Chapter Five

Aizawa hadn't stopped smiling and Izuku had felt abruptly, awfully, cornered. Like he'd been goaded into it. Nervously wringing his hands together and scratching at the ripple of scales persistently sticking to the base of his index finger.

And the hilarious trussed up Bakugou.

The moment he'd turned and seen the terrifying visage that was visible teeth in Aizawa's face, Bakugou had launched forward with the all the fury and wrath of a god, pouncing like a cat about to tear into an unsuspecting mouse.

Aizawa hadn't even stopped smiling when he'd wrapped Bakugou up like a particularly violent Christmas present.

"The point of these exercises was to show me your potential, to show me that your power over your quirks is not complete, not yet, but to prove to me that each and every one of you have the dedication to improve. Midoriya, you passed that test." Aizawa looked over the rest of them. Not one of them shuddered so Izuku guessed he'd turned off the smile. "You all passed, for showing integrity and control. Congratulations."

"What was that about being expelled?" Uraraka muttered next to Izuku when he shuffled over to them, no longer under the creepy watchful eye of Aizawa.

"Fear tactics?" Izuku mused. "But congratulations! You found something you were the best in."

"And what's up with him." Uraraka looked down at Bakugou who was squirming in his restraints and screaming in what might have been Japanese but might have also been a new language entirely.

"Oh." Izuku didn't know how to feel about that. "Um. My quirk was…a late bloomer. And I guess Kacchan doesn't…uh…like that I have one now?" A few words filtered through. "Or, apparently, I was hiding it all this time."

If Bakugou could cause explosions with pure vitriol alone Izuku was sure he'd be ash by now just by virtue of the look he was being given. Izuku felt numb, honestly. The threat of expulsion had hung over everyone. Now he just felt loose and relieved, like the adrenaline rush had left him.

"Are you okay?" Uraraka pestered. "You said you broke some bones in the exam, and the ball went pretty far!"

Izuku proudly displayed his hands and seemed to realise only then that the tip of his index finger was at a nearly ninety-degree angle from the knuckle, bending backwards.

"Oh."

"Oh."

The both of them stared at it.

From the side, Iida calmly remarked, "Perhaps you should get that seen to."

Izuku and Uraraka shrieked in unison. Neither of them had heard him come up from behind them.

"It's not your arm," Recovery Girl agreed, and Izuku squirmed under her stare, wishing that she hadn't banished Uraraka and Iida back to class because now he was under the brunt of her attention. "But it's still broken."

"I'm sorry," Izuku mumbled, feeling properly chastised by less than ten words. He thought he'd never find someone who could convey disappointment without outright sounding disappointed like his mother but here he was.

"Considering everything else though," Recovery Girl continued. "I'd expected the damage to be worse."

"Aizawa-sensei said I was a danger if I couldn't control it. A danger to the others." Izuku was still very offended by that notion.

Chiyo hummed and snapped his finger back into place. The high-pitched yelp reverberated across the walls and she watched closely as scales rippled across the injury before sinking back underneath skin.

"Sorry."

Izuku said nothing of the fact she sounded the furthest thing from apologetic.

"How's your calorie intake," she said suddenly, pressing a dry lipped kiss to the top of his head and making his skin tingle.

"Um?"

"How much do you eat," Chiyo clarified as she scribbled something down, no doubt marking the reason for his visit, and whether or not his parents needed to be involved.

"I – " and Izuku stopped and thought about that. "A…lot?"

"Mmhmm," Chiyo scratched something else out onto a piece of paper before slamming it away into a filing cabinet. "Now, normally I don't advocate for missing lessons, but this is your first day and Present Mic doesn't do much more than talk about himself or the radio show for the first lesson you have with him, so I've some questions to ask."

"Questions?" Izuku fiddled with his fingers nervously, thumb rubbing into his recently realigned fingertip.

"About your condition," Chiyo clarified. "If I'm going to be your primary healthcare official, I need to know everything I can." She paused. "Perhaps condition is too harsh of a word. Heritage?"

Izuku sat upright.

"Oh, that! If you mean about the puberty and stuff, my dad has already gone through it with me."

"'Puberty and stuff'," Chiyo repeated, tonelessly. "That there, will be question number one."

