Fair warning - This is one part fanfic, one part writing exercise. Ill deviate from the cannon a bit, but overall the story will be pretty recognizable. So, sorry if you're not up for this. If you are, then let's take a look at what's what, shall we?

It wasn't long after returning to the classrooms that Midoriya noticed the bandages, previously wrapped firmly around his shattered arms, were slipping, loosening the grip they had around his recently healed limbs. He had tried tightening them himself, but since both his hands were totally battered, he had no success with this. Fighting Todoroki had left him absolutely beaten and broken, - Literally - struggling to even move his fingers until they had recovered. Even after recovering thanks to Recovery Girl's Quirk, he was still having trouble getting the feeling back into his fingers. Previous experience had taught him that he would need a short while before he would be able to feel the nerves in his hands fully again.

He decided that he'd have to go to see Recovery Girl again before he left today, so she could see if she could fix the bandages. The last thing he needed was his arms breaking again because he'd not bothered to get the faulty healing appendages looked at. He was already on slippery terms with the school nurse due to his overuse of his Quirk, and he didn't want to have to report to her the next day with another injury, particularly after the warning she had given him.

Coincidentally, the broken boy had arrived at his classroom door at the same time as another one of his classmates. The girl in front of him seemed to have just reached the door handle herself when she must have heard his footsteps from further down the corridor, as she turned her head in curiosity to see who it was, even though she had her hands on the classroom door handle. Mina Ashido, one of the classmates the awkward teenager hadn't spoken to particularly often. She wasn't an easy girl to miss, either, which made their lack of interaction somewhat more bizarre. Pink skin and equally pink, and messy hair, horns atop her head, and black sclera in her eyes, finished by yellow iris's that stood out like a firework against the night. She wasn't the kind of person you saw every day. She had changed from her gym clothes to the standard school uniform, as had Midoriya, although certain liberties had to be made thanks to the bandages he now wore. He had to wear his school jacket like a cloak around his neck, as opposed to Ashido, whom was able to properly and, surprisingly, given her personality, neatly.

Upon seeing him, Mina seemed to smile at him, removing her hand from their classrooms humongous door's handle and waved to him energetically, despite him being only a few meters away from her. "Midoriya!"

Not having spoken to her too much before, Midoriya broke into a small sweat, not too sure how to proceed with conversing with Ashido. Based on what little he knew about her, she was very sociable, energetic, and informal. He took a short intake of air before he responded, his wobbly smile forming in one corner of his mouth. "H-Hey, Ashido-san." One had to question how he was nervous when it came to interacting with people he'd not known all that well. For God's sake, he'd taken on villains, and had just a few hours ago, basically dared, and forced Todoroki to shoot fire – Freaking fire! - At him! How did he even possess the ability to be nervous when talking to his classmate?!

Ashido seemed to beam at his response, skipping over to him, and turning heel when she lined up next to him. There was just a short space between Midoriya and the door, so it hadn't really made a difference. "You doin' okay?"

"Urm... I guess the best I can be, considering..." Midoriya responded. Aside from the broken bones that were healing up, and reeling from the loss he had suffered, he was actually feeling okay about things. He wasn't entirely sure how they would pan out over the next few days, but he felt oddly optimistic about them.

"Good, good!" Another bright smile came from the pink skinned girl. Midoriya could dare say that her smile was contagious, because he found himself smiling just a little as the two of them interacted. He liked Ashido okay enough. She seemed to be a nice, if overzealous, sort of person. Their lack of conversation up until this point made it hard to guess if she was trying to get something out of him, or if she was just genuinely trying to have a pleasant conversation with him, not that it was unwelcome. The girl's mannerisms and actions seemed to suggest the latter, which Midoriya openly welcomed. "You need me to get the door for you?"

"I-If you don't mind..."

"No sweat!" Ashido took a few quickened steps forward, and flung the door open a bit faster than need be, and holding it open so Midoriya could step through with minimal difficulty. He thanked the hyperactive girl as he walked past her, and she made her way to her seat.

Taking special care to not upset Bakugou, as Midoriya was convinced the blond boy would actually kill him if he pissed him off, given the furious glare he was giving the wall, with his first place medal still hanging from his mouth, Midoriya took his own seat behind the raging Explosive Quirk user, resting his shattered arms on the desk the best he could, trying not to upset the delicate hold the bandages had, wrapped around him.

