko was comfortable with developed onto Nezu's face. "Yes, I suppose we are."

Inko would be lying if she said she didn't begin to sweat at his predatory tone.

"It appears that war may come sooner than we had anticipated."

"So that's the story between me and Bakugo, and that's why I'm fairly sure that he's going to abandon the bomb entirely to come directly after me," Izuku finished explaining with a sigh.

"Oh no, I'm sorry for making you relive all of that!" Hagakure exclaimed, frantically waving her gloved hands.

"It's fine," he quickly assured her. "I'm getting past it, and it's better to know these things now before they potentially result in disaster later on."

"Well, we have a few minutes left. Got a plan in that green noggin of yours?"

Izuku's smile returned with an edge to it. "I do, actually. I take it that you're pretty good at sneaking around." She nodded, but when he stayed silent, she remembered that he couldn't see her, so she gave him a thumbs up. "Right, well, I'd normally suggest that you sneak your way through the building and locate the bomb while I keep Bakugo busy, but Todoroki has a pretty powerful ice quirk, and I'm not certain how far it reaches. Given your… costume situation, you might catch hypothermia if you're frozen and I'm not around to thaw you out and heat you back up."

"So, you just want to stay around and keep me warm, huh?" she playfully teased.

"Basically," he casually replied.

She huffed, lamenting her failed attempt to get a rise out of him. "What about Ol' Explodey?"

"How hard can you hit?"

"Pretty hard."

Izuku hummed in consideration. "Punch me in the gut as hard as you can."

"Uhh… are you sure?" she hesitantly questioned.

"Yes. I've seen Bakugo take a hard hit and keep on going on pure spite and hatred alone. He's no doubt gotten tougher since then, so I just want to measure what we're working with," he responded. "Give it all you got, I can take it."

"…Okay," she reluctantly accepted.

Izuku flexed his abs and mentally prepared himself for the coming blow. He didn't want to underestimate the girl, so he readied himself for a hit as if he himself was throwing it.

He was not at all prepared to be folded over an invisible arm with a gloved fist firmly planted in his stomach. His eyes were bulging out of his skull, and he just barely kept his very soul from being ejected from his body on impact. He fell to his knees and hacked his life away while Hagakure apologetically fretted over him.

"Holy hell, it feels like I just got hit by a Texas Smash!" Izuku struggled between breaths, and he flashed her a wobbly grin. "You've got a mean straight punch."

"Well, when your whole thing is being invisible, you gotta develop some other talents to keep up," she sheepishly chuckled with a not-so-insignificant measure of pride.

"I think we'll be just fine," Izuku told her with a confident smile.

"Your 10-minute prep time has concluded!" All Might's voice blared over their ear pieces. "GO!"

"Listen up, Mr. Freeze, I'm hunting down Deku and beating him into the ground. I don't care what you do, just stay out of my way!" Bakugo snarled at Todoroki.

Todoroki's impassive stare did not falter for a second as he walked past Bakugo and placed his right hand on the wall. "There won't even be a fight, and I don't need your help."

Bakugo might have been intimidated by his chilly tone if not for the ridiculously goofy ice prosthetic covering his left side with a glowing red eye. Instead, he just felt even more annoyed.

That annoyance became shock when Todoroki froze the entire building in an instant. Turning away from him, Todoroki calmly walked towards the door amidst Bakugo's silence.

"They're done. Let's capture them and get this over with," he coldly instructed.

That snapped Bakugo out of his stupor, and his annoyance returned ten-fold. "Don't fucking order me around, Ice Terminator!"

Izuku felt the sudden, abrasive cold before his quirk activated on instinct with a flash of orange, and the hallway they were in glaciered in the blink of an eye. As if on a mental command, the hallway was blanketed in a deep crimson, and the red flames of his quirk quickly melted the surrounding ice. Looking over to check on his partner, he was greeted with the sight of Hagakure wrapped in a snug-looking blanket of orange fire. If her head movements (at least, what he could assume was her head) were any indication, she was just as confused as he was.

"Huh… I forgot I could do that," Izuku calmly stated.

"You forgot?!" Hagakure shouted. "I thought your quirk was just colorful fire that lets you move fast sometimes! What even is this?!"

Izuku could tell from her hands curiously probing and examining the orange fire blanketing her that her tone was less accusatory and more excitedly inquisitive.

"Well, I can separate my quirk into individual flames that each allow me to do different things," he answered. "It's kind of a lot to explain, so I'll just say that red gives me even more intense heat in localized areas, and I've only ever used orange once at the entrance exam. I think it forms barriers that I can protect people with, but it activates subconsciously thus far."

