51

"I'm gonna miss you!" Melissa gave him a big hug. "It's been fun having another quirkless person around."

Izuku sniffed, "I'm sorry! I'll try to come back as soon as possible, I promise!"

"We better." Mei threatened. "I'm ruined for any lesser labs! How am I gonna survive without a micro plasma fusion printer?!"

Dr. Shield held back a smile, "You can always make your own."

A wide grin spread across her face, "I like the way you think!"

Izuku wiped his tears away and shook his head, "You know that Powerloader is going to hate you for that, right?"

"Nah, old Iron Claws will be fine." Dr. Shield said. "He secretly likes the chaotic ones, he just likes to complain to hide how proud he is."

An automated voice echoed through the airport, "Last boarding for Tokyo, Last boarding for Tokyo."

Izuku sighed, "Do we really have to go?"

"Yes!" Melissa laughed. "You have to run field tests with Uravity and tell us how she likes the earrings, remember?"

"Oh right!" Mei grabbed Izuku's hand and started dragging him away. "Come on, Izu-kun! The sooner we get on the plane, the sooner we can get back to testing our babies!"

"I don't think that's exactly how it works, Mei-chan." Izuku chuckled. He turned as best he could to wave goodbye to the shields. "Bye! We'll be back!"

"Hey Shindig, do you know why they wanted us to come straight to the school?" Ochako asked. "I mean, doesn't it make more sense to drop off our stuff at home first?"

Hitoshi shrugged, "I think it's timing. For me, my adults are already at work, but you don't live with your parents, so I don't know why they're having you tag along with me."

Ochako sighed, "Well, it would be a lot more annoying if I couldn't make our bags weightless. Do you think they'll let us leave them in the office?"

"I'm sure they will." Hitoshi nodded. "But if not, then my kidnappers can probably stash them in the tunnels for us, so it's not a big deal."

Ochako rolled her eyes, "You're forgetting that I don't know how to get into those."

"You don't have to." Hitoshi gave her a mischievous look. "All you have to do is focus on the right person and you'll pop right in!"

Ochako shook her head, but couldn't hold back a smile. Their nightly games of hide and seek had become the highlight of their internship, and Gunhead had gotten them all mochi last night to celebrate Ochako getting in the same room as him. Sure, that room had been the training room, which was the largest room in the agency, but she'd done it! Next, she might even be able to stop teleporting randomly without Hitohsi's help!

Aizawa and Mic met them at the door and Mic lit up as soon as he saw them coming, "Hey, little listeners! We're glad to see you're ok! We were a little worried there for a minute!"

"Uraraka, give your bags to Shinso." Aizawa ordered. "You can put them in Midoriya's workroom for now, or the teacher's lounge, I don't care. Hizashi'll help you. Now hurry up, everyone's waiting for us."

"Everyone?" Uraraka left her bags floating and hurried to catch up with Aizawa, who was already striding down the hall. "What's going on?"

Aizawa raised an eyebrow, "You really thought that you could disappear for half a day and not get a call home to your parents? We're having a parent teacher conference."

Ochako's eyes widened, "Mom and Dad are…" she felt gravity shift and she was suddenly down the hall from the principal's office, "here?"

She grinned and started running forward, only to stop. Was she supposed to wait for Aizawa? That would make sense, but then again, they knew that she could teleport and so it wouldn't be a surprise that she'd gotten there faster. The decision was made for her when Nedzu's door opened invitingly. It looked like they were expecting her. 

She ran straight into her dad's arms, "Dad! What are you doing here?!"

Dad kissed the top of her head, "I just needed to see that you were all right with my own two eyes, Ochako. You really gave us a scare!"

"Sorry." Ochako smiled sheepishly. "My quirk kinda…"

"They are well aware of the changes to your quirk." Nedzu piped up. "Or quirks as the case may be."

Ochako froze in panic. They knew? But All Might had said that it was a secret and she wasn' allowed to tell anyone…someone cleared their throat and she whirled around to see All Might in the corner, still in his smaller form, with a bloody handkerchief in his hand. 

"My apologies, young Uraraka." He said. "I had attempted to keep the knowledge of One for All in as small a circle as possible, but when you disappeared, well…"

"The main concern was that you had been kidnapped." Aizawa finished, finally walking through the door and closing it behind him. "All Might has plenty of enemies, many of which would jump at the chance to target his quirk while it was vulnerable with a new, untrained holder."

"We decided that telling your parents was the only call we could make in good conscience." Nedzu explained. "If you had been kidnapped because you were holding One for All, they deserved to know why their daughter had disappeared."

