42

 42: Kaleidoscope vs One For All

"Now, the final match is set to begin! Pony Tsunotori, Kosei Tsuburaba, Hitoshi Shinso, and Melissa Shield will take on Jurota Shishida, Yui Kodai, Minoru Mineta, and Izuku Midoriya! Teams, head to your base camps!"

"Finally," Izuku muttered, then he turned to Yui. "You ready?"

"Mm," she affirmed before something occurred to her. "Where are Shishida and Mineta? I don't remember seeing them since the training began."

Her question was answered when the two mentioned teens speed past them, Mineta tugging Shishida along in a red wagon (spawned by Yaoyorozu after Mineta begged her for an assist) that he was bound to by Mineta's Pop Off balls.

"Is this really necessary?" Shishida deadpanned as he was led away from the platform.

"Don't get in the way of The Rizzler," was Mineta's succinct response.

Izuku and Yui stared at the retreating duo in silence, though one was significantly more amused by the scene than the other. Sighing, Izuku shook his head and motioned for Yui to come along so that they could get this started already. He received pats on the back and well wishes from his classmates as he left, most notably a bubbly "Go kick some ass!" from Ochako. That was definitely the plan, otherwise, Mirko would give him hell for it.

"Midoriya," Shoto called out and gained his attention, appearing beside Ochako.

"Hm?"

"Fracture your tibia."

Izuku was once again rendered silent, but this one was closer to bewilderment rather than exhaustion. Yui's snort and subsequent giggle fit were swiftly joined by Ochako's incredulous laughter (and that of the rest of their class once they pieced together what Shoto had attempted to say).

It took a minute for Izuku's brain to regain function, though. "What?"

Shoto gave him and their classmates a quizzical look. "Is that the wrong expression?"

"I think you mean 'break a leg,' dude," Kaminari clarified through his laughter.

Shoto nodded "Right, that. Best of luck."

"Thanks," Izuku replied, letting loose a few chuckles of his own before heading off.

Meanwhile, Mirko was finally growing excited. The entire reason she was there in the first place was about to show off, and her foot was minutely thumping in anticipation.

"Fucking finally," she bemoaned before turning to Inko. "How much you got on a Team 2 stomp?"

"Betting on my son feels wrong," Inko said with a frown, but her frown disappeared with a careless shrug. "But betting against him would be stupid."

"Now, I wouldn't be too hasty," All Might surprisingly joined the conversation, still in his buff form to keep up appearances around the students. "Young Melissa might just surprise you. She's a very fast learner."

Mirko perked up at the unspoken implication, and she looked intently at All Might. "Hold on a minute, did the Symbol of Peace take on an apprentice?"

"One could say," All Might noncommittally replied.

Inko quietly chewed on that bit of information. She had only met Melissa Shield once when she came to see Izuku in the hospital after Kamino, but she seemed like a nice girl. She also knew a bit about what happened on I-Island from her son's account of events and what Nezu told her of the aftermath. She really hoped that the young girl wouldn't run herself into the ground trying to both fill All Might's shoes and forget her own problems. She really should make herself available should Melissa ever need anyone else to talk to.

In fact…

"All Might," she addressed, gaining his attention. "Bring her to family dinner tomorrow evening."

A jet of blood spewed through his clenched teeth at the instruction, and he struggled to keep himself from deflating out of shock. "Ex-excuse me?"

"Family dinner tomorrow evening," she calmly explained. "You're invited. Bring Melissa along, too, if she's available."

She turned and set her gaze on Mirko. "You're more than welcome to come, as well."

Mirko grinned. "Hell yeah, I'll be there."

All Might, on the other hand, was recovering from the sudden invitation. He would never have expected anything of the sort, not to say that Inko was a cruel or cold woman by any stretch, but merely that it was phrased to be a familial affair…

"Are you sure?" All Might hesitantly probed. "I really wouldn't want to impose…"

"Nonsense, you're pretty much family already, at least in my opinion," Inko shrugged, taking All Might aback once again. "My mother was your mentor. That kind of makes us step-siblings in a way."

"Not in the, 'What are you doing, step-bro?' kind of way, I hope," Mirko couldn't help herself from snickering.

Legend has it that Mirko's kidney never recovered from the iron grip Inko's quirk inflicted on her for that joke.

"So, we're going up against Lite Brite," Tsuburaba mused with his hands in his pockets, his three other teammates turning to him. "I'm fine with peacefully surrendering. How about you guys?"

"No," was the swift and decisive reply of Shinso. "I have no intentions of losing today."

Tsuburaba huffed, running a hand through his head of mildly spiky, brown hair. "Look, I get it; you've got something to prove against Midoriya. He called you skinny-fat in front of half of our grade, and I'd personally never be able to live that down-"

He was cut off when Pony bonked him on the head with one of her horns, shooting him a scolding look for him to knock it off.

"Anyway," he continued, sending her a dirty look back while rubbing his head, "that was before the sports festival, and I'm sure that he's only gotten much better since then. Unless you guys have a foolproof plan to deal with him, the four of us are pretty toast."

"This is weird of you, Tsuburaba," Pony remarked with a tilt of her head. "I never took you for a coward."

Tsuburaba winced, but he did not back down. "Dude, I make walls out of air. What the hell am I supposed to do against a guy who can create mini suns and then blow them up?"

"That is a bit of a problem, I'll give you that," Pony conceded with a thoughtful nod.

"Not one that we can't deal with," Shinso declared. "He's not impervious to my quirk. I've gotten him under my control more than once in the past."

"That just means he'll know when to keep his mouth shut like Bakugo did at the Sports Festival," Tsuburaba countered.

"Not if he doesn't know that it's me," Shinso replied, motioning to the black mask sitting over his mouth. "This is a vocal modulation mask. She called it Artificial Vocal Cords, I think. Gotta remember to thank Hatsume after this is all over."

"So, that's what she's been working on…" Melissa muttered in realization, and Shinso nodded.

"It acts like another set of vocal cords," Shinso continued. "If my voice goes through a mic or megaphone, my quirk loses its effect. It has to be my real voice that they respond to for it to take hold; amplifiers won't work. With that in mind, through the variation and resonance of a number of plates, this mask can change how I speak while still letting my voice be heard directly."

Shinso turned a knob on the side of the mask before speaking again, this time in Tsuburaba's voice. "With it, I could speak through any of your voices."

He turned the knob again, absently noting the surprise of his team while switching to Melissa's voice. "And he won't be able to tell…"

He turned the knob a final time, finishing with Pony's voice. "…the difference. See where I'm going with this?"

