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Chapter Text

Six years of verbal and emotional, and even occasional physical abuse could easily break someone down, no matter how hard they tried to remain stood on their feet. Humans weren't impervious walls that were immune to anything that came their way, and no Quirk was strong enough to even claim that it was unbeatable. That wasn't the way that people were built. Even those who had the strongest wills, the strongest bodies, and the strongest minds, could be eroded away to leave a shell of a person. Every person had their weaknesses, their insecurities, their fears and Quirks all had limitations that simply couldn't be bypassed.

Izuku longed to have those limits though. He wanted to say that he had a weakness. He longed to have something that he could claim was the mountain that he just wasn't ever going to get across.

He wished... That he had anything, really.

That was the difference between those who were Quirkless and those who had Quirks in this world. Those who had powers had limits, mountains, entire continents that they had to topple and climb, to blast their way through and fight like hell to reach. They had hard lives ahead of them, filled with nothing but difficulty and hardship.

Quirkless people though? Like Izuku?

They didn't even get that.

No one who was born without any powers was going to be told that they had a hard life ahead of them. No one was going to tell them that they had mountains to climb over. No one was going to tell them that they had to split the seas in two. No one was going to tell them that they were going to reach the top.

To reach the top in the first place, you needed to have a chance at even getting to the base of the mountain.

No one was ever going to tell them that they could be a Hero.

If you wanted to even begin to have a chance, you needed a Quirk.

That was the difference between those who had powers, and those who didn't. Between those who weren't born equal, and those who were born on top.

Those who weren't born without Quirks had no life to look forward to. Not in a world where Quirks were the norm.

The ten year old boy sat alone, on the swings that were in the park that was near his school. He had found this place once when he was running from those in his class who were looking to try to harass him after classes were done. No one else seemed to even know that this place existed, which made it one of his favorite places to just be on his own.

No other students. No bullies. No odd looks. No one that Izuku would look at and envy their individuality with everything that he had. No Quirks. Here, he was just on his own, and could just think to himself. He could just be alone. And pretend that the world didn't have Quirks. That it didn't have Heroes. That he could just be rid of the soul crushing envy and sadness that living in this world gave him in the first place.

He'd wanted to be a Hero since he had the capacity to understand language. When he'd first seen All Might's original footage. How he'd come across it, he honestly didn't remember, though his mother claimed that the news had been rerunning clips of his during the number one Heroes tenth anniversary, and that he'd been hooked ever since. However it had happened, all he knew was that he wanted to be just like All Might. Someone who was so cool, so brave, and so dependable that just seeing the guy made the young child grin from ear to ear in absolute awe of his idol. He wanted to be that for someone else. He wanted to be a Hero, who saved people, and made them feel safe. He wanted to be someone that people looked up to, and were reassured by his mere existence. He wanted to be a Hero...

But he couldn't. Not without a Quirk.

Everyone around him said the same thing, every single day. There were no Quirkless Heroes. There weren't even any Quirkless Vigilantes that anyone was aware of. In this superhuman society, not being a superhuman just meant that you couldn't do anything that only superhumans could.

You couldn't be a Hero if you didn't have a Quirk. That was how all Heroes did anything. Without a Quirk...

He really was worthless.

Kacchan said it at every single available opportunity, which hurt a lot more than everyone else doing it daily. Izuku remembered when the two of them were friends, talking about their dreams to become Heroes with awesome powers. When it became apparent that wasn't happening for Izuku... Kacchan had changed. His insults hurt far more than anyone else's did, and he was by far the most frequent culprit behind those same insults.

Only...

They were never wrong.

The insults, no matter how personal or petty... They weren't ever factually inaccurate. They were never false. Nothing that they said was a lie.

On the green haired boys lap, was one of the many notebooks that he had when it came to recording the Quirks, costumes, moves and applications of various Heroes and people around him. Book number seven, most recently filled in entries being the debut of the Smoking Hero Smokescreen and Projectile Hero Frontline. He didn't even know how many hours he'd spent filling in the pages of this particular notebook, but he did know it was far more than the others he'd done previously. He'd been writing in it for at least the last six months, cramming information into each of the pages as much as he could. Every single bit that he could find about every single Hero he could think of, and their powers...

All of it was in preparation for his future. For the day that he would debut as a Hero that people could depend on, as someone who people would be able to feel safe under the watchful eye of. As a Hero...

As a Hero who...

A Hero...

For the last six years, Izuku had worked hard, pushing himself every single day to do everything that was in his ability to become a Hero. He'd studied endlessly, trained and tried to activate either of his parents Quirks, and all but begged everyone he knew to help him train in some way, to show them how they activated their Quirks, in the off chance that maybe, just maybe, something would happen and grant him his own unique ability. He'd done everything that he could, while being told that he was wasting his time. He refused to listen and kept trying...

But he knew. He knew the truth, deep down, and after over half a decade, he was battered and broken down enough.

Holding the notebook in his hands, he flipped through some of the pages, his vision blurred. He remembered all the information that he had ever written down, about every Hero he had ever heard about...

And with as much power as his arms would allow him, he threw the notebook as far away from the swing he was sat at as he could. Wind resistance didn't let it get far – Only about a pathetic four or five meters away. Pages flipped over with the wind, until it landed cover side down and open.

Onto the boys most recent attempt to make Hero Names, and a Hero costume. All Might Junior, Mighty Boy, Mini Might... A costume that imitated the small antenna like strands of hair All Might sported, and a cape... Just last night, he had dreamed about being able to stand next to the world's greatest Hero as a Sidekick despite being Quirkless...

Just a stupid dream...

Tears finally fell from his eyes. Six years after not getting his Quirk, after trying so hard in the face of adversity... He would admit the truth now. The truth that he'd always known, but never wanted to face. He was broken, and he couldn't deny it any more, no matter how much it hurt.

He couldn't be a Hero.

Without a power, he couldn't do anything. Without a power, he couldn't save or protect anyone. Without a Quirk... He was useless. He wasn't capable of anything. He was weak. He was defenseless.

Like Kacchan pointed it out every single time, he was poor, defenseless Izuku.

He was just worthless Deku.

"Yahoooooo!"

As sudden as the sound of a bullet being fired out of a rifle, the peace and quiet that characterized the park Izuku had used as his refuge was absolutely and immediately shattered by a single cry of joy, coupled instantly by an individual leaping onto the swing-set next to him, landing on the seat feet first and standing up, and letting their body weight act as the force that allowed them to swing.

"Gaaah!" On pure reflex, Izuku let out a short, but loud scream, out of shock and surprise more than anything else. This marked the very first time that he'd even seen a semblance of other Human life at this park in the many months he'd spent coming here to be alone, and for the briefest moment, he almost thought that he was being attacked by a Villain on the run.

Upon hearing his instinctive cry, the newcomer stopped what they were doing to just look at him, in a mixture of confusion and curiosity. Izuku looked back at them, regaining his composure at a rapid rate.

"Sorry!" They quickly apologized, trying to offer a smile to show sincerity, but was just a bit too wide to convey that particular feeling. "I honestly didn't see you there! Didn't mean to startle you!"

When he was able to begin to notice distinctive features once he had calmed down, and had had managed to identify that this person was about his age, Izuku quickly came to a singular conclusion within about three seconds.

This person was easily the single quirkiest person that he had ever met in his entire life. For starters, it was a girl, whom possessed pink skin, similar in color to that of cotton candy, and the same went for her unruly hair, which was similar to his, only a bit longer. Additionally, this person also had a pair of horns that extruded out of her skull just above the forehead, the entrance point of which was covered in more of that pink hair, so it was difficult to tell exactly where the point of exit was. To top everything off, her eyes were golden, and while that in itself wasn't an unusual eye color, the area surrounding the iris, the sclera, were pitch black, certainly an oddity Izuku hadn't recorded previously.

In short, she was the exact type of person Izuku had wanted to get away from by coming here. Someone who, just by looking at them, had a Quirk that could garner attention for them wherever they went. Someone who was like Kacchan, holding onto a power that had to be flashy and impressive, and useful and strong. Perfect for someone who wanted to be a Hero.

Someone who had pretty much everything that Izuku wanted.

He didn't recognize her in the slightest. If she was someone who was even remotely local to his area, he would have known who she was, or at least remembered seeing her, without question. She wasn't the easiest sort of person to miss or forget, even in passing. He had a feeling that if he wanted to, he'd be able to rough out a sketch of her that night without taking any sort of photo of her if he wanted to. The world was full of those kinds of people, those who skirted on the border of what was considered human and what wasn't, due to her many alien mutations, so the fact he had no clue who this girl was indicated to him that she wasn't a local at all.

Regardless of who she was or where she came from though, her energetic smile served as a stark, painful contrast to the depressed ten year old, though he found himself unable to look away from her. Part of that was due to the fact that she was so hyperactive that she just drew attention to her, like a moth to a flame. Even though he wanted nothing more than to not have to look at someone who had a future so bright ahead of them, who didn't have a care in the world, Izuku couldn't help but look at her, like she had the attention equivalent of gravity infused into her personality.

Considering that he'd been crying not thirty seconds ago, it wasn't exactly the best image for himself when he looked towards her. Tears were still in the corners of his eyes, and his face was flushed red from the increased activity around the area, and previously spilled tears were still sliding down his cheeks.

"Hey, are you - Are you alright?" The girl asked, suddenly dropping her smile to a confused but sympathetic frown. She quickly crouched down onto the seat, though it still swung due to her weight, so she used one of her feet as a stopping point. "Are you hurt or something?"

"I-I'm fine." Izuku lied, turning his head away from the pink skinned girl, while rapidly trying to wipe away the water that was running down his face.

"Are you sure?"

"I-It doesn't matter. I-I don't want to b-bother you. I-I'll just -"

"I'm Mina. Mina Ashido." The girl randomly introduced herself, jumping off of the swing set that she was on, and turning on the heel of her foot to spin towards the direction of the green haired boy. She then squatted down, so she could try and get a look at his concealed face. "What's your name?"

Moving his head just slightly, Izuku allowed the very tips of his eyes to look upon the black eyed girl. Her expression wasn't particularly difficult to read, though her black eyes were off putting to him, since he'd never seen anything even vaguely like it before. It made him need a few seconds to figure out that she was in fact, trying to be kind to him. So used to abuse he was that the idea of someone actually being kind to him was one that he struggled with.

"I-Izuku Midoriya..." He introduced himself, shyly, and resignedly. He had the distinct feeling that this girl wouldn't leave him alone until he did so.

"Alright then Midoriya, since we know each other's names, that means we're friends, right?"

The green eyed boy's head shot up at this tremendously flawed leap of logic, his eyebrows raised in surprise, and he remained stunned at the forwardness of this individual girl known as Mina Ashido. "Wh-What?!"

"Aaaaaaaaaand since we're friends, that means that if you're upset, then it does matter and I wanna know. Friends aren't bothered by this sort of thing." Mina offered a small, but very warm and welcoming smile, tilting her head ever so slightly to the left as she did so. "So, what's wrong, my good friend Midoriya?"

His eyes remained wide in confusion and in aghast, blinking several times, the Quirkless boy honestly had little to no idea how he was supposed to respond to such a series of events. Whoever she was, this Mina girl was straightforward and persistent, more than any other person than he honestly had met beforehand. When he wouldn't give a straight answer, she found workarounds, and applied her own personal version of twisted yet somehow viable – At least, to her - logic onto the events to try and put him into a position where he would have no choice but to confess what was leaving him in this state.

It left him pretty much speechless. How exactly was he supposed to react to something like this?

Mina didn't stay still for long, quickly rising up onto her feet again when she realized that Izuku wasn't going to spill his guts anytime soon. "You're not getting bullied, are you? People usually stay quiet when they're being bullied..."

"N-Not really -"

Turning around, and using her left hand as a sun shield by poising what looked like a salute over her left eye, the energetic girl seemed to suddenly start scanning around the place in the search of the bullies that she had no idea if they existed or not. From her own experience and knowledge, people who picked on others usually were the cause of a lot of childhood misery. And it was one that she absolutely could not stand. It was why she was so friendly to people around her, especially those who seemed to be upset by something. A lot of the time, it was because of people making their life miserable. There were other reasons that it might be, but she was just working with the most likely scenario.

And it was just the decent thing to do. Her whirlwind of subjects wasn't entirely due to her being hyperactive, but rather her trying to distract the boy from his problems, if only for just a short while. But she could tell. What Izuku needed right now was a friend. Someone who understood his plight and could offer sound advice. Someone who could help him.

If there were bullies around her, she intended to find them. Though since they didn't exist - At least not here - She didn't find any.

She did, instead, find something very different.

"That yours?" She questioned, moving away from Izuku, and towards whatever it was that had caught her eyes. With the direction that she was headed, it didn't take the Quirkless boy long to realize exactly what she had spotted.

His notebook. The one he had literally just thrown away.

"N-No, I-it's not!" He rapidly denied ownership of the book, flustered, embarrassed at its contents, and ashamed of what it would reveal about him. Ashamed that it would reveal the ambition that he had held onto for years. Ashamed at the idea that he thought he, someone who didn't have a single ounce of power in him, could even dream to stand by Heroes. "I-I-It - It's just trash! It's -"

"Izuku Midoriya... Notes for my future, mark seven..." Before the green haired boy could even deny ownership of the book, the horned girl had picked it up, dusted it down, and had read the title of the notebook aloud.

He simply froze, both from embarrassment and humiliation that this stranger had figured him out so quickly. He just sat on the swing, looking away, as he awaited ridicule and judgement.

Flipping over the cover and reading the first single page, Mina immediately knew what the book was for. It was filled up with ideas for costumes, gadgets and the likes. It couldn't more clearly be the work of an aspiring Hero. Anyone could guess that just from looking at the contents for about five seconds.

"You wanna be a Hero?" She asked, just wanting to make sure.

"I... I do... But - "

"Cool! You're like me then!" The pink girl cheered, throwing her pumped right fist into the air, and a grin reaching from ear to ear as she smirked. Her free hand kept skimming over the pages once again, her eyes darting all over the contents and taking everything in. "I wanna be a Hero too! Hey, who's your favourite Pro?"

"I - I didn't say you could - "

"Actually, never mind." Joked Mina, looking through several other pages. "I think I've figured it out. You're huge fan of All Might, right?"

"I..." Even regardless of his resignation, of his shattered dreams and acknowledgement of his inability to become a Hero, he wasn't ever going to be able to deny his admiration of them. Not ever. "A-All Might is... Such a cool and a-amazing Hero..."

"He is number one for a reason. Though I'm more of a fan of Xeno-Mistress myself, since, y'know, I kinda look like an alien myself."

"I-I remember her. She made her debut two years ago, over in Hokkaido, when she fought against Iceberg the Freezer, right? She was commended because she was able to stop him going on a huge rampage in a metropolitan area without even causing any damage to the surrounding area."

"Yeah! You know your stuff. Not really a surprise now that I think about it."

It was the first time that day that Izuku had managed to make even anything that remotely resembled a smile.

"You're gonna be an awesome Hero someday with this kinda dedication! Hey, maybe we'll even be in the same class in Yuuei!"

And just like that, it was immediately gone again.

Those words hurt. He knew that she didn't mean to do that, but they hurt. This girl, this total stranger, she was just trying to be nice, to be friendly, to encourage him. He'd managed to recognize that. But she'd only succeeded in reminding him. Of reaffirming his fears. Any semblance of ease that had come from their fleetingly brief conversation about Pro's died immediately thanks to that attempted compliment. It wasn't the girls fault, and he knew that she hadn't meant it...

But it still hurt.

"Hey, are you... Really okay?" Mina asked once again, this time more confused than anything else. She honestly now had no idea why the boy in front of her was looking so pained, even though, not too long ago, he was starting to show signs of cheering up. "Are you... Not well?"

"I... I'm not gonna be a Hero."

"Huh?" The pink girl questioned, not understanding what he meant. "What d'you mean by that? You mean you're wanting to go someplace else? Like a Navy Hero -"

"No... I - I mean, I'm not gonna be a Hero.. At all..."

"What? Why not?! You've got all these awesome notes that only Heroes would want to make, and they're so detailed! You said that you wanted to be a Hero yourself, so why aren' you -"

"Because I don't have a Quirk!"

Silence. Complete, deafening silence followed the sharp, emotional outburst from the young green haired boy. The only sound was the wind, that sent a small gust throughout the area. That aside, there wasn't a single noise. It made time feel like it dragged on much longer than it actually did. The ten seconds that ot lasted instead felt like hours.

"I don't have a Quirk..." Izuku said again, this time quieter. Sadder, barely able to hold back any tears. "I don't have any powers... I can't do anything... I don't... I can't do anything."

It was all true. He knew it deep down, but hadn't ever wanted to admit it.

"I can't do anything to help myself, to help anyone else... I've always tried... But I always end up getting beaten up, and unable to do anything..."

This was the reality that he had so desperately tried to ignore. But the reality of the situation always meant that he was going to lose.

"I... I'm Quirkless... I can't..."

He couldn't... Ni matter how much it burnt and hurt inside, he just couldn't...

"I... I can't be a He - "

"I have a cousin who's Quirkless."

Izuku's words stopped, immediately, at the other girls words. Quirklessness was a rare birth defect, only currently affecting about twenty percent of the population. He'd never even met another person who didn't have a Quirk before him. He had always been alone.

He looked up at Mina. Had she seen the hopelessness of being Quirkless before?

"He's... He's the best. He was a fun guy. Loved to play and hang out. Wanted to be a Hero. He would've been an amazing one." Mina recalled, seeming to fondly reminisce about the memories of her relative. Though the tone of her voice was coated in sadness. "He's a huge fan of Endeavor. He thinks his fire Quirk is awesome, and he wanted to have a cool Quirk like that... But he didn't get one."

The Quirkless boy swallowed. He understood that feeling all too well.

The hopelessness.

The emptiness.

The despair.

The defeat...

"He hasn't been the same since..." The black eyed girl looked away for a moment. "I... I do have a Quirk. It's called Acid. It lets me make Acid. So... I can't say that I know what being Quirkless is like. I can't imagine life without my Quirk... But my cousin... He would've been an awesome Hero... But he gave up. He stopped trying when he learned that he was Quirkless."

That had been the one thing Izuku hadn't been able to do. Not until now, when it just became too much to bare.

"He said... That he didn't have any powers. That he couldn't be a Hero without powers... That because he didn't have a Quirk, he didn't have a chance. That because he didn't have any powers, he couldn't do anything... I never got that... So... I'll ask you what I asked him."

She looked Izuku straight in the eye, eyebrows burrowed into a glare.

"Why not?"

All Izuku could do was blink at her. Her defiant stance. Her clear irritation, and her refusal to accept reality...

Was she serious?

"What... What do you mean, why not?" He questioned, though his entire body was shaking. From anxiety of anger, he wasn't sure. He didn't know exactly what it was that he felt, aside from that pit of burning that was present in his chest. "You're asking me why Quirkless people can't be Heroes?"

"Yeah, I am." Mina stood strong, not moving a single centimeter from her stance. "Why can't you be a Hero?"

"Because Quirkless people are Quirkless! That's why!" He yelled. How did she not get it? It was obvious! So obvious that he knew, even when he tried to defy the way of the world, he knew he was chasing a fantasy! "We can't do anything! We - We can't jump from building to building! We can't - Shoot lightning from our hands! We're not super strong! We're not fast! We can't make fire! We can't move objects with our minds! We - We can't make Acid!" He was shouting through tears and wrecked sobs by this point." Heroes can do all of that, but we can't! We can't do anything! You need a Quirk to be a Hero!"

It was always true. Always, no matter how much he had wanted it to be different. It hurt... It hurt so much...

It hurt...

It hurt so much...

But it was the truth.

He couldn't... He couldn't be a -

"So... Do you think All Might is a Hero just because he has a Quirk?"

Managing to quieten his sobs, Izuku listened. The only reason he didn't retort was because the lump in his throat, brought on by crying so much, was making it nearly impossible to do so. He only had the option to listen to the Acidic girl's argument, even if she just didn't understand.

But what did she mean? Why was she talking about All Might's Quirk?

What did that have to do with anything?

"Or do you think it's because of what he does? Do you think that Villains are born that way? That their Quirks are nasty, so they have to be Villains?"

He just looked at her. Where was this going?...

"Quirks... They don't make us who we are." The ten year old girl stated. She had seen so much about this subject for being so young... She couldn't help but feel the need to step her foot down and speak out now. "Quirks are a part of us, yeah... But we choose how we use them. We have to make that choice, and we have to get into the places we need to be in the first place... I mean, with my Quirk, I could easily end up as a Villain if I wanted. Anyone with a Quirk can..."

"…What are you trying to say?" Izuku managed to force out, towards the girl who now his her eyes from him. What was she trying to say?

"I'm saying that Quirks don't make us who we are!" She suddenly yelled, with just as much force and sound as Izuku had done just a few seconds ago. "Heroes aren't born Heroes just because they're born with cool Quirks, and Villain's aren't born because they have nasty Quirks! We get to choose how we act! We get to choose if we want to be a Villain or a Hero! We chose to act Heroic - So what does it matter if you don't have a Quirk?!"

The next words that she yelled made Izuku shiver.

"You don't need a Quirk to be a Hero!"

As she spoke, her head finally showed her eyes again.

Glaring towards him, a mixture of anger that he was just giving up, and sadness for the same reason. It was totally clear that this was a subject that she cared about deeply, and had watched happen before, heartbroken at the results. She was passionate about her feelings on this matter, even if it wasn't her own family involved, or her business whatsoever.

"So... Don't say that you can't be a Hero. As soon as you say it... And start believing that you can't... Then you won't be able to. It stops when you chose to stop trying... And you've been trying so hard. I can tell." The notebook was all the proof she needed of that. "So what if you don't have a Quirk? You don't need one to be a Hero!"

It was the first time.

The first time that anyone - Anyone at all - Had said that to him.

Told him that he could be a Hero, even without a Quirk.

Had told him with genuine belief, with actual passion, and genuine meaning behind what they said, that he could become a Hero even if he was powerless in the face off all odds.

That being a Hero wasn't just about Quirks - But the actions that someone took. The bravery that they showed, the selfless nature that characterised them, the way they charged quite eagerly into battle with Villains to protect people who couldn't protect themselves.

And it hadn't just been lip service.

She actually meant it.

No lies. Not jokes. No teasing and no pity service. She wasn't saying this just to make him feel better, but because she actually believed it...

He was just left speechless.

"It's not my business, I know… And I dunno if you've been bullied, or if you just think it's hopeless, or whatever…" The pink girl approached him, rubbing her eyes with her sleeve. Once she was within arm's reach of the green haired boy, she held his notebook out, for him to take.

And smiled.

"…But I really don't think that you need a Quirk to be a Hero."

That night, Izuku found himself scribbling faster and faster, more and more about Heroes, Villains, Quirks and costumes than he had for the entire year, filling in the entirety of his seventh book, and moving onto an eight. He'd been at it since he first managed to get home after separating from that Mina girl, called away by her parents come to collect her from wherever it was that they had been.

He had spent a long time with her after their initial conversation. Talking. Playing. She even let him sketch her and showed off her Quirk for him, so he could take notes of what she could do.

What she had said, she had meant, and Izuku didn't have any doubts about her sincerity. The way that she had spoken, and the way that she had just been so adamant about his ability to be a Hero… Even though she knew he was Quirkless. She didn't judge him, or ridicule him the way Kacchan, and everyone else did. She didn't abandon him like she had just found a lost cause. She didn't try to backtrack on what she had said earlier.

She stayed. And argued. And fought, passionately. Why she had such a passion regarding the subject, he didn't know. If it was just her cousin, then he had to be one of the greatest people that she knew. Either way, she was just as vocal and passionate about it as if it was her who was Quirkless.

But she wasn't. She was just a sweet, empathetic girl.

And she inspired Izuku. She inspired him to keep trying. To keep ignoring the way of the world right now.

To reject the notion that people who didn't have Quirks couldn't be Heroes.

To reject the idea that his dreams couldn't become a reality.

To reject the idea that he was poor, defenceless Izuku.

To reject that he was Deku.

"Izuku?" He heard his mother knock on his door gently, and then calling out his name. "You've been in there ever since you got back from school, sweetie. Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, it's fine!" Izuku called back, in a positive tone that honestly surprised his mother. "I'm just writing some notes down about someone I met today!"

"A friend?"

"Kind of." He admitted, finishing off a note that he was working on, and then going back to the page that he'd written in Mina's information, regarding her Quirk, and what she could do.

And also, the note that she herself had made.

"Okay, well, dinners just about ready. Come and get it when you're ready to." The green haired woman said, making her way away from her son's door. "We're having Katsudon."

"Awesome!"

Katsudon – His favourite food, pretty much of all time. Under most normal circumstances, he'd already be out the door and bolting towards the table to get as much of it down his throat as possible. Not today though. This time, he had something that he realized that he should have done as soon as he got home.

Before he ran out of his seat to go and grab his favourite food, he tore out the page next to the notes he made on Mina and her Quirk.

Earlier that day, when she was called away, she had asked to borrow his notebook for just a second. Though he didn't understand why, Izuku had complied, and had also provided her with a pencil to use to do whatever it was that she planned on doing. The pink girl had scribbled something inside it, and then bid him a goodbye, a good luck, and a hope to see one another again in Yuuei.

It was a small goodbye note, that didn't actually say goodbye in it.

