Like all children, Imari Tengo dreamt of being a hero when he grew up. Like all children, he idolized All Might and all the other famous pros. And like all children, he never once thought that he'd be working as a minimum-wage employee in a shoe store.

For the twelfth time that day, Imari was asked by a customer to use his elongated fingers to grab a shoebox on one of the higher shelves. It wasn't much, but all the same, it was gratifying for his Quirk to actually come in handy. As a kid, he was embarrassed by his Quirk. All the popular kids had a Quirk that was more useful or practical or flashy. Like wings, for example. But him? He could extend his fingers and that was about it. It did eventually dawn on him that the Hero track was wishful thinking.

Having such a lame Quirk was guaranteed to get him relentlessly picked on, but as luck would have it, he had an out:

Deku.

Having a weak, unimpressive Quirk made him a target, sure, but no one would bother him if there was an infinitely more pathetic target going to the same school. And so he joined in when a few of the other kids, including Bakugou, started tormenting him, and Imari actually felt safe.

In hindsight, though, he realized how messed up it all was, and it started to sink in one day when King Nitro made his official debut shortly after graduation. Imari recognized Bakugou's Quirk, then recognized the rest of him, feeling a little nostalgic. However, for the same cocky, rude attitude Bakugou had back in Junior High to come out of a Pro Hero felt… wrong. Perverse, even.

It was the first time he had even thought about Deku since graduation. That fact alone made him feel ashamed, even moreso when he remembered Deku wasn't even his name. After fishing out an old yearbook of his and remembering the name Midoriya, he felt a wave of nausea wash over him.

All throughout Junior High, Midoriya was there to provide an escape for suffering for his own underwhelming Quirk. But come High School, he was once again on the bottom rung of the cutthroat teenage hierarchy. And the feeling of life using him as a footstool didn't stop when he graduated. Really, he was lucky to have gotten this job at all.

So how much worse would it have been for Midoriya? The thought honestly kind of scared him.

How miserable must his life have already been without me joining in? Imari asked himself.

He tried to push it out of his mind, saying he would've been tormented with or without Imari's involvement, but the guilt settled there, like too much sugar in a pitcher of lemonade.

Eventually Imari decided to go online to try and look him up. He didn't find any social media accounts, but he did stumble upon his name in the context of some event held by Hamada Institute, some school he'd never heard of before. So he would've graduated by now.

Still, ever since then, the Quirkless kid from school remained in the back of his head and stubbornly refused to leave, like a roommate who never pays the rent and leaves beer bottles everywhere.

He tried not to think about it as he went about his shift. It was pretty uneventful, all things considered. As usual, at 11:15 AM, he headed off for his lunch break. He meandered through the crowded mall, eventually arriving at the food court. After considering his options, he sighed and just decided to go to WcDonald's. He waited in line, ordered his food, and went to go find an empty table when he saw it. A curly mess of dark green hair appeared in his peripheral vision, and suddenly it was all he could see. Luckily he seemed preoccupied on his phone, so he didn't notice Imari staring. Green hair, freckles, big ol' eyes, that was Midoriya all right, calmly eating lunch while wearing some weird black gloves. By sheer dumb luck, the only empty table was right next to him.

Imari sat down and started eating his meal, his mind racing trying to decide what to do now. Apologize? He'd love to but how would he go about that? Hey Midoriya, it's me, the guy who helped make your life a living hell all through Junior High. Sorry about that. Wanna be friends? He shook his head, grateful that he hadn't been noticed yet.

Ultimately he wouldn't get the opportunity to make a choice, as everyone's attention turned to a ruckus slowly advancing into the center of the food court.

The baffling sight that awaited him was a stampede of what looked like 40 people with identical gold-colored jackets. In fact, they all looked… completely identical. Same neatly-combed brown hair, same cold blue eyes, same pale complexion. It must have been the work of a Quirk, he realized.

The mob was being pursued by a group of police officers, but they refrained from firing when the stampede entered the crowded, target-rich area that was the food court. Imari noticed they were all carrying knives, aside from a few who were carrying briefcases, and realized at the same time as everyone else that these were villains, or rather, a single villain with a duplication Quirk.

One of them got up on top of a table and yelled out "Attention everyone: This is Zeitgeist speaking. You are now our hostages!"