Melissa, Pony, and Tsuburaba were impressed and excited at the possibilities that were now open to them.

"If you can ensnare him with your quirk, I can easily snag him away and drop him off in the jail lickety-split!" Pony declared with a grin.

"And failing that, I could punch him really hard," Melissa supplied with a smile of her own.

"…How hard are we talking?" Tsuburaba dubiously inquired.

Melissa chuckled, and then her body began to emit flecks of pale blue electricity alongside power that was almost tangible to the others present. "My quirk has as much if not even more raw power than his. It's just not safe for me to use very much of it just yet. That's why…"

With a single activation, her wristbands practically unfolded and fashioned themselves into gauntlets, her boots expanded into crimson leg braces, and her bandolier followed the wristbands' example by unfolding into a snug chest piece. Tsuburaba and Shinso were gaping (though it was hard to tell in Shinso's case), and Pony was giddy at the sight that reminded her so much of one of her favorite retro comic heroes.

"I call it Scarlet Cowl," Melissa said with a prideful smile, but it soon grew a bit sheepish. "Still workshopping the name…"

"Holy hell, Ironheart," Tsuburaba whistled.

Shinso's violet gaze narrowed, however. "If your quirk is as powerful as you say, why exactly do you need a high-tech power suit to be effective?"

Shinso wasn't still bitter about people popping out of the woodwork with egregiously powerful quirks. He wasn't, and no one could prove otherwise.

"It's precisely because my quirk is so powerful that I need this suit," Melissa patiently explained. "I'm… a really late bloomer, so I haven't had very much time to get accustomed to the destructive potential I now have. I could break every bone in my body by simply walking a couple of yards in any direction if I'm not careful."

…Alright, Shinso could at least concede that having that happen probably wasn't ideal. Maybe having a powerful quirk wasn't always the blessing it was cracked up to be, especially if she, presumably, spent most of her life being quirkless and now had to learn how to navigate life with a quirk. She was much like Togeike in that regard, except that she had what appeared to be a top-tier, uncontrollable well of power to deal with. Togeike at least had it easier there.

In her room, Togeike was happily tending to her plants when a sudden sneeze crept up on her. Unfortunately, the mild control she was exercising over her plants with her quirk went haywire, and all of the plants in the room immediately grew into long, sharp masses of chlorophyll death. Razor-sharp leaves and stems sliced through the air like katanas, meanwhile, budding flowers bloomed in an instant and rocketed into the walls and furniture like shuriken. The end result was a floral deathtrap that she had just barely avoided by virtue of hunching over when she sneezed.

"…Huh," she mumbled in befuddlement, silently taking in the scene.

Maybe she should take up Principal Nezu's offer for possible quirk counseling.

"So, Midoriya, you're our super strong super-genius," Mineta began. "What's our plan of attack?"

"You'd be the obvious initial target given that you're their most dangerous opponent," Shishida added, looking at Izuku. "They're certainly plotting something to take you down first to get you out of the way."

"I'm not so certain about that," Yui hummed. "Izuku is the obvious target. In fact, he's such the obvious target that it wouldn't make sense to target anyone else, which is why that's exactly what they'll do."

"What makes you think so?" Shishida inquired of his classmate, and Mineta was also curious about the rationale.

"Izuku isn't just the biggest threat," she continued. "He could probably take them on all on his own if he wanted to. Attacking him first would just expedite that eventuality. At the same time, if Izuku fighting them all at once is inevitable, then lean into it by taking his teammates down first. Aside from him, Shishida is the biggest threat, so they'll probably look to take him out of the equation before anything else."

"She's 100% correct," Izuku finally spoke up, filling Yui with sweet vindication after a moment of surprise.

"That does make sense," Shishida nodded after considering the summation. "If they want to win, fighting him as a group will happen anyway, so it would behoove them to eliminate all other factors, and I would be the hardest to overpower in that scenario."

"But they'd have to have a plan to keep Midoriya busy if that's the case," Mineta chimed in. "What could they possibly throw at him to accomplish that?"

"Melissa," Izuku answered. "She's been training with All Might to get her powers under control. Her quirk is nuts, so if anyone has the firepower to keep me busy, it's her. I wouldn't rule out the rest of them, though. Yui, Shishida, what can you tell us about Tsuburaba and Tsunotori?"

"Tsuburaba's quirk is called Solid Air," Shishida began. "He can solidify the air he breathes out to create invisible walls and platforms."

"How strong?" Izuku questioned.

"Your best bet at breaking them would be to hit them with a metal pipe," Shishida answered. "He's not much for direct combat, but he's excellent at support and capture."

Izuku nodded. "How about Tsunotori?"

"Horn Cannon. She can shoot her horns, and since they grow back immediately, she can rapid-fire as many as she wants for as long as necessary. She can manipulate them telepathically, but only four at a time. Even so, flying around on her horns is a cakewalk for her. She has the best mobility in our class. Pinning her down is going to be very difficult."

Izuku stroked his chin in thought. "Air walls and high-mobility projectiles, huh?"

"Indeed," Shishida nodded. "It will be a tough matchup, and that's merely accounting for the two of them."

Izuku silently mulled the information over. Then, inexplicably to Shishida, a white flame ignited in Izuku's hair. He was going to question it, but he noted the unconcerned expressions of the other two, meaning they had likely been exposed to it in the past. A few more seconds of silence passed before Izuku perked up with a confident expression.

"Close-ranged support means that Tsuburaba will probably stick near a heavier hitter, more than likely Tsunotori. If this match goes the way I expect it to, Melissa would have likely advised him against supporting her because he'd ultimately just get in the way. Shinso is in a similar boat; he'll play more of a support role, but from the looks of his new capture scarf, I doubt he's negligible in combat."

"It looked just like Mr. Aizawa's," Mineta noted, and Izuku nodded in agreement.

"I'd be shocked if he could use them as well as Mr. Aizawa could, but he wouldn't have them if he wasn't at least somewhat proficient with them," Izuku continued. "On the subject of Shinso, he has a powerful mind control quirk that only requires you to respond to him in order to snag you under his control. I've been under it a few times, and I was only broken out of it by someone else. Be really careful about speaking when he's around, and even when he's not. Honestly, I'd just avoid speaking entirely if possible."

Upon receiving nods from his team, he sent them an encouraging, determined smile. "All of you, stay on your toes. Keep your eyes and ears open and your butt cheeks clenched. Got it?"

"Aye aye!" Mineta and Yui saluted while Shishida stared at the three in befuddlement.

"Begin!"

