A breeze blew across Japan.

From Tokyo, heading south, the wind wound itself through cities and waves and people until it blew across the mountains. Wherever it blew, people felt the distinct feeling of eyes on their back and laughter in their ear. Some of them tasted possibility and salt in the breeze while others ran to lock themselves in their homes. The wind didn't stop until it crossed the mountains into Owase. It wasn't odd for a strong wind to blow through the cove, but this one was odd. Everyone seemed to know that, but not many could place their fingers on why.

Truth be told, this wasn't just wind, but a message of sorts. Not the type that many enjoyed getting, you understand. Fae are tricky at best, and most people run when they feel a swarm running amok in their city.

Ochako didn't really know what the Fae were. She only knew that they were tricky, that they were magic and that seeing them was… something. Ask enough people and you'd get a million different answers either way and millions in between. What she did know was that most people went their entire lives only catching a glimpse of a Fae's shadow, and that was more than enough for her grandmother and her uncle.

She gaped openly, staring downwind as countless tiny shapes danced in the breeze, dragging it along behind them like a fishing net. There had to have been a hundred of the creatures and twice that many colors in their glassy wings and fluttering clothes. Rainbows danced over the pavement around her as they passed over her, cheering and flirting and insulting the people on the street.

"Ochako, listen," an old voice whispered in her ear, "if you ever see a Fae, you be polite. Be as polite as possible and then you run. Don't let them give you the chance, just run. They'll make it sound like they let you, and that you sold your soul and more for the chance to get away from them!"

Part of her wanted to listen, to run and hide. But it was lost in the bubbly feeling that the Fae had brought to life in her chest. The same feeling she got whenever she flew, before her sickness brought her back down to earth.

Obaa-san got no apology when Ochako turned and ran after the Fae.

Her eyes followed the Fae as they rolled over the city, tearing up laundry and open shops, flipping hats off of heads and spilling purses and throwing dresses into the air. Ochako couldn't help but giggle at first, but soon she was out of breath just from chasing them. And then she was trailing behind the flock, gasping for breath as she stumbled and rested against a parked car. After a few moments she was off again, pushed until even the agony in her lungs couldn't make her stop.

When she turned the last corner, her jaw dropped even further than before.

If the Fae had rolled over Owase like a wave, then they'd hit this street like a storm. A twisting mess of glass wings and rainbows and voices hovered further down the block, hiding the sidewalk on her side of the street as the flock churned around one spot in particular.

She caught herself wandering towards the flock in a haze and cursed silently, ducking behind a car to watch as the bubble stretched out and scattered along the street, leaving… a boy. A green haired boy, just about her age, sitting on an overturned bucket with a leather-bound notebook on his lap and a pair of Fae sitting in the palm of his hand. The trees and telephone wires and ledges all across the block disappeared beneath the little critters as they settled, leaving a comfortable white noise in the background as Ochako stared at the changed scenery.

"Well, Kaerie, I guess you've got news huh?" The boy laughed as the pair of pixies in his hand reclined. Bells rang out as the street erupted in laughter, as if the boy had told the funniest joke on this side of the planet. Ochako shook her head for the… gods-know how many times. Everything that was happening was impossible. She had every right to be confused, she thought.

"So Nighteye is on me now, huh?" The boy sighed, leaning his chin on his free hand and tapping away at his cheek. "Well, I'd hoped it would take him a little longer to notice. But that's fine, it's not like he can find me that easily. Anything happen back at the castle?"

Ochako frowned as he grinned down at the little things in his hand and nodded. He understood them, obviously, and… he had vines in his hair? Was he a Fae? She didn't know enough about them to say for sure. Everything, from his bright red boots to his thick green jacket and the white shirt beneath, looked human enough. Bright green eyes widened as another burst of Fae voices rolled up and down the block.

Shit, he had a cute smile.

"You did that? Seriously? What happened?" The boy laughed aloud and slapped his knee as the street erupted in a new wave of iridescent chaos. When things finally settled, he was wiping tears from his eyes. "Have any of you gotten caught? Because if you have then… No? You're all amazing! I'd never have gotten away with any of that."

Ochako frowned. A sigh rolled through the flock, almost as if they were… swooning?

"So, you can carry gunpowder in small amounts, huh… that's really incredible. Only some Fae are hurt by iron, right? There's only so much I know from stories." The boy dissolved into a muttering storm, having produced another journal from somewhere to scrawl in. Ochako couldn't help but stare as random bits of the flock began breaking away, flitting down to settle on his shoulders and his arms and legs, anywhere they could stay put. He let it happen, not bothering to slow down at all. Soon enough he was cloaked in a shifting curtain of rippling crystal and fabric.

Ochako didn't hear herself sigh until it was too late.

She'd barely blinked before the Fae were gone. Not flying away, not hiding, just gone. The street was completely normal. For the first time in her life, the world looked dull. Not in the vague, elusive way that clung to her shoulders on cloudy days, either. Afternoon sunshine still lit up the street, casting a shadow behind the green haired boy and the car she was leaning against. Colors still littered the street, in red and baby blue and yellow paint, even a splash of purple over there. Everything just looked so drab and ordinary that it left an ache in her chest.

"Excuse me, miss?" The boy was taller than she thought. Not tall enough that she couldn't throw him over her shoulder and leave him wishing he'd never come to Owase in the first place, but taller than she was. She couldn't help but stand a bit straighter and run a hand through her hair as he wandered towards her. He smiled openly as he tucked his journals beneath one arm. "Do you have a minute? I just have a quick question."

"Um… sure?" She bit her lip and glanced down the block one more time before she looked up at the boy.

"Have you seen a dragon anywhere?"

Ochako blinked. She shook her head and tried to talk, only to shut her mouth. Then she turned around and walked away, doing her very best to ignore the disappointed sigh behind her.

Izuku sighed as he stood up, stretched and yawned. Sitting on a bucket all afternoon probably wasn't good for his back, but he needed to keep himself out in the open. Otherwise people wouldn't see him… Then they wouldn't have to work to avoid him in the first place. Not that he was getting anywhere, per se, but he was trying.

He grinned as he turned the corner, feeling a pair of eyes linger on his back. Part of him wanted to confront whoever was following him, but he needed to make sure they weren't a lead first. Once he knew that, he'd figure something out. A couple of plans were already outlined in his journal. Gods know he'd had enough free time over the past four days.

One day, Izuku thought wistfully, he'd be able to go where he liked without the Elders on his ass. Jumon came into view, and Izuku put a little more speed in his step. The little ramen shop had single handedly made his stay in Owase brighter just by serving him at the end of every day.

"Oh, you're back!" The old man behind the counter threw a crooked smile over his shoulder as Izuku stepped inside. "You're having the same as the past few nights, right?"

"Yes please!" Izuku sighed happily as the old man went to work. Around five pm, no one was in the shop. Being the only customer meant that Izuku could work on his spells and plan out where he'd be sitting the next day. He didn't even think about leaning back in his chair, pen out and sketching wildly, until the old man called out again.

"You still looking for that dragon of yours, kid?"

"Yes sir! Have you heard anything?" It only took one look at the old man's smile to know that he was joking, and that he thought Izuku was joking as well. Izuku didn't mind. Even if it was just banter, the old man had been kind to him. Suffering for a joke wasn't the worst thing in the world if that was the only tax on Jumon ramen.

"Nope, but I did ask a few people for you." A laugh sounded from the kitchen. "All I heard back was that a few folks have a cat named Dragon. That thing is adorable."

"Yeah, yeah! I saw the cat." Izuku laughed as he remembered the couple in question. "Apparently it was a stray before. They thought I was going to take the cat back when I asked them, I almost felt bad for scaring them."

"You're not a bad kid, even if you are a bit nutty." The old man grinned, setting a full bowl down on Izuku's table. "Don't let anyone around here bother you, alright? Just don't start any trouble and you're welcome here."

"Thanks, oji-san!" Izuku's sticks dug into the meal quickly.

"No… Uraraka-chan?" Izuku blinked and spun around as the old man eyed the door. He nearly choked when he saw the girl from the day before standing there awkwardly. "What are you doing here? Why aren't you out on Shinji's boat?"

"Eh… He, um, didn't need the help today?" The girl shuffled into the shop quietly, throwing one or two glances at Izuku.

Izuku didn't blame her for feeling uncomfortable. He was still trying to eat the same mouthful of noodles since she'd come in, and it wasn't getting any easier.

"It's been a while since I've heard from your parents," The old man drifted back to the counter, smiling at the girl as he wiped it down. "How've you all been?"

"Oh, you know," The girl poked two fingers together, standing there awkwardly as Izuku frantically slurped his meal. He wasn't trying to be creepy, but his eyes kept dodging between the girl and his apparently bottomless bowl of ramen. "We get by. Daddy has been looking for more work, but no one around here really needs any help. Same as always."

"Yeah, that's the trouble with old towns like this. You need a bigger company to do any work on the mountain." The old man sighed, then glanced up. "You here to eat, Uraraka-chan?"

"Oh, um, yes!" She smiled suddenly, then reached for her pocket. "I was out walking, and I haven't eaten yet. But I nearly forgot this place existed."

Izuku paused, staring as the girl paid for her ramen and sat at the counter. She glanced over again, locking eyes with him over his bowl.

Was she the one who'd been watching him…? No, that couldn't be. She wouldn't have any interest in him, she'd run away because he was being weird. Dealing with magic did that to just about everyone, even people who had magic. Then again, it's not like I did myself any favors asking if she'd seen a dragon.

I really thought that was a pretty good conversation starter. He frowned and pushed his chopsticks through his soup, staring at the jagged edges of sauce in yellow soup. The curls and bubbles made him think of stars and galaxies that set him adrift in a patchwork daydream. I probably should have thought that through… I can't act like that every time a pretty girl looks my way.

A long sigh hissed out of his nose as he fished more noodles from his meal. His eyes darted to his notebook, faded black leather sitting on the reddish-brown gloss table.

Best case, she doesn't have to worry about me for too long, I guess.

"Did you need a cup of water?"

Izuku choked, bumping the table with his knees as the girl reached down. She barely managed to keep the water from spilling when it jerked, leaving them both wide eyed with racing hearts as his journal hit the floor. He bit through his mouthful, slammed a hand on his chest and took a breath.

"I didn't mean, I'm really s-sorry!" He risked a glance at the girl as he snatched up his journal and dropped it into his pocket. She set down the water, clutching her own cup and bowl while he took a sip. "Um… I'm sorry if I bothered you. Yesterday, I mean. With that question."

"No, it's… you're fine, really." The girl forced a laugh and waved her cup at the chair across from him. "C-could I sit down? Are you waiting on someone, or…?"

"No, please!" Izuku half stood, ready to pull out her chair despite the fact that she slipped into it easily. He sat with burning cheeks as she said a small 'thank you' and stirred her own meal. "The food, I mean the ramen here is really good, isn't it?"

"Mmhmm. Ken oji-san makes some of the best in the city." A shout came from the kitchen when she said it, earning a laugh from both of them. For a moment, they grinned around mouthfuls of ramen and quiet sips of water. Izuku tried his best not to stare at her open shoulders or her milk-chocolate eyes or her rosy cheeks or the rippling muscles on her forearms and the faded scars covering them. He scolded himself every time his eyes drifted off his bowl, knowing that any of his friends would have killed him for letting his eyes wander.

She was a nice, pretty girl. Don't screw this up. He'd scared her off yesterday. Don't be creepy, idiot! Maybe someone was following him but if he assumed it was her then he'd be making an ass out of both of them and he couldn't make an ass out of her.

"So, um… I never got your name." She said, sneaking glances between his face and her meal. Izuku swallowed and wiped his hands across his pants.

"Midoriya! M-Midoriya Izuku." He bobbed his head briefly and forced a 'charming-definitely-not-creepy" smile. "I'm staying in town for a few days."

"I'm Uraraka Ochako." The girl smiled at him briefly before she locked eyes with her soup again. "Um… about what you asked me yesterday."

A wave of cold sweat broke out across Izuku's arms, running up and down his spine the tip of a blade.

Well if I'm going to get run out of town, I'd rather it be a pretty girl than a bunch of old people, I guess… She doesn't exactly need help with muscle like that, does she? Izuku wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.

"I… I really am sorry, y'know, I didn't mean to overstep talking to you like that…"

"Are you really looking for a dragon?" Uraraka muttered.

"…Eh?" Izuku blinked a few times. Across from him, Uraraka sighed heavily and spared a look over her shoulder. Ken-san was still humming to himself back behind the counter, ignoring them for the most part, when she leaned forward some and stared up at Izuku.

"You asked about a dragon, right? Are you really looking for a dragon?" She asked quietly.

"Oh, yeah, I am."

"What kind of person just wanders up and asks everyone in the city if they've seen a dragon?" She leaned back in her chair and wrapped her arms around herself. "Are you crazy, or did someone make you do this? Like… like a prank, or something? Are you posting videos…?"

Uraraka's eyes widened as Izuku flicked his hand and pulled his notebook out of his pocket. To anyone else, it appeared as if he'd just summoned a full-size journal from thin air, even though he could clearly see the edges of the portal hanging off the cuff of his jacket.

"I actually am looking for a dragon, Uraraka-san." He slid the journal across the table, watched her pick it up and flip through the pages with wide eyes. "There may be other ways of finding it, but if I'm being honest most of the Elders would throw a fit if they heard I was here."

"You're an Inquisitor?" Uraraka's eyes widened further, and the awe made Izuku blush a bit.

"N-no, no no, I'm… I'm just doing research. But the Elders and the Inquisition don't like it when I go poking around." Izuku took a sip of water. "Have you heard anything about a dragon around here?"

"What are you going to do when you find it?" Uraraka frowned. Her expression was careful neutral, but her voice had an edge that made Izuku nervous. A list of lies ran through his brain before he stammered out his excuse.

"J-just looking for something! Dragons like jewels, you know. For their hordes. Some of them, at least. But, well, there's… I mean, I just want to see it, and maybe barter for a gemstone. They like magic ones, which would make finding the right stone… easier…" He laughed nervously and trailed off as her frown grew more severe with every word. "But, I mean, I don't need to… Just seeing the dragon…"

The silence was suffocating. Izuku wasn't sure what was worse: she could be an agent of the Elders here to throw him out of Owase or she was a normal girl about to kick his ass for being crazy and weird. He didn't know which would hurt more. Not that he'd blame her for beating him up. Knowing him, he'd deserve it. But… well, it wasn't really rejection if…

"How much do you know?" Uraraka asked suddenly. Izuku felt the pressure in his chest burst, running all the way to his fingers.

"About dragons? I mean, I've read up…"

"No, not dragons!" Uraraka hissed, leaning across the table with fiery eyes. "Not JUST about the dragon, about… about the Fae. About magic! How much do you know about all this?"

Izuku chuckled quietly as the tension in his shoulders faded.

"More than anyone else." He watched her gasp quietly as he smiled and leaned his chin on one hand. "What do you want to know?"

Uraraka sat down hard. Hard enough that her chair squealed back, not that she seemed to hear it. She stared at him as if he'd grown two heads or pulled some priceless gem out of his pocket.

"Everything." The plea was barely a whisper, but the desperation shook every fiber of his being. Despite the secrecy and the risk, she was looking for something. How many had turned her away or scolded her or fed her broken rumors instead of answering her questions?