"We deserved to know before the decision was made." Mom said sternly. "Ochako is a teenager! You can't expect her to make such a big decision without even being allowed to talk to anyone about it!"

All Might hung his head, "I see that now, and once again, I apologize to both you and to young Uraraka for putting her in that position. It was unfair of me and I was blind to how the secrecy would impact her decision. I also had no idea how drastically One for All would affect her quirk. I was under the impression that I was giving her a simple strength enhancer, not...well, all this to say that I would like to make this right."

He took a deep breath and turned to face Ochako, "It was unfair of me to push this quirk onto you with no explanation or understanding of the consequences. So I would like to offer you the opportunity to choose if you truly want this quirk. I will understand completely if you decide that it is too much trouble and give it back to me."

"No." Ochako hardly even waited for him to finish the sentence before she gave her answer. "Absolutely not."

Everyone looked a bit taken aback, and All Might coughed into his handkerchief again, "Uh, are you sure? You can take all the time you need to think about…"

"My answer is no." Ochako repeated firmly. "One for All is mine now and there is absolutely no way you are getting it back."

There was a long moment of shocked silence before Nedzu chuckled, "Well, it seems you are quite determined, young lady. Would you mind giving us an explanation for your decision?"

"I didn't want this quirk." Ochako answered plainly. "But then it gave me a challenge and if I can't rise to that then I don't want to call myself a hero. Forgive my language, but I have worked too damn hard to throw in the towel. I am going to make this quirk my bitch and use it to save as many people as humanly possible, and then I am going to move back home with my parents and save on rent by teleporting to school and you can't stop me."

There was a beat and then her dad started laughing, "Well, you heard her. Our Ochako is gonna win this! The quirk stays!"

"How long do you think it'll be before you move home?" Mom asked. "Oh no, honey, we've been using her room as an extra office! Where are we gonna put everything?"

"I'm sure you'll figure it out." Nedzu said with a smile. "And please, let us know if there's anything we can do to help you with this transition. We've already contacted an old mentor of All Might's to give Uraraka some remedial quirk counselling and he is well aware of the special circumstances surrounding One for All, and between him and our support students, I expect that we'll have her popping over to see you in a few weeks!"

"Is that all?" Ochako asked. "Can I go to class now?"

Aizawa jerked his head toward the door, "Fine. And tell Shinso that next time he leaves for a week, he should clean his room before he goes."

"Ok?" Ochako said slowly. "Oh, and I might be a little late for class. I have to drop by and see his kidnappers first."

Aizawa groaned as she disappeared.

Izuku reached out and grabbed Mei's hands, "Stop. They'll work perfectly and Uraraka will love them."

"I know… " Mei bit her lip. "But there's still so many ways that they can be better and…"

"And you'll have plenty of time to perfect the design later." Izuku said patiently. "But even the current design will help her so much."

Mei smiled, "I guess you're right. I need to…"

She was cut off by a short scream out in the main labs and they both rushed out of Izuku's workroom to see the rest of the class looked at Uraraka in shock as Kohaku fumed, "What the fuck?! What did you two do?"

"Oh, Gravity Girl!" Mei grinned widely as she pulled her into Izuku's room by the arm. "Your control's getting better! You like pink, right? I looked at your costume and the accents were pink, so we assumed you liked it."

"Yep!" Uraraka nodded, rolling with the weird questions like a pro, but then again, Izuku assumed she was used to weirdness at this point.

"Good! Here!" Mei shoved a jewelry box into her hands. "Happy birthday!"

Uraraka shook her head, "Still not my birthday, but these are the tracking earrings, right? Woah! Are they moving?!"

"Yep!" Izuku said. "Be careful. Melissa suggested using gyroscopes, so yeah, they shouldn't get caught on anything, but it's still not a good idea to just stick your fingers in them or something."

"They're so cute!" Uraraka gushed, putting them in. "And they'll track my warping, right?"

"Right." Mei said. "And Izu-kun wrote the program, so he can track your location and send a ping to Extra-Credit-Kun's phone when you jump. That way we won't lose you again!"

"That's more of a training wheel feature." Izuku explained. "But, yeah, we tested them and they should beep when the gravity around you shifts too much, which will warn you of any incoming warps!"

"Thank you so much!" Uraraka pulled them both into a hug. "This means so much and it'll be super helpful. You two...I don't think I would have gotten through this without you. I probably would have just given it back by this point if I'd gone to anyone else on my first jump. See you later, bye!"