Vlad King's signal sent them into action. Along the way, Izuku's hands lit up in a fusion of violet and green flames as he constructed several small, dense shapes before signaling to Yui.

"Here," he said, giving the handful of dense constructs to her. "Figured you could make some magic happen with your quirk."

Yui accepted the items and curiously observed them, paying close attention to the cubes and spheres in particular. "How long can you maintain these constructs after you've detached them from yourself?"

"I have no idea," Izuku replied honestly. "Guess we'll find out."

Yui shrugged before pocketing the items, equally content with on-the-fly experimentation.

"Up there!" Mineta called out from atop Shishida's shoulders and pointed toward a figure in the sky.

Looking up, the other three spotted Pony hovering far above the towers. Then, she turned around and zipped away, disappearing into the jungle of pipes.

"Scout…" Shishida uttered before a faint cry of "Thunder Horn!" crept into the area like a soft breeze.

The ensuing barrage of Pony's horns was much less soft by comparison. An orange wall flared up in front of them in a flash, stopping the assault in its tracks and shielding them from harm. Shishida took his cue to hulk up into his Beast transformation, and then he smashed through the barrier, charging right through the horn barrage with a savage roar. Despite many of the horns stabbing into his thick hide, Shishida mostly shrugged off the onslaught while Mineta crafted his Vineyard lasso on Shishida's back.

Shishida plowed through the horns on his way toward Pony's scent as Izuku bounded from tower to tower behind them with Yui riding piggyback. It didn't take long for them to finally reach Pony, but she was already prepared for a quick retreat and lifted off the ground just in time to evade a collection of violet tendrils that came after her. Tsuburaba, meanwhile, took that opportunity to enter the fold and shot Air Prisons at Shishida and Mineta, but Shishida deftly evaded them with a frightening degree of agility that a beast his size shouldn't have.

"Take 'em down Shishida!" 'Mineta' cheered on.

"Consider this our win already!" Shishida excitedly shouted, and then he inexplicably froze in place.

"Hold on, I didn't say that!" Mineta panicked, but one of Tsuburaba's Air Prisons slammed into him and smacked him right off of Shishida's back, sending him rolling down the road in a glass ball.

Meanwhile, Izuku had deposited Yui to solid ground so she could ready a Pocket Sandstorm to blind the other team, but he noticed Mineta's predicament in his periphery. Trusting Yui to be able to handle herself against Pony, Izuku vanished in a bright yellow blur, reappearing with a hard stomp to Mineta's prison that shattered it back into harmless air. He was gone again in another flash, this time practically materializing behind a startled Tsuburaba. Tsuburaba was not afforded a single second to defend himself before a hard kick slammed into his ribs and blasted him into a nearby wall, taking him out of the fight.

"Midoriya!" he heard Yui call out to him. A quick reply almost left his lips as he turned to where he last knew her to be, but he stopped dead in his tracks.

Yui was currently peppering a flying Pony with scattershot grains of enlarged sand, but she wasn't looking at him. If that wasn't strange enough, what really unsettled him was what she called him. He and Yui had been on a first-name basis practically since they met. He genuinely couldn't remember the last time she called him by his surname. Had she ever?

No, that wasn't her. He knew it couldn't have been her, so someone was imitating her voice…

'Shinso!'

Before he could travel any further down that train of thought, violet tendrils snaked around Tsuburaba just before one of Pony's horns could snag him for herself. He took off toward Shishida and bonked him on the cranium to snap him out of his trance, then he dumped Tsuburaba into his arms.

"Take him back to the jail! We'll clean up here!" Izuku instructed, and Shishida nodded his understanding once his wits were back about him.

Once Shishida leaped away, Izuku spotted Mineta running toward him, but a horn popped out of the ether and yoinked him away from the scene. Before Izuku could go after him, a foreboding crackle of energy filled his ears, and he instinctively brought his arm burning a bright emerald to block the punch he knew was coming. Melissa's gauntlet impacted Izuku's arm, and the force of the blow not only rattled Izuku's bone, but it also shook the immediate area. He briefly got a glimpse of her hard, usually aqua gaze glowing a menacing electric blue before her boots fired up, jettisoning the two of them out of the area.

Back with Yui, she wasn't making any headway with knocking Pony out of the air, and she couldn't avoid the return fire of Pony's horns forever. When she noticed Mineta being hauled away (his screaming was hard to miss), she knew she had to do something. Since Pony could only control four horns at a time, the rate at which she could fire new ones at her while still keeping the horns carrying herself and Mineta in the air was substantially hindered. With this in mind, Yui broke into a sprint in Mineta's direction, reaching into her pocket to retrieve a few of the dense cubes Izuku had given her earlier. Then, she grew them and threw them out in front of her to act as makeshift stairs one by one. Hopping up onto cubes of increasing size in pursuit of a flying grape like a platformer video game was not on her bingo card for the day, but she wasn't complaining.

Soon enough, though, it became clear that no matter how high she got, Pony would just raise Mineta even higher to keep him just out of reach. She'd run out of cubes long before she could reach Pony's height limit, so she needed to change course.

"Hey!" she called up to Mineta loud enough to snap him out of his panicked state, then she pointed to the yellow lasso on his hip. "Rope!"

It took him a second to realize what she was asking for, but when he finally did, incredulity joined the panic. "But you'll get stuck-

"JUST DO IT!"

Taken aback by the loud command from the usually silent girl, he dutifully complied and threw the other end of his Vineyard rope down to her, to which she leaped and grabbed onto it just before Pony was able to raise him out of reach. Now that she was stuck there, not only had the added weight made it that much harder for Pony to keep them in the air, but they were also flying at a much slower speed, as Yui expected would happen.

That meant she could initiate stage two of her half-baked plan. With the horn flying at a much safer speed, Yui rocked the rope back and forth, jostling Mineta in the horn's grasp and quickly chipping away at its hold over him. With a final wrench of the rope, Mineta slipped out of the hold of the horn, sending the two tumbling to the concrete and tangling Yui in the Vineyard rope evermore. On the bright side, the fall was much more graceful than it otherwise would have been. When the two regained their bearings, Yui looked toward Mineta and did her best to motion to him to untangle her given that he was the only one that could.