Rummaging through his drawers, Izuku quickly located some white-tac that he used normally to pin the various posters of his favorite Hero all over his wall. He had about half a sheet left from all the other times he had hung up posters in his room. He used a lot – An excessive amount – To cover the back of the page that he had just torn out, and then, with a ton of force, plastered it in the spot on the wall that was right above the computer screen.

The words weren't anything particularly special to someone who looked at the note and didn't understand the situation. Some might even have thought that he had put it up there himself, to try and convince himself that he was still capable of doing something that the rest of the world said was impossible. Like a motivational quote that he hung up on the wall to try to make him push himself further into the mountain ranges of struggle and trials, reserved only for those with Quirks.

He knew what it meant though. And he knew that when he saw it, he'd remember the first time that he was told those words. And he'd remember that same person, who told him them, time and time again, even when she knew that he was powerless. And he'd know how much that meant to him, even if they had come from someone who, at that point, was a complete stranger.

Just five worlds. Five simple words that made Izuku want to push himself further and harder than he ever had before.

'You can be a Hero.'

Chapter Text

Actually getting into Yuuei was a dream come true. It was an absolute fantasy come to life, and Izuku wouldn't ever phrase it any other way. Standing at the gates that would actually take him into the courtyard that belonged to one of the world's greatest Hero schools was something that gave him the shivers that ran all down his body. It felt alien, surreal, and impossible that he was able to even enter this place as a student.

He'd earned it. He'd earned the right to be here. He'd earned the right to be proud of what he had done, how he had gotten here, and everything he'd pushed himself towards in order to get this far. All Might had told him that, time and time again ever since he'd actually been accepted into the school, and starting from now, he was going to try to believe that very same statement himself. He deserved to be here, after all the training and hard work that he'd done.

This was his dream. This was what he'd been working towards for most of his life. Even against all odds, against everyone who told him that he couldn't be a Hero, against the very foundations of the current superhuman society itself, he, timid and Quirkless, pushed on and never gave up. And he had made it. Thanks to all the help he'd received from All Might, he'd made it here. He'd managed to make it to Yuuei High. Just that knowledge, just knowing that he'd been pushed this far, and gotten to start the high school career of his dreams, made him tear up, not that that was anything unusual.

It was just so incredible.

So surreal.

So alien, that Izuku struggled to believe that he wasn't in some kind of comic book right now. This had always seemed to out of the realms of possibility for him, so insane a prospect to even think about... But he was here.

He had done it.

He'd gotten into Yuuei.

He had done it!

No matter how many times those thoughts echoed throughout his head, over and over and over, it was like he was listening to a gospel. He was able to chase after the previously seemingly impossible prospect of becoming a Hero. The first steps he took onto the Yuuei campus were going to be steps that he thought back to, if he managed to graduate, become a Sidekick, rise through the ranks and eventually become a Pro Hero himself. He knew that he'd remember this day practically forever, as the day that began his education toward his dreams.

But for some reason though... Taking those first few steps was difficult. He felt that he was going to be entering an active minefield. One wrong step could end up setting off an explosion that decimated him completely. With barely any control over the Quirk that now inhabited his body, one could take that in a far more literal sense than he was actually thinking. Before him was one – If not the – greatest institutes for Heroism on the planet. It was impossible to not feel at least slightly intimidated by the huge building, the top ranking students in all of japan around him, the undeniably impressive Quirks those around him had to be sporting.

For someone like him, who had been conditioned to believe that he was the bottom at everything that he did, that he was at the absolute lowest point of the low in this world because of his Quirk heritage, or lack thereof, to now be standing alongside the best of the best?

Deserving of it or not, there was no way that this wasn't going to terrify him.

Before he could bring himself to even think about making his way through the gates to the school on his very first day, Izuku found himself thinking back to the day he had come so close to abandoning all his dreams. He looked at the huge building, which had built hundreds upon hundreds of incredible Heroes throughout the decades, including the very top standing Heroes that ever came into society, and thought back to his childhood. Those who showed signs of becoming great Heroes always did so when they were young. As prodigies, be it via their immensely powerful Quirks, their incredible strategic intellect, or their Heroic hearts of gold. As people who the world just knew were going to be incredible members of society. And he thought back to himself, who had shown no signs of being nothing but a burden on the world for so long.

Seeing himself as nothing but a burden, deep down, for so long… But not anymore.

Reaching into one of his grey jacket's pockets, Izuku pulled out a small piece of paper, which he had folded up incredibly carefully and neatly, trying not to leave any permanent creases. He thought back to the lowest points of his life. The day he'd learned that he wasn't ever going to develop a Quirk. The days that had been nothing but teasing, bullying and ridicule towards him for trying to be a Hero without a power. The day he and Kacchan suddenly were on opposite sides of the fence. And of course, those days when he had come when he had considered just giving up.

He still remembered that one particular day, in the part that park near his old school that he had found. He still remembered that day, crystal clear, minute for minute. How worthless and defenseless that he had felt back then, and how deeply the words of all his classmates had cut him. How much he had wanted to just run away. From his classmates, from his town, from the entire world of Quirks. He just wanted to run away from everything that caused him pain, tormented him, and made him feel like he didn't have any worth or reason to be a part of this world. He remembered absolutely every single bit of it, and how it made him just want to stop trying...

Unfolding the paper, Izuku looked upon the writing that it held. Scanning it over, he got that feeling in his stomach. That warm, fuzzy feeling, that made everything feel lighter around him. That made him feel more at ease, and let him breathe. That made him stop his trembling and shaking.

That made him smile and sigh.

With absolute perfection, he also remembered the girl who he had met that day.

If there was one thing that he remembered with complete clarity, beyond even the slightest slither of a doubt, it was that girl. Mina Ashido. He remembered her completely. How she looked, how her voice sounded, the way she acted, and the things that she had said to him, they all remained firmly fixed within his head.

Her inclusion in that day had changed everything. That day was looking to be one, if not the single worst in Izuku's entire life.

Now he considered it to be one, if not the best.

The paper he had in his hands was, as ridiculous as it might have sounded, one of the most precious things that he owned. It was just a page from a ripped out textbook with a few words scribbled in it, but they were the words that he had needed to hear, more than anything else. They were just what he needed to see when he was convinced beyond all measure of doubt that he was fighting an uphill, losing battle, of which he would never succeed. What got him most was also the way they were filled with emotion, and real meaning. There was emotion behind those words. Honest belief by the girl when she wrote them, when she said them, when she refused to let him just give up on himself, even when she didn't know who he was.

Hearing those words meant more to him than anything in the world. The first time anyone had ever told him that he didn't need a Quirk to be a Hero...

All Might had told him the same thing just under a year ago, and had kept telling him that same thing ever since, and that had absolutely brought him to tears. And he was eternally grateful to his mentor that he had shown that faith in him, that faith that had pushed him to going as far as he had done...

But he wasn't the first to say it to him. That belonged to Ashido. And he was never going to be able to thank her enough.

Were it not for her, he may have given up on his dreams of becoming a Hero altogether. If he had given up, maybe he would have stopped writing those notes. Maybe Kacchan wouldn't have destroyed his notes, which made him late going home that day, and maybe everything that had happened leading up to him inheriting One For All would have never occurred.

All because on person said that she didn't think a Quirk was a necessary requirement to becoming a Hero.

Now, he did have a Quirk, even if it wasn't his, and even if it did absolutely wreck his body into utter oblivion whenever he used it. At this point, he was a volatile glass canon, ready to shatter if someone so much as leaned on him wrong. It was an almighty power that belonged to the Hero he idolized the most. It was his to turn into his own power now...

He felt like he owed everything to All Might and Ashido. They were the two who had made him keep going. They were the ones who held out their hands for him to take, to pick himself up off of his feet, and back down the path to success. They were the ones who had refused to let him give up on himself. They were the ones who had made him keep fighting until he hit a breakthrough.

There was a difference between them though.

All Might said that he couldn't be a Hero without a Quirk. It wasn't an incorrect statement, no matter how much Izuku had wanted to ignore that fact. Maybe it was possible, but not for someone like him. But he offered the green eyed teen his own power, after seeing the potential within the young man. He had trained the boy personally, put him through a physical hell to tamper his body to be able to actually withstand the sheer power of the Strength Enhancement Quirk.

Mina had said what she had without even thinking that Izuku getting a Quirk was possible. And that felt just as powerful. Sometimes, it felt more powerful.

'You can be a Hero.'

Reading that writing once again, as a final injection of motivation to himself, he put on a smile, returned the paper to his pocket, and took his first steps onto the Yuuei campus. Ashido had been right. All Might had been right.

He wasn't going to let them turn out to be wrong.

"Class 1-A, Class 1-A..." Izuku repeated quietly to himself, searching through the corridors to find his new classroom. Yuuei was an enormous school, a building so large it had its own set of maps, something that the green haired boy just wasn't used to. He was used to layouts that he could easily grasp, ones that were standard throughout the rest of the country. Because of the kind of school that Yuuei was, a lot of standard practices that were practically considered traditional at this point were just thrown out the window. It was going to take him a little while to adjust to the differences.

He did find the corridor for the first years though, after a little bit of back and forth. It was a few floors off the ground level, but not anywhere close to being at the top.

Everything about the building felt larger than life. The building itself was practically a mansion, corridors were huge, and even the doors to each individual room were enormous. They had to account for even Gigantification type Quirks, Izuku knew, but it all blended together to make him feel so tiny and the school feel so gigantic. It still bewildered him that he was even walking through these very corridors.

Remembering the information booklet that had come with his info package once he was admitted into the school, he considered what his classmates were going to be like. He knew that there were overall thirty six students that were admitted into Yuuei every year via regular entry criteria, and four that would be accepted via special recommendation, and the booklet had told him that they were split between two groups, equaling twenty per class. Only one in three hundred applicants actually got into this school, so that meant that he was one of twelve thousand applicants that year alone.

Behind the door to 1-A were some of the best potential Heroes in the entire nation, out of at least that tremendous number.

A singular bead of sweat ran down his forehead while he looked at the door in front of him. What were his classmates going to be like? Were there going to be people that he could befriend inside? He didn't know.

Was Bakugou and that intimidating guy with the glasses and blue hair that he'd encountered during the Entrance Exam going to be in there? The thoughts of having to share a class with them made him shudder.

He did manage to make a small smile though, as another thought, fantastical and near impossible as it seemed.

What if Ashido was in there?

Over the years, Izuku had tried his best to find the pink girl who had snapped him right back on the path of the Hero, in whatever ways he could. He knew that she wasn't local to his area, but he always kept an eye out, despite knowing it was pointless, hoping to maybe see her in the streets someday. Whenever he saw a shade of pink, he became excited, only to be disappointed when he learned of the actual source. Sometimes it was just a bag. Sometimes it was just hair dye, or a natural shade that just happened to look similar. One time it was a person with a Quirk that changed their skin color based on their emotions, which had been an awkward moment especially, one he preferred not to dwell on.

When his real life searches ended in failure, he would, periodically, look online, on social media, to see if there were some traces of her name on there. The name Mina was pretty common though, and quite a large chunk of the user icons that she found were pictures of characters from video games, anime, symbols and Heroes, meaning that, even if he did see her actual account, he had no way of knowing, since he never saw her face. And when he typed in Ashido, he was just reverted to a variety of scientific papers regarding acids that were all in English. Apparently her name was quite befitting her Quirk.

In short, finding her at all had been practically impossible.

Still, he did have the memories of what she had said back then. That she was aiming to enter Yuuei too. She had made comments, plenty of comments, regarding the two of them somehow ending up in Yuuei together. She was just being friendly back then, Izuku knew.

They didn't know one another, so she wouldn't really want to actually end up in a class together. She had no real investment in the pair of them getting into the same school or not, and he didn't blame her for that at all...

But it was a nice thought.

He wanted to meet her again.

Just so he could say 'Thank you', to her.

So he could let her know how much her five words had meant to him. So that she could know that, in no small part, her words back then had kept him on the Hero track. So that she knew how much he appreciated it.

While he knew of her Quirk, and that it was powerful, as well as the actual fact she had one, he didn't know anything about her skill with it. About how devoted she was to becoming a Hero, or if she even still wanted to attend Yuuei. Even if he assumed that she met all the requirements, and that she was at least half decent with her powers - Would that be enough?

Plus, he hadn't seen her during the entire entrance examination. Even with all of those people there, with their various Quirks and unique definitive markings, Ashido would have stood out more. She would have caught his eye, but he hadn't seen anyone who even looked vaguely like her. Of course, it was possible that she just wasn't at the same testing site that he had been at, and given just how many people had been applying in the first place, as much as she stood out, finding her would be difficult in a crowd of that sheer volume.

Realistically, the chances of it were spectacularly low, he knew. How he got in was an absolute miracle. The odds of being in a class with Ashido, even if she did somehow manage to get into the school, were just so slim that they were pretty much impossible. At the same time, it seemed totally bizarre that he was the one to get into Yuuei, and not her. Someone born with powers should have infinitely more of a chance to succeed than him and his barely under control inherited ability, but that was the reality of the situation.

Twelve thousand times over.

It was, at its core, pure, improbable fantasy, that after five years of having met the girl, that they would be reunited in the world's most famous Hero Course.

It was so slim that, no matter how much he didn't want to, he removed the possibility from his head.

There was just no way.

Instead however, he did retrieve the paper within his pocket again, and looked at the writing upon it. It was something that he had made a small habit out of, in hindsight. Whenever he felt doubt, whenever his nerves got the better of him, whenever the taunts and the jeers were about to became too much for him to, he looked at the note. He reminded himself that there was at least one person who had thought that Quirks weren't necessary for a person to become a Hero. That he had the potential. That he could be a Hero. He repeated it so often to himself, to remind himself that he was here today because he hadn't given up. No one had let him give up, and he hadn't let himself give up.

A few deep breaths later, and having pushed those thoughts aside, he pit the paper in his pocket again. He was ready.

"Maybe I'll get lucky and Kacchan and that other guy are in the other class..." He quietly muttered to himself, finally finding both the strength and the courage to slide open the door to the new classroom he would spend at least the next year with.

"Get your feet off of the desks this instant!"

"Hah! Why don't you make me, you extra?"

…And they were both in there. Of course they were. Just his luck. Izuku wasn't sure if he should laugh at just how predictable that should have been to him, or if he should cry for the exact same reasons.

Nearly twenty other pairs of eyes seemed to scan over the newest addition to their group, seeming to inspect their unimpressive looking classmate. Izuku took a very brief sweeping scan of the room, looking at the various people with their various Quirks and their various mutations. One person had a grand total of six arms, another had hair of two colors, split perfectly down the center, one had earlobes that were extended down to her shoulders and were shaped like earphone jacks...

The room was totally filled with people who sported some kind of unique features. Some possibly due directly to their Quirks, some inherited from their parents, and some perhaps due to pure mutation. Whatever the reasons were, the student body was largely filled with those whom had appearances that sat just outside the realms of the baseline Human, like Izuku was.

Then there were those who looked outright inhuman. Someone who had what looked like a rock shaped head, someone with the head of a bird. None of those sorts of people were unusual in this world filled with superpowers and Quirks. They were the kinds who stood out the most though. The kinds that would catch the eye. Those who were –

In that exact second, things just halted for Izuku, but physically, and internally.

The kinds who... Who...

Someone who was like...

Someone who... Was...

Like the person Izuku was immediately drawn towards. Like a straight up magnet had pulled him towards looking at this person, he had caught a glimpse out of the corner of his peripheral vision. Something his brain recognized, and demanded he shift his attention towards.

His eyes shot open and his hands froze in place. In fact, the vast majority of his person just froze, more in complete shock. His breath ceased, lost as he forgot how taking in oxygen worked. And his skipped a beat.

He recognized this person. He'd been in the room for under ten seconds, but he already spotted her. And he knew exactly who she was.

Anything that the completely disbelieving rational side of his brain was saying was completely ignored and made moot by what was in front of his eyes. No matter what the statistics were, no matter how unlikely it seemed not twenty seconds ago, he couldn't deny the sight in front of him.

Pink skin. Pink hair. Black eyes. Horns.

He recognised her immediately. There wasn't even a second's doubt.

It was Ashido.

Grown up and slightly different, absolutely, but so many features were the same that it was almost uncanny. Obviously her defining traits were all still there. Nothing was going to get rid of those particular peculiarities from her, but the more universal stuff was still recognizable. Her face held the same shape, and her hair was slightly longer, and looked much softer with its newfound length. Her horns were still there, of course, but they seemed to have grown since the last time he had seen her, now extruding much further out and over the crown of her skull.

Obviously, she was taller, much taller than when he had seen her last, though she was probably around the same height that he was, minus the horns, which gave her a couple of additional inches on him. When he first spotted her, she was looking away from him, already managing to have engaged in conversation with those around her.

He knew he shouldn't stare at her. It was wrong, from a moral, ethical, and even personal stance. Staring at others was just downright rude, and even if he removed that from the equation entirely, this was his first day at Yuuei - What sort of introduction did it give him if he just straight up, from this new classmates perspectives, began what could looked like ogling the first girl that he saw once he entered the room?

But he couldn't turn away.

He just didn't have it in him. He was drawn to her. It was her.

Holy crap, it was really her!

The person who had picked him up when he was at his absolute lowest. The person who had made him force himself to keep going against all odds. The person who had challenged his own pessimism, and beaten him.

Everything that had happened to him, he directly owed to her...

He had to at least say hello now! All odds had stated they wouldn't ever have the chance to see one another again, and here she was, in freaking Yuuei with her! In his class! His mind couldn't even fathom that insane notion!

There wasn't even a question in his mind - He had to talk to her!

Not doing so would be the biggest slap in the face to the biggest mercy the large, cruel, uncaring Universe had ever, ever, ever shown to him.

Swallowing down his initial nerves, he took a deep breath, and made a single step towards Ashido, whom by now had at the very least acknowledged his existence - If that meant anything to her was entirely another matter. "H-Hel-"

In keeping with the theme of the Universe enjoying slapping him in the face at every opportunity however, he didn't even manage to get the first word out before his actions were completely interrupted. He had noticed that the yelling between Kacchan and the equally scary, but in a completely different way, taller person who wore glasses had ceased, and both had started looking in his direction as they began to acknowledge his presence. This had started happening as soon as Izuku had made a move to try and talk to Ashido though.

So by the time he had tried to take a step towards her, the teller person was already making a beeline straight for him, introducing himself without any delay at all. "I'm from Somei Private Academy. My name is Tenya Iida."

From there, things just spiraled out of control for the green haired boy, as the formally adhesive student came over to introduce himself to Izuku, coupled with a speech that, while he could tell was impassioned, completely misunderstood why Izuku had done what he had done during the Entrance Examination. The way he talked made the freckled boy almost sound like he were an opportunist, using the situation of the girl that he had saved during the Exam to bolster his own points, which wasn't the case at all. He had done it without even thinking, completely unaware about the concept of rescue points.

Barely managing to even get a few words in during that particular conversation, the next intrusion came from the same brown haired girl that he had saved. Just like the tall Iida, she began to talk to him extensively in what was a very a one sided conversation. Know them or not, when it came to girls in general, he had always been a flustered mess.

And it wasn't like he didn't appreciate that people were actually talking to him for once in his life. Close to a decade of ridicule and abuse at the hands of his classmates, it was actually a relief to be able to talk to people without worrying about someone turning their hands into a hammer or rock or something and hitting him upside the head with them.

It was the first time in a disturbingly long time that he'd been having conversations with people his age...

But he was filled with the compulsive urge to speak to Ashido as soon as he could. He wanted to be able to talk to her before the day was out, for a reason that he didn't quite understand himself. He didn't want to be rude, but at the same time, he just felt like he had to get away from the two who were essentially holding a conversation with him entirely by themselves. He didn't blame either of them at all - They had no idea about what was going on inside his head.

"I'm really looking forward to the orientation sessions! Those're what we have today, yeah? I'm so excited!" The girl, whom Izuku remembered from his letter of acceptance as Uraraka, though her first name passed him by right now, basically was talking more at him than she was talking with him. For the socially awkward boy, it made trying to actually get a word in to excuse himself from the conversation near impossible.

"Y-Yeah. U—U – U – Um, p-please excu – "

"If you're here for socializing, then get out."

A shaggy haired man, wrapped up in a yellow sleeping bag in the corridor behind the brown haired girl threw pretty much every single person in the room for a loop, just staring – Outright staring at the absurdity of what they were looking at. A lot of people couldn't decide if they were amused, bewildered, or just disturbed at what they were seeing.

From there though, things just kept spiralling out of control for Izuku and whatever plans he hoped to achieve.

"Gah…."

The first day at Yuuei had already ended, and the green haired boy was nothing less than absolutely exhausted. His index finger was wrapped up in bandages and accompanied by a splint, thanks to Recovery Girl.

Just by the skin of his teeth, he'd managed to scrape by his first day, with his homerooms threat of expulsion hanging over him throughout the entirety of the Quirk assessment that Yuuei apparently held during their introduction periods. It wasn't like any other sort of schooling that Izuku had ever heard of. Then again, very few other institutions would allow their students to use their Quirks to gauge their strength on the very first day of the year.

It was a well renowned school for a good reason. And if every day was going to be like today, Izuku already knew that he had one hell of a high school career in front of him. It was going to help him on his way to becoming a Hero, absolutely, but he was going to have to fight tooth and nail to keep up with everyone.

Today, he had come in dead last at the Quirk Apprehension test. He was literally starting from the bottom and had to work his way up. Were Aizawa-sensei's statement of kicking out the person who came in last not a 'logical ruse', he would already have been kicked out of Yuuei.

That was the situation he was in.

He let out a stifled yawn, using his uninjured hand to try and cover his mouth as he did so. Recovery Girl's Quirk was amazing, letting his finger heal within just a few moments, but the downside that it took up his stamina was something he was going to need to be careful about becoming reliant on. Finding another way to utilize One For All was going to be paramount if he wanted to become a Hero, and live up to the legacy that was All Might. He wasn't going to stop though. Not until he was a Pro.

Broken bones or not, he wasn't going to give up.

There was a small sense of remorse in his stomach though. He hadn't managed to speak, or even tangibly get anywhere close to Ashido. No way to even begin to spark a conversation with her, and no way that he was going to be able to ask her about their shared past. It was slightly disheartening when he thought about that.

Being in the same class at Yuuei together… It was still absolutely mind blowing to him. He had barely even had any time to just sit down and actually accept that this was the current state of things.

She was actually here, in Yuuei, and they were in the same class! No matter how much he thought about that fact, it was just so completely amazing to him that he couldn't fully comprehend it. Against all chances, odds, and statistics, she was here, and so was he!

His heart beat had frozen when he'd first seen her. Now it was pounding like an automated machine overclocked to the point of absurdity. Just the thought of it was sending his heart into a flurried beat against the insides of his ribs. At the point where he'd almost given up the hope of seeing her again… Her existence was like a definitive reason why he shouldn't ever give up on hope. Both times he'd seen her now, he'd been on the verge of giving up on something, and then she was right there to knock some sense back into him.

He couldn't help but smile at the prospects of the future. He could always find the time to speak to her tomorrow, or the day after…. Or any day at all now, while they were still in Yuuei together.

Another yawn managed to escape his lips as he took steps out of the front door to the Yuuei main building, and was exposed once again to fresh air. Maybe it as the cool air that was making him tired. He needed to take a nap once he got him, without question.

Stifling yet another yawn, Izuku groaned slightly at the idea of having to stand on a crowded train for another twenty minutes, and then walking home before he could reach the comfort of his own room, and just rest for the remainder of the day. "I'm beat…" He muttered to himself, wiping his eyes with his left sleeve. He knew that attending this particular school was going to be a difficult affair. He was going to have to get used to being this tired, and powering through it.

Making his way down the pathway that would lead him away from this school, he quickly looked up from the ground and stopped dead in his tracks.

There she was. Ashido.

Recognizing her wasn't a difficult affair in the slightest. With all of her distinctive features she was downright impossible to miss. She was stood by the gate to the school, talking to some of the other classmates that she had already apparently befriended. From his memories, Izuku did remember her as a social creature, so it shouldn't have surprised him that she was already managing to make friends despite it only being the very first day,

Izuku felt his chest tighten at the sight of her again. Why, he didn't know. Nerves, perhaps? Gratitude that was manifesting itself as anxiety? Just his own social awkwardness deciding that now would be a great time to come and mess with him? Just straight up anxiety?

Who knew?

Still, there she was. Less than fifteen meters away….

He did have a bit of a worry though. One that did cause him some concern. Something that would… Well, it would be reasonable, but it would certainly be disheartening.

Maybe he could -

"How's your finger?"

"Gaaah!"

A hand suddenly had placed itself upon the awkward boy's shoulder, giving the nervous boy quite the surprise. His head, based entirely on pure reflexes, shot towards the perpetrator without delay, to see if this was something that he was going to need to be worried about.

It turned out to be Iida. And once again, Izuku found himself on the edge of a one sided conversation that he was only tangentially involved with. While he did learn that his classmate wasn't as scary as he had previously suspected him of being, he did still feel like the two of them were dramatically different people in their attitudes towards studies, even if both were serious about their workloads.

Once more today, things seemed to spiral out of Izuku's control, or ability to navigate. Uraraka rapidly joined the pair of them and engaged in the conversation herself. As they conversed, Izuku having to explain the origins of the nickname 'Deku' to them, the green haired boy managed to shoot a couple of looks towards the location that Ashido was at.

One time, the final time that Izuku was able to do this, she turned towards the three of them, offered a wave and a smile, and the skipped off with her friends.