He was more than aware of some of the looks his classmates were giving him. His fight had been, to many, the highlight of the entire festival, even more so than the finals, within their group, anyway. They'd all seen Midoriya fight in a way they had never seen before, throw himself into the fray with no regard for his well-being in a way none of them had expected, and had gone toe to toe with the person everyone had considered to be the single strongest person in their entire class, and push him to the point of breaking his one rule of never using the Pyrokinetic aspect of his Quirk, and nearly beaten him. Even when he was supposed to be taking Todoroki down, he had displayed that altruism that everyone knew him for, despite it having been none of his business to do so.

It was a side that no one had ever expected someone as meek as Midoriya to display.

The gutsy part of him. That part of him that thought nothing of broken bones, shattered hands and bloody knuckles in the pursuit of victory and assisting those who needed it. His classmates couldn't help but at least give him a second glance.

Ashido in particular staring at him a bit longer than most others were, although Midoriya didn't notice this particular detail.

It wasn't long before Aizawa came into the room, still wrapped up like a mummy in the bandages he had received from the USJ fight, and announced, "Due to the nature of the Sports Day Festival, you'll have tomorrow and the next day off to recover." It actually came as a surprise to the inheritor of One For All that Yuuei would allow their students time off, even in these circumstances. Part of him actually felt disappointed about it, now more motivated than ever to learn, to train, to become a Hero. But when he remembered the state he was in, he resigned that it probably was for the best.

Today was Wednesday, meaning the days the class had off were Thursday and Friday. The weekend rolled in after that, totalling up at a four day break from attending classes. In middle school, such a lengthy break would have called for a celebration, and would have made the classmates he had back then too happy to bother bullying him for his lack of a Quirk. (Thinking back on it, Midoriya wondered if any of his former classmates had watched his participation in the events today.)

For the elite students of Class 1-A, however, a four day grace period before they could get back to work almost felt like a kick in the teeth. Each and every one of them had signed up for the hardest tasks and to keep pushing themselves both physically and academically in order to become the very best they could be. Being told that they couldn't due to this was almost saddening. But none of them complained, at least vocally. They all knew they needed the rest, deep down, though they may not have liked to admit it. Some of them had injuries that needed time to recover. Some of them, particularly Todoroki, with the family issues he suffered regularly, and Iida, wherever he was right now, had emotional issues they had to clear up before they could return to give it their optimum efforts.

This was for the best. A few days or boredom was preferable to failing their classes for the next couple days.

Students raised from their seats, filtering out of the room once they had acquired their belongings, some leaving far more vocally and explosively than others, until it was just Uraraka and Midoriya, Midoriya trying to tighten up what he could of the bandages, and Uraraka looking at him like he'd just gone feral. The fact the white material was now in his mouth between a set of clenched teeth didn't do anything to help the messy green haired boy's image.

"Um, Deku?" The Zero-Gravity Quirk holder asked, concerned, "What the heck are you doing?"

Midoriya only just realised that his friend had been stood there with her mouth slightly ajar at his curious behaviour, watching him, from an outsiders perspective, attempt to chew off the medical equipment designed to aid his recovery. "O-Oh! My - The bandages are sort of loose! I - I'm just trying to keep them from falling off!" His awkward reply was only amplified thanks to him talking without removing said bandages from his mouth. Realising this only embarrassed him further, so he allowed the object to fall from his mouth, and awkwardly smiled at his friend. "I - I'm going to see Recovery Girl, and I kinda don't want her to yell at me. Eh heh heh..." He laughed quietly, knowing it wasn't really that funny.

Thankfully, Uraraka knew how shy and awkward he was, and accepted his reasoning and silly actions reasonably quickly. Mercifully, she moved along with the conversation, sparing Midoriya and further embarrassment. "Do you want me to wait for you?"

"That's - That's okay. You go on ahead. I'd like to think about some things on my own if that's okay."

"Okay, Deku." The browned haired girl nodded at him, adding on her affectionate nickname for him. "Make sure not to fall over on your way there."

That would hurt, a lot, Midoriya thought, shivering at the prospect. "R-Right... Thanks..." Sometimes, he really wished that his friend would think before she spoke, if only for his own reassurances.

With that, she left him alone in the classroom. Once she was gone, he let out a long winded sigh. The truth was, he just felt like being alone for a little while. Just to let himself contemplate the day gone by. He picked himself up, and made his way to Recovery Girl's office.