Some of the duplicates pulled their knives out and held them threateningly to random people who were just trying to eat. A few of them grabbed a few drinks from off of random tables and started drinking them, much to his confusion. Imari slowly crawled under the table to stay hidden as the villain, whose name was apparently Zeitgeist, began yelling his demands. The first thing he did was look around for Midoriya, and found him also underneath a table, which had been upturned in the chaos… except Midoriya didn't look scared at all. In fact, his mind appeared to be racing at a thousand miles per hour.

What is going on?

Just my luck, Izuku thought as he remained out of sight. The one day Mei has my costume in the shop for repairs, I'm stuck in hostage situation. Good thing I have some of the bits, at least.

He mostly ignored the villain's demands (or would it be villains' demands?) since it was fairly evident what had happened. Zeitgeist committed a heist, and were now holding the food court hostage until the cops let him (them?) go. Standard stuff. He examined the copies for any details he missed, but the only one he could find was that all the copies wore very expensive-looking watches.

Maybe I can find a clue for how to tell them apart.

"Um, excuse me?" he asked one copy, putting on the facade of a frightened, nervous hostage.

"What do you want?" the copy asked harshly.

"I, um, I know I'm a hostage and all, but, um… I really need to use the bathroom. I ate too much Quesadilla Bell, you see, and-"

"You can… stop talking now," the copy groaned, and pointed over to the restroom at the end of the food court. "Don't even think about trying to escape."

"Thank you," Izuku said, taking a good look up and down the copy before he left, briefly pausing when he noticed the watch.

It was a digital watch with a light green screen and the time displayed, very clearly, as 1:30 AM.

Interesting, Izuku thought as he went into the bathroom. Wasting no time, he went into a stall, stood up on the toilet, and pried off the ventilation duct above it before climbing up into it. He crawled through until he arrived at one duct that overlooked the whole food court. He slowly, quietly opened it and peered out of it.

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a device Mei had made for him, basically a scope to zoom in on things from a distance. Mei designed it essentially to mimic her own Quirk, which would help Izuku's hero work.

Acting on a hunch, he zoomed in on one of the watches. It read 4:30 PM.

He zoomed in on another one. 6:00 AM.

Each and every watch had a different time on it. In fact, a few of them even had a different date on them- Tomorrow's date, to be exact.

Interesting, Izuku though, a theory taking shape in his analytical mind. He turned his attention to one copy in particular, holding a steaming cup of WcDonald's coffee. Time to go down and test my theory.

Before he went back down the vent, however, he made sure to identify the one copy whose watch had the proper date and time.

He walked out of the restroom, walking back to the main area as the copy from earlier glared at him. Once the copy wasn't looking anymore, Izuku slowly made his way over to the one holding the coffee, "accidentally" bumping into him. The coffee spilled onto the Zeitgeist copy's hand, eliciting a hiss of pain as the coffee burned his hand. He whirled on Izuku, who put his hands up. "Whoa, I'm sorry," he said, backing away- strategically moving towards the one he spotted earlier.

"Watch where you're going," the copy growled, before turning to another. "Why don't we start killing the hostages?"

"Fine by me," one of them said. "The police aren't listening to our demands anyway."

Izuku looked at that other copy's hand. It looked red and burned, in the exact same place the coffee spilled on the first copy's hand.

Perfect.

As the copy prepared to use his knife, in one fluid motion, Izuku whirled around, unfolding his right glove into his Taser Gauntlet and punching the Zeitgeist he identified, the one whose watch actually had the right time, shocking him in the process.

The electricity did its work and it send him to the ground, unconscious. And, like a set of dominos, the copies just kind of… faded out of existence. Even their knives disappeared, though the cups some of them were holding remained in existence and dropped to the floor.

One of the police walked up to Izuku as the other patrons breathed a sigh of relief.

"Excuse me, sir," the policeman began, "What did-"

Izuku responded by whipping out his Hero License. "I'm Pro Hero Sleeper Hit, officer," he said, completely missing the nearby bystander with the finger-extending Quirk, whose eyes went as wide as dinner plates.