Izuku couldn't prevent himself from letting out a small sigh. He knew that he shouldn't be, but he couldn't help but feel a bit upset. He was now attending his dream school, seemed to have made some friends, without that much actual effort on his own part. And he was happy about that. He was grateful that these two, who were practically complete strangers to him, were engaging in conversation with him, and he wouldn't lie and say that he didn't feel guilty about trying to avoid actually conversing with them to try and speak to Ashido. He was actually having the experiences that he'd always been denied due to his Quirkless nature. And he was happy about all of that, more than any words would reasonably be able to convey…

"Deku?" Uraraka leaned forward to get a better look at the freckled boy's face, trying to see what emotions were written there. "Are you okay"?

Glancing towards the brown eyed girl, Izuku managed to smile, though it was a weakened one. "Y-Yeah. I-I'm okay, th-thanks…"

It was reasonable, but it was disheartening. The fact she'd seen his name, seen his face, and hadn't reacted. Hadn't approached him. Barely even seemed to acknowledge his presence, at least no more than she did anyone else in the class full of complete strangers… It wasn't like he didn't expect it. He wasn't particularly unique when it came to this world. No distinctive features, no bizarre personality, nothing like that… But he had hoped, deep down….

But no. no such luck.

Ashido didn't remember who he was.

Chapter Text

Izuku's first week at Yuuei was... A mixed bag felt like the best way to describe it.

Absolutely, he adored this school and everything about it, even if the teaching methods were unorthodox and sometimes quite questionable. Actually, mostly questionable. A school in which any teacher could expel any student for any reason, and allowed the teachers themselves the amount of freedom that Yuuei did, to make allow them to challenge their students to do just about anything that they wanted, within the confines of training obviously, was not a place where traditional thinking was going to survive. Regardless though, it didn't change the fact that, for aspiring Heroes, there was no place finer to learn.

He wasn't going to deny any of this, and he didn't oppose it either. He'd always wanted to attend Yuuei, and now that he was here, he had no right to complain. He wasn't complaining, in fact. The workload, though already rather intense and difficult right out of the gate as Aizawa had warned them it would be, was interesting, and learning new things about the field of Heroism was something he greatly enjoyed.

On top of that too, he actually had friends, and people seemed to generally accept him here. He had a couple of problems in the beginning with Todoroki, but that was quickly straightened out. At the very least, he wasn't hated for merely existing like he was at middle school. Compared to that social nightmare, everyone at Yuuei was friendly. Genuinely friendly, even if a few of them had particularly quirky personalities. That did make sense when he thought about it. Everyone who was there wanted to be Heroes. That was the goal for everyone, and they'd all worked incredibly hard to get there. No one was there to mess around, and all of them at least had that in common. A certain kind of mutual respect and understanding, for one another filled the classroom in that particular sense, even if all they knew about one another was that they wanted to be Heroes.

Outside of that, everyone was basically a stranger to each other, though they could still admire and respect one another's power and how they handled themselves. Given that they'd only known each other for a few days now, it was really all that they had to go off of. Surprisingly though, this seemed to be something Izuku was inadvertently good at.

In fact, he seemed to have a good relationship with most people in his class, despite them not really knowing one another all that well. He had certainly impressed people with the display of One For All, which seemed to have sparked the interest and respect of a lot of people. A large chunk of them had, after the first real combat trial, come up to him and introduced themselves to him personally.

Ashido included. Enthusiastic and bouncy as Izuku remembered her to be.

That however, was bittersweet.

She had been so ridiculously impressed with his dodging, apparently, that even with half the class trying to personally introduce themselves to him and compliment him on his strategy and his intellect during the match with Kacchan, he'd actually managed to get to exchange a few sentences with her. Of course, on his half, they were flustered, and stammered out half-sentences - Half words might be slightly more accurate - But it was a lot more than he'd been able to do in the last half a decade, so he could consider that to be progress. He didn't manage to inquire with her regarding their past before circumstance forced him away from her yet again, but it felt good. Good to talk to her. Good to hear her voice.

But... That was where the pleasant part of that conversation ended.

It basically confirmed to the formerly Quirkless student that she didn't remember anything about him. Were he in her memory at all, she wouldn't feel the need to reintroduce herself, would she? Even if she did feel that need, though Izuku doubted that she was that polite - She had been hyper when he met her, and she seemed just as hyper now - She would have brought it up, wouldn't she? She didn't seem like the type to have any inhibitions about that sort of thing. She would just bring it up, right?

But she hadn't even hinted a mention of it.

It felt like the final nail in the coffin to any hope that he had that she might at least have a vague memory of him in any capacity.

Of course, it wasn't her fault at all. Izuku didn't blame her or feel any anger towards her in any way. In the world they lived in, a society ruled by individuality and superpowers, everyone just stood out naturally. Even those who had weak, and to some, useless Quirks at least had that one feature about them that others remembered. Him being himself, he liked to shy away from being put onto the center stage, thanks to his many years of abuse at the hands of his classmates. He learned to shy away and not stand out. Mixed into a world where standing out and diversity was everything, and he couldn't blame anyone for forgetting who he was.

That didn't stop him from being upset about it though. Of course he understood…

It just... It didn't really do him any favors, emotionally. He should have expected it. And this one single thing had been a bit of a dampener in his first week at Yuuei.

He couldn't help but sigh.

"You okay, Deku?"

More times than he cared to admit, Uraraka had asked him that question with a lot of concern clear in her voice. He did a bad job at hiding this particular bit of upset, it turned out, though he was trying his hardest to.

The fact that she very clearly cared about him and how he was doing was a fact that did make the awkward boy go a bit red in the face. He did appreciate the concern that was being shown towards him, even though they only knew one another a small amount. They still hardly knew one another, though they were on good enough terms that they were quite happy to call one another friends. Uraraka was just the kind of person who would check on the people who were close to her because she genuinely was concerned. Izuku appreciated that about her. It made him glad that she was one of his few friends.

"Y-Yeah, I'm okay." He lied, not wanting to bring unnecessary worry to either her or Iida.

Neither of them knew anything about his past with Ashido. That was something that he was keeping only to himself. Ashido might have forgotten, but Izuku still planned on bringing up their history together at some point, if the opportunity presented itself, and he didn't want anyone else to reveal their history to her before he did.

Quickly, he swung the conversation around. "I'm just... I'm a bit worried about if I'm really cut out to be a Class President."

Newly crowned as the Class President of Class 1A, Izuku just took a small bite of the food that was now in front of him. The mixture of his emotions regarding the pink girl and his recent electoral win were simultaneously affecting him, leaving him with next to no real appetite. How on Earth he had managed to get three votes from a bunch of total strangers was beyond him completely. When he had timidly raised his hand to try and volunteer for the role, he hadn't honestly expected to even be remotely considered for the role, only raising his hand to show he was willing to at least put himself forward.

He hadn't shown anything particularly special, he felt, during their short time at Yuuei. To be fair, no one had, which was why most people during the vote opted to cast their vote to themselves - In retrospect, someone probably should have been a moderator to help stop this, but again, people barely knew one another. Trust was an issue, so it wasn't like Izuku thought worse of anyone for doing that. That was why being elected as the Class President had been a bit of a shock to his system.

All he had really shown was the power that One For All held, and that was the same power that tore himself apart. He had demonstrated some strategy, sure, but he hadn't expected that to be enough to persuade several people that he was leadership material. He had his own ideas about what being a leader meant, and not all of them involved pure power.

The ability to organize. Good judgement. A willingness to put others above ones-self. Being capable of inspiring faith and trust in those one oversees. A true Heroic mindset. Of course, any leader needed to be strong, and have the support and faith of those who were following them. There was no defining trait that made a good leader. If Izuku had to pick one though, it was a willingness to get involved in situations that weren't directly theirs to get involved with.

That was what he had been was what made a good Hero by All Might, so admittedly, maybe he was a little biased. Regardless, it made sense to the green and back haired boy. Leaders needed to be able to involve themselves in the affairs of those who wouldn't want him involved even remotely. To help them readapt, and focus, to help remove their demons and properly align themselves with the task at hand. To force them to deal with their issues if the need arose. Someone who wasn't afraid to get involved where they weren't welcome.

And apparently three people had seen that sort of merit in him. That was what was baffling to him. He hadn't shown any of that, had he? He didn't feel like he had at least... So he had to wonder, what on earth had made people think that he was a suitable candidate?

"You'll do fine." Iida stated, calmly, while taking a small sip of his chosen drink. "I wouldn't have voted for you if I thought otherwise."

"Y-You were one of the ones who voted for me? I-I thought you wanted to be the Class President!"

"Hey, I voted for you too!" Uraraka chimed in, showing off another one of her warm, cheery smiles. "You're really quick at coming up with strategies and your Quirk is super powerful!"

Conversation divulged at that point, into the merits that Iida and Uraraka found in Izuku, and from there, it somehow turned into a talk about the socio-economic status of the Engine Quirk user. It was a family name and legacy that he had to live up to, and he had his own goals and aspirations to be aiming for, yet he had given up on one of the stepping stones to that goal simply because he felt someone deserved it more. It earned him a lot of Izuku's respect.

He only could awkwardly smile at the shower of compliments and reassurances the two tried to give him, still timidly uncertain that he was anything that they both described. It did give him comfort, even honor, to know that his friends saw him in such a positive light. A light he honestly wasn't sure that he deserved.

"...Thanks, you two." He managed to awkwardly chuckle, not sure what else to say in response, though he was genuinely grateful. "And, thanks, for voting for me... It kinda makes me wonder who the other person was who voted for me is though..."

"Wait, you didn't vote for yourself?" Uraraka paused her chewing for a moment to ask that question. In an over exaggerated fashion, her eyes widened up to convey shock and surprise. Iida joined her, though his was more geared towards a realistic look of curiosity.

"N-No." Izuku admitted, fiddling with the chopsticks in his left hand, as his cheeks became a bit redder. "I uh... I voted for A-Ashido."

Izuku had wanted to try his hand at being the Class President, absolutely. He had gone through absolute hell to get into Yuuei, and he wanted to get the absolute most out of his time here as possible. He wanted to put himself out there, to excel, not just to succeed. He wanted to be be the best Hero he was capable of being...

But that didn't mean that he thought he was truly up to the task. His self-doubt and his lack of confidence in his abilities to perform as a Class President, none of it was hyperbole. By his own standards of what a leader should be, he fell flat in several areas. Ashido on the other hand fit into every single category perfectly from what he remembered, and he had no reason to assume that had changed.

She got involved in his business when he hadn't wanted her to, after all.

He couldn't in good conscious vote for anyone else, knowing what he knew about her.

"Ashido?" Uraraka blinked a couple of times, looking genuinely confused. "I'm uh, still getting used to everyone's names... That's the pink girl, right?"

"Y-Yeah."

"Why her? I mean, she's nice and she seems fun, but I don't really know if she's much of a leader. She seems kinda... All over the place sometimes."

"If I may, Midoriya?"

"Uh, sure. Go ahead, Iida."

"We have only been at Yuuei for a single week, but you seem to be particularly fond of Ashido, even though you haven't spoken much to her at all." Izuku gulped. "This is none of my business of course, so feel free not to answer, but I have noticed you looking in her direction during classes and often during our lunch breaks." Had he seriously been that obvious? He hadn't even caught himself doing that. "I was wondering what the reason for all of that is."

A small bead of sweat made its way from Izuku's forehead down to his cheek. Given that he and Ashido barely ever spoke, he had kind of just assumed that no one would guess about their previous relationship, small as it might have been. In hindsight, he had no idea what he had been thinking. Yuuei was one of the best schools for aspiring Heroes out there, of course the place was going to be filled up with inquisitive and intelligent individuals. Someone had been bound to hazard a guess at it sooner or later.

There was a moment though that Izuku was seriously tempted to lie, to refuse to answer, or just deny any and all questions, for the simple reason that he didn't want to risk Ashido being reminded of their past by anyone but himself. He wanted to be able to speak to her, to remind her, and reach put to her, and their previous history with one another was basically all that he had in order to do that. So the temptation was there, and it was incredibly sweet... But he couldn't. He couldn't do that.

For the first time in years, he had friends. People who honestly were interested, curious, and, by their own admission, had respect for him. He shot a glance towards Iida, whom hadn't changed expression since asking his question, and then to Uraraka, whom was listening intently. He couldn't lie to them. It would be a slap in the face to the first friendships he'd made in over a decade.

"... I..." He let out a small breath and looked at the two of them. Me and Ashido... We... Knew each other before Yuuei." He admitted, feeling his cheeks redden and heat up slightly as he admitted to it. He almost felt like he was confessing to a crime that he'd been caught in the midst of committing.

This revelation made both of his friends become more intrigued. The pair of them seemed to lean in, to encourage the green haired boy to keep going. He gulped.

"A schoolmate?" Iida guessed.

"A friend?" Uraraka guessed.

"N... I'm not sure what you'd call it." Izuku admitted, with a sigh. "I only met her the once... And that was five years ago." They already knew he had a history with her, so he decided at they might as well have the full story. If they were going to know that they knew one another, then they may as well know the full extent of why he was acting the way that he was. "My... Quirk is kind of odd. I-It wasn't until recently that I was able to become a Hero with it. And I... I came close to giving up."

He still remembered every moment of that day in perfect detail. He didn't think he'd ever forget it.

"I... Really didn't like myself. O - Or my Quirk." Saying that he actually had a Quirk now was still something he was getting used to. "And on the day I actually just gave up outright... I met Ashido." A smile managed to make its way onto his face, and his heart felt itself increase in speed, but at the same time, he felt good about it. It was a pleasant feeling, a fluttering in his chest that made him feel fuzzy. "She thought that I'd been bullied, but she figured out what was wrong pretty quickly... And she told me that I didn't need a Quirk to be a Hero. E - Even if it's true that someone who is basically Quirkless can be a Hero or not... It was just something I needed to hear."

Of course, not knowing Ashido at all, and only knowing Izuku himself to a very limited degree, neither Iida or Uraraka would have been able to predict such a history between the two. The differences in their personalities made such a connection downright impossible at best, and bordering onto the planes of just outright lying and making the story up at the worst.

Still, for all the emotion and fondness with which Izuku spoke of Ashido with, neither of his friends doubted him for even a second. They were surprised, absolutely, but neither of the, even slightly thought that he was lying. Not even for a moment.

"That is... Rather unexpected." Iida broke the silence after a couple of seconds, though he seemed satisfied with the answer that he got. He returned back to sitting properly in his seat and took another sip of his juice. "That would explain a lot of your behavior towards her though."

"I don't' get it though. Why haven't you talked to her about it then?" On the other hand entirely, Uraraka still seemed to retain a large amount of interest in the story, now having completely put her food to one side for the time being while she intently listened to her friend and his story. Like anyone would have, she had questions.

"E-Eh... Well... I... To be honest I... I don't think she remembers me." He admitted, feeling his chest constrict as he admitted that particular fear out loud. "I... A couple of the times that we have actually talked, she didn't really seem to remember who I was. I mean, she had my name and everything, but she didn't mention or ask about it, so..."

"So why not tell her? See if that jogs her memory?"

"I want to... But every time I try and bring it up, sometime happens and gets in the way... Or... I get all anxious and fidgety and can't even say three words around her..." He now began to look towards the table, suddenly incredibly interested in the individual grains of rice that were in his bowl. His cheeks were heating up just thinking about it. "I... I get that a lot around her to be truthful... I-I'm not sure why though."

"Do you have a crush on her!"

If Izuku had had anything in his mouth when Uraraka asked that question, he would have certainly choked on it. As it stood right now, when she asked that question, he almost choked on the air in his lungs. It had come out of nowhere, and of all the questions he had expected to be asked regarding his and her relationship and his opinions regarding her, that hadn't been one of them. It surprised him.

Mostly because, when openly asked, he knew the answer already. Internally, he'd convinced himself that it was just a deep admiration and gratitude towards her. What he at least wanted her to know how grateful he was. And he was grateful, but it had evolved since he'd seen her last. It had evolved during a course of time, during which he hadn't even seen her, but held onto the memory of her... And now that she was here again, he was overcome with both happiness and joy.

But approaching someone to say thank you wasn't this difficult. He knew this, but he kept telling himself that it was just that. It didn't work this way when he wasn't the one asking though.

Forced to mention these things out loud, and when directly asked, honest a person that he was, he found himself answering with complete and truthfulness. It wasn't like lying about his Quirk. That was a promise he made to All Might. That was different. He needed to keep that secret. He felt like it was his duty to guard it with his life. Even if it made him feel dirty, he couldn't come clean about the origins of his power, but it was easier. Easier since he wasn't lying because he wanted to, but because he had to. When it came to Ashido though... Denial, duty, and self-conviction played no role in his true answer, when he answered with honesty, and before he could even think to stop himself.

Yes. He absolutely did.

"I... I admire her a lot... I... I think she's an amazing person. I don't know much about what she's done since I last saw her... But I remember her being the kindest person... And the most honest and Heroic person I've ever met. Which is kind of silly, I know... All she did was tell me she didn't think that Quirks were totally necessary for Heroism, but to me, back then... It was the most amazing thing that someone had ever done. And... I've always remembered that about her. I've always... I... I suppose I've always had a crush on her ever since then..."

He had meant to talk to her. He really had. It had been his every intention to at least find a way to have a conversation with her, and to bring up their past. It was something that did bother him, Ashido being there but also being completely oblivious as to their history. So, it wasn't like he was trying to shy away from it.

As it turned out though, he was part of the class that was destined to suffer setback after setback, stricken by rivalry, internal conflict at times, and outright Villain attack after Villain attack. The League of Villains. The Hero Killer. All For One. Even the freaking Yakuza - Although admittedly, that one was an issue that had hit him in particular, and a few others in 1A and not the class as a while.

The point wasn't that though. The point was, things kept happening. All in rapid succession. So rapidly, and so suddenly, that he'd barley had the time to breathe. Barely had the time to take stoke of everything that had gone down, and to reorientate himself. And that was just in their first year. Who even knew, or could hazard a guess as to what laid in store for them in years two and three?

Honestly, by the time the Sports Festival came around, it almost seemed pointless to even try to speak to Ashido. By then, everyone had formed into small friendship groups, and gotten to know one another. At that point, he felt like he'd just be annoying her, and if that entire event wasn't going to remind her about him - Not even bothering to use his Quirk in the fist trial and hardly using it at all in the second event - Then he seriously doubted that anything would.

Since the end of their first year was coming up, the students at Yuuei found themselves very busy with classes and training, during both school and their own hours. Revision, improvement, and revision and improvement all over and over again, making sure that they were capable to the absolute best of their abilities. Their intellects sharp and their Quirks refined, honed to an absolute point.

Time wasn't on their side in any real capacity, and if they wanted to really stand a chance at getting through their final exams, they needed to make the most out of every opportunity, all the time that they had, every single second of available freedom had to be sacrificed in the name of pumping up grades. Passing the first year was going to be difficult, since they had no idea whatsoever to expect, and considering that they were already being pushed into things that would normally go to second years during their first few months at the school, there was no doubt that they would have everything that Yuuei had to throw at them being used to try and crush them at full force.

With the constantly ever-growing threat of Villain attacks rising to levels that hadn't been recorded since the age of All Might, the next generation of Heroes had to be tougher than steel alloys. They had to be ready to take on the biggest, and most dangerous threats to their superhuman society in decades, and they were going to need every single lesson and test to be tougher than the last. Setting them up and beating them down with sledgehammers, creating walls the size of pyramids for them to force themselves over was really the only way that they were going to be prepared to face the world once they left the school.

It was why, when he actually had managed to find the time to speak to her, he had chosen not to. He didn't want to be responsible for her failing in any way. He could have offered to help her study, but aside from looking weird since they didn't really talk to one another, he was just downright shy about doing so.

He was between a rock and a hard place. And he felt it better not to drag Ashido into the same place that he was in.

Everyone knew that they had a tough time ahead of them, which was why very few of them were messing around anymore. Constant studying and training went underway, everyone training and honing themselves the best that they could. Beating rules of engagement and general educational knowledge into their heads with textbooks, and pushing their Quirks well beyond their already high breaking point, practicing techniques, and honing battle instinct. Multiple people also visited the support groups, to discuss ideas on how to improve their Hero Costumes and what adjustments could be made to better utilize their Quirks. To put it as simply as possible, everyone was focused on making sure that they were prepared. For anything, and that they had the backups plans in place for if those failed and turned into incomprehensible messes.

Many allowed themselves to have regular breaks though, to let them just turn their brains off for a while. If this helped them to focus or not was depending on the sort of person that they were, but one of the universal times that they had to themselves was during the lunch break of the school day. An hour and a bit to just relax, eat, socialize, and recharge at their own pace, without having to worry about academia for just a short while.

Izuku on the other hand, didn't want to waste even a moment. His intellect and knowledge when it came towards fields within Heroism was practically his saving grace where getting into Yuuei was concerned, even if he had a powerful Quirk inside of him. Even with his recent unlocking of about 25% of the overall power of One For All, he was still a long way away from being able to live up to the incredible Hero career of All Might.

So he would always eat his food as quickly as he could, pull out a textbook and his notebooks, and work away, long before anyone else had even finished eating. He would still engage in conversations though. He was a good multi-tasker.

The current topic on the other hand... Was not something that he felt he had any place in being a part of.

"I'm still not sure that I get the logic here, Tsuyu." Uraraka sounded honestly confused at her friends answers here. "You and Kirishima are going out. I don't get why you aren't sitting with him."

"Not enough places. We tend to spend time with different people. And we can spend as much time together as we like at the dorms." The Frog Form Quirk user, in her trademark fashion, stated everything as bluntly as it came into her head. It made sense to her, and she seemed fine with it, so she was okay with that supposedly being the case.

"But... I just don't get it. Wouldn't you want to spend as much time together as you can? We're all so busy these days it's hard to spend any leisure time with anyone at all."

"Not everyone is as joined to the hip as you and Baku-chan." Tsuyu stated, though there wasn't any sort of malice or resentment to her words. She was taking everything that the Zero Gravity Quirk user was saying with good faith and understanding of her perspective. Besides, you need to be around him so you can keep him on that leash."

Sitting opposite the two girls, Bakugou, in what was no doubt a serious spout of anger, but nonetheless comedic to those around him, burrowed his eyebrows and yelled, "No one's fucking got me on a leash!"

Izuku had to hide a small laugh as Uraraka began to lightheartedly scold him, pulling back in that spoken leash to stop him from exploding into a full fit of rage. He'd said it before, and he'd say it again - Yuuei was filled with all sorts of amazing people.

In the hear that had passed, so much had happened, to everyone that was in the school. Especially those in 1A, who were like magnets to this sort of thing. Villains kept showing up to mess with them that they were beginning to joke that someone probably had some sort of attraction Quirk as well as their more apparent abilities.

Jokes aside, many things had happened. Lots of continuously dangerous, scary, and violent things, over and over again, and through that danger, plenty of bonds had been formed. Most of the class was friends with one another, and since Bakugou had calmed down dramatically since the beginning of the first year, the class was all on reasonably good terms with each other, without exception.

There were plenty of stronger bonds though. A lot of the students had, unsurprisingly, ended up in romantic relationships with one another - It wasn't difficult to see why either. Constant danger and fighting alongside one another for life itself. Forging bonds through fire and steel. That had led to a sense of camaraderie, in the class, but when it came to genuine affection, things were different. Everyone had faced the real danger of Villainy. They'd all come inches away from death. Not everyone had those real brushes with danger, those genuine, real moments where instinct was all that remained.

How would anyone else understand? How would anyone else understand how that felt? How would anyone else understand those feelings of real fear, or real loss? Who could they build those bonds with?...

There wasn't anyone else. Heroes faced the dangers of the streets all the time. It was what they did. But a civilian wouldn't understand. They couldn't understand what it was like. So romantic bonds like this, with other people who just understood, had become common.

First there had been Kirishima and Tsuyu. The two had always been on good terms, but a lot of things had happened. Kirishima, being the openly affectionate guy that he was, made no secret about his fondness for any of his friends. That had apparently resonated within Tsuyu, and she had asked him out.

Uraraka and Bakugou was one of the more unlikely pairs, at least in the eyes of their peers. Despite vastly differing personalities, they held onto a mutual respect of one another since the Sports Festival. When Bakugou finally came clean about his treatment of Izuku and apologized the way that he had, the two had actually managed to sit down and discuss things. Once that was out of the way, and they mended their relationship about as much as it was going to get fixed, Uraraka and Bakugou just found themselves drawn to one another. It was mostly Uraraka that actually initiated things, but it happened to the surprise of virtually everyone. After a while, they just sort of acknowledged that they were dating.

Hagakure and Ojiro - Honestly, Izuku didn't even have the first idea what happened between them. They'd always been friends, absolutely, but he didn't really know either of them well enough to know the specifics. The same was true when it came to Jirou and Yaoyorozu... Although those two had been obvious to anyone who had a working brain.

Things had just wound up this way without anyone really noticing. It all seemed natural, like things were supposed to work out like this, and no one questioned it. Some were more open about their affections, like Uraraka and Kirishima were with their respective partners, whereas some were more reserved, like Tsuyu and Jirou.

Izuku genuinely was happy for all of them. They were his friends - Although with Bakugou, he wasn't exactly sure what to call them - And they were happy with their situations. That was all that mattered at the end of it all. Heroism was a dangerous job, and those who wanted to go into that particular profession deserved to be happy with whoever they wanted to be happy with. He actually enjoyed seeing it happen in front of him. People who made one another happy despite their differences and perhaps conflicting personalities and opinions. People who were able to laugh and enjoy the smallest things together. People who were able to offer support and warmth that no one else was capable of doing. It honestly made his own heart feel warmer when he saw it.