He thought of the first person who'd given him a hand, and he gave the girl his very best smile.

"Let's get started, then. Everything may take a while."

They paid quietly. Izuku promised Ken-san he'd be back the next day, and Uraraka promised she'd be back sooner than later. With the girl trailing at his side, he took a right out of the shop and walked back the way he'd come.

"So, what's your Talent?"

"Oh," Uraraka held out a hand, showing five pink pads covering the first joint of her fingers. "I'm able to make things fly as long as I can touch them."

"Really? That's incredible!" Izuku pulled a journal out and flipped to a clean page. "How do you write your name again?"

"It's spelled as Tea Child… just how it sounds, you know?"

Right, "beautiful" name for Beautiful Girl of course, should have…

"R-right!" Izuku coughed as his ears burned. His handwriting wobbled a bit, making the hastily sketched profile look amateurish to his eye.

Add it to the list of reasons to kick yourself, do it later, focus on the girl!

"So, how do you make things fly?"

"Keh?" She tilted her head, distracting him for a moment before he turned back to the profile.

"I mean, like, how? Do things just float with you grab them, or do you need intent? Do they have a limit on how high? Can you make anything fly, or are some things too heavy? Is there anything that your magic doesn't work on? Does it exhaust you, or maybe…"

"Wait, wait!" The girl waved her hands at him until he broke out of his mental hurricane and caught sight of her shock. He swallowed and blushed even more when he realized what he'd been doing.

"Sorry about that, Uraraka-san."

"You're fine, I guess? It's just," She poked her fingers together before turning her palms up, staring at her fingertips. "No one around here really knows anything. I was born like this, but it's not like it runs in the family. My uncle and grandmother had powers, but…"

She trailed off as pain crept into her eyes. Izuku shut his book and dropped it into the pocket again, reaching out to her with a shaking hand.

"Uraraka-san? Sorry, I wasn't thinking, okay?" His hands hovered around her shoulders as she shook the hurt off. He kept his voice quiet, even though there wasn't anyone around to hear, as she let out a deep breath. "You don't have to know any of that, you know? It's…

"Hey, Uraraka?" She looked up, staring at his smile and his eyes. "Not everyone… I mean, a lot of people don't know about their powers. It's not like there's a school for this, or scientists who study it. People try, but not everyone wants to play around with magic."

"You said you're a researcher." She huffed. Izuku grinned and shrugged.

"If I'm being honest, a lot of people have tried to stop me. And it's caused a lot of problems, but at the end of the day I made all my best friends because I got up and tried this stuff." Izuku held up a hand, showing her the gnarled fingers and scars crisscrossing all the way up to his elbow. "There's no good way of doing any of this. I got hurt, and people I care about got hurt. Everything has upsides and downsides, right?"

"That looks pretty bad, though." Uraraka ran a finger across his palm, lighting his ears on fire. "Oh, um… can I ask you something? Before we talk about my power an' all that…"

"S-sure, anything!" Izuku stepped back and scratched his neck as they started walking again. "I'll teach you whatever I know, so…"

"Are those real?" She pointed up at his hair tentatively. On instinct, he tried to look up, only to realize what she was talking about.

"You mean the leaves?" He bent down and pulled at a stray vine, showing her the broad leaves hanging off the stem. "Yeah, they're really growing out of my hair. I accidentally took a trip to Faerie woods during one of my tests and this kinda… Well, I got a lot of souvenirs. Turns out I'm stuck with these."

Uraraka nodded, running a hand along the vine. He gasped when her fingers ghosted over the stem and winced when she tugged at it.

"C-careful! I keep them cut short for a reason…" Izuku muttered, digging hand into his hair. Uraraka giggled.

"Sorry! I just… had to be sure."

"Everyone says that…" Izuku chuckled.

"But about what we were talking about? I haven't really tried much with my powers." Izuku nodded as the girl took the lead, walking slowly with her hands woven behind her head. "There isn't really a good place for me to practice anymore, and I can't really do it with anything too large, you know? Owase is a popular tourist spot, so using magic isn't really allowed. Everyone is really careful, and most of the magic folk are in a couple of big families, ya know?"

"I've seen that in a few other places, yeah. I guess it's not like Tokyo… Wait, you said 'anymore', didn't you? Did you used to have a place where you could practice?" Izuku frowned as Uraraka spun on her heel, flashing a wide smile his way.

"Yep! One of my dad's old construction sites! It was my favorite, since it was pretty big." She pointed a finger up the hills to the south. "But they had to abandon the project two years ago, and now no one is allowed anywhere close to the site."

"What…" Izuku trailed off as he sought out any trace of a construction site. He didn't dare hope, but…

"We told everyone that it was an issue with the funding, but Daddy didn't really have to do very much to convince everyone." Uraraka sounded very smug as she continued up the hill. "The Elders worked really hard to keep people out once the dragon moved in."

The construction site was much further along than Izuku expected. It stood four stories tall, still surrounded by piles of materials and old machines. Plastic was tearing off the windows near the top, though the bottom floors were relatively well sealed off. Metal plates had been screwed into the concrete and drywall, covering any openings. Yellow tape was wrapped around the perimeter and the building itself to a RIDICULOUS extreme, in Izuku's opinion.

But that was how the Elders worked. Hide first, lie second, ask questions later.

A quick look at Izuku's map of the city proved that he'd have to erase a few spells and organize new ones. But that was the price of overpreparing, one that Izuku was willing to pay for stunts like this.

"I used to come around here to practice my magic late at night, since I needed someplace to hide the light." Uraraka sighed. "C'mon, we can get a good look from over here."

"Wait, Uraraka-san, you…" Izuku couldn't help grinning as the girl jogged over to the back of the building. "Didn't you stop coming when the dragon came to stay?"

"We can get in here, as long as you're quiet." Uraraka hesitated, then frowned at him again. "You're tellin' the truth, right? You're not gonna hurt him?"

"I swear to you I'd never hurt a dragon." Izuku huffed some when she crossed her arms. "Look, Uraraka-san, all I can do is promise you. But I told you before, I'm researching the dragon. Keeping it here, in Owase, is one of my top priorities if I want to come back."

She still didn't look convinced. Izuku groaned as he dragged his hands across his cheeks.

"Nobody ever trusts me. Uraraka-san, I'm not going to do anything to scare off the dragon, okay? That could go very, very badly! But knowing whether or not they actually talk? Learning what kind of scales they have, what this one is hoarding, what type of hunter it is… That's what I want to know. If it leaves, I can't learn anything."

"Alright, alright…" Uraraka huffed, then flashed him a small grin. "You get so worked up when I say I don't believe ya."

"I'm just…!" Izuku trailed off. He wasn't about to say he was afraid of getting beaten up. Even if it was relatively true, what kind of home life did that sound like? Ashido and Hatsume meant well. "I just… want you to trust me, you know? Since you could very easily feed me to a dragon or get me kicked out of the city and everything."

"I'd never do that!" Uraraka clapped her hands together and gave him a pretty reasonable attempt at a poison-dipped smile. "Then you couldn't teach me anything, Midoriya-kun!"

"Eh, heh heh… right…" Izuku blinked as she tapped her hand against his shoulders, then grabbed her own wrists. "Wait, are we…"

"Shh, we gotta be quiet from here." Uraraka put a finger to her lips before she grabbed his arm and pushed up. Izuku yelped as his feet left the ground and soared straight up. When they touched down on the edge of the fourth floor, the glow faded and gravity returned to them slowly. Before he even had a chance to ask questions, Uraraka was creeping towards the edge of the floor.

The fourth floor wasn't really a floor. Or, more specifically, it didn't have a floor. Somehow this floor had caved in and taken the rest of the building with it, leaving shattered pieces of the floor creeping out from the edges. Uraraka had laid out plywood over one of those pieces, giving her a view straight down to the building's basement.

Izuku crept over and sat down beside the girl, keeping his eyes on the darkness below. After a few minutes, he cleared his throat and gave her a curious look. She chewed her lip for a moment before she sighed and wrapped her arms around her knees.

"You can only see it when the moon's overhead." She sighed, glancing at the fading sunset. "There's some kind of spell keeping the whole place hidden."

"Shrouded." Izuku already had a notebook out, opened to a page full of times and important data he'd jotted down before heading to Owase. "Anything that blankets an area like this has to be a shroud, which cuts down the distance you can see before things get hazy. Let's see… sunset is roughly now, but we won't get total nightfall for another four minutes and with the moon at such a low angle…"

Izuku completely lost himself in the page. The notebook with Owase's data dropped into the pocket as his fingers yanked out a decently sized piece of mirrored glass. Holding one edge up, he pulled out a black marker and started drawing on the window-side. Uraraka's presence fell away entirely as he pulled up the formula from memory, taking seconds between placing each kanji so that he could be sure they were on the right line.

Barely five minutes after they'd arrived on the ledge, Izuku tossed his supplies into the pocket and pulled out another notebook.

"That's… amazin'…" Uraraka stared at him with wide eyes as he flipped through his old notes on traditional spells. The single glance at her awed expression made his ears burn some, since she was glancing back and forth between the mirror and Izuku.

"It's nothing, really…" Izuku muttered, running a hand over the charm he'd been looking for. "This is an older spell, one that draws in light and clears your vision so that you can see through barriers and illusions. Back in the day they would paint this over paper masks and then tie them around your head, but using a mirror lets you focus it if you overlay your charms."

"Um… I don't really understand…" Uraraka muttered. "It's like a telescope? That what you mean?"

"Yeah," Izuku chuckled. "But this one lets us see everything."

Holding the mirror by both sides, Izuku took a moment and focused. Opening his senses to the magic in the air left him breathless for a moment. Different currents and powers flowed up and down the mountain like rainwater and fogbanks. Stray puddles of magic trapped in the mountains' flow hummed dangerously. Rivers and ropes of different colors bled into the twilight sky over their heads, hiding the stars behind countless veils of raw magic.

No matter how old he got, Izuku always took a moment to drink in the sight.

"I'll have to use some of the latent magic around here to power it, but it shouldn't take too long…" He took a breath, then let it out. As he exhaled, he glanced up the mountain, watching the flood of power washing down the slopes as it parted around the construction site. "Here, could you hold the mirror, Uraraka-san?"

"Eh?!" He took her hand and settled her fingers in the right spots before either of them could be bothered, then took out a piece of clean paper and began drawing another spell. Compared to the spell on the mirror, this one was messy and unorganized. Mostly lines, hastily drawn around a pair of characters in the middle of the page.

"I need to pool the mountain's latent flows in the center so that it behaves like a battery, which means… Connect it like this, draw just enough… It flows down towards the city, but there are some natural pools…"

He chewed his lip as they stared at the page. After a moment, he caught Uraraka's confused stare and sighed.

"This is… it's a quick spell, one that drains energy off the mountain. It's supposed to work naturally, without any startup, but sometimes it… takes a minute?" Izuku glanced out towards the rivers of power parting around the construction site. "Hold on, this isn't… Oh, damn it. I always do that."

"What?"

"I just… I didn't put a line on this kanji. It says the wrong thing."

"…You just…?"

"Yeah, you can't really prepare these beforehand unless you know where you'll be working, so I'm winging it. But that… there we go!" Izuku grinned as the characters lying in the center of his spell began to glow. "That should do it. Give that about three or four minutes and we can power up the charms on the mirror."

Uraraka blinked as the page filled with soft green light.

"You just… made a magical battery out of a piece of paper?" The look of raw amazement on Uraraka's face made Izuku's throat tighten up some. "Just… just like that? How? What kind of magic is that?"

"It's not any kind, really…" Izuku sighed, lifted the page and pressed it to the back of the mirror. They quieted as the light flowed into the characters he'd scrawled across the glass. Seconds after he'd pressed the page to the surface a ring of green light flowed through it and left the entire thing buzzing with the gentle, sleepy energy of the mountain. "Just a couple things I picked up along the way."

Uraraka didn't have anything else to say. With the mirror fully charged, they found themselves peering down through the ground floor of the building. Even Izuku lost his train of thought in the face of what lay beneath them.

Down below what should have been the basement, a decently sized cave had been carved out of the ground. At the very center of the hole lay a shallow basin that had been filled with what amounted to, in this case, a small hoard. Gold here and there, some other gleaming metals, gemstones, treasures that Izuku could only wager weak guesses about and things that Izuku would probably never know about. Most of the wealth wasn't in real metal, though there was quite a bit of metal. There were scrolls with ratty edges, paintings in frames, rolls of fabric and too many polished pieces of coral to count.

"I guess… I guess it's out huntin'," Uraraka muttered. "This is really amazin' Midoriya-kun."

Izuku watched her eyes roam the spell he'd drawn on the glass and felt something in his chest tighten uncomfortably.

"Hey, Uraraka-san." He turned the mirror over and laid it down, leaving it to burn off the rest of its magic until he could see the dragon, so that he could turn to the girl. She sat down and peered at him over her knees again, watching him with the same awe-filled expression as she'd had before. "Is there anything you want to know? Since we've gotta wait for the dragon."

She glanced at the mirror, then back up at him.

"Are you a Gifted, or did someone teach ya?"

Ah, isn't that the question. Izuku stopped, mouth already half open, then pinched his lip and sighed. There's no good answer for this, but he also had no choice. No one was really allowed to know who he was, since he's…

"I'm an accident." He said, letting the words hiss between his teeth against his better judgement. Uraraka cocks her head to one side, obviously surprised and so freaking cute that Izuku can't help looking away and blushing some. "I wasn't born with any magic or power. I couldn't even feel it. My mom and dad were both Gifted, but I was… They called me Empty.

"It's rare, apparently. Only one in a million people born into a magic household are born unable to sense magic at all. They don't have the Gift, they can't hold magic… it just passes right through us," Izuku chuckled wryly, staring at his hand. A stray rope of green energy curled around his feet and disappeared, drained by the ravenous well of energy sleeping in his chest. "So, they called us Empty. I grew up watching my mother pick things up without actually touching them, listened to her talk to things around our apartment that I couldn't see. She runs a safe shop for magic people, and when people heard that I was Empty they, uh… Well, they wanted to try to help, you know?"

He turned his eyes to the sky, watching the auroras flowing overhead instead of looking at the girl beside him.

"People back home call me Deku, cause of my name. Regular people thought I was crazy, always researching magic and trying to get it to work, and then magic folk heard what I was trying to do, and they called me that too. Because a Deku is someone who can't do anything right, even just being Empty."

"What happened?" Uraraka's awe was gone, now. Izuku could only stand a glance before he looked up at the sky again.

"I died." His eyes lid shut as he remembered. "I wandered into an exorcism. Some passing Elders were trying to send a swamp elemental back to its plane when I stumbled into their ritual, and even a Deku like me could see what was going on. But then the spell broke and the elemental got me. The only reason I'm alive is because one of the men performing the ritual turned me into a conduit for latent magic."

"If you're Gifted, then you've probably never played around with the magic running through Owase. That trick I did, with the paper battery, it's like that. Creating a conduit in my body was like digging a hole and waiting for it to flood. All the magic in the area poured into my body and my soul until it overflowed. He used some of his own power to guide the process, but even then, it was like being set on fire or hit by lightning." Izuku was used to the lie. This was the first time in a while that it tasted bad. "When I woke up, they dragged me along to capture the elemental. Turns out the whole experience left me with my magic."

