Training to enhance and extend a Quirk was far more intense than training to improve or build up a muscle. Physical training was a lot more standard that Quirk extension. If one wanted to improve their arms, they would work with their arms, lift weights, do push ups, do any of the normal things. If one wished to train their legs, they could go out jogging, perform squats, or practice kicking. These were fairly universal rules as well. No matter what ones Quirk was, physical activity was an all-round guaranteed way to develop some muscular abilities. In a world without Quirks, this would be how everyone became stronger, all equal in the sense that everyone had the same stuff to work with.
This wasn't a world without Quirks, though. Quirks, since they were heavily varied in terms of their functionality, and individually different from person to person, required more specific methods of practice and extension. More creative and more imaginative ways to improve one's self, with regimes so unique that they rivalled Quirks in their individuality themselves. All designed to push the body to the limits, to enhance and empower, to knock them down, to make them get up twice as strong.
Bakugou, for example, would submerge his hands in hot water, hoping to increase his sweat glands to allow for more rapid, larger explosions. Kirishima would allow himself to be hit and hammered to increase the durability of his Hardening. Tokoyami would fight his Dark Shadow within blackened caverns, Kaminari would push his outage limits to the extreme, and so on and so forth. Each student had a specialised training regime that tested their ability to push on, no matter the pain. All in the name of becoming even stronger Heroes.
The universal consensus was that it was like hell on earth. Even though hours had passed since the training ended, their muscles and Quirks still ached and stung. Many of them weren't even aware that Quirks had the capacity to sting this badly, yet they found themselves surprised. Once laid on a futon that would allow them to rest, many knocked right out, with only a few remaining awake for maybe ten minutes, chatting idly, before rolling over and blacking out.
Even Izuku found the training exhausting, painful, and tiring. And he was a boy whom had spent an entire year training with All Might to be able to inherit the power that he had spent all of today trying to extend and refine. Was it even possible to extend a Quirk that didn't originally belong to its current user, Izuku questioned. It was a question that, as the day went on, became less and less important than just trying to survive it.
He knew what pain felt like, what it meant to train from dawn till dusk, putting everything that he had in him into his training. To even just have this power, he'd done it for practically a whole year of his life. And this had still made him reach those levels of agony. Furthermore, all he'd had was straight up combat training with Tiger, a man who really struggled when it came to holding back. He'd practically been a punching bag for the Pro-Hero, taking hit after hit. Just a further testament to how brutal the training was that the Pussycats had put together.
Unsurprisingly then, he was one of the students who, when his head hit the pillow, was practically immediately asleep. For a few seconds, he stared up at the ceiling, as the people around him started to retire to their own futons, some talking lightly. Noise and visuals blanked out though. It didn't take him long to fall into a deep slumber.
Not without sparing a thought for Mina though, and wondering how she was doing with the extra lessons. He wished that he would be able to know when she would finish those lessons. If he did, he would have quite happily stayed awake for her, or at least tried to, to wait until she had finished, to talk to her, to ask her how the lessons had been, and how everything had gone. If she had done well and learned more like she had needed to, and if she needed some help during their breaks in the training. The next day, however, seemed to stretch out in front of him, leaving him with nothing but more pain to look forward to. He was out cold before he'd even realized it.
All he would be able to do was to offer his services the next morning.
For five hours, he slept, tossing and turning a couple of times in his rest, from side to side. The futons were surprisingly comfortable, padded, and warm, not leaving much trouble when it came to getting cosy. Tossing in his sleep was just a habit that he didn't have a wall against his bed, not a sign of restlessness. Frankly, it was the deepest sleep that he'd had since his run in with Shigaraki, just a week ago.
At one point in his sleep, he turned onto his back, both of his arms outstretched in either direction. Another few seconds later, he felt a heavy warmth suddenly press against his left arm, and onto his chest. Tired as he might have been, his natural instincts kicked in almost immediately, knowing without optical confirmation that something was amiss. His head rose up slightly as his eyes twitched, and then opened slowly to inspect the source of the disturbance.
It took less than five seconds, even in the dim light from the moon creeping in through the window, for him to figure out what the cause of his waking was.
On his chest, was Mina's head, and much of her body, that slanted slightly off onto his left arm. He didn't even need to see her face to know that it was his girlfriend – Pink was basically her colour. If you saw it on a person, in either 1A or 1B, then it was going to be Mina, without question. She had only just lowered herself onto his body, as seen by her still moving around, trying to make herself comfortable, while moving gently so that she didn't wake up her sleeping boyfriend.
