Erasure

Training log updated.

Take a breath. The next test is already starting.

✦

My first mistake was thinking the test had ended.

The class changed back into uniforms with the kind of energy people got after surviving a threat they had not believed in until it had teeth.

Kirishima called the whole thing insane at least four times. Kaminari asked whether all U.A. teachers were like that, then immediately looked worried about the answer. Iida began organizing his notes with the grim focus of a man preparing a complaint against uncertainty itself.

Bakugo did not speak. He kept flexing his right hand. Not from pain. I knew his tells well enough for that. He was replaying the softball throw. Mine, his, the gap between them, and the wrongness sitting inside that gap.

For once, I did not try to guess what he would do with it.

I had enough trouble walking without looking like my bones were negotiating a new contract.

Uraraka caught up beside me outside the locker room.

"You are limping enough that I can see it."

"Barely enough to count as a limp."

"Barely is not a no."

"I have discovered people here are aggressive about answers."

"Maybe because you keep giving slippery ones."

Unfair. Accurate enough to sting. I adjusted my bag strap with my left hand.

"My leg cramped. It will pass."

"And your shoulder is also being dramatic?"

"Still committed to being dramatic."

She gave me a look too sharp to hide behind sweetness.

"You joke when you do not want people to ask more."

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Her eyebrows rose.

"There is the pause again."

"There what is, exactly?"

"The pause. You do it like you are checking three versions of the future before answering."

My stomach went cold. She said it lightly, mostly, but concern sat under the curiosity.

And the beginning of a pattern I could not let form too clearly.

"Old habit," I said, and heard how thin it sounded.

"From Aldera, or from something else?"

The name of the prep school made Bakugo's footsteps behind us feel louder. I did not look back.

"From wanting fewer surprises than I usually get."

Uraraka's expression softened.

"That part I actually get."

Of course she did.

Money could make a person ration every breath. Family did too. So could being told the world had no place for you unless you forced one open with bloody hands.

We reached the classroom. Aizawa was already inside, yellow sleeping bag gone, capture scarf loose around his neck. Somehow, without the sleeping bag, he looked more dangerous and less awake.

"Midoriya, you stay after class," he said.

The room quieted before I answered.

"After class. Training Room Three."

No explanation. No tone. Just a sentence dropped on the desk like a knife. Every eye in the room found me. Bakugo's mouth twitched.

"In trouble already, Deku?"

"Efficient use of school resources," I said.

Kirishima winced. "Dude."

Aizawa looked at Bakugo. "Do you want to join him?"

Bakugo's grin vanished into a hard, bitten-off "Tch."

"Then sit down and stop volunteering."

He sat.

I had never appreciated a teacher shutting him down as much as the original Izuku's memories wanted me to. The satisfaction was there, old and bright and a little ugly.

I did not feed it. That way led to bad decisions and broken bones.

The rest of homeroom became paperwork, schedules, emergency protocols, and enough legal language around hero training to remind everyone that U.A. was a professional academy, not a playground with costumes.

Fine. Better than nothing.

This world needed fewer children thrown at villains and more adults signing informed consent with shaking hands. Still terrifying. Just more honest.

When the bell rang, the class broke into motion. Uraraka lingered.

"Do you want me to wait?"

I wanted to say yes. I hated that more than the pain.

"No," I said. "It is probably about the test."

"That does not make it better."

"It makes it predictable, which is not the same as better."

"You like predictable that much?"

"I miss predictable more than I should."

The answer slipped out too honestly. Her face changed. Before she could ask, I lifted a hand.

"I'll see you tomorrow before anyone starts a rumor."

She let it go. Not because she missed it. Because she chose not to push.

That made it worse.

Training Room Three smelled like rubber flooring, disinfectant, and old sweat. Aizawa waited in the center of the room with his hands in his pockets. Recovery Girl sat near the wall on a stool, cane across her lap and a clipboard balanced on one knee.

I stopped in the doorway.

"Am I being medically supervised or interrogated?"

"Yes," Recovery Girl said, without looking sorry about it.

Aizawa pointed to a strip of tape on the floor. "Stand there."

I did.

"Your file says your Quirk manifested recently."