"That's… that sounds awful." Uraraka's throat was hoarse. Izuku chuckled, though it felt dry.

"It's… I mean, I got what I wanted. And ever since, I've been learning how to do whatever magic I can find. Not that it's been easy. Normally I only have access to the natural magic of the area, and sometimes it takes days to siphon up enough power to make anything work." Izuku sighed. "That's my story. I'm just an accident who wanders around experimenting, trying to learn everything I can."

"That's… But you know what?" Uraraka brightened suddenly, then threw her arms up. "Deku doesn't sound bad! It sounds like they were cheering you on, saying 'You can do it!'"

Izuku blinked. At some point, the sunlight had disappeared entirely. Moonlight cast long shadows overhead, but Uraraka's smile was so genuine and happy that he could feel sunlight bleeding through his shirt. Warmth spread through his chest until he remembered that this was, in fact, a conversation and he was required to respond at some point.

"I, um… That's…" He blushed when he realized he'd been staring but couldn't stop smiling. "Th-thank you, Uraraka-san…"

Despite his best efforts, it came out as a whisper. His throat was tightening as he finished, and he could feel the tears welling in his eyes.

"And, and!" Uraraka's grin spread even more as she leaned over the mirror. "Look at what you managed to make! I've never heard of anyone who could do stuff like this! W-wait, why're ya cryin'?!"

"I'm fine, I swear!" Izuku laughed as he wiped his eyes. "And that, the charm, it's an original so…"

"Well it's really neat!" Uraraka huffed, looking him over curiously. "Ya sure you're okay? If I said somethin'…"

"No, you're fine. Amazing, actually," Izuku chuckled. "I guess when you said that you wanted to know everything… I could see it. The same sort of thing I used to feel when I couldn't see magic going on right under my nose. Like there's a whole world out there, and you're just… stuck on the sidelines."

She made a noise in response and turned her eyes towards the plywood between them.

"I've always been able to make things fly, but not for very long. And then the Elders came by to make sure that we weren't gonna get exposed, which turned into never using magic where people could see and then… not using magic ever." She muttered. "I help out where I can, but my parents aren't doing great. Here I have this power to help, but no one can see me use it. And I can't…"

The girl choked something back as she glared at him. Even knowing it wasn't at him, Izuku couldn't help but feel nervous with that fire burning in her eyes.

"Have you ever broken a leg, Midoriya?" He shook his head, then frowned when Uraraka laughed bitterly. "Not bein' able to fly is like having a pair of broken legs. Every time you feel the wind on your face, and you count another day that you can't take off… It's like the world is laughing at you. You look at birds and wanna kick 'em, just because they can go wherever they want and you're trapped…"

She ground her teeth as she tried to get herself back under control. Izuku could feel the anger, even from a distance. He hadn't felt the same thing at all, though he'd thought so at first. What she felt was so much more real.

"I can't imagine what that must have been like." He muttered. She shook her head, glaring a hole in the wood.

"It's not really that horrible. Just… It feels like what you said. About knowing there's a whole world and not bein' able to see it. Having no one to teach me anything made me feel like a little kid all the time." Uraraka huffed indignantly. "I'm eighteen, and I know the boats as well as anyone. They got no right."

Izuku blushed, then shifted over and turned the mirror up so that he could see the basement of the construction site again. For a few minutes, he manipulated the charm to focus on little pieces of the hoard, just passing time and trying not to look at the adorable pout on Uraraka's face.

"Hey, Midoriya-kun? Why'd ya tell me all that stuff? About you being different?" The girl muttered faintly. Izuku hummed, keeping his eyes on the mirror, before he decided to go with the truth.

"I felt like telling you. You brought me up here, showed me your perch and your Talent… That's a lot to give to a stranger," He glanced over his shoulder briefly, offering her a smile. "And I want you to know you can trust me. You asked me to tell you what I know, right? If we're friends, if you trust me, then it'll be that much easier."

"Friends, huh?" Uraraka worked up a small smile. "I'll hold ya to that, ya know."

"I already promised, didn't I?" Izuku turned back to the mirror and narrowed the image on a gemstone lying near the edge of the pile.

"I showed ya the dragon, ya better not ghost on me."

"I've got a friend who would be very offended by that statement, I'll have you know. Besides, I said I'd teach you before we ever mentioned the dragon. There wasn't any price, Uraraka-san."

The next day Izuku did his best to lay low. Around noon he pulled up his hood and went through the city checking his latent spells, added a few extra layers and double checked that everything was working properly. So far, his projects weren't even halfway to capacity, which left him a few days before he had to flee the city.

Uraraka apparently spent the day out on her uncle's fishing boat, leaving him to head to the construction site on his own. In the end it was probably a good thing, considering that was his first real look at the dragon he'd been looking for.

Izuku was lucky. He'd been so bored just watching the basement that he nearly missed the dragon's arrival. Any healthy magical creature bent currents as they flew, weaving a magical 'cloak' of sorts when they traveled. Without a way to perceive magic, no one could see through the haze of colors spread over the dragon's body as it flew.

How they missed the distant rumble and the gale beneath the beast's path was completely beyond Izuku. Magic didn't naturally hide from anything but the eye.

A pencil fell off his perch as the wind tore across the city and up the mountains. Izuku's eyes widened as he looked up, catching sight of the dragon's curtain as it dragged itself through the sky. He barely had time to cast a minor cloak over himself, draining his excess power and silencing his natural magic, until nothing remained to give him away. The entire building shook as the dragon descended and settled in its den, leaving Izuku to tremble in fear.

After fourteen years of research, Izuku knew a few things about dragons. He knew the differences between eastern and western, that mainland dragons tended to be bulkier and more akin to apex predators than their serpentine kin. Some could breathe fire or had venom, others relied on magical casting. One thing that all texts agreed on was that dragons had a much faster and more natural aptitude for magic.

What interested Izuku, though, was what the texts didn't agree on. Some claimed dragons could talk, some said they had their own language, others claimed that they spoke telepathically. Dragons could breathe anything from fire to heavenly wrath, whatever that could have been. Most agreed that they laid eggs, but no one had ever documented a single sighting of an egg.

But, more than that… nothing had really prepared him for how big dragons would be.

"So, ya finally got to see the dragon huh?"

"Yeah… I, uh, almost got caught, actually." Izuku sighed over his bowl. "I didn't expect it to be so…"

"What, you'd never seen one before?"

Izuku frowned and dug through his meal for a moment before he shook his head and met Uraraka's eyes.

"Dragons are pretty rare these days. Not that there aren't a lot, but they're never close to human cities and most of them prefer to live outside of our plane rather than risk being caught." He sighed. "Truth is, a couple hundred years ago while Japan was still feudal and the rest of the world was still getting settled, people with magic went and fought our own war. A lot of people got tired of dealing with demons and ghosts and dragons, so we drove everything we could out of our world and killed anything that chose to fight. Apparently, mages in other countries did it differently, but here Japan supported planar separation."

"That's… a lot of big words." Uraraka huffed. "So, it sounds like we killed anything trying to stick around and chased everything out, right? Why is this dragon here, then? Shouldn't people be hunting it?"

"Well, nowadays mages aren't very powerful. Magic was taught back in the day but fewer people believe now." Izuku shrugged. "Half the people I know wouldn't get anywhere close to that dragon even if it was friendly. They're terrified, and the Elders have a rule against stirring up trouble."

"Hey, Midoriya-kun? Something's been bothering me."

"What's up?"

"Are ya hidin' from the Elders?"

"Uh… not really? I mean, I'm not on the run or anything." Izuku did his best not to meet her eyes.

"Ya said they don't like you much, and then you always say things about them." Uraraka crossed her arms, glancing at the door nervously. "I don't like 'em much, but I know they're important. Record keepers and such. Traditional magic. Guardians and shrine maidens."

Izuku snorted softly and grinned, earning a bit of a pout from his companion.

"What, did I get it wrong again?"

"The Elders don't really like me, but I don't mind them." Izuku sighed. "My guardian would probably tell you otherwise, though."

"What's he like?"

"Nighteye-san?" Izuku leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. "I guess he's like… Imagine an accountant."

"Mmhmm."

"Give him a really, really sharp sense of fashion, forget all those old robes,"

"Right…"

"And a right hook capable of knocking out a manticore."

"A MANTIPHOWE?!" Izuku cackled as Uraraka choked on her mouthful, nearly spilling her meal across their table. Ken-san shook his head as he glanced out across the restaurant, tending to customers at the bar. "S-sorry, did you say-?!"

"Yeah, I watched him floor one once." Izuku's laughter trailed off when he remembered what Sir had done shortly after that. "Sir Nighteye is a very uptight Elder, and one of the most powerful fortune tellers in the country. He was assigned to watch me after… after my first accident."

"Accident?" Uraraka perked up a bit too fast for Izuku's liking.

"Um, well… I had been putting spells together before I could actually do magic, you know. But, my mom isn't really classically trained. She couldn't help me try them and couldn't tell me if they would work. After I got my power, I tried asking a few people for help, but no one even knew what I was trying to do. My mentor, the guy who saved me, he's horrible at anything with a formula." Izuku grinned when he remembered Yagi's expression the first time the man had gone through his journals. "First thing I tried was a magic battery."

"That little charm?"

"Yep. I ended up destroying a beach and got accused of terror-"

"You WHAT?!"

Izuku blushed as Uraraka dragged him down the sidewalk. He was trying not to think of the way she'd blushed when Ken-san had asked them to keep quiet on their 'date' and failing to keep himself from wondering if she was still blushing. Considering she was free for a few hours, they were on the way to Uraraka's perch to get in some more questions and some dragon studying.

About halfway there, she threw his hand away and huffed.

"Wasn't even my fault." She spared a glance over her shoulder before she started walking again. "Sorry about getting us kicked out."

"No, it's my fault really. I should really know better." He dug a hand through his curls, itching the base of a vine. "Honestly all of my stories are like that so I should pick and choose where I tell them."

"I'll say. Ya blow up beaches and fight manticores and chase dragons on a regular basis?" The girl groaned aloud at the end. "Sounds like some sorta wild adventure."

"Depends on what I'm up to, I guess. But, if it makes you feel any better, most of my 'adventures' end up with a beating from Sir." Izuku winced as a phantom pain rolled down his right arm. "He's got a really sick sense of punishment."

"Most excitin' thing that happens round here is the coral divers seein' a merfolk." Uraraka sighed. "I wouldn't mind a little adventure."

"Why don't you move out to Tokyo?" Izuku heard her snort and frowned, setting a hand on her shoulder. "I'm serious, you know. Even without magic, you could get a decent job and an apartment and then learn your way around the folk up there. They would love you, Uraraka-san!"

She smiled and waved his hand off before he continued.

"I've never left home before, Midoriya-kun. And my parents… What would they do? I pull in a bit working on the boat with my uncle, but they'd just worry over me if I left." She smiled wistfully. "Moving out… Even if I could, I don't think I'd feel right livin' without momma and daddy there."

Izuku let the subject go, though he couldn't help but think that Uraraka-san would love it back at the castle. Even with all their organized chaos, the folk and the people around Musutafu had warmed up to all of them quickly enough.

Everyone except Izuku, at least.

A shiver ran down his spine as he remembered Sir decimating the manticore, and the look in the man's eyes shortly afterward.

"So, Uraraka-san!" She yelped a bit as he quickened his step. "What did you want to talk about tonight?"

"Eh? I was wonderin' what was up with those faeries from the other day, actually…"

"Now THAT'S a story I can't tell in a restaurant."

"Just don't go gettin' us eaten by a dragon, Midoriya-kun."

"You're the one who laughs like a sailor- OW… okay, okay, I deserved that…"

Mental note: Uraraka was absolutely as strong as she looked and she could probably fight Kacchan one on one, don't piss her off.

The dragon was a mix of Eastern and Western characteristics as Izuku knew them. It had a chest and hips that widened further than a normal Japanese serpent, but the long body and snout of a serpentine beast. Black and yellow plates covered its back while smooth charcoal scales seemed to make up the underbelly. Six legs, a pair of forearms near the head and four 'hind' legs, made moving through the den relatively easy, despite the incredibly large wings.

Really, Izuku still couldn't get used to the dragon's size. He was sitting on top of a four-story building and he was sure that the creature could have risen up to look him dead in the eye without even reaching its full length. Part of him wondered if he was any larger than the dragon's head, but he didn't think his self-esteem could take the answer. Even with his recent growth spurt, he'd only just gotten tall enough for people to stop calling him 'little Deku'.

Most of the time when it was in its den the dragon is sleeping, which wasn't surprising. Predatory cats seemed to spend most of their days doing the same, and this dragon wouldn't exactly have to do much if it's living off seafood. Keeping magic stockpiled would be easy on the mountain, which means the dragons wants for nothing.

He hadn't seen it breathe fire yet. But that just meant he wouldn't know until he was already in range. It bugged him more than it probably should, so he checked over his calculations again and spent his second free afternoon rechecking his circles and glyphs. The temporary ley lines he'd placed needed a bit of realigning, but he was sure that the energy should redirect properly.

All he had to worry about was giving himself away with the light show that came from activating that particular series of spells. Unless he used his own power as an anchor and drained the magic into his own vessel, he couldn't do anything about the excess energy or the seismic reaction.

Theoretically. He reached like… Well, it's magic, so degrees of accuracy don't really do much when the Mountain could be moody or something but he was really close to one hundred percent sure this will work.

"So Faerie is… a whole world?" Uraraka leaned back in her chair, staring at the little flittling on Izuku's shoulder. Izuku smiled softly as he copied down the latest news from the castle.

"I don't know if you can call it a world, I mean… That word just doesn't really do it justice. Faerie is just like our universe, but space and time aren't the same there. I read a book by some English mage named Thomas before I took my little trip, he called Faerie a 'paradoxical distortion of proper Axes' and barely managed to relate time between our dimensions to like, just over sixty percent accuracy or something."

"What was it like when you were there?" Uraraka's eyes may as well have been full of stars when they talked like this. It'd been five days since they first started talking and every time he expected to start working with her powers, she asked him about something else. The look in her eyes when he told her his stories made it worth it, though. She laughed in all the right places and usually they ended up giggling over something ridiculous.

"Time was strange. I got dumped into a forest, and by the time I realized I was in Faerie I'd already started growing vines down to my shoulders." He shakes his head when he remembers all the tricks that the Fae pulled on him. "Everyone says the Fae are these… mean spirited creatures but really they're just tricksters. Just like humans, if you ask me."

We like this one, the flittling chirped in his ear, giggling when Uraraka cocked her head to the side. Izuku frowned at the teasing, trying not to let the heat reach his face.

"I mean, some people are nice, and some people aren't. No matter what, everything is like that. But I should say that you gotta be careful how you talk to these little beauties, or else they might end up thinking you're engaged," Izuku's eyes widened when he caught the glee on Uraraka's face. "N-not that I'd know anything about that!"

"Awww…" She sighed and leaned her chin into her hand. "How'd you even get to Faerie? I thought planeswalking was really serious stuff."

"I've never actually tried to Travel before but given the amount of effort it takes I can understand why everyone thinks that." Izuku shrugged. "It's like getting on an airplane, but you step through a door and it takes a couple weeks to get everything set up."