"Told you that you'd get stuck," Mineta tried to joke, but the utterly blank stare he received hastened his motion. "Um, right, gimme a sec…"

Thankfully, Mineta could freely manipulate his Pop Off balls when in hand, so untangling her wasn't going to be an issue. However, before he could make any decent progress, Yui kicked him away from her and quickly shuffled back as a white binding cloth attacked the spot he had just been. Lurking in the shadows was Shinso, who had chosen that moment to strike and capture Mineta while she was indisposed. He didn't let up, lunging for Mineta once again to subdue him. Mineta was faster, though, narrowly evading and tossing his Pop Off Balls ahead of him to create a trampoline path that would allow him to generate a good amount of distance between himself and Shinso while he came up with a plan to subdue him.

Fortunately for Mineta, he didn't need to, as a mighty roar crescendoed through the area, followed by Shishida smashing through the walls of a building, leaving a gaping hole in his wake.

"OH YEEEEAAAAHHHH!" he bellowed to the heavens.

In the serenity of his study, a large, anthropomorphic pitcher of Kool-Aid was placidly reading the paper before something unsettled his liquid. Looking up from the newspaper with a perturbed expression, he knew in his non-bones that there was a disturbance in the force. Someone was guilty of copyright infringement, and he'd send his lawyers out to deal with them first thing in the morning.

Shishida was tearing through the area like a beast let off his collar, which is to say he quite literally was a beast let off his collar since the shirt collar that acted as half of his costume was nowhere to be found. Pony had returned to save Shinso's skin on the (many) occasions where Shishida came dangerously close to capturing him in his big, meaty claws, but neither would retreat just yet; they were down a teammate, so they needed to at least even the odds before any sort of escape could be made. With that in mind, Shinso steeled his nerves and faced off with his grizzly adversary. He wasn't certain that his capture scarf alone would be able to subdue him, but a combined effort between that and Pony's horns might give them the edge.

Beckoning for Shishida to charge, Shinso got his wish and then some. Shishida closed the distance between them and readied a vicious swipe that was certain to take Shinso down for the count, meanwhile, Shinso tossed his capture scarf at him while bending over just enough to allow two sets of horns to sail over him for added restraint. What they weren't expecting was for Shishida to shrink back to his normal size while airborne and completely bypass the two-pronged attack with the added agility he was afforded. Shishida started bulking back up before he even hit the ground and continued his vicious charge toward his actual target, Pony. Caught flat-footed by the evasion, Pony wasn't fast enough to stop Shishida from slamming into her and locking her into a bear hug.

"You're not going anywhere, Rocketti!" Shishida declared.

"You should know me better than this by now, Beast Man!" Pony gritted out, calling forth two sets of horns to attack.

"For the last time, my hero name is Gevaudan!" Shishida indignantly shouted.

"That's a stupid name and you know it!" she fired back right as the horn slammed into Shishida, rocketing the two of them into the nearest building. And the one after that. And the one after that, as well. In fact, Pony's horns shot them through building after building without pause, carving a path of destruction straight into Team 1's jail cell with a deafening crash to eliminate Shishida definitively.

With Shishida now out of the equation, Pony let loose a huge sigh of relief. She and Shinso could deal with the other two, then they could help Melissa against Red Sun Superman. Just as she was climbing out of the cell, however, Shishida started grumbling.

"Gevaudan is not a stupid name!" he insisted, drawing a long-suffering sigh from Pony. "It's based on a famous, French cryptid!"

"Oh my god, Shishida, the Beast of Gévaudan literally ate people!" she retorted, turning to face him fully with a stern expression. "Why would you name yourself after that?"

Now it was Shishida's turn to sigh. "The Beast of Gévaudan wasn't actually a real creature, Tsunotori."

"Well, something ate those people!"

"Well, I guess it doesn't matter how you get your opponent in lockup so long as they're in there," Vlad King chuckled.

"She didn't really need to slam herself through half the training ground to do that, though," Aizawa sighed.

"She'll be fine," Vlad King waved it off. "Her head's as hard as All Might's. Must be an American thing."

"Still, a little less careless destruction would be preferable," Aizawa remarked, his gaze flipping between one screen showcasing Izuku and Melissa tearing into each other with reckless abandon and another showing the newly freed Yui producing two toy robots from her utility belt and enlarging them into… giant…

"Are those the fucking Zero-Pointers from the sports festival?" Aizawa asked his coworker in a fine blend of incredulity and exhaustion, and it only deepened with the unhinged laughter he got from Vlad King in response.

"WHY DO YOU HAVE THESE?!" Mineta shouted at Yui as a pale Shinso did everything he could to avoid getting pancaked by the very unexpected juggernauts that were smashing their way through the tight corridors of the training ground to get him.

"Why don't you?" she replied.

"If you haven't noticed, I can't stash giant, kick-ass robots to whip out as trump cards later!" Mineta shot back.

"Exactly."

Mineta momentarily sputtered before he limply sighed. It wasn't worth pressing further; the robots were on their side, after all.

"Come on," she motioned to follow the robots chasing after Shinso. "We'll pick him up when he drops from exhaustion."

The frank and inflectionless way she said that unsettled Mineta.

Time slowed down for Izuku as Melissa became a literal blur even to him, covering the entire path in less than half of a second, and her crimson gauntlet illuminated with the crackle of One For All dressing her like a herculean gown. He was face to face, or rather face to fist, with a missile packed with so much power that he could practically taste it even before it made contact with his face; it was strawberry flavored.

"Yep, that's me. You're probably wondering how I ended up in this situation. Well, let's rewind a few minutes."

When they initially locked horns, Melissa's boots briefly fired, launching the two away from the scene of the group battle to isolate them and (hopefully) limit collateral damage. When they landed, Melissa wasted no time dashing in to attack throwing crackling punch after punch that was deftly dodged until Izuku pounced on an opening, latching onto her overextended arm and wrenching it over his shoulder to slam her to the concrete with a thud. He hooked her arm under his shoulder and pressed down onto her own with his other hand, all the while quirking a mirthful eyebrow at her.

"What is it with blondes and telegraphing their right hooks-" he began to snark before Melissa brought her leg up and kicked him square in the forehead, causing him to release his hold on her arm and stumble backward.

Then, a sudden jet of air from her heel smacked him in the face and would have disoriented him had he not braced himself. He idly noted that her boots had been propelling her in a manner that was incredibly reminiscent of Gran Torino, and now he knew exactly how she did it, but he could think about that later. She was back on her feet and in his face again in no time at all, but Izuku was prepared, sidestepping her attack and shoving her away. However, she was just as prepared, using the jets in her boots to change course on a dime and bounce off of the nearest wall to launch herself back at Izuku.