She wasn't happy to see him back again so soon after sending him out of her office with a slap on the wrist and a warning. She honestly had expected, knowing Midorya, that he had broken his body once again trying to save someone or something equally dumb and selfless, like getting a cat out of a tree. She was almost prepared to chase him out of the room while wielding a nearby rigid piece of equipment, but once he managed to stutter out his reason for being here, she quickly calmed down, and tended to the bandages in silence.

There was a certain sense of calm that befell Midoriya when Recovery Girl never questioned him about his Quirk. She knew everything. About All Might. About One For All. About his previously Quirkless nature. It felt good to not have to hide that from her. That at least one person knew about who he really was. He appreciated and respected Recovery Girl as a member of Yuuei for just that reason. Although he had to admit, she was a very stubborn sort of person when she wanted to be. Her refusal to treat his injuries any further left him in a bad position - Either stop using One For All, suffer the large recovery time it would take to heal from his Quirks backlash naturally, or find a better way to handle said power.

The first two were totally out of the question. And he wasn't sure how to go about doing that last one. He had felt he was making steady, if painful, progress to achieving better control over his bestowed power. That had partly been in thanks to the knowledge he could be healed if he became injured. That service now stripped away from him, he wasn't sure how to proceed.

Thanking Recovery Girl, Midoriya left the nurses office, his bandages now firmly secured, and began to make his way off of the school premises. Glancing at the clock, he saw that he had missed his usual train ride back home, or more accurately, there was no way he'd be able to get there in time in his current state. A new train came at quarter to the hour every hour. He wouldn't be waiting for too long, so it wasn't like it would be a huge problem.

He'd only just gotten past the gates of the school parameter, when he heard his name being called out from behind him, along with the crunching sounds of rapid footsteps. "Midoriya! Waaaaaait uuuuup!"

Quickly turning around, mostly on reflex, Midoriya was just in time to see what he could only describe as a pink blur skidding to a half on the heels of her shoes, kicking up a bit of a dust cloud that caught onto the young Hero in training's uniform, so he had to shield his eyes to prevent any debris from hitting his eyes from it. "A - Ashido-san?"

"Yep!" Ashido confirmed, standing up on her tip-toes so she was just that tiny bit higher than her male classmate. Without this small boost in her height, she stood just a couple of inches shorter than her male classmate, even with her horns included. "We seem to keep running into each other a lot today, huh?" this was the second time, but Midoriya kept that thought to himself. "You headed to the subway now?"

Her mouth was running at a mile a minute, requiring her conversation partner to need a second to process the words she had said and put them into a complete sentence before he could make an appropriate, if short response. "Y-Yes."

"Mind if I tag along with you?"

"S-Sure thing." He would have preferred to walk alone, to go over the day's fights in his head, but he would have felt a lot ruder if he just turned her away when she had so kindly asked him. He decided in that split second that it wouldn't be that bad to go with her. They were both heading to the same location anyway, so it wasn't like he could avoid her even if he wanted to.

"Yay!" Ashido cheered by throwing her hands into the air in an overly dramatic fashion, and jumping in line with Midoriya once again. The two of them walked in sync, Ashido leading most of the conversation. "Your fight with Todoroki was amazing! You were all like 'Bam-Bam-Bam!' And Todoroki was like 'Boom-Boom-Boom!'" With each one of her short, but accurate descriptive words, she threw a punch in the air in front of her, expelling all that pent up energy she seemed to generate at a rapid scale. "It was super intense!"

"Y-Yeah... It was pretty tense, huh?" The loser of the battle she was describing agreed. It had been a very tense fight, although he had been in a ton of pain for each second of it.

"It was totally cool how you forced him into using his fire power! I've never seen him pushed that far before! You're really strong!"

"You - You think so?"

"Yeah dude! Not even those villains back at USJ could force him to use his fire! I thought he was the strongest in our class for sure..." Ashido swayed her hips from side to side, her skirt following as she did so. He tilted her head and leaned forward, so she could clearly look at the face of her classmate. "I'm starting to think it might be you now."

Midoriya laughed awkwardly, a bead of sweat running down his forehead. An example of Ashido's excitable and overenthusiastic nature. "I - I wouldn't go that far... I - I mean, it took its toll on me. I had to push myself to the limits to even get him to use his fire, a-and he beat me in one move with it!"

