Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Deku, what are you looking at?” Uraraka asked, jolting Izuku from his thoughts.

Izuku looked up from his phone, where he’d been scrolling through one of his favorite forums: “Today in Hero History.” It was a great source of information on major incidents that happened before his time. There were so many amazing heroes he’d have never heard of without it simply because they’d lived and died before he was born.

“Oh, hi Uraraka! I was just checking one of my hero forums. Apparently, the 15th anniversary of some big incident is coming up next week, and everyone’s really excited for the documentary that’s coming out for it. It involved some villain named Garvey?”

Iida tensed up and stopped speaking mid-sentence across the room. He whirled around to look at Izuku. “Garvey, you say? That name sounds familiar. I think Tensei’s spoken of him…”

Izuku checked the clock to see they still had ten minutes before homeroom. He clicked on a video of bystander footage that one of the forum members had linked this morning. “Here’s part of the fight. Near as I can tell the villain had some sort of absorption and redirection quirk? Might have a stockpiling component given that he doesn’t release the attacks he absorbs right away.”

Uraraka poked him in the side to snap him out of his muttering. Izuku sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck while shooting her a grateful grin. He really needed to break his muttering habit. Then he turned the volume on his phone up and positioned it so his friends could see. Iida, Uraraka, and the quietly observant Todoroki crowded around to watch. A few other classmates joined the huddle as they trickled in, and Izuku shoved down his discomfort at almost being cornered. The room was oddly silent, the teens watching with mounting horror as the giant villain took down hero after hero with little difficulty and continued stomping around the city block.

“You’re sure the heroes win this one?” Jiro asked. “There’s an awful lot of screaming in the background.”

“Y-yeah,” Izuku said, only confident because he’d read summaries of the incident before and knew it ended with the villain behind bars. It was the “how” he was unsure of. How did you fight someone who could turn your own attacks back on you or your allies?

The view from the bystander’s apartment balcony wasn’t the best, but they could still see each team of heroes that tried and failed to stop the villain, only giving him more ammunition to work with. Then a building collapsed, and the villain’s attacks suddenly stopped. Garvey looked around in apparent confusion before a small figure in black began attacking him. They couldn’t make out much, but Izuku hissed in a breath as he recognized the weapon the person wielded with far less grace than they were used to.

Everyone jumped when the classroom door slid open in time with the starting bell. “Class,” Aizawa greeted. He stopped one step into the room and narrowed his eyes when the cluster of students only stared at him in disbelief. He raised one eyebrow in silent question.

“A-Aizawa-sensei? You were in the Garvey Incident?” Izuku asked.

“In it?” Kaminari asked. “Dude! He resolved it! Check the video’s comments; he took Garvey down hard.”

The rest of the class glanced at Kaminari to see him showing another version of the video on his phone. Izuku was the only one to catch the brief flash of pain that pinched the underground hero’s features at the declaration.

Aizawa sighed. “Yes. Now sit down before I give you all detention.” Once the last student was in their assigned seat, he tossed his folder of papers on the ground next to his yellow sleeping bag. “Since you all seem so fascinated with the event, we’ll go over disaster-level villain attack protocols. Balancing evacuation versus villain containment is a challenge in such events, especially when the damage is widespread or the villain has high mobility. I cannot stress the importance of coordinating with the other heroes and hero teams on-site enough…”

The class sat in rapt attention and hurried to take notes as Aizawa lectured.

As the end of homeroom approached, Aizawa shifted gears. “If possible, work in pairs in an unstable environment. Watch each other’s backs. The safety of civilians is paramount, but you can’t save anyone if you yourself become a casualty…” Aizawa paused to look around the classroom. Something in his eyes made Izuku uneasy. The following words only deepened the feeling. “I won’t sugarcoat it. In a largescale event like Kamino or the Garvey Incident it’s highly likely you will face civilian or colleague deaths. You can’t freeze up or let your emotions overrule your common sense when that happens. As long as there are living people in danger you have a job to do. Grief is normal, but it must wait until you’re in a safe environment, both for your safety and others’.”

Todoroki straightened and stared intently at their teacher. “You’re speaking from experience.”

Aizawa met Todoroki’s gaze briefly before scanning the room again, as if to reassure himself all 20 students were still there. His eyes lingering on Izuku a second or two longer than the others. “One of my friends didn’t make it to graduation.” The bell rang moments later, and Aizawa walked from the room, leaving the class to process that bombshell.

1-A talked of little else the rest of that day and the following week. After all the talk, it shouldn’t have surprised Izuku that the class decided to have a watch party for the Garvey Incident documentary. The day of the anniversary quickly arrived, and Izuku volunteered as tribute for their snack run. They’d gone on the weekend, but someone (definitely not Sero, Kaminari, or Ashido) had eaten through half of their communal stash already.

Aizawa signed his permission form after an unusually long time spent staring at the paper. Izuku started to wonder if his teacher had fallen asleep with his eyes open (he really didn’t put any skill past Eraserhead at this point) when Aizawa finally handed it back. “You’d better come right back, Problem Child.”

There was something odd in his teacher’s tone, and Izuku couldn’t place it. It wasn’t something he’d ever heard from a teacher before; he was sure of that much. But it didn’t seem particularly…bad. Izuku was self-aware enough to know he had trouble reading teachers—and people in general—when it came to anything other than negative emotions. He simply didn’t have enough practice with it yet. Izuku frowned and tilted his head as he took the permission form, mentally adding his teacher’s odd behavior to his Research Later list. “Of course, sensei.”

It was only a trip to the corner store. What was the worst that could happen?

---

He really should have learned by now not to ask himself that question. Crouching behind the end of an aisle, Izuku took stock of the situation. (Why was he always the one finding himself in situations? Despite what Todoroki said, he did not have a villain magnet quirk!) There was a pair of criminals up front. One was holding the cashier at knifepoint and ordering them to open the register drawer. The other held an aluminum bat and was keeping an eye on the other people in the store. A woman with a daughter who couldn’t be older than four or five, two college students, and an elderly gentleman were huddled against the back wall, each standing several feet apart under the second criminal’s scrutiny.

So far, Izuku had avoided notice. He’d already triggered the police/hero app on his phone that sent out a silent distress signal and his location to nearby authorities. It even had a priority flag granted by his status as a hero student that put it right below a distress signal from another pro. Help was on its way. They just had to hold out. And he had his shiny new provisional license in his wallet if things really hit the fan. Which of course, they did.

The man with the knife whipped his head toward the front door. The movement allowed Izuku to catch sight of a slightly elongated ear that had previously been hidden by the man’s hair. “Shit. Cops are coming. We gotta bail.”

A sensory quirk. Izuku silently berated himself for missing that. He could have sent out a message for the police to come with sirens off if he’d only noticed. A criminal who felt they were cornered was far more dangerous than one caught unawares.

The second man gestured with his bat to the bag his partner-in-crime had set on the counter and snarled at the cashier, “Hurry it up unless you want a trip to the hospital.” Turning back to the civilians he lifted the bat and dropped it back into his hand a few times as he stepped closer to them. “Now which of you idiots had the bright idea of tipping off the police?”

Izuku tensed and prepared to move, but froze when yellow-green light spilled across the tiled floor.

The little girl who had been sniffling up til now started bawling and glowing fitfully. The man took a half-step back and eyed the kid warily. “Hey! None of that.” The girl’s mother looked panicked as she tried to comfort her daughter without moving from where the villain had told her to stand. When that failed, the criminal cursed and dropped his bat to his side, instead raising a hand wreathed in its own blue glow. “I said, knock it off!”

“Come on, man; let’s just go!” The first criminal called to his friend, bag of money in hand. His eyes and ears shifted focus franticly, no doubt tracking incoming police or heroes. “We ain’t got time for this!”

“We have as much time as I say we do!” The second called back. “Though a hostage couldn’t hurt.” He reached to grab the girl’s mother.

Izuku reacted at the same time as the little girl. Izuku called upon One for All and moved as fast as he dared in the confined space. The girl screamed, “Leave Mommy alone!” as her quirk brightened.

The criminal with the bat had faster reflexes than Izuku expected, spinning toward him with the bat flying toward his head. Izuku blocked it with his left arm, feeling his bones creak under the blow. He glanced over his shoulder at the terrified civilians. He needed to keep the man’s focus on him. He was not in the mood for a hostage situation. Channeling his inner Kacchan, he gave the criminal a slightly feral grin and ripped the bat from his hands, sending it skidding down one of the aisles. “That all you’ve got?”

Izuku quickly attempted to press his advantage. To Izuku’s dissatisfaction, the man was more skilled than the standard street thug had any right to be, blocking or dodging a surprising number of Izuku’s hits. Granted, Izuku could only use so much of One for All indoors and with civilians in such close proximity.

“Look out!” Two voices yelled at once. The knife criminal and the mother. Izuku whipped his head around to see an arc of the little girl’s quirk ballooning out from her like a solar flare, and it was aimed right for him and the bat criminal.

Izuku kicked off of his opponent in a move that should have pushed both of them to safety. Except the criminal caught his ankle with a glowing hand as he was knocked back. A weird, jittering shudder traveled through Izuku, and he found himself unable to direct his movements as he reversed through the kick he’d just performed, landing him right back in the line of fire. Still trapped in the criminal’s quirk, Izuku could only close his eyes and brace himself as the girl’s quirk hit him head on. Pain lanced through him, and all the air was knocked from his lungs as he fell into darkness.

Chapter Text

Izuku groaned as he came to. His head…no, his everything hurt. Usually, if he felt this bad, he was on his way to Recovery Girl’s office, not lying facedown on dirty concrete. An experimental twitch of his fingers told him moving was too much effort just yet, and with the splitting pain in his skull, he didn’t even bother trying to open his eyes. So, he focused on his breathing and listening to his surroundings.

After a period of time, he was certain he was alone, and he was also certain he wasn’t in some villain’s dungeon cell. There was too much audible foot and street traffic for that. And the air was fresh if a bit dusty. He was somewhere open, though the lack of stench ruled out any alleyways. So, why had no one spotted him and helped? Or at least called a paramedic?

Finally, he decided that if no one else was going to help him, he’d have to get himself to some help. He held back a whine as he gathered his sore legs under him. He squinted his eyes open just enough to scan his surroundings as he pushed himself upright. Izuku frowned. What was he doing in a construction site?

He stumbled to the edge of the concrete and wooden frames denoting the soon-to-be building and dug his phone out of his pocket. He unlocked it and frowned again. No service? What the heck? There had never been any issues with service around UA.

UA…

Izuku staggered to lean against a stack of cement bags as his vision went spotty with a sudden spike of pain. He went to the corner store only a few blocks from UA. There was a robbery, and he’d been hit with a quirk. Two quirks. How did he end up in a construction zone? Where was he? What did those quirks do to him?

He needed to get to Recovery Girl. Even he could admit that. Quirk interactions could be finicky and dangerous. And whatever those quirks had done to him, the pain and disorientation didn’t seem to be going away in any hurry. Concussion, maybe? He was definitely having trouble walking in a straight line.

Right, first things first. Get out of the construction zone and find a phone to call for help. No wonder no one had seen him. The fence around the lot had canvas sheeting up for privacy. He eyed the locked gate as he slowly approached. He could break it, but then anyone could wander in and either steal the construction supplies (which was a real and common problem, according to Uraraka) or get hurt on some piece of equipment.

He shook his head slightly in attempt to clear his vision. It had the opposite effect really. Izuku groaned and rubbed at his temples, eyeing the fence. It wasn’t too high. 5% should be more than enough to clear it, but he couldn’t see where he’d land. He didn’t want to hurt anyone, and the way his head felt, he didn’t trust himself to be able to reorient midair. A quick scan of the fence line showed him one side that should abut an alley based on how close the next building was. That was his best bet for not landing on top of someone.

He slowly limped his way over, steadying himself on any solid surface he passed. At one point he leaned against what must have been the foreman’s table/makeshift desk. Blueprints littered the surface held down by weights, and an abandoned thermos and newspaper sat on one corner. The thermos’s presence made Izuku realize just how thirsty he was, and he suddenly worried he’d been unconscious for a lot longer than he’d thought. Izuku picked up the thermos, hoping for some water or maybe tea, but it was empty.

He sighed in defeat and set the thermos back down, eyes glancing over the newspaper in hopes of getting a town name if it was a local publication. He squinted at the paper and blinked a few times. He could not be reading that right. April 5, 2234. It was 2249 last Izuku checked, and September at that.

Something that felt a lot like panic clawed its way up Izuku’s spine as he turned to the blueprints, searching for dates on them. Several had dates, all in early 2234 or late 2233. He recalled how the criminal’s quirk had felt like moving backwards. The lack of phone service made sense now. Somehow, he’d travelled back in time fifteen years and change.

Izuku slumped into the chair at the table and dropped his head into his hands. He let himself drown in his panic and dismay for a few minutes before a particularly cold wind made him shiver. Ow, even shivering was painful. Right, he needed medical help and a place to stay, and some food and water couldn’t hurt.

What did one do when they found themself out of time? His first instinct was to find All Might, but he quickly squashed that idea. 15 years ago…er, now, All Might didn’t know him, and he was actively hunting down All for One’s interests. He’d be super suspicious of a teen turning up out of nowhere with a copy of—

Izuku froze for a moment before he stared at his hand. He called up One for All and sighed in relief at the sight of familiar green sparks. At least he still had his quirk. His eyes widened in horror. Shit, he had One for All, and he was stuck in the past with an active, uninjured All for One. If he didn’t find a way back, Izuku’s time might be stuck without the one quirk that could defeat the supervillain, and he—an as of yet inexperienced holder—was in a time when All for One was fully capable of hunting him if he caught wind of his existence.

Okay, he really needed to find a way back, or at least a place to lay low and stay off of All for One’s radar. That ruled All Might right out. Even if the hero wasn’t suspicious, All Might would be watched. Also, weren’t time paradoxes a thing? The time travel segment of hero law had been covered so briefly Izuku couldn’t quite recall. He was pretty sure there was something about paradoxes.

So, no All Might or anyone else he’d interacted with regularly, or they might not act the right way around him in Izuku’s timeline. So, no Naomasa. Most of his teachers weren’t even heroes yet at this point, even if the paradox rule didn’t disqualify them. And he wasn’t sure where his parents lived when he was born. He’d just have to hope he didn’t run into them.