This was the pattern they slipped into. Melissa shot around the area like an electrified pinball, periodically changing course to throw him off before attacking once again. Unfortunately, her hits never quite landed, as Izuku took to dodging and deflecting her attacks, which became more and more narrow as time went on. Adjacently, Melissa's expression grew more and more agitated as the tangle progressed, while Izuku stayed as cool as a cucumber.

The pattern was interrupted when Melissa landed against a wall in a huff, now full-on scowling at Izuku. Curiously, she began emitting a thick, purple smoke cloud that quickly engulfed the area, making it impossible for Izuku to see more than a foot in front of him. He wasn't concerned, though. Even if he couldn't see her, he could listen for her movements and get a rough idea of where she was at any given moment, so that's what he did... well, that was the goal, at least. In practice, he couldn't hear any movement at all; there were no footsteps, no scuffing of concrete, and not even the jet of her boots could be heard. He'd be lying if he said it didn't make him nervous.

A sudden shift in the air beside him triggered his green flames to ignite for the first time since their initial clash, and it was a good thing they had, as Melissa kicked him in the ribs even harder than he had kicked Tsuburaba, sending him crashing into a nearby wall just like Tsuburaba. With a pained grunt, he burned an even deeper green before flicking his finger to create a gust of wind that cleared the area of the purple smokescreen. He wasn't quite prepared to see Melissa hovering unassisted in the air and glowering down at him.

"Take this seriously, damnit!" she snarled before throwing a punch while midair with her gauntlet crackling with the energy of One For All, but to Izuku's further surprise (and eventual shock), sharp, black tendrils shot out of her arm and cleaved through the area.

Igniting yellow and vanishing from the spot was instinctual, but the chaotic nature of the tendrils ensured that he couldn't remain still for even a moment until he created a significant amount of distance. The destruction wrought by those black tendrils was a sight to behold; the building and surrounding network of pipes were nearly torn to shreds, and deep, jagged claw marks spattered the concrete like chalk on a playground. Izuku marveled at the scene, trying to piece together how it was that Melissa was capable of this.

Then, it hit him. The conversation they had with the vestiges of One For All in Togeike's room came back to him. Yoichi laid out the entire history of his quirk and the generations-long struggle between One For All and All For One. The present vestiges even touched on their quirks since they'd be available for Melissa to use sooner rather than later. The functionality of his violet flames finally made sense when he saw Banjo's Blackwhip in action, which he realized was what he had just seen from Melissa. That purple cloud must have been En's Smokescreen rather than something she had simply worked into her suit (if she could mimic Gran Torino's Jet, he wouldn't put it past her to figure other abilities out, too).

Then, there was the fact that she was flying, or rather, she was floating. It truly wasn't the time to feel all warm inside at seeing his grandmother's quirk in action, but damnit, he could not help it. It all made so much sense now that he was actively thinking about it. He really wished he brought his notebook with him to the battle. Curse his plot-induced amnesia-

He couldn't frolic any further down that mental tangent once Melissa closed the considerable distance between them in a literal blur. Still, she wasn't moving so fast that he couldn't make out her positively apoplectic expression. Her fist was crackling so violently that it perfectly matched the fury wafting off of her.

Izuku sighed, and then he turned a deadpan gaze toward the camera. "Well, you're all caught up now."

The impact blasted him through hundreds of meters of metal and concrete.

"I told you not to count Melissa out," All Might chuckled with poorly masked pride.

"What the hell is that idiot doing?!" Mirko growled upon seeing her not-sidekick be punched through half of the training ground.

"He's going easy on a friend," Inko discontentedly remarked. "I taught him better than that. He pushed his luck, and now he's paying for it."

"I'll beat it out of him after this is all said and done, don't you worry about that," Mirko promised.

Melissa felt marginally better after punching Izuku's stupid face. That would teach him not to treat her like a goddamn porcelain doll again. It was the same thing he had done at I-Island after the whole debacle, and then again when he was talking to All Might about her taking on the responsibilities of One For All. She knew he cared about her dearly, and she really appreciated that and reciprocated, but she wasn't some helpless little sister who needed to be coddled.

Besides, she was older and taller than him; if anything, she was the older sister making sure he didn't blow himself up.

'You seem a little upset out there, Ninth.'

'What gave it away, En?' Melissa dully quipped back.

Banjo's excited laughter filled the void. 'I can't believe she used the built-up kinetic energy from all her bouncing around to force Fa Jin into activating. You were right, Nana. The girl is a monster already.'

'When am I not?' Nana smugly grinned.

An aggravated yet resigned sigh entered the void. 'If you're going to insist on using my meta ability, then you should be aware that it's best used efficiently in increments. Using up all of the stored energy will give you explosive speed and power, but it'll empty your tank and force you to recoup all of that kinetic energy every time.'

'Holy hell, Third is finally stepping away from the party poopers' corner?'

'Kiss my ass, Fifth.'

The merriment of the vestiges went silent when Danger Sense roared in Melissa's head just as an explosion of green fire blasted away tons of debris, and a golden blur blasted toward her with a vengeance. She just barely got out of the way, but she wasn't the only one who learned from Gran Torino, as Izuku bounced off a nearby wall and slammed into her back. She was sent skidding across the ground and crashing into a tower, sending a spiderweb of cracks up the structure.

"Alright, you've made your point," Izuku said with the utmost seriousness, approaching her as she climbed back to her feet. "I was going beyond just holding back by not even attacking to avoid doing serious damage to you, and that was disrespectful. I'm sorry for that."

"Apology accepted," she sighed. "I can take it, Izuku. Don't you dare go easy on me."

"As you wish," was all Izuku said before he was in her face in a flash, most of him burning a bright yellow while his right arm burned green and buried itself in her gut.

She was blasted through the tower entirely and shot out of the other side before she even knew what hit her. Despite the pain, nothing but excitement coursed through her veins. Feeling One For All wash over her once again, she shot off the ground and around the collapsing tower to reengage him. Finally, they'd have a real fight.

"I never thought I'd see the day Midoriya gets manhandled," Kaminari gawked as Melissa yanked him by the scarf and slammed him into the concrete.

"Dude, look at his face!" Sero pointed out. "He's having the time of his life!"

It was true, as evidenced by the beaming smile he was sporting while kicking Melissa off of him and yeeting her around with his purple flames. That smile grew a touch feral when he launched her away as hard as he could and she caught herself by stabbing the surrounding towers with black tendrils of her own to launch herself back at him.

"So manly!" Kirishima and Tetsutetsu cried in unison.

"This is so not fair," a bandaged Monoma quietly grumbled.

"I didn't know Melissa could do all of that," Jiro commented. "Her quirk is almost as broken as Midoriya's."