"I see," the officer said. "I wasn't sure if you were a vigilante or not, just had to be sure. If you don't mind me asking, how did you…"

"You see," Izuku began, "That villain's Quirk wasn't a duplication Quirk like I originally thought. It was actually a low-power time travel Quirk. If I'm guessing correctly, he can travel backwards 30 minutes, creating a duplicate of himself. He did this multiple times until he had a small army of himself. Guess that explains why so many of them were chugging coffee and looking really tired- they were awake for almost a full day. I was able to identify and subdue the original Zeitgeist, which paradoxed the copies out of existence since in 30 minutes, he'll be in Quirk-suppressant handcuffs and unable to go back."

He finished giving his statement to the police, who began talking with some of the other hostages. Now that he was more or less alone, he sighed in relief that the situation didn't escalate. He went back to his table, only to remember Oh yeah, it got knocked over when Zeitgeist stormed the place. He felt like weeping when he saw his lunch strewn over the floor.

"Um, I can pay for you to get another one, if-if you like," a vaguely familiar voice said from behind him. Izuku turned and saw a familiar face he never thought (or hoped) he'd see again.

Imari smiled nervously. "H-hey, Midoriya," he said, knowing there was no turning back now.

"...Imari," Midoriya said coolly.

"It's, uh, nice to see you again."

"Wish I could say the same."

Cold, but fair.

"So, uh... you're a Pro Hero, huh?" he asked, trying to make small talk. No response. Imari sighed. "Look, Midoriya, I- I just wanted to say that I-"

"Don't," Izuku cut him off. "Don't even start. You just want to get into my good graces now that I'm a pro," he snapped.

"What?! N-no, I-"

"Whatever, I don't need this," Izuku grumbled as he walked off.

"B-but your lunch though!"

"Cram it."

Imari sighed in defeat as Izuku sauntered off, not bothering to look back. Yeah. What did I think was going to happen? I helped make his life a living hell, what good is bribing him with food gonna do?

On the plus side, his boss gave him the rest of the day off due to the attack. So that was kinda nice.

"Here you are, miss," Imari said, handing the young woman a shoebox from the top shelf, as was his job. It was a pair of shoes themed around Uravity, having the same pink color scheme. The hero-themed shoes were easily the most popular shoes the store had in stock.

Well, all except for King Nitro.

Just a couple weeks after the mall incident, a massive controversy erupted about Quirk discrimination at UA, and shortly afterwards there was an incident in Musutafu resulting in King Nitro losing his license.

After the woman thanked him and headed to checkout, he sighed. In hindsight, he was surprised Bakugou lasted that long. Their old schools had clearly given him a free pass due to being Quirk-centric and as such, Bakugou never grew out of the mindset that the rules didn't apply to him. Guess if UA couldn't fix that about him, they got what was coming to them.

"Excuse me?" a voice behind him said. "You wouldn't happen to have any red boots around here, would you?"

"Hm?" Imari responded as he turned to face the customer. "That's an oddly specific requ - Midoriya? "

There he was, the same guy who saved him and then told him off. "Yeah, it's me."

"Look, Midoriya," Imari began. Midoriya didn't interrupt him this time so he took that as his cue to continue. "I'm… I'm really, truly sorry about how I treated you. I was trying to avoid getting picked on for my own lame Quirk and… I mean, that's no excuse. I was messed up, I should never have done any of that to you. I was so focused on not being at the very bottom I didn't realize how badly I was hurting the person I thought was below me, the person I should've known to stand beside. I… I know you don't forgive me, I just needed to get all that off my chest."

A moment passes as Midoriya mulls over his answer.

Finally he spoke.

"I'm glad that at least one of my old classmates grew up."

Imari was a little surprised that was the reply.

"Neither of us are the same person we were back in Junior High," he continued. "I shouldn't have shot you down like that, back at the food court."

"I had it coming," Imari admitted.

"That you did, Imari. But you know what, a lot's happened in the past week or so and I have a lot of peace to make."

Imari finally dared to get his hopes up. "So… am I forgiven?"

"Look, I'm not going to get all buddy-buddy with a former bully of mine. But like I said," Izuku replied. "You're a different person from Junior High. And there's really no point holding a grudge against someone who doesn't exist anymore. And unlike a certain someone, you've grown up. So yes. I forgive you," he finished as Imari let out a sigh of relief, feeling a weight lifted from his shoulders.

"You still owe me lunch though."