Izuku rubbed his hands over his face. Maybe he needed to look at this differently. Instead of who he couldn’t approach, maybe he should look at who could realistically help him. Who was smart enough to help him? The HPSC? Some instinct screamed a warning against that idea. He didn’t like that option, though he might keep it as a last resort.

Hatsume? No, she probably hadn’t even been born yet. Maybe a family member? Hadn’t she said her family owned a support company? Or was it that she was going to start one? Regardless, if they were anything like her, they’d find a way to blow up the time stream. Definite no.

An intelligence hero, maybe? Nighteye? No, he either wasn’t a hero yet or was working with All Might. Too risky. Nezu? Nezu! He hadn’t met Nezu in person yet in his time. Which was a little odd considering he was in the know on One for All according to All Might. Had Nezu been avoiding Izuku on purpose? If time travel looped, then it was quite possible he’d avoided Izuku until now, because he was waiting for this to happen. Nezu was one of the smartest beings in Japan, if not the world. If he didn’t know what to do, he’d probably know who did.

With the beginnings of a plan in mind, Izuku shakily forced himself back to his feet. He reached the fence and channeled his quirk to jump over it. The landing wasn’t as smooth as it should have been. Even with One for All strengthening him, his knees buckled on impact. He caught himself on his hands and knees, thankful he hadn’t fallen on any broken glass or worse. Pulling on a measly 1% of One for All to avoid visible sparks and unwanted attention, Izuku hauled himself back up, using the fence as a support. He was a little steadier with his quirk active, though not much.

Escape from construction zone? Check. Next up on the to-do list was figuring out where the hell he was. He made it back out to the road and nearly sobbed in relief when he saw UA’s gate a few blocks down. He’d still been at the corner store…or where the corner store was going to be. He could see his destination. Now he just had to get there.

It was painful and painfully slow going, but he eventually made it across the last crosswalk to stand before the gate. He started to take a step through when he remembered himself. Yes, he had a student ID, but it wasn’t going to be in the system 15 years in the past. His eyes drifted to the intercom next to the gate. That could work, but how was he going to convince them to let him in?

The wind picked up again, and he shivered violently and stumbled against the wall. He’d gone out on his snack run dressed for late summer or early fall, not early spring when the bitter cold hadn’t quite released its hold on Japan.

Before Izuku could get back to thinking about how to convince Nezu to talk to him, the mammal in question was speaking through the intercom, “Excuse me, young man. Are you in need of assistance?”

Izuku jumped at the sudden voice in his ear and nearly fell over. “Principal Nezu?” he asked in tired disbelief. “I was trying to get ahold of you.”

“Oh?”

He wracked his sluggish brain for a minute before recalling one of the few test questions their Hero Law exam had involving time travel quirks: A person out of time, either through their own quirk or the quirk of another, should report to the nearest hero for debriefing, decontamination, and assessment. That had been law… “T-429,” Izuku mumbled. Talking any louder seemed a gargantuan effort. Staying upright was starting to get there too.

“Oh my. Do hold on a minute. I’ll send someone to collect you.”

Nezu believed him? It wasn’t that Izuku expected him not to…but teachers generally didn’t believe Izuku. A principal never had. Izuku guessed Nezu’s being a hero probably counted for something there. Izuku relaxed against the wall. He was somewhere safe. Nezu could help him figure this out. He was going to be okay.

Izuku lost concentration for a moment, and One for All slipped through his fingers. It turned out that was the only thing holding him up. He collapsed to his knees on the sidewalk, still leaning against the wall. Izuku thought he heard Nezu’s voice on the intercom again, but it was fuzzy and distant. He was really tired. He rested his head against the wall and closed his eyes. A few minutes couldn’t hurt.

---

The soft murmur of voices and the beeping of a heart monitor drew him back to awareness. Izuku did a mental inventory before moving. He wasn’t as painful as the last time he woke up, and he was on something much softer than concrete. The pull of tape on the inside of his left elbow and the chill running up that arm told him he had an IV drip. So, he’d probably been out awhile either the first time or the second. Long enough to get dehydrated anyway.

He took a deep breath and was startled to feel the constriction of bandages wrapping him shoulder to hip. What on earth? Had he missed a major injury under all the other pain he’d been in? A small cough escaped him, and the chatter stopped.

Izuku sighed and opened his eyes; whoever was here knew he was awake now anyway. A very familiar ceiling met him. Too familiar. He was in UA’s infirmary. Was he back in his own time already? He turned his head to the right, where he knew Recovery Girl’s desk would be and found her and Nezu watching him. Recovery Girl was much less wrinkly than he remembered. “Damn it,” he said under his breath.

Nezu twitched an ear and smiled at his expletive. “Based on your reaction and your student ID and scars, I take it you’re quite familiar with the infirmary, Midoriya?”

Izuku grimaced. “Unfortunately. My quirk gave me a lot of trouble my first semester. I’m doing better now.”

Nezu hummed. “Sounds like quite the quirk, but we can come back to that. You reported a T-429 scenario, correct? What date did you come from? It’s currently April 19, 2234.”

Izuku tried to prop himself up slightly before feeling a twinge in his chest. Seemed like he was injured after all. “Yeah, I’m from September 3, 2249,” he said, settling back down. “I got hit by two peoples’ quirks during a robbery at the corner store and woke up in a construction lot where the corner store should be. The dates on the blueprints and newspaper were a big giveaway to what happened.”

Recovery Girl noted his aborted attempt to sit up and walked over to check his bandages. “I take it the strange burn was from one of them?”

“Burn?”

“Ah, allow me,” Nezu chimed in, climbing up a stool to hop onto the bed. He held up his phone with a picture on the screen. It showed Izuku without his shirt on. There was a blistered and strangely yellow-green burn streaking from the top of his sternum to the outside of his right hip. It wasn’t terribly wide, but it looked like the type of injury to scar.
Izuku made a face at the image and blinked. “Well, that color matches the little girl’s quirk. Angle looks about right too. Not sure what it was though. The other quirk appeared to be a contact-based rewind or minor time manipulator. The villain grabbed my ankle after I kicked him and I ended up moving backward through my kick’s movements regardless of gravity and prior momentum. Couldn’t make any conscious movements while it was active aside from blinking.”

Nezu had started typing on his phone while Izuku talked, no doubt working on his incident report. Confirming his guess, Nezu asked, “Is there any chance your own quirk or any others were involved in the event that brought you here?”

Izuku tilted his head back in thought. “None of the other civilians were visibly using a quirk, and the other criminal had a sensory quirk. I did have mine active at the time, but it shouldn’t have interfered? I dunno. It’s a strength enhancer, but it’s energy-based. And I was using it at a pretty low level at the time to avoid property damage…”

Nezu nodded. “Wise. Alright, I think that’s it for quirk involvement. Can you describe how you felt when you first woke up in this time? The Commission doesn’t have an event with this large a time jump on file for us to reference as far as side effects go.”

Izuku dutifully listed off his symptoms and recounted his journey to UA’s gate, where the proximity alarms had picked him up when he made contact with the wall. “I’m feeling much better now, aside from the burn, but um…where are my clothes?” He hadn’t noticed at first, but his shirt was missing, and the pair of shorts he was wearing were very much not his.

Recovery Girl answered this one. “Sorry, dearie, but we had to dispose of them when you went through decontamination. Couldn’t risk you bringing back some contagion from the future that none of us have immunity to. I was able to put your wallet through the sterilizer and disinfect your phone though.”

“Oh, that makes sense…”

“Not to worry, Midoriya,” Nezu said, patting his knee through the blanket. “We’ll have you some replacement clothes by the time Chiyo clears you to leave. I must say though, your choice of shoe brand is rather interesting.”
Izuku stiffened. No one had ever paid his red sneakers much attention before, but if anyone was going to notice he wore the brand that accommodated the extra toe joint it would be the principal. Izuku glanced between Nezu and Recovery Girl, then the door, which was thankfully closed.

Both heroes were in the know on All Might’s quirk in the future, but he wasn’t sure if they knew yet. He contemplated lying, but then he again remembered that in this here and now All for One was active. A quirkless kid getting a quirk late would definitely throw up red flags, and if he lied and Nezu caught him out…

Izuku cleared his throat. “Recovery Girl, are you All Might’s doctor yet at this point?”

Both heroes blinked in confusion. Then Recovery Girl bristled. “Answering that would be a breach of doctor-patient confidentiality, young man.”

Well, that answer was unhelpful, but Izuku really shouldn’t have expected a better one. He worried his lip for a moment before deciding to just go for it. “If I said I’m the Ninth, would that mean anything to you?”

Based on her visible shock, it did. That made things easier. Nezu gave no visible reaction aside from leaning in slightly to better scrutinize Izuku.

Izuku met the principal’s unnerving stare. “I have those shoes, because they’re the only comfortable brand for me. I was quirkless before All Might gave me One for All.”

“My, aren’t you an interesting one?”

“Yep. That’s me, hehe.” Izuku hesitated before asking, “But, um, my quirk being what it is…how long do you think it’ll take to get me home? I’m kinda needed there.”

“Oh, that’s an easy one to answer!” Nezu declared, tucking his paws behind his back. “Fifteen and a half years, give or take.”

“What?”

Nezu blinked at him. “Well, most time-related quirks come with their own…time limits, so to speak. They’re temporary, the longest displacement on record being 12 hours. But you were hit with a combination of quirks and have already been in this time for over 24 hours. Where quirk interactions are concerned, things get messy. There’s a very high chance that whatever occurred interfered with the time quirk’s built-in parameters if it didn’t outright nullify them. In short, this was most likely a one-way trip.”

Chapter Text

Izuku was stuck in the past. 15 years in the past. This couldn’t be happening. He had to be in some sort of coma in a hospital right now, worrying his friends, mother, and All Might sick. Aizawa was probably so disappointed. Izuku bet he was going to have detention for the rest of the semester when he woke up. Izuku didn’t think he’d even complain, not if it meant he got to see his friends and family again.

Izuku was so wrapped up in his head he missed the conversation going on only a few feet from him. At least until Recovery Girl’s rising voice demanded his attention. Raised voices never meant anything good for him, and despite how small she was, Recovery Girl was plenty scary when she was angry. “Nezu, I have half a mind to bar you from the infirmary permanently. The boy’s still recovering from the worst chronal displacement syndrome I’ve ever seen. You did not have to tell him that right this minute.”

“Ah, but I did, Chiyo. Midoriya’s circumstances are such that we cannot hand him off to the Commission as would be the usual protocol.”

This had happened before? And enough times to require an established protocol? Izuku made a mental note to check for any time quirks attending UA in the years between now and 2249 if he ever made it back home. Those were so rare to start with—oh right. Nezu was still talking.

“He needs to understand his position and options. We’ll need to move quickly to preserve his freedom and secret, regardless of time shock.”

Izuku turned his head to see the two, who were at Recovery Girl’s desk again. Nezu caught his eye briefly before continuing, “The Commission by no means will let a permanent time traveler roam free, especially not so far removed from his own time. And if they take custody of Midoriya, they will eventually learn the true nature of his quirk.”

Recovery Girl scowled but nodded.

“Now that Midoriya appears to be with us once more,” Nezu said, nodding in Izuku’s direction. “We can discuss how to proceed. What year of schooling are you in?”

“I’m a first year.”

Both adults looked shocked for a moment. Recovery Girl found her voice first. “A first year? They had first years take the Provisional Licensing Exam?”

Izuku nodded. “Our year was the first. Considering all the villain attacks, our teachers wanted us to be able to defend ourselves without having to worry about legal repercussions.” And now the adults were giving him concerned looks. “I-it really wasn’t that bad! There was the USJ, and then Hosu and the summer camp and Kamino…and I guess Shigaraki catching me at the mall counts….a-and Toga infiltrating the Licensing Exam…” Izuku cringed. That list sounded a lot worse out loud than it had in his head.

Nezu tapped his chin. After a few seconds of thought, he seemed to reach a decision. “I’ll arrange some placement tests to see where you are in terms of this time’s curriculum. Assuming you wish to continue in the hero track?”

Izuku shot Nezu an incredulous look. “Of course, I still want to be a hero!”

Nezu chuckled. “Just making sure. This is your future we’re speaking of. You should have a say in it. That said, you are still a minor. You’ll need a legal guardian on record and a place to stay. We can arrange for a specific person to become your guardian, or UA can take you on as a ward, much as we do for foreign exchange students. That has potential to provide you with a nice cover story too. I will work out the details for your housing and the forging of all pertinent documents over the next day or two. Once you’re settled in, I’ll look into a few options for potentially expediting your return home, but I make no promises.”

“And in the meantime, you need to rest,” Recovery Girl said, warning both Izuku and Nezu with her gaze. “You’re not leaving that bed for a while yet.”

Izuku wanted to argue. But at the same time, his chest hurt, his eyes were somewhere between sore and heavy, and he felt mentally wrung out. Sleeping for a while and just…not having to deal sounded pretty good right about now. So, he sighed and let himself melt back into his pillow. “Okay.”

Recovery Girl nodded approvingly and gave him a quick kiss on the forehead with her quirk. The pain in his chest and behind his eyes eased as he drifted off, and he spent much of that day and the next sleeping or filling out placement tests and medical history papers for Nezu and Recovery Girl respectively. By the time the school doctor declared him over his bout of time shock, the sun was setting on his third day in the past. Recovery Girl cleared him to be released first thing in the morning.

Izuku’s sleep schedule, unfortunately, was royally screwed by that point. He spent the whole night restless and writing everything he remembered of the future in a notebook he’d begged from Nezu on his last visit. Izuku wasn’t sure how much his being stuck in the past would impact the future. He had never come across a hero with a quirk remotely similar to his and All Might’s in this time frame. So, either he had already irreparably damaged the timeline by virtue of being here (but wouldn’t that have created a time paradox?) or he’d actually gone for underground heroics and been really good at staying under the radar and avoiding the creation of any time paradoxes. Izuku knew for a fact he wasn’t aware of all underground heroes in his area, let alone the rest of Japan.