"They do appear to be similar in more ways than simply being very multifaceted," Yaoyorozu observed from beside her.

Near them, Shoto quietly observed the fight, as well. Melissa Shield's abilities were remarkably similar to Midoriya's, though she appeared to have traded fire for some sort of bioelectricity. With her quirk being as reminiscent of All Might's as it was, he was certain that she was his secret daughter. Still, her similarities to his friend and All Might's seemingly familiar relationship with Ms. Midoriya gave way to many more questions. Were All Might and Ms. Midoriya potentially related? A common ancestor, perhaps? Fire and electricity were both sort of plasma-adjacent, so it was possible. This web only seemed to grow even more intricate as he explored it.

Melissa was having the most fun she had ever experienced in this fight, and she could plainly tell her enjoyment was reciprocated wholeheartedly. Every thunderous punch, every earthshaking stomp, and every movement that felt faster than lightning imbued her with such fulfillment that she thought she could only obtain from creating weapons of mass destruction. Granted, she still had sorta done that by creating her suit and then modifying it to pair with One For All, but it was a different kind of fulfillment. The high she got from pouring dozens of hours of blood, sweat, and tears into a mechanical marvel was different than the high she was currently feeling from throwing punches that could annihilate whole buildings.

Speaking of criminally overpowered punches, hers were being parried with practiced ease by her flaming adversary followed by feints that kept her attention locked onto his upper body while he dropped low and swept her legs like it was an ordinary Tuesday and not a damn near supersonic brawl. Her attacks were being read like a mediocre young adult novel; they had been ever since Izuku started getting serious. While she was able to get the better of him a few times, it was evident that even with grueling training from Uncle Might and Gran Torino, Izuku was still in a completely different stratosphere than her in terms of combat prowess. She could narrow the power gap all she wanted, but the experience and skill gaps still remained and would for the foreseeable future.

As her next swipe was ducked and she was grabbed and tossed away into another building like a sack of bowling balls, Gran Torino's words ran back through her mind.

'Remember, kid, Toshinori's ceiling is your floor, so 5% for him is far different than 5% for you. You've got more power than even he would know what to do with, but your suit will help you manage a lot more of it. Just don't go overboard.'

She had reached the point where she could comfortably handle 5% of One For All, and Scarlet Cowl raised that to 20%. Theoretically, 20% was only what she knew the suit could handle without her doing excessive damage to herself since it was also reinforcing her body, so it could probably handle even more than that…

'Melissa…' Nana warily spoke up.

'If I can exceed him in raw power, the skill gap should steadily be rendered moot,' Melissa reasoned.

'The power gap would have to be insurmountable in your favor for that to be true, Ninth,' En warned.

'Then I'll make it so,' she insisted.

'Melissa,' Nana said, her voice much more stern.

'I won't hurt your grandson too badly, I promise!'

'Yeah, I'm sure you won't. It isn't him that I'm worried about!'

Danger Sense roared once again, forcing Melissa to jump out of the way of a thunderous kick and swing out of dodge with Blackwhip.

'I need more power if I hope to put him down!' she insisted once again, channeling even more of One For All's power before launching back into the fray with a devastating haymaker to Izuku.

'This is pathetic,' an unfamiliar voice entered the void.

'Oh shit, Second graces us with his presence, too?!' Banjo piped up with exaggerated shock.

'If you can't even take down another teenager, how could you hope to stand up to All For One?' the Second User ignored Banjo and continued.

'We don't even know if he's still around!' Nana cut in.

Melissa reengaged Izuku in a furious flurry with 25% of One For All at her disposal and the tune of the Second User growling in her mind. 'His vestige isn't gone according to Midoriya, so he could potentially come back. We thought he was dead before when Eighth reduced him to armless paste, and look how that turned out.'

'The man is a cockroach at the best of times,' the Third User added in agreement.

'If you two are only going to state the obvious, take your asses back to the timeout corner!' Nana demanded.

'Relax,' the Second User waved her off. 'Hey, Ninth!'

'BUSY!' she mentally shouted back as she and Izuku were locked in a test of strength that was gradually creating a massive crater.

'Thought you wanted our help,' he sarcastically remarked.

'Are you actually going to help, or are you just going to fucking argue amongst each other while I'm in the middle of a fight?!'

'…Fair. Fine, here's some advice. If you want a power-up, use our meta abilities better.'

'Is that supposed to be fucking advice?!' she practically snarled as she was wrapped in violet tendrils and flung out of the crater, then promptly shooting Blackwhip back at him and bringing him along with her.

'Listen! You're already pushing your body past where it can handle with the power stockpile, so try working smarter and not harder with the tools you have at your disposal. Our meta abilities can be used in conjunction to achieve the same outcome you'd get from overloading yourself with the power stockpile without the drawback of killing yourself.'

'…I'm listening.'

'First, my Meta Ability is called Gearshift. It allows me to manipulate the speed at which things accelerate through any space, completely ignoring Newton's First Law.'

'That's…'

'Busted as hell in concept, yeah, I know. Unfortunately, I could only do so on small objects, but I had excellent control over it. That restriction does not apply to you, but neither does that benefit.'

A vicious kick from Melissa smashed through an orange barrier, but that extra fraction of a second that Izuku planned on capitalizing on was nullified by a jet of air from her heel slamming into his face, allowing her to create some distance.

'Okay…' she probed.

'Gearshift has merged with One For All, and as a result, it's been boosted to such a point that it can not only work on much larger, more complex objects, but also down to the cellular level, meaning you can use it on yourself.'

'So, I could theoretically make myself faster than the speed of sound using just your quirk alone?'

'In theory, but I wouldn't recommend it. Again, it has become really difficult to control, and the strain is so great that it will take you down within minutes if you use the full extent of it. Your body will not receive enough oxygen to function, and you're no use to anyone while blacked out. At that level, it's a last resort in its current state.'

A plume of purple smoke exploded out of her and blanketed the area, allowing her to quietly float away outside of Izuku's notice. 'I sense a "but" coming.'

'Smart girl. With all of that in mind, using Gearshift in split-second bursts, while not necessarily painless, will give you the benefits you're looking for when used in conjunction with Fa Jin and the jets in your boots.'

'I see where you're going with this,' Melissa nodded. 'Build up enough kinetic energy to release one big burst, launch with the jets, hyper-accelerate with Gearshift, and I have to do it all at once. Timing would be everything.'

'Sounds about right.'