"That is so fucking cool!"

"My grandson is so fucking cool!"

The vestiges of One For All were watching the Battle Trial through the unwitting eyes and ears of All Might, and they could hear Izuku's explanation to go along with the showcase of his quirk. Nana was positively over the moon with pride at her grandson, while En and Daigoro Banjo were shaking their heads in amused exasperation. Banjo could definitely concede that Nana's grandson had looked pretty cool up to that point, though.

Hikage Shinomori and Yoichi Shigaraki, however, were watching the scene with critical eyes, Yoichi especially.

"Is that…" Hikage began.

"Singularity?" Yoichi finished. "Looks like it."

"Sheesh," Hikage sighed. "You think Eighth is going to try to pass it on to him?"

"I certainly hope not," Yoichi replied. "Two quirks reaching singularity within one person? I'd rather Nana not have to watch her successor clean the remains of her grandson off of the floor and walls."

Izuku retracted the protective orange shield and focused his quirk in melting a path down the hall for the two. It didn't take long for them to realize that Todoroki had frozen the entire building.

"Hey, Midori?" Hagakure spoke up.

Momentarily taken aback by the nickname, Izuku stumbled. "Midori?"

"You've poured your heart and soul to me in our first conversation and saved me from being frozen, and I've folded you over my fist for science. I think we've already advanced to being best friends, today."

"That's… fair," Izuku conceded with a chuckle. "I don't have a cool nickname for you yet, unfortunately."

"Just Toru is fine."

"Roger that. What did you need?"

"Well, since Todoroki froze the building, how likely is it that he thinks we're frozen too and left the bomb unguarded to capture us?"

Izuku froze for a moment as he hadn't considered that, and his eyes lit up with another plan. "How well do you think you can sneak around on ice?"

"I used to train by silently navigating through a room covered in broken glass. Ice will be child's play," Toru confidently replied.

"Awesome. I'll find a large enough room and make a ton of noise to draw them to my position while you find the bomb."

"Aye aye, Captain!" Toru said with a mock salute and scampered off down the hall. Izuku made his way down the hall in the other direction, passing through the corridors to find an empty room that was suitable enough for the distraction. He knew that he'd likely end up taking on both Bakugo and Todoroki, so he needed room to dodge explosions and more glaciers. He wasn't sure if they'd work well together, however, but he'd make them pay for it if they didn't.

Finally finding an optimal room, he ignited his red flames and melted the ice, even subliming it directly into steam at points. The room was filled with steam and slippery patches of mostly melted ice, and Izuku's flames of ruby transitioned to emerald like Gen 3, and he clapped his hands together as hard as he could to both clear the room and create a thunderous boom to draw his two opponents to his location.

All he had to do now was wait. So he waited.

And waited.

And waited.

After around 15 seconds, he started to get a little impatient, so he took a shot in the dark and speculated that they were waiting outside the room in case it was a trap. With that in mind, he decided to push the easiest button he knew of to get the show on the road.

"Hey, Bakugo! I'm better than you and you know it!"

"THE HELL YOU ARE, YOU BASTARD!"

Bakugo bounded down the hall and into the room with a vicious snarl. The bright sunshine of Izuku's yellow fire took over, and he darted out of the way of the furious blonde's initial explosion. Bakugo threw an explosion at him again, and Izuku dodged again... and again…and again. They kept up the intense game of cat and mouse with Bakugo launching himself at Izuku with explosion after explosion, meanwhile Izuku dodged each one with an apparent ease that felt so mocking to Bakugo. The boy was practically bouncing around the room like a yellow pinball, and Bakugo was getting incredibly sick of it. The intermittent kicks and punches he received whenever Izuku bounded past him that often came close to knocking the wind out of him were not helping matters, either.

"Stop dodging and face me, Deku!" he commanded. Izuku, feeling the strain begin to set in on his chest, obliged him and landed in a crouch in front of him, deactivating his quirk all the while.

Bakugo felt truly insulted in that moment by him deactivating his quirk, and he would make the boy pay for it in blood. "Don't you dare fucking look down on me, you piece of shit!"

Bakugo threw himself at Izuku in his rage, telegraphing a right hook that Izuku was more than happy to exploit by hooking the arm and using the blonde's own momentum to toss him over his hip and onto the concrete. It was a scene very reminiscent of their schoolyard scuffle 5 years prior, and Bakugo knew that all too well. He stared up at Izuku with wide eyes, feeling just as bewildered as he did back then. He felt just as small, just as insignificant.

He felt just as inferior.