Maybe that was it. He could leave the Musutafu/Tokyo area when he graduated and set up shop somewhere like Kyoto or Okinawa. Maybe even overseas. Other places needed heroes too. And it wasn’t like he was abandoning his responsibility to fight All for One. Even All Might had laid low in America while he was getting started out. And it didn’t have to be forever. Izuku just needed to stay under the radar until his younger self ran into that corner store robbery. (That was so weird to think about.) Then he could be the replacement Symbol of Peace All Might wanted.

He added a quick sidenote to the page he was working on to ask Nezu for his opinion on career options next time they talked.

And…if Izuku went underground, he could keep track of certain villainous elements, even if he probably shouldn’t interfere directly. Maybe Izuku’s encyclopedic knowledge of heroes and major villain fights could prove useful in that line of work. He really wished he was allowed to change things though. He thought of the scar on All Might’s side. But if he changed something so major, he almost certainly wouldn’t have gotten One for All, gotten into UA, and been in the position to be sent back in time in the first place, thus creating one of the paradoxes warned against in class.

Izuku wrinkled his nose in distaste. He knew it was true, but he didn’t have to like it.

So, he kept writing, working from this present to his. He didn’t notice the sun rising outside the window until Nezu and Recovery Girl walked in. He blinked at them owlishly, then glanced at the wall clock. “Oops?” He sheepishly closed his notebook—which he was already three quarters of the way through—and set it aside.

Nezu grinned at him, but Recovery Girl did not seem amused. She huffed and moved to her desk to fetch supplies for Izuku’s morning exam, leaving Izuku to face Nezu, who held a…shopping bag? The mammal handed him the plastic bag before saying, “I did promise you some new clothes. You can change into those once Shuzenji has looked over your wounds. Then I need to introduce you to the rest of the staff before classes start. After the meeting, I’ll have someone show you where you’ll be staying. You wanted to be a ward of UA, correct?”

“Yes, Principal Nezu,” Izuku said as he took the bag and set it next to him on the bed. “Thanks.”

Nezu nodded. “Good. You’ll have today to settle in and fix your internal clock. Once the school day’s over, one of the teachers will take you to purchase any supplies you’ll need.” The principal stepped to one side to allow Recovery Girl to better access Izuku. She started unwinding the bandage around his chest as Nezu continued, “You’ll be attending classes with 2-A. Their homeroom is on the third floor, just above 1-A. Noroi or one of your classmates can show you to the rest of your classes from there.”

Izuku blinked in surprise. “2-A? But I just started my second term as a first year.”

Nezu smiled. “Yes, and I daresay either the curriculum grows substantially in the next 15 years, or your teachers missed your potential entirely. Aside from some spotty knowledge on current era heroes and Modern Literature, you’re on par with the second years.”

Izuku frowned and gave Nezu a confused look. How could he be almost a full year ahead of his friends? That didn’t make any sense. He wasn’t any smarter than them.

Nezu considered him for a minute before asking, “Midoriya, were your previous classes challenging? Did they take all of your focus?”

What? Of course, they were challenging. He got the material pretty quick, sure, but figuring out the school’s teachers and just how well he was allowed to do in each class without attracting attention had always been tricky and ate up a lot of his mental processing at the beginning of a school year. He thought he’d figured out just about all of his 1-A classmates and teachers except maybe Aizawa. Eraserhead had been exacting from day one, and he was difficult to read with his trained lack of tells.

He hadn’t even had to worry about that on the placement test. There was so much material he’d never seen before there was no need to consider throwing questions. Izuku tilted his head and furrowed his eyebrows. He was sure he’d gotten way more than two-thirds of the test packet wrong, which was entirely expected with him only completing one semester at UA in his time. Something wasn’t adding up.

Nezu’s smile grew wider and toothier. “So, you did notice.”

Izuku hunched his shoulders and slapped a hand over his mouth, earning a stern look from Recovery Girl where she was still unwinding his bandages. How much of that had he mumbled?

“I had a hunch, and my instincts are far sharper than a human’s. So, I gave you a test that included some college-level material. I was pleasantly surprised to find your Math, Science, and English scores higher than my initial estimate.” Nezu hopped up into the empty chair beside Izuku’s bed to put him nearer to the time traveler’s eye level. “Though I must ask, why did you handicap yourself in your time?”

A thousand memories told Izuku why. Anytime he did better than Bakugo or one of the “star” students in his elementary and middle school classes, nothing good came of it. Often the opposite. It was easier and safer to stay out of the spotlight. He refused to fully play into their expectations—failure—but as long as he stayed out of the top five positions in his class, he was able to escape with no more bullying than usual.

Nezu rested a paw on Izuku’s shoulder, startling the boy back to the present. “Whatever reasons you have, I assure you that you need not worry about them here and now. You are under UA’s protection, and mine,” Nezu added with a toothy grin that Izuku was beginning to understand was equal parts promise and threat—a promise to him and a threat to anyone who might hurt him. “Besides, aren’t you curious just how well you’ll do when not holding yourself back?”

But that was sure to make Kacchan furio—Izuku blinked and shook away the automatic response. Kacchan wasn’t here. There was no way for him to find out. No one in this time knew Izuku as the weak and useless Deku he’d been before high school. No one here was constantly rubbing that version of himself in his face, making it impossible to forget. He could reinvent himself here, he realized. No one could call him out on it either. Well, no one aside from himself.

Izuku hesitantly nodded and offered a shaky grin. “I-I’ll try my best, Principal Nezu.”

Nezu nodded before removing his paw from Izuku’s shoulder. He shifted back in his chair as Recovery Girl peeled away the last of the old bandages. Izuku grimaced at the smudges of skin-toned makeup that stained the gauze. Then he dropped his gaze to his chest. All the blisters along the burn had long since popped, drained, and healed, leaving behind a sickly yellow-green swath of scar tissue.

Izuku tentatively rubbed at his new scar before Recovery Girl swatted his hand away to more carefully inspect it. “Tell me if anything hurts,” she ordered before gently prodding at different places along the scar.

Izuku stoically sat there, wondering at the odd numbness associated with this scar. All of his other ones ached if pressed in just the wrong way. Perhaps it was something peculiar to that little girl’s quirk or the interaction with the criminal’s quirk? Or the ache could not have set in yet. The next big storm or cold front was likely to be telling. He supposed he could only wait and see.

Recovery Girl hummed and had Izuku raise his arms, then twist and move in a few different ways to see if the scar impacted his range of motion any. It tugged a little, but nothing Izuku wasn’t used to from dealing with the others. A compression shirt, some scar cream, and frequent, careful stretches should work out the worst of it. He said as much, and Recovery Girl raised an eyebrow at him but said she’d look into getting him those supplies.

Thus dismissed, Izuku changed into the clothes Nezu had brought him: a plain white t-shirt, dark blue hoody, and a pair of khaki cargo shorts, along with socks and boxers. Nothing impressive, but he had no intention to complain when there was a pair of quirkless sneakers at the bottom of the shopping bag. A quirked jog or two and they’d be fully broken in and just as comfortable as his last pair. At the thought of finally being able to exercise again, let alone use his quirk, he couldn’t hide his smile.

Nezu caught the grin when Izuku stepped out of the restroom adjoining the infirmary. “Amazing how a set of clean clothes can make you feel better, isn’t it?”

Izuku nodded, setting his previous clothes on his former infirmary bed and snatching up his notebook and pen. Then he fell into step with the…creature. Mouse, he was just going to refer to Nezu as a mouse. It seemed less disrespectful than thinking of him as a rat or a dog, at least. “Yeah, though a shower wouldn’t hurt either.”

Nezu’s nose twitched, as if assessing Izuku’s state himself. “Yes, you’ll have a chance for a good shower and bath after the meeting. It shouldn’t take long. Just a meet-and-greet and an explanation of your situation, really.”

The rest of the walk was covered in small talk, at least until Izuku fidgeted with his notebook one too many times for the inquisitive Principal to ignore. “The notebook seems to have served you well.”

Izuku did not squeak at being caught. He didn’t! He was willing to admit he probably blushed up a storm though. “I-I yes. I couldn’t sleep last night. So…I ended up writing everything I could remember happening between now and my future,” he said, running his fingers over the unblemished cover. It was still odd having a notebook not stained by soot or water or garbage, though his ones at UA had been safe too. “I know I’m supposed to avoid causing paradoxes, b-but surely there’s a way to mitigate things without ruining the timeline? I was going to ask you about it later. I’m pretty sure you avoided running into me in my time because of this whole situation.”

“Hm. An astute assessment, Midoriya. I was planning on doing just that when you became a student again. I would be happy to look over your notebook and see what ideas I can come up with.” The mouse turned and held a paw out.

Izuku nodded, somewhere between relieved and anxious. He’d written down all the information he could think of. If there was anything to be done, surely someone as intelligent as Nezu could figure it out. But was he going to? He was a busy principal of a renowned hero school, and Izuku was a first year—er…second year? Why should Nezu listen to his concerns or take them seriously? Passing his notebook to Nezu’s waiting paws was harder than he expected, and his hand shook the smallest amount as he let it slide free of his scarred grasp.

Nezu slipped the notebook inside his vest without missing a beat or commenting on Izuku’s nerves. Izuku took the opportunity to take a deep breath and focus on the task ahead. He had a whole new slew of teachers to learn the names, habits, and ticks of, and he needed to not make a fool or nuisance of himself in the process. He’d have much preferred to not talk to them one-on-one at all, but he understood that was unavoidable, what with his situation and his joining classes partway into the semester. Whether he liked it or not, Izuku was going to draw attention in this time. He just hoped not too much of it was the negative kind.

Chapter Text

“So, Midoriya will be staying with us for the foreseeable future as a ward of the school,” Nezu said, concluding the explanation for why Izuku was here.

The student sheepishly waved at the gathered teachers from his seat at Nezu’s left. Aside from Recovery Girl and Nezu he only recognized two of the heroes present. Much younger versions of Ectoplasm and Power Loader sat halfway down the meeting room’s table. Izuku was relieved that he hadn’t had any significant interactions with either of them in the future, though some part of him wondered if Power Loader had left him to Hatsume so quickly that first visit to the Development Studio to limit the hero’s exposure to him and vice versa. Ugh, Izuku was going to overanalyze every interaction he had in his time whenever he met another familiar face here, wasn’t he?

“As for his cover…” Nezu waved a paw to the teacher sitting on his right, who coincidentally had a stack of papers on the table before them, and the teacher took one packet and passed the stack down the table. Izuku was mildly surprised when the last sheaf of papers was set in front of him. “I believe the witness protection custody clause will serve here, as he was directly involved in a crime committed with the aid of a quirk prior to his arrival here. And certain…powerful and dangerous individuals will come after him should they learn of his existence in this time.” The fact that the two halves of that reasoning were completely unconnected went unsaid.

Izuku marveled at how everything Nezu said was technically true but oh so conveniently worded. And he kept a straight face the entire time. How did he do that?

One of the teachers—this one wearing some sort of modified ninja costume—grunted and set his papers down. “So, that’s why you had us cover the unit on witness protection and the importance of confidentiality and discretion early.”

One of the other teachers—who Izuku had yet to be given the names of—frowned before casting a critical gaze over Izuku. “You’re putting him with the second years? He looks like he’s barely out of middle school.”

Izuku slowly folded in on himself and tightened aching hands into trembling fists under the table. It was a familiar pain, indicating the approach of a storm. It had nothing on the familiarity of disappointed and disdainful adults though. He dropped his gaze to the table and remained silent, wanting this to just be over already. They were helping him; they didn’t have to like the situation or him to do that. He idly traced the grain in the polished wood, pretending he wasn’t pinned under so many sets of eyes.

Nezu laughed, recapturing the teachers’ and Izuku’s attention. “You’ll find him quite capable. In fact, he already has his provisional license.”

That earned more appreciative glances and a few sounds of disbelief. While this attention wasn’t quite so judgmental, Izuku still wished he could disappear. Nezu met his eye and gave him a reassuring grin before nodding his head toward the gathered heroes.

Nezu wanted him to say something? What was he supposed to say in this situation? “Hi, I’m from the future, and I know me staying here is technically illegal and a huge inconvenience, but thanks for taking care of me?” He didn’t think that was what Nezu was going for, and he really didn’t want to let down the only person/creature here who seemed invested in him.

Izuku took a steadying breath and smiled, though it was far from his best. He lifted his eyes to glance around the table, and the group of skeptical teachers suddenly looked not so different from the crowd of students outside 1-A after the USJ attack. They had surprisingly similar expressions: mostly curious or bored, but a few were guarded, unimpressed, annoyed. But he wasn’t one among 20 here; he was alone, the sole subject of those looks.

Izuku felt anger spark and die between one breath and the next. It wasn’t like he enjoyed being at the center of trouble! It just…found him. Repeatedly. He didn’t ask to be put on the spot then or now.

Maybe he took a brief moment of inspiration from the hero seated beside him, maybe he was still out of sorts from time shock or giving Nezu his notebook, or maybe he had a smidgeon more courage now than he had back in that classroom. Either way, he somehow decided it was a good idea to say, “Yeah, you learn quick when your class keeps getting targeted by a group of A, B, and S-ranked villains.” All led by the only villain to ever be graced with the rank of SS, but who was counting?

Speechless shock was the prevailing reaction, though there were a handful of startled and distressed sounds as well. One teacher accidentally inhaled their sip of coffee. Izuku did not smile wider. (Nezu didn’t either.)

It was more a showing of teeth anyway.

Nezu brought the gathering back to order and quickly moved things forward from there. They still had to get through introductions before the school day started. Izuku did his best to remember everyone’s face, name, and quirk, though he paid special attention to the names he’d already seen on the class schedule included in his packet.

Noroi Batsuki was the teacher sitting on the other side of Nezu from Izuku, and he was 2-A’s homeroom and heroics teacher. Izuku got the modern sorcerer aesthetic when he heard the man’s quirk: Hex. It was an energy-based quirk, allowing the user to both see the energy fields around people and interfere with them to varying degrees, usually inflicting a target with vertigo or fatigue, though Izuku bet there were plenty of other uses. Hearing the quirk’s description also made the teacher’ solid white eyes less intimidating and more intriguing, especially since he hadn’t turned to fully face Izuku once during the meeting. Did he even need to? Noroi’s eyes were his only visible quirk factor, and Izuku had so many questions. He bit them back for now and tried to keep up with the information the next teacher was giving him.