The second part of which she had failed miserably.
"Mina?..." Izuku whispered in a half-awake state, looking at the horns pointed towards him, and the pink messy hair from which they grew out from. For a couple of seconds, he thought that something had gone bump in the night, and he was just hallucinating from a lack of sleep. When he realized that it was in fact Mina – Having snuck her way into the boys shared bedroom in the middle of the night – And not a fatigue induced dream, his eyes suddenly shot wide open. "M-Mina?!"
Her head shifted again once she heard his hushed whisper of a voice, moving to look up at his face. Her blackened sclera were difficult to see in the dark, only visible because her brighter skin tone served to create a very clear contrast between the two colours that allowed him to, just barely, see her eyes. They were actually, on closer inspection, slit and mostly closed, no doubt due to absolute exhaustion.
For a second, they looked at one another, and then, the young girl grimaced when she realized that Izuku was awake. There was a sign of a small smile on her lips, but it was very faint. "Damn. Was kind of hoping that you'd just stay asleep." She then rested her head just on top of his left shoulder, making herself comfortable, using him like he were a pillow.
"W-What the heck're you doing?!" He asked, trying to keep his voice as low as possible so no one woke up to see this awkward, incriminating and difficult to explain situation. Hell, he barely understood what was happening – Well, he did, but he had no clue why it was happening, what was going through Mina's head, and why on earth she thought that this was an acceptable act. "You're – You're not supposed to be in here!"
"I hadn't guessed." Mina yawned with a sarcastic response, wrapping her arms around Izuku's chest as she did so. "Can we talk in the morning? I'm sleepy."
"Sh-Shouldn't you be in the girl's room?"
"I mean, yeah…. But, you're not there."
"M-Mina – "
"I don't wanna fight you." The pink skinned girl said. The way she said it indicated that she meant for it to be snappy, though she failed to stifle another yawn towards the end of the sentence. Before she continued to speak, Izuku felt her fingers grip onto his body more. It seemed like every single movement that her body made was designed to bring the two of them closer together, physically speaking.
"Wh-What do you mean, fight?"
"I mean... We've pretty much been arguing all day. If you could call me being passive aggressive an argument. And…. It's not exactly been fun. I know there's stuff that the two of us need to resolve. I think it really is a dumb idea to just ignore that entirely… But we're here to train to become better Heroes. And I dunno 'bout you…" She yawned, yet again. The more she spoke, the clearer it was that she was fighting to even remain awake. A couple of seconds passed before she kept going. "…But I think it'd be best if we spoke in private… And I don't feel like arguing with you all week… So, can we just drop it for now? Until we get back home at least?"
Her words, softly spoken close to his ear, made Izuku pause for a moment, while his brain started to quickly process what she had said. Had she been thinking about this throughout her whole remedial session? What she was going to do about their current situation? What she was going to say? What she was going to do? Was this something that she'd recently decided that she wanted to do?
This was Mina he was dealing with. Frankly, he didn't know if he dared but any of these potential ideas past her. Understanding her was still something that was difficult, even for her own boyfriend.
Still, the pitch that she made…. It was a nice one, Izuku agreed. He also didn't like the current situation that they were in, but knew that they needed to resolve it with calm discussion, not angry, emotional shouting. They needed to do it behind closed doors, so they could confidentially speak their minds to one another. Given their current scenario, that wasn't something they could just do right now…
When they started their relationship, both of them knew, deep down, that if something like this did happen, they had to put their Hero training first, no matter how much it hurt. They had spent years dreaming of being able to stand with the best of the best in all the country. If they fell behind on their work, then it meant that becoming Heroes would be that more difficult in the long run…
Now that it was here though, they both had realized that putting their problems aside was a much easier thing to think than it was to actually do. The idea that they could just abandon whatever issues they had to focus on work was, in hindsight, laughable. It simply wasn't possible. For months now, the two had been growing close and closer, deepening their affections and experiencing all sorts of new emotions and feelings together. To just drop whatever bumps in the road came, and pretend they didn't happen to focus on other subjects… Neither of them had been in a relationship before. Both had no idea what to expect.
Neither knew that just letting that sort of thing slide was going to be this difficult. It was their first real disagreement that had serious emotional issues for the two of them. Letting something this important slide, to Mina, was just undoable. Not this.
