….
All Might stood beside Dabi near the north edge of the training field.
To any student glancing over, he was the same Pillar of Hope they saw every morning; back straight, chest out, and that iconic, unwavering smile firmly in place.
But Midoriya was not just any student.
Izuku had spent a lifetime dissecting the anatomy of that smile. He knew the precise depth of the crinkle around the eyes and the exact duration a grin held.
From across the field, Midoriya felt a chill.
This wasn't the 'Plus Ultra' grin he was used to seeing.
It was the look of someone standing helplessly, watching a world he could no longer touch.
What could be that pushed him to such an extent? He wondered.
All Might's gaze moved across the entire class, scanning the field the way he always did, but slower this time, more deliberate, as if he were taking stock of something that mattered.
Midoriya quickly looked away, burying his face in his notebook before his staring became a distraction.
….
Twenty meters away, Dabi leaned against a railing, who hadn't said anything for a long moment.
All Might had been quiet since the morning briefing, which usually wouldn't have mattered, Dabi was used to silence, but now it was starting to affect even him.
"You don't need to watch the whole session." Dabi said finally.
"I want to."
All Might replied, his voice was deep and resonant in his Muscle Form, but the boom of it lacked its usual brassy cheer.
"These young heroes… they had shown such improvement and tenacity over such a short time. Beyond that, they aren't satisfied with where they stand. Such maturity is rare amongst the first years."
He turned his head slightly toward Dabi. "I understand now why you hold them in such high regard, Dabi. It is a source of great shame for me that I have contributed so little, despite us beginning this journey as educators at the same time."
All Might looked back at the field, his smile tightening with a bittersweet edge.
"The least I can do is bear witness to their growth and efforts."
Below them, on the eastern platform, a student executed a flawless evasion sequence, triggering a ripple of competitive excitement through the rest of the class.
The atmosphere was electric, fueled by the kind of raw ambition that usually defined the upperclassmen.
The class 1-A had been like this all week.
Still, what's the reason behind All Might's complicated expression?
Midoriya revealing the truth about his quirk to Bakugo wasn't what had put that uncertainty on All Might's face. Toshinori understood better than most that some truths eventually outgrow their cages; a lesson he had learned firsthand.
So, what else could make the Symbol of Peace look so... heavy?
"I assume you read it." Dabi said.
It wasn't a question, but a prompt, delivered with the flat tone of a man who already knew the answer.
All Might remained silent for a long moment, his eyes fixed on the horizon where the training ground met the sky.
"...I did."
The investigation report had been short.
Dabi had written it himself, drawing from three separate channels: Nezu's sources, connections All Might had built over his career that still answered when the right name was invoked, and a few threads that Dabi had pulled himself through networks he felt no obligation to explain.
The picture it assembled was not a comfortable one.
It told the story of Nana Shimura's son: A boy raised in foster care, growing up in the empty space left by a mother who had vanished without explanation.
Unbeknownst to him, he took that sacrifice as abandonment and turned it into walls: rigid, punishing structures that resembled discipline from the outside but felt like something far harsher within the home, enclosing his wife, his daughter, and the boy, Tenko.
Dabi hadn't written the name in the report.
He had left it as "youngest child, male, approximate age consistent with–" letting the rest sit in implication.
"The house?" All Might asked.
Dabi did not answer because it was already mentioned in the report.
The Shimura residence had been reduced to splinters and ash. In the municipal records, it was listed as an 'unattributed villain attack.'
And since the property records showed it had been sold six months prior, the paper leads effectively ended there unless someone was willing to dig deeper.
"It was him, wasn't it?" The certainty in All Might's voice was absolute, cutting through any possibility of doubt. "All For One."
Dabi neither confirmed nor denied it, even though he knew the truth for a different reason, one that underpinned everything else he understood about the situation and still couldn't be spoken aloud.
What he said instead was: "The timing is consistent with that theory."
"He killed her husband, forced her to give up her child, and then, when she was finally in the ground..." All Might's jaw tightened, the muscles in his neck cording with a sudden, violent tension. "He went after them anyway."
Dabi said nothing; sometimes the only respectful thing to do was to not say anything.
All Might went on, his voice flattening into a dangerous monotone. "My master had given up everything; her name, son, and own heart. All in the belief that distance would keep him safe from the target on her back. And it didn't. None of them were ever safe."
"We don't know the full picture yet." Dabi said, his voice carefully neutral. It was a half-truth, a way to anchor All Might before the man drifted too far into the dark.
All Might looked at him, the hero's eyes, in the costume, had a particular raw directness.
It was not the calculated projection of the public symbol, but the actual man underneath it, sharp and tired and very, very old in the way that people who had carried something too heavy for too long got old.
Below them, the students continued their session.
Kirishima took a direct hit from the obstacle course, his skin hardening into jagged rock. He wiped a smudge of dirt from his face, grinned, and dove back into the fray with cheerfulness of someone who viewed every blow as a lesson.
Bakugo, at the far end of the field, had stopped arguing with Aizawa correction and was listening.
Midoriya, watching from the waiting group, had noticed it too. His notebook was pressed to his chest, his eyes darting with that familiar, frantic intelligence as he scribbled a fresh observation.
All Might watched the tableau for a long moment, the tension in his shoulders slowly yielding to a solemn pride.
"They are going to be extraordinary." he said.
He didn't name names.
"Yeah." Dabi replied, his gaze following Bakugo's explosive movements. "I will make sure of it."