Of course... He would admit to being just that little bit jealous.

Maybe jealous was too strong a word. Perhaps envious worked better?

He didn't know. But he found himself wanting that same thing that they had. It was weird. He had focused on nothing but becoming a Hero for so long, hearing himself think these things was... Odd, to say the least. Maybe it was because he'd tasted the real world of Heroism. Because he'd faced that danger.

But he noticed it. And he was curious as to how it felt, what it was like to be with someone like that. He was intrigued. That was the word. Heroism was the first and foremost thing in his mind. It always had been and probably always would be. To not be thinking about it at all times would almost be like slapping the Quirk that he held onto for over a year now in the face. Indeed, he'd always focus on his studies, on his efforts to become a Hero that could live up to All Might's expectations... But these secondary thoughts were floating around in his mind too.

He didn't really know. It was a difficult thing to describe...

Maybe it was because of his own crush that he felt this internally unsure and slightly conflicted.

Without really realizing that he was doing it, he lifted his head up and looked to his left. Past Todoroki, whom was sat right beside him, and to another table, just across a small gap between the two of them to allow others to walk through, and other towards her.

Ashido.

In the last year, she'd always been there. In the same room as him, learning the same things, and interacting with the same people, every day. She was always there, in the same room as him. She was always there... And he'd find himself drawn to her. Drawn to look towards her. Like she was literally attracting him with some kind of power. It wasn't that though, he knew that it wasn't.

Right now, she was talking with Kirishima, Kaminari, Ojiro and Hagakure, listening to another one of the Electrification Quirk users ridiculous stories or jokes, or something else that would capture the attention of the energetic girl. She had her head rested in her left hand, and was resting her elbows on the table. What it was exactly that they were talking about, Izuku had no idea.

She was smiling though. Laughing, even. And that made Izuku, by extension, smile, and feel his own heart fluttering.

Ashido was a pretty girl. This was something that he couldn't bring himself to deny, even if he was being teased by his many friends about his not so secret feelings for her. He did consider her to be a very cute and very attractive girl. These weren't normally things that he took notice of in people, but in her case, it was impossible to ignore. She stood out so much that her looks were taken into consideration a lot more than most other things were.

Ever since seeing her in action again - Something fate certainly seemed to want to stop. He'd battered himself into utter oblivion during the Sports Festival before her second round match in the finals, although that was mostly his own fault, hadn't ever been put on a training exercise with her, and just generally never really got the chance to witness her in a combat scenario - Her Quirk had improved drastically. There was no denying that. If they were talking about pure strength, Ashido had to be in the top five in 1A, since most people would either have to get close to her to attack her, which made her a huge threat, or had long range Quirks that she could simply dissolve, evade, and counter with her own powers and abilities. Really only a few people in 1A could take her without difficulty - If Quirks were the only determining factor anyway.

What really stood out to Izuku though was that despite barely getting to talk to her, despite rarely seeing her in action, despite her amazing power, and despite everything that prevented him, both foreign and internal, from being able to go over and just say hello, was that she was open, and retained that same gentle, caring, friendly and energetic personality that he knew her for originally. In five - Actually, it was now six - Years, her personality hadn't changed one bit.

Maybe she was slightly more energetic. But she was still that kind person that he remembered. That kind person that had helped him out of a dark place. That same person who told him what he needed to hear when he needed to hear it the most.

He couldn't not look at her, even though he knew that what he was doing might be slightly creepy... He just couldn't stop himself. His lips made a soft smile all of their own, as they always seemed to do when this girl was involved. Whenever he got to see her, his heart did that fluttering thing, and he struggled to keep his eyes off of her. How on earth he had managed to maintain his grades at this point was beyond him.

He had it bad. He'd been told that by many, many, many people, and they were very, very right about it. He knew that he had it bad for her. How couldn't he? He was one of the absolutely few people who knew just how genuine a person that she was, and how caring, gentle, and kind she could be. He was one of the only people who knew the full extent of that...

And it was what he honestly loved about her.

Him looking at her, staring at her with a smile on his face, that wasn't anything particularly new. He would steal glances in her direction every so often during class, when note taking was complete, and he would often look in her general direction during lunch - Finding her was never a particularly big challenge - And he'd just watch her, admire her. There was a part of him that really did know it was weird and a bit unnerving, he honestly did, and there was a part of him that did feel bad about doing it... But he just couldn't help it.

On this day in particular though, Ashido actually caught him in the act.

What had got her attention, he didn't know. If he had to guess it was probably Bakugou yelling something at someone else on their table, or something behind them that had caught the pink girls eye. In either case, she suddenly switched focus from whatever elaborate tale Kaminari was telling, towards Izuku. Her black eyes were wide open, either in surprise or intrigue, and they locked eye contact.

Izuku just gulped. His breathing stopped, and his pupils became smaller, and far more focused.

"Oh, crap..." He whispered to himself, feeling his cheeks getting redder and redder. Instinct told him to turn away, to save himself this awkwardness and try to forget that it happened, and to act like it never happened for good measure. But he couldn't. And this had nothing to do with it being Ashido. This was that part of him that still, after everything that he had been through, froze like a deer in the headlights when presented with an awkward situation such as this.

The two of them remained like this, just staring at one another for what felt like a ridiculously long time, though in actuality it was only about five seconds. Neither of them moved during this time. Neither of them even thought to blink. They just stared at one another, without any sort of interaction.

To be frank about it, it was one of the most awkward experiences that Izuku had had in a while.

Ashido was the one who broke this stalemate. With a huge, warm, and welcoming smile that she practically had trademarked at that point. With the hand that had, until a few seconds ago, been holding her head up, she then used it to offer a wave in the direction of the freckled boy.

That sudden movement though was enough to snap Izuku back into action.

He quickly turned a dark shade of red in the face, and turned rapidly to face his desk, blocking his face from Ashido's sight with his hand, in a miserably failed effort to save himself further embarrassment. His eyes went wide and his mind began to race, like his heart rate started to.

His mind went into a sudden override, his thoughts spiraling out of control. 'Oh crap, she saw me looking at her, oh crap, crap, craaaaap! Now what the hell is she going to think? She just saw me straight up staring at her, she's gonna end up thinking that you're some kind of weird creep Izuku, what were you even thinking? Oh crap, crap -'

"You were staring at Ashido again, weren't you Deku?" Uraraka nudged him, breaking him out of his flustered stupor, as she had done quite a number of times throughout the school year. It had been a source of amusement for her ever since she'd learned about her best friends crush on the Acid Quirk user, lightly teasing him whenever the opportunity arose.

Izuku looked up at the brown-haired girl, only to go red at the expression that she was making. Uraraka genuinely hoped for the best for her friend in regards to his affections for Ashido, but she'd also made no secret that she found his embarrassment and fluster around the subject to be nothing short of hilarious. It was honestly a fairly universally shared opinion amongst their circle of friends, one that was used against him rather frequently, though they were all careful never to take it too far. The Zero Gravity Quirk user has a large grin on her lips, and had one of her eyes half closed. The eye that remained wide open was quirked as far up as it was going to possibly get.

"How long are you gonna wait until you actually ask her out?"

"Gaaaaaaaah..." The noise Izuku made in response to this question was entirely nonsensical, a mixture of a groan and a flustered hasty denial of anything. His face went as red as it was going to get, and his gaze suddenly became incredibly focused on the empty space in front of him, too embarrassed to look at anyone.

Letting out a sigh, the Half-Cold-Half-Hot Quirk user to his side stopped eating for a moment and looked at the green haired flustered wreck. "I know I'm not exactly the best person to have an opinion on this, but I really don't see whats so difficult about being up front with how you feel about Ashido, Midoriya."

"You don't feel that way about anyone though, Todoroki." Tsuyu said in Izuku's defence, understanding the situation that the awkward boy was in. "It's not so easy that you can just do it like that."

"Isn't that what you did with Kirishima though?"

"It still took a while to work up the courage to do it."

Looking up from his fumbled state, Izuku held up his hands lightly, like he were trying to hold Tsuyu back. "I - It's okay, Asui -"

"Tsuyu."

"S-Sorry. But it's okay. I - I know Todoroki means well."

It had become quickly apparent that his friend didn't exactly understand or feel romance or affection in the same way that a lot of people did. He did, however, still care about his struggling friend, and wanted to help in whatever way that he could.

As much as Izuku did appreciate that concern, that, combined with his overall obliviousness to certain things, did make talking about this sort of thing a bit difficult with him.

"If it's difficult for you, I could ask her for you." Offered the dual hair colored boy.

Izuku was quick to reject that particular proposal, shooting his head completely up so that he was level with his friend. "No! No... I - I appreciate the offer, Todoroki... But..." Without him knowing that they were doing so, his fingers intertwined themselves tightly around one another. "But... If I... I want to be able to have the courage to at least talk to her before... I tell her anything like that."

"We're going to be waiting a while then." Tsuyu bluntly stated. "You two have barely even exchanged words to each other all year."

All that Izuku could do in response was laugh. The Frog Girl wasn't wrong at all... Hearing that aloud certainly didn't do him any favours though.

Halting her teasing, Uraraka's expression shifted to one of concern. "I kind of agree with Todoroki a bit, you know. I mean, Ashido's really easy to talk to." She chose her words as carefully as possible, though it was difficult to find the right words to say what she wanted to. "It's... If I can talk to Katsuki of all people -"

Upon hearing those words from his girlfriend, the Explosion Quirk user let out a low growl, though he didn't say anything out loud.

"- then I just find it kind of difficult to see why you find talking to Ashido difficult."

The One For All inheritor paused for a moment, before he sighed lightly. He knew that, if someone looked at things from that perspective, then it did look like he was being silly about things. Ashido and Bakugou were two totally different kinds of people, like night and day, and he was sat with the more volatile and aggressive member of the two, and could at least hold a short conversation with the guy before his old friend got irritated and threatened to unleash an explosion in his face. To be on speaking terms with the person whom had bullied him for twelve years, and barely able to even bring himself to approach the nice girl whom had helped him get back on his feet...

Admittedly, yes, that was backwards. It wasn't something that he had intended. Things just... Turned out this way. How and why, he didn't really have clear answers to. Things were just... Like that. They just turned out that way. It didn't particularly matter if he liked them or not.

That was just how they were.

Before he could lament in the situation any further, the final lunch bell of the day rang out, signaling that it was time for everyone to make their way to their various classes. That afternoon, they had Hero Training, which was a topic no one wanted to be late for. The majority of the table quickly packed their things away, some of them forcing down what few bites they had left to eat, and then making their way towards their classroom, without further incident. Izuku in particular had made a rushed escape, keen to avoid any further embarrassment from the topic of his feelings for the Acid Quirk using girl of 1A.

Of those who hung back though, were Uraraka, Tsuyu and Bakugou. All united in a mixture of frustration that Izuku couldn't bring himself to speak to his crush - Though in Bakugou's case, it was more annoyance and irritation.

There was a part of Izuku that honestly was surprised that, with how much his friends liked to bring it up, that the entire school wasn't aware of his crush on Ashido. Not that he expected them to go gossiping to every single person that crossed their field of view, but he was aware that it was a popular topic of discussion among them - Why, he didn't know. Uraraka said that she found it cute, which seemed to be the only reason they spoke of it.

It was his own fault that they knew, and it didn't bother him that they did know. They teased him, yes, and it flustered him to absolutely no end, but he knew that they weren't saying anything to be mean. They were honestly hoping for the best, and any efforts on their part were filled with the best of intentions.

Although, knowing these things did certainly give him miniature heart attacks whenever he saw any of them talking to Ashido. Social a person as she was, the horned girl got along with nearly everyone in 1A, and that extended into Izuku's circle. Uraraka and Tsuyu both were good friends with Ashido, so they interacted often.

He trusted his friends not to reveal his feelings to her without his permission. He trusted them explicitly, and he couldn't stress that enough. They wouldn't do that.

But there was always the nagging doubt. That nagging little thought that echoed 'What if' a thousand times into his ears, and just didn't shut up. That small part of him that would play against his own rational thinking, and made him second guess himself. Make him second guess his friends. Make him second guess literally everything he otherwise wouldn't.

He sighed, and attempted to refocus on the notes that he'd been making since Homeroom. Throughout that day, he'd been acutely aware of Ashido, anxious and half afraid to even look over in her general direction. He wasn't sure exactly what to expect from her if she approached him to confront him about why he was looking at her the way that he had been. She hadn't seemed to be bothered by it, at least not externally anyway.

Then again, no one who was made uncomfortable by that would approach the person who had made them uncomfortable, would they? This was Ashido he was thinking about though. She wouldn't likely have many reservations about going up and letting someone know that she had problems with them.

She certainly hadn't had any when she learned about Bakugou's old bullying habits, only backing down, along with several others, when Izuku made it clear that he didn't hold a grudge and didn't want Bakugou to be out-casted. Relationships had improved, slowly, and only by a very small margin for certain people in the class towards him. Now that he and Bakugou were at least social, a lot of the anger and distaste towards him had subsided. No one forgot though. And no one had forgotten that he hadn't technically apologized yet.

The point being, Ashido had no problems making her opinions of others blunt.

So if that were the case, it shouldn't be any different for her and him, if she had a problem with him, right? So did that mean she was fine with it? Izuku struggled to believe that anyone was just okay with being stared at...

Either way, she hadn't been acting any different towards him, or any different at all. So that was at least something to draw comfort from.

"Yo, Midoriya."

Looking up in response to his name being spoken, and recognizing that voice as Kirishima's, the green haired boy quickly saw that the Hardening Quirk user was stood just in front of his desk, one hand shoved into his pocket, while the other was scratching the back of his head. This was accompanied with a slightly slanted, awkward smile, that showed a couple of his sharpened teeth in the corner.

"Uh, hey, Kirishima. What's, uh, what's up?" Izuku had known Kirishima for a year now, just like everyone else in 1A, with the exceptions of Ashido and Bakugou. In that year, he'd known his friend to be many things. Strong, dedicated, loyal. trusting, and reckless. He was pretty much the epiphany of a person who had resolve.

One thing he'd never seen Kirishima to be though, was awkward. He'd never known him to be unsure. Or be generally anxious like this.

It immediately let Izuku know that something was off.

"So... This is kinda awkward to ask." The red-haired boy said, running his fingers through said hair. "Uh, basically, Tsuyu's wanting me to sit with her at your guys's table at lunch today. What for, I don't really know yet."

Izuku just blinked. Kirishima and Tsuyu had a... Unique relationship to say the least. During the schools hours, they generally tended to be apart from one another, while when they were back at the dorms, they usually remained close together. No one could claim that they weren't affectionate towards one another - They absolutely were - But that just made the way that they operated that bit more curious. Tsuyu had explained this to their friend group as them acknowledging that they had different people they enjoyed spending time with during the school hours, and that doing so would mean that neither would get distracted with schoolwork. Weird as it was to say about two people who were in a relationship, seeing the two of them together was uncommon during school hours. Which may be why he felt the need to announce it... But...

"... What's wrong with that?" Izuku didn't exactly see why this was an issue that he specifically needed to be informed of. That was the part that didn't exactly make a whole lot of sense to him.

Kirishima scratched his head slightly more rapidly. "Here's the thing. She says she needs Iida and Todoroki both there at the same time. I thinks he's trying to sort out some kind of study thing for me. So... That means someone on your table would have to be kind of... Uh... Replaced."

Oh.

Suddenly things made a lot more sense.

"She said it didn't seem right to separate Uraraka and Bakugou, since they're a thing... Iida and Todoroki... I have no idea why they need to be there, but she says they do, so..."

"I... I - I see." The green-eyed boy gulped but nodded.

He wasn't sure exactly why Tsuyu had requested this, or why she hadn't mentioned this before hand to everyone, or why this even needed specifically to happen with their lunch group, and why those she needed couldn't just go to another table if this needed to happen...

...Actually, now that he stopped to think about it, a huge amount of things didn't make any sort of sense about this entire request.

"Wait a second, I'm confused. Why -"

"I'm not just gonna let 'em kick you off to figure something out on your own though, dude." Kirishima followed up quickly by saying. Izuku wondered if he'd even heard the protests that he'd been about to make. "I'll admit, i don't really get why someone had to get kicked off, but I'm gonna talk to Ashido, see if she doesn't mind you taking my normal spot."

That made Izuku freeze up, and made his cheeks heat up. "W-Wait, what?"

"She should be okay with it. Ashido's a nice girl. I've known her a while." The Hardening Quirk user went on, seemingly unaware of Izuku's reaction. "You two'd get on really well."

"I - I - I - It's o - okay K-Kirishima!" The One For All Inheritor suddenly busted out, holding his hands up in front if him, as if he were trying to block and catch the suggestions the red haired teen was making as he made them. "I - I don't w - want to bother a-anyone!"

"It's no problem, man, really. I can -"

"I don't want to bother Ashido!"

It took everything in his power not to clamp his hands over his lips as soon as those words escaped them. He almost wanted swear at himself.

"Why would she be bothered? You know we're talking about the most social person in 1A, right?"

Ashido would have no problems with talking to anyone who ended up being even remotely near her. She was a social creature. She knew people who no one else seemed to even know existed, so it wasn't like Izuku doubted that she'd object to Kirishima asking her to allow him to take his regular place. It wasn't really a matter of the fear of rejection in this respect.

What it came down to right now was a matter that compared to her, Izuku wasn't impressive at all. As he had grown more confident, and became far more willing to put himself out there, he'd begun to stop comparing himself to those around him, at least when it came to Quirks and skill levels. He'd stopped putting his classmates on pedestals that he wouldn't be able to reach, and started just focusing on himself and on what he could do. Pushing himself further, and relying on his wit and intelligence, combined with that of his own power. Over time, he'd grown, and developed into someone who was capable. In his own right. He didn't shoot himself down at every single opportunity anymore. He was now able to focus, train, and say the things that he was good at with confidence. To put it simply, he wasn't the meek, shy boy with the weird Quirk anymore. Not even close.

But that didn't stop him, even just subconsciously, comparing himself to others on a more personal level. People like Kirishima and Iida, they had their goals and their reasons for becoming Heroes, and they inspired him deeply. Todoroki had his reasons for wanting to be a Hero, which made Izuku's seem unimportant, and downright selfish in the worst possible light. And Mina was just someone who was incredible in most aspects. Academically, not so much, but in why she was trying to be a Hero, mixed with the confidence that she did have in herself

He would bore her. He'd be a waste of her time. That was the issue here. He knew Ashido, but he didn't know her. "I - I just... I feel like I'd kind of..." He didn't really know how to finish his sentence.

"Y'know, she talks pretty highly of you."

Green eyes rapidly widened, and came back into direct contact with the red ones that Kirishima had. Red did make its way onto Izuku's cheeks, but it was a far lighter shade than the one it normally was when the heavily mutated girl was the topic of discussion.

"H-Huh?"

Ashido talked about him? That was already a surprise to him. Exactly how much was there was to talk about him? He wasn't a particularly fascinating topic, at least to the best of his knowledge. That conversation more or less ended around how unusual his Quirk was, at least as far as he was concerned.

His curiosity was sparked now though. Anyone's would be if they learned that they were a topic of discussion for other people, wouldn't it? While he wasn't normally inquisitive into other people's conversations like this... He couldn't help but want to know more. "Wh... What does she say?"

Folding his hands and rolling his eyes up so he was looking towards the roof for a moment while he thought back over the conversations he'd had with the Acid Quirk user, Kirishima bit his lower lip gently with one of his sharp teeth. "Well, for one thing, she thinks your Quirk is bizarre."

Izuku wasn't sure if he should laugh or sigh. Everyone pretty much thought that about the power bestowed onto him by All Might. They weren't wrong though, so he couldn't fault them for thinking like that.

Listing off points with his fingers, Kirishima kept going. "She's talked about how you were insane at the Sports Festival, especially against Todoroki, how you took on the Hero Killer, the League of Villains, how we went on that raid to rescue that girl from the Yakuza. She asked me for details about that. Couldn't really say much though." He managed to laugh about it now, but it had been a rough few weeks for everyone after that raid. Kirishima had been separated from everyone else fairly early on too, so he couldn't really relay any details about Izuku to Ashido, even if he'd wanted to. "Just that kind of thing to be honest, dude." The Hardening Quirk user gave Izuku a friendly smile, one that was encouraging as well as it was kind. "She thinks you're a nice guy, and she's mentioned that she wishes you two spoke more." A brief pause. "At all, actually."

Now Izuku's cheeks went the normal shade of red that they had when his crush was at the head of the topic of discussion.

People had discussed the things that he'd done rather frequently, asking him questions and expressing their amazement at the feats he had accomplished. The media had also gone out of its way to do a couple of articles around him, which had made him fairly uncomfortable, were he being honest. People recognized him on the streets for the things that he'd done, and his name was pretty well known all around the country at this point. A lot of those incidents, though they had shaped him into the sort of person that he was right now, he didn't really think of them as anything overall impressive. He didn't really even consider them particularly Heroic, despite knowing that they absolutely were, technically. But he didn't do them because they would make him look more like a Hero.

He only did them because it was the right thing to do.

But they'd been discussed to death, so it wasn't like those parts were what had made him start to blush.

Hearing Ashido's opinion on him like this though - That had caught him off guard. And it made him flustered. But also happy at the same time.

"Oooh, Deku! You should go for it!"

Jumping in seeming from out of thin air, Uraraka enthusiastically chimed, walking up behind Izuku, with her hands balled up into fists, and pumping up and down rapidly to go along with her excitement.

"U-Uraraka?!" Izuku was more surprised than anything else. He'd thought that she'd already headed off with Bakugou for their short break. Evidently, he was wrong.

"Where'd you come from?" Kirishima seemed just as surprised, at the brunette's sudden entrance. His eyes widened lightly, his mouth very slightly open. Apparently, he legitimately hadn't seen her before she'd shown up behind her green haired friend.

Sometimes Izuku seriously wondered if Uraraka just lurked around corners just in case someone brought up Ashido to him.

The cheerful girl just smiled. "I know when I'm needed." That sentence alone didn't do anything to convince the already flustered boy that she wasn't some tease based ninja. She looked down towards her best friend and knelt down, so she could see his red face. "You've been waiting for a chance like this, Deku! This is perfect!"

"H-Hey!" Izuku hissed, pressing a lip against his finger to try to make Uraraka quieten down. The last thing that he wanted was people knowing -

"Because of your crush on Ashido, right?"

Feeling his face go pale, the inheritor of One For All looked up at his red haired friend, whom showed little surprise on his face, or any sort of smugness at all. "W - What? I - I d - don't - "

"Dude, I'm pretty sure everyone knows." Kirishima said with a small shrug. He then turned around and looked around the room, before calling out a couple of names. "Hey, Hagakure! Kaminari! Jirou! You guys know who Midoriya's crushing on, right?"

Both the girls looked towards Kirishima as they heard their names called out, and then towards Izuku, and then one another. Hagakure was the one who jumped up and answered first. "It's Ashido, right!" Kaminari simply nodded his head along with the energetic invisible girl's lively response, leaning back in his seat.

A look of object horror etched itself out on Izuku's now pink as the aforementioned girls face. His eyes opened up as wide as they could go, and his jaw dropped slightly ajar. "H - How did you - "

"Are you kidding? I'm pretty sure the only one who doesn't know is Ashido herself, isn't it?" Jirou commented towards Kaminari, before looking back at the green haired boy. "Dude, you're pretty obvious. It didn't take a genius to figure it out. Freakin' Jemmingwhey figured it out."

"Stop calling me that, Jirou!" The Electrification Quirk user yelled, before he looked back towards his red eyed friend, and green-eyed classmate. "But yeah, you are pretty obvious though, Midoriya. Like, seriously, I have no idea how Ashido hasn't figured it out yet."

"Because we all agreed to keep our mouths shut about it." Hitting him lightly over the back of the head with the side of her hand, Jirou 'reminded' her blond friend. Her eyes them wandered over to Izuku again. "And we'll continue to keep our mouths shut about it until Midoriya grows a spine and tells her himself."

"U - Um... Th - Thank you?..." A sigh was all the now thoroughly embarrassed teenager could manage. Was he seriously that obvious? Even with his friends swearing themselves to secrecy about this, the rest of the class had figured it out anyway? Was he seriously that easy to read? He had at least liked to think he was at least competent at hiding his emotions like that, but it turned out he was anything but. He could only imagine him making a complete fool of himself, while thinking that he was managing to hide it incredibly well. The mental image only further enhanced his embarrassment.

They had all agreed to keep his feelings for the pink girl to themselves though, to let him have the opportunity to tell her how he felt himself. That was something he absolutely was grateful for. Pretty much the only silver lining in this mess.

Given the choice between telling her himself, and having his feelings repeated by someone or something outside his control, he'd opt to just face her and force out a confession. The last thing that he wanted to happen - Ever - Was that Mina would hear how he felt in a way that he couldn't do justice. In some way that the extent of his feelings of admiration and respect and adoration wouldn't be made clear. That was just the absolute worst-case scenario for him. So, he could only thank everyone for not denying him that.

And the universe, for not putting him in such a situation in the first place.

Still, his embarrassment certainly wasn't lessened in the slightest by these facts. In fact, they might have even been magnified a bit by them. "Wh... What... Do I even want to know what gave it away?..." He hesitantly asked, honestly slightly afraid of the answer. Mostly because he was worried about how much of an idiot he must have looked throughout the year.