All Might and I had built that lie carefully. Not too polished. Not too vague. A late manifestation tied to stress and physical awakening, with strength enhancement as the visible explanation.

"Yes, sir. That is what the file says."

"Your entrance exam shows controlled burst movement, high tactical awareness, and a pain response consistent with someone using output beyond safe range."

"That sounds bad when you say it that way."

"It is bad," Recovery Girl said. She tapped the clipboard with her pen. "I am not here to admire grit. I am here because grit keeps making my patients stupid."

Aizawa's eyes stayed on me.

"During the long jump, I erased your Quirk."

My skin remembered the fall before my thoughts did.

The sudden emptiness. The body waiting for power that never arrived. The ground coming up like a consequence.

"I noticed when the floor got ambitious."

"You adjusted before landing instead of freezing."

"Badly, but I did adjust."

"Better than panic from a dead drop."

"Is that what a compliment sounds like from you?"

"It is a measurement, not a compliment."

Recovery Girl hid a smile badly. Aizawa ignored her.

"We are going to test response delay."

"Right now, with both of you watching?"

"Unless your injury prevents basic movement."

Recovery Girl looked me over.

"No high impact. No full output. If he tears that shoulder worse, Shota, I will write your name on the chart in red ink."

"Put that blame in writing."

"I already did, in advance."

He did not look surprised.

Aizawa had me perform small movements first. Step forward and stop. Lateral shift. Short hop. Grip and release. Each time, he let One For All start and then cut it.

Erasure did not feel like losing electricity. It felt like losing an agreement.

One For All was still there, packed deep in the bones, humming beneath everything. Aizawa could not erase the fact that power existed inside me. The stockpile did not vanish.

But the conscious flow snapped. Output broke. Feedback went blind. The Ledger struggled to update while my body corrected too late. After the fourth interruption, my calf seized.

I caught myself on one knee. Recovery Girl made a displeased sound.

"Enough. I mean that medically."

"One more controlled interruption," Aizawa said.

"No," she said, flat and practical. "His leg is giving us the answer you wanted, and I would like it to keep belonging to him."

He looked at her. She looked back. He blinked first.

Tiny victory for healthcare.

I sat on the mat before my body made the decision for me. Sweat crawled down my neck. My shoulder throbbed with every pulse. The Ledger finally stabilized.

[Erasure Variable]

Stockpiled Core: intact

Conscious Output: interrupted

Feedback Loop: unstable

Risk: catastrophic during airborne movement

"Yeah," I whispered. "I caught that part."

Aizawa heard me.

"You trained for this kind of suppression."

I froze.

Recovery Girl's eyes sharpened too.

"For what, exactly?"

"Quirk suppression. You recognized the gap too fast."

That was his first mistake. Not a stupid one. A reasonable one, which made it worse.

"No," I said, too fast to sound harmless.

"Do not waste my time."

"I'm not. I trained for pain. Falling. Bad landings. Output failure. Not you."

Silence settled between us. The difference mattered. It also did not make me sound less suspicious.

Aizawa crouched in front of me, close enough that I could see the dryness around his eyes.

"Then why were you scared before you were confused?"

There it was. The better question.

My fingers curled against the mat.

"Because losing power midair is obviously bad."

"Most first-years learn that after they hit the ground."

"I am very committed to early education."

"Deflection," Aizawa said.

"Survival habit," I said.

"Both can be true."

Recovery Girl tapped the cane once.

"Shota, do not turn this into pride."

He did not look away from me.

"I don't care about your secret today."

That sentence scared me more than if he had demanded everything.

"Today is doing a lot of work there."

"Today I care that you treat injury like a budgeting problem. Spend a little here, save a little there, hope the bill comes after the mission."

My jaw tightened.

"Rescue work requires risk; pretending otherwise gets people killed."

"Yes. It does not require you to confuse arithmetic with judgment."

Recovery Girl leaned forward.

"And before you argue, I do not have a complete diagnosis. I have a pattern. Shoulder strain, calf spasm, fatigue compensation, and a Quirk response your joints are not ready to absorb. Your muscles are adapting faster than your tendons. That is not heroic. It is inconvenient biology."