"You're dodging the question again!" Uraraka grinned wolfishly.

"Do we really need to talk about that?" His ears burned in earnest now, but his friend didn't seem to care at all. The minute he shut his notebook she stood up and leaned over their table, forcing him to look her dead in the eye.

"Ya did say everything!"

We really like this one, Midoriyubi, you should bring her Home one day.

"I MAY," Izuku groaned at the flittling's comment and forced the words out through the hands covering his face. "have accidentally misspelled a pair of my spell circles while I was trying to build an astrology projection room in the castle…"

"A what now?"

"Like… like an interactive telescope that uses magic to show you space in real time." Izuku sighs. "I managed to pick apart a pair of spells used for illusions and space compression, but when I tried to fuse the two circles, I wrote a couple things out of order and messed up my layout. When I finally siphoned off enough magic to get the whole thing working, I punched a hole through the planar boundary and ended up falling into Faerie."

"Planar boundary?" Uraraka's eyebrows leapt into her bangs.

"It's like… You know space, right? Space in our universe is a vacuum, like a constantly expanding void full of stars and planets and stuff? Well, imagine planes are like snow globes and planar boundaries as a vacuum between all the planes."

"I think I follow. I'm guessin' it takes a lot to punch your way through by accident?"

"There's a reason people try to compress space instead of expanding it. Turns out my spell tried to expand the space of the room to match the size of the space I was trying to project, but then it was also trying to dump an inverted quantum copy of the target region into that space…"

"Ya lost me again, Deku-kun."

"I tried to make the room a million times its original size and then dump a bunch of antimatter into it."

"You're a lot smarter than I originally thought, y'know!"

"I… I really hope that was a compliment, Uraraka-san."

"I mean you read a lot of books, but you always talk about this stuff you've done, so… It's like two different people rolled into one you."

"I spent a lot of time studying when I was growing up. Reading about magic turned into reading about astrology and then it was physics and calculus…"

"I've never been great with books, even though I could study. Guess I've always been better with my hands."

"You work on a fishing boat, right? I've never actually been on a boat."

"Seriously? You've been to like, three different dimensions and you're excited about bein' on a boat?"

"There's so much history behind boats! And there's a whole bunch you can't see without getting out on the ocean! Though I'm not sure I want to see Jormüngandr in person if it's beneath the boat I'm on…"

"What now?"

"Just, ah… a really big snake."

"Bigger than a whale?"

"Probably? I've only… read about it in books, really…"

"Hey, Melissa! How are you…?

What do you mean 'Do I know what time it is', it's like noon on I-island, right? I know I got…

Oh, you meant here! Well, I mean…

Yeah, it's late. But, look, I just had a quick question…

No, I haven't heard from Sir, have you? Oh, he's looking for me…

I had no idea. Hey, can the I-island magic shield formulas stand up against a dragon?

What do you mean you don't know, your dad is the top technician for magical…

Yeah, okay, maybe there hasn't been a dragon attack for centuries, but we use dragon breaths as a force measurement, right?

No seriously I'm fine, I've just been taking it easy. Visiting the ocean. No magic involved! I'm telling the…

Yeah, all right maybe you don't trust me, but when have I ever led you wrong? I'm just doing a little theory crafting on a new personal barrier and I was hoping you knew the strength of the barrier overlays…

So, they COULD withstand a dragon attack?

Don't worry about the compression, I can use Baien's conversion spectrum…

What do you MEAN Baien's conversion is old school, it always works! Look, Arbitage's paradox is just a limit theory, you can…

Can I just get your overlays?

I'll send you the new formulas when I'm done, and we can have this talk in person…

Yes, I'll have Yagi-san bring…

Why do you all try to raise the alarm every time…

That was one…!

Okay, Tooru loves you and only FOUR ghosts escaped…

You're basically the only person who even remembers the Toad God other than Tsuyu. Why? Why can't I just be innocent…

Calling me a trouble magnet is rude, you know. You're using like five of my original spells…

I'm not just BRINGING IT UP…!

You're sending the overlays, right? Email is fine.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Melissa.

Yeah, we'll come back soon. And we won't have to worry about testing or anything, I'll…

No, no no NO WAIT please don't tell Nighteye…! Everything is fine, I swear! Dragons aren't even native to Japan!

I meant NOW, not historically, I know…

Do we really need to have an argument about historical accuracy of dragon nesting? Like five different portals…

No, no I'm NOT deflecting, just… Please? Look, I'm not up to anything.

I haven't even been gone a week, most spells on that level take AT LEAST two and a half to charge.

We're supposed to be friends, why are you threatening me?

No Hatsume isn't involved! They took my phone, how am I supposed to even get close to the castle?

Oh, it's a pay phone.

Yes, they still exist. It's kinda dirty though.

You're the second person to tell me that today, you know.

She's a perfectly normal…

Shit, wait, Melissa, YOU CANNOT TELL MINA…

Yeah, I owe you like… seven? Seven sounds like a good number.

What do you mean quality? Everything I put out is quality!

Tell your dad I said hello, okay?

We'll visit soon.

Promise.

Thanks!" Izuku groaned as he hung up the phone.

"…I'm in so much trouble if this doesn't work."

"So ya just want me to… keep this in the air? Right here?" Uraraka frowned, glancing between Izuku and the chunk of limestone in her hand. Izuku nodded as he tossed another stray wire off to the side.

"Yep! I want to see what your Talent is all about."

"So… how does sweeping help?"

"Well," Izuku grinned as he pulled a journal out of his pocket and flipped to Uraraka's profile, "the mountain's latent magic might have an effect on your powers, and I prefer to keep a clean workspace. Force of habit, I guess."

"Nothing's going to explode, you know?" Izuku's smile faded at the joke, draining all of the humor from Uraraka's face.

"Sometimes you say that, but then you forget to put away the duct tape and suddenly everything is on fire."

"You scare me sometimes, Deku-kun."

"Well, we shouldn't have anything to worry about but… better safe than sorry with magical experiments, okay?" Hatsume was miles away. No way her curse would carry over this far.

"I'll trust ya, I guess." Uraraka grabbed the stone and stepped back as it began hovering in place.

After a moment, Izuku focused everything he had on the stone and the woman before him. He circled it, carefully sketching the pink aura that covered the stone. Poking the rock sent it drifting off to one side, but nothing else changed. It was simply a chunk of rock, hovering in a soft pink light.

"That's… wow." Izuku held a hand out beneath the stone and siphoned some of his own power to his fingertips, watching as the new current rippled into the atmosphere and disappeared.

"What's so special? It's just a floating rock." Uraraka sighed. "I really don't see…"

"S-sorry for stopping you, but," Izuku glanced at her before stopping the stone and letting it drift in place once more, "normally, magical Talents are… it's knowing how to do something that no one else can do with your own magic, if I had to simplify it. If you could see this, you'd just see a ribbon of pink magic around the rock, like a river flowing in a circle."

Uraraka nodded, then walked over and stared down at the stone. Izuku couldn't help feeling a little bit breathless seeing her power in action- really, truly getting to see it in action.

"Uraraka, anyone who has magic uses that magic to make things happen. That means that you've always got to stay connected to what you're doing, unless it's my tricks and charms. But yours, this rock? It's completely free! Your magic passed to this rock in a second, removed the effect of gravity from it entirely, but there's no link."

"What… I don't really get it, Deku-kun."

"Uraraka, you're the only one who can break this spell. Unless someone siphoned your magic from the rock, no one can sever your link to it." Izuku scribbled frantically on a spare page, listing questions as fast as he could. "I know someone who can use her magic to create matter and Sir's apprentice has one of the most powerful spatial magic abilities on the planet, but I've never seen anyone imbue an effect to objects without some sort of magical lifeline, this… your Talent is self-sustained flight magic! Self-sufficient magic is an entire field of study but seeing it occur in a person, this is one of the rarest types of abilities!"

"But, wait, why do I get sick when I use it for too long?" Uraraka quietly released the rock and bounced it from hand to hand. "Wouldn't that mean I've got a connection?"

"If I had to guess," Izuku shut his journal and dropped it into his pocket as he met Uraraka's eyes. "You're getting sick because when you imbue an object with your magic, you're giving it enough magic to activate the flight spell and sustain it. The more you give away, the more nauseated you'll feel because you're running out of power. If you get sick using it on yourself, it might be constantly putting power into the spell and overworking it. Between the drain and the overpowering magic cloak that builds up anyone would want to be sick."

"Um… You're using all that theory stuff again. My magic just doesn't work well on me?" Uraraka giggled weakly as he nodded. "Well that's… Doesn't that make things kinda hard?"

"You can build up an immunity to it over time." Izuku smiled as wide as he could manage. "Really, Uraraka-san, it won't be much of a handicap once you train your Talent some more. And other than that, this power… It's one of the most amazing Talents I've ever seen."

"You've got all kinds of crazy friends. I doubt this is really that great." Uraraka turned and threw the stone back into the pile of stray materials. "Besides, I can't train here, or do anything other than get a regular job ta help out my parents. Thanks for tryin', Deku-kun, but it's not really that easy."

"Uraraka-san." Izuku frowned when she avoided his eye. "Look, Uraraka-san, I'm sorry if I… the way I talk must sound like I don't care, or as if all this is easy. I don't mean it that way."

"You're fine, Deku-kun. I doubt ya would hurt a fly unless it was an accident." She whispered, trying and failing to laugh at her own joke. Izuku felt something thickening in his lungs when he let it pass without a word.

What could he say when he was actively fighting a war?

The pair of them stood there awkwardly, letting the wind blow as Izuku fell into darker memories and Uraraka stared up the mountain.

"It does sound nice, though," Izuku glanced up as the whisper reached his ears. He knew it might not be for him, or anyone in particular, but the same part of him that felt horrible for lying couldn't help wishing she was saying it for him. "Bein' free to do magic the way you do, havin' all these crazy friends and seein' all that neat stuff."

"It's only great because I have people to share it with. Like you, Uraraka-san." Izuku dredged up a wistful smile when the girl turned around, and for a moment he imagined that they were both enjoying the melancholy taste in the air.

"Well, Japan isn't that big, ya know!" Uraraka blew past him and bumped his should just a bit, knocking him out of the moment as quickly as it had taken him. He stared at her back as she bounced towards the edge of the site. "So once ya finish your research, we can exchange numbers and you can tell me all about this stuff over email!"

"I can call, at least," The thickness in his chest turned hot when he realized what she was implying, and the words came out strangled. Uraraka giggled, then waved from the fence.

"Gotta head home, Deku-kun, but I'll see ya around nine, right? Back here?"

"Y-yeah! Enjoy your dinner, Uraraka-san!" Izuku waved long after she was gone, still not quite sure what he was feeling.

The glasses worked fine. It had taken most of the night to inscribe two pairs, one for himself and one for Uraraka, but it had been worth it to see the girl's face light up. Having a pair of Looking Glasses might help her down the line at some point, and he'd been wanting to get her something. Maybe it shouldn't have been something so practical, but… Well, he was trying.

And he didn't really have the time, or the budget, to go gift shopping.

He had one day left in Owase, if he was right. Melissa had sent her shield overlays, and he'd sent her the personal barrier version just that morning. Whatever sleep he'd lost fixing it into his other spells and redirecting the stored magic was worth it, in his opinion. That one spell would probably earn him another grant from the Elders once they got done yelling at him.

Izuku took a deep breath and looked over his supplies again. A gemstone plucked from the dragon's hoard, check. After three days, the dragon would probably be looking for it. Putting on his glasses revealed the additional flows of magic that his ley lines were charging him with, and the personal circle formed by all seven of the wells connecting properly.

"All right… Guess I just need to find out if this one speaks draconic or Japanese." Izuku tipped the gemstone into his pocket and looked at the closed off building as if it might rear up and bite him. The dragon had just returned a half hour ago, and the rumbling proved that it was more testy than normal. After a moment he slapped himself on the cheeks and took another deep breath. "C'mon Izuku, you're just… trying to swindle a dragon. No worries. Hephaestus has gotta be worse than some dragon, the guy threw actual lava. Don't even know if… Okay, let's just not think about that."

He cut a strand of red tape and pressed a hand to the plywood, drawing a string from his personal well of magic to write a tiny entrance through the blocked door. Green circles ran along the surface of the wood before the rest of the spell filtered in and the plywood began to flicker in and out of existence. Izuku was through it well before the wood returned to normal, though he winced some when light bled in around the edges and a crack sounded from the doorway.

Yagi was right, he needed more work using his own power. Tricks were fine, but eventually…

The floor of the building was surprisingly sturdy for housing a massive creature beneath it. Much like Uraraka's perch, the outside edge of the floor remained intact before the ground fell away. Izuku did his best not to look at the edges, which had obviously been scoured by giant, viciously sharp claws.

Of course, since he was a puny mortal, he had to fall from the ground floor. Which meant hitting the ground, stumbling and rolling onto his rear. He didn't even have time to get up before the dragon's eyes were locked onto him.

"Weel ya lookie that, little scummer went and fell down a hole." Izuku's entire body locked up as fire-orange and yellow stretched out around him endlessly, seemingly pitching him feet first into the dragon's pupil. He blinked and found the creature's snout barely a meter or two from his face, whiskers extending to poke at his cheeks while molten breaths rolled out of its nose. "Dinnae be feart, laddie, yer looking a bit peely-wally. Better just caw canny, ye know, kick back an all that ye fuckwit."

"I… I don't… That's not Japanese or draconic," Izuku giggled hysterically as the dragon lowered down to eye level and arched a single furry brow at him. The voice was… softer than he expected. Not soft, but soft considering it was coming out of a massive, predatory magical serpent. "Reeeaaally should have thought of that…"

"Oi, scummer, quit standin' there like a stookie. We ent chumming round, and ya don' just drop in unexpected." The dragon wound around him slowly, sending a shudder down Izuku's spine as it crossed behind him. It was well outside of the minimum distance but still. "I'm feelin' a bit radge lately an' havin' guests ent helping."

"Wait… wait wait, I have something for this!" The dragon blinked, both the membrane and its real eyebrows, before its eyes began to narrow.

"Eh,"

"Oh man, I never thought this would actually work, do you know how hard it is to find anyone who speaks a language local to this plane outside of, like, ambassadors? And they've all got these fancy translation spells, plus I never really get to talk to them in the first place, but I mean I TOLD Sir that this would be helpful if you travelled around and now I get to tell him I used it ON A DRAGON!"

"Eh!" The dragon's snout pushed dangerously close, blasting him with what may as well have been hot steam.

"W-wait! Please, I'm sorry, you don't know what I'm saying b-but, I'm sorry, just gimme a second…!" Izuku held his palms up to the dragon for a moment before he yanked off his jacket and pushed up the sleeves of his shirt. Green light began fading into existence on his arm, smoky at first before it finally solidified and expanded out into a disc around his wrist. From his elbow to his fingertips green characters and circles locked together, shifted vertically as they crawled up the invisible cone wrapped around his hand. Slowly the green turned red, and Izuku glanced up at the dragon. "Um… could you, eh, give me a sample?"

