A degree of cold that Izuku didn't think was possible rips through his bones as the wind blows without end. Dawn isn't for another few hours and Mitsuki had dragged him out of bed just after midnight to come walk into the frigid wilderness of Alaska. Snow crunches beneath his feet as he follows his aunt through the frozen wastes until she finally comes to a stop in an empty ice field, barren except for a few dead plants peeking up through the snow trying desperately to get an inkling of warmth from the sun. "Perfect, this is where we're gonna train." She says, causing Izuku to grumble before looking at his watch. It reads almost 2am, and the only thing this could mean is that this is gonna be a long night. "Quit your bellyaching, you're the avatar so a little cold shouldnt hurt you." Mitsuki says before pointing downwards. "Sit." She demands and Izuku grunts before following suit.

"Why the hell are we out here?! It's 20 below dammit and I didn't even get a chance to go to sleep." Izuku protests as he slumps to the ground indignantly. "We're gonna get hypothermia at this rate if we don't use our bending."

"True but you're not allowed to use your bending, only your mind." Mitsuki says before pulling the hood of her parka back and reaching into one of her pockets. "Today you're gonna learn how to combustion bend. Well, it's gonna take a lot longer than just today but that's what we're starting. Psychic firebending and combustion bending."

"I thought you had to be a natural born combustion bender." Izuku responds before puffing out a bit of fire from his mouth to heat himself up. Doing so earns a snowball to the face from Mitsuki.

"Most are but it can be learned. To learn it, you have to master creating fire in a place where fire can't exist, making something burn without a flame, without your other methods of firebending. So no firebreath, no hands, no feet, nothing except for your mind." She says before kneeling in front of him and producing a small circular jar from within her parka. "This will help you focus it." She says before opening the lid revealing a red ink like paste within it. She dips one of her fingers into it before reaching up and applying it to Izuku's forehead.

His face smushes slightly as she pushes her finger down his forehead slightly then moves it to a slightly higher spot and creates a curve on his forehead with the ink. She repeats this creating another curve underneath it then flares the oval she created on his forehead with three lines on both ends. "There, the third eye of Agni. This is the only spot you're gonna be allowed to firebend from. And you better figure it out quick, if the cold doesn't get you, the kodiac bears will. I'll come back to get you at noon and when I get here I expect to see you demonstrate it, because I'm not dragging back an avatar-popsicle all the way back to Anchorage." She says before looking up towards the northern lights, she takes a deep breath then let's out a high pitched whistle as loud as she can before firing off a combustion beam from her forehead into the night's sky. "Chop chop Izuku, this blizzard is only gonna get worse." She says as the screech of a dragon echoes through the night. The large copper scaled beast swoops down and lands in front of Mitsuki. "Good boy Jojo, let's go back to the hotel and get you out of the cold." She says as she climbs into the saddle on the dragon before the large scaled beast takes flight leaving Izuku alone in the blizzard.

"Drag your nephew all the way to the arctic circle and just leave him there while you go back to the resort to have a hot toddy and cozy up to your big fat flying lizard." Izuku says more to himself than anyone. "What's stopping me from just using my normal firebending to keep warm?" He asks rhetorically but in the back of his mind he knows that if he does, Mitsuki will know he cheated on his training.

Shivering, Izuku puffs a couple breaths of fire out in order to warm himself up so that he can focus on this strange training method. Sure, it technically breaks the rules of Mitsuki's training but Izuku can think and focus better when he's not on the brink of hypothermia so in his mind he thinks she'd let that slide. Though probably not, but in any case what she doesn't know won't hurt her, but it'll keep him alive. Now warm enough to remove his hands from underneath his armpits, Izuku curls his hands into fists and places them together, beginning to focus on a small, fragile twig just barely peeking out of the snow in front of him. The air is so cold that it feels like every breath of air is stabbing him with daggers of ice, but he takes a deep breath trying to ignore the cold and focus on his inner fire. Closing his eyes he begins to breathe in deeply, taking the teachings of master Gedun to allow his meditation to calm the whipping winds around him to make this more bearable.