So the idea of just dropping it, and waiting until they were back home, where they'd have all the time in the world to discuss their issues to death… It was a nice one. A reassuring one. One where they could focus on what they had come here to do, and focus on themselves later on.
A good compromise. One that worked for both of them.
They would talk…. But not until they had the comfort of familiar territory to do it in.
"I just… I just wanna let things be how they were before we came out here. I just wanna spend time with you and love you without having to worry about us having a row later in the day…" The sleepy girl whispered, honesty dripping alongside her heartfelt words. It wasn't something that Izuku had noticed before, but did she become more open with her feelings the more tired she got? Considering that she was a very honest person by default, that was certainly saying something.
"Okay…" Izuku nodded, quietly. He was all for this idea, to just let things go for now. After such an openly honest plea, he didn't think he'd be able to refuse it even if he wanted to, anyway… "..B-But still, wh-why're you in here?"
"Mmm, I just told you. You're not in the girls' room." She repeated, before hugging him once more. There had been an overall lack of intimate contact since the trip had started, her current clingy affection not being something that had come from being starved for physical contact for just a single day. Nothing but Quirk training had gone on for the whole day. Right now, she just wanted some intimate cuddles, no matter how childish or clingy it might seem. "Just lemme have this? Please?"
"B-But if Aizawa-sensei o-or someone else catches you in here…"
"I'll take the blame." Mina responded, this time much quieter, falling asleep more and more by the second. Her grip seemed to loosen as her drowsiness increased. In terms of forcing herself awake, she'd completely reached her limit. "Don't worry… 'bout it…"
With that, Mina's head completely slumped, and her body went limp as she blacked out of the woken world, a combination of extreme intimate comfort with Izuku, and absolute mental and physical exhaustion combined to make her totally knock out. Her last movements were her snuggling up even closer to him, curling up slightly, wrapping her leg around one of his, locking them into place.
Izuku already knew that trying to wake her up now was going to be a pointless, fruitless endeavour. Even if he managed to get her to open her eyes, she wasn't going to leave now that she'd set her mind on staying with him tonight. He didn't have it in him to move her either, now that she'd finally gotten to sleep.
He let out a small sigh, unable to decide if he should be exasperated, or amused with his quirky girlfriend. This was a pretty par for the course sort of thing from her, he supposed, making him chuckle again, this time for slightly longer. Taking his right arm, he rested his hand on her hip, the closest body part to him that he could reach without rolling over and pushing Mina off of him. With his left arm, trapped from the bicep up by her body weight, he managed to curl up his forearm to pull her into a slightly closer hug by resting his hand on the small of her back.
"Night, Mina…" He said, quietly, before kidding her forehead and closing his eyes. He was already totally aware that tomorrow morning was going to be an eventful scenario for the pair of them once their classmates woke up and saw this, but he'd deal with that when it came to dealing with it.
It had only been a couple of days since the pair of them had slept together like this. Apparently for Mina, that had been far too long, and while Izuku could easily have lasted a lot longer without this level of intimate contact…. He didn't want to push it away either. Frankly, though getting him to verbally admit it would be like trying to get blood from a skeleton, it made for some of the most relaxing and comforting contact that he enjoyed. He didn't want to deprive himself of that.
Instead, he just held his girlfriend close, and fell asleep.
Rise and shine time. Seven o'clock sharp.
Mina wasn't normally the sort of person who would up and wake up immediately. She wasn't in any way, shape, or form ready to wake up. She would much, much rather just roll right over and put off having to open her eyes and actually wake up for as long as physically possible. And that was just her when she woke up normally. Given that she'd been working off of five hours of sleep thanks to the extra remedial lessons, she barely even considered opening her eyes.
A situation which, for Izuku, was bound to cause him no limits of awkwardness.
Once the call to wake up had gone out, in the form of a loud announcement from Mandalay's Telepath Quirk blasted straight into everyone's heads, the students in the male dorms were fairly slow to rise. None of them in particular were morning people, except for maybe Tokoyami, whom seemed ready to wake as soon as the call was made. Otherwise, the other students needed a couple of minutes to adjust to the early morning light. Kirishima, Kaminari, Sero and Sato in particular all needing a bit longer to sluggishly get themselves into gear.
It took the green haired boy himself a few moments to wake up himself, but he was quite ready to go once he'd adjusted. He'd gotten more than enough sleep the previous night, even though he had been interrupted by Mina in the middle of it. Once he'd rubbed his eyes and gotten a built up yawn out of his system, he was, surprisingly, well awake. In a couple of minutes, he'd be wide awake.
