"Did I do something wrong? Or why did you ask for me?" Robinn asked Nezu directly as they walked away from the garden. She had to shorten her stride drastically to match the tiny, deliberate pace of his steps. The path curved gently through a line of manicured shrubs, and the distant buzz of cicadas hung in the hot summer air.

  Did Hawks finally tell the school about my incident? Why would he wait this long? And why now? She kept her expression flat, but the line of her jaw tightened. There was no clear reason for Nezu to talk to her privately unless it was something serious.

  "A talk with you has been long overdue," Nezu spoke up. He didn’t bother craning his neck to look up at her. He simply continued forward, paws clasped behind his back in his usual unreadable composure.

  "Huh," Robinn said first, then quickly followed. "And what do you want to talk about?"

  Nezu sighed, though his tone stayed bright and strangely conversational. "How have you been doing at U.A.? Has my school been treating you well?"

  Surprise flickered across her face before she forced it back into neutrality.

  "Yeah it's been great!" she said, throwing on a big bright smile that felt overly practiced even to her own cheeks. She had no idea if this was actually the topic or if he was circling something heavier. It felt like prying. A light, casual kind of prying, but prying nonetheless.

  "And what are your plans for the future?" he asked briefly, then continued before she could answer. "What will you do to back up your claim of being the next symbol of peace?"

  Her gaze sharpened. She tensed, then consciously let her shoulders drop again. His question pressed right up against the edge of her comfort zone. She stopped walking.

  "Well I need to graduate from U.A. first don't I? It's not like anyone knew who All Might was before his debut." She smiled, the comfort returning. "So I'm already a step ahead."

  Nezu also stopped. He took a step backward so he could look up properly at her. His tone shifted, turning more challenging. "But All Might didn't have anyone to replace, you do."

  Robinn rolled her eyes slightly at his strained posture, then stepped off the path and sat down on the soft, sun-warmed grass. "So I don't have to talk down to you." She fixed him with a critical, almost bored look. "I have time." She said it simply, as if stating a weather fact.

  Nezu cleared his throat and paced a few small steps, stopping at the edge of the path. He crossed his paws behind his back. "Robinn, both you and I know that All Might isn't going to last that much more as a hero."

  Her gaze dropped slightly, voice matching it. "I know that... and I'm going to change it." The words came out steady but uncertain underneath, the conviction shaky at the corners.

  Nezu’s tone softened. "I hope you can... and as your principal and family friend I will do my best to help." Even then, there was a thin, unavoidable thread of doubt in his voice.

  "But we do have to prepare for the inevitable," he continued, gentle but firm.

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  "Anyways. Is that all?" Robinn said bluntly, brushing his concern aside as if clearing dust from her sleeve. Her tone slipped back into its monotone.

  Nezu nodded. "Yes, for now that's all. But Robinn, if you need to talk about anything... please don't hesitate to ask." He offered a warm, earnest smile.

  She pushed herself to her feet, brushing grass off her palms. Her gaze drifted back toward the garden. She looked like she was calculating something, weighing whether returning to that meeting was worth the trouble.

  "Yeah sure," she said simply.

  "Anyways bye Principal, see you later!" She turned on her heel and grinned, waving behind her as her steps quickened, escaping the conversation with a little too much eagerness.

  A brisk walk turned into a run quickly. An aimless run, not even on the track and definitely without a destination. Home was the very last place she wanted to be. Her ponytail snapped behind her in the warm summer air as she rounded a corner and froze at a fork in the path. One way led toward U.A.'s front gates. The other pointed her toward the gym and the training grounds.

  Weirdly enough her feet took her straight for the gates, her mind too cloudy to form intent. Running usually grounded her, let the noise settle, but at the time the thoughts felt like they were sitting in the marrow of her bones. She didn’t even notice when she stopped in front of the gates, or when she turned around again, drifting toward the training grounds as if pulled by gravity.

  Inside one of the gyms she stood in front of a reinforced punching bag, one of the models meant for power-type quirk users. She didn’t bother wrapping her fists. Instead she let them harden into stone as she took a stance.

  "Inevitable." She whispered it to the empty room as her fingers curled. Stone grated against stone. Then she started hitting. Hard. Brutal hits over and over, pacing around the bag like a shadow trying to outrun itself. Chips of stone flaked from her knuckles and skittered across the mat. The bag didn’t even sway much under her strikes.

  By the time she stopped she was breathing hard, shoulders rising and falling, arms still transformed and hanging heavy at her sides.

  "Ine…" She dragged in a breath. "Inevitable my ass." The words came low and rough as she clenched again, emotion cracking something loose inside her. Her fists darkened, stone shifting into steel, the chipped edges on her knuckles being replaced by sharp metal edges.

  She didn’t notice. She just sucked in one more uneven breath and launched a haymaker, putting everything she had into it. Mid-swing, a stubborn thought cut through. Harder. Her quirk reacted before she even consciously shaped it, twisting her fists into a heavier, denser metal. Tungsten dragged her forward and the punch crashed into the bag with a crack that echoed through the empty room. The tough exterior split, and the stuffing collapsed out onto the floor.

  She didn't catch her own momentum. She fell forward and hit the mat fists-first, gouging into it before the rest of her body dropped into a rough plank. Her breaths came shallow and uneven. Her stare burned a hole into the floor.

  "You really should stop before you hurt yourself." A tired voice carried across the room just as her arms gave out. Her quirk vanished in an instant and her body sagged against the mat. She forced her head to turn, and found Aizawa standing behind her with his quirk already on, eyes red and hair floating.

  "I'm fine." She barked, pushing herself into a shaky sit against the nearby wall, eyes darting toward the ruined bag spilling its insides.

  Aizawa let his quirk drop and sighed. "You're very clearly not fine... If you are, stand up right now." His tone was flat, not even bothering to frame it as a challenge.

  "M'kay." Robinn muttered. She shifted her upper body into air, leaving only her head, and tried to rise. Her legs trembled hard, clearly contradicting her.

  Aizawa flicked his quirk on again. The transformation snapped off and she hit the floor a second time, glaring up at him like it was his fault.

  The silence that followed tightened around her. For once she was the one who couldn't stand it.

  "I pushed a bit far…" she said quietly. "But I needed to, okay?" The fight crept back into her tone near the end.

  Aizawa shook his head, unimpressed, already pulling out his phone. He dialed. Someone picked up, though she couldn’t hear who. She didn't need to. Her stomach sank.

  "Come pick up your brat in the training gym." He said it bluntly, then hung up and looked down at her.

  She hated being right. In trying to run from the problem, she'd basically delivered herself to him. Now her problem was on his way to come collect her and drag her back to health against her will.