"Ye hit yer head on the way doon? Ach, away ye go, scummer. No time fer yer little tricks…" The dragon trailed off and rose into the air somewhat as Izuku began cackling. Red light shifted back to green, then flickered yellow and black before a pattern of green and yellow formed in the spell.

"Holy shite, I dinnae believe it works! That's barry!" Izuku snapped his fingers and winced as the spell flickered in and out, then resettled on his arm. "Bit switherin', but better than no. I didn't mean to cause a fuss!"

"…Ya thinkin' a fancy lightshow makes ya look less appetizing, Doaty."

"Eh… Ye weren't kiddin, gone a bit radge have ya?" Izuku winced at the warble in his voice. He could feel the spell changing his words to fit the translation, and it was a bit rough despite the hours he'd spent putting the spell together. Suddenly he blinked and looked up at the dragon. "Oi, snakey fucker, where'd ya get Embra Scott's from?"

His hands slapped over his mouth the moment the words left him.

"Fuck me I dinnae think I can go back ta normal."

"Weel, that's a first. Ya bagged my tongue, eh? How's that feel stick fucker?" Izuku winced as the dragon lowered itself back down to eye level. "Had to go and borrow a pair ta keep the missus happy, eh? Can't say I'm not flattered but I doubt ye can keep the act up. Look a bit… sick."

"I just called a very large dragon a snakey fucker, I'm definitely feelin' a bit sick thank you kindly." Izuku ran his hands over his face a few times before he met the dragon's eyes and forced himself to smile. "Weel now that, ye know, we can talk… Was hopin' I could ask ye for a favor?"

"Ye come falling doon into my den, no invitation mind, ye bag my tongue and wear my balls around and NOO ye wanna ask me fer a favor?" The dragon snorted, accidently blowing Izuku's hair out of place and knocking a few leaves out of his hair. "And litterin'! All over my den, ye really are a stick fucker aren't ye?"

"Wait, wait, I got… I'm no just…" Izuku groaned around the translation spell as he yanked the gemstone out of his pocket, holding it up to the dragon's eye. "I mean it's no like I just figured I'd come askin' an ancient dragon like yerself for a favor without some kinda payment, right? I ent that daft."

"Ye'd like to think so eh? Tresppassin, littering, phony credentials with that pathetic little magic there, honestly, and noo yer gonna try and sell me back my own rock? Granted, ye got good taste it's a pretty rock, but ye just called me OLD, stick fucker, yer really makin this worse the longer ye keep talkin'."

"Oh… weel, that's… Prolly shoulda seen that comin', eh?"

"Fuckin humans really aren't as salty as ya think ya are, honestly. Taste like rankin birds, not even worth the hunt. But, ye know, I ent above doin' my own dirty work." Izuku's eyes widened as the dragon's eyes narrowed one more time and the lips peeled back, revealing puckered black flesh around Izuku-sized fangs and pink-black gums. "I'd apologize, but I'm not sorry."

The dragon lunged, and several things happened at once. A small explosion tore through the air between them as the dragon hit the barrier that Izuku had set up, illuminating a blue and purple bubble of condensed, smoky magic. Before Izuku had time to process everything that was happening, though, a pink glow coming from behind the dragon caught his eye.

Uraraka wasn't supposed to be there. She didn't have a barrier. The dragon was in a radge. He caught the dragon turning around and moved.

He was already reaching forward as he broke the limiters on his magic, releasing a blast wave while he bent the space between where he was and where Uraraka was floating. An arm wrapped around her as the dragon hesitated, already poised to leap when it'd been struck by the second explosion. Izuku did his best to ignore the small squeak from Uraraka as he locked eyes with the dragon and broke the translation spell on his arm.

"You will not touch her, understood?" The dragon narrowed its eyes at him for a moment, ignoring the way its whiskers and fur danced in the breeze caused by Izuku's transformation.

"Weel, that's a wee flashier entrance, ent it stick fucker? Put the girlie doon and we can talk this out proper." The dragon retreated some, coiling its head so that it was close to the floor of the den and looking forward, looking down on them as little as possible. Izuku nodded, lowering the two of them and setting Uraraka on the floor near the entrance before he walked towards the dragon. Part of him wanted to explain things to Uraraka, but first… best not to take his eyes off the dragon.

"I'll return the gemstone and leave you alone. You have my word you won't be bothered again, though my friend has taken to looking into your den occasionally. I'd appreciate it if you left her be, seeing as she means no harm."

"So, yer more than just some rowdy, cocksure little stick fucker. This is the Sage's power, ye ken? You're the ninth Sage?"

"I am, though I prefer not using this power against others if I can avoid it." Izuku frowned. "Are we going to fight, or can I take your word that both she and I are protected here, at least while we talk?"

"Calm yerself, ye fuckin mortal whatsit. 'M not bout to attack a little lassie fer stargazin, or attack the Sage, even if ye are a daft little stick fucker underneath all that power." The dragon huffed. Izuku let the eight flames burning in his chest compress into a single massive source of power before he took it and pressed it down underneath the first of his usual seals, just enough that he could call it out if needed. A bit of vertigo took over as his sense became mortal again, and his scalp itched- he'd burned off the vines, which would be quick to grow back. Still, everyone was safe.

"I'll have to redo the translation spell…"

"Don't bother." Izuku blinked as the dragon responded in perfect, if heavily accented and somewhat overly formal, Japanese. "I could understand you before, though I prefer being able to say what I like in my own way."

"So… The spell, me talking like that… You just…" Izuku slumped a bit. "That's a bit mean, isn't it?"

"So is stealing. Trying to sell it back was inspired, or it would have been if you thought it through." The dragon slid forward until Izuku was less than a meter from its nose, staring up the length of its snout at giant molten eyes. "Asking for a favor in exchange for a piece of my own hoard is a bold move, Sage brat."

"I… Really didn't know if I could bargain with you otherwise." Izuku sighed.

"Try asking nicely next time. It does wonders, though none of you mortals learn manners anymore." The dragon reclined again. "I'll have my rock back."

Izuku nodded, setting the gemstone at his feet before taking a few steps back. The dragon sniffed the stone before reaching out with two claws and delicately placing it back on the pile hidden behind the coils.

"Now that I have what's mine, and we've tried to kill one another, what do you really want from me, stick fucker?"

"Well… Considering you're going to continue calling me stick fucker regardless of what I ask…"

"Good on you, picking that up this early."

"…I was hoping that I could get you to help a friend of mine with his magic." Izuku took a moment to meet the dragon's eyes earnestly before bowing at the waist. "My friend Kirishima has the ability to strengthen himself, and I've read the dragons are well versed in defensive magic."

"That's it? You came here, nearly died for some idiot? Must be packing a hell of a pair, that one."

"We aren't… Look, if I had anymore research maybe I would know better but dragons are the apex predator on the planet, barring disasters and interdimensional travelers…"

"Shut up." Izuku shut his teeth with a click and flinched as the dragon huffed at him again. "Look, boy, I'll be honest. It's been a century or two since someone wandered into my cave to ask for anything. Longer since anyone actually surprised me, and never in my life has anyone ever pissed me off that badly, tried to sell me a part of my own hoard after stealing it- which, by the way, I've got to give you credit for stealing it in the first place, that was a surprise- and then proved that they could, without really trying in fact, kill me and take what they wanted."

"I would NEVER…"

"Can it, stick fucker," The dragon's eyes narrowed. "While I'm being honest, I must confess that I'm bored. Today has been entertaining, at least, so I'll do you this one favor. Help your friend out with whatever he's got in him. He can come to me, though. This is my place, and I don't mind having a few visitors if it means that more interesting things get to happen occasionally. BUT you'll do it properly, got that?"

Izuku nodded, and the dragon nodded, and then Izuku bowed.

"Could I maybe ask to come by and speak with you, at some point? If I did it properly?"

"I'll teach you brats how at some point." The dragon let out a deep breath, filling the room with heat. "For now, get out. I'm tired, after spending three days in a fury. Come back next week when I don't still feel the itch for letting you live."

Izuku nodded and scampered backwards with another bow, meeting a shell shocked Uraraka. He didn't take the time to worry about what he was doing, he grabbed her and reached up towards the courtyard. They blinked into existence as a breeze blew off the mountain, which nearly knocked Uraraka over. By the time they let go of one another, Izuku's ears were on fire.

"That…" Uraraka stepped away from him carefully, fixing him with a cautious glare. "You promise me… And you said you didn't… Deku-kun, who ARE you?"

"I'm…" Izuku sighed, digging a hand through his curls for a moment before he let out a breath and frowned. "I'm an apprentice to the Sage of the Elders. Most people know him as the Sun Mage."

"You lied." Uraraka's face twisted harshly. "You tol' me… You said you weren't gonna do anything to the dragon, but you were just lyin' the whole time. And now you're… You probably made up that entire sob story, didn't you?"

"Wait…"

"I don't wanna hear it!" Uraraka glared up at him with tears in the corners of her eyes. "You lied, you're a liar, and… Gods, why did I even let myself think that you were who you said you were?!"

Waves of something rolled through his chest with every word, but the feeling got heavier with every word.

"My parents warned me, told me that the Elders were worried about some mage coming to town and that I shouldn't get involved, but I trusted you, I lied for you, and you LIED! You really had me with all that talk of bein Empty, not having any power. I fell for all the flashy tricks and the glasses and the stories…!"

"I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to calm down, miss."

Izuku flinched as a familiar voice broke through her shouts. He didn't need to look: the man walking onto the scene would be wearing a crisp white suit, despite his ridiculously thin frame, and rimless glasses. Several people had thought, maybe, they were related. Nighteye had never found that amusing.

"Midoriya." Izuku shrank down some and peeked through one eye as the man leveled a frosty glare his way. "I'd be lying if I said you didn't deserve to get yelled at by this young lady, but unfortunately, right now, my job is to take you back to Musutafu."

"S-Sir, I can…"

"You will not explain, Midoriya." Sir Nighteye pushed his glasses up his nose as he stalked closer, eventually getting close enough to lean down and press their noses as close to touching as possible. "You will shut up, come quietly and answer for running off while you were on house arrest, understood?"

"Yes Sir." Izuku squeaked as the man's hand clamped down on the back of his jacket. "U-Uraraka-san…"

"Miss, I'm sorry for any trouble he caused you." Sir didn't bow, though the words were a bit deferential. Uraraka just glared at them. "If you need to come yell at him later, please get in contact with me and I'll make sure that you get the chance to punish him more seriously. For now, I'll have to take him."

She barely seemed to notice the card for what it was, but she snapped it up and stormed away regardless.

"What did you do this time, Midoriya?"

"I… I tried doing things myself, instead of getting her involved, Sir."

"… Well, apparently you can't even do that right."

Izuku swallowed as the mountain's magic swirled to life around them, supplementing Sir's own power for a minute or two before a bubble wove itself around them.

Less than ten minutes after he'd accomplished his mission, he was back home… and he couldn't help but feel like he'd failed.

Ochako was mad. She was furious, actually. Even with a week to forget him, her anger had definitely, definitely not boiled down and turned stale. There were no thoughts of an awkward, sheepish green haired boy with leaves in his hair. Late night trips out to stare down at the dragon had stopped altogether, and she did not miss them.

Screw magic, and all the times it had toyed with her.

Family came first.

"Ochako-chan…" Her eyelids fluttered open at the sound of her mother knocking. "There are some men here to see you, honey. Elders."

"Tell 'em to go away." Ochako groaned.

"Honey, please… it's… They say they came to apologize?" Ochako bit her lip, then buried her head in her pillow and groaned.

"Gimme just a minute, momma."

If she remembered right, the man who'd come to take that bastard away was named Nighteye. His card was… somewhere. Probably with those damned glasses. She remembered his voice easily, considering it was one of the coldest voices she'd ever heard from anyone. All things considered he was definitely scary. Deku had definitely described him right.

Her expression twisted as she threw on a nicer shirt and some pants. A guilty chord struck her for a moment when she realized that she'd spent her last two days in bed. Raging mad, obviously. Not that that was an excuse for being lazy when she could be working off all the anger.

Her parents were all but shaking at the dinner table, having gotten out some patio chairs to fit five people around the dinner table. Daddy looked confused, but forced himself to smile, while her mother looked like she was floating on cloud nine… which was odd, considering she was shaking a touch.

Across the table sat Sir Nighteye and the spindliest man Ochako had ever seen. Beside Sir Nighteye's white suit, the man's pitch-black business suit seemed terribly formal and sharp. He had to be at least two hundred cm tall, but… he didn't look it, even if he felt tall. Maybe he loomed over the table a bit, but his expression was easy going despite the skin drawn tight across his skull and the sunken, shadowed eyes that caught her as soon as she entered the room. An impressive mane of washed out blonde hair framed his face, with two long bangs that reminded her of herself (though she hoped her bangs were more tasteful). More than anything, he seemed Fragile.

"Ah, young Uraraka. It's nice to finally meet you in person!" Ochako's eyes widened as he bowed his head some, "My name is Yagi Toshinori. Thank you for welcoming us into your home."

"I… But you're…"

I'm the apprentice to the Sage of the Elders. People call him the Sun Mage.

Even growing up in a magicless house, Ochako had grown up listening to stories about this man. The Sun Mage, who single handedly fought off demon lords and angry gods, who defended the mortal plane with eyes like blue nova and wielded magic capable of bending the universe however he pleased.

"Y-y-you… You're…" Ochako blinked a few times before bowing sharply at the waist, forgetting her anger for the moment in favor of joining her parents' panic. "It's nice to meet you please take care of us!"

"Please, please, I'm retired. And besides, I've heard you're rather exceptional yourself."

"Yagi-sama, please, we came to apologize, not to indulge your student." Nighteye muttered. Ochako suddenly remembered why they were there and felt… a little less respectful. All the same, she sat down beside her parents and kept a neutral expression as the two men glanced at one another.

"Well, Osamu isn't wrong." Yagi shrugged. "I've heard that you were subject to young Midoriya during his stay here, and I was hoping to thank you for taking care of him. But first, we wanted to apologize for anything he might have done to cause you trouble."

Ochako's mouth dried as the men both bowed.

"It… Midoriya-san wasn't any trouble." She muttered. Nighteye snorted, earning him a glare from Yagi.

"Don't look at me like that, Yagi. When I found him young Uraraka was in the middle of giving him a very pointed thrashing." Nighteye's glare rested on her for a spare moment, forcing her to blush and shudder at the same time. "I do commend you for that. He deserved it, I'm sure."

"Ochako, honey, did that boy…?"

"Momma!" Ochako's blush turned furious as she shook her head.

"Uraraka-san, please trust us when we say that the most Midoriya could have done was step on your daughter's toes." Nighteye sighed. "That boy is harmless to everyone besides himself and the Elders' peace of mind."

"You're just as fond of him as everyone else, Osamu." Yagi chuckled before turning back to Ochako, who was still not happy with how this was going. "Young miss, my sincere apologies. Midoriya-kun has a terrible habit of making friends and getting people involved in his experiments, though he does mean well. He's mentioned several times that he was worried for you, and that even if he deserved to be yelled at, he wished he could have explained things properly."

"He mentioned me?" Ochako frowned some. He'd talked about so many adventures that she'd guessed he was off on the next one already, not regretting the way they'd left things. Yagi's smile became a little bit pained at the phrase.