"Midoriya?"
Tilting his head slightly to the side to face the person he was addressing, Izuku was met by Tokoyami, stood just half a meter to the side of him, and looking down on him with a mixture of what seemed to be confusion.
"Morning, Tokoyami…" Izuku sleepily greeted, blinking a couple of times in an effort to remove the sleep from his eyes. Stifling another short yawn, he then addressed the crow-headed boy, still looking at him as though he'd grown another head. Suddenly feeling rather self-conscious, he asked, "What's wrong?"
"Is… That Ashido?"
For the briefest of moments, Izuku had completely forgotten that Mina was even there with him, until she shifted herself in response to the noise and his movements, prompting him to look down, and see his pink girlfriend, still wrapped around his waist. A couple of nanoseconds later, the memories of when he had been woken in the middle of the night came flying back into his head, making him go red in the face. Looking back at Tokoyami, he was then met with a sea of faces from the rest of his classmates, all with expressions like they had caught the two of them in the middle of something much, much more inappropriate.
"What the hell is Ashido doing in here?..." Kirishima questioned, running his scarred eye with his fist, his other eye firmly shut to keep out the light. Out of everyone there, he was probably the least surprised, excluding Izuku of course, though going solely by his vocal response, he was still thrown off by her presence.
"Late night tryst by the look of things." Kaminari muttered through a yawn. "Even when the remedials were all up so late… I'm not even surprised at this point. Lucky bastard."
For his part, Bakugou didn't utter a word. He wiped his eyes clear from any water and sleep that may have formed in his eyes when he woke up, and then glared over towards the curly haired pair without a word.
"Midoriya, you green headed son of a bitch…" Mineta almost seemed to growl towards Izuku with what could almost be called genuine ferocity towards the freckled student. Ferocity that genuinely made Izuku worried that the Pop-Off Quirk user was going to attack him one of these days if he didn't stop seeing Mina basically draped over the awkward teenager.
Iida's response was far more reprehensive though. The fact that the green haired boy was his friend wasn't any form of defence for the Engine Quirk user, especially not in this particular scenario. "Midoriya, what exactly is the meaning of this?!"
"I-I swear this isn't what it looks like!"
"No, 'Zuku… Don't… Stop…" Slurred words came from the barely awake girl wrapped around his waist, apparently in response to the noise that was going on around her. If she was actually sleep-talking, had seriously misunderstood the subject of the conversation, or was just spouting utter gibberish was up for debate. Still, what she had actually came out with was… Even more embarrassing that their default situation. "Keep… Goin'…"
"Y-You are not helping, M-Mina!" Izuku stammered loudly, his blush increasing until it overtook his entire face, burning at the words that he just heard. If she was dreaming, and not trying to mess with him like she loved to do, then the subject of said dream was seriously going to have to be called into question. Frankly, the inheritor to the power stockpiling Quirk wasn't sure what was more embarrassing – Either the fact that everyone had come to the seemingly out of nowhere conclusion that the two had engaged in far more intimate actions the previous night, or the fact that she'd muttered that completely out of context!
As he was going red, however, perhaps in part to his unusually loud exclamation of embarrassment, the pink girl finally opened her eyes, slowly, before slamming it back shut again, even tighter than before, though she knew she had to get up. Dragging her heavy bones from her warm position, she forced herself to sit up onto her knees, and let out a loud yawn, and stretched her arms into the sky.
"Urgh…. Mornin', 'Zuku…" The clearly exhausted young girl drowsily greeted, still with her eyes firmly closed, completely unaware of the many other male students that were just staring at her in a mixture of amusement and disbelief that she actually had just snuck into the boys' room.
Granted, it seemed like something someone like her would do, when everyone stopped to think about it. Mina's affection towards Izuku was practically legendary throughout the class, and infamous after the previous day. If they were being honest, the majority of the male students were just confused that, in spite of their argument the previous day, the Acid Quirk user had gone right back to acting how things were beforehand.
None of them got the chance to question it though.
"Get to the dining hall quick or you'll go without breakfast!"