Izuku squirmed, wondering if he should have just kept his mouth shut. The possibility of making a break for it crossed him and he eyed the door contemplatively.

"My dad gave me some pointers," Izuku said slowly. "Since I'm you know. Half human too. He had both of his puberties at the same age, the normal 'hit a certain age' one and the dragon one. My dragon one is a little…late. Considering the new development."

"Dragon puberty," Chiyo said flatly. Izuku winced. When it was spoken out loud like that, it sounded stupid and ridiculous.

"Yeah…"

"Please," Chiyo took a seat, waving her hand. "Don't spare the details."

"Well," Izuku licked his lips, the nervousness refusing to leave and honestly, if it didn't, he'd be escaping before it bettered him. "Dad gave me some pointers but there hasn't been a dragon my size for a while."

"Is there a possibility One-For-All enhanced it?" Chiyo asked.

Izuku froze and wondered why on earth he'd never contemplated that himself. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Chewed his lip and felt his fingers twitch in the urge to make notes. He gave in, diving down for his bag to drag out a notebook.

"I – I'm going to write down some questions to ask my dad – my questions, and the ones I can't answer for you," he said at the lift of an eyebrow. What was it with this school and the amount of people that were as terrifying as his mother.

Lowering his eyes, he scribbled the first few questions.

Do full-blooded dragons have quirks? Ask extended family/dad.

If yes, any cases of dragons w/ quirks being bigger/enhanced/different?

Izuku stared at his messy handwriting and wondered when these had become important questions to his life.

"It's like I'm writing a fantasy novel," he whispered to himself.

"Back onto other topics," Chiyo nudged. "Puberty?"

"Oh! Oh, yeah." Izuku set the book to the side and chewed his pen. "Dad said that I'm going to get a little bit tougher, maybe a bit stronger, because not all of it is always contained."

"'Belly full of fire'," Chiyo quoted, from the first time Izuku had been in the ward with her. "But the enhancement would be a reason for why you've been needing to eat more. You're definitely bulkier, considering the short amount of time between visits."

"I haven't had any signs of breathing fire," Izuku promised. "If that happened along with everything else, I think Kacchan would turn apoplectic. Or have an aneurysm. But uh, apart from that, the big thing dad said to look out for were the instinctive things. A dragon doesn't have any reason to think like a human. In fact, it's only a recent adaptation over the past couple of years that dragon clans have developed the ability to hold a human form due to modernisation of the –"

"On topic please."

Izuku was mortified. At least Chiyo sounded amused.

"The dragon is a big lizard. The big lizard likes to do things his way. Lizard brain. They've got 'human-like' intelligence but obviously it's adapted to their own needs. It's just…a lizard brain."

More amusement. Izuku felt his cheeks burn and looked down.

"So what does this mean for you?"

The indignation from earlier, from Aizawa, suddenly flared.

"Aizawa-sensei said I could have been a danger and…I didn't like that." Izuku chewed over the words in his head, cocking his head in an uncanny manner. "I don't know exactly why, but the implication that I couldn't look after my classmates just rubbed the wrong way."

"Were you at risk of losing form then?"

"Oh, no, not at all. I just had to prove myself in the right in front of a figure of authority." Izuku straightened his neck, chewing his pen again.

"And if your classmates were put under direct threat?"

Just the idea of that had Izuku rearing back, indignant all over again. Something under his breastbone rustled uncomfortably and he brought the pen out of his mouth, rueful that his teeth had cracked the plastic but glad he hadn't spilled the ink within.

"Lizard brain," Chiyo murmured. "That thought makes you very uncomfortable doesn't it?"

"I don't even know half of their names yet," Izuku said. "But if anything happened to them, I don't know what I'd do. They're…" his mouth twisted. "We're all here for a reason and we're all so earnest and I don't want that ruined."

"All-Might is setting up a training exercise where you'll be pitted against one another in teams. I shouldn't be telling you this, but if your reluctance to see your teammates hurt puts you at a disadvantage because you refuse to fight, I can write a note excusing you."

"Oh, no, it's only if they're under an outside threat, I'm sure," Izuku reassured, and then immediately realised how unreassuring that actually sounded. "Not that I'd actually hurt them for real, but for the sake of an…an exercise, I'm sure it'll be fine!"