Otoraku Kyokumen was one of the teachers who hadn’t seemed terribly impressed with him, but she was civil, or perhaps diplomatic was the better word. She was the hero in charge of teaching the Entertainment class that left Izuku a bit confused. He was 90% sure that class didn’t exist in his time. Maybe it got replaced by something like Public Relations? Regardless, Otoraku was one of the few heroes in the room who wore a mask. The bright teal thing covered her from the nose up, though Izuku wondered if her equally bright shade of orange hair offset any benefits to hiding her civilian identity. The rest of her hero suit was a reinforced, keyboard-patterned coat and a set of high heels. The latter seemed rather impractical until he heard her quirk: Sound Construct. She could target and manipulate any soundwaves in range into semi-solid to solid constructs for defensive or offensive use. The constructs lasted as long as the sound continued, whether it be an orchestra playing or tapping a beat out with her heels. Given those examples, Izuku immediately wondered if the patterning of the sound impacted the construct’s stability.

Before he could sink too far into his analysis he had to focus on the next teacher. Kyūsai Tamotsu was UA’s current rescue training teacher, Thirteen’s predecessor. His appearance was more rumpled than the other heroes’ but he seemed genuinely nice when he greeted Izuku. His outfit looked more like military tactical gear—minus the weapons—and neon orange safety vest than a hero costume, and Izuku took that as a good sign for a rescue hero. Kyūsai’s quirk was just as utilitarian as his costume choice: Pocket Dimension. There…really wasn’t much explanation needed there, though Izuku wondered about the “anything non-living” stipulation for what could be placed in it. A brief memory of drowning in sludge made Izuku think he might know why. One cubic meter couldn’t hold much air, after all.

Those were the three Hero course teachers he was going to interact with on a daily basis. He probably should have paid more attention to the general course teachers too, but Izuku kinda got stuck in his head thinking about Ectoplasm’s math class back in his time after that teacher’s introduction. Izuku couldn’t recall if he’d finished his homework before going on that snack run.

Was that really only three days ago? If he ever got back (without having to age out the time travel) was the same amount of time there going to pass as he spent here, or was it more likely for him to pop back up in the middle of that corner store robbery? Was the corner store even where he’d end up? When he was sent back in time, he appeared in the same physical location as he left; did the same rule apply for returning? That had a lot of potential for awkwardness.

Speaking of awkwardness, Nezu flicked him with his tail. Shoot, had he started mumbling again? He bit his lip and glanced around. Well, if he had, the others didn’t seem to have noticed. It looked like he’d zoned out for most of the Gen Ed and Support teachers. At least Nezu snapped him out of it in time to learn that it was the Business teachers who had taken particular issue with him. Izuku made a mental note to avoid them.

Underground heroics was sounding better by the day.

Nezu wrapped up the meeting shortly after and dismissed everyone except for Izuku and Noroi. “Noroi, could you show Izuku to his room in the teacher’s dorm? He’ll be taking today to finish recovering and will join your class starting tomorrow.”

“Of course,” The hero nodded a farewell to Nezu. Looking a few feet to Izuku’s left, Noroi said, “Follow me.”

Izuku held his questions in and followed, wondering if Noroi was anything like Aizawa. It was a little ironic that both of his homeroom teachers had sight-based quirks.

Noroi sighed ahead of him. “I can feel your curiosity from here. You have until we reach the dorm to ask questions.”

Izuku blushed even while he beamed. “Can you see around you without having to actually turn and look?”

“No.”

The blunt answer threw Izuku a little. “I noticed you avoided looking directly at me during the meeting and now…” he trailed off, unsure how to ask his question without offending.

Noroi glanced over his shoulder just a little, squinting. “That’s because you’re extremely bright, and I didn’t feel like being blinded. Probably something to do with your quirk. It’s energy-based, correct?”

“Yes?” It clicked a moment later. “That makes so much sense! You see peoples’ energy fields. What’s mine look like from the glances you’ve caught? Are the energy fields unique to each person? Could you use them to identify someone with a shapeshifting quirk? Do certain types of energy-based quirk attacks leave behind a residue that you could see? Would that count as evidence? What—”

Noroi huffed, and Izuku promptly shut up. “Chatty all of a sudden, aren’t you?” Izuku’s face burned. “Yes, energy fields—or auras—are unique. I can use them to identify people, but it’s less accurate than something like a fingerprint or DNA sample, mostly because strong emotions and some quirks interfere with a person’s aura. Someone like you though I’d be able to identify a mile away. Haven’t seen an aura close to yours since Aosaginohi’s last stand. Yes, some energy quirks leave signatures behind, but they’re muddied at best and fade quickly. If I’m on-site soon enough, I can give a general estimate of the quirk type used, but there are usually people on hand better equipped for that type of thing.”

Noroi put up with Izuku’s questions and sidetracks about various quirk types the rest of the trip. Before Izuku even realized it, they reached the teachers’ building. It housed a collection of rooms with a communal entertainment area and large kitchen. Noroi pointed out a few of the occupied rooms as they passed. Only a few of the teachers lived on campus currently, Noroi and Recovery Girl among them, and Izuku’s room was at the end of the second floor’s hallway.

Noroi handed him his key and left him to settle in, not that Izuku actually had anything to put away yet. He wasn’t opposed to a nap though. With that thought tempting him Izuku walked into his…dorm? Apartment? It was in the teacher’s dorm building (because the others wouldn’t be built for over 15 years) and was bigger than he was used to. He looked around the sparingly furnished space, suddenly wondering how one was supposed to decorate a living room. A bedroom, he knew how to handle, but Mom had always…

Izuku grimaced and blinked suddenly wet eyes, slapping a hand over his mouth to contain any sound that wanted to escape.

He couldn’t see Mom. He couldn’t see or talk to her again for 15 and a half years. His dad wasn’t that big a loss. He didn’t remember the man to miss him in the first place. But his mom had been the only safe person in the world for 10 years, the only one who cared about him when he was nothing. It hadn’t really hit him when he was in the infirmary. It had felt like any other day at school (and that probably didn’t say anything good, but he’d get back to that never). But now…

This, this wasn’t home. And he wasn’t going to see home again until…until he was older than Aizawa-sensei. A combination of a sob and a laugh escaped as Izuku stumbled to the couch that came with the apartment. He collapsed onto the stiff, new cushions, unable to stop himself from comparing the uncomfortable thing to the couch back home and the ones in the Common Room in the 1-A dorm. The stains from tears and hot cocoa when he was little and the singeing and burnt sugar smell from Kacchan’s quirk. The one partially melted armrest from Kaminari scaring Ashido during a horror movie and the two cushions made of high-density foam for Shoji and Kouda that were weapons of mass destruction in pillow fights.

Izuku couldn’t hold the tears back anymore. Hoping Noroi was far enough away to not hear him, he doubled over and sobbed. Grief and loss carved out his heart piece by excruciating piece, leaving an aching void behind. Of all the things to finally make him crack, it was the damn sofa…

---

The rest of that day passed in a haze, even the shopping trip with Kyūsai-sensei. To the man’s credit, he seemed to catch on pretty quick that Izuku wasn’t in much of a talking mood. And if the teacher threw a few extra boxes of tissue and a weighted blanket in their cart before checkout, neither of them commented on it.

The haze lifted slightly when he paused in front of the makeup aisle. Normally he covered his pre-UA scars on a daily basis, but…there was no one here to recognize what the shape of those scars meant. He eyed the shelf with his favored, water-resistant brand and debated for a long moment. Finally, he turned away and walked to the next aisle.

Izuku forced himself to put away all of the purchases and set up his new phone to charge before collapsing into bed. Between the weighted blanket and the day’s emotional exhaustion, Izuku’s sleep that night was deep. His dreams were filled with the faces of those he already missed and odd flashes of a star-filled sky over a barren and rocky field.

He woke to a flash of lightning outside his window, scars and joints aching worse than the day before. The storm had finally hit during the night. A hot shower loosened up his joints somewhat, and by the time he’d changed into his UA uniform (of all the things that had changed in 15 years, the uniforms were the one that hadn’t) and filled his Bronze Age All Might backpack with all of his supplies, the storm had lifted. Izuku rubbed his hands and eyed the clouds outside while leftovers reheated in the microwave. Breakfast was demolished in minutes, and Izuku grabbed his new umbrella from the stand beside the genkan just in case.

It was with a weird mix of déjà vu and displacement that he walked UA’s halls to his new classroom. The halls and turns were familiar, but every face in the crowd was different. He swallowed as he paused outside 2-A’s door.

He didn’t belong here, but Nezu said he did. Despite the few classes he’d be doing makeup work for, this was where his placement tests had gauged his averaged academic level. Izuku took in a deep breath and let it out. Hopefully, his classmates were nice. Maybe this class didn’t even have a Kacchan.

Before he could second guess himself further, he slid the door open and took one step inside. He froze when a very familiar, very loud laugh assaulted his ears. Izuku scanned the room with frantic eyes before spotting a gangly teen with blonde hair and sunglasses. His volume cut back to normal levels as a student several seats behind him glared him down with glowing red eyes behind dark hair.

Izuku gaped for a few seconds more before promptly stepping backward out of the room and sliding the door shut once more. Izuku trailed his eyes along the ceiling until he found a discrete security camera. He stepped into the center of its view and hissed, “Nezu, this isn’t funny! Are you trying to cause a time paradox? I can’t be in the same class as Aizawa and Yamada!”

Chapter Text

He was stuck in Aizawa and Yamada’s class. Nezu was not budging on that. He seemed oddly smug about it too when Izuku swung by his office at the beginning of his lunch break. So, here Izuku was, standing in the lunch line, silently fuming over the unnecessary risk to two important future pros. He didn’t even realize he had no money until he got to the end of the line with his tray. He blushed in embarrassment and started to set his tray aside. He could just run back over to the teacher dorm to pilfer more leftovers from the fridge.

“Where do you think you’re going, young man?” the lady behind the register asked.

“I, uh…forgot my wallet…”

The lady eyed Izuku up and down with one eyebrow raised. “Midoriya, right?” When Izuku nodded, the lady pressed a few buttons on the register, and his meal zeroed out. “Your meals are covered as a ward. So, eat up; get a second helping if you need. Goodness knows you hero kids are all bottomless pits.”

Izuku’s face was still bright red as he stammered out his thanks. Then he took his tray and fled. Now where to eat? The cafeteria looked smaller than it was in his time, and all tables appeared to be taken. Maybe he could just eat outside?

“Hey, new guy!” a familiar voice shouted behind him.

Izuku flinched as he turned around, finding himself suddenly face to face with the two people in his class he’d been trying to avoid. What he wasn’t expecting was a third person to be draped over Yamada’s shoulder. This boy’s hair hovered about his head like a pale blue cloud, and his sky-blue eyes stared intently at Izuku over a friendly smile. Izuku blinked in surprise. “Um…hi?”

“Midoriya, right?” The student he didn’t know asked.

“Y-yes, I’m Midoriya Izuku. It’s n-nice to meet you,” Izuku said, eyes darting between the three.

“Same!” The blue-eyed student said, smiling even wider. “I’m Shirakumo Oboro. This is Yamada Hizashi, and the Grumpy Gus over there is Aizawa Shota.” The other two students waved in turn, though Izuku noted Aizawa only glanced at him briefly before looking away.

Yamada seemed much more outgoing and slipped from under Shirakumo—who caught himself with a small cloud before he could fall. Yamada moved closer, encroaching on Izuku’s space. “Did you have a place to sit yet? Me and the guys are heading up to the roof to eat if you want to join us.”

“The roof?”

Aizawa shrugged and shifted his grip on the bento he held. “It’s quieter up there.”

“Plus, we can enjoy some fresh air and watch the clouds!” Shirakumo threw in as he successfully rebalanced himself. He tossed his cloud at Yamada’s face and laughed when it engulfed his friend’s head briefly before dissipating.

Yamada coughed before gasping in feigned offense. “Throwing things at people is rude, you know. I could have tripped and spilled my lunch!”

“Like you did with your bento this morning?” Aizawa asked with a faint smirk. “Doesn’t look like you need any help being clumsy.”

Izuku watched the interaction with confusion. Seeing two of his teachers—and one of them his strictest, no less—acting so carefree was…really weird. But Izuku couldn’t help but laugh when Yamada gaped at Aizawa as if he’d murdered a puppy.

The trio seemed to remember him at the sound, and Izuku slapped a hand over his mouth. Shirakumo and Yamada beamed, and Aizawa’s eyebrows furrowed in…concern? Izuku followed his gaze to realize he’d left his right hand holding his tray alone. And it was shaking. Izuku quickly dropped his left hand to hold the other end of the tray and save his food, sighing in relief when he saw nothing had spilled.

“You okay?” Aizawa asked as the group of four left the cafeteria. Shirakumo and Yamada, who had missed the shaking threw their friend confused looks.

“Y-yeah. I’m fine. Just an old injury from my quirk. The storm last night made it achy,” Izuku said, shifting his tray to balance in his left hand. He curled and opened his right hand a few times, wincing slightly. “I-I’m used to it.”

Aizawa frowned. (It was so weird actually being able to see Aizawa’s facial expressions; Izuku was used to there being a scarf in the way.) “You shouldn’t have to be.”

Shirakumo nodded. “Have you talked to Recovery Girl about it? She could probably find something to help, like my breathing strips to keep my sinuses from clogging up when I use my quirk,” he said, pointing to the white strip on his nose.

“Or the special throat lozenges I keep on hand for when I overuse my quirk or Shota’s eye drops,” Yamada added.

Izuku tilted his head, unused to the idea. No one in his class had to regularly carry something around to deal with quirk side effects, except maybe Ururaka and Aoyama’s occasional stomach issues. Izuku did have some pain medicine back in his time, but it was over-the-counter stuff. It wasn’t like his hands hurt that much. He could still take notes and use chopsticks fine. Even if they sometimes made falling asleep difficult.

Izuku let the thought fade as Shirakumo held the door to the stairwell open for him. Izuku focused more on his footing here and hoped the lapse in conversation wasn’t as awkward as it felt to him. The combination of stairs and people he only vaguely knew made him a touch nervous. (And despite him knowing Yamada and Aizawa in the future; these versions were just that—strangers.)

He needn’t have worried; Shirakumo and Yamada picked up the slack before the group reached the next landing, filling the air with casual chatter as Izuku and Aizawa hung back a few steps with several feet between them.

