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“Alright everyone, we’re finished with drills for the day,” Aizawa called out, to the relieved and exhausted groaning of the class. “You have the rest of the day off. Do what you want with the time, but don’t get into trouble or this will be a reward you won’t be seeing again any time soon.”
“Yay,” Uraraka cheered weakly, collapsed against the edge of the pool as Aizawa pulled his sleeping bag out of nowhere and began napping. “I love the recent focus on prepping for rescue work, but I’m sore in muscles I didn’t even know I had.”
“I think this will feel more worth the work when we actually start doing simulations,” Midoriya agreed, worn out as well, despite being in better shape than most of their class. “At least we’re getting used to climbing and swimming and stuff first, before getting thrown into things?”
“Hm,” Todoroki agreed from his other side, face down on the pavement by the edge of the water, his lower half floating behind him.
“I think the weirdest part of this is wearing our hero costumes while swimming,” Ashido piped up from the other side of Uraraka, tugging at the fabric of her costume with a frown. “The fabric is surprisingly hard to move in when it gets wet.”
The class sat in silence for a few moments, the only one of them with any energy remaining being Asui - but Aizawa had her doing a different set of drills due to her water-based Quirk, so she was more tired than normal too. In the efforts of getting them into shape, they’d been swimming for the last five days for their hero classes, slowly increasing the difficulty over time. By now, they were all pretty tired of running drills in the school’s different pools set up with different temperatures, depths, and distances.
After a while, Midoriya groaned and slowly hauled himself out of the water and onto the pavement. He tugged off his gloves and mouthguard, before moving to untie his shoes. Normally he would have already removed as much as he could before swimming, but Aizawa had them training in their full gear because ‘you never knew when you’d have to do a rescue unprepared’.
He shook out his wet hair and sat down, leaning back on his hands to dip his feet back in the water. Midoriya eyed Todoroki in mild concern, the other boy still flat on his face and limply floating, showing no signs of moving any time soon.
“I guess I should - Deku! What’s wrong with your hands?”
At Uraraka’s alarmed question, Midoriya hurriedly took his weight off of this hands to look at them. In the corner of his eye, he saw Todoroki tip his face towards him and crack an eye open in worry, but as soon as Midoriya saw his hands, all he did was groan in exasperation, lifting a hand to his head.
“Really? Darn, I guess all the swimming really did a number on my hair, huh?” he mused, seeing more streaks of green drip down his hands after he ran them through his hair again.
“Oh, you too?” Kirishima piped up from further down the line-up, his attention having been caught by Uraraka’s exclamation. He held up a red-streaked hand in solidarity and grinned wryly. “At least yours isn’t making it look like you’ve murdered someone!”
By now their conversation had caught the attention of the rest of their classmates, and Midoriya felt a little sheepish under their attention. A few of them paddled closer, while others crawled their over on the pavement.
“I was unaware that you dye your hair Midoriya!” Iida exclaimed, looking curious.
“Ah, yeah,” he replied to the interested stares, hand moving to rub the back of his head unthinkingly and coming back even more green. “This is actually the color my hair used to be as a kid, before it changed. And, well, it’s the color my mom has, so I wanted to keep it, you know?”
“What color is your hair normally?” Todoroki asked, lifting his head fully for the first time since they’d ended the lesson, eyes gleaming with possibilities. Midoriya withheld a sigh, knowing that he probably suspected blond , due to his lasting theory that All Might was his father. He glanced around at the eager expressions of his classmates, then over at the nearby sinks.
“I mean, I guess I have to redo this anyway now, so if you guys want to see…?” he said, gesturing towards the washbasins. His classmates nodded, so Midoriya hauled himself to his feet and staggered over to them, dunking his head under the water and scrubbing vigorously at his hair.
He kept scrubbing until the water ran clear and the few strands of his hair that he could see were his natural color again. Then, he shut off the water and shook his head to dry it out at least a little before turning back to his classmates.
Most of them were staring in interest, though a few were gaping at him. Midoriya smiled sheepishly, walking back to the edge of the pool and dunking his feet back in.
“So, yeah. This is my hair!” he said, doing awkward jazz hands.
“Your hair is white ?” Ashido exclaimed, eagerly leaning forward to get a better look. “I would have guessed black, based on how dark it was - kind of like Kiri’s hair!”
“Oi, nerd,” Bakugou called out from where he was lounging further away. “When the fuck did that happen?”
“Er, I think my hair started going white when I was about eight?” he replied, tilting his head back in thought. “I know that it was fully white by ten. It comes from my dad, he has white hair too, and it started going that color pretty early for him as well. But I liked the green mom and I had, so I chose to dye it so that I could keep it!”
“It looks super manly bro!” Kirishima grinned. “Maybe once we’re done with this water unit we can dye our hair back together! Not much point before then, huh?”
“It looks really pretty,” Yaomomo admitted, looking on in interest. “It’s not pure white, there’s a bit of silver mixed in there too I think, making it look a little shimmery.”
“Yeah, it looks really cool!” Uraraka said, finally finding her voice. “It’ll take some getting used to, but it looks good!”
“Ah, thanks guys,” Midoriya laughed, feeling himself turning red under all the praise. Before he could say anything else, the door to the pool creaked open, revealing All Might in his smaller form.
“There you are! I thought I might still find you here after today’s unit,” the man said, looking around at them in amusement. Then his eyes reached Midoriya and he froze, blinking.
“Oh right! Midoriya dyes his hair!” Kaminari grinned at the man. “Isn’t the natural color cool?”
All Might didn’t say anything for a long moment, his face pale and his eyes wide as he stared at the boy. After a moment or two, Midoriya began to get concerned at his lack of response and bit his lip, frowning in worry.
“All Might?”
“Ah,” the man said, a somewhat strained grin on his face. “Sorry, my boy, it’s just that for a moment you greatly resembled someone I once knew. Your classmates say that this is your natural color?”
“Yeah, it used to be green but thanks to my dad’s genes it turned white when I was younger, and I’ve been dying it ever since!” he was going to say more, but a squabble breaking out between several of his classmates drew his attention away from his mentor.
As a result, he missed the strained smile falter into a momentary expression of alarm. He missed seeing All Might’s look of contemplation and worry, as the hero thought about how it was possible for two people to be related and look so alike, only to turn out to be such opposites.