"Pretty much everything." Kirishima flatly answered, though now his grin was of amusement at his friend's fluster. "You get fidgety whenever she gets brought up, she keep looking at her during classes and at lunch. For Gods sake, she waved at you once and you straight up did a one - eighty turn and your face was bright red." He chuckled and shoved his hands into his pockets. There was a lot of humor to be found, at least in the eyes of one of Class 1A's most cheerful individuals. He snickered to himself one final before he halted any sort of laughter at all. His smile dropped, and his voice became a lot more serious, to match the words that came next. "She thought she'd upset you."

A pang of obvious and visible guilt hit Izuku's face. "I... I didn't mean to do that..."

"Yeah, I know dude. I get the sort of man you are." Not that figuring out Izuku was difficult, at least on the most basic of levels, but Kirishima was surprisingly good at understanding people, and seeing when they were going through difficult or painful times. Combined with the fact that Izuku was admittedly a very simple kind of person, at least on the surface, figuring out what made him tick wouldn't be too difficult. Given some understanding, of course.

Another sigh left Izuku's chest through his lips. "I… I appreciate what you're t-trying to do, Kirishima… R-Really. I do…" No lies or hyperbole. He knew what his friend was attempting to do, and it wasn't like his concern and eagerness to help wasn't noteworthy… "B – But I just… I'm not sure."

"What's the problem?"

"I just…. I don't want to force anything." He could make a list of all the things that he was worried about when it came to talking to Ashido, though along with his fears of both rejection and of his feelings being revealed from outside his control, the next thing to top it all off was his concerns about trying to force something.

Assuming he ever worked up the nerve to actually speak to her, the worst thing he could do then was make things feel unnatural, fake, and forced. He didn't want to make Ashido feel like she had some sort of obligation to converse with him, which would probably make the pair of them uncomfortable. That just seemed like a surefire way to make her start avoiding him.

"Seriously dude, you're overthinking this way, way too much."

"Wh - Why does this matter to you so much?!"

There wasn't a glare of any venom into his words. There wasn't any anger in him at all. Normally, Izuku wouldn't be so blunt, or so bold when asking such a question. Often times, he probably wouldn't ask at all, for politeness's sake - But this was far too bizarre for him to simply ignore.

No matter which way he sliced it, none of what was being said to him in the entirety of this conversation made any real sense. Admittedly, the subject was a bit of a sensitive one for the Quirk Inheritor, but all the same, everything felt like it wasn't quite… Normal.

Kirishima, apparently fully aware of his friend's crush on another one of his friends, was offering to set up some kind of opportunity for Izuku to be able to talk to the girl he admired. There was absolutely every chance that he was being completely genuine and up front about wanting to just help his friend out with his troubles. Knowing Kirishima like he did, Izuku wouldn't put that sort of thing past the Hardening Quirk user. He was a good guy like that – Except he seemed exceedingly pushy about the entire thing. Exceptionally so, about something that wouldn't affect him much, and while it could be seen as jumping into someone else's problems, which was something Izuku had grown to see as the mark of true Heroism… This wasn't exactly the same thing. This was a much more personal matter. Something not even Heroes had the right to interfere in. One Kirishima, being in a relationship himself, should understand.

Why he was supposedly asking made little sense, now that he properly thought about it – What exactly was stopping Kirishima and Tsuyu and whoever else they needed from having this supposed Study Session during their downtime back at the dorms? Why did it need to be during a lunch break? And that didn't even go into the various reasons why Izuku doubted that Tsuyu would genuinely be on board with this. Obviously he couldn't just ask, since she was nowhere to be found right now, but he had his doubts about it.

Come to think of it, the entire Study thing seemed rather fabricated out of nowhere too. While he was admittedly not the top of the class by any stretch of the imagination, Kirishima wasn't an idiot. He was capable when he put his mind to it. And again, assuming it was true, there was absolutely no reason that Izuku could think of that required it to be during class hours. To go on dates during their downtime was the only thing he could think of – Except, no one dared to risk failing the final exam of the year just to go on dates. No one had been on one in a while.

So it just didn't add up.

His blunt questioning didn't come from a place of malice… But he needed to know why Kirishima was being so persistent about this. For all his altruistic impulsiveness, Izuku wouldn't dare get involved in the relationships of his friends, unless he felt there was a very serious, significantly darker issue to address. There were lines he just felt he shouldn't cross – One of which very much including interfering with romantic relationships between people.

What was Kirishima's reasoning for doing so?

Clearly, he had surprised both Uraraka and Kirishima, and thrown them off their guards with his sudden statement. Uraraka's eyes opened wide, along with all semblance of amusement and joking behavior immediately ceasing. Her eyes immediately averted, half out of reflex, and half to see the reactions of those around the two of them, to try to signal to them to refrain from making any comments that they might have been about to make, though she was greeted with an empty classroom – Everyone else apparently deciding to leave unnoticed while this conversation went on.

For his own part, Kirishima had also taken a single step back from Izuku's desk, holding his hands up and open just in front of his torso. His expression said it all – He realized that he'd pushed his friend too hard, been too intrusive, and that he had stepped well over a line that just wasn't acceptable in, really, any respect. That had never been his intention of course, but he'd wound up doing without realizing it. Kirishima had his reasons – Ever so slightly selfish as they were – For doing so… But clearly it had backfired.

Izuku hadn't been vicious, but it was clear that this was a boundary that should have been respected. Kirishima gulped. "Uh… S – Sorry, Midoriya." He apologized quickly, guilt hitting him just as rapidly. "I uh, didn't mean to push you."

The green haired boy's face was angled slightly towards his desk, so his irises and pupils were half concealed by his upper eyelids as they rolled upwards to look at the remorseful teenager. What could be generously called a glare that had been on the boy's face didn't last for too long at all, as he quickly sighed, allowing any pent-up irritation to be expelled from his chest.

"I uh, I'm sorry too." The next apology came from Uraraka, which honestly did surprise Izuku a bit. He was fully aware that Uraraka never meant any intentional harm in her teasing at all. The thought hadn't even crossed his mind. Given his normally meek personality, and how that drastically contrasted with the outburst he'd just had, he shouldn't haven't been surprised. It did mark the first time that he'd actually blown up like this in regard to his emotions on this subject. Immediately, he did regret it…

Yet, still though, he couldn't just let this go without saying something. There just…

There had to be a reason behind this sudden mess.

"I…" A brief pause. "It's… It's okay. I uh…" Another pause.

What exactly was he supposed to say? How was he going to phrase something like this? A few seconds were needed before he could bring himself to say anything again.

"… Look… It's …. It's probably my own fault that everyone figured out that I…." His voice turned into a very quiet whisper, as well as his face going a dark shade of scarlet. "Like Ashido – B – But that's – I – I… I… I don't understand why you're so concerned about this, Kirishima. This just…. It seems like such an odd thing to be worried about. Especially since we all have exams soon…"

Both Kirishima and Uraraka shot a look towards one another, both blinking twice at the same time, before returning their gaze back towards Izuku. To the flustered young boy, the expression that now was on Kirishima's face made it look like he'd asked for the answer to the most obvious question in the entire world. For all he knew, to Kirishima, he might have done.

"You and Ashido are both my friends." Kirishima replied simply. His hands came together, and his fingers intertwined as he spoke, and his eyes rolling into the right corner of each socket. "That's all there is to it. I just thought that maybe you and her might be able to, you know, find some common ground or something. Tsuyu needs the space anyway, so I thought you and Ashido could – "

"What's this about me now?"

At that exact moment, Izuku could feel most of the muscles in his body stiffen up at the sound. A voice, more specifically. Literally, the exact last voice he'd wanted to hear throughout this entire conversation. A part of him truly was beginning to wonder if he was cursed.

Three pairs of eyes turned over to the entrance way where none other than Ashido herself was, the door half open as she filled in the space that was open. Her right hand still on the door, and her left, wrapped around the corresponding strap on her backpack, and an eyebrow on the same side was raised, quirked up. She had walked into three people, all in the same general area, crowding around one person, having heard her name. Naturally, she was curious. Anyone would be after hearing their name come up in conversation.

Seeing her, Izuku simultaneously wanted to seal his own mouth shut, pray to whatever cosmic beings may or may not exist that both of his friends would also keep their mouths shut, and hope to God that Ashido would just lose interest and do whatever it was that she had originally come in here to do….

At the same time though, he couldn't help himself from smiling at the mere sight of her. It was something that had been hitting him a lot harder in the more recent months, when he'd all but given up on actually approaching her, almost like a reaction to his surrender. Just seeing her now reminded him of that day in the park. Of the words that she said to him, of the feeling she gave him back then, and the feelings she made him feel right now.

So, in that moment, he was filled with both enamourment, and complete dread – Not the best mixture of emotions.

"Oh, hey Ashido." Jumping to respond rapidly, Kirishima sent over a casual wave her way, trying to act nonchalant. After seeing Izuku blow up like that, it just didn't seem right to him to try to force this again.

"Ashido! Perfect!" Uraraka on the other hand, jumped at this suddenly presented chance. "We kinda need you to take Deku for lunch period!"

Izuku's eyes and jaw both opened in horror.

Now three heads turned to look at Uraraka's beaming face, one terrified, one confused, and one suddenly a lot more hesitant. Words were attempting to make their way out of Izuku's lips, but they just came out as a stammer. No words would articulate and nothing that made any kind of sense made it past his voice box.

What the hell was she doing?!

"You…. You need me to what now?" Ashido was just completely bewildered, so much so that the normal hyperactivity that she would display just wasn't there in this moment. She was just standing there, looking utterly puzzled, not that anyone could blame her for receiving such a seemingly random request. Her eyes darted between the Zero Gravity Quirk user, and the wide eyed One For All Inheritor, whom her eyes lingered on for a couple of additional seconds, before returning to Uraraka. "What for?"

Uraraka shot a look towards Kirishima, and made a gesture with her head towards the newly appeared Acid Quirk user. After a short internal debate with himself, he turned to look at his pink friend, scratching the back of his head. "Well, here's the thing…"

Telling Ashido what he had told Izuku, Kirishima went over the various details and reasons why the awkward boy's group supposedly needed to kick someone off their table for the day. She listened in silence, taking the occasional glance towards Izuku, whom was still paralyzed in downright horror. A wobbly, crooked smile was etched onto his lips, one which he just couldn't force to get lost no matter how hard he tried. He didn't want to even imagine how utterly ridiculous he had to look in that moment.

"What're you doing, Uraraka?!" He hissed quietly, so only the brown-haired girl would be able to hear him. Literally only a few seconds ago, she' apologized for taking things too far, only to now push this the second the opportunity arose? What on earth was even the logic there? "You just said that – "

"Think about it, Deku, this is the best chance you've had all year!"

"A – Are you crazy?!"

"Not saying a word to someone who helped you out years ago is crazy. This is something any sane person could've done!"

"Th – This really isn't like you…" Teasing, that was one thing to Izuku. This was another entirely though. This was crossing the unspoken boundaries that the pair of them had had for close to a year now when it came to discussing one another's crushes respectively, something that Izuku had respected when it came to her and Katsuki.

What the hell had both Uraraka and Kirishima both so invested in this?

"Ah!" Hearing everything that Kirishima had had to say, Mina clapped both her hands together and looked at the timid sixteen-year-old with her trademarked warm and welcoming smile. "Yeah, sure, that's no problem dude!"

"You sure?"

"Yeah, 'course I am! More fun with more people!" A very clear amount of cheer had made its place known in Ashido's voice, before she turned to look at Izuku directly again. "This fine with you, Midoriya?"

"It's…. Kinda weird that Uraraka and Kirishima set this up, don't'cha think?"

There was a very real part of Izuku that questioned why on Earth he had agreed to this. Avoiding this whole mess would have been so easy. All he had to do was say that no, he wasn't okay with this. That he was uncomfortable with this whole thing being pushed down his throat, even when he'd made it quite clear he didn't want this to happen.

He could have quite easily turned this all away, and gotten out of this situation without any difficulty. If he had said something, what were Uraraka and Kirishima going to say to Ashido? That he didn't know what he was talking about? That he was shy? He supposed the last one might have worked… But his voice would have had more weight.

Besides – He didn't even have to come here, even if he had agreed to. No one could have forced him to actually show up at Ashido's regular table. A thousand excuses would have been available to him as well. Saying that he had some kind of extra lesson with All Might, that he'd been called up by Aizawa, or that he'd suddenly ended up sick – He could have gotten out of this without question if he'd wanted to.

And yet, here he was. Alone with Ashido, sat directly opposite her.

"Y…. Y – Yeah. I – I… I -I a - also t - thought s - so." His stammer was particularly bad now. Worse than he'd ever remembered it being at any point in his life, not helped by his rapidly beating heart that refused to let him try to regain his composure. All nerves aside, he knew why he was here.

Because deep down, he was happy. All anxiety out of the picture, he was grateful, and glad that this had ended up happening. He wanted to be here.

Ashido poked something on her plate, before grabbing hold of it with her chopsticks. Before she placed it into her mouth, she did a quick scan of the room again, peering over people's heads as she attempted to locate her friends. "Where the heck are the others?..." Bizarrely, no one else had arrived at the table yet either. None of the usual, like Sero, Tooru, Ojiro, or Kaminari. Ashido was just as confused as Izuku had been, that no one else was anywhere to be seen. Normally their table was so loud it was completely unmissable. Now it was like they just hadn't bothered to come to classes today. And that wasn't the case at all. Izuku remembered seeing Tooru and Kaminari back in their classroom.

One of two things had happened there, he was willing to put money on – Either Uraraka had told them not to, or they had come to the idea not to join them themselves. In both cases, they would have gone around and told the rest of their friends the situation themselves.

His crush, apparently, wasn't a secret, so this could very well have been their way of giving him a 'Chance'.

He wasn't sure if he appreciated that or not.

Both Izuku and Ashido had only been speaking rather sporadically, more focused on eating their meals more than engaging in conversation. Of course, given that they barley spoke to one another normally, this wasn't a big surprise. Ashido hadn't had a problem with letting Izuku join her because she was just a nice person. That didn't mean she knew the first thing to say to him, or vise versa. Izuku wanted to say something to her, he really did – He just didn't know how to start out his sentence.

They were both strangers at this point. How did one go about telling a stranger that they hadn't exactly been strangers for over half a decade now?

Did he just go for it?

Did he ask if she remembered a kid in a park six years ago?

Did he just tell the story and see if she reacted?

"U – Um…" He muttered quietly, so quietly that Ashido almost didn't hear him. When she realized that he was talking though, her head shot up to look at the curly haired boy, trying to turn the gears in his brain to work. "H…. H – How's your s – studying g - going?"

That was normal enough, right?

She swallowed whatever was in her mouth, before she let out a small sigh. "First thing you actually ask me, and of course it's to do with schoolwork." She couldn't stop herself from letting out a small laugh though. His reputation as a nerd didn't exactly leave him surprised at that reaction. "Eh, it's going okay, I guess. I'm not really a fan of textbooks though." She shook her head as she spoke, as if the word alone was something that bothered her. "Yao-Momo's study sessions kinda help, but it's no good going over some Algebra thing in Math if you've got no idea how Math works, y'know?"

"I Uh… Th – That makes sense." Izuku nodded. Ashido wasn't exactly known for being book-smart. Her grades were much more physical orientated.

"Mm." The Acid Quirk user nodded back, before she took another mouthful of rice. "I think I should be okay with the Hero stuff, but it's pretty much everything else that I suck at." She managed to let out a soft laugh as she said that. "We're here to be Heroes. I don't get why we even need to know the Square root of… Whatever."

"I uh… I – I like to - to think that I – it to help make us s – smarter. So we k – know how to make the r – right call in a bad situation…"

"I guess. I don't remember the last time I saw an equation help any Pro out though." She then shrugged. "Unless you count Kakudo, I guess, but even then."

"You – You've h – heard of her?"

"The Angle Hero. Debuted like, a month ago. Yeah, I've heard of her. I saw her debut. She's got an odd Quirk though, don't you think?"

Izuku nodded in agreement. Kakudo was a new Pro Hero on the scene, and her Quirk was certainly an interesting one. She had the ability to bend her body to absolutely any angle that she desired, in any direction that she wanted, so long as it didn't cross over with the rest of her body. A very limited Quirk, but in the hands of his Pro, and surprisingly potent one. "You… Keep up with Hero Debuts, then?"

"We're all here to debut someday, dude. 'Course I watch when Heroes first show up in the news. It's awesome!" Ashido cheered, enthusiastically pumping her one fist up and down as she spoke. "Makes me look forward to when I get to make mine once we leave Yuuei."

"Y – Yeah." Every aspiring Hero looked forward to their first day as a Pro, the moment when they finally stepped into the public spotlight and became known to the world. Izuku had had his fair share of fantasies and day-dreams about his own debut, mostly back when he was Quirkless. Nowadays, he was much more focused on actually getting through the next few years in order to become one, he hadn't been thinking about his actual debut too much.

But it was common ground between him and Ashido – That was a start, at least, wasn't it?

It was sure as hell more to work with than he'd had in the last whole year, and he wasn't in any sort of rush to just let the conversation die on that. "I…. I tend to write down stuff about their Q – Quirks. F – For reference…"

"In those notebooks, right?" She questioned, pointing her chopsticks at him while she chewed. "The ones you write all sorts of stuff in?"

"Y – Yeah."

"You mind if I have a look? I've kinda been interested in… Whatever the heck it is that you write in those things for a while now."

Her blunt questioning wasn't something that should have surprised Izuku, having seen her inquisitive nature firsthand multiple times, particularly back when they first entered the dorms. Still, he felt his heart race a little bit when she actually asked, and felt his cheeks get warmer.

"S – S – Sure."

Reaching down into his backpack that was located by his feet, he quickly fished out his notebook, his newest one, at number fourteen, which he'd started working on just a few months ago. He couldn't help but let out a small sigh of relief – Thankful that it wasn't the one with all his notes on the girl in front of him.

Those notebooks were partially responsible for their first interactions, how she had learned about his lack of a Quirk. About his dream of becoming a Hero. He'd always, in some small way, been reminded of her whenever he'd made notes in them since that day. If not for her, he might not have even continued to make them. It was thanks to her, and her primarily, that the one he was now holding in his hands even existed.

The only way he could think to describe it was that it felt like, after she had left his life for five years, that they were some of the only things that still kept him connected to her, in some way. To now hand one over to her…

It felt like bridging the gap that had no doubt existed between them.

Ashido placed the book on the table in front of her, and flipped it open to the first page, which contained a multitude of notes regarding a member of the Yakuza that Izuku had fought during the raid to rescue Eri. Particularly, it was focusing on one that had a Quirk that allowed them to manipulate leaves, and use them as weapons. Notes about how this Quirk would be useful in natural areas, but less so in suburban and city locations were dotted around the place, as well as mentions that when the leaves left the plant in question, they didn't seem to return to the source, meaning the user could only use the same leaves once. Next to those, were theories and possible suggestions to get around that kind of limitation. It was, by all accounts, very thorough, as was expected of Izuku at this point.

"You really go into detail, huh?" Ashido commented, running her finger over the point that she was reading. The entire page was crammed with information, though it was all very neatly organized, and was easy to follow thanks to how it was all laid out. She continued to flip through the pages, reading some more intently than others, ranging on her opinion on the effect of the Quirks name, and which ones caught her eyes. "Thermokinetic Degree, Riptide, Triggered Optical Laser, Frenzy Plant, Ionize, Paper-Thin, Ricochet… How do you even find half of these Quirks, dude?"

"R – Research." He answered. "I – I see a lot of them on TV. Some online, mostly in articles… I – It's mostly filled with stuff I just happen to f – find…"

"Roundabout, Strafe, Retractable Claws…" She kept flipping, reading aloud the names of the various Quirks that she saw. Just like when Izuku first met her, she kept skimming over pages, only slightly reading the ones that she passed by initially. It reminded him of their first meeting…

Except…. She didn't remember him. She had no idea who he was.

… Though he could change that.

The chance that he'd practically been begging for – It hadn't exactly come about even vaguely in the way that he'd thought that it would, or even particularly hoped that it would, but it was here, in front of him. They were talking, for the first time in years, and it wasn't weird. It wasn't abnormal, and contrary to the many paranoia's he'd had, she didn't seem to think of him as weird or anything of the sort. They were just talking, the topic being the very thing that had been Izuku's only reminder of her…

And he could tell her that now.

Weirdly, he wasn't even nervous about it. The previous anxiety was just gone. It didn't exist in his mind anymore, and he was able to just think clearly, and felt himself become calm. He had no reason to worry. Nothing to fear. Somehow, he just knew that Ashido was going to be able to take what he had to say well. What would come after, he had no idea… But he was actually looking forward to finding out.

"Ashido… Do you, remember – "

"Still find it amazing that you're still making these, dude."

Izuku just blinked. "S – Still?"

"Six years later and you're still working on these things. I mean, that's dedication if I ever saw it."

Izuku's entire mind and body just went completely blank. His eyes shot wide open, and his jaw dropped, through absolutely no command of his own.

He stared at her. Blankly. Without a word. Ashido looked back at him, looking for all the world like she was trying to stop herself from smiling. The two of them just looked at one another, not a single word exchanging between the two of them, for at least twenty solid seconds.

Had he just seriously heard that right?

There was no way.

No.

Freaking.

Way.

"The…. The …. The – The… You… I – You – You…. You - Wh – What?!"

She remembered?!

Grinning from ear to ear, Ashido's face suddenly lit up, one of her hands practically slapping her lips to try to stop the immediate burst of laughter that erupted instantly after his utterly aghast expression and awkward stammering escaped him. It didn't work. Within seconds she was loudly and openly bellowing with laughter, unable to hold it back even a single fraction of an instant longer. Izuku's reaction had been pure gold. She couldn't even begin to try to stop herself.

"Pfffft! You – You have no idea how l – long I've been waiting to see that look on your face!"

"You – You r-remembered all of that?!"

"Let's see – Plain looking boy with green hair and freckles, awkward as all hell, a Quirk he can barely control, who keeps writing stuff down in his books and is overall just a massive nerd." She grinned and pointed at him. "You're not exactly a difficult guy to remember, dude."

Said green haired and awkward boy just sat there, completely and totally floored with what had just been said. She remembered him, this entire time?! No less than a million questions hit him, all at once, and it took everything in his power not to just throw them all up at once.

"I – But - That – You –"

Forcing herself through a series of giggles, Ashido commented yet again. "Yeah, y'see, it's kind of difficult to forget someone who acts like you do. Even if it was six years ago at this point."

"The – B – B – But I – if you knew a - all this t – t – time th – then why didn't you s – say anything?!" The was the big question, the one he felt he needed answering before a single other one.

So much awkwardness, so much doubt, and so much else could have been completely avoided if she had spoken up and said something. If she had just approached him – Given the sort of person she was, she just would have! But she'd kept her distance just as much as he had?

What for?!

Wiping the grin off of her lips, Ashido looked towards Izuku with a more serious expression, though as she did so, her cheeks flushed up to a slightly darker color, lilac, as she leaned in slightly, and lowered her voice to a slight whisper. "Okay, promise not to laugh?"

All the boy did was nod.

"…I … Kind of thought you'd forgotten about me."

For a moment, Izuku seriously was not sure if she was serious, or if she was mocking him. Neither of them said a word, Izuku not even moving the position of his head for a few seconds, like he was waiting for some sort of tell, a sign that the girl in front of him was being disingenuous.

He saw nothing for the sort. She was being totally honest.

She genuinely, somehow, thought herself to be forgettable like that. "H – How the hell would I f – forget you?! "

Leaning back, Ashido looked up towards the roof slightly, before she recounted. "I mean… We've barely even talked all year. I mean, I wanted to, I really did. But, I was kinda hoping that when you heard my name after the whole thing with Bakugou at the start of the year that you'd remember who I was…. But we didn't really talk after that." She shrugged and looked back at the freckled boy. "I thought about approaching you a few times, but… Well…"

A momentary pause to catch her breath, and a readjustment of her fingers, now intertwined, later, she continued.

"I remembered how much you wanted to be a Hero… And you still seemed so dedicated to it. I didn't wanna, you know, rock the boat for you. I'm not exactly the top of our class, so I was worried I'd end up distracting you." She offered him a warm smile, practically dripping with honesty. "I just remembered that kid I met who was crying because he didn't have a Quirk, and thought he couldn't be a Hero… And when I realized he was right in front of me… It just didn't seem right to bring up the past. Not after you managed to get into Yuuei, and got a Quirk."

"A – Ashido…"

Izuku couldn't decide if he wanted to burst out into laughter, or into tears. The pair of them had had the exact same fear as the other had been having, this entire time?

Irony? Fate? Cruelty? Or just coincidence? He couldn't decide which one it was more, or which one it was that he wanted it to be more. "A – S…. So wh – Why now?..."

"Mainly to shut Kirishima up."

Her flat answer made Izuku reel back slightly. "K – Kirishima?"

"Yeah, he caught on pretty quickly that I knew who you were, so I basically told him everything. Suppose he got tired of me bringing it up at some point. He's spent the last year trying to get me to go over and talk to you. Really started pushing it the last few months, after you guys took on the Yakuza. I guess he figured out you remembered or something." She couldn't stop herself from grinning and laughing to herself again. "I kinda figured that was what he was doing when Uraraka mentioned the whole needing to boot you off your table thing. I gotta remember to get them back for this."

"H – How?"