Aizawa leaned in closer to Izuku to quietly say, “They’re a lot, but they’re alright once you get to know them.”

Izuku glanced to the louder two—who hadn’t heard—then back to Aizawa before nodding and offering a half-grin. “Is all of 2-A like this?”

Aizawa groaned. “Too many of them. Katasugi’s quiet in general, and Kuga’s alright if a bit cagey about his quirk. It’s apparently classified.”

Izuku brightened at the prospect of a mystery quirk, brain already spinning theories. “Really? What do you think it is?”

Aizawa shrugged—a gesture so like the Aizawa of Izuku’s time that the déjà vu made Izuku stumble. Izuku’s future teacher/present classmate stepped past Yamada and Shirakumo to crouch in front of the rooftop access door. He set his bento down to dig through his pockets. “Dunno, but based on me being barred from using my quirk on him in training, my bet’s on some sort of immortality or longevity.” Aizawa pulled out a set of hair pins and picked the lock with practiced ease. “He has no visible quirk factors, and he’s oddly skilled with martial arts for someone our age.”

“You’re just upset that he beat you in hand-to-hand last week,” Shirakumo said, patting Aizawa on the back.

Aizawa made a sound between a grumble and growl, eliciting a laugh from Shirakumo. Yamada and Shirakumo rushed through the now unlocked door, and Aizawa held the door open for Izuku. Izuku was so busy thinking about the implications of a longevity or immortality quirk that he didn’t even comment on the casual display of lock picking.

“Speaking of classified,” Shirakumo said, turning to face Izuku from where he sat against the wall. “do we need to be on the lookout for any villains in particular hunting you down or lurking around the school…?”

Izuku froze up a little at the direct question. His mind replayed memories from Kamino, and he felt himself pale. “Hehe. Nope, I hope not. If they do find me, I’m dead. He’s too strong for anyone except maybe All Might.”

Shirakumo leaned his head back and hummed. “So, the villain’s a dude. Got it.”

Izuku sputtered and waved his hands before him. “What?! No, I didn’t say…” Izuku groaned and buried his face in his aching hands. “I suck at this…”

Aizawa huffed a familiar, but lighter, laugh and tore into his bento. Shirakumo took pity on Izuku and stopped questioning him to eat his own meal. Yamada was already halfway through his. Izuku sighed and started scarfing his own large lunch. One for All took a lot of calories to maintain, and that wasn’t even considering his weight training regime.

Izuku tapped his chopsticks against his chin in thought. Was he allowed to use the weight room on campus after hours? If not, he’d need to arrange something with Nezu or buy some weights for his apartment. He was still only pulling 8% consistently, though he suspected he could handle more in short bursts. He hadn’t gotten to test that though. There was so much work to do to master One for All.

Izuku glanced at the other three. Well, he did have some students right here… “Do you know if the weight room is open use or if we need to make reservations?”

The three stared blankly at him, and Izuku grimaced to himself. None of these three were particularly bulky. They were all lean muscle, which made sense. Aizawa was a technique fighter and Yamada ranged; neither was a brawler. He wasn’t sure about Shirakumo, but his build and the move in the cafeteria suggested technique.

Finally, Yamada broke the staring contest. “UA has a weight room?”

Izuku sighed in defeat. “I’ll ask Noroi-sensei later.”

“Why do you need the weight room?” Shirakumo asked, eyeing Izuku up and down. “I mean, you can bench press me any day…”

And Izuku’s face was red again. “Shirakumo!”

After the laughter died down and Izuku could feel his face once more, Izuku sighed. “I-I need it for my quirk. It relies on my muscle mass. The more muscle I build, the more of my quirk I can use, and the more safely. Too little, and my quirk breaks my bones.”

Yamada whistled. “That’s some serious quirk drawback, man. Just how strong is your quirk?”

“Um…” Izuku actually hadn’t measured the force of one of his smashes. How did one quantify that? He wasn’t sure if the zero-pointers existed yet, and he couldn’t really explain why he knew what the UA entrance exam looked like either. How thick was their armor again? Mei had ranted about that one time when he visited the Development Studio. “Enough to buckle a six-inch thick steel plate and send it flying half a kilometer?”

Now all three of his classmates were staring at him.

“That’s one hell of a strength quirk,” Aizawa commented.

Izuku rubbed the back of his neck, mentally rehearsing the cover Nezu had written in the packet of papers yesterday. “Y-yeah. It’s energy-based, and I couldn’t even use it until I got enough muscle mass for it to not kill me. And in that time, it already stockpiled a lot of fuel.”

Yamada shook his head. “Yikes.”

Izuku grinned sheepishly and went back to eating his food. They seemed to buy the story; that was good. The only problem was the feeling of Aizawa eyeing him from his left. Izuku stole glances at him but couldn’t figure out what he was thinking. Izuku swallowed his unease and focused back on packing the calories in. He really hoped he hadn’t given something away he didn’t mean to.

Aside from the look Aizawa was giving him, these guys weren’t so bad. They weren’t Uraraka, Iida, and Todoroki, but they weren’t bad. And none of them seemed to be like Kacchan so far. Though he’d only been in classes half a day. Izuku frowned around his next mouthful of rice. Right, he needed to be careful. A lot of people in middle school seemed nice at first glance too. Then he remembered Nezu’s odd promise/threat. Izuku decided to wait and see. UA had been different from his other schools the first time—aside from all things Kacchan…Maybe it was different this time too.

---

Izuku felt like he was wound tight as a spring by the time Heroics class rolled around. Finally, something physical! One for All felt fit to buzz right out of his skin. He hadn’t gone so long without using it since he learned to use it safely. Even after Kamino, when he was home, he still practiced regulating it while doing things around the apartment. Having super strength was kinda pointless if you couldn’t pick up an injured civilian without further hurting them.

And there were so many new people to spar against! And new quirks to analyze! Izuku couldn’t help but smile, even if he was in a standard gym uniform rather than a costume. This was going to be awesome!

Noroi blew a whistle to cut through the chatter on the field. “Alright, pair off. You’ll be doing one on one sparring today, quirks allowed. Midoriya, with me.”

Izuku frowned. Was he sparring with the teacher? Yes, with him there were an odd number of students, but surely, he could just rotate in and out or do a three-way spar. “Sensei?”

Noroi waved for Izuku to follow him to the edge of the field where someone had set up a lot of…something around the perimeter. Izuku realized after a moment of staring that he was looking at an obstacle course not made out of concrete. Oh. Izuku was way too used to UA having Cementoss on staff. Was this how all the other hero schools did things?

“You’ll be running the obstacle course with your quirk. We need to get a good baseline for where you are in training and what you can do. Now, get warmed up.”

“Yes, sensei!” Izuku said, smiling. After a few minutes of stretching muscles stiff from days of bed rest Izuku was itching to go, and it felt like One for All was just as eager. Izuku was actually having to hold himself back from activating it.

“Ready?” Noroi asked. At Izuku’s nod, the hero held up a timer and said, “Start.”

Izuku welcomed One for All’s familiar thrum with open arms, letting the power swell to a comfortable 8%. Then he moved. Izuku didn’t think flying across the ground with each step would ever get old. Energy crackled off his skin as he bounced between, around, and over obstacles in true Gran Torino fashion. He did have to slow down a little at the climbing wall for lack of any other surface to bounce off of, but he made it over while barely breaking a sweat.

When a few robots moved toward him on a straightaway, Izuku dispatched them with quick blows to the head or neck. These robots were less armored than the ones he was used to in his time, and it showed when he accidentally knocked the head clean off one of them, sending it flying toward one of his classmates.

A guy with faint striping on his skin shifted into a large, white tiger and batted the accidental projectile out of the air with a paw. “Watch it!” He called with a rumbling deep voice.

“Sorry!” Izuku yelled back, grimacing.

Izuku was almost disappointed when he finished the obstacle course moments later. He panted lightly and shook his aching arms out as he walked back and forth to cool down. His muscles burned, but he felt good. Izuku idly wondered if it was possible to get a runner’s high from quirk use (quirks were physical too after all) but snapped out of his thoughts when someone whistled.

Half of 2-A was clustered near Noroi-sensei and staring wide-eyed at Izuku. Even Noroi seemed impressed where he stood with eyebrows raised. Izuku felt red creeping up his neck. “S-sensei?”

That snapped Noroi out of it. “Not bad, kid, though I’m guessing you’re used to arm and leg protection?”

Izuku glanced down to see his arms and legs scratched up and his shoes looked a bit worse for wear. He hadn’t meant to break them in that much! “Y-yeah. Iron soles and arm and leg braces. My arms aren’t in the best shape at this point, and I’m working on switching my fighting style to be more focused on kicks to compensate.”

Noroi nodded, but before he could say anything else, a classmate with short, dark hair and no obvious mutations (Kuga?) stepped forward. “If you’re going for kicks long term, you should look into some proper fighting styles. I’d recommend silat, karate, or Muay Thai.” The guy turned to look at Niragi. (Izuku had memorized her name fairly quickly as one of the only foreign names in his class; she had moved here from India to attend UA.) “Or if you ask Niragi really nicely, she might show you some moves from kalaripayattu. Those should mesh well with your mobility.”

Noroi cleared his throat and shot the student a look. “As Kuga said, your technique has a lot of room for improvement, but your mobility is excellent. See Power Loader after class to get your costume sorted.” Noroi wrote something on a clipboard before tearing off a slip of paper and offering it. “For now, clean up and head on over to Recovery Girl.”

Izuku wanted to protest, but a small spike of pain through his right hand had him biting his tongue and taking the slip with his left hand, glancing back at his classmates as he headed for the main building. He caught himself looking for faces he knew weren’t there and sighed. He allowed himself one more long look before turning fully away. None of his (former) friends were there, none of the familiar smiles or sneers. Actually, no sneers at all. Did that count as an improvement? Somehow it didn’t feel like one.

Chapter Text

Shota watched as Midoriya headed for the locker room, nurse’s pass clutched in his non-dominant hand. The others didn’t seem to notice how their new classmate had favored his right hand after punching a robot with it. Had Midoriya simply forgotten and used it out of habit? It sounded like the change in fighting style was a very recent one. And the massive scar on the student’s right bicep, still warped and red with newness, gave Shota a few ideas why the boy was making the sudden change.

That wasn’t the only odd thing he’d noticed about Midoriya today, not by a long shot. It wasn’t even the only questionable scar he’d glimpsed in the locker room. There was his hand, of course, and the strange, nauseating burn streaking across his chest and side, but there were also at least a dozen faint and faded burns in starburst patterns and one that looked suspiciously like a handprint. Shota also noticed the flinch at lunch and how the green-haired student tracked the movement of anyone within ten meters of him. How he’d hesitated before following Shota, Yamada, and Shirakumo into the stairwell. How he never quite turned his back to the rest of the class but never met anyone’s eye either.

Shota had recognized all of those because they were familiar.

He shook his head and half-heartedly glared at Yamada. “Can we get back to our spar now?”

Yamada stopped chatting up Fujimi and smiled at Shota. “Yeah! Let’s do this.”

Yamada lost. Again. Shota wasn’t 100% convinced his friend took anything seriously, but at least he wasn’t a sore loser like some people.

Shirakumo joined them as they walked back inside. “Guys, can you believe the way Midoriya was moving earlier? That was incredible!”

“Yeah! I didn’t know the guy had it in him,” Yamada said. “He was so shy earlier. But while he was zipping through those obstacles, he had the biggest smile. Heck, if that’s what gets him to open up, we should invite him for after school sparring.”

Shota stayed silent, turning the pieces he had over and over, trying to see how they fit. Midoriya acted for all the world as if…But he had a strong, heroic quirk. It didn’t make sense.

“Earth to Sho,” Shirakumo said, leaning into Shota’s space and rapping his knuckles against Shota’s forehead. “What big thoughts are you thinking in there?”

Shota scrunched his nose at his friend and none too gently shoved him out of his face. “Midoriya’s skittish…”

Shirakumo nodded. “Ya kinda expect that after going through a villain attack and being targeted by villains, yeah.”

Shota shook his head. “No. He’s skittish around us, his classmates, everyone.” Shota raked a hand through his hair as the trio walked into the locker room and headed for their designated corner. “It’s almost like he…”

Yamada laid a hand on Shota’s shoulder. “I’m sure it’s not us. He probably just needs some time before he’ll relax his guard again.”

Time… “And in that time, it already stockpiled a lot of fuel.” That was it!

“He was bullied,” Shota said, speaking what he already knew on instinct. Now he had a tangible reason for it. It didn’t make sense for someone like Midoriya to be singled out for discrimination, but it did if he was the late bloomer he’d implied.

People had despised Shota for his “villainous” quirk, and here at UA he still got grief for having a “weak” quirk. They weren’t wrong. Some days he wondered how he could ever hope to be a hero when he was so powerless. That thought felt hypocritical now when Shota looked at Midoriya. What must life have been like for someone without any quirk at all?

“What?” Yamada jerked in surprise.

Shota looked between his two friends. “Did you see his scars? Those starburst burns? Some of them have to be years old.”

Shirakumo and Yamada looked uneasy. Shirakumo was the first to speak again. “It…does sorta make sense with what we’ve seen...but how did you know?”

Shota’s shoulders tensed for a moment. He reminded himself that these were his friends. He shrugged his shirt on and focused on doing the buttons as an excuse to not meet their eyes when he said, “I knew what to look for.”

---

Nezu watched Midoriya as the bright young man poured over a textbook on the last three decades of Japanese heroics like it was something priceless. He couldn’t help but chuckle, though he did feel a little bad when the boy startled at the sound, nearly dropping the book in his gnarled hands. “You can keep the book. I have a spare copy that was a gift from a friend of mine,” Nezu said.

Midoriya beamed and stuttered out a litany of thank yous. Then he carefully closed the volume and tucked it into his backpack, sensing the real reason for Nezu’s interruption. Clever boy.

“Now, before we move on to your calculus and physics work, I wanted to bring up the coming Sports Festival. It’s still a few weeks out, but I wanted your input on how you’d like to proceed.” Midoriya was in protective custody, essentially, and broadcasting him and his quirk could be very dangerous if All for One—or even All Might—paid attention. On the other paw, Midoriya was stuck here. He needed to live his life, and a big step to accomplishing that was securing himself a beneficial work-study. Nezu certainly could pull some strings if Midoriya chose not to participate in such a public event, but pulling those strings could draw unwanted attention of a different sort.