Another loud message suddenly broadcast throughout everyone's heads via the power of Telepathy. How even Heroes could manage to be this awake and ready to go first thing in a morning was something that none of the students felt that they would ever be able to understand. When the choice came, however, to choose between getting answers from Mina, who was going to still be around in half an hour, or getting some of the only free, pre-made food that they were going to get all day before it was gone…
Practically everyone quickly made their way out of the room and towards the dining hall to grab whatever they could so they could face the no doubt tortuous day ahead A word of warning, and demands of an explanation from Iida followed before he also left, leaving the room void of people. Everyone except Izuku and Mina, the green haired boy still flustered and embarrassed by what he'd been subject to from his peers, and by what Mina had muttered in her rest, and the pink haired girl herself, only just now slightly opening her eyes to attempt to adjust them to sunlight.
"Don't suppose you wanna just go right back to sleep?..." Mina questioned tiredly, already fully aware of what the answer to that question was going to be.
"We – We're gonna be training a-all day today. We should… Get something to help us through the training." Izuku stuttered, a first for him in normal conversation for quite a long while.
"Aw." Forcing herself onto her feet, slumped as her posture might be, Mina conceded the argument to Izuku without much of a fight. "Alright, you win…"
Trying to shake the blush off of his face, Izuku stood up and took a short, but deep, intake of air. Mina was already ahead of him, having opened the door and made her way into the corridor, already thinking about what gossip Hagakure was probably going to try and squeeze out of her when the invisible girl put two and two together and figured out where her friend had been the previous night. Izuku quickly followed, though he kept arm's length from his girlfriend.
Primarily out of embarrassment. By this point in their relationship, he had figured out that Mina was a very physical sort of person, in both her skills and grades when it came to schoolwork, and regarding their relationship with one another. If last night proved anything, it was that she was someone who would go to extreme lengths just to be able to sleep next to someone that she loved, and while he felt almost honoured that the one such person she did this with was him…
Her mumbling in her sleep, and the dream that she apparently had did make him question just what she exactly thought about regarding their relationship.
In her head, was she already thinking about taking things to such a level? The mere idea made Izuku blush like a maiden, and his heart beat like a jackhammer. It wasn't even that he was necessarily opposed to the idea… He loved her enough to even consider it, even think about it very occasionally…
But wasn't it a bit too soon?
Then again, how soon was too soon for them? People moved at different speeds in relationships, but wasn't there at least some sort of minimum time requirement? Was that even a thing? Mina was the sort of person who just went at her own pace, slowing down only when someone held her back. If she had free reign… There wasn't much doubt that she might try something like that.
Another scarlet blush made its way onto Izuku's cheeks. With these ideas in his head now… He felt that he needed to bring it up with Mina. Add it to the list of things that they needed to talk about. Though he had to wonder, what was she going to say in response? Knowing Mina, he probably had two options – She was either going to claim that she was awake the whole time and that she was messing with him, or she was going to try and seduce him on the spot.
No other way other than to just outright, he supposed, before he gulped.
"U-Uh, Mina?..." He asked, still blushing at the thought of what the answer was going to be to his question. He fiddled with his fingers as he formed each letter, doing his best not to devolve into various mumbles and mutterings. "Did you um…. Have a dream before you woke up?..."
Scratching at the side of her forehead, the sleep deprived girl thought back. "Mmm…. Uh…. Yeah, I think so." Dreams were odd for her. She very, very rarely had a dream that she could comprehend, and be aware that said dream was happening, and when she did, they were normally surprisingly cohesive, but the moment she woke up, nine times out of ten, she had forgotten it entirely. This was one of the few cases where she did actually have a rough idea about the contents of her dream, however. "Why?"
"What, um…What was it about?"
Looking over her shoulder towards him, and with a soft smile, she answered honestly. "Would you believe me if I told you I was dreaming about the Sports Festival?"
Izuku blinked, multiple times. That was it? That was what she had been dreaming about? "O-Oh?"
"Yeah. Don't know why to be honest, but I remembered your fight with Todoroki. I keep thinking about it every so often, how awesome you were back then. And it's part of why we started talking, so I kind of think of it like the beginning of us, if that makes sense?" She let the suggestion hang in the air, and when no answer came, she gently sighed. "I guess not. I know it's still, whenever I think back to the festival, I think of you… Part of me wonders why I waited until then to talk to you, but, hindsight I guess… Hey, are you okay?"
The One For All's inheritor's face was a pure blood red colour, and steam could virtually be seen rising from the top of his head when he realized that, for once, his was the head that was actually in the gutter. Hands covered his face while he tried to calm his blush to absolutely no avail. Instead, he just simply tried to hide the red colour spreading onto his face the best he could, while his girlfriend quickly and concernedly asked what on earth was wrong with him.