"I dunno. We could pretend to be engaged. That might throw them off."

His face lit up bright red. "A- Ashido!"

"Mina."Ashido told him, before bursting into laughter outright.

This time, Izuku couldn't stop himself from joining her in her laughter.

It hadn't even slightly gone how he'd expected it to. Nothing about this sort of situation even vaguely matched up with how he'd imagined it in his head. How he'd seen it play out in his mind.

It was all absurd and coincidental and madness…

But he was happy with it. Happy he hadn't been forgotten. Happy that, in spite of all of his reservations and hesitance, and nearly just downright refusing to go along with this plan at all, that he had agreed to it in the end.

It had been a year of pointless awkwardness between the two of them… But that was over now.

And he was happy about that.

"So… About you getting a Quirk." Ashido – Mina said, once she'd calmed down. "How'd that happen?" 

Chapter Text

It had become habitual for Izuku to go out for a walk or a run more or less immediately after waking up, depending on how he felt, and what the weather was like. While he'd gone for these sorts of runs while he was training his body to inherit his power, and when he was still refining it, it wasn't a habit that stuck with him. Not like weight-lifting or aerobic exercises. He'd picked up the habit not long after his internship with Sir Nighteye had ended. All Might had been the cause, naturally, after running alongside his student the same day he confronted the previous holder of One For All. It was then something he just picked up and decided to keep doing, until it became something that he just did on a daily basis.

Going out and use moving around the place, maybe with some music going through a set of earphones, helped him think, and clear his head. There was something relaxing about it. When he wasn't training for something like the sports festival or preparing himself so inheriting a Quirk wouldn't blast his limbs off, at least. Something tranquil about it that he couldn't quite explain. Fresh air, maybe? A change of scenery?

It wasn't the warmth at this time of year, that was for sure.

Lately, it had begun to get colder and colder, as the new year aged. The final exams were over and, thankfully, everyone in their class had managed to pass. Yuuei was a very hectic and driven school, filled with those who had that same determination to succeed, and while those in the Hero course had been made to work through their Summer break, they hadn't decided to push things, and make them work through their entire Winter break. Just half of it. It was now mid-February, leaving them with a month and a half of break, with only instructions to train on their own, to research into various agencies, and that on their first day back, they would be made to make a report on what they had learned and done during their time off.

Essentially, they had to go around independent learning. Those that didn't have anything, or not enough, to show for themselves once the new year began, could expect to be worked like dogs until they were up to scratch. The Hero course, of all courses out there at Yuuei, wasn't one that allowed even a moment to be wasted. Especially not since the fall of All Might.

The students had taken this to heart through. Many spent the days training and studying, going out of their way to discover new things about the Hero agencies inside the cities in and around the campus. Several applied for internships until the spring, while others conducted field research with their provisional licences. Some preferred a more academic approach, doing all of the information digging online and through old textbooks.

Three laps around the Yuuei campus was traditionally how Izuku ended his morning outings, though due to the colder temperatures than normal, he decided to cut it short today. Nearly slipping on ice three separate times on the first two rounds, two of which had been on the same patch, had convinced him that today wasn't the day for it. He was going to head out later on, and was going to need to have better equipment for going into town today. Avoiding any bigger patches of frozen water that he could see, he made his way back to the 1A dorm building.

Some students had gone to visit relatives during the break, particularly those who had come from far away. The dorms were a lot quieter than they normally were, since fewer people were there. And only a few ever woke up as early as he did too. It was only about a quarter past eight, and the vast majority of people were taking full advantage of their newfound break and were catching up on the many hours of sleep they had lost throughout their first year. Some students had chosen to stay because they were receiving some additional tutoring. Some were staying simply because it was easier for them to stay, given their familial situation. Izuku stayed because he was concerned that if an incident went down, like they always seemed to, he wouldn't be able to help. Be it to do with All Might, or Eri, or whoever else.

Plus, he now had an additional reason. A bit more of a personal one.

No sooner had Izuku re-entered the building, and made his way onto the ground floors living space, was he suddenly greeted by what was, for the last month now, a familiar voice.

"Mornin', Midori." Mina's voice. One of her eyes was half shut, while the other was entirely. She was only half awake, having gotten up recently, going by her sluggish movements, one side of her hair being even more scruffy and wild than her natural curls normally were, and her ever so slightly slurred voice. In her hands, she had a mug each, both filled to the brim with coffee, and unquestionably a blasphemous amount of sugar and cream in them.

It had become something of a tradition that the pink girl had created between the two. Izuku normally woke up early and went out, and Mina would, regardless of if she liked it or not, wake up not long after, since they were on similar schedules thanks to the routine of classes at Yuuei. When she learned that he went out every day to go out to walk or run, she'd decided to prepare something warm for him when he got back. She'd been doing this for a couple of months now, since she'd learned of his habit.

Taking the cup she handed him with both his hands, Izuku nodded his head slightly in gratitude. "Thank you." Her smile of a response made his heart flutter. He took a sip of the coffee. Sweet. Even by the standards of sugar itself.

After Kirishima and Uraraka's plan to get them to talk to one another had gone off without a hitch, Mina and Izuku had found themselves able to openly speak to each other, able to converse and talk. Mina in particular was more than happy to finally talk to the boy, and Izuku was all too happy to response. A reaffirmation of their brief friendship from over a half a decade ago hadn't even taken two days, and by the time two weeks had passed, it was like they'd never been separated whatsoever, and had known each other their whole lives. Izuku had done what he could to help her pass the end of the term exams, in at least the academic sense, which she credited her success on entirely to him. He would respond that she had done so of her own accord, and that the only reason she hadn't been passing up to this point was because she hadn't had the information presented to her in a way that she could comprehend, and that she was more than smart enough to pass the tests without him. This back and forth had reiterated the opinions of those in their class.

The two of them weren't a question of if. They were a question of when. The teasing Izuku had received had been enormous.

"How cold is it?" Mina asked, taking a few large gulps of her own hot drink. Honestly, the sheer amount of caffeine Mina was capable of drinking disturbed Izuku sometimes. It explained why she had so much energy, if nothing else, but he had, more than once, had to force her to just have a bottle of water as opposed to another two-litre bottle of soda.

"We're gonna need jackets." Izuku responded simply. He shuddered at the sudden warmth that was only just now spreading throughout his body from his drink. "There's some ice around the main gate." It as the coldest month of the year in Japan, so it wasn't like this was a surprise.

"Yay." Mina stated flatly, already finishing off her drink. She placed her cup on the counter and let out a long sigh. "I know we're in the Hero course, but … Couldn't Yuuei just let us have, like, just one month to ourselves?... Just, completely to ourselves? I'm sick of all the assignments…"

The green haired boy couldn't help but gently laugh at this. Mina had a stack of papers in her room that almost reached the roof. Assignments and work pieces that she'd needed to complete and send off before their second year at Yuuei began. He couldn't blame her for being sick of them. Not only was there a literal mountain of things to do and complete, she was vocally not a fan of such amounts of homework. For Izuku, it wasn't much of a problem thanks to his already near encyclopedic knowledge of Heroism and its various fields and his overall intelligence, and the fact he simply didn't mind working hard.

For Mina, who liked to cut back, relax, and let things happen as they happened… He could see why she wasn't a big fan of the sheer amount of work they had to compete. Admittedly, he had found it difficult to keep up with the tremendous amount of it himself. Many of his nights over the last couple of weeks had been late ones. A couple of times, he'd worked so hard that by the time he had finished his planned workload, the sun had already come up. He was just as stressed as anyone else.

Which was why he'd offered to assist Mina in her research assignment into local Hero agencies.

"Thanks, by the way." She said as the thought cropped into his head, and pouring herself a second cup of black liquid. "I know I've said it a couple times already, but I can't even tell you how much I appreciate you helping me out here."

"It's no problem." Izuku smiled. "Your input helps me with my work as well. An extra perspective never hurts with these sorts of things."

"You're the one doing me a favour. It's not like I'm really gonna be much help with this sort of thing." A crooked smile this time, one that did show that the acidic girl knew that she was causing an inconvenience to him, but truly felt that she was going to need his assistance if she wanted to start the new academic year in a way that didn't make Aizawa want to throw her in detention for the entirety of April.

"I'm the one who offered." He repeated. "You don't need to worry about it, really."

"I owe you one either way. Don't let me forget that."

"Deal." He took another sip of his coffee, realizing she wasn't going to let up until he agreed. She liked to pay back her debts. That was just the sort of person that she was.

Really though, he didn't need her to repay him. When he was around Mina, he couldn't help but smile. Their rapport was something that he'd wanted for the entirety of their first year, and wanted to feel again for the last ten. Now it was here, he couldn't help but smile whenever she was near. All he could really think was just about how lucky a person he was. Lucky for all the good things in his life.

His friends. All Might. His Quirk. And now, Mina.

Rackereer – Quirk – Surround Sound. With a Quirk that let him generate loud noises from whatever point he desired, Racketeer was a young Hero, but he'd quickly risen in popularity. Considered to a ladies' man by the media, ironically, since he possessed no interest in people of the opposite sex, which he was open about. Regardless, his Quirk was oddly powerful when combined with the right people.

Pyrovile – Quirk – Scorch. Compared by some to Endeavour, only in a far more favourable fashion, Pyrovile was known for being a hardliner and strict, but who always put the people before himself. While he tended to keep away from people in part to do with his flames around his arms always being active, he was known to be very open about what he did behind closed doors. It made gathering information about him and his agency very easy.

Fullbuster – Quirk – Liquid Nitrogen. A far more jovial person than the previous two, Fullbuster was a woman who took things as they came and was quite happy to extinguish flames of both animosity and legitimate outbreaks at the drop of a hat. This made her surprisingly popular even by Hero standards, with many agencies vying for her partnership.

Mina bit down on the end of her pencil, trying to think of the right wording for her notes. "Man, Hero Teams have really made a comeback, haven't they?"

Izuku nodded, and flipped through some more websites on his phone, looking for more local agencies that they could scout out. "I uh, I think Kirishima's interning at Rockside's Agency. He might be able to help."

"Yeah, but doesn't Rockside work solo?"

"Uh…. According to this, he takes on sidekicks, so…" That wasn't really what they were looking for.

The only thing these three Heroes really had in common was the fact they were all part of the same Hero Team. Team Thermal Song. The sudden resurgence of Heroes that formed into teams to help fight against Villains had been Mina's choice of topic, since she thought that the most information would be readily available. And it was a topic she was genuinely interested in, to absolutely no surprise of anyone that knew her. When Hero Teams had begun to make their resurgence, she was one of the first to readily jump at the prospect, Team Rainy Day being the first thing that came to her head. She was a social creature, friendly, and could work with people easily. Somehow, Izuku didn't have too many doubts that if the opportunity presented itself, she would quite happily create a Hero Team herself.

Probably a good fit, Izuku thought to himself. She was very capable of working in groups of people when she needed to, and with just about anyone. She'd had problems with Bakugou in the past when she, along with everyone else learned about the kinds of things he did before getting into Yuuei, but the bad blood had been evaporated over time. Now she was capable of working with him, even if her quips towards him were about twice as much as they were towards anyone else.

More than anyone in their class, Mina seemed suited towards teamwork.

This was their third stop of the day, the previous agencies being those belonging to Team Unbreakable Hounds and Team Miraculous. Thanks to some personal connections that their teachers had, Mina had been able to be in contact with the Wild Pussycats, and had managed to ask them a few questions, so she technically had the information of four agencies right now. Izuku had suggested sampling a large number of teams to compare them to one another, so she'd get a better overall feel for how Hero Teams in the new age were working. How they operated, what their funding was like, reception, reputation, and how they collaborated with Solo Heroes.

Fundamental difference between the teams of the past and present day were numerous, since several generations of Heroes had become used to individual glory. The idea of sharing that glory was one that people still had some trouble getting around. But they'd have to get over it eventually. The popularity of these multiple person teams was undeniable. So, glory hounds weren't going to have an easy time of things.

"Seems like the most successful Hero Teams are people who have varied Quirks…" Mina muttered as she chewed on her pencil. "I mean, that makes sense, but I was half expecting to see a fire-breathing-quartet or something."

"I… I don't know if that would be the most effective team."

"Yeah, but it'd be cool though. And wouldn't it depend on the kind of Quirk they had? Like you and Sato. Your Quirks are kinda similar. You could do cool stuff with that."

The only similarity between One For All and Sugar Rush was that they were both Strength-Enhancement Quirks, but Izuku did understand the logic she was using. Depending on the Quirks, and their exact mechanisms, similar powers could also merge into effective combinations, at least in theory. Like Water Creation, Water Manipulation, and Freezing. If a Hero Team had that combination, Izuku could see quite a few ways that it could be very effective. Strength-Enhancement teams could also theoretically be very effective if they were properly managed.

Co-operation, Izuku felt, was the most important aspect, not so much the Quirks.

Both of them continued down their way through the main city. No real destination in mind. Izuku suggested that they find a place to sit down, or get a drink or something along the lines, so they could go over everything that they had and compile it into the simple formatting style Mina understood. A quick stop in a café had supplied them both with hot chocolate, warming their bodies against the cold surroundings that stole their body temperature.

As per usual, the city was bustling and busy, as it always was during the cold February months. The coldest month of the year didn't stop society from functioning, Heroes moving around the clock to perform their various duties, businessmen taking briefcases to various companies for deals and transactions, and students, enjoying their time off school before April rolled around, and the new academic year began. Nearly everyone bundled in warm clothing, to preserve as much body heat as they were capable of doing so, eager not to freeze. Mina wouldn't mind admitting that she was slightly jealous of people like Todoroki during this time of year. The ability to regulate body temperature was something she imagined a lot of people were envious of when it was either freezing to the bone, or so warm it burned the skin.

She was wrapped up in a puffy, dark purple jacket that she favoured for this time of year. Over her head was a dark grey beanie hat with a couple of pins attached to the front, from video games Izuku had never even heard of, and one on the side that belonged to a Hero named Alkaline, whom Mina admired. There were two holes in said hat, which she had custom requested, so her horns would slip right through. One of the benefits to having horns, she joked, was that it was nearly impossible for hats to be blown off her head. Along with this, she had a red scarf that she bundled around her neck twice. She wasn't a particular fan of the cold, though not to the lethargic extent she knew Tsuyu was, and did what she could to avoid it. She didn't wear any gloves though. If she did, writing things down would become awkward, so she just kept them in her pockets while they walked.

Another sigh escaped her as they walked. "Kirishima had the right idea. Kinda wish I'd managed to get an internship instead of doing a report paper…"

"Why didn't you?"

"Practically, I'm doing pretty well. I don't need to worry about anything like that. Aizawa said that if there's one thing I'm good at, it's physical stuff. Academic stuff though…" She shook her head. It wasn't her strong point. Never had been. "Just… Thought it might be a good idea to try and give myself a little boost with this, y'know?"

Izuku smiled and nodded at his crush. He was proud of her, that she was willing to put more thought into things that she knew she needed to, that she was willing to put aside what she knew she needed to put aside, and try to improve herself where she needed to. Aside from his feelings for her, it was a big part of why he'd offered to help here with her assignments. The fact she was willing to do her best to improve herself was something that he truly did admire. Something that he resonated with, and understood perfectly well.

He felt obliged to help her. And he wanted to too.

Swiping over his phones touch screen, he punched in a few keys that let him search for other Hero Agencies nearby. A couple more strokes let him specify that he was interested in looking for Teams, and that were within the city. "Teams Scorpia Rising and Storm-Breaker are on the other side of the city. I could send both of them a request to talk if you like."

Mina nodded. "Better to know they'll actually let us speak to 'em before we head all the way over there. It's a couple hours on the train, isn't it?"

Typing in a few buttons in his phone, he quickly typed up a very polite request to one agency. Given the number of people who were working at these agencies, the number of people who would not only recognize their names from public events like the Sports Festival, but the fact that they were Yuuei students, and the sheer reputation students at Yuuei had simply for attending the school, a response wouldn't take more than an hour at most, he bet. "Right." He responded, only after the first message had been sent. He then copy-pasted it into the second agencies address, and sent them both off. "If they don't accept, I guess you could correspond with them through emails… But it would be harder to get exactly what you're looking for."

"I already have four agencies info down. Wouldn't that be enough?"

"You probably could manage with just them… But the more teams you have, the easier the report will be."

"Well, either way," The pink girl suddenly rose her hands, cracked the joints in her fingers, and in her arms, and looked around their immediate area. A grin appeared on her face when she turned back to the taller boy. "We've got a bit of time to kill! I vote we go window shopping and just nerd the hell out for a while!"

" – So they made like, this whole awesome game, though the choices you make didn't really matter in the end… But it was a complete blast! They haven't released the second season of it yet, and I really wanna know what happens next!"

"When did they promise the next season?"

Doing some mental maths in her head, Mina responded. "They released the first season like, four years ago, in six parts. But they haven't said anything about the new season." She pouted as she finished her sentence, almost like she was sulking. "I guess it takes a while to make games, but, like… I dunno. Feels like if they promised something they should at least tell us what's taking so long, right?"

"I-I don't really play games all that much." Izuku responded sheepishly, taking a sip of the hot chocolate that was within his hands. "I only played the ones you showed me because… Well, you showed me them."

In the past couple of months, spending time together had been something Izuku and Mina had done a lot of. According to the Acid Quirk user, it was all in the name of making up for lost time, and that they had an enormous amount of catching up to do. It was always something Izuku was more than happy to do, to learn more about this girl he adored. It started with the pair of them talking about the things that had happened in their lives since they'd met. Mina told him about her childhood, about middle school and how she'd faced off against a Villain. Small details, according to her, although that last one he'd pressed for more information on.

Aside from this, he'd learned more about her interests, and the sorts of things she'd grown to enjoy – To both his amusement and pleasure, that she could be just as nerdy as he was, if not to the same extreme, with a couple of differences. What superhero comics were to Izuku, were Video Games to Mina. According to her, she'd grown up with brothers who were obsessed with the things, and they'd rubbed off on her when she was young. When she just wanted to do absolutely nothing, they tended to be her first choice of pastime.

She'd introduced him to a couple, which according to her, he was inexplicably good at, going as far as to feign offence when Izuku claimed not to have any idea what he was doing. Her favourites to watch him play were from one particular company that told a story, but had the player pick various dialogue options and make certain choices. Aside from them requiring next to no skill to play, she could just sit back and watch him flail about all his choices, which he fretted over and tried to consider every possibility he could in the fifteen seconds he usually got to make them.

One of said games she'd been talking about for the last few minutes after seeing a copy in a store. It looked like an old medieval-fantasy themed game, made before the time of Quirks to Izuku. That was another thing he'd learned about her. She liked retro style things.

While gaming was never something Izuku had a particular interest in, aside from the occasional Superhero themed one, he enjoyed the time he and Mina spent playing the various ones she had. And he could even say that it had little to do with Mina in that regard too. Playing them, he really did have a good time. He was outside of his normal comfort zone, but he was enjoying himself. It surprised him how much he enjoyed them…

Although without Mina, he wouldn't have been exposed to this sort of thing. So, no matter what way he sliced it, he still owed it to her.

And there was more than that.

Being around her was just easy now. Talking to her was so easy, and nothing felt better than that. Just being able to talk to her, spend time with her, go out like this….

It almost felt like a date.

He blushed, thanking whatever cosmic entities may be out there that Mina wasn't a mind reader.

"We uh, we could play it when we get back." He suggested offhandedly, scratching at his cheek while doing so.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it." Mina looked towards Izuku with a slight smile, and a raised eyebrow. "But knowing you, I'd thought you'd want to get on with actually compiling everything right away."

The redness on his cheeks increased just a bit, and his scratching increased. "W-Well… We have been out all day… I-I thought that we could start to meat of things t-tomorrow. O-Or we could end up making a mess of everything if we start right away. I don't know about you, but I think I'm going to be exhausted by the time we get back."

Shrugging, the pink girl nodded and smiled. "Yeah, good point. You're awesome!"

Izuku's blush suddenly eclipsed his entire face, his cheeks burning and heart pumping. "Wh – What – Wh – Where did that c-come from?"

Mina skipped head a couple of steps, her hands joined together behind her back, before she spun around to look at the flustered One For All Inheritor with her trademark Ashido grin. "I dunno, I just kinda always had you pegged as the more serious type. You're as crazy about Heroes as you were when we were kids, and you work really hard, but you've kinda loosened up. Even more since we started talking again."

Had he? Izuku hadn't even noticed.

She gently giggled to herself, bringing her hands in front of her, turning them into fists, and shaking them up and down as she did when she was excited or enthusiastic. "If your Quirk hadn't manifested, we might not have ever even met each other again! Everything about this is just awesome!"

Detestable as it was, Izuku had remained true to his word to All Might, and hadn't told Mina about how his Quirk worked. He'd used the old 'late bloomer' excuse, which Mina had believed without a question. And he knew that she was right. Had he not been given this amazing power…. The chances were, they wouldn't have been able to meet one another again. It was entirely thanks to his teacher, for his faith and trust in him, that Izuku was here right now. That he was able to follow his dreams, and had been able to rekindle this friendship with this girl he liked. That was the truth of it and he knew that all perfectly…

And yet….

"…I thought you told me that I didn't need a Quirk to become a Hero…"

Somehow, Mina knowing just as well that without his newfound power, their chances of meeting had been slim, made him feel worse about the whole thing.

Defying fate was something Izuku had gotten used to trying to do. Defying the status quo of society's stance that the Quirkless couldn't become Heroes. Defying the expectations of those that were around him. Defying the winds of fate was something that he had grown used to… But he was well aware, now that this power was inside his body, that really, going against the flow of things was impossible.

He was born Quirkless, yes… But he hadn't gotten to where he was today without a Quirk. He'd earned his power, yes, but it was still that power that had carried him all the way here. Not that he was in any position to complain. He loved having One For All and owed everything to it. It was his power. His Quirk. And in a couple of years' time, who knew what he was going to be capable of doing with it. Who knew how many people he could save, how many Villains he could stop.

…But those words Mina had told him so long ago had been what had kept him moving forward.

'You don't need a Quirk to be a Hero.'

Complaining was wrong. He was in no position to be complaining. Of everyone out there in this world, him complaining about his lot in life was just wrong. It made him feel ungrateful, like he'd started to take this power for granted, like he'd had it his whole life. And while that made him feel awful… The thought that all that time ago, Mina had been lying to him…

That hurt more. He had no right to be upset, he knew, but -

"Yeah, I did. Still think that."

Her response though quickly pulled him out of any disparaging pre-emptively. He quickly looked up at her, and saw that her smile was softer now, like the day they had met. More than half a decade later, and Izuku still remembered everything about that day vividly. The weather, the scenery, their surroundings and he could even remember how warm it had been, which was not very at all.

What struck out at him was that today was so similar to back then. It was almost identical.

Mina mulled it over a bit in her head, glancing to the side, before looking back at the boy before her. "…You remember my cousin I told you about when we met? The Quirkless guy."

Izuku nodded. He remembered everything that she'd told him that day. It was her bringing up her relative that had made him pay real attention to the words that she said.

"He's a policeman now." Mina seemed to beam with pride as she spoke. "Turned out he was one of the guys who took that Nomu away from that attack at the start our first year. He's pretty happy with how things turned out."

Police work wasn't something to be sneered at, particularly in a world filled up with Quirks. Most officers weren't allowed to use Quirks if they even had them and that could easily leave them at the mercy of ruthless Villains and lunatics with enough strength in their upper lips to knock down an entire city block. Yet they were still there, still providing the net of safety and security on the ground level that Heroes just weren't able to provide.

Especially not in the current age.

To a lesser extent than Heroes, sure, but Izuku did admire the work the police did. As he had progressed through Yuuei and learned the true hardships of Heroism, that respect had only increased. People who weren't even allowed to weaponize their powers, assuming they had any, going up against crooks like Shigaraki, Overhaul, and the Nomu?

He couldn't help but smile. More than a lot of people out there, he understood how much it stung to be Quirkless, and to not be able to follow one's dreams. It wasn't the same thing as being a Hero…

"The police are pretty Heroic themselves, huh? And they don't even need Quirks to do what they do."

Relocking eyes with her, Izuku suddenly, and quickly realized the comparison that she was making. Still, before he could say anything in response, she carried on.

"I'm not saying it wouldn't have been dangerous as all hell. It would have been. It's dangerous to be a Hero even if you do have a Quirk like yours. We can't really say that if you have a Quirk you're set for life. Rich coming from me, I know. I had my mutations since I was born, and my Quirk before I was four… But I really don't think that having a Quirk completes a person…"

She smiled. In that same way that ten-year-old Mina had when she'd handed him back his notebook, only with less tears.

"… I think Heroes are Heroes because they're just good people. I don't think there's anything else to it other than that. And you're a good person, Midori. I could tell you were when I first met you."

"… I feel like angering the Queen of the entire nation wouldn't help our cause."

"No, but she's literally the worst person ever."

"She still rules the whole country! Couldn't she just send an army up north and overpower us?"

"Yeah, but would she bother? Or are her people spread too thin?"

"I – I barely even know what's going on in this world!"

Several hours had passed since the curly haired pair had made it back to the Yuuei dorms. Both Scorpia Rising and Storm-Breaker had accepted their requests to visit them in their offices, the day apparently being rather slow in terms of work for Hero Teams. Nothing too major going on that couldn't be handled by those who were going solo. So that had resulted for the two students a two-hour train ride across the city, a couple of hours finding the agencies and then another two hours on the way back. With the sun almost down, the sky was a right mixture of orange, yellow and blue by the time they returned to their lodgings, exhausted and tired both. Collectedly they'd been out for a full eight hours, collecting and gathering the data that they would need to work all everything into one giant report. With all of this official information about Hero Teams, Izuku was confident that they would be able to compile everything into a detailed, successful report.