"The truth is," Nighteye's expression shifted into a deeper frown, though he glared at the table pointedly, "Midoriya happened to be on house arrest before he left for Owase, and it was my negligence that allowed him to cause you so much trouble. For now, he's been confined to his room back in Musutafu, under the watch of all those who've had the misfortune of being involved with him before."

"What my colleague MEANS," Yagi dug an elbow into Nighteye's side and glared at him, "is that young Midoriya has a terrible habit of overextending himself and he was ordered to take a vacation for his health. Now that vacation has, somehow, become a bit of a punishment and he's being watched carefully to make sure he gets his rest."

Ochako glanced back and forth between the men in confusion. One, his guardian, seemed… pointedly angry with him, while his mentor sounded as if the boy was a danger to himself more than anyone.

Her mind drifted back to that day, when his hair had turned to green and white flames and his eyes became green spirals in a white fire-storm, and suddenly she realized that she'd no idea who he'd been. The thought drained something from her chest, something she hadn't even known was there, until she felt… empty.

"He saved me from that dragon." Ochako muttered. Yagi nodded and smiled as if he'd known that… which maybe he had, but it still made her feel a bit small.

"I'm sure the past weeks have been rather confusing." Yagi chuckled. "Young Midoriya tends to stir things up when he gets out."

"Aren't the Elders supposed to be," Ochako groaned as her dad leaned over the table, glancing back and forth between their visitors, "I don't know, monitoring people like that? I have no idea what this boy did but if Ochako was attacked while he was here…"

"Daddy, he saved me, it wasn't like that!" Ochako cursed the words. She had no idea how to feel, but that much was true at least.

"Uraraka-san, you're absolutely right." Nighteye closed his eyes under her father's words. "Truthfully, this was our failing. Midoriya might mean well, but his track record has proved him a menace. We came to apologize and see if there was anything we might be able to do to right our failing on your behalf."

That… Ochako felt a little bit weak, knowing what was coming next. Even if they had troubles, they had their pride. Her father's expression hardened some, even as her mother slid a hand onto the man's shoulder and they shared a brief moment.

"As long as Ochako is safe, and that boy is being dealt with, we could ask for nothing more from the Elders."

Ochako swallowed again. Despite everything she felt drained, but that statement alone had reminded her of her old wish, which led to thinking of Midoriya and…

No, she had no idea what she was feeling now.

"Well, we'll respect that." Yagi sighed, "but could we leave our contact information? If you ever need anything in the future, feel free to reach out. Besides being a part of the Elders' Council, I'd see it as a personal favor. My student was very clear that his time in Owase was well spent, and that your daughter was incredibly kind to him."

"We… of course, Yagi-sama."

"Please, Yagi would be fine. As I said, I'm retired." Yagi chuckled, ignoring the strangled tilt on her father's words.

Why do I feel like I'm about to miss the train…? Ochako swallowed the thought, and her words, and… everything. She was a mess, but… she was angry at him. Magic did nothing but hurt her, so why…

"Well, it's just about five… Shall we go, Osamu? That shop should be open." Yagi groaned as he stood up, nearly standing well above everyone else in the room. Ochako blinked as she realized what they had to mean.

"You mean Jumon?" Yagi grinned widely.

"Ah, yes! Young Midoriya praised the shop heavily, and I've been sorely tempted to drop by."

"You're a glutton, despite being on a very strict diet Yagi-sama." Nighteye muttered, ignored the way the man scoffed.

"I'm allowed to cheat every once in a while, even with my condition. Don't take this from me, Osamu!"

The pair were gone before Ochako even realized it. She watched from the hall as her parents collapsed into chairs at the table, looking stressed out of their minds.

"I know we told all those fairy tales but… seeing two of those Elders in our house just makes all the magic so…" Her father trailed off when he realized she was still there, looking pained. "Sorry, sweetie. Are you alright? They made it sound like that boy nearly got you killed with all that talk."

"Why didn't you tell us about that boy?" Her mother caught her eye, looking… not distraught. Ochako couldn't place the look, if she was honest.

"I… It wasn't really anythin' worth talking about." Ochako sighed. She fell into a chair and laid on the table, staring at the wood. "He was just supposed to be researching that dragon, an'…"

Before long, she'd told her parents everything… everything but Midoriya's stories. She left those on the wayside, saying that he taught her all about magic. What else could she say? That she'd gotten so caught up in his stories for a week that she'd barely learned anything at all?

The re-telling left her feeling even more conflicted than before. It made her want to laugh and cry and reminded her of their talks on the dragon perch. Her stomach felt hot and her chest felt light and her head swam, remembering the way early evening starlight light up his eyes and the way he'd talked about everything.

He was the only one who'd ever told her that she was special. Not like her parents or her uncle or her grandmother did, or the way the families in Owase heard of her flight magic with vague interest. Midoriya had looked at her power and seen it as something amazing. She wasn't just Talented, she was…

Well, he had plenty of friends who were special. Odds were that he'd thought her Talent was special like theirs. He was just nice like that. Easier to use people when they thought you were their friend, right?

"Ochako," She blinked when she realized she'd said that out loud. Her parents were both staring at her with sad expressions, her mother running small circles on the back of her hand. "You said he saved you, right?"

"I… of course, but that…"

"I don't really know what to make of the kid, since I'm not special like you two," Her father frowned and scratched his head, looking down at his free hand in confusion. She knew he did that because he only knew about her and her uncle, their touch-based Talents, but every time she saw him look that way it made her heart ache. "But I think, listening to Yagi-sama… Maybe he was trying to keep you safe. Men are dumb like that sometimes."

"Yes, you are." Her mother chuckled some before turning a frown back to Ochako. "Honey, we… you know we love you, Ochako. If you want to go with those men, to go see your friend, I mean…"

Ochako sat up, ready to cut her off, when her mother's expression softened.

"Ochako. Just because we don't know what magic is like, don't think I don't remember what it's like to be young." She caught the way her mother's hand tightened around her father's arm and glanced away. "We didn't know why Yagi-sama was offering us that favor but maybe he… Well, I guess we should have known he was offering it to you, not to us."

In all her life, Ochako had only known a handful of people who used magic. Her grandmother had been taught properly, having been a distant member of one of the families in Owase, and her uncle had received a bit of teaching from her. But there was no teaching for a girl whose grandmother was bedridden and old, whose parents hadn't even realized that magic was real until their daughter set the table afloat in their kitchen for the fifth time.

Distantly, she remembered the Elders coming to their house, dropping off old fairy tales for magical kids and giving her parents some helpful tips. As she got older, though, she'd started sneaking into the temples to hear those lessons. Only kids younger than ten got the general lessons, and those were, she knew now, mostly just preaching old stories about mages.

When blue light began to bleed from the ground around Sir Nighteye, Ochako's eyes widened. She forgot how to breathe as the lines rose out of the ground and formed a bubble around them, flowing with blue and yellow light as the ground beneath their feet blurred and Shifted.

Yagi was grinning at her when black and white tiles settled into view and the bubble began to fracture into tiny bubbles, leaving them in a subway station. She couldn't help blushing a bit under that grin, even if Yagi seemed to mean well.

They'd apparently 'Shifted' into an old Musutafu station line that no one used, which had been appropriated by the Elders to keep travel easy. As soon as they descended the steps, she found herself swamped by normal everything, and keeping up became something of a 'day out' instead of a trip to somewhere magical.

One thing that had struck her back during Midoriya's stories left her a little bit worried. During his trip, Midoriya had turned mirrors into telescopes and pieces of paper into magical batteries, then turned around and called those 'little tricks'. But now that she was about to visit his home, considering he was on 'house arrest', she couldn't get one of the things he'd told her out of her head.

Midoriya had always said 'back at the castle'. Everything usually included something that happened BACK AT THE CASTLE, or IN THE CASTLE, or…

Ochako wasn't well traveled, but Yagi and Sir Nighteye had definitely brought her to downtown Musutafu, or at least the city portion of Musutafu. Which… She really didn't know if that was expecting a lot, but…

She was kind of expecting to find a castle in the middle of downtown.

Maybe Midoriya had spoiled her. Who'd have thought.

The longer they spent wandering the city, even taking the subway out towards an edge of the city that Ochako had never really seen much about, she couldn't help thinking that it was too much. That a castle couldn't possibly be in the middle of the city without getting found.

"How are you feeling, young Uraraka?" Yagi's voice cut off her wandering eyes, bringing her back down to earth.

"Oh, um… I'm fine, actually. Sorry, I got a bit distracted…"

"No need to apologize, I was just a bit worried with being so quiet. Some people get terribly sick Shifting that far on their first trip." The man hummed, tapping his chain with a finger while his limp bangs danced in the breeze. "I remember young Ojiro, if I'm not mistaken, was a bit green the first time we picked him up."

"I'm used ta bein' on ships and flyin' some, so that wasn't too bad…" She trailed off, realizing for the first time that she had no idea how to address the man in front of her. He smiled and fell back into step with her, patting her shoulder.

"Call me Toshi-kun, if you don't mind. Most of young Midoriya's friends around the castle do," She blushed some at the idea of calling the Sun Mage, of all people, by a cutesy nickname.

"O-of course, T-Toshi-kun…"

"Forgive him, he has no sense of how special he is." Nighteye called over his shoulder. The man's voice cut through the crowd even at a low, conversational tone in a way that seemed almost magical in and of itself. "Midoriya shares his terrible habits and more, sadly. However, I can promise that everyone you're about to meet is genuinely glad to have another companion, even if you choose not to stay."

Ochako blinked when she caught Yagi's amused wink.

"I… really, I just wanted to return the glasses and talk to D…-Midoriya-kun one more time." She muttered.

"Well, as much as I'd like to believe you," Nighteye sighed audibly, despite not looking back, "Midoriya has one talent that has been quite… particular. Ever since I met him. No matter what, he seems to make friends. And, usually, those friends are precious people with special Talents or abilities. Nearly all of them have moved in since we established ourselves in the castle."

Ochako frowned, then straightened up as Nighteye glared back over his shoulder.

"I'm sure you're set on returning, but I'll hold my doubts until I've returned you to your parents safely."

"Don't make it sound so morbid, Osamu, feh. You might as well be older than the other Elders, scaring young girls like that."

"I'm not being morbid, Yagi-sama, I'm simply being honest. She deserves that, after Midoriya went and pulled that stunt."

"You make it sound like she'll be held at the castle against her will." Yagi coughed and winced, running a hand over his right side.

"I specifically said…"

"Come now, come now, we're almost there. Forget I said anything, old friend." Yagi rasped. Ochako yelped as he slipped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her up to walk between them. "Young Uraraka, you'll want those glasses of yours for this, I think."

They'd been heading east, towards a portion of the city that was probably still considered downtown. Just ahead of them was a large white wall, broken by an archway that led up to a rather large group of buildings, stairways, fountains and other bits and ends. People moved in and out in suits and school uniforms, drowning what had to be five or six blocks of the city in an air of complete and utter normal.

Something caught in her throat as she pulled the glasses out of her pocket, looking over the pink frame as she opened them up and slipped them on. When nothing changed, and the men at her sides didn't stop moving, she resigned herself to be a part of Yagi's joke, whatever it might be.

People greeted her escorts as they headed onto the campus. Up close it was in fact a campus, apparently a mixed college and high school if Ochako was seeing right. Even with her glasses showing her flows of magic in all sorts of colors, she found absolutely nothing odd about the entire place, other than how clean and… full of nature it was. Trees and gardens, even a massive expanse of hills behind the buildings on her right and a full-fledged stretch of woods on the left, filled the space between buildings.

Now that she was paying attention, actually, lots of people were greeting the pair of men at her sides. And nearly all of them were smiling or stopping to pay respects. The pair seemed to take it in stride, either waving and greeting everyone in turn or just… nodding, keeping their eyes dead set on the path.

Ochako was starting to realize why Midoriya was afraid of Sir Nighteye. He didn't seem to like anything, save for Yagi-sama.

The three of them stepped into a building off to their right and reached the elevator. Yagi's grin had gotten wider, which made her a little uncertain about being in a tiny metal box with two relatively strange men. Which, of course, only grew worse when they stopped and waited for the doors to shut without doing anything.

No one hit a button. The only warning Ochako had was a garbled twist of words from Nighteye before the doors shut with a pleasant chime and the elevator lurched.

When the elevator dropped, Ochako didn't even have time to scream.

Midoriya was absolutely right to be afraid of Nighteye. Yagi at least seemed apologetic, but Nighteye had the gall to smirk when she finally got her legs under her. Whatever these people thought was 'just a joke' was completely and utterly TWISTED.

In hindsight, it wasn't surprising that she hadn't gotten Yagi's part of the joke. When she'd seen the school in front of her, she'd imagined that Izuku's 'castle' was all a bit of the joke and that he spent his days locked in a dorm room.

Who would think to look beneath the city for a freaking castle?

And even now, looking up at what had to be a five-story castle made of white marble, mirrored windows and stained glass, she couldn't take her eyes off the city hanging literally overhead. Whatever dropped them into the pocket of space beneath the city had left everything at an angle, turning streets into windows and leaving entire city blocks hung like ceiling tiles.

The castle drew her eyes when they got closer, having walked for nearly ten minutes to reach it. It was something out of a fantasy story, with a steepled tower at the center and blocky ramparts stacked around it at various heights. A moat stretched around it, full of sparkling water, and instead of a drawbridge there stood a sweeping, narrow footbridge capable of fitting six lanes of traffic across its width.

By the time she'd reached the outer wall, Ochako had forgotten how she'd reached the castle in the first place.

"Toshi-kun! Sir!" Ochako blinked as a girl with pink hair and horns came charging out of the front gates, crossing the entire courtyard in barely a minute.

"Ah, Ashido! How were things while we were away?"

"You haven't even been gone for a day, what did you expect?" The girl chirped, bowing quickly to Sir before she reached out and seized Ochako's arm. "Is this the one?!"

"Be gentle, Ashido." Nighteye was already stalking off towards the right side of the castle, where a smaller version of the main keep rose up beside the main tower. "She's new to all this."

"Yes, Sir!" Ochako yelped as she was hauled bodily towards the main gate. "Later Toshi-kun!"

"I'll see you for dinner, I'm sure, young Uraraka! Do try not to overwhelm her, Ashido!"

Ochako barely kept up. Sure, she had stamina and she was strong, for anyone who worked the boats she was considered powerful, but this girl wasn't stopping. Ashido, or whatever her name was, took off through the main hall and tore up the stairs, heading left constantly as people, rooms and all sorts of hallways blurred by the two of them.

"W-wait, please!"

"No time! Everyone is waiting in the study!" Ashido had black eyes as well as horns, Ochako noticed. What the hell…

They'd run up what must have been five flights of stairs, and even with that, a glance out the windows proved that they weren't any closer to the top of that tower in the middle of the castle. Ashido finally slowed as they reached a long hallway near the center of the castle, by Ochako's guess, and threw open a set of doors on their right.

"She's here! Told you they'd bring someone back!"

A peek around the doorway made Ochako's eyes widen. The room beyond wasn't as much a 'study' as it was a massive, multi-level lounge. On the sides of the room were small alcoves, eight or ten of them, with people all poking their heads out or heading down the little stairs lining the room. Rich, heavily worn crimson carpet filled the full expanse of the room, all the way to the set of doors at the back. Somehow a set of windows lined the vaulted ceiling, filling the room with beams of natural light.