Folding her arms and puffing out her cheeks, Ashido looked straight ahead, like she was thinking very hard about what to say in response to that. It wasn't really a statement she could argue with, since the fight had left Midoriya with broken bones once again. She almost could have looked like she was sulking if she hadn't spoken up again with, "Your Quirk really is strange, y'know?"

"O-Oh?"

"Every time you use it your body breaks. It's weird, ya know? And it sucks too. It's such a strong power. It's like if my Acid burned me every time I used it." Comparing their Quirks wasn't the best subject, not that she knew that fact. While Ashido was born with her power, Midoriya's had been passed down to him. But he understood the logic of what she was saying, and from an outside perspective, it would seem peculiar that his own Quirk violently harmed him like it did from only one use. It would be more understandable if it happened over multiple uses, like a drawback to pushing past his limits, like Uraraka's nausea or Todoroki's frostbite from overusing their respective powers, but from a single use? Midoriya couldn't blame Ashido for thinking that his Quirk was strange.

"I-I guess so, huh! Hahahaha!" He laughed a bit louder and more obviously forced than he would have ever liked to have in any conversation with literally anyone. He even got a few odd glances from some of the people walking past the two Yuuei students, as well as Ashido.

Surprisingly enough though, she didn't seem to think too much of it. She just shrugged her shoulders, readjusting her heavily decorated backpack, and smirked, glancing at him with her yellow iris from the corner of her eyes. "So it's not just you that's strange, but your power is too."

"What - What do you mean by that?"

"I just found it odd that someone who has such an awesome Quirk could be so... Wimpy..."

That elicited a genuine laugh from Midoriya, albeit an awkward one, since Ashido had technically insulted him. He was certain she didn't mean any offence though. She was a bit like Asui in that respect. "You - You don't mince your words, do you?"

"But when you try to help people, you suddenly become this badass fighter!" This was the first time that Midoriya outright blushed at the compliments that were being thrown at him by the pink haired girl. Sure, he'd been red in the face basically the entire time, but that was par for the course with him whenever he received such praise. This was an outright blush that warmed his cheeks. "I don't think there's a lot of people who could throw themselves at an enemy when they know that they'll definitely break their bones. I think its super cool!"

Unsure how to respond to that, Midoriya just smiled to himself as both he and Ashido walked down the steps to the subway lines. He felt... Really good about himself right now. All his life, he'd wanted to be a really cool, calm, and inspiring Hero to people who could watch him and think, 'That's such a cool Hero!' Hearing that compliment from someone who had watched him fight and said this themselves... Midoriya just didn't know how to express his gratitude. His warm red blush now covered his freckles, masking them in a surrounding of scarlet, and he felt his heart rate quickening just that bit faster.

Upon the inspection of the train times, Ashido let out a long groan as her head slumped forward, her arms limp at her sides, like every time Midoriya broke his arm. "Aaaaaawwwwwww maaaaaaaaaan. I missed my train. I'm gonna be here ageeeeeees!"

Glancing at the timetable, Midoriya saw that his own train was due in just a few minutes. The next one wouldn't be arriving for another hour if he missed it, so he didn't want to stay around, but he felt bad for Ashido. "What - What number is your train?"

"Hrm?" Ashido glanced at Midoriya before she took another look at the time table to get the number again. "Three-Seven-Two."

Smiling, Midoriya informed her, "There's a train with that number that leaves from my home station, actually. I think it sets off sooner than the one here." Pure luck, as it were. Pure luck that Midoriya just happened to be the person Ashido had been walking with, and that he was the sort of person who just happened to remember all this random trivia.

"Really?!" The pink girl's black eyes somehow seemed to sparkle at Midoriya's sentence. The life seemed to have been shot back into her at the base of the spine, a very rapid turnaround from just a few moments ago.

Taking just a second to make sure he wasn't wrong, the green haired boy did a quick run through of all the trains that he saw at his local subway station each and every day. "Let me think... I normally get on the train that I missed today that leaves at around 4PM and arrives at home about half an hour later. I leave and get onto the station and there's always a line of trains to the right hand side..." He began his usual muttering that he did whenever deep in thought, which earned him an odd look from the girl with the Acid Quirk, since this was the first time she had seen his legendary muttering in person. Nodding his head, he reaffirmed his statement. "Yep, I'm sure of it. It leaves about five minutes after my train gets back. I'm pretty sure it takes a faster route too."