The lashing gusts begin to calm slightly, now orbiting him as he breaths calmly and focuses on the blue and white burning flame in his soul. Firebending is an expression of this flame, no matter how small or how bright every firebender relies on it to create their fire and emotion is its fuel. Anger may help fuel the flame briefly, but too much fuel will drown the flame rendering it useless, firebending requires passion and strength, emotion whether good or bad can fuel the flame but too much can smother it. When a firebender throws a punch attempting to create a flame, they're creating a path for the energy from their inner fire to follow. When that energy leaves the body it combusts and becomes fire. The breath, the emotions and the energy is what allows for firebending just as a natural flame requires fuel, oxygen and heat to live. Trying to forcibly create a path from the bender's inner flame to a point where they've never used firebending from before is difficult enough, add that to the fact that the flame created needs to not burn but be a pure expression of energy and it makes the task feel impossible.

Though, with literally thousands of years of experience in previous lives behind him, Izuku believes that he'd be able to pick it up... eventually. Internally he imagines looking at himself and only seeing his inner flame, the rest a silhouette. He draws the flame upwards through his body as if he is going to breathe fire but he continues to focus it towards the center of the forehead. He feels the warmth radiate through his body, almost reminding him of the time he and Katsuki got into Marasu's collection of whiskey chocolates as kids and eating a bunch. He draws his inner energy from his stomach through his chest and towards his head bringing it further and further towards his forehead. He opens his eyes and stares at the small twig in front of him focusing on extending his fire towards it. Concentrating as hard as he can to generate enough heat to cause the twig to catch fire.

Nearly three hours later, Izuku sits half buried in the snow still staring at the tiny twig in front of him. His concentration had generated enough heat to at least keep the shrub he's been staring at from getting covered in snow, but it hasn't yielded any fire. Blinking Izuku turns his attention away from the small bush to readjust his eyes to the surroundings. Staring at something continuously for over three hours really gives you a headache, and right now Izuku is dealing with a pretty bad one. As he scans the tree line for something to look at, in a sea of white and gray, something catches his eye. He can't really make it out at this distance, the first rays of dawn are still peaking over the horizon making it difficult to see, but far out in front of him appears to be the silhouette of a man dragging something behind him. He tries to squint to make the image sharper but the shadowy figure trudging through the snow vanishes into the blizzard almost as soon as he had noticed it. 'Probably a hunter dragging an Elk-deer.' He thinks to himself before returning his attention to the small bush in front of him.

His lack of attention to the bush has allowed the blizzard to partially cover the bush in a layer of snow. He sighs seeing his progress being undone but he breathes out a bit of fire to warm himself up in order to resume his training. He recalls the times he's seen Mitsuki or Katsuki combustion bend in the past, remembering how they'd inhale deeply, flex their core and focus through their head. Sometimes Katsuki would make weird faces when he does it which causes him to chuckle at the thought. But remembering how they'd combustion bend gives him an idea. As he adjusts his posture to sit up straight, some of the snow that has collected on his back slides off of him. Now sitting upright, he begins breathing in deeply, focusing on fueling his inner fire as much as he can before attempting to project it. His stomach extends slightly as he breathes into his diaphragm, each breath fueling his inner flame more and more until it's as hot as a newborn star. The warmth of his inner fire is enough to melt the snow accumulating on his back and even cause hot vapor to waft off of him. Satisfied with the power he's built up he exhales everything he can in his lungs. He takes a long deep breath through his nose then flexes his core and focuses with all his might towards the shrub in front of him.

Firebending without any other muscle movement aside from your mind is a very strange feeling, like a burning liquid spraying from the center of the forehead. Izuku feels a stream of fire leave the center of his forehead from Agni's eye that Mitsuki had drawn on him. The feeling is nearly indescribable but a stream of condensed fire leaves the eye drawn on him reaching out towards the shrub in front of him. While nowhere near as fast as anything Katsuki or Mitsuki has done, the flaming combustion beam Izuku has created is just as explosive. The moment the orangish white flames touch the shrub, it explodes violently, creating a cone of fire outwards from where the impact had taken place. The resulting shockwave knocked the snow off the trees nearly a thousand feet away from him in all directions. The shrub itself had been completely obliterated, sending flaming sticks and shrapnel everywhere. Izuku himself had recoiled away from the explosion, surprised at how massive it was but, after seeing the flames in front of him and the melting snow around him he laughs triumphantly.