Midoriya furrowed his eyebrows over suddenly distant eyes and tugged at his lower lip with his fingers, deep in thought.

Nezu’s sharp ears caught quite a bit of the boy’s muttering as he mulled over the pros and cons and…oh! Midoriya was considering going into underground heroics? That did make keeping him out of trouble easier in a way. He had a fairly solid reasoning for the choice too. Was he really that good at digging up information on underground heroes? He’d have to touch back on that topic later. Information gathering was a valuable skill, after all.

“Your mind is truly fascinating to watch at work, Midoriya,” Nezu said, cutting off the student’s rambling before it could get too off-topic. “If you wish to pursue underground heroics, we have the resources to assist you on that path, but back to the Sports Festival…?”

The boy turned red to the tips of his ears. “S-sorry, Nezu-sensei.” He collected himself for a moment before continuing, “I want to participate. B-but I think I’ll drop after the second event. I don’t want to miss out on the teamwork experience or internship offers. Um…how do those work for second years? Are they like first year internships or closer to work studies? I haven’t gotten to do one of those yet.”

Nezu smiled. “A reasonable plan. I’ll inform the officiators so they don’t draw undue attention to your withdrawal. As for the internships, they will be closer to a work-study since you have a provisional license.” Forging that and hacking it into the HPSC’s database had been refreshingly challenging, but now the time traveler had a time-appropriate license. “It will only last one week, but if the agency you intern with likes you, they may extend an offer for a longer contract before you return.”

Izuku nodded. “Okay. Good to know. I only got 1 offer my first Sports Festival. So, it’ll be interesting to see how many I get now that I can use One for All without hurting myself.”

That…wasn’t as reassuring as Midoriya likely meant it to be. Nezu had caught a glimpse of the medical file Recovery Girl had started. This student had a frankly concerning amount of damage already done to his bones and joints, his arms especially. It was no wonder the boy was already dealing with chronic pain, based on the sharp scent of the anti-inflammatory cream Recovery Girl had given him after classes yesterday. How had All Might’s quirk grown so self-destructive?

Midoriya recaptured Nezu’s attention with another question, “Nezu-sensei, I’ve been meaning to ask about the weight room. Since I’m living on campus, is it okay if I use it after hours?” The student looked away and fidgeted. “I had a training regime in my own time, and I’d like to get back to it if possible. I can’t up my usage of One for All safely without putting on more muscle.”

Nezu considered the request briefly before agreeing. When humans had no healthy outlet for their energy they tended toward anxiety or destructive behavior, Hero course students especially so. Humans were surprisingly similar to other species in this respect. Even Nezu kept some exercise equipment tucked away in his hidden quarters within the school, and he regularly patrolled the vents. It was good stealth practice for him and situational awareness training for his staff and students.

“Of course. However, I do ask that you have someone present to spot you when you use the heavier equipment or if you want to try something new.”

Midoriya nodded. “Sure. And…what’s the policy on quirk usage for training outside of classes? Like for running on the track around campus?”

Nezu grinned, thinking back to the footage he’d watched of Izuku’s obstacle course run yesterday. He did seem to enjoy himself. “As long as you keep it confined to campus, and avoid any injuries or property damage, I see no issue allowing it.” Sometimes practice was the only way to improve, and with a target on his back, this boy needed to improve as quickly as he could.

Regardless of whether Midoriya’s affliction proved to be a closed time loop or a timeline splintering remained to be seen, but the larger events and key players (especially All for One) were certain to remain the same without significant interference.

That was the true reason the Commission disallowed time travelers’ freedom. If things were truly set in stone, and time always looped, there was no danger inherent to the occasional traveler cropping up. Nezu knew as well as anyone with high enough clearance—or great enough skill in hacking—that this was not the case. One of the HPSC’s own agents had disproven it.

Jumper had a fascinating quirk that allowed her to travel back in time up to one year. She remained in the targeted time for a mere hour, but she had one of the only time quirks the Commission had been able to get their hands on. (Nezu always wondered at that.) On one of her first official missions, she directly intervened in a villain attack to save a civilian’s life. Upon returning to her time, she found things…changed. The person she’d saved turned out to be a nurse who—having lived—saved the life of one of her coworkers who had died months prior in the original timeline. However, the change had produced less ideal impacts as well. The shift in hospital staff schedules also resulted in the death of someone who had originally lived, because the right person with the right quirk wasn’t on-site when Jumper’s fiancé was wheeled into the ER only the week before.

Jumper was institutionalized shortly after, unable to cope with her loss and perceived guilt. The current laws regarding time quirks were established thereafter to prevent villains or well-intentioned individuals from getting any bright ideas. Time paradoxes were a convenient and terrifying, if overstated, deterrent as well. The wider public didn’t need to know that all it might take for their world to fundamentally change was one irresponsible or determined time traveler. It only showed how fragile their existence was and how desperately some clung to a semblance of power.

Humans never did like being reminded of their smallness or lack of control in the grand scheme of things.

Nezu didn’t either, but he was a realist and a survivor. The question wasn’t if the past could be changed, but if it should be. Given the opportunity to avoid and/or mitigate the disasters Midoriya listed in his notebook, did he and his new student have a moral obligation to intervene? And how much? He was still uncertain.

Nezu thought back over the events he’d read in Midoriya’s notebook from a different angle. Given the moves All for One had made in the boy’s time…perhaps it was a good thing Midoriya was sent back to now. The idea of All for One being captured and confined to Tartarus didn’t sit quite right. By all of Nezu’s calculations—and the list of confirmed quirks Midoriya provided from what he called the Kamino Incident—the prison shouldn’t be able to hold the man. He was waiting for something, and Nezu had a feeling the Midoriya sitting before him wasn’t ready to face whatever it was. (Nor should he have to. He was only a boy.)

With an extra fifteen years of training though? The boy could grow into one of the best. He might actually end the two-century long feud and survive to see a world without All for One.

To that end, Nezu planned to train Midoriya’s mind as well as his body. Academics beyond the usual curriculum were a good start, but he would introduce Midoriya to quirk analysis, psychology, and politics in the coming semesters. They had time, after all.

Chapter Text

“You…want me to train with you after school?” Izuku asked, looking between the three classmates that seemed to have attached themselves to him.

“Yeah!” Yamada said a little too loudly.

“Your run on the obstacle course was impressive, and you use a different fighting style than any of us. Sparring against different types of opponents could be beneficial,” Aizawa explained, glancing at Izuku briefly before looking away again.

“And well, I don’t know about you, Mr. Muscles, but the rest of us need the extra practice before the Sports Festival,” Shirakumo teased, poking at Izuku’s left bicep with his chopsticks.

Izuku blushed and covered his face for a moment as he whined. “Fine. I’ll be there, but I’m not bench pressing you.”

Shirakumo laughed.

“And we’re hitting the gym twice a week instead of sparring.”

That stopped the laughter. Then Shirakumo leaned toward Izuku and said flirtatiously, “Oh, change your mind already?”

Aizawa snorted. “You’d hardly be a challenge for him.”

Izuku chuckled nervously. “Yeah…I just need a spotter for my heavier sets.”

Shirakumo and Yamada pretended to debate it. Finally, they nodded to each other, and Yamada said, “You drive a hard bargain, Midoriya, but count us in.”

Izuku gave the trio one of his blinding smiles. “Great! I was actually planning to check out the weight room after school today, just to see what equipment I’m working with i-if you all want to come. Then we can spar?”

Aizawa and Shirakumo nodded readily. Yamada frowned and thought for a moment. “I need to ask Ectoplasm-sensei a question about my makeup work from being out sick last week. I could meet you after I finish?”

Plans set, they all got back to eating their lunches. The rest of the day passed in a blur of anticipation and anxiety. Were Aizawa, Shirakumo, and Yamada his friends now? They were going to hang out outside of class, and that’s what friends did, right? Izuku hadn’t had as much time as he’d have liked to hang out with his 1-A friends, and one of the few times he had, he’d been attacked by Shigaraki. Izuku rubbed at his neck, recalling a four-fingered grip and a crowd unaware of his plight.

The bell rang, drawing Izuku from the unpleasant memory. He shoved the image of malicious red eyes away and shoved his Japanese literature book and notebook into his backpack. When he looked back up, Shirakumo was leaning on his desk, Aizawa hovering a few feet behind him.

“So, uh, do you know where the weight room is, because we sure don’t,” the blue-eyed boy said, pointing between himself and Aizawa.

Izuku nodded and led the way out of the classroom. “Yeah, this way.” With how big the gyms reserved for the Hero course were, the weight room had ended up being put in the Gen Ed building. Izuku and All Might had only reserved the room once a week in their time to limit any staff or students seeing them together for their training sessions; most of their training had been in the forest surrounding the campus or out at Dagoba Beach.

Izuku fidgeted with the straps of his backpack as he and his friends made it to the locker room. They changed, and Izuku guided Aizawa and Shirakumo to the weight room. The room was unoccupied when they arrived. Izuku gave it a once over, happy to note most of the equipment was the same as in his time—if different models. Then he glanced over at his friends and laughed at the lost look they shared. “Come on, I’ll show you what the machines are for.”

After a half-hour of explaining the different machines and how not to get hurt while using them, Izuku tried not to laugh at the slightly glazed look in his friends’ eyes. Yeah, that was kinda his reaction when All Might first introduced him to a weight room too. “Come on, Aizawa, Shirakumo. I think that’s enough for one day. Let’s go find a place to spar and message Yamada where to meet us.”

That seemed to shake them free, and Aizawa took the lead, saying, “I know a place.”

Izuku and Shirakumo happily fell in line behind him as they headed for the door. Only, the door opened before they got there. Aizawa froze, and Izuku and Shirakumo paused behind him as another group entered the weight room.

Izuku sucked in a breath as a ghost walked through the door. “Iida?”

The student looked up at him, and oh…that wasn’t Tenya. He wasn’t wearing any glasses, and the proportions of his face were slightly off. And when the student raised a hand to wave, he had a small muffler sticking from his elbow. A glance down told Izuku what he already knew; there were no engines in the boy’s calves. “Hello! I’m Iida Tensei. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”

Tensei. As in Izuku’s Iida’s older brother. Ingenium. The hero who Stain paralyzed, who Iida almost killed to avenge. Izuku struggled against the memories and focused on this Iida. “Hi, sorry. I’m Midoriya Izuku. I just started here, but I’d heard of you.” Izuku bowed politely before glancing at the others who had walked in with Iida. He didn’t recognize anyone else, but there was something familiar about one blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl.

Another person took all his attention before he could think to introduce himself to her. A huge guy—like Shoji-sized—stepped forward to sneer at Aizawa. Izuku flinched even though the look wasn’t aimed at him. Then he blinked. Wait, why was someone turning that look on Aizawa?

“What do you think you’re doing here?” The guy with pink hair and pale yellow eyes looked down his nose at Aizawa. And oh, was that tone familiar. Izuku’d heard it all through middle school and the first semester at UA from Kacchan. Aizawa seemed familiar with the tone too, stiffening and ever so slightly shifting to make himself a smaller target.

A spark of anger caught in Izuku’s chest and smoldered. Aizawa was amazing, and he was going to be one of the best heroes Izuku had ever met. What reason did this guy have to look down on him? Izuku saw an old memory of himself with Kacchan standing over him with crackling palms; then the image shifted, replacing Kacchan with this guy and himself with Aizawa. Izuku moved without thinking, sliding in front of Aizawa.

He put on a smile, though this one was more strained and plastic than the one he’d given Iida. “Hi there! I’m Midoriya Izuku. I just started here a few days ago. Nice to meet you.” If Izuku didn’t bow to this student, it was totally because there wasn’t enough space to, not because he didn’t deserve it.

Thankfully, the giant student took a step back to be able to look down further to see Izuku. The one thing Izuku really hated about getting bumped up to second year was how much shorter he was than literally everyone. This guy was head and shoulders taller than Aizawa and even taller when compared to Izuku. “Sensoji Tatsuya,” the boy said with only a little hostility.

Izuku smiled a little wider. “Great! Now, if you don’t mind, you’re all kinda blocking the door.”

The rest of the students readily moved out of the way, dispersing throughout the weight room, but Sensoji remained a close and malevolent presence. Izuku carefully stayed between the other two and Sensoji as they exited, only relaxing once he’d closed the door behind them.

“Man, what a jerk,” Shirakumo said, shaking his head. Izuku nodded.

Aizawa hummed noncommittally as he led them at a fast walk to the locker room. No one complained about them taking their bags with them, though Izuku wondered if Aizawa was used to having his school supplies stolen or damaged too. Then they headed outdoors. Aizawa glanced around as they crossed the lawn heading for the trees.

Izuku and Shirakumo followed until Aizawa stopped at a clearing. They found a large tree to drop their bags under, then spread out to stretch. Aizawa texted Yamada before starting his own stretches. A few minutes later, they started some quirkless sparring. Izuku’s senpais (okay, thinking of them like that was weird) were more skilled in this department, but Izuku was a quick study. He even asked for some advice on kicks from Aizawa, who used a surprising number of them. Izuku guessed that was due to him learning to use his capture weapon, which occupied his hands. Shirakumo was more of a mix of footwork and punches.

Both of them seemed to have a thing for attacking from above, frequently using the low-hanging tree branches at the edges of the clearing to their advantage. One of their spars turned into a convoluted game of tag in the trees with all three of them once Izuku figured out how to gauge his jumps without One for All.

That was how Yamada found them. “HEL-lo, friendos!” he yelled.

Aizawa cut off his quirk after a second, but the sudden noise was enough to make Izuku flub a jump and fall out of his target tree. Lying on the ground he looked up at his friends and frowned when he noticed that Aizawa’s hair wasn’t floating despite the red, glowing eyes. Did that not show up until he’d trained his quirk more? Huh.

Yamada popped into his field of vision, apologizing, “I’m so sorry. I’ve gotten better with my Voice slips, but they still happen sometimes. Are you alright?”

“I’m okay!” Izuku chirped, hopping back to his feet. His left ankle twinged as he put weight on it. He shifted his weight almost entirely to his right leg.