"You're kidding!" Ashido seemed to bounce up and down with excitement over this new information she was being presented with. She was almost like a kid at Christmas opening a new gift. "Can I travel with you then?" When Midoriya nodded his head - What else could he do? Say no, turn heel and run for it? - Ashido had to physically stop herself from hugging the boy, and she came very close to doing so, before she remembered his multiple shattered limbs. Instead, she just placed her hands in his shoulders and continued to bounce up and down in her trademarked zeal. "You're the best, Midori!"

He had to blush at that name. When had he turned from Midoriya to Midori? He didn't let the thoughts of that cloud his mind for too long, since he had to lead his classmate to the train that he normally captured back home before it departed from the station and left them both stranded on the station in the middle of Tokyo. They had to run a bit of the last leg of their journey to Midoriya's normal platform, since there were so many people using the subway that day, many of them most likely spectators from the Yuuei Sports festival. Once on the train with just a few seconds to spare, both the students both caught their breath, and shared a small laugh at how hectic the trip to their train had been.

They both found a set of empty seats that they both sat at, Ashido insisting that Midoriya take the window seat, since he was still injured, and engaged in further conversation with one another. Being within close proximity to the girl led Midoriya to a few observations he may not have otherwise made when it came to Ashido.

First and foremost, he noticed that she had a very unique scent to her, and while thinking that sentence alone was enough to make Midoriya blush, he realised it was most likely akin to the type of shampoo she applied to her hair. Bubble-gum and citron. That's what he first thought of when he first caught scent of it.

Secondly, was that she had a very pretty smile. Being so close to her, Midoriya was able to note her smile seemed to brighten up the entire subway. It was infectious, as though no choice of his own, he found himself smiling alongside her, for no reason whatsoever. It would have made him blush were the grin on his face not taking up the space that he had to do so.

The girl also possessed more energy than Midoriya even knew a single person could contain. She was the sort of person who would look out the window and become enthused by a new brick texture that had some colourful graffiti spray - painted onto it.

Taking a few seconds out of their conversation to check the Hero news, as he always like to do on his journeys to and from school, Midoriya scanned over a few articles that were currently trending. Nothing on Iida's brother, he noted. It wasn't surprising, since it was a very recent development, but still, he worried for his friend.

"Hey Midoriya. What about your arms? When will they be healed?"

"Um... Recovery Girl said to leave them on today and tomorrow... And then I can take them off when I wake up on Saturday..." He didn't take his eyes off his phone as he read a story about a thug who used a Quirk that allowed him to turn his body into grass to fight off the custody enforcement officers during a chase.

"Sooooo, what're you gonna be doing for our time off?" Ashido asked, leaning over her classmates shoulder to see what he was reading. Her voice was a lot closer to his ears than he was used to when she did this, which caused him to jump back a bit from her.

"O - Oh... Um..." His hand containing his phone now rested on his lap, and he looked up to face the pink-skinned girl. There wasn't really an answer he could give without giving away the sheer levels of hardiness that he exhibited, so he just decided to be honest. "I guess just studying."

"Is that all you do?" A raised eyebrow came alongside the response.

"N - No!" Suddenly, he felt embarrassed. Did he seriously give off the sort of impression that all he did was sit in his room and study all day? Did all his classmates have that mental perception of him?

"What else do you do then?"

"I... Lift weights?" It was more like a question than it was a statement, and even then, it was a fairly mediocre response at best. From anyone else, it would sound like he was attempting to boast about his weightlifting, whereas with Midoriya, it was probably the furthest thing from what he was doing. It almost sounded like he was pitying himself.

"You don't go out and just do stuff for fun a lot, huh?" Ashido sounded almost sympathetic, sad nearly, like she'd just found out a little kid she had been looking after had never been to a theme park.

"I - I guess not." Since before he had even enrolled in Yuuei Academy, Midoriya had barely had any free time to do anything he normally considered fun. His pastimes before All Might had thrown his working regime at the Quirkless Hero admirer had involved reading from his impressive collection of Superhero comics and reading about various Pro-Heroes online.

He hadn't gotten out much, even when he had had every opportunity to do so. He attributed it to his lack of friends due to growing up without a Quirk. No one wanted much of anything to do with him because of it. He hadn't had a reason to go out and experience anything like that in his life.

