Chapter 42:

Do Not Engage

My Hero Academia: Izuku's Ninth Ledger

Training log updated.

Take a breath. The next test is already starting.

✦

All Might smiled like the room had not learned how teachers bled.

For one second, the U.S.J. believed him.

Villains flinched. Students breathed in too sharply. Even the dust seemed to hang still, waiting for the Symbol of Peace to tell it what kind of story this was supposed to be.

I was close enough to see the lie working.

His shoulders held steady, but his breath came in too thin through his teeth. His eyes had moved over Thirteen, the scattered class, Aizawa on broken concrete, and Uraraka's hand locked around my sleeve because my leg could not be trusted.

Then me.

The smile stayed where everyone needed it.

His eyes did not.

Shigaraki saw that.

"Finally," he said.

The word scraped the room open.

All Might stepped down from the entrance platform. Not fast. Not yet. He moved like every student in the dome had to see the same thing at once: an adult between them and the monster.

"Fear not," he said, voice huge enough to reach the flood zone, the landslide zone, the ruined plaza, the places where classmates had been trying to look smaller than terror. "I am here now."

It worked on us.

It did not work on Shigaraki.

"You are late," Shigaraki said.

The smile sharpened.

"Step away from my students."

My chest hurt.

Not from awe. Not exactly.

All Might belonged to this fight. The thought was obvious and horrible. He was the adult, the target, the symbol, the man Nomu had been built to answer. Every part of me that knew the shape of the scene wanted to grab the edges and correct them before anyone else got hurt.

Do not engage.

The command arrived inside me without a voice.

It was not clean.

It sounded like leaving Aizawa bleeding because I understood the matchup. It sounded like letting All Might spend something private in front of children because the room needed him more than it needed my cleverness. It sounded smart in a way that made my stomach turn.

Nomu moved.

All Might crossed the distance to meet it.

The impact cracked through the dome like thunder trapped under glass. Wind slammed into the wrecked rescue vehicle. Uraraka lost her grip on me for half a second and caught my forearm with both hands before I could fold.

Nomu skidded back one step.

One.

Then it stopped.

All Might's fist was buried in its guard. The creature's head hung wrong for an instant, beak open, brain exposed under the training lights.

It did not look hurt.

My mouth went dry.

I knew why. Of course I knew why. Years of memory tried to arrange itself into a neat answer: not invincible, absorbing impact, made to soak up brute force until time ran out.

The answer was dangerous because it was true.

Truth without a way to prove it could still get people killed.

All Might hit Nomu again.

Concrete tore loose beneath them. The monster bounced off the floor and came up with both feet under it. Shigaraki laughed, breathy and delighted in a way that made Mineta press both hands over his mouth.

"It was made to beat you," Shigaraki said.

All Might's smile widened.

Worse.

"Young Uraraka," I said.

"Don't ask me to let go."

"I was going to ask you to put me behind the vehicle."

"That is not better."

"It is fractionally less terrible."

Her face said she hated that I was probably grading accurately.

Another blast of wind shoved grit into my cheek.

Uraraka lowered me behind the wrecked vehicle. My boot touched the floor and pain fired from calf to hip so hard I bit my tongue. Tsuyu's hand caught my elbow before my knee could make the decision for me.

"Midoriya."

"Still here."

"You look like a hospital with hair."

Mineta made a tiny noise that might have been a laugh. Terror was doing most of the work, but it counted.

Aizawa shifted beside the vehicle. His face had gone gray under the blood.

"Stay down," he rasped.

"Yes, sir."

His visible eye narrowed.

"Too fast."

"I can stay down quickly."

The glare should have burned through me. His eyelids fluttered instead. Tsuyu crouched nearer, her expression going flat with focus.

"Sensei?"

"Awake," he said, barely.

Alive enough to be rude.

Across the plaza, All Might drove Nomu backward with a flurry my eyes could not track. Every blow should have ended a person. Nomu took them like weather.

Shigaraki stopped watching All Might for one breath.

He looked at me.

Attention had weight. His gaze felt like fingers closing around my throat, not because he understood me, but because he had noticed a shape. The green kid warned Aizawa. The green kid baited him with the schedule. The green kid made All Might's eyes change.

In Shigaraki's head, those pieces were not an answer yet.

They were a bruise he wanted to press.

"He keeps looking over here," Uraraka whispered.

"I noticed."

"Why?"

I could have given her a version that sounded sane.

Because I yelled too much.

Because I guessed right in front of the wrong villain.

Because future knowledge leaves fingerprints even when I try to wipe them off.

"I made myself annoying," I said.

Uraraka's mouth tightened.

"You're good at that."

"Natural talent."

Her grip shifted to support my weight without touching the worst bruising. "Then stop practicing."

All Might caught Nomu by the wrist and tried to throw it toward the central fountain. Nomu twisted midair and drove a knee into his side.

All Might staggered.

Only one step.

The room saw it anyway.

So did Shigaraki.

"See?" Shigaraki said. "He's not perfect."