Izuku only had a fraction of a second to notice Bakugo's thousand-yard stare before his instincts screamed at him once again, and he went back up in yellow fire to just barely dodge the pillar of ice that slammed through where he once stood, carefully skirting around Bakugo to avoid freezing him as well.

"I told you this would be a trap," came the annoyed voice of Todoroki from the entrance. "You clearly can't finish this yourself, so I will."

Izuku, feeling an almost alien rush of confidence and snark, decided to roll with it and respond. "You're more than welcome to try, Terminator."

"Holy hell, he even got your one-liners!" Banjo laughed alongside Nana, who was currently using En's collar to wipe the tears of joy from her face.

"Right? And look at how well my little baby Inko trained him, he's moving even better than me!" Nana cried.

Yoichi quietly sighed with a mixture of fondness and dismay. The boy looked like he'd make for a great Ninth wielder, but it just wasn't in the cards. 'That invisible girl, though, she did have a wicked right…'

Izuku was mildly disappointed at the lack of verbal or facial response from the heterochromatic teen, but he didn't have time to dwell on it since he was busy dodging the resulting ice spikes that shot at him. They were faster than Bakugo's explosions, however, and he only narrowly avoided being skewered on a few occasions. After the 5th tear on his costume, he decided to switch tactics. He put out his yellow fire and green took its place, and he met the next mini-glacier with a solid right hook, smashing into the ice with enough force to shatter it entirely.

Momentarily taken aback, Todoroki only acted in instinct when blasting another mini-glacier to block the split-second advance by the newly golden Izuku, trapping him in the ice in front of him. Putting his confusion at the boy's constant changing of color and powers aside, he exhaled his tension away at a seemingly apprehended foe. That relief was short-lived, though, as the ice flashed red and practically blew apart with the green head forcing his way out shrouded in crimson fire. The heat became too much for even him to deal with, and he quickly backed off.

Or, rather, he backed off as quickly as he could manage since the frostbite from overusing his ice started to hit him. The sluggishness would come to bite him, as he received a left hook to the jaw and a boot to the sternum in rapid succession for his troubles. Midoriya was beginning to become a truly troublesome opponent.

Izuku, meanwhile, wasn't fairing much better. The strain was really beginning to hit him, as well, and he didn't need Recovery Girl whacking him with her cane again. He wanted to prolong the fight as long as possible to give Toru time to find the objective, but it looked more and more as though he needed to end the fight quickly if he didn't want to be captured and leave her to fend for herself 2 on 1. The two teens intensely stared each other down as they picked up that the other was slowing, and they both knew that the end for one of them was near.

"All these years," came a raspy, feral growl to the side of them. They broke eye contact and looked over to see an absolutely tempestuous-looking Bakugo clutching his right gauntlet.

"All these years you've been looking down on me, those extras only kissed up to me, and those shitty teachers tried to use me as their patsy! I'm no one's pawn, I'm no one's stepping stone, and I'm no one's fucking measuring stick! I'm the fucking best, AND THAT'S ALL I'LL EVER FUCKING BE!" he roared and yanked the pin from his gauntlet with both Izuku and Todoroki in the line of fire.

The resulting explosion was gargantuan, shaking the building and weakening the structural integrity even more than flash freezing it did. Bakugo panted at ground zero, watching intently for any signs of movement. He was both relieved and enraged when there was movement in the rubble ahead of him, and a soot-covered Izuku sporting a freshly torn costume emerged with a barely-conscious Todoroki hanging off his arm. The glare Bakugo received from those emerald eyes was so frigid that he was rooted in place. The blonde swore he saw flickers of black enter the boy's eyes and spark in his green hair. It was exponentially more threatening than the contemptuous glare he received half a decade prior in the alleyway.

Izuku, meanwhile, felt an unfamiliar level of rage leak into him the longer he laid eyes on the blonde. The blackness he briefly felt that day months before the entrance exam was returning much hotter than previously, and Izuku struggled to keep a lid on it out of fear of what sort of damage it could do if he didn't.

Then, a chunk of ice slammed down onto the back of Bakugo's head, and he limply fell into unconsciousness. Izuku's surprise gave him the opportunity he needed to swallow that blackness and lock it away again. He looked over to the limp form of Bakugo to find capture tape floating above him and proceed to wrap around the boy.

"Midori, what the hell happened down here?!" the voice of Toru shouted from above Bakugo's captured form.

"Toru?" he asked in confusion. "I thought you were looking for the bomb?"

"I felt that massive explosion and figured you might need help," she frantically reasoned.

"Ah, that," he bemusedly chuckled. "You came at the perfect time. I am absolutely spent."

