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Today she had learned a difficult truth: the hardest workers don’t always finish first.
Yaoyorozu Momo was the last one to go as she walked along the dark corridor from the locker room to the stadium’s exit.
She had spent sleepless nights for two weeks memorizing chemical and molecular structures, fastidiously copying them into her notebooks, all the while staying several chapters ahead of her classes. Most of the others had done no such thing, save for Midoriya Izuku, and even then, from the times she’d peeked at his books’ contents, they seemed a mindless jumble, the product of an overeager, scatterbrained, and unsophisticated teen’s ramblings, where hers were organized, readable, and succinct. She drilled herself in making each and every item that she thought might be useful to a point where it should have been second nature.
But when it mattered, all the efficient notes in the world didn’t help her. She’d been outperformed. Despite her diligence, everyone seemed more adept at using their quirk than she was at hers. That hers was more difficult was no kind of excuse. That meant her quirk should also be more versatile, better overall. The results spoke for themselves.
Eliminated. Round of sixteen. Winner: Tokoyami Fumikage.
Tokoyami Fumikage.
Tokoyami Fumikage.
Tokoyami Fumikage.
She couldn’t get that boy’s name, nor his intense, unfaltering expression out of her head. The few words they’d exchanged before their sports festival match replayed in her head. What had she said? That she promised to give her best?
It didn’t matter that he had gone on to lose in the semifinals - if anything, that made her own defeat all the more bitter. She was worse than the person who lost to the person who won. Transitive property, it was a simple calculation to figure: she was far from the best.
It would seem desperate to approach him after losing, wouldn’t it? How could she ask for help when it was her job to figure out where she had gone wrong?
Yet, where could she have possibly gone wrong? She’d worked hard, harder than anyone there. When was hard work not the answer?
The only explanation she could think of: the problem was her. She couldn’t think on her feet or in high-pressure situations. She’d always wanted to be a hero, but maybe she just couldn’t handle fighting. Maybe a place like the support course would be better for her, where she could exercise infinite creativity in a low-stakes, low-pressure environment. Maybe her dream just wasn’t in her reach.
Tokoyami, on the other hand, didn’t seem fazed by pressure. And his quirk? It was fast, combat-oriented but still versatile, and didn’t require rote memorization and a encyclopedic memory just to use at a basic level.
She rounded the final corner just before the outside light spilled into the small corridor and made her way to the exit. Standing on the side just barely in the shadow was the silhouette of a short, skinny boy with a feathered head ending in a pointy beak. He was leaned with one foot against the wall, arms crossed and facing the ground with his eyes closed.
“Tokoyami? What are you still doing here?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I was waiting for you.” He said without opening his eyes.
“What for? To console me? I don’t need you to add salt to my wounds.” She stared at him in disgust.
“Hmmm…” said Tokoyami, opening his eyes and regarding her. He paused, considering. “Is that so? Wounds are earned on the battlefield. A dark, unforgiving, neverending place of only the basest struggle. Is that how you saw this competition between aspiring heroes?”
Yaoyorozu goaned internally. Where did he come up with this stuff? Most of the other students didn’t understand half the things the strange boy said because of how intentionally cryptic he was, but she was able to decode it rather easily. It was just so... unnecessary.
“It’s a figure of speech, feathers. No need to get so worked up over it.”
“Synecdoche this time? Your figurative language, as you put it, is getting rather out of control.” Tokoyami frowned. “Dangerous, even. You use it to express hostility that does not become you.”
She took a deep breath before responding. “You want literal speech? Fine. I can handle myself. I don’t want you to stand there as a constant reminder of your victory and my defeat.” She tried to walk past him and toward the exit.
“Victory and defeat…” he said, holding up his bronze medal just enough so it glinted in the sun, giving it a sad look. “How superficial. Do you know what happens to the late bird?”
Yaoyorozu stopped for a second. “He doesn’t get the worm?” she guessed, annoyed.
“And he dies,” Tokoyami nodded. “Because he didn’t get a chance to learn that he needed to wake before the sun’s dawn. Late, I suppose, in more than one sense of the word.”
“Now who’s using the figurative language? I’m no bird.”
He gave a slight smile at that. “And you’re not dead, either.”
She considered this for a moment. “But you’re a bird,” she said, amused. “Shouldn’t you be dead?” Tokoyami looked at her with exasperation, not saying anything for some time.
“She’s got you there, boss,” said a sudden, new voice. She looked up and saw that his quirk had apparently decided to appear in the shadow of the building. For a moment, Tokoyami looked startled, beak slightly open. Then, he regained his composure, and without a word, took one step out of the building and into the light where his shadow began to recede. “Wait! No, come on-”
There was another silence that seemed to last for an eternity before Yaoyorozu erupted with laughter. He let her have her moment, eyes closed in embarrassment.
“What did you do to your quirk that he appears to taunt you without your consent?”
“You could say that ours is a bit of an… adversarial existence,” admitted Tokoyami.
“Wait, seriously? He doesn’t listen to you?” This was completely new information to her.
“Yes, it’s a constant emotional struggle. If I don’t keep my composure at all times, the beast comes loose. And when I find myself in darkness,” he nodded over to the shadows of the entrance tunnel, “it becomes evermore difficult.”
It took a minute for this to sink in. His quirk was much more complicated than she thought. “So during the night…”
“It is like trying to subdue a force with the strength and wiliness of the very seas at high tide with a simple dam.”
As Yaoyorozu considered this and compared it with her own quirk, she gained a newfound respect for Tokoyami. While she had absolute control over hers at all times and was only limited by the depth of her knowledge and speed of her thinking, he had to remain stoic at all times. The idea of that scared her; if she had to constantly regulate her emotions for her quirk to work, she would definitely go insane. Perhaps it was for the best that they each had their own quirks to handle.
“Simile and hyperbole at the same time? You’re such a dork, you know that, Tokoyami?” She laughed, and he stood there awkwardly, feathers twitching, unsure whether to take it as a compliment or as an insult. She started walking toward the main school building and motioned for him to follow. “Come on, let’s go see if Lunch Rush still has anything. I’m starving. We can go over the matches together too, and compare notes. I got Kyouka to record my matches.”
“Very well.” He looked a bit confused, but relieved that she didn’t seem upset with him anymore. He began to follow her toward the school.
“And Tokoyami?” she said, looking back at him. “Thank you.”
“It was Midoriya’s idea,” he said a bit too fast.
“Stop deflecting. You do that every time someone compliments you. And that was weak.”
“Fine. It was Dark Shadow’s idea.”
“He’s basically you anyway.”
“Fine. It was- it was my idea,” he corrected. Yaoyorozu smiled at him, then turned back around, and they continued walking to the school together, her anger at her own weakness forgotten.