The wind moved across the training field.
Near the eastern platform, a student finally landed a complex evasion drill they had been attempting for an hour; A raw, wordless exhale of triumph tore from their throat in success.
All Might's expression flickered, a complicated mix of hope and heartbreak, but he didn't turn away.
"I will read the rest of the report tonight." he said.
"Take your time. It's not going anywhere."
"Nana and her family deserved better." All Might whispered, his voice almost lost to the wind. "And more than anything, I wasn't–"
"You weren't there yet." Dabi interrupted.
His voice was flat, cutting off the self-flagellation before it could take root. "That's not the same as failing them."
All Might said nothing.
Dabi let the silence sit, and he was good at that.
Below them, Class 1-A trained on; burning, pushing, testing their own limits.
They moved with the stubborn brightness of a generation that had already decided the future was something worth bleeding for.
….
It had been that way for the better part of a week now; ever since the preparations for the final exams had kicked into a motion that consumed every free hour the first-years had.
Written portions in the mornings with their textbooks cracked open, practical drills in the afternoons until their uniforms were soaked through.
The routine had an almost comfortable weight to it, and nobody complained, including Kaminari, usually the first to find a reason to deflect.
Because somewhere between incidents they happened to be involved, and seeing their teacher risking his life, and later their friends; something had shifted in Class 1-A.
They weren't just students anymore and were becoming a unit that cannot be ignored.
….
Midoriya Izuku had been staring at his right hand for approximately three minutes.
"Why are you staring at it like it owes you money, Deku?" Uraraka asked, not breaking the form of her stretches.
"Ah! It's nothing, Uraraka-san! Just... thinking!"
He closed his hands, then opened them again.
He snapped his fist shut, then unfurled it. There was no crackle of green electricity, no violent eruption of dark tendrils; just his hand, mapped with the scars of bones he had broken, healed, and broken again,
But something was different this time.
Midoriya could actually feel it.
[Black Whip].
According to the plot of events Dabi remembered, which now felt more and more bits and pieces like, Midoriya unblocked the [Black Whip] in a quite disastrous situation putting himself and other students in danger.
Which made him wish to not have that power, sealing it away; that took days to break through again.
Here, it hadn't been sealed.
It remained, present and waiting, like something that had always belonged to him and was only now revealing itself properly.
The problem was that Midoriya had no idea what it looked like from the outside when he used it.
And judging by the initial manifestation under Shinso's Brainwashing, it was anything but subtle.
….
Initially, Midoriya was hesitant to use the new power in front of his classmates, unsure how they would react.
Awakening something like this wasn't normal that happened often. It is almost unheard of. It defied the fundamental laws of Quirk science they had been taught since kindergarten.
At the same time, he knew he couldn't keep it hidden, especially with practical exams approaching and no way to predict what U.A. 's faculty was designing the tests.
If [BlackWhip] manifested in the middle of a high-stakes exam, it would only create more problems.
Better to show it now, in a controlled setting, around people he trusted.
So during the scheduled practice session, the very next day after he first used [Black Whip], he made the decision to demonstrate it.
….
"Alright! Two-on-one evasion drill!" Iida announced, his leg engines already humming. "Midoriya-kun will be the primary target. Sero-kun and I will act as the pursuit team. The objective is to avoid capture within the three-minute limit. Are all parties ready?"
Midoriya took a breath, feeling the 'sense' within One For All thrumming in response to his heartbeat. He looked at his friends, his jaw setting with a new kind of resolve.
"Ready!" Midoriya took his position in the center of the training field.
Sero grinned, his elbows clicking as he unspooled long strips of tape. "No hard feelings, Midoriya! We're not holding back today!"
"BEGIN!"
Iida shot forward immediately, his Recipro Burst roaring with a metallic scream as he closed the distance.
From the opposite flank, Sero's tape lashed out like a whip, weaving through the air to cut off the lateral escape routes.
It was a perfect pincer movement; which could potentially end a match in seconds.
Midoriya activated Full Cowling 8%, and dodged Iida's initial rush, but he could feel the trap closing.
Sero's tape was already circling behind him, and Iida was pivoting on a dime, his exhaust ports glowing white-hot as he came back for the tackle.
Now, Midoriya thought.
He reached for that sensation Dabi-sensei had helped him access; the specific, jagged frequency he had felt during the training accident.
The familiar surge raced through his body, sharp and electric, but something else came with it this time.
Blackwhip.
Jet-black tendrils snapped out from his forearms.
The first line anchored itself to a reinforced concrete pillar behind him, instantly yanking him backward out of the path of Sero's tape. Simultaneously, a second tendril lashed out, to wrap around a nearby railing and pivot Midoriya's entire trajectory in mid-air.
He swung through the gap between his two classmates as a dark blur.
He landed ten meters away, the black energy retracting smoothly into his skin like it had never been there at all. He stood tall, his breathing even, the power perfectly contained.
Even though no one was down, the drill collapsed into stunned silence.
Iida froze mid-step, his engines sputtering out with a pathetic hiss as he stared at the spot where Midoriya had been.
Sero stood motionless, his tape dangling from his elbows like limp streamers, his jaw literally hanging open.
On the sidelines, the chatter of the rest of Class 1-A died instantly. The silence was heavy, thick with the collective realization that they had just seen the impossible.
Kirishima was the first to find his voice, though it sounded faint, even to him.
"Midoriya... man... was that a second Quirk?"
.
….
[To be continued…]
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