The afternoon sun hung heavy and golden over the training camp lodge.
Class 1-A had been given the rest of the day off as a reward for "scaring off" Pixie-Bob's masterpiece (nobody believed the story, but nobody had the energy to argue).
Most of the students were face-down in their curry or already snoring in the shade. The forest smelled of pine resin, gunpowder, and teenage exhaustion.
Izuku slipped away quietly.
He had seen the small figure earlier, a black-haired kid in a red cap and yellow boots, glaring at the celebrating students from a distant ridge like he wanted to set the entire camp on fire with his mind.
Mandalay had mentioned her nephew once: Kota. Parents killed by a villain. Hated heroes with every cell in his body.
Izuku understood hatred. He had carried plenty of it once, before All Might, before everything.
And right now, he needed to talk to someone who wasn't pretending everything was fine.
He followed the narrow mountain trail up the cliff behind the lodge, boots crunching on loose gravel. Ocean guided him the way it always did now: a faint pulse of blood in the distance, small, fast, furious.
Kota was sitting on the very edge of the outcrop, legs dangling over a fifty-meter drop, staring at the valley below like he could will the entire hero world out of existence.
Izuku approached slowly, hands visible, palms open.
"Hey."
Kota didn't turn. "Go away."
"I will," Izuku said, voice soft. "In a minute. I just wanted to see the view."
He sat down two meters away, leaving plenty of space. The wind tugged at his curly hair. Far below, the river glittered like a blade.
Silence stretched between them, thick and hostile.
Then Kota spoke, voice low and venomous. "You're all the same. Smiling, pretending you're saving the world, when you're just waiting for the cameras."
Izuku didn't answer immediately. He picked up a pebble and rolled it between his fingers.
"My mom used to cry every night after my dad left," he said finally. "I was four. Quirkless. Kids at school would beat me up just because they could. One day a pro hero walked past while I was bleeding in an alley. He looked at me, shrugged, and kept walking. Said I wasn't worth the paperwork."
Kota's shoulders stiffened.
"I hated heroes too," Izuku continued.
"Hated them so much I wanted to scream until my throat tore. Then I met someone who showed me that hating everything doesn't fix anything. It just leaves you alone on a cliff."
Kota whipped around, eyes blazing. "Don't act like you understand me!"
He lunged.
Izuku saw it coming the way he saw everything now: Ocean mapping the sudden spike in Kota's heartbeat, the microscopic flex of calf muscles.
The boy's quirk activated in the same instant, twin jets of pressurized water blasting from his palms like fire hoses aimed straight at Izuku's crotch.
In canon, that attack had folded Izuku like a lawn chair.
This time Izuku simply wasn't there.
He shifted his weight a fraction, hips twisting, letting the twin streams hiss past on either side.
The water blasted chunks of rock off the cliff edge and sent them tumbling into the void.
Kota's eyes widened, shock, then fury.
He attacked again, faster this time, water jets carving figure-eights in the air, trying to catch Izuku's legs, his torso, his face. Each blast was strong enough to shatter concrete. Any direct hit would break bones.
Izuku moved like a ghost.
He didn't block. Didn't counter. Just flowed. A half-step here, a lean there, knees bending, spine curving.
The water never touched him. Not once. It was the kind of movement that looked effortless only because every muscle remembered vampire fangs and stone titans.
Kota screamed, raw and ragged, and charged.
Izuku let him come.
The boy swung a wild punch with a water-wrapped fist. Izuku caught the wrist gently, pivoted, and used Kota's own momentum to spin him around.
A soft chop to the back of the neck, precise, controlled, and Kota dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.
He caught the boy before he hit the ground, lowering him gently to the dirt.
Kota's chest rose and fell rapidly, unconscious but unharmed. Tears had carved clean tracks through the dust on his cheeks.
Izuku sat cross-legged beside him and waited.
Five minutes later Kota's eyes fluttered open. He stared at the sky, then at Izuku, expression dazed.
"You… didn't hit me hard," he mumbled.
"I didn't need to," Izuku said. "You were already fighting yourself harder than I ever could."
Kota sat up slowly, rubbing the back of his neck. The hatred in his eyes hadn't vanished, but it had dimmed, like someone had turned the dial down from a raging furnace to a sullen campfire. Maybe thirty percent. A start.
"Why didn't you dodge the first shot like a coward and run?" Kota asked, voice hoarse.
"Because you needed to hit something," Izuku replied. "And I'm not fragile. Not in the ways that matter."
Kota looked away, out over the valley. His small hands clenched into fists, then unclenched.
"My mom and dad…" he started, then stopped.
"I know," Izuku said quietly. "Water Hose. They died saving people from Muscular. I read the file. They were brave. Real heroes."
Kota's shoulders shook. He didn't cry again; he was too proud for that. But something inside him cracked, just a little.
Izuku reached into his pocket and pulled out a single senzu bean. He rolled it across the dirt until it stopped against Kota's shoe.
"If you ever want to get strong enough that no one can hurt the people you care about again… eat this when you're ready to train. Not fight. Train. There's a difference."
Kota stared at the bean like it was a live grenade.
"I don't want to be like you," he muttered.
"You don't have to be," Izuku said, standing. "Just be better than the heroes who let you down."
He turned to leave.
Behind him, Kota's voice was small but steady. "What's your name?"
"Izuku Midoriya."
Kota was quiet for a long time. Then: "…Thanks for not lying and saying it gets easier."
Izuku smiled over his shoulder. "It doesn't. But it gets possible."
He walked back down the trail, leaving the boy alone with the wind and the bean and a hatred that had shrunk just enough to let a sliver of something else in.
When Izuku reached the lodge again, the sun was low and orange. Most of the class was playing cards on the porch or helping the Pussycats prep dinner. Ochaco waved him over.
"Deku! Where'd you go?"
"Just needed some air," he said, sliding into the seat beside her. She smelled like citrus and campfire smoke.
Across the yard, Midnight caught his eye and gave the tiniest nod, everything under control.
Denki and Aoyama were dramatically recounting their "survival" of the Beast's Forest to an enraptured Kaminari fan club (A/N: Mineta's absence was still unnoticed). Mina and Momo sat a little apart, heads bent together, whispering.
Izuku's fingers brushed the velvet pouch. Twenty-three Master Balls. One earth titan. One bound pro hero. Two resurrected classmates. Seven skeletons and a time-stopping dhampir on standby.
And now, one very angry little boy who might, someday, choose to stand up instead of lashing out.
Night was coming.
But for the first time since the vampire dungeon, Izuku felt something lighter than strategy in his chest.
Hope, maybe.
Or at least the beginning of it.
He leaned back against the porch railing, closed his eyes, and let the mountain breeze carry the scent of pine and possibility across his face.