Kurogiri's mist thickened near the entrance. "Tomura Shigaraki, professional hero response is approaching. We should withdraw if the objective cannot be completed within the next exchange."

"Shut up."

"The green student has already altered the central engagement."

Shigaraki went still.

I hated Kurogiri with sudden precision.

All Might heard it too. His head turned a fraction. Nomu punished the fraction.

Both fists drove into All Might's torso. The impact launched him through a fake building front. Steel beams bent around him. Dust rolled out in a heavy wave.

Every student in the room went quiet.

My foot moved.

Uraraka's fingers dug in.

"Don't."

I stopped.

Barely.

Do not engage.

The command did not say do nothing.

That made the command cruel.

All Might climbed out of the wreckage. His smile had blood on it.

"Young Midoriya," he called without looking away from Nomu. "Evacuate the injured."

He knew.

He knew I wanted to run toward him.

He gave me a job that pointed the other way.

"Yes, sir," I said.

My voice cracked on the second word.

Tsuyu wrapped her tongue around a loose support beam and pulled it away from Aizawa's legs. Uraraka made broken chunks weightless one at a time. Mineta stuck them to the floor so they would not float into someone's skull when she released. Sero limped over with tape already stretched between his elbows.

"Who are we moving?" he asked. Too pale. Still moving.

"Aizawa first," I said. "Then Thirteen if we can reach her. No one crosses open ground during a hit."

"You giving orders now?"

"Only bad ones."

"I know how those work," Sero said.

We got Aizawa onto a broken slab from the rescue prop. It was not a stretcher. It was better than dragging him over concrete. Kirishima helped lift the far side and flinched when his injured shoulder took weight.

"Sorry," Kirishima said.

"Less talking," Aizawa muttered.

Alive enough to be impossible.

All Might and Nomu collided again.

This time All Might did not throw a straight punch. He dipped under Nomu's first swing and struck from below, twisting at the last instant. Nomu's shoulder snapped back with a wet sound, then settled almost immediately.

There.

Not a theory.

Something everyone close enough could see.

If All Might kept treating Nomu like a wall, his time would vanish. If I shouted the wrong thing, Shigaraki would stop guessing and start deciding.

My teeth clicked together.

Do not engage.

Aizawa coughed behind me.

The command bent.

"All Might!" I shouted.

Uraraka looked ready to hit me herself.

All Might's gaze flickered toward us.

"Impact isn't the only problem!" I called. "Its joints still answer wrong!"

Shigaraki's head snapped around.

Too much.

For half a second, Kurogiri's mist opened behind him like a door thinking about my name.

All Might moved before either villain could use it.

He met Nomu low, not harder. Smarter. A punch drove into the creature's hip as it stepped, turning momentum against balance. Nomu hit the ground shoulder-first instead of eating the blow through the chest.

The floor cracked under them.

Shigaraki made a small, furious sound.

"You talk too much."

The words were for me.

My mouth went dry enough to hurt.

All Might did not look away again.

"Your fight is with me."

Nomu lunged. All Might lunged with it. The next collision blasted the fake lake into rain.

Cold water came down over dust, blood, torn uniforms, and the faces of students trying not to scream. For a second, the U.S.J. smelled like wet concrete and burnt cloth.

Uraraka's hand found mine.

It was not comfort.

It was a grip to keep both of us from doing something stupid.

"We move on the next opening," she said.

She was terrified.

She sounded steady.

"Right," I said.

All Might drove Nomu backward. One step. Two. The Symbol of Peace was still smiling.

Nomu did not care.

I wanted a perfect order.

The want frightened me more than the fight.

Perfect orders belonged to clean versions of scenes, the kind where injuries became notes and courage looked obvious because no one had to smell the blood. In front of me, classmates made ugly, fast, human choices with smoke in their lungs and a villain watching for weakness.

They deserved more than my corrections.

Tsuyu pushed from Aizawa's side. Mineta marked cracks on the floor with shaking hands. Sero kept tape tight while his shoulder trembled. Kirishima put himself between Nomu and people who could not stand. Mina wiped water and dust from her eyes and still checked whether the route to Thirteen had opened.

Help did not look like winning.

Help looked small.

It looked almost insulting beside All Might trading blows with the thing made to break him.

Then Aizawa's fingers twitched against the slab, and small stopped meaning useless.

All Might's next punch folded the air.

Nomu caught it.

The whole class inhaled.

For a heartbeat, I saw the limit under the smile. Not a number. Not a secret. Just strain in the line of his jaw and a rough edge in the breath he forced through teeth that still had to look heroic.

He was spending himself in front of us.

He did not let us see how much.

Shigaraki saw enough.

"You're slower," he said.

All Might grinned wider.

"And you are chatty!"

He slammed his forehead into Nomu's face hard enough to shake dust from the dome.

Kaminari shouted something that might have been a cheer. It died when Nomu did not fall.

I swallowed the next warning.

Too much from me, and the villains learned where to look.

Too little, and people died inside reach.

There was no clean line. Only a line I had to keep finding again while it moved.