It wasn't something that particularly bothered Midoriya. Not that he opposed the concept of just having fun with friends for a few hours at a carnival or something along the lines, but in all honesty, all he had ever wanted to do as a child was prepare for when he grew up and became a Hero. It had been a one track-life for him so far, but he couldn't begin to think of any other way he'd wanted to spend his childhood.

Aside from maybe having a Quirk.

"I know what you need!" Ashido acted without warning, and snatched the phone straight out of Midoriya's hands. With honestly impressive speed, she flipped out her own phone and began running through her contacts while scanning through Midoriya's. She noticed that on the list of contacts he had, the only two he had favourited were his mother's and Uraraka's. After quickly typing in her own number, and getting Midoriya's number for her own phone, she took the liberty of marking herself as a favourite on the boy's phone, her name now at the top of his contact list since her name was alphabetically the earliest on in his favourites list. She also made note to add two wave symbols at the start and end of her name before she gave the boy his phone back.

Stunned by the immensely fast interaction, Midoriya had to confess, he was amazed with just how speedy she was when it came to mobile technology when she wanted to be. She had only had hold of his phone for about ten seconds before she was handing it back to him with a new contact logged into it. "What the -"

"Your bandages come off Saturday, right?" Ashido stood up suddenly. Glancing around, Midoriya was amazed that he hadn't noticed the train had stopped, at his usual station no less! He struggled up, but kindly, his fellow student helped him out of his predicament with a fond smile. "We should hang out!"

"H-Huh?!"

The horned girl held up her phone for the plain-looking boy to see, covered in a glittery silver phone case with a bunch of colourful stickers and buttons attached to it. "I've got your number, so I'll text you later, yeah?" She didn't give the confused boy enough time to respond before dashing off, apparently deciding that she could find her train from here, despite having never been to this station before. "Catch you later, Midori!"

"W-Wait a second!" Midoriya called out, but Ashido was already off the train, and lost in the crowd of people. "You don't even know where your train leaves from..." He tried to call out, but as he finished the sentence, his words got quieter and quieter before he just eventually stopped talking. Blinking hard a few times, he inquired himself; What the hell had just happened? Contemplating this very understandable question, alarmed by an announcement, he had to run off of the train before the doors sealed and he ended up somewhere in the central Tokyo district.

That had been a dramatic change of pace, to say the very least. He knew Ashido was impulsive and bombastic when it came to her energy and social interactions, but that had been an unpredictable move. He barely even knew Ashido, and now she was asking him to hang out with her during their time off. And she'd run for it before he could say no. Or yes. She'd just dashed off before he could fully comprehend what she had said to him, now lost in that sea of people, unable to be found, no matter how much she stood out. Mixed into the crowd of brown trench-coats and colourful dressed.

He sighed, hoping that she'd find her way around okay. He would have happily shown her to her station if she'd just waited for him, but evidently, patience wasn't the biggest virtue of Ashido's. It wasn't that the platform was particularly difficult to navigate or anything, but he worried that since it was her first time in this area, she might get turned around. Then again, she seemed to have a talent for figuring things out, however unorthodox those solutions may be.

Curious, he unlocked his phone and swept through his contacts. And he blushed when he saw what name Ashido had put her number as.

~Mina~

"Seven times! Can you believe it?!"

"Nope..." Doing his best to hold his fork in his bandaged hand, Midoriya attempted to jab his cutlery into the freshly cooked egg his mother had served him. His grip wasn't as firm as he would have liked, so his fork ended up skidding across to the other side of the plate, as opposed to scooping up the piece of food. Without the use of his other hand, he couldn't cut up his dinner, nor could he use a knife to scoop the sustenance onto his fork. "Damn!..."

His mother was talking to him about the number of times she had fainted during the Sports Day Festival. Broadcast worldwide, it was a very popular, reoccurring success every time it came around. Midoriya had watched it with his mother many times before his enrolment into the prestigious Yuuei Academy, fascinated and enamoured by all the amazing Quirks and Heroes in training competing in the event. He'd dreamed, but never truly thought that he could be a part of it someday. "I fainted seven whole times during the Cavalry battle! And the last two were from dehydration!"