Oh, and people. Way too many people. Luckily for Ochako, at least one of them was sane.

"Ashido, did you drag her all the way here from the courtyard?"

"What about it, Yaomomo! She's the latest addition, you wanna wait until after dinner to meet her?" Ashido threw herself into the room like a stick of dynamite, draped over an armchair until she was shooting the brunette a lopsided, upside-down grin. "Plus it's about time we got another girl, ever since Mido brought Todoroki-kun back we've been waaaay too cocky, if ya know what I mean."

"Could you stop shouting?" Ochako flinched as a girl with purple hair appeared from one of the alcoves, glaring at Ashido. "Some of us have the night shift, you know."

"Like he's even going anywhere!" Ashido flipped in her chair in a blink, sitting upright and leaning on the back legs. "You're the only one taking guard duty seriously, Kyōka!"

Just like that, the room dissolved into what was, probably, familiar chaos for anyone who lived there. Ochako could only stare as people gradually shuffled out of their alcoves and sat at the table. A boy with a lightning bolt in his hair took the chair beside Ashido, and next to him came a boy with plain features who seemed to be eating peanuts from a ridiculously large bag. She did her best not to stare when the boy with multiple arms lumbered down the steps and nodded her way, or when the girl with vaguely frog-like features and greenish skin came loping up to her side.

"Sorry about Mina-chan. She's excitable." Ochako nodded dumbly as the girl grinned and shuffled off again.

Soon the table was full, or nearly full. Six seats were left, despite the insanity clustered throughout the room.

"Tsu already said it, but we are sorry for Mina's… eagerness." Ochako squeaked as a tall girl with long, ridiculously silky black hair emerged on her left.

"Oh, um, it's fine… I'm just… This is…" She took off her glasses and swallowed, though it didn't help much. "It's a lot?"

"Yes, I suppose it is." The girl laughed and smiled, lending a bit of sparkle to obsidian eyes. "I'm Yaoyorozu Momo, but you can call me Momo or Yaomomo. Everyone here is rather comfortable already, but please take things at your own pace."

She found herself stuck next to Yaoyorozu and the frog girl at the table, glancing up and down the table at several faces who were… way too happy to see her, honestly.

"Um… So, I was just hoping to give these back to Midoriya-kun?" Ochako held up the glasses and frowned, watching as people got comfortable and shot glances back and forth.

"May I?" Ochako gladly handed off the glasses to Yaoyorozu, who grinned when she looked them over. "I shouldn't be surprised, of course. This is some of his best work, though. Here you are."

"So, you know him?" Ochako wasn't sure why she asked. She couldn't help feeling intimidated by their eyes, but at the same time a wave of laughter rolled over the table at her question and she couldn't help but want to know more.

It was exactly the same feeling she'd had when she saw the flittlings.

"We all know Midoriya," The peanut boy chuckled a bit. "It's not a stretch to say that everyone is here because of Midoriya, one way or another. That's why we're so curious about you! If you're here, that means he had another one of his adventures."

Ochako frowned.

"Why didn't ya ask him?"

"Because!" Ashido slammed her palms down on the table. "He came back from this one all sulky and Sir locked him up in the Observatory and now he won't talk to anyone!"

The pink girl hit her chair with a huff, though there was obviously no more than hot air behind her outburst.

"Really, it's not fair if he gets to go off and have adventures without us."

"You say that like Midoriya's adventures are good things." Ochako glanced up as the door opened and a boy with crazed purple hair wandered in, taking a seat at the very end.

"That's Shinsō," A blonde with a black streak of lightning through his hair piped up from across the table, "He talks like that but he's just a tsundere, don't worry."

"Fuck off, milliwatt," Shinsō droned, propping his head on one hand. "So, that's the new girl?"

"I… I'm just here to give these back?" Ochako offered the glasses weakly. Shinsō raised an eyebrow but didn't comment.

"No one gets out aliiiiiiiiiive…!"

Ochako stiffened as a hand closed around her shoulder, sending spikes of ice through her arms and spine. Before she could think about it she had a hand around one of their wrists and flipped them, propping a knee over their chest as she locked an arm into place.

At least, that's what it felt like. Ochako blinked as she stared at an empty table and several people standing over fallen chairs.

"I'm sorry, it was just a joke!" The voice was definitely a girl, and it definitely came from the table under her hands, but…

"What, where…"

"Uraraka-san… That's Tooru…" Yaoyorozu lowered her spear, eyeing Ochako warily as she moved towards the table. "She's a ghost, but she was just playing."

"O-oh," Ochako blushed heavily as she released the arm, letting the invisible body float off the table as she crawled into her chair and tried to shrink down. "I'm really sorry, just… reacted."

"Damn. She's a badass." Kyōka whistled. "You do martial arts?"

"Just a bit? I work on a fishing boat, and some of the men aren't trustworthy until you, eh… make a show of someone." Ochako muttered.

"I can respect that. Oi, Kaminari, lay off her or I'll help her make you pay."

"What the hell, Jirō?! I'm not that bad!"

"I'm sorry, Uraraka-san!" Ochako glanced upward as a pair of shorts, wristbands and a tank-top floated back into the room.

"N-no, it's fine, I shouldn't have overreacted." She muttered, staring as the ghost girl went and floated over the shoulder of a boy who… seemed to have a tail draped across his chair? "Um, I really… Did you all want me to tell you about the dragon?"

The room went dead quiet for a moment before everyone exploded into motion all at once. Even Yaoyorozu, Jirō and Shinsō, who'd seemed the most level headed of the bunch, stared at her with various states of wide-eyed anger, shock or disbelief.

"DRAGON?!"

"Eh?" Ochako nodded hesitantly, watching as most of the room shifted to anger. "Wait, what…"

"I believe we all have a bone to pick with Midoriya-kun, Uraraka-san." Yaoyorozu stomped around her chair towards the door at the back of the room. Ochako stared as the rest followed, all muttering something about recklessness or not being included or wondering if maybe he'd escaped again.

Ochako wasn't sure if they were all talking about the same person anymore. She honestly expected to follow them all into a room and see one of Midoriya's siblings, someone completely different from the person she'd met back home. But she followed, hoping that maybe they would finally take her to the person she was supposed to be looking for, and let her worry grow with each passing step.

The stairs beyond the door at the end of the study led to a split hallway, with a single set of steps leading further up. Now they were approaching the main tower, and Ochako swallowed as a door appeared at the end of the narrow, enclosed set of stairs.

She watched Yaoyorozu kick open the door and decided that the girl was definitely not someone she wanted to piss off anytime soon, though a sound coming from the room beyond caught her ear.

"Midoriya."

"Yao… W-what's… Oh gods, what happened?" Ochako groaned when she recognized the voice, strangled as it was. That… was definitely her Midoriya. Which meant she just had to figure out who he was, considering how all these people were acting.

"What. Happened. In Owase." Slowly everyone piled through the door, letting the six-armed giant boy shut the door and trudge off to the side to stand with a stern expression. A glance around proved that everyone surrounding the crop of green hair was doing the same, though the blonde and the plain boy were watching with slight frowns or eating peanuts conspiratorially.

She tuned out the rest of the conversation in favor of looking around the room, and quickly forgot she was in a room at all. The walls didn't seem to exist, though she could see vague lines where they should have been. If they were true, then the room was massive. Maybe the size of the Study all over again.

Except she couldn't really tell, considering the supernova hanging a few feet overhead and the spiral galaxy floating beside her foot and the cloud of black-red-and-orange that was busy spinning through the crowd of people.

With the door shut behind them, they'd somehow wandered into an empty expanse of space focused around the supernova, which expanded slowly in the center of the room.

"Look, I had three different barriers on me I was FINE!" A hoarse voice snapped her out of her trace, returning her ability to breathe as the projection began to fade and soft orbs of various colors lit up the ceiling, which had apparently been turned into a perpetual haze of darkness. Apparently, the room they were in, which had five doors in and out, was made of dark stone compared to the rest of the castle. The difference in atmosphere was intense, given the argument slowly mounting in the middle.

"You took on a DRAGON!" Ashido's voice sounded genuinely angry now, and the girl had taken it upon herself to rap her knuckles on the back of Midoriya's head. He grimaced, shook a hand at the girl and threw a ball of light off towards the wall. Ochako gasped with it stopped and hovered beside the wall, just like the rest of the lights in the room. "What kind of stupid barrier spells do you think can save you from getting lectured afterward?!"

"We already did this, didn't we?" Midoriya glared around the room and stalked out of the circle. For the first time, Ochako noticed the tired slump in his shoulders and the tone of his voice. He sounded completely uninterested in the lecture, maybe resigned to it. Even his clothes, a plain white shirt and cargo shorts, seemed different from the tough travel outfits he'd worn in Owase. "I'm locked up, you guys are forcing me to take a vacation, and everyone is fine, so I don't see why…"

"Because you ALWAYS do this, Mido! You can't keep throwing yourself into things like this!" Ashido groaned. "What were you thinking?!"

"Do you even know what happened?" Midoriya slumped when they didn't respond. "Why are we even doing this? Who told you about Owase, I thought Sir was keeping quiet!"

"We asked her." The blonde, Kaminari, threw a thumb over his shoulder and the crowd parted, leaving Ochako standing there awkwardly as Midoriya's eyes widened.

"Uraraka? What… How did you get here?"

"I, uh… may have asked Yagi-sama to bring me?" She walked forward carefully, pulling the glasses out of her shirt and holding them up. "I was hoping to return this… and maybe get your side of the story, instead a just… yelling at ya."

"I…" Midoriya glanced around the room, shut his eyes tight and bowed deeply. "I'm sorry for what happened. For lying, and for getting you involved at all, and…"

"Midoriya-kun!" Ochako didn't mean to shout. She was just… overwhelmed. There were people staring at them, and she really had no idea how to deal with him in the first place, let alone with an audience and everyone was mad now, which was her fault, somehow. But even if she didn't mean to shout, she did, and Midoriya straightened as if he'd been struck by a whip. Everyone looked a bit surprised, actually. Maybe she'd overdone it pinning Tooru to the table like that.

"Damn, Midoriya, you really found a badass chick this time, huh?" Ochako blushed as Jirō nudged her with an elbow. Midoriya seemed about as red as she was, luckily. "So how about that explanation?"

Well. That wasn't how she'd intended this to go, but Ochako couldn't say no. She wasn't about to ask to be alone with him, gods. After resolving to apologize for putting him on the spot later, should he deserve that apology, she swallowed the knot in her throat and nodded.

She'd never seen Midoriya look like he was about to die before. Maybe this wasn't a good idea.

"W-well… Uh…" Midoriya took one last glance around the room before resigning himself and rubbing a hand over his face. "Uraraka, you don't know Kirishima, but he's a friend of ours."

"He's out with Blasty, right? They left like right after you got back." Peanut boy piped up.

"Yeah… Well, I have a theory about his magic," Ochako heard a few of them snort, which seemed to make Midoriya blush, "I think that he uses magic to harden his skin up to a point of… Without all the theory, I think he uses a mental image to keep the ritual up and harden his skin into that crystal-like surface we've all seen, you know? But I realized that if he's using a mental image, then it could be similar to the types of magic that predators use when they absorb magic and harden their hides. Like, uh, dragons."

A chill ran through the room, along with several intakes of breath.

"After that whole, uh, mess with Todoroki-kun and Hellflame, I thought, you know, since… well, I thought maybe Kirishima could use some cheering up, and I'd been monitoring most of the country for sightings like that. Plus, I happened to be reading Halstrome's Compendium of Extraplanar Sentients adapted to Terra… Right, right, you guys don't… I knew that there was a dragon in Owase, since, you know, people report that kind of thing, and so when Sir sent me back home I just… slipped out."

Ochako found herself smiling a bit as he rambled. She wasn't sure why she'd imagined him being different, but the sight of him reeling himself in awkwardly and blushing under their stares proved that, at the very least, this was a part of him. Not just a façade.

"Look, there's only so much information on dragons, right? Sure, they're powerful they might breathe fire and they can fly, sometimes, but most of them are gone or out of the country! We're talking about one of the most powerful creatures to ever exist on our plane, behind the gods and their disasters, so I realized that it was a chance I couldn't pass up!" Midoriya flinched as the temperature of the room dropped further. "M-maybe it wasn't very relaxing, but… I didn't just wander in blindly. I set up a couple of siphons around Owase, and I drafted up three or four different shield spells that were compatible with one another. With everyone working in parallel and mountain's natural abundance of magic, it went pretty quickly, so I started asking around the city to see if anyone had heard about a dragon. No one really gave me the time of day, though I met this really cute cat…"

Midoriya glanced up from his hands, briefly locking eyes with Ochako before he looked back at the floor.

"…And then this girl kinda chased the flittlings over to where I was camped out. She, uh… I asked her if she'd seen a dragon anywhere and she… Well, obviously she didn't say anything, I sounded like some kind of crazy person, but I honestly thought it was a pretty good ice breaker, I mean I got a lot of people to laugh, you know? And I kind of had to get it across before people could just wander off." Ochako couldn't help but giggle a little bit at that, because of course he thought that was a good way to break the ice. Everyone else seemed disappointed or amused in different ways. "But, uh, Uraraka-san… she kinda stalked me for a bit before she finally introduced herself and told me she knew where the dragon was."

Oh. Right. She'd… She'd forgotten about that. Now her face was on fire.

"Without going into detail, Uraraka-san showed me the dragon's den and I told her… well I told her about all of you guys. Or at least all the stuff that happens around here. That was… about a week? Uraraka has a really, really unique Talent, one of the coolest I've ever seen, she can cast self-sustained flight spells on things and she gets to fly around and it's just, uh, really really cool..."

Yeah, she was never gonna get over this.

"But I kinda… Well, I didn't want to get you involved, Uraraka-san." He cringed a bit as he said it. "I made sure my barriers were strong enough to handle the dragon and I… So I had a theory. I thought, maybe, I could bargain with the dragon to teach Kirishima. It's not like I knew where to find something it would like so I stole a gem out of the hoard and I, uh, dropped in a few days later to try and bargain with it."

"You W…" Yaoyorozu's eyes bugged out of her skull as a collective wave of shock rolled through the group.

"I KNOW, okay? I know dragons are dangerous…"

"Dragons fought GODS Midoriya, and you barely survived Hephaestus!"

He did what now?

"I had PLENTY of barriers! I even got the I-island's defense overlays and compressed them over everything to hold it together, which turned the whole thing into a seven-layer defensive overlay with a reductive… right, no one… Gods, can one of you go get Hatsume or something? This is impossible to tell without someone to understand the theory! You're all acting like I did this without any sort of preparation!"

"No, we're acting like you do crazy reckless things all the time and this was only the latest, not even the worst, mind you, but the latest," The boy with the tail piped up, "in a string of very worrying events. Seriously. Dragons. What the fuck, Midoriya?"

"I… Look, everything is fine…" Midoriya tried to smile. Several people started talking at once. "Hey, hey, I had my translation and my barriers and it even worked, I got Kirishima in with the dragon!"

Ochako couldn't help but feel out of the loop. Maybe she knew that dragons were scary, that magical folk avoided them and that they were crazy powerful, but… She felt like that was underestimating it, now. These people were acting as if Midoriya had offered himself up on a silver platter.