With this new found ability, Izuku goes a little buck wild for the remaining time that he has before Mitsuki returns. Now, he doesn't go combustion bending into the wilderness to start a forest fire, what he does do is focus the shots he's creating into the snow near where he's been all morning. Each time he fires it, the combustion beam gets progressively faster and the time between each shot he can do goes down but it's a very slow process. One thing he can't seem to understand is how both Mitsuki and Katsuki can make the beam they create not burn during flight. How does someone firebend without fire? He thinks, as he uses his rudimentary combustion bending abilities to blow up a rock nearby. It's a skill that he would need to practice day in and day out in order to get as proficient as Katsuki and Mitsuki are but he wonders if he could ever get to that level of skill. Mitsuki herself is nowhere near her father in skill when it comes to combustion bending. The former pro-bender/hero, named Mr Bombastic by the public, was able to create explosions without any sort of visible heat radiation or change in temperature. He could just look at something and it'll blow up.

As the clouds part around midday, Izuku sees the silhouette of Mitsuki's dragon flying down. She smirks seeing the destruction around him as she brings Jojo in for a land near where he's standing. "Well well, looks like someone figured it out. Care to show me what you've learned?" She asks, meeting Izuku's annoyed scowl with a slight smirk, intentionally cupping her bosom with her arm and nudging them slightly trying to distract him away from his anger. Izuku just sneers at the gesture from Mitsuki before turning and looking at a burnt patch in the grass that he partially obliterated earlier that morning. He takes a sharp deep breath in then flexes his core and leans forwards focusing with all his might towards the patch of burned soil. Mitsuki watches as a stream of orange and white flames fire from Izuku's head, at half the speed of her own combustion bending, impacts the ground then explodes in a massive fireball. What little snow that had been clinging to the nearby trees is shaken off by the shockwave as the busty blonde starts clapping slightly. "Nicely done, I shouldnt be impressed by how quickly it takes you to pick up on anything firebending related but it's still astonishing. As much as you'd love me showering you with compliments Zuzu; we have to go, there's been an incident. I don't know a lot of the details but we need to head back to the resort." Hearing this, Izuku quickly jumps onto the back of Jojo as Mitsuki orders the dragon to take flight.

As Jojo lands in front of the resort, the entirety of the first year class is gathered outside with Hisashi and Endeavor going through the students over and over again trying to do a head count. Beside them is an older woman dressed in waterbender attire with each of them looking worried. A few of the students from the Yue academy are also gathered nearby but aren't amongst the group of firebenders. "You haven't seen Chan have you? He wasn't in his room when we got up this morning and he missed the tour." Kihon asks rushing up to Izuku who's in the process of getting off of the dragon.

"No, why?" Izuku asks, noticing the change in the girl's face, the same girl that was so confident, arrogant and boisterous just a few weeks ago is now a mess of anxiety and fear. "What happened?"

"Chan suddenly vanished last night, we checked the security recordings and didn't see anyone entering or leaving his room after he entered for the night. Nothing on the exterior cameras either." Endeavor says as Hishasi finishes up a phone call with the anchorage search and rescue team.

"Search and Rescue hasn't found anything, they've scoured the nearby forests all morning." Hisashi says, "You probably haven't seen anything either since you've been with Mitsuki all morning."

"Woah woah, hold on I saw something out in the ice fields, though it could have just been a hunter." Izuku responds. "I don't know when it was, but I saw someone out in the ice fields dragging something large through the ice and snow."

"Any guess on how long ago it was?" Endeavor asks.

"I'm not sure, I know it wasn't too long before sunrise though but it took us 2 hours to walk out there on foot." Izuku responds.

"That means there aren't gonna be any tracks we can follow." Hisashi adds before running a hand through his hair and exhaling exacerbated. "Well shit, this isn't good. The rest of you go inside, introduce yourselves with the other class and try to relax. We'll handle this." Hisashi says, directing the two classes back into the hotel. "At least we won't have to worry about him freezing to death out here. If he paid attention in your class, Enji, he should be fine until we can find him."

"I hope so." Endeavor says before approaching a police car that just arrived to the hotel.