"You even did better than me in that department..." Midoriya attempted another jab at his meal, but with the same results. His mother sometimes over exaggerated, but judging by the literal mountain of tissues that he'd found nearly enwrapped by when he came through the front door, he wasn't inclined to disbelieve her. To be honest though, he was only half listening. He had way too many things on his mind. Namely, One For All, and Ashido-San.

The pink girl had invaded his thoughts even when back home, the conversations they had engaged in, the laughter they had shared, and the journey back to the familiarity of his neighbourhood. She had managed to systematically make her way into his thoughts while back at home, and dealing with his hypersensitive, caring mother. Midoriya wasn't sure how she had managed that.

Ashido completely juxtaposed the entire way he had grown up. His place of raising had been a place that had felt dark, oppressive, and downright imprisoning at times throughout his childhood. The bullying, the teasing, the bitter disappointment and heartbreak he felt of being Quirkless... Though it had been no fault of her own, his mother had done everything in her limited power to brighten up his world, but in the end, she had just allowed him to remain in the darkness that he seemed to keep crawling back into, hoping that one day, things would get better for him. They had, of course, and his mother had wept maybe three buckets worth of tears when he came home that day and told her about 'His' Quirk. But for the most part? The place felt just... So empty to Midoriya.

But Ashido? Her very existence was an opposition to the conditions in which he had grown up in. She was so bright and cheerful, she could make the night time seem like a dimmer switch at a disco rave. Even her pigmented skin was bright and colourful. The freedom with which she carried herself was like nothing Midoriya had ever seen. She never seemed to hold back, or even really know how to. Throw something at her, and Ashido would go at it with pretty much everything she could manage with no regrets and a smile on her face, unless it was an academic paper of course.

Maybe it was all those things that made her stick to his thoughts like glue when he returned to his home.

"I know you told me your Quirk manifested so unexpectedly, but why does it have to be such a dangerous power?..." His mother said with a sigh, a worried look plastered on her face. "I support you, Izuku, of course I do... But you still make your poor mother worry."

"Right... Sorry..." And that was the other thing. His power just wasn't stable enough to keep going the way he was. He could barely contain the boundless energy of One For All within his fragile body, with no idea how to proceed with how to begin learning to control it. He'd thrown a few 5% punches, but that wasn't to say that he knew how he'd even managed it in the first place. They'd been accidents. Coincidence. Luck of the draw as it were.

He needed a better way.

A way that didn't involve him being a glass cannon anymore. A way that meant he didn't have to rely on everyone else saving him all the time. A way that meant he didn't have to worry anyone anymore.

Through diligence and determination, he'd improved his intellectual capabilities and academia in order to enter Yuuei. Through bravery and a willingness to throw himself into the fray for the sake of others, he'd proven to everyone who ever doubted him that he could become a Hero.

Now he needed all those skills to learn how to utilise One For All, once and for all.

"Do you wanna watch the videos?" His mother asked Midoriya, her voice pepper and upbeat again. "They're in HD! HD!" Living in their sets of flats, they rarely got HD video footage, since it was overly expensive. His mother had made an exception for her son's debut on the sports day.

Midoriya considered for a moment, before he nodded. "Yeah, I think I do... I wanna see a fight I missed."

Welp, this is the first chapter of the first my Hero Academia story that I'm putting out. I said it at the start, and I'll say it again - This is one part fanfic, the other part writing exercise. I'll be deviating from the canon in a few places, but overall, I'll be fairly close where it lies.

Next chapter, I plan on focusing on Mina's perspective, which should certainly be a challenge, and quite a bit of fun. Mina's obviously a favourite of mine, since she's both hilarious and adorable as hell, and I will freely admit I think she's the cutest damn thing in all My Hero Academia - Fight me.

I'ma write this whenever I'm bored and have a few moments to kill, so usually while I'm falling asleep and not reading WhiteRose from RWBY. It's more just a guilty pleasure thing more than anything else, so expect me to have a few ideas in there that I just really wanna write. Hey, if people like this sorta thing, maybe I'll make another one that's a bit more out there. Who knows? I'm in a fairly happy place with my writing these days, so

Since I got a shout out from him, and because I freaking adore his work so I'd do this anyways, be sure to check out SecondaryVulpine's Urban Ultra story if you haven't already. Trust me, it's freaking hilarious, and it's apparently the only multiple chapter story of MinaXIzuku, so it's a win-win. Well, I like it anyway. You can find it one FF. Net or Ao3. Either one works.

Until next time guys! See ya!