"Look, Uraraka-san, I'm really sorry I lied." The noise died down as Midoriya bowed again, focused on her yet again. "I'm sorry that I didn't tell you outright, but I thought you might report me or get involved, and it wasn't… That wasn't your fight."

"M-Midoriya, ya don't gotta do that," She sighed, still feeling a bit red at the ears. "I was mad, yeah, but I didn't really… I just thought ya were trying to fight it, or kill it, not ask it for a favor."

"Oh, no you don't!" Ashido planted herself squarely between them, frowning at Ochako as she crossed her arms. "Don't you dare encourage him, that doesn't make it any better!"

The crowd of people erupted again, only for Ashido to raise a hand and cut them off with a shout of her own.

"Owase is a peaceful district, guys, it's not like she would know anything about the rest of Japan! Plus, no one outside of the castle is educated on every possible threat to the stability of the country, so she probably has NO IDEA what Midoriya did by walking into the dragon's den!" That definitely caught her ear. And shut up the rest of them. Ashido turned her eyes to Ochako, softening her glare as she sighed. "Look, Ochako, the Elders have a rule, right? You don't go around and get involved with things that are dangerous. I'll bet they put up red tape and evacuated everyone within two or three blocks around the building, right?"

"Well, not all that far but pretty close. The dragon just slept a lot and used shrouds, so…" Ochako frowned as Ashido took her by the shoulders.

"Dragons have enough magic power to level a continent." Ochako trailed off as Ashido's golden eyes began to dance in and out of her vision. The memory of the dragon turning and lashing out had run through her mind a few times, since that day, and now… "They're one of the single most powerful races of creatures to nest here on our world, and when they have magic to spare, they're easily able to fight people like Toshi-kun on his good days. You were looking at a predator who could wake up and decide to drown the continent of Japan just because it's grouchy… though, we've got people and things in place for that, but…"

Ochako blinked, then frowned.

"But… Midoriya fought the dragon off. Doesn't that…"

"Whoa, girl did you say he fought the dragon?" Jirō was there now, staring at her with wide eyes before whirling on the boy in question. "What the absolute fuck Midoriya?!"

"I used the barriers! That was it!" Midoriya held up his hands as the group bared its fangs yet again. "Really, everything went fine, I just protected Uraraka-san, I didn't even take any risks…!"

"Damn it, you're supposed to be RESTING!" Yaoyorozu's voice was thunder in the closed room. Everyone flinched back as the raven-haired girl stormed across the empty space and grabbed Midoriya by the front of his shirt. "You just got injured in battle and suddenly you're out fighting DRAGONS?! When will you learn that we are TRYING to take CARE OF YOU!"

Ochako winced as Midoriya cowered beneath the shouting.

"Yaoyorozu-san, please…"

"No!" He hit the floor hard, wincing as he caught himself and the woman continued advancing over him. "This is exactly like it always is, you go running off with some idea or you lay out a plan or you do SOMETHING and end up overexerting yourself, even though you're barely holding up when we actually need you to fight. Could you go a MONTH without causing a natural disaster, or provoking a god, or starting a fight with the Planar Guard, or getting whisked off to some other plane?!"

"Yaomomo!" Ochako stared as Jirō cut off the tirade. All it took was a hand on her shoulder to flip a switch, leaving Yaoyorozu with tears in her eyes and a horrified expression. It lasted all of a moment before she rubbed her face and schooled herself until she looked upset, not… outright screaming mad.

No one seemed to have the heart to chase after the pair as they stalked out of the chamber.

"She… Did she say something about Hephaestus?" Ochako winced as the group turned to face her in the aftermath. After a moment peanut boy snorted and shook his head.

"Yeah, Midoriya here went and pissed of Hephaestus a while back by making live golems with some crazy girl, and then he sent a bunch of golden eidolons to attack the Elders. Turns out he'd cursed the girl at some point, and he couldn't stand seeing her make progress." Ochako made a little noise in the back of her throat when peanut boy grinned wide and glanced at Midoriya, "Of course that was after Midoriya and Hatsume set off their own golem rampage and had to save the city from getting blown up."

"W-wait, you guys fought a god?" Ochako squeaked. They shrugged and shared little smiles among themselves.

"Once you've got the Elders in war mode, it isn't that bad. The gods don't actually fight anyone, they just send other things to do it. You just have to fix whatever they break or break whatever they send." The blonde sighed. "Honesty, I was more scared of Hellflame than the robots. That guy is seriously scary."

"Yep!" Ashido shuddered, then bumped the blonde's shoulder. "But I wouldn't be here if Midoriya hadn't gone and saved me from the border patrol!"

"Maybe but I mean we literally had a pyre mage try to kill us! TWICE!" The blonde… Kaminari? Screeched, glancing around. "Is anyone else actually convinced that wasn't our closest brush with death?"

"Tooru is actually dead, Kaminari." Ojiro sighed, backed up by the ghost striking some kind of pose behind him. "Remember Midoriya tearing open the Veil? I think THAT was our closest call."

"Okay, that's LITERAL Death you can't…"

"You're using that word wrong."

"Don't STAB me for it! Damn! Look, even if we go there, Death wasn't trying to kill us!"

"You watched Death nearly decapitate Midoriya and you say it didn't try to kill us?"

"I said US!"

"That's low, dude."

"Midoriya got me struck with lightning, I'm ALLOWED to be a little bit of a dick!"

"Dude, didn't that, like, fix your whole magical… thing?"

"Not helping!"

A door slammed shut, cutting off the argument before anyone could continue, leaving them all to stare at the place where Midoriya had been before.

"Well fuck, we just lost Midoriya."

"I… Can I go find him?" Ochako winced as they turned to look at her. "I started all this so I mean, I should apologize."

They shared a look before the tail boy shrugged and rubbed the back of his head.

"That door just leads up to the upper levels, which means he's probably in the tower or on the roof… unless he's really taking off, which means we'll have to go get Sir." He gave her a curious look. "If you really want to, sure. I think most of us would just make it worse, honestly."

Ochako wasn't sure about that, but no one said anything against it. She took a few careful steps across the room when someone tapped her on the shoulder. The multi-armed giant boy looked down at her from the top of his mask with a pair of hands held palm out.

"If you're going," The boy's voice was soft enough to surprise her, though she felt bad about it. "Then look for Midoriya-kun on the top of the tower. He likes to stargaze there when people are looking for him."

"Oh… thanks?"

"Please don't tell anyone about it." The boy nodded, lowering his hands as the others wandered out the other end. "He needs a place to get away to, sometimes."

She nodded, watching the boy saunter out, before she took a breath and made her way to the other door. After another two flights of stairs, she walked out onto the roof.

Apparently, her grasp of space didn't work at all here, because she found herself standing on the roof of the castle with well over five stories of building beneath her. Leaving that question for another day, she followed the handrail to the tower and stared at the massive door leading into the structure before she wandered back a few steps and clutched her hands together.

"Where'd you go, Deku-kun…" She floated easily, pushing off of the roof and flying straight up the surface of the tower. Despite having arrived in the afternoon, she found sunset gradually turning to twilight and real nightfall as she rose. By the time she reached the top of the tower, she was staring up at a sky as clear as one of the night's spent at her grandmother's rural village. Clearer, if she had to guess.

And there, perched on the lip of the stone steeple, was a green haired boy in a white shirt and cargo shorts.

"Deku-kun?" She saw the way his shoulders tensed and slumped forward and kicked herself. "Can I come over there?"

"Heh, you could throw me off if you'd like. I'll try to fall pretty far before I catch myself." He muttered, scratching his head. "Can… Was there something I could do, Uraraka-san?"

"I just wanted ta apologize," She said, clearing her throat as she walked to the edge and sat down beside him. "And, eh, I kinda… I wanted to give these back, remember? That's how this all got started, I guess."

She held the glasses out, earning a tired glance from him.

"Those were a gift, actually." He swallowed and looked down at his hands, playing with his fingers. "I wanted to get you something before I left, since… You showed me the dragon, and I didn't know how long I had before Sir found me…"

Ochako blushed some as she set the glasses in her lap.

"I'm sorry. For getting ya in trouble and telling them about the dragon…"

"No, Uraraka-san, you, I mean you didn't do anything wrong." Midoriya sighed. "I guess I just messed up again. Really, I thought this time I could just pull off a miracle without letting anyone know. Guess I should have known better. I really am just bad luck…"

"I don't know about that," Ochako hummed. "I mean, look at everyone down there. Didn't ya save them all somehow? They're mad, sure, but it's because they're worried about ya. Not because ya messed up."

Midoriya sat there quietly for a few minutes, staring up at the sky. Eventually, she found herself following his stare and tracing constellations.

"I… I didn't lie about any of the important things," Midoriya muttered. Ochako couldn't help but frown at the way he said it, considering she was still pretty upset at him for lying in the first place. He blushed as she glared at him, coughing to clear his throat and backtrack. "I mean… Okay, lying wasn't… It was wrong, and I AM sorry, but I mean… What I told you about me, and the stories I told you, those were all real. Especially what I said about your Talent. I'd never lie to someone for no good reason."

"So… just lie to keep us all outta the way when you do crazy stuff?" She pursed her lips as she tried to defend that, then swatted his arm. "That's why everyone is so worried about ya, Deku-kun."

"They wouldn't let me do anything otherwise." He groaned. "I know they mean well, that they're just not… No one wants to try and do something crazy, something that hasn't been done before."

"You do." She watched his expression twist half a dozen ways before she smiled some. "You've got all those tricks, all that power, and you fought a dragon so your friend might be able to get stronger. Maybe that's crazy, but if you're going to do all of the crazy what are the rest of us supposed to do?"

He laughed at that, and a bit of the tension drained out of his shoulders. She looked back up at the sky and actually looked, drinking in the sight of a clear, vivid night sky rolling overhead.

"I missed you." Ochako's eyes widened when she heard him mutter that. A quick glance confirmed that he was, in fact, blushing hard. But he didn't say anything against it.

"Y'know, everyone keeps saying that once you bring someone out here, we get caught up in everything and end up staying." Ochako laughed, though she felt a little bit light headed, sitting on a ledge so high up with… "Is this the kinda thing that ya show 'em to keep people around?"

"Actually, you're the only person who's ever followed me up here." Midoriya said. "I told Shoji-kun once, and Todoroki-kun. But no one else knows about this place."

"Oh. Sorry for…"

"It's okay, Uraraka-san." He chuckled, sounding almost exactly like… "It feels like we're sitting on top of the construction site again, looking for the dragon."

She grinned, staring down at the ground to hide her blush.

"Uh huh. Just like old times, huh?"

She did end up staying the night. As it happened, she had to send her parents a message telling them she'd be back the next day, that she was fine and staying in the Elders' headquarters. Dinner, as it turned out, was a quiet thing. Food was delivered to the Study, which turned out to be where people their age stayed. Or, more specifically, the dorm for people who Midoriya had brought in personally.

Apparently, there were other groups like them. Magical teenagers who were getting training or who were particularly troublesome or needed a place to stay. Ochako's new friends boasted that they were the only ones who were constantly in trouble, hence being the only dormitory in the castle that revolved around one person.

Midoriya didn't turn up for dinner. No one seemed to bat an eye at that.

One thing that caught Ochako's eye was the boy with red and white hair split down the middle. He stormed in halfway through dinner and power walked through the Study, heading straight for the dorms. Bets were placed as to whether he was heading for Midoriya's dorm or Yaoyorozu's dorm, which left her a bit unsettled.

When curfew rolled around, a man in black armor with a pile of white paper wrapped around his neck showed up and glared them into submission, shutting the door behind them as everyone rushed off to their various rooms.

Before she could go to bed, someone knocked on her door. Ochako smiled awkwardly as Mina and Tooru and Tsuyu flowed in, making a place on her bed and grinning like the devil… and ghosts, and frogs.

It took three days before she managed to get everything packed and moved out to the castle. The girls welcomed her in with a party, though for the most part everyone went about things normally. She found out the red- and white-haired boy was, in fact, living with them, though it was a touchy subject. Yaoyorozu seemed oddly skittish about the subject, and Ochako already knew Mina well enough that the girl's smile told the story.

Well, she felt a bit better about that, at least.

Yagi and Nighteye made a point about the castle being a home away from home, but that she'd need to take lessons on magic to catch her up. The castle was a stronghold for the Elders' forces, and they couldn't exactly leave her in the dark about her Talent and magic, in general.

Even if she didn't enjoy going back to school, she didn't mind learning about magic, for the most part. Until she realized that meant redoing all her math and sciences to compensate for time away and all the things she'd have to relearn magically.

That part sucked. It really, really sucked.

At least… for a day.

She was sitting in an empty lecture hall with Aizawa, the man in black, on Thursday when the door opened, and someone came running in.

"Midoriya, what is it." Ochako's head snapped up, catching a glint of green eyes and a quick smile before the boy was standing in front of the podium with his back to her. Quickly as they rose, her eyes returned to the book on her stretch of the table.

He'd rushed in wearing a sleeveless top, gym shorts and tights. If she hadn't given any consideration to his physique, she was now.

"Can I borrow Uraraka-san?"

"No. I've already been warned against leaving one of the students with you. Especially anyone without proper lectures on basic principles."

"I've got a new invisibility spell for you to test out. It filters out sounds." Ochako ran a hand over her forehead as she listened to the pair, catching a bit of the smile in Midoriya's tone.

"…I'm listening."

"You saw the defensive barrier from my last trip, right? The I-island overlays had a process for hiding sounds and masking presence from everything that isn't a god-level probe, electrical or magical. And with a quick rework, you're looking at…"

"…A complete potential masking spell? That would take an entire room to work, Midoriya."

"This one is personal."

"If you send me to another dimension, I will strangle you and hang your corpse out from as a testament to my resolve."

"Melissa confirmed it."

"You're telling me that you created an actualized personal invisibility cloak capable of evading the Elders' patrols? Midoriya, giving that information away is the single dumbest mistake you've ever made. Why shouldn't I report you right now? If I let you keep that you could…"

"See, sensei, I already have it, and so does I-island, but I'm saying that you could have it."

Ochako wasn't sure what to expect. Aizawa had so far proved to be a terrifying person, and everyone she knew, bar Midoriya suddenly, took his threats seriously. It didn't help that she had no idea what they were talking about. Didn't the Elders already have an invisibility cloak?

"This is bribery."

"Bribery means that this is worth about as much as the sleep lost teaching Uraraka-san. If anything, I'd be giving you a gift for being such a brilliant sensei and treating us so well."

She nearly lost it. Who in their right mind would believe…

"Fine, take her and get out. If you give the Council a way to track this, I'll make good on my promise to throttle you."

Ochako gaped as Midoriya grabbed her and tugged her up the stairs.

"Thanks, sensei!" The door slammed behind them before she caught his response.

"Deku-kun, wait! What are we even doing?!" She couldn't keep from laughing as the boy in front of her spun around and winked at her.

"I told you, didn't I?"

"Told me what?"

"That I'd teach you everything!" For half a second, she was a breathless mess, dragged along behind him while he started taking the stairs two at a time. "C'mon, Uraraka-san, we've got a whole lot to learn!"