Melissa nodded, then she anchored herself between two buildings with Blackwhip and steadily backed up while repeatedly bending her knees to build up energy for Fa Jin, preparing to bungee herself straight toward Izuku once he got fed up and dispersed the smokescreen. She only had to wait a few seconds longer for exactly that to happen, and Izuku was in her line of sight, she blasted off.

At that moment, four things happened simultaneously.

One, the air jets on Melissa's boots fired. That was supposed to happen.

Two, she released the energy she built up through Fa Jin. Again, that was supposed to happen.

Three, she accelerated herself as much as she could in a split-second to seal the deal. All was going to plan.

Four, though, was that Danger Sense was not simply roaring at her, but it was practically slamming her with a tidal wave of painful anxiety. That was not part of the plan.

What she realized upon examining Izuku as she rapidly approached him was that his quirk was behaving differently than she was used to. His multicolored flames were present, but they were substantially more intense than normal, and she could feel the power he radiated slam into her like a freight train. The smoke hadn't been dispersed by a burst of air like last time, but merely by the burst of power that erupted from him. It finally dawned on her that Danger Sense was warning her about him.

She wasn't going to halt her advance or change direction, though. She was in way too deep to give up now, so she would weaponize the power she had unleashed and slam her fist into him as hard as she damn well could!

Izuku did not agree with that assessment, however. Even though the time between her blasting off and reaching him was so much shorter than it had been when she got the drop on him earlier, Izuku sidestepped the punch as if she were moving in slow motion to him. She turned her head slightly to the left to look up at him, and she was met with the most calm, blank gaze she had ever seen staring back down at her. Then, Izuku's foot slammed into her gut, and it was one of the hardest blows she had ever endured from anyone, Uncle Might and Gran Torino included. Before she was launched straight up into the air, she did manage to mush his face with her palm, activating Gearshift on him in that split-second, and as she was rocketed to Mars, Izuku inexplicably flew backward and slammed into the wall behind him.

As Melissa attempted to regain her bearings, the vestiges of One For All were abuzz with shock, incredulity, and smug vindication in the case of one of them.

'So, what was that about her being unable to take down a teenager?' Nana smugly asked the Second User.

He picked his jaw up from the ground with some assistance from an equally flummoxed Third User, and he took a moment to process what he had just seen. They had slapped together a pretty solid plan on the fly, one that probably would have been a one-hitter quitter on literally anyone else. And he just… stepped aside like the speed she was traveling at was trivial to him.

'I apologize,' the Second User said, surprising everyone in the void. 'I wasn't familiar with his game.'

It was the Third who spoke up next. 'Gotta be honest, it kinda felt like we were back up against All For One just now. Not in terms of malicious aura, but purely in sheer presence.'

Shinomori regained himself enough to throw his own observation in. 'I don't think I have ever felt my quirk ping that strongly for anyone… EVER. Ninth, I don't think you stood a chance to begin with if he had THAT in his back pocket the entire time.'

'I said my genes were impeccable, and I've been proven right once again,' Nana gloated.

Melissa heard it all, and she couldn't find it within herself to disagree with anything stated. Not even her pride was bullheaded enough to compel her to be angry at him for still holding back throughout that whole fight. It was an amazingly fun experience regardless.

As she plummeted back to Earth, she spotted something curious: her teammate was being chased by two giant robots, and he looked panicked beyond belief. Remembering that she could literally float, Melissa halted her descent and got a better look at the approaching titans. Shinso was definitely in trouble, and his red face pouring with sweat told her that he wouldn't last much longer.

"I should probably lend a hand with that," she mused aloud, ignoring the snorts in her head.

Blasting off with her jets, she rocketed toward the fracas and snagged Shinso with Blackwhip, carrying him out of the robots' reach before jetting into the face of one of them. With a single (granted, absurdly powerful) uppercut, the robot was knocked off of its feet and out of commission. An army of Blackwhip tendrils caught the robot before it could tumble over, though, and Melissa spun in place, picking up the titanic machine along the way and twirling it around before slamming it into the other robot.

The resulting explosion rocked the entire training ground and beyond, even knocking many of the students and teachers viewing the battle off of their feet. The fireball could have been seen all the way from Nezu's office, though he and Eri were already watching the battle with popcorn on one of the monitors in the room.

Meanwhile, Shinso was gawking at Melissa. The two giant machines of automated death that had been chasing him through the entire training ground were reduced to a shower of nuts, bolts, burned armor plating, and Power Loader's tears.

"Um," he stammered, trying and only partially succeeded in getting his words together. "So, uh, were you able to take down Midoriya?"

"Nope," she simply replied with a smile. There was not a hint of annoyance, frustration, or even a downcast expression present. She just answered the question like it was an unalienable fact of life.

"Right," Shinso sighed in resignation.

Unbeknownst to him, a similar dynamic was taking place on the ground a little bit away from the blast zone. Mineta and Yui had taken cover from the explosion, and Mineta was absolutely beside himself in the aftermath. Their two aces in the hole had just been eliminated in short order by a gender-swapped All Might, and he felt like he was the only one who saw anything wrong with that.

"How can you be so casual about this?!" Mineta questioned Yui. "She just destroyed two giant robots- YOUR giant robots- in seconds!"

Yui simply shrugged. "I have others."

A moment of silence fell over the two as Mineta's brain just about broke.

"Of course you do," he sighed in resignation, unknowingly in stereo with Shinso.

Suddenly, the two were snagged by two of Pony's horns from behind, lifting them into the air while Pony herself finally arrived at the scene. Thinking quickly, Yui reached into her belt for any of the remaining constructs Izuku had given her, but they were gone, meaning they had likely fizzled out already. Cursing, she pulled out a ball bearing and enlarged it to the size of a beach ball before lobbing it straight at Mineta. The bearing collided with him and knocked him out of the air (she'd apologize for the crude solution later), and then she enlarged the horn carrying her until it was wide enough to cover the entire corridor, clipping Melissa and Shinso out of the air, as well.

It was then that Izuku, having only now recovered from a bout of motion sickness, registered what was happening and sprang into action. 2nd Gear roaring back to life, Izuku practically flickered on top of the giant horn and took Yui into his grasp before stomping it back to the ground, a faint call of "Release" slipping into the wind as the horn and earlier ball bearing returned to their original sizes. After depositing her back to the ground, Izuku spotted a barrage of horns headed their way from his periphery, and an orange barrier went up with a mere click of his heel. Then, surprising even himself, he kicked the barrier towards Pony and forced her to cut her Thunder Horn short and take flight again. He didn't even know he could do that, but he'd think about it later.

Izuku zoomed away to draw Pony's attention away from his teammates, and Pony happily obliged by chasing after him.