Not tonight though. After their constant trekking all over the place, neither wanted to even begin to compile everything. They were both tired and needed to unwind.

So, following Izuku's suggestion, Mina had set up a games system – Which her family had gotten for her as a going away gift when they all moved into the dorms – in her room, hooked it up to her monitor, and the pair of them had spent the last hour or so killing time with said game.

Izuku being made to make all the decisions in the game, and Mina teasing him and making him second guess myself. "You know, I think you might've gotten a better idea about what to do in this game if you'd watched the show first.

"Why didn't we do that then?!"

"There's like, seven seasons and all the episodes are an hour long. It'd literally take us weeks to get to get to this point in the game."

The Quirk inheritor rolled his eyes and let out a small laugh. "You're only just mentioning this now?"

"You looked like you were having fun."

He shook his head and smiled.

"…Hey, d'you mind?" Mina quickly asked, sitting upright and looking at him out of the corner of her eye.

Suddenly there was a solemnness to her voice. Like a quiet hesitation to speak. There was certainly exhaustion to her words, though that wasn't at all surprisingly. Still, it made Izuku look towards her, worried momentarily that something serious was wrong.

He blinked, and felt his fingers reflexively pause the game whilst he gave her his undivided attention. "Wh-What's wrong?"

Without a single word further though, Mina suddenly let out a loud yawn, and outstretched her arms as she did so. The second her yawn was finished though, she immediately grabbed hold of his left arm. The green haired boy froze as she lifted his arm a couple of inches into the air, and rested her head on his abdomen. Her own left arm allowed Izuku's arm to gently drop over her shoulder, and wrapped hers around his waist. Like she was a child, hugging a stuffed animal

"Thanks." She quickly said, the rest of her body curling up closer to the now blushing bright red awkward teen. "This is cozy."

For a moment, Izuku was completely frozen, and if someone walked into the room, they would have been able to see what could almost be described as steam rising off of his boiling hot face. Where this had suddenly come from, he hadn't the slightest idea in the world. His entire body tensed up for a moment.

And then it relaxed.

It wasn't something that he could even explain why. In his head, he knew that he was supposed to be freaking out, that he was supposed to be a stammering awkward mess and that he should not be comfortable at all. He knew that he wasn't supposed to be okay with this… But he was. He was supposed to be nervous, but he wasn't. It was just….

Fine.

Glancing towards the pink haired girl that was now resting on top of him, Izuku couldn't help but smile. She had reached over, and un-paused the game, and there was some kind of conversation was happening, but he couldn't bring himself to particularly worry about that. Mina's eyes were still focused on the screen. She didn't notice the smile that Izuku was giving her, full of affection. He couldn't help but think about really, how lucky he honestly was to have met her again. He's repeat that sentiment practically every single day of his life, because it was just unbelievable how fortunate he'd wound up being. It was rare that he could be so carefree around anyone. That anyone could make him feel so calm, while at the same time, make his heart race. Who made him feel like things around him were just right.

In fact, the only person who had ever managed it was Mina.

With so few friends until getting into Yuuei, he'd never had the chance to just relax and play games with people. Never had the chance to just kick back and enjoy himself. He'd never really been able to just enjoy a friend's company. When he had made friends in Yuuei, he was happy to spend time and enjoy their company, but none of them had made him feel both excited, yet calm simultaneously. Bashful, yet open. Happy, while nervous. These weren't combinations of emotions that he had thought was possible beforehand.

Really, it was just a case of him knowing truly how he felt when it came to this girl. This girl made him happy, and he loved spending time with her, no matter what it was they were doing. They could end up doing nothing but watching a television screen all afternoon, and he was certain that they'd find some way to have the time of their lives. What it was that they did just didn't matter to him. He really just liked this girl.

Loved her, even. His crush had evolved into outright loving this girl. He just somehow knew it.

And he wanted to tell her...

…But how could he?

Wouldn't that put everything that they had right now, this friendship, in jeopardy? If he admitted to her how he felt, wouldn't she see him as a creep or a weirdo? Was that going to be the case, how far this went? That six years later, meeting each other again, and finally becoming friends once more, that it would all end because he'd opened his mouth and admitted that he liked her? Was that going to be how in five years, he'd be looking at that note again, wondering where she was, how she was doing, and thinking of how vastly different the universe could be if he'd kept his mouth shut?

Was the only time that he was going to be able to see her when she made headline news? And there was no mistake about that – She was going to make headline news as a Hero. He didn't doubt that for even a quarter of a second. And that made the prospect of losing her friendship all the more terrifying.

He'd always see her, but he'd know that they couldn't even be friends anymore, because he'd screwed up…

Then again, did he see Mina as the sort of person to end a friendship over something like a crush?...

…

…In all honesty, no.

He couldn't. Mina wasn't that kind of person. Things would be awkward if she didn't reciprocate, she wasn't the kind of person to just leave people out in the cold. She wasn't the kind of person to abandon her friends just because she was suddenly uncomfortable. Mina had a sense of loyalty about her. She wouldn't try to ever make someone else feel guilty about their own emotions.

Mina was a good person. And she wasn't ever the type to blame someone else for something that they couldn't control.

…So, what did Izuku have to lose?

When he thought about it…

His left hand suddenly left the girls shoulder, and absently, he began to run his fingers through her hair. He wasn't even completely aware that he was doing it until he felt the tip of his fingers gently tap against the horns of the Mutant girl. A part of him would normally have yelled at him to stop, but it never came. Mina made no protests, so he ran his fingers through her hair more, gently, noticing how soft it was.

"Mmm… That's nice." The pink girl's voice softly made itself known, and Izuku could feel her snuggling into his stomach more, apparently very comfortable exactly where she was.

"You… You don't mind it?"

"Nope… It's relaxing, actually."

Izuku smiled. He rested the game controller underneath his right hand, not needing more than that to plat the game. His fingers gently brushed through her curly untameable mess of a hairdo, just as uncontrollable as his own. The similarities between their hairstyles meant that he knew where to be gentle, and where to be a little tougher to avoid tugging on her hair, of getting his fingers caught up in any natural knots.

"…Hey, Mina?"

"Hmm?"

"…I enjoy being with you."

He had no idea what made him say that. It was completely true, but he didn't know why he said it. It was like he had suddenly run onto automatic, and felt the compulsive need to confess this to her. Like he owed it to her.

"Thanks… I enjoy being with you too." Came his response, from a girl tired and half asleep. Her had reached out, pointing to the game. "C'mon now… I wanna see you do verbal jousting with these turncoats."

All Izuku did was smile and oblige her. The pair of them remained like this throughout the entire night, until they both passed out and fell asleep, just like that.

The only thing Izuku had to lose was the perfect way to tell this girl how he felt. That was the only thing stopping him from telling her.

And it was something he was going to figure out before the new term at Yuuei began.

It's shorter than the last chapters behemoth, which was a mistake, but I hope that you were able to enjoy this chapter ^_^ It's the second to last chapter, and I'm looking to get this story finished before returning to AE, so you can expect the next chapter fairly soon.

Thank you very much, and ill see you all next time!

Chapter Text

'I'm so sorry I have to write this down. I'm not brave enough to tell you any of this out loud. Which is ridiculous considering the hell of a year it's been at Yuuei, I know, but I just can't do it.

We only met once before Yuuei… But the amount that you changed my life with that one meeting is just… Incredible. I don't think I could ever say how much you changed the course of my life. Before I found out I was a late bloomer, I thought that I was Quirkless, and that meant that I wasn't ever going to be a Hero. I truly did believe that it was out of my reach. The day you met me was the day I'd finally given up on following my dream. The world isn't kind enough to throw someone like me a bone or a lifeline to float on…

But… You threw one for me. By talking to me, even though you'd never even met me before, and had no real reason to think that you would ever again. You were the first person ever since I was Quirkless to try to encourage me, support me, and tell me that I could be a Hero, even when I didn't have a Quirk. It was exactly what I needed to hear. More than anything.

You Can Be A Hero

I still have that note. Framed on my wall, above my computer. Because it's the only memory I had of you for years. And… It made me remember that you did exist. And that you somehow could believe in me. That you could put so much stock into a stranger. And then, when I walked in and saw you in my homeroom…

I was thrilled. I was so happy to see you. I wanted to approach you right out of the gate, but things just kept getting in the way. And it became so hard to just go over and talk to you the longer I waited. The longer it took, the more afraid I ended up… It's only been a few months, but now, I can't even remember what it was like before we spoke. Everything has just… Been so much better.

But it's why I need to tell you this. And I've been terrified of telling you this for the entire year… But it's gotten hard to look at you, and not think about it. And I can't say it because I'm too much of a coward not to.

But I like you. I've been infatuated with you since we were kids.'

Izuku read over the full page in his fifteenth notebook with a very loud, audible groan. What the hell had he been thinking?! Reading over everything was cringeworthy, and it was physically painful to do. He couldn't have chosen worse words if he had made the effort to. Who on earth confessed to a crush by using the word 'Infatuated'?! He thought writing this down would make things easier, but somehow it was just as painful. The actual act of writing hadn't been so bad, but reading what he'd actually written?

It was all so painful to look at. He flipped the page back one, so he simply wouldn't have to see it for a second longer.

And of course, he was on the most recent page – That page being of Mina's appearance and her Quirk in detail. He'd written about her and her Quirk far more times than he was ever willing to admit. In the case of this page, he hadn't even been aware he had done it. He'd just been sat at his desk the previous night, and the next thing he knew, two and a half hours had passed, and his notebook had another entry.

The notes for that were just as bad.

'Black eyes and gold irises, like stars in the night sky. Soft and warm skin, smooth thanks to her amazing Quirk. Fluffy, messy hair that – '

He closed the book outright, and felt his face burning up. This had to be on the border between being a sweet crush, and being downright creepy, didn't it? At least to someone who didn't know him for what he really was – A nerd with a crush who made notes on people out of a habitual thirst for knowledge on Heroes.

Their second year at Yuuei was right around the corner, now that they were in March, and everyone was starting to return to the dorms to get ready for the new academic year. Only a few people weren't present, though they had a couple of weeks to show up before their classes started up again. And Izuku wanted to confess.

He wanted to admit to Mina that he liked her. He'd wanted to admit that for most of the year, but he felt compelled to do so before their new year started. Doing it after, and distracting her… It just didn't feel right at all. No one really knew what to expect from their second year at Yuuei…

If he just confessed to her before the second year started, then at least even if he got rejected, neither of them would be distracted by feelings?... Or at least he wouldn't. Was that selfish of him?

He sighed. Honestly, he wasn't sure if there was any real way to go about this. He was in totally unfamiliar - And horrifying – Territory. A part of him was telling him that he needed, more than anything, to go through with this; if not for his own sake, than for Mina's. She deserved to know, didn't she?

Had he ever told her that she was the reason he was even here now? That it was because of her that he hadn't given up? That because of her encouragement and words that day, he'd kept on marching through Hell, and finally wound up here? Had he told her that? He didn't honestly think that he had. And that was the main reason that he'd even wanted to talk to her again – To say thank you. To let her know just how much she had impacted him. How much she meant to him because of that…

…And yet somehow, he'd forgotten to even tell her that. He'd gotten so caught up in getting to talk to her, actually building up a friendship with her and just, well, her in general, he'd forgotten to even say anything about it. Forgotten to say the main damn thing he'd been wanting to say in the first place. How had he even managed to do that? And here he was now, trying to figure out how he was supposed to write a love letter to her.

Suddenly, confessing felt dirty, and he suddenly felt horrible, like he'd realized just how ungrateful that he'd been this entire time. It hadn't been his intention… But intention didn't excuse him. He was sure that in their minds, many Villains had good intentions. That didn't excuse them for the terrible things that they did. He'd be selfish, even though it wouldn't be his intention. But that didn't matter. He'd be selfish anyway.

Did he really have the right to confess to her after all of that?

Internal debate went through his head, the rational part of his brain telling him that he was overreacting and that there wasn't anything to worry about, while the other part of his brain was continuing to freak out and reject that idea in favour of a more panicked and irrational point of reference.

Forcing himself to calm down, he thought up the simplest solution.

Just thank her now. Just approach her and say thank you. Just tell her how much she had inspired him throughout his life, and thank her for it. And then admit his feelings for her.

Flipping the book open, he added another line in his letter, between 'You Can Be A Hero' and the paragraph that followed it.

'Thank you. I have never said it to you before, even though I should have. So thank you. Thank you for giving me the strength I needed to keep going.'

And then he looked at the letter again – It was cringeworthy still, but if there was one word he could use to describe it that wasn't self-depreciating, it would be honest.

These were his honest feelings. No lies. No trickery. No secret message or anything like that. They were his blunt, honest feelings, and he couldn't make them any clearer than this.

Part of him hesitated to hand it over, though. Hesitated to even slide it under her door and just let Mina take the next steps, whatever they would be. It was his nerves again, the same ones that stopped him from talking to her in the first place, now raising concerns about losing that ability at all.

The part of him that was horrified about the idea of driving her away. Mina wouldn't do that though, would she? After getting to know her, he knew that she while she had a very enthusiastic approach to romance, she was also relaxed and comfortable about the topic too. He didn't know if she had ever had relationships before, though it wouldn't surprise him if she had. He didn't know how she would react though. Assuming it went badly, and she didn't share these feelings, what would her reaction be?

A rational part of him said she wouldn't do anything. She'd let him down gently and insist on remaining friends. But if there was one thing Izuku seemed to suck at when it came to Mina, it was letting sense reign supreme in his head.

Thousands of possible negatives swarmed in his mind. Ways that it could backfire and blow up in his face. Mina outright laughing at him. Some half-hearted promise to remain friends, but slowly drifting away from him. Straight up slapping him in the face and running off. What if she didn't want a romantic relationship? What if she wasn't interested? What if she just wanted a solid friendship and Izuku was throwing that possibility out the window for the both of them?

Sometimes, he really did hate having an analytical mind that went over every single possibility in the world.

He forced himself to calm down by closing his book yet again, tilting his head to face the ceiling, and staring into nothingness. Who was he really benefiting by confessing to Mina? Was he going to be doing her any favours at all by being honest, or was this a truly selfish thing to do? Did he really have the right to? Kirishima and Tsuyu, Yaoyorozu and Jirou, Hagakure and Ojiro, even Kacchan and Uraraka had all gotten together in various ways. Was that a result of selfishness, or was it selflessness? If both people were happy, was it selfless? Was willing to give someone a chance being selfless? Or did that end up being pity?

Asking them could be an option. Outside opinions could be helpful… But he dismissed it. If he was going to tell her how he felt, it was like Jirou had said - Because he had made the choice, had gotten himself ready, and it should be on his terms and he should figure them out on his own – Jirou probably hadn't meant it like that, but it made sense to Izuku nonetheless.

Sense, but in a way that made no sense at all. Which in turn, made it make sense?

Izuku just sighed. What was he even thinking anymore?

His life would have been simpler if he'd never had a crush on Mina, he thought sometimes. If there was an Izuku in some parallel reality that didn't even know Mina before Yuuei, he slightly envied them, not needing to worry about crushes and that sort of thing. But this certainly wasn't that reality – and the more he considered it, the more terrifying and so much worse off a reality where he never met Mina seemed.

Should he even give her the note?...

He didn't know.

Having their normal classmates return from home had been fun and refreshing. While they'd all kept in contact with one another over the internet and phones and whatever other means they had at their disposal, it was great to finally get to see friends face to face again. Life quickly was going to return to normal as the next few days passed, as people returned to the dorms, handed in their assignments, and moved their new belongings into the rooms they had spent the last year in, and would spend the next one in.

It made for a livelier dorm house, which was nice. For the last few months, the building had been mostly empty, with the few exceptions of the people that had willingly stayed behind. Now it was less of an empty building, and more of a, for lack of a better word, home away from home.

Reunions were aplenty, and Izuku and Mina both had friends they were happy to see again after their absences. Several days were dedicated to just catching up with everyone, hearing whatever stories they had to tell, and recounting the uneventful days at the dorms.

Once the evening fell though, things usually went back to being quiet and more relaxed, when people retreated to their rooms, doing whatever activities they did to kill time.

For Mina, that had generally become a time to hang out with Izuku.

"What d'ya mean there aren't any more of these out?!" Usually hanging out with Izuku meant that the pair of them had a system. Mina would show something that she liked one night, while Izuku showed off something he enjoyed the next, and they alternated on that basis. It kept things from getting boring, and was also a passive way of catching up on the time they had missed.

Turned out, even after months of talking again, they still had mountains of stuff to show each other. They were just lucky they were as nerdy as one another about this kind of thing.

"The author died, so there isn't really anything that could be done about it." Izuku grimly smiled. He had been showing her one of his old favourite comics, which sadly got discontinued due to a tsunami about a decade ago. Some people blamed a Villain's Quirk. Other just said it was a force of nature.

Didn't change the fact it was over now.

"Midoriiiii!" Mina whined, holding up the unintended final instalment of the comic in both her hands. "Fix iiiiit!"

"Wh-What am I supposed to do?!"

"Fix iiiiit!" Behind the coloured pages and panels, Mina's smirk was in plenty of abundance.

Once the pair of them had managed to get over the awkwardness that was just speaking to one another, the two were just the best of friends. There wasn't really any question about that. They just were. And Mina was happy. Happy that she'd gotten to meet Izuku again. Happy that she'd met him when they were kids.

Her teasing continued for a couple minutes longer before she finally relented, allowing herself to sit back against her bedframe and let out a happy sigh. Many times, she had feared that she'd missed out on this chance. A part of her had honestly thought that Izuku had forgotten about her since they met that day in the park. Admittedly, she hadn't thought about him constantly over the years. Things had happened. She'd met people. But there had been a bit of wonder in her.

Wanting to know how that Quirkless boy had done. If she had helped him in any way. If he really could go on to be a Hero. It had always been something she'd find herself coming back to. He was fascinating in that respect.

Over time, she had forgotten the boy's face, but not his name. It was as plain as his face, and easier to remember. So when she saw him again, she didn't recognize him. When she saw his name though, it didn't take her long to put the dots together.

After nearly a full year of awkwardly jumping around one another, circumstance – By which she meant Kirishima and Uraraka concocting some scheme, because they were as subtle as a landmine, in a sea of other landmines in landmine land – had pushed them together and here they were.

And she couldn't be happier about that fact. She and Izuku got along like a house on fire, and it made her upset that she'd never spoken to him sooner, that she'd never just bitten the bullet and approached him first. That she'd never just gotten over that weird, awkward barrier that just randomly existed with Izuku, and reached out to him. It was too late to think too much about the past though. Right now, she was just enjoying the moment, and everything that came with it.

Which included jokingly being bratty towards the green haired dork.

He seemed to have gotten used to her particular brand of humour, and went along with the jokes that she pulled on him whenever she did, happy to engage and respond to them, even if he was the same flustered dope that he'd always been. She'd learned to deal with his quirks as he had done hers, and their dynamic was a fun one that Mina enjoyed being part of.

"Seriously though, that sucks." She groaned, looking at the front cover of the comic with a longing stare. "This was awesome…"

"Lots of things can just…. Make good stories just stop happening." The freckled boy sighed, with a small, crooked smile. He'd made his peace with the loss of the comic a while ago. "There isn't a lot to be done about it, I guess. I don't know if I'd want another author to carry it on."

"Games have a one up in that respect then." Mina smirked. "I mean, if the developers know what they're doing, it's easier to pick off a game halfway through."

"I guess so." Izuku nodded. He looked over towards the clock that Mina kept on her desk, and felt his blood freeze for a moment. It was past midnight, and had gone far past the point that marked the next day on the calendar. "I should probably get going. It's much later than I thought it was."

Mina's eyes bounced towards the clock as well. "Oh, yikes. Lucky we're still on break."

Quickly, she helped him scoop up all of the comics that the two of them had spent the last few hours flipping through and reading, before helping him transfer everything back into his room. She'd grown familiar with the room, and how everything was laid out, so she knew exactly where to put the comics. He kept them tucked under his bed, in plastic containers that could house who knew how many books at once. Once they were all away, the two of them bid their goodbyes for the night, and she returned to her own room.

She let out a small sigh as she leaned against her now closed door once she was on the inside.

Really, she wasn't fooling anyone, was she?

Since she'd learned that the same Quirkless boy she had met was attending Yuuei, he had her curiosity, and it didn't even take him one full day to have her attention once he's shown off what a powerful Quirk he was working with. Where it had come from, Mina couldn't even begin to suspect. On their first day, she thought that maybe it wasn't him. Maybe she'd made a mistake.

Then, one day, she had seen him scribbling in a notebook. A quick glance into the contents, so he couldn't tell that she was looking, and it more or less confirmed his identity. There wasn't even a shadow of a doubt anymore. He was the same guy that she'd met all that time ago. So many questions, but she never approached him, for multiple reasons. The two of them were close now though. She couldn't complain. She had nothing to complain about. Everything about this situation was awesome, completely and utterly.

As she'd watched him though, something had begun stirring for her. It didn't take her too long to figure out what it was that was bubbling up inside her. It was something she had experienced only a couple of times since she'd seen him, and nothing had ever come of either, but she knew what it was. She was certain of it. She'd started to crush on Izuku.

And honestly, could anyone blame her? Just looking at everything that he'd done over the last year alone would be enough to make anyone's head spin. How many people he had saved, the number of Villains he'd fought in so many dangerous circumstances, how many times he'd been willing to risk everything, how many times he'd literally broken himself just to protect people. The sheer number of things that he had done was incredible. Who hadn't fallen for him? (The rest of her class, apparently, though in that case, what the hell was wrong with them?!)

It was hard to even gauge how such a guy would react to being told that they were liked by a girl like Mina. She would be the first to confess to being a little… Over the top at times. Bluntly put, she somewhat doubted that she was even his type. Someday, she wanted to tell him. Someday.

The pink girl scanned her room and let out another small sigh. It always seemed too empty when Izuku left, and quiet along with it. Empty and Quiet, two things Mina generally wasn't a fan of, or even really used to. She'd always been used to things being a bit more bombastic. Her home life was probably to blame for that.

Promptly, she changed out of her clothes and swapped into her night gear. Oddly though, she wasn't even remotely tired. Usually after a day like today, she'd be tuckered out, but she just didn't feel even the mildest tugs of drowsiness calling her. She debated turning on her games console and just blasting away a few pixels before she passed out.

That was when she saw it though.

Izuku's notebook.

It was slightly underneath her desk, and one of her chair legs had narrowly avoided skewering the thing. It had been out of the line of sight, and sort of blended in with the colour of the floor, so it would have been easy to miss. She blinked a couple of times, half convinced that her eyes were playing tricks on her. It seemed unlikely that he'd ever forget his notebook… Unless he'd thought that he'd scooped it up along with his comics.

The Acid Quirk user picked it up, and looked over the cover. Notebook number fifteen. She'd seen the contents of many of the others, so she had an idea of what was probably inside. For a moment, Mina just stared at it, debating if she should take it to him. She decided against it though. He would probably already be fast asleep.

She'd return it in the morning.

Without really thinking, she laid down on her bed and absently flipped through some of the pages. Again, Izuku had allowed her to look though the previous ones before, so she couldn't see him getting too upset at her looking through this one. To tell the truth, she admired Izuku a lot for his academic prowess and how much he was willing to put into this sort of thing. He really went all out in his desire to become a Hero, and these notebooks were just incredible. The level of detail, the theorizing and the knowledge that he had absorbed into his brain by writing all of this down was something to be admired. It felt impossible not to admire it.

This particular volume seemed to have a lot of notes about Hero Teams in the front, but lots and lots of Quirks in the middle. The more recent volumes of his notebooks had been focusing a lot on society and the changes, and the various advantages and disadvantages to such new unions. People, and how their various powers could interact and aid one another. A bit like he was putting together a jigsaw puzzle, in a sense. He'd been slacking slightly when it came to noting down straight forward Quirks. Reading those was always a lot of fun.

Atomic Enhancement. Lightning Clap. Adaptability. Gyroscopic Shielding. Wave. Star.

She couldn't help but chuckle at the detail every sketch and Quirk went into. "What a nerd." She fondly muttered, before turning the pages and reading what was next.

Bolt. Hammer. Blind Blink. Prime Wire. Barricade. Acid.

Acid?

Mina had to blink a couple times and do a double check when she saw her own Quirk listed among the list, along with a fairly impressive sketch of her in that trademarked Izuku way that somehow, she just knew he'd spent a bit too long on – He had a surprisingly artistic side to him, apparently. What confused her was the fact she was in this book. She knew for a fact he'd seen her Quirk in multiple other volumes.

And this was the most recently drawn on page by the looks of things. The pages looked sort of clean, and there wasn't anything past them. No new inputs, anyway.

Curiosity made her read.

And what she read made her cheeks burn up, her mind spiral, and her heart race. Every word that she saw just increased those effects more and more and more. Every sentence.

Every apparent observation that Izuku had made. Every sentence he would use to describe her. That entire…. Page of recollection…

A confession.

He could feel his feet ache, but it didn't matter – With One For All still flowing through his whole body, Izuku launched another attack, slamming his foot through the slightest opening in Kirishima's guard, striking him straight in the chest. It felt like kicking a boulder, even with his power enhancing Quirk. The energy that surged through Izuku aided in his attack, giving him momentum that he needed to hit his sparring opponent off of his rooted position.