“No, you’re not,” Aizawa said, dropping down beside him with less grace than his adult self, but still enough to make Izuku wish he had the same level. He crouched beside Izuku and lifted his injured leg. Yamada stabilized Izuku while Aizawa prodded at the ankle.

Based on the lack of popping or cracking when he’d landed and the current level of pain, Izuku was guessing he’d sprained it. Aizawa agreed. Izuku pouted as Aizawa pulled his left arm over his shoulder and said, “Yamada, grab our bags. We should get him to Recovery Girl.”

Izuku tried to protest, but they weren’t hearing it. Resigned to his fate, he sighed. “By now, she’s probably over at the teacher dorm. My room’s there too. Just take a left at the sidewalk up ahead.”

The walk wasn’t a long one, thankfully, and as they walked/hopped up to the door, Noroi opened the door for them, raising an eyebrow as he looked to Izuku’s right. “What happened?”

“Rolled my ankle when I fell out of a tree,” Izuku said sheepishly. “Is Recovery Girl back? If not, I can just ice it.”

Noroi sighed and pointed at one of the couches in the common area. “Put him over there. Shirakumo, grab him an ice pack from the freezer.” Then he headed for the elevator.

Aizawa lowered Izuku onto the couch and turned to catch the extra pillows Yamada tossed him from the other couch to prop up Izuku’s foot. Shirakumo jogged back over with an ice pack wrapped in a dishtowel. Then the trio sat on the now pillowless sofa.

Izuku flopped back on his couch and huffed. “So, have you all started on the worksheet for Ectoplasm’s class?”

“Ugh!” Shirakumo said, slumping dramatically to lean his head over the back of the sofa. “Don’t remind me about that. I’ve been focusing on reading The Tale of Genshi for our ancient literature report.”

Yamada perked up at the book title. “Oh, you picked that one? I went with Strange Weather in Tokyo.”

The two looked over at Aizawa, who blushed and muttered out, “Snow Country…”

Shirakumo’s smile was blinding as he gently elbowed his friend, “Didn’t take you for one to read romance, Shota.”

“Shut up.”

“What about you, Midoriya?” Yamada asked, ignoring the teasing going on beside him.

“Oh, Nezu assigned me The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I’m about halfway through and thinking he may have had ulterior motives.” Izuku was pretty sure the shrewd principle gave him that book specifically for the themes of anxiety and existential crisis. On the nose, much?

Shirakumo shook his head. “I keep forgetting that you have classes with the principle.”

“I do not envy you, my man,” Yamada chimed in.

Izuku shrugged. “Most of it’s fine. There are a few classes I’m behind in, and the advanced English worksheets are a little tedious. But calculus and physics are fun.”

“Fun?” Shirakumo asked with a look of horror.

Izuku laughed. “Yeah. I already know a little bit from what I picked up doing my quirk analyses, but having a proper, comprehensive class is nice. My knowledge before was pretty spotty.” Mostly formulas for calculating the force of All Might’s punches and various other heroes’ strength and a few electrical and gas spread formulas. His notebooks were going to be so much more accurate with these classes under his belt.

“Quirk analysis?” Aizawa asked.

Izuku froze. Shoot, he’d mentioned that, hadn’t he? How had he made such a stupid mistake? His classmates always hated his creepy hobby once they knew about it. He’d been so careful at UA in his time not to reveal what he wrote in his notebooks. Only Uraraka and Kacchan knew, and one of them didn’t count because he’d known for a decade. And here he was spilling his secret only a handful of days into attending class in this time.

Izuku mentally cursed as he realized Aizawa was still waiting for an answer. Shirakumo and Yamada looked pretty interested too. “I-its just me rambling on about quirks I s-see. Strengths, w-weaknesses, applications, that type of stuff. I-I’m not that good though.”

Yamada opened his mouth to ask a question when Recovery Girl and Noroi returned. “Young man, it’s only your first week. What did you do to yourself?”

Izuku’d never been so glad to be scolded by the nurse before. He recounted his story while the old hero poked and prodded at his swelling ankle. After affirming it was only a sprain, she kissed it, making it feel much better, even if it made Izuku want to take a nap.

He vaguely heard Noroi shoo his friends from the building as Recovery Girl gave him a mild anti-inflammatory pill to take to bring down the residual swelling. “Off to bed with you, sonny. Put some of your pain cream on it, sleep with it elevated, and you should be right as rain tomorrow morning. You can wake up early and do your homework then.

Izuku sleepily hummed and stumbled to his feet. His ankle didn’t hurt anymore, but the remaining swelling made the joint stiff. As he rode the elevator to his floor, Izuku smiled to himself. In his previous UA experience, he’d been hurt much worse and more often in the first three days than he had in a whole week here. That was pretty good improvement in his book.

Chapter Text

The morning of the Sports Festival, Izuku woke groggy. Images of a starry sky and shadowed figures lurking on the edges of his vision lingered in his mind, and the memory of whispered words that were almost decipherable tickled his ears. Normally shadowed figures would have been at home in Izuku’s nightmares of middle school, but he felt strangely at peace after this dream. He laid in bed a minute longer, contemplating the one thing he’d heard clearly. “Soon.”

Mysterious, possibly One for All related dreams aside, he had to get ready. He’d set his alarm early today to take care of some extra preparations. When he finished and met his classmates in the stadium locker room, he turned a lot of heads. They were especially looking at his hair and face. His straightened, grey-dyed hair and freckleless face. Only a few noticed that he’d also covered up the scars on his arms. Izuku smiled at the gape-mouthed stare Yamada gave him. Aizawa seemed to have forgotten how to blink or move. Shirakumo just looked confused.

A hint of a grin touched Shirakumo’s face before he said, “Sorry, man. You must have gotten the wrong time. The first years already had their run.”

Izuku gave his friend a flat look. Yamada seemed to finally shake himself out of his stupor and grinned as he got in on the mischief. “Shota, look what you’ve done! Midoriya learned your face. You’ve ruined him!”

That cracked Izuku’s composure, and he laughed. Shirakumo and Yamada joined in, and even Aizawa huffed and shook his head. When the laughter died down to snickers, Aizawa picked up a strand of grey hair that now fell between Izuku’s shoulder blades. “It’s a good disguise, but won’t the announcer putting your name on blast kinda make this pointless?”

Izuku smiled wide with just a touch more teeth than necessary. He ignored Yamada’s shudder as he said, “Not when they’re using my fake name.”

Before any of his friends could ask about that, Kuga popped up in Izuku’s peripheral vision, smiling. “About time! Really, if you’re in witness protection, you shouldn’t have told us your real name either, but newbies make mistakes.”

Izuku had a lot of questions, but he got cut off by the intercom calling for his class to head out to the field. Kuga vanished into the sudden press of students at the prep room’s door. “I’m starting to think his quirk is gaining energy from chaos around him,” Shirakumo said, falling into step beside Izuku and throwing an arm around his shoulders.

Izuku didn’t even flinch, instead laughing at Shirakumo’s theory. After the hiccup with mentioning his notebooks, he’d been worried they’d find out about his hobby and drop him as their friend for being too weird and creepy. He’d been surprised, but appreciative beyond words when they didn’t ever bring his analysis up again. He’d gotten somewhat used to being given consideration from his friendship with Iida and Uraraka, but it still warmed him. And while he wasn’t as at ease around his new friends as he’d been with his old ones yet, they had time.

He’d already made progress with not flinching or jumping out of his skin whenever Yamada had a Voice slip or Shirakumo did something unexpected. Aizawa was a welcome calm consistency that balanced out and grounded their friend group. Whenever the other two got to be too much or Izuku had a low energy, high anxiety day, he hung out closer to Aizawa. If Aizawa occasionally sought out Izuku’s company too, neither of them commented on it.

With his friends dominating his thoughts, Izuku smiled widely as 2-A walked out into the stadium amidst the deafening cheers of the crowd. Izuku clung to that feeling through the speeches and the announcement of the first event, only sobering when he and his friends had to separate as the field was prepped.

The first event was called “Pro Tag.” It was fairly self-explanatory. UA had hired a few pro heroes in addition to their teacher roster to play targets, each worth a different number of points. As Izuku cataloged the ones he saw, he spotted an odd trend. The slimmer, quicker pros had higher point values. Izuku supposed that made sense. It would be harder to tag the more mobile heroes. The heroes weren’t going to fight back, but they had full permission to use their quirks for evasive maneuvers. The students, in turn, could use their quirks for restraint or mobility but not to directly harm. Izuku grinned as he thought about how this applied to non-violent villain takedowns.

Something about that idea seemed important, but the event started before Izuku could figure out what exactly. All the pro heroes scattered across the arena as the students gathered around the edges of the field rushed toward the center. Izuku sprinted forward too with One for All flowing through him at a comfortable 8%. He pulled ahead of the main pack with his speed boost, looking around for his first target and quickly spotting Yoroi Musha. Mindful of the man’s arsenal of weapons, Izuku darted toward the man’s right as if to pass him entirely. At the last moment, he changed direction, vaulting over the man’s (hopefully) blunted glaive to tap a hand on the man’s forearm. The hero nodded at him as he dashed off to seek another target. With the 30 second cooldown for tagging the same person twice, Izuku decides it was better to keep moving.

There were several heroes Izuku didn’t recognize in the arena, but he could at least judge their relative difficulty to catch by the point value attached to the front and back of their hero suits. He tapped a few Ectoplasm clones while debating a higher point target. He avoided the part of the arena where a flash of bright light kept appearing. From what he could tell there was a hero in a purple suit blinding students with…his chest hair? Izuku really didn’t want to know. Then there was Majestic (one of the few pros he recognized) flying through the air with his quirk. A handful of students with flight quirks were chasing him down, but Izuku quickly decided not to bother trying. He could jump high enough, but Majestic could very easily maneuver around him. Much closer there was a man in a bodysuit and mask moving around at incredible speed, but only in short bursts separated by several seconds of inactivity and stillness. He had one of the highest point values, and the longer Izuku watched, the more tempting a target he seemed.

Izuku started counting under his breath as he circled through the pack of students and pros, tapping a heroine with shoulder-mounted lasers of some sort, all the while never taking his eyes off of the increasingly patterned movements of the masked hero. Finally, he got close to one of the man’s frequent stopping points. All of the pros seemed to have some sort of handicap instated to limit their movements or make the event more even. Yoroi Musha was armed to the teeth but barely moved from his starting position. Ectoplasm’s clones were everywhere, but they barely even tried to dodge. This pro hero moved incredibly fast but seemed to have preordained stopping points and a possible cooldown on his quirk. The ten second breaks were too consistent to be anything else.

As the unnamed hero zipped to the spot Izuku had been watching out of the corner of his eye, Izuku turned and lunged. The man turned toward him but only moved at normal speed when he dodged. Izuku missed him by a centimeter. Not deterred, Izuku landed and made another attempt. The man dodged again, but Izuku noticed he dodged left both times. As his mental countdown from ten reached three, he tried one last time, feinting right before diving left, just brushing his fingers against the man’s hip before he twisted away. The man grinned and nodded at Izuku before speeding off to another of his resting spots.

Izuku glanced up at the scoreboard and panicked a little when he saw how far down his name was. He’d spent too long analyzing and tracking that hero. His points hadn’t made up for it. If he were competing against his 1-A class, he’d be on par or even ahead, but the second years he was competing against now had eight months’ experience and training on him, and it showed. His panic ratcheted up another notch when Otoraku’s voice carried over the stadium speakers, announcing there were only five minutes left. Izuku frantically cast about the field. He needed points and fast, or he wasn’t going to qualify for the second event.

A flash of white fur caught Izuku’s eye as a diminutive figure darted between the feet of several students. Nezu. Izuku hadn’t noticed the principle was here before this point, and judging by the point total on the mouse and the lack of comparable scores on the leader board, no one else had either. Or they hadn’t bothered going after him. Izuku moved before his plan fully formed. He chased after Nezu, sticking to the principal’s left.

Izuku saw the hero’s mouth pull back in a smile as he obligingly pulled right. Izuku kept pace with Nezu rather than pressing closer, driving him to the far side of the field, occasionally tapping a slower hero along the way. Finally, Izuku spotted a familiar purple suit. He turned his face away just in time to avoid being blinded. Nezu wasn’t as lucky, or he allowed himself to appear as if blinded. Either way, Izuku took the opening to gently tap his sensei on tip of his tail. Nezu turned to look at him with squinted, rapidly blinking eyes and smiled. “Well done, Saietsu,” he said just as a buzzer went off, signaling the end of the first event.

Izuku smiled back at the use of his fake surname. “Thank you, principle Nezu.” Izuku froze a moment later as Nezu climbed him like a tree to stand on his shoulder with one paw on his head, presumably to maintain his balance.

The principal hummed as he gazed up at the scoreboard. Izuku looked up too, blinking in surprise when he saw that his last-minute tag of Nezu had bumped him up to fifth. “An excellent showing for someone with less practical experience than his peers,” Nezu said quietly, patting Izuku’s dyed hair once. “Keep up the good work.” Then Nezu hopped off his shoulder and walked toward one of the entrance tunnels.

A long whistle behind him had Izuku turning to find Yamada and Tendo staring at him. “You tagged Nezu,” 2-A’s class president said, staring with wide, felid eyes. Izuku noticed the stripes across his cheeks hadn’t quite faded from his most recent tiger transformation. “You didn’t even hesitate. You’re going to be a scary one, aren’t you?”

Yamada laughed nervously. “Yep, he might look like a helpless kitten, but he has claws.”

Izuku puffed out his cheeks and pouted. Why shouldn’t he have chased after Nezu? The mouse was extremely smart, sure, but he was handicapped for the event and didn’t want to hurt any of them anyway. Izuku rubbed at the scar he got fighting Muscular, almost wishing he could tell them that benign (or perhaps protective) intelligence just wasn’t scary in comparison to villainous killing intent. He blinked a few times when he realized that his classmates probably hadn’t come face to face with murderers yet.

As if sensing the dip in his friend’s mood, Aizawa appeared at Izuku’s side to offer him a water bottle and a way out of the conversation. “Thanks,” Izuku murmured, taking a few gulps of water. “How’d you do?”

Aizawa grunted. “Well enough.” Then he leaned into Izuku’s space as Shirakumo appeared to drape himself dramatically over Aizawa’s free side.