"The itsy bitsy Beacon went up the water spout. Down came Rocketti and snuffed the Beacon out!" she gleefully sang, firing more of her horns at him with the intent of keeping him busy long enough for Melissa and Shinso to mop up the others.

However, Izuku had made a habit of disagreeing with one's plans for him and then promptly turning them on their head, which was what he did when he turned around and joined her in the sky. Pony, having completely forgotten that Izuku was more than capable of flight in the confusion of the battle, was not prepared for him to barrel into her like the Man of Steel himself, and she certainly wasn't prepared to be flown directly to jail to join Tsuburaba in a matter of seconds.

"HOLY SHIT, WHERE DID YOU COME FROM?!" Tsuburaba shouted as Izuku dumped a dizzy Pony into the jail.

"The tabloids say Endeavor was pregnant with All Might's baby," Izuku shrugged before blasting off again.

Yui and Mineta were doing their best to hold off Melissa and Shinso while Izuku was disposing of Pony, but it wasn't an easy task. Mineta found that the weird, black whips that Melissa was able to produce were more than capable of fending off the stickiness of his quirk, and Yui could only do so much to keep Shinso's capture scarf at bay. Fortunately, there was a wealth of rubble left over from Izuku and Melissa's fight for her to play around with, so Shinso found himself having to dodge sprays of enlarged chunks of concrete, giant pipes, and even more giant debris left over from the robots.

Mineta wasn't so lucky, though. He tried to restrain her with his Ultimate Move, Mineta Beads, but she deftly evaded the attack and batted him away, sending him crashing against a wall. With him presumably out of the fight, that left Melissa to assist in the stalemate between Shinso and Yui, at least that was the plan until she felt something holding her in place. She turned around to find that Mineta had succeeded in sticking the long string of Pop Off balls to her back, and it kept her in place just long enough for Yui to toss something in the air above Melissa before releasing her quirk, returning a massive chunk of the chassis of one of the Zero-Pointers to its proper size. Unable to dodge, Melissa was forced to catch the heavy hunk of metal and buckle under its weight while Yui returned her attention to Shinso.

Seeing the situation devolve, Shinso decided to forego capturing her from a distance and get in close. Anticipating this, Yui brandished her last handful of pocket sand and made a show of winding up to throw it. Remembering what happened the last time he came at her in particular with sand involved, Shinso involuntarily flinched and shut his eyes to prevent the same fate from happening again.

"Flinched," Yui snorted before blasting him with a wave of enlarged sand.

With that taken care of, she dusted off her hands and leisurely strolled over to the struggling Melissa. She silently kneeled to her level and locked eyes with her, aqua meeting cerulean in an awkward stare down. What made it so awkward was that Melissa had to maintain her focus on keeping the weight of the metal from crashing down onto her while Yui dispassionately stared down at her and simply watched her struggle. It was one of the most unnerving things Melissa had ever experienced.

She soon had enough of the interaction, though, so she slowly forced herself to a standing position and heaved the chassis away from them with as much energy as she could muster after such a long, draining battle. She still had enough left in the tank to take Yui down, but she definitely didn't have enough to counter the sudden impact of Izuku's foot in her ribs. The kick sent her flying away, but violet tendrils struck out like vipers and coiled around her, snapping her back towards Izuku to be clotheslined and slammed to the concrete. The strain of the battle, pushing One For All past her limits, using Gearshift more than once, and being tossed around like a rag doll by Izuku finally compounded, and the last dregs of consciousness were beginning to escape her.

"This was fun," she muttered with a pained smile. "We should do this again."

"Anytime, dude," Izuku replied with a smile of his own.

With Melissa losing consciousness, that left only Shinso to deal with. The gravelly coughing of shoes scraping along concrete drew his attention to the boy in question as he stumbled over to them, obviously doing his best to not totally collapse to the ground.

"Midoriya," he growled, continuing his unsteady approach. "You and me, right here. No fancy quirks, no fancy support items, just us."

Izuku stared blankly at him, then he turned to Yui and Mineta who only offered blank stares in return. He shrugged, and then he approached Shinso with no real sense of urgency. Shinso put his fists up in a wobbly stance, but Izuku continued his steady meander. Soon, Izuku was within striking distance, and Shinso threw a slow, tired punch that was easily blocked and discarded. Rather than strike back, however, Izuku placed two fingers on Shinso's forehead and tipped him over, sending him to the ground in a boneless heap. The boy was running purely on adrenaline and spite, and the adrenaline had finally worn off.

Once Izuku, Yui, and Mineta closed the gate on Team 1 in their jail cell, the horn blared throughout the training ground, and the final match of the day was over.

Aizawa could feel the migraine developing already. This match was by far the most destructive, which he sort of expected would be the case, but the thing that rankled him the most was that his favorite problem child hadn't even used any of the ultra-destructive techniques that Aizawa should have banned him from ever performing again for the sake of his sanity, and yet, they still exceeded his expectations for how badly the training ground would be laid to waste. The worst part? He couldn't even say he wasn't proud of everyone involved. His and Vlad's little psychos gave it their all and left everything out there, and that went for everyone who had fought today.

"That… was a fight," Vlad King remarked, wiping away a lone tear.

"Anyone stand out to you as unfit for work-study?" Aizawa questioned.

"Honestly? No. I think they're all ready to take the leap if they so choose."

"Apologies for being the only one to be captured," Shishida lamented as their team made their way back to their classmates.

"Don't sweat it, dude," Mineta replied. "Without you, Kodai and I would've been toast pretty early on."

"You were exactly the feral beast we needed when Tsunotori and Shinso had us cornered," Yui added.

"I appreciate that," Shishida thanked them with a smile, and then a wistful sigh escaped him. "If only I could go wild like that all of the time. Liberation will be upon Japan soon enough, I suppose."

Izuku froze at the utterance of those words. Mineta and Shishida didn't notice, but Yui did.

"Is everything okay?" she asked, keeping her voice low when she followed his gaze to Shishida's back.

"…Yeah, everything's fine," Izuku assured. "I think I just misheard him."

Yui wasn't entirely convinced, but she didn't press the issue. Izuku, meanwhile, kept his narrowed gaze locked onto Shishida's back as they continued their trek back to the others.

It's okay to not be okay sometimes. I hope you're all doing well. You're all wonderful people, and you mean a lot to a lot of others. Reward yourself with a pizza for simply existing because that shit's tough occasionally, and you deserve to be appreciated every once in a while, even if it's by yourself.

Thanks for reading.