The look on Kirishima's face was clearly one of surprise – Izuku had hit him in a spot that he had suspected was guarded, and that had thrown off his balance. Kinetic force did the rest of the work, and Izuku's strike was able to launch the Hardening Quirk user slightly off the ground. Not by much, but enough that his feet were off the ground as he was sent back about twenty meters. He skidded along the ground on his feet, though it wasn't a clean landing in any sense.

Hoping to get the next strike in before his opponent got his guard back up, Izuku launched another assault, leaping forward and launching a feint with his right fist, making it look like he was aiming to strike Kirishima's exposed head. In response, the red-haired student slammed his arms together to create a double forearm guard to block the strike.

Shoot Style came into play the second Izuku saw his feint worked. He flung his hand over the top of Kirishima's spiky hair, and launched a roundhouse kick into his side. The Hardening around that area was lesser, as the guard there hadn't been as important. The kick was solid, and Kirishima clearly felt it.

"Aak!" His guard fell, exposing him.

Moving quickly, Izuku then pushed into his chest as hard as he could with his hands, aiming to throw him off balance. It worked perfectly, and he then shoved.

Knocking his opponent right out of bounds.

"That's it - Kirishima's out!" Hagakure called out from her elevated seat, like she was refereeing a tennis match. The wristbands on her wrists flung up and down, indicating the invisible girl's arms were flailing as she shouted out the winner. "Midoriya wins!"

"Gah…. Damn it." Kirishima groaned, looking down for the first time and noticing that he was in fact, out of bounds.

Physical training and combat exercises were by no means compulsory during the break during the summer. It was supposed to be a time of rest and relaxation after all. Yet, no rules were in place against it either, and the USJ did remain open for the students who wished to make use of the facility. Several of the students did make use of it. Classes started up again in just a weeks' time, and they all wanted to be in tip-top shape. They needed to be. Who knew what Aizawa was going to throw at them first thing when they walked through that door and were welcomed to their second year. No one had any doubts that they were going to be in for twice as much hard work s their first year. Twice the pain.

Several of them were rusty. Many of them hadn't gotten the chance to have a proper spar against anyone else in a while. So this had been an excellent opportunity.

"You okay, Kirishima?" Izuku offered a hand to help up his friend, which Kirishima took immediately.

"Yeah, I'm fine. You just hurt my pride. And my ribs." The slightly taller boy joked, though he did have a hand over where Izuku's foot had struck him. "I keep forgetting that you changed over to a foot-focused style. You're getting good with it."

"I'm still getting used to it. I keep wanting to use my hands."

"Well fought either way, dude." As he spoke, Kirishima held his hands up, looking at his open palms. "I've still got a lot of training to do. My defence isn't nearly as solid as I thought it was. I'm not really much of a wall if I can be knocked back like that."

He couldn't carry on talking before he was suddenly, and rather abruptly pulled down towards a suddenly appearing short Frog Form Quirk users shoulder height, where his head was suddenly rested. Tsuyu was nearly a foot shorter than her boyfriend, and the sight of her appearing from nowhere to pull him into what Izuku could only really describe as a hug of reassurance, in which one of her large hands was wrapped around and patting the back of his neck, while the other patted the top of his head, was… Nothing short of entertaining, to say the very least.

"Don't beat yourself up too much, Eiji." Tsuyu said comfortingly. She was no doubt aware of the self-confidence issues that her boyfriend faced, and knew he may let even a small loss like this bug him if he let it.

"Don't pat the hair. You'll ruin the spikes." Kirishima muttered, though he didn't make any effort to leave the Frog Girls embrace.

Izuku could only laugh gently at the pair of them. He turned his head around, and looked at the various people training around the place. Kacchan and Uraraka were sparring, the Explosion Quirk user shouting off vulgar obscenities which, if he was screaming them at anyone other than Uraraka, would probably indicate his murderous intent. Instead, it only seemed to fire the pair of them up more than ever before. He saw the blonde set off a vicious explosion. If he were fighting anyone else, Izuku would be worried. Uraraka though? She'd handle it.

Most of their classmates were there. It had been an outing that the majority of them had planned out and agreed on. Ojiro was facing off against Sero, trying to better his combat skills against ranged attackers. Aoyama was shooting his laser while Todoroki defended, utilizing his ice to increase his reaction time. He could see Kaminari trading jabs with Fumikage, the latter attempting to gain better defensive control over his Dark Shadow. And on the outskirts, Iida was going against Jirou and Yaoyorozu both, the two girlfriends attempting to find a way to combine their Quirks against an opponent who simply out-sped them and their normal combinations. Everyone was there, doing their best to improve.

Everyone except Mina.

Well, that wasn't entirely accurate. Mineta and Sato weren't here either, but in their cases, it was because they weren't back at the dorms yet. She was the only one not here out of sheer choice. A choice which had Izuku confused. More confusing was the fact that he hadn't seen her all day, at all. Kaminari had mentioned going to grab her, but he said she just responded that she wasn't coming. Apparently, she hadn't even opened the door, and that was all that she had given him in terms of any answer. There hadn't been any time for Izuku to check on her before the group had to leave.

"Hey, uh, Asui?"

"It's still Tsuyu, Midoriya. What's up?"

"You uh, you haven't seen Mina today, have you?"

Tsuyu had been awake before Izuku, on account of his late night stay up with the pink girl, so Izuku thought it might be possible that she had seen Mina while he was still asleep.

That idea was shot down quickly though. "No, I haven't seen her all day. Kaminari said she was holed up in her room, didn't he?"

"I haven't seen her either." Kirishima added on. From his position, he did the closest thing possible that could charitably be called shrugging his shoulders. "Seems weird for her."

"Yeah… That's why I'm worried." Izuku admitted, folding his arms, and biting on his thumb. He had a couple of guesses that he could roll out. She had fallen ill, or she'd received a call or something along those lines from her family that was nothing but bad news and had soured her mood. Both would be valid reasons not to come along, but neither of them warranted her just shooing away Kaminari like he claimed she had.

Maybe something had gotten her in a bad mood? But if that was the case, what had so thoroughly irritated her?

Outside those three assumptions, Izuku didn't really have a clue what was wrong with her. In hindsight, he regretted not going and checking up on her himself, but in the heat of the moment, with the Electrification Quirk user just telling him not to bother, he'd decided against it.

Now though, curiosity and worry had made their voices heard, and Izuku was wishing he'd listened to them earlier. It wasn't like Mina to pass up on something like this, and the more he thought about how out of character it was for her, the more worried he ended up making himself. And the more he cursed himself for not doing anything about it.

That was going to have to change once he got back to the dorms. Somehow, he felt that he was going to be one of the only people that was going to be able to do anything for her. He didn't know why, but he just had that feeling in his gut.

Maybe right now, she needed a friend.

Izuku found himself outside Mina's door at about four in the afternoon. The trip to the USJ had been an all-day thing, and the students had remained there for as long as they were able to get away with, before they had to be forced out of the building by the caretakers and teachers, wanting to start setting things up for the new year. That entire time, Mina had been on Izuku's mind, the green-haired boy trying to figure out what he was going to say to the horned girl. How he was going to figure out what was bothering her, and what he was going to do to offer his help.

All the theories in the world didn't make sense of her actions. No matter what he thought, no matter how he tried to see things from her perspective, no matter how hard he tried… He just couldn't make sense of it.

He'd beelined straight for her room, wanting to try to figure out exactly what was wrong.

Though he stopped once he got there. And gulped.

Somehow, the door seemed bigger than he remembered it being. It felt like it was towering over him, looking down on he who dared to even approach it, and those who dwelled on the other side. It suddenly seemed enormous, like it was somehow looking down on him, like he was inferior to what was just wood with white paint on it. He literally shook those thoughts out of his head. It was just in his brain. That was all.

Still, he hesitated to knock. He didn't really know why. A part of him maybe thought that this was his fault, that he had somehow done something that had made her end up reclusive. Had he somehow offended her? Nothing he thought of he could see honestly upsetting her. If he had, he would apologize for it, without question or hesitation. He would try to understand how and why this had been why she had reacted, and he would do anything within his power to try to atone for it. If he hadn't upset her, he'd still do everything in his power to try to help her with whatever the problem was.

Taking a deep breath, he outreached his hand, and then knocked on the door, four times.

To no reply.

Several seconds passed, and there was absolutely no response from the other side. He couldn't hear any shuffling, no voice telling him to wait, no clattering, or even any footsteps. Just pure silence. And a lot of the tension was suddenly just gone.

Was she even in the room?

He knocked again, and still, there was no response. "M… Mina?"

Nothing.

"Mina?"

Nothing again.

Izuku suddenly pressed his ear against her door, and once again, he heard absolutely nothing whatsoever. Nothing to indicate that anyone was even in the room. Maybe she wasn't even in the room anymore. The mystery surrounding this girl today just seemed to be getting more and more complicated. Maybe she had gone out while the rest of the dorm had been at the USJ? That seemed like the easiest conclusion to come up with.

So naturally, there was no way that it could possibly be that.

Was she actually just in there, silently ignoring Izuku's voice and what he was saying? Was she just blanking him? Had she even moved from the place she'd been at when Kaminari had come to check on her hours ago? Three options existed right now. Either Mina was outside of the Yuuei schoolgrounds entirely, she had left and was wandering around the campus, or she was locked up in her room still.

Those were good odds.

"I…. Mina? I, uh… A-Are you alright?" Like he expected, he didn't get a reply. "R… Right… Um… Listen, if you're, you know… In there, and something's bothering you… You can talk to me, you know? We… We're friends, right?"

Again, there wasn't a response. It only just now struck Izuku as a possibility that he was talking to an empty room

"Right… Uh… Well, I… If you are in there, I… Guess you want to be left alone? This is a… Weird way to talk to someone." He paused, suddenly feeling awkward, and hoping that no one could actually see him. "I… I'll be in my room if you need me for anything. Or you can text me, or… Just…. You know, let me know that you're okay, okay?" He wasn't able to disguise the worry that was in his voice. He was worried, but there wasn't anything that he could do.

With a heavy heart, he left Mina's door alone, and returned to his own room.

The only thing that Izuku could think to do was send Mina a text, to repeat what he had said outside her room, to let her know that if she needed it, she could approach him and let him know what was bothering her. But like at her door, Izuku had gotten no response, and no reply.

Every time he checked his phone, he was greeted with that black screen, that informed him that he had no new messages. That Mina hadn't responded. Every time he saw it, the only thing that he could do was let out a disappointed sigh.

Worry was at the forefront of his mind, and there wasn't really much else he could do. Short of kicking down her front door – Which he seriously doubted she would appreciate, even if she was in mortal danger – He couldn't think to do anything else. He could go outside and leap onto her veranda, he supposed, but if she really didn't want to see him at all, then that would only service to anger her further.

It was why she was angry that the mystery truly was. And the answer, he just did not have at all.

He took a swig of bottled water that he kept at his desk, and punched in a few keys on his keyboard. The monitor lit up, and he scrolled over some of the news and Villain sightings that had shown up in the last twenty-four hours. Someone with a Gigantification Quirk, a known Villain whom possessed some sort of Telepathic Quirk, and a Fire based Quirk. Nothing he hadn't already put into his notebook, or worth committing to memory. If he were being honest, even if there was something worth committing to memory, his mind was so full of other, more important things, he couldn't really bring himself to care too much to note down any Quirks. He didn't have the focus. He couldn't really focus on it.

All he was doing was trying to kill time. To the hopeful hour that Mina would eventually send him some kind of message. Or at least just let him know that she was okay.

A whole year it had taken him to be able to get onto good terms with Mina. One whole year of doing the absolute best that he could in classes and in the world of Heroism surrounding him, and only a few months ago had the pair of them even been able to start talking again. He was so acutely aware of this fact. So aware.

All he could think of now was how aware he was that it felt like he was going to lose that.

The more rational part of his head was telling him to calm down. She hadn't spoken to him for one whole day – That wasn't cause for concern. Looking back, he could almost call himself clingy. There could be any number of reasons for her lack of response. There wasn't any need for all of this doom and gloom outlook on things. Was it just him being clingy?

Perhaps it was all just down to paranoia… Then again, after how lucky he was to even have met her again at all? How lucky he was to meet her at Yuuei, and get the opportunity to be in her class in the first place? With how precarious it all was, he felt somewhat justified in his paranoia. He felt if someone understood just how much that Mina meant to him, they would be able to see that he was so very concerned about their friendship, about her as a person, about her health and safety. That from that, they could understand his worries and borderline paranoia.

Or they'd just see him as complete insane. One of the other.

At this point, he questioned which one he saw himself as.

The very moment that thought got into his head, Izuku was brought out of this train of thought by the sound of three taps on his door echoing throughout his room. For a moment, he sat there, looking at his door, half expecting Mina to just barge right in as she normally would do if it was her. But nothing happened. He could feel disappointment hit him in the gut as the seconds passed.

"Hold up." He called out, unable to hide the let-down in his tone. He quickly turned off the monitor of his computer, and got onto his feet, and made his way towards the door. He didn't have the first idea who it was or what they would want from him.

He didn't think twice as he opened the door wide to address whoever had come calling.

Standing there was Mina.

Izuku actually needed to take a couple of seconds to register who it was that was stood in front of him. By the time he realized that it was Mina, he then needed a few seconds more to register what she was wearing. He recognized that she had thrown on her favourite shirt, a dark purple one with the word Acid in pink, written across the chest. Over that, she had decided to put on a black hoodie, though the zip was undone. Across her right shoulder was a bag-purse, that landed around her waistline. A blue skirt that to the untrained eye could somewhat resemble the Yuuei standard uniform's, though it was longer, and a lighter shade.

Alongside this, she also wore thin, knee-high socks, that looked like tights until someone saw the crop off. Mina hadn't ever been the sort of person to wear high heels, and this wasn't any sort of exception. Instead, what she wore were more like loafers than they were anything even remotely feminine, and they had that purple and blue camo-pattern that she was so fond of. This didn't even account for the various accessories that Mina likes to throw on – She'd coloured her nails black with what he assumed to be removable nail vanish, wristbands, and even one that she had wrapped around her left horn.

She looked ready for a night on the town.

"M-Mina?" Izuku blinked a few times when he fully registered that it was his friend stood right in front of him, looking up at him, without much expression on her face. She was nearly never this unreadable. Her face was far too animated, and herself too expressive for that.

It was slightly unsettling. Still, he had been hoping that she would actually show up, and he wasn't going to let his surprise stop him from actually asking the questions that had been on his mind.

"What – Where have you – What's with – "He wanted to ask where she had been all day, and why she was wearing what she was, and almost tried to combine the two. Instead of asking either, he wound up saying nothing, before he bit his lower lip and forced himself to speak in proper sentences. "I… Where have you b-been all day? I've been worried about you…"

The pink girl didn't respond. Instead, her eyebrows just seemed to bury deeper into her eyes. It hovered on the line, somewhere between a glare, and an apprehensive look. She didn't say a word. She just looked at the slightly taller boy.

He felt himself gulp. "Uh… what… What's with your… Clothes? A-Are you going somewhere?"

He could see it. The first showing of any sort of emotion from her. When it came to Mina, a lot of her emotion came from her body language, but she was nearly as still as a statue, so the next best thing were her black eyes. Somehow, despite their unusual colouring, they were able to convey emotions even more than someone who had sclera of the traditional pallet. She quickly shifted her eyes away from his, and looked over to the side;

Anticipation. Suddenly, the cold feeling she was giving off instantly evaporated when he saw the curls of a small smile at the edge of her lips. But there was still something odd about it. Like it was wavering between the highest high, and the lowest low. Describing the look on her face was difficult.

He then saw her arms move outwards, and before he knew it, he could see the object she had held behind her back, now held at arm's length for him to take.

His notebook.

Neither of them moved for a solid fifteen seconds, as Izuku's eyes slowly opened up wider and wider as his brain quickly put all of the pieces together. He recognized the notebook. It wasn't just one of the many he kept for reference. It was his current one, but what it contained actually took him a few seconds longer to remember, almost like his entire mind was lagging behind the rest of him.

He looked at Mina, and then back at the notebook.

He then looked at Mina again. Her cheeks were a tint of lilac against the pink that the rest of her skin was. He could tell that she wanted to look away. She didn't though. She forced herself to keep looking at him. Not to look away.

And then he went dark scarlet red. The implications were crystal clear.

She had read the entries about her. She had read the love letter.

She had seen his confession.

She knew. Everything.

Every observation he had been making about her. Everything that he'd compared to her. Every single thought that he'd written down about her. Everything in that book… She knew. She'd seen. Every single word.

Suddenly, her absences all day made sense. And he suddenly wanted to just lock himself up and just hide until he ends of time.

For her part, Mina looked at him with a soft smile, and managed to actually speak. "…Midori, I… I had…" The words seemed to struggle to come out, but she managed to force them. "… I had no idea…"

Izuku had no idea how to respond to that. He didn't know what to say. He could feel himself on thin ice here, and whatever he said next could completely change everything. All it would take was one word for that ice to crack.

Frankly, he was too nervous to speak. The words just turned into nothingness in his throat.

"…I …I read everything." She confirmed, fighting that desire to turn away with everything that she had. With her hands, she flipped open the notepad to the pages she was referring to, and looked over them again. Izuku could see her blush increase as she read everything. "Everything that you… Said about me. It… Meant a lot. If I'd known that that was how you felt…" She looked up to him. "…Why didn't you say something?"

"I-I'm sorry." It was the only thing Izuku could fore out. "I-I didn't… I – "

"Izuku." The use of his first name silenced him instantly. Mina lowered the book to her side, and asked, "If I wanted to an apology, do you think I would have spent all day picking out an outfit and working up the nerve to even come here?"

The pink girl shifted weight onto her left leg, and finally averted her eyes to the side, but she didn't turn away. Izuku was able to see that the lilac on her cheeks was brighter, but there also seemed to be less of it. Her right hand left had side, and grabbed hold of her left forearm. Shyness wasn't really something that Mina ever displayed.

In truth, a lot of oddities right now showed that she was just as anxious about this as he was. One could have guessed that she would have utilized the opportunity to tease Izuku, to make him feel flustered and embarrassed before she eventually dragged him out and admitted she liked him too. Lots of people in their class honestly had suspected Mina would be the one to make the first move, and would have been incredibly matter-of-fact about it, saying it and admitting it like it wasn't that big of a deal. No one ever really suspected Mina of even really being capable of shyness.

But it served to highlight the honest truth about her. That even though she knew that really, she had nothing to worry about, confessing to a person that she liked was still a nerve wrecking experience for her. That even when there was no reason to be afraid, she still felt her nerves take over.

She was just like Izuku. Even when she had no reason to worry, anxiety and fluster had their grips on her, just as they did any other person. She wasn't a carefree machine. She did care. Cared a huge amount, evidentially.

Once all the pieces were put together, Izuku felt his heart flutter, as opposed to pumping faster. Mina didn't even need to explicitly state it. He knew what this was.

"…I..." He bit his lip and let out a small sigh. "…This isn't… How I wanted you to find out…"

Not from his book. Not on accident. That hadn't been how Izuku wanted this to happen. He'd been formulating, and trying to figure out the best way that fully encapsulated how he felt about Mina. She deserved to know the full extent of his affections, and he had wanted it to be the perfect display. He wanted her to know exactly how much he cared about her, and he had wanted it to be on his terms.

Not from a notebook that made him look like a stalker obsessive. He had every being in existence to thank for the act that Mina knew him well enough to know that he wasn't like that.

"…Then go ahead." She returned her gaze onto him, the same small smile still on her lips.

He looked at her. "H-Huh?"

"You said this wasn't the way that you wanted me to find out… So, how did you want me to find out? If you had some sort of… Plan or something… Then, now's a good time for it."

His face went redder than ever. "I… I didn't really… Have a plan to be honest. I-I was trying to figure something out…"

"…It wasn't when we were kids I started liking you, you know." Mina told him. "I… I mean, I barely even recognized you when I first saw you. I just remembered your name and that you didn't have a Quirk."

Izuku couldn't stop himself from letting out a small chuckle. That seemed to be what most people remembered about him. He couldn't blame her.

"It wasn't your Quirk either. It wasn't your looks either. It wasn't…" She paused. "… You're just this… Really incredible person at the end of the day. You put so much passion into everything, and you work so freaking hard. You didn't even let your own bones breaking stop you. And… When I think back to meeting you for the first time, and how you just looked so… Broken, and then I compare you to how you are now… How am I not supposed to admire that?"

"M-Mina…"

"How can't I just think 'Wow, what a guy.'? I can't, that's how. I wanted to reach out to you… But t the same time, you worked so hard, and I didn't want to distract you. You deserved to be able to finally focus on achieving your dream. You wanted to be a Hero… And I didn't want to get in the way of that. So, when Kirishima and Uraraka pulled that trick they did… I was actually really happy. Because I had a chance to just talk to you… I finally got to tell you that I hadn't forgotten… And by that point I already..."

A moment of silence.

"…Had fallen for you."

For a moment, Izuku and Mina just stood there, looking at one another, without saying anything else. His heart didn't hurt anymore, and a lot of his anxiety… It was just gone. Mina had just opened her heart up to him…

Suddenly, an idea came into his head.

"Just… Wait here for a second." He told her, before turning around and re-entering his own room.

That certainly hadn't been the response Mina had been expecting. She stood there, sort of awkwardly leaning so that she could see into Izuku's room, to see if she could spy at whatever it was that he was doing. She saw him rummaging at something in his desk, which caused her to raise her eyebrows.

It only took him about fifteen seconds before he returned to her. In his hands, a framed image. She recognized what it was immediately.

The note she had written him. Six years ago, in a hurry as her parents called her to leave the place, never to return there again.

Five words that Izuku claimed to have changed his entire life. 'You Can Be a Hero.'

"…You… You don't know how much what you said meant to me back then." He said, simply, and honestly. "…My… My Quirk isn't… Really conventional, I-I know that. With my Quirk, being a Hero is… Going to be difficult. It could even end up being impossible… But… No one ever told me that I could even try when I was growing up."

A short pause.

"…My own mother couldn't even tell me that I could be a Hero." It was a sore memory for him, but he understood why she hadn't been able to tell him, even when it had been what he'd wanted to hear. What he'd needed to hear. His mother wouldn't lie to him…

He could see the look that Mina gave him. Sympathy, more than anything.

"…I know I've told you this before, and you… You read it in my notebook… But the day you met me was the day I had finally given up. How could someone Quirkless ever be a Hero?... How could someone like me become someone like the Heroes I admired? No one around me even gave me a second thought…. You were the first person to tell me that I could be a Hero.

You can be a Hero… Mina… You…. I could stand here all day telling you, but… I'd never be able to fully express how much you saved me just from saying that…. And I never even got to thank you for it… So… Thank you. You… You're the reason I kept trying. So, thank you…"

"Izuku…"

"…I've liked you since I met you." He finally admitted to her, his confession tumbling out along with the rest of the words. "I…I've always wanted to be able to tell you that, but I never approached you because I was worried that you wouldn't remember me… And it just… I couldn't bare that thought. I didn't want to hear it. As long as I didn't hear it, I could just… Pretend that there was still this opportunity… But you did remember me.

You… You're incredible. Your Quirk and how you want to help people… You really try hard when you need to. You... You stand up for people… You help people… You helped me…"

Another pause.

"…You saved me." He smiled. "…Five words was all it took."

Mina just looked at him. And then promptly burst into a sudden and unexpected fit of giggles.

"Pffft!"

"Wh-What?!"

"I-I'm sorry, you just – Pffft!" Mina suddenly lost any sense of anxiety or tension, and clutched at her side, keeling over and laughing without any control whatsoever. "D-Do you know how freaking cheesy that all was?!"

"I-I was just being honest!"

"That makes it so much better!" She erupted in laughter again, though she did try her hardest to stop herself. It made her laugh even harder though, and for a moment, she really thought that her sides were about to split open. "Pfft! Y-You freakin' dork!"

Her laughter had a habit of being infectious. Awkwardness was just gone from Izuku, and suddenly he found himself chuckling, which suddenly became full blown laughter too. "Y-You're the one who showed up here like this! You started it!"

"Yeah, cause the worlds biggest sap had to write all his feelings down like a diary – You're the biggest dope I think I know!"

The pair of them found themselves laughing for at least a solid minute, quickly evolving into snorts and chuckles that overtook their ability to speak. Any and all tension or anxiety had been shot straight out of a cannon without a wave goodbye as they both lost their minds with relief and laughter.

When Mina finally forced herself to calm down, she took a couple of deep breaths, and held Izuku's notebook, and framed note, out for him to take. "Come on, grab a jacket. We're headed out."

"We are?"

"Do you think I put on this outfit for a joke, dude?" Mina smirked. "Date night, you and me, right now! C'mon!"

Though the green-haired boy blushed, he nodded, and returned into his room. He placed the note and the frame on his desk, and picked up a dark green jacket that he kept in his wardrobe, re-joined Mina, and suddenly found his hand within hers, and was dragged down the corridor to the exit.

If someone had asked him when he was younger if he thought that five words could so drastically change someone's life, he would have said that he thought that idea was absurd. That was before he met Mina though. Before All Might gave him his power. And he had both of them to thank, but to him, Mina was the main reason.

Without her, he may not have even kept up his efforts, and that might have meant he never even met All Might.

Small gestures like that were all it took.

Five words were all it took to change everything for him.