There was a quiet chirping sound and there was a brief light that surrounded her like an aurora before she disappeared, probably using Shinso as an anchor again. Izuku frowned and turned to Mei, "What did she mean by give it back ?"

Hitoshi held back a smile as Ochako ran into the room two seconds before the bell. Mina immediately abandoned her attempts at interrogating him and ran over to her, only for Aizawa to banish them all to their seats before she could get a word out. Mina pouted and shot a glare at Hitoshi, who just shrugged unapologetically. Sure, he probably could have explained how and why she'd gotten a surprise visit in the middle of their internships, but that wasn't nearly as fun as saying you'll have to ask Ochako yourself.

"All right, class. Welcome back. Most of you did well." Aizawa said. "Now, today's lesson is going to be about…"

"Sensei?" Yaomomo's hand shot into the air. "Do you know where Iida is? He's never late for class, especially not on the first day."

Aizawa sighed and Hitoshi frowned as an unfamiliar chirping sound echoed around the room. It took him a half second too long to realize what that meant, "Ochako! Wait...and she's gone again. Oh well, I guess she'll say hi to Iida for us."

The classroom erupted into confused whispers and it took a full ten seconds for Aizawa to glare them all into submission, "Isn't it your job to make sure that doesn't happen, Shinso?"

Hitoshi shrugged, "Well, you know her. Ocha-go….Ocha-going...Ocha-gone."

Aizawa groaned, "Well then, we were trying to keep this under wraps, considering that it's a miracle that the media hasn't picked it up yet, but since Uraraka is going to figure it out, I may as well make you aware that there was an incident during Iida's internship."

"You mean the Nomu attack?" Todoroki asked. "But that was on the news."

"No." Aizawa began. "It happened around the same time, but…"

Hitoshi's phone buzzed and he checked the message to see that he'd been sent Ochako's new location, "Wait, where is...Iida's in the hospital?!"

Aizawa sighed, "And that, students, is why today's lesson is on the dangers of vigilantism."

How in the world had Iida ended up in the hospital?

Ochako tried to look like she knew where she was going as she tried to figure out what room he was in. He had to be here somewhere, right? But at least now she could tell Yaomomo why he wasn't in class. Being in the hospital kinda came with a free late pass.

"Hey, shouldn't you be in school?" A guy in a wheelchair called out to her. "I mean, UA started again today, right?"

Ochako nodded, "Don't worry, my teacher knows where I am...or at least he should be able to figure it out. Um, I'm actually here visiting a friend but, uh...ok, this is silly, but I forgot the room number. Do you know if there's any nurses around who would know?"

"The nurses' station is just around the corner, but I've been here long enough that I might be able to help." The guy smiled, the movement making his bandages shift slightly. "I'm Tensei Iida, who are you looking for?"

"Tensei Iida?" Ochako sighed in relief. "Oh, you might be the perfect person to ask then. I'm looking for my classmate, Tenya Iida. Are you related?"

Tensei's face fell, "He...he's my brother. Um, you didn't call ahead, did you?"

"Uh, not really, no." Ochako grimaced. "Coming here was kinda impulsive."

"Well, I'm sorry, but you just missed him." Tensei said kindly. "The doctors just took him back for surgery about a half hour ago."

"Surgery?" Ochako's eyes widened. "What happened?"

Tensei looked at her in confusion, "You don't know?"

"Uh…" Ochako took a second to think of a better excuse than I only know something's wrong because I can't control my quirk . "Aizawa told us he was in the hospital, but didn't tell us any details. So?"

Tensei stared at the floor, "It's my fault. If I hadn't been so weak and gotten hurt.."

"I'm sure Iida doesn't blame you." Ochako assured him. 

Tensei smiled sadly, "Thanks, but I don't think that matters much. Tenya...well, I guess he wanted revenge. He went after the hero killer."

Ochako didn't know what to say. The hero killer. Honestly, he was lucky he was only in surgery and not in a box, "Oh."

"Yeah." Tensei gave a small chuckle. "He was lucky to escape alive, but the hero killer targeted a lot of major arteries, mostly in his arm and shoulder. The paramedics were able to save his life, but...well, he was never going to be able to use that arm again…"

Ochako panicked, reaching out to Iida again with her quirk. Maybe she could jump close enough to the operating room, she could...well, she didn't know what she'd do, but it didn't matter, because no matter how hard she looked for it, Iida's familiar gravity signature was gone.  

Tensei was grim, "We had to make the decision to amputate."