"I can see that; you're barely standing up straight with him unconscious on your arm," she giggled.

Izuku looked over to see that Todoroki was indeed slumped over in unconsciousness. "Huh, so he is." He removed his cape with his free hand and appeared to twirl it, forming it into a thinner piece of fabric that wrapped tightly around Todoroki.

"Erm… Hero Team wins…" came the shocked voice of All Might through their ear pieces.

"Awesome," Izuku breathed out. "Please catch me," he said before slipping into unconsciousness himself and falling forward with Toru scrambling to keep him from hitting the ground.

The control room was silent. The entire class, teacher included, could only stare at the screen, mouths agape. No one moved a muscle until All Might snapped out of it and sprung into action, leaping out of the room and toward the building to collect his 3 unconscious students.

The rest of the class was left to make sense of the titanic clash they had just witnessed. Three of the strongest kids in their class just beat the piss out of each other, and one of them may have tried to commit murder against the other two? And, in the end, the winner was still the guy who was outnumbered in the first place.

"How in the FUCK are we supposed to follow that?!" Kaminari shouted, voicing what just about everyone was thinking.

Izuku awoke to the unfortunate sight of white walls and the unfortunate feeling of a hospital bed. He immediately deflated when he realized where he was.

"I thought I told you not to overdo it again!" Recovery Girl scolded him at his bedside.

"Would you believe that I didn't have a choice again?" he offered with a sheepish smile.

The old medic sighed in resignation, knowing that it was the truth. "When Toshinori came in with you three, he explained what happened. I want to be upset at you, but you weren't the one being reckless this time around." Her face scrunched in frustration. "He should've stopped the match, and Bakugo shouldn't have gone as far as he did. But we're here now, and from what Toshinori told me, you seemed to know restraint again this time around, so I'll give you props for that."

Izuku was just glad that he wouldn't be getting whacked in the head-

"You're thinking too loudly, young man," Recovery Girl smirked after lightly whacking him with her cane. Her smile then softened to a kind one. "You didn't go overboard and hurt yourself with your quirk, so all you needed was some rest to regain your stamina. You're good to go."

"Thanks, Recovery Girl," Izuku returned her smile and shuffled out of bed and out of the room. He noticed that he passed the unconscious figures of Todoroki and Bakugo on his way out, but he didn't stop to check on them. He had faith in Recovery Girl, and he also had a sinking feeling that Bakugo would be in some shit when he awoke, which he wanted no part of.

He made it back to Ground Beta in time for the rest of the class to be headed back to the locker rooms, and he was immediately tackled by an invisible missile.

"Midori! You're okay!" Toru gleefully shouted.

Izuku momentarily blue-screened at being hugged with no warning by the one person other than his mother who can consistently sneak up on him, largely because she was still practically naked. She seemed to realize this, and she sheepishly stepped back and gave him some space.

That space was not to be, however, as a second blur in the form of Ochako slammed into him and accidentally negated his gravity, causing him to float into the air above the class while struggling in vain to right himself. Ochako quickly canceled her quirk, and he plummeted right into the arms of Shoji.

"Sup," Shoji said after a moment of silence.

"Yo," Izuku replied just as casually as if he wasn't in a bridal carry. "You are strong."

"So are you," Shoji replied with mirth edging into his voice.

"Fair enough," Izuku replied with a light smile, and the taller boy let him back down to his feet.

The moment he was back on solid ground, the entire class surrounded him.

"Dude, that fight was so manly!" Kirishima shouted.

"Where did you learn to move like that? I could hardly follow you!" Sero asked.

"Did you train at a dojo?" Ojiro asked

"I can't believe Bakugo tried to blow you two up! I mean, I can, but still!" Ashido shouted in frustration. That frustration seemed like it was much too familiar to her.

"Now, now, children, please do not crowd him! He just recovered from an intense battle!" thankfully came the voice of All Might, and the class gave the boy some much appreciated space.

All Might watched as he nervously answered their questions and shyly accepted their praise. It was a stark contrast from the alert, self-assured teen he was in the heat of battle. It brought a genuine smile to the Number One's face.

Internally, One For All was a different story.

"LET ME AT THE LITTLE SHIT! I'LL TEAR HIM APART FOR TRYING TO HURT MY BOY!" Nana practically snarled while being restrained by Banjo and En.

"Why are we even holding her back? It's not like she can leave the void and hurt him for real," Banjo queried to En through strained grunts in their efforts to keep the apoplectic grandmother contained.

"I'd rather not test if she could find a way," En replied with equal strain.