"Believe me, my shoulder has been making that argument all day."

They both looked at me.

Wrong answer.

"I mean, I understand what you are saying."

Aizawa's eyes narrowed.

"No. You knew enough to gamble with it."

The room went quiet. He did not know how far that went. He could not.

But he had found the edge of it.

"When I erased your Quirk," he said, "you were not surprised enough."

"I knew your Quirk existed."

"That is a bad lie."

"It is the one I can give."

Recovery Girl's expression changed. Not softer exactly. More careful.

"Fine," Aizawa said, which was worse than anger.

Worse than anger.

"Fine how, exactly?"

"You do not owe me your secret on day one. You do owe me survival."

My breath almost caught.

He pointed toward my shoulder.

"If you use that power like you have already decided which bones are expendable, I will bench you. If you hide injuries, I will bench you. If you turn a rescue into martyrdom because it makes the story in your head cleaner, I will bench you and sleep very comfortably afterward."

The story in your head. The room tilted a degree.

He still did not know. He still hit too close.

I looked down at my hands. They were Izuku's hands. Scarred now in places canon had never put scars. Stronger than they had been ten months ago. Still too small for the future I kept trying to hold.

"I don't want to die," I said.

The sentence surprised all three of us. Simple. Ugly. True.

"I just know there are moments where someone moves or someone else pays."

Aizawa said nothing.

Recovery Girl's cane tapped once, softer this time.

"Then learn to move in a way that lets you do it again tomorrow."

It sounded like mercy. It also sounded like homework.

Aizawa tossed me a thin folder. It landed beside my knee.

"Recovery schedule. Output logs. Pain, fatigue, successful activations, failed activations, and erasure response drills. Not just heroic outcomes."

I opened it.

Tables. Empty fields. Clinical categories. Daily supervised mobility. Trigger notes. A small section for response after suppression.

Maximum authorized practical output: below 1% until cleared.

I stared at the last line.

"Below one percent even in supervised drills?"

"You have a problem with decimals?"

"Many problems, most of them personal."

"Develop a healthier relationship with decimal points."

Recovery Girl nodded once, brisk and satisfied.

"That restriction follows you into heroics class. Battle Trial, rescue drill, sparring, whatever dramatic name they put on it. Below one percent means below one percent."

My stomach dropped.

"Tomorrow's combat class counts too?"

"Especially tomorrow's combat class," she said. "No impact exchanges to prove toughness. No airborne recovery unless a teacher orders it. No taking hits because it makes the math cleaner."

Aizawa added, "If the exercise forces combat, you work around the restriction. If you cannot, you say so before your body says it for you."

"That is going to affect the match."

"Correct. That is why we are saying it now."

"People will notice if I fight like that."

"Also correct, and still not a medical argument."

I looked between them, searching for the loophole that had to exist because my brain hated closed doors.

Recovery Girl smiled sweetly.

"I like rules that keep patients out of my office."

Of course she did.

I had fought a sludge villain, survived ten months under All Might, inherited a power older than common sense, and thrown myself at a zero-pointer.

Two adults with clipboards still managed to make me feel cornered. Maybe U.A. really was elite.

On the way out, Aizawa stopped by the door.

"Midoriya, one more thing."

"Yes, sir?"

"Do not build your plan around taking hits."

"I wasn't planning to make it the whole strategy."

"You were considering where it might fit."

I shut my mouth.

His expression did not change.

"Fix that too before combat makes it tempting."

The hallway outside was mostly empty. Afternoon light cut across the floor in long gold strips.

I leaned against the wall and let my head rest back for two seconds. The Ledger pulsed.

[Training Restriction Added]

Authorized Output: below 1%

Erasure Response Drills: mandatory

Battle Trial Constraint: active

Institutional Attention: confirmed

Below one percent. Mandatory drills. Combat restriction. Confirmed attention.

I laughed once, quiet and tired.

"Welcome to U.A.," I told myself.

Then my phone buzzed. All Might.

Young Midoriya, I heard from Aizawa. We need to talk before combat training.

A second message arrived before I could reply.

Also, please do not panic.

I stared at the screen.

Too late.

✦

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