Chiyo looked suspicious but Izuku guessed he really did deserve that.

"If I have to throw a punch, I'll throw a punch," Izuku sounded his argument out carefully. "Because I know a bruise you can stand up from. It's more…wholescale. If someone's playfighting and gets a bloodied nose it's not bad. But if someone straight up brings a knife to a fistfight and threatens to stab someone, that's not on."

"This will be more like bringing a quirk to a quirk fight."

"Exactly! Everyone's on equal grounds. Person A is just as likely to get as hurt as Person B but not in a life-threatening manner."

"And if it happened to change to a life-threatening manner?"

Izuku's easy going smile froze on his face. Chiyo sighed.

"Get to class. Here. This will let you get through the halls and explain why you were late to class." She held out a slip of paper which Izuku gratefully snatched, if only so he could escape as fast as possible from what was one of the most awkward conversations of his life, bar that one time his mother had asked if he had a crush on All-Might.

"Hey, are you…okay?" Uraraka asked at lunch, even as Izuku continued pointing out what he'd like added to his lunch tray, already piled high. Lunch Rush seemed almost jubilant as he added more and more food. Izuku wondered if he'd been appraised of his unique situation of needing to eat all the food ever.

"Just hungry," Izuku sighed. "I think it might be from Recovery Girl."

Uraraka's unease turned into understanding. "Oh! Of course. She takes energy when she heals huh?" she sounded sympathetic. "I slept through my healing after the exam so I guess I rested enough after it all to not feel it."

Izuku took his teetering tray over to the table where Iida was already sat. He wasn't sure if they were already friends, but at the end of class both of them had waited for him and it gave him some warm fuzzy feeling in his stomach.

He hoped that was what was causing the fuzzy feeling. If he belched fire now he'd dig his own grave and bury himself.

"Well balanced," Iida appraised his meal as Izuku set his tray down. "But a lot."

"Yup." Izuku agreed and refused to elaborate, more concerned with separating his food into very careful neat piles by food type.

"We have our first class with All-Might after lunch," Uraraka admitted nervously. "I almost forgot to tell you, but he came in at the beginning of the lesson with Present Mic. You missed it being…Recovery Girled and all."

There went the pyramid of rice, tumbling down.

I shouldn't be telling you this… echoed in his head. Despite his bravado in the infirmary, Izuku wasn't actually sure of his ability to hold face in front of his other classmate when it came to being set against one another. At least not without more preparation than say, the forty odd minutes he had left of lunch.

Izuku shoved a piece of chicken into his mouth and chewed it viciously, unaware of the concerned look on Uraraka's face due both his reaction and non-reaction to the news.

God forbid if he was on the opposite team to Bakugou when it all happened.

His luck wasn't that bad after all.

The sneeze that came after that thought wasn't in anyway ominous. Not at all.

Some of you have been mentioning that I've been missing key facts, pieces, etc.

This is not canon.

If you can't handle the slight misstep from detail #6072 from the manga I haven't read in it's entirety, you don't have to continue reading. Everything is at risk of being tweaked because of the big issue that Izuku can now eat every single one of his problems instead of dealing with them as he did in canon.

This is also humour. Crack. Whatever you want to call it. Take it with a grain of salt. If you're looking for something perfect this isn't it.

Please stop sending messages or reviews saying 'this is wrong' or 'this is wrong'. I'm either unaware, or completely aware and don't care.

Sorry for ranting, but I'm just getting annoyed. This is fanfiction.

Again, sorry. Thank you to everybody else for the wonderful reviews!

As for the Ryuko issue – some people say estranged family member, others are just 'coincidental quirk' since Izuku's circumstances are different from hers.

When I say Izuku can be a big dragon, he can be a big dragon, a la Game of Thrones style.

Anyway, until she needs to be introduced, that can be a near or far future problem – if she is introduced, it could be 'we need to ask you questions on this and that' and she can be all 'I have a quirk, this is out of my realm of expertise but ask away'.

Let me know what you think.

Once more, sorry for the rant. I just wanted to write this story for fun. I feel I'm getting nitpicked.