“Shota! It’s so unfair. I was this close to catching Majestic when the buzzer went off. That would have put me in first! First!”

Yamada feigned sympathy and patted Shirakumo’s floating hair. Aizawa rolled his eyes and shoved a water bottle into his friend’s hand. “I’m sure you’ll get him next time.”

Izuku grinned as he watched the scene. He took another swig of water before he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Glancing around, Izuku spotted Sensoji glaring daggers at Aizawa. Izuku glared right back, stepping pointedly into the bully’s line of sight and blocking Aizawa. Sensoji’s eyes snapped to his, and the tension in the air intensified as One for All buzzed loudly in Izuku’s veins, more a thunderstorm than the warm flood he was used to.

Sensoji finally scoffed and looked away. The buzzing in Izuku’s ears and blood died down, and he took a deep breath. Brushing off the oddness of One for All’s response, Izuku turned back to his friends. They were all staring up at the center stage. Izuku blinked and looked there as well; he must have missed the beginning of the next event being announced.

Kyūsai was explaining this one. It was a team event, an obstacle course. Izuku got a brief wave of déjà vu at that. Teams could have two to four people on them, and they were going to be escorting a “civilian” robot through the course. Izuku was distantly aware of Aizawa, Yamada, and Shirakumo pressing closer to him. He took a step toward them, confirming their non-verbal team claim. He didn’t take his eyes off the screen though. There had to be something else. There always was. Like the ten-million-point headband in his 1-A Sports Festival.

After another minute of describing the course and rules, Kyūsai got to the caveat. The robots were a match for the size and mass of the highest point hero tagged by each team. Instead of first place being penalized, those who went after the more difficult targets were rewarded. Yamada laughed, and Izuku, Aizawa, and Shirakumo shared a smile. Izuku had tagged Nezu after all. (Izuku was sure the principal was cackling wherever he was.)

The following 15 minutes consisted of the teams receiving their assigned robots and planning with their teammates and provided stretchers. The first thing Izuku’s team did was disassemble their stretcher to use the poles as two bo staffs for Aizawa and Shirakumo respectively. Their Nezu bot was quickly settled on one of Shirakumo’s clouds alongside the blue-haired boy. It was a good plan, but there were other students with flight capabilities that had made it through to this round. Izuku had a feeling Nezu had some surprise planned to handle them.

“Shirakumo?”

“Yeah, Midoriya?”

“Be careful. I think there’ll be some obstacle in the air.”

Shirakumo put on a serious face for all of two seconds and nodded. Then his expression settled into a much more familiar teasing smirk. “No worries. You guys’ll be there to catch me if I fall, right?”

Aizawa grumbled and looked away, face slightly pink, much to Izuku’s confusion. Yamada chose that moment to chime in, “Midoriya catching you wouldn’t count as bench pressing, you know.”

That earned a bark of laughter from Shirakumo, and they got back on track. Shirakumo was going to handle the civilian bot, and Izuku, Aizawa, and Yamada were ground support to defend against other teams and the course itself. (While they’d been told that injuring another team’s robot would cost them points, no one had said anything against tripping other teams up or blocking their path.) It was a good plan, but Izuku still felt like they were missing something. He glanced around to the other teams before chancing a look down at the ground…and the discarded canvas from their stretcher. On a whim, Izuku rolled it up and tied it around his waist. Just in case.

All too soon, it was time to start the second event. The 12 teams took off like a shot, slowly spacing out as the quicker (and less-burdened) teams pulled ahead. As the first obstacle, a maze of metal walls, came into view, Izuku spotted the air defense. There were some sort of nets hung above the walls of the maze. “Shirakumo, net!”

At the same time, Yamada called out, “Iida at seven o’clock.”

Shirakumo dropped his cloud lower to the ground, hovering in the middle of their group as Izuku called back, “Got it!” He spun and dropped a One for All-powered axe kick to the pavement, breaking it apart into a hazardously uneven sprawl spanning most of the track. Izuku’s ankle twinged a bit, but he quickly caught back up to his team. That should slow down the teams behind them for a moment. Only two teams were ahead of them right now.

Izuku wasn’t sure whether to be thankful or not that one of those teams had Sensoji. As the strongest one on his team, he was carrying their robot, which looked about the same size as a standard person. At least he seemed to be focused on finishing first for now. Regardless, Izuku’s team took a different turn from Sensoji’s team when they entered the maze. After wandering the corridors for several minutes, they heard Otoraku announce that someone had made it to the second obstacle. Izuku ground his teeth and looked around. He didn’t think he’d be able to break through the walls without hurting himself (at least not without his support gear), but…Izuku looked up at the nets arched over the maze passages. Rope was much easier to break than metal.

“I want to check something,” Izuku told his friends before ricocheting between the walls to get to the top. Izuku hesitantly grabbed onto the ropes, relaxing slightly when he realized they didn’t appear to be trapped or electrified. Grabbing on with his other hand he tore several feet of the net apart with a flare of One for All. “Time to change plans,” he called down to his grinning friends from where he hung onto one side of the net.

“Oh, HEll yeah!” Yamada declared. Aizawa quieted him with Erasure and dragged him up onto Shirakumo’s Cloud. The cloud rose up through the hole Izuku had made. Then the two not driving reached down and caught Izuku’s hands to pull him up after them. The nets themselves almost made a second maze above the metal one, but Izuku tore through layer after layer as they quickly crossed the remainder of the first obstacle.

They made it to the end of the maze and nets about the same time as Kuga and Tendo’s team exited at ground level. They were one of the few teams of two with Kuga and the civilian bot riding on the back of a fully transformed Tendo. Izuku paled a bit at such a close-up view of the white tiger in all his 270 kilograms of glory. He suddenly understood why some of their classmates jokingly called their class rep “Byakko.”

The two teams nodded to each other before continuing. They didn’t really have a good way of stopping each other without harming their opponent’s robots. The whirring of machinery ahead of them drew their attention anyway. The track ahead turned into a water-filled trench with platforms spotted across the expanse between one end and the other. However, the mechanical sounds came from the walls running the length of the trench and the drones circling lazily above it. Far ahead, Izuku spotted the team that was ahead of them (a group of students Izuku didn’t recognize aside from the vaguely familiar blonde-haired girl from 2-B) dodging sections of the wall that shot out toward them from either side before retracting.

“Oh…that looks…fun?” Shirakumo said, hesitating at the beginning of the trench. Most of the platforms seemed to shoot out in a programmed pattern, but other pistons only seemed to fire when a student landed on one of the platforms—which they discovered when Tendo leaped to the closest one.

“How do you want to play this?” Yamada asked.

Izuku was too busy studying the pattern of pistons to answer right away, but Aizawa did. “We go under.”

Izuku and the others looked at him pointing below the platforms. There was in fact a gap of maybe two meters between the platforms and the water below. It looked like a tight fit, but a quick look confirmed that the piston walls didn’t extend below the platforms. Izuku smiled. “Let’s do it.”

They went slowly once they’d dropped out of piston range. Shirakumo was leery of letting his cloud touch the water. Apparently, waterlogged clouds were harder for him to control. (Izuku made note of that to add to his notebook later.) The only time they ran into trouble was when Tendo got half knocked off of a platform above them. Aizawa and Izuku nearly took scrabbling back paws to the face before Shirakumo moved them out of the way. Yamada’s surprised scream docked them a few points if the red flash of their robo-Nezu’s eyes was any indication. Izuku winced and untied the canvas around his waist to tie around the robot’s head instead. Hopefully, that counted for some protection if Yamada had another Voice slip.

As they neared the end of the trench, the sound of explosions, or maybe lasers, sounded above them. They were different from the explosions Izuku was used to, but Aizawa tensed beside him. Shirakumo cursed and sped up. Izuku heard a splash behind them and looked back to see part after part of pistons falling into the water and rapidly getting closer.

“Who?” Izuku asked.

“Sensoji,” Yamada whispered, much more conscious of his quirk after the Tendo scare.

Of course, the asshole who picked on Aizawa had a quirk similar to Bakugo. Izuku really should have expected as much. He sighed at the universe before rising into a crouch. The others only had time to throw him a questioning glance before a piston fell too close. Izuku moved in a blur of green lightning to bounce off of the debris, pushing it away from them in the process. Izuku latched onto the vertical support of one of the platforms as his team sped away. “Keep going! I’ll meet you at the end of the trench!”

He didn’t wait for a reply before pushing off again, this time jumping up between platforms to join the main obstacle course. He landed on a platform and shot off again. Rather than stick to the platforms, Izuku aimed for one of the pistons, hitting it as it extended and bouncing off to aim for one on the opposite wall. Izuku thought Gran Torino would be proud if he could see him.

Izuku focused back on the moment as a blast went off. Ah, Sensoji’s team was right behind him. Izuku spared them a glance before continuing onward. From up here, he could just catch glimpses of Shirakumo’s Cloud, but he couldn’t spare any real attention from his own course. At least Izuku seemed to be distracting Sensoji enough to avoid any more pistons falling close to his teammates.

At least, until the end of the trench. Izuku saw the cloud rising above the platforms a split second before Sensoji did. Izuku pushed off one last piston and spun to face the pink-haired student. The teen wasn’t carrying his team’s robot anymore, instead taking point and destroying pistons in the path of his team which followed a platform behind him. Izuku saw the rage in the boy’s eyes as he looked past Izuku to stare at Aizawa. He raised his hands and so did Izuku. Izuku fired first, flicking two fingers with a short spike in One for All to around 20%. It stung, but he was confident he hadn’t broken anything. Sensoji saw the incoming air blast just in time to redirect his quirk. The two blasts cancelled each other out, but Izuku had been pushed by his air blasts to the end of the trench by the time the smoke cleared.

Izuku tumbled into a messy roll before hopping back to his feet and letting his friends pull him up onto their cloud. “That’s enough for now,” Aizawa said, pushing Izuku to sit. “I got this.” Izuku, a little worse for wear after that landing, stayed seated. Aizawa crouched at the back of the cloud, looking behind them as the wind whipped his hair around his face.

Izuku absently noted how fast Shirakumo was pushing Cloud now. They reached the third obstacle only to stare at it in mingled horror and fascination. Whatever it had been, the obstacle was demolished now. Mounds of dirt and stone buried sparking bits of technology. Yamada hissed. “Ooh, something must have spooked Tsuchikawa for her to do that.”

Izuku latched onto that name, turning it over and over in his head. It was familiar from somewhere. That and the terrakinesis…His eyes flew wide as he placed the name and vaguely familiar face. He’d seen her older counterpart just a few weeks ago in a different uniform. “Pix—"

He was cut off by a particularly loud blast. Sensoji and his team had cleared the trench and were catching up. Aizawa’s eyes flashed red, and Izuku reached up to hold his friend’s hair out of his face. Aizawa blinked and minutely flinched before realizing what Izuku was doing. Then he nodded and focused back on their pursuers. Izuku watched in satisfaction as Sensoji’s blasts cut off, but his expression quickly fell into a frown. Sensoji’s team still had their quirks. Aizawa was only canceling one at a time. Izuku remembered the USJ and how Aizawa erased whole swaths of villains’ quirks at once. Another quirk growth thing? Something made Izuku suspicious something else was going on.

Then they were in a tunnel and reentering the stadium to the roar of the crowd. Izuku startled and let go of Aizawa’s hair at the sudden noise, whipping his head around. They were the third team to finish, just behind Kuga and Tendo’s team and Tsuchikawa’s (Pixie-Bob’s!) team. He sighed in relief and let his shoulders sag. They’d made the cut.

Or well, Aizawa, Yamada, and Shirakumo had. Izuku needed to exit stage left about now. He honestly hadn’t meant to show off as much as he had this round. He frowned and hoped not too many people questioned his withdrawal.

“You okay there, Green Bean? That was a pretty nasty tumble after the second obstacle.”

Bingo! Izuku grimaced and slid off the cloud, only to lean on it heavily and keep his weight off the ankle he’d tweaked earlier. “Could you help me to the infirmary?”

“Your ankle again?” Shirakumo asked, appearing at his right as Yamada took his left arm. “RG is going to kill you if you keep hurting that, especially with your arms the way they are.”

Seeing their blatant concern, Izuku felt kinda awful. “I-it’s really not that bad, but Nezu and I both agreed that I should bow out after the second round to avoid drawing unwanted attention. After we placed so well…feigning an injury for the crowd seemed like a good idea, though my ankle does hurt a little”

His friends relaxed hearing that it wasn’t serious. “We’ll miss you on the winner’s podium, my man,” Yamada said.

Aizawa hummed. “Will you watch the final event?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world!” Izuku said, beaming.

And he did watch the one v ones. From the comfort of the stands with a pair of (unnecessary) crutches, his notebook, and a pocket full of pens. There were so many cool quirks in 2-B that he was only now getting to see! At first, he was tense and hyperaware of his classmates around him in the stands, but with each fight that passed without anyone commenting on his notetaking—aside from Kuga, who nodded his approval—Izuku relaxed more and more. He tried to keep a lid on his muttering, but if he failed, no one called him out on it.

He filled several pages before the first of his friends was eliminated: Yamada. He had an unlucky matchup against Tsuchikawa who just buried him in dirt up to his eyeballs to immobilize and mute him. Shirakumo lasted to his second round, where he was pitted against Kuga. That guy was seriously good in hand-to-hand. Without his bo staff, Shirakumo was quickly overwhelmed once Kuga got around his cloud cover. Aizawa made it to the semi-finals. Against Sensoji.

Yamada and Shirakumo were tense in the seats on either side of Izuku, and Izuku was right on the edge of his seat with them. The fight lasted longer than Izuku expected, frankly. Even without his quirk, Sensoji was huge, and he knew how to throw his weight around. Without his capture weapon, Aizawa’s only hope seemed to be a joint lock or pin, which Sensoji was not giving him opportunity for. And without his eye drops, Aizawa’s quirk stamina gave out first. He kept his irritated eyes closed a second too long, and took a blast from Sensoji’s quirk almost point-blank, throwing him back just far enough to cross the boundary line. He stayed down.

Sensoji looked annoyed that his free beatdown had ended, and Izuku had to fight against the buzzing storm of One for All suddenly straining against his skin and the urge to keep that bully away from his friend. But Sensoji sneered and walked away when the teachers called the fight, and Izuku shakily settled back in